Favorite Deities

[Captain_Karzak]

I'm trying to cobble together a (3.5) homebrew setting and I'm pondering what deities it should feature.

I find the PHB deities to be a reasonable baseline for what a god of each alignment might be like, but (aside from Vecna) they don't thrill me.

Are there any deities you guys have really liked that you could suggest?

____________________________________________________________

My first D&D DM used an altered version of the Greek pantheon. In that setting Apollo was a True Neutral because - unlike other gods - his attention did not fixate on particular people and places. Instead, he rode across the sky every day, and saw all of the greatness and depravity that mortals across the world were capable of.

He also saw that the guidance machinations of his fellow gods contributed little more than strife to mortals' existence, and so believed that mortals should be left largely to their own devices, to make or break their own destinies. Apollo also worked tirelessly to eradicate the scourge of undeath whenever it threatened.



Another deity that I think stands out is this obscure chick from Libris Mortis:

Evening Glory teaches that love need not ever die. Instead,
love may go on indefinitely, if the body’s remains are properly
preserved.

The deity of love at any price, Evening Glory
appears as an exquisitely preserved woman with
ice-white (almost translucent) flesh and platinum white,
neck-length hair.

The Eternal Lover appeals strongly to immortality
seekers, lovers, and undead. Still, anyone who has loved
and lost, or knows love and fears its end, is a potential worshiper
of Evening Glory. Most who worship her are undead, or soon
become undead after worshiping her for a time. Many of her
followers would rather welcome the followers of other faiths,
but it is hard to welcome members of faiths that believe undeath
must be eradicated.

Evening Glory teaches that desire is all that matters, and the
desire for the love of another should never be allowed to fail
through the depredations of age. Those whose love transcends
life should seek life everlasting through the grace of undeath.

The perfect preservation may freeze love forever. While the resurrection
of tragically slain lovers may do for some, nothing can
stay old age’s imperious final call—nothing but the embrace of
undeath.

She seems like an interesting take on a love goddess. Hopefully my players won't weird things up with using her religion as an excuse for necrophelia?

[Ancient History]

I had a small Hackmaster campaign where one of the PCs became Ancestor Gawd of Brewing & Alchemy. He was also, and I love this, a centauroid with the bottom half of a Dwarven war pony, and he wielded an enchanted battle tankard in each hand (chained to his wrists), each of which would magically fill themselves up with beer. And after an encounter with a Deck of Dwarven Things he could convert any liquid to beer by touch (although a limited volume).

[K]

I've always felt that DnD works better when you assume that there are lots of beings who are worshiped as gods.

Iconic DnD must include:

1. Worship of distinctly earthly and powerful things like dragons.

2. Worship of powerful extraplanar beings like traditional pantheons.

3. Worship of a very large cast of anti-gods like demon princes and elemental lords.

4. Priests and holy men of abstract principles. Ex. Zen monks, druids, etc.

5. Different pantheons for different cultures and micro-cultures.


All of these things need clerics and temples/monasteries/sacred sites with real magic powers, representative monsters like avatars and minions, and unifying mechanics, and that can't be done if you create a setting with only 6-8 "gods" for the whole world/universe.

PS. Even individual gods need various permutations so that you can have schisms and heresies because those are awesome.

[...You Lost Me]

My personal favorite is Kaelik, God of Rage.

[Captain_Karzak]

I kinda lump demon/devil lords and elemental lords into the same category as "regular" deities. I mean, a being from any one of these categories would have a priesthood to whom they grant cleric spells, and they all want to be worshiped.

I've never been clear on what makes Asmodius' status as a Lord of the Hells all that different from an evil god like Vecna or an elemental lord like Imix.

How would a DM go about differentiating these groups to players? Or am I missing the point - which is 6-8 gods won't cut it, and any creature that is totally badass will likely end up being worshiped?

Hmmm... that does make a lot of sense.

[Voss]

I'm trying to cobble together a (3.5) homebrew setting and I'm pondering what deities it should feature.

I find the PHB deities to be a reasonable baseline for what a god of each alignment might be like, but (aside from Vecna) they don't thrill me.

Are there any deities you guys have really liked that you could suggest?

Deities are going to rely pretty heavily on culture, so it really depends what the world and the civilizations in it look like. That said, standard D&D pantheons tend to look pretty similar because they're based on the Romanization of everyone the Romans conquered and then subsequently correlated all the local gods to Roman gods, and then wrote that down, while most of the details of the local religion got a little lost. Plus D&D writers tend to ignore the parts of the world that the Romans didn't touch.

