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ZeroGear
2020-04-09, 10:56 AM
So, this is a concept that I've been playing around with and have brought up in my previous thread about Races changing through the ages: in the world I'm building, Divine power exists as part of the world, but the Gods that control these energies do not exist unless someone believes they do.
The short version of this is that there will always be A god of fire, however it's never a SPECIFIC god of fire unless there is a culture, sect, or even a single individual that believes he exists.
This is kinda an interesting topic when it comes to worlds where magic is very much a real thing and a part of everyday life because unlike reality, these are realms where mortal races could very well have been created by deities. As such, there is an interesting paradox that comes up: if a given god comes into being by one culture, would he have the power to change the beings of that culture into forms that more suited him?
As an example, let's say there is a group of wild elves that exist as a hunter-based society, and they worship the Elven deity of the hunt. At some point magic becomes a more prominent aspect to the wild elves, and they start worshiping their deity as a patron of both hunting AND magic, would said deity have the power to alter the wild elves into more graceful forms (High Elves) that are more adept at using magic?
On the other hand, Loth marking the elves that are faithful to her and changing them into Drow is a common myth throughout D&D lore, especially in Faerune, but would she still be able to do that if she was a creation of Elves to begin with?

What do you all think about this conundrum? Should deities have the power to alter mortals if they themselves are reliant on the belief of mortals to exist? And what would happen if the entire culture that believes in said gods ceases to exist? Would the deities just vanish, or would the souls that not reside in their afterlives keep them from disappearing?

Democratus
2020-04-09, 01:55 PM
Quantum divinity.

In a given multiverse, there are moments when a diety/mortal race pair are spontaneously created.

Usually these two collide back with each other and annihilate. But occasionally they achieve separation (usually on the edge of a planar boundary) and continue to exist, linked by 'divine entanglement' but separated by the boundaries of the plains.

This is why nearly all deities exist on the outer plains while nearly all mortals exist in the prime - those are the conditions that prevent annihilation

Or maybe I've been studying a little too much and have gone crazy. :smallcool:

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-04-09, 02:34 PM
In the "standard D&D model" of gods (or the Planescape conception of it, at least), a god is made of three basic components that you can think of as the three P's of divinity: Persona, Portfolio, and Power. The god's Persona is who they are as a person (name, personality, alignment, etc.) as well as how they're perceived by and relate to their worshipers (and I call it a "persona" because a god can be worshiped under multiple aliases or present different aspects to different groups of worshipers). The god's Portfolio is the aspects of reality that they control/influence and are controlled/influenced by--the thing(s) that they're "the god of," basically--as well as how prominent/important they are in the world. The god's Power is the amount of divine oomph they have, represented by levels or divine ranks or whatever other system you have to measure it, as well as the degree to which they can exert this power in the mortal world.

All three of these things influence each other: Power is dependent on breadth and prominence of Portfolio (a god of Water is likely going to be more powerful than a god of the Sea is likely going to be more powerful than a god of Sea Elves) and the individual power level of the Persona (being King of the Gods like Zeus or Odin is going to make you more powerful than another god with the same portfolio), Portfolio is dependent on Power (stronger gods can acquire more portfolios via killing or absorbing lesser gods, for instance) and Persona (a kindly paladin isn't going to ascend to be the God of Murder and Puppy-Kicking), and Persona is dependent on Power (a just-ascended demigod is going to be more humanlike in personality than a greater goddess who spend all her time focusing on grand cosmic things) and Portfolio (if "Lathander, NG god of dawn and healing" is worshiped as "Amaunator, LN god of the sun and order" long enough and by enough people, either his actual self will slowly change to match or he'll have to spin off an aspect or split into multiple gods to retain his prior identity).

I find that this conception of deities is pretty flexible and can be made to match up with most mythological and RPG conceptions of gods by tweaking aspects of it for different settings (e.g. Forgotten Realms gods are highly dependent on worship so the gods' Powers and Portfolios are hugely variable and Persona is what people care about the most, while the classical Greek gods don't care much about the particulars of mortals' belief in them so all three aspects are fairly static and their Portfolio is what people care about the most), so I tend to use it in pretty much every game and setting I run unless a given setting's metaphysics require otherwise.

