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

[Ilbranteloth]

Most 1e dungeon masters homebrewed their own campaign setting and never used TSR campaign settings.

AD&D 1e only had three core rulebooks: Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide, and Monster Manual.

The 1e Deities & Demigods is noncore. It is officially an optional supplemental splatbook. The book itself makes clear its rules are noncore: "...everything contained within this book is guidelines not rules. DDG is an aid for the DM, not instructions.

"We would not presume to tell a Dungeon Master how to set up his or her campaign's religious system. Probably no facet of AD&D varies more from campaign to campaign than this, and that's the way it should be."

1e instructs DMs to invent their own worlds according to their own imaginations, and supply whatever religion was appropriate for that world.

That's simply not true. TSR marketed all of the hardcover books as core books. More importantly, it explicitly states it right in the forward to Deities & Demigods:

"Deities & Demigods is an indispensable part of the whole of AD&D. Do not fall into the error of regarding it as a supplement. It is integral to Dungeon Mastering a true AD&D campaign. Experience players will immediately concur with this evaluation, for they already know how important alignment is, how necessary the deity is to the cleric, and how interaction of the various alignments depends on the entities which lead them. Those readers not well-grounded in ongoing campaigns must take my word for all of this, although they will soon discover for themselves how crucial the deities of the campaign milieu are."

As I already pointed out, your quote isn't stating that is isn't core, it states that it's not a book of rules. It is a book of guidelines, which was different from what had been published before, because each DMs setting was different and the way the gods fit into that setting is crucial. It's not a statement of whether to use the book or not, it's instructions on how to use the book. Otherwise people would just consider it a book of "monsters" and try to go kill the gods (which is what they did anyway!).

For example, there are variant rules in the 5e PHB. They are still core rules. They are optional, but still core. That's quite different from a Forgotten Realms supplement, which has no place in a Dragonlance campaign for example.

Regardless, the concept of what is core and what is a splatbook has evolved over the years, and it's clear based on TSR's marketing that they considered it a core book.

Now that doesn't mean that you can't run a monotheistic campaign, or one with no gods. But the game was designed around the concept of multiple gods.

Yes, AD&D (and D&D before it) encouraged DMs to make their own campaign. I don't think there's anyway to judge "most" because as time went on, and the published adventures sales continued to increase, which then expanded into multiple campaign settings, it certainly seems to me that a significant part of the AD&D community used published materials instead of/in addition to home brew.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Furthermore if the hero PC cleric reveres a deity, then evil clerics, by definition of the class, should also revere a deity, result being polytheism, unless you are willing to accept that they could be the same deity, just each cleric interpretting the dogma differently.

There's actually a difference between polytheism (where a religion recognizes and worships multiple gods) and a world where there are multiple religions, each with their own god(s). I'm sure there's a term for the second, but I can't find it. But in the second case, one of the defining features is that each religion doesn't recognize the other gods as divine, and may not even recognize them at all.

Of course, this is quite different in D&D where the gods are not based on the faith of a religion (although they gain power from it), but are explicitly designed beings that live in their own planes and can actually be verified in person by characters or other creatures from the material worlds in many different ways. So when the church of Cyric states that Cyric is the only god, and the only being worthy of worship, that's technically a monotheistic religion. But there are other beings classified as "gods" which in game terms means they are able to grant divine powers to clerics (although this is a bit less explicit in 5e).

EDIT: @Yaarel - I have a question, I'm not a huge fan of tieflings and dragonborn and yet it doesn't stop me from running games without PC monstrous races. Also I remove resurrection and raised dead spells and the Lucky feat and add/adjust mechanics where I see fit to suit my vision for my homebrewed worlds.
What is really stopping you from doing the same on the section or fluff relating to deities? Why does the hobby have to cater to your specific needs and exclude all others who take and use what they want from the book?

Absolutely. No dragonborn or tieflings! (Actually, I have them, but very, very different.) But yes, to your (and really @Yaarel's) point. Home-brew is king. Especially in OD&D, AD&D (1e) and 5e. I'd argue that 5e is really more about home-brew than any other edition. As you pointed out, AD&D (and OD&D before it) was home-brew because it had to be. There wasn't enough published. This changed dramatically in 2e. But more importantly, 5e is a better designed and simpler rule system, and extremely easy to tweak. Plus it has the benefit of the internet, with DMsGuild for "official" home-brew, and all of the various forums and blogs for "unofficial" home-brew.

They also dialed the fluff way back in 5e, compared to 4e, in the PHB and DMG. What fluff is there encompasses most of the previously published worlds, and even some historical elements too. It's the first edition since 2e that doesn't include a specific set of deities for the core rules.

