D&D 4E Who / What will be the main gods of 4E?

[Jer]

And I want some grittier feel to the religions. I want them to fight for influence and followers. I want crusades and inquisition

Szatany, let me introduce you to Eberron. Specifically the Church of the Silver Flame.

Silver Flame, this is Szatany. Szatany, this is the Church of the Silver Flame.

I'm sure the two of you will be great friends....

It's a lot easier to do the crusades and inquisition thing with nebulous, distant gods like you get in the Eberron setting. It's a lot harder to do it with powerful Good gods sitting at the head of most of the religions like you get in a lot of traditional D&D settings.

I guess you could get some mileage from a setting where the most powerful religions are a Church of Asmodeus and a Church of Lolth fighting back and forth for followers, but boy, that wouldn't seem much like most of the D&D settings I've played in...

 

[heirodule]

Y'know, using a non-greyhawk world as the default, and backgroundign greyhawk gods is a good way to allow forthe return of planescape.

Planescape works better (from a Clueless --> planar play sense) if you don't start on Greyhawk, travel to the planes, ans suddenly deal with a bunch of Gods you've never heard of.

"Hecate is the goddess of magic? Where's Wee Jas?"

 

[Desdichado]

I would prefer made up patheons (not real religion). Not for any reason other than I find FR or GH style deities more interesting

Huh. I find them much less interesting, since they're clearly imagined as a game mechanic first (domains and favored weapon) and as an actual living, breathing mythological presence second, if at all.

I'd probably rather use invented dieties, honestly, but I'd rather make up my own, and I'd rather develop them on my own. IMO, the game itself has done a relatively poor job of developing the core deities, or convincing me that they belong anywhere else other than in Greyhawk.

Honestly, for the campaign that I'm going to propose to the group, I'm going to follow Eric Mona's suggestion in Armies of the Abyss by Green Ronin and have the demon lords (many of which are unique to that publication, and don't feature in, say, FC1) simply be the pantheon. I can imagine my players' reactions when I list the half dozen or so major gods of Freeport, and they're easily recognizeable. "What do you mean Graz'zt is the patron god of the city?!"

 

[Malhost Zormaeril]

A question for the planar scholars: if Asmodeus were a god in 3E, what would his domains be? What's his schtick, beyond being all Evil and Lawful and devilish?

In the Book of Tobit, Asmodeus had fallen in love with Sarah and murdered every man who she tried to marry. Since he is LE, though, perhaps Covetousness, rather than Lust or Murderous Passion. As for domains, I'm not even sure that'll remain a relevant concept...

 

[Szatany]

It's a lot easier to do the crusades and inquisition thing with nebulous, distant gods like you get in the Eberron setting. It's a lot harder to do it with powerful Good gods sitting at the head of most of the religions like you get in a lot of traditional D&D settings.

Maybe, but not impossible. If a god of good decides that purging and converting non-followers is good, then it is good and the sole duty of every cleric and paladin of good god is to do so. Crusades commence

In other words, I hope that the alignments will not be independent entities, but vulnerable to whims of those with most power.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Maybe, but not impossible. If a god of good decides that purging and converting non-followers is good, then it is good and the sole duty of every cleric and paladin of good god is to do so. Crusades commence

In other words, I hope that the alignments will not be independent entities, but vulnerable to whims of those with most power.

Keep in mind the developers comments on alignment. It is being retained in some fashion, but is also being removed as a "mechanic." Whatever that means, I expect that the deities will be less clearly "good" and "evil", and simply have "motives" and "goals", with (perhaps) tendencies about the (good or evil) tactics they choose to use / preach about achieving them. You'll probably also see clerics of many alignments worshiping the same god, just in their own way. I can equally imagine clerics of Ares who are LN (Regimented soldiers; Military Justice) or CE (battle for the carnage, war, rapine and looting that result). Likewise, clerics of alignment-orthogonal concepts such as farming, mercantile endeavors, music, right of kings, knowledge, magic, etc. etc. could have clerics that are all over the map, alignment-wise. Only the gods of pure charity or debasement (such as Ilmater or Asdmodeus, respectively) would attract followers from a narrow range of possible alignments. Even Torm could have his "Children of the Light" (from Wheel of Time) dark side.

 

[Oldtimer]

While it would interesting, to gather from real world anicent religions (Norse, Egyptian).

We can stay with "dead" pantheons.

I'm of the Norse religion, so it is in no way "dead". However, I don't mind if a game use my gods - it's not like Thor would be upset by something as simple as that. And I would think Odin rather enjoys hearing us making up good stories about him.

 

[Kaodi]

I think the thing to do would actually have regional/competing pantheons be a part of the core. I mean, is there really any reason we can't have 60+ deities in the Core? hehehe...

 

[Szatany]

I'm of the Norse religion, so it is in no way "dead".

Good for you! I wonder if you enjoyed Stargate (the show).

 

[Alikar]

Well, asmodeus is from Bible, and they are not avoiding him.

The Book of Tobit, which he is from, is not in the Bible, its in the Apocrypha.