The spellplague is in a decade, what do?

[rmnimoc]

I was reading a forgotten realms story and I got a bit curious as to what people would do in a specific situation.

The situation is this: You wake up in a new human body in Toril. The year is 1375 DR, meaning in just ten years everything is going to get fourth editioned when the spellplague happens. The previous owner of your body went through the effort of learning the basics for the class(es) of your choice and is effectively level three. That said you can assume your body was, like everyone else in canon Toril, poorly optimized. Think the wizard with the starting feat Toughness from the PHB. Their choices are better to have than nothing, but definitely not anything that'll help you that much.

So, you've got ten years in the world to amass all the power you can before fourth edition nerfs literally everything and you're left with as much of your power as the new system allows. Of course, if in those ten years you can manage to stop Mystra from getting ganked (again) or otherwise stop the spellplague (even the overdiety Ao couldn't so that might be a bit above your level) you might be able to prolong the age of greatness that was the Third (and a half) Edition. So, what do?

[Buufreak]

Well, unlike 3, 4 has a canon, RAW means of achieving godhood. I'd work towards that.

[Malroth]

Buy a scroll of plane shift and escape to greyhawk or eberron

[legomaster00156]

Realize that 4th edition wasn't a bad system and that edition wars are beneath me.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Get to epic within a couple of days. That way you can survive in the utter deathworld that is Abeir-Toril.

Take the Loyalty's Reward feat (from Kingdoms of Kalamar). Use it to craft for yourself the following feat:

Spellplague Immunity
Benefit: You are immune to the normal effects of the spellplague. If you are ever exposed to the spellplague, your body starts generating your own internal weave and you can use magic normally without it.
Normal: The spellplague will ruin you and everything you hold dear.

Then take Leadership and recruit all the magic users who suit your ethos. They will likewise be protected from the horrid curse that is 4th Edition the spellplague.

[edit] With luck, the gods will petition to become your followers, including Ao. Then you can ask him to do you a number of favors, such as raising you to a high divine rank and dismantling the horrible Wall of the Faithless.

[rmnimoc]

Realize that 4th edition wasn't a bad system and that edition wars are beneath me.

It's not so much edition wars here as the fact that the world in fourth edition is weaker than the world in 3rd edition, just like 3rd is weaker than second. That's both in lore (everyone is weaker because of what happened) and mechanics (3.5 is broken). Also the world massively gets wrecked by the spellplague and the wailing years and pretty much everything is crippled for a while when two separate worlds fuse and unfuse.

What do you do in a dangerous world that's about to become far more dangerous in such a way that most of the power you've got will become worthless? Magic is the path to power most people think of in D&D, but when the spellplague happens the entire weave basically shuts down and all magic just dies for a little while. Even Ao couldn't do anything to help and he was as far beyond the gods as they were beyond mortals.

If you want to survive the spellplague (provided you can't stop it) I'd think you'd want something caster-y that isn't magic, so psionics seems like the best bet. Spell-to-Power Erudite would probably be the best choice, since you could keep all the spells as things that don't require the weave (Toril's counterpart (Abeir) had little to no magic because it didn't have the weave, but it still had psionics). Since most of the problems with the spellplague are because of the weave screwing up (also the standard end of the world stuff: gods dying, realms collapsing, blue fire from beyond space killing or corrupting everything it touched, earthquakes, tsunamis, parts of the world just abruptly ceasing to exist, a third of all casters just dying on the spot, etc) then not needing the weave to do all the magic things that need to be done can only be a benefit. Sadly the standard "hide in a demiplane" strategy gets a lot riskier when actual real planes are crashing into each other somehow (though it did work for some people), so I'd probably have to look into a plan B for the whole "surviving the apocalypse" thing. That said, if you can pull it off then as a caster that doesn't need the weave you'd be in a much better position than any arcane or divine caster after all that is over since you won't be affected by the new changes to the weave that weakened basically every wizard who survived the spellplague.

Of course, all that still requires surviving the spellplague.

[tiercel]

The same thing I do every Forgotten Realms campaign, Pinky:

TEAR DOWN THE WALL OF THE FAITHLESS!

