| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Let's talk about the deities that you feel are awesome! MY favorites are
Asmodeus, Zon-Kuthon, and Nethys.
Desna and Pharasma for me. I also have to give props to Cayden.
Cayden, Gozreh (love the duality thing), Rovagug, Sun Wukong, Shelyn/Zon-Kuthon (love their backstory).
Desna and Pharasma for me. I also have to give props to Cayden.
For some odd reason when I think of Pharasma a female Charon comes to mind. I could just see her carrying the departed souls down the river of styx. Even though that's not part of her lore. xD
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I am running an Inquisitor of Groetus at the moment and I love it, I basically play him as inspired by Ænema by Tool. Other gods I've become a fan of are, Cayden, Asmodeus, Iomedae, Sarenrae, and Desna.
Urgathoa, Goddess of gluttony and raising hordes of undead minions, what's not to like?
|
The Pantheon is actually one of my favorite things about Golarian. Everything I read about them just feels right - there's great diversity and they all have very real but distinct personalities. Some of my favorites though are Desna and Erastil - I like the idea that the gods aren't perfect and some of them are old fashioned while others are quite liberal, without making either right or wrong. Just different takes on Lawful or Good or whatever the alignment might be.
I also LOVE the flavor of Cayden, though I doubt if I'd ever actually play a character who worships him.
Sun Wukong, Desna, Nethys, Likha, and, of course, the Juju spirits, are my favs.
|
Well, Cayden Cailean's clearly got the coolest back story.
Desna's cool in a hippie chick sorta way.
I like that Sarenrae's the goddess of redemption and healing, but she's not afraid to kick some serious ass when necessary, as demonstrated by her fight against Rovagug.
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Calistria. At first glance, she looks like a badly stereotyped dominatrix, but there's enough variety among her various roles and worshipers to keep things from being quite as predictable as they'd seem at first glance.
I like that Shelyn's more than just a typical love goddess from other pantheons. The fact that she's got more depth than that makes her interesting.
And of course, there's Gorum. Yeah, he's kind of a stereotype, as a war god who doesn't care which side of the fight he's on, as long as it's a good battle. But my barbarian character is exactly the same as that.
Having bought Gods and Magic and read about the various deities while planning my first cleric, I now want to make half a dozen different clerics just to play up various different personality types, try different domain powers, etc.
The only thing that strikes me as weird about the major pantheon is that the majority of the good gods are female, including the top crusading warrior goddesses (Iomedae and Sarenrae). I usually prefer good characters, but I can't picture myself playing a cleric who worships a dwarf god or rural god, so that leaves only Cayden Cailean as the only major good male god that I'd pick. I'm ok with picking the females - my first two clerics worship Sarenrae and Desna - but given that the ancient real world religions were all so patriarchal, it does strike me as odd not to have a dominant male leader anywhere on the good side of the pantheon.
I am running an Inquisitor of Groetus at the moment and I love it, I basically play him as inspired by Ænema by Tool.Most awesome concept I have read in months. Want to steal it.
Feel free bro. Thing was he didn't start off that way, but that song come on randomly on my way to my game and it all just clicked.
Cayden Cailean, Aroden, Zon-Kuthon, and Tsukiyo.
This list is subject to editing because I have a hard time picking absolute favourites.
As a college student who does silly things while drunk, my vote goes to Cayden. Truly an awesome idea for a god.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The only thing that strikes me as weird about the major pantheon is that the majority of the good gods are female, including the top crusading warrior goddesses (Iomedae and Sarenrae). I usually prefer good characters, but I can't picture myself playing a cleric who worships a dwarf god or rural god, so that leaves only Cayden Cailean as the only major good male god that I'd pick. I'm ok with picking the females - my first two clerics worship Sarenrae and Desna - but given that the ancient real world religions were all so patriarchal, it does strike me as odd not to have a dominant male leader anywhere on the good side of the pantheon.
Pretty sure it's because most good deities were strictly male in the original D&D, and also because of the Fanservice potential. Sexy women tend to attract an audience better than good-looking men, which sadly has some unfortunate implications as well.
