yet another religion question...

[blelliot]

In a d&d campaign, would it be possible to have just nine main gods( ie one of each alignment)? I have been beating my head against a wall trying to create a pantheon, I started with over thirty, wittled down to eighteen, but I still think its too much. Help!
Also, any ideas on which types of gods would be absolutly necessary?

[the_david]

There are 22 domains in the PHB. You could make 5 deities with 5 domains each and they could cover all of the domains together.

You'd need 7 deities to cover the 33 domains from Pathfinder.

Deities with an alignment other than neutral should have the domains of their alignment. (WotC made a mistake with this in a greyhawk gazetteer or something, and then som designer made a rule for it or something.)

You could say that greater deities have 5 domains, intermediate deities have 4, etc. That is, if you want to give your deities ranks ofcourse. If your players are never gonna fight the gods, then handing them ranks is a bit pointless.

The most important question is how many deities do you want to have. (The opinion of you players matters too) You could just let the player's figure it out for themselves. They make up the gods they want, while you are the one who ultimately decides what their limits are. The villains and the evil races however, follow the evil gods that you create.
I think that was kinda the intent of Gary Gygax, or close to it.

You do know you could have posted all those questions in your original thread, don't you? It would have been more convenient too, as I could have looked up all the information you posted instead of just this one post.

[akma]

You could even have no gods. There is no "perfect" number of gods.

The only issue is gameplay - if a player will want to play a cleric in a certain way, and no god would fit.

But clerics don`t have to worship gods - they can worship ideals, demons, outsiders, unspeakable horrors, their ancestors, statues, locations, the Tarrasque, etc. You could also decide to ignore the domain rules, and let clerics pick any two domains they like, as long as they don`t contradict what they worship (so a cleric of a good god couldn`t take evil domain).

[atomicpenguin]

I think that making gods for certain alignments is somewhat missing the point. People tend to create deities that represent things they hold to be important (and if those things are threatened, evil deities that represent the things that are threatening those things). If you ask what people in your world hold to be important, make a pantheon or two based on that, then sort them into alignments afterwards, I think you will have the perfect number of deities for your world and a pantheon of realistic and believable gods while still having them be mechanically varied.

As for important gods, that depends on the society that is worshipping them. If they are an agrarian culture, then you'll need a fertility god/goddess. If they are highly urban and have a king, then you'll want them to have deities for civilization and justice, like Erathis and Bahamut. If they use magic, then you'll want a deity or even a couple for magic. etc. etc. Also, whenever you find something they don't like, make an evil deity (a particularly lawful society would probably have an evil deity representing chaos).

[TripleD]

You could move away from the Greco-Roman idea of pantheons and go with something more Chinese-style ancestor worship.

Have your cleric come up with a backstory for an ancestor that embodies the domains they wish to worship.

[nrg89]

I have six Gods in my Pathfinder pantheon, and I honestly think it's too few, but just a tad (I notice it, and my players who aren't clerics don't, but the one who is complain about variety). I'm working on expanding it to eight and see where I go from there.

I think ten is the magic number, or around it. More than that and it becomes too intimidating and boring for your players, fewer than that and you would run into not only the fact that domains get less exclusive but the fact that a deity plays a huge role for a cleric player who's really into roleplaying. You need to ask yourself "do I have enough gods to allow enough different clerics, with different backrgounds, different cultures and different moral values to find someone who they see as the perfect embodiment of their way of life?". Cleric's don't just admire their gods, they worship them. You need enough gods to make your players feel that enough clerics don't look, play or feel exactly the same.


You could move away from the Greco-Roman idea of pantheons and go with something more Chinese-style ancestor worship.

Have your cleric come up with a backstory for an ancestor that embodies the domains they wish to worship. Wow, this is a really good idea! Joink!

[themourningstar]

I have the basic 9 gods you are positing in my pantheon. One main god for each alignment, and then, as Ive mentioned in your earlier posts, Godlings that serve them in some capacity that have one or two domains of their own. These are essentially mortals with a very limited number of divine ranks. This gives you a way to explain literally any combination of domains that your cleric or whatever could want.

