Pantheons

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When creating your own pantheon (something I've never done for a D+D game), from your experience, what is a good number to settle on? I desire to have enough gods for followers of these gods and the gods themselves to wage politics instead of war, but it isn't my intent to create a world as spiritually congested as Toril where the majority of the world's gods aren't going to be making an appearance. I'm trying to create a pantheon where the gods are sometimes more active in the world then their followers, where when something "big" happens the gods immediately try to use it to forward their idea, prevent the idea of another deity or at least in someway benefit from it.

I'm modifying Hell (and getting rid of the Abyss) to have a 7 deadly sins theme and a god/goddess who rules each plane (the 8th plane is a plane of fire or possibly the forgotten 8th sin vainity and the nine plane is a "special" plane that only one deity has access to). I have a Lady of Lust, a Lord of Gluttony, a Lord of Envy, a Lord of Greed, a Lord of Pride and a Lady of Wrath (I have yet to create a Lady/Lord of Sloth). I've also created a goddess of the cold and death and a god of the undead. Unfortunately, the good deities are very limited in number right now, with 2 lawful good deities and no other types of good.

I'm also trying to figure out how well a set of utilitarian deities would work in a D+D settings, specifically with a lawful evil deity who acts on the behalf of good, overseeing the punishment of the most wicked beings of this world (he plays a role similar to Satan in the Old Testament). This deity ends up being lawful evil because he takes a great deal of pleasure in thinking up the most horrific torture possible to inflict upon his victims and then making sure those ideas are put inplace.

 

I find it ironically hilarious that your procrastinating on making a God/Goddess of Sloth.

More to the point however try looking at the complete book of priests from 2nd edition, i lists a large number of godly themes along with suggested abilities for their specialty priests.

In general for good gods/goddesses i find the following good staples;
-goddess of love/arts/music/dance/bards/elves
-god of light/sun/justice/honor
-mother goddess of children/agriculture/home and hearth
-god(dess) of healing/guardianship/protection
-god(des) of strength/craftsmen/the forge/dwarfs
-a chaotic neutral god(dess) of storms and war, or one diety of each
-neutral god of time/fate
-good or neutral god(dess) of magic and the moon
-chaoric god of trickery/mischief, not neccesarily evil
-god(dess) or travel/messengers
-neutral god(dess) of the Earth/mother earth/druids, maybe combo with mother goddess

of course its your choice what you want to choose or alter as you see fit. Hopefully something there serves as a good idea.

 

A good number? Depends on the feel, I guess. Try to think of aspects important in your setting that you want to emphasize. Having a evil deity for each of the seven sins is a good start.

As for a number, perhaps 15 would be good. Half might be the evil ones, which you probably won't need to describe in detail since I assume in your setting evil gods aren't typically or popularly worshipped. You can then sketch out in detail the deities of more everyday things -- craftsmanship, the ocean, the earth, celestial objects, war, etc., etc.

Your idea of a Satan or "adversary" deity is a nice one -- it definitely sounds like the type of god that could receive even open support. Perhaps the god's followers do things like those who don't submit to the authority of the mainstream pantheon. Now that'd be pretty ironic: stray from the flock of LG deities, and the LE priests of hellfire and brimstone will go after your ass. a problem with this is that tormenting evil people is not evil itself in D&D -- thus, you could have to have these guys torturing adulterers and heretics even if said victims aren't evil.

A final note -- unless you plan on the gods popping up frequently in your campaign, give pantheon less thought than what actual religion is like in your setting. I can't come up with that much on the Roman Catholic God, but I can think of plenty of powerful imagery (and adventure hooks!) with Roman Catholicism itself.

 

He just ends up having a general disregard for human life. Everyone who has ever sinned is deserving in punishment (he believes essentially in destroying the world to save it). Even though he's the most physically powerful of the gods, he's held in check by heirarchy; he desires to destroy all those who are likely to continue committing evil actions and subjugate everyone else in order to control their actions. He's also a sadist by the Book of Vile Darkness has he derives the closest he can come to pleasure from causing excessive pain to others.

I've also found a rather frustrating problem in regards to my Lady of Lust and my Lord of Greed (arguably the two most disgusting and improper deities in the pantheon). They overlap, the Lady of Lust is the Goddess of Immorality, Perversion and the Erosion of Tradition (she's more chaotic then evil, but the sexual antics she forces her servants to perform to entertain her make her evil none the less), while the Lord of Greed is the God of Material Excess (he likes misers, lazy aristocrats with too much luxury, lust crazed sex addicts and anyone with an physical addict that can be used to hurt others or cause the addict to become self absorbed), which ends up with sexual excess falling in the lap of both deities instead of clear cut boundries. If makes things a bit interesting in deific and religious politics as the two faiths have common ground and both faiths, like their deities perfer not to use direct or physical methods to get what they want. However deities, I believe, are suppose to have control of their realms of influence.

