D&D General Build the "Definitive Pantheon"

[doctorbadwolf]

Thor has the benefit of actual mythologies and sagas to make him interesting, but I think that Kord suffices for D&D.


If "strength" existed as a domain, it would probably be relegated to an Exarch, as per 4e, a lesser god who exemplified it. As a major god for a pantheon? I agree that there is no reason to have a major god who was just a god of strength or even that strength itself is that noteworthy. This is where I typically see Kord more as a god of athleticism than strength.

I can dig that. Tbh it’s possible that Kord just needs some sort of quirk. Like Thor is full of oddities, he has a very memorable look, he has named artifacts that are important, goats that come back to life, etc.

Kord doesn’t seem to have any weird.

And you are being unnecessarily adversarial, if not condescending. Would you mind toning it done please? If I skipped past the point or was mistaken in your point, then don't just tell me that I missed it, please clarify your position first before resorting to snapping off at me. Please.

Even rereading it, I don’t see it, but sure I can make an effort to be nice and more patient. Sorry I came across aggro.

The point was simply that the idea of it being better to have strength and storms as two separate gods because both together is doing too much is absurd, because strength isn’t a significant domain. Take Storms away from Kord and I’d label him the god of physical competition/struggle/striving before I’d call him god of strength, and I don’t even like Kord.

Btw if I had to keep Kord I would probably make him the god of Seafarers, and of athletes, elite warriors, anyone who seeks glory through being the best. So acrobats and dancers might even look to Kord, or one of his Exarchs.

For Storms, I’d consider another 3 deity triangle, of Melora (Nature and The Land), Mananan, Kord, or Lyr (The Sea and Seafarers), and a witchy goddess of The Sky and The Moons, and Storms would be a lesser deity that is the child of Sehanine and the Sea god.

Agreed again.

 

[Mecheon]

That's my point


Kord is either a lame battle god, a lame storm god, or split personality because his 2 main portfolios conflict.

They don't conflict at all? Like, he's just athletic Thor

Regardless though, if you think that's a conflict in portfolios, you'd hate actual IRL goddess Inanna/Ishtar, yeah, That Ishtar, goddess of love, fertility, civilisation and most importantly war. Very much not anything to do with marriage in addition

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Then who is the god of honorable, fair, challenge and fights?

Either Bahamut (for the fairness), Erathis (she is based on Athena, after all), or, possibly, Bane.

Or maybe there just isn't a god who cares a lot about that. The Norse didn't have a specific "messenger" god, even though many other pantheons did. (Hermiod comes closest, but that was really only because he was the one who volunteered to go to Hel on Frigg's behalf to petition for Baldur to return to life.) The Egyptians had plenty of gods of war, but I don't know of any that would have represented honorable combat; the closest to that might be Set/Seth/Sutekh, but he was a reconciled evildoer and specifically the god of foreigners, who turned the horrible dangers of the deep desert, the "red land," against the enemies of Egypt.

But my core point is there is no need to give Kord or Melora 2 major portfolios while having ultra specific people like Torog, Zehir, and Lloth out here.

There is no need for having any deities at all, so "need" is the wrong standard. What is useful? What is interesting? What fits a mythic structure?

You would create a better pantheon by splitting some of the gods up and giving some of other (mostly evil) gods more general and common portfolios.

I strongly disagree. Plenty of religions have gods or godlike figures that are portrayed as evil or understood to be evil, or at least as Very Bad Things, but still objects of worship. Shinto, for example, has plenty of not at all positive figures that are still understood to be divine. Izanami, for example. Or quite nasty deities from Greece, like the Furies, Nemesis, or (in certain versions) the precursor to what we now call Persephone. Propitiatory worship is very much a thing, as is "revere a dark, malevolent force so it will like you and hurt the people you dislike."

Part of the way D&D evil deities work is by them having a major aspect to draw in worshippers. There has to a base for push back either from the powerful enemies or the unreliable duality of the deities themselves.

D&D Tiamat is a goddess of greed and vengeance. Lots of people want to take what others have or get revenge against their enemies. It's not hard to see how that could spawn cults.

Otherwise you have to pull a Matt Mercer and lock up all the powers because you nerfed all the evil powers too hard.

Nah. There are numerous other solutions. The Primal Ban is one, as 4e did; Dragonlance has its particular quirky ways; Eberron has the "whether the gods exist is an article of faith" option; 13th Age's solution is pretty neat, where the gods of light and gods of darkness would be competing with one another, but those friggin' reality-destroying demons are too much of a threat, because the gods of darkness want to rule, not to destroy. For my own stuff, I've three or four different tacks I'd consider taking. There are options.

Dawn War Pantheon only works in an post post apocalypse world like Nentir Vale. It's a great pantheon. One of the best. But it doesn't work in a generic world. Without the War, the Dawn War Pantheon is too strong. AKA you'd have to beef up the evil gods, "Greek" up the pantheon, or free the primordials.

Again: I disagree. The Dawn War pantheon is strong, yes. It's also horribly weak in other ways. The Primal Spirits could kick ALL the gods out on their own, without outside aid. That must have stung, to be outshone by an accidental side-effect of their creation.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Kord doesn’t seem to have any weird.

In my headcanon (which I purely recognize as headcanon), Melora is his sister and Bahamut is his on-again, off-again boyfriend. This is a source of consternation for both Bahamut and Moradin, whose divine couch Kord is semi-permanently surfing now that he has no divine domain of his own.

