What religious pantheon do you use?

[Haltherrion]

What religious pantheon, if any, do you use in your campaign world?

Homebrew for me but I like building worlds and I always make the gods or equivalent an integral part of the setting. Even if they don't factor much into the particular campaign (not all setting details matter), I like homebrew because:

• Earth pantheons were not created with a game in mind. They often like balance (in terms of other races and Ethos) and their myths can be hard to fit into my game settings.
• Standard mythos (like the ones in the PHB) are pretty generic and make a lot of assumptions on how races and ethos work in your world.

But it's just a matter of personal taste for me in the end. I like creating settings and creating gods is a fun part of that for me.

 

[Rel]

While brainstorming my last campaign I came up with an idea that ended up working really well. I referred to it collectively as "the small gods".

For certain spiritually strong individuals they can simply call forth power from within themselves so long as they have an external inspiration. That inspiration might be a cause or concept but most often it is an individual. By virtue of having inspired this devotion in others that being also gains some measure of power, which can be reinforced through ritual.

As a result there are dozens of "small gods" scattered across the campaign setting. Fallen angels, demon lords, a powerful Warlock, a few dragons and even a really big crocodile were all "gods" of a sort. And there was always room for more.

I really ended up liking the notion that these gods were local and relevant to those who worshiped them. Many of the denizens of the world could literally say, "Yes, I worship that god. He lives in that tower right over there..."

This idea was contrasted with the concept of the "Old Gods" that existed before the huge cataclysm killed 99.9% of all life on the planet. Those were the "official" D&D pantheon. Of course one of the players in the party wanted to worship one of these Old Gods (Melora) so there was a whole sub plot about whether her goddess actually existed (she did) and whether she was making a comeback (she was).

Another player's Paladin also worshiped what he thought was one of the Old Gods but turned out to simply be an ancient Gold Dragon who had taken the form of that god. That ended up being a really cool plotline as well when we got to explore whether whether that was a betrayal of the followers or if it was justified because of all the good that was inspired in the followers.

Anyway, I ended up really liking the feel of the whole thing and I'll probably use the idea again in another campaign.

 

[Haltherrion]

While brainstorming my last campaign I came up with an idea that ended up working really well. I referred to it collectively as "the small gods".

I like that concept as well and am using a variant of this in my current campaign. It has turned the sources of divine power from being distant and generally unimportant in the campaign into NPCs that matter.

In my setting, the mechanics are different from what you propose: there are spirits (much like the spirits of the Celtic and Greek world) who have a small domain- possibly a grove or a stream or the like. In 4E terms, each can grant a single channeled power to a divine class character but they also have information and perishable expendables. PCs can "attune" to multiple spirits (it's a functin of their level but starts at 2 at lower levels).

The players have already made multiple use of these spirits in ways I had not anticipated and it has worked out very well in terms of game color and story. It has even had major battle impact at times, like when the party remembered they had some magic sand from an air spirit that could bind wings that they had acquired for another purpose. It proved of invaulable use on a frost dragonling that was set to keep strafing them.

My local region map places many of the spirits but I don't typically flesh one out until they head in that direction which keeps it managable but "rich." And the spirits can have as wide a range of personalities as any powerful NPC can.

This particular world has gods but they play a different role (related to the progression of souls and the after life).

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

While brainstorming my last campaign I came up with an idea that ended up working really well. I referred to it collectively as "the small gods".

In my setting, the mechanics are different from what you propose: there are spirits (much like the spirits of the Celtic and Greek world) who have a small domain- possibly a grove or a stream or the like.

One of my favorite short-short stories is Lord Dunsany's "Chu-Bu and Sheemish".

I think a fun setting might be one like the world of Chu-Bu and Sheemish, in which the gods are highly localized and specific, prone to squabbling, and not much more powerful than the PCs. The PCs would wander from place to place doing whatever PCs do, but also earning the petulant enmity of subminor deities, settling inter-divine disputes, and possibly even gaining a measure of adoration (and possibly divine power) themselves. In fact, such a campaign would be much like a lot of really high-level play in some respects-- especially the rp and storylines-- but at much lower power-levels (maybe appropriate for an E6 campaign, actually).

 

[Wepwawet]

In my setting, the mechanics are different from what you propose: there are spirits (much like the spirits of the Celtic and Greek world) who have a small domain- possibly a grove or a stream or the like. In 4E terms, each can grant a single channeled power to a divine class character but they also have information and perishable expendables. PCs can "attune" to multiple spirits (it's a functin of their level but starts at 2 at lower levels).

I love your idea, but I have a few questions:
- If spirits are local, the PCs don't travel a lot do they? The campaign doesn't takes place in countries far from each other until higher levels, right?

- I don't know which edition you play, but in 4E words, Primal classes are perfect in this mechanic. Does your setting include Clerics and Druids/Shamans? Is there a difference between Divine magic and Nature (Primal) magic?

 

[Greg K]

It depends on the campaign. If I am running a campaign in the Forgotten Realms, I will use the FR deities. If I am running Greyhawk, I will use the Greyhawk pantheon set out by Gary Gygax in Dragon Magazine (I won't use the 3e default pantheon that mixes them with the Suel deities (e.g., Kord)).
If I running Dark Sun, no deities.

For homebrew, I always create my own deities unless there are no deities in the setting.

And, if I were to run 4e, I would never use the default pantheon (blech!).

