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Blueiji
2012-06-09, 11:34 PM
What are your favorite pantheons to use in your D&D games? Are they straight from the sourcebooks, or of your own design? Are the gods active in the mortal world, or distant and un-reacheable? Are they inspired by real deities?

If you use a real life or published pantheon I'd love to hear what you like about that particular pantheon and what your unique additions/interpretations to it are.

If you have a home-brewed pantheon I'd love to hear what deities your pantheon is composed of, what it was inspired by, and what campaign setting you used it for.

Personally I'm a fan of the Greyhawk pantheon described in the 3.5 Player's Handbook. I also like Rich Burlew's Sun/Moon concept from his "The New World" articles. My own setting features a pantheon completely composed of individuals who were previously mortals (much like Vecna and St. Cuthbert), my players like that because they all aspire to have their own characters become gods.

Looking forward to your responses :smallbiggrin:

Craft (Cheese)
2012-06-10, 02:59 AM
My personal homebrew setting doesn't really have deities in the standard fantasy sense: The actual "bare metal" that runs the world is impersonal. What I do have that acts as an almost complete functional replacement are the Soulhoarders.

A Soulhoarder is a perfectly mortal, if unaging, being that has the following properties:

- It has the ability to "absorb" soulstuff in its environment and gaining nourishment from them, only releasing it when it feels like it. (My setting doesn't have a discrete afterlife: When things die they release homogenous "soulstuff" made of positive energy that has to be used up when making new life.) This control over soulstuff effectively means that a Soulhoarder has control over life and death within its domain, which can have a radius of hundreds of miles.

- This control over positive energy also gives the Soulhoarder the power to control mindless non-undead, non-construct, non-outsider, non-dragon creatures within its domain at will. (For somewhat unrelated fluff reasons, dragons basically work like native outsiders in that their souls don't work the same way other creatures do.)

- They aren't extraplanar: You can walk to where they are and have a cup of tea with one, no special plane-shifting magic required. They do, however, tend to lock themselves away in underground citadels and not take visitors very often.

- They demand worship and tribute from local sentients: If a city doesn't make its local soulhoarder happy, that city could suddenly find itself destroyed. While it has little power to make earthquakes and hurricanes in person, it can command a hoard of monsters to start destroying infrastructure and, if it comes down to it, can use its soul-sucking powers to make a population start dying off. A soulhoarder can use this power to remotely kill as many as 10,000 people a day.

- There aren't very many Soulhoarders in the world, but they absolutely hate each other and constantly fight for territory. Two formerly allied nations could suddenly find themselves begrudgingly waging war against one another because their local Soulhoarders demanded it.

- A Soulhoarder is a humanoid who turns themselves into a monster through a secret magic ritual for power and immortality. They look much like they did in their former lives, but horribly disfigured. Alzerethion, the only one I've had show up in person so far, was a human male who now has a massive left arm and a tiny, shriveled-up left leg (such that he walks using his left arm instead of his left leg), grey skin with the texture of tree bark, and an active wasp nest under the skin on his face.


There are about 50 soulhoarders in total right now: The original 24 did it to themselves out of desperation to be able to better defend civilization against a terrible war with the Dragons. But they were all eventually destroyed and replaced with power-hungry idiots.

J.Gellert
2012-06-10, 03:51 AM
Every people have their own gods.

It is not known how many of these actually exist, and from those that do exist, how many are actually gods*.

Some people worship entire pantheons, some worship single gods, but there is also overlap, as well as dogmatic differences.

*The definition of "god" also varies.

Yora
2012-06-10, 05:34 AM
I go with six primal forces plus lots of local demigod fey.
Earth, Ocean (Water), Sky (Air), Sun (Fire), Moon (Light), Darkness.

Kol Korran
2012-06-10, 09:48 AM
i'm a big fan of the Sovereign Host and the Dark Six pantheons of the Eberron campaign setting. but not the paltry info given in the basic book, but rather the amazing job they have made in "Faiths of Eberron".

there are a few things why i like the pantheon, some relate to all Eberron pantheons, some specifically to this:

1) they are not just a god/s they are a believable religion. this means they try to answer ALL aspects of life, all important questions ("what is the world?", "what happens when we die?", "what are the gods?", "what is good and bad?" and so on) and they have a real way to treat the lore of the gods, of their followers, of their priests and so on.

2) the gods may or may not exist. no one knows, it is up to theory, just like in the real world. there is no entity that on some occasion stomps their foor and does something in the world. all of the gods' influence in the world (if they exist) is through their believers. there is a good explanation to where clerics get their powers from, the nature of outsiders, the planes and the like.

3) the Sovereign Host represents the gifts of civilization (even their more "nature" oriented deities) while the Dark Six represent primal forces, raw nature, instinct and bestiality. but though the two seem opposed, there is an interesting way they are worshiped:

- the clergy of the host call to worship only the host as a whole, and renounce the dark six effect in your life. they claim the dark six left in "the schism", banished from the original host".

