Working on Elemental lords for my home game and need some Domain help


Homebrew and House Rules

Shadow Lodge

To elaborate on this a little I'm building 4 gods into my home game meant to be the rulers and representatives of the 4 elemental forces of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water and I'm hitting a bit of a snag with with a few things. First is domains, I've got a few for each but I'm having trouble really sinking some of the final options that feel right and really make them shine. Second is weapons for a few of them as I'm trying to find something that feels right with both their aesthetic and that of the culture of the region.

So I'm going to throw some of my notes up here to give everyone the idea of what I'm aiming for with each and see what happens from their.

Final note: The setting is very plains indians, american great plains themed and should show up in these gods who they would worship.

The Inferno:
: The living fire of all creation, The Inferno appears on earth after Water runs off with Air and gets lost in the sky giving him room to scream across the plains without water to stop him. Inferno is known as a God of rebirth, seduction, curiosity, and flame for though she comes and lights the plains ablaze in her wake she seeds the lands soil and brings bounty with her. It is believed that with her fire comes rebirth.

Current Domains: Charm, Fire, Healing,
Potentials: Strength and Glory (but looking for more interesting ones)
Favored Weapon: Shortbow

Rumbling Mountain:
: One of the oldest thing in all the Plains he and Water existed in the time when man and beast were just dreams and gods and monsters roamed the plains alone. With Water's help and his knowledge they created the greatest sights one could ever see (oceans, mountains, rivers, etc.). During this time he also makes flowers and plants for her as his gift, something pretty and powerful but stable like himself. This continued until she leaves and gets lost in the sky with Air, leaving the Inferno to come in and cause havoc while she is away. He's basically the patron of Stone, Memory, and Solitude right now but I can't think of much else.

Current Domains: Earth, Knowledge
Potentials: Plant, Strength
Favored weapon: not sure but I like something simplistic, blunt, and powerful like a greatclub or Gunstock warclub

Lady of the Rains:
: The other original elemental of the world The Lady Rain is the great creator and shaper of pretty much all the great landmarks of the world along with her partner Rumbling Mountain. In the time before time she and he sculpted oceans, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, and even the snow capped peaks together with he having this great strength and material while she had the true gift of creation. Their greatest success was when they come together and create life as Rumble tries to create these greater beings than the plants he'd grown and comes up short with her she grants his creations life and motion, giving their iron hearts water to pump and turning it to red blood. She eventually begins to travel with the Elemental lord known as The Great Gale but together they get lost in the sky, unable to come down for half a year but so marvelous is this experience that she goes back every year to look upon everything the world has and the creations it carries.

Current Domains: Artifice, Water, Weather
Potentials: Travel
Favored Weapon: Taiha

The Great Gale:
: The wind on the breeze, The Great Gale is all of the great ambitions of the sky. The Great Gale traveled through space and saw all that was made and being made and wept with both joy and sorrow for he saw so much but could not be seen in turn. So while he travels he learns the magics of all that is and the words to use them in hopes that he could impress upon magic the same great works the gods and beings of the time before man create. When he gets to the frontier he begins to start writing his stories into everything he sees, his story are wind etched canyons and the slithering ripples in the desert dunes. He is the force that teaches language to man as they travel and start to learn how to read his cuts in the earth. For him Tornadoes are his quills which he uses to cut his words into the earth itself. Eventually though The Great Gale meets The Lady of Rains and he convinces her to come away with him into the clouds where she can see all the things he would write into the earth. Unfortunately once she gets there again they both find out that she becomes like a ghost like he is and they both get lost in the sky.

Current Domains: Air, Magic, Rune, Travel, Trickery
Potential domains: I actually am pretty cool with his but I'll take suggestions
Favored Weapon: No clue but I kind of like something like a Boomerang, with some of the holy weapons of his producing these great tornadoes that cut runes into the earth

So remember a lot of this is a first pass but I'm down to hear any thoughts people might have. Remember these are supposed to be First Nation style religious choices so I'm also trying to avoid a lot of favored weapons that fall under that spread if I can. Hope to hear people's ideas soon.

