D&D 5E Everybody's got to have a Patron deity. Where did it come from?

[Ilbranteloth]

The 1e description of the Cleric class conveys minimal setting assumptions. It says:

"
The cleric is dedicated to a deity, or deities,
and at the same time a skilled combatant at arms.

The cleric can be of any alignment (q.v.)
save (true) neutral (see Druid hereafter) alignment,
depending upon that of the deity the cleric serves.

"


‘The cleric can be of any alignment.’ But. It depends on the deity. If there is only one deity, then its clerics must correspond to its alignment.

It doesnt say, every setting must have clerics of every alignment.

Rather, if a setting only has one ‘deity’, then possibly only some alignments are available.

Except the DMG clarifies it more. "Each cleric must have his or her own deity, so when a are player opts to become a cleric (including a druid), you must inform them as to which deities exist in your campaign milieu and allow the individual to select which one of them her or she will serve. This will not necessarily establish the alignment of the cleric, so at the same time the cleric player character should also state his or her ethos (not necessarily to the other players).

Furthermore, there are assumed to be evil clerics that will be NPCs against the PCs.

And that still doesn't resolve the fact that almost all clerics are dedicated to a deity. That sentence doesn't tell you anything about the religion itself - it could be monotheistic or polytheistic. It's the other sentences that address the nature of the religion - the ones that state "gods."

According to the description of the Druid class, the trees grant the Druid spells. The trees are treated as ‘deities’. But these trees are actual literal trees. They are nonhuman and ‘think’ as trees think. Specifically, the ‘mistletoe’ plant ‘gives power to their spells’ in order to protect other ‘plants’. This 1e description of the Druid is nonpolytheistic. It is animism.

"
Druids ... hold trees (particularly oak and ash), the sun, and the moon as deities.
Mistletoe is the holy symbol of druids, and it gives power to their spells.
They have an obligation to protect trees and wild plants, crops,
and to a lesser extent, their human followers and animals.

"

1e Druid engages ‘nature worship’ in the form of vegetative animism.

Which attributes deific power in such things. But furthermore, the DMG (via the index) directs you to pg 38-40 for casting, acquisition, and recovery of druidic spells. The sections included are cleric spells, magic-user spells, and Illusionist spells. There is no separate section for druids.

Druids, being a subclass of clerics, who are also called out in the second paragraph (quoted above), regain their spells with the same rules as clerics in that section.

That is, sixth and seventh level spells are granted directly by their deity, and if they have not been faithful, they can be withheld. Even third through fifth level spells can be withheld by the minions of the deity.

Mechanically, whether it's a being someplace else, or the plants themselves, they are a deity. An intelligent entity that can judge and choose to provide or withhold their blessings.

Regardless of whether you assign deity status to the druids, they are worshipping something other than the god of the cleric (assuming it's a "monotheistic" campaign).

What is the reasoning for clerics in your monotheistic campaign that druids worship and receive divine powers from the plants? That they are not gods? But the denial of the divinity of the plants does not preclude the druids for declaring them divine and continuing to receive their divine gifts.

What about the clerics, shamans, or whatever of orcs, elves, drow, giants, and evil humans? Do their clerics worship the same good god of your clerics, but are simply rewarded with spells that harm?

In our world Hitler was a "Christian" but not in any sense that I understand. But the fantasy world is a bit different. If Hitler received clerical magic, how could that be from the same god as the allies?

Regardless, if you can accept the nature (pun not initially intended...) of druids while maintaining it as non-polytheistic, then why can't use accept the different domain clerics of 5e without invoking polytheism?

That's what I'm still struggling with. Because as best I can tell, in the 5e PHB, outside of the appendix, this is what it has to say:

"Clerics are intermediaries between the mortal world and the distant planes of the gods. As varied as the gods they serve, clerics strive to embody the handiwork of their deities."

"Divine magic, as the name suggests, is the power of the gods..."

"The gods don't grant this power to everyone who seeks it..."

"...the ability to cast spells relies on devotion and an intuitive sense of a deity's wishes."

