Worlds of Design: How Powerful Are Your Gods?

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Picture couresty of Pixabay.
Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered.” Neil Gaiman

What Flavor of God?​

Are your fantasy role-playing game gods all-powerful, and are they omniscient (they know everything, which implies they are omnipresent as well)? Monotheistic religions tend to have one deity along these lines, but that's not how many of the ancients thought. The gods of the ancients tended to be something like very powerful humans or like comic book superheroes, in groups (there is also a point of view called monolatry, belief in the existence of many gods but with a consistent worship of only one deity). Here’s a list of characteristics to consider when creating your fantasy pantheon:
  • Extent of their knowledge (which includes, their presence)
  • Limits of their power (if any)
  • On a scale from benign to malign, where are they (See “RPG Gods Benign or Malign”)?
  • On a scale from engaged to aloof, where are they? That is, do the deities meddle in the affairs or mortals (Greek Gods), or do they rarely if ever engage with them (Cthulhu)?
  • What is the relationship with other gods?
  • Nature of worshippers (if no worshippers, can the “gods” truly be gods?)
  • How do they treat their worshippers? Are they merely a a means to an end, or do they love, honor, and care for their worshippers?
  • How do they treat their “spokesmen” (priests)?
  • Are they absolutely immortality (cannot be destroyed). or conditionally immortal (can be killed (with much difficulty) but won’t die naturally) or not immortal at all?
  • Can a god be stuck in one plane of existence, or does the god need to be able to travel to many planes, or perhaps to anyplace within a plane?

Divine Traits​

When you draw the line between gods and not-gods, immortality is the first thing that comes to mind. And yet, J.R.R. Tolkien’s high elves had a form of “conditional” immortality, living until someone killed them. Unusually, Tolkien’s elves continue to exist after they are killed, in a sort of waiting area in Valinor. And in some cases “gods” can die, e.g. Baldur in the Norse mythos. But gods are usually immortal until someone kills them, just like Tolkien’s elves. And their worshippers are necessarily “mortals.”

The second criterion for godhood that comes to mind after immortality is great power. So are all very powerful monsters also gods? Some of these are only conditionally immortal, some may be subject to death by very old age (dragons, in most cases). Is a thousand years close enough to immortal? Or can we not care about immortality if the “monster” is sufficiently powerful?

What about gods as “monsters,” that is, as opposition for adventurers? I don’t let player characters gain godlike powers, so I don’t put them up against godlike opposition. On the other hand, you could say that if a “god” is so wimpy that mortal adventurers can defeat it, it isn’t much of a god (Hulk: “Puny god.")! Some GMs may prefer to have their adventurers fight “gods” sooner or later.

Edge Cases​

This brings to mind my “monster” Elemental Princes of Evil that originally appeared in the Fiend Folio. Are they gods? They’re immortal, perhaps more than conditionally (that is, they respawn if killed). They’re very powerful, such that the only time my player character in a powerful party ran into one of them, we grabbed what we came for and fled post-haste. Do they have worshippers? There’s a tradition in fantasy that “old gods” who no longer have worshippers either fade away, or hang around in obscure ways – as “monsters,” more or less. Or in this case, never had worshippers, so they’re monsters, not gods?

We can also talk about Demigods. These are common in ancient Greek/Roman mythology, the result of a union between god and human, such as Hercules. In most cases they are conditionally immortal, but much less powerful than full gods, resembling comic book superheroes, or demons. So sometimes they’re treated as mortals, sometimes as gods.

Choose Wisely​

Defining your deities and the extent of their influence will have significant repercussions on your campaign: for your divine spellcasters, for your fiendish and celestial monsters, and if the player characters are powerful enough, even as potential foes.

Your Turn: How powerful are the gods in your campaign?
 

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Lewis Pulsipher

Lewis Pulsipher

Dragon, White Dwarf, Fiend Folio
what gods? Im a Panentheist - All of Reality is a Divine Manifestation of Ultimate Divinity. From first Conception it radiates in all directions outwards and inwards, upwards and downwards, twin streams entwined in helical union, each shift and shiver a new potentiality, an unformed mode, and unaccounted attribute yet to manifest its true form.

And oh the myriad of forms that manifest - the endless storm and the spider in her web, the Celestial Dragon and the weeping swan maiden. Monsters, Mortals, Heroes and Spirits - each one might become the Focus of its own Story, the Anchor to its own Domain, Patron to their own Petitioners and thus the Mode of its own Divinity.
 

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I just posted the following Table in the GOD RULES thread. Direct Divine Intervention by Immortals upon the mortal plane is outlawed except in extreme circumstances (eg. some Alien Entity shows up to gobble the planet), though a Demigod can have their Divine Realm upon a mortal world (such as IUZ in Greyhawk) and 'get away with it' so to speak. But typically Demigods and above will send Avatars (2 ranks lower) or Aspects (4 ranks lower) when interacting with mortals.

Divine Ranks 1 (Hero-deity) & 2 (Quasi-deity) can freely act on the mortal plane.

View attachment 390362
I’m slightly intrigued but also overwhelmed by your chart, but maybe I’m missing some context about your game. That’s a lot of tiers of deities, and it’s not obvious to me what the differences are. (Probably the fact that I don’t recognize about half of them is a contributing factor.)
 

I've done a lot of versions.

God's that were so incredibly powerful they were prohibited from directly influencing mortal realms because their very presence would destroy it, with the gods of destruction constrained by the other gods vowing retribution.

