Divine/Cultural Issues with Fertility Enhancement Magic?

[kalos72]

Original Post - http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?541161-Divine-Cultural-Issues-with-Fertility-Enhancement

Linking it here because I am wondering if the 3.5 world might have some additional insight to the topic.

I am trying to determine if the use of Enhanced Fertility type spells would be considered taboo by the typical elf/dwarf of the FR or maybe the Gods there?

I find it absurd, and hard to RP my campaign, thinking there are only 200k dwarves in the world as Deep Dwarves suggests....


Thoughts on this or other ways to speed up population growth in the city of Neverwinter?

[Fizban]

There are no 1st party creature fertility boosting spells that I know of, so even asking the question means you're already making changes that are up to you. Forgotten Realms already has a divine event that boosted the birth rates of dwarves. Gold dwarves in the Great Rift area if I remember right, it's mentioned in the Thunder Twin feat but should be explained in one of the sections about dwarves.

[Necroticplague]

I can't imagine there would be much of an issue with it. It wasn't until incredibly recently in real life that having many kids was seen as a bad thing, and many foolish medieval rituals existed that involved trying to increase one's own fertility (after the even less sensible ones to influence the harvest). Considering the incredibly high rate of mortality in the common DnD world, such things would likely be viewed as a sensible investment.

[kalos72]

I was just looking at spell traps of https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Enhance_Fertility_(3.5e_Spell)

Any other thoughts on increasing the elf/dwarf population in my area besides standard immigration? I guess paying more for "non-human" immigration would be appropriate as well...

We did note in the Q1 Demonweb modules there was an entire kingdom of dwarves being attacked by Lloth, Maldev. Things like that might work I guess?

[Geddy2112]

Citing your previous thread, there are real world examples of countries paying people to have children, or at least making it less expensive. The idea that a culture or society would pay for, or at least mitigate the cost of children is not very farfetched. Likewise taxes/other cultural barriers to keep out certain people is a thing, and might be alive and well.

I can't think of any deities off the top of my head that OPPOSE fertility(short of the world ending kill everything kind) but also very few to support it. Lamashtu from Pathfinder is very into fertility, although being chaotic evil her views are a bit...different. Calistria is a pathfinder deity that does not oppose fertility, but her temple openly provides contraceptives as she is into the more carnal aspects of reproduction, but she is unlikely opposed to the rearing of children. Pharasma from pathfinder is true neutral, and she is very concerned with birth, but also death. Less of the fertility aspect, but that the child(ren) and mother survive childbirth.

Only evil deities opposed to life itself would have a problem with fertility, and maybe those neutral balanced themed deities would intervene if one race or species became far too fecund, but otherwise I see little divine opposition.

[John Longarrow]

And in 3.5 there are ways to increase your "Child bearing" population. AFAIK, if you PAO someone/thing into an Elf and they have a child, the child remains even if the PAO goes away.

Worked that out for a lich. Area he controlled was loosing its ability to support life, but not too quickly. He started PAOing anything he could into mature females so they could have children. Once you get a child, PAO to adult female.

Pretty evil when you think about it, but the lich WAS going for a way to create more and more undead.

[Bronk]

Original Post - http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?541161-Divine-Cultural-Issues-with-Fertility-Enhancement

Linking it here because I am wondering if the 3.5 world might have some additional insight to the topic.

I am trying to determine if the use of Enhanced Fertility type spells would be considered taboo by the typical elf/dwarf of the FR or maybe the Gods there?

I find it absurd, and hard to RP my campaign, thinking there are only 200k dwarves in the world as Deep Dwarves suggests....


Thoughts on this or other ways to speed up population growth in the city of Neverwinter?

Well, there is magic dealing with enhancing babies while in the womb, various Sherem based feats from Ghostwalk.

There's also the Thunder Blessing in Faerun, where the dwarven gods all got together, decided there weren't enough dwarves around, and split all dwarven souls in two so that from then on most were born twins.

Maybe a stealth trip to the Bastion of Unborn Souls, just to see if there's something inhibiting new life?

I don't know how a spell trap would go unnoticed... just, everyone's suddenly having unexpected babies? Without their consent?

Spell trap of gender change?

PAO traps to change other animals into humanoids?

[Psyren]

The only time increased fertility would be a moral issue (assuming it is achieved in a way that is safe for parent and child), is if a given race is becoming overpopulated. In most D&D settings, simply walking from one town to the next carries with it a certain chance of being eaten by owlbears, so overpopulation is unlikely to say the least. So I don't think any deities would have a problem with this unless they're, like, against the idea of life in general (and those certainly do exist, but worshiping them generally involves a certain level of crazy.)