Er.

"Get out of Dodge" seems a reasonable option, honestly.

[Vizzerdrix]

Switch over to pathfinder (finally) and learn to make poppets and use fire poi. Maybe reinvent shapesand.

[heavyfuel]

Go Cleric. Chaos shuffle myself ASAP. Clerics were the strongest class in 3.5, were still powerhouses in 4e, and are powerhouses in 5e.

I'm gonna be fine.

Druids would also be an option, but I'd rather not be a tree hugger extreme

[GrayDeath]

If the above suggested Feat works, do that (thanks!).

If AO/The GM are ***** and it doesnt, simply go find Mystra, get her to set up a Zone of truth, tell her m EXACTLY how she is going to die (again), and in thnaks for avoiding that get Ao to make me the God of Avoided Apocalypses, good Timing, and important Knowledge. ^^

[Quertus]

Yeah, Um, 10 years sounds like plenty of time to get out of Dodge. That would be my #1 concern.

Before that, though, I would likely take a moment to mourn the poor soul who died for me to be there. I might even investigate who used which monkey's paw to wish something like "I W~ someone understood…".

Also, rebuild the body. I hear Trollblooded is nice this time of year.

As I don't really know much about the FR transition to 4e, I wouldn't be much help there. I'd just flee, so that those schmucks left behind could say, "he's in a better place now".

Oh, and on the off chance that the sap whose body I stole is the one responsible for the wish, I suppose I might extend the offer to leave to their family.

[Psychoalpha]

People be hating on the Wall of the Faithless. Is it just a general contempt for the idea of characters having to put faith in something greater than themselves, when common wisdom is that there is no such thing, assuming the right degree of optimization? ;D

Pretty sure Kelemvor already tried doing away with the Wall of the Faithless and it didn't work out so well. The cosmology is what it is, and the Wall serves a purpose, so all this 'tear down that wall!' stuff just seems weird.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

People be hating on the Wall of the Faithless. Is it just a general contempt for the idea of characters having to put faith in something greater than themselves, when common wisdom is that there is no such thing, assuming the right degree of optimization? ;D

Pretty sure Kelemvor already tried doing away with the Wall of the Faithless and it didn't work out so well. The cosmology is what it is, and the Wall serves a purpose, so all this 'tear down that wall!' stuff just seems weird.

It forces you to be a cultist and worship monsters that are petty and cruel by nature. And if you dare to rail against them and don't become an abomination yourself (see: any number of undead monstrosities), you will be punished in an utterly horrific way until your very soul is devoured through all-consuming pain or poached by the demonic hordes.

"Pledge your soul to us and grovel, or we'll torture you horribly for the rest of your existence." I'm not sure how you can't see why that's utterly monstrous with even a passing glance.

[tiercel]

Pretty sure Kelemvor already tried doing away with the Wall of the Faithless and it didn't work out so well. The cosmology is what it is, and the Wall serves a purpose, so all this 'tear down that wall!' stuff just seems weird.

The “logic” for why Kelemvor “had” to put back the Wall, IIRC, seemed a bit specious; Good people always have more to look forward to in their afterlives than Evil ones. The Wall just effectively adjusts, from an afterlife point of view, “Evil” to include “didn’t genuinely devote yourself to a self-interested monster who wants to make you into another Scooby Snack.”

It forces you to be a cultist and worship monsters that are petty and cruel by nature. And if you dare to rail against them and don't become an abomination yourself (see: any number of undead monstrosities), you will be punished in an utterly horrific way until your very soul is devoured through all-consuming pain or poached by the demonic hordes.

"Pledge your soul to us and grovel, or we'll torture you horribly for the rest of your existence." I'm not sure how you can't see why that's utterly monstrous with even a passing glance.

This.

[Psychoalpha]

It forces you to be a cultist and worship monsters that are petty and cruel by nature.

Some of them are, some of them aren't. Describing entire swaths of deities, and Faerun has a pretty ridiculous number of Gods, like that says more about your biases than their actions. You're basically spoiled for choices, and there's no particular evidence of most being petty or cruel unless they're... you know, gods of pettiness and cruelty.

