It's a one god world... [Archive] - Wizards Community

It's a one god world... [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Sir_Wolfgar
10-17-07, 03:27 PM Hey guys and gals, It's been about half a year since came to the boards, but I'm starting to play again and I'm hoping you all can give me some advice on something new for me...

So, I'm going to start a new campaign in a home-brew setting, and I want to try something different with the religious aspect. Historically, the setting is similar to Scotland during the reign of the English King Edward I (think Braveheart). An outside empire has come in and conquered the region, and brought their religion with them, smashing out a Celtic style polytheistic pantheon. (Oh, and the players can only be humans; other than monsters and magic, there's nothing to fantastical about this place)

The religion they bought with them worships only one god, but there are five different orders, similar in part to monastic orders, but not limited to that. They are as follows:

Order of the Hand- the militaristic, crusader knights of the religion

Order of the Heart- the healers, the nuns, the mercy workers

Order of the Mind- the teachers, the magicians

The Feet- not offically an order, but the aspect of god worshiped by thieves and plebs, whose priesthood is a secret society of wandering friars.

Order of the Spirit- the largest clerical order, comprised of the leading theologians and chruch leaders

So, what are your thoughts? I'm trying to go for a religion similar to the medieval catholic church, in that it is all encompassing, but I don't want it to be to rigid that there is no room for variety.
russdm
10-17-07, 04:56 PM Are you going to include a "Order of the Stick"? ;) :D :w00t:

ROFLMAO.....................
Delfedd
10-18-07, 12:05 PM Not that funny.

I think it's a great idea, personally. Make sure the orders have different conflicts between each other. Make people (possibly the players) discover a lost tribe, a lost aspect of the orders.

Make sure that the enemies also worship aspects of this deity, which raises some very interesting questions about the deity's alignment.

Make some "demon" worshipers. Do some typical cultists, the "Blarg! Death and Souls for my dark lord," but have there be other fascits (sic) of this "Demonic" cult.
Dog_O_War
10-18-07, 01:31 PM I take it these orders are not good/evil restricted?

Also, who or what does the common folk worship? I doubt these orders are of any importance to the average citizen; these sound more like organizations within the church than actual aspects to which people devote their faith.

Maybe (I don't know how familiar you are with the organization/guild rules) treat these just as guilds/organizations, using a more general faith for people to crowd under; most of the domains would be covered by this religion, with a few that their clerics simply do not take (the death domain, or the nature ones, for example). These "barred" domains could be available to heratics, giving the faith less of a monopoly.
Sir_Wolfgar
10-18-07, 05:19 PM I take it these orders are not good/evil restricted?

Yep. There are no alignment restrictions for the orders, just fairly large trends. The Hearts are more NG or CG, the Fists are mostly LG and LN, as are the Minds. The feet are almost all chaotic. The Order of the Spirit is very broad, but the majority of the members are Neutral in some way, with the church hierarchy being LN or TN.

Oh, and as for the Demon worshipers, I figure the church would spend a lot of it's time trying to stop people from worshiping the old gods (which are similar to a basic D&D pantheon). Those 'pagans' are a big priority. I'm going to give the players the choice to be pagan or not, as some of the characters they make may be locals. I figure this could lead to some interesting role-playing if we have a Cleric of the One God in the party with a Pagan Barbarian.
Return of the Flumph
10-21-07, 01:24 AM Are the pagan gods actually evil, or is it just a theological turf war?
Delfedd
10-21-07, 04:40 AM Depends on what he wants the campaign to be. If he wants his players to go into morally grey areas, then it could go either way. If their evil, do the players destroy the perfectly acceptable way of life for the natives? or do they destroy every pagan?

If they're good, this throws them deeper into greyness. What is good? Does your deity determine good and evil?
Hochiu
10-21-07, 10:33 AM I based my monotheistic faith heavily on the traditional Latin Church (Middle ages) and Roman Catholicism (Pre. Vatican II, so in effect Traditionalist Roman Catholic) which was inspired to me by reading the Tales of Wyrd thread on the ENWorld story hour. My church is pre-1054 Schism, though. There are currently two Archprelates that work together, but who knows how long that will go.

If you think in terms of "faith" instead of "Church", it'll be a bit easier to think of variation. Does your empire profess a single church (similar to Christian-church of the Middle Ages) above all others, making it illegal for other variations of the faith to exist? Or is it fairly relaxed about who worships what?

