D&D 5E Racial Deities

[Mercule]

I also liked 4e's universal deity list. I tend to use the notion that the gods are more interested in expanding their portfolio than in getting souls (so if Lolth is the goddess of strife and discord, she gets more power the more strife and discord there are in the mortal worlds). Organized religion and shaping "chosen" races are efficiencies--there is always somebody working on your portfolio.

This. I tend to go with a similar idea. Worshiper count has a similar root cause as expanding the portfolio, but isn't always an even thing. If craftsmanship is held in high regard, Moradin tends to get more prayers, offerings, etc. and is probably best served by answering them, if the metaphysics allow for it. If there's a lot of strife, it doesn't mean that Lolth is going to get more worshipers; she might get more prayers for mercy, but that's not the same thing and she's not served as well by granting those prayers.

This also plays into how mortals can ascend to divinity, in one of my home brews. If a mortal can tie themselves tightly to a given concept, they can ride the same tide as the gods. This is actually what makes humans "special" in that setting -- their soul is actually more able to do this than the other races. Not a ton, mind you, but with millennia and a large enough population, it's a non-zero number of ascended humans. Meanwhile, elves have spirits (this comes from the setting's origin in 1E) and have absolutely no ability to attain divinity -- they were actually celestials who gave it up before recorded history and that's a one-way trip. Psionics is also a manifestation of this divine force. Divine casters borrow power from other beings, arcane casters shape cosmic energy, but psions actually have enough personal power to do something with -- just like the gods, but on a smaller scale. Humans are psionic more often than any other race and elves can never be psionic (again, 1st edition origin).

 

[Mephista]

Racial dieties were always.... odd. Like, in Greyhawk and FR, you had "general" gods. Were they the human pantheon? Area pantheons? What? They just didn't quite make sense to me.

On the one hand, I do like the idea that different cultures had different gods. Elves had different cultures, ergo different gods. But? This became all elves, irregardless of local elf culture, or all dwarves, irregardless of culture, etc. It became very odd.

Like others have mentioned, all in all, this is a very human-centric view of the different planes, and it rubs me the wrong way. Its a kind of implicit fantasy racism that feels off. Its like the cliche of the going to viist a generic town. What kidn of town? Invariably human one.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

This. I tend to go with a similar idea. Worshiper count has a similar root cause as expanding the portfolio, but isn't always an even thing. If craftsmanship is held in high regard, Moradin tends to get more prayers, offerings, etc. and is probably best served by answering them, if the metaphysics allow for it. If there's a lot of strife, it doesn't mean that Lolth is going to get more worshipers; she might get more prayers for mercy, but that's not the same thing and she's not served as well by granting those prayers.

This also plays into how mortals can ascend to divinity, in one of my home brews. If a mortal can tie themselves tightly to a given concept, they can ride the same tide as the gods. This is actually what makes humans "special" in that setting -- their soul is actually more able to do this than the other races. Not a ton, mind you, but with millennia and a large enough population, it's a non-zero number of ascended humans. Meanwhile, elves have spirits (this comes from the setting's origin in 1E) and have absolutely no ability to attain divinity -- they were actually celestials who gave it up before recorded history and that's a one-way trip. Psionics is also a manifestation of this divine force. Divine casters borrow power from other beings, arcane casters shape cosmic energy, but psions actually have enough personal power to do something with -- just like the gods, but on a smaller scale. Humans are psionic more often than any other race and elves can never be psionic (again, 1st edition origin).

That is an interesting take on psychics.

 

[Mercule]

That is an interesting take on psychics.

Thanks. (I'm taking it as a compliment, anyway.)

It shows the versatility that psionics have traditionally had, in terms of how they can integrate into a campaign setting. It's also the sort of thing that has me skeptical of the Mystic and the path that they seem to be taking with psionics in 5E -- including the occasional mention of a tie to the Far Realm. I wouldn't tell anyone that they had to treat psionics as divine spark, but I don't like anything that restricts that sort of creativity, either, even if it's only a "soft" (i.e. flavor in a sidebar) limitation.

On the other hand, the 5E Sorcerer class is now pretty psionics-like, with the exception that you're still tied to VSM components instead of it actually feeling like you're tapping your own power in a very raw way.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Thanks. (I'm taking it as a compliment, anyway.)

It shows the versatility that psionics have traditionally had, in terms of how they can integrate into a campaign setting. It's also the sort of thing that has me skeptical of the Mystic and the path that they seem to be taking with psionics in 5E -- including the occasional mention of a tie to the Far Realm. I wouldn't tell anyone that they had to treat psionics as divine spark, but I don't like anything that restricts that sort of creativity, either, even if it's only a "soft" (i.e. flavor in a sidebar) limitation.

On the other hand, the 5E Sorcerer class is now pretty psionics-like, with the exception that you're still tied to VSM components instead of it actually feeling like you're tapping your own power in a very raw way.

It was. I just got called away for a bit midpost. That is a nice story set up, and fits in a Malazan-style set up where ascension is step on the way to godhood and you have more impact/gravity/I'm not sure how to describe it on the metaphysical world that is different than just being really good at magic.