Oh, and thanks for reminding me of how awesome Sarenrae is now that I can't edit my first list of favourite deities. She's like Pelor, but a bit cooler (then again, I think they are almost identical in demeanour and domains) and with a scimitar instead of a mace.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
And she is illustrated by Wayne Reynolds, don't forget that.
Desna is awesome. Gorum is awesome. Ragatheil has an awesome background even though he is an emperyal lord. The eldest have awesome backgrounds.
|
|
Milani - hello, patron deity of Poland
Cayden Cailean - I wuz liek drunked and became a god, totally tru story bro
Erastil - So, fellow adventurers who wish to set out to protect this hamlet from orc warbands, I give you a heartfelt blessing ... but you know, you might want to talk that sword-swinging gal out of her adventuring ways, she'll be much more at place as a mother tending to a warm household...
Sun Wukong
|
|
Milani - hello, patron deity of Poland
Cayden Cailean - I wuz liek drunked and became a god, totally tru story bro
Erastil - So, fellow adventurers who wish to set out to protect this hamlet from orc warbands, I give you a heartfelt blessing ... but you know, you might want to talk that sword-swinging gal out of her adventuring ways, she'll be much more at place as a mother tending to a warm household...
I just started playing an inquisitor of Milani - awesome stuff but I wish there was more information about her. Minor deity and all, I guess.
I'm also having a blast playing a female paladin of Erastil. It's raised more than one eyebrow and completely threw a local priest in a spin, but it was fun coming up with a believable way to portray it and fight the stereotype.
My Favorites are: Calistria,Cayden Cailean,Erastil,Gozreh and Pharasma
I rather like Pharasma and Urgathoa. I like that both the death goddesses are female and neither of them is the tedious ravening devourer. Instead, one is the grave school marm whose extremely serious about her job and has no patience for the undead. The other is the wild party girl who does the whole Oingo Boingo "Dead Man's Party" number except slightly more evil but not inherently malicious. It's a great set-up.
I also like Cayden Cailean because it's absolutely great having an accidental god.
My favorites are:
Sarenrae -- Prior to playing in Golarion I was playing a Lathanderite bard/cleric from Calimshan (in Forgotten Realms setting) that primarily used a mace but preferred the scimitar above all other swords because of cultural ties to Calimshan (at least in my head). Sarenrae took the two sides of my existing FR character and combined them into the goddess my character should really be worshiping. I also love that she's an ascended angel and that she's not happy-fun-time all over the world--in the desert lands she's considered a harsh goddess because the sun beats down on the deserts remorselessly.
Cayden Cailean -- He's just an awesome deity. How much more Chaotic can you get than getting rip-roaring drunk and deciding to take the test to become a god? And his herald--the one with blue hair and five wings (Asmodeus tore off the sixth) that wears nothing but blue ribbons--is super-cute too, and how many celestials are former prostitutes? Love her backstory. Can you imagine when Cayden approached her about being his herald? Cayden Cailean has swagger. If Old Spice deodorants/soaps/etc existed in Golarion, they'd all have Cayden's face as their logo.
I like some of the others too, but not so much for them but for their churches. The Pharasmin church strikes me as pretty awesome, but Pharasma herself is just pretty good. I like her idea that bones can be broken, but "the bones land in a spiral" so even though bones can be broken the spiral (identifying either with cycle of life or with Pharasma herself) still exists. I still need to read more on the afterlife situation in Golarion though.
I have a love/hate relationship with Calistria because I like that elves have a CN goddess of lust, trickery, and revenge as their most common goddess. It reflects how I have actually seen elves played when they were supposedly worshiping the CG gods of the Seldarine in Forgotten Realms. They've often come across as haughty, petty, vengeful, sex-maniacs. But on the other hand I don't like that the primary goddess of lust in Golarion is a non-human deity, and not good-aligned. I always like Sharess in Forgotten Realms and she allowed for a devout sex-pot character that could still be very good-aligned and serving the goddess's agenda. OK, so the character I'm describing could follow Shelyn in Golarion, but Shelyn is more like a Sune analog, with associations to romantic love rather than hedonistic indulgence. I also miss the feline association of Sharess and don't find Calistria's bee theme a very good sexy-lady motif at all.
