In my Monster Hill campaign I have decided to use versions of the Greek/Roman deities (as the Imperial/Regulan Pantheon), the Germanic/Norse deities (as the Norden Pantheon), and the Celtic deities (as the Daoine Pantheon), in addition to the traditional D&D Elven and Dwarven deities. I'd like some help figuring out the domains, subdomains and favored weapons for the deities in these pantheons. These versions need not be 100% accurate to the historical versions, though.
I'm having some trouble with Zeus in particular. He was worshiped as a god of law and order, yet many of his actions in the mythology are more consistent with a chaotic alignment. I'm thinking of giving him an alignment of Chaotic Neutral, but giving him the Law domain and treating his alignment as lawful neutral for purposes of cleric alignments.
For Zeus I would go Lawful Neutral. As for his behavior I would simply say he views himself above law. His capriciousness are beyond that which he expects from his followers.
Zeus is CG.
Zeus is definitely not good.
There is an infinite amount of deities waiting to happen. Therefore I don't see the point of contrasting real world deities with fantasy world deities.
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If you go with the 3.0 Supplement Deities & Demigods, Zeus was listed as Chaotic Neutral. I agree with it.
No, he was listed there as Chaotic Good - Poseidon was Chaotic Neutral, and Hades was Neutral Evil (which most everyone disagrees with, but He was presented as having Assassin levels, which if they wanted to be total sticklers about it, would have required Him to be evil).
I've seen online commentators give Zeus more crap than He really deserves. Even Wikipedia gets the part about who cast Hephaestos from Olympus wrong - Hera did that, not Zeus, and their Zeus page is locked. Zeus may have been far from faultless, but he was alright as gods go - he's certainly a damned sight better than the God of Abraham.
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Here's what I have so far, for the Imperial pantheon.
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In my opinion, when Zeus's intentions go beyond just getting laid by any sentient being that isn't Hera, his intention are more often than not fairly decent. I'd probably put him at (barely) Chaotic Good, or more likely Chaotic Neutra with good tendancies.
Then again, I think the entire alignment system should be scrapped anyway.
I've pegged him at Chaotic Neutral, but with Good tendencies. I will allow lawful neutral and lawful good priests, but I'm not sure what other alignments to allow. I might allow chaotic priests of Zeus, but definitely not evil ones.
So, I'm thinking Hades might be lawful neutral, but I'm also leaning towards neutral. I'm also having trouble fleshing out the domains and subdomains for Demeter. She definitely has Earth and Plant, but beyond that I'm really not sure. Maybe Community, since that seems to be relevant to some of her less prominent portfolios that she was worshiped for in some locations. In general, I'm somewhat unclear on how to handle local variants of deities. Should I include these less widespread porfolios in the general writeup of the deity?
So I've completed the basic write-ups for the Imperial pantheon, except for Demeter, I think. Not a comprehensive list, but I've covered all the most important and a few more that I think are relevant to adventuring.
So now for the Norden of Daoine Pantheons.
For Loki, I'm going for a pre death of Balder view, so I think I'm going to do Chaotic Neutral with Evil tendencies.
About a year ago, I was in a friend's campaign that took place in what was essentially the Roman Empire, with Gaul and Scandinavia as options to play from. I played a druid from the Gaul equivalent in the campaign that worshiped Nantosuelta, the Celtic goddess of fire, fertility, and nature. As I recall, we made her Neutral Good and her domains were Nature, Fire, Healing, and one more that I couldn't recall. That'd at least be one deity for that pantheon.
Seriously you pegged Ares as CE? He is the god of organized violence in the name of conquest or vengeance (or for any reason really), but the key word here is organized. He obeys Zeus, not out of fear, but out of filial loyalty. These are both Lawful traits. His children however (at least Deimos, Phobos, and Eris) would be Chaotic Evil. War produces chaos, but is not itself chaotic, if I am making sense here.
Granted I also question the good component to Heracles's alignment. Most of his heroic acts were inspired because he had to do penance for some short sighted, hubris provoked or otherwise bone-headed action that he had to atone for. In short, he took after his father and not always Zeus's better traits at that. Not really Good qualities in my opinion.
That said I do like what you have done with the alignments on most of the others, with there being very few truly good deities in the mix. Once again, going by the myths, the gods were a bunch of prideful, petulant, spiteful children most of the time (even Athena and Hephaestus had their moments).
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Seriously you pegged Ares as CE? He is the god of organized violence in the name of conquest or vengeance (or for any reason really), but the key word here is organized. He obeys Zeus, not out of fear, but out of filial loyalty. These are both Lawful traits. His children however (at least Deimos, Phobos, and Eris) would be Chaotic Evil. War produces chaos, but is not itself chaotic, if I am making sense here.