So, to answer your particular questions according to this perspective:


As an example, let's say there is a group of wild elves that exist as a hunter-based society, and they worship the Elven deity of the hunt. At some point magic becomes a more prominent aspect to the wild elves, and they start worshiping their deity as a patron of both hunting AND magic, would said deity have the power to alter the wild elves into more graceful forms (High Elves) that are more adept at using magic?

Assuming that the god is Powerful enough to make such a change, yes, changing worshipers into a form that better suits his Portfolio makes sense and should be possible. Depends on his Persona, though, as a more remote/unapproachable god is less likely to do that sort of thing than a more active/elflike god.

A good comparison is Mystra vs. Boccob: both are Greater Deities (high Power) of Magic (broad Portfolio) who are perfectly capable of transforming a bunch of mortals however they like, but Mystra is an ascended mortal who meddles a lot and keeps an eye on magic use in the Realms while Boccob is titled "the Uncaring" and cares more about magic itself than its wielders, so if both suddenly became deities of elvenkind I could totally see Mystra snapping her fingers and turning every Wild Elf among her worshipers into a High Elf but Boccob probably wouldn't care what race his worshipers were and might not even notice.


On the other hand, Loth marking the elves that are faithful to her and changing them into Drow is a common myth throughout D&D lore, especially in Faerune, but would she still be able to do that if she was a creation of Elves to begin with?

Obviously Lolth can't have "drow" in her Portfolio before drow as a race exist, so it would depend on how it would relate to her existing portfolios at the time. Lolth's portfolio in 2e and 3e is said to be "spiders, evil, darkness, chaos, assassins, and the drow race," so even without the drow portion, "creating a Chaotic Evil stab-happy darkness-dwelling elf subrace" checks four out of five boxes and would fit solidly within her portfolio. However, taking the 5e version whose portfolio is just "drow and spiders," or the 1e version who's the Demon Queen of Spiders first and patron goddess of the drow a distant second, Lolth making herself a custom elf subrace fits as much as her making a custom dwarf subrace, which is to say not at all.

So it would depend on how the elves in your scenario view her. If she's "Lolth, an elven goddess of all elven things spooky and spidery" that's a yes, if she's "Lolth, a goddess of all things demonic, spooky, and spidery who happens to vaguely personally resemble an elf" that's a no.


And what would happen if the entire culture that believes in said gods ceases to exist? Would the deities just vanish, or would the souls that not reside in their afterlives keep them from disappearing?

Depends, once again, on how mortals relate to the gods' various aspects. The way it vaguely works in D&D is that removing one of a god's aspects makes it not a god and removing two or more will kill them. A being with Persona and Power but no Portfolio isn't the "god of" anything, just a powerful unique being, like an Archomental or Demon Prince; a being with Persona and Portfolio but no Power is more of a place spirit or ancestor spirit or something, not even worthy of Divine Rank 0; a being with a Portfolio and Power but no Persona is hardly a "being" at all and is more of an abstract source of power, like the abstract Nature that druids serve or the forces of Good and Law from which paladins draw power. A Persona on its own is a depowered mortal (if it's lucky) or a disembodied intelligence like a vestige (if it's not), and Power and Portfolio on their own are abstract concepts, no more a god than "the force of gravity" or "the laws of Cormyr" are gods.

So if a culture worships Joe, God of Fire into existence and then suddenly disappears down to the last individual, Joe is likely to hang around because the Power of "fire" is a fairly important and very widespread aspect of the world, and there's not necessarily a reason why, to use your verbiage, "that SPECIFIC god of fire" would revert to being "just A god of fire" just because existing worshipers vanished--there are likely temples, relics, carvings, scriptures, etc. of Joe left around for other mortals to potentially discover down the line, having a few worshipers in the afterlife should be enough to keep him hanging onto existence, and belief energy directed toward "any ol' god of fire" can probably sustain him in the meantime.

