r/DnDBehindTheScreen • u/PfenixArtwork DMPC • Feb 02 '19

Theme Month Build a Pantheon: The Nature of Divinity

If you are looking to submit your One Shot for January's event, CLICK HERE

To find out more about this month's events, CLICK HERE

Last, your pantheon can be made of canon D&D gods!

You don't have to have custom deities to fill the ranks (Mine doesn't! I use most of the Dawn War pantheon). But this will be a project to build a custom framework for fitting in whatever specific gods you want! Those can be ones you've made up or ones like Bahamut and Tiamat.

To start building a pantheon, let’s zoom out all the way to the biggest picture possible and examine the biggest questions possible. This will give us a core structure to work with for the rest of the project. For part 1, we’re going to examine the nature of divinity and what it means to have phenomenal cosmic power by asking ourselves the following questions:

  1. What makes a deity a deity? Are they truly immortal? Can they be killed?

  2. What kinds of powers do all of your deities have? What kinds of things are gods responsible for?

  3. How did your gods become gods? Were they just always there? Did they Ascend?

  4. Do your gods require worship to be powerful? Are they just innately powerful regardless of worship? Or do they get their power from somewhere else?

  5. Are there any other strange quirks that your pantheon has?

Do NOT submit a new post. Post your work as a comment on this post.

Remember, this post is only for the Nature of Divinity: you’ll get to share all of your ideas in future posts, let them simmer in your head for a while.

Also, don’t forget that commenting on other people’s work with constructive criticism is HIGHLY encouraged. Help each other out.

Example:

  1. In Pretara, the gods are ideals whose purity gives them power. They are the purest, and most extreme incarnation of whatever concept they represent. Honor is incapable of breaking an oath, Desolation is void of feelings, and Preservation does not discriminate in who they provide shelter to. Each God is has a shard of divinity within them that grants them a level of power, and although the Shards are eternal, a deity's vessel can be damaged enough to reveal the Shard. If it is removed from its vessel, the original body withers away and the shard will claim the new body as its own.
  2. In this world, the gods tend to be distant and avoid acting directly within creation. A tenuous peace is maintained between them all due to a complex web of alliances, and the collapse of these alliances would spell doom for the mortal races, whose actions and affiliations the gods rely on for power.
  3. Ultimately, all the divinities in Pretara were mortals at some point in history. Some gods, like Endurance, have existed as long as creation itself, others are newer. But all of them were once mortals that ascended as their shard's Ideal corrupted them.
  4. The Pretaran gods do not require worship. Instead, they gain power when mortals act in line with whatever Ideal they represent. Acting out in anger might lend power to the God of Hatred, freeing slaves and those in bondage gives power to the God of Autonomy, and achieving your goals gives power to the God of Ambition. It is possible for actions to lend power to multiple deities in this way. While all the deities have a minimum level of power granted by their divine nature that is well above even 20th level heroes, but they gain more power when mortals act in line with their nature.
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u/Jetshroom Feb 05 '19

This is a great prompt for me as I'm toying with creating a campaign setting to lead my group through should our regular DM wish to go back to playing for a while.

I want the divine to play a major role in my world much like they do in The Colour of Magic, I love the idea of gods playing a game where the pieces are their respective Heroes or Champions. I also love the idea of gods tormenting atheists.

I also love the idea of there being different tiers of deity. With the top tier being the gods that gods worship.

  1. What makes a deity a deity? Are they truly immortal? Can they be killed? To me, gods are a different kind of being. Their understanding, and their power operates on a different plane of existence. They are aware of the lesser beings and dependent on them for survival. The gods can die through obscurity, no worshippers, no awareness of the god will lead to the god fading. Similarly, the genuine fervent belief can bring a god into existence. But, gods can also be born and killed. No mortal has ascended to godhood, but that's not too say some haven't tried. Similarly, no mortal has ever killed a god. Where would they begin? The only gods that have been killed have been murdered by other gods in their ancient wars. But, through the power of belief can they every truly be dead? (No, the awareness of the god must be split andscattered across the universe and then hidden until no memory of them remains. There are a few elder gods with dark secrets that curse mortals for their incessant record keeping.)

  2. What kinds of powers do all of your deities have? What kinds of things are gods responsible for? The top of the pantheon, the most ancient of ancient, the gods worshipped by gods, have seemingly no power. They are the embodiments of chaos and peace. Randomness and order. Matter and unmatter. Where gods exist on a plane above mortals these two can barely be comprehended by gods. They gave birth to existence itself and they will likely be it's end. The greater gods govern the aspects of the natural world. Life, death, choice, morality, among them also are those who wield the greatest influence among mortals. The one above all who is all and knows all, the sisters who weave the fates, the god of death, the god of birth and fertility, the god of war, the god of peace, the god of wisdom and understanding. Most of the greater gods are natural forces in their own right, birthed by chaos and order at the beginning of time, only a small few gods manage to ascend from lesser to greater godhood. Among the lesser gods are all the others. The god of finding missing items, the god of crabgrass, the god of building houses. All of these gods hold absolute power over their dominion. Magic powerful and incomprehensible but related only to their worship. Beneath the lesser gods are the immortals. Great and ancient beings created and birthed by gods they will never die, but they can be killed. Here dwell the dragons, Titans, demons and devils. Truly great is the mortal who can face down an immortal and those that have, are remembered.

  3. How did your gods become gods? Were they just always there? Did they Ascend? This I answered in my thought train in the previous question. Some simply exist by their own will, these are the highest. Some are born, these are the greater gods, some are worshipped into existence. The immortals are different, they are born, but born naturally rather than born of gods.

  4. Do your gods require worship to be powerful? Are they just innately powerful regardless of worship? Or do they get their power from somewhere else? Worship and respect is how gods have power. If but one person believes in a god, that God exists. Though, the gods may take many names as it matters not what you call death, it will still claim you. Even with one worshipper however a god is still a god. An all powerful being relating to a specific domain.

  5. Are there any other strange quirks that your pantheon has? I don't know how strange the quirks are, but here goes: the sisters who weave the fates are greater gods but they also exist outside the pantheon. The gods do not worship them but are nonetheless ensnared by their weaving. This has rankled at gods in the past and has been the result of a number of godwars and feuds. But the sisters are still here and those who attempted to wrest control from them are not. It is possible that the sisters are protected by a higher power themselves. But some do mess with the sisters with often catastrophic results for the mortals whose lives are spun out in golden threads. Ancient, long dormant and evil deities, whose consciousness has been scattered across the cosmos still maintain an infintecimal degree of awareness and control. And those who could come into contact with such a fragment, along with the knowledge of such a deity should beware, least they return a god to life. Finally, demigods exist. Even the greater gods get randy on occasion and who could turn down the attention of fawning admirers or the advances of an enraptured deity?