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I'm running a campaign for a bunch of new and young players (like ten years old) and the question came up "Whats a deity?"
Well, I've honestly been over and done with the whole made-up gods and goddesses trope for a while. In my regular gaming group with older, mature players, it rarely came up. It was assumed that D&D religions, like real world religions were mostly just collections of rituals and beliefs. Clerics were powered by their own faith more than actual divine other-worldly beings. Also, I don't have any Golarion books, so I don't have a good idea of what the pathfinder pantheon looks like.
For this game, I plan on creating a setting inspired by the real-world silk road, and the varying cultures and countries that it touched. The game would begin after the crumbling of the "mongol" empire, a vast human khannate with numerous vassal states. It'd be a lil past 1400, early firearms are common place, and polytheistic paganism is no longer really the mainstream.
I was thinking about creating a dwarven originated monotheistic culture, with different sects. There could be the dwarven sect that believes dwarves are the chosen people and seek to return to the glory promised them in ancient prophecies, another sect that worships a mortal incarnation of this dwarven god, and a third that follows the teachings of a human prophet who forged an empire out of the disparate desert tribes in the central part of the super-continent.
In addition, there will be numerous animistic and shaman cultures, and a Hinduism parallel that takes polytheism to the extreme.
I'm thinking this will allow the players to pick any belief system they already know about and incorporate it into the game, making my job easier.
I've heard "Keep the real world out of it" before, but are there any other thoughts about this kind of an approach?
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Well I can definitely tell you that clerical power is not powered by faith. They're powered by their god. I know it isn't Golarion, but Forgotten Realms literally had the collapse of all arcane and divine power during the Time of Troubles (all gods were forced out of the heavens and stripped of their immortality for a time). DnD has always had that aspect, especially when mortals have often ascended to divinity (Starstone test) and interfered in the mortal realm.
If you want to try this approach, then you have to ask if any of your players want to play any class with Divine spells, if they do, then you need to create a deity or demigod similar to the ones in the Golarion wikipedia, with a favored weapon/alignment/domains/etc.
Honestly one issue I have with DnD is the certainty of the gods and afterlife. I know why it exists, but it takes away quite a bit of the mystery of life when you can dial up a god for a chat or resurrection. The "divine magic" powered by faith sounds like an interesting approach.
So clerics who dont worship specific deities get their spells........?
In normal settings that allow this, from a deific entity who supports them even without worship. Whoever that might be is up to the GM, if it gets pursued at all.
Many settings don't allow this though, and require a cleric to worship someone to get power.
In Pathfinder, Clerics worship a particular cleric to get spells. I mean...it's a cleric, that's what a cleric is, basically a priest of X religion who is empowered by their deity. This is why there are such things as "Ex-Cleric" and "Ex-Paladin."
Mechanically speaking. If you're just talking about spirit back story stuff, no need to do anything, but if your players pick a Divine class, they ARE going to ask "Well, what is the alignment of my religion? What's its tenets? What about its favored weapon? What domains does it have?"
Unless of course you just...disallowed Divine classes.
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There are certain problems with creating 'monotheistic' religions in a pathfinder universe. First and formost, there are lots of cleric abilities organized by deity. Which domains you have access to, favored weapons you can get a hold of etc are all determined by the available deities. If a culture or even the whole game completely revolves around one or two 'religions' you drastically reduce the choices for clerics.
I think if you want to take this kind of approach you might want t oconsider compeletely replacing the cleric with the oracle. The theme of the oracle is a far better fit for your world conceptually.
The other option a factor in real world 'monotheistic' religions have ways they split up their deity's responsibilities. Look at for instance the christian saints. If you adopt that concept for your monotheistic dwarves, clerics could still function reasonably smoothly.
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The most complete religious system I've seen for any RPG was published by Green Ronin: The Book of the Righteous, for 3.0 (They updated the new class, The Holy Warrior, for 3.5)
It's not just a pantheon, it details the religious work of all the different churches, including a Great Church that worships the divinity of all the deities. Worth checking out at least.