But in a more extreme scenario like someone carrying out a ritual to erase all knowledge and evidence of Joe from the world and the afterlife (drastically weakening his Persona), or another culture actively worshiping Jane, Goddess of Fire instead (overwriting his Persona with something else), might indeed result in Joe dying off because his Persona is changed beyond recognition and not being recognized as the God of Fire would put his Power and Portfolio beyond his reach...and if you don't have a Persona or Power or a Portfolio, well, you're not a god anymore.

However, if Joe is, instead, the God of Elves and every elf suddenly ceased to exist, Joe is probably going to vanish at the same time because his worshipers are his Portfolio and getting rid of them does to Joe the God of Elves what eradicating every last trace of fire from the world would do to Joe the God of Fire. No Portfolio and no Power from worship means no Joe.

This is where you'd have to decide particulars like the minimum amount of worship necessary to keep a god around (Will mere knowledge by a single person be enough or is there a "critical mass" of a few thousand devout worshipers?), how quickly they can change (Can they slowly dwindle away and hope to make more followers to stave off death, or do they explode the moment their last worshiper dies?), what happens to gods who fail to sustain worship and power (Do they end up as a massive stone body in the Astral Plane like in baseline D&D so they might get resurrected later? Are they absorbed by another god and effectively obliterated? Is it impossible to truly kill a god and they just hang around, aware of their environment but utterly unable to affect it?), and so on. The answers to all those will vary by setting and cosmology, and will determine the answer to the original question.

Matuka
2020-04-09, 02:41 PM
Humans rely on cows for meat and milk. Over the years, we have killed the skinny and unmilkable cows in favor of mating the larger and milk producing cows. Same thing with a deity, if changing the creatures that worship it would reign in more followers/belief, it would totally do so. Lolth marking her followers could be seen as her singling them out and forcing them to worship no one but her thus making her existence more sustainable.

Khedrac
2020-04-09, 03:03 PM
There is another way to approach this, and that is to borrow a few concepts from RuneQuest and Glorantha...

In Glorantha mortals can change the myths that come before history (time has a precisely fixed start) and this changes the gods about which those myths provide the details. One fallen empire (usually called the "god leaners") made extensive use of these techniques and even tried experiments like swapping fertility deities between tribes to see what would happen!

Also, the myths of the period before time do not always agree with each other (and it's the god learners who came up with the version of pre-history that reconciles as much of them as possible), these differences do not matter (much) as where there is a conflict both versions of the story are true. E.g there is one people who's oral history tells of a couple of hundred years where they had an empire ruling the continent, and their explorers of myth (heroquesters) can locate this time and journey through it; conversely none of the other peoples of the continent have any recollection of such an empire in their histories - so did the empire happen? - well that depends which mythology you explore.
(And some cultures have written records that go back to before the beginning of time, so it's not down to poor recordkeeping.)

So, using the principle that cause and effect do not have to follow sequentially, and the principle that multiple versions of an event can all be true even if mutually contradictory, mortals creating gods and gods creating mortals are simply alternative truths about the same events.

Vahnavoi
2020-04-09, 05:39 PM
The answers to your questions depend on deeper metaphysics of what "belief" means and how it actually sustains your gods.

Let me outline two contrasting versions:

One, gods are strictly as mortals believe them to be and have no object permanence of their own. This means a god has no independent existence, ability nor agency. A god cannot choose to do anything, anything they do is directly caused by mortals. F. ex. elves turn into drow because they believe there is a goddess called Lolth who is causing the transformation. If they start to believe otherwise, both Lolth and any changes attributed to Lolth will disappear.

Two, gods are living beings who are born from belief. The moment they are born, they also attain object permanence and will of their own. This means they have decree of independence and agency, at least as much as any living being does. This allows for the kind of feedback loop you asked about: first, mortal belief births a god, and then the god acts to make more believers. However, this inevitably leads to non-linear (complex) causality and spoils the simple idea that "mortal belief shapes gods" ; after enough loops, mortals have become just as shaped by gods and it may be impossible to reconstruct how mortals were without them.

