So what do the Gods actually do?

[Ken Murikumo]

Im writing a new pantheon for a future fantasy game i have coming up. I usually use my own settings with very little to do with religion, so i don't know much about what the gods actually do in the written D&D settings.

Who do they appear to and why?

What kind of events do they personally influence?

What do they do when they are not being used in the DMs plot to force the players on righteous quest?

Things of that nature.

[Manyasone]

The same as what whatever god you choose to believe in does in this world.
Absolutely nothing... It 's all what the dm chooses to enforce in it. The portfolios are concepts of Belief. Also, the goddess of fertility isn't going to zap you when you take some 'hands-free' time

[Tohsaka Rin]

Nothing but Divine Bureaucracy.

Celestial Paperwork.

Allmighty Meetings.

Ascended... Standing around the watercooler, complaining about how much paperwork they have to do?

Ok, so the joke petered out around the end there, but it depends on what sort of higher plains business you find interesting for your game.

[AnimeTheCat]

They're batteries

[Braininthejar2]

In my headcanon, gods rarely intervene personally for two reasons.

1 Immortality is a cool thing... no need to test it against beings of equal power, is there?

2 They're permanently distracted. The whole super-smart and enlightened thing comes with a lot of mental traffic - answering prayers from thousands of clerics (no wonder an odd Ur-priest slips through) witnessing events at many places at once (and sometimes in different times at once) - They could engage personally, but... imagine trying to get anything done when you have a massive RTS game in progress that you cannot pause, and that keeps pinging you about stuff.

2a This is also why so many prophecies are cryptic. When a priest asks for guidance, his god usually has like ten seconds to spare, and during that time he gives him an answer that seems clear for someone with 50 WIS, but might be too much of a "mental shortcut" for an ordinary human. (again, imagine you're busy at work, when your 6 year old kid texts you a question - there is nothing wrong with how you use language, and still, your answer could easily be misunderstood)

3 Finally, even the smartest of gods suffer from some level tunnel vision. "When all you have is a hammer, all problems start looking like nails." How much worse is it when you're the god of hammers? Some of it might be a result of all the faithful projecting their expectations onto a god.

4 Gods regulate their portfolio aspects just by being - a goddess of fertility only really needs to be interested in the planet for the crops to grow. (what would happen if she were gone, differs from world to world. In some, you wouldn't notice, and those can have militant atheist movements seeing gods as supernatural protection rackets. In others, like Toril, things can go crazy overnight if the respective god goes away - such as when Ciric had a breakdown that shut down the afterlife, rendering everyone on the planet briefly (an painfully) undying, or when Mystra got murdered, and the magic went so haywire it reshaped the setting.)

5 Other than that, divine politics - for every god, there is some with opposite goals or outlook, and much as some of them would like to just bash heads, see point 1.

[Darth Ultron]

In a fantasy world with active gods, each god exists to promote their sphere of influence. Each god has their corner that they watch over.

In a general sense, even gods that are active stay a bit hands off. It's the old model idea. Think of a floor model of a world something like 20 feet wide. You can move around stuff at the edges no problem, but to move anything in the middle....you'd have to step on and crush and destroy things on the model.

Or like an ant farm...you can try and take a tiny drill and make homes and paths of the ants (good luck!) or you can just feed the ants and watch them do it themselves....

So god wise it's better for them to influence their faithfully followers to do things ''in the middle of the model'' and not do it themselves.

In a general sense, gods are playing the long game....of forever. So they have....forever....to do something like ''found a school for warriors'' and ''hope to spread it throughout the world'', in maybe a couple thousand years (as gods do have forever). Gods plant lots and lots of seeds and wait to see what grows...some times leaving them alone, some times giving them a bit of attention....but often not too much.

At the same time the also have to oppose the gods they don't agree with....both with violence, and with talk or other ways. And they have to defend themselves and their followers from other gods, monsters and other things too.

In vague theory, each god wants to be the one true god and have everyone...even other gods follow them......but in reality most gods (that are not crazy chaotic evil) know that will never happen and will settle for just being ''one'' of the Great Gods.

[BWR]

It really depends on how they function in any given setting. If they are representations of certain things and processes, without which these things cannot exist, then they presumably spend most of their time making sure the world keeps turning, and they may not even have much by the way of enemies if the pantheon is built in a specific way. If they are tied to specific portfolios but have rivals with similar or identical portfolios, they do a lot of ploticking and working against rivals in addition to working against enemies.
Mystaran Immortals aren't really gods of things, they are powerful beings with hobbies or a political agenda. They can do pretty much whatever they want: go on god level adventures, figure out even deeper secrets of the multiverses (yes, plural), try to become an Old One (to the gods as gods are to mortals), plyaing political games with mortals, fight very carefully against rival gods, usually through proxies and harming their interests rather than direct attacks, etc.

[zlefin]

I'm not that familiar with all the various DnD settings; but my understanding is that the gods behave differently in each of them, running all across the possibilities.
so it's pretty easy to have the gods do whatever you want, and to have them be low-key if that's what you want for the setting.

[the_david]

A soul is born in the positive energy plane from where it travels to the material plane. There it merges with a mortal. When the mortal dies his soul will go to heaven or one of the other outer planes, depending on religious beliefs and alignment. He becomes a blank slate as all his memories are whiped. In the outer planes the soul becomes a petitioner, a being that could grow into a powerful outsider that fights on behalf of his god.

So basically the gods just want mortal souls to power their army in their eternal wars. There's no such thing as free will. And it's the same with all the outer planes, the gods are all tyrants. The good ones are just "nice tyrants". Ofcourse, this is all based on the great wheel cosmology. If you've got another cosmology in mind then things will work differently. But since you just asked what the gods do, I'll assume that you haven't figured out how your cosmology works.

If all else fails, just remember that gods tend to have limited portfolios and that keeping it simple is usually the best idea. A tribe of hunter/gatherers will pray to the god of the hunt, a farming community will pray to a fertility goddess, a community near the ocean will pray to father Dagon, etc.

I'd love to see gods of a duelistic nature. The goddess of life is also the goddess of death, the goddess of abundance is also the goddess of famine. That sort of stuff.

[Sheogoroth]

I prefer to give them Greco-Roman power, but with hidden restraints.

That is to say, they have petty or extreme and ridiculous aims can manifest themselves to support those aims and whatnot.

