Serious Skills: Religion

The entry on Religion in the Rules Compendium is sadly short and uninteresting.

Religion is the academic study of gods. sacred texts, rituals, symbols and theology. This information extends to knowledge of the undead and the Astral Sea, including the denizens thereof.

The following Religion checks give mechanical benefits:

• Easy DC: General knowledge of a religious subject.
• Moderate DC: Expert-level knowledge of a religious subject; origin, type, keywords, temperament of an undead creature or denizen of the Astral Sea
• Hard DC: Esoteric knowledge of a religious topic; powers, vulnerability and resistances of an undead creature or denizen of the Astral Sea

DISCLAIMER: The following statements contain commentary on religion that are solely the views of the author (Ryven Cedrylle) and do not represent any other contributor or the At-Will Blog as a whole.

Somewhere in my dad’s apartment in Ohio is a old 1960s MAD paperback containing a parody of the Sound of Music. (It might be Hopping MAD or maybe Gone MAD, I don’t quite remember.) The rewrite to the song “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” opens with this little gem:

“How do you solve the problem of religion? How do you handle nuns and not offend? How do you solve the problem of religion…? Pretend!”

This is precisely the approach D&D takes to religion. In order to not offend the sensibilities of any possible players – or perhaps more honestly, parents and spiritual leaders of said possible players – the religions presented in D&D are wholly faithless. The gods are real and proveable. The Cleric throws around Astral Seal at-will, people get raised from the dead, heck, you can go VISIT the gods and talk to them under the right circumstances. There are no discrepancies in dogma, heretical groups are Evil 99% of the time (kudos to Mr. Schwalb on the recent Vecna article that bucks this trend nicely) and the will of the gods is pretty easy to discern. There’s no need for faith or belief, no room for doubt; even the atheists KNOW the gods exist and simply don’t care. In all practicality, D&D religion is very little more a bunch of magical politicians all vying for votes – an important point we’ll come back to shortly.

Compare this with real-world religions. Some religions, such as Taoism or Buddhism, don’t have a deity they’re much concerned about. For the Hindus, the highest god (Brahman) is not necessarily sentient and sure doesn’t give one whit about you. Maybe the sub-deities do, like Shiva or Krishna, but none of them are purely Good or Evil. Even religions that have a central deity (or many) lack other aspects we generally associate with D&D religion. Judaism, for example, did not profess belief in an afterlife at the time of Jesus of Nazareth and still isn’t entirely sure about it even now. Even in polytheistic religions that D&D is roughly based on – like the Norse, Greco-Roman or Babylonian mythos – stories were constantly being made up and altered without concern for ‘canon.’ There simply was no definitive source one could go to learn the ‘truth’ about the gods. I could keep going, but suffice it to say that religion in D&D is a piecemeal construction of parts of many real religions, the result of which doesn’t properly resemble any of its progenitors.

So what is a D&D religion all about? In one of my seminary classes, I had an assignment to write about my agreement or disagreement with Martin Marty’s definition of religion. (Martin Marty is a current Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago School of Divinty and a prominent American theologian) He has defined a religion as having five common features:

• Appeal to myth or symbol
• Concern for an ultimate cause
• Rituals or superstitions
• Demands certain behavior of its adherents
• Defined communal space for related activities

Sure, there are many other definitions of religion I could use here, but I really like this one for D&D. Why? The main point of my paper was that according to these criteria, the Green Bay Packers constitute a religion. (I got an A on that paper, by the way.) It goes to show just how un-spiritual a religion (from the Latin religio meaning “to bind together”) can be. In other words, the basic differences between a political party, a church, and a fandom is almost nothing. Religion isn’t really about faith, belief, mysticism or honing one’s character – it’s about allegiance. Whose “team” are you on and how do you get support from that “team?” What’s the hierarchy of power within it? It’s not just that religion and politics tend to get intertwined and/or used by one another throughout human history – religion IS politics at the core. Incidentally, this is the flavor reason your Cleric and Paladin aren’t using Religion’s key ability, INT, but the Invoker is. The Cleric knows something about all the other faiths, but is really just keyed into his or her own. The Invoker, on the other hand, has not claimed allegiance to any divinity, choosing instead to pull from ALL possible divine sources. The cleric is a press secretary; the Invoker is a pundit.

It seems to flow quite smoothly then that Religion is a sort of History skill for the common man. It represents knowledge of organizations and companies that exist around political structures that are too small or simply not scandalous enough to make the major history records. By way of real-world example, consider Habitat for Humanity. Founded by a Biblical scholar named Clarence Jordan as the ‘Koinonia Farm’ outside Americus, GA in 1942, Habitat is well-known throughout the U.S. and abroad (thus excluding it from Streetwise). Due to the local community level in which it usually operates, though, its activities rarely make news outside of metropolitan TV and radio stations (thus excluding it from History). The way you would go about finding out the backstory about such an organization would be through its sponsors and backers, many of which are religious in nature despite the fact that Habitat itself is not technically a faith-based organization. Consider also the ‘horns’ hand gesture associated with heavy metal music. This particular symbol is generally attributed to the late, great Ronnie James Dio though it filtered through many of his musician friends and fans. He is said to have originally picked it up from his grandmother who wielded it as the corna intended to ward off the malocchio or Italian ‘evil eye’ curse. Symbols in particular are very fluid, elusive things originating with a particular belief or religion and ending up very far from home idealistically. The Da Vinci Code, whether you believe the symbolism behind the story or not, is another excellent example of iconography working its way through various cultures, locales and times; each ‘borrowing’ changes both the culture and the symbol in their meeting. For the sake of not belaboring the point, I will simply direct you here and get on with it.

