Pantheon of one?

Wraith Form

Explorer
This might have been asked several times before, but....well, whatever. (Shoot me.)

Is there a product that describes how one might pare down polytheistic pantheons down to a monotheistic one (or possibly a small number of gods), but still "fuels" various clerics / priests / holy persons?

Thanks!
 

log in or register to remove this ad


If I recall correctly, Deities and Demigods suggests bulding up various churches around aspects of the deity's personality, with different churches granting different domains and being different alignments.

The Ravenloft setting has a fine example in the Church of Ezra. The church has four different sects. The original church is lawful neutral and dedicates itself to healing and protecting its faithful from evil. A similar lawful good branch includes prosylitizing as a major tenet, bringing people to the fold for their own good. The neutral sect dedicates its time studying the true nature of their goddess. The lawful evil sect is a doomsday cult.

All of the sects of Ezra use the same holy symbol, favored weapon, and domains, but this doesn't have to be the case if the deity grants all domains.
 


Cool, thanks one and all for ideas! I have all of those books, but failed to pass my Knowledge (Remember D&D Uni-pantheon) check.....

(Keep 'em coming if anyone has more....)
 

So far not really but the Theives World Panethon has ideas about decreasing gods' power and thus promoting one god over another...
 

Wraith Form said:
This might have been asked several times before, but....well, whatever. (Shoot me.)

Is there a product that describes how one might pare down polytheistic pantheons down to a monotheistic one (or possibly a small number of gods), but still "fuels" various clerics / priests / holy persons?

Thanks!
*shoots you*
;)

Deities and Demigods had a monotheistic deity towards the back.
 

Eberron has a fairly small pantheon, and even allows worship of the entire pantheon, so it's probably a good example.

But I also like viewing the domains as aspects of the deity the cleric chooses to focus on.
 

Rules for that?

Just allow a cleric to be of any alignment and take any two domains (must have matching alignment to take an alignment domain). Pick a favored weapon based on alignment (using the guidelines for Spiritual Weapon).
 

Wheel of Time doesn't have traditional clerics, but the Aes Sedai and other spellcasters are more of a religious order than traditional wizards. The setting is dualistic, with the Creator and the Dark One. The Creator doesn't get involved much, and the Dark One does (and grants spells). Spellcasters (apart from a very few who get spells directly from the Dark One) channel what's called the True Source, which is neutrally-aligned and elemental.
 

Remove ads

Top