The hardish part is contriving a reason for deities to give a crap about mortals on your planet in an entire cosmos, and the easiest way to do that is to say that humanoid souls are the best for some reason and worth pursuing. (make the best petitioners, their worship gives the most power, etc.)

Then comes the hardest part which is, why don't they just take over, to which I have 2 solutions.

1. The Fat men and the little door.
A bunch of large men trying to cram into a small door all at the same time could get perhaps an arm or a leg in at a time, but their comparable girth means that none of them will ever really get the upper hand.

2. The Elder Scrolls Solution.
In the ES universe, there are a bunch angry, belligerent, and crazy deities and then 9 nice, happy, lawful minor deities. These deities banded together to create a "Wall" that limited how much the crazy ones could interfere on "earth". I think this is really the best solution, and it doesn't even have to be good deities, but a bunch of minor deities that originate FROM "earth" band together to create a wall that limits influence to whatever the DM feels like, to the point where they can grant spells, influence their goals, but are restricted from too much divine intervention.

[Gildedragon]

Not all gods have to be primeval forces. Ascended beings works great for a setting. Why do they care for mortals: because they used to be them
Also, possibly, they can see and affect the world through their believers.
Who they appear to: nobody, possibly, and only speak via omens and oracles
Influence: if one isn't having gods that ARE a thing, then the influence may be limited to the power they lend their clerics and believers.
They won't send a storm unless a cleric uses control weather...

[Alcore]

I have played a game called Black and White. It's a god game. Supposedly a village will breed people and build buildings as needed. My latest 'divine' experiment is to watch this happen. This will take many hours; a game century or two.


Otherwise it's you doing the work. You can make deciples who breed, grow food, chop wood, build things and just about anything else. If your not working the world stops turning in many ways. Of course there is the hands on job of floating over a forest with a store house in view and move the trees by hand.

Work, work, work.


One village is tough; you'll have five or more by the end of any one game. It's all control.


How you interpret that control is up to you. The villager could decide to become a paladin or the god of paladins said "you will be a paladin!" From there the villagers life is ordaned, he might decide to be a paladin anyways but beyond interference from another god his path is set.

[Zanos]

The same as what whatever god you choose to believe in does in this world.
D&D gods provably exist in almost every setting, other than the ones that make it a specific point that they aren't around, like Eberron.

In general, a gods duties are:

1. Maintain influence of portfolio in the cosmos, usually the Prime Material Plane.
2. Provide a suitable afterlife for those that die and are sorted into their portfolio.

Personally I usually run it such that while gods provably exist, they don't often directly intervene in matters for one of two reasons. The first is that there's a divine bureaucracy or mystical force that bars gods from directly intervening in events on other planes. Having this not magically enforced is fun, meaning gods can directly affect stuff if they can slip it under the radar. The other is that there's a cold war going on between deities that nobody wants to break, where one deity directly influencing something could set off some really bad events like WWIs powder keg.

In either case, the deities not being able to have overt influence in your setting keeps mortals relevant where deities can't just smash anyone who they don't like and isn't protected by an as strong or stronger deity. This justifies the existence of clerics, who work to spread their deities influence where they can't act directly.

[Nifft]

Im writing a new pantheon for a future fantasy game i have coming up. I usually use my own settings with very little to do with religion, so i don't know much about what the gods actually do in the written D&D settings.

IMHO, the most important question thing: Ask not what you should do for the gods. Ask instead: what can the gods do for you?

Is there anything about your setting that you want the gods to do?

Do you need them to justify any military, social, or political issues in the setting?


== == ==

In terms of examples, there are a lot of different official D&D settings, so you have a lot of different patterns to choose from.

In Eberron, for example, the gods might not exist. Some people pray to (some or all of) a pantheon, some people worship a single monotheistic deity, some revere their own divine potential, some idolize an ideal. They all get spells. Nobody has ever seen a god (except maybe the Trickster, but it would be in-character for him to lie about existing so hard that he both existed and didn't at the same time).

In Greyhawk, the gods have a strategic avatar limitation treaty which prevents them from directly interfering in the mortal world, except a few who are native to the mortal world -- and the only one of that type who's currently active is a jerk.

In the Forgotten Realms, the gods are busy taking away player agency, removing consequences, and ensuring the PCs stay on the plot-railroad. Also sometimes one of them polishes the authorial self-insert's knob.

In Planescape, gods aren't allowed to visit the best city in the multiverse, so they don't directly intervene -- but there is still power to belief and an ongoing war between incompatible philosophical truths.


Going off the top 3 popular settings list, you have stuff that's even more distinct:

In Midnight, there's only one god, and he's doing the same thing he does every night: trying to take over the world, so he can destroy it, and thereby escape his prison. God has a plan, and you're the only one who can stop it.

In Call of Cthulhu, there's only evil alien entities which neither deserve nor care about your worship, and you shouldn't try learning more about them lest you puncture the soap-bubble that is your sanity.

In Mystara, there are ascended immortals, but they're not really gods in the usual sense. You can join them, if you try.

In Birthright, the gods are your deadbeat father. Go take his stuff.



So you have a lot of different -- and often mutually exclusive -- patterns to build upon, and there's no particular need to pick one over another.

All of them have worked, all of them are proven.

What do you need to get done?

How can the gods help?

[Ken Murikumo]

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Hmmm, Im trying to avoid the, "they just do nothing" path. At least without a good reason for it


Snip

The setting is future fantasy, so it may not be that far off, though less comical. I did think of the Ox King from dbz when you said that, just sitting at a desk, board out of his gourd, stamping paperwork for souls to enter.


They're batteries

Kinda vague, but it did give me a pretty cool idea, thanks


Snip

1 & 5 are not too far off from what i was thinking.


Snip

The "planting seeds" thing is actually a really good and simple explanation for them not intervening.


Snip

Hmmm, i have 9 gods written up that follow the basic 9 alignments. They have some small opposition, but not full on rivalry. Although the Old One idea was a thought i had a while ago, maybe i'll stick with it.


Snip

Every campaign i've run i skipped over religion entirely. Never had a player play a religious cleric or paladin so it was never really something i need to write into the plot. I wrote up these cool (i think they're cool) god like characters and realized i didnt know how to use them without shoehorning them into the plot or leaving them absent.


Snip

These eternal wars, are they actually something in the D&D setting or something that most DMs who use gods recycle for plot?


