New Design: Wizards...

[BryonD]

... Unless you're playing in the FR ...

... or in most games where the pantheon is fairly set ...

Right.

But doesn't that exactly make the point?

The best solution is a open-ended base ruleset for which more specific details are developed within custom settings.

 

[Greg K]

I would hope that my DM had more interest in his own homebrew than this.

Me too. if a DM said that to me, I would say, "Thanks for the invitation. Please, call me when you have taken more interest in your homebrew setting. I'll show myself the door."

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Right.

But doesn't that exactly make the point?

The best solution is a open-ended base ruleset for which more specific details are developed within custom settings.

Regardless of that, it does make precisely my point that the PHB says specifically that a cleric can choose any two domains, and this core rule has to be revisited if the intent is to patch over it.

(It makes my point so precisely, frankly, I can't fathom why he thought he was rebutting it.)

 

[Jer]

Me too. if a DM said that to me, I would say, "Thanks for the invitation. Please, call me when you have taken more interest in your homebrew setting. I'll show myself the door."

Bah - I'd never ask you to play at my table with that attitude anyway I'm long past the point where I want to make my own homebrew setting whole cloth - nowadays my settings are done in collaboration with my players. I haven't made a whole pantheon for a campaign setting all by myself without player input in well over a decade at this point.

 

[WayneLigon]

Wait, are you saying that there is really someone that reads and actually use those parts? I thought that they put it there because... well, to be honest I've no idea why they put it there, they are at best useless and at worse damaging, with their implied concept that things like Classes are actually concepts that exist in-game, like if a PC or NPC actually think to himself as a Rogue, or Expert or a Exotic Weaponmaster.

A lot of the broader classes are just generic; the four main ones certainly are, and for a very good reason. But some of the other classes (and a lot of the prestige classes) are also professions in and of themselves. If you're a paladin, people are going to call you that; it's not what you do, it's what you are. Most of the caster variants are specific enough that I have no problem with someone self-identifying themseves as one, such as 'I am Lazlo the Warlock' or 'I am Pinebracken, a druid of the Winterfrost Caern'.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Bah - I'd never ask you to play at my table with that attitude anyway I'm long past the point where I want to make my own homebrew setting whole cloth - nowadays my settings are done in collaboration with my players. I haven't made a whole pantheon for a campaign setting all by myself without player input in well over a decade at this point.

There is a significant difference between:

"Deities? I can't be bothered to think about that."

and

"Deities? I expect the players to collaborate with me to develop them so that we have a pantheon that suits all of us."

 

[WayneLigon]

And your DM is going to say "I don't even know what the valid domains ARE, yet alone what they're supposed to do in this edition!"

I would have to seriously question if someone with that attitude or level of interest is really a good choice to be a GM. If he hasn't paid attention to something that basic, then what else has he neglected to learn, especially if he mentions 'edition'. Is he going to be constantly thinking a rule works like it did in 1E or 2E. (I've encountered just such a GM. It was not a pretty sight, let me tell you. Sloppy adventures, rules that came and went based on his half-remembered houserules for 1E, eeeeaaggh.)

 

[Cadfan]

There is a significant difference between:

"Deities? I can't be bothered to think about that."

and

"Deities? I expect the players to collaborate with me to develop them so that we have a pantheon that suits all of us."

Right, because deities as a central part of a campaign is an obligatory aspect of D&D. If your campaign doesn't deal with religions in a meaningful way, you're playing wrong. Stop playing now before you sin again.

The last campaign I ran was a war campaign using a lot of Heroes of Battle material. The only religious character we had in the party was a Favored Soul who wasn't particularly religious- he was just a devotee of healing the injured amongst his people, who had been blessed by some unknown god so that he could excel in his life's work.

Religion was not involved in any meaningful way at any point. Presumably it was there, and if a player had inquired into the subject I would have come up with something, but why should I bother in advance? I didn't stat out the king of the PC's kingdom because they weren't likely to fight him. I never mapped out the streets of the capital city because the only thing that mattered was the walls.

Why should deities be any different?

The important parts of my campaign (important as in the players would encounter them) were things like military ranks, militant orders, and the politics amongst the nobles who comprised the king's army. Unimportant parts were things like the religious pantheon of the major humanoid races of the world. I won't criticize your campaign for not having a strictly defined military chain of command for the major armies of the world, and you can stop labeling my dismissal of unimportant aspects of my campaign as wrongbadfun.

Or in short, until the gnomish fertility goddess becomes campaign-relevant, I'm not statting out her clerical order, and you can't make me.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Right, because deities as a central part of a campaign is an obligatory aspect of D&D. If your campaign doesn't deal with religions in a meaningful way, you're playing wrong. Stop playing now before you sin again.

If your players are asking you about the gods, then there is a big difference between

"Deities? I can't be bothered to think about that."

and

"Deities? I expect the players to collaborate with me to develop them so that we have a pantheon that suits all of us."

Since the quote itself is in response to a question about deities, there is already as assumption that this information is important to at least one player.


RC

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

(It makes my point so precisely, frankly, I can't fathom why he thought he was rebutting it.)

I'm pointing out that while, yes, it is an option in the core rules psuedo-Greyhawk milieu, that usually doesn't work out in practice (where generally clerics are the servants of specific gods, and those specific gods determine what domains are available).