ZeroGear
2020-04-09, 08:10 PM
This is where you'd have to decide particulars like the minimum amount of worship necessary to keep a god around (Will mere knowledge by a single person be enough or is there a "critical mass" of a few thousand devout worshipers?), how quickly they can change (Can they slowly dwindle away and hope to make more followers to stave off death, or do they explode the moment their last worshiper dies?), what happens to gods who fail to sustain worship and power (Do they end up as a massive stone body in the Astral Plane like in baseline D&D so they might get resurrected later? Are they absorbed by another god and effectively obliterated? Is it impossible to truly kill a god and they just hang around, aware of their environment but utterly unable to affect it?), and so on. The answers to all those will vary by setting and cosmology, and will determine the answer to the original question.

Thank you for bringing up this point, as it's something I'm not actually sure on yet.
In the setting I'm building, the Progenitor Dragons are the first intelligent creatures to come into existence, and therefore are the first to develop a type of culture. Given that Dragons age and develop a lot slower than any other creature on the planet (to the point where one could classify the "modern" variants as living fossils in their own right), it's worth assuming that the deities of the dragons are the oldest surviving Gods in this realm, and it's possible that they are the reasons that dragons split into their Chromatic and Metallic variants.
Similarly, given that the timeline I'm building will be featuring multiple types of cultures (I'm not just going to say "ok all orcs believe this and that's that") there is a strong possibility that some of the gods will be mortals that reach divine status due to the belief in them (similar to Talos from the Elder Scrolls games), though I'm not sure how common this will be.
As for a bare minimum, one of the minor deities that I'm including in the "modern" mythos is known as the Black Rabbit, a god of Healing, Protection, and Children, who was born from the belief of a single child (this more of an exception though, not the rule), and developed a following within a small town. (Think of the Black Rabbit as something akin to an Easter Bunny with healing powers)



Two, gods are living beings who are born from belief. The moment they are born, they also attain object permanence and will of their own. This means they have decree of independence and agency, at least as much as any living being does. This allows for the kind of feedback loop you asked about: first, mortal belief births a god, and then the god acts to make more believers. However, this inevitably leads to non-linear (complex) causality and spoils the simple idea that "mortal belief shapes gods" ; after enough loops, mortals have become just as shaped by gods and it may be impossible to reconstruct how mortals were without them.

This might be the better route for me to go with, since I kinda want the gods to be actual individuals.
That leaves the question though: how much are the gods allowed to influence the mortal realm?

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-04-09, 09:28 PM
Similarly, given that the timeline I'm building will be featuring multiple types of cultures (I'm not just going to say "ok all orcs believe this and that's that") there is a strong possibility that some of the gods will be mortals that reach divine status due to the belief in them (similar to Talos from the Elder Scrolls games), though I'm not sure how common this will be.
As for a bare minimum, one of the minor deities that I'm including in the "modern" mythos is known as the Black Rabbit, a god of Healing, Protection, and Children, who was born from the belief of a single child (this more of an exception though, not the rule), and developed a following within a small town. (Think of the Black Rabbit as something akin to an Easter Bunny with healing powers)

You'll want to come up with some very specific rules for achieving divinity, even if they're just for your own reference for the sake of consistency and aren't known in-world. If a god can arise from a single being's belief like that, and there's only one such god in existence after gods have been arising left and right for however many umpty-thousand years, you'll definitely want to know why, partly because that'll tie into the question of ascended mortals as well and it's nicely elegant to have a single answer to multiple questions like that...and partly because the way divinity works actually ties quite strongly into the rest of your world's metaphysics and you'll want to make that apparent with campaign themes and such.

So, why is the Black Rabbit the one exception? If it's because "the Black Rabbit" was an existing widespread tradition that became a god through collective belief and the single child was just the last worshiper necessary to push it over the hurdle from nonexistence to godhood, that says that the faith of individual beings is pretty integral to divinity in your world. Thematically you'd probably want to emphasize that the gods are fairly active in daily life because every single believer is worth courting, and people who ascended to godhood in the past will probably have done so by spreading tales and becoming famous before leveraging that belief into ascension.

If it's because the circumstances were incredibly rare and specific (e.g. lots of children over many years wished that a god like the Black Rabbit existed, but this child happened to make their wish on a falling star during a planetary conjunction on the spring equinox in the year that a new queen ascended to the throne), that says that astrology, celestial bodies, planar conjunctions, or whatever other mechanic was used can have a tangible impact on the world. Thematically you'd probably want to emphasize that by having lots of holy days and festivals on important days, have lots of prophecies and omens around rulers and other important people, and so on, and people who ascended to godhood in the past will probably have done so by carrying out grand rituals in similarly-significant circumstances.

