K wrote:How? How does a religious follower know that a spell is divine and comes from his particular god and is not a trick of some other spellcaster?
Religious faith (and see below). Since deities rule peoples lives, that includes faith and knowledge.
K wrote:That sounds clever, but it is actually not. How is the person this spell is cast on know that he hasn't just been the victim of a mind control or memory altering spell, and not the combo of spells that you suggest? The ranks in Spellcraft that he doesn't have? He doesn't. All he knows is that the cleric says "let me cast this spell on you, and then you'll believe me....." Yeh, that's not any kind of evidence.
The cleric can lend the commoner a magic item that allows the wielder to use the Augury spell independent from the cleric. The commoner can use the spell to divine some other future event first. Once the Augury has been proven to successfully predict the future, the commoner can ask about undead. There is your proof, and it is about as irrefutable as you can get. I hope you are not going to fall back on the ‘closing your eyes and sticking fingers in your ears’ defense again.
K wrote:Really? Where in their monster description does it say that they have access to the Wishes of the more powerful angels? Where does it say that anywhere? Support your arguments. You are making assumptions not supported in the rules.
So you are asserting that a good Solar would not help a lesser good angel with identical or similar ideals? A CR 14 Angel has the same innate ability to obtain magic items as a 14th level Rogue. At worst, they have the same capability to obtain magic items. If you go on to assume a good
angel would help another
angel, then they are ahead of the rogue.
K wrote:The issues you were mixing was whether spellcaster who potentially could cast animate dead might support a philosophy that made it seem unattractive, and the issue of you've restated above. Keep up, shortbus. Those are two separate issues.
Actually, shortbus, they are directly related as I’ve explained previously. Reread my posts if you need to.
K wrote:The SRD (and Dieties and Demigods) clearly outlines the powers of the god. Rulership is not one of those powers.
Irrelevant. The entire chapter on religion in the Phb explicitly states, or implies, that gods rule over humanoid existence.
3.5 PHB p. 106 wrote:The typical person has a deity whom he considers to be his patron.
3.5 PHB p. 106 wrote:Those described here are the deities most often worshiped among the common races, by adventurers, and by villains.
So most people worship deities that are real. End of argument.
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K wrote:But the rules, they don't even have angels or demons at their command, or fortresses, or anything. Some have domains, and that is a function of their powers, but in no place does ot say "this god has 200 of this angel at his command (though some demon lords do, as flavor text)".
3.5 MM p. 12 wrote:Solars are the greatest of the angels, usually close attendants to a deity or champions of some cosmically beneficent task (such as eliminating a particular type of wrongdoing).
3.5 MM p. 12 wrote:Planetars can cast divine spells as 17th-level clerics. A planetar has access to two of the following domains: Air, Destruction, Good, Law, or War (plus any others from its deity.)
3.5 MM p. 12 wrote:Solars can cast divine spells as 20th-level clerics. A solar has access to two of the following domains: Air, Destruction, Good, Law, or War (plus any others from its deity.)
It is explicitly stated that these angels both have the power of clerics, and have patron deities. Maybe you should take your own advice and “Support your arguments. You are making assumptions not supported in the rules.”
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K wrote:You are assuming that some kind of divine organization exists when nothing in the rules grants those powers.
You see, clerical religious orders are ‘divine organizations’ that are, and try to keep up, granted powers by deities. It isn’t just one line of text. It is paragraphs of text supporting the powerful religious institutions of the clerics, and virtually all of the flavor text in D&D’s mythos.
K wrote:"Seeing a cleric" was an expression denoting people's access to a cleric where they could hear sermons and the like.
Fine, back-peddle. Even if we go by your assumptions that clerics never go to other towns to preach, or that people never go on pilgrimages, or to religious gatherings, significantly more than half of all people live in a community with a cleric.
K wrote:You can't prove that it does not harm the soul or the person. Seriously.
I have proven it. Read my statements above.
K wrote:Consider Intelligent Design.
...
Stop thinking like a gamer who knows the rules, and start thinking like a person who lives in a world without defined black and white rules where deception is easy.
I wondered which one of us would bring up real world religions first. In Dnd land, both the religious majority and the lying minority have access to deceitful magic, so it’s a wash. Lets remove it from the equation. So there are only two meaningful differences between the real world and Dnd land concerning religious belief. These being: Some people have proof of the knowledge of deities, and virtually all of the varied religions agree on the afterlife.
Given those two changes to the real world, consider how widespread agreement on the afterlife would be. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Scientologists, etc, would all agree on the afterlife and have people who actually know it for a fact. So it is easily concluded that people in dnd land would know and believe that animating the dead isn’t evil.
You are arguing against your own point, and have proven mine. Thank you. Hopefully you now understand, and the discussion can be put to rest.
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You have been proven wrong so completely, and so often, that it has become tiring to correct you. I hope you now have a better understanding of the issue. I also hope you will refrain from being so prodigious in making false statements in the future, because I think I might let the issue rest soon, if not now.
There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe