D&D General The Generic Deities of D&D

[Lanefan]

I'm basically thinking a kinder, gentler, more "warm and fuzzy" version of St. Cuthbert.

I misread this as "... a kender ... version of St. Cuthbert", which would completely rock!

 

[Minigiant]

I honestly think an attempt at creating a single "Racial Deity of Humanity" would wind up being, to use the TV Tropes term, a "Crystal Dragon Jesus". . .a fantasy pastiche of Abrahamic religion, as the single real-world predominant deity that is worshiped and most D&D players are most familiar with. . .a Lawful Good deity that is a patron of humanity, seen by his worshipers as the god of Creation, and possibly associated with things like the sun, skies, justice, protection and mercy with a church that clearly takes inspiration from the medieval and renaissance Catholic, Orthodox, and possibly Anglican denominations, especially since the D&D cleric is pretty blatantly inspired by medieval crusaders.

That's Warhammer's Sigmar and Wahammer 40k's GEM
The HRE with magic and the WRE in space.

Many of the God of Humans i can think of that is one being in fiction is "LG, Fantasy-Abrahamic, Angry Paladin (Wo)Man"

WoTC can't do it now because GW is lawsuit-happy.

 

[wingsandsword]

That's Warhammer's Sigmar and Wahammer 40k's GEM

Except the God-Emperor of Mankind is a Lawful Evil version of this. He's more a perverted, dark-side version of what I'm thinking of.

. . .and that's not just his Church, often described as "Catholic Space Nazis" (but them too), but the Emperor himself. . .he outright conquered all of humanity, eradicated all religions, then turned around and had the troops that helped him achieve that conquest be purged.

The God-Emperor is pretty much textbook Lawful Evil, not Lawful Good.

 

[Minigiant]

Except the God-Emperor of Mankind is a Lawful Evil version of this. He's more a perverted, dark-side version of what I'm thinking of.

. . .and that's not just his Church, often described as "Catholic Space Nazis" (but them too), but the Emperor himself. . .he outright conquered all of humanity, eradicated all religions, then turned around and had the troops that helped him achieve that conquest be purged.

The God-Emperor is pretty much textbook Lawful Evil, not Lawful Good.

GE is more LN to me. Textbook LN. He conquered planets, destroyed churches, then his men "died in battle" because choatic gods were siphoned off any human worship. In D&D, GE would not have to cleanse all thought and would revert to LG. There are other good and neutral gods who can siphon.

In FR, he'd be human Moradin except he'd actually be active.

 

[Undrave]

Most races have a class they are particularly good at (admittedly in 5e "particularly" isn't as strong as it was in previous editions). I don't see one for humans. If you had the human creator god somehow related to a class (like hunting to ranger or fertility to sorcerer) then it would be weird that humans are just "average" good at that or you would need to change humans to make them better. I think TSR and WotC were trying to avoid that.

[As an aside, I think the fertility god/sorcerer combo is the best one. It puffs up the ego a bit, but doesn't imply any virtue like studiousness or piety (or even industriousness) that might limit characters. Plus, all those half-elves, half-orcs, tieflings, aasimar, and genasai tend to look like humans were one of the ancestors, and "my grandpa was a dragon" is the stereotypical sorcerer origin.]

That being said, there have certainly been enough instances where part of race A ends up following some other god/demon lord/archdevil than the one that created them that you could justify a complicated history for humans that no single patron is running the show. Being able to do that while not offending a bunch of people or being "over the top" pro-human seems likely to be difficult. [Of course, the origin story humans tell themselves should be "over the top" pro-human].

Edit: in hindsight, it would be easy to change all the races so that there are "secret histories", so, for example, Moradin tells his clerics that he created the dwarves, but he might just be the latest guy running the show, and a 1,000 years ago, when he took over, his guys broke a bunch of statues and destroyed a bunch of scrolls saying that the last "God of Dwarves" created them.

Elves live a long time, so that is why the drow origin involves other deities than Lolth (someone alive might actually remember what happened.

What about Bards? With their dilettante styling, and the human bonud feat and floating skills, it’s a good match. And the whole ‘humans will bone anything’ and ‘Bards will seduce anything’ cliches. Maybe a sort of Dionysus/Orpheus type figure. A God of Art, Love and Community!

 

[Parmandur]

Possibly, but Bahamut was given stats which mean he wasn't as "powerful" as Bane and Moradin who were deemed to be too strong to be given stats. I believe I read somewhere they in theory had Bane at level 38-39 and Moradon at 40.

None of them got stats in the PHB, IIRC, which is all I ever really dug into in depth.

 

[dave2008]

None of them got stats in the PHB, IIRC, which is all I ever really dug into in depth.

Well no, there are not typical stats for deities in the PHB of any issue of D&D that I am aware off. Off the top of my head the following gods got stats in 4e:
Tiamat
Bahamut
Vecna
Torog
Lolth
Sekola (exarch of Melora)
Blibdoolpoolp (demigod or something in 4e)
Maglubiyet (exarch of Bane / former deity in 4e)

Several other gods (like Bane, Gruumsh, and Melora had extensive articles, but no stats).

