I would support the notion of Neutral elemental lords, because they ALWAYS seem to be Neutral or Evil...Good elementals are weird, but I still prefer Neutral over Evil with such primal forces as the elements.
Fire and Destruction are her primary methods of enforcing her will. Leaving burned and disintigrated (harm, inflict) husks and buildings and bodied behind ad a warning is her #1 calling card. The domain powers found in protection are ones her clerics would largely never use in terms of tactics.
Also, yes, the whole point of the exercise was to come up with a goddess that combined fire and healing, or at least to have fire available to more dieties. Sorry if you dint like my ideas. The prevailing attitude here seems to be that domains cant ever represent tactics, tools, areas of affinity, or preferencex, and that instead if a god wants to help people then they have to take protection. And thats just not a limiting factor for me.
This goddess I envision cares most about fire, destructuon, healing, trickery and chaos. If my trappings dont justify that for you, then so be it. If I had to follow your idea and justify the domains by your approach, I would have to appeal to a phoenix god since they are an existing fantasy trope that people accept together; which would just rope me into having to follow Sarenrae, since that is already the way fire and healing are linked.
At that point I would just abandon the character entirely and move on. :) Or just make a Fire Mystery Oracle and have my powers come from Alseta. Because me setting you on on fire is ... like a doorway or something. :)
The thing is fire is not a selective tool. You have a hard time controlling fire to not harm anyone but the target and setting a building on fire in any city is gonna do just that. It seems at odds with her aims.
It is not that I don't think you couldn't do fire and healing, heck ya made a fine god of healing and death really. It is just the goddess does not seem to match those goals. You went for destruction yet it does not match the god you ended up making. In cases like that it is best to keep the cool and interesting god you ended up with and make another god that fits the other goals.
This is why I am not a fan of picking domains first, you are hamstring yourself by having to try and make odd corner cases to justify a domain that does not work as well as many others.
Fire can be used with precision, and I feel my domains do match. I just think other typical tropes dont allow people to accept it. But fair enough. We disagree. You win. Lets move on. :)
I would also like to make a god that is a fire-breathing night dragon that protects people and is a champion for good. Or perhaps he is a mere night lizard. Domains are scalykind, darkness, fire, protection and good. Call him Pyronixius, the Night Guardian. :)
Your words about controlling fire reminded me of the fire deity in Dragonlance who's against uncontrollable fires despite being more-or-less the main deity of fire in that world. Also, fire is used as an aspect of renewal as well, which was kinda the point with the Forgotten Realms dragon deity Garyx.
Yeah, I dig Garyx.
In our current Pathfinder game, for a while I wad a cleric of a god of transformation and renewal. But the god was a "scientific" (in the medieval alchemical way) of transformation, in the sense that it viewed everything as being one of the 4 elements. So my domains were fire, water, air, earth, and renewal. It was a neutral god, but not by any means (in terms of personality) a nature god.
It was a custom god, since Ptolus supports odd stuff, being a one-way dumping ground for dimensional imports and all. :)
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I will not ever play a cleric of Sarenrae.
If the only way to ever get fire and healing in the setting is via an aspect of Sarenrae, and if the other fire gods are evil, or lawful dwarfs, or machines, then hey. I will just make some other character. Or if we ever run a Golarion game (and I hope our group will) then mayne we will move the elemental lords to neutral (instead of NE).
Pity, I've felt that there is never enough usage of heresy and schism as plot seeds and design elements in D&D/PF. Too often we assume that the one written interpretation of the god's portfolio is the one and only way to worship, and everyone either perfectly worships that god, or perfectly worships some other god. Commoners don't even adopt pantheons usually, just individual gods. Monotheism has really insinuated itself deep in the Western mindset, I guess...
Separatist Calistrian, then? Separatist Kossuthian? You actually worship the supposedly-defeated good fire elemental lord? There are lots of ways to give you what you want with a little flexibility and creativity.
If you need to say, "this goddess must be this one, specific way I envision, and it must be published" then you'd better publish the goddess yourself. It's easy to do these days.
Rather than say "I will never play Sarenrae," just alter sarenrae to fit. I agree she comes across a little one-dimensional RAW, but you've got to put work into almost any RPG deity. What you're describing, the take-names-and-kick-@** fire goddess who's willing to bend the rules when it's needed, is Sarenrae on Golarion. She's not going out of her way to shake things up, but she's certainly not Lawful. She an ascended angel who only grudgingly worked with the lord of Hell to bind the greatest threat the world has ever faced.
A great tack would be giving Sarenrae a new direction, a breakdown in her old and tenuous alliance with Asmodeus as a result of the devil-takeover of Cheliax that makes her change her tactics to be much more anti-authoritarian and aggressive as a result. It's not outside the fluff entirely, as the Dawnflower's cult was instrumental in the overthrow of the Keleshite satraps of Osirian.
Personally, I prefer to mess the fluff that's there and has roots to the rest of the setting, rather than drop something new in wholesale or dramatically up the value of a minor player.
It also sounds like you prefer the more human and meddlesome gods of Faerun - that's not how they work in Golarion, even the ascended. The exception was the now-dead Aroden, and even he had been sitting things out for so many centuries that his return was anticipated as a new age of the world (and it sort of was). I for one am happy with this, as you always got the feeling in FR that you were only a pawn for some deity's plans.
On a side note, I'd love to see more about the Peacock Spirit
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Apologies for vague tone. I love the Lovecraft and I love Set's contribution. More is good. And I'm glad people still like the Hellknight argument. Look for him as my AM HELLKNIGHT persona so I don't have to keep donning a helmet.
And let me echo, again, the feelings of the last few posts. I, too, feel apostasies, strange sects, and heretical offshoots cover most of the desired territory. My earlier suggestion of making a new empyreal lord is only one possible way to go about doing that.
As I said, I will just make a new character concept for whenever I play. :)
Whats up with the peacock god, btw? Is it supposed to be modelled after the real world Earth God, Melek Taus, as worshipped by the Yazidi over in Syria and other places in the Middle East? I have always found Satan-As-Hero in the form of a real God that people still worship today, to be fascinating. Its a surprise they havent been all killed off.
Anyway, is the Golarion peacock god modelled after our real Yazidi faith's god, Melek Taus?
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The Peacock Spirit is an old Thassilonian divinity. A patron of wizards and monks. Not much is written, though you will want to page through Rise of the Runelords Ch 4 and Ch 6 for what little we know. The Cult of the Peacock Spirit, like most of Thassilon, is dead and gone. Whether the peacock spirit is deceased is ambiguous.
Creative Director
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One thing folks should also remember is that Forgotten Realms has had about a 20 year head start on Golarion for ALL design elements. That includes 20 years head start in revealing deities.
We didn't want to overwhelm folks with a list of 60 deities right out of the gate (that's about how many gods my homebrew campaign had... not counting any of the demon lords or other demigods... counting them, my homebrew has well over 200 deities, I suspect). In time, we'll continue to add all sorts of content to Golarion, including additional deities, but it'll take us until 2029 or thereabouts to catch up to the Realms.
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One thing folks should also remember is that Forgotten Realms has had about a 20 year head start on Golarion for ALL design elements. That includes 20 years head start in revealing deities.
We didn't want to overwhelm folks with a list of 60 deities right out of the gate (that's about how many gods my homebrew campaign had... not counting any of the demon lords or other demigods... counting them, my homebrew has well over 200 deities, I suspect). In time, we'll continue to add all sorts of content to Golarion, including additional deities, but it'll take us until 2029 or thereabouts to catch up to the Realms.
I for one hope you never add many more. I think it is way over populated enough as it is.
That was one of the things I hated about FR
We didn't want to overwhelm folks with a list of 60 deities right out of the gate (that's about how many gods my homebrew campaign had... not counting any of the demon lords or other demigods... counting them, my homebrew has well over 200 deities, I suspect). In time, we'll continue to add all sorts of content to Golarion, including additional deities, but it'll take us until 2029 or thereabouts to catch up to the Realms.I for one hope you never add many more. I think it is way over populated enough as it is.
That was one of the things I hated about FR
As someone who loved the diversity in the old Realms, I like it. And in Golarion, I assumed that many gods by different names were just syncretic aspects of the same deity. Or maybe a NG deity starts being worshipped by a distinct group of primarily LN or CN people... so the deity forks a branch off the main kernel for them. Maybe the "new" demipower never grows very strong or fades into obscurity. Maybe it becomes powerful enough to influence the core deity and eventually its dogma and how it is worshiped.
