How many gods is too many gods?

[Voi_D_ragon]

In my own homebrew setting I've kept it rather simple, so my players can at least remember most of the deities.

I have three ancient evils, which are god-like in nature, and only worshiped by the villains.

I have one pantheon of good/neutral gods, 5 of which are referenced repeatedly in the campaign. Priests in my setting worship all of the gods in the pantheon, but only 5 of them are always prominently on display in every church. The other gods may have a small shrine/statue in a corner of the church; always represented, but depending on the church, other gods may get preferential treatment. For example, the goddess of love and fertility is only worshiped when people want to have a child, have marriage problems, or when a big festival is approaching. So, this goddess is not prominently on display, and the players have little interaction with the deity.

Lastly, some churches have a local saint, which the church tends to be named after. So you might have a St. Anna's Church, or a St. Germaine's church. These saints are only worshiped locally, but pretty irrelevant anywhere else in the world. I use them mostly to justify the name of a church, and to give a little backstory to its founding.

This raises the question, why have so many gods at all? For my campaign, I find it helps with immersion when an npc mentions a deity in casual dialogue. It makes the world feel more alive. But its not important to me that my players know the names of all the gods by heart. I'm surprised by how many they remember by name though. They know the goddess of the sun, the god of death, the god of storms, the lesser-goddess of sailors, the god of the moon, the god of trickery and the god of protection. That's a lot of names.

Yuup, that's exactly what I'm going for. In fact all racial deities are actually saints of sorts, as are any "regional" gods (the viking faction worships the norse pantheon, there are ruins with ancient egyptian statues, etc) which is to say they started out mortal and then through great acts (backed by the actual gods) were elevated to legendary and then godly status by their people.

 

[MNblockhead]

In my homebrew, I created a number of different pantheons for different cultures. Some are the same gods with different names as gods are adopted and adapted among cultures.

I will also just make up new ones as "needed" for an adventure or story.

Players can also make up their own if they feel so inclined.

I don't expect my players to "learn" all the pantheons and gods. I go through the effort of creating them because I enjoy it and I can build storylines or add some flavor to the PCs travel the world. As a matter of fact, not only do I not expect my players to not memorize all the gods, but I want it to feel impractical to try. Makes the world feel vast and deep. If their characters are religious scholars, well, that's why we have religion skill checks.

It also helps that in my homebrew world, I'm ambiguous about whether the gods exist--or at least whether they exist as conceptualized by mortals. Philosophers and prophets have lots of room to argue over whether the multitude of gods are just aspects of a small number of being, or just different ways of understanding one divine power, or whether there are no gods--clerics are tapping into arcane power through belief but their are no actual gods behind the spells.

I think many DMs worry too much about this. Pantheons is one area where you should feel free to make stuff up and contradict yourself. Just like real religions in the real world.

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

Throw a golden apple marked, 'To the prettiest one' amongst them and find out.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

One other thought: the best reason for having a lot of gods is to have a lot of oaths (I mean the "by the bristling beard of Odin" oaths, not the paladin oaths) or colorful phrases for NPC's (and hopefully eventually PC's) to use, although you could also do so with saints, famous ancestors, etc. A few mildly salacious ones can substitute for swear words letting you keep the game a little more PG 13, if that is a consideration.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

I prefer around 20-30 gods in the pantheon. 2 of each alignment, weighted more towards neutral for things like Death, Time, Magic, etc.

I also am aware that in a campaign, only a handful will actually be important to players. For instance, right now 4 gods are important to my players: the gods of Justice (the paladin god), the god of seas and storms (for the ranger/cleric), the god of entropy, necromancy, undeath and insanity (the villian?), and the god of magic (the wizard follows this god).

Other gods touched on in the campaign include the god of nobility, the goddess of love, the goddess of family, the twin sister goddesses of Good and Evil, and a human lich trying to wrestle part of the god of entropy's portfolio away from him.

 

[Yaarel]

Heh, how many gods is too many? Two.

More important for religious traditions is the spell domains. A compelling thematic concept for a domain inspires a distinctive kind of religious tradition, whether an abstract force (like Daoism), or philosophy (like Buddhism), or so on. Think about why certain symbols are sacred, and how the symbols come into use.

 

[fjw70]

The gods in my game aren’t well defined and typically don’t play much of a role in the meta plot.

I allow any god from any D&D or real world pantheon in my games. If two gods come up that seem somewhat similar then I just say maybe they are different names for the same being and it typically doesn’t matter.

So as many as you want it what I would say.

 

[Voi_D_ragon]

The gods in my game aren’t well defined and typically don’t play much of a role in the meta plot.

I allow any god from any D&D or real world pantheon in my games. If two gods come up that seem somewhat similar then I just say maybe they are different names for the same being and it typically doesn’t matter.

So as many as you want it what I would say.

So you don't have any backstories for churches/paladin orders and whatnot?

 

[fjw70]

So you don't have any backstories for churches/paladin orders and whatnot?

Nope. Players are encouraged to create those backstories themselves, if they are interested.

 

[SkidAce]

The majority of the gods (small g) in my campaign could be considered local (world) or minor. More like the Immortals from Basic.

So there can be literally thousands of them across the cosmos.

In order to be manageable, I describe the main campaign ones in terms of the religion or pantheon, i.e.;

The Imperial Temple,
The Elven Heroic Immortals,
The Vaesir (norse/finnish),
The Old Faith (nature/spirit),
The Pantheon (mystical/meditative/monkish)


So in effect, for the campaign, they are dealing with four "religions" with detailed individual gods as needed.