- the clergy of the dark six often dedicate themselves to one or two gods (though paying homage to all), and almost don't recognize the importance of the host. they don't seem to recollect the schism ever happened.

- the vassals (the worhipers) often worship both in secret, recognizing in their way that all have a part.

- "the all inclusive host": the host tries to assimilate (often succesfully) every regional/ racial gods they encounter, proclaiming that the gods are actually the hosts' gods under a different name. i love this strategy.

- the host IS integrated in nearly all parts of civilized life, but their patrons and their dogma is still a matter for debate and interpertation. warforged finding Onatar as their patron, some thinking the traveler is Onatar's brother, do exemplary dragons become the gods themselves? there are still lots of mysteries and places for a religious character to make her place in the known religion.

- the play with other religions: one of the wonderful things about religions in Eberron is that each follows it's own unique path, way of worship, answers to the world and so on, and each has a very unique way to look upon other religions. The Silver Flame emerged from the Sovereign Host (Christianity from Judaism?) and they have a very interesting interaction. to a lesser extent with the blood of vol, and even with the druidic sects.

so yeah, i'm a fan.

joe
2012-06-10, 10:39 AM
i used to allow pretty much any deity anyone wanted for my campaign, but that got really troublesome when it came time to make temples and whatnot. Sometime after, I built a home brew pantheon, which is largely based around deities that are common to most pantheons as well as deities that my players seemed to have a preference for. I'm always working on my pantheon (still today) and while some deities have been fully embraced by the players, there are some that I'm not entirely content with. My players know that the pantheon is subject to change and I generally let them know of changes ahead of time, but overall, they seem to approve.

The pantheon is largely and shamelessly ripped off of other pantheons, but the way the deities interact with each other is fairly unique.

Altair_the_Vexed
2012-06-10, 10:51 AM
Deities in my games are generally the objects of religious worship, rather than actual provably existing entities.

Orthodox religion in the main setting I use has one god, and multiple saints. This religion is at war with a neighbouring theocratic empire, which also has one god. These gods are purposefully ill-defined - their in-game names are just obscure linguistic plays on the word "god", and I ascribe no alignment to them.

There are remnant traditions of the old polytheistic / animistic ways, and even some who actively follow the old gods, but quietly out of fear of the orthodox authorities.

The real powers in the multiverse are the angels and demons (and archon and devils, and other such strongly aligned outsiders). Mortals don't understand that the these entities are not the servants of their favoured gods, but actually the great exemplar powers of the alignments made real.

kieza
2012-06-10, 11:50 AM
My setting has a large number of gods, who may or may not actually exist, and may or may not be a small number of gods worshipped in different ways.

One of the few common tenets of most religions is that the names of the gods are impossible, dangerous, or blasphemous for mortals to know or speak. Some faiths simply think that a mortal mind cannot know the celestial name of a god; others think that speaking a divine name can cause all sorts of disasters to befall the speaker or listeners. As a result, all of the gods are known only by titles or poetic epithets: "The Valiant," "The Warlord," and so on. "The" is always capitalized when referring to a god.

There are eleven gods that pretty much everyone (who isn't an atheist) believes in and pays some respect to. Two of them are a duality, The Bright Lady and The Dark Maid, who are always worshipped together and govern birth and death. The eleven major gods have fairly wide portfolios, such as protection, war, light, and so on, and they are widely appealing.

There are quite a few more minor gods, who have narrower portfolios and are often situationally appealing, or appeal to a small group. For instance, there's The Brewer, who governs only the brewing of alcohol: the grain and grapes that go into it are the domain of The Sower, consuming alcohol belongs to The Reveler, and alcoholic excess is relegated to The Besotted or The Hedonist, depending on who you ask. Minor gods are only worshipped by people they directly affect, although most people accept that they exist; but only brewers take part in The Brewer's temple services.

There are a few "fringe gods" out there as well; these are the gods that few people believe in, such as The Fundamental Constant, god of gravity, magnetism, and other physical phenomena, whose cult is less than a century old and consists mainly of physicists. However, they can have clerics and paladins, and so mainstream religions maintain that the fringe gods are simply aspects of major or minor gods that have been mistaken for independent entities; for instance, The Fundamental Constant is widely thought to actually be The Creator, or possibly The Sage. (There is also a fringe god, The Atheist, whose very few, very strange clerics gain power by not bothering him with prayers, or so they say.)

Finally, there are the nondeific faiths, which include the dwarven ancestor cult, elven reverence for the Sidhe, nature worship, dragon worship, demon worship, the Path of Enlightenment (a self-improvement sort of faith), and consorting with the alien influences from beyond the dome of night.



There also isn't a single, unified religion centered around most of the gods; most of them have lots and lots of holy orders and sects with slightly differing interpretations of canon. The Brewer, for example, has sects that use sacramental wine, sacramental ale, sacramental lager, and occasionally, sacramental vodka. For the most part, different orders get along well, but there have been a few cases of two groups declaring each other excommunicate and having at it.