Snip

I hate Greco-Roman gods. Just my opinion, but i cant stand how self-destructively petty they are. In some cases completely predictable, which kind of ruins the whole god thing.

Although, the Elderscrolls thing you mentioned is a good idea. I may have to use a similar concept. Thanks.

[Ken Murikumo]

Snip

I want them to be a liiitle more in touch with the mortal world, but not so much so that they influence EVERY war or bit of political strife. Having them give vague prophecies on occasion would, over time, make people question their existence. At least thats how i feel it would logically play out in my setting.


Snip

I am aware of this game, but never played it myself. Im personally not a fan of fate determining where you go or what you become. It's like really minor railroading and i have used fate or destiny to goad the players into quests. I'm trying to stop that for this game.


Personally I usually run it such that while gods provably exist, they don't often directly intervene in matters for one of two reasons. The first is that there's a divine bureaucracy or mystical force that bars gods from directly intervening in events on other planes. Having this not magically enforced is fun, meaning gods can directly affect stuff if they can slip it under the radar. The other is that there's a cold war going on between deities that nobody wants to break, where one deity directly influencing something could set off some really bad events like WWIs powder keg.

This, i think, is what i may go with. They exist. It is universally known that they exist because it is provable. A little tweaking with the advice above, and i may have a more fleshed out pantheon.


Snip

Thats a really helpful and simplified explaination of the settings. Thanks.

The Greyhawk one seems to fit the bill pretty well, so i'll use that style as needed.


Im just not sure how involved i should make them with the shaping of the worlds. I have a timeline that stretches over 50,000 years before the events of the campaign and very close to the beginning of that timeline those gods show up. I have events like wars and space travel/colonization written into it, but i fear throwing the gods influence into some of the equations can create weak plot structure.

You guys have given me some golden advice, an certainly helped me find some good lore to add to my world.

Thanks everyone!!

[Florian]

To add to Nifftys list:

In Golarion, divinity is a broad spectrum ranging from ascended mortals to true cosmic forces.
On the lower scale, there´re hero-gods, great old ones, demon lords and spirits of the land, on the upper scale, there´re embodiments of cosmic function like time, prophecy, death and gravity.

Basically, the deities are the direct representation of the things they have dominion over and what they are and what they represent is directly connected.
For example, when the Aroden, the god of humanity died, empires fell, prophecy lost its power and human dominance was shattered. When Yserdius died, the Serpentfolk went into decline...

So "meddling" always happens. Each deity "meddles" in the things it is connected to, from indirect ways, like Nethys inspiring wizards to create new spells, to empowering paladins or oracles, to direct interventions.

[Pronounceable]

Gods do whatever you want them to (much like every other element of rpging). Their whole point is serving the DM/player/author of a fictional setting in entertaining themselves/players/audience. You can make them sing, you can make them dance, you can make them do barrel rolls if that's what you want for your campaign/story. There's no ironclad rules.

Various DnD canons are pretty well covered above and everyone modifies those stuff to some extent too. Here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?497963-Teaching-new-tricks-to-old-gods)'s an example of such modifications if you're wondering how far some people with too much time on their hands can go.

[Crake]

I solved this dilemma in my campaign. Built a whole amazing pantheon of gods and everything. Here's how:

I killed them all off in my first campaign.

[Sagetim]

Im writing a new pantheon for a future fantasy game i have coming up. I usually use my own settings with very little to do with religion, so i don't know much about what the gods actually do in the written D&D settings.

Who do they appear to and why?

What kind of events do they personally influence?

What do they do when they are not being used in the DMs plot to force the players on righteous quest?

Things of that nature.

Gods appear to whomever they want to. But for your purpose, they should probably show up to people who are either a) their Chosen, or b) Their Prophets. If you want gods to just kind of show up and hang out with people, that's fine too, just realize that players will probably start treating them like any other npc instead of a big damn deal.

Chosen are a concept in 3.5 from, as far as I know, Forgotten Realms. In that setting and it's various fluff books you'll find npcs who have been designated as "Chosen of Mystra" or "Chosen of Bane" or so on. These people are not necessarily divine casters or anything like regular servants of their deity, they're more like living weapons. The Chosen of Mystra include in their ranks Elminster, The Simbul, and a number of other epic level arcane casters, and they tend to relate to Mystra as friends (or lovers). That might just be because of Mystra's alignment, and I'm not sure how Bane interacts with his Chosen. I imagine he treats them more like protege's or a hammer by which his will is done. Point is, Chosen get templates applied to them that grant them bonuses and abilities based on the god they are a Chosen of.

Based on the Cadderly books for Forgotten Realms, it seems like Prophets are rather few and far between, with most clerics not actually having direct contact with their god beyond being granted spells. Like, they don't seem to get direct orders or suggestions on how doctrine should go, or anything like that. They just kind of follow the right rituals, show their faith, pray and get the spells they want. This opens up story potential, as it did in that book series, by allowing for priests who aren't very good at being a priest of their particular god still reach high rank within the church and still claim authority because 'well, I get 5th level spells, so eat it.'

It's perfectly alright if you don't want to run your cleric npcs that way. After all, players are going to get tired of it if every cleric npc they run into is kind of a jackass that justifies themselves with the fact that they keep getting divine spells when they pray. But this leads us to a question:

Where does a God's power come from?

As the setting designer, it is your job to determine things like this. In some settings, gods have intrinsic power, and that's it. They're just straight up powerful, and grant spells because they want mortals to push their agenda on the mortal plane. In other settings, gods and their power are tied directly to the faith of their followers. And then in Forgotten Realms it started as one, and then punitive action resulted in it becoming the other.

So, AO is the over-god in the FR setting. He's kind of a jerk, and lazy, and doesn't seem to be very smart. But he's powerful, and seems to be a big fan of punishing all the gods for stupid crap that cyric does. Anyway, at one point (not cyric's fault, actually) the gods are holy warring it up on the mortal plane, having their followers commit genocides and atrocious acts against each other and pointing and laughing and smiting and really...if their overgod was Zeus he would probably be laughing along with them and giving out high fives. Instead their overgod is AO, and he's done with their crap. He kicks them out of the heavens and down to the mortal realm, and they have to jump through hoops and do all kinds of stuff to get back to being gods in the heavens and having their old position and all that. And then they realize no, he changed the settings when everyone is gone. Now instead of having intrinsic power due to being a god, their divine power is supplied by their followers. This means that more than being some pets that they maybe like because they're cute or whatever, they have to actually care to some degree about the well being of their followers and faith. This is part of what starts the deific cold war in FR. If you lose followers, you lose faith, and if you lose faith, you start losing power, and if you lose too much power, another god can kill you, eat you, and get your stuff highlander style (except with portfolios instead of lightning coming out of your neck).

