D&D 5E I'm working on a homebrew pantheon for my upcoming campaign, any sugestions?

I want a somewhat smaller pantheon than usual, with primarily lawful deities.

Hm, there are some plausible ways to do this.

Multiple gods in RL ancient religions did not so much divide alignments amongst themselves but rather different tasks like war, agriculture ,fertility etc.

Also 5E has different speciality domains for priests so you have to take that into account.

If you just want to create a Pantheon based on alignment then just take 3 gods eventually

It is Law which stands for the deity that most People will revere with subdomains healing, light, knowledge

Neutrality with druids as priests

Chaos with war tempest Domains etc.

That way your Pantheon is small but still every player will find something for himself if he wants to play a priest.

For the bad guys either take chaos gods or demons and devils or elemental powers. If you like a concept of a god for a monster race,
say you want the Orcs not to pray to a god of your Standard Pantheon for the normal folk, then just reskin Gruumsh as a demon.

Easy to do, there are enough sources which Detail out some of the lore for the Mobs including some powers habitating the abyss anyway.

Maybe a simplified world axis would work for your concept liek the 4E assumptions of the planes or a single upper and single lower plane.

Please write a bit more what Features you would like to include your ppost is a bit vague in what you want to achieve in Detail e.g. monastic / Paladin orders etc.

Hmm. I think, counting the 3 UA domains which will probably make it into Xanathar's Guide, there's 12 cleric domains? Maybe randomly combine them into 6 groups of 2 or 4 groups of 3, and see if anything comes to mind. A god of Death, Nature and Arcana is pretty different that a god of Death, War, and Protection.

You can have only a handful of gods and each may have different aspects or powers associated with them. The nature god could also have a healing side, a death side, a storm side, and a fertility side, depending on who is looking or what culture is favored where. The sun domain could even be part of the nature god and worshiped as destruction by the desert tribe and favored by the ice barbarians for bringing the harvest.

Overall I would start small and just cover the large things you need. Let players add some ideas from their characters and help out. Add later whether they are new gods or angels that hold power over certain domains. The angel of winter is very different than the one of summer.

MonoBlack Selfmill said:

I want a somewhat smaller pantheon than usual, with primarily lawful deities.

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You could go with a pantheon in the form of a sort of deified royal family, a King & Queen of the Gods, a loyal, honorable, heroic Son, and a shifty Trickster-God second son or fosterling.

Or, you could go with deities as personifications of natural cycles. Sun, Moon, Sky & Earth and the Seasons marking time and supporting life on the mostly-lawful side, Storm the chaotic black sheep.

So many nice ideas here I have to give a lot of XP, only with the second paragraph in [MENTION=27385]aco175[/MENTION] s post I got a little problem. The start out small and let the players contribute works for several aspects of a homebrew campaign but things like a pantheon should be a bit more detailed upfront.

It is not like adding a new town to an uncharted area on the map but common global lore we talk about.
You can easily run into consistency problems with that.

Coroc said:

So many nice ideas here I have to give a lot of XP, only with the second paragraph in [MENTION=27385]aco175[/MENTION] s post I got a little problem. The start out small and let the players contribute works for several aspects of a homebrew campaign but things like a pantheon should be a bit more detailed upfront.

It is not like adding a new town to an uncharted area on the map but common global lore we talk about.
You can easily run into consistency problems with that.

Click to expand...

In my experience, letting players contribute is an excellent way to get buy in from the players. In the last game I played in I was a cleric and the GM let me design the hierarchy of the church. I don't think my additions majorly changed his plot but it made me much more invested in my character.

When I've done this both as a GM and as a player, the GM can veto ideas and has the right to alter the contributions to fit their plot and setting. It's a good happy medium because the players get invested and the GM has the power to maintain consistency. And if it's a major element of the setting we do this prior to the campaign starting, so we can iron out any details or discrepancies.

You could also make the gods the personification of heavenly bodies . . . No wait. That's too straightfkrward.

You could make each of the heavenly bodies the home of one god - and that god has shaped his home to be a reflection of him/herself.

So the Sungod lives on the sun, and has fashioned it into the flaming light giving thing it is.
The Moongod has created her home into a shimmering celestial crystal paradis.
The Earthgod, mother nature or poison ivy (take your pick), has created the vast sprawling forest and wildlife.

Then there'd be the distant stargod, and you could tack on a couple planetgods (or more distant moons where, say, the wargod and lovegod live)

Six gods.

Thank you for the excellent advise. From now on I will try to be less vague.