And if you dare to rail against them and don't become an abomination yourself (see: any number of undead monstrosities), you will be punished in an utterly horrific way until your very soul is devoured through all-consuming pain or poached by the demonic hordes.

Well, sure. But, I mean, at that point you're basically railing against the idea of global warming and actively choosing to contribute to its effects as a means of protest, it's just that in Faerun you end up having to actually pay the price for those choices instead of just foisting them off on future generations (but also that).

Like I said, the Cosmology is what it is, and in Faerun it dictates that the Gods are both tied to their portfolio and responsible for the upkeep of its contents, as well as directly requiring the worship of mortals. When a God dies or otherwise fades away, its portfolio is in turmoil and Faerun suffers (physically or metaphysically depending on the portfolio in question) as a result, unless another God snaps it up quickly enough... which almost inevitably leads to conflict between other Gods, which can lead to more Gods dying, rinse and repeat until it settles.

The mortals of Faerun and the Gods of Faerun are bound in a symbiotic relationship, and either party not doing their part in that relationship puts everyone else at risk. We've been shown, as has Faerun as a whole over time, the consequences of either side messing with that relationship (and it's usually mortals who suffer more greatly, obviously). Those who choose to rail against the Gods aren't 'daring' anything, they're putting their own selfish pride first and saying that since they personally don't care for (or hate or whatever else) the Gods then they don't care if others end up suffering for it.

I feel empathy for the Faithless the same way I feel empathy (or sympathy) for people who believed the lead and asbestos regulations in our world were all just a price fixing hoax and so continued to use lead paint and asbestos insulation on the sly for years. Except, unfortunately, those people didn't get mortared into a big wall with mold, or whatever. ;D

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Some of them are, some of them aren't. Describing entire swaths of deities, and Faerun has a pretty ridiculous number of Gods, like that says more about your biases than their actions. You're basically spoiled for choices, and there's no particular evidence of most being petty or cruel unless they're... you know, gods of pettiness and cruelty.

{Scrubbed}

Ao is vile, and he actively encourages psychotic mass-murderers and worse to flourish. Destroying him would be a benefit to the universe at large. And his regime (including the "Good" gods, which are also just nasty, from everything I've seen) needs to be destroyed.

Well, sure. But, I mean, at that point you're basically railing against the idea of global warming and actively choosing to contribute to its effects as a means of protest, it's just that in Faerun you end up having to actually pay the price for those choices instead of just foisting them off on future generations (but also that).

Like I said, the Cosmology is what it is, and in Faerun it dictates that the Gods are both tied to their portfolio and responsible for the upkeep of its contents, as well as directly requiring the worship of mortals. When a God dies or otherwise fades away, its portfolio is in turmoil and Faerun suffers (physically or metaphysically depending on the portfolio in question) as a result, unless another God snaps it up quickly enough... which almost inevitably leads to conflict between other Gods, which can lead to more Gods dying, rinse and repeat until it settles.

The mortals of Faerun and the Gods of Faerun are bound in a symbiotic parasitic relationship, and either party not doing their part in that relationship puts everyone else at risk. We've been shown, as has Faerun as a whole over time, the consequences of either side messing with that relationship (and it's usually mortals who suffer more greatly, obviously). Those who choose to rail against the Gods aren't 'daring' anything, they're putting their own selfish pride first and saying that since they personally don't care for (or hate or whatever else) the Gods then they don't care if others end up suffering for it.

Mortals are chattel. The gods don't care about them; they just use them for their own power. The Evil gods obviously want everyone to suffer, and the Good ones don't actually make life better, else it would be better. They even expect mortals to take care of themselves, which is why they push mortals into doing things as their servants, rather than actually making the multiverse a better place outside of their own domains (which is mostly for their own benefit anyway).

They are selfish and petty and either actively engage in cruelty or allow it to happen, without lifting a finger to help.

Railing against the gods? That's just seeing them for what they are and for what they do. Just because they have power doesn't mean they are using that power responsibly, or care for anything but themselves.

