Playing as an Eothan priest

[blotter]

But in this setting, do the powers then come directly from the priests' God, or is it fuelled by pure belief and willpower much like other powers and abilities, regardless if there is a conscious and acting created entity which it is in the name of?

Does this potentially then mean that a person could manifest these same abilities without the assistance or direct intervention of the god as a conduit for them?  (even if it may provoke their wrath).

 

As is noted in the Pillars 1 class description for priests, their powers come from their faith rather than being bestowed upon them by a god. And yes, this would seem to suggest that a godless priest would be possible as long as they have faith in something else.

 

What then, if it is by pure belief/will, distinguishes a priest from say a wizard, other than the way their will is manifested?

 

A wizard's magic is produced through specific interactions and techniques, as well as external foci such as their grimoires (though they still tap into the power of their souls to activate these foci). A wizard's power doesn't depend on faith or dogma and understanding of the various applications of arcane magic is expanded via experimentation. As a system of magic, it's more objective and scientific in its approach - making magic flow through a grimoire in the right (or wrong) way will produce a specific result regardless of whether or not the wizard behind it believes that this result will occur. See update #74 from Pillars 1 for details.

 

It gets murkier when trying to distinguish between a hypothetical godless priest whose faith is tied to nature itself and a druid (conceptually speaking, at least). The link I provided above states that druids harness their power through animistic principles, basically tapping into forces which link living souls together (which is starting to sound a bit like ciphers, but whatever). This sounds like precisely the sort of thing that could serve as a focus for faith in place of a deity, but I guess what separates a priest with such a belief system from a druid is that the latter doesn't actually have to worship nature; they could simply exploit natural forces through their understanding of them.

 

An animistic priest such as the one I described would probably end up being represented in game terms as a druid/priest (or "universalist"), though, and at the end of the day, it's likely that there aren't intended to be clear, immutable boundaries separating one type of class from another. The representation of class combinations by singular titles in Deadfire is one point in favor of this view and then there's the fact that Sawyer apparently isn't planning to use classes at all for the pen & paper system.

Edited February 7, 2018 by blotter

[Diogenes]

In the world of Eora Priests don't draw power from the Gods but they use their faith in them as inspiration to draw power from their own soul.

[Valmy]

In the world of Eora Priests don't draw power from the Gods but they use their faith in them as inspiration to draw power from their own soul.

 

That a fact? I found it interesting that you had to pick a god if you pick a priest.

 

But I guess the question would then be if priests had powers before the Engwithans built and empowered the gods. If they did, then I do not really understand how Thaos and company were able to convince the world that their traditional gods were fake.

 

I mean if the gods have zero power to give their priests then what was the point of pumping them full of soul power in the first place? I guess a fantasy world does not have to make sense but that seems pretty illogical to me on several levels.

 

Edit: Actually I am just going to pretend that is not true because that is stupid. 'I am a priest of soup spoons! Behold my powers!' I find the idea that the Engwithans created these crazy and corrupt Olympian-type Gods that we are stuck with forever (or not? STAY TUNED) that actually make things difficult and complicated more interesting than the idea that we can get rid of them and there would be no cost to doing so. Hopefully this silly concept never has any impact on the plot of the game.

Edited February 7, 2018 by Valmy

[Diogenes]

Picking a god as a Priest is just choosing which god has inspired your power, like Paladins aren't all believers in whatever god, they get their power from devotion to a cause etc.

 

Thaos and his dudes basically murdered everyone who wouldn't agree that his gods were the best and killed anyone who knew they weren't true gods. Their scheme was all about their cowardly and paternalistic culture. They believed that people could never be inherently good or wise unless someone more powerful told them what to do. So they all committed mass suicide to escape the horrible world they lived in and create gods to push people around.

 

Gods don't directly grant Priests powers but they totally could if they wanted to. Waidwen probably turned into an avatar of Eothas and he could shoot lasers. Skaen dudes have a ritual to make someone became an avatar of him too but most of the time it doesn't work, probably only when Skaen feels like it.

 

You probably could be a priest of spoons but you'd have to be extremely insane, so insane that you believe with every fiber of your being that spoons are absolutely the greatest thing ever and ignite your soul with the power of your belief. Even after all that it would probably be Wael messing with you.

[blotter]

But I guess the question would then be if priests had powers before the Engwithans built and empowered the gods. If they did, then I do not really understand how Thaos and company were able to convince the world that their traditional gods were fake.

Yes, priests most likely had powers before the creation of the gods. The Xaurips are an example of this, given their worship of dragons rather than gods and the fact that their priests are still able to cast spells.

 

Even with faith alone being sufficient for priestly magic regardless of what one has faith in, there are a number of factors that could certainly facilitate widespread conversion to the gods that the Engwithans created:

1. Engwithan-made gods can directly communicate with their followers. Priests of less "real" gods may believe that they are receiving messages from the deities that they worship as well, but the phenomenon is likely to be both less widespread and consistent in terms of interpretations and responses given the idiosyncrasies of the priests involved.
2. Engwithan-made gods are capable of exerting demonstrable influence over the world through the use of their powers beyond what individual priests are capable of. Ondra dropping a meteor on Eora is one example and there are plenty other ones that can turn up in the ending slides if the Watcher breaks their promise to a god.
3. Engwithan-made gods are able to create/unleash agents of their own in addition to gathering mortals for this purpose. The Eyeless are one example of this, and they're basically able to wipe out nations if the Watcher's conversation with Ondra in the White March is anything to go by.
4. The Engwithans were (and still are) unmatched in their mastery of animancy, something they could both attribute to the gods and utilize to achieve greater military power. In the first case, people are enticed to convert in order to grasp the secrets of animancy (or what scraps the Engwithans deign to share, at least) while in the second case, it works as Diogenes described: systematic slaughter of heathens with a bit of soul destruction/imprisonment on the side to drive the point home.
5. Thaos and the Leaden Key have been active through the centuries to subvert faiths and institutions that are deemed an affront to the "true" gods.

Besides that, this is a polytheistic world. It isn't necessary for all other deities to be branded 'fake' to begin with: it would be sufficient in many cases for these gods that don't exist outside of kith imagination to be branded inferior or subordinate to the Engwithan-made gods, and it isn't hard to see how this could be accomplished given what the Engwithan gods are capable of. In other cases, the Engwithan gods might take on the names of gods that were already worshiped within various cultures and adjust the faiths in question to better suit their purposes over time.

[Elkor_Alish]

How and why Eothas got stuck in that body is important though. In the last game Eothas seemed to do something insane and crazy and it turned out to be for a very good reason.

 

So I presume it is the same here. Eothas would probably be served by actually explaining to his worshipers why he does stuff though.

 

He does, which is how he gained his initial following, and why Eder's brother chose to enlist in his ranks.

[CottonWolf]

 

How and why Eothas got stuck in that body is important though. In the last game Eothas seemed to do something insane and crazy and it turned out to be for a very good reason.

 

So I presume it is the same here. Eothas would probably be served by actually explaining to his worshipers why he does stuff though.

 

He does, which is how he gained his initial following, and why Eder's brother chose to enlist in his ranks.

 

 

Maybe. That bit's deliberately ambiguous. We might find out exactly what happened there in Deadfire, but I kind of hope we don't.