This doesn't really stop the gods of FR from being giant children, but it does force them to act a little bit more mature. Compare this with the gods of Dragonlance, the setting that brought us the worst race ever: Kender. Not Kobolds (who sometimes get called Kender in some of the dnd games). Anyway, the gods of Dragonlance are actually some of the weakest ones around. They are weak enough that a high level wizard managed to, what was it, kill and or maim the primary goddess of darkness and evil? At one point the rules in the setting actually had anyone who hits level 16 as a character get exiled from the plane to keep that person from challenging the gods. As I recall, the Gods in Dragonlance have intrinsic power, they just don't have a whole lot of it. Also, arcane magic there is technically just round about divine magic with a sourceforge.net style 'free to anyone who can figure out how to use it' thing going on. Only when storyline shenanigans caused god granted magic to go away did anyone get around to figuring out that you could actually cast magic without the gods at all, but at this point we're side tracking away from the whole god discussion.

Dragonlance shenanigans aside, you also need to figure out how you want to answer the question: What Are Gods?

Are they really really powerful nearly impossible to kill, basically immortal beings? that's how dnd tends to stat them up with divine ranks and templates and so on. That doesn't mean they can't be killed (as I'm sure at least three of the people that respond to this thread could come up with a pre-epic character who could manage to kill at least one god). What it does mean is that they are very different from mortals at very basic levels.

Are they trumped up mortals? In some settings, you'll find deities who used to be mortal. Generally in dnd, they follow the same kinds of templates, divine ranks, and so on that all the other gods do, it's just that their backstory involves them having been mortal at some point and then Ascending to becoming a Deity. But deities who were once mortal tend to be how you get deities with epic character levels, since gods who started as gods seem to be allergic to this concept. I recall there being a note about this in the epic level handbook, or Deities and Demigods, but the end result is the same: mortals who become gods tend to be a lot more focused at being good at one thing. None of this '20 fighter/20 ranger/lots of outsider hit dice' thing, more 'Barbarian 35, eat my rage!'.

Are they actually mortal, but have access to an unusual ability? This is one that you don't see in DnD, at least not with any of the official settings. In this kind of set up, gods are basically just other mortals who have a capability that most don't. It might be as simple as the ability to grant spells by converting faith to power. This doesn't mean that they are necessarily any more or less powerful than any other mortals in their setting, and may well age and die like the rest.

To move back to one of your questions though: Gods are generally doing things as defined by their alignment and place within the story when GM's aren't using them to do whatever. It's safe to assume that a god of death is probably busy making sure people die when they are dead and their soul heads off to whatever afterlife it's supposed to (probably with divine servants like grim reapers or angels or something so they don't have to do it themselves). A god of farming is probably busy watching how crops are doing and keeping an eye out for his faithful, while a god of fire is probably trying to subtly whisper 'do it' in the ear of young pyromaniacs. Gods of knowledge likely read books, while gods of magic do (or research new) magic.

--------
And then I got caught up on this thread.

So, if you have a setting with provable gods, you'll need to also consider how that impacts the advance of anything like technology. Do you have gods who are specifically promoting it or against it?, specifically and provably in support of research and science?

Is this a setting where a significant minority (or even a majority) of people can pray to their particular god and get things done with little more than some god bothering and knee on pew action? Have work dynamics shifted as time has gone on, with people praying food into being instead of farming so that they can work the factories for money, and the few people who do grow food sell it as a luxury good to the incredibly wealthy? If your local priest can cure diseases, is there any impetus for the development of actual medical knowledge and practices, or are they just guesstimating and blasting you with divine spells until it sticks? Has a disease started to gain divine resistance, such that it has SR, or Immunity to Remove Disease?

The less intervention that gods take in a setting, the more mortals have to rely on what they can do without gods. This might be the very reason that deities take a sedate role on a particular world in your setting, that place serves as the experiment to see what kinds of things mortals get up to when left on their (mostly) lonesome. Meanwhile other worlds in the same setting may have much more regular divine intervention going on. The main problem (for the gods) is if the mortals on one of their high intervention worlds decides to take their wealth of magic and fly their way to a low intervention world for a vacation (or because they have decided entirely on their own that their god would surely want them to spread the faith as far as possible). Do any of the worlds in your setting have an abrupt increase in divine activity because of cross pollination? After all, if gods are provably existant, then being an atheist just doesn't compute. "Dude, you just got flame stirked, what do you want?" "I want proof!" "Fine. Slay Living, Gentle Repose" ten hours later "Breath of Life, There, better? You've died, seen some afterlife, are you going to admit gods are real now?" "A figment of my imagination, nothing more. Surely your solipsism skills are not to be trifled with."

Now, on a low intervention world you might have mortals developing a lot of technology, and if arcane magic has nothing to do with gods, then magical technology might come into the picture as well. With enough people being awful to eachother as an impetus, you could well have magical sailboats flying off that world to try and find safer places to live, resulting in encountering some high intervention worlds, where the shoe is now on the other foot.

And there's always the possibility of an Elder God invasion having an impact on the way society evolved. It may not have been a successful invasion, but being invaded from the stars could drive a relatively complacent world to start actively patrolling it's nearby space by whatever means it has at it's disposal, if only to better prevent the next invasion attempt.

[rel]

I like an Incursion approach.

The gods are powerful immortal outsiders
They get something from veneration and worship and are willing to offer aid to get it
They cannot interfere in the material world unless called.

So if you don't want to deal with them you can ignore them entirely

If you do want to deal with a god you have to avoid doing things that angers them and do things to gain favor.
A pleased god will help you out but an angry god may smite you.

[Florian]

@Sagetim:

I don´t fully get your train of thoughts on this.

If we use the model of "divine physics", then everything in existence (in the Prime Material plane) will have a connection to a "divine" counterpart on the Inner and/or outer Planes. Basically, we have a "flow" from the Positive Energy Plane > Inner Planes > Prime Material > Outer Planes > Negative Energy Plane.

