The in game preacher job allows you to set up an altar to your diety and allows others to pray at it.

If they person praying at the altar has an alignment acceptable to the altar's deity they receive a certain ammount of XP and the altar's owner gets a message saying that their god is pleased by the worship of the faithful.

If the person praying at the alter has an aligment in conflict with the altar's deity, they get little XP and the altar's owner receives a message saying that their god is not pleased by the person praying.

My questions is this.

Is this information that is given to the altar's owner usable as information given IC?

ie. If an evil aligned character prays at my altar to Lathander, I get a message saying that my god is not pleased. I can thus concur that the character is not a good one.

It would make sense that the preacher would know this IC, also given that clerics can detect aliments (of course given consent and all)


I am not pushing one way or the other but I would like to clarify if this is ooc mechanical information or something that I would feel IC

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Characters:

Fel'Brin - I am one with the shadows

I think that alignment has nothing to do with it. Your god is pleased or displeased depending on your roll, not on the alignment of the person praying.

Bottom line, why would Lathander be displeased if an evil person was praying at his altar?

Ah, perhaps I misunderstood how it worked. The description on the forums states:

And yeah, I would imagine the gods take prayer form whomever will give it.



I suppose that means that someone of evil alignment cannot even attempt to pray at it?

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Characters:

Fel'Brin - I am one with the shadows

If I remember correctly, you cannot pray at a Preacher's altar if your Alignment does not match the deity of that altar, at all.
I've tried to pray at an altar of Beshaba on Ahsra, but it simply refused her and gave me a feedback message to that effect.
I don't know if the Preacher got anything out of it or got any feedback messages.

IMO, anyone should be able to pray at any altar regardless of their Alignment in relation to that deity. People pray to a host of deities they don't actually follow in Faerûn, after all, and most Clerics who are also Preachers are probably happy for the opportunity to turn lip service into a chance to get someone to actually convert, and thus bolster the number of dedicated worshipers of their deity.

I agree with Letum. It makes little sense (just like the lightning bolt hitting you when you try to worship an "incompatible" idol) and has no basis in lore. As has been pointed out, Faerûnians are thoroughly polytheistic and will worship at almost any altar given the right situation. Furthermore, gods and clergy want and actively seek new converts, with the hope of reforming them to the right faith. If enough people of a mismatched alignment convert, it might result in a change in the god and church's alignment. That couldn't happen if they weren't able to worship in the first place.

I can't speak for Disco, but I think he just liked clarity and order in the diety system and to make people think about alignment. Which to some extent has worked, but it has also created problems like this which really have no IC basis and are more troublesome to the good players than the dubious benefit of making bad players look like average ones. (Incidentally, that's why I dislike most superfluous rules and restrictions: they only hamper true talent and will never mold a mediocrity into an original mind. But that's not really for this topic.)

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