monthesim in the game

[blelliot]

Has anyone ever sucessfully used montheistic religion in d&d? Or maybe dualistic religion? I'm thinking about it and it seems like a cool idea to do. Any input?

[Genth]

See, I've wondered about this too, mechanically. If you're homebrewing a campaign, and your setting only has two gods, that only gives you six domains all up (3 each). Which makes the choices for clerics really tight. Any solutions to that problem?

[HammeredWharf]

It can work in a homebrew setting or a low-magic setting with troubled access to divine power. Ravenloft is a good example of the latter. The Dark powers give clerics their spells and answer divinations, so worshipping a deity is based purely on faith instead of concrete proof.


See, I've wondered about this too, mechanically. If you're homebrewing a campaign, and your setting only has two gods, that only gives you six domains all up (3 each). Which makes the choices for clerics really tight. Any solutions to that problem?

1) You're the DM. Give the gods more domains.
2) Let clerics worship both a god and an ideal.

[blelliot]

The idea I had is based on the archangels and saints of christianity. Say each church worships one god, but each archangel represents a different aspect of the diety. And the domains that aren't represented by the good diety are taken up by the dark god. That's the idea I have, anyway.

[Eldan]

If you have one universal creator deity, I see no reason why you can't stick it with any domain you want. It created all the elements, so it has those. It creates and destroys, heals and protects, and so on and so on. So, worship it in whichever way you choose.

[Larrx]

I did this once. The god was born at the same time the world was, and aged with it. So he had a life story, anecdotes, different hobbies and jobs. Folks would pray to aspects of his character or history. That way I got to have one deity, but still kept varied domain sets.

[weckar]

I think Patron Saints instead of gods for a cleric are the easiest way to go here. God for a cleric doesn't matter, there is only one after all. But, while St Francis might provide the Animal domain, others will not.

[Serafina]

Religions rarely stay truly monotheistic. They will develop other important figures, and ascribing some sort of supernatural power and thus the appropriate veneration to them is usually the next step. Christianity for example has saints and prophets, plus of course the whole trinity isn't really monotheistic either.

In a world with actual supernatural beings, its much more likely that some will be venerated/worshipped as well. Their true power might (be perceived to) come from the monotheistic deity, but you'll still pray to them for specific things.
Which you could easily use to grant clerics access to more domains - all worship the deity as the only true god etc., but they also pray to the deific servants and might follow one of them more than the others.

[BWR]

What do you mean 'monotheistic'? In that there truly is one deity, or the religion refuses to acknowledge the existance of other gods, or that the religion forbids any worship of others?
I've never done the first, but I don't really see it should be a problem. Like any cult in a polytheistic world, they will have their traditions and rituals and beliefs. There are plenty of real world inspirations to draw on, but going into more detail here would violate board rules.
In the second case, sure. Some crazy cult wihch believs its god created everything and refuses to acknowledge the existance of other gods despite the obvious proof (divine casters etc.) claiming they are all evil and mislead by fiends.
The third, I've also done. Mystara has the Immortal Al Kalim, Prophet of the Eternal Truth and who doesn't want to be worshipped for his own sake, and who totally isn't an expy of Muhammed honestly. Some of his followers can get a bit zealous and are the only missionarying religion I have seen in the setting.

As for dualistic, Dragonstar has the Dualist Heresy, scorned by the Unification Church. The Unification Church is based on the idea that all gods in all settings are merely aspects of twelve divine archetypes, known undert he moniker of the Father, the Warrior, The Destroyer, etc. Lo and behold, when the early philosophers tried worshipping these hypothesized entities, they were granted spells and powers. The Unification Church is the state religion in the Dragon Empire, and they are not exactly missionarying, but they do try to enlighten poor people on normal D&D worlds.
The Dualist Heresy takes this one step farther and posits that there are only two gods, which you can for simplicity's sake call the Creator and the Adversary - you can guess the general attributes and dispositions of the two. The Dualist Heresy is considered not only unorthodox and heretical, but mostly just nutjobs. Still, their clerics gain spells, and in any case, the gods are silent about theirtrue nature.

