D&D General A Gruumsh Of A Different Type

[Ralif Redhammer]

As much as I love all those pantheons and nuances, yeah, it gets confusing when, say Clangeddin is the dwarven god of battle, and Tempus or Kord is just the god of battle, not the human god of battle.

4e tried to move towards a simpler pantheon, and I actually consider the Dawn War pantheon my favorite, with just the right granularity while not spamming you with a ton of different deities.

I think the real problem is that settings like FR and Greyhawk just have too many deities. Especially racial deities.
Unpopular Opinion: Either have only racial deities or none at all.

 

[Bohandas]

I think the real problem is that settings like FR and Greyhawk just have too many deities.

I can see this. Like how can you have a dozen different sun gods who don't even work together? Even if the Faerunian sun gods work together they still don;t work with the Maztican or Mulhurandi sun gods

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I can see this. Like how can you have a dozen different sun gods who don't even work together? Even if the Faerunian sun gods work together they still don;t work with the Maztican or Mulhurandi sun gods

Wait, why does it matter if they work together?
Like, if we imagine all the pagan pantheons of earth to be real, I wouldn't expect Ra and Apollo to work together.

If we imagine a world in which Apollo's chariot isn't metaphorical at all, but is in fact the actual literal sun, maybe there is an issue, but otherwise...eh

 

[Minigiant]

As much as I love all those pantheons and nuances, yeah, it gets confusing when, say Clangeddin is the dwarven god of battle, and Tempus or Kord is just the god of battle, not the human god of battle.

I can see this. Like how can you have a dozen different sun gods who don't even work together? Even if the Faerunian sun gods work together they still don;t work with the Maztican or Mulhurandi sun gods

Exactly.

If there are 15 war gods, why would one decide to be a racial diety. One can think deities don't think like humanoids but it doesn;t take more that a few brain cells to go convert more than one race.

Why wouldn't Gruumsh want to convert dwarves? He'd want to convert them or actively attempt to absorb their war god.
So Gruumsh would attempt to broaden him to snatch up people of all races. With Punk Rock and Sports!!

 

[Charlaquin]

As much as I love all those pantheons and nuances, yeah, it gets confusing when, say Clangeddin is the dwarven god of battle, and Tempus or Kord is just the god of battle, not the human god of battle.

4e tried to move towards a simpler pantheon, and I actually consider the Dawn War pantheon my favorite, with just the right granularity while not spamming you with a ton of different deities.

Why not both? I use the dawn war pantheon (plus Selune) but also break them down into different pantheons for different faiths.

Primordials: Tharizdun
Archfae: Corellon, Sehanine, Gruumsh, Lolth
Celestials: Pelor, Selune, Ioun, Bane, Avandra, Kord, Melora
Elder Dragons: Bahamut, Tiamat
Ascended Mortals: The Raven Queen, Vecna, Erathis (Kind of, my take on her is a bit different)
Dwarven Gods: Moradin, Torog
Thanotheist God: He Who Was, Asmodeus

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Exactly.

If there are 15 war gods, why would one decide to be a racial diety. One can think deities don't think like humanoids but it doesn;t take more that a few brain cells to go convert more than one race.

Why wouldn't Gruumsh want to convert dwarves? He'd want to convert them or actively attempt to absorb their war god.
So Gruumsh would attempt to broaden him to snatch up people of all races. With Punk Rock and Sports!!

Why would he, though? Outside of FR's (IMO) absurd notion that gods have to be worshipped to survive and get more powerful the more followers they have, it's pretty easy to imagine any given god only really caring about a given group of people.

 

[Minigiant]

Why would he, though? Outside of FR's (IMO) absurd notion that gods have to be worshipped to survive and get more powerful the more followers they have, it's pretty easy to imagine any given god only really caring about a given group of people.

Well it depends if deities are completely independent of followers or if there is a direct or indirect relationship between deity and followers.
And that all come down to cosmology and worldbuilding.

But in worlds with racial deities, wouldn't it be direct? Why would the overdeity allow giant gods to create giants and elf deities to make elves and orc deities to make orcs?
That's why racial dieties make no sense unless they all are racial and regional.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well it depends if deities are completely independent of followers or if there is a direct or indirect relationship between deity and followers.
And that all come down to cosmology and worldbuilding.

But in worlds with racial deities, wouldn't it be direct? Why would the overdeity allow giant gods to create giants and elf deities to make elves and orc deities to make orcs?
That's why racial dieties make no sense unless they all are racial and regional.

Why would there be an “overdeity”?

But even if we assume there is one, for some reason, why wouldn’t they “allow” the different gods to create mortal races in their own image?

 

[Minigiant]

Why would there be an “overdeity”?

But even if we assume there is one, for some reason, why wouldn’t they “allow” the different gods to create mortal races in their own image?

It encourages divine war.

You'll have racial pantheons fighting each other and within each other.

 

[Tonguez]

I can see this. Like how can you have a dozen different sun gods who don't even work together? Even if the Faerunian sun gods work together they still don;t work with the Maztican or Mulhurandi sun gods

To be fair the Mesopatamians had about 5 sun gods, albeit Utu was the main one, plus they recognised a number of ‘foreign’ sun gods too