D&D 5E Clerics building temples to more than one god

[MNblockhead]

In your campaigns, would a cleric building temples to more than one god be acceptable, or would they be expected to be wholly devoted to a single god?

Do you have any mechanics in your games that would let you benefit from spreading your devotion around?

In the new Theros source book, there is a new piety mechanic, but that seems to reward clerics being devoted to a single god, even though most non-cleric would pray to multiple gods.

I'm thinking reputation would work with each god and its body of worshipers being a faction.

I'm thinking faction points can lead to certain perks like piety does in Theros. But different gods would offer different perks. So if you know you were going to have to go into battle, you may pray, make generous offering, and go on quests for a the god of war. You may pray to other gods for perks to help you in other situations. I believe that Warhammer used a mechanic like this. Praying at different temples or two different gods could give you different buffs and other perks.

My current campaign is set in the Lost Lands. A cleric in the party is devoted to the god Telophus, Lesser, LN, Title: Lord of Crops and the Seasons. Spheres of Influence: Crops, the Harvest, Fields, the Seasons . Typically worshiped by farmers and halflings, some druids revering his natural cycle aspect

He has already built a temple to Telophus and has been increasing it grandeur over the campaign (using Colville's Strongholds & Followers rules). Now he wants to build a temple for Hecate:

Hecate, Greater, LE, Goddess of Evil Magic, The Arcane Mother; Evil, Knowledge, Law, Magic; Arcane spellcasters, women, hags, witches, crones, remnants of lost Arcady

There are in-story reasons for this that I won't get into here, but I'm wondering about your thoughts on this.

I use Renown and Infamy in my game using a modified system published in EN5ider that earns you larger "organization" dice the more renown you have. You can roll on a table for all your faction whenever you level up to earn boons or banes. You can also spend reputation/renown points for favors.

How would you handle donations and building of temples to multiple gods?

 

[DND_Reborn]

In my games, Clerics build temples dedicated to a primary deity, but with places of honor/worship for all the gods within the temple as well (even rival gods). Temples for my homebew panteon are considered neutral ground and violence of any sort is forbidden. Clerics (and others) who disobey the gods' wishes can face drastic consequences.

Donations go to the temple as a whole.

 

[RangerWickett]

In War of the Burning Sky's third adventure, there's a subplot about this. A city is receiving a lot of refugees, and to try to tamp down on the intercultural bickering, a paladin asks the PCs to help her win over representatives of eight prominent gods in order to create a syncretic temple that anyone can worship at.

 

[RangerWickett]

I actually went on to implement that in my home campaign, where the 8 prime gods of the pantheon eventually got linked to 8 different rooms that each temple needed, and so you could tell which god the builder favored by how much care they lavished on that room. A dining hall respected Brasseth, a library respected Churdoh, the guest quarters respected Kelida Taryaver, the infirmary respected Meliska, etc etc.

 

[cbwjm]

Only certain situations would allow a cleric to build a temple to multiple gods in my campaign. Clerics are devoted to a single god, while they might pray to other gods when entering the god's sphere of influence (for instance send a prayer to the sea god when boarding a ship). This is all good and well and they would be expected to make some sort of offering to the other gods in these instance, but they are still devoted to a single god and would only build temples to honour their god.

Those certain situations in my campaign would be the following, the dragonborn have 5 primary gods out of the 15 gods of my setting who have individual temples. The 10 low gods tend to be grouped into a single temple or have small individual shrines near locations of their spheres of influence (a farming village might have a shrine to the earthmother, for instance). In this case, a cleric of one of the low gods who wanted to build a temple would be expected to build a temple of the low gods, he might fund it himself or he might have funding from other temples and priests.

 

[Todd Roybark]

In our world it is not uncommon for areas with a shared religious tradition to have a temple complex that has shrines for different divine personalities.
For example:
Hinduism
Catholicism/Saints.

 

[Seramus]

Shared religious shrines are a good way to keep jealousy down. Certainly not fullproof, but even some destructive gods are willing to not destroy things if offerings are made and some respect is paid.

 

[Eltab]

FR has the Triad, three gods who work together. There are temples to each of them individually and to the group.
You could create historical flavor in your campaign if all really old temples in a certain era are individual, then a period of joint use, then new construction is split different ways. Or the primary god in a joint temple changes after an invasion / conquest / 'time of troubles' period.
"This temple was built to Zeus alone during the Olde Dynasty. The monastery across the way was built to Apollo originally but converted to Athena during the Rebellion. After the Zeal of Hercules rose to power, the temple was extensively remodeled so that all the gods had a chapel dedicated to them. Today the original Zeus sanctuary has been restored and the chapels that had been in that space were added to the new wing."

A cleric serving multiple gods depends on those gods. Some pantheons work together, some pantheons are composed of bitter rivals.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

In your campaigns, would a cleric building temples to more than one god be acceptable, or would they be expected to be wholly devoted to a single god?

Pantheons. Perfectly acceptable in most RL polytheistic religions, so should be quite common in a typical D&D setup. Most folk will sacrifice to whatever god seems relevant to the boon they are seeking - the god of harvest at harvest time, the god of war in a time of war etc.

 

[MarkB]

Pantheons. Perfectly acceptable in most RL polytheistic religions, so should be quite common in a typical D&D setup. Most folk will sacrifice to whatever god seems relevant to the boon they are seeking - the god of harvest at harvest time, the god of war in a time of war etc.

Exactly. In Eberron, there are probably more temples to the Sovereign Host than there are to its deities individually. For another example, the Elder Scrolls setting typically features temples and shrines devoted to individual deities, but major cities will have temples devoted to The Nine as a whole, containing individual shrines to each of them.