Shadow Lodge

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Dark Archive

My advice is to aim for the standard of 5 domains, and that you keep in mind that those 5 always include the appropriate alignment domains. In other words, a lawful good deity has to take Law and Good as domains, as well as 3 others of your choice. It sucks a bit, but that's how it works.

Ofcourse, you can leave the alignment of your deities ambiguous as their motives are beyond mortal comprehension. Or as most elementals, they could be neutral. You might want to keep in mind that with 33 domains, 4 deities with 5 domains each aren't gonna cover all of them.

Shadow Lodge

the David wrote:

My advice is to aim for the standard of 5 domains, and that you keep in mind that those 5 always include the appropriate alignment domains. In other words, a lawful good deity has to take Law and Good as domains, as well as 3 others of your choice. It sucks a bit, but that's how it works.

Ofcourse, you can leave the alignment of your deities ambiguous as their motives are beyond mortal comprehension. Or as most elementals, they could be neutral. You might want to keep in mind that with 33 domains, 4 deities with 5 domains each aren't gonna cover all of them.

Going to try to knock out these responses as they come up.

1. Alignment domains: I'm looking to actually avoid alignment domains for these divinities in particular since they are meant to represent not just elemental forces but the elementals and the planes they come from. The Great Gale is as much a representation of wind as he is the father and king of Invisible Stalkers, Air Elementals, and Belkers. As such he and the other Elemental Lords here are left neutral.

2. Covering the whole domain spread: I know about the domain spread and I'm not really worried about trying to cover the domain spread. The pantheon these guys are being incorporated into has enough various religious options to cover the spread as it is. What I'm aiming for right now is just hearing what ideas for domains and favored weapons people get from reading these entries (along with whatever interesting inspiration they get from the classical elements themselves) and seeing what seems the most interesting here. In other words don't worry about hitting the spread I'm interested in see what people think is cool and fits the characters created here.


just an idea.

But only require one Elemental domain option being set by deity.. like Fire for The Great Inferno.

Then let the player choose any (non-elemental), domain for there other option. This would let there be a lot of option, to cover all the domains, while still linking the cleric by deity.

Anyway, i think that would be the most interesting option in the long run.

Shadow Lodge

Oliver McShade wrote:

just an idea.

But only require one Elemental domain option being set by deity.. like Fire for The Great Inferno.

Then let the player choose any (non-elemental), domain for there other option. This would let there be a lot of option, to cover all the domains, while still linking the cleric by deity.

Anyway, i think that would be the most interesting option in the long run.

Sorry if this sounds a bit blunt but that feels too simplistic a model to yield the kind of interesting play I'm looking for in the setting we run at home. Opening up all domain options for a cleric of any of these 4 gods so long as they have a one of the elemental domains just leaves you with this large clergy that don't really have any shared qualities or narrative firmament save that they, "All have water" or fire, or whatever elemental domain they have and that just ends up uninteresting. Worst of all it takes away a lot of interesting narrative work you put into a divinity that is expressed in that domain portfolio like the idea that Norgorber has death and charm, Sarenrae's fire and forgiveness aspects. They all get washed out when you can just ignore it to take whatever you want and that is easy when you don't give players some solid narrative ground to fiddle in like a solid list of things that fall under that god's interests. Like it would feel weird if I could take Charm or Good as cleric domains if I was a cleric of Rovagug and that that was as normal and okay in Golarion as any other weird combination.

Again I'm not intending to tear you a new one here, just understand a little bit of why that just doesn't really work for most situations and this capacity in particular. Domains are a great way to kind of present a gods personality to your players and give them something to groove off of and set your religion/divinity apart from others that share the domain. If you just write this blank check with that minor caveat it runs the risk of creating a clergy that doesn't have anything in common and not much to grow your PCs off of.

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