If it's because the existing gods found it amusing and made the Black Rabbit real on a lark, that says that the gods have a good amount of control over their own divinity and that of others. Thematically you'd probably want to emphasize that by setting up your pantheon with plenty of inter-god and inter-faction politicking and possibly a fairly strict divine hierarchy, and people who ascended to godhood in the past will probably have done so by having the support of an existing god (and who may in turn have been helped to godhood by the original draconic gods).

If gods can be brought to life by the power of one or handful of individuals' belief all the time, but said gods are extremely low in Power, have extremely narrow Portfolios, and can extend their power out to a few miles at best, that says that the roster of the gods is likely to change very frequently and be full of many overlapping-but-subtle-different gods. Thematically you'd probably want to make religions more animistic (worshiping lots of spirits of lots of forests as much as or more than Bob, God of Forests), and people who ascended to godhood in the past possibly started off weak like this and Highlander'd their way into greater prominence by absorbing other mini-gods and other faiths.

If it was completely random happenstance that no one can figure out, that says that magic (or fate/destiny, or whatever other force keeps the metaphorical wheels turning in this cosmology) is chaotic and whimsical and possibly alive. Thematically you'd probably want to emphasize that by going for a more "magical realism" tone in various adventures, featuring the Plane of Dreams/Shadow Plane/living demiplanes/other sapient or shapable-by-willpower-and-magic planes more heavily than Inner or Outer planes, and so forth, and people who ascended to godhood in the past will probably be a very eclectic bunch with no obvious similarities around the circumstances of their ascension.

And so on and so forth. Point is, the nature of divinity ties into a bunch of different aspects of the setting so you should try to tie as much as possible into a coherent picture of how that works.


That leaves the question though: how much are the gods allowed to influence the mortal realm?

That depends entirely on how much you want them to influence the mortal realm. There are very few mythological and fictional settings where the gods are unable to influence mortals strictly by virtue of their divinity; usually the reason the gods don't meddle in absolutely everything is a wager between gods, a peace treaty between warring divine factions, a barrier of some sort between where the gods live and the mortal world, a Cosmic Balance of some sort, or some other factor extrinsic to the gods themselves. Even when the setting does stipulate that the gods can't interact directly due to some intrinsic property of godhood (e.g. they're so powerful that focusing their power tightly enough for a pinpoint intervention is impossible, and even the tiniest touch on the mortal plane would cause major disasters across continents), there's usually a secondary wager/treaty/barrier/etc. to explain why they don't intervene more with avatars/heralds/servants/high priests/etc.

So come up with your desired level of divine intervention for this world, then work backwards to get the appropriate explanation. If you want them to be able to descend to the mortal realm and kick serious ass, but only very infrequently, say that sustaining their immense metaphysical presence against the very fabric of reality is difficult and exhausting and it takes years or decade to build up the energy to do so for more than a few minutes at a time. If you want them to be able to talk with mortals easily and frequently, but not show up in person to solve every mortal's problem for them, say that the mortal realm doesn't have enough dimensions for a god to bring their full self in person, but they can make a three-dimensional projection that can walk and talk and such just fine. If you want mortals to be uncertain about the gods' nature and very existence without the gods telling them what's really true, say that planar physics make it easy for faith and information to flow from mortals to gods but vice versa is practically impossible outside of very extenuating circumstances.

False God
2020-04-09, 09:47 PM
So, this is a concept that I've been playing around with and have brought up in my previous thread about Races changing through the ages: in the world I'm building, Divine power exists as part of the world, but the Gods that control these energies do not exist unless someone believes they do.
The short version of this is that there will always be A god of fire, however it's never a SPECIFIC god of fire unless there is a culture, sect, or even a single individual that believes he exists.
This is kinda an interesting topic when it comes to worlds where magic is very much a real thing and a part of everyday life because unlike reality, these are realms where mortal races could very well have been created by deities. As such, there is an interesting paradox that comes up: if a given god comes into being by one culture, would he have the power to change the beings of that culture into forms that more suited him?
As an example, let's say there is a group of wild elves that exist as a hunter-based society, and they worship the Elven deity of the hunt. At some point magic becomes a more prominent aspect to the wild elves, and they start worshiping their deity as a patron of both hunting AND magic, would said deity have the power to alter the wild elves into more graceful forms (High Elves) that are more adept at using magic?
On the other hand, Loth marking the elves that are faithful to her and changing them into Drow is a common myth throughout D&D lore, especially in Faerune, but would she still be able to do that if she was a creation of Elves to begin with?