 

[Nifft]

What religious pantheon, if any, do you use in your campaign world?

I used six deities, one for each non-evil alignment. They were:

Raelor / LG - Sun, Justice, Nobility, War. King of gods, and god of kings. Eagles, lions, gold, longswords, Paladins.

Selene / LN - Moon, Magic, Death, Knowledge, the Ocean, Winter. Owls, a scale, silver, spears, Wizards, Inquisitors.

Alrainna / NG - Animal, Healing, Life, Plants, Protection, Summer. Serpents (eps. coiled around a staff), a fatted calf, bronze, maces, healers.

Kassoth / N - Artifice, Creation, Fire, Magic, Runes, Summoning. Bulls, the forge, iron, hammers, Sorcerers.

Eilonwy / CG - Air, Luck, Music, Travel, Trickery. Foxes, truth, springtime, troubadours, gamblers, rapiers, rogues, Bards.

Cernunos / CN - Battle, Destruction, Renewal, Storm, Strength. Bears, a horned helm, autumn, thunder, axes, Barbarians.

Is it based on a real-world culture's religion (e.g. using the Norse gods), or is it made up?

I stole from as many cultural groupings as I could find.

For example, the female trinity of maiden / mother / crone is embodied as Eilonwye / Alraina / Selene, and similarly the three male deities can be viewed as the male trinity of civilization (sovereign / soldier / support = Raelor / Cernunos / Kassoth).

They can also be paired up:
- Lords (Raelor, lord of the living; Selene, queen of the dead),
- Livelihood (Alraina, agrarian; Kassoth, artisan),
- Liberation (Eilonwye, by cunning and trickery; Cernunos, by force of will or arms).

Have you ever run a game where people believe in a single deity, rather than the typical polytheism?

Sure, there were priests of a single over-arching divinity, whose great Self could not meaningfully be sub-divided, whose "thoughts" were ineffable, whose servants felt a calling that demanded selfless service to unknowable forces obviously greater than themselves.

I called them "Druids".

Cheers, -- N

 

[Rel]

One of my favorite short-short stories is Lord Dunsany's "Chu-Bu and Sheemish".

I think a fun setting might be one like the world of Chu-Bu and Sheemish, in which the gods are highly localized and specific, prone to squabbling, and not much more powerful than the PCs. The PCs would wander from place to place doing whatever PCs do, but also earning the petulant enmity of subminor deities, settling inter-divine disputes, and possibly even gaining a measure of adoration (and possibly divine power) themselves. In fact, such a campaign would be much like a lot of really high-level play in some respects-- especially the rp and storylines-- but at much lower power-levels (maybe appropriate for an E6 campaign, actually).

This isn't too far off from how my game played out.

 

[Haltherrion]

I love your idea, but I have a few questions:
- If spirits are local, the PCs don't travel a lot do they? The campaign doesn't takes place in countries far from each other until higher levels, right?

- I don't know which edition you play, but in 4E words, Primal classes are perfect in this mechanic. Does your setting include Clerics and Druids/Shamans? Is there a difference between Divine magic and Nature (Primal) magic?

Good questions and observations

As it happens, this campaign is set in a fairly small region but as developed so far, it is intended that the spirit attunements can work over long distances. The spirit might drop a follower who persisted on remaining far away however.

I did design it with more "primal" type casters in mind but I actually created a first version of this for 3.5 before we decided to use 4E for this campaign (I was working on this while the last campaign was wrapping up). Any character can worship a spirit but to gain an in-game power, the character has to have a channel-divinity class feature so it covers divine classes as well. Seemed simplest from a rules point of view to make key it off that class feature and the setting has a strong bias towards primal casters in any case.

Allowing clerics or paladins to have these attunements may seem strange to many. It is not classical D&D since this doesn't fit the medieval model at all but it is a good fit for antiquity where priests usually served a local god albeit one who was often associated with a more widely known god, like Athena Alea in Sparta. In the ancient world, early on the gods were local and even in the classical period, they retained a local feel to them.

My setting does have gods separate from the spirits and it might be an interesting refinement to make the divine classes god-based although at present one of the distinctions between gods and spirits is that the gods do not grant their followers powers. They deal solely with the after life.

 

[AFGNCAAP]

After years of trying to build a "perfect" pantheon for my homebrew, I gave up. Often what I created wasn't enough to engage the players to soem degree. So, instead of having specific deities, I just created some major philosophies that are broadly accepted throughout the setting. The deities serves as examples/aspects of those philosophies.

There's the Path of Light (Good/Non-Evil), the Path of Darkness (Evil), the Path of Nature (primal), the Path of Knowledge, and the Path of Revelry.

The Path of Light is akin to the Virtues/Way of the Avatar from the Ultima games, while the Path of Darkness is the Anti-Virtues. The Path of Knowledge is akin the the Gargoyle Virtues from the Ultima games. The Path of Nature encompasses all of the natural/animistic/spirit-based styles of belief. The Path of Revelry is akin to Mandrake the Bard's Virtues from the Ultima games, and is there as a non-serious, almost hedonistic outlook on life (it is also the religion for the campaign's sole Trickster God—go figure).

There's religions for small pantheons/individual deities as well, but these are akin to very small, localized regional/tribal cults that are extreme in their dogma compared to the main religious philosophies. These religions maybe have a minor spirit, fiend, or demigod at its core—beings who don't have much power, and won't gain much power due to their extreme/bizarre dogmas.