FormerlyHemlock
Hero
I want to create religious systems and doctrines within D&D, and stay out of the traditional pantheon systems.
There will, of course, be the gods around, but a lot of it feels like comic book hero discussions. "Which is better: Lathander or Pharasma?" I want to move from there to developing actual doctrines, especially in a world where all of the gods can exist and be real, or just some of them, or even none of them.
Any advice?
This isn't exactly religious per se but you might find it inspiring:
My current campaign has religions and "gods" in it (many of whom are just monsters and NPCs as low as CR 5), but the real movers and shakers are based off the book Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones. The idea is that each of the seven siblings "farms" one or more aspects of human society. More on that in a second, but in order from oldest to youngest:
Archer (handsome golden boy with a friendly smile) farms magic, wealth, and power. He thinks he got all the cool stuff.
Shine (fat girl with thick, muscular arms) farms trickery, violence, crime, and leadership. She thinks Archer's a chump and she got all the cool stuff.
Dillian (golden girl who smiles like Glinda the Good) farms nature, health, law enforcement, and beauty. She acts like she got all the cool stuff but secretly she envies Shine's stuff. Control freak.
Hathaway (middle child, quiet-spoken man) farms history, family, farming, and teaching. He just wants to be left in peace, but he farms things that he thinks are important.
Torquil (handsome, lanky, stylish man, rambunctious and fun-loving) farms music, religion, recreation, love, and food. As far as he's concerned, he got all the fun stuff. Everyone else's stuff is boring.
Erskine (huge man with a small head, has trouble speaking in full sentences, mostly good-natured but has a temper) farms industry, water, waste/garbage, and transportation. Erskine feels like he always gets stuck cleaning up after other people's messes, and he farms the nasty but necessary jobs that no one else took upon themselves.
Venturus (huge young man with a normal-sized head) farms research and invention, housing, time, and technology. As the baby of the family, the others are supernaturally compelled to look after him and take care of him, but they don't always like it. Venturus farms things that no one else was visionary enough to claim, but he has ambitions to someday eclipse even Archer, whom he envies and admires.
The mechanics of "farming" are: the farmer receives virtual credit for 10% of whatever it is they are farming. (E.g. for wealth, if 10,000 gold in wealth is produced, Archer receives 1000 gold worth of credit.) That credit can be used to either create goods (1000 gold worth of money wherever Archer needs it to be) or to destroy it on a 1:1 basis (Archer can cause 1000 gp to vanish from your bank vault) or to conditionally destroy on a 1:1 basis (owner becomes consciously or subconsciously aware that 1000 gp will vanish unless he takes certain actions as mentally specified by Archer). For personal qualities such as magic, violence, healing, etc., credit can be spent on a per-day basis to both halve proficiency bonus AND impose disadvantage. For example, Shine could farm 10 4th level soldiers' capacity for violence and spend that farmed credit to reduce one of those soldiers' attack bonus from +4 to +3 (+2 from strength plus +1 from proficiency) and impose disadvantage on all his attack rolls; or Archer could cause half of a wizard's spell points to vanish, his spellcasting proficiency bonus to be halved (reducing spell DC), and all enemies to have advantage on saving throws against the wizard's spells. The farmer is also aware of all farmed activity: you can't make money without Archer being aware of it, and you can always get Erskine's attention (on some level) if you shout down a latrine loud enough.
The long and the short of it is that merchants and wizards will avoid crossing Archer almost at any cost, priests and cooks will avoid crossing Torquil, warriors fear Shine's wrath as well as Dillian's (who wants to lose half your HP?), etc., etc. It's not a religion but it has many of the features of an old, pagan religious system, which probably isn't surprising when you consider that the original source material (Archer's Goon) is not-so-subtly sketching out a family of demigods.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51wfo-VWqyL._SX326_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
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