"...wade into melee with the power of the gods on their side."

"...carrying out their gods' will..."

"...the most important question to consider is which deity to serve and what principles you want your character to embody. Appendix B includes lists of many of the gods of the multiverse. Check with your DM to learn which deities are in your campaign."

Under Divine Domains
"In a pantheon, every deity has influence over different aspects of mortal live an civilization..."

"For example, the portfolio of the Greek god Apollos includes the domains of Knowledge, Life, and Light.

"Apollo, for example, could be worshipped in one region as Phoebus ("radiant") Apollo...Apollo Acesius ("healing")..."

"Each domain's description gives examples of deities who have influence of that domain. Gods are included from the worlds of..."

Each domain has a paragraph that generally starts with "The gods of knowledge..." with examples.

Outside of this quoted text, and the blurbs at the start of the domains, there is nothing that I can see that is requiring you to use a polytheistic religion. So that's a total of around 20 sentences that actually include the word "gods" or "deities" in the entire book.

But there's another major consideration in terms of presentation.

I'll rewrite the first quotes from above. I suspect this would offend a great many people, and also bring a lot of unwanted attention to the game (again).

"Clerics are intermediaries between the mortal world and God. Clerics strive to embody the handiwork of God."

"Divine magic, as the name suggests, is the power of God..."

"God doesn't grant this power to everyone who seeks it..."

"...the ability to cast spells relies on devotion and an intuitive sense of God's wishes."

"...wade into melee with the power of God on their side."

"...carrying out God's will..."

The added fluff in 5e is to help explain the concept better, and tie you closer to the worlds of D&D. Both worthwhile goals. While there may be many home-brew worlds out there, they aren't there to tie the game to your home-brew. Their purpose is to present a complete set of rules that anybody can pick up and play, and they release APs for them to play using those rules. It's also obvious that this is a game, not a real treatise on religion, and that's exactly what they want.

You could also go to the "his or her" approach by saying:
"Clerics are intermediaries between the mortal world and their deity or deities. Clerics strive to embody the handiwork of deity or deities."

"Divine magic, as the name suggests, is the power of their god or gods..."

"A deity (or deities) doesn't grant this power to everyone who seeks it..."

"...the ability to cast spells relies on devotion and an intuitive sense of their deity or deities wishes."

"...wade into melee with the power of their deity or deities on their side."

"...carrying out god or god's will..."

It's just not practical, and grammatical issues with the mix of singular and plural.

They no longer publish a book like Deities & Demigods because it's somewhat useless on its own. First because the deities don't need stats like monsters. Second, because they really should be tied to the setting and the cleric class much more closely. Because a polytheistic world of some sort is the default, naturally the examples use a polytheistic approach. But there's nothing that's saying you have to run it that way.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

On this point, the complaints about the Cleric being polytheism-only started in 4e. For example, explicit support for philosophical clerics was absent in the Players Handbook. Various communications with designers went on, on the WotC site and twitter. At one point, Mearls said 5e would support them. But in the end it did not. Part of the change was for corporate IP.

But even the 3.5e rules just allowed a cleric to be philosophical in a polytheistic world. The entire section reads:

"Every reasonably well-known deity has clerics devoted to him or her, so clerics can be of any religion. The deity most common worshiped by human clerics in civilized lands is Pelor (god of the sun). The majority of nonhuman clerics are devoted to the chief god of the appropriate racial pantheon. Most clerics are officially ordained members of religious organizations, commonly called churches. Each has sworn to uphold the ideals of his church.

Some clerics devote themselves not to a god but to a cause or a source of divine power. These characters wield magic the way clerics devoted to individual gods do, but they are not associated with any religious institution or any particular practice of worship. A cleric devoted to good and law, for example, may be on friendly terms with the clerics of lawful and good deities and may extol the virtues of a good and lawful life, but he is not a functionary in a church hierarchy."

This once again talks primarily about the religious approach of a single cleric, and nothing to to with whether the world is philosophical, monotheistic, or polytheistic, but then circles back specifically to the relationship of a philosophical cleric to the clerics of other deities.