None of the gods have ever made a bodily appearance. Only a very few people have traveled to the Astral Plane, even fewer have returned, and none of them made it into the heart of the gods' astral domains. The angels won't talk about the gods. (Angels don't talk about much of anything, but that's another story.) No miracle has ever been performed that can't, theoretically at least, be duplicated by an arcane caster. So, there's no direct evidence for the gods--but clerics are definitely getting a lot of power from somewhere, and that's enough to inspire faith in most of the people inclined to question. There's a small but growing atheist population, and the only lightning bolts to have hit them out of a blue sky came from angry priests, so it's entirely possible that there are no gods.

GenericGuy
2012-06-10, 02:00 PM
The Gods of my homebrew campaign have abandoned the world after humanity “killed” one.

The Gods didn’t make the world, they found it, but believe they can improve on creation by adding magic and other fantasy elements. Elves for instance are “uplifted” humans, the Gods altered ancient humans and gave them long life and magic, and believe their creations are obviously superior than whatever power may have created what was before. Because of this the Gods are racist, favor the Elves, and consider Elves “instruments of their will” and are granted complete dominion over all mortal affairs on the world. So after few thousand years of a theocratic Elven empire that has been enslaving anything and everything (also experimenting on), humans start a slave revolt. Despite humans not being able to do magic, the Elves get desperate and summon the Gods to the battlefield. However, humanity was prepared for this and managed to “kill” one of the Gods. Humans can now do magic by tapping into the God’s decaying corpse, which is now entombed underground, and the rest of the Gods fled in terror once they found out they could be killed.

TheThan
2012-06-10, 07:45 PM
Suddenly i want to do a campaign setting where the classic gods from antiquity are fighting it out in a big war. Only they've decided their preferred battleground is the planet.

So we'd have Norse gods, battling Greek/Roman gods fighting Egyptian gods fighting Aztec/Mayan gods, fighting Mesopotamian gods, etc.

In fact, just having the Greek and Roman gods battle it out would be hilarious.
Zeus: "Jupiter! you imposter! have at these" [lightning bolt]
Jupiter: "No! You are the imposter!" [counters with lightning bolt]

Sheogorath
2012-06-10, 09:49 PM
A pantheon of my own design has come into a few different games, though they are originally for a fantasy epic I've been writing for some time.
A couple of my favourites are an obese deity of sloth and greed who literally exists in and as part of a bath of his own muck.
And a deity so old he's given in to dementia and often comes to earth, forgetting that he's a God at all, and doing some mundane mortal work like cobbling shoes or making fences for a while before remembering he's a deity and vanishing again.

Savannah
2012-06-10, 09:53 PM
And a deity so old he's given in to dementia and often comes to earth, forgetting that he's a God at all, and doing some mundane mortal work like cobbling shoes or making fences for a while before remembering he's a deity and vanishing again.

That is quite awesome *starts plotting how to steal it*

Frenth Alunril
2012-06-10, 10:01 PM
I personally use the Forgotten Realms Pantheon. I find that it is quite well developed, and it makes for a lot of fun now that I have read some of the novels.

All of that makes for something interesting, but...

Recently I got a little obsessed with NPC descriptions. In my obsession, I took a look at a completely homebrew concept to deities. I put together a table of all the domains, and I put together the concept of gods with portfolios, then I made a list of appropriate words and something that would randomly generate names by splicing together common and uncommon phonemes. Setting all of that aside, I press the random generator shortcut, and I get wild concepts on gods based on a randomly generated sentence! They are amaizingly fun to imagine, I will randomly generate 5 for you, so you can see how crazy and fun it is to imagine what that god might be like.

Here's a simple one:
She sometimes gives lip-service to Poddon, The King of War, Ranseur wielding god of War.

Or there is:
He is a follower of Aohtan, The Master of Snakes, Dart wielding god of Reptiles, Community, Travel and Creation.

Or:
He is a follower of Phedsin, The Magic Maker, Falchion wielding god of Magic, Luck and Earth.

Or:
He sometimes gives lip-service to Usavta, The Radiant Maelstrom, Spear wielding god of Chaos and Repose.

And:
She is a follower of Usastan, The King of Plants, Spiked Gauntlet wielding god of Plants, Healing and Air.

There, 5 completely randomly generated gods. Some of them make little sense, but, c'mon, we are talking about religion, it's about faith, not sense. And, like I said, those are completely random, absolutely no thought went into them, some seem odd, but sometime you get fabulous little gems.

Anyway, it's all fodder for the creative mind.

Sheogorath
2012-06-10, 10:11 PM
That is quite awesome *starts plotting how to steal it*

Go right ahead, people tend to like that one. Just don't put it into a novel, and we're all good!

Special mention goes to the 'God of Hobos' from the D&D extension 'New Gods on the Block'.