Regional variations always crop up, particularly in history when the Christian Church moved into an area and assimilated the predominate gods and wights of a region. In the British Isles, particularly in Ireland and Scotland, you get Celtic deities that have been coopted into becoming Saints and religious figures of the new faith to encourage people to worship.

If you want, hit me up in a PM and I'll share what I've designed off of the Tales of Wyrd story thread so you can see how I'm developing my form. I'd rather not give rights to this over to Wizards by posting here.
Sir_Wolfgar
10-22-07, 02:56 PM Thanks for the posts, because if I can answer these questions now, I won't have to think up answers when my players do.

The pagan gods are not actually evil (well, not all of them anyway). They will consist of a pantheon very similar to core D&D, with both good an evil deities. Inside the empire, the official religion is that of the One god. I may develop some small alternatives, similar to the pockets of Judaism that were present in middle ages of Europe, but the religion of the One god that I described earlier will be vastly more prevalent.

Officially, it will be illegal to worship the pagan gods, but that's a very hard charge to prove, since I am going to eliminate all spells dealing with the scrying of a person's patron deity, and perhaps even all spells which detect evil/good as well. I think this will lead to some hysteria and 'witch hunts' that will make for good plot devices.

On a technical note, one of my players has chosen to play a priest of the Feet, or a Footman as they are called (TMNT jokes aside). I'm thinking I will give the foot priests the weapon and armor proficiencies of a thief, and give them the Luck domain for free, as in being able to use the Luck power and having the Luck spells be similar to spell-like abilities (which he will gain as he goes up in level). Any thoughts? Will he be overpowered?
dungeonman79
10-22-07, 03:11 PM i love to see I'm not the only one that has a "one god" type of world. although the history and conflicts in my campaign are a little different. I'll try and keep this brief. my GOD was imprisoned by the other gods when they found out that he desired to be the only god and wanted the all the divine power for himself. and 1000's of years later he is back and now is rising in power. the PCs are not 100% aware of what they are doing for this GOD or that they are even working for him. all the information they can find on him are symbols and very vague information because he has been "Erased" from history. i mean i have a lot more about this God dude but anyone has any good ideas on how to expand on this subject i would love to here them.
Hochiu
10-23-07, 07:57 AM i love to see I'm not the only one that has a "one god" type of world.

I think you're going to start to see a number of homebrew designers limiting the number of gods available to the world. For whatever reason - too much bookkeeping, irritated with the fairly limited scope of the many-god/few-portfolio type of deity, what have you. I have no actual statistical data to back this up on except for the fact it seems that whenever I get influenced in something, half a dozen to a dozen forum members already start posting about it.

That, and it's a lot easier to engender trust, love, and loyalty to a single (or a few) all-encompassing god(s) on the part of the PCs. They can't wander down Aisle:13 - Gods, Mythos, and Lingere aisle, throwing faiths into their little shopping basket next to their underoos like it's a gods damned un/holy blue-light special.
Sir_Wolfgar
12-10-07, 02:53 AM Well, I'm going to shamelessly bump this thread back into existince, seeing as very soon I will be running my first game in this world.

I've decided to do away with alignment altogether. Spells and items dealing with alignment don't exist. I'm going to replace the Protection from Evil/Good/Law/Chaos spells with one generic Protection spell, and so on.

All clerics of the One God will begin play knowing how to spontaneously cast cure spells and turn undead. Later on, they may learn in-game from either a book or another cleric how to rebuke undead and spontaneously cast inflict spells. Animating undead is a serious offense to the One Church, and is almost always done in secret by bad guys.If they play a pagan cleric, it depends on their patron deity.

I would love to generate more general discussion about this setting, but I also have a very specific question. Now that there are no spells dealing with alignment, what should replace the paladin's Detect Evil and Smite abilities?
Dog_O_War
12-10-07, 11:43 AM Well, I'm going to shamelessly bump this thread back into existince, seeing as very soon I will be running my first game in this world.

I've decided to do away with alignment altogether. Spells and items dealing with alignment don't exist. I'm going to replace the Protection from Evil/Good/Law/Chaos spells with one generic Protection spell, and so on.

All clerics of the One God will begin play knowing how to spontaneously cast cure spells and turn undead. Later on, they may learn in-game from either a book or another cleric how to rebuke undead and spontaneously cast inflict spells. Animating undead is a serious offense to the One Church, and is almost always done in secret by bad guys.If they play a pagan cleric, it depends on their patron deity.

I would love to generate more general discussion about this setting, but I also have a very specific question. Now that there are no spells dealing with alignment, what should replace the paladin's Detect Evil and Smite abilities?