 

Why not consider the Lord of Greed a horder of material item that he does not use, while he may have a gigantic harem he's to absorbed in aquiring more girls for his harem to actually do anything with the ones he has. He amasses a vast supply of materials but he is so obsessed with having more that he never uses what he has. That way theres no overlap with the lady of Lust, she's too concerned about the moment and getting the most pleasure from it, the Lord of Greed cares too much about the future; what can he do to get more, or anything and everything.

 

I like that idea, material excess being possession of the excess rather then the actual enjoyment of the excess. I think the Lord of Greed could continue the support od some of his more debased cults under the idea of trying to aquire as many sexual partners as possible or trying to aquire as much sex as possible under the idea of having rather then feeling. Thank you, that is quite a good idea.

 

Does anyone know how ambitious of an undertaking it is to try to create a deity specific class? For starters I'm simply just trying to blend the Disciple of Asmodeus (Vile) and the Disciple of Baalzebul (Vile) to look something like this for my King of Lies:

1st level: Tonuge of the Devil, learn secret 1/week
2nd: Sneak attack +1d6
3rd: Charm, learn secret 2/week
4th: Suggestion
5th: Learn Secret 3/week, sneak attack +2d6
6th: unknown
7th: Beguiling nature, learn secret 4/week
8th: Sneak attack +3d6
9th: Summon CR 10 (my King of Lies uses Marliths, Imps and Babaus as his primary servants and they're either too strong or too weak; since there is no Abyss and Hell is home to gods of all evil alignments, demons and devils take on the alignment of the god they serve)
10th: King of lies

I think this works because it's predominately meshing other classes together.

However I'm trying to figure out how to make a class for a LG goddess of witchcraft and alchemy that reflects her magic users and I had the idea of creating a spellcasting class to replace the sorcerer class, as a spontaneous casting arcane class that uses widsom (to represent understanding and being in tune with the world as being the source of their magic) and can only cast spells from the schools of abjuration, enchantment, necromancy and transmutation, but can use alchemy to increase the power of their spells (to represent the importance of material components to witch spell casting). They would also be able to use alchemical rituals to cast conjuration (summoning) spells and increase the number of questions they could ask via the commune spell (as they'd have some acess to clerical divination spells).

My last question is how good of an idea would it be to force prerequisites to take a cleric class? I was thinking of forcing players to have at least 1 level of knight (PHB II) before they could become a cleric to my Lord of Pride, seeing as my Lord of Pride only excepts nobility and males members of the nobility at that, into his clergy and since he's representitive of, among other things, unyielding tradition; a traditional male member of the nobility would have training as a knight and having a level in knight as an LE character would definately help bloat their ego IMO.

 

Have you really just thought about making a prestige class for each deity instead?

As for the last question, it really seems as if the question is whether or not traditional male nobles should have the Knight class. I haven't read up on the PHB II, but I'd shy away from making class requisites here -- if you're a noble, you're a noble and don't necessarily need a class to represent it. (Some nobles probably pursue magic or thievery or whatever anyway.)

 

Yeah, I finally decided to remember that the DMHB has a section on ideas for class creation/modification.

I've also decided to remedy the problem for my Lord of Pride by making an evil varient of the Paladin class (as well as an evil variant of the Justicar of Tyr) which can help remedy the church by giving the Church a very traditional, combat based holymen (the Church of the Lord of Pride doesn't not allow characters with sneak attack abilities to join the church so blackguards are out). I'm giving the Church of Vassal of Pride prestige class as well which deals heavily controlling and dominating PCs and NPCs (including, at the 10th level, a permant dominate monster spell, similar to the 9th level spell of the Domination Domain). Since the Church of Pride represents very a very traditional element of the nobility and they dislike anyone who obtains their strength from sources that are not traditional or sources that are underhanded, I figured for the sake of enjoyment that excessive restrictions would be too much.

The church already bars women from enterance into the clergy and any female adventurer is almost certainly barred from admittance on the grounds of taking unlady like action; it bars anyone who isn't of a lawful alignment and a social elite, believing only those strong enough to take what they want in the open under the context of law is worthly to be a member of the Church of Pride.

An evil paladin might make this church more likely to be played by a player in the face of the overly abundant restrictions the church places on everything and the fact that the Lord of Pride is an utter hypocrite being his daughter is the Lady of Lust and he's involved with an incestuous relation with his daughter. Even with it's religion specific classes, the Church of Pride still probably isn't as fun as the Church of Wrath, the Church of Gluttony or the Church of Lust which allows chaotic and chaotic evil characters to go hog wild with wanton destruction, perversion and slaughter.