Acanous
2012-06-10, 10:31 PM
A pantheon of my own design has come into a few different games, though they are originally for a fantasy epic I've been writing for some time.
A couple of my favourites are an obese deity of sloth and greed who literally exists in and as part of a bath of his own muck.
And a deity so old he's given in to dementia and often comes to earth, forgetting that he's a God at all, and doing some mundane mortal work like cobbling shoes or making fences for a while before remembering he's a deity and vanishing again.

Sounds like a certain god from Dragonlance :p

Personally, I preffer the Eberron deities, just because they've got the best/most extensive lore behind their churches (Despite being the newest pantheon in D&D Cosmology o.0). I mean, sure there's a bunch of stuff about the Faerun gods, but there's next to nothing about their churches, or beliefs. You know, the stuff you'd need to actually play a cleric.
Eberon actually has that, and it adds a lot.
That, and Dol Dorn made one of my characters the demigod of Tactics.
That was pretty cool.

Sheogorath
2012-06-10, 11:38 PM
Sounds like a certain god from Dragonlance :p


Actually the inspiration was from Pedidro Street Station... I've never actually seen or played a Dragonlance, but I'll take it on your word.

RedWarlock
2012-06-11, 01:26 AM
I use a mix of core-ish D&D deities, and the Quadrene Holy Family from the Curse of Chalion novels by Lois McMaster Bujold. (I'm still debating whether I want to add the Bastard.. I may make it a plot-point in my first campaign.)

The Holy Family has the Father of Winter (justice, law, knowledge, with divines doubling as judges), the Mother of Summer (healing, faith, community, with divines running hospitals), the Son of Autumn (hunting, animals, and war, with divines serving in the active military), and the Daughter of Spring (travel, protection, renewal, with divines serving as a local police and defensive military). These four act as overdeities in the setting, worshipped by all races, as suited to their age and sex (young men worship the Son of Autumn until they father their first child, after which they tend to shift to serving the Father of Winter, though its not guaranteed. Men in the order of the Daughter are not uncommon, and while not required to take vows of chastity, they are particularly bound in oath to protect the virginity of women from untoward advances.)

I've been using a 4x pyramid scheme for my gods, so that there are 4 greater gods, then 12 intermediate deities, adding up to 16 intermediate-or-higher, then 48 (as yet undefined) lesser deities, adding up to 64, and so on. There aren't likely this actual number, but this structure defines deific power, so that at the upper end, you have to kill a current god to assume power of that rank.

On the next tier down, we have mostly racial deities, borrowing from all over, but adding twists. Llolth the Spider is the primary elven deity, and is CN, fey, and an illusionist, with aranea serving as her mortal agents. (drow are not inherently evil, but live in the cruel and unforgiving underdark, which engenders harsher living conditions and more unforgiving emotional states) The goblin deity is Ysengrin the Wolf, a LN/LE survivalist god, who uses barghests as his mortal agents. (I think he has some kind of raging usine god as a subservient deity who favors bugbears.) I also borrowed the 4e version of Bahamut and Tiamat as the divided form of the now-slain Io, the dragon god. (each seeks full divine power, currently sharing it to their mutual displeasure.) I've also got Azmodeus, Gruumsh, Wee-Jas, Zehir, and Tharizdun. (Notably, Gruumsh, Wee-Jas, and Azmodeus aren't evil, though they all bear dark tendencies, much like Llolth. Azmo in particular was actually a good angel who slew the evil god he served, not realizing he would inherit his portfolio in the act. This is slowly corrupting him.)

I borrowed in Cenarius and Ner'zhul from the WarCraft universe, in modified forms. Cenarius is more of just a generic stag-god, acting as 'good' foil to the predatory Ysengrin, but it sets up the more druidic faction of elves apart from Llolth's trickster-illusionists and drow.

Each of the racial gods also favors 'bending' their servants into more suitable forms. I haven't decided if elves, dwarves, etc, started as humans and were modified into their current forms as reward for their faith, or if they were lesser creatures pushed towards humanity (elves being descended from spiders, goblinoids from wolves, etc), or maybe both. Driders are seen as 'blessed' by their goddess, for instance, and more powerful servants are the descendants of the faithful. (the aforementioned barghests and aranea, for instance)

The Bandicoot
2012-06-11, 02:16 AM
Normal Greyhawk deities with a few changes. The deities are very much so involved in the mortal life. (Pelor himself personally runs a kingdom for example) and there are four new deities. Xira, half dragon kobold Goddess of Draconic Knowledge and Kobolds. Sivart elf god of bards, music and travel.

Then there's The Two. Two tall hooded asexual figures that are worshipped together as the gods of the beginning, magic, chaos, law, and creation.

Malimar
2012-06-11, 07:57 AM
i used to allow pretty much any deity anyone wanted for my campaign, but that got really troublesome when it came time to make temples and whatnot. Sometime after, I built a home brew pantheon, which is largely based around deities that are common to most pantheons as well as deities that my players seemed to have a preference for.

