Most people respect and fear the divine powers. Mortals who deny the deities who made the world and govern its basic forces are rare indeed. Human and humanoid souls who refuse the gods come to a bad end after death, lacking a deity to speak for them upon the Fugue Plane. Deities of Faerûn take an active role in the world, promoting causes that they favor, watching over domains for which they are responsible, and constantly seeking to increase or defend their temporal power by protecting worshippers and encouraging the expansion of their faiths.

While some of the people zealously follow one deity, others make sacrifices to many deities, while upholding one as their personal patron. Others will sacrifice to as many deities as possible, shifting allegiances as their circumstances and needs warrant. The belief system of most Faerûnians generally centers on a particular deity whose interests and influences are most likely to affect them.

Divine Influences

Divine magic can play a significant role in society but not always through the direct intercession of some cleric or druid who is wielding divine spells. Deities of prosperity and plenty such as Chauntea may answer her worshippers' prayers with an abundant harvest and fair weather where as a god of plague and famine, like Talona, may demand placation and will send all sorts of blights and epidemics against those who would deny her power. These supernatural influences have a way of balancing each other.

Temples and Clerics

All of the clerics, soldiers, shrines, churches, abbeys, temples, and holy sites dedicated to a particular deity are collectively referred to as the Temple, or Faith, of that power. Neither term is exactly accurate since the Temple of a deity may include many temples of that god and the Faith refers to both a deity's followers and system of beliefs they hold.

The Temples of the great powers such as Bane, Chauntea, Tyr and a handful of others, are as powerful as small kingdoms. Dozens of major temples in the great cities of Faerûn house hundreds of clerics and soldiers dedicated to the deity. Hundreds of smaller temples and shrines in towns and villages of countless lands serve thousands of worshippers. Almost all faiths sponsor high-level clerics, champions, devotees, and secular agents who look after the faith's interests and defend it against those who resent its power.

Most of a Temple's clergy are not clerics. They're experts, aristocrats and even commoners who serve as advisors and counselors to the faithful and officiate at routine observances. A cleric usually leads any particular temple, shrine, or order, judiciously using their spells to aid sick or injured followers and assisting the local authorities in maintaining law and order in the community as it suits the deity in question.

Healing

Temples and shrines to some number of deities stand in virtually every thorp and hamlet of Faerûn. Most are under the supervision of a low to mid level cleric. Normally, these parish priests and shrine keepers possess healing abilities unavailable to low level adventurers.

The degree to which a local cleric may make their healing spells available to adventurers in the town varies greatly with the tenets of their faith, the demands of the town, and their own best judgment. Clerics obviously prefer to aid fellow followers of their patron deity, and if healing resources are limited, the faithful will be aided before people devoted to other gods. Naturally, the followers of gods opposite to the clerics own deity are extremely unlikely to be helped in any circumstance.

Same Patron Deity: If a person or persons requiring healing follow the same patron deity as the local cleric, they stand the best chance of receiving help.

A person of the same faith brought before a local cleric in a dying state will be stabilized often without any expectation of compensation. A person who isn't dying isn't likely to find free healing. After all, people heal with time and most clerics prefer to retain their spell power than give it away. Adventurers can purchase routine healing spells and some clerics may heal a follower of the same faith at no cost but only if it is clearly an immediate need of the faith to get the injured person back into top shape as soon as possible.

Afflictions such as disease, blindness, loss of level, or other conditions besides hit point loss are a bit more complicated. If an adventurer has served their faith well, they may be healed with no cost, otherwise, they might be healed in exchange for a special donation or a special service for the temple.

Raising. or resurrecting the dead is never taken lightly. Friends of a dead character that are wishing to bring that person back to life should expect to pay. Only in some rare instances may a dead character be raised by clerics of his own faith regardless of whether the character or their friends can meet the spell casting cost. This only happens when the deceased has been an exemplary servant of the faith and the cleric has cause to believe that it is very imperative to the faith to restore the dead character. Even then, the raised character might be charged with a quest to serve the faith in some specific task to justify the effort and expanse of the resurrection.

Allied Patron Deity: A local cleric devoted to a god allied to the adventurer's patron god, or a local cleric who simply wishes to support like minded adventurers who advance his own cause by advancing theirs, is the next best thing to a cleric of an adventurer's own faith. Again, characters of the allied faith who arrive in a dying state may be stabilized, often without any expectation of compensation. They can purchase routine healing spells at normal prices or at reduced cost, but only if it's clearly advantageous to get the person back on their feet.

Neutral Patron Deity: If a local cleric's patron deity is not particularly friendly or hostile to the patron deity of an adventurer, then the decision to aid them or not is much more mercenary and situational. Any good aligned cleric is likely to stabilize a dying character brought before them unless the person is clearly an agent of evil. Other than that, healing spells are available at normal cost but only if the neutral cleric has reason to believe that aiding the adventurer won't cause any harm or risk to followers of the cleric's faith.