D&D General Which Gods/Pantheons do you use in your D&D setting?

[steeldragons]

My homebrew World of Orea uses a homebrew set of entities (and several others in the wings. Loooove making up pantheons/mythologies/religious systems).

There are 4 "Elder" gods who were part of the world's original keepers who still exist. Dozens others have died/been slain or imprisoned outside of the planes for going insane and/or attempting to usurp creation for "The Chaosbringer" (one of the 4 remaining Elders).

The bulk of humanity reveres a "goodly king's court," a la the Olympians, of primarily good and neutral deities, numbering 13 for the "greater" gods.

Lesser deities number almost twice that, and a handful (only 3, I believe) of demigods.

There are, of course, then, ancient dragons, titans, elemental and fae nobles, demons and devils, all revered as "local gods" or worshiped by cults of varying power and influence around the edges of the formalized "real gods' temples" religions.

The bulk of other species, if they possess cultures that organize religion, worship "facets" of the entities of that pantheon, "reflections" or "refractions" of that entity as most befits the species.

The Sky-god Shining King of the Gods of Men, for example, has a different name as the "All-Father" ruler of the dwarven pantheon -which is structured more as the dwarves structure their society-, master of all dwarven craft, defender of all dwarvenkind. He is also "the Sky" entity that rules over/forms the desert nation's elemental-based religious structure that contains only 5 "god-beings"...very different from the expansive "court" of the western kingdoms and southern realms. This same entity is revered, but not formally worshipped, by elves, under yet a different name, and acknowledged as the unmoving "North/Pole Star." And so on. But all a single deity, which mortals view as entirely separate beings.

Not all deities are celebrated by all species or within all cultures of a species. But, generally, for the "greater gods," they have at least one to several, alter-ego facets from their humano-centric appearance and organization. Some get along in one mythology, but at odds in another. Some don't exist for certain species or cultures at all.

But, for the most part, the theologians and sages of Orea are in agreement of the 42 (or so) "real/current gods." and any/everything else being some -immortal or near-omnipotent- "something else."

 

[The Amethyst Dragon]

I have a single homebrewed pantheon of 20 deities for my world.

The gods have directly communicated with people and there's clear evidence of their existence, so there's never been a reason for the people of my setting to invent local gods, give different names to the same gods, or reinterpret earlier religions to win over worshippers for a newer god or set of gods.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I actually am not a huge fan of gods being a matter of faith in a fantasy setting.

(I'm not trying to tell you that you're wrong, just share my stance on this issue and why I feel this way.)

In my opinion and experience, the religions and characters that come from settings where gods are both proven to exist and fairly active in the world are much less interesting and inventive in settings where they're either less present or not proven to exist (Eberron). Especially in settings like the Forgotten Realms where there are hundreds of boring gods and not worshipping them is punished in-world (Wall of the Faithless, Ahriman eating their souls). Of course interesting religions can exist in settings where the gods are proven to be real (the various religions of the Elder Scrolls and the Cosmere's religions come to mind), but D&D settings tend to not do this well. Most D&D religions are weirdly monotheistic/henotheistic in that they specially venerate a single god and basically ignore all the other gods, even if they acknowledge their existence. Henotheism cannot be a primitive form of monotheism in D&D settings like the Forgotten Realms, so it's weird that the vast majority of D&D religions are henotheistic. Religion in the Forgotten Realms and similar settings would be much more interesting if it was more accurate to polytheism from the real world.

There is a weird lack of transtheistic, nontheistic, and gnostic religions in D&D worlds. What's more interesting, the religion of murder that wants to murder everyone (Church of Bhaal) or a religion that refuses to worship the gods in search of some greater enlightenment (Blood of Vol)? In D&D there are dozens of apocalypse cults that want to cause the end of the world, and very few religions that do sacrifices in order to avoid the wrath of their gods (which are much more common throughout history).

Interesting religions can exist in D&D settings where the gods are proven to exist, but they don't (for the most part). Interesting religions are much more common and easier to make in D&D settings where they're not proven to exist.

Tangent: Settings with smaller pantheons (Theros, Nerath/Exandria) are, IMO, better than settings with endless gods like the Forgotten Realms. In my homebrew settings I try to keep the pantheon between 10 and 20 gods so it's easier to keep track of them.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@Levistus's_Leviathan I don't really disagree with your analysis how it has been handled in actual published settings. Distant unprovable deities strike me as anachronistic, but how D&D handles knowable deities is usually also so, and unsatisfactory in many ways.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Distant unprovable deities strike me as anachronistic

May I ask why? It doesn't to me, and I'm curious why you feel this way.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

May I ask why? It doesn't to me, and I'm curious why you feel this way.

