Balancing a Monotheistic Setting

[gareth]

I'm working on a setting that has a single god who's as active in the world as the normal DnD gods. The world is divided between his theocratic Empire and the Pagan savages, and I'd like PCs to be able to come from both. The god is lawful neutral, so whether the characters are good or evil has no connection to their religion. I've decided to restrict some classes and races to the Empire and some to the Pagans, and I'm wondering how balanced my choices are. Ideally the choices available for Pagan characters should be just as good, if different, as for Imperials. Here are the classes:
Rogues and Fighters are available to both sides.
Clerics are Imperial-only. The Pagan religions have priests, but they have no supernatural abilities. Imperial Clerics have some restrictions on domains and spells that make them slightly weaker than a standard Cleric.
Wizards, Imperial-only, some restrictions on spells.
Paladins and Monks are Imperial-only and are unchanged.
Druids, Rangers, and Barbarians are Pagan-only, and are unchanged except that they can't be Lawful.
Bards are Pagan-only. The Empire has plenty of bards, it's just that they have no supernatural abilities.
Sorcerors are Pagan-only. The Empire does have people born with powers of sorcery, but it magically purges the powers out of them before they reach first level.
As for races, all Imperials are either humans, half-orcs, or half-elves. It's not that the religion is particularly racist, it's just that it's never made a convert outside these races and hasn't tried much either. The Pagans have all of these, plus the rest of the core races.
So, do either the Pagans or the Imperials have an unfair advantage, and if so, what changes need to be made?

[TheLogman]

Seems fairly balanced, Wizards and Clerics versus Sorcerers and Druids is pretty fair, but I'm worried that the Pagen side doesn't have enough healing, since Druids are good healers, but not as good as Clerics, in the same way that Sorcerers are good arcanists, but Wizards are better. Pagens do have Bards and Rangers, but who CAN heal, but aren't fairly good at it. Flavor-wise, excellently balanced, but the Imperium is fairly better. A good way to balance this depends on what side the players are on. If the players are Imperium, have them fight Pagen gorilla fighters with superior tactics, but with less power or numbers. If the players are Pagen, then have them fight weaker, bigger numbered forces, forcing them to fight with better tactics and sneakiness. If there is a mix of sides, and the two groups are just fluff and plot hooks, then it doesn't really matter, but war tactics against a side would be fun...

[Tempest Fennac]

Could you let the Pagans have access to the Healer class while altering it so that they get their spells from nature (while they are excellent at healing, they can't really fight and they don't really have any offencive spells: http://www.devinweb.com/healerspells.htm ). Alternatively, Favoured Souls who represent nature could rather then gods could be used (this would fit in with Sorcerer's being Pagan only).

[Alex12]

What? No love for psionics? Maybe make psions Imperial-only, Wilders Pagans-only, and the rest both?

[Telonius]

I'm not sure what Domains you're going to give the LN God. But be aware that a lack of Clerics with Good, Evil, and Chaos domains would make Holy, Unholy, and Anarchic weapons impossible in the gameworld (at least without house ruling). The spells needed to create those weapons are only available as Domain spells.

[Yakk]

Why do you need balance? Are you intending to generate arena battles between Imperials and Pagans?

[Binary Stars]

I'm not sure what Domains you're going to give the LN God. But be aware that a lack of Clerics with Good, Evil, and Chaos domains would make Holy, Unholy, and Anarchic weapons impossible in the gameworld (at least without house ruling). The spells needed to create those weapons are only available as Domain spells.

Um, if it's monotheistic, I am pretty sure he may just cram all the domains in there. :smalleek:

I also think that's why he chose the Alignment the way he did.

[Telonius]

I know, but since the deity is Lawful, I'm assuming he wouldn't grant Chaotic spells to anybody. Good and Evil might be out, too, if the god is "actively" neutral rather than "passively" neutral.

[Riffington]

The Imperial side has a massive advantage.
Not the class choices; those are balanced. Druids are fine healers, provided the savages are capable of crafting magic devices.
Rather, the assistance of the only deity.

[Spacefrog]

Yes... you'd have to come up with a reason why the god doesn't just smite all the pagans, if it is an 'active' god and is the only one.

If it was me I'd say that the god isn't as powerful, or isn't as interested in what happens in the world, as the theocratic empire believes it to be.

[Yakk]

*nod* -- restrict the Diety to acting on the world through human actors.

Think something like the 4e Devils -- the Authority worshiped by the Imperium is restricted in what it can do to reality. The Imperium religion will have a gussied-up reason why the Deity doesn't interfere.

For a LN god, one idea would be "The Grand Treaty with the Adversary". This generates an anti-Deity, and a good source for Devil-type summons (and an alternative source of power). Both sides agree that neither can touch Reality without the intervention and choice of mortals.

So now the Empire can accuse the Pagans of actually acting as ways for the Adversary to touch the world. So they feel very justified in destroying and suppressing their culture. Good old holy war.

