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xmarik69x
Member Posts: 37 Arc User
i know that the various crystal spheres (campaign settings) can be traveled to except for Athas (Darksun) which is cut off from all the rest, but what I'm having trouble wrapping my head around is how are some Greyhawk Gods, gods in the Forgotten Realms? I.E. Kord and Orcus are the two I've come across mention of in game
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From a more gamist perspective, the reason Kord is in there is because during 4E, Kord became a core deity of 4E along with the likes of Pelor (another GH god) and Asmodeus, and they shoe-horned all of those into FR as well. They even storied it up like Lathander died and Pelor took his place. With 5E, they brought all the FR gods back to life and just sort of "forgot" about most of the 4E deities they had jammed in. I'm not sure if Kord is even still officially considered a known FR god, but because of inter-planar travel and knowledge, there would be nothing from stopping a ripped, shirtless cleric of Kord running around Toril wrestling bears.
Mystra seems to get dead and stay dead a lot because a lot of the big shakeups happen because she dies in dramatic ways or because massive trauma to the Weave rips her to shreds.
Disclaimer: I'm not a super-mega-FR-lore-fiend, so some of my statements may not be entirely accurate, but I'm about 95% sure of about 95% of it.
So basically it would go like this.
Lawful Good
Torm
Bahamut
Ilmater
Moradin
Neutral Good Deities
Mystra
Mielikki
Eldath
Lathander
Chaotic Good
Selune
Eilistraee
Tymora
Sune
Corellon
Lawful Neutral
Azuth
Helm
H'oar
Kelemvor
True Neutral
Silvanus
Oghma
Gond
Waukeen
Chaotic Neutral
Tempus
Uthgar
Leira
Mask
Lawful Evil
Loviatar
Bane
Bhaal
Tiamat
Neutral Evil
Shar
Myrkul
Auril
Chaotic Evil
Lolth
Talos
Ghaunadaur
Malar
Vhaeraun
Cyric
Umberlee
If the result is that players start picking dieties based upon what buff they can get then I would just as soon leave them as they are.
If they want to add a diety based campaign with diety-based armor and weapon sets (sort of like the celestial mantle) where players can learn more about their diety as they play through it then I would be all for that.
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Two other small things.... I would like to be able to change dieties (insert "quest of purification" or something that would allow such a thing as a time sink, including preventing any benefits from worship for some period of time), and I would like to see a few more dieties added to the character selection.
Nothing that would mess up any of the game's facts or anything, to keep it simple, but just get Ilmater in there, for one example, as a good "all-around" diety choice for anyone, and a "hunter" type diety like Mielikki would fill a niche, I think.
That sort of thing.
Basically you would "think" these other worldly MMOs would come up with their own unique Gods. But most of the time they just pluck them out of the pages of history. Many times, I have actually seen users get upset about how the God was use in context to the story. I admit I got a tad bit miffed about Disney's take on Hades. Greeks believed he was just God of the Dead much like Kelemvor is in Neverwinter. Not an evil deity, but a jailer or warden of the dead. According the tales about Hades, he only was guilty of kidnapping his wife and causing the winters to come. Many religions talk about levels of Hell and thus we get that whole 9 Hells in this game, thanks to Dante's "Inferno".
My Scourge Warlock in this game, Aero Ironcrown is a worshiper of Asmodeus, but she poses as a follower of Oghma. My gripe about character creation is the inflexible hero role that is forced upon the player.
If you read Dresden you may like the interaction he has with Hades.
--- I created my own original pantheon back in the mid 2000's. When 4E came out, they had stolen most of the gods I created, even down to their genders. It was a little depressing.
Lathander is now Anauroch, or at least he was in 4E. Lathander, to me, had a totally different vibe than Anauroch, though.
I am hesitant to attaching mechanical advantages to dieties, as I said earlier, but as campaign boons they could be covered up a little bit.
For example, if someone played a Paladin that followed Sune the boons may not be a perfect fit, but at least there would be other campaigns with other boons that the player could play through and earn, and since you have to select active boons, any damaging effect of "mismatched" dieties and followers would be minimized.
Unless, of course, these boons were all better than any boons offered by any other campaigns.
I would not want to see every hunter ranger deciding that they need to follow Sylvanus because that is the only diety that has any boons that will help them.