I tried to explain it in the post I quoted. It is sort of modern mindset. We don't believe in gods anymore. Not really, not like the ancient people did. To us, if we believe at all, it is more like hoping, whilst to them it was knowing. We live in the world of science, they lived in world of sprits and magic. That is how they explained and understood the world. Gods were real to them, like gravity is real to us. Now of course from the modern perspective they were mistaken, but that doesn't change how they experienced the world. So to get a modern jaded and cynical roleplayer into a mindset of a person who believes in gods and magic, then easier way to do it is just show and tell them that in this world gods and magic are real, not just that maybe they are but you can pretend that your character believes in it.

 

[Minigiant]

Tangent: Settings with smaller pantheons (Theros, Nerath/Exandria) are, IMO, better than settings with endless gods like the Forgotten Realms. In my homebrew settings I try to keep the pantheon between 10 and 20 gods so it's easier to keep track of them.

Either

1) Have a large or multiple large pantheons with a god for everything (with no duplicates) and weave a few connecting threads that the DM and players can add to during play

OR

2) Have a small pantheon with 1-2 dozen gods, each with a clear portfolio, personality, attitude of followers, and relationships with other powers

Big pantheons with "duplicates" and small pantheons with big wide gods are too unwieldy for people not planning to write a book.

 

[cbwjm]

I think a large part of the weird worship a singular god of a pantheon in DnD settings is down to presentation. They do mention that people make offerings to the various gods of the pantheons but these statements are often hard to find and they then turn around and make clerics followers of a singular god. However, it's not like we didn't have priests of specific gods in the past, I know of examples from Roman and Ancient Egyptian sources, though I believe in Rome these were somewhat political positions (if someone knows more, happy to be corrected). In ancient Egypt priests would, for instance, be priest of Amun and serve in that temple but I'm sure that they'd still be making offerings to other gods.

What the various DnD settings really needs is to create faiths which are made up of pantheons so that you aren't a follower of Helm but a follower of the Cormyrian Immortals (made up of various gods that represent their values, and a few others that might be acknowledged as the dark gods which are great for cultists to follow). You can still have the gods as known entities, but instead of trying to gain followers from other gods they can try to get them from other pantheons.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

In my opinion and experience, the religions and characters that come from settings where gods are both proven to exist and fairly active in the world are much less interesting and inventive in settings where they're either less present or not proven to exist (Eberron). Especially in settings like the Forgotten Realms where there are hundreds of boring gods and not worshipping them is punished in-world (Wall of the Faithless, Ahriman eating their souls). Of course interesting religions can exist in settings where the gods are proven to be real (the various religions of the Elder Scrolls and the Cosmere's religions come to mind), but D&D settings tend to not do this well. Most D&D religions are weirdly monotheistic/henotheistic in that they specially venerate a single god and basically ignore all the other gods, even if they acknowledge their existence. Henotheism cannot be a primitive form of monotheism in D&D settings like the Forgotten Realms, so it's weird that the vast majority of D&D religions are henotheistic. Religion in the Forgotten Realms and similar settings would be much more interesting if it was more accurate to polytheism from the real world.

There is a weird lack of transtheistic, nontheistic, and gnostic religions in D&D worlds. What's more interesting, the religion of murder that wants to murder everyone (Church of Bhaal) or a religion that refuses to worship the gods in search of some greater enlightenment (Blood of Vol)? In D&D there are dozens of apocalypse cults that want to cause the end of the world, and very few religions that do sacrifices in order to avoid the wrath of their gods (which are much more common throughout history).

Interesting religions can exist in D&D settings where the gods are proven to exist, but they don't (for the most part). Interesting religions are much more common and easier to make in D&D settings where they're not proven to exist.

Tangent: Settings with smaller pantheons (Theros, Nerath/Exandria) are, IMO, better than settings with endless gods like the Forgotten Realms. In my homebrew settings I try to keep the pantheon between 10 and 20 gods so it's easier to keep track of them.

D&D doesn't generally do a good job of modelling anything real (society, religion, economy, technology - you name it), but rather exists as its own, self-reinforcing paradigm, where its various quirky elements support its idiosyncratic structure.

We know, in a general sense, that religion is a “thing” - or, at least, we think it is - but its boundaries are very blurred: we can’t really disentangle it from culture, or time, or place; it is enmeshed in notions of identity; of ethnos, tradition, heredity, and family. I've suggested before that by solidifying a pantheon as a metaphysical reality - concretizing a mythopeia and embedding the deities in the game world as "real" - we lose anything which resembles real world religions, which, necessarily, are undemonstrable.