What do you all think about this conundrum? Should deities have the power to alter mortals if they themselves are reliant on the belief of mortals to exist? And what would happen if the entire culture that believes in said gods ceases to exist? Would the deities just vanish, or would the souls that not reside in their afterlives keep them from disappearing?

The answer depends on the game system you're using. A high-level wizard in 3.5 can remake whole races into something else. Could a god do it? Probably without even thinking about it.

Should they have the power to do this? I think they should, because it times it could be necessary (perhaps to protect their people from a calamity or as a punishment of sorts), but at the same time, this is likely a power that is regulated between the gods, as many of them and their followers are at odds. If one god could just make their people stronger and faster at a whim it'd be a never-ending arms race.

If your gods are 100% reliant on mortal belief to exist, then souls in the afterlife IMO, don't count. You've gone to the afterlife, belief is no longer necessary, you're there in your god's realm, you can go have a chat with your god just like they were your neighbor. Of course this assumes that definitive proof of the gods existing can never be found before death. So once the people who believe in that god are gone, the god goes with them.

I tend to add the note that once created, a god is a fully real being. It is empowered by belief and worship, but only reliant on that to remain a god. If the belief and worship goes away, then their core being remains. IE if a race begins worshipping a nature god that is a giant walking, talking tree, then even when the faith is gone, the giant walking, talking tree remains. It now has to survive like any other creature and it may die at some point, but just as the gods created something real in mortal life, the mortals created something real in godly life.

ZeroGear
2020-04-09, 10:02 PM
If it was completely random happenstance that no one can figure out, that says that magic (or fate/destiny, or whatever other force keeps the metaphorical wheels turning in this cosmology) is chaotic and whimsical and possibly alive. Thematically you'd probably want to emphasize that by going for a more "magical realism" tone in various adventures, featuring the Plane of Dreams/Shadow Plane/living demiplanes/other sapient or shapable-by-willpower-and-magic planes more heavily than Inner or Outer planes, and so forth, and people who ascended to godhood in the past will probably be a very eclectic bunch with no obvious similarities around the circumstances of their ascension.


About that...
In the previous discussion that led to this topic was about how races change over a given timeline. In it I established the idea that the world is based in an oratory planar system where the orbiting planes exert a "tug" on the magic of the Material plane, thereby influencing how live on changes over time.
If you don't mind me playing the "my celestials/devils/demons are different" card for a sec, I'm toying with the idea that these beings are made out of the matter of the plane they originated from, but didn't come into existence until a deity willed them into being (usually by forming them around the soul of one of their faithful).
As such, there are generally inhabitants of the outer planes (such as elementals or templated animals), but most intelligent inhabitants tend to be creations of deities past or present.
So, to get back to the main point about the Black Rabbit, I'm ruling that one as a rare event of a specific planar alignment, triggered by the immensely pure believe of a young child (I'm very fond of the belief that there are few things as powerful as the wish of a pure-hearted child).
In regards to the other gods, they're probably going to be much more sparse during the early ages. Overall, the Dragon Gods are the oldest, followed by the Gods of the Giants, and the Gods of the younger races being the most recent (kinda hard to have a real following until your worshippers have a culture of some sort).

Vahnavoi
2020-04-10, 01:52 AM
This might be the better route for me to go with, since I kinda want the gods to be actual individuals.
That leaves the question though: how much are the gods allowed to influence the mortal realm?

If gods are living beings born from belief, then the medium they exists in could be (the minds of) their believer, and their vectors for influencing the world would be them.

