D&D 5E Eliminating Non-Human Deities from FR

[GameDoc]

At some point, Forgotten Realms reduced the number of non-human specific deities by revealing that some of them were just aspects of the Faerunian pantheon. For example the halfling goddess Yondalla is just Chauntea, and Gruumsh and the storm god Talos are the same being.

This got me thinking about eliminating the non-human deities altogether (they were all imported from Grayhawk anyway). This allows monstrous humanoids to serve the same evil gods as human and demi-human villains (IIRC there's been a coupe of Forgotten Realms novels where sauhagin are depicted serving Bhaal and Umbrelee anyway). It also makes it easier to have gods with priests and other followers among various races,


I can easily find appropriate Faerunian deities to assume the aspects of deities for most races: Lathander and Selune for high elves, Silvanus for wood elves, Shar for drow, Mielikki for forest gnomes, Gond for rock gnomes, Bane for goblinoids, and so on.


But I can't seem to find a good fit for dwarves. Gond as a god of crafts would fit somewhat but doesn't seem to jive with the typical dwarven ethos. Tyr seems to have the militantly lawful good aspect but not the craftsmanship domain. For dwarves there just doesn't seem to be a Forgotten Realms deity that can be synonymous with Moradin.


Any suggestions?

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Talos was really Gruumsh so you only have one example of a non human deity being eliminated. Anyway I would not eliminate them anyway, I kind of like them having some of their own gods.

 

[Li Shenron]

But I can't seem to find a good fit for dwarves. Gond as a god of crafts would fit somewhat but doesn't seem to jive with the typical dwarven ethos. Tyr seems to have the militantly lawful good aspect but not the craftsmanship domain. For dwarves there just doesn't seem to be a Forgotten Realms deity that can be synonymous with Moradin.

In our hodge-podge homebrew campaign setting of our 3e era, where we mixed elements from a variety of sources and added our own, we also didn't have "racial pantheons". Most of those deities didn't exist or were aspects of other deities. Some racial deities slipped into the setting anyway because they had been featured in some adventure (Lolth, Urdlen) or chosen by a cleric PC (Semuanya). You have to know that the campaign setting was not thoroughly planned top-down, but also 'grown organically' by playing, incorporating stuff from adventures and player character's material...

Indeed the whole distinction between deities was fuzzy, since people of the world didn't really know who or what the gods were, so the descriptions of different deities were really more descriptions of different religions. We also had practically the whole Seldarine (the elven pantheon) demoted to being mythical rulers of a legendary elven land (Arvandor) instead of true gods.

Moradin was there as the God of Mountains rather than God of Dwarves, worshipped by humans as well as whoever felt it appropriate for them, eventually being the favourite amongst dwarves. This gave Moradin a much larger breadth as a deity, and shifted the idea from "Moradin has Dwarves as favored race" to "Dwarves have Moradin as favored deity" (which basically happened to every race anyway).

So if you can't find a new deity for Dwarves to favor, my suggestion is not to remove Moradin, but to make it a larger deity than usual.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

In my own design I go the other way. I make the basic setting patheon explicitly the human pantheon. Dwarves revere their own pantheon, and it would be considered extremely improper to revere the human pantheon instead.

But...if you want to see some great precedent for what you are looking at, just look at the Dragonlance pantheon. The various races all worship the same gods, which go under a variety of different names but are understood by the learned to be the same beings.

That doesn't directly give you the FR solutions, but I'd recommend it as a good source for research purposes if you want to go that deep into getting the feel you are looking for.

 

[DEFCON 1]

You could maybe go the other way and make Moradin the true god and Gond the mask he puts on for humans.

Yeah, this basically follows the 4E version of Moradin. In the 4E Nerath setting, a number of traditional "non-human" deities were made regular deities that everyone worshipped (human and non-human alike). Corellon was the god of magic, Moradin was the god of craft, Bahamut was the god of justice, Tiamat was the goddess of greed, and Gruumsh was the god of conquest. You could easily bring that idea over to the Realms. The primary Greater God of the non-human pantheons are in fact true gods that both human and non-human worship and all the rest of the non-human pantheons might just be aspects of the other traditional human gods as you suggest.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

The idea of a deity being the personification of a given concept (eg justice), phenomenon (eg storms), or nature (eg greed) fits perfectly with a by-another-name worship of said deity by a number of races, precisely because the personification itself is reflective of the person relating to the concept/phenomenon/nature.

All races have a shared experience of these what I'll call concepts as a catch all term, but they personify that concept in a way that makes sense to them, culturally. An Orc will see an Orcish physicality when that concept is embodied, an Elf an Elven form, a human a human, a gnoll a gnoll. The gods are quite literally, to each race, "one of us" because the deity embodies that which is understood by us, lies within us, or is thought by us. So naturally the races will call the God by a name from their own language and clothe it in a form acceptable to their eyes. Or rather, the better to instil worship, the deity will appear to each race in the manner most suited there to do.

