Hi,
I dont know if this has been covered , but I see pathfinder as playing a essentially medieval game , in a ancient historical context with the pantheon of gods.
Has anyone developed a system that allows clerics et al to continue using magic when there is one god ?
I am intending to keep the Gods , ala Xian Ti , Vuldrani and the various races gods, but like David Eddings , the church worships one god.
Clerical magic still comes from this God , and I intend to keep the demons and nasty side of things.
My question is has any work been done on this with the Golorian setting , I would be interested to seeing it.
My other changes, The Mongol Hordes are Orcs, and the Cheliax Empire was once like Rome , and they maintain a strong regard for the 'old gods' and there armies are made up like the legions , but primarliy of slave races of hobgoblins....
other changes to be worked out , all I know is Dwarves have very welsh accents..
thanks
(or is there a board where personal changes to Golorian are discussed)
Hi,
I dont know if this has been covered , but I see pathfinder as playing a essentially medieval game , in a ancient historical context with the pantheon of gods.Has anyone developed a system that allows clerics et al to continue using magic when there is one god ?
In my homebrew my Church has three gods, but dozens of saints (demi-gods basically), Very Catholic in flavor (with closely related Orthodox and Judaism / Islam analogues). In any event, it's your game. No reason you couldn't have a Church with one deity. I would suggest a number of former mortal ascended saint types to give it diversity / flavor.
I am intending to keep the Gods , ala Xian Ti , Vuldrani and the various races gods, but like David Eddings , the church worships one god.Clerical magic still comes from this God , and I intend to keep the demons and nasty side of things.
Eddings is a good example for this. There are other panthens in my game with different relations with my Lawful Church (some are tolerated, some prohibited (but not directly attacked) others are proscribed (i.e. demon worship). Again, your game, your decision.
My question is has any work been done on this with the Golorian setting , I would be interested to seeing it.
I'm sure it's been done, but even if it hadn't, it's your call.
My other changes, The Mongol Hordes are Orcs, and the Cheliax Empire was once like Rome , and they maintain a strong regard for the 'old gods' and there armies are made up like the legions , but primarliy of slave races of hobgoblins....other changes to be worked out , all I know is Dwarves have very welsh accents..
thanks
(or is there a board where personal changes to Golorian are discussed)
I use centaurs for my steppes nomads and the ancient magical empire in my game was elvish. Working this stuff out is what makes world building fun. Even if you're basing it on someone elses campaign world there's no reason to stick stictly to it's "cannon". I do suggest you let your players know that you are customizing things so they don't expect it to be identical to the published setting.
Quite honestly every bit of monotheism in the real world rather strongly resembles polytheism if you just squint a little.
Christianity, especially the Catholic varieties, in particular. Once you get saints, apostles, prophets, angels, and archangels into the picture, the difference between that and polytheism is what precisely? And that's before you even get into the various cults of the Virgin Mary and sycretization, in particular the Virgin of Guadelupe who's taken in the iconography of the Aztec corn goddess Tonantzin and also some of the iconography of Isis (due to one of the original Virgin statues likely being a repurposed icon of Isis).
I did this recently with my last game. There was a large monotheistic Catholic-type church, but all the old gods were now just the various patron saints. For example, the goddess Brigid becomes St. Brigid, kind of like she did in reality.
How did you handle the evil gods Kevin?
Just let them become demons and devils in the hierarchy of the hells, same as they did in reality.
Lilith predates Judeo-Christian theology anyway so it's really not that hard.
And the goddess Ishtar became the demoness Ashtaroth. It's pretty much all laid out already.
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I'm really interested in this as well. The 3.0 book Deities and Demigods presented an option for this with a dualistic overdeity that offered all Domains with each church or temple focusing on different aspects of faith. Also, most established settings already have something like this built in that you can change slightly to do what you want. Dragonlance has The High God and Chaos, FR has Ao, Ravenloft has Ezra and the Dark Powers. You could make the deities into saints or philosophies within the larger faith.
It's really easy.
Two campaigns ago I did a medieval fairytale Europe campaign which had the Crusades and Christendom as well as pagan faiths and so forth.
One of the players was playing a Scandinavian pagan druidess right out of the Norse fairyland. She was worried about what would happen with her character when she got down into the Christian areas, whether she'd be burned as a witch, etc. I told her not to worry, I'd take care of it as GM, but I'd like to leave some surprises.
So the PCs got down there and one of the ones they joined up with was a paladin of the Dominican order. He was pretty mellow for a member of an order that was set up to root out heresy, but his superiors weren't. That said, just as the Dominicans started asking suspicious questions about this strange young woman from Scandinavia when this affable old man in a brown robe and sandals wandered, spoke a few words of Druidic to the druidess, then explained to the suspicious Dominican that there was nothing to worry about, this young woman was a nun from the Carmelites, one of the Poor Claires, the sisters to his own order, the Franciscans.
I mean, look at the miracles of St. Francis. Guy goes out in the woods and talks to all the animals and befriends them. In what world do you not stat that up as a druid?
This also explained why the Franciscans and the Dominicans had such a rivalry, and likewise set up for all the wizards and archivists who were members of the Jesuits.
Luckily the Crusades were off for the moment, due to the recent peace talks initiated by the Medici pope, so when they got to Islamic lands, the druidess discovered that the local druids were a women's mystery society which did a lot of gardening.
It really works out pretty easily, especially given the source material. I mean, the 3.0/3.5 god Cuthbert started as St. Cuthbert in 1st edition who is an actual Catholic saint, if a somewhat obscure one. Really no trouble working it the other way.