Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Add Lathander as selectable God, please!

Sigh ... thanks for the answers SunGardian, Tarloniel, Zarna (and everyone else I may have accidentally missed). I'm really wondering how Larian works ... I mean, why coming back to polish some things at the end when you could do things well from the start, and doing so does not require more work ? (Ok, it depends how their code works ... if it's not greatly organised ... it might be better to avoid giving the Deity feature to any other class if the code for the feature is to be reworked, and classes "accessing" it actually need a copy-paste of the code, instead of a pointer/fetcher to it.)




Druids started out as Clerics-but-different, being essentially modelled after the Celtic priests of the same name. Then the lore of the FR evolved, but Druids have remained Divine Spellcasters. To the question "where do your spells come from", Arcane casters would answer "study" (or "it's innate" in the case of Sorcerers), Divine casters would answer "from my god". For Druids, those would be nature gods.

Nowadays, the gods are not necessary. For Clerics and Paladins, you can say that they derive their power from faith in an ideal, philosophy or cause. Certainly, I would have assumed that you can provide a similar god-free answer for Druids, even to a GM whose setting is the strictly canonical FR. As a matter of fact, there's always been the concept of Shamans floating around, often attempted to be captured/implemented as yet another class, and the answers "spirits" or "drawn from direct, intuitive understanding of the forces of nature" have always also been there, including for Druids (and Rangers). So I just checked the PHB, which confirms all that :

So, currently Larian has created a whole Grove of Sylvanus-worshipping Druids. If I understood the trailer well, your PC Druid can become Faith Warden. So ... hm ... either they consider that a PC Druid must be of the "direct connection to nature" type and doesn't need any god, which would make absolute total sense with their depictions of Druids, or they they have never heard of Chauntea, Mielikki, Eldath, quite a few others gods as well as the "direct connection" type Druids and they assume that all PC Druids worship Sylvanus. Both of these choices would be poor ones. Or, as I hope, they just haven't gotten round to giving Druids a deity yet.



Absolutely ! Everyone should have a Deity attribute. And everyone should be able to choose "none" for Deity, including the Divine spellcasters.

There is a difference of opinion within WotC on this issue. When Greenwood is asked if the need for a god and the related fate of the faithless and the false are still in place he says yes. In the realms everyone needs a deity or they are going to suffer in the afterlife. (and if you have an evil deity you are still going to suffer) The idea that you can worship an abstraction like "law" only exists in settings like Ebberon, Dragonlance and Greyhawk.

I take Greenwood as the final authority on these matters. He's contributed more to building this world than anyone else.

Now if were DMing and someone wanted to play someone false, faithless or atheist-despite-all-evidence I would let them. The point of the rules is to have a stable place from which players can deviate, the rules illuminate the crystalline structure of your unique snowflake. So if Larian wants bring a home rule that allows people to choose no deity or an abstraction I'm all for it as long as the strangeness of the decision is highlighted. A note should appear on the character maker screen and NPCs should comment on it.

. . .

Shadowheart: "You know those fine words won't sway Kelemvor's heart or move his hand, right? He judges the dead without passion or prejudice. He will either let your soul dissolve in the wall of the faithless, give you over to some devil or declare you a worshiper of some god you once mentioned in passing"

Tav: "He can't assign me to some god just because I said their name once"

Shadowheart: "He can. He's the lord of dead, it's his decision. Besides, he'd be right to do so. All of us engage of acts of worship whether we realize it or not. When we ask Tymora to smile on us or implore Beshaba to avert her gaze we are actively venerating the gods.

You need to choose a deity. It's the only thing that makes any sense. In the mean time I would choose your next curse words carefully. I wouldn't want to see you stub your toe and hand your soul over to the goblin god of latrines or something worse.

Every time a farmer looks up on a stormy sky and think "there goes the harvest" Talos gets, like, five faith points

Meanwhile every "praise the sun" meme gives Lathander like five faith points.

Oh, is that how it works?




... is Lathander in the game now?

It is official forgotten realms lore than even someone praying to a gods domain can help give them some form of power... it has been heavily implied that prayer to Amaunator OR Lathander gives Lathander power either way... since he sort of IS Amaunator or at the *very least* took his job... people need gods for divine casting in Forgotten Realms...

But for the good side it feels like the gods were just randomly picked out of a hat with no thought given to the selection whatsoever.

I want to believe that the list of deities that went into EA v1 was a combination of :

• Some deities Larian really wanted to have in the game for EA roleplay purposes. Notably, Shar and Selune.
• A random mix of the rest to give a bit more options. And I mean, literally random.

Lathander is Amaunator has never been anything but a theory, though, and in-setting considered an heresy by Lathanderites. 4th Ed said they were the same but 4th Ed merged lots of deities (Talos and Gruumsh, for example, because that makes sense) and everybody hated that. When they walked back on that design choice in 5th Ed that was undone and they were made separate deities again. Amaunator was also one of the many gods who returned to life so now they're both around and divine at the same time.

Considering the ties both Lathander and Amaunator have to previous games in this series, we should at least get call-outs to them, along with a spiffy temple or two to visit in Baldur's Gate.

What especially aggravates me is that on the evil side there is a solid representation of the prominent evil gods. But for the good side it feels like the gods were just randomly picked out of a hat with no thought given to the selection whatsoever. And this fits with how the companions are working out as well (yes, even if we supposedly get some good companions in the future). So overall it feels very strongly to me that the game is being made for those who like to play the evil side, and the good side is deliberately getting screwed over.

Oh yeah ! I said earlier that
I want to believe that the current list is really just a placeholder, and that we'll get a much fuller list eventually. I know. It feels weird. When I'm not thinking about combat rules and Larian's communication, I find myself being somewhat optimistic. Anyway, I don't think they favour evil. I'm sure they're aware that most players will play good, at least at first (and most people won't even finish their first playthrough), and I hope (...) that they realise that their evil path isn't exactly award-worthy. I think it's just a random selection of gods.

I think you could only select 3 gods in the first version of EA and now there are more (not 100% sure).

I guess we will get more gods on release, just as we get more races and classes and party members.