As another thing, I would like to see the game "suggest" certain dieties for certain race and/or class choices.
Just add a little section that says "suggested dieties" above the list of the other dieties.
That would at least help people that do not know any better make a "sensible" choice beyond the brief description of the dieties.
Because while I don't want every hunter ranger to be forced to pick Sylvanus, I do think that it hurts to tell prospective hunter rangers that Sylvanus is right in their wheelhouse.
So an Elf hunter ranger could have Corellon, Sylvanus, probably Chauntea, maybe Selune as their suggested dieties, so people that don't know about any of them could quickly make a "sensible" decision that fits into the campaign world.
But ultimately I don't think that the payoff is there.
I mean, fun to talk about, maybe, but I won't be holding my breath.
I mean, they could add something going forward, but at no time do you get to decide "screw the Dwarves... I'm keeping the Icehammer". >:)
And if it's just conversational stuff then what does it really matter? Earning evil points for saying "who cares about the people, I'm in it for the money" doesn't much matter if you are going to run the exact same mission and save the people anyway, does it?
I am not really a fan of this unless you can go beyond just the surface (and I have never seen a video game that could), and a simple points system usually results in some silly outcomes.
"Killed that guy in cold blood? Okay, not a problem... Just help five little old ladies across the street and you will cancel the evil points out."
Or maybe "Hmmm, I need more evil points to equip that gear... Guess I'll replay that mission where I can kill all the people for no reason to earn them".
There were a lot of writings on playing Paladins back in the days of D&D, AD&D, 2nd edition, and even 3.X.
The term "lawful stupid" was bandied about.
But when it comes to these morality point systems it seems mostly reversed. The bad guys have to behave in some really stupid ways sometimes to avoid earning "good points".
Oh, sure, occasionally the good guys might be forced to make a decision that seems pretty horrible in order to avoid earning evil points, but mostly it's the evil side that gets to wear the stupid hat.
And since these systems push people to the extremes, there is a tendency to want to score the points when you can.
And that punishes RP. I mean, hey, no one is making anyone make any choice, but again, since the benefits are at the extremes, someone that makes the choices that seem natural to them or to what their character would do tend to fall behind if not just be stranded in the middle somewhere, gaining and losing good and evil ranks and whatever benefits they confer along the way.
There are reasons they say things like, "Their worshipers contain many rangers and druids" for a nature deity, or "rogues" for a shadow deity (like Mask)... The domains offered, the benefits, etc benefit those worshiper types the most (that might be considered meta, but consider even in an RP fashion, these people know who would look after their interests the most, so they tend to flock to the deity of 'insert my personal hobbies/job/interests here')
So, yeah, the boons should benefit certain people more than others to reflect that this is what they do. A deity of war should probably have a good 'war-like' boon, a deity of fire should give fire bonuses (which might make a pyro type even more deadly, but not a lightning based wizard). However, if they build the boons right, they could be used across to other classes. If Sylvanus gave boon choices of either toughening the character like wood (maybe even transforming them into an ent for a bit?), or giving a root effect to attacks (with higher chance if the attack is a taunt), or something...
Of course, the optimal way would be to design a boon set where the first choices are all the same, but the final-4 depend entirely on which deity you worship, and have a wide enough array of those 4 to allow for all worshipers to have a good pick, no matter which deity.
So, yeah, you can say that Drizzt follows Mielikki because that deity espouses the same things that he believes, but, then, that deity also blessed him several times, even brought back friends, and other things. You can say he didn't worship Lolth because he didn't like the things she espoused... but, he also saw the 'blessings' she bestowed in the form of driders of people he knew, or in the form of the magical powers she granted to people (not just priestesses), and other stuff, that he perceived as twisted, perverse, evil... but, most drow do not see them as such, and worship her (or other drow/evil deities).
These people DO worship because of what the deities can do for them, it isn't just for a set of beliefs (but includes them)
Did Drizzt have expectations from Lolth? No. Did he have expectations from Mielikki? Again, no. That Mielikki did for him and his friends showed some favor of the god. Not that it was ever expected.
That said, I also wish deities here were a bit more interesting to be involved with, but not mechanically so. I guess we can always write them into our own biographies!