PHB gods

[Grayswandir]

I think the gods from the PHB are perfectly fine for a campaign, and in fact they get used with little to no changes in most of the campaigns my group runs. Except for me, of course.

In the mini-campaign I run, I use seven homebrew gods: Corruption, Rulership, Healing, War, Sun, Moon, and Nature. That pantheon has, in play, proven to be a bit too small for D&D.

In my main campaign I use a number of different pantheons. The races each have their pantheons, which have been detailed in various products previously. Apart from the racial deities, the only god from the PHB whom I use is Hextor, but I plan soon to reveal that Hextor is the same god as Deimos and thus link him into the Greek pantheon. Once he's firmly established as an Olympian, I can just call him Deimos all the time and pretend I never used a god from Greyhawk. Apart from the Greek pantheon, the Norse and Celtic pantheons are also known (though small), and the Babylonian-Sumerian pantheon(s) was wiped out about a thousand years ago (or was it?). Then there's a few homebrew gods on top of all that - Solarus (think Pelor), Midnight (goddess of psionics), Hmemtyet (god of madness), and Sorecal (TN god of magic), and Serra (don't ask).

Yes, that is too many gods. But most of them are backgrounded. The major gods are: Solarus, Midnight, Hextor / Deimos (currently the greatest god on my world), Serra, Eris, Apollo, Artemis, Hecate, Sehanine Moonbow, and Hmemtyet. I think those nine are pretty much it.

The moral? As far as I can tell, the ideal number of deities is about a dozen.

 

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

In response to Ravs comment about Faerunian deities: There really are a lot of them. My suggestion is to keep all of them around for character creation so the players have a decent choice and just let the ones that you don't need/like fade into the background. That's what I do at least...and that really had nothing to do with the topic, so I'm going to take this opportunity to shut me mouth.

 

[Grim]

Sort of off topic...

I once heard about a campain were the elven pantheon was really the greek one, but with diffent names, and the human pantheon was really the roman one, which was really the Greek/elven pantheon with different names. So the gods all had like 4 or 5 names. It sounded confusing, but also kind of cool...

 

[Grayswandir]

Grim,

That sounds almost like Kalamar. Not quite, since I don't think KoK uses the Greek / Roman names, but similar. In Kalamar, each god has about a half-dozen titles but no name per se. Each culture calls each god by a different title.

Now back to your regularly scheduled thread ...

 

[Grim]

Kalimar?

Huh. Ill have to go check that out. Is it a good campain? I've seen adds, but their mostly just hype with no real content.

 

[hong]

I don't think the number of gods in FR is too big at all. Look at Earth, how many gods have been worshipped here?

And how many of them do you remember?

 

[Ravellion]

What I've done is taken the PHB gods and added five more that seemed missing (a moon god, a god of knowledge, etc...)

Oh, you mean Corellon Larethian and Boccob

Also, do all of you think of Wee Jas worshippers as evil?

I found him useless (and a very silly name to boot), so I ignore him. He isn't there. I will never use the PHB pantheon again, though... I don't like the idea of 1 racial god per non numan race either. It's either the FR way (seperate pantheons) or the Dragonlance way (same gods, different names and rituals per race) that has my preference. The latter is probably my favourite.

And with Greyhawk having multiple pantheon's... I didn't know that. But they don't present them as being part of different pantheons either.

Rav

 

[green slime]

Also, do all of you think of Wee Jas worshippers as evil? In the world I'm developing I've put the religion of Wee Jas in charge of looking over burial grounds and destroying undead (a la Kelemvor) and even detailed what her paladins are like. Does this go against the way her religion is usually depicted? (not that I mind being different).

If I recall correctly, the Wee Jas is LE, but she does allow LN worshippers... I had a LN Necromancer/Cleric of Wee Jas who was sliding the downward slope towards evil... In fact pcgen has Wee Jas down as LN...

Destroying undead? nonononnonononono, there isn't enough undead... You seem to have misunderstood something

 

[d12]

I just rechecked the PNB and Wee Jas is listed as Lawful Neutral.
Quote: "Her titles are Witch Goddess, Ruby Sorceress, Stern Lady, and Death's Guradian." If Nerull is the god associated with Death (killing things) then I thought Wee Jas must be the deity of seeing that souls go to the right place, corpses staying in the ground, etc... IMC, her church would be allied distantly with Boccob's (both keepers of magic) and either Hextor's, Heironeous' or St. Cuthbert's (whichever was the keeper of law in a particular land). Her church would be generally opposed to any chaotic religion and would work to thwart Nerull's church (although would probably avoid direct action when possible). If you were in my campaign, would you find that stupid?

 

[Grayswandir]

Re: Kalimar?

Huh. Ill have to go check that out. Is it a good campain? I've seen adds, but their mostly just hype with no real content.

There should be a few other threads around that talk about Kalamar in more detail than I could. I own the book, but haven't used it for a game. It claims to be more anthropologically accurate than most settings (which is the reason I bought it), and is full of good hooks, nicely detailed, but very very dry. It desperately needs some good 'Overview' sections.

Back on topic, it was my understanding that the racial gods given in the PHB (Corellon, Moradin, Gruumsh, Garl, Yondalla) were simply samples or examples of their respective pantheons, since the authors didn't want to deluge new gamers with too many gods. I do know that in the "full" pantheons, these are the primary deities. Can anyone shed light on this?