From there it gives an actual list of deities, instead of relegating them to an appendix. There are several more paragraphs about selecting a deity, with another two sentences referencing a philosophical cleric: "If your cleric is not devoted to a particular deity, you still select two domains to represent his spiritual inclinations and abilities. The restriction on alignment domains still applies."

Druids are explicitly separated from clerics, which is a bit of a change.

But the polytheism is also discussed in the religion section of each race and in each class in 3.5e. The description section has a bunch more (and I checked 5e, the section on alignment also mentions deities briefly, in relation to evil deities creating evil races).

Of course, then 3.5e has a whole section on religion and the gods of D&D, (and actually mentions that all characters might have a patron deity - something that actually relates to the OP). There are pages and pages of material in 3.5e and all of it polytheistic.

I don't see how that's better than 5e. Other than that sentence in the alignment section, best I can tell, all of the references to polytheism (gods or deities) is entirely contained within the cleric class or an appendix, which is primarily a list.

That seems to be a huge reduction of polytheism or religion within the PHB, bringing it to a level significantly lower than any edition since 2e. Of the many pages of polytheistic material in 3.5e, there are exactly 5 sentences about a "philosophical" cleric, and even then one of them is about their relationship to the churches of the polytheistic religion.

I'm sorry, but the idea that 5e is "worse" in this regard just doesn't make sense. Moreso, with the amount of material that TSR published for AD&D and 2e, holding onto a few sentences as proof that it "explicitly supported" something that they never supported again (where were all the monotheistic supplements?), I think your definition of both explicit and support are quite different than mine.

Among the "problems" D&D/AD&D was accused of in the late '70s/early '80s was heathenism and promoting other gods. Even the people who didn't know anything about the game thought it was promoting polytheism.

 

[Shasarak]

The 1E character sheet had space for a character's last will and testament, for Pete's sake. The notion that a line is somehow mandatory to fill that out because it's on the sheet is absurd on the face of it.

If you dont have a last will and testament that means the rest of us get your stuff when you die.

 

[Yaarel]

Ilbaranteloth, I appreciate your detailed citations, along with the way that you interpret them. I will try focus on specific points. If you feel I missed something, bring it up again. I also appreciate your focus on the three 1e core books. These core books define my use of the 1e system. I homebrewed it, as instructed, and I never felt like I was ‘supposed to’ rely on splatbooks, magazines, or published settings.

Mechanically, whether it's a being someplace else, or the plants themselves, they are a deity. An intelligent entity that can judge and choose to provide or withhold their blessings.

The 1e Druid treats ‘plants’ as ‘deities’. Nevertheless, these plants are still normal plants. They are divine in the sense of, life is sacred. Plants are ‘intelligent’ maybe in the way that living organisms are responsive.

In reallife, plants are lifeform that seems weirdly altruistic to me. Philosophically, I admire plants.

Regardless of whether you assign deity status to the druids, they are worshipping something other than the god of the cleric (assuming it's a "monotheistic" campaign).

What is the reasoning for clerics in your monotheistic campaign that druids worship and receive divine powers from the plants? That they are not gods? But the denial of the divinity of the plants does not preclude the druids for declaring them divine and continuing to receive their divine gifts.

Here, we are talking more about 1e homebrew settings that I ran and played in.

For my settings, I like religion to be subjective, cultural, without mechanical enforcement. I value transcendent monotheism, and it includes a kind of humane mystical streak. Whether a culture engages the divine infinity like Jews do or like Buddhists do, is fine.

In my monotheistic settings, animism is never a problem. In reallife animism, at least the traditions that I find interesting, nobody ‘worships’ anybody. Humans themselves are a kind of nature spirit, and the whole point is to be a good neighbor toward other nature spirits. These forms of animism lack idolatry. There is openness to the infinite, and there is never a ‘slavery’ to a finite ‘image’. In other words, being compassionate yet cautious toward forces of nature, is good. Even holy.

What about the clerics, shamans, or whatever of orcs, elves, drow, giants, and evil humans? Do their clerics worship the same good god of your clerics, but are simply rewarded with spells that harm?

