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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jerichothebard" data-source="post: 1419988" data-attributes="member: 4705">I have been using one god in my world for a while.  The backstory is that about 1300 years before the PC's time, there was a holy war to end all wars, and one church emerged victorious.  I am of the mind that a god w/o worshippers dies - that the faithful give of their strength through prayer, and the god recieves and returns.  Thus, mortal holy wars can and do equal divine wars, and in this case, eliminated all the gods save one, ORB, the god of the sun and moon.There are a few minor gods worshipped by the monster races, but they are not nearly so powerful as ORB.As for schisms and controversy, hello Eric's grandma yes!As with Christianity, there are multiple interpretations.  The paladins choose to worship ORB as a lawful war god, whereas the monks (a chaotic-aligned holy order, IMC) choose to worship him as the god of enlightenment (literally and figuratively).  The clerics span the gap between, with some choosing the domain of war, and others protection and community, still others music or sun. (They can choose war, sun, community, protection or music as their domains, and some get knowledge as a freebie from the Cloistered Cleric option in UA, which is an optional choice).There exists an age-old rivalry between the monks and the paladins, which has led to blows on many occasions, although never all-out war.  It started ages ago when the paladins failed to fulfill the Council's directive to kill all the mages in the land, and the monks stepped up and did the job instead.  This forced a major change in the makeup of the council, creating much more equality between the orders, although the paladins managed to maintain a slim margin of leadership.An interesting facet is that ORB himself is NG, and wasn't originally a god of war.  The paladin's greatest secret is that he has, at times, reigned them and taken away their powers wholesale for brief periods of time.  If the monks were ever able to prove it, they might well use that information to overthrow the paladin's leadership in the Council.The monks have their own nasty secret, which has been all but forgotten - they didn't kill the mages.  Most of them have been hidden out of time and space for centuries, courtesy of the monks.  All heck is about to break loose, because the PCs will need to release them from their stasis.As far as gameplay goes, it has worked out pretty well.  The clerics get six domains to choose from (befitting a very powerful god), plus there are a number of prestige classes available that add to that. There is no shortage of holy orders - counting the PC classes, Prestige class groups, and NPC groups, there are at least ten, plus rangers, druids, and bards (who cast divine magic IMC).  Divin-aligned character have proven a popular choice, with a monk, a cleric, a bard, a paladin, and two rangers in the party.  Although that might have something to do with the fact that I made the casting of arcane magic illegal, and consequently disallowed wizards and frowned on sorcerers. This worked out differently than I expected, I will note.  I fully anticipated having a party of sorcerer rogues working to overthrow the oppressive regime of the paladins.  Instead they focused far more strongly on the rising tide of undead and stopping that.  The monk's player has taken it so far as to have developed a distaste for paladins, and then felt (and role-played) the conflicting feelings when he decided to join the Hunters of the Dead - a largely paladin-based prestige class!That was a great moment for me as a DM, and for him as a player.I think the key to is has been providing a lot of options within the societal structure.  Had I just stuck to the idea of "ORB is a NG god, therefore the only worshippers can be NG clerics", it would have flopped.  But, instead, there are many facets to ORB and his flock, and this has allowed the players to really run with it.jtb</blockquote>

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