Available in non-mint hardcover from Paizo!
http://paizo.com/products/btpy8boj?Book-of-the-Righteous-Hardcover-NonMint
(PDF available form Green Ronin directly)
In Pathfinder, Clerics worship a particular cleric to get spells. I mean...it's a cleric, that's what a cleric is, basically a priest of X religion who is empowered by their deity. This is why there are such things as "Ex-Cleric" and "Ex-Paladin."
In Pathfinder, the RAW are thus (emphasis mine):
As their powers are influenced by their faith, all clerics must focus their worship upon a divine source. While the vast majority of clerics revere a specific deity, a small number dedicate themselves to a divine concept worthy of devotion—such as battle, death, justice, or knowledge—free of a deific abstraction. (Work with your GM if you prefer this path to selecting a specific deity.)
Anything else is setting-specific. The Pathfinder material, derived from 3.5, is not setting-specific. The material for the Golarian Campaign Setting is setting-specific.
What Da'ath said,also Clerics that are removed from the influence of their Gods, like for instance when traveling through the First World(where normal gods have nothing to say) still keep their Powers and Spellcasting just by the Power of their Faith.
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In the DnD 3.5 Eberron setting, clerical spells WERE powered by the strength of the cleric's faith. There were a variety of religions in the world: some of them the standard DnD polytheistic approach, some were more like Taoism, and others still worship beings who are clearly not gods. But if the cleric's conviction was strong enough (ie. high enough Wis score) he could cast his spells. Also, since clerics had no god persay (it was debatable whether or not the dieties existed) they did not risk loosing their spells for breaking their church's code of conduct or for having a wildly different alignment than their religion. Hence corruption in the curch was rife.
In the end, it's your game to run as you choose. The reason a lot of people advise to keep the game as surreal and fantastical as possible and keep the real world out, is to maintain comfort level. As long as you feel your players are mature enough to handle game religions similar to real-world religions, go for it.
Now as CommandoDude said, if any of your players choose to play a divine character class in such a setting, you should give some thought as to the overall alignment, favored weapon, domains, code of conduct, and such for the religions of your setting as these provide definite mechanical options for those classes.
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I'm trying to be as non-restrictive as possible. This game is a conscious shift on my household's part to bring my young nephew's attention away from violent video games, while stimulating his imagination and cognitive skills. The huge selling point is that you can do ANYTHING! so I'm going to try avoiding banning classes or races till he has a clearer vision of the campaign he wants to play in.
I have disallowed clerics in the past (no pallys that game either), replacing them with oracles, inquisitors, and druids to great effect, but I'm frankly taken aback by A) Commando's fervent insistence that clerics must worship gods and B) the impression people seem to have that I'm not including anything in my campaign for clerics to worship.
For the sake of Argument, lets call the original Monotheistic religion in my world "Dweomerism". Tens of thousands of years ago, the Dwarven people were slaves to the giants. The giants forced the dwarves to toil their lives away building massive ziggurats and carving out huge mountain halls. Eventually, one dwarf (Lets call him Torses) was contacted by a omnipresent divine entity who granted him the power to liberate his people from slavery, promising a land of milk and honey where they would be free from the oppression of the real-big-folk. Torses cast many a high-level spell, and the Giant Pharaoh was defeated. During the great Dwarven exodus, Torses received additional messages from this divine entity, and established a system of laws to govern his people.
Fast forward a few centuries, the dwarven people find themselves once again second-class citizens, this time under the heel of an expansionist hobgoblin empire with a decadent capital, many gods, and a philosophy of "Panem i Cirucs de solei". A dwarf is born seemingly from the earth itself, travels the world acquiring mad knowledges (and leveling up) and returns to save all the people of the world (Not just dwarves) from their suffering. He dies, gets resurrected, and ascends to the astral plane (So goes the legend).