My story is much the same.

In my homebrew D&D3.5e setting, I originally used the straight Greyhawk pantheon, plus a couple from Stormwrack (it was an entirely aquatic world at the time -- the PCs of my first campaign partially fixed that), plus a homebrew god for a BBEG.

Then I fiddled with some deities (e.g., the gnomes and dwarves had interbred to become one race, so they wound up worshipping Garl Glittergold and Moradin together as one god; halflings are almost extinct but Yondalla was repurposed by other races as a goddess of agriculture), and added some more homebrew ones, and there were some archdemons and archdevils involved.

Eventually I realized it had gotten stupidly complex (plus some other reasons), so I pared it down to one god for each alignment plus 3 philosophies, retconning it to always have been thus.

For the curious, a brief rundown:

LG: Numiel, god of valor, the sun, good dragons, dandelions, actual lions, summer, humans... (Pelor + Heironeous + D&D Bahamut)
NG: Sequoia, the Huntress, goddess of land nature, plants, virginity, winter, the moons, wisdom, elves... (A pretty straightforward ripoff of Artemis/Diana)
CG: Dalya, goddess of agriculture, fertility, tricksiness, alcohol, love, spring, cats, halflings... (Originally based on Yondalla, strongly reflavored to the point where I inadvertently turned her into a female Dionysus/Bacchus)
LN: Urmaggr, god of machines, constructs, cleverness, math, science, engineering, rats, gnomes/dwarves... (Moradin + Garl Glittergold, reflavored with a stronger engineering focus)
N: Hafgufa, the Leviathan God, god of sea nature, cetaceans, travel, commerce, locathah/merfolk/tritons... (Basically "big whale, god of whales", plus some Eadro and Valkur)
CN: Inglip (http://www.churchofinglip.com/).
LE: Quasxthe, god of floods, cephalopods, carnivorous fishes, slime, tyranny, evil oceans, some mind flayers, sahuagin, mongrelfolk... (The BBEG of my first campaign)
NE: Mirk, the Lugubrious One, god of secrets, magic, death and undeath, darkness, long-forgotten lore, complex nervous systems, corvids, autumn, poison, drow, most mind flayers... (Basically Vecna + Ilsensine, with some flavoring from other evil gods)
CE: The Burning Hate, god of horrible monsters, hate, fire, destruction, corruption... (The name is from Pelor (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19558798/Pelor_the_Burning_Hate), the concept is mostly the greek Echidna, plus D&D Tiamat and miscellaneous slaughter gods)
The entire pantheon at once (inspired by real-life pantheons and the Veiled from Digger (http://www.diggercomic.com/))
The Ancestor Spirits (inspired by the countless real-world cultures where most of the functions of gods are performed by one's own ancestors)
Antitheism, the popular, if not quite mainstream, philosophy that mortals should be free to make their own decisions without divine tyranny

obryn
2012-06-11, 09:00 AM
I'm running Dark Sun, so..... N/A?

Well, that's not 100% accurate. One of my players has an intense interest in the old gods of Athas, so I'm indulging him.

I'm modifying the history of Athas, and basically saying - Yes, there were gods, but they were pretty much like the Sorcerer-Kings, just ... different. They were totally corporeal beings of immense power who could in turn grant power to their worshippers. And - the champions of Rajaat killed them during their wars, possibly for good reason, as part of their insane genocide. I'm looking at them more like regional gods than gods with a specific divine portfolio - kind of like Sumerian views on the subject.

They are currently trying to figure out what the deal with Taraskir the Lion is (we're going through City by the Silt Sea); they previously saw a bunch of animal-headed statues in a forgotten temple below Tyr; and they inadvertenty freed a hawk-headed god from an old temple in the Southern Wastes before said god got into a fight with another entity trying to pass through and brought the mountain down on their heads.

-O

Anxe
2012-06-11, 10:33 AM
I use the Greek Pantheon in my current campaign. I've used the Greyhawk pantheon before, but didn't like it very much. The only resource I had was the PHB, so it seemed like the Greyhawk gods just sprung out of nowhere with no history, relationships to each other, beliefs, or practices. It was just, Obad-Hai is god of nature. So I switched to the Greek Pantheon to have concrete answers to most of the questions someone could ask about the gods. Even better, most everyone already knows who each of the major gods is!

Of course switching to the Greek gods meant I had to set the campaign in the "real world" as the Greek gods are heavily tied to Greece (Shocking). The physical setting is in a heavily modified part of West Kazakhstan. The gods moved there after the Trojan War. The War convinced them that their power would devastate and destroy the mortals if they continued to play with their "toys." They improved their toys by giving them more magical powers and creating new stronger races. The stronger races are dwarves, elves, halflings, trolls, goblins, etc.