Some years ago, one of my campaigns happened entirely underground among the Drow. We played non-Drow who descended there on an adventure, and as it happened, kept leveling there, and never returned to surface life.

The Drow culture ‘worshiped’ ‘Lolth’ (a fantasy reinvention of the name Lilith, who in some reallife folklore traditions was explained to be the mother the elves and trolls). In D&D, Lolth is officially a ‘demon’, unworthy of worship; those Drow who worship her are evil. Additionally, it is an error to worship any image, and Drow Clerics commit idolatry. Of course, we eventually killed Lolth, a monster with stats.

We never felt obliged to make our own player characters commit idolatry.



But today I am so sick of polytheism. Even Lolth will never happen again. If I use Drow, they would have nothing to do with her, or maybe, she could be a hostile nature spirit (of spiders?), or else a cultural construct.

Incidentally, the 5e Paladin seems fine to me. ‘A vow is sacred’. The extent of their ‘divineness’ is an ethical code of conduct. There is no idolatry, there is no polytheism, as far as I can tell.

I would probably present the 5e charisma Drow as female Dex Paladins and male Sorcerers, with both being Dex Fighters and Rogues.

Even the 3.5e rules allowed a cleric to be philosophical in a polytheistic world.

Yeah. The 3e Players Handbook fails to support, but at least officially permits nonpolytheistic Clerics.

For a 3e game, I use the SRD which is setting-neutral enough. I keep setting assumptions in mind (cosmic, regional, and local) and let the adventures and the player questions flesh out the details.

Why can't you accept the different domain clerics of 5e without invoking polytheism?

The answer is, because I cant.

In other editions of D&D, I can use the core rulebooks or SRD to run monotheistic settings. The amount of extra work to do this is tolerable.

4e is troublesome.

I find, 5e impossible. The lack of setting neutral rules, means I perpetually confront references to polytheism, on many levels, in many critical contexts, in the classes, in the races, in the cosmology, in the spells, in the healing, in the instructions, in the mechanics, in the monster descriptions, in the local settings, everywhere. Polytheism is totalitarian. The 5e products are unusable to me.



If D&D 5e puts out a 5e rule set that is truly setting neutral (similar enough to the 3e d20 SRD), without polytheism, so I can easily consult and flavor its rules for a monotheistic campaign setting, then I would be able to sit down and enjoy a game of the latest iteration of D&D.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Ilbaranteloth, I appreciate your detailed citations, along with the way that you interpret them. I will try focus on specific points. If you feel I missed something, bring it up again. I also appreciate your focus on the three 1e core books. These core books define my use of the 1e system. I homebrewed it, as instructed, and I never felt like I was ‘supposed to’ rely on splatbooks, magazines, or published settings.

The 1e Druid treats ‘plants’ as ‘deities’. Nevertheless, these plants are still normal plants. They are divine in the sense of, life is sacred. Plants are ‘intelligent’ maybe in the way that living organisms are responsive.

In reallife, plants are lifeform that seems weirdly altruistic to me. Philosophically, I admire plants.

So based on this I would have to say that AD&D didn't support what you wanted to do, as much as it didn't get in your way. The druid thing is a good example. Mechanically, the "plants" (if that's what's doing it), can determine that a given druid had strayed too far from neutrality that they must atone for their sins before they can cast spells as low as 3rd level again. That's a mighty intelligent and judgmental tree. If you chose not to follow that rule so be it, but that's not as the game was written.

Also, you choosing not to purchase the other core hardcover books is fine too, but not the intention of the designer.

Here, we are talking more about 1e homebrew settings that I ran and played in.

For my settings, I like religion to be subjective, cultural, without mechanical enforcement. I value transcendent monotheism, and it includes a kind of humane mystical streak. Whether a culture engages the divine infinite like Jews do or like Buddhists do, is fine.