Else the Wall of the Faithless would never have existed in the first place. Offering actual love and acceptance and protection should be enough. "Punishment" in this case would be not getting said benefits. Telling people to grovel or be tortured for eternity just shows what kind of monsters they really are.

I feel empathy for the Faithless the same way I feel empathy (or sympathy) for people who believed the lead and asbestos regulations in our world were all just a price fixing hoax and so continued to use lead paint and asbestos insulation on the sly for years. Except, unfortunately, those people didn't get mortared into a big wall with mold, or whatever. ;D

"Worship me or die horribly" is hardly a hallmark of someone who actually cares for those they parasitize upon.

[Malphegor]

Forgotten realms self insert checklist:

Be nonmagically immortal.

Destroy all afterlives. They are not my cup of tea.

Destroy or control all gods. They are a wildcard and not to be trusted.

Figure out planar travel to one of the Earths that the various human slaves come from. Even if I’m heading to a Earth where Egypt never stopped expanding or whatever, it is better than the Realms. If I can find Ed Greenwood I am piggybacking onto him to get myself to an Earth one way or another.

Be a psionicist if I see the opportunity to learn from them. Psionics is one of the more reliable methods to have ‘magic’ I feel.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Forgotten realms self insert checklist:

Be nonmagically immortal.

Destroy all afterlives. They are not my cup of tea.

Destroy or control all gods. They are a wildcard and not to be trusted.

Figure out planar travel to one of the Earths that the various human slaves come from. Even if I’m heading to a Earth where Egypt never stopped expanding or whatever, it is better than the Realms. If I can find Ed Greenwood I am piggybacking onto him to get myself to an Earth one way or another.

Be a psionicist if I see the opportunity to learn from them. Psionics is one of the more reliable methods to have ‘magic’ I feel.

I like you.

[Ramza00]

People be hating on the Wall of the Faithless. Is it just a general contempt for the idea of characters having to put faith in something greater than themselves, when common wisdom is that there is no such thing, assuming the right degree of optimization? ;D

Pretty sure Kelemvor already tried doing away with the Wall of the Faithless and it didn't work out so well. The cosmology is what it is, and the Wall serves a purpose, so all this 'tear down that wall!' stuff just seems weird.

It prevents discovery, forcing you to be loyal to 1 thing or many things without the process of self-discovery that is so pivotal to so many hero stories.

Why have Luke have to struggle before choosing faithfully I am a Jedi when the outcome of the choice is preordained? Part of many hero myths is being a greenseer / master of two worlds. And faith is tied to doubt in many philosophies such as Kierkegaard, turning faith into something that the wall of the faithless is antithetical to Kierkegaard's ideas and thus you are restricting options to the player. When faith is given definite form and definite consequences you reduce wonder in your setting and make it something mechanical.

[Vizzerdrix]

It forces you to be a cultist and worship monsters that are petty and cruel by nature. And if you dare to rail against them and don't become an abomination yourself (see: any number of undead monstrosities), you will be punished in an utterly horrific way until your very soul is devoured through all-consuming pain or poached by the demonic hordes.

"Pledge your soul to us and grovel, or we'll torture you horribly for the rest of your existence." I'm not sure how you can't see why that's utterly monstrous with even a passing glance.

I highly suspect you could easily win over Gond by inventing legos.

[Calthropstu]

Planeshift to golarion. Retrain levels to pf. Achieve real power. Return after spellplague and obliterate everything.

Alternatively, Planeshift/teleport to earth, travel through time and stop 4e from ever existing.

[Bronk]

Easiest way? I’d probably head to Waterdeep, sign on with a Spelljammer crew, and set myself up somewhere else.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Easiest way? I’d probably head to Waterdeep, sign on with a Spelljammer crew, and set myself up somewhere else.

I'd probably do this after I took the above feat, subjected myself to the spellplague, transplanted myself into a new body (to quarantine the old one), and then be on my way.

