Small Gods

Gez · Dec 18, 2003

Everry single region is a small god in my setting.

Will · Dec 19, 2003

(sniff) Well. FFG's Spells and Spellcraft has a section on defining and running Small Gods.

I wrote it.

And junk

(sniff)

Tonguez · Dec 19, 2003

Tsunami said:
Erythnul is a towering, savage ogre, face contorted with the lust for slaughter, who roams the mountain sides. Valley villages fear his coming, for he leaves behind no survivors.

One of the Big Bads IMC is a Magma Paraelemental Ogre Magi with a pyroclastic blast breath weapon who was traped inside a volcano until his goblin worshippers helped him escape. The PCs were building a village on the Island when he escaped and thus had to stop him from destroying them all....

TheAuldGrump · Dec 19, 2003

The river ford near Smithdowns is a small god, and place of the first forge. Coins are tossed into the waters, and small scraps of brightly colored cloth are tide to the branches of the trees and bushes around it...

The name of the small god who dwells in the river below the falls has been forgotten, but his stony shape can be seen in the rocks where the falls cascade....

The Koboldkin is a god made of a sacrifice bound within a box, kept within a cave...

Upon the top of a chalk hill the shape of a man erect has been carved through the sod to shine whitely...

The Stone of Farrow must be turned over every year upon the first of spring, what will happen if this tradition is not kept has never been discovered...

Near the Smithdowns they people used to make a human sacrifice to the Rye Mother, today the tradition has gentled, with the village smith escorting a virgin into the rye fields and performing a blood sacrifice of a different sort...

Some of these are based loosely upon true tradition, each has been changed slightly from the real legends.

The Auld Grump

frankthedm · Dec 23, 2003

nice ideas.

IMHO they don't mesh with a D&D 9 level spell stack cleric swinging a mace in full plate, but that's the system's fault.

Tsunami
Obad-Hai is a monolithic tree at the center of the forest, with a trunk as wide as a house.....

only a house? Natural Redwoods get close to that, don't they? A small fort maybe. [My orcs currently have a huge wooden fortess made from the elven life tree, so i am used to picture those as a little larger.]

Lalato · Mar 8, 2004

dream66_ said:
Anyone in this thread who hasn't should definattly read J. Gregory Keyes The WaterBorn He does a fantastic job of presenting Shamanism with small gods, and Monotheism in the same world, both working under the same metaphysical laws.

Rest snipped...

I second that recommendation... That book is an excellent introduction to small gods/spirits.

--sam

Buttercup · Mar 8, 2004

frankthedm said:
IMHO they don't mesh with a D&D 9 level spell stack cleric swinging a mace in full plate, but that's the system's fault.

I agree. But if one were to eliminate the cleric class, and maybe the wizard and druid as well, and tinker with the sorcerer, one would have a pretty flavorful setting. If only I could figure out the specifics of this idea, I'd be a happy camper.

Moe Ronalds · Mar 8, 2004

Deep within the bowels of the underdark resides the Eldest Brain , a mass of brain matter said to have created the illithid and their kin through sheer force of psionic will.

Lalato · Mar 8, 2004

Buttercup said:
I agree. But if one were to eliminate the cleric class, and maybe the wizard and druid as well, and tinker with the sorcerer, one would have a pretty flavorful setting. If only I could figure out the specifics of this idea, I'd be a happy camper.

Hi Buttercup...
isn't that called "Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed"?

Olive · Mar 8, 2004

Lalato said:
isn't that called "Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed"?

I'm not sure that more powerful magic using classes is what Buttercup is looking for.

On the subject, I see small gods not as spell granting deities but as divine beings (in game terms DR0 gods). They are immortal etc, but to protect the one village of worshippers they use their own power rather than giving the power to clerics through spells.

Perhaps they are native to the prime, perhaps they reside in a portal. Perhaps they teach and lead cooperative casting rituals ala incantations from UA. They'll be the gods of soemthign but that may be the god of beggars or the god of the village of Thoa or the god of obsessing over collectible painted minis. They may have no worshippers, or a hundred. They could have becoem divine through luck, adventure or intervention.

I think that there is a place for gods to not grant spells while still having a place in a society.