Religion IRL is, on some level, always tied to some kind of social or cultural group, or to a political entity. This unit may be as small as a family, as loose as a cultural milieu, as large as an empire etc. The fact is that religion always requires some kind of context, even if that context is adversarial with regard to the religion itself. By "objectifying" religious truths, you lose one of the very things which makes a religion a religion - it becomes something else.

 

[DammitVictor]

Not gods, but my "noble" genies, have fit this pretty well. The party has met, interacted with, and even been manipulated ("benevolently"--they were pawns, but never in any real danger, and the end result was useful to them) by these genies. They got very comfortable with the idea that these were just like regular human nobility, but with fancy powers.

And then they actually befriended one of them--and they got to see more than just the superficial social behavior.

I could hear it in their voices when they had that dawning realization of, "Oh. Oh. These people aren't human and they have values and modes of thinking that...aren't like ours. At all. Ohhhhh boy." It was extremely satisfying.

My current homebrew features genies pretty heavily and I would love to pick your brain on this. May I PM you about it?

---

The longer I play D&D, the less I can stand the way it models polytheistic religions and cosmologies-- the way some people can't stand psionics or firearms-- and neither I nor my players really appreciate doing it right enough to put in the effort of doing so. What I do is take a handful of different variant approaches to cosmology/religion from different D&D settings and put them all in the same setting to serve different cultures or different roles within a culture.

Some of my favorite playing pieces:

• Sort of an anime-style Crystal Dragon Jesus as a monolithic, monotheistic political institution that supports many different religious orders with different holy (angelic/saintly) Patrons to support the Domain-based priest classes. I really like to combine this "high religion" as the official State religion with a completely incompatible "folk religion" that is also the official State religion.
• Combine the kind of animism that D&D normally attributes to "Shaman" classes with the Force Traditions from Star Wars. This combines really well with CDJ above. The shamanic practices introduce a level of holistic mysticism that enhances the flavor of the Jedi and Sith (IMO) and makes it feel more like "divine magic" and less like psionics.
• Combine the Athasian Elemental Clerics (including paraelementals and quasielementals in a space fantasy setting) with the (3.X) shugenja and sha'ir.
• Mystaran-style Immortal (or Athasian Immortal) worship, more like Warlock flavor than Cleric flavor, with an arbitrary (and redundant) collection of ascended mortals and more or less a blank check for players to make up their own. The Immortals have their individual spheres of interest, but they are not "Da Gawdz" in terms of being the metaphysically load-bearing bedrock of reality. Paired with this, True Dragons have a vital cosmology role in these settings: metallic dragons challenge and encourage worthy (and responsible) mortals to ascend, while chromatic dragons act as beefgates and saboteurs to protect reality from irresponsible, tyrannical, and most especially elven gods.
• In conjunction with the above? Maybe the Ascended Immortals are just a subset of Immortals that includes all the other "godlike" beings that D&D would consider eligible Patrons for Warlocks.

So... my current Spelljammer homebrew features a sort of universal syncretic/animist "folk religion" wherein the primary priest class of almost every human culture and most alien cultures is the Shaman-- like the PF Oracle/Witch hybrid class-- with some system-wide "high religions" that produce the Acolyte (hybrid Cleric/Warlock) class, some versions of Socerer (Wu Jen/Shugenja/Kineticist) being dragon/genie/giant cultists, and lone weirdo/small covens of Warlock/Druids.

For my commercial projects... Shroompunk has Shamans of the five elements of the wu xing, in the Athasian/Rokugani model, celestial/fiendish/protean Oracles, and various flavors of Witch... but they're all more or less part of the same "folk religion" that worships the Spirits Above, honors the Spirits Among, and fears the Spirits Beneath.

In my Cosmic Rangers, the One True Faith of the Galactic Empire is the Orthodox Church of the Benevolent Host, basically an Anime Catholicism that worships powerful angelic beings and Ascended Immortal Saints as the proxies for an aloof clockmaker deity. But it's also the Way of Harmony, which are basically knights errant Jedi Shamans... and if the priests of the Chuch are Clerics and the priests of the Way are Shamans, the holy knights of the unified traditions are Jedi Paladins. There are a number of heretical sects that worship "non-canonical angels" or interpret holy doctrines idiosyncratically; heresy is technically a criminal offense, but there are degrees of heresy. There are cultural minorities and individual converts to dragon-worship, which the dragons and the Church tolerate as long as the dragon cultists continue to pay lip service to the Imperial Throne and the Holy Church.

My urban wuxia setting is based on our real-world religious history and trends, extrapolated over two centuries and two world wars; it's pretty recognizable to modern readers, and I'm certainly not arrogant or tone-deaf enough to use it as a platform to express my religious beliefs as (narratively) objective truths. There are magicians are martial artists from every sect of every faith, and the laity and clergy have every possible opinion on the moral and theological implicaitons of every combination of piety and power.