Maybe you should polarize the protections to do type variants (ie: protection from outsider/magical beast, etc...)

As for a paladin; dump the class, period. They are a heavily alignment based one, and without alignments, they kinda have no thunder.

OR

Make their smite generic and not work on true followers of their religion/sect. While you would keep the smite pretty open, I'd close it off to mindless undead, normally evil monsters, etc... unless said monsters was willfully working against the paladin's church, or were actual followers of an enemy church. It'd be kinda hard to govern, but maybe be a little forgiving and have a potentially wasted smite just not count against the uses/per day.
Kyric
12-10-07, 07:56 PM I've been planning to do a whole medieval, christian (catholic) based religion, world. However I'm emphasizing the effect of angels (fallen and otherwise) on the world (this is fantasy right? they exist). So suggestions from how I've been working with it, How does the old Demons/Devils dynamic work into your campaign, same questions for celestials: are normally evil outsiders only those opposed to the church or are they actually evil incarnate. Do the celestials always agree with the church? and when its no to either question, how do the humans of the world reconcile with this.

Also can clerics get magic from the diety even if their "evil", so long as they believe they are being faithful. Can splinter sects gain access to the same domains that those of the main church do. Finally how does arcane magic factor into this. If magic can come from another source than the diety what does this mean about the true nature and relationship of magic and divinity. This is more important than in a polytheistic world as the gods are much more fluid, while here, by definition, it has to be more defined (if only because there is a united church), but this is a question I think that the core rules fail to really address.
azirafel
12-10-07, 08:27 PM how about.. instead of paladins smiting evil, smite heretic (if you are of the one god, its smite pagan, if you are pagan .. well divide the pagan gods in two or three broad categories, and he will smite followers of the one god and the other families/family of pagan gods).. so detect evil can be detect heretic, etc...
for extra paranoia you can make heretic even other orders of the one god (and the smite heretic of a order the foot will affect the other orders and pagans) so you cant say if the people are pagans or of other order!
and yes, giving spell like abilities of the luck domain is overpowered (unless is one low level spell cost a feat and everione can buy it, similar to a dragonmark of eberron) or more accurate, im think its ovepower (im human, i can be wrong) and i think it because giving adavantages to a player and to all players (and for sake of fun, to the enemies aldo) make hard feelings in the party.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Sir_Wolfgar 10-17-07, 03:27 PM	Hey guys and gals, It's been about half a year since came to the boards, but I'm starting to play again and I'm hoping you all can give me some advice on something new for me... So, I'm going to start a new campaign in a home-brew setting, and I want to try something different with the religious aspect. Historically, the setting is similar to Scotland during the reign of the English King Edward I (think Braveheart). An outside empire has come in and conquered the region, and brought their religion with them, smashing out a Celtic style polytheistic pantheon. (Oh, and the players can only be humans; other than monsters and magic, there's nothing to fantastical about this place) The religion they bought with them worships only one god, but there are five different orders, similar in part to monastic orders, but not limited to that. They are as follows: Order of the Hand- the militaristic, crusader knights of the religion Order of the Heart- the healers, the nuns, the mercy workers Order of the Mind- the teachers, the magicians The Feet- not offically an order, but the aspect of god worshiped by thieves and plebs, whose priesthood is a secret society of wandering friars. Order of the Spirit- the largest clerical order, comprised of the leading theologians and chruch leaders So, what are your thoughts? I'm trying to go for a religion similar to the medieval catholic church, in that it is all encompassing, but I don't want it to be to rigid that there is no room for variety.
russdm 10-17-07, 04:56 PM	Are you going to include a "Order of the Stick"? ;) :D :w00t: ROFLMAO.....................
Delfedd 10-18-07, 12:05 PM	Not that funny. I think it's a great idea, personally. Make sure the orders have different conflicts between each other. Make people (possibly the players) discover a lost tribe, a lost aspect of the orders. Make sure that the enemies also worship aspects of this deity, which raises some very interesting questions about the deity's alignment. Make some "demon" worshipers. Do some typical cultists, the "Blarg! Death and Souls for my dark lord," but have there be other fascits (sic) of this "Demonic" cult.
Dog_O_War 10-18-07, 01:31 PM	I take it these orders are not good/evil restricted? Also, who or what does the common folk worship? I doubt these orders are of any importance to the average citizen; these sound more like organizations within the church than actual aspects to which people devote their faith. Maybe (I don't know how familiar you are with the organization/guild rules) treat these just as guilds/organizations, using a more general faith for people to crowd under; most of the domains would be covered by this religion, with a few that their clerics simply do not take (the death domain, or the nature ones, for example). These "barred" domains could be available to heratics, giving the faith less of a monopoly.