Based on this, a lot of deities have dominion over the "concept of something" and the granted magic is tied to that concept, as well as showing how far you could take that concept.

Let´s take "healing" as a concept. It´s there because it exists and it has multiple deities representing one facet of it or another. Looking at the granted spells, we can readily see how far we can take that concept. I don´t see why any deity in the "divine physics" model should have anything against (technological) progress, as solid and available "tech" will strengthen that concept even more.

[Misereor]

So what do the Gods actually do?

Depends on your Cosmology.

Standard D&D cosmology goes something like:
- Primal chaos. (May still exist as Far Realm)
- This reality starts taking shape. There have been others before it, but they were destroyed somehow.
- As chaos evolves into ever more distinct patterns, primordials are born. (Elementals for instance are types of primordials)
- As reality becomes ever more defined, more and more primordials are born. Some sire or spawn offspring and inadvertently become gods when their offspring start worshipping them.
- Gods are still tied to their primordial forms, and so portfolios are created. Primitive at first, but ever more advanced over time.
- The nature of souls, spirits, and faith slowly become better understood.
- Gods begin to make reality more suited to worshippers. Primordials resent this and the Dawn War begins. Various alliances are formed along lines that eventually becomes alignments.
- Immigrants arrive from a previous reality that was destropyed. The Obyrith Incursion. They bring a shard of their old reality with them, aronud which The Abyss eventually forms, and Demons with it.
- Obyriths manage to corrupt various gods, primordials, mortals, etc.
- Dawn war takes a short break as everyone fights the intruders. Devils are created. Planes are moved around. Alignments may also have changed.
- Some time during this period new gods evolve not from primordials but from mere mortals through worship alone.
- As a result of this ever more portfolios develop that are not tied to natural phenomena (like "Light", "Darknesss", or "Storms", but instead stuff like "Honor" or "Deceit" i.e. Metaphysical constructs.)
- It is discovered that portfolios can be taken over or split. This is apparently tied to the strength and nature of worship.
- Gods who lose their portfolios are weakened, die, go into comas, or revert to their previous state.

I'm sure I missed or misinterpreted a lot of stuff, but in a cosmology like the one described, gods need to balance their relationships with each other, take care not to lose worship, and keep various threats from ending the world as we know it.

OTOH, if gods are not dependent on worship, they might only tolerate mortals (like the Olympic Pantheon).
If portfolios cannot be stolen, there is less conflict.
If there is no Obyrith incursion, but merely a divine order for angels and demons, there is no need for any celestials wars.
In that case you should create your own seeds for conflicts/adventure opportunities in your setting.

[Melcar]

Nothing but Divine Bureaucracy.

Celestial Paperwork.

Allmighty Meetings.

Ascended... Standing around the watercooler, complaining about how much paperwork they have to do?

Ok, so the joke petered out around the end there, but it depends on what sort of higher plains business you find interesting for your game.

I like this! Very funny!

[logic_error]

A pantheon of gods exists as philosopher deities That endlessly dream and create new things. But they are careful not to create sentience. One God dares this experiment secretly but is punished by others to be a moon forever to watch her creation.

In order to be free she must induce madness in the creation so they destroy themselves.

[Pugwampy]

Who do they appear to and why?

DND gods appear to their faithful clerics but usually in dreams . They happy , carrot . They are upset , stick . They want something ...quest .



What kind of events do they personally influence?

Divine magic players are using borrowed power .

Depending on their moral code or mood. gods take away divine super powers or give a magic goodie . Say a nice goddess ? Player goes out of her way to be nice to a street urchin or puppy , give em a reward . Player is teaming up to massacre village folk , cut off their power supply . nothing quite says I am mad at my faithful servant than ....no super powers .
Cannot have both an evil or good cleric in a party one will suffer power loss depending on who is stronger but also the moral actions of the party . Its in the clerics best interest to keep the party on the good or evil track or if party messes up too badly to divorce herself from them .


What do they do when they are not being used in the DMs plot to force the players on righteous quest?

The gods are all knowing and all powerful so they are very very very VERY bored . Giving mortals free will to act as they please is like watching a tv show . If the gods can see the future they probably have an off switch for that ?
In theory a god doing any kind of actions on said tv show kinda spoils the fun a bit although they can and will draw a line somewhere if they dont like what they see .

Dont forget to offer players 1 percent per level to summon them
.................................................. .............

All gods report to the Allfather DM . Depending on his whims he can make them very active and alive in the campaign or not at all.

Its quite possible having very active deities can make the divine classes seem less or more appealing . Dm needs to tread carefully and players need to be made aware of the biblical facts .

[Calthropstu]

Doesn't oots cover this topic?

[AnimeTheCat]

Kinda vague, but it did give me a pretty cool idea, thanks

Sorry, It was meant to be comedic. They serve as the font of divine power for their worshipers and followers, channeling it to them lest they be ripped apart by un-tempered cosmic energy. I guess they're less batteries and more alternators? Either way, they have a full time job answering the prayers of their followers and granting amazing abilities to their clergy.

[Sagetim]

@Sagetim:

I don´t fully get your train of thoughts on this.

If we use the model of "divine physics", then everything in existence (in the Prime Material plane) will have a connection to a "divine" counterpart on the Inner and/or outer Planes. Basically, we have a "flow" from the Positive Energy Plane > Inner Planes > Prime Material > Outer Planes > Negative Energy Plane.

Based on this, a lot of deities have dominion over the "concept of something" and the granted magic is tied to that concept, as well as showing how far you could take that concept.

Let´s take "healing" as a concept. It´s there because it exists and it has multiple deities representing one facet of it or another. Looking at the granted spells, we can readily see how far we can take that concept. I don´t see why any deity in the "divine physics" model should have anything against (technological) progress, as solid and available "tech" will strengthen that concept even more.