A lot of people like this and start worshiping this Dwarven Messiah, lets call him Yoshul.
A few centuries after that, this divine entity contacts another mortal. This time a human. This human prophet, whose name can be Bobert, writes down all the new laws and teachings in a book and starts sharing them with the world. This human religion spreads very quickly and soon a whole lot of the world has heard of, or even worships, this single divine entity in one form or another.
Meanwhile, east of all this, We have a culture with more than 3 Million gods and goddesses (Who are all really different forms of a single divinity) and a prince from this culture who attains enlightenment and shares wisdom with the world. Plus lots of people who worship the spirits of their ancestors, honor the spirits of nature, or just try to live by the teachings of great masters from throughout history.
You want a mechanical break down? That'll be my next post
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Dweomerism: Lawful Neutral, Domains: Community, Earth, Law, Liberation, Protection, Strength, Sun. Holy Symbol: the shinning sun of Thorin, favored weapon Warhammer.
Yoshanity: Neutral Good, Domains: Community, Glory, Good, Healing, Nobility, Repose. Holy Symbol: the gallows Yoshul hung from, favored weapon Bastard Sword
Bobert's Malsi: Lawful Good, Domains: Fire, Glory, Good, Knowledge, Law, Travel. Holy Symbol: a dragon chasing the moon. Favored weapon: Falchion.
If players want to play a subsect of any of these, they can pick one domain from those listed above, and one domain that is not listed. For example, the Armies of Abstergo are a mercantile/warrior sect of Yoshanity that incorporates the Glory, Nobility, and War Domains.
Vedayism: Includes scores and scores of deities, (I like to let the players make these up themselves) But important ones would be
Unhasav: Lawful Good. Domains: Glory, Protection,War
Rudra: Chaotic Neutral. Domains: Destruction, Knowledge, Repose
Also, Vedayism has numerous deities directly associated with sub-domains, such as Mar the god of Heroism, or Kil, the goddess of Catastrophes, or Goosh the rhino-headed god of Toil.
The last major religion is Bhoddism, which is followed mostly by monks, but I suppose clerics of Bhoddi can have access to the Knowledge and Liberation domains.
FYI, I made up all of this while I was writing it down, but I reckon it'll work, no?
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there are really only two possible "issues" you will face by not running with any specific dieties, mechanically speaking. The first is really no issue at all; domains. Just run with the same mechanic as outlined in the CRB for clerics without a specific deity (i.e. - they pick two domains, only restriction is based on alignment).
The second issue is favored weapon. The easiest way around this would be to list out a seemingly appropriate weapon for each domain and have the player choose one from the two possibilities at the time of character creation.
Now, that said, if you are playing at a table with people of differing faiths, then you do need to tread lightly. Basing the religion aspect of the game on real world monotheistic belief systems (or polytheistic belief systems) can be serious eggshell territory, especially if you are going to have any conflict based around the varying religions. This, not game mechanics, is the biggest issue you will face if you run with analogies to real world religions. People can get very touchy about religion, even if it is just an analogy to their actual religion.
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I've honestly been bugged by the same issue. It seems that nearly every setting takes an approach to gods that is loosely structed after the Greek or Roman pantheon. There always seem to be a few assumptions about the gods that flavor how we percieve them and their religions, and it's gettng a little stale. I think that in most (not all) settings...
1) Gods are knowable entities. They are easy to identify with, and they have mortal-like motives. Sometimes they give voice to their driving maxims, opining on matters and clearly laying out dogmas for their clerics to follow. Each god can be identified as a single powerful entity, and, in the worst cases (Forgotten Realms), simple resemble what I've heard described as "Graduated PCs."
2) The gods are all loosely connected to one another. Each religion is centered around the reveration of a specific deity, but the existence of other deities, or the validity of their worship, is seldom denied by clerics. The gods all acknowledge the existence of the others, and they often have allies and enemies amongst this broad, vaguely connected pantheon. Even the racial pantheons are more aloof than they are seperate.