[sideswipe]

See, I've wondered about this too, mechanically. If you're homebrewing a campaign, and your setting only has two gods, that only gives you six domains all up (3 each). Which makes the choices for clerics really tight. Any solutions to that problem?

the idea is that the gods would have more domains than three. they would not follow old gods mechanics

[weckar]

Thinking, doesn't the Silver Flame in Eberron basically do this?

[Yahzi]

The idea I had is based on the archangels and saints of christianity.
That is an excellent idea. Have people pick saints for their domains (or demons if they are on Team Evil). And remember, you don't have to use every domain.

You could even create different sects by giving them a different set of saints. And just because they all follow the same god doesn't mean they won't fight each other.

[Jeff the Green]

I've got one in my campaign setting. It draws from a lot of sources but mostly gnostic stuff. Basically, the mythology goes that an evil god created the world, humanoids, and all the things that make humanoid life difficult and unpleasant. His brother came along and saw what he had done, and kills him. In the process this god was severely wounded and so wasn't able to entirely change the world, only to make it possible for humanoids to fix it.

This exists alongside a dwarven belief in seven gods who each have chthonic and empyreal aspects; several mystery cults primarily followed by gnomes; a polytheistic hagiolatry also primarily followed by gnomes that holds that there are myriad gods, but none of them particularly care about the world, so if you want anything you have to pray to saints to ask them to intercede with the world; various ancestor and spirit cults; a belief in three archetypal spirits of mother, father, and child; a belief that at one point a kobold will learn the way to be a true dragon and ascend to physical divinity (there being no true dragons in my setting); and bull worship, primarily by half-orcs.

The monotheists have more or less tolerant (if not accepting or welcoming) relationships with these others, though a lot of this is the result of the territories where the monotheism is the official religion signing treaties that guaranteed freedom of religion. They are expected to wear their religion's holy symbol and pay an additional tax in those countries, though. (Monotheists are expected to wear their holy symbol too and pay tithes, so in theory at least it isn't a yellow armband situation.)

Since the other major religions have some diversity within them, I'm making different sects, orders, and organizations have different perspectives on their god. The one devoted to rooting out heresy and the remnants of the religions the monotheism displaced gets Inquisition while the one focused on charity gets Community.

The key thing, unless you want this to be the only religion, is uncertainty. The gods are removed from everyday life, and there's nothing that a cleric of a god can do that a cleric of atheism can't.

[Chester]

See, I've wondered about this too, mechanically. If you're homebrewing a campaign, and your setting only has two gods, that only gives you six domains all up (3 each). Which makes the choices for clerics really tight. Any solutions to that problem?

Isn't there some provision in the PHB for clerics without specific deities? In a monotheistic culture, clerics need not be clerics of a particular god, but rather clerics of particular domains.

[Red Fel]

As I recall (away from book at the moment) Deities and Demigods outlined both a monotheistic and dualistic setting. The former was basically a multifaceted deity with different "aspects" which provided different domains, and the latter was a sort of yin-and-yang of "creator" and "destroyer" archetypes.

So there is canonical basis, in the books. If you wanted to create a setting with a single deity, or two deities, I'd start by looking there.

The issue, as others have pointed out, is how (and whether) it mixes with other faiths in the setting. Particularly with regard to a monotheistic religion, it's extremely difficult to implement in a setting with multiple deities. When there is concrete, actual evidence of cosmically powerful beings, it's virtually impossible to persuasively say "that's all a lie, there's only one," particularly when some of those cosmically powerful beings have a tendency towards smiting. Many of the deities tend to be exclusive in their teachings (for example, Wee Jas would not be happy if one of her followers started worshipping Vecna on the side) but none presume that their celestial colleagues don't exist. That's just rude.

