FR gods, too many?

[xmanii]

Just take one pantheon from our real Earth - the Greek.

Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athene, Demeter, Dionysos, Hades, Hecate, Hephaistos, Hera, Hermes, Hestia, Persephone, Poseidon, and Zeus. That's not counting other beings that were either formerly worshipped (The Titans such as Chronos, Gaia, Uranus, et. al.) or who were later ascended to divinity (Herakles, Achilles, etc.) Count up the number of beings worshipped as Divine in the Greek pantheon, and you'll come up with well in excess of 50 to 75.

All things considered, the FR pantheons have too FEW, not too many. We've just been spoiled by Monotheism.

What he ^ said

 

[Mystery Man]

What he ^ said

Henry is the man.

 

[John Crichton]

IMHO, FR is the best example of a bad practice in D&D--an immense amount of detail & variety in human cultures (while lumping all varieties of humans under 1 stat set), while underdeveloping the various demihuman cultures (though all of their various/major cultures are depicted via different stat sets--drow elves, gray elves, high elves, wood elves, wild elves, etc.). One of the elements of this is providing a plethora of different culturally-based human pantheons, yet having only 1 or 2 pantheons for each demihuman race.

There are different pantheons worshipping in different parts of the Realms, but to list them all would further complicate the tremendous amount of deities (racial and world-wide) already in the core book. I haven't flipped through Faiths and Pantheons just yet so more may be recognized there. The world is very diverse as it is. Besides, something has to be left to the individual DM who wants to add in these other cultural pantheons.

IMHO, I think the existence of the multiple pantheons is more or less for accomodating players. Want to be a pseudo-Egyptian like cleric? Here's the Mulhorandi pantheon to pick from! Want to be a LN cleric of war, but not follow the CN god Tempus? Here's the Red Knight!

Agreed. I tend to stick with the main Gods but if a player really wants something different he can choose to be from a far-off part of the Realms.

I have to agree that there is a huge amount of redundancy, and that some areas really do need to be covered. However, I also think that areas could be trimmed as well by reducing the number of deities who basically have the same pantheons. I also think that the pantheons need to be less D&D-centric--there should be gods of fertility, harvest, love, & other major aspects of life, and less deities of character classes, character races, or other game-mechanic-related faiths, if you will.

2 of the 3 that you mentioned are covered: harvest by Chauntea (it's not in her portfolio but it can be inferred) and love by Sune. Fertility could be covered by either of those two as well. If you look at the list of aspects covered by the portfolios of the Faerunian Pantheon you'll see that while most of it covers adventuring class aspects (as it should, being a game with a large bent towards combat and conflict) there are plenty of every-day aspects covered as well. I challenge anyone to come up with more than a few glaring exceptions that couldn't be covered by any of the exsisting FR deities.

Simply put, I think that there should basically be 1 deity per portfolio. I think that clerics, druids, & other PC "priest" classes should cover the major/dominant deities, while the adept NPC class could cover tightly-focused aspect deities/demi-deities/spirits (like gods of particularly-aligned PC classes, specific locales/nations, etc.), worshipping outsiders (like angels & daemons), as well as "fallen" deities who've lost most of their faithful (Moander, for example). These deities (whose existence is fact in the setting) may have different names, titles, &/or appearances to faithful from different cultures (for example, Tempus could be known as Anhur by the Mulhorandi & Clangeddin by the dwarves).

The main pantheon does limit one portfolio per deity - in fact it is one of the main rules of the Realms and the reason why many of the Gods are at odds with each other. As for the rest of your post which is basically about racial deities, I basically agree however those decisions should be made by individual DMs. I like having the option of having my FR be different than someone elses.

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[Desdichado]

It's hard to draw comparisons between the Greeks and FR, because the Greeks didn't have individuals worshipping a single god; they worshipped the entire pantheon, and made prayers to whatever god or goddess was applicable to their specific current situation.