Agreed, for the most part. You're making perfect sense.
Granted I also question the good component to Heracles's alignment. Most of his heroic acts were inspired because he had to do penance for some short sighted, hubris provoked or otherwise bone-headed action that he had to atone for. In short, he took after his father and not always Zeus's better traits at that. Not really Good qualities in my opinion.
This one's wrong. Heracles 12 Labors were specifically to atone for a horrible crime that wasn't really his fault: Hera cursed him with temporary insanity long enough for him to mistake his wife and children for mortal enemies and kill them.
For the record, I'm a huge fan of the alignment system - it's the best political compass I've ever seen. It's just that a lot of the stereotypes and assumptions people bring to it turn out to be wrong.
So for Ares would you say NE, LE, or something else, Leo_Negri?
I'd probably say definitely Lawful Evil or at the very least, Lawful neutral with evil tendencies.
I see Zeus as TN, definiitely- he is the Arbiter supreme, beyond being egoistical and whimsical at times.
I made myself some greek god statistics, if you like I could post them.
If you go with the 3.0 Supplement Deities & Demigods, Zeus was listed as Chaotic Neutral. I agree with it.Zeus may have been far from faultless, but he was alright as gods go - he's certainly a damned sight better than the God of Abraham.
Could we leave bigotted predjudices out please. It was one thing to discuss in substance though this likely is not the forum for it, but back handed snarky comments is just trolling.
I'd say Zeus was mostly Neutral, with a tendency to law as a deity involved with order and civilization. His cheating on his wife/queen was iirc his major chaotic moment, but I'm not sure how strong a chaotic influence that is - did he ever swear a vow that he'd be true to her?
Hera would be LN imo; generally if you didn't get involved with her husband and paid her due respects you'd be perfectly fine. She was generally one of the more reliable ones from the bunch.
Ares I can't see as lawful, imo he's pretty much CE or CN with evil leanings. He wanted bloodshed, a lot of it, and generally didn't care much about what others thought of it unless they could force him. Ares was the deity of vicious, destructive war, bloodthirst and carnage. Here is how one hymn describes him:
""To Ares, Fumigation from Frankincense. Magnanimous, unconquered, boisterous Ares, in darts rejoicing, and in bloody wars; fierce and untamed, whose mighty power can make the strongest walls from their foundations shake: mortal-destroying king, defiled with gore, pleased with war’s dreadful and tumultuous roar. Thee human blood, and swords, and spears delight, and the dire ruin of mad savage fight. Stay furious contests, and avenging strife, whose works with woe embitter human life; to lovely Kypris [Aphrodite] and to Lyaios [Dionysos] yield, for arms exchange the labours of the field; encourage peace, to gentle works inclined, and give abundance, with benignant mind.""
Do note that this comes with a huge caveat - the cults of the same deities could be very different in different regions. For example, in the ruins of Heracles' temple on Kos (near Asia Minor), he was iirc mentioned to be a deity involved with seafarers. AFAIK Ares himself was considered the deity of organized warfare in some regions (Macedonia, I think), but that was generally Athena's portfolio.
Huh-huh. The Greek Ares is mostly CE, while the Roman Mars is a protector and a wise warrior, and could be depicted as LN or even LG.
So for Ares would you say NE, LE, or something else, Leo_Negri?
I'd say Lawful Evil, or a really harsh Lawful Neutral. Granted I am only familiar with how he was depicted in Macedonia and in the southern Pelloponesian region. Up around the Athens and on the isles he may well have been depicted as a chaotic force.
And yes, Heracles's murdering of his wife and children was Here's fault, but the fact that the twelve labors were 12 instead of the initial 10 that it was supposed to be was all his own. He had to do two additional labors because he took the lazy way out on one (the Eugean stables where he diverted a river, and didn't put it back afterward) and one where he scared the crap out of the king assigning the tasks (the taking of Cerberus). As for his other mythological appearances, he is for the most part depicted as a drunken lout who's enormous strength gets him into as much trouble as it gets him out of, prone to boorish behavior.
Heracles is CG for me- good-intentioned most of time, but short-sighted and short-tempered.
Dotted for future reference. I love the different interpretations of the Greek Pantheon that all the people have. And glad to see people know Hades is NOT automatically Evil just because Disney claimed so long ago.
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Dotted for future reference. I love the different interpretations of the Greek Pantheon that all the people have. And glad to see people know Hades is NOT automatically Evil just because Disney claimed so long ago.
Eh, I don't even blame Disney. Pretty much every decently popular media portray of Hades in modern times has branded him with the "EVIL" tag.
Although I don't remember...was he evil in Herculese/Xena?
At least before the end of Xena, when they decided to go with the theory that if something was deific, it was evil and deserved killing.