The Greek gods are currently in a bit of a fit in my campaign world because Zeus is in a poison induced coma of some kind. On the physical world a new evil god has risen up and is trying to create a new pantheon. You can check it out in my sigged campaign log.

Project_Cobalt
2012-06-11, 02:24 PM
My campaign setting has a number of deities, but the only one recognized by the majority of the races (Elves excluded) is The Shepherd, whose church works quite a bit like the Catholic Church. The religion is responsible largely for the shaping of the world's society, and was instrumental in the cordoning off of the ancient elven lands, which are now filled with undead.

The church is also responsible for the destruction of Lycanthropes and giant sea-monsters (which stems from an Out of Game crippling fear of both things from two of my players, and serves to make the church that much more heroic, or tyrannical depending on your point of view).

SPOILERS - If you are in my group, you have been warned. Do not read this unless you want the end-point of our current storyline utterly ruined for you.

But where it gets really interesting is the fact that the entire religion is a plan by a duo of Mind Flayers to gain control over this plane of existence in a bid to return to their native plane and wage war against their enemies with an army of dragons at their back. It's a shame that they would have been able to do that hundreds of years ago, if only they didn't require an item of power which was stolen by the elves long ago, and is now in the hands of the PCs...

hamlet
2012-06-11, 02:29 PM
Depends on the game. I've done the standard fantasy type pantheon frequently, but currently I'm writing up a setting where there are only three religions. That of the religion of darkness (aka, evil, entropy, decay, etc.) and Nature (aka, druidism). And in order to balance out the evil, the mortals of the world actually created the religion of light . . . by creating their own divinity . . . by turning an innocent 10 year old girl into an impersonal conduit for light, righteousness, charity, etc. and funneling that power out into the world. They created an eldritch good so to speak.

Averis Vol
2012-06-11, 05:46 PM
I just separate the different campaign settings into different continents in my campaign, far be it from me to tell my PC's their characters perfect god fit doesn't exist. And for the more tribal people i have created dead gods like Grelbir The Soulwarden who watches over the Maerdinvaal Barbarians and who lends power to their shamans and such. Of course, the second he stops becoming in IC joke and I actually tell them hes returning to the world, and hes pissed, the party gets all uppity and calls me out for bringing the only god they extensively dicked with back to life.

....well, they'll get what they deserve. :smallbiggrin: don't piss on the alter or slay the high shaman if you arent ready for the consequences.

Morithias
2012-06-11, 05:53 PM
My campaigns Pantheon is always changing, because "god" is a job in the celestial realms. Basically there's a god of combat, god of trade, etc, and their job is to look over the rules of reality and keep order and good faith in the world.

There are no evil gods. Gods are hand picked by the creator from the beings who find their way into heaven.

So for example, if you were a great merchant in life, when the god of trade retires, you might be offered the position of god of trade, your job? Keep corruption out of the trade market, and keep the economy flowing (harder than it sounds!)

Yukitsu
2012-06-11, 06:43 PM
In mine, the God or Gods are beyond mortal comprehension, beyond their reach and complete enigmas. I've never even stated outright that they exist. There are miracles, angels, demons and all these things are practically mundane, but no one, not even the angels have ever seen anything like a God.

In a friend's campaign, all the dieties are former PCs. The odd one out is my contributing member, who is the Lord of Magic, but whom is not a God. He's considered to be the equivalent of either a strong rank 20 or weak rank 21 diety, but has no divine ranks, despite being a member of the pantheon (and probably one of the more plot important ones, as if he dies, arcane magic fades, a bit like Mystra.)

I'm currently running a digital devil saga campaign, so in terms of what deities are there, the answer is "yes".

Anxe
2012-06-11, 08:03 PM
My campaigns Pantheon is always changing, because "god" is a job in the celestial realms. Basically there's a god of combat, god of trade, etc, and their job is to look over the rules of reality and keep order and good faith in the world.

There are no evil gods. Gods are hand picked by the creator from the beings who find their way into heaven.

So for example, if you were a great merchant in life, when the god of trade retires, you might be offered the position of god of trade, your job? Keep corruption out of the trade market, and keep the economy flowing (harder than it sounds!)

What about a god of torture or theft? Do those exist? Or are those the type of things that good gods try to prevent and there is no bad god for them? Like the Trade God could try to prevent theft. The Confession God or the Justice God could try to prevent torture.

Morithias
2012-06-11, 09:33 PM
What about a god of torture or theft? Do those exist? Or are those the type of things that good gods try to prevent and there is no bad god for them? Like the Trade God could try to prevent theft. The Confession God or the Justice God could try to prevent torture.

That's pretty much it. There is no god of torture, but there is a demigod of "sacrifice" who is kinda a BDSM god. She teaches people that devoting yourself to someone or something in order to better the world will cause great things and will allow someone to create greater works of art and magic.