Also- to the person who said you couldn't have a god with both the Evil and Good domains, I disagree. Making a god have domains that don't usually go together is an interesting way to add to the back story. A god that epitomizes both good and evil? The godling of Duality, who's constant internal struggle with the two opposing forces inside him. Sun and evil? The evil desert godling who believes the world should be consumed in the purifying flames of the sun. You could go on and on. :)

[atomicpenguin]

Also- to the person who said you couldn't have a god with both the Evil and Good domains, I disagree. Making a god have domains that don't usually go together is an interesting way to add to the back story. A god that epitomizes both good and evil? The godling of Duality, who's constant internal struggle with the two opposing forces inside him. Sun and evil? The evil desert godling who believes the world should be consumed in the purifying flames of the sun. You could go on and on. :)

I don't think anyone here has said that you couldn't have a god with both good and evil domains. Akma only said that you couldn't have a cleric with an evil domain that worships a good god, which is true because it stands to reason that , once the good deity realized someone was using his power for evil means, he'd just pull the plug on the power he's granting.

Also, maybe this is just my way of interpreting the alignment chart, but you seem to be operating pretty loosely with it. You can have an evil sun god, but there is nothing about the sun that makes it inherently good. In fact, in a desert society where the intense heat of the sun kills all crops, one could easily interpret the sun as evil. As for the godling who wants to purify the world in flame, this is one of those moral grey areas that the alignment system wasn't designed to handle, but since he wants to kill everyone and everything that puts him pretty squarely in evil. Your idea for a god of duality is the one I find most interesting, as there are numerous examples in mythology of one deity that was actually two deities, one good and one evil, that would change for whatever reason (mostly seasonal). Otherwise, I would think a god of duality and balance would be true neutral.

[Deepbluediver]

I think having one god of each alignment would not be a problem, but assigning the existing domains to all of them could problematic. For example, what "alignment" is the plant domain? If that where the case, you might want to have your 9 alignment-based dieties, each with their own cult, and then a few more nature-spirits and the like, that you can give the various elemental domains to.


I'm working on a setting where there are about a dozen major gods, and each represents a general theme rather than being tied to a specific race. For example, rather than having a god of humans, a god of elves, a god of halfings, etc, there is a god of Peace, a god of Power, a god of magic, a god of crafting & trade, etc.

And each race worships several dieties that it considers most important in a way the reflects on them. And one race's major/most-important god might be another races minor-member of the pantheon.
For example, while any orc would probably fly into a rage at seeing the god of war and battle depicted as an elf, everyone sort of tacitly acknowledges that things like gender, race, and physical appearance are basically meaningless to an entity like a god.


I took heavy inspiration for this from the greek-roman dynamic. When the Romans absorbed much of greek culture, they renamed most of the gods and quite a few of them got character-lifts and changes to their personality.
Ares got less berserker-ish, Zues becames less of a pervy man-whore (:smalltongue:), some gods or goddesses became less important and other where elevated. They where still technically the same, but their aspects changed depending on what culture they were viewed through.

I've only studied Greek myths and legends casually, and Roman hardly at all; don't go nuts if I've messed something up please. Just explain it to me properly so next time I know better.

[OzymandiasX]

If you want to run with just a handful of deities, you don't necessarily need to match every domain to a deity. As a matter of fact that would probably suck to play in, as there are a few domains that are MUCH better for PC clerics than others...

Instead maybe give each deity 2-3 primary domains. Their clerics must use ONE of these domains. Then the cleric can pick any second domain as long as it isn't in conflict with the deity's beliefs.

With a small pantheon you have to allow for additional flexibility to compensate for the fewer choices of worship.

[Maraxus1]

In a d&d campaign, would it be possible to have just nine main gods( ie one of each alignment)? I have been beating my head against a wall trying to create a pantheon, I started with over thirty, wittled down to eighteen, but I still think its too much. Help!
Also, any ideas on which types of gods would be absolutly necessary?

There is nothing wrong with thirty gods. In fact, there would be nothing wrong with all of them in a mediocre-sized area (and many more beyond it's borders) and out of the 30 gods, there are 20 fertility and 17 war-gods. Of course, that does not mean, that within the whole nation homogeneously everybody dedicates exactly one day a month to the worship of each god. In fact, in many villages, most people would probably only know about 10 or so. Just that every village puts a focus on different gods, mixes them with some ancestor or holy figures worshiping and they tell different stories about the deeds of their gods (not exactly all accurate), specifically explaining the relationships between the gods known in their area.

