Forbidden Magic, Fantasy Religions, and other Thoughts

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Arith Winterfell

Potentially more recent human based gods are actually illusions built around concepts and spells empowered by collective belief and sanctity levels reflecting strength of shared belief in the holiness of locations. Power is drawn to power spells (which really still use the casters fatigue anyway) from collective belief in an illusion that there is a divine consciousness behind a concept (like The Sacred Light faith).

The core issue with systems like this is probably how much alignment of belief is required, and how do you judge it. With an actual god, it's easy, the god decides, but anything else and the issue of what happens to heretics (or lunatics) is more open.

Suppose a sincere believer in the Good God follows all his commandments without flaw in all cases whatsoever. But is also delusionally certain girl children with red hair are demonic witches and faithfully follow his command not to suffer them to live. Can he draw on this pool to cast "divine" spells in general? What about when specifically slaughtering a demonic witch? Why or why not?