Gods that were bonded to demiplanes that housed the souls of their worshippers, acted as a conduit to grant spells and would regenerate their powerful physical avatars.

Gods that were the semi-immortal embodiment of some concept. Near absolute influence over that concept, but with minimal power outside that concept.

The "pagan panoply" where there are familial hierarchies of immortals and near-immortals with geographic domains ranging from nymphs in stretches of rivers to the god of an ocean, with the most powerful residing in adjacent realms that have near-permanent portals mortals could enter.

Some find this pointless background world-building, but I consider it foundational as it materially changes the world.

In the panoply, these immortals are a constant risk. You never know which spring truly has a spirit made powerful by generations of devotions from the villagers and which is merely a place for season parties. And every so often a war might result in Thor squaring off with Prometheus.

The Embodiments could appear anywhere something significantly impacts their Domain. The Embodiment of Weavers might be heavily invested in a war that threatens the sheep with the best wool in all the world. This is well outside that Embodiment's purview so they might seek out mortal agents, promising rewards like Cloaks of Invisibility made of woven moonbeam (which is within that Embodiment's power).

The ultra-powerful gods can see the possible futures and the distant past but have issues with the present, unless one of their worshippers is present to act as a proxy. The evil gods teach their minions the fastest ways to gather power (usually evil sacrifices), while the good gods teach slower, non-evil methods and encourage community building, something evil is rarely good at.

And then the demi-planar gods are the "generic" d&d gods, who have worshippers praying up useful info, and likely have minions (celestials/infernals) using scrying and the like to monitor major events and entities in the mortal worlds. Their avatars can appear anywhere in the mortal realms and are typically Tier-4 strong, but they are just a fraction of the gods real power. Defeating one is just a temporary setback for the god, not a permanent loss.
 

Fact is, gods are VERY core to any setting that uses them. I'm not talking about the standard D&D world pantheons. Those are all based off the core greek and roman gods. And yes, I know they are NOT directly out of Bulfinch's Mythology, but they're kissing cousins.

The lady of pain is one like this: Sigil is literally BUILT around her. She's the reason it exists. Nobody knows WHY or HOW, but if she suddenly left, the place would devolve into uncontrolled chaos. (As opposed to the controlled chaos it currently is.)

In one setting I built, the gods looked like the standard pantheon, right down to stealing know gods like Loki, god of chaos and Hestina, goddess of hearth and home. The fact is, none of them existed a few ages ago. They were all born when a group of priests worshipping (and not getting any answers back from) a singular god of their world tried to open a gate and call him down to the mortal plane... they succeeded.

Instantly broke reality. He walked through the gate, was immediately perceived by a whole city's worth of people... and shattered on contact. Every single shard of him becoming a god fully formed and utterly terrified of experiencing existence in an instant.

Glassed the city. Literally. Then took the fractured reality and yanked it out of the mortal plane before it could more than undo ten thousand years of magical advancement. The moon itself was turned to glass, a giant fractured crystal in the sky, and the gods were trapped in a plane that would later be called the planes of glass.

And the gods lived in that city, and watched the world through the crystal lens of the moon, and wanted nothing more than to... do something. A few hundred years later, the first of them did. They channeled their power into a mortal, and realized they could make clerics, and druids, and paladins... Eventually they found they could make avatars if they had enough power, and power came from being perceived.

And humans got what they wanted. Beings that noticed them, and meddled like it was their only purpose. because it was.

So... that's how I made one set of gods.

You should hear about the world where there were just three. The Moon Goddess, the Sun God, and their daughter, the Void.

Fun times.
 

My world building tends to have two or three Primal Beings, and then a selection of lesser (but still potentially very powerful) gods who are often ascended mortals. Or in one case, the magic sword of one of the Primal Beings. (Starfire: The Ace of Swords, treated as a peer by the major deities of the world.)

What the gods are really like "under the hood" is important because it sets possibilities and limits on the various things the inhabitants of a world believe about the gods. That's the important player-facing bit.

My gaming "white whale" is a Dawn of Creation campaign where the PCs are the eldest deities at the beginning of their careers. At the start there is Earth and Sky, a sapling World Tree, and the PCs. Everything else must be created by the PCs. Everything else.

Sun, Moon, Stars? To be created by the PCs. Fire and Water? To be created by the PCs. Mountains, rivers, seas, plants (other than the World Tree), animals, people... Up to the PCs to create.

First level characters, but with some extreme powers & abilities, probably, mostly, of the expendable, can only use once, variety.
 

One of the campaigns I ran focused more heavily on the gods and their business. There you had minor deities and major deities. Anyone could become a god, it was like becoming a saint - do some major thing while alive that had people remember you and tell stories about you, and you could wake up after death as a minor god.

The more people believe and pray to you, the more your power grows. All gods embody a concept - Death, Life, War and so on. Major gods usually embody two or more.

The only surefire way to kill a god is to completely undermine their belief system, such that the belief fueling their power disappears, otherwise they will simply reappear at a place of their worship should there be any followers of theirs left.
 

IT depends on the myths of the gods. I had generally ran 4 mythos which the group could join. The different Mythos may acknowledge each other but they stayed in their lanes.
The same with how much power, interaction, etc. That bump your are trying to drink under the table just maybe Thor. If you do kill him, in a year and day he is showing up to your birthday party with some nice presents.
Unlike the realms, gods DON'T need worshippers but they are very handy to send to Walmart to fetch a pizza and smite that rascally rabbit.
And that is all I remember about my homebrew gods interaction with pcs.
 

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