D&D General Can There Be Non-Problematic Fertility Deities?

[MGibster]

There's no reason to have statues of a Priapus analogue in your game if you think it's an issue (although, ring toss...), and maybe don't add in temple prostitutes if you don't think your players will be able to handle it.

I wasn't going to add temple prostitutes until you told me I had to!

I think a lot of this would be so far in the background of a campaign setting anyway that it probably wouldn't really come up unless the DM specifically notes the statues of Priapus lining the street, parts of which have been knocked off.

Yeah. Others have already said it, but in D&D we're typically focused on kicking down doors, killing things, and taking their treasure. Even as a wee gamer, I didn't typically focus on prurient interests instead preferring over-the-top violence and gore like a normal person.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

And a whole lot of people after the first Suicide Squad movie who said Joker/Harley -- an explicitly abusive relationship -- were "relationship goals." People can be dumb.

I'd facepalm, but there's people who thought Homelander was the good guy.

 

[the Jester]

Sure. I think you are using the back of a wrench for a hammer, is all.

EDIT: Nevermind.

 

[the Jester]

Fertility, as such, is probably best broken up into its agricultural sense/s, as mentioned above, and a sense perhaps best named "Family." Otherwise it tends to end up as "Motherhood," which is where it becomes problematic. (The examples above of non-mammals might have their own meanings, here.)

My campaign's fertility god is the Forgotten King, whose seed gave rise to all living things.

 

[Gradine]

For OP, essentially any deities of "home and hearth" have got you covered!

Also, if you're in team "D&D isn't suited for sex stuff" you might want to choose a less yonic descriptor of "true" D&D than "going into holes"

 

[Incenjucar]

There are plenty of things that benefit sex and reproduction efforts that apply elsewhere. Ignoring the many jokes possible, healing, protection, divination, stealth, environmental control, food and water, poison detection, and so on would be amazing in the real world.

 

[Indagare Nogitsune]

I think it's less that a fertility god(dess) is inherently problematic and more that D&D is a game of heroic adventure. Going home to raise babies is generally a successful retirement for an adventurer, so it's not really an area that people playing the game have a use for rules for. There's not a need for cleric spells specifically about improving fertility, so there's no reason to create gods or domains focused on it.

My thing is that the general populace will want to worship fertility deities and, however many dungeons the adventurers go into, it's not quite sense that someone, at some point, wouldn't come from a Deity of Fertility. Indeed, a blighted land could be the ideal spot for one such Cleric to work in: restoring the fertility. The Fisher King is an example of this.

I hadn't considered the Life domain as such, but it does make sense.

 

[Fifinjir]

There's also a potential for abilities and spells being inappropriate for the theme itself, like the unfortunate Love domain for clerics.

You’d think that, with all the many depictions of what you can do with “the power of love!” out there (including shooting lasers with it), WotC wouldn’t have much trouble thinking of something for it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There are plenty of things that benefit sex and reproduction efforts that apply elsewhere. Ignoring the many jokes possible, healing, protection, divination, stealth, environmental control, food and water, poison detection, and so on would be amazing in the real world.

Purify food and water would save more lives than any dragon killer ever could.

 

[Questianor]

I think the relative (though I should say not absolute) dearth of fertility deities in D&D (and D&D-likes) conpared to their abundance in real life is simply because making children and rearing families is not generally the sort of things that comes up a lot for adventurers. From a pure worldbuilding/verisimilitude perspective it makes total sense for there to be fertility deities who have priests that go around and bless people to be more fecund and have healthy children, but a "Fertility Domain Cleric" who can do things like cast Enhance Virility or Purify Womb isn't very useful in a dungeon. I'm sure a creative game designer can come up with some creative spells that could make the concept work but it's not as straightforward as the "the god of storms has blessed you with the powet to shoot lightning at goblins" or "the god of war has given you the ability to hit things really good".