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

[Li Shenron]

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?

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

I kind of always assume that folks in the fantasy world worship a little bit of everything, like in pagan times. A typical peasant working in a farm might pray daily to the deity of agriculture, and on specially occasions might participate in a festival to the sun goddess, or make an offer to other specific gods before going hunting, and so on. Evil deities being much less popular, but there might still be a festival to either please or bane the gods of death to ensure they stay away from the village, or a peasant might secretly make a donation to a deity of diseases if someone in the family gets ill.

OTOH about Clerics I always default to single deities. It's a bit like different professions: there are bakers, blacksmiths and tailors, and while folks need to buy services from all of them, each person works in a single profession.

I wouldn't mind having some Clerics devoted to a whole pantheon however. Maybe a small community can only afford a single Cleric who has to cover a bit of everything, or maybe there are some priests who oversee common temples or keep multiple religions tied together.

I don't use any specific rules for getting benefits from worshipping or donating.

 

[Oofta]

In my campaign temples are generally dedicated to the entire pantheon not just a single deity. You may have a small alcove dedicated to a specific god.

Only in large cities or in cities with ties to a specific deity are you going to have dedicated temples.

There may also be small shrines dedicated to specific gods, but they may only be used for special occasions.

Most clerics are generalists.

 

[The Glen]

The Mystara setting has Immortals aligned by spheres, or schools of thought, so there's temples to the different sphere where the teachings of multiple Immortals are taught.

 

[MostlyHarmless42]

One factor to consider is also the practicality of each individual place. A small town is unlikely to have either the manpower, real estate or money to afford making a different temple to each god of a pantheon. It would also not make sense to worship some dieties based on geographic location too. I.e. a god/goddess strictly related to the sea (but not storms) would not likely have temples in landlocked areas and would have at best a small shrine if every god is present in a temple. This is also likely why most gods in mang settings have a diverse portfolio (storms are common for sea gods).

Typically I like the setup of each god getting a temple in a "temple district" for larger cities, and for smaller towns I tend to have either on temple reflecting the major diety of the area with smaller shrines in or around it out of respect for other Faith's, barring it being a god whose goal is to quash said other faiths.

Red Larsh from Princes of the Apocalypse / Fae'Run has an interesting setup in where they have a single neutral temple where every deity has a shrine, but the clergy are two random clerics of two deities sent out from Waterdeep that run the temple together and each month they switch out with two random clerics sent, so it can be any sort of combination.

 

[Legatus Legionis]

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[MNblockhead]

Thanks everyone. Personally I think it is interesting to have both happening. Some clerics would feel that while they may be a devotee of one god, they must give all (or all in their religion/pantheon) due respect. But other sects may demand devotion to one and only one god even while not denying the existence of other gods.

It is interesting to see debate among Hindus over ISKON. E.g., Why does ISKCON Say That Only Krishna Should Be Worshiped and worship of other gods is Condemned? - Quora

The problem with being a DM, however, is that you are running the world and the gods and this influences the mechanics of the game.

Generally I deal with it in a number of ways.

1. If the setting has specific rules and canon about this, like Theros, I'll generally play it as written, making sure everyone is on board with that.

2. In my homebrew setting, there is room for debate over the nature or even the existence of gods. Perhaps, devotion and ritual is just another way to get the mind to tap into magic. It isn't the gods giving clerics their power any more than it is with arcanists or psionics. That allows for a diverse range of belief systems and the players bascially decide on the nature of their character's belief system.

3. Currently I'm running a campaign in the Lost Lands setting by Frog God Games. I keep to RAW mostly, but FGG hasn't published their book on gods and religions yet. The Lost Lands setting guide only covers this at a very high level. In how I run my campaign in this setting, the gods are real but mostly distant. They depend upon the devotion of sentient being to survive and to grow or maintain their power, which makes them jealous, but also practical in that their are benefits to focus on certain domains and letting followers worship other deities in non-competing domains.

 

[Voadam]

I do not have mechanics to encourage or discourage it.

I have mono/henotheistic religious traditions, polytheistic ones, and atheistic clerical traditions in my game and cosmology. Tapping divine power is what clerics do and it is not dependent on gods cosmologically even if most traditions say it is.

Socially I have a main mono/henotheistic tradition of the Holy Lothian Church (from Ptolus) but I also have the Old Gods and other pantheons and even some gods of other pantheons who are venerated as incorporated saints and Angels in Lothianism plus clerical spellcasting traditions not directly associated with gods.

An Athenaeum hall for the occult Athenaeum order in my game might be a secular library or a temple shrine to all the knowledge gods that are known in the area across pantheons at a cosmopolitan trade port.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Clerics in my campaigns follow the Highlander rule for the worship of Deities ....

There can be only one!

 

[CleverNickName]

In my campaign, a temple is dedicated to a pantheon of gods, not to a single deity. It's usually a large building with several alcoves around a single auditorium, like petals on a flower. Each alcove has a shrine to a different god in the pantheon. Some small-town temples only have 2 or 3 shrines in them, but in large cities they may have 10 or more.

Druid enclaves are similar, with a grassy clearing surrounded by cairns or standing stones--each one is a shrine devoted to different nature-spirits.

Worshipers come in, leave offerings at the shrine (or shrines) of their choice, maybe sit in the auditorium for a bit to listen to the day's teachings or to participate in whatever ceremony, festival, or ritual is going on, then go about their daily business. Few people are expected to visit every shrine, usually they just leave offerings at one or two depending on the circumstances. Someone about to go on a journey might leave an offering to the God of Travel, or the parents of a sick child might leave an offering to the Shrine of Life, that sort of thing.

 

[Coroc]

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?

That totally depends on what the pantheon / clerics are defined like, no?

It would be acceptable if a cleric aids some other cleric in building the temple, if each god is of a similar alignment or maybe only differs by one step. Or maybe if clerics are just good / neutral/evil with no focus on one of the pantheons deities.

Most often in my campaigns, clerics have only little time to build a temple, so they spend that on building a temple for their own faith, if they get a chance.

The latest occurence was a Beory nature cleric, taking over the Beory temple in Greyhawk, so he did not build it, but with Beory 's temples it is that they resemble a public park more, and they usually have no residing cleric, whatever cleric of Beory feels the calling to do so, stays there for a time to care for the believers. So he went there having some special new plants and included them into the garden.