Actually, looking at it, 2e is the most non-specific about religion. It states that in general, all you really need to know is that clerics "serve religions that can generally be described as "good" or "evil." Nothing more needs to be said about it."

There's quite a bit more discussion, but it's very non-prescriptive. Thinking back (and glancing through the PHB), I had forgotten how much the edition moved away from the strict presentation of 1e. Of course, the downplay on religion also coincided with the removal of demons and devils to appease the hysteria of the time regarding it being an occult game teaching actual spells and condemning us all to hell.

 

[Henry]

The concept goes waaaaay back:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutelary_deity

But I just point to the idea that it's fun to add an aspect of faith to a PC; if a character has an ideal that they empathize with, it brings added dimension to their personality. Even beyond religion, many people have a favorite TV or literary character that they identify with or who has traits they aspire to. My wife for instance loves the character of Ripley from the Alien franchise, for her strength and ability to handle even hopeless situations. (Ripley would make a good D&D-style warrior goddess. )

 

[Yaarel]

@Ilbranteloth,

Your post suggests how formative D&D becomes more and more fixated on polytheism. Even so, its increase is ad hoc, conflictive, incomplete, and inconsistent.

With regard to the 1e Cleric class, the mentions of ‘a deity or deities’ included the possibility of monotheistic campaign settings that only have one deity.

A Cleric can be of any alignment, unless it conflicts with their deity. Meaning. In a monotheistic setting, the Cleric might be restricted to certain alignments. Or else lack access to the higher level Cleric spells.



With regard to the Druid class, the literal ‘trees’, ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ are figuratively called ‘deities’. In other words, the Druid engages nature veneration. The rules somewhat misuse the word ‘deity’. In the context of 1e rules, ‘deity’ seems to serve as a technical term that extends to include any kind of sacred concept. To be fair, the term ‘deity’ is more abstract, and can mean ‘godness’ rather than a ‘god’. The Druid lacks actual gods, but rules referring to Cleric spells sometimes conflictively apply to Druids too.



The sales pitch notwithstanding, the 1e Deities and Demigods is an optional splatbook. Gygax appears to adopt polytheism for his own campaign setting, but stops short of imposing it on other DMs who already have their own established campaign settings.

Curiously, Gygax recommends polytheism because he uses it to police the alignment system. For me, neither the polytheism nor the policing of alignment are appealing. Alignment is only useful when it is descriptive, rather than prescriptive. Whenever D&D tries to coerce the alignment system, it becomes unpleasant, even inane. Additionally, polytheism is an unfun nonstarter.



The D&D 1e Players Handbook empowered the DM to supply whatever setting the players would use, along with any kind of religious system appropriate to it, whether monotheistic, polytheistic, or other. By the time of the 3e Players Handbook, D&D becomes more dependent on official setting assumptions, with less room for DM responsibility. But even it has safety-valves. For example, the 3e SRD minimizes setting assumptions, and the Cleric class at least mentions how a Cleric might lack a deity. Thus the player at least gets a heads up, how the setting might be monotheistic, polytheistic, or philosophical. By the time of 5e, the Players Handbook freezes out DM choice of monotheism; polytheism is totalitarian, and there are insufficient safety valves.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The D&D 1e Players Handbook empowered the DM to supply whatever setting the players would use, along with any kind of religious system appropriate to it, whether monotheistic, polytheistic, or other. By the time of the 3e Players Handbook, D&D becomes more dependent on official setting assumptions, with less room for DM creativity. But even it has safety-valves. For example, the 3e SRD minimizes setting assumptions, and the Cleric class at least mentions how a Cleric might lack a deity. Thus the player at least gets a heads up that the setting might be monotheistic, polytheistic, or philosophical. By the time of 5e, the Players Handbook freezes out DM choice of monotheism; polytheism is totalitarian, and there are insufficient safety valves.

See, I disagree there are "insufficient safety valves" because by the time of 5e the Standard Operating Procedure of DnD has been well established for many decades.


"The DM, with input from the players, decides what is true at their table for their game." Call is Rule Zero, Page 44, or No Duh Sherlock but Homebrew is so accepted by the community that if your DM says "I've got a homebrew setting" no one is terribly shocked by this.


The fact that the 5e PHB does not include a line about picking a domain to worship an idea is something I need to constantly double check, because it is such an obvious thing to me that it's lack never sticks. And, despite it not being there, I still fully expect a lot of DM's and tables play it as such.


