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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DammitVictor" data-source="post: 9311152" data-attributes="member: 6750908">My current homebrew features genies pretty heavily and I would love to pick your brain on this. May I PM you about it?[HR][/HR]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:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Combine the Athasian Elemental Clerics (including paraelementals and quasielementals in a space fantasy setting) with the (3.X) shugenja and sha'ir.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> </ul>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.</blockquote>

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