[Telok]

I feel that it says something about how screwed up FR is that almost every single response to the "You end up in Forgotten Realms. What do you do?" threads has, for more than a decade now, come down to 'escape FR as soon as possible' or 'kill all gods and replace them with something better'. Of course I also think that it says something about D&D that as the editions progress it keeps becoming both more important, and less possible, to achieve either of those goals.

[tiercel]

Some of them are, some of them aren't. Describing entire swaths of deities, and Faerun has a pretty ridiculous number of Gods, like that says more about your biases than their actions. You're basically spoiled for choices, and there's no particular evidence of most being petty or cruel unless they're... you know, gods of pettiness and cruelty.

I think you’re missing the point here: it’s not the portfolios of the gods or whether they have a tinfoil “Good” halo hanging over their heads, it’s that all the gods seem totally okay with the onus of worship being 100% on mortals under the threat of Hells-like punishment, rather than the gods having to actually earn said worship. It’s a classic mafioso protection racket (“gee, mister, that’s a real nice SOUL ya got there, be a real SHAME if somethin’ were to HAPPEN to it, knowhaddaImean?” *rubs fingers together*), and being the God of Happy Butterflies That Vomit Rainbows doesn’t make you any less a mafioso if you’re willingly part of the racket.

Like I said, the Cosmology is what it is, and in Faerun it dictates that the Gods are both tied to their portfolio and responsible for the upkeep of its contents, as well as directly requiring the worship of mortals. When a God dies or otherwise fades away, its portfolio is in turmoil and Faerun suffers (physically or metaphysically depending on the portfolio in question) as a result

Not always (how many times has some version of Mystra died now? You’d think that the literal Goddess of Magic could do better, given that GitP canon for optimized mortal high-level wizards is “basically invincible”, but magic doesn’t fail every time she does) — and perhaps more to the point, not for always — didn’t Ao decide this was supposed to be the case, but then instead of “and so you gods better do your jobs well” instituted “dance, mortal monkeys, dance!” as the determining factor?

Also, you’d think that the entire point of having an Overdeity would be to protect the sphere against events no deity could handle, but with the Spellplague, Ao was too busy giggling in a corner somewhere because, y’know, plot, edition change. I would say that Ao is nothing more but a rebranded Lord of the Ninth with the “-smodeus” filed off, but by canon Asmodeus at least defeated Zargon mid-pantheonicide (if for his own reasons) . Ao seems either completely useless or even more maleficient than the Lord of the Hells.

The mortals of Faerun and the Gods of Faerun are bound in a symbiotic relationship

“Parasitic” is the word here; non-believing mortals get thrown into a metaphysical meat-grinder for all eternity, whereas lousy gods can rest assured that their mafioso protection racket will keep them feasting on endless tasty mortal snacks as long as they can remain not-assassinated.

I feel empathy for the Faithless the same way I feel empathy (or sympathy) for people who believed the lead and asbestos regulations in our world were all just a price fixing hoax and so continued to use lead paint and asbestos insulation on the sly for years. Except, unfortunately, those people didn't get mortared into a big wall with mold, or whatever. ;D

Except that lead and asbestos are objectively, inherently harmful, whereas FR cosmology works the way it does because Ao said so and all the gods are basically OK enough with being a protection racket.

Ao is vile, and he actively encourages psychotic mass-murderers and worse to flourish. Destroying him would be a benefit to the universe at large. And his regime (including the "Good" gods, which are also just nasty, from everything I've seen) needs to be destroyed.

"Worship me or die horribly" is hardly a hallmark of someone who actually cares for those they parasitize upon.

I’m not sure I could play in an FR campaign a character who knew about Ao/the Wall of the Faithless and wasn’t ultimately on a quest to defeat the Epic-level Mafia.

[Jack_McSnatch]

I have a DM who is downright OBSESSED with running things during the spellplague. How do I explain to him that the canon transition from 3.5 to 4 is ****ty and shouldn't be the setting for a 3.5 game?

[rmnimoc]

Spoiler: Give Mystra hugs, not stabs.

