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Hish
2018-06-29, 06:39 PM
Apart from humans, what races have no deities mentioned? I'm thinking about maybe including a plot about why humans have no racial deity, and I want to include other deityless races.

Monsterous races are alright, but they should have some form of society (like lizardfolk or kobolds).

Khloros
2018-06-29, 07:54 PM
Every creature in D&D has a god, even frogs.

My theory si that humans are alien creatures formt he far realms.

BWR
2018-06-30, 02:11 AM
Apart from humans, what races have no deities mentioned? I'm thinking about maybe including a plot about why humans have no racial deity, and I want to include other deityless races.

Monsterous races are alright, but they should have some form of society (like lizardfolk or kobolds).

In Golarion there was a God of Humanity. Most races have a god of some sort somewhere.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-06-30, 02:32 AM
Illithid. Sort of.

JoeJ
2018-06-30, 02:41 AM
Illithid. Sort of.

In Planescape, Ilsensine was the illithid god. Did something happen to change that?

Koo Rehtorb
2018-06-30, 03:10 AM
In Planescape, Ilsensine was the illithid god. Did something happen to change that?

Hence, sort of. They don't worship it, but it exists.

noob
2018-06-30, 04:22 AM
Apart from humans, what races have no deities mentioned? I'm thinking about maybe including a plot about why humans have no racial deity, and I want to include other deityless races.

Monsterous races are alright, but they should have some form of society (like lizardfolk or kobolds).

Humans have no deity because an human murderhobo killed it for trying to get its power.
Then the Murderhobo figured out the portfolios were going to be incompatible with his lifestyle and so he did not absorb the power of the human deity.
That murderhobo is still roaming around killing gods (not for the divinity because he figured out being restrained by portfolios would be annoying but he kills gods for the experience).
The gods lies by saying their power is derived from worship but they tell that lie so that people does not think "there is a murderhobo with no divine power going around and killing gods then people stop worshiping those gods because the god is dead and stop providing them with power" and instead thinks "there is gods who starts having too few worshipers then they become unable to give power to their clerics and then their religion spirals downwards and they die of lack of worship"
It is obvious it is a lie when you see that evil gods with near to no worshipers are no weaker than good gods with tons of worshipers.

Eldan
2018-06-30, 05:26 AM
Wasn't there one for humans in Cityscape? Zarus or something, ******* god of racial purity.

hamishspence
2018-06-30, 07:07 AM
Zarus is in Races of Destiny, but yes - he's a 3.5 "God of Humanity".

Thinker
2018-06-30, 07:13 AM
I was under the assumption that most of the gods in D&D were human gods. Humans are special because they get more than one.

hamishspence
2018-06-30, 07:16 AM
I was under the assumption that most of the gods in D&D were human gods.

Most of the gods in D&D are gods of some specific thing, that theoretically anyone could find value in (or fear enough to want to buy off with devotion).

So you might have a "Goddess of Oceans" or a "God of Hatred" or a "Goddess of Love" - who didn't really care what race their followers were.



Even the racial pantheons had demarkations - Sharindlar was "Dwarf Goddess of Love"

But a "God of Humanity" in the same way that Moradin was "God of Dwarves and Head of the Dwarven Pantheon" - not so much.

That said, it's possible that D&D had one before Zarus.

Anonymouswizard
2018-06-30, 08:38 AM
Yeah, most species in D&D have deities. Some are represented by other supremely powerful beings, such as demon lords (hello Gnolls), but the line is blurry and what may be a god in one setting isn't in another.

So yes, it very much depends on setting. I remember that the Nentir Vale didn't really have racial deities as such, even Moradin, Bahamut, and the elf god were more gods of their domains which intersected more with race X than with humans (although to a much lesser degree than pre-4e).