But you're probably going to want the important stuff- fertility/harvest, death, war, seas, etc. Different types of societies are going to emphasize different ideas, and keep in mind that not every concept is going to have a god attached- for every society with a god of merchants, there is a society who believe merchants are scumbags and morally ambiguous sons of bitches, who the gods don't particularly care for, and hence have no particular place in the social structure. Other religions don't have goddesses of 'marriage,' 'love.' or 'lust,' but on the other hand, you get monotheistic religions with temple whores, including male whores, who 'help' wives having problems with infertility (because publicly calling the husband out as infertile is bad form, particularly when he is one of the wealthiest men around)

It also helps immensely if you treat pantheons as actual pantheons. People don't just worship Ares 24-7. They offer sacrifices to him when a war is on, but they sacrifice to Zeus on his holy days, Pluto when grandpa dies, Neptune when they go on a sea voyage and so on. They don't pick one and tell the others to fuck off.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I actually do like the deity Bane. He's an unapologetic dick that most people end up opposing but you could also see why his priests would cooperate with priests from other religions. And mentioning that he's your primary deity will get you the stink-eye but not banned from polite society like Lolth and Gruumsh would. Furthermore, even though he's a dick, you could imagine having a sane debate with him unlike Asmodeus or Vecna or whoever was the deity of the Ravager PrC.

That's immensely helpful from a Drizz't 'creates drama but not a party-derailing amount' perspective.

Regardless, though, I think importing real-world deities is more helpful and has more gravitas than making your own. Bar a couple of exceptions (pretty much Gruumsh, Lloth, and Asmodeus) you can pretty much find a real-world deity that is much cooler than what D&D currently provides.

Black
(Neutral to Good) Hades
(Good) Ganesh
(Evil) Cain
(Evil, or Neutral) Tiamat or Scylla
(Evil) Cizin

Blue
(Good) Anansi
(Evil) Tlaloc
(Evil) Set
(Neutral to Evil) Poseidon
(Neutral to Good) Thor

Green
(Neutral) Artemis
(Neutral) Hanuman
(Evil) Gruumsh
(Good) Coyote
(Evil) Xipe Totec

Red
(Evil, or Neutral to Evil) Kali or Bane
(Neutral) Raven / Crow / Yatagarasu
(Evil) Asmodeus
(Good) Brigid
(Good) Vulcan

White
(Neutral) Athena
(Evil) Tezcatlipoca
(Good) Ama-no-Uzume
(Good) Bahamut
(Neutral to Evil) Zeus

[icyshadowlord]

Lago, Bahamut wasn't so much a god as he was some odd mythical monster IIRC.

[Ancient History]

I misread that as "Lego Bahamut," and that's going in my next D&D campaign.

[erik]

I misread that as "Lego Bahamut," and that's going in my next D&D campaign.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Lago, Bahamut wasn't so much a god as he was some odd mythical monster IIRC.

Truefax, but I included him in there anyway because you do want an unironically heroic and gallant deity in the pantheon -- and unfortunately, many of the deities that have accumulated enough stories to be awesome have accumulated a few really 'what the fucking fuck' moments that kind of taints their deeds. Which is why I switched from Amaterasu to Ame no Uzume, would make Hanuman a 'neutral' deity in the vein of Kord, and had to resort to using Raven and Coyote. Though, Raven and Coyote are sweet enough on their own merits to earn a spot in the Godly Worthies despite shortcomings like their default form and their rather blunt names.

But anywho, D&D Gods that I feel cover holes left by real-world ones:
Asmodeus: You need an evil deity that's unironic and open about their evil but can still give a smooth Glengarry Glen Ross-ish pitch to tempt mortals without making them look like idiots.
Bahamut: See above.
Bane: See previous post.
Gruumsh: You need an evil Social Darwinist deity that gives a plausible reason as to why certain races behave so selfishly and savagely that you can mow certain members down by the truckload (like Nazis) without having to do to Evil Orc Baby dilemma. Gruumsh provides relentless propaganda about constant warfare and murder and ressentiment and punishes orcs who try to live in peace.
Lolth: See Gruumsh. I wouldn't use her AND Gruumsh if I was making my own pantheon that was fewer than 30 deities, but I would use one or the other. She has a panache that Gruumsh lacks, but her schticks collide with Asmodeus's unless you take the cop-out that most writers use; make her a sneering, short-sighted incompetent.