I like Desna too, but I can't quite put my finger on why.
Shelyn I mostly like for the same reasons I like Sune in Forgotten Realms. She tries me as a very similar deity, but with a more tragic backstory because of her ties with Zon-Kuthon. I do like that she's NG rather than CG though. That's an improvement over Sune. She can legitimately have paladins rather than having some cosmic exception.
I like Erastil because he's a Lawful Good ranger type, and because he's a Lawful Good god with an animal head, and you don't see many of those. I guess I really just like that he's a different take on a Lawful Good deity.
My two favorites are Sarenrae and Cayden though.
I have two characters in two Golarion campaigns presently: An inquisitor of Sarenrae and a cleric of Pharasma (though the cleric of Pharasma is likely to become a village NPC if I take over GMing that campaign). Maybe my next character will worship Cayden Cailean.
Personally I think it would be fun to play a Centaur who worships Cayden Cailean.
Kuthites of the world, unite! I mean... self-mutilate!
Asmodeus: He's THE classic "villain" god. Need I say more?
Zon-Kuthon: The only evil god who actually makes me a little queasy. That's an accomplishment.
Sarenrae: The archetypal "strong yet gentle" good deity (though some of her worshipers forget the gentle part...). If I were a theist, her NG or CG aspect is the kind of god I'd worship. Plus, she beat up the Tarrasque's daddy - mad props.
Sun Wukong: We know so little of him, relative to the core gods, but he's the freaking Monkey King! How can you NOT love him?
Finally, I like how atheism is handled in Golarion. It reminds me of the Athar from Planescape, which I also identified with.
Sun Wukong: We know so little of him, relative to the core gods, but he's the freaking Monkey King! How can you NOT love him?
Pretty easily actually
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yes Razmir gets some love just for having a set big as a mountain to try and pull what he has so far gotten away with.
Calistria, Cayden Cailean, Sarenrae, and Sun Wukong
Among the major gods, I like Erastil.
I also almost kinda like Iomedae and Asmodeus. Almost.
This all surprises me because normally I hate lawful gods. I still wouldnt play a character who worshiped a lawful god though, just because I dont enjoy playing lawful characters for any extended period.
I happen to strongly dislike all the NG, CG, CN and N major gods. All for different reasons. Most of them push buttons which really irritate me. Which is rough for me, because I normally favor gods of those alignments in other settings.
I also tend to loathe dualistic gods, so I have extra dislike for Nethys, Gozreh, and Callistria (though she is less dualistic, and more dual coverage in realms I consider entirely unrelated in my own personality; but I hate having the baggage of one to get the other).
Anyway, so yeah. I guess the one I kinda like the most among the major gods is Erastil. Thats it.
Among the minor gods, I like Alseta, Hanspur, and Naderi.
Major gods: Erastil
Others: Nyarlathotep, Minderhal, Ahriman, Abraxas, Sifkesh, Haagenti, Count Ranalc, Ng, Speakers of the Depths, the Godmind of Axis, Aroden
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I loathe Lawful Gods because they seem to hog the valour department in every fantasy world, but there's something gleefully insane about worshipping Asmodeus and getting away with it, both in PFS as a devout Chelaxian and in various adventuring parties and in Paths, playing up the strict-but-seemingly-benevolent stereotype and only serving himself. Who cares if your soul may be damned? Maybe you'd end up in Hell anyway for doing the jobs the party takes or maybe it's possible to avoid the grasp of the Inferno and you are only, you know, borrowing it's might for a while. You'll stop eventually and worship someone like Abadar. Yep, sure you will.