In summary, Religion is fine for the divine, spiritual stuff – that’s what it’s there for. Perform your ceremonies, say your prayers, give your alms, whatever. This is all well and good. Remember, though, that your beliefs didn’t just arise spontaneously. They came from somewhere else and someone else and you probably interpreted them slightly differently than they were handed to you. As you pass on your wisdom, your symbols and beliefs get tweaked and adjusted as well, creating a long string of allegiances, connections and strange bedfellows that draw out over hundreds and thousands of years. All of this goes on under the radar of the annals of History, ever-shaping the landscape but just out or sight. “Therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses… let us run with Endurance the race set before us.” Bet Paul never expected to get quoted in a D&D article when he wrote that, eh?

Who are the folks trained in Religion and why?

To get the obvious ones out of the way first: Clergy, Scholar, True Believer.

A far more complex background I’ve never seen but would really like to is the Pastor’s Kid or PK. There seems to be a trend among PKs of all faiths that either you’ve bought in for good or you want nothing at all to do with religion. Ever. The PKs who walk the middle ground are far and few between. Your character is not necessarily a religious type, but one of your parents was. How does that affect your view of the organized faiths? The 3rd edition Favored Soul class had a solid story behind it – a god chose you whether you really like that god or not – and some interesting mechanics, but was in many ways an unnecessary class and somewhat pigeonholed in its features despite the number of available deities. Train in Religion, grab a Channel Divinity feat and find out what happens when Mehlora has you on speed-dial. The same setup is also good for I’ve Already Been Dead Once – a character that died but was denied final rest by some god or another in order to complete some work.

Getting away from the more rigid sense of Religion, what kinds of characters are in the know about the world’s companies, organizations and symbols? I still contend that Statesman is a good choice if you live in a world that has some form of representative government or if you are advisor to a monarch somewhere. Sure, you need to know your History but it also helps to be aware of the lesser-known connections between factions and what groups might share beliefs and goals without necessarily being related to one another. The flipside of this is the Conspiracy Theorist or Paranoid who simply THINKS he or she knows all these secret societies that History has left undocumented for one reason or another. Whether they’re real or not is up to you and your DM. Be careful with this trope, though, because you are still an adventurer. You have to believe this shadow group CAN be taken down or is not yet all-powerful, else why bother? Bards need to be trained in Religion, no questions asked, as many of your stories and tales fall under this ‘secret’ or ‘common’ history category. Finally, consider Religion if you are Heavily in Debt, a Raging Activist or a Journalist. Each of these folks are going to be interested in ‘following the money’ for one reason or another and History curiously tends to leave out those sorts of things. Why? Winners write History. The losers’ standpoint is often marginalized and attacked, leaving it nowhere to go but in myth and belief.

How can Religion be used as a sense, to gain and process information?

Religion as a sense is deliciously fun as it is primarily the obtaining and processing of symbols. Need to decode a family’s coat of arms? That’s more likely to be a Religion check than History since much of the iconography will come from religious or superstitious sources. Why is that NPC wearing a necklace with a triangle inside a circle? It’s certainly not an arcane rune. The Religion-trained character, however, will probably recognize that as a bastardized form of the Monolith of Erathis that was co-opted by a masons guild (representing working on buildings and structures) and then over time took on the colloquial meaning of an anti-immigration league (building and maintaining OUR community). To the Religion-trained character, everything is a sign or symbol. The signs could be portents from the gods (flocks or birds, chance coincidences) or simply affirmations that a society or company has influence in the area (as in the necklace example). The signs could be real or imagined, they could mean what the character thinks they mean or in fact mean nothing at all. The important part is that to the Religious character, nothing is just what it is. There’s always something else behind it, for good or for ill. Training in Religion is to understand the interconnected nature of the world; that everything comes from somewhere and is bound up with other things one way or another. Whether your character looks too deeply into those connections or not is up to you, your DM and the dice to some extent, but always be thinking and looking to for where one symbol leads to another, to another, to another.

How can Religion be used in social situations?

Religion as a social skill is admittedly somewhat limited. In social skill challenges, Religion can be used to communicate theology, dogma or history that is relevant to the topic at hand. It could be used as a form of reassurance, knowing the proper forms of blessings and prayers to create the mood of solemnity or joy in a situation. Improvising such prayers or blessings could be a Religion check, though I would also accept Diplomacy, Bluff or Thievery here as well. Perhaps the best use of Religion in a social context is to know passwords, handshakes or other modes of identification that members of an organization use to recognize their own. Really improv-heavy DMs might even allow a Religion check in place of Arcana in certain rituals (Anthem of Unity comes to mind here), representing a character’s ability to preach effectively but again, that’s more of a Charisma thing and so don’t expect it to work very often. In short, Religion has a few very situational uses that will be VERY handy when that time comes, but is overall not a particularly social skill.

And that ends the Serious Skills series! Once again, I’d like to thank all of you for returning each week and commenting. I hope you’ve had as much fun reading the series as I have had writing it. Also, due to popular demand, we will be releasing a full PDF book of the Serious Skill series sometime in the near-ish future, probably concurrent with or just shortly after the Worldbreaker book.