 

[gyor]

Like RuinExplorer, I'm of the opinion the way most D&D settings model religion is very clumsy and awkward. Sure, it doesn't model polytheism correctly (as pointed out, not enough of deities useful to the average man) but it is also terribly anachronistic. In societies modelled off medieval and early modern in sophistication (like the Forgotten Realms) why is the religion resembling more primitive hearth style gods of ancient times. Why do no settings actually attempt to model the far more interesting religious developments of late antiquity and beyond?

My approach is more like Eberron's (which IMO is far better), no actual proof that the gods truly exist, allowing you to build interesting and complex religious traditions with histories and links to each other. Far better that than the weird disconnected hodgepodge of deities most settings seem to have.

When you really explore religion in D&D there is more depth then one would think, if you know where to look. Still I think so much more could be done with religion in D&D then what they are doing with it, including settings like the Forgotten Realms.

Really this is a complex question. There is so many angles to explore this I don't honestly know where to start. It varies between editions and within editions. There are cool things like the Adama, the Lorebringer, and other stuff that is extremely interesting.

Also remember that while some deities in FR are natives, most FR Gods are immigrants, others are ascended mortals, and all play by a set of rules that AO created and changes at his whim.

Also their are deep religious mysteries such as who AO answers to from an actually in setting perpective.

So there is a lot to chew on.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Curious. Where does this information come from? My pre-90s experience consisted of non-gamers and the media hyping up the Satanic Panic.

I was a small child at the time (or not even born!) but if you read up on early D&D players and DMs, including contemporary accounts posted as articles here on ENWorld I believe, you will frequently see it off-hand mentioned that this or that early DM or early designer was a person of faith. Dragonlance, for example, was designed by two fairly devout people. It's probably worth noting that most Americans of that era were people of faith, so this is unsurprising, I think.

Certainly plenty of non-gamers etc. hyped the "Satanic panic" angle, but that didn't stop people who were firm in their faith from playing (especially before that whole thing - the panic didn't start until the 1980s - the book that started it was from 1980, and it didn't spread widely until later - and D&D had been going since 1974).

As a personal note, the DM who taught me D&D in 1989-ish was a woman of faith, and I used to run D&D for entire group of people who were all mild-to-strong believers in the early 1990s (unusual in the UK!), none of who put the slightest credence in the Satanic stuff.

Also their are deep religious mysteries such as who AO answers to from an actually in setting perpective.

AO (an obvious allusion to Alpha-Omega, a Judeo-Christian motif) is interesting in the context of what I'm saying as a counter-example to my general point. However, I believe the fact that AO has been fairly consistently minimized and kept at a safe distance supports the general thrust of what I am saying.

GE is more LN to me. Textbook LN. He conquered planets, destroyed churches, then his men "died in battle" because choatic gods were siphoned off any human worship. In D&D, GE would not have to cleanse all thought and would revert to LG. There are other good and neutral gods who can siphon.

In FR, he'd be human Moradin except he'd actually be active.

I think we have to consider which version of 40K's GE we're discussing here. The 1980s and 1990s version was pretty clearly LE by D&D standards, because he required constant human sacrifices (literally constant - sometimes a conveyor belt was involved - it seems like many or all, depending on source, were unwilling, too) to maintain his power, and his agents, working in his name, and with his full apparent divine support, would do things like murder planets with billions of human inhabitants, often on somewhat flimsy reasoning.

He's far beyond any line which could reasonably be considered LN, because sheer enormity of the acts of genocide and mass destruction committed directly in his name makes the greatest devils of D&D look like friendly puppies by comparison. Asmodeus would blanch at some of that stuff, even.

Yet it is all to a very specific order and purpose - so clearly he's Lawful.

More recently, some depictions have attempted to tone this down, with stuff like him requiring far fewer or no human sacrifices (again depending on source), or them all being willing sacrifices, and Exterminatus and the like being used far more cautiously and with a lot more hand-wringing, and you might, if you took the most generous possible take on all of those, get to LN. It's all a bit of a giant retcon and still inconsistent, though.

But it's the Blood War, essentially. LE vs CE, because Chaos is most assuredly CE. LN would be more like the Tau, who are not involved in the same kind of genocide and mass-murder as a matter of course (whereas it is literally how the Emperor and his empire work), but do some incredibly creepy things in the name of order (mass sterilization of humans in their space, for example).

Literally no currently existing faction in 40K could be seen as Good in the D&D sense, I'd argue. You might have been able to have Squats as LG when they were still around, but no more. Individuals can be, of course.

I would agree with your general point that the Emperor started LG, then became LN out of necessity, but in many/most portrayals, I would say he is clearly LE. This is the result of the extreme actions he's had to take to stay "alive" and to fight Chaos, sure, but it's clearly that he's been brought down to the level of Chaos, despite better intentions. Without such powerful adversaries, he'd probably go back to being LG, as you say.

 

[dave2008]

I was a small child at the time (or not even born!) but if you read up on early D&D players and DMs, including contemporary accounts posted as articles here on ENWorld I believe, you will frequently see it off-hand mentioned that this or that early DM or early designer was a person of faith. Dragonlance, for example, was designed by two fairly devout people. It's probably worth noting that most Americans of that era were people of faith, so this is unsurprising, I think.

I know based on statistical data that is probably true, but since I was a child in the '70s and an atheist (with agnostic parents), it always feels odd to me. Though I will say the term "people of faith" in the USA covers a very broad spectrum from people who just believe god exists (and are basically ignorant of the church and its teachings) to people you take the bible literally.