Heck, outside of the deities themselves and their more aware divine servants, how many mere mortals -- legendary as they might be in their own right -- can really wrap their head around what it means to be an azata lord or an aeon or archdevil, let alone an actual demipower or greater? There are probably multitudes of powerful beings in the Golariverse that are not actual spell-granting gods, but they are all lumped in together from a mortal's PoV.
Fire can be used with precision, and I feel my domains do match. I just think other typical tropes dont allow people to accept it. But fair enough. We disagree. You win. Lets move on. :)
I wasn't trying to win, but I just do not get your God idea I think the reason being you didn't make a god but picked domains and then tried to make them fit.You even used domains powers as the reason protection did not fit a god with a big theme of healing and keeping innocents from harm.
But yep, I'll agree to move on :)
I'll also agree with some others Golarion has a bookle of Gods. Counting Gods to date we have 112+13 dead gods. Counting Demon lords, devils and every thing else we have another 168 which brings us to a total of at lest 280 divine beings so far, active on Golarion. We know we are getting at lest another 19 soon and that not even touching the rest of Vadra's 1000 Gods.
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Anyway, is there a chance any more demigods might be created? Maybe a wild chaotic good or chaotic neutral goddess of fire, healing, chaos, destruction :)Pele would fit the bill here and is easily portable to Golarion
The was great artwork of her on the former Razor Coast site but alas that site is no longer up for the time being.
Wasn't there also a write up of her on the site? I am pretty sure there was as well. I checked my PDF of RC and there is no info about her in it beyond mentioning her and the artwork.
Before anyone asks the RC PDF I mean is a partial copy that was sent out to people months ago. It has about 1/3rd of the book done. Part of the gaz and a lot of NPC's with stat blocks.
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The church of Sarenrae in most of Avistan is very different from the church in Quadira. In most of Avistan, the church is a nice "Light the way to redemption" type. In Quadira, it is a very militant, "Kill the Evil Outsiders first" type. There is enough discord between the two for a schism to happen.
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Creative Director
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The church of Sarenrae in most of Avistan is very different from the church in Quadira. In most of Avistan, the church is a nice "Light the way to redemption" type. In Quadira, it is a very militant, "Kill the Evil Outsiders first" type. There is enough discord between the two for a schism to happen.
And in fact, in Qadira, there is indeed just such a schism happening!
And in fact, in Qadira, there is indeed just such a schism happening!The church of Sarenrae in most of Avistan is very different from the church in Quadira. In most of Avistan, the church is a nice "Light the way to redemption" type. In Quadira, it is a very militant, "Kill the Evil Outsiders first" type. There is enough discord between the two for a schism to happen.
Is there more info on that?
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Creative Director
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Is there more info on that?And in fact, in Qadira, there is indeed just such a schism happening!The church of Sarenrae in most of Avistan is very different from the church in Quadira. In most of Avistan, the church is a nice "Light the way to redemption" type. In Quadira, it is a very militant, "Kill the Evil Outsiders first" type. There is enough discord between the two for a schism to happen.
For now, just some info in the Inner Sea World Guide, in the entry on Qadira on page 151.
(The portrayal of Sarenites as warmongers was a direction I rather would not have seen the church go, honestly—that depiction kind of snuck in under my radar in the Qadira book or wherever it first showed up, and the mention of the schism in the Inner Sea World Guide is my attempt to start bringing things back in line—it's actually worked out to be a cool element of the church, though—that a big part of the organized religion is getting away from its roots and is flying off the handle...)
** spoiler omitted **
This kind of thing is why Rahadoum threw out the lot of them.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Re deities in general.
FR: These benefited from the Faiths and Powers series, fleshing out both the deities and churches
GH: Benefitted from Sean's pen. Wee Jas is awesome.
Golarion: As others have said, deities are still developing, but they are still pretty unique and diverse (like Set, I'm a fan of Brigt).
This kind of thing is why Rahadoum threw out the lot of them.
Yet canon seems to imply that the citizens are somehow "wrong" about being agnostic. I don't think they fit the bill of atheism really, or then I'm just mixing words here.
Also, +1 to Wee Jas being awesome.
Desna did a one-deity crusade into the Abyss to kill a demon lord just because said demon lord picked on one of her worshipers. She's a lot more than meditative and dreamy.