Edit: Okay rereading this needs clarity. She is NOT a sexual god, just bondage and giving up your freedom for someone else is seen as sacrifice. She's basically the goddess of marriage, giving up your freedom to do something (for example seeing people besides your lover), in order to make someone else happy. Of course marriage takes many forms across the cultures, and no one god oversees weddings (the creator is of the mind 'you want a good relationship? Work at it, I can't make him/her love you without breaking free will')

There is no god of theft, stealing is seen as wrong by the creator, but Bel the archdevil serves as the patron of war, and basically controls the laws of war (Don't kill needlessly, don't kill medics unless they fire first, don't kill non-combatants).

Yeah in my settings the devils and demons aren't even evil, their job is simple, punish the wicked until they learn their lesson then release them (and no the punishment is not torture, it's more like rehabilitation).

Of course there are exceptions to every rule, stealing a magical artifact from a dark cult that was planning to commit genocide wouldn't get marked down on your review.

Basically my Pantheon can be summed up as "how would I design the afterlife if I was god."

Omniplex
2012-06-11, 11:18 PM
In my campaign, I used 3 levels of divinity, the highest were the 10 Eternals, which were paired off as opposing concepts, and who were bodyless and genderless, though they were often depicted in human forms. They were: Fate/Luck, Truth/Beauty, Civilization/Wilderness, Fire/Water, Earth/Air.
The eternals one followed basically replaced the alignment system.
Then there were the Divinities, who were the children of the eternals, and were a more conventional pantheon of gods, who championed various causes and races, the most powerful of them being Arcanis Firstborn, the god of arcane magic. And then there were the Acendants, which were basically saints.

DigoDragon
2012-06-12, 07:49 AM
In my homemade campaign world, I borrowed ideas from Issac Asimov's short story "Inevitable Conflict". My gods are a network of super computers left behind by a human/elf civilization that died out 2300 years ago. The network's primary goal is to ensure the surviving civilization thrives. However, the super computers know that a civilization without conflict will stagnate, so the network has taken sides to run war game scenarios pitting super computers against each other.
Since the mortal races of the world are generally supersticious and believe in gods, the computers have taken to appear to them as very realistic holograms of their deities. The network can even access the realm of magic and give their worshippers access to specific spells when "prayed to" and can convince the more dedicated worshippers to do their bidding.

However, it's been many centuries since the our super-computing gods have had any major maintenance, so on occasion they may come to specific heroic mortals to carry out a quest to locate some ancient artifact for the gods
(One specific quest had the heroes recover a small magical crystal that could give huge bonuses to scry spells. One of the gods needed it to replace their failing unit).

There are about 8 major gods and 8 intermediate gods. The major gods each sponsor one of the main 8 name-giving races of the world. The intermediate gods are representatives of specific worldy subjects or concepts (i.e. Boccob represents magic, Nerull represents death, Lunaria represents inspiration, etc.)
Then there are the minor gods-- rogue super computers that are off the main network and have their own agenda. These gods generally sponsor uncivilized or beast races that are more fanatical to the causes they want to enact. Grummish instills his roc tribes to destroy the societies of the major gods and take their resources to build more shrines and temples for Grummish (which would increase his personal network and thus, his computing power).

Malimar
2012-06-12, 01:16 PM
And a deity so old he's given in to dementia and often comes to earth, forgetting that he's a God at all, and doing some mundane mortal work like cobbling shoes or making fences for a while before remembering he's a deity and vanishing again.


Recently I got a little obsessed with NPC descriptions. In my obsession, I took a look at a completely homebrew concept to deities. I put together a table of all the domains, and I put together the concept of gods with portfolios, then I made a list of appropriate words and something that would randomly generate names by splicing together common and uncommon phonemes. Setting all of that aside, I press the random generator shortcut, and I get wild concepts on gods based on a randomly generated sentence!


In my homemade campaign world, I borrowed ideas from Issac Asimov's short story "Inevitable Conflict". My gods are a network of super computers left behind by a human/elf civilization that died out 2300 years ago. The network's primary goal is to ensure the surviving civilization thrives. However, the super computers know that a civilization without conflict will stagnate, so the network has taken sides to run war game scenarios pitting super computers against each other.
Since the mortal races of the world are generally supersticious and believe in gods, the computers have taken to appear to them as very realistic holograms of their deities. The network can even access the realm of magic and give their worshippers access to specific spells when "prayed to" and can convince the more dedicated worshippers to do their bidding.

However, it's been many centuries since the our super-computing gods have had any major maintenance, so on occasion they may come to specific heroic mortals to carry out a quest to locate some ancient artifact for the gods
(One specific quest had the heroes recover a small magical crystal that could give huge bonuses to scry spells. One of the gods needed it to replace their failing unit).

These three fill me with joy.

Winter_Wolf
2012-06-12, 08:20 PM
I make my own. One the one hand there are six gods, one for each season and one of the four classical elements, plus one other attribute that more or less "fits" with the first two. The last two gods are of the sky/sun and the earth, and are largely inactive in the world, having moved on to other things while leaving the world to their four children.