Meanwhile, the Pagans are (for the most part) getting power from a completely different source -- the Feywild or Shadowrealm (stolen from 4e) for the most part, or simply raw elemental sources (such as Dragon blood -- there is power in the world that does not come from outside).

So we have, cosmologically, the following players:
The Authority (LN).
The Adversary (CN).
The Feywild (NN) (realm of the Fey, a civilization-less mirror of Reality).
The Shadowrealm (NN) (a death and decay mirror of Reality, where the recently dead persist before departing).
Reality (NN), containing the Elemental Powers.

...

The Authority touches the world through Clerics and Paladins and other Worshipers.

The Adversary offers a means to power for others. Warlocks can gain power from the Adversary. Wizards and Sorcerers can summon the servants of the Adversary and use them in Reality. Deals can be made with the underlings of the Adversary granting them limited access to reality.

The Feywild contains no gods, just spirits. This is the "natural" home of pixies, dryads, etc. Many places on the Earth touch the Feywild, and you can go through either accidentally or on purpose. See the D&D 4e stuff for the fluff: the topography is similar, but there is no sign of human inhabitation in the Feywild.

Druids and Rangers draw their power from the Feywild. Summoned animals come from there. In the Feywild, Wolf walks, and Crow plays tricks.

The Shadowrealm is a decaying reflection of reality. Return-to-life spells only work on souls still wandering the Shadowrealm. Shadow magic draws it's power from the Shadowrealm, and Undead can be animated by enslaving spirits from this realm and stopping them from continuing on. (Undead can also be animated via possession of other non-Reality beings)

Both Necromancy and Illusion uses Shadowrealm for power, if in completely different ways. Illusion weaves Shadow-stuff into a seeming, while Necromancy rips Shadow-stuff and pins it into reality.

...

As a bonus, this will be somewhat future-compatible with 4e. It places both the Empire and the Pagans in the "right" -- the Empire is trying to stamp out the Adversary, who wants reality itself to be turned into pure chaos, and fears that the Pagans are letting the Adversary touch the world.

The Pagans, meanwhile, are actually drawing their power mostly from the Feywild, and really don't care about the Authority/Adversary conflict that is so central to Empire tradition. Their cosmology is more about the opposition of the Feywild, the source of life, and the Shadowrealm, the end of life.

...

The minions of the Adversary are bound by the Agreement to only touch Reality when beings from Reality let them in. Hence Devil-like agreements that those with any smarts bind them to in exchange for access. The CN minions of course attempt to pervert the agreements, but are still bound by them on pain of violating the Agreement (which is bad (tm) both for the Adversary and for the creature in question).

This creates an Adversary that is philosophically opposed to the Authority. The Devils are bound by Rules, yet are Chaotic at heart. A free Devil who manages to shuck off the Rules becomes truly Chaotic -- a 4e Demon, a being of pure chaos and destruction of the very fabric of Reality.

[Eighth_Seraph]

...congratulations. You've just made your own campaign setting. Unfortunately, we have no idea if that's the kind of thing that the OP was looking for, but it's definitely a direction it could go.

Where are you getting all this 4e stuff this early on, anyway?

[gareth]

Thanks for the responses. The god is limited to intervening through the Imperial characters, but I haven't decided why yet. There are three possibilities I'm considering.
The first is some kind of deal with his enemies, as Yakk suggested. Although I'd have a rather rag-tag assortment of outsiders and demigods rather than a single Adversary.
The second is that the setting is a tiny bubble of order that the god created in a sea of mindless chaos. The chaos breaks in from time to time, warping the landscape and mutating the originally human inhabitants. That's where orcs, elves and so on come from. To stop the world from dissolving completely the god has had to harden it, make it so resistant to change that even his power is limited there. The world is like proverbial rock too heavy for God to lift. In this case, he could make it, but he can't lift it.
The third possibility is that the world is exactly as the god intended it, pagans and monsters included. The purpose of all the chaos is to train his worshippers to be truly Lawful by constantly battling Chaotic forces. Of course this raises the question of what he's training them for.

[Talanic]

Or you could also go with the reason given for why the Christian God doesn't step in and make everything better / make good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people: Free will.

If the overdeity values order, but not slavish obedience, free will is the way to go. He shows them the path, but they have to choose to walk it, because he wants them to have the choice. He will cause miracles and grant powers, but generally speaking won't do things that his people are capable of accomplishing on their own, so their accomplishments have meaning.

Of course, there's always the fanatical Knight Templar who decides that his way is the only way and he wants to grind all who don't agree into dust because he thinks his god wants him to.

[Yakk]

If the God is a pro-rules God, by forcing the other beings to follow rules in order to interact with Reality in an agreement -- that's sort of the ultimate set of Rules.

I'd imagine something like the God winning a battle with the other beings who are opposed to this being's ultimate order -- and the Authority enforcing a bunch of arbitrary rules on all kinds of deity/mortal interaction, because the Authority likes arbitrary rules.

A truly LN deity. :)