Typical D&D pantheon?

[Cyclone231]

What are the recurring characters, archetypes, and specific details you've found (or found annoying) in many D&D (or other Fantasy Generica) pantheons?

[Cyclone231]

Okay, I guess I'll start:

God of Death: Varies wildly, from evil necromancer gods to lords of balance. Tends to be nongood, though.

God of Nature: Mostly neutral or good deities.

God of War: Generally lawful, varies between Heironeous and Hextor types.

God of the Forge/Crafts/Building stuff: Less common, but still an important figure. Frequently lawful. Creativity versus meniality varies.

The God of Good/The God of Evil: Very common motif - I think that the "standard" D&D pantheon has several. Also matched up with the God of Law and the God of Chaos.

The God of Magic: Generally neutral. Sometimes lawful.

The God(s) of Bards/Rogues/Gamblers/Travellers: A lot less specific. Olidammara. Fharlanghn. Generally has a portfolio comprised of things like: music, parties, trickery, travel, luck, et cetera.

It's worth noting that in D&D you tend to end up with several gods of the same thing. Wee Jas and Boccob. Wee Jas and Vecna and Nerull. And so forth.

So... that's my general knowledge of the "typical D&D pantheon." Would you say this is correct?

[puppyavenger]

Racial gods, almost always evil(monster race) good (PC race) or neutrel(uber/widely variable race)

[Dan_Hemmens]

The Generic Catholic God. Often LG or Neutral, and nebulously associated with Lawfulness and Goodness, sometimes with the Sun. Even more functionally identical to Catholicism than all the other fantasy deities.

[sickler]

God of Magic could be chaotic as well, given the imagination included in creating/using magic usually requires one to think outside the box.

[Dan_Hemmens]

God of Magic could be chaotic as well, given the imagination included in creating/using magic usually requires one to think outside the box.

Yeah, but he very seldom is, which I think is the point.

[Fhaolan]

I'll list off the gods in my campaign's pantheon, in case it helps:

The Primaries:
Grandfather Dirt: God of Earth (retired)
Grandmother Sky: God of Air (dead)
Mother Corn: Goddess of Agriculture
Father Smith: God of Crafts and Writing
Mistress Sun: Goddess of Fire and Trade
Master Mountain: God of Mines and Wisdom
Lord of the Revels: God of Winds, Music, and Dance
Lady of the Mists: Goddess of Night and Magic

The Secondaries:
The Tempest: Goddess of the Ocean and Storms
The Watcher: God of the Dead. (Not Death, but the Guardian of the Dead)
The Wanderer: God of Trickery and Travel
The Lich Lord: God of Insanity and Resurrection
The Beast Lord: God of Animals and Hunting
The Crying God: God of Healing
The Rat God: God of Disease
The Forest Queen: Goddess of Seasons
The Cat God: Goddess of Luck and Passion
The Warlord: God of Justice and Duty
The Oracle: Goddess of Fate
The Voracious God: God of Hunger and Consumption
The Tyrant: God of Domination

And the most dangerous one of all:
Good God: Goddess of Innocence. Dangerous, because while she is the most Good of all the Gods, she has all the emotional maturity of a six-year-old human girl and is also the most likely to actually show up when mentioned. Never, ever swear 'Good God!' in one of my games. It never helps.

[Orzel]

My campaign uses very powerful avatars of the aspects of the one powerful deity infused in chosen mortals. If I list them I'll probably get the basics

Good
Evil
Life
Death
Nature
Forge/Invention/Artificial/Science
Knowledge
Battle/War
Magic
Trickery
Earth
Fire
Sky
Sea
Travel/Sailor/Merchant/Change
Civics/City/Law/Stability
Arts
Time
Sleep/Peace

Many are often combined. My campaign uses an artifact that transfers an available aspect (due to the last guy having it dying. happens a bit) to the one who finds it. Currently the Avatar of Knowledge is my Cousin's "idiot" Barbarian/Cleric and my Rogue is the Sky and Sea Avatar. And the Trickery Avatar is the DM's reset button. "Lipin tricked you. You're not dead."

[Serenity]

There will generally be two gods of battle. One will be the Lawful Crusader type, like Tyr or Heironeous, emphasizing honor and valor. The other will be a beserker like Kord or Tempus, and be all about getting into knockdown brawls and fighting as a way of life.

Then there's the Chaotic Evil God of Random Mayhem (Erythnul, Ares), and the Lawful Evil God of Tyrants and Magnificent Bastards (Hextor).

The God of Death, as mentioned, is either a monster who hates all life or at best a neutral, perhaps a bookkeeper type who simply ensures that the natural cycle continues. The God of the Dead, on the other hand, is the more often Neutral, ensuring people get sorted into the right afterlifes.