I personally tended to consider Pelor the 'human' god of the Greyhawk pantheon, but this is entirely because the 'iconic' 3.X Cleric was a human cleric of Pelor. In fact, most D&D settings seem to be set up along the lines of most gods being mainly human gods, other races get their own special gods that they worship, occasionally two to four gods, and that humans can't worship at all.

LibraryOgre
2018-06-30, 09:22 AM
Notably, in AD&D, gnomes did not have any goddesses, which Demihuman Deities spun out into being a thing within their mythology... the lost goddesses of the gnomes.

Dimers
2018-06-30, 10:02 AM
IIRC kender don't, for which the multiverse is extremely grateful.

Of the races described in the later 3.5 books, it's basically just goliaths and duergar who DO have racial gods, and duergar do because they were in earlier editions. Look at psionic, incarnum and Eberron races, for example.

From earlier works, halfsies (planetouched, half-elves, half-orcs, etc) don't often have racial gods. You might think that's obvious, but consider: a deity of half-elves could encourage unions of human and elf, or could simply create a species of creature that has elven and human traits without having any such ancestry. Maybe they just LOOK like a human/elf mashup.

BWR
2018-06-30, 10:23 AM
IIRC kender don't, for which the multiverse is extremely grateful.


Dragonlance is weird in that Reorx is the only racial god there is. While primarily concerned with dwarves, gnomes and even kender are part of his purview.

LibraryOgre
2018-06-30, 11:04 AM
IIRC kender don't, for which the multiverse is extremely grateful.



Dragonlance is weird in that Reorx is the only racial god there is. While primarily concerned with dwarves, gnomes and even kender are part of his purview.

It's more that Dragonlance doesn't have ANY racial deities... they have a pantheon of 21, which covers every race. Reorx is particularly honored by the dwarves, but he's only a "dwarven god" in the sense that he's the god the dwarves like.

Paladine, for example, is noted to be particularly fond of kender.

Hish
2018-06-30, 03:04 PM
In Golarion there was a God of Humanity. Most races have a god of some sort somewhere.
There was? Does anyone know his name?


Wasn't there one for humans in Cityscape? Zarus or something, ******* god of racial purity.
Yep, but I'm not really looking for humans to be represented by a ******* god.


IIRC kender don't, for which the multiverse is extremely grateful.

Of the races described in the later 3.5 books, it's basically just goliaths and duergar who DO have racial gods, and duergar do because they were in earlier editions. Look at psionic, incarnum and Eberron races, for example.

From earlier works, halfsies (planetouched, half-elves, half-orcs, etc) don't often have racial gods. You might think that's obvious, but consider: a deity of half-elves could encourage unions of human and elf, or could simply create a species of creature that has elven and human traits without having any such ancestry. Maybe they just LOOK like a human/elf mashup.

The new races from Races of X have full racial pantheons. I don't think a god for each halfsie would make sense, because they are inherently not distinct races. I could see an overall halfsie god though.

I will inspect MoI and XPH, maybe RoE (though most of those races have either alternate origins or don't exist in my universe). Thank you for the tips.

BWR
2018-06-30, 03:34 PM
There was? Does anyone know his name?


Aroden (https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Aroden)

On the other hand, you have settings like Mystara where there are deities specifically concerned with certain races (or more likely, concerned with certain cultures consisting of a given race) but they are not "the God of Race X". The closest I can think of to a racial creator god is Kagyar, who took the older dwarf race and altered them to more standard D&D dwarves (to survive the fallout of Blackmoor) and has been the patron of that racial culture since. That isn't his only area of concern and there are presumably other baseline dwarf races around which do not pay Kagyar any particular worship.

Jay R
2018-06-30, 05:39 PM
Apart from humans, what races have no deities mentioned? I'm thinking about maybe including a plot about why humans have no racial deity, and I want to include other deityless races.

Monsterous races are alright, but they should have some form of society (like lizardfolk or kobolds).

Remember that this is your game, and you can invent gods for any race that you wish to have one. If you want humans to be the only race without one, you can make it so.