Sir_Wolfgar 10-18-07, 05:19 PM	I take it these orders are not good/evil restricted? Yep. There are no alignment restrictions for the orders, just fairly large trends. The Hearts are more NG or CG, the Fists are mostly LG and LN, as are the Minds. The feet are almost all chaotic. The Order of the Spirit is very broad, but the majority of the members are Neutral in some way, with the church hierarchy being LN or TN. Oh, and as for the Demon worshipers, I figure the church would spend a lot of it's time trying to stop people from worshiping the old gods (which are similar to a basic D&D pantheon). Those 'pagans' are a big priority. I'm going to give the players the choice to be pagan or not, as some of the characters they make may be locals. I figure this could lead to some interesting role-playing if we have a Cleric of the One God in the party with a Pagan Barbarian.
Return of the Flumph 10-21-07, 01:24 AM	Are the pagan gods actually evil, or is it just a theological turf war?
Delfedd 10-21-07, 04:40 AM	Depends on what he wants the campaign to be. If he wants his players to go into morally grey areas, then it could go either way. If their evil, do the players destroy the perfectly acceptable way of life for the natives? or do they destroy every pagan? If they're good, this throws them deeper into greyness. What is good? Does your deity determine good and evil?
Hochiu 10-21-07, 10:33 AM	I based my monotheistic faith heavily on the traditional Latin Church (Middle ages) and Roman Catholicism (Pre. Vatican II, so in effect Traditionalist Roman Catholic) which was inspired to me by reading the Tales of Wyrd thread on the ENWorld story hour. My church is pre-1054 Schism, though. There are currently two Archprelates that work together, but who knows how long that will go. If you think in terms of "faith" instead of "Church", it'll be a bit easier to think of variation. Does your empire profess a single church (similar to Christian-church of the Middle Ages) above all others, making it illegal for other variations of the faith to exist? Or is it fairly relaxed about who worships what? Regional variations always crop up, particularly in history when the Christian Church moved into an area and assimilated the predominate gods and wights of a region. In the British Isles, particularly in Ireland and Scotland, you get Celtic deities that have been coopted into becoming Saints and religious figures of the new faith to encourage people to worship. If you want, hit me up in a PM and I'll share what I've designed off of the Tales of Wyrd story thread so you can see how I'm developing my form. I'd rather not give rights to this over to Wizards by posting here.
Sir_Wolfgar 10-22-07, 02:56 PM	Thanks for the posts, because if I can answer these questions now, I won't have to think up answers when my players do. The pagan gods are not actually evil (well, not all of them anyway). They will consist of a pantheon very similar to core D&D, with both good an evil deities. Inside the empire, the official religion is that of the One god. I may develop some small alternatives, similar to the pockets of Judaism that were present in middle ages of Europe, but the religion of the One god that I described earlier will be vastly more prevalent. Officially, it will be illegal to worship the pagan gods, but that's a very hard charge to prove, since I am going to eliminate all spells dealing with the scrying of a person's patron deity, and perhaps even all spells which detect evil/good as well. I think this will lead to some hysteria and 'witch hunts' that will make for good plot devices. On a technical note, one of my players has chosen to play a priest of the Feet, or a Footman as they are called (TMNT jokes aside). I'm thinking I will give the foot priests the weapon and armor proficiencies of a thief, and give them the Luck domain for free, as in being able to use the Luck power and having the Luck spells be similar to spell-like abilities (which he will gain as he goes up in level). Any thoughts? Will he be overpowered?
dungeonman79 10-22-07, 03:11 PM	i love to see I'm not the only one that has a "one god" type of world. although the history and conflicts in my campaign are a little different. I'll try and keep this brief. my GOD was imprisoned by the other gods when they found out that he desired to be the only god and wanted the all the divine power for himself. and 1000's of years later he is back and now is rising in power. the PCs are not 100% aware of what they are doing for this GOD or that they are even working for him. all the information they can find on him are symbols and very vague information because he has been "Erased" from history. i mean i have a lot more about this God dude but anyone has any good ideas on how to expand on this subject i would love to here them.