Well, that's a very reasonable attitude to take, and lest we forget, deities are not required to be reasonable. Like, at all. Even when they have big ol' AO to punish them for being unreasonable, that doesn't mean they will ever learn anything or grow as a person. So, you know, remember that gods are not necessarily enlightened persons who are seeking to grow and learn and be reasonable in their actions and so on. You could have a god that is lawful good, but bans technology as the work of Mephistopheles because that god believes it to be a corrupting influence that takes people away from the one true path that he has laid out for them to follow and prosper in their lives from. The path of hard labor, tilling the fields most of the day and worshiping him on their day off. In that god's eyes, this format for living conditions results in the things he wants out of his worshipers- dedication, faith, belief, an appreciation for hard work, and so on. That doesn't mean it actually works that way, but gods aren't required to be reasonable or use their super-mortal mental stats in any meaningful way, they can stubbornly hold on to some ideal they came up with that was better than hunter-gathering and dying before you were 30, and refuse to believe anyone about technology making people's lives better because having more time to do not-hard labor lets them learn. And if they learn they might learn about gods who are more reasonable in their expectations and will still grant divine favor even if you only work enough to meet your needs. And then that god would be in danger of losing followers. Sure, the answer to their problems is to become more reasonable in their expectations and actions, but after a certain point their clergy is going to be heavily entrenched in traditions that have lasted for centuries or longer, and to institute any kind of change will require radical action on the part of the god in question. Like setting all his priests on fire at the same time and ordaining new ones who understand the reasonable course of action he might want to take. But that's a lot of effort, and gods seem to average out to being more complacent than that.

On a less 'smitey' path, the god might deem someone to be his prophet and bring the new word to the clergy to shift doctrine. The clergy probably won't react well to this, because it means changing from what they have known for a long time. Even if they start losing access to their highest level spells for not going with the prophet on this, or lose their spellcasting entirely, it's not going to be easy to get people with entrenched values around old and primordial concepts to change their ideas. It's entirely possible the clergy of the god would see this person claiming to be a prophet as a heretic and immediately stone them to death for heresy. If the guy got back up because the god directly intervened, more heresy. If the clerics lost their spells, more heresy. Eventually they wold be reduced to having a 3/4th bab, some above average hp, saving throws and proficiency and would be fighting off anyone who tried to oust them with fervor*. If they got really desperate, they might even turn to a different god to pray for spells with which to protect their way of life.

I suppose what I'm getting at here is that it seems like no combination of mental stats, alignment, and so on actually requires someone to be reasonable. And if there is a combination of those things that equates to 'reasonable person' then at least a ninth of the gods should fit into that category, but it seems like they don't get written that way for most setting lore and books related to settings.


*good old fashioned stubbornness and belief that what they are doing is right, not some mechanical bonus.

[the_david]

These eternal wars, are they actually something in the D&D setting or something that most DMs who use gods recycle for plot?


Well, there's the Blood Wars between the devils and the demons. Yugoloths sell themselves as mercenaries to both the devils and the demons while furthering their dark plots.
Somebody already mentioned the Dawn Wars which was a 4e thing.
Several deities clash like Hextor and Heironeous, Bahamut and Tiamat.

So yeah, war is one of the things the deities seem to waste their time on. The other thing is ofcourse gifting mortals with spectacular power so they can do the gods work on the material plane. That work being collecting followers who can later become outsiders that fight on behalve of their gods, and stopping other clerics from doing the same for the other gods.

There are a few exceptions like Tharizdun wanting to destroy everything. (He just prefers non-existence over an endless pointless war between deities.) But even suicide cults make sense in this theory as they are a quick way to get some souls without a chance that your followers convert before they die.

At least according to my theory, which is based on the Great Wheel cosmology. The problem with this is that the multiverse behaves way more lawful than it should. It's a flaw in the general D&D setting that can't be fixed. It's even gotten me to the point that there has to be a cosmology that works better than what we have. In a way, I'm asking myself the same question as you are.

Edit: Maybe I'm not making myself very clear. Souls are being used much like currency and pawns by the gods. This is clearly the case in the lower planes, and less so in the upper planes. In any case it means that there is no free will, which is very strange for a game like Dungeons & Dragons. Even the gods are stuck in their endless wargames.

[atemu1234]

I always write deities as spending most of their time among themselves, in their own realms, seeing to their own petitioners or allies, or dealing with someone who's messing with them in particular.

In a homebrewed setting, I came up with something I called the Pact Divine, which is basically an agreement between all the pantheons of the following:

- Individual members of pantheons cannot attack members of other pantheons.
- Gods cannot directly interfere in mortal affairs, unless they are specifically attacked by the mortal in question. For example, if a human were to go into a temple of Thor, and deface statues, then he could be cursed, but a god can't just show up on a battlefield and wipe out the enemy forces. That's what clerics are for.
- Gods cannot interfere directly with the affairs of other pantheons, either.

Therein the gods are particularly hamstrung.

[Bohandas]

In Greyhawk, the gods have a strategic avatar limitation treaty which prevents them from directly interfering in the mortal world, except a few who are native to the mortal world -- and the only one of that type who's currently active is a jerk.

Do you mean Vecna or Iuz?

[Nifft]

Do you mean Vecna or Iuz?

Depending on the era and/or module currently in use, the answer is yes.

[RoboEmperor]

Give Deities and Demigods a read.

Bahamut in particular disguises himself as an old man, and his 7 gold dragon bodyguards as birds, and then appears before good characters and gives them subtle advice/tips.

So they grant spells, forces roleplay requirements to whoever worships them, and then random stuff like the old man thing. Churches also have festivals your clerics might be forced to attend.

[Bohandas]

One thing that troubles me is that many of the gods have official stats that are woefully inadequete to control the subject of their portfolio. This is expecially true of sun gods.

[Bohandas]

Depends on your Cosmology.

Standard D&D cosmology goes something like:
- Primal chaos. (May still exist as Far Realm)
- This reality starts taking shape. There have been others before it, but they were destroyed somehow.
- As chaos evolves into ever more distinct patterns, primordials are born. (Elementals for instance are types of primordials)
- As reality becomes ever more defined, more and more primordials are born. Some sire or spawn offspring and inadvertently become gods when their offspring start worshipping them.
- Gods are still tied to their primordial forms, and so portfolios are created. Primitive at first, but ever more advanced over time.
- The nature of souls, spirits, and faith slowly become better understood.
- Gods begin to make reality more suited to worshippers. Primordials resent this and the Dawn War begins. Various alliances are formed along lines that eventually becomes alignments.
- Immigrants arrive from a previous reality that was destropyed. The Obyrith Incursion. They bring a shard of their old reality with them, aronud which The Abyss eventually forms, and Demons with it.
- Obyriths manage to corrupt various gods, primordials, mortals, etc.
- Dawn war takes a short break as everyone fights the intruders. Devils are created. Planes are moved around. Alignments may also have changed.
- Some time during this period new gods evolve not from primordials but from mere mortals through worship alone.
- As a result of this ever more portfolios develop that are not tied to natural phenomena (like "Light", "Darknesss", or "Storms", but instead stuff like "Honor" or "Deceit" i.e. Metaphysical constructs.)
- It is discovered that portfolios can be taken over or split. This is apparently tied to the strength and nature of worship.
- Gods who lose their portfolios are weakened, die, go into comas, or revert to their previous state.