Can someone point me to where I could read this. That is pretty awesome.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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This kind of thing is why Rahadoum threw out the lot of them.Yet canon seems to imply that the citizens are somehow "wrong" about being agnostic. I don't think they fit the bill of atheism really, or then I'm just mixing words here.
Also, +1 to Wee Jas being awesome.
If you read Death's Heretic, it really plays with the concept of them being 'wrong'.
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I like the Golarion gods. But I think they are sometimes too broad. That said however I added deities to the pantheon of primary gods.
I like Mielikki, so I brought her in with the same portfolio she had in FR. Patron goddess of Rangers, and goddess of Forests and dryads. I play Gozreh as more of the WEATHER and WATER god.
I added Sharess and made Calistria the goddess of vengeance. Thor, Odin, and Loki are all gods of the Ulfen (Gee why?).
Finally I took natural beasts away from Yeenoghu. Oh right that's Lamashtu.
I am not sure if I want to bash Lamashtu back into 'just' demonlord realm, and have another god steal her portfolio.
I also kept the standard race gods. Corellon is the god of the elves, Moradin IS Torag, but Torag is worshipped by humans instead of dwarves.
Garl Glittergold is there too:)
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Creative Director
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Desna did a one-deity crusade into the Abyss to kill a demon lord just because said demon lord picked on one of her worshipers. She's a lot more than meditative and dreamy.Can someone point me to where I could read this. That is pretty awesome.
It's in Book of the Damned II: Lords of Chaos. In the section on dead demon lords that talks about Aolar in particular.
Mielikki and Sharess are among my faves too. :) Also Shaundakul, for some reason.
I like the PF gods for the most part. The gods are usually one of my favorite aspects of a campaign setting.
That being said I feel sorry for the elves. The only face deity they have outside their homeland is Calistria. Not great for the public image.
On a side note: In conversation my friends and I have stumbled upon the conclusion that Asmodeus sounds like Jonathon Frakes.
Mielikki and Sharess are among my faves too. :) Also Shaundakul, for some reason.
I always liked Shaybdakul, but some fun facts. Mielikki is a real world god and Sharess in the realms started out as the real world Goddess Bastet. She like Hoar was at one point Totally Mulhorand Goddess at first, yet as her people spread out she went with them and changed in time. Sharess is simply the newest name she has used is all :)
Yeah, I am aware of Sharess' info. That's a big part of why I like her.
Shar all the way. I like manipulative villains that are not mere fools unsure of what they want (Cyric).
All thums up for Golarion Bad guys, they still look like they have some lure for the commons and they have real-looking agendas, well, most of them at least :)
"Owning a mountain of gold and having minions is a real agenda right?"
For a dragon... sure, for a god... not so much.
"But what if its a REALLY BIG mountain of gold? Can't a god be greedy?"
I always liked Shaybdakul, but some fun facts. Mielikki is a real world god and Sharess in the realms started out as the real world Goddess Bastet. She like Hoar was at one point Totally Mulhorand Goddess at first, yet as her people spread out she went with them and changed in time. Sharess is simply the newest name she has used is all :)
Added fun fact, Mielikki is a Finnish deity. And I happen to have been born in Finland, and I still live here. Now if only the weather would get colder, I hate all this rain. Also, I like Bastet/Sharess as a deity, but I could never make a Cleric or other character who worships her for some reason.
Also, am I the only one here who makes homebrew races and creates a few homebrew deities for them too? >_>
"But what if its a REALLY BIG mountain of gold? Can't a god be greedy?"
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Some are, but those are usually gods of greed. Aside from that the gold is usually quite useless for the gods - I think they can create it at their whim. God of thieves doesn't probably care for market price of the target as much as for the act of thievery and perhaps for the emotional value the owner puts to the thing that's stolen. Gold's usually valuable to all, so it's a good target to steal, butI can imagine the god pesonally to dump the treasure to some forgotten vault for someone to find and start the process anew.
If tehre would be a thing that the gods covet, it would be power and worship, which fuels them and allows them to do thingds like *create* mountains of gold out of thin air.
It would be differentif the gold had some purpose for them, or had some mystic value that would require power investment, but nothing so far implied that.
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I like Mielikki, so I brought her in with the same portfolio she had in FR. Patron goddess of Rangers, and goddess of Forests and dryads.