 

[orangefruitbat]

Less gods, more religion

In my opinion, FR has plenty of gods, plenty of god stats, and plenty of prestige classes.

What it needs is a book on religions in Faerun. There's a smattering in the FRCS, but not much, and in my mind, it's pretty inconsistent.

I would like to see a chapter on each religion, which includes:
1) a description of the hierarchy in the church, including titles. Also, more information on rituals, rules and moral behaviours.
2) where the church is influential, where it is not, where it is outlawed, etc. Numbers of followers,
3) relations with other churchs
4) location of temples, shrines, and monestaries. Maps and NPCs would be nice as well.
5) spells and relics that are specific to the faith (but go easy on the prestige classes and feats - we have too many already)
6) a history of the church - what challenges, schisms, heros have gone by in the past
7) rumours, quest ideas and politics - enough to run a religion-centric campaign.

 

[John Crichton]

It's hard to draw comparisons between the Greeks and FR, because the Greeks didn't have individuals worshipping a single god; they worshipped the entire pantheon, and made prayers to whatever god or goddess was applicable to their specific current situation.

While it's hard I think Henry's point is well made. I look at the Greeks who occupied a fairly small amount of space compared to the FR. Then I look at the Realms with their large pantheon relative to size and it makes more sense. And the FR peoples do have patron deities but they pray to whatever God suits the task at hand all the time. To take an example from the FRCS - A craftsmen who worships Gond may call upon Tempus before forging a fine sword.

 

[John Crichton]

In my opinion, FR has plenty of gods, plenty of god stats, and plenty of prestige classes.

What it needs is a book on religions in Faerun. There's a smattering in the FRCS, but not much, and in my mind, it's pretty inconsistent.

I would like to see a chapter on each religion, which includes:
1) a description of the hierarchy in the church, including titles. Also, more information on rituals, rules and moral behaviours.
2) where the church is influential, where it is not, where it is outlawed, etc. Numbers of followers,
3) relations with other churchs
4) location of temples, shrines, and monestaries. Maps and NPCs would be nice as well.
5) spells and relics that are specific to the faith (but go easy on the prestige classes and feats - we have too many already)
6) a history of the church - what challenges, schisms, heros have gone by in the past
7) rumours, quest ideas and politics - enough to run a religion-centric campaign.

Wouldn't Faiths and Pantheons cover some of this?I'm actually asking as I don't have that book yet (it's actually on the way to me as I type this).

 

[Desdichado]

It's a well made point, and duly noted, but there's also some significant differences between the "Greek religious system" and the "FR religious system" and what the effects of that may be are difficult to determine.

For convenience, FR also has a much more "globalized" culture than anything we saw historically as well, which would tend to cut down on deities worshipped.

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

Forgotten Realms is like Rome. Did you ever see how many gods Rome had? True, the core gods were mostly either native Etruscan deities or stolen from Greece and renamed, but then they proceeded to import deities from all manner of conquered territories, so you got Roman worshippers of Mithras, Isis, and all sorts of others. By the end, you had to have had at least 200 gods, maybe more. Got to be a pain for workplaces, I imagine, since every day practically was a holiday to someone.

 

[Oaken25]

I would like to see a chapter on each religion, which includes:
1) a description of the hierarchy in the church, including titles. Also, more information on rituals, rules and moral behaviours.
2) where the church is influential, where it is not, where it is outlawed, etc. Numbers of followers,
3) relations with other churchs
4) location of temples, shrines, and monestaries. Maps and NPCs would be nice as well.
5) spells and relics that are specific to the faith (but go easy on the prestige classes and feats - we have too many already)
6) a history of the church - what challenges, schisms, heros have gone by in the past
7) rumours, quest ideas and politics - enough to run a religion-centric campaign.

Most of these were covered in 2e's Demihuman Deities, Powers & Pantheons and Faiths & Avatars. 3e's book on the gods really stinks compared to the trilogy from 2e and since most of the info in the 2e books is "fluff" it is still useable.