In my monotheistic settings, animism is never a problem. In reallife animism, at least the traditions that I find interesting, nobody ‘worships’ anybody. Humans themselves are a kind of nature spirit, and the whole point is to be a good neighbor toward other nature spirits. These forms animism lack idolatry. There is openness to the infinite, and there is never a ‘slavery’ to a finite ‘image’. In other words, being compassionate yet cautious toward forces of nature, is good. Even holy.

Some years ago, one of my campaigns happened entirely underground among the Drow. We played non-Drow who descended there on an adventure, and as it happened, kept leveling there, and never returned to surface life.

The Drow culture ‘worshiped’ ‘Lolth’ (a fantasy reinvention of the name Lilith, who in some reallife folklore traditions was explained to be the mother the elves and trolls). In D&D, Lolth is officially a ‘demon’, unworthy of worship; those Drow who worship her are evil. Additionally, it is an error to worship any image, and Drow Clerics commit idolatry.

We never felt obliged to make our own player characters commit idolatry.

Well, as has been pointed out elsewhere, none of this is idolatry. Drow worshiping what they consider to be a god is religion. Worshipping a likeness of her is. In Q1 she was a demoness, yet the drow worshipped her and received clerical spells from her, as only a god can do (according to the AD&D rules). At some point she was "upgraded" to a goddess.

But today I am so sick of polytheism. Even Lolth will never happen again. If I use Drow, they would have nothing to do with her, or maybe, she could be a hostile nature spirit (of spiders?), or else a cultural construct.

Incidentally, the 5e Paladin seems fine to me. ‘A vow is sacred’. The extent of their ‘divineness’ is an ethical code of conduct. There is no idolatry, there is no polytheism, as far as I can tell.

I would probably present the charisma Drow as female Paladins and male Sorcerers, with both being Dex Fighters and Rogues.

So, OK. I still don't quite understand, but I don't have to really. Part of the issue for me, is that regardless of whether you have the outer planes and the beings living on them, I don't see how you have a world like this exist without religion. And when there are multiple races and cultures, then there will be different religions. Polytheism was a natural extension of attributing spirits to parts of the world. Religion produces more passion, more conflict, more wars, than almost anything else.

The answer is, because I cant.

In other editions of D&D, I can use the core rulebooks to run monotheistic settings. The amount of extra work to do this is tolerable.

4e is troublesome.

I find, 5e impossible. The lack of setting neutral rules, means I perpetually confront references to polytheism, on many levels, in many critical contexts, in the classes, in the races, in the cosmology, in the spells, in the healing, in the instructions, in the mechanics, in the monster descriptions, in the local settings, everywhere. Polytheism is totalitarian. The 5e products are unusable to me.

If D&D 5e puts out a 5e rule set that is truly setting neutral (similar enough to the 3e d20 SRD), so I can easily consult and flavor its rules for a monotheistic campaign setting, then I would be able to sit down and enjoy a game of the latest iteration of D&D.

So what about the 5e SRD? None of the gods are part of that, since those are protected IP, and I think it removes pretty much all of the fluff too. To me (similar to you) the game has always been a "use what you want" thing. But I wanted to see everything so I could pick and choose. Every supplement, every issue of Dragon, even the 3rd party stuff. I ate it up. More options that way.

I really don't recall seeing much at all in the races of the PHB, nor the MM (probably in the fluff of the humanoid races, but my interpretation of them is so different I just ignore it anyway).

 

[Yaarel]

So based on this I would have to say that AD&D didn't support what you wanted to do, as much as it didn't get in your way.

‘AD&D didn't support what you wanted to do, as much as it didn't get in your way.’

Ok, fair enough. But. In AD&D 1e, the rules are actively trying to encourage the DM world building and to not get in the DMs way.

The druid thing is a good example. Mechanically, the "plants" (if that's what's doing it), can determine that a given druid had strayed too far from neutrality that they must atone for their sins before they can cast spells as low as 3rd level again. That's a mighty intelligent and judgmental tree. If you chose not to follow that rule so be it, but that's not as the game was written.