3) The church is centered around the god. I see this every time. You worship one god, and what that god says goes. There's relatively little interpretation that goes on, expecially when #1 starts to get stepped up (Golarion has been a little better about this, though). No one would ever dream of worshipping two gods, or having a cleric dedicated to a pantheon rather than a single deity.
I can understand why they do this. It helps to standardize the cleric class, and makes it easier to streamline religion and introduce new faiths into the game, but if you're willing to take the time, you could very easily come up with slightly different rules for the cleric of each religion. For my own part, I want to avoid all the above tropes when creating the faiths of my own games.
First and foremost, I want to see a world where religion can be a little more controversial, where other religions aren't necessarily acknowledged, and where the existence of the gods is a little more questionable. In the game I'm designing, each culture (not each race) has it's own religion. Most of the time they acknowledge other gods and their power, but acknowledge them as strange or fale ("Those people have funny gods - something's not quite right about them) and even clerics don't learn much about religions other than their own.
Secondly, I want to make a non-god centered religion an option. This is not to say that gods aren't worshiped, but that the faith is not centered around a single deity. Domains are what gets tricky here. For example, I want to create a monotheistic religion for one of the larger nations in my setting. However, given that the last paragraph applies, it means this is the only religion most people are going to follow, and I want to give clerics from this area access to more than five domains, so I've added patron saints to the faith. Each cleric has one. They choose one of four domains granted by the actual deity in the pantheon, then they choose one of two domains that is presided over by their patron saint. I'm going to have another religion that functions similarly to traditional D&D religion, but with only four deities that cover a range of societal aspects. Each will probably have six domains instead of the usual five, so that the faith itself has access to a suitable range of domains. Clerics would devote themselves to a single deity above the others, but they would revere and respect all four, and the mythology and lore of all of the deities would be closely intertwined.
And then of course there are religions which have no deity. It wouldn't be too touch to base a religon of of Bhuddism, Daoism, or Hinduism. You just have to identify core beliefs of the religion, tenents for their clerics, how the religion is structured, and which domains it grants (and how many). It might help to assign an alignment to the philosophy, or come up with a short list of alignments that are acceptable for clerics (I'd say no more than four, though). Make sure that if this is a religion that's going to dispalce others in a region, you give clerics a way to choose from more than the usual five domains.
As an example, let's say I want to come up with a fantasy religion inspired by, but not identical to, Daoism/Mohism. I decide it will be a relgion about religion about introspection and personal discovery. The religion values variety, civil liberties, and individual freedom. It espouses that empyrical learning is vital, and someone can act moral without being moral because in addition to simpel behavoir it's important to understand the "why" of right and wrong. Most of all, I'll borrow the concept of the Dao, so clerics should be trying to find a rythm to life and fall into sync with that rythm. This is a lifelong journey for most of them, and the faith is divided in places on what this rythm of the universe may entail. However, clerics are encouraged to improve themselves. The should try to experience new things but excercise moderation. They must meditate each day at dusk (just because) and reflect on how they've affected and been affected by the world that day. The should help others where they can, and limit restrictions imposed on them by others, because that restricts how they are able to grow. Because they travel often, they are close to nature, and they espouse limited attachment to individual people things, believing a lack of such attachment facilitates a hollistic understanding of the universe. The structure is a loose hierarchy of junior and senior priests, and the senior priests usually teach the juniors with questions and riddles. Looking back, I decide that this religion permits followers of CG, CN, NG, and N (with a focus on balance) alignments. If I'm only going to assume five domains, I'd give say their tenents are most aptly represented by Liberation, Good, Travel, Knowledge, and Luck (an ability to manipulate karma).
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Well I can definitely tell you that clerical power is not powered by faith. They're powered by their god. I know it isn't Golarion, but Forgotten Realms literally had the collapse of all arcane and divine power during the Time of Troubles (all gods were forced out of the heavens and stripped of their immortality for a time). DnD has always had that aspect, especially when mortals have often ascended to divinity (Starstone test) and interfered in the mortal realm.