I don't think we need a line in any of the books saying "your setting can have as many or as few gods (up to and including zero) as you want" because it is a given that a homebrewing DM makes that determination for themselves, you don't need permission to homebrew.

 

[Yaarel]

The fact that the 5e PHB does not include a line about picking a domain to worship an idea is something I need to constantly double check, because it is such an obvious thing to me that it's lack never sticks.

And, despite it not being there, I still fully expect a lot of DM's and tables play it as such.

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.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

@Ilbranteloth,

Your post suggests how formative D&D becomes more and more fixated on polytheism. Even so, its increase is ad hoc, conflictive, incomplete, and inconsistent.

With regard to the 1e Cleric class, the mentions of ‘a deity or deities’ included the possibility of monotheistic campaign settings that only have one deity.

A Cleric can be of any alignment, unless it conflicts with their deity. Meaning. In a monotheistic setting, the Cleric might be restricted to certain alignments. Or else lack access to the higher level Cleric spells.

And I disagree. The text as a whole, scattered as it may be, implies a world with more than a single god. Again, I don't know if you object to several monotheistic religions in your fantasy world, just as there are many monotheistic (and polytheistic) religions in our world.

Furthermore, the text doesn't say "unless it conflicts with their deity" it says a cleric can be of any alignment, dependent upon their deity.

Meaning: A cleric can be of any alignment. The specific alignment is restricted by the choice of your deity. If you want to be a different alignment, choose a different deity.

With all of the other text supporting, implying, or outright stating that there are multiple gods in the campaign in AD&D, the mention of "deity or deity" is allowing the possibility that the cleric can actually serve more than a single deity. Again, the default is that a D&D cleric worships a single deity in a polytheistic religion.

With regard to the Druid class, the literal ‘trees’, ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ are figuratively called ‘deities’. In other words, the Druid engages nature veneration. The rules somewhat misuse the word ‘deity’. In the context of 1e rules, ‘deity’ seems to serve as a technical term that extends to include any kind of sacred concept. To be fair, the term ‘deity’ is more abstract, and can mean ‘godness’ rather than a ‘god’. The Druid lacks actual gods, but rules referring to Cleric spells sometimes conflictively apply to Druids too.

But it's more than figurative. They grant spells to the druids, and they can refuse to grant them spells as well. That's not a misuse - mechanically, in game terms, they are deities to the druid.

The sales pitch notwithstanding, the 1e Deities and Demigods is an optional splatbook. Gygax appears to adopt polytheism for his own campaign setting, but stops short of imposing it on other DMs who already have their own established campaign settings.

No, as far as the game design is concerned it's a core book. Whether players choose to treat it that way is different, but as Gary stated, it was an integral part of the design. Also, again, the statement of it being a "guideline" and not "rules" doesn't mitigate the fact that the rules-the framework-were based on a polytheistic approach, with a god for each alignment at the very least. What the disclaimer in Deities & Demigods is stating is that the specifics of that implementation is up to you. But it's quite clear that the assumption on the part of the designers is that everybody will be running a campaign with a polytheistic religious system.

Curiously, Gygax recommends polytheism because he uses it to police the alignment system. For me, neither the polytheism nor the policing of alignment are appealing. Alignment is only useful when it is descriptive, rather than prescriptive. Whenever D&D tries to coerce the alignment system, it becomes unpleasant, even inane.

I don't find this curious at all. Alignment was a significant part of the design at the time. That is is often confusing and misunderstood doesn't make it unpleasant or inane. It's really not all that different from the 5e trait, ideal, bond, and flaw approach for additional guidance on the personality of a given character. It's also a good shorthand for tying a deity to a cleric without having to design a complex religion with tenets and beliefs to determine whether the cleric has strayed too far or not.

While I personally prefer the more complex approach of developed religions and oaths and such for classes such as clerics and paladins, the simplicity of the alignment system in that regard is missing. Actually, the entire concept that a cleric can stray and lose their abilities has pretty much been removed.

Additionally, polytheism is an unfun nonstarter.

For you. Clearly this is not the case in RPGs in general, nor in fantasy fiction for that matter. As you've noted, the approach became more integrated as time went on, and it hasn't stopped people from playing, nor even from taking it farther and debating the actual nature of their fictional gods. If anything it seems to have sparked a lot of passion for their campaigns. It's not even the case for the majority of the people in this thread.

The D&D 1e Players Handbook empowered the DM to supply whatever setting the players would use, along with any kind of religious system appropriate to it, whether monotheistic, polytheistic, or other. By the time of the 3e Players Handbook, D&D becomes more dependent on official setting assumptions, with less room for DM responsibility. But even it has safety-valves. For example, the 3e SRD minimizes setting assumptions, and the Cleric class at least mentions how a Cleric might lack a deity. Thus the player at least gets a heads up, how the setting might be monotheistic, polytheistic, or philosophical. By the time of 5e, the Players Handbook freezes out DM choice of monotheism; polytheism is totalitarian, and there are insufficient safety valves.

