How many gods is too many gods?

[Voi_D_ragon]

Sooo, I've been working on my world, and I've been stuck on the gods for a looong while now. I've plundered and pilfered from past editions and other fantasy settings, and now I have (ranked by divinity level)

8 Overdeities- First beings ever created, absolutely untouchable and incredibly powerful (one per base divine domain in PHB)

32 Greater deities- created by the Overdeities, oversee different aspects of their domains (4x OD)

About 20 racial deities, who are basically saints that were helped by the gods at some point and gained divinity status among their people.

Now, all these cover basically any aspect of life possible and give ample choice to any type of player a character may want to make. The problem is, will they be too much to handle?
Obviously only a couple of gods will have actual churches/organisations, the rest will be worshipped mostly on a personal basis, but I'm afraid that their presence won't be felt at all in the world.
But at the same time, if I reduce the gods I have to make the portfolios massively bigger, leading to some people only worshipping one part of what the god oversees, leading me to having to name those parts, leading me back to the beginning basically.

What can I do about this?

 

[Zardnaar]

Sooo, I've been working on my world, and I've been stuck on the gods for a looong while now. I've plundered and pilfered from past editions and other fantasy settings, and now I have (ranked by divinity level)

8 Overdeities- First beings ever created, absolutely untouchable and incredibly powerful (one per base divine domain in PHB)

32 Greater deities- created by the Overdeities, oversee different aspects of their domains (4x OD)

About 20 racial deities, who are basically saints that were helped by the gods at some point and gained divinity status among their people.

Now, all these cover basically any aspect of life possible and give ample choice to any type of player a character may want to make. The problem is, will they be too much to handle?
Obviously only a couple of gods will have actual churches/organisations, the rest will be worshipped mostly on a personal basis, but I'm afraid that their presence won't be felt at all in the world.
But at the same time, if I reduce the gods I have to make the portfolios massively bigger, leading to some people only worshipping one part of what the god oversees, leading me to having to name those parts, leading me back to the beginning basically.

What can I do about this?

Varies by group but once you get past 20PCs eyes glaze over.

Realistically about 3 is about right (generally the head of Pantheons the clerics god and their opposed deity). Oh and the healing one.

 

[Li Shenron]

I don't think you have to do anything, it sounds fine.

 

[Coroc]

I think that is eventually to much, but it all depends on how much your Players invest in your homebrew Canon.
With my Group who played a lot of FR before i joined them, they basically know some (i guess 3-5) gods of FR, even though some of my Group do dm themselves.
I know most of the gods of FR GH and some of DL and Eberron, with that i mean with their official Portfolio. But thats because i started to DM Long ago, and back then it was ususal to run this campaign world and then that one for a Change so i read a lot.

My current campaign is in GH and my Players do not know much about that world meaning they do know the deities as they occur in game and have some meaning for them.

The Paladin in my Group of course knows that his Patron is Heironeous and the fighter has found to Farlahgn recently, and they know St. Cuthbert temple and that Iuz is a demigod residing on oerth, but that's about it. Would i introduce every deity ever published for GH i might get your numbers, but it does not improve the game in any way at least not for my Group.

 

[gyor]

In RL some religions had hundreds of deities.

 

[Voi_D_ragon]

I think that is eventually to much, but it all depends on how much your Players invest in your homebrew Canon.
With my Group who played a lot of FR before i joined them, they basically know some (i guess 3-5) gods of FR, even though some of my Group do dm themselves.
I know most of the gods of FR GH and some of DL and Eberron, with that i mean with their official Portfolio. But thats because i started to DM Long ago, and back then it was ususal to run this campaign world and then that one for a Change so i read a lot.

My current campaign is in GH and my Players do not know much about that world meaning they do know the deities as they occur in game and have some meaning for them.

The Paladin in my Group of course knows that his Patron is Heironeous and the fighter has found to Farlahgn recently, and they know St. Cuthbert temple and that Iuz is a demigod residing on oerth, but that's about it. Would i introduce every deity ever published for GH i might get your numbers, but it does not improve the game in any way at least not for my Group.

Sooo, basically it's fine to have as many as I want as long as I don't force feed info on them to the players.

 

[Zardnaar]

In RL some religions had hundreds of deities.

Try thousands. I know a bit about he classical world but they had a lot of obscure gods.

 

[Oofta]

I have a decently large pantheon, all the norse deities and demi-human deities from FR/GrayHawk settings. Halflings have an extremely poly-theistic religion where players can just make up new gods as they go along. So my campaign has many, many named gods and innumerable halfling deities.

As far as what the players actually use, I could probably have 6 deities including the non-human ones like Moradin and Corellon for what the players actually use. The player for the halfling came up with one god and that was it. So it's great to have it for your background, but don't expect people to pay attention to more than a god or two.

 

[Draegn]

For my game there could technically be thousands of deities. There are the Old Gods followed by druids, witches, and rangers who are natural spirit deities. The man in the woods, the maiden in the river and so forth. There are the New Gods followed by priests, clerics, paladins, templars and sages. These deities are defined by emotions and actions. Love, war, farming and what not. The New Gods are "flavored" by various cultures and races. Except for the special star worshiping elves who have seven stars along with their heretical dark star followers.

 

[DEFCON 1]

You can have as many you want... but just bear in mind you're probably only going to see two or three actually have any place in the game you end up running. So my advice is to not go too deep on fleshing them all out, but rather wait until you see which one or two your players latch onto. Then you can just worry about fleshing out the churches for those one or two and perhaps a third one that might be the antagonist church to the one your player selected.

The biggest thing in my experience (and I've had some lively discussions about this in another thread) is that the more deities you have... the more every single aspect of societal life gets its own deity... the more monolithic the DM and players see that god and those that worship of it. Rather than realizing that every god has different aspects to their domain, they should have many sects that place different mportance to the different parts of the domain, and those that worship it can be split up into many different factions.

Even something simple life a 'God of Life' can and would have many different sects that focus on different parts of what 'Life' is, and some of them could not only be diametrically opposed, but some could actually come to blows and have holy wars about which of their beliefs is "right".

- Does every person have the right to live? Should you take in the less-fortunate and help them survive?
- Does every animal have the right to live? If you kill an animal are you spitting in the face of your god?
- Do plants deserve the same rights as humanoids and animals?
- Is the circle of life the foundation of all existence? Is it the priest's job to help see the circle of life revolve?
- Is using magic to heal someone spitting in the face in the natural order of the circle of life?
- Is killing things a part of the circle of life and thus there's nothing wrong with it? It's nature's way?

And these are just several examples of the different parts of a 'God of Life' that each would have their own sect and worshippers. Some would be out and out pacifists, others would find killing things to part of the life cycle of all things. And both sides would disagree vehementally with each other.

THIS is the kind of thing that can inspire us to not have to bother creating huge pantheons of gods. You can have just one or two or three and still find infinite ways to distinguish the peoples who worship them. It isn't really necessary to split hairs and have a God of Death *and* a God of Disease *and* a God of Murder *and* a God of War etc. etc. if you want different people to react different ways to the same thing.

So if you want a huge pantheon, that's cool... but it really isn't necessary. Especially considering your players are only going to be touching upon one or two of them when you play anyway.