Show

Just throwing this bit into the "the gods all suck" ring after seeing the thing about Mystra, every time she gets interfered with Toril had some sort of major issue pop up, which might be because she's legitimately working her hardest to keep bad things from happening and everyone and their dog keeps screwing her over while she's busy. Trying to regulate magic so the entire realm doesn't get screwed over while also trying to fix the damage a big old war was doing to the weave? A wizard decides he can do it better and takes all her power, immediately using his new vast cosmic knowledge to learn that the situation was more complicated than he thought and Mystra was already in the middle of fixing it and he's may have accidentally-ed magic, forcing Mysta to give her life to keep things from getting as bad as they otherwise would. Trying to regulate magic so the entire realm doesn't get screwed over? Ao decides the gods don't care about their mortals enough or something after a pair of idiots tried to usurp him so he chucks them all down to Toril to play mortal for a while, screwing up what Mystra was doing, messing up magic. When Mystra tried to get back to work she got explosion-punched by the security guard at the door and second edition happened. Trying to regulate magic so the entire realm doesn't get screwed over while also making sure that even if she dies again magic will be fine? Shar gets Cyric to gank her, then breaks all the fail-safes Mystra made and unleashes the spellplague on the world, fourth edition happens. The only edition change other than second that didn't involve Mystra dying was 4th to 5th. Odd coincidence here, the spellplague that popped up after she died and her house got wrecked got fixed shortly after she got brought back to full power. Clearly those two things aren't related. Ao claimed all the credit after separating Abeil and Toril again. Weird that it took him a hundred years to get around to it and that it got done right after Mystra got fixed. I don't think there was a canon explaination for the 2nd to 3rd edition change.

TLDR; Kill all the other gods and doublekill Ao if that's really what you want, but for the good of everyone in the realm just let Mystra keep doing whatever it is she's doing. It's probably pretty important and the poor girl just wants to do her job.

[Asmotherion]

Realize that 4th edition wasn't a bad system and that edition wars are beneath me.

it's not bad per say... as a generic RPG it's... well not that bad. But i refuse to call it an official D&D edition when it strayed so far from core.

Pathfinder is more of a 4th edition of actually D&D than the official "4th" ever was.

[Raven777]

It forces you to be a cultist and worship monsters that are petty and cruel by nature. And if you dare to rail against them and don't become an abomination yourself (see: any number of undead monstrosities), you will be punished in an utterly horrific way until your very soul is devoured through all-consuming pain or poached by the demonic hordes.

"Pledge your soul to us and grovel, or we'll torture you horribly for the rest of your existence." I'm not sure how you can't see why that's utterly monstrous with even a passing glance.

Afroakuma once made a pretty well thought out lore expalnation as to why the Wall might be needed and why it was put back in short order that one time Kelemvor tried to abolish it:
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questi...ss-after-death

[Quertus]

Alternatively, Planeshift/teleport to earth, travel through time and stop 4e from ever existing.

Best answer ever. I approve.

I feel that it says something about how screwed up FR is that almost every single response to the "You end up in Forgotten Realms. What do you do?" threads has, for more than a decade now, come down to 'escape FR as soon as possible' or 'kill all gods and replace them with something better'. Of course I also think that it says something about D&D that as the editions progress it keeps becoming both more important, and less possible, to achieve either of those goals.

I'm not sure that that says much about D&D, but it definitely says something about FR.

What do you think it says about D&D? That it's designed by railroaders who want consumers who are forced to stick with their *****, no matter how bad the plot?

I’m not sure I could play in an FR campaign a character who knew about Ao/the Wall of the Faithless and wasn’t ultimately on a quest to defeat the Epic-level Mafia.

Thank you for joining the ranks of the Righteous.

Afroakuma once made a pretty well thought out lore expalnation as to why the Wall might be needed and why it was put back in short order that one time Kelemvor tried to abolish it:
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questi...ss-after-death

So, on top of everything else, the FR deities are idiots? The Wall is their best PR idea? {Scrubbed} The more I hear about FR, the more fire I want to take to it - especially its gods.

(Also, the premise of the argument must be incorrect, else the god of Illithids would starve.)