Dualistic deities work a bit better, since there's no presumption of exclusivity; rather, followers of one or both are simply followers of one or both, as with any other deity.

But, yes. A monotheistic religion generally only works in D&D if (1) there is no concrete evidence of deities in the world (e.g. Ravenloft), (2) there actually are no other deities in the world, or (3) the character is delusional and/or possessed of a relatively short life expectancy.

[Gildedragon]

Couple things:
1) deities can have more than 3 domains (as a divine ability, see deities and demigods), as the sole deity it's divine rank is arbitrarily high
2) the DM can give a deity as many domains as the DM likes

---

Now onto religion:
General ideas:
1) racial domains are always and only available to members of that race
2) alignment domains are always available to clerics of that alignment despite the god not necessarily having them

Monotheistic ideas
1) god has (over) half of the domains, clerics not of the god get access to the domains the god does not give; there are no clerics of ideals. This establishes a pretty cool divide between holy and unholy divine magic. Also ideas of heresy and heterodoxy arise. And it makes it a true monotheistic faith, as there is no adversarial anti-god.

2) Monistic faith rather than monotheistic (this is the one most suggested) you have an overdeity and then aspects, or emanations, of it produce saints/angels/demigods/incarnations of it that have domains and are actively worshiped. The overgod is not directly worshiped but by a few (sovereign speakers for example). Benefit is that you can keep a polytheist system, and the faith can work in a polytheistic world via a "your god is an emanation of our god" argument, or syncretism.

3) hard monotheism: god has all the domains. Clericless gods are not possible. There is but one awesome divine source, and DM cannot come from anywhere else.

Dualism:
1) non-adversarial dualism. Two neutral gods with various domains and portfolios that oppose each other's. One is fire, the other is water (or earth, or air, or animal, or plant: just justify it). Treat the duo as a monotheistic faith for interaction with stuff above. Allow for dual worship: that might have separate domains (maybe law and balance). One might do neg energy channeling despite alignment, the other pos, despite alignment.
This reflects a society of strong moieties.
2) adversarial dualism: as above but joint worship not possible. Treat each god as with the monotheistic variants (sans #3) all domains must be allocated, there can be partial overlap (or almost total, even, for a main god v dark reflection). Clerics cannot be on the fence with these guys. Standard good v evil; though it might be law v chaos; or pos v neg energy.

[weckar]

The issue, as others have pointed out, is how (and whether) it mixes with other faiths in the setting. Particularly with regard to a monotheistic religion, it's extremely difficult to implement in a setting with multiple deities. When there is concrete, actual evidence of cosmically powerful beings, it's virtually impossible to persuasively say "that's all a lie, there's only one," particularly when some of those cosmically powerful beings have a tendency towards smiting. Many of the deities tend to be exclusive in their teachings (for example, Wee Jas would not be happy if one of her followers started worshipping Vecna on the side) but none presume that their celestial colleagues don't exist. That's just rude.

Soooooo as I mentioned earlier.... Eberron?

[Segev]

The easiest way to do a monotheistic religion in a setting with multiple gods is to have the monotheists claim that the others are false gods not because they aren't powerful and able to grant power to their followers, but because the One True God is far more powerful and more worthy of worship.

Generally, if you really dig into serious monotheistic faiths, they either claim the others don't exist, that the others are not really powerful in a spiritual sense, or that there is a deeper, greater Truth to their faith that the others lack. In a setting with gods that can smite and grant power to clerics, the first two arguments fall kind-of flat. Clearly, Thor does exist and grants Durkon power.

Therefore, a One True God must have and represent a deeper spiritual truth of reality. He must be the true Creator, or he must have more and greater wisdom worth learning from, or his worship must grant something even more than mere magical power. He must somehow be more in tune with or have a greater understanding of reality as a whole, such that the other religions' "gods" are really just powerful beings play-acting at the truth this One True God embodies.