In simple terms, this means clergy, like in D&D: a god's hands in the material world are those mortals who are devout enough and close enough in mentality to the god to work miracles (cast divine spells) in their name.

You could put hard numerical limits on this: Divine Rank X is needed to provide spell level Y, and it takes Z believers to reach Divine Rank X.

Again, since spells of higher level allow for greater effects, potential exists for a feedback loop. Miracles performed by clerics lend credibility and fame to a god, expanding belief in them, making the god more powerfull, which allows for greater miracles, which lends credibility and fame to the god....

So, well-known gods, with large religions and amount of believers, have greater ability to affect the world. While obscure gods with few believers struggle.

Tvtyrant
2020-04-11, 10:41 AM
So, this is a concept that I've been playing around with and have brought up in my previous thread about Races changing through the ages: in the world I'm building, Divine power exists as part of the world, but the Gods that control these energies do not exist unless someone believes they do.
The short version of this is that there will always be A god of fire, however it's never a SPECIFIC god of fire unless there is a culture, sect, or even a single individual that believes he exists.
This is kinda an interesting topic when it comes to worlds where magic is very much a real thing and a part of everyday life because unlike reality, these are realms where mortal races could very well have been created by deities. As such, there is an interesting paradox that comes up: if a given god comes into being by one culture, would he have the power to change the beings of that culture into forms that more suited him?
As an example, let's say there is a group of wild elves that exist as a hunter-based society, and they worship the Elven deity of the hunt. At some point magic becomes a more prominent aspect to the wild elves, and they start worshiping their deity as a patron of both hunting AND magic, would said deity have the power to alter the wild elves into more graceful forms (High Elves) that are more adept at using magic?
On the other hand, Loth marking the elves that are faithful to her and changing them into Drow is a common myth throughout D&D lore, especially in Faerune, but would she still be able to do that if she was a creation of Elves to begin with?

What do you all think about this conundrum? Should deities have the power to alter mortals if they themselves are reliant on the belief of mortals to exist? And what would happen if the entire culture that believes in said gods ceases to exist? Would the deities just vanish, or would the souls that not reside in their afterlives keep them from disappearing?

I would imagine it as something like a group of chairs around a table. The thrones of the gods are permanent, but the individual who sits on them burns out if they tap the power too strongly or in ways that violate the rules of that throne. So the God of War is safe as long as they use their powers to promote warfare and don't overreach, but can die and be replaced as an individual if they save someone's life, or turn a warlike race into doves.

In your scenario any god could transform a race if they wanted to, but they as an individual would die if they did and one of the other gods could revert the changes if they didn't care about dying. New individuals would then rise up to take their places, usually famous mortals. This means beliefs turn mortals into gods, but only when there is an empty throne and if that person matches it. Mortals inevitably tire of the throne and suicide at some point or another to escape godhood, but the oldest could be from species that went extinct long ago (say a reptilian god of slumber.)

TeChameleon
2020-04-13, 07:38 PM
Heh. My first thought when I read the title was something that happened in a previous campaign where courtesy of hitchhiking archons, buttloads of magic, and time-travel shenanigans, the party inadvertently created most of the pantheon...

More on topic, if you haven't already read it, you really need to read Small Gods by the late, great Terry Pratchett. Not only is it a highly entertaining fantasy novel, it goes over a lot of the ground you're covering and in a fair bit of detail. The general gist of the bits that relate to what you're ruminating on is that gods basically feed off belief (the trope gods need prayer badly (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GodsNeedPrayerBadly) is heavily in play) and that if they are starved of belief, they dwindle into 'small gods'- think like the proto-Roman 'household spirits'- the echo of a voice on a breath of wind, barely even sentient, much less sapient.

So they continue to exist entirely independent of any human intervention, but human belief powers them up to the point that they can effect tremendous change in the world if they're so inclined. In the case of the Discworld, the gods don't tend to go around reshaping the world because they're lazy yutzes with the attention span of a cocker spaniel in a sausage plant, and getting a massive swell of belief takes effort and focus, neither of which they're all that fond of. Although speaking the question 'do the gods exist?' out loud tends to result in a pair of smoking boots with a note reading "Yes, we do." between them. Well, all that and they tend to spend most of their time bickering.