On the other hand, the powers that created the universe are five in number and beyond need or care for any kind of worshippers. Any other immortal is simply a demi-god that gets its powers from the same wellspring as everything else in the universe. The demi-gods don't technically need worshippers, but since they all stem from mortals, they champion various causes dear to mortal minds. I guess you could say they're just very powerful role models. If PCs can devise a way to get to and kill a demi-god, they're free to do so. They might be hate and reviled for it by other mortals, but they're free to do it. At the same time, since the five powers infuse everything in the universe in varying proportions and degree, they'd literally have to destroy a universe to get rid of it. And also themselves, since they're also suffused with it, being part of the universe. :smallbiggrin:

I actually prefer the Five Power model over Six Gods. Six Gods came from a need in a short story that never quite got past the framework stages before being shelved.

Draz74
2012-06-13, 03:09 PM
I like the Eberron pantheon better than most. Not, as some of its fans, because of the whole "distant gods that may or may not exist" aspect, but because it has a realistic balance between monotheistic and polytheistic religions. And how its Clerics can embrace a whole sub-pantheon. And how not all of its portfolios are adventurer-specific. And how it includes lots of fluff about churches' beliefs and behaviors. And the moral ambiguity.

Even better, though, I like the religious system presented in Tears of Blood (http://tears-of-blood.weebly.com/). Everyone agrees that there are five gods: Life/Death, War, Magic, Nature, and Travel. However, different cultures/religions have different opinions of these five deities' names, alignments, relationships with each other, and relative importance.

I have a few ideas for a "generic" pantheon of my own ... something like a cross between the standard semi-Greyhawk pantheon and the funky, creative Incursion Pantheon (http://www.incursion-roguelike.org/man/Pantheon.html). Someday I'll get around to actually putting these ideas to paper and making it official.

But that won't do for my own non-generic setting, Gyzaninar. It will be more like the Tears of Blood system, but with eleven gods instead of five (and less ambiguity about names). These eleven gods will be eleven African animals (e.g. the gods "Elephant," "Leopard," and "Crocodile"), loosely based on Anansi the Spider and other figures of African mythology.


Suddenly i want to do a campaign setting where the classic gods from antiquity are fighting it out in a big war. Only they've decided their preferred battleground is the planet.

So we'd have Norse gods, battling Greek/Roman gods fighting Egyptian gods fighting Aztec/Mayan gods, fighting Mesopotamian gods, etc.

In fact, just having the Greek and Roman gods battle it out would be hilarious.
Zeus: "Jupiter! you imposter! have at these" [lightning bolt]
Jupiter: "No! You are the imposter!" [counters with lightning bolt]

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10383/risk-godstorm?


Basically my Pantheon can be summed up as "how would I design the afterlife if I was god."

It's a pretty cool idea for an RPG religion system. It feels a little more realistic and a little less angsty than most fantasy pantheon systems, including the traditional real-life (e.g. Greek) religions.

Yora
2012-06-13, 03:31 PM
Eberron has really cool gods.

Except the Sorvereign Host and the Dark Six. Those are boring and generic :smallbiggrin:

But all those weird fringe cults are all gold. Blood of Vol, Aernal Ancestors, Lord of Blades, Cults of the Dragon Below, Path of Inspiration, I really like those.

blackspeeker
2012-06-15, 04:59 PM
Eberron has really cool gods.

Except the Sorvereign Host and the Dark Six. Those are boring and generic :smallbiggrin:

But all those weird fringe cults are all gold. Blood of Vol, Aernal Ancestors, Lord of Blades, Cults of the Dragon Below, Path of Inspiration, I really like those.

I agree with all of these, I also really love the idea of the Godforged and then the silver flame I don't care for it really, but it's always fun to just interact with those guys.

Jack of Spades
2012-06-15, 05:47 PM
Recently I got a little obsessed with NPC descriptions. In my obsession, I took a look at a completely homebrew concept to deities. I put together a table of all the domains, and I put together the concept of gods with portfolios, then I made a list of appropriate words and something that would randomly generate names by splicing together common and uncommon phonemes. Setting all of that aside, I press the random generator shortcut, and I get wild concepts on gods based on a randomly generated sentence! They are amaizingly fun to imagine, I will randomly generate 5 for you, so you can see how crazy and fun it is to imagine what that god might be like.
My brain just twitched from the degree of want I have for that generator.

My homebrew pantheon is the result of a dozen power-hungry but completely at odds individuals who eventually achieved godly power and remade the world according to their whims. This remake included extremely defined lines of power which intersected exactly where the new gods wanted to settle down-- the furthest possible distance from one another. However, being power-hungry, the gods went to war amongst one another. As a result, there are only a handful of remaining gods, and all but one of those are actually former mortals who managed to recreate the ritual which empowered the original twelve after a few of them had been destroyed and left an open slot. This has the advantage of making my homebrew world extremely easy to map to a d20-- because it's based on one.