Whether, in your setting, the monotheistic faith is right and the others are misguided (or outright lying), or the monotheistic faith is full of itself (or outright lying) and the other gods are just as (if not more) valid, is up to you and how you write it.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

First I'd like to point out that near the back of Dieties & Demigods has both a singular god that grants power to all Clerics regardless of alignment and for a system with just two opposing gods.

From my own experience, I've run a Agnostic game that didn't have Clerics. Social and spiritual circles existed revolving around several classes, but the only big player was the Church of the Light. They had a three pronged philosophy.

Literal Light>Darkness
Good>Evil
Knowledge>Ignorance

They were an excellent source of Knowledge(all) and they were the primary source of trainingfor Vitramancers; Dread Necromancers with most of Cleric's Necromancy(Healing) added to their list. They usually wore white robes and the church forbade the creation of undead refering to it as "Black Vitramancy".


I also have a friend who's developed a virtual Monothism over time in games he runs. First he ran Red Hand of Doom and presented an undead city as rather reasonable and following "The Blood God". They were easy to negotiate with and seemed to want to check undead reproduction in order to maintain a balance with the living population.

In a later game he ran another module, I believe it was the tearing of the veil. I decided to play a SotAO Ranger, because it seemed like an appropriate character. Then he sprung on us that in this game the part of Mystra would be played by The Blood God(tm). This lead to me having to repeatedly explain to NPCs a philosophy that involved life cycles and how the universal power of blood flowed through all living things and was the source of both life and undeath and this became cannon. Then the role of Shar was also played by a crazed cult of The Blood God(tm) that followed tenants long deemed heresy by mainstream followers. So it pretty much amounted to Monotheism. It was a bit comedic at times, but screaming "Blood for the Blood God" as a LG character was super fun and it ultimately moved the story along. Also the Blood God became the God of "Yes" which fed into the comedy feats, domains and classes were approved for The Blood God left and right.

[Larkas]

What is "montheistic", or "monthesim" for that matter? :smallconfused:

Regardless, Deities & Demigods has some insight into that configuration. I recommend checking it out, in addition to what everyone is saying here.

[weckar]

#monthesim is a hashtag often associated with the little known video game Mon: the Sim. It is basically a genetics simulator in which you create monsters for customers to their specifications. Actually kind of fun. Eventually you also have to build monsters for other purposes, like helping out in your lab or defending it.

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[JusticeZero]

Yes and campaignwise it works fine. It's the way that the system as written bakes a whole bunch of restrictive ideas in for no good reason that's a problem. My setting of choice bans all divine magic full stop, so it makes things easier.

[NecessaryWeevil]

Soooooo as I mentioned earlier.... Eberron?

The Church of the Silver Flame acknowledges the other gods. It just believes the Silver Flame is all you really need, and that the other gods will fade away as the Flame purifies the world.

Eberron's a bit of a special case, as the gods aren't very obtrusive at all; even the Silver Flame, which objectively exists as a huge fiery pillar, only speaks through one person. So you don't have gods smiting their followers for apostasy (or anything else, for that matter).

[Jeff the Green]

The Church of the Silver Flame acknowledges the other gods. It just believes the Silver Flame is all you really need, and that the other gods will fade away as the Flame purifies the world.

Eberron's a bit of a special case, as the gods aren't very obtrusive at all; even the Silver Flame, which objectively exists as a huge fiery pillar, only speaks through one person. So you don't have gods smiting their followers for apostasy (or anything else, for that matter).

It goes a bit beyond that. No one knows that the gods even exist. You can get spells from them even if you are of an entirely incompatible alignment (i.e. there are a lot of corrupt Good churches). You can get spells from non-deific entities (the Silver Flame, the Dragon Below, the Lord of Blades—who is additionally mortal—the Undying Court, Spirits of the Past, Il-Yannah, Il-Lashtavar), gods that will, according to worshippers, only exist in the future (the Becoming God), and philosophies (the Blood of Vol, the Path of Inspiration). You can also be a cleric of a cause, and that could presumably include atheism.