Each race's own nature will accentuate aspects of that concept to suit itself, so there are differences. One race may view storms and vengeance as so closely aligned that one deity covers both; in another race the storm may be more aligned with death.

If this were the case, then things such as the great old ones may be a matter of the deity being seen for its true, unfiltered, non-racially presented, self: a form with no relation to normal physics, a colour unseen, a being existing simultaneously in infinite different dimensions rather than the paltry three we understand.

It may be interesting to create an interlocking pantheon of these deities, each of which is itself merely a facet of one of a small number of ultimately divine or supercelestial beings, constantly jockeying with one another for power but being stopped from plain old war by the need to share worship among different races and cultures by theses cultures' free will determining differing axes of power and alignments of concepts forcing the supercelestials to cooperate more than they'd like. Which explains why beings of such unimaginable power and properties haven't wiped all life out yet; in the end the only thing keeping reality together is the very differences between races, the things that the races themselves wish to eradicate ('our gods are the only true gods'), but if successful would actually be catastrophic for all life.

So, yeah, Gruumsh = Talos = Shub Niggurath. Why not, it might make an interesting theme to have a world where a war is fought by two races in the name of two different gods who are in fact the same god, which in turn is merely one aspect on one plane of another being who job shares that aspect with another being when in a different plane of being.

But for all intents and purposes, on a day to day level, it's business as usual for your cleric of whoever. Just don't listen to those crazy telepathic warlocks with the flecks of spittle on their beards from trying to articulate their 'patron''s name. They're just mad.

 

[Shiroiken]

This got me thinking about eliminating the non-human deities altogether (they were all imported from Grayhawk anyway).

Quick note: the non-human deities came from the setting neutral Deities & Demi-gods (later renamed Legends & Lore) in 1E, and then expanded in Monster Mythology in 2E. Greyhawk originally had no listed deities (original Folio), and then expanded to have a customized set of deities in the Boxed Set. Demi-human deities were only officially added later (in late 2E or 3E, I think).

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Why does there have to be a single god of each race other than humans? Why not have dwarves choosing to follow Gond, or Tyr, or whoever they feel is most worthy or worship?

 

[Uchawi]

The idea of a deity being the personification of a given concept (eg justice), phenomenon (eg storms), or nature (eg greed) fits perfectly with a by-another-name worship of said deity by a number of races, precisely because the personification itself is reflective of the person relating to the concept/phenomenon/nature.

All races have a shared experience of these what I'll call concepts as a catch all term, but they personify that concept in a way that makes sense to them, culturally. An Orc will see an Orcish physicality when that concept is embodied, an Elf an Elven form, a human a human, a gnoll a gnoll. The gods are quite literally, to each race, "one of us" because the deity embodies that which is understood by us, lies within us, or is thought by us. So naturally the races will call the God by a name from their own language and clothe it in a form acceptable to their eyes. Or rather, the better to instil worship, the deity will appear to each race in the manner most suited there to do.

Each race's own nature will accentuate aspects of that concept to suit itself, so there are differences. One race may view storms and vengeance as so closely aligned that one deity covers both; in another race the storm may be more aligned with death.

If this were the case, then things such as the great old ones may be a matter of the deity being seen for its true, unfiltered, non-racially presented, self: a form with no relation to normal physics, a colour unseen, a being existing simultaneously in infinite different dimensions rather than the paltry three we understand.

It may be interesting to create an interlocking pantheon of these deities, each of which is itself merely a facet of one of a small number of ultimately divine or supercelestial beings, constantly jockeying with one another for power but being stopped from plain old war by the need to share worship among different races and cultures by theses cultures' free will determining differing axes of power and alignments of concepts forcing the supercelestials to cooperate more than they'd like. Which explains why beings of such unimaginable power and properties haven't wiped all life out yet; in the end the only thing keeping reality together is the very differences between races, the things that the races themselves wish to eradicate ('our gods are the only true gods'), but if successful would actually be catastrophic for all life.

So, yeah, Gruumsh = Talos = Shub Niggurath. Why not, it might make an interesting theme to have a world where a war is fought by two races in the name of two different gods who are in fact the same god, which in turn is merely one aspect on one plane of another being who job shares that aspect with another being when in a different plane of being.

But for all intents and purposes, on a day to day level, it's business as usual for your cleric of whoever. Just don't listen to those crazy telepathic warlocks with the flecks of spittle on their beards from trying to articulate their 'patron''s name. They're just mad.

I believe that is a good way to handle it and keep things simple at the same time. And later on in the campaign you can throw the sucker punch as a DM when the true nature of the gods are revealed.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Why does there have to be a single god of each race other than humans? Why not have dwarves choosing to follow Gond, or Tyr, or whoever they feel is most worthy or worship?

There is not. Each of those races have their own Pantheon. Some of them do worship gods like Gond and Tyr anyway. But for Dwarfs it's mainly Moradin, Dumathon and the other Dwarven deity's.