If you want to try this approach, then you have to ask if any of your players want to play any class with Divine spells, if they do, then you need to create a deity or demigod similar to the ones in the Golarion wikipedia, with a favored weapon/alignment/domains/etc.
I would point out that The Power of a God is dependent on the number of Worshipers. You need x number of worshipers to become a demigod. Thus there is a degree of faith in the nature of D&D Godhood. So Faith in you by others has the power to make you a god.
Charisma is an interesting one - Though Charisma would be required to convert others to the worship of your god - too great a charisma would be an individual who realizes that if the followers worship the priest instead - then he would be a god. Likewise Wisdom would increase your understanding that the power of the gods comes from the people who worship them. So if anything Gods are looking for total morons to be clerics and worshipers with little wisdom and charisma of their own - Just enough to take orders and maintain the status quo.
Otherwise you would have a D&D setting where People worship the Adventurers of their community imbuing them with 'hero-power'. It would be kind of like People believing in Hercules and as a consequence Hercules is imbued with godlike power.
As to the Collapsed Mongolian Empire having a religion - There are three aspects of protoindoeuropean faith - The Patriarch who is the guiding authority for the Family, the Clan, and the tribe - so the ruler of the clan is also its Clerical authority; The Recollection of childhood memories and their attachment to the natural world - a kind of personal druidism; and the third aspect of faith is the pursuit of prophecy and future sight - through singing and bardism. These three aspects of Faith are the spiritual foundation for all civilizations.
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I would point out that The Power of a God is dependent on the number of Worshipers. You need x number of worshipers to become a demigod. Thus there is a degree of faith in the nature of D&D Godhood. So Faith in you by others has the power to make you a god.That's certainly not true in Golarion; the Test of the Starstone doesn't depend on worshipers. It wasn't true in Dragonlance, and I don't recall Forgotten Realms mentioning it. Spelljammer did require that you have a permanent temple in a crystal sphere to recover higher level spells from your god, so there is something not completely dissimilar in D&D, but I don't know of any Pathfinder or D&D source that actually says what you point out.
Deites & Demigods...plenty of Worshipers equals god power there.
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After the Time of Troubles, the Gods of Faerun were dependent on the number of worshipers they had. The more worshipers they had, the more powerful they became.
Golarion did away with that, largely because you could 'kill' a God, by kill his/her followers, and Pathfinder won't print rules to slay Gods (Demigods are ok though, and will be killable next year in Mythic Rules).
The default is that the gods DO NOT require worshipers to powers themselves. It was however one of the option presented in Deities and Demigods.
And I never liked that set up anyway. It doesn't make sense. FR was the exception because of its set up. Also, it wasn't just worship that was required. There had to be something to spark the ascension.
Additionally, the divine magic powered by faith thing has also been done to death.
It doesn't make sense.
For the sake of curiosity, why not?
Additionally, the divine magic powered by faith thing has also been done to death.
So has divine magic powered by gods. I'm not trying to be antagonistic, I just don't see the relevance.
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The default is that the gods DO NOT require worshipers to powers themselves. It was however one of the option presented in Deities and Demigods.
And I never liked that set up anyway. It doesn't make sense. FR was the exception because of its set up. Also, it wasn't just worship that was required. There had to be something to spark the ascension.
Additionally, the divine magic powered by faith thing has also been done to death.
It wasn't really OPTIONAL in Deities & Demigods - it was core to the rules governing Power of the Gods From Hero-Ultimate. As to done to death...I don't recall playing a 'God - Just add followers'. Perhaps the pages on Charisma and your Godhood were stuck together.
It doesn't make sense.For the sake of curiosity, why not?
Additionally, the divine magic powered by faith thing has also been done to death.So has divine magic powered by gods. I'm not trying to be antagonistic, I just don't see the relevance.