Thor, Odin, and Loki are all gods of the Ulfen (Gee why?).
I also kept the standard race gods. Corellon is the god of the elves, Moradin IS Torag, but Torag is worshipped by humans instead of dwarves.
Garl Glittergold is there too:)
Preach on Brother Mourn!
You pretty much nailed down what I did with my campaign.
Add to that Finnish Loviatar is Calistra, she surmised correctly that when she dropped her blatant evil descriptor she would gain a larger flock. Her aspect as Calistra is a very successful long term experiment of sorts.
Finally, the Norse goddess Hel reinvented herself too and gained much of a cult following outside of her native Ulfen lands: she's Urgathoa. Papa Loki is equal parts proud and jealous and looking for ways to gaining inroads into Avistan.
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Icyshadow: I LOVE Finnish mythology. Perhaps one of the greatest oral traditions still carried on today. A perfect example where gods' clerics could really be bards. In my home game growing up the great northern land akin to what the Norsemen would be in other home games I actually named Kalevela, land of Warrior Poets.
And one of my first ties to what would become a life long hobby of roleplaying is actually an old book with some translations of the epic tales of the Kalevela given to me by Miss Finland (and Ms. Universe 1st runner up) way back in 1978. My fate was pretty much sealed since that time.
Didn't expect to see a fan of Finnish myths around here, but nice to hear that. Also, this made me think about one thing. If Väinämöinen was in D&D/Pathfinder, which class would he have in your opinion? I thought about it once, but couldn't nail one down on his case. Lastly, now I'm going to have a semi-Kalevala inspired campaign brewing up for some time. Only problem is that the references would be too obvious for one of the two groups I play with, and I wouldn't know if the other group would have chances to play with me as the DM.
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If Väinämöinen was in D&D/Pathfinder, which class would he have in your opinion? I thought about it once, but couldn't nail one down on his case. Lastly, now I'm going to have a semi-Kalevala inspired campaign brewing up for some time. Only problem is that the references would be too obvious for one of the two groups I play with, and I wouldn't know if the other group would have chances to play with me as the DM.
Väinämöinen (you have perfect spelling there by the way!) was actually stated up in the 1st Edition Deities and Demigods and was also in the parried down Legends and Lore from that edition.
He was a Hero (a step below Demigod, and was the mortal son of the goddess of the wind and motherhood) with all these class levels:
Druid 14
Paladin 20 (?!)
Illusionist 12
Bard 20
He had a remarkable 250 Hit Points, that's quite an incredible figure because he had more Hit points then Demogorgon, Tiamat, Asmodeus or Lolth ! Well, almost anyone had more hit points than Lolth back then.
I'm not really sure where he got those Paladin levels from, he is defintely partially chaotic in his alignment, I would 100% give him Bard levels, a great portion of his classes should be from that. He should also have access to the illusion school of magic and some Druid levels. He is a skilled warrior though, and has Craft skills. He would be at least level 20 perhaps passing into Mythyic level rules. He is also very long lived, but his age has begin to show, think Gandalf, but just not that old.
If you want to bounce off some ideas regarding your campaign my email:
Why must there always be gods for everything? And more importantly, why would these gods if they exist as a lesser form of deity, be powerfull enough to grant boons to clerics?
I've always been a strong believe that gods gain their powers from how much faith they receive, which technically has been the modus operandi in FR as well. Then why are there gods of obscure concepts, such as -waterfalls-, -unicorns-, or the natural element of fire.
These are very specific concepts that is usually overshadowed by greater gods of nature and likewise. Leave specific concepts up to demigods, but I don't think they should have clerics of them.
Why must there always be gods for everything? And more importantly, why would these gods if they exist as a lesser form of deity, be powerfull enough to grant boons to clerics?
I've always been a strong believe that gods gain their powers from how much faith they receive, which technically has been the modus operandi in FR as well. Then why are there gods of obscure concepts, such as -waterfalls-, -unicorns-, or the natural element of fire.
These are very specific concepts that is usually overshadowed by greater gods of nature and likewise. Leave specific concepts up to demigods, but I don't think they should have clerics of them.
I think the problem in Forgotten Realms stems from the fact that Ao will b****slap you to oblivion if you try to have the same portfolio as another god, and that's why they made so many deities that are similar but slightly different. The same doesn't usually apply in other settings, but I see what you are getting at.