New Design and Development: Pantheon

[hong]

That's not a rule. You just have an ass for a DM.

? You do have to be an elf to be a cleric of an elf god.

 

[Brennin Magalus]

I do not use the D&D pantheon (I've got my own: one good god and one evil one). However, I say keep the stench of FR out of core D&D. Also, I prefer Heironeous to Bahamut.

 

[hong]

I think it's fine for the "default" game, as it is indeed better than a bunch of placeholder names, but for a developed campaign world, it really doesn't make sense. In real life, human beings had a hard enough time agreeing on religions and reducing pantheons, so having honest-to-goodness different races have different pantheons makes much more sense to me. Even Dragonlance in its later source material came up with different names and aspects for different peoples to worship the same set of gods, because one pantheon known to all peoples and races by the same names, over thousands of years, really stretches a sense of suspension of disbelief too far for me.

Exactly. Dragonlance --> same underlying god, but with different names. As opposed to lots and lots of different gods.

 

[Brennin Magalus]

Exactly. Dragonlance --> same underlying god, but with different names. As opposed to lots and lots of different gods.

As it should be. Even vanilla Kalamar got that one right.

 

[Aloïsius]

One of our goals with the new pantheon was to loosen the tight associations between gods and races that has in the past led to the creation of whole pantheons full of elf, dwarf, orc, and goblin deities. Corellon is still associated with elfy things like arcane magic and the Feywild, and he still hates Lolth and the drow. But his appeal is a little broader now.

I like this, too.
People adopting some God of another exotic pantheon was commonplace in history (eg : Isis; Mithra in Rome).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

? You do have to be an elf to be a cleric of an elf god.

Weird. My brain filtered that rule out, it's so stupid. I just went and checked the PHB, and sure enough, there the rule is, tucked into the default pantheon text.

Thanks, brain!

 

[Kunimatyu]

I'm just saying, it's amusing to see someone asking for more historical gods instead of fictional ones, and then mentioning snake-Set as an example of the former. ^_^

Yeah, like another poster said, "fantasy pop culture" would be a far better term -- including well-known deities that most fantasy readers are likely to have some familiarity with doesn't sound like a terrible idea. Pairing them works well too, so that clerics always have another religion to hate on.

Osiris/Set, Thor/Loki(or Thrym, perhaps), Bahamut/Tiamat, Pelor/Vecna(or Nerull, but Vecna is cooler) -- it's a good way to give DMs easy plothooks.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

No more Jeff, God of Biscuits or Simon god of hair-dos.

Take an "executive transvestite" point, there.

 

[Nifft]

Osiris/Set, Thor/Loki(or Thrym, perhaps), Bahamut/Tiamat, Pelor/Vecna(or Nerull, but Vecna is cooler) -- it's a good way to give DMs easy plothooks.

Thor/Thrym - "You stole my name!" -- "NO YOU STOLE MINE!"
Bahamut/Tiamat - "You gave me a hickey!" -- "YOU GAVE ME FIVE HICKIES!"

Yeah, there's some potential there.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Plane Sailing]

I've never used default pantheons, although I've played in some games that have used them.

I'm SO glad to see the end of Heironymawhatcit (most unpronounceable battlecry), and Hextor just sounded like a 'He Man' villain. "Oh, he's a bad guy, so we'll use Hex. That's too short. Well I liked the name of Skeletor, why don't we tack -tor on the end? That's fine. Hex-tor" Yuck.

Bane works for me (I've got no idea about FR background), but it is short and not campy.

Bahamut is a great example for a default paladin god (although we pretty much know that there are going to be paladins of other gods too, right?)

Cheers