Actually, the wording the in the 5e PHB is pretty close to AD&D, "the most important question to consider is which deity to serve and what principles you want your character to embody...Check with your DM to learn which deities are in your campaign. If you only have one, then it's simple - pick a domain and continue.

You can choose to read only those passages in the AD&D 1e books that don't include the word "gods" and ignore things like the fact that druids are a sub-class of cleric, and receive their powers in the same manner of a cleric, and can be judged and lose those abilities from their gods, and you can ignore that the gods in AD&D are directly tied to the alignment system, and thus must have more gods than one, etc.

Or you can do the same thing and ignore the sentences that you don't like in 5e. There isn't anything hard-coded to alignment in 5e like it is in 1e, which seems to be another part of AD&D you dislike. But the overwhelming amount of material published before, during, and after AD&D is that the intention, and the default, is that AD&D assumes a polytheistic approach to religion in the game.

 

[Yaarel]

Furthermore, the text doesn't say "unless it conflicts with their deity" it says a cleric can be of any alignment, dependent upon their deity.

Meaning: A cleric can be of any alignment. The specific alignment is restricted by the choice of your deity. If you want to be a different alignment, choose a different deity.

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.



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.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

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.

I can definitely see some business reasons to back up the decisions. But that simply means that they need to continue to use them from time to time to maintain the branding. It doesn't preclude them from writing a paragraph promoting monotheism.

But let me address your first statement from a different direction.

First, you are assuming that there was an intent to support monotheistic campaigns (I think the evidence is exceedingly thin in AD&D and earlier), and then you take that further to indicate that WotC intentionally removed that possibility, for whatever reason.

Why was it conscious and intentional? Did the support exist in 4e? 3e?

I don't have a 3e PHB handy, but the 3.5 steers you directly into a specific pantheon. It goes on to say this:

"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."

So it allows for a cleric that doesn't worship any god, but it continues to describe how they relate to the rest of the polytheistic world.

I don't remember it being there. I don't think there was anything to remove. Your examples for 1e amount to portions of a few sentences that I read differently. Nor do those eliminate all of the other text that points to polytheism in the PHB/DMG. More importantly, all of the published AD&D material on the subject of gods and religion, Deities & Demigods and the various campaign settings along with many articles in Dragon also supported a polytheistic approach exclusively. It is extremely clear what TSR believed to be the default approach to AD&D religion simply by looking at what they released.

There wasn't anything for them to remove, intentionally or otherwise. When 3e was developed, they decided they needed a default campaign world, and went with Greyhawk. I think it was a logical choice, and it's certainly the setting that most closely fit the AD&D rules. In 4e they decided (explicitly so and they released material explaining the design process), that D&D needed it's own lore. They took it upon themselves to alter established lore that they felt came from other sources, to create new lore. And the game was tied to a polytheistic approach to religion.

5e took a different (and in my opinion, much better approach). It looked at the legacy of D&D as a whole. When it came time to look at clerics (and the gods), the legacy is polytheism. Starting in OD&D with historically-based religions, then moving to setting specific options. The concept of specialty priests which started with druids, expanded to cover the range of options with a polytheistic world that started in 2e.

So 5e brings in all of those concepts, but relegates the gods themselves (for their settings and some historical ones), to an appendix.

So then you're left with specialty clerics. You don't seem to have ever had an issue with druids, and the others are simply many aspects of a religion. A monotheistic god can still support the different domains, with each being a facet of the whole. Not all that unlike the concept of saints, although obviously quite different in a game world.

As was mentioned earlier - I can't stand dragonborn. But it's very clear that since 4e they are a central part of WotC marketing and design strategy. They are integrated into the game through the art, and the text. They've been wise (in my opinion) to minimize their continued presence in SCAG, but they are still there. It's just left up to the DM to determine by how much.

Like it or not, they are there. But it certainly doesn't make me even consider, for even a split second, that I won't purchase or use the book. Because outside of the handful of sentences or paragraphs, they aren't there.

 

[Yaarel]

First, you are assuming that there was an intent to support monotheistic campaigns (I think the evidence is exceedingly thin in AD&D and earlier), and then you take that further to indicate that WotC intentionally removed that possibility, for whatever reason.

Why was it conscious and intentional? Did the support exist in 4e? 3e?

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.