Mystra

[Kaaurk]

I was thinking of making an evil Mystran wizard today so I looked up the help file and it says no evil followers. I was pretty sure that Mystra allowed them. Is this a in house policy and if so can someone explain the reasons to me?

[Gwain]

I think they posted a while back that it was house policy because of the hard code or something similar. There may be more to it, but I think that being an evil mystran would interfere with the current hardcode (you'd get damned more than blessed, etc.) And you'd lose access to half the active mystran areas. I don't know the official policy stance though.

[Tandria]

Right in Help Mystra, it says:

In FK, the Mystran faith will not accept any evil followers.

So yup, definitely a house rule. I assume it's for the exact reasons Gwain stated. In FK, if your alignment is outside of your deity's, you will get damned every time you do something that would normally give you favor.

[Lirith]

This is correct. Someone made an evil follower a few years ago and were damned for almost everything they did. There wasn't a workaround that could be found for it.

[Kaaurk]

I saw recently that another alignment was added to a different deity why couldn't evil alignments be added to Mystra?

[Kaaurk]

found the thread for reference

viewtopic.php?f=148&t=16664

[Tandria]

There still is the conflict of having many faith areas not allowed to you.

As well, I don't believe you can have that broad sweeping a range of alignments. CG as a druid was added to an NG deity, so that's not much of a stretch. Having a LE follower of a NG deity is a huge stretch, and may not be possible in code. I want to be clear here, too, and add that by a "stretch" I'm talking about a hard code stretch, not an IC stretch.

A good way to go around this could be to follow an uncoded deity or a neutral one instead.

[Kaaurk]

The only place that I know that doesn't allow evils is Silverymoon so I don't see to big an issue there.

I really don't see why it would be considered to big of a stretch

[Mele]

I do not, personally, see what an would make an evil Mystran evil on FK, nor what it would bring to a player's personal experience. Here are some reasons why:

You would not logically be involved in PK's as the god directly enemied to Mystra is the god of Murder and not a sought after activity for a Mystran. Without this it's more likely that instead of being evil, you would be more leaned towards chaotic neutral.

You may not enter Zhentil Keep, as it is Cyric's city. (Code will not allow, even.) Thus barring yourself from the center of 'evil' activity.

You may not enter Silverymoon and thus lose access to coded Mystran quests and rare available spells.

Your favor will constantly be at the very last of the spectrum as even so much as killing a mob reduces it due to your incompatibility with your deity's alignment.

You will not find companionship in most other members of your Church, thus will not have the biggest part of the roleplay that comes from joining a coded deity's faith.

You will be enemies with four large evil deities: Cyric, Shar, Talos and Bane. Thus again removing yourself from many evil roleplay options.


All in all an evil Mystran sums up to be a code unfriendly, and roleplay lackluster option. Code will allow every option besides evil, only lacking TN for clerics. Many of our coded evil deities are much more suited, in FK, for evil wizards while Mystra, in FK code, is not as much. Even no deity would be more code and freedom friendly for a wizard.

However, with any policy comes the option to make a game suggestion with support for the idea of change and how it will work, or an application with support for how an individual concept could work. (Neither of which come with any promise of potential acceptance - they would be discussed for pros and cons like any other application/suggestion.)

Some functioning more unique(to FK) alignment to deity options are coded such as: A good Maskarran. An evil Waukeenar. An evil Tymoran. A good Beshaban. An evil Oghman. An evil Gondar. A chaotic neutral Selunite. These options are code friendly, though may prove to have the roleplay challenges similar to Mystra's but in less volume. With these also comes the roleplay challenge of proving yourself potentially to good or evil aligned Faith Managers.

[Solaghar]

The problem is due to something that comes down to how faiths gain and lose favor. For some faiths, doing 'good' things gains favor. For example, casting a beneficial spell on an ally, or burying a corpse. For others, for example evil faiths, there are positive faith benefits for killing faith enemies, for killing *anything* or other reasons. The problem comes when you have a deity whose ways to gain favor conflict with the alignment of the player. Then you end up with a player who by playing their alignment, progressively damns themselves in the eyes of their faith. The only way to solve this problem is either to restrict the alignments of the followers of the faith to keep out the ones who would end up with negative favor, or to remove most ways of gaining favor altogether for the faith. That's why it's a problem. Hope you can understand...

[Yvonne]

Appending to this because I didn't want to start a new thread and it's sorta moved into a more general discussion now...

Re. the CN Selunite - the helpfiles in FK state cleric alignments as LG, NG, CG, LN, while the website linked to (which I think is 2nd edition?) also adds CN and N to that list. I just wanted to check whether this was an omission or deliberate (perhaps due to the above issues/3.5 edition).

[Harroghty]

Yes, 3E took away those alignments for clerics of Selune. (Compare p.55 Faiths and Pantheons to p.135 Faiths & Avatars.)