 

[Minigiant]

They don't conflict at all? Like, he's just athletic Thor

Regardless though, if you think that's a conflict in portfolios, you'd hate actual IRL goddess Inanna/Ishtar, yeah, That Ishtar, goddess of love, fertility, civilisation and most importantly war. Very much not anything to do with marriage in addition

RL Pantheons and Adventuring Game Pantheons serve different purposes.

A deity created for RL Earth might not be great for Generic D&D Setting #5.

"Boring Athletic Thor" isn't a great deity for an adventuring game. Neither is "Passive Neutral Motherly Goddess of all Nature".

They are passable but not enough to make Dawn War pantheon definitive.

Then you get the lameness of the evil gods where they are Racial Patron Deities but not Racial Patron Deities but the nonRacial portions of them are ultra niche.

Then you have the not listed primordials. And all the dead unlisted gods.

And you get a pantheon that is one of the best but by definition is too incomplete to be definitive.

 

[Seramus]

Dawn War needs a AGENT OF CHAOS!
Full on problem causing jerk-hole who promotes freedom by creating distracting chaos and random explosions!

It cracks me up that Critical Role actually did this specific thing. Even had the god in question come into conflict with Sehanine.

 

[SkidAce]

The only reason I don't use it more is that the story of the gods underlies the entire cosmology, which a lot of people like, but I prefer gods/pantheons to be a little more local in scope.

Yeah, except for Ptah, Tiamat, and Bahamut, I reign the "gods" in down to about basic Immortal set level.

 

[Mecheon]

RL Pantheons and Adventuring Game Pantheons serve different purposes.

A deity created for RL Earth might not be great for Generic D&D Setting #5.

"Boring Athletic Thor" isn't a great deity for an adventuring game. Neither is "Passive Neutral Motherly Goddess of all Nature".

They are passable but not enough to make Dawn War pantheon definitive.

Then you get the lameness of the evil gods where they are Racial Patron Deities but not Racial Patron Deities but the nonRacial portions of them are ultra niche.

Then you have the not listed primordials. And all the dead unlisted gods.

And you get a pantheon that is one of the best but by definition is too incomplete to be definitive.

D&D decided to bootstrap every single deity it could find into a single setting back in Deities and Demigods, let's not pretend that didn't happen. You can even go and visit them in Planescape and people specifically complained about the half-assed zero effort "Eh let's plonk actual Egyptian gods here" parts of it didn't call them out.

Atheletic Thor is a fine deity. Like.... When the Romans ran into the Nordic people and heard about Thor, they didn't go "Storms? That's clearly Zeus". Nah, they went "He's a giant slayer? That's Hercules". That's Kord, right there. Passive neutral motherly goddess of all nature also works because, shock and horror, that's your immediate "Yup that's the druid goddess". Its different to IRL stuff but it also tells us ocean travel isn't necessarily important to the people worshipping her, that the ocean is associated with nature in general as opposed to a seperate thing

Racial Patron Deities are stupid and unfortunately, that's the mess D&D's had for decades. Regardless though, the only ones relevant on that are Gruumsh and Lolth, both of who are absolute long-standing folks who need a rethink, and Zehir who's just your Pop Culture Evil Snake God

Primordials aren't gods. Just like how in Greek myth, the Titans weren't gods, despite the fact they're the parents of the gods and a few of them (Chronus, at least in terms of being linked with Saturn) straddle the line

The incompleteness is a feature of it being the Dawn War pantheon, but its miles ahead of any other D&D pantheon outside of Eberroon

 

[Mind of tempest]

D&D decided to bootstrap every single deity it could find into a single setting back in Deities and Demigods, let's not pretend that didn't happen. You can even go and visit them in Planescape and people specifically complained about the half-assed zero effort "Eh let's plonk actual Egyptian gods here" parts of it didn't call them out.

Atheletic Thor is a fine deity. Like.... When the Romans ran into the Nordic people and heard about Thor, they didn't go "Storms? That's clearly Zeus". Nah, they went "He's a giant slayer? That's Hercules". That's Kord, right there. Passive neutral motherly goddess of all nature also works because, shock and horror, that's your immediate "Yup that's the druid goddess". Its different to IRL stuff but it also tells us ocean travel isn't necessarily important to the people worshipping her, that the ocean is associated with nature in general as opposed to a seperate thing

Racial Patron Deities are stupid and unfortunately, that's the mess D&D's had for decades. Regardless though, the only ones relevant on that are Gruumsh and Lolth, both of who are absolute long-standing folks who need a rethink, and Zehir who's just your Pop Culture Evil Snake God

Primordials aren't gods. Just like how in Greek myth, the Titans weren't gods, despite the fact they're the parents of the gods and a few of them (Chronus, at least in terms of being linked with Saturn) straddle the line

The incompleteness is a feature of it being the Dawn War pantheon, but its miles ahead of any other D&D pantheon outside of Eberroon

how are the titans not gods, a god has to many possible meanings not to include some of them?
it is not like the several different interpretations of its serveral subtypes of the faith.

regardless I think making some of the big portfolios more spread out is good so we can have more gods and more importantly more interesting god interactions as dnd unlike real faiths needs plot lines assuming your building for the assumed generic dnd setting

 

[Aldarc]

In my headcanon (which I purely recognize as headcanon), Melora is his sister and Bahamut is his on-again, off-again boyfriend. This is a source of consternation for both Bahamut and Moradin, whose divine couch Kord is semi-permanently surfing now that he has no divine domain of his own.

In some sources of the 4e Dawn War mythos, Kord is the brother of Bane and the deceased war and fire god Tuern.