Post/Author/DateTime	Post
celestialkin 01-10-08, 09:03 PM	Hey guys, I am trying to finish up my own homebrewed multiverse (new DM), and I am currently putting together a list of which deities currently exist in my multiverse (basically the default cosmology from Manuals of the Planes, with the some optional planes like the Mirror Plane, and any potential alternate Material Planes). The things is I want to kill off almost all of humanity's deities, but I am worried about it hurting players mechanically and causing players who enjoying playing humans to feel singled out. I also ruled that all divine casters need to have a patron deity to receive their spells and abilities. So since the human deities make up a good 50% or more (rough guess) of the deities in D&D I am worried this will cause other problems my newbie DM self has not foreseen yet. Plus to my (limited) understanding I believe that most other racial deities and the monstrous deities aren't as nice about sponsoring other race's creatures. So, can any of the pros on here tell me if they see a problem with this before I end up making a big mistake for my players? Would I need to homebrew a lot more deities to fill in the domain gap I might be creating? Am I right in thinking this might be unfair for any player who wants/likes to play humans and clerics? Would you feel singled out if the DM only limited your favorite race's selection of patrons after enforcing a "no deity, no magic" policy? I have just never liked the whole humans are so adaptive that they always surpass and snuff out the ancient extremely long-lived races even though they live and learn for only a tiny fraction as long cliche I see in every single media adaptation of fantasy. Thanks in advance for any help given! edit: Oh, and in case it's important here would be the only deities remaining: • Nerull, greater god of death, darkness, murder and the underworld (NE. Domains: Death, Evil, Pestilence, Trickery.) • Pelor, greater god of sun, light, strength and healing. More humans worship Pelor than any other deity. (NG. Domains: Good, Healing, Strength, Sun.) • Vecna, lesser god of destructive and evil secrets (NE. Domains: Evil, Knowledge, Magic.) • Wee Jas, intermediate goddess of magic, death, vanity, and law (LN. Domains: Death, Law, Magic.)
Shemeska the Marauder 01-10-08, 10:57 PM	Give it a cohesive, evocative backstory and you shouldn't have problems, assuming your players want to play in the campaign in the first place. You'll also need to define just what makes and sustains a deity (ie if they depend upon worship, their nonexistance might imply hundreds of thousands or millions of sterilized worlds drifting in the void of the prime, nameless, forgotten, and devoid of the multitude of mortals who worshipped those now deceased gods). Perhaps no calamity occured. Perhaps it almost did, but those now dead gods martyred themselves for the sake of their worshippers. Perhaps that looming holocaust across the multiverse wasn't stopped, but only held back, and in the deific power vacuum, there is a need for mortals to ascend to take up the mantle of their dead patrons and perhaps finish their own salvation from that nameless, lurking terror. Perhaps the remaining gods were responsible for the deicide, perhaps they know the cause but won't say for their own benefit. Maybe non-human gods will attempt to gain the worship of humans, even spreading rumors of the complicity or fault of the remaining human gods in whatever event caused the death of the others. Perhaps another non-human pantheon was responsible. Perhaps the fiends culled the human gods in preparation for a more extensive act across the entirety of the planes, for the gods of all the mortal races. There are lots of ways to go with it.
celestialkin 01-10-08, 11:37 PM	Thank you for the ideas Shemeska. Some good stuff there, and the fiends kinda sparks some ideas. Anyways, I just always felt that humans should have been the ones dying out not the "older" races. Being strong willed and ambitious just doesn't make enough sense for me. Plus the fact that they have so many gods compared to other races never set well with me. Because of this I decided that now as a DM I can have a chance to change things a bit more to my tastes, so I am writing humanity up to be a dying race on the verge. Still around, but in significantly less numbers than the other races. Kinda like the Averial Elves (although the Averials will be much better of here) . I don't want to penalize any of my potential players just for my tastes, though. Humans can still be played, but I will try asking that players role-playing things appropriately. Sadly, I have only jotted down a tiny bit of fluff relating to it so far though: Human Deities Most of the Human deities now lie dead. Humanity’s impulsive and reckless nature proved to be its undoing. Too many wars, too many rivalries, and too many enemies proved to be too much for the young race. Uncannily similar to their lives their race reached its peak, then began to regress back to nothingness in an insignificant amount of time. Since no deity can ever truly die, most still walk the various planes as mere shadows of their former selves. Once worshipped by entire civilizations, they are now devoid of all their former cosmic power, and are destined to wander the multiversity endlessly as ghostly spirits; unable to even help themselves. Some have gone mad, others still try desperately to convince the living to change their ways, yet most wait quietly; watching what is to come. • Nerull, greater god of death, darkness, murder and the underworld (NE. Domains: Death, Evil, Pestilence, Trickery.) • Pelor, greater god of sun, light, strength and healing. More humans worship Pelor than any other deity. (NG. Domains: Good, Healing, Strength, Sun.) • Vecna, lesser god of destructive and evil secrets (NE. Domains: Evil, Knowledge, Magic.) • Wee Jas, intermediate goddess of magic, death, vanity, and law (LN. Domains: Death, Law, Magic.) I tried to pick deities which would both best suit humanity's current situation, and which would allow for most characters to be able to pick one while only diverting one step from their own alignments. However, I think this pretty much sets in stone what their domains will be. Also, I wanted the human deities to number less than the average amount of deities other races have. Since most only number around five or six at max I had to cut out quite a bit. Based on my experience the human deities often get picked by players for PCs of other races ("just cause" :rolleyes:), so that is why I am worried about making a domain gap. Then again, I wouldn't mind players playing races a bit more accurately, but I don't want to force them. Anyways, sorry for the rant. Was rerunning some stuff in my head while typing. :embarrass Do you, or anyone else know a good template or race for the ghostly gods idea? I prefer the option that deities never truly die, so I figured having a few of the dead human gods pop-up every-now-and-then as NPCs for the human players might be an interesting idea. I don't want them having any significant world altering power, but at the same time a simple ghost seems too little. Again, thanks again fro all the help!
Orchomenos 01-11-08, 09:21 AM	Do you, or anyone else know a good template or race for the ghostly gods idea? I prefer the option that deities never truly die, so I figured having a few of the dead human gods pop-up every-now-and-then as NPCs for the human players might be an interesting idea. I don't want them having any significant world altering power, but at the same time a simple ghost seems too little. Reminds me about the Time of Trouble in Faerun, or Fizban the Fabulous (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paladine_%28Dragonlance%29) from Dragonlance.
Derren S. 01-14-08, 09:29 AM	There weren't really any human deities to begin with. Only demi-humans have racial deities. The deities you think of as human are in reality deities of a concept and not related to a race at all. So killing many of them wouldn't be a problem. It would only mean that a lot of humans would also worship the racial deities of other races because of the concepts they also represent (for example Corellon for magic).
Prime32 01-16-08, 10:19 AM	IIRC there was a human creator deity, and he was LE :confused:
Legdiwena 01-16-08, 02:17 PM	Would you allow humans to worship other race's deities? No CN cleric can worship a human deity with that selection.
ArgulFraster 01-23-08, 03:36 PM	I had that problem. I started making an entirely new planescape and world without having ever DMed or even played fully before. It is languishing on a half-dead hard drive I am feverishly looking for a computer to put into. If I were you I'd just use a standard world or campaign setting until you get used to DMing.