The New Core Pantheon

[Dykstrav]

Make up your own damn pantheon. Why should the designers do all the work for us? If you're using a pre-published setting, fine; if you aren't, make up your own gods. Exercise a bit of right brain.

Many dungeon masters do just this. In fact, not only have I made up seperate pantheons for my own homebrews, I've been asked to design pantheons for other people's homebrews as well. There's no problem with getting this level of creativity out of most DMs.

Still, I think a basic core pantheon is a good idea. The fighter doesn't get to decide what weapons and armor are available in the campaign, the wizard doesn't get to decide what spells are available. In the same vein, the cleric should be able to check out the Player's Handbook for a list of basic vanilla options.

 

[Jer]

WotC has already contacted me and asked if I would serve as one of the new gawds. I'm still thinking it over.

Don't do it man! You know how gawds get treated by adventurers! They'll only kill you and take your stuff!

 

[Turjan]

Hmm, Thor, Set...sounds a little like the "defualt" pantheon at Necromancer Games...

Actually, it reminds me somewhat of the hodgepodge of major deities in the Wilderlands.

Armadad Bog (OK, not this one )
Athena
Harmakhis
Mitra
Mycr
Nephtlys
Odin
Set
Thor
Seker
Thoth

With an approach like that, D&D history would go full circle .

 

[Sundragon2012]

I never understood the whole attraction to a culturally (even faux culture) bereft, aimless, hodgepodge of dieties from wildly different societies that we are all at least peripherally familiar with. This familiarity makes it very difficult to not see Odin and Anubis being in the same pantheon as wildly inappropriate. The name familiariy works against players and DMs who desire versimilitude in a setting but not those who prefer settings that are merely life support for dungeons.

Personally I think its a lazy choice to just grab gods from the real-world willy nilly based on some name familiarity. Fictional gods can be done right in books like the 2e FR deity books (the names escape me) and the more recent Book of the Righteous by Green Ronin. The Book of the Righteous is THE benchmark for what a book detailing fictional deities could be if handled in an internally consistant and sound manner.

Plus, at least with fictional gods you can tailor their stories to fit their standing in the pantheon. With real world deities, it takes a lot of work to set them to specific alignments without bastardi*ing and sanitizing their mythologies, in the case of ancient deities given a good alignment, til nothing of the powerful mythic character remains save a name.



Sundragon

 

[Thurbane]

I agree with you 100% Sundragon. If they are determined to dump the Greyhawk deities for a "real world" pantheon, for crying out loud, keep it confined to ONE pantheon! Otherwise it just looks plain silly, and messy.

 

[Frostmarrow]

I think the All Star line-up will be something like:

-Asmodeus
-Bahamut
-Lolth
-Vecna
-Zeus
-Thor
-Set
-Tiamat
-Ra
-Hercules
-Ares

I wonder if they will stretch out into any Babylonian, Finnish or Chinese mythos etc?

There is a cleric of Orcus in Keep on the Shadowfell. I guess that means Orcus is in the core pantheon and the PHB.

 

[Gold Roger]

There is a cleric of Orcus in Keep on the Shadowfell. I guess that means Orcus is in the core pantheon and the PHB.

Not as god. We have an explicit statement that Asmodeus is not in the MM because he's been made a god and that Orcus is in the MM.

So while he is a definite part of the Core Cosmologie, he won't join the pantheon.

This also means that archfiends can grant spells to clerics and that divinity is not just defined by "grants spells to clerics".

 

[Gold Roger]

The design article on elves makes mention Corellon (without his last name) as fey god and Obad-Hai as the nature god. While no confirmation, this is a definite pointer that these two may be in.

 

[Gold Roger]

Alright, there have been a bunch of gods mentioned recently. We now have:

Asmodeus. First comfirmed god.

Corellon and Obad-Hai. Mention in Design & Development: Elves.

Zehir. Mentioned in Desert of Desolation Preview 4. Flavor text mentions he's "the Serpentine god of lies and darkness". I've never seen him mentioned before, so I guess he's a 4th edition entry.

Tharizdun. He's mentioned in Design & Development: Monster: Demons & Devils. Apparently he's now the big daddy of demons and elemental evil.

Vecna. Design & Development: Cosmology mentions "The black tower of Vecna, hidden in the depths of Pandemonium". Means there's a Vecna and he resides in the traditional realm of deities, but not necessarily as god.

Lolth. She's mentioned as godess who resides in the abyss in one of the staff blogs.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't mind much about the "default" Pantheon, so long as we don't have the bloody Greyhawk gods. I loathe them. Sadly Obad-Hai, who sucks, has already been mentioned.