My favorites, however, are definitely Sarenrae, Sivana, Lissala and Ydersius. I like ancient gods, mysterious gods and forgotten gods. Sarenrare is as old as the bones of the earth, being one of the beings that saw the unmaking of Ihys and thee way she has been written as representing different virtues to the different regions is a great aspect to her worship. A female desert goddess of harsh justice is an interesting way to represent some of Earth's own nomad belief systems. Yet in the West she is a sort of a mix between a crusader figure and a caring healer and righter of wrongs and taker of sins. Wonderful!
Sivana and Lissala seem very similar yet different. Both represent certain aspects of magic, the other has no face while the other has many but the true one is hidden, they both like the number seven and have secretive sects of worshippers that value knowledge. Their methods do differ, with Lissala favoring self-flagellation among her worshippers, the binding of knowledge on flesh, and Sivanah remaining unknown even to her devotees(not that you'd want to know what the Madness domain implies). They are twin shades of coolness and secrecy in a setting that likes to bare all about it's gods.
Ydersius? Immortality is a damn fashionable thing to flaunt and caves and serpentfolk are mean cool, but the real reason why I picked him? Serpent's Skull, Lovecraft and the grand potential for meandering presentions of serpentine secrets!
e.g "Leaving the earthen tunnel behind, you come upon an echoing vault, its halls empty, but its spirit not yet absent. Your first steps in the bowels of this new domain send out a reverberating clatter that seems to bounce back as if recoiling from the walls, dreading to touch their black surface. The first thing your eyes fall on are the pillars along the hall. These ancient constructions holding the ceiling are coiled with stone amphisbaena, carved so lifelike you can almost see the poison dripping from their mouths. The floors are set with untarnished black marble, green etchings - painful to the eyes - running wayward along their their skin. Then you gather the courage inspect the walls... On them CRAWL the serpentine forms of those who came before! In abject worship, goring the humankin cattle on their dread lord's obsidian altars. Lingering on you skin is the ophidian gazes of those pre-human masters of yore, their mouths gorging on glistening entrails and their scales clad in war paint of Azlanti blood. And the ceiling, oh the CEILING...roll them will saves"
Hell yeah Ydersius.
Erastil and Desna
Desna- my very first Pathfinder character was a cleric of Desna in our all-elf party for the Second Darkness Adventure Path and I had much fun with him.
Pharasma- my second Pathfinder character was a middle aged varisian woman cleric of pharasma and loremaster with a magic shop in Absalom. We pissed off an Arclord, and the group decided to hide in Geb, despite the protests of both the wizard and my cleric, that wanted to go to Irrisen.
Also Shelyn, Nalinivaty, Tsukiyo, Arshea, Naderi, Mahathallah, Maghd, Andoletta, Shei Five Dawns, Ihys and Arazni.
I really quite like what I've read of a lot of gods. Cayden Cailean has my favorite back story I think. The "I'm a god? How long was I drunk???" angle amuses me no end.
Saranrae is more badass than FR's Lathander, and I like the way how the politics of her faith complicates things for her (Kelishites love her, Taldor's banned her... be on top, or be on the run depending).
Pharasma is really a neat goddess. I like how she's got both starting and ending covered, but now that prophecy is out of whack, it seems her church must scramble to adjust. TN Deities are normally dull for me, but not Pharasma.
Those are probably my top three, but there are a lot of runners up. Evil gods aren't my thing, but I find Lamushtu pretty original and I think the shared history of Shelyn and Zon-Kuthon helps both deities.
Groetus & Aspu
|
|
Sarenrae: The archetypal "strong yet gentle" good deity (though some of her worshipers forget the gentle part...). If I were a theist, her NG or CG aspect is the kind of god I'd worship. Plus, she beat up the Tarrasque's daddy - mad props.Sun Wukong: We know so little of him, relative to the core gods, but he's the freaking Monkey King! How can you NOT love him?
Sarenrae beat up the Tarrasque's daddy...with the help of Asmodeus, and a LOT of other gods...most of whom didn't survive the process. It doesn't sound quite as badass when you realize that her big accomplishment was not getting slaughtered while she flung some sacrificial lamb/deity into him while Asmodeus was closing the gate.
And ask Ron Stopable about not loving the Monkey King. :P