Of that list, Bahamut and Asmodeus are the most expendible. You could straight-out replace Asmodeus with Loki and most people wouldn't care. They're not interchangeable, even with broad strokes, but Loki is an A-Lister deity and provides a function that other deities don't really do -- gullible, easily-bored evil trickster deity.

There's no particular reason to use Bahamut if you want to make up your own Direct Action, Justice, and Human Rights (for lack of a better word) deity, but nothing like him really exists except for some really obscure deities.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I know that I used a lot of Aztec deities and there's the unfortunate implication of making them all evil, but Atheist Daddy Lago don't give a shit. Aztec deities are metal as fuck. I had to limit myself to four, otherwise like a third of the pantheon would be Aztec gods.

[hogarth]

K is right; a good campaign has lots of different things to worship.

As an addendum to his post, I'll add this: gimmicky deities like the Libris Mortis woman mentioned in the initial post are cool, but if all of your deities have some weird gimmick then your pantheon sucks. That's my problem with Paizo's Golarion campaign setting; they try so hard to give every deity (and country and NPC, etc.) an unusual twist that there's little room to tell stories that require a more vanilla flavour.

For instance, you should never have a conversation like this:

Player: My PC is a lawful good fighter. Is there a deity who would suit him?

GM: Sure! For lawful good deities, there's Flbrt, whose worshippers are all eunuchs. And there's Brzlnt, who hates black people. And there's Cshw, who is the god of prostitutes, architects and the ocean. And there's...

Player: You know what, I think I'll stick with atheism.

[Lago PARANOIA]

That's my problem with Paizo's Golarion campaign setting; they try so hard to give every deity (and country and NPC, etc.) an unusual twist that there's little room to tell stories that require a more vanilla flavour.

That's a problem with the Law of Conservation of Detail, not a problem of the pantheon sucking because the deities are too weird. Zeus and Loki and Ganesh have all accumulated their share of extraordinarily weird shit, but most people aren't going to object to you making a story about them on the grounds of 'oh, man, it's that bestiality guy' or 'it's that momma's boy deity who meddles a lot'. People are simply just not that willing to expend that much mental space on a flash-in-the-pan character whom may never come up.

Unless you're willing to do the push to push your deity into the annals of Pop Cultural Memory (like they did with Bahamut and Thor) you should use an off-of-the-shelf deity

[hogarth]

That's a problem with the Law of Conservation of Detail, not a problem of the pantheon sucking because the deities are too weird. Zeus and Loki and Ganesh have all accumulated their share of extraordinarily weird shit, but most people aren't going to object to you making a story about them on the grounds of 'oh, man, it's that bestiality guy' or 'it's that momma's boy deity who meddles a lot'.

Just to clarify -- I'm saying that if all deities have weird shit in their background like Zeus, that pantheon sucks for a D&D campaign and I am going to object. Having at least some deities that are a blank slate is a good thing.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Having at least some deities that are a blank slate is a good thing.

Or you could just be like the fighter and just say 'I don't worship a deity', rather than cluttering up the pantheon with filler deities. Filler is always worse than weirdness, especially for homebrewed settings.

[K]

I feel that a lot of RPG material about gods is either:

A. Filler material that will never make it into an adventure or campaign.

B. Arbitrary villains.

An RPG would be better served by not wasting page space on various creation myths or divine fuck-stories (looking at you, Zeus) and would be better served by having drawings of temple decor and priestly vestment fashion because that's the kind of thing that players actually interact with during adventures.

For flavor purposes, this bit of art does more to explain Hextor to me than any number of pages of divine myths:

I'm also more than a little annoyed at the "good/evil god syndrome." There doesn't seem to be a need for absolutes in this particular realm when you can have followers of a nature god who make wicker-man blood sacrifices and other followers of the same nature god that are agrarian crop-blessers. The setting is more realized when you can't justify murdering someone just because they follow a particular god.

Can anyone really tell me why a war god would not suit an orcish tribe AND a holy order of paladins, or why any RPG would be better by not being able to tell a story about those two groups interacting?

Villains are much more interesting and memorable when their plans are not stupid. This means that your setting is better when the follower of Demogorgon can say that he has a rational reason for making blood sacrifices to a demon lord and is not just throwing his soul into eternal torment for substandard amounts of power.

