D&D 5E Could Theros and Tasha's Cauldron the way they're going to handle real-world pantheons?

[LuisCarlos17f]

Gods from mythology are public domain domains. This means everybody can publish their own rip-off of possible new franchises, even altering the stories totally, for example Atenea rebels against Zeus and become the supreme ruler of the Olympus, but a new Titanomachy starts. Or Atenea starts a "too good relation" with Guan Yu, a former Chinese mortal and later god war.

* The knights of the Arthurian round table would be nice as "patrons", and I miss the preislamic pantheons.

* We have to remember today officially Hindu pantheon is a religion not mythology. Don't you remember the past contriversies of Xena with the Hindu gods?

* Today when we are talking about mythologic pantheons we can't avoid to imagine it according to the look of old movies...or modern videogames.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

It's especially weird considering that with Roman syncretism, they didn't just equate their deities with the Greek equivalents, but also the Celtic, Egyptian, and the Germanic gods.

So, yeah, maybe Jupiter is Zeus. But in that case, you can also say Hercules is Thor and Mercury is Odin. (Both are how the Romans saw it!)

Odin and Mercury is an odd equivalent, but then I remember that Wednesday is for Odin/Woden/Wotan (rough equivalents), and Mecredi in French is for Mercury.

 

[wingsandsword]

The official take in the Forgotten Realms (as of 2006's Dragons of Faerun) is that "Tiamat battled an Untheric alias of Bahamut, known as Marduk the Justice Bringer, time and again, but neither wyrm could prevail", that eventually Bahamut-Marduk "killed" Tiamat "at the cost of his own life" in an event that didn't actually kill either but did demote them both from godhood, and then they both became gods again something like 2,400 years later.

Yeah, it's my understanding that the official D&D canon is that Bahamut IS Marduk, it's just an alias of his.

The same way that Tiamat is also known as Takhisis, or Tchazzar depending on where you go, Marduk is known as Bahamut (or Bahamut is known as Marduk) depending on what world you're on.

Bahamut in real world folklore/mythology isn't a deity, it's a giant sea monster in medieval Islamic cosmology, roughly equivalent to the "World Turtle" in traditional Hindu and Chinese cosmology. Since D&D cosmology is built on planes of existence and the material plane is built on crystal spheres and phlogiston, it doesn't fit, so the name for a gigantic spacefaring sea monster had to go somewhere, and I guess a giant platinum dragon is as good an answer as any.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Yeah, it's my understanding that the official D&D canon is that Bahamut IS Marduk, it's just an alias of his.

The same way that Tiamat is also known as Takhisis, or Tchazzar depending on where you go, Marduk is known as Bahamut (or Bahamut is known as Marduk) depending on what world you're on.

I think a lot of Dragonlance fans will argue against the point of Takhisis being Tiamat.

 

[dave2008]

I think a lot of Dragonlance fans will argue against the point of Takhisis being Tiamat.

They can of course argue, but I am pretty sure that is currently the official stance. And frankly it would be odd, IMO, if they were not aspects / avatars of the same entity.

This Takhisis wiki claims they were officially determined to be the same entity in both 4th and 5th edition, but with a quick look I couldn't find the references in the books they listed.

EDIT: Found it in the 5e DMG, it was under the dragon orbs:

EDIT 2: Evidently it goes back to 1e. pg 111 of the Manual of the Planes:

EDIT 3: So here is some more 5e area confirmation from WotC: Monster Mythology web article.

 

[Umbran]

Odin and Mercury is an odd equivalent, but then I remember that Wednesday is for Odin/Woden/Wotan (rough equivalents), and Mecredi in French is for Mercury.

Real world patheons were not static. We think of "Odin Allfather" as king of the gods. That's one image of the pantheon taken at a particular time. Go futher back, and the pantheon is less war-oriented - Tyr/Tyw is king of the gods, and Odin is more of a wanderer/messenger.

 

[Voadam]

Real-world pantheons in D&D have generally been a mess and usually something regulated to an appendix if at all.

Real world pantheons in D&D have generally been a big sourcebook of their own.

0e Gods, Demigods, & Heroes

1e Deities & Demigods

2e Legends & Lore

3e Deities & Demigods

4e skipped out on it in general but 5e put them in the PH similar to various D&D pantheons.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Can I finally be a Cleric of the Giant Flying Spaghetti Monster?

If there's not a write-up and domain on DMs Guild, someone's leaving money on the table.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Real world pantheons in D&D have generally been a big sourcebook of their own.

0e Gods, Demigods, & Heroes

1e Deities & Demigods

2e Legends & Lore

3e Deities & Demigods

4e skipped out on it in general but 5e put them in the PH similar to various D&D pantheons.

They've been regulated more and more to the margins as the editions have moved on.

And On Hallowed Ground, is a big collection of real-world deities with campaign specific deities. It's a Planescape setting book, but it lists almost everything they could from Legend & Lore, Monster Mythology and the various 2e campaign settings that had pantheons (Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Greyhawk and Birthright).

Using real-world pantheons seems to be a trend they're moving away from. From 2e to 3e they've dropped things like the Babylonian, Sumerian, Finnish, Celtic, Indian, Chinese and Japanese pantheons, to just focus on Norse, Greek and Egyptian. 5e starts with the Norse, Greek and Egyptian mentioned occasionally, but Tasha's Cauldron contains no references to any of them.

 

[wingsandsword]

Real world pantheons in D&D have generally been a big sourcebook of their own.

0e Gods, Demigods, & Heroes

1e Deities & Demigods

2e Legends & Lore

3e Deities & Demigods

4e skipped out on it in general but 5e put them in the PH similar to various D&D pantheons.

Also in 2e: On Hallowed Ground, Planescape's entry into the subject, which addressed a huge number of real-world pantheons and discussed how they interact on the Outer Planes and how they interact with D&D-specific pantheons and how they all fit together in the D&D multiverse.