Hochiu 10-23-07, 07:57 AM	i love to see I'm not the only one that has a "one god" type of world. I think you're going to start to see a number of homebrew designers limiting the number of gods available to the world. For whatever reason - too much bookkeeping, irritated with the fairly limited scope of the many-god/few-portfolio type of deity, what have you. I have no actual statistical data to back this up on except for the fact it seems that whenever I get influenced in something, half a dozen to a dozen forum members already start posting about it. That, and it's a lot easier to engender trust, love, and loyalty to a single (or a few) all-encompassing god(s) on the part of the PCs. They can't wander down Aisle:13 - Gods, Mythos, and Lingere aisle, throwing faiths into their little shopping basket next to their underoos like it's a gods damned un/holy blue-light special.
Sir_Wolfgar 12-10-07, 02:53 AM	Well, I'm going to shamelessly bump this thread back into existince, seeing as very soon I will be running my first game in this world. I've decided to do away with alignment altogether. Spells and items dealing with alignment don't exist. I'm going to replace the Protection from Evil/Good/Law/Chaos spells with one generic Protection spell, and so on. All clerics of the One God will begin play knowing how to spontaneously cast cure spells and turn undead. Later on, they may learn in-game from either a book or another cleric how to rebuke undead and spontaneously cast inflict spells. Animating undead is a serious offense to the One Church, and is almost always done in secret by bad guys.If they play a pagan cleric, it depends on their patron deity. I would love to generate more general discussion about this setting, but I also have a very specific question. Now that there are no spells dealing with alignment, what should replace the paladin's Detect Evil and Smite abilities?
Dog_O_War 12-10-07, 11:43 AM	Well, I'm going to shamelessly bump this thread back into existince, seeing as very soon I will be running my first game in this world. I've decided to do away with alignment altogether. Spells and items dealing with alignment don't exist. I'm going to replace the Protection from Evil/Good/Law/Chaos spells with one generic Protection spell, and so on. All clerics of the One God will begin play knowing how to spontaneously cast cure spells and turn undead. Later on, they may learn in-game from either a book or another cleric how to rebuke undead and spontaneously cast inflict spells. Animating undead is a serious offense to the One Church, and is almost always done in secret by bad guys.If they play a pagan cleric, it depends on their patron deity. I would love to generate more general discussion about this setting, but I also have a very specific question. Now that there are no spells dealing with alignment, what should replace the paladin's Detect Evil and Smite abilities? Maybe you should polarize the protections to do type variants (ie: protection from outsider/magical beast, etc...) As for a paladin; dump the class, period. They are a heavily alignment based one, and without alignments, they kinda have no thunder. OR Make their smite generic and not work on true followers of their religion/sect. While you would keep the smite pretty open, I'd close it off to mindless undead, normally evil monsters, etc... unless said monsters was willfully working against the paladin's church, or were actual followers of an enemy church. It'd be kinda hard to govern, but maybe be a little forgiving and have a potentially wasted smite just not count against the uses/per day.
Kyric 12-10-07, 07:56 PM	I've been planning to do a whole medieval, christian (catholic) based religion, world. However I'm emphasizing the effect of angels (fallen and otherwise) on the world (this is fantasy right? they exist). So suggestions from how I've been working with it, How does the old Demons/Devils dynamic work into your campaign, same questions for celestials: are normally evil outsiders only those opposed to the church or are they actually evil incarnate. Do the celestials always agree with the church? and when its no to either question, how do the humans of the world reconcile with this. Also can clerics get magic from the diety even if their "evil", so long as they believe they are being faithful. Can splinter sects gain access to the same domains that those of the main church do. Finally how does arcane magic factor into this. If magic can come from another source than the diety what does this mean about the true nature and relationship of magic and divinity. This is more important than in a polytheistic world as the gods are much more fluid, while here, by definition, it has to be more defined (if only because there is a united church), but this is a question I think that the core rules fail to really address.
azirafel 12-10-07, 08:27 PM	how about.. instead of paladins smiting evil, smite heretic (if you are of the one god, its smite pagan, if you are pagan .. well divide the pagan gods in two or three broad categories, and he will smite followers of the one god and the other families/family of pagan gods).. so detect evil can be detect heretic, etc... for extra paranoia you can make heretic even other orders of the one god (and the smite heretic of a order the foot will affect the other orders and pagans) so you cant say if the people are pagans or of other order! and yes, giving spell like abilities of the luck domain is overpowered (unless is one low level spell cost a feat and everione can buy it, similar to a dragonmark of eberron) or more accurate, im think its ovepower (im human, i can be wrong) and i think it because giving adavantages to a player and to all players (and for sake of fun, to the enemies aldo) make hard feelings in the party.