In a very real way, DnD divinities are heavily influenced by Christian monotheism where following the wrong god is absolutely wrong and a reason for justified murder and following the right god is an automatic badge of virtue, and that's just not productive for storytelling considering that this maxim does not exist in the real world and does not make better fantasies.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm also more than a little annoyed at the "good/evil god syndrome." There doesn't seem to be a need for absolutes in this particular realm when you can have followers of a nature god who make wicker-man blood sacrifices and other followers of the same nature god that are agrarian crop-blessers.

Can anyone really tell me why a war god would not suit an orcish tribe AND a holy order of paladins, or why any RPG would be better by not being able to tell a story about those two groups interacting?

K, a deity that provides blessings to people who provide wicker-man blood sacrifices along with agrarian crop-blessers isn't some kind of nuanced and DEEP deity with multifaceted aspects; they're flat-out evil.

There's really no way around it. If a deity fails to punish or at least fight against followers who do evil things in their name, then they themselves are actually evil.

Now, you can have some grimdark justifications as to why people would kowtow to a deity that demands child sacrifices in return for providing rain -- people are seriously that desperate, ethics are too undeveloped, the good God of rain is small and weak compared to the evil one. But it's a problem with only three outcomes.

[*] All of the gods are dicks. Some of them are bigger dicks than others, but none of them are worth worshiping beyond a 'mafia protection racket' kind of way.
[*] Some of the gods are genuinely good guys. If Bahamut absolutely refuses to endorse genocide or sophont sacrifices or poverty or etc., he dodges the problem of 'why is this being worthy of worship', but contrariwise he makes every other deity who decides to hold onto evil viewpoints that much worse. If you create any unironically good deities, you have by necessity created a good/evil divide unless they all are on the side of good.
[*] All of the gods are genuinely good guys. Depending on how shitty your setting is, you then have the Problem of Evil. Most people get around this by saying that their gods aren't actually all that powerful but should still be worshiped in a manner akin to paying taxes or volunteering for civic services; Vulcan turns your prayer labor into research on new forms of alloys which he redistributes back to the people for free, Ganesh uses your prayer labor to give scientists flashes of insight into unscryed territories past the edge of civilization, etc.

[K]

K, a deity that provides blessings to people who provide wicker-man blood sacrifices along with agrarian crop-blessers isn't some kind of nuanced and DEEP deity with multifaceted aspects; they're flat-out evil.

Only if the gods are active NPCs in the setting.

That's a very narrow and constricting version of gods and religion, and almost the entire reason that people hate settings like Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms (DM-penis NPCs are not made better by being actual gods). This means that it's far better to NOT do that.

Unless your whole RPG is focused on gods being playable characters, it's far better to retain the mystery and power of your divine elements by not explaining why they do or do not act.

That's the soul of religion: unanswerable questions and unknowable mysteries. It's about saying nonsense things that sound profound because the audience is not smart enough to know the difference. It's about enforcing behavior that serves the priests and not the people. It's about priests disagreeing on what the scriptures say today because they each have a different agenda that they want to press.

That being said, an order of paladins and a tribe of orcs following the same war god is awesome. It could be the whole basis of a campaign as the PCs get caught in a conflict between the two, never knowing which ones are the heretics and which ones are the true believers. You could have internal conflicts over doctrine, external conflicts over the public perception of the god, battles over important sites and artifacts.... all kinds of awesome religious-specific adventures that can't be done if the RPG defines the gods as moral absolutes and active characters in the setting.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Only if the gods are active NPCs in the setting.

That's a very narrow and constricting version of gods and religion, and almost the entire reason that people hate settings like Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms (DM-penis NPCs are not made better by being actual gods). This means that it's far better to NOT do that.

Look, it doesn't matter how active or personal or whatever your deities are or be. If you have a deity that provides blessings to evil followers and not-evil followers, you can only come to a few conclusions:

[*] The deity can't tell what's going on at all. It has no knowledge of the context of prayers, the agents of the prayers, what their effects will be, or even what the prayer is. All they know is that they get weird prayers seemingly at random and can't even decipher them and are expected to make a decision on them anyway. But then you don't have deities. All you have are nature spirits or just plain nature. Its character or beliefs or precepts or ethics are absolutely meaningless.
[*] The deity answers both good and evil prayers, benefits both good and evil people by some knowable metric. The deity is then evil.
[*] The deity has no choice but to answer prayers and can't interact with the world in any way but answering prayers. Then the deity really isn't a deity. It's some deistic middle man that has no purpose other than to add a layer of bureaucracy.

