Author Topic: Help with a new Pantheon  (Read 3017 times)

Offline Gray Lensman

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Help with a new Pantheon
« on: October 22, 2016, 12:13:34 PM »
If there are 9 Alignments, and I am going to have only nine gods in the pantheon (1 for each AL), which alignment would YOU say that the Creator God is?

IMNSHO and YMMV as always, Dan
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Offline Stratovarius

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Re: Help with a new Pantheon
« Reply #1 on: October 22, 2016, 12:56:59 PM »
I'd go for true neutral in that case. It's what I did anyway.

Offline Solo

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Re: Help with a new Pantheon
« Reply #2 on: October 22, 2016, 01:25:41 PM »
If there are 9 Alignments, and I am going to have only nine gods in the pantheon (1 for each AL), which alignment would YOU say that the Creator God is?

Alignment is for lesser deities.
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Offline Dr_emperor

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Re: Help with a new Pantheon
« Reply #3 on: October 22, 2016, 04:28:17 PM »
Chaotic evil, struck down and weakened by his children.  Lookin at you Chronos, Ymir.

Offline Nifft

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Re: Help with a new Pantheon
« Reply #4 on: October 23, 2016, 01:34:52 PM »
I had a world where there was only one deity per alignment box. There were six deities.

Evil worship was focused on arch-devils and demon-princes, which became relevant cults since there were no evil gods.

- - -

There was no creator deity.

Here's what happened:

- Earth was a shiny blue planet with intelligent life. The intelligent life named itself "human", and discovered the supernatural, and thus gained powers -- specifically, Druidic magic and Psionic powers.

- Humans went exploring: their own planet, and the planes.

- On the planes, they met a large number of other intelligent creatures.

- Some of the creatures from other worlds decided to migrate to Earth, because their worlds were suffering from varying degrees of demonic invasion and/or undead infestation.

- Some of these creatures had Arcane magic. This was a big advantage, and humans disliked their lack of Arcane magic.

- The humans in Totally Not Rome decided to obtain Arcane magic. Unfortunately, this caused a demonic invasion, for reasons which are totally foreseeable if you understand the source of Arcane magic, which nobody living did.

- The humans from Totally Not Rome fought the demons for a few hundred years. Over that span of time, with their new Arcane magic & their Psionic powers, they constructed six great flying citadels. Over time, each flying citadel became like a civilization unto itself, with its own values & philosophy.

- One group of humans created an Epic spell which could create a source of power directly opposed to the powers of the lower planes: both anti-fiend, and anti-undead. Unfortunately it required a massive number of high-level participants, but the result was a permanent gestalt entity which should be untouchable by Abyssal corruption, and which could grant powers to a veritable army of spellcasters.

- The exact order of events is unclear, but each of the 6 great citadels learned of this Epic spell, and each wished for the new entity to embody their own philosophy & values. So there was a bit of an arms race and mistakes might have been made along the way...

- Each of the 6 citadels fell from the sky on the same day, and were lost from the world. By some great coincidence, the six true gods presented their revelations on that same day.

- Earth has been a bastion against demonic invasion for the last 1,800 years. Earth has tended to collect people from various doomed worlds -- Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, etc. -- none of them were from Earth originally. All were fleeing the doom of their various home world(s).

- - -

Every "layer" of the Abyss is a world that fell to demonic invasion. There are nigh-infinite layers. Earth is tottering on the doorstep of damnation. Roll for initiative!

Offline Gray Lensman

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Re: Help with a new Pantheon
« Reply #5 on: October 23, 2016, 03:41:34 PM »
I thought I could limit this to just nine for a world I am creating but it just ain't gonna happen.

Thanks for your thoughts gentlebeings.
IMNSHO and YMMV as always, Dan
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"A person who never makes mistakes seldom makes anything else." Christine Friberg

Offline sirpercival

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Re: Help with a new Pantheon
« Reply #6 on: October 23, 2016, 03:50:16 PM »
Lawful Neutral.

The Universe was at first created as a system of Perfect Order (LN), a monopole. However, as complexity propagated through the system, higher-order moments revealed themselves. First came the dipole, and Perfect Chaos (CN) was the result. This added more complexity, and the quadrupole came into existence, bringing with it Perfect Good (NG) and Perfect Evil (NE). This created a feedback loop (electric & magnetic field lines coiling around each other) and led very quickly into the octupole moment and interactions between the quadrupoles -  LG, CG, LE, CE.

The octupoles are weaker than the quadrupoles, which are nearly the equal of the dipole moments. The mess of interactions in the center have agglomerated into TN, which is intrinsically weak, but very broad and versatile. Each Plane is a field line between one of the poles.
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Offline Nifft

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Re: Help with a new Pantheon
« Reply #7 on: October 23, 2016, 04:10:44 PM »
I thought I could limit this to just nine for a world I am creating but it just ain't gonna happen.

Thanks for your thoughts gentlebeings.

It's possible to use multiple different 'interpretations' of the same god as worshiped by factions who hate each other.

For example, I had two Goblinoid factions: one revered the Trickster, the other revered the Noble Hunter. Both of these were aspects of the same CN god, who enjoyed their conflict, because the god's real central theme was Personal Excellence and the warring of these tribes did tend to wean out the non-excellent members.

Offline Gray Lensman

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Re: Help with a new Pantheon
« Reply #8 on: October 23, 2016, 04:14:18 PM »
@sirpercival  Not bad.

One thing I am looking at is allowing the common man to play a little too, like this.

A Feat for my (WIP) homebrew world.

(click to show/hide)

All questions, comment, criticisms, praise (lol), ect. graciously accepted and appreciated.

IMNSHO and YMMV as always, Dan
"A surefire way to avoid mistakes - don't do anything." Dale H. Besterfield
"A person who never makes mistakes seldom makes anything else." Christine Friberg

Offline SorO_Lost

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Re: Help with a new Pantheon
« Reply #9 on: October 23, 2016, 04:17:34 PM »
The real answer? Pick one.

The thing about Alignments is they are the excuse to avoid and the reason to do for everything because their kind of their point at a more basic level. Go with the perfect creator loves you story of creation with murdering crusaders for LG or skip the crusaders in favor of piece talks for NG or the simple struggle for striving to be good for a CG deity. SirP has one for LN, TN pretty much explains it's self while CN is pretty much a sentient big bang. You can even go with CE because the deity made a mess of things and plans to murder it all for sport, or NE because life was an accident that needs some fixing, or LE because it's just a simulated strategy to pass the time for him.

The question on what your creator will be is dependent on what you want the world to be.