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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 7747512" data-attributes="member: 58172">Polytheism doesnt have to be a problem. If it is easy to swap it out, then no problem.Just make the cleric class make sense for various kinds of sacred traditions and various kinds of settings. If the DM makes a setting without polytheism, no problem, or with polytheism, no problem. Same cleric class, same rules. Just remove the Great Wheel from the setting − and done! If the player wants to play an adherent of an abstract sacred tradition, great, or an adherent of polytheism that personifies the concept, that is fine too. (Most Non-Western sacred traditions emphasize abstract sacred concepts, so there are good reallife multicultural benefits to diversifying the cleric class. Only Westerners seem to need to worship a personification.) There neednt be a problem.Unfortunately, 4e and especially 5e made polytheism a problem. These systems bake polytheistic flavor deeply into the cleric class features, the spells, the races, the monsters, the planes, the setting assumptions, it is hard to find a chapter that avoids saturating the mechanics with the unwanted polytheism flavor. Even sections that mention alternatives to polytheism still push polytheism in the most heavy-handed way possible, like recommending to DMs and players who dislike polytheism that they should use polytheism anyway, or use pantheism worshiping multiple gods at the same time.I know, because in the attempt to try remove polytheism from the rules in the 5e SRD, and I gave up, having lost interest in the amount of time and energy that it takes to remove it. I am sick of polytheism.In the 3e, I was neutral about polytheism, because the rules let me be neutral. 4e and 5e made polytheism a problem.Anyway, keep setting assumptions in separate textboxes. For example, for the cleric class have a sidebar that mentions the most prominent sacred traditions in Golarion, how a cleric character might fit within each one of them. A textbox is easy to blot out (even literally). Oppositely, baking something into all mechanics everywhere is hard to ignore.Compartmentalize flavor options for the same reason that it is useful to compartmentalize mechanical options.</blockquote>

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