That being said, an order of paladins and a tribe of orcs following the same war god is awesome. It could be the whole basis of a campaign as the PCs get caught in a conflict between the two, never knowing which ones are the heretics and which ones are the true believers. You could have internal conflicts over doctrine, external conflicts over the public perception of the god, battles over important sites and artifacts.... all kinds of awesome religious-specific adventures that can't be done if the RPG defines the gods as moral absolutes and active characters in the setting.

Sectarian differences only exist because there's no recognized authority on doctrine. Now, while it's possible to have heretic priests of Lolth telling people that her actual wishes are for drow to live in harmony with other races and to support democracy and class collaboration, there's no getting around the fact that the actual Lolth has said the exact opposite and can make her will be directly known. It's just darkly comic to have some Kierkegaardian Death of the Author type thing where surviving priests say that it's okay to rub your dick on the ark of the covenant because their interpretation of priestly law nullifies the command not to. Despite Yahweh roasting Aaron's sons just days prior and in fact roasting the previous 'balls on the ark' leader just minutes prior for continuing to insist on his position.

[Username17]

Lago, if you think that there necessarily has to be a difference between "gods" and "nature", then you are demanding too much anthropomorphization from your gods.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Lago, if you think that there necessarily has to be a difference between "gods" and "nature", then you are demanding too much anthropomorphization from your gods.

-Username17

Well, I don't, I just don't see the point of actually making a big deal about it if the god can't or won't interact with other sapients in an intelligent and/or knowable way. Apollo is worthy of literary discussion in a way that the Spirit of Fire -- a personification of fire whose wishes and behavior are completely unknowable and unable to be influenced -- is not.

[K]

....there's no getting around the fact that the actual Lolth has said the exact opposite and can make her will be directly known.

The gods only make their wishes known if the designer has decided that they are active NPCs in the setting.

That's a choice, one that's not made in almost all fantasy stories. Conan prays to Crom and Crom sends the occasional cryptic vision in return. Thulsa Doom runs a snake cult and the only evidence of the existence of the god is the odd giant snake and some hypnotism.

The "gods are real people" stories are in religious doctrine. The rest of the stories in the fantasy canon realize that having god-like beings of great power who only periodically act in the world is unworkable on first principles, both morally and as a storytelling device.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The gods only make their wishes known if the designer has decided that they are active NPCs in the setting.

K, you're arguing about degree of intrusion. Lolth doesn't have to give all of the drow mass hallucinations of her 'peace, justice, prosperity, equality' cult being slowly flayed and tortured for people to know that's not what she wants; she can just cut them off from her divine power or just send a fucking press release.

Yes, not all deities will nitpick their followers on the details of their doctrine. Pelor might say that his favorite color is yellow and that his symbol is a sun, but I doubt that he's going to get too much of a bug up his butt if all of the priests say that his favorite color is green and his symbol is a moon. However, if his priests start doing things like endorsing child sacrifices or enslaving sapients and he doesn't give a forceful enough rebuke then one should either suspect that he's A.) too weak to do anything about it, B.) secretly supports or doesn't care about it (which will throw him into the evil camp), or C.) has some sort of Xanatos-like hidden agenda.

[K]

The gods only make their wishes known if the designer has decided that they are active NPCs in the setting.

K, you're arguing about degree of intrusion. Lolth doesn't have to give all of the drow mass hallucinations of her 'peace, justice, prosperity, equality' cult being slowly flayed and tortured for people to know that's not what she wants; she can just cut them off from her divine power or just send a fucking press release.

Yes, not all deities will nitpick their followers on the details of their doctrine. Pelor might say that his favorite color is yellow and that his symbol is a sun, but I doubt that he's going to get too much of a bug up his butt if all of the priests say that his favorite color is green and his symbol is a moon. However, if his priests start doing things like endorsing child sacrifices or enslaving sapients and he doesn't give a forceful enough rebuke then one should either suspect that he's A.) too weak to do anything about it, B.) secretly supports or doesn't care about it (which will throw him into the evil camp), or C.) has some sort of Xanatos-like hidden agenda.

You are stuck on the idea that gods have to be real people with understandable motivations and responses.

Large sections of the fantasy canon will forever be closed off from you until that changes.