I'm sure I missed or misinterpreted a lot of stuff, but in a cosmology like the one described, gods need to balance their relationships with each other, take care not to lose worship, and keep various threats from ending the world as we know it.

OTOH, if gods are not dependent on worship, they might only tolerate mortals (like the Olympic Pantheon).
If portfolios cannot be stolen, there is less conflict.
If there is no Obyrith incursion, but merely a divine order for angels and demons, there is no need for any celestials wars.
In that case you should create your own seeds for conflicts/adventure opportunities in your setting.
It was my understanding that obryiths presence in the multiverse predated the gods, as did Ulgurshek, Piscathes the Blood Queen, and possibly Zargon

[Clistenes]

I have always had a bit of trouble with the gods both having a non-intervention pact in settings like Planescape or Greyhawk, and at the same time, being in charge of managing stuff like crops, storms, disease, war or undeath...
I mean, okay, god X can't appear in front of you and stab/blast your face... who cares? He can give you brain tumors, or wreck your ship, or send a hurricane against your house! And you guess what! Since Disease/Storms are his portafolio, your own patron can't do a thing to stop him save take revenge against his worshippers and start a divine war!

It is difficult: you may end with gods who can't do a thing but to empower their minions , or you may end with Faerunian-like gods who can freely appear in front of you and wreck your life as they please...

[RedMage125]

Im writing a new pantheon for a future fantasy game i have coming up. I usually use my own settings with very little to do with religion, so i don't know much about what the gods actually do in the written D&D settings.

Who do they appear to and why?

What kind of events do they personally influence?

What do they do when they are not being used in the DMs plot to force the players on righteous quest?

Things of that nature.

I've read some of the Forgotten Realms novels, and I like their pantheon. So much, that when I started running my own game, even though I made my own world, I adapted the FR pantheon. The geography was customized to what I needed for the plotline I was running. As I ran the game, over the years, I fleshed out more and more of this world, and I found I had a whole campaign world on my hands, with seeds of adventures I could run in the future.

That meant I needed my own pantheon.

I focused on some key, common elements in fantasy pantheons. Sun deity, Moon deity, War deity, Magic deity, etc. I came up with a few original ones that I found appropriate, and shamelessly stole ideas from other settings and mythology.

Now, as to your questions.

Who do they appear to and why? Well, as has been said, that varies from setting to setting. In Forgotten Realms, they quote commonly make personal appearances to their followers, or to mortals of particular interest to their goals, sending visions, avatars, or even acting directly. In Greyhawk, they are less directly involved, but they are still individual beings with personalities and agendas. The direct appearance of one, through a vision, an avatar, or even through a dream to a cleric or follower is rare (discounting when it was ACTUALLY only a dream). In Eberron, they may or may not actually even exist. The old Goblinoid War deity from the Dhakaani Empire, for example, is thought to be an aspect of Dol Dorn, one of the Sovereign Host. The drow worship a scorpion god (I think called Vulkoor or something), who is considered to be an aspect of the Destroyer of the Dark Six. These gods do not "speak" to their followers directly. But the faith in them goes beyond the planes.
So a powerful Solar may answer the questions of a Commune spell, but the solar ALSO believes he speaks for said deity. The only unquestionably REAL divine power with agency in that setting is the Undying Court, a collection of deathless elves who draw power from the faith and reverence of their people, and collectively wield it like any true deity. Their followers can speak to them because they know exactly where they are located, in a city on the isle of Aerenal.

So, ultimately, that is up to you, the DM, on how to decide. In my world, they're somewhere between FR and Greyhawk examples.

What kind of events do they personally influence? Well, in Core 3.5e D&D, each deity has what is called a portfolio which is that deity's sphere of influence. That's more or less what they are the god OF. A deity is always believed to have some hand in anything related to that sphere, even if they didn't do it directly. A Goddess of Luck, for example, has influence over every coin toss and dice roll in the world, but those don't require her focused attention every time they are done. But, if she focused on it, she COULD affect the outcome of any die roll or tossed coin.

It's important to note that deities are not limited in their attention like we are. A god could LITERALLY focus on dozens, if not more, things at once, paying each instance the equivalent of full mortal attention, while simultaneously being aware of all the other things they are doing.

What do they do when they are not being used in the DMs plot to force the players on righteous quest? Again, this falls into "what kind of gods do you want to have in your world? FR deities have their own plots and machinations. They plot against each other, they try and influence the mortal world in subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways, and they generally further their own agendas. This may or may not be a good thing for the world. Shar plots to overthrow Mystra and become the sole goddess of magic, making the Shadow Weave supreme. She also wants to destroy her sister, Selune. Cyric wants to become the supreme god in all creation, and see the other gods dead or humbled. Kelemvor leaves well enough alone, mostly just concerned with the balance of life and death and doing his job. Lathander, a Neutral Good sun deity, seeks to stamp out all evil in the multiverse, but misguidedly believes that his own light is the most perfect way of doing so. He once tried to engineer a cataclysm that would have made every deity a clone of himself.

In Eberron, they may not even exist, so no one knows what they do.

What it boils down to is what KIND of deities do you want in your game. They can be aloof and distant, or they can be powerful immortals with personalities and agendas who frequently meddle and intervene. Or somewhere in between.

[Bohandas]

The only unquestionably REAL divine power with agency in that setting is the Undying Court, a collection of deathless elves who draw power from the faith and reverence of their people, and collectively wield it like any true deity..

What about the raksahsa rajahs and Erandis Vol?

[Gildedragon]

What about the raksahsa rajahs and Erandis Vol?

Not gods... More like Elder Evils
Not a god: either a very powerful lich and head of an organization OR (if living) a MacGuffin

[hamishspence]

Vol generally isn't statted out with Salient Divine Abilities. The Blood of Vol, despite the name, don't revere her as a deity - they revere themselves, and blood "The blood is the life".

Dragon Magazine 337 does stat out at least one rajah overlord with salient divine abilities though - Sul Khatesh, the Keeper of Secrets.