Neutral Nature deity for the druids. The storm god (Poseidon, Umberlee) is either Chaotic Evil or Chaotic Neutral.

[Dan_Hemmens]

The God of Death, as mentioned, is either a monster who hates all life or at best a neutral, perhaps a bookkeeper type who simply ensures that the natural cycle continues. The God of the Dead, on the other hand, is the more often Neutral, ensuring people get sorted into the right afterlifes.

Further: If Neutral, the God of Death will despise the undead, if Evil, the God of Death will really like the undead. Curiously, despite his stated reasons for despising the undead (they tamper with the natural cycle!) the Neutral God of Death (who, as Serenity points out, is usually more a God of the Dead) will have absolutely no problem with resurrection magic.

Further, no matter how evil the Evil God of Death is, the "cycle" of life and death with still always be Neutral at worst, and the undead will still be seen as a perversion of this natural cycle, despite the fact that death is apparently the domain of an Evil deity.

[Kioran]

Despite violence being, for the most part, a neutral means to an end, the gods of war/slaughter/fighting are always either good or evil, or just have any extreme alignment in general.
I subverted this a little by making a TN god of slaughter appear in my last campaign, who had a CE Avatar. He judges his Avatars by their prowess. If you could kill them, they deserved it and maybe you get their job. But the god doesn´t judge their avatars, mortal weapons do. Sadly, the party got TPKed by his minions due to an invisibility goof-up (can´t see them, can´t heal `em.........).

[mostlyharmful]

I'm a real big fan of the Ebberron set up for the gods, at least for the soverign host. Abstracts which are named but faceless that work in a pantheon that your cleric chooses a patron from but can call on all of them. They're disinterested in the world and impossible to reach/touch/fight without REEEEALLY high epic levels. I like the gods to have a distinct split from the game world, it's one of the few things that annoys me about Faerun, that Avatars come stomping through all the damn time.

When I hombrew I try to keep it down to 13 or below with a whole handfull of roles/domains each and only a couple with alignments other than True Neutral.

[Turcano]

A long while back, Stainboy wrote the definitive word on typical D&D pantheons:

The Rent-a-Pantheon Package Deal

In any game setting, the pantheon of deities must include all of the following:

-A patriarchal god of light who really hates undead, and looks like the kind of god all those guys from the 2e art, the ones with winged helmets and handlebar mustaches, would have worshipped.

-A god a justice, who's basically the god of light, but more of a bastard. He also looks just like the god of light except that his helm has a faceplate.

-A god of guys in spiky black armor trying to conquer the world, whose sole reason for existence seems to be keeping the good guys in business.

-A hippie nature goddess whose followers have never quite come to terms with the fact that animals kill each other.

-A god of thieves and vagabonds, who would be really fun to play a cleric of if clerics got more skill points.

-An insane god whose followers want to summon their god to the material plane, thereby destroying the world. The fact that they inhabit the world seems lost on them.

-Three other gods who also want to destroy the world, but whose minions are a different creature type. Got aberrations covered? Make a god of evil elementals! Or plant monsters!

-At least two gods of magic who are basically just powerful wizards. One of them is evil.

-A dragon god who's redundant with one of the other good gods, except that he/she is a dragon.

-An evil dragon god who's redundant with one of the other good gods, except that he/she is an evil dragon.

-A lich who's either become a god or is worshipped as one.

-An orcish god of murdering everything.

-An additional god for every other race of dungeon-fodder humanoids, also dedicated to murdering everything.

-An elven god of trees, art, music, orc killing, free weapon profiicencies, and secret door detection.

-A dwarven god of mining, drinking, and being stubby.

-A halfling god no one cares about.

[Swooper]

Where's the fun in having only a standard set of gods? My friend's pantheon (which has become somewhat standard in our games) includes a God of Rules, Paperwork and Bureaucracy, Qhleeeshlhlt (spelling optional), The Sticky Lord, the God of Slime and Filth and some other random gods.

[Dan_Hemmens]

Where's the fun in having only a standard set of gods? My friend's pantheon (which has become somewhat standard in our games) includes a God of Rules, Paperwork and Bureaucracy, Qhleeeshlhlt (spelling optional), The Sticky Lord, the God of Slime and Filth and some other random gods.

I think the point of this thread is to *identify* tropes rather than to propagate them.

Oh, has anybody mentioned the Goddess of Beauty yet? Always a goddess, of course, because men aren't allowed to have an aesthetic sense. The Goddess of Beauty (who sometimes gets love into the bargain) has the distinction of being one of the 2% of deities in most D&D pantheons *not* directly related to adventuring in some way.

[Swooper]

I think the point of this thread is to *identify* tropes rather than to propagate them.

Guess I shouldn't post at that hour then, eh? :S