Gods should really not be treated with Abrahamic awe, at the low end, they are just immortal guys with some magic powers, barely more then an epic level Monk or undead sorcerer. :xykon:
Sure, no old Greek would dare to speak bad of Zeus but he's a big one, there are tons of lesser deities they would challenge or simply view as irrelevant below the Olympians. "Sure, Hypnos, God of sleep has a divine ranking but it's like 1, so whatever, I just party through the whole night, yeah!"

Make many gods, big ones, small ones, some that are barely more then epic mages, some that can kill a man with merely a thought (fortitute save DC 30 for 15d6 damage instead), some that are worshipped wide and far, some that are known only to small cults. Many with overlapping spheres of influence. Godhood is no job-sharing program, instead, gods should be imagined as complex characters, their domains derived from what they do, instead of the other way around.

[akma]

You could have diffrnet interpertations of gods. That way, one god can serve as many.
For example, in one of my settings there is the god Braryon, which is the manifistation of how time effects things. He is mainly worshipped as the god of agriculture, but is also worshipped as the god of rot, rust, aging, growth, seasonal change, change in general... each is a valid and accurate representation (each sub-religion also considers the others as heathens who misrepresent their god). Even with demons, some are worshipped by several rivaling cults (in that setting, each demon is a unique and powerfull entity).

To help with that, you could ditch alignments. Either alignments won`t exist at all, or they won`t exist for gods.



Also- to the person who said you couldn't have a god with both the Evil and Good domains, I disagree. Making a god have domains that don't usually go together is an interesting way to add to the back story.

I didn`t say that. I suggested that clerics should be able to take any domain they want, as long is it doesn`t contradict their god, and gave taking evil domain while worshipping a good god as an example. If it makes sense for that particilar god, than it`s resonable to allow it. Otherwise, it`s simply illogical to have both.

[Lord of Shadows]

In the homebrew setting I am running here, there is a core group of just five "gods." There is some further division of these five in some cultures, but that is a cultural thing. This allows for almost any other "god" to appear in the world, as someone's "interpretation" of one of the five. There are also cultures that adhere strictly to just the five core gods, and that see all others as heretics. Makes for some interesting dynamics.

As far as Domains go, we are using the Pathfinder ruleset, so we have all the Domains from the Core Rulebook plus some additional ones plus a few that are homebrew and specific to the setting. They are divided among the five gods so that one has 6, three have 7, and one (the Nature deity) has 8 Domains. We haven't had the need for any other Domains (or deities) so far.

There are also cults and similar groups that can appear from time to time. Stick with what seems like the right number of gods for the setting, and also what you are comfortable with having available. A lot of it also depends on how involved your deities are going to be in the day to day activities of the setting. Some settings have deities that are far removed, or even absent entirely and only spoken of in legends, and some have deities that will buy a PC a drink in a bar.

[BWR]

Looks like you're looking for Dragonstar's Unification Church (http://hastur.net/wiki/Unification_Church_%28Dragonstar%29).

The perfect number of gods depends on how large an area you are DMing. It makes little sense for one country the size of England to have 40 gods competing for worshippers. An interesting trend in real world cultures is the tendency towards power/portfolio scaling. The more specific and limited a portfolio, the less powerful the god. It's basically at one end you have animism, with spirits and minor gods in just about everything and you have the modern Judeo-Christian at the other, the aloof and omnipotent and most impotantly, only one.

I'm running Mystara, which is kind of like the real world mixed up in that it has an astonishing number of Immortals (gods): 51 are mentioned and stat'ed in one of the Immortal books, with an additional 52 mentioned with about one line of description. And that's only in the Known World, which is rather small. Granted, Immortals run the gamut from basically epic heroes to Greater God.

One thing I think is important to find out when creating a setting: are the gods powerful beings with hobbies or are they intrinsically and mystically tied to their portfolio?
In the former case it's perfectly possible for there to be competing sun gods. In the latter case, there is only one god to turn to when praying for rain.

[Mutazoia]

In a d&d campaign, would it be possible to have just nine main gods( ie one of each alignment)? I have been beating my head against a wall trying to create a pantheon, I started with over thirty, wittled down to eighteen, but I still think its too much. Help!
Also, any ideas on which types of gods would be absolutly necessary?

In some of my groups campaigns we do away with multi-deity pantheons. We run a version of the Catholic Church. One God and the clerics are members of orders devoted to different saints or Arch-Angles (or Fallen Angels depending).

EDIT: We usually play at a public venue at the local college campus...there's a christian student group that meets there at the same time we do. We find it's a lot easier to deal with them running religion in game around them this way.