It is funny, but I think the mystic feels like what the sorcerer should be (more fun with points, doing things with magic that no one else can).

Edit: I would also like to say that I like the notion that humans are really good at a particular class. Although I tend to lean to humans being better at multiclassing then other races, this gets around the "boring human" problem quite nicely.

 

[Mercule]

It is funny, but I think the mystic feels like what the sorcerer should be (more fun with points, doing things with magic that no one else can).

Irony: The mystic is a better sorcerer than the sorcerer and the sorcerer is a better psion than the mystic.

Edit: I would also like to say that I like the notion that humans are really good at a particular class. Although I tend to lean to humans being better at multiclassing then other races, this gets around the "boring human" problem quite nicely.

I'm kinda torn on this. When 3E came out and removed the race/class restrictions I was irritated. It actually didn't take that long for dwarven wizards to grow on me, though. By the time 3.5 came out, I actually didn't like the whole "favored class" nonsense -- actually, that shoehorn may have been part of what changed my tune.

At this point, I'd say that I'm "over" the class thing altogether. By that, I mean that I really don't think that much about classes, anymore. They're rules constructs that can be used for certain character concepts. Yes, each class represents a certain archetype and should do it well. After 35 years of playing D&D, though, I've seen enough "archetypal rangers" that I don't need another one. The irony there is that I'm pretty opinionated on what that archetypal ranger should and shouldn't be and about the mechanics that should and shouldn't be part of the class.

The same goes for races, to an extent. I don't want races that are too strongly tied to specific classes or even archetypes -- no more "humans with facial prostheses" acting as stand-ins for different human cultures. If you're going to have a non-human character, the race should matter beyond statistic benefits. It should be at least somewhat alien, like the elves from my setting. Either that, or go the Eberron (or Talislanta) route and have a variety of races that have some differences, but aren't alien in any way. In both cases, saying a race is particularly good at a given class isn't beneficial, IMO.

 

[Captain Lhurgoyf]

In my homebrew setting, I handled gods and pantheons in a way inspired by the interpretatio romana - all cultures and races worship the same beings, but they may do so in different ways or give them different names. For instance, the chief god worshiped by the dwarves is the same entity as the humans' god of craftsmanship, the chief god of the orcs is the god of war, and so on. Elves are animists and ancestor worshipers, but that's an entirely different story.

 

[Shiroiken]

To me, it really depends on what type of campaign you want. Some settings, such as FR, have established that the non-human pantheons exist. Some don't have them, like the original Greyhawk, but lack many good options for several races. If you were to make your own pantheon, I'd strongly suggest not using them, and having a single divine pantheon to choose from. A neat idea that requires a LOT of work is to create the different pantheons, which are actually all the same. The gods have different names and appearances, along with slightly different dogma, but the goddess of love is the same for humans, elves, and dwarves (even if they don't accept this as truth).

It always seemed that for those settings where races had their own pantheons, members of the non-human races oftentimes would still worship the "human" deities anyway... and yet it seemed extremely rare for the inverse to occur-- a human worshipping a non-human deity. And that kind of "humanocentric" way of looking at things just struck me as odd and didn't really sit well with me.

The DMG actually provides a reasoning behind that. Non-human pantheons are generally tight pantheons, similar to the Norse pantheons. You have a primary "father" god, and the rest of the gods are honored equally (except for the occasional rogue member). Human pantheons tend to be loose pantheons, where people just worship whomever. Thus humans are less likely to find a place in the tight non-human pantheons, while non-humans are usually more welcome in the various human churches. It makes a level of sense, but I prefer my human pantheons to also be tight pantheons.

 

[Ath-kethin]

I think the D&D handling of gods is pretty goofy, and "racial" gods doubly so.

I like approaching deities as being religions, not high level monsters. This is the approach taken by Al-Qadim back in the '90s and Eberron back in the aughts. Worship of a specific religion becomes a function of culture, not DNA.

Now, you could argue that elves worshipping Corellon Whatshisface is an aspect of elven culture, not the elven race, and so forth. I suppose I could been buy that argument to an extent. But when you look at the many many many ways religion influences real-world lives, a hodgepodge of deities seems sillier and sillier. Do the elves use a different calendar than the dwarves, and from the gnomes? How about bugbears? Kobolds? Mind flayers? Do the nymphs, centaurs, satyrs, and wild elves each have completely different days of rest and festivities? Seems like a stretch to me.

 

[Irennan]

But when you look at the many many many ways religion influences real-world lives, a hodgepodge of deities seems sillier and sillier. Do the elves use a different calendar than the dwarves, and from the gnomes? How about bugbears? Kobolds? Mind flayers? Do the nymphs, centaurs, satyrs, and wild elves each have completely different days of rest and festivities? Seems like a stretch to me.

To me it makes perfect sense. Even we humans have a lot of different days of rest/festivities and what you have. In the Realms, even humans use different calendars than other humans. That makes even more sense considering language barriers and absence (or sparse accessibility) of the fast travel and communications of our modern world. Why would that be problematic or illogical?