I'm not trying to be antagonistic either. Sorry if it came off that way. Anywho, in any setting where the gods made creation it doesn't fit. Why would the gods be dependent on their own creations for existence.
Both have been done to death. So one is at an impasse where either way old ground is being tread. I guess it just annoys me when someone tries to posit it as this cool new thing when its pages are dog eared and the binding is well and truly cracked.
It wasn't really OPTIONAL in Deities & Demigods - it was core to the rules governing Power of the Gods From Hero-Ultimate. As to done to death...I don't recall playing a 'God - Just add followers'. Perhaps the pages on Charisma and your Godhood were stuck together.Power of the Gods From Hero-Ultimate? Is it being written funny or am I just not reading right?
Both have been done to death. So one is at an impasse where either way old ground is being tread. I guess it just annoys me when someone tries to posit it as this cool new thing when its pages are dog eared and the binding is well and truly cracked.
It's sad, but true. I pretty much quit bothering with trying to explain the hows and the whys of the cosmology and just accepted that it works.
I ended up merging the two, so to speak, at one point (divine power made gods divine, faith/followers helped determine their rank).
Well the Kaidan setting by Rite Publishing uses religions based on ancient Japan with analogs to Buddhism, Shinto, Shugendo and Taoism, and administered by clerics, oracles, inquisitors and paladins - so settings with loose alliterations to real world religions using Pathfinder rules in published form exists now. The concept of only the gods themselves power the faithful does not exist in Kaidan. There is no 'one true wayism' in roleplaying games, no matter what it says in Core.
I've often wanted to base a setting around a single religion, single deity, but with multiple denominations, sects and splintered factions based on different interpretations of the holy scripts. While every branch of the faith can point to the same deity to reference their powers, everything else: alignments, spheres of influence, granted powers, favored weapons vary depending the particular sects specific agendas - which are all different. Lots of intrigue, religious wars, inquisitions would be available in such a setting.
Just because standard faire Pathfinder adheres to the old D&D idea of a pantheon of gods doesn't mean other paths of the divine could not exist and perhaps excell in a Pathfinder game.
Nothing is default for 'every' setting in any aspect of the game.
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Interesting idea to have different sects based on different interpretations of the text, however since the gods can talk to people it's likely that the god would correct any such large deviency, unless the god's ability to communicate is limited or if the god is hibernating for a long period of time.
Perhaps all the sects share certain beliefs/rituals that an otherwise aloof deity considers sacred and provides divine power to all adherents, however other 'gospel' is treated differently. The schism in a once singular church has splintered into multiple orthodoxies based more fringe interpretations.
The age of religious wars in Europe between Catholics and Prodestants, Catholics and Cathars, all were Christian, but differing interpretations led to crisis that continues today - follows such a premise.
An aloof deity might work through lieutenants, lesser divine beings, angels, spirits of the saints thus divine doctrine can differ should the intermediaries have their own private agendas, within the scope of their master deity.
Some settings have regular occurences of divine intervention. Some settings have a living bureaucracy of an organized church worshipping an invisible god whose existence is based on faith, relics and otherwise without any real evidence. Spells are still granted, but divine communion is treated with a hand wave. Different GMs run different style games.
You don't have to change the mechanics of PF, just re-explain the fluff to fit a different paradigm. Assign alignments, powers, spheres, favored weapons to each faction, rather than the deity itself. An all powerful one god might be able to possess all divine powers, but dispense his power normally following different ideologies within the greater shared religious beliefs.
What if gods don't 'talk' to you per se, instead sends the faithful dreams, that are interpreted by priests. Without concrete exact words to base one's faith upon, the same dream shared by multiple recipients could be interpreted differently by different priests, hence different factions/sects.
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What if the gods don't exist at all, divine magic doesn't come from the gods, it comes from faith, so you could just say everyone believes in the god that doesn't exist. Fits better with church splits that end up fighting each other, cause I find it hard to believe that a god fully capable of intervention will let their followers massacre themselves, (unless it's part of the gods domain/portfolio).