And Tiamat's role in Eberron is that of "rajah overlord"

http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Overlords

[Bohandas]

Vol generally isn't statted out with Salient Divine Abilities.

Neither are the members of the undying court.

[RedMage125]

The individual MEMBERS of the court are not gods.

The Ascended Councilors, acting in concert, collectively wield the power of divinity.

How else do you think little island nation Aerenal has maintained a stalemate in a centuries-spanning war, with an entire continent of freaking dragons?

[hamishspence]

Maybe a few of them are epic casters - which "frighten even the gods" - with the Court as a whole pooling their spell slots as part of Epic Rituals that ward off dragonkind attacks.

They don't have to be throwing around Salient Divine Abilities to be scary.

I could see their clerics as being like clerics of the Lord of Blades - getting power from within - their own "faith" - despite the Lord of Blades having no actual divine power.

In the same way, the Undying Court can be spellcasters, rather than a "gestalt deity" with access to Salient Divine Abilities and other divine power.

[logic_error]

The individual MEMBERS of the court are not gods.

The Ascended Councilors, acting in concert, collectively wield the power of divinity.

How else do you think little island nation Aerenal has maintained a stalemate in a centuries-spanning war, with an entire continent of freaking dragons?

Because the dragons keep using them for target practice?

[Gildedragon]

The individual MEMBERS of the court are not gods.

The Ascended Councilors, acting in concert, collectively wield the power of divinity.

How else do you think little island nation Aerenal has maintained a stalemate in a centuries-spanning war, with an entire continent of freaking dragons?

circle magic, epic spells, incantations, magic items, diplomacy (both the skill and actual diplomatic encounters), birth-rates (dragons are slow to mature, even compared to elves, and gain HD quite slow compared to non-age-category races; dragons v elves end with dragons dead and elves just greatly diminished), and lastly probably an effect not unlike lolipope's cleric level boost while in the flamekeep: worship of the Undying Court gives them extra power

[RedMage125]

circle magic, epic spells, incantations, magic items, diplomacy (both the skill and actual diplomatic encounters), birth-rates (dragons are slow to mature, even compared to elves, and gain HD quite slow compared to non-age-category races; dragons v elves end with dragons dead and elves just greatly diminished), and lastly probably an effect not unlike lolipope's cleric level boost while in the flamekeep: worship of the Undying Court gives them extra power

...AND the fact that the Court can bring the full force of divine power against the dragons.

[logic_error]

Seriously guys? Never read the books? There is a strong implication that the Aereni haven't been blown skyhigh yet because the dragons think that their time has not yet come by the prophecies. There is also a strong hint that they are using the elves to train younger flights.

[Bohandas]

I think I've figured it out. The gods role is to override the dumber blind effects of alignment in regard to afterlife assignment. Like, someone who's evil solely due to the karmic effects of repeatedly casting animate dead and worships Boccob can spend eternity in Boccob's realm rather than getting sent to the lower planes.

[johnbragg]

They're batteries

This. And this can be extended. Gods are not self-willed, they are propelled by what their believers believe about them. They collect psychic energy from their worshippers, and that energy is a resource that can be harvested and exploited by the churches and powers associated with the god, usually for the benefit of the believers.

[Buufreak]

Bad necro is bad.

[Uncle Pine]

In my last campaign I made it extremely clear to the players there were no gods. However, the lack of them still spawned various cults revering certain animals, aspects of nature, or even just powerful beings in the world (like a certain fang dragon). These cults would occasionally oppose or even fight against each other "in the name of their gods". Deities did absolutely nothing in my campaign, and most d&d worlds work no differently even though gods exist there.

[Cespenar]

It's like being a CEO. Do CEOs step down to the offices every day and micromanage everyone?

There are, on occasion, some projects that may draw the CEO's attention, so that he/she might come down and try to micromanage it.

Often, as in RL, those projects end in disasters.

[Bohandas]

Not in a big company. They might if the company is a small startup with like six or seven people.

Pray to a demigod.

[Psyren]

This depends heavily on the specific setting you're talking about. In some, deities intervene/meddle rather directly, and even walk around as avatars; in others, they chat up their followers but stay distant, and in still others, it's unclear whether they exist at all. I don't believe there are any major settings where they don't exist at all though. (Closest we have to that I believe is Ravenloft, where they exist but are kept from being heard or intervening.)


D&D gods provably exist in almost every setting, other than the ones that make it a specific point that they aren't around, like Eberron.

It's more accurate to say that in Eberron, nobody is sure. You can't disprove them any more than you can prove them, there.

[Caedes]

In most of my custom campaign settings, the gods are all ascended mortals. They are less deific as much as they just have a whole different level of problems and adventures to have to deal with. Which is why most the time they do not have time for people that worship them.


For instance one of my gods is the God of Law and Justice. And instead of answering every prayer to him. He has created a judicial hierarchy of courts full of LN mortals and angels that hear prayers before they ever get to him.

Another of my gods never answers prayers as they are to preoccupied and ADHD to notice. The fact her worshippers get any powers from her often times amuses her.

So, really you can do whatever you want with them.

[Bohandas]

How else do you think little island nation Aerenal has maintained a stalemate in a centuries-spanning war, with an entire continent of freaking dragons?

I think that's closer in principle to how the United States is hesitant to use the Bomb again

[Max_Killjoy]

I like an Incursion approach.

The gods are powerful immortal outsiders
They get something from veneration and worship and are willing to offer aid to get it
They cannot interfere in the material world unless called.

So if you don't want to deal with them you can ignore them entirely

If you do want to deal with a god you have to avoid doing things that angers them and do things to gain favor.
A pleased god will help you out but an angry god may smite you.

The gods are vampires... they can't hurt you if you don't let them in, and they feed from mortals.

[Zanos]

It's more accurate to say that in Eberron, nobody is sure. You can't disprove them any more than you can prove them, there.
Yes, but that's a contrast to most settings, where you can just call them up and they actively muddle about. Eberron's lore goes out of it's way to make sure anyone reading the setting knows that the Deities don't provably exist.

[Psyren]

Yes, but that's a contrast to most settings, where you can just call them up and they actively muddle about. Eberron's lore goes out of it's way to make sure anyone reading the setting knows that the Deities don't provably exist.

"Can't be proven" and "aren't around" are two very different things, is all I'm saying.