Yes, the 1e Druid reveres actual normal plants. In some sense, plants are ‘intelligent’. How different is this from the real world? If humans mistreat the environment, plants lose their ability to flourish, and eventually everything starts to die. The collective ‘lifeforce’ of our natural world can thrive or diminish. For the 1e Druid, plant life is sacred and a source of magical power. (The 4e Druid is similarly nonpolytheistic, ‘primal’ and animistic, but moreso includes animal life as well plant life.)

Well, as has been pointed out elsewhere, none of this is idolatry. Drow worshiping what they consider to be a god is religion.

In the monotheistic traditions that I find interesting, ‘idolatry’ (the cultic worship of representative images) extends to mean, the worship of any image that is ‘in front of’ the imageless God.

Divinity is infinite, transcends the space-time fabric, simultaneously past, present, and future.

If Zeus ‘objectively’ existed, then he is an image. If he killed all the other immortals to make himself the sole surviving immortal, he would still be a finite image, an idol. It is strictly forbidden to worship him.

So what about the 5e SRD?

None of the gods are part of that, since those are protected IP, and I think it removes pretty much all of the fluff too. To me (similar to you) the game has always been a "use what you want" thing. But I wanted to see everything so I could pick and choose. Every supplement, every issue of Dragon, even the 3rd party stuff. I ate it up. More options that way.

I really don't recall seeing much at all in the races of the PHB, nor the MM (probably in the fluff of the humanoid races, but my interpretation of them is so different I just ignore it anyway).

The current 5e SRD refers to polytheism (‘gods’, ‘deities’, names, etc.) probably over a hundred times. It is awkward for me to edit pdfs, but as an experiment I highlighted in yellow each time polytheism shows up, and I lost count and lost interest.

When you reach the point that you are sick of polytheism, you notice it every time.



Ideally, there needs to be 5e rules that are setting free that DMs can easily incorporate to flavor for their own campaign settings.

 

[Chaosmancer]

In its Players Handbooks, D&D tradition used to support nonpolytheistic campaign settings. However for 5e, WotC intentionally and consciously removed this freedom.

Some time ago, Mearls admitted to some degree, WotC enforced polytheism in order to control corporate IP branding of its trademarked gods.

And yet, to steal a clichéd line, no D&D police are going to come and burn your books if you decide to make a nonpolytheistic campaign setting. You could also tweet that you are making such a campaign setting to Mearls, and I doubt he will tell you you are wrong to do so or that such a setting is not DnD.


Yes, the base assumption of the game is polytheistic, but you have full permission to change that for your table. You seem to get hung up on explicitly getting permission to do these things, but you have permission to change the game however you want, all you need are players who agree to play in the world you create. It is a pretty simple change, not particularly difficult or anything.

You keep mentioning all this editing and rewriting you need to do, but if you are just deleting all the fluff then you are down to Clerics and Paladins being an issue, maybe druids though I’d have to re-read that, and… that’d be it. And I’m not sure you’d even have to do it, just tell everyone that the fluff of your game ignores all the fluff in the PHB. Nothing is true unless you say it is, and start from there.

 

[LordEntrails]

In some editions, there's a spot for it on your character sheet. If you weren't supposed to fill in something, then it wouldn't be there.

That's convoluted logic. How about quoting a published rule in any edition that requires a patron deity for other than divine casters?

 

[Yaarel]

And yet, to steal a clichéd line, no D&D police are going to come and burn your books if you decide to make a nonpolytheistic campaign setting.

Heh. What books?

In order for me to play 5e, I would moreorless have to rewrite a whole new Players Handbook to remove the unwanted flavor and supply a different setting flavor.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

That's convoluted logic. How about quoting a published rule in any edition that requires a patron deity for other than divine casters?

I quoted two, the 1e Deities & Demigods, and the 3/3.5e PHB (although it didn't require it).

In terms of the character sheet, it's not convoluted logic when they had separate character sheets for each class, and the Religion and Patron Deity fields were on every sheet, regardless of class. It implies that it is expected, if not required.

That's what led me to look in the 1e core books. AD&D was much more rigid in the way they presented the rules. So if the character sheet had it, then there must have been a rule somewhere. And so there was...