Of course you could instead have different branchs of the same church that each have their own tasks assigned by the god, that could also lead to friction. So you could have the crusaders to go recruit, the inquisiters to find criminals, the clergy to run services, the leadership, and the special projects group to build churches and other projects.
I have a similar "take" on Gods. We have clerics of light and clerics of darkness (basically what did they choose for channeling) the Gods are for flavor and are talked about more by those who are less "enlightened" cults form around deities and fanaticism on a specific god and its goals.
I did this because there are alot of players that polytheism offends and i just choose not to deal with the issue. so their cleric of light can worship allah or god or yahweh, i dont care, but if they do fine. It doesnt effect the way the game runs.
Paladins and Inquisitors specifically state they dont have to worship a specific god as do oracles and druids, so why do clerics "have" to be manacled by this minor inconvenience, when all classes supply divine spells ?
Alternatively, let the player select his/her domains and one favored weapon and all the mechanics work. The domains should follow the same rules of course (cant pick law when your character is chaotic)
(Wow! Some of you guys are SO dogmatic about the rules!)
The idea isn't original with me, but I'd step away from giving the gods known alignments, instead giving each sect a dominant alignment and clerical domains. If they ask whether there's "one true faith", I'd answer that each worshipper has their own take on that question. I'd say that many people have claimed that their religion is "the one", but just like the real world, even the wisest of sages argue about the truth.
As an example, some group might interpret X as a god of harsh judgment and judge of the dead ("Orthodox Xism"), with its clergy and holy books emphasizing a lawful neutral alignment. Robed old men would stingently enforce their sect's interpretations of scripture. Other worshippers ("Reformed Xists") reject these interpretations, claiming that the orthodox faith misinterprets their prophets' teachings. Their clergy have entirely different domains, even though they claim to worship the same god.
A faith might also have several compatible sects or religious orders, comparable with monastic organizations from the Middle Ages. (e.g.: The "Holy Brethren of X" are sworn to poverty, living as anchorites in the desert, while the "Warrior Sisterhood" defends the sanctity of all Xist temples, blinding any unbelievers who approach closely enough to glimpse their hidden sanctuaries.) Clergy of each order might typically have very different domains.
While these differences might briefly confuse some players, such an approach models real-world differences between different sects of the same faith.
What if the gods don't exist at all, divine magic doesn't come from the gods, it comes from faith, so you could just say everyone believes in the god that doesn't exist. Fits better with church splits that end up fighting each other, cause I find it hard to believe that a god fully capable of intervention will let their followers massacre themselves, (unless it's part of the gods domain/portfolio).
Honestly in every game of D&D/Pathfinder I've been involved in over the last 30 years, gods have never been especially hands on, talking to their adherents, and directly mananging the faith. I have seen settings based on Greek mythology, where Athena comes to a worshipper in human form to direct a heroes actions. This is the exception, not the default for deities of the game. Original Deities and Demigods never suggested that divine intervention is the normal process for practicing faith. It's only actions that directly defy the deity, where the god gets involved, and sometimes not even then.
Of course you could instead have different branchs of the same church that each have their own tasks assigned by the god, that could also lead to friction. So you could have the crusaders to go recruit, the inquisiters to find criminals, the clergy to run services, the leadership, and the special projects group to build churches and other projects.
Not as detailed as you've put it, but my previous posts pretty much stated this as being the case.
(Wow! Some of you guys are SO dogmatic about the rules!)
Many of us are only "dogmatic" about the rules when someone treats their opinion or interpretation (or house rules) of the rules as RAW and expects that we should all just swallow their version as DA LAW. Generally, people on these boards are rather friendly.
another variation which I have seen played with in some settings is that the faith of the followers define the god. As the Faith focuses on certain teachings and not others, the diety itself changes. And if different sects focus on different elements, the diety may actually split to become two beings, each concentrating on different elements of the original teachings.