Great citations, DM Under the Bridge!
Worship of Aton was pretty much monotheistic IIRC. And that was 3500 years ago. So hardly that modern ;-)
And we do not know at all what went on before the invention of writing. Just because polytheism was very frequent in antiquity does not mean such was always the case in prehistory.
The notion that there is an evolution of beliefs that goes Animism => Polytheism => Monotheism does not stand to reality.
Yeah, Aton or Aten was the first thing that came to mind as a Monotheistic religion, however 1) it arose from the midst of the Egyptian Polytheism, and the Wikipedia article indicated that it could have been Monotheistic, but it may have been Henotheistic or Monolartristic (), so I didn't include it as an "Ur" example, as it were (*), and since I wasn't strongly confident about it in the first place (I had no sources of my own to cite) I decided to default to the wikipedia, though it's not the best source of scholarly research**.
One thing I wanted to note about my earlier post is that, the "at most" reference to Monolartristic Judaism, meant that they were either Monolartristic or Monotheistic. The texts are a bit unclear, however the entire point of the Miracles of Exodus were to prove the Lord's dominance over the gods of Egypt (leaving the idea of whether those gods were simply weak or false a bit vague).
The Genesis account, certainly, indicates no divine being in existence other than the Elohim - the Creator-Divinity (Who, unless I'm mistaken, refers to Himself as "We").
Further, the earliest records of Judaism (before it was even called that!) interacting with other faiths is that of extreme antagonism to the worship of any other divinity (generally considering it unclean).
All that said, it's unlcear which of the two it is at this point in history.
Also, in Grecian polytheism, at least from what I understand from the mythology, the priests were individually dedicated to a given deity (much like a given city was) despite revering all the gods. That was, I thought, one of the reasons Medusa (originally a priestess of Athena) and her sisters were cursed to being the Three Gorgons - her beauty had caused Poseidon to rape her in Athena's temple. Athena got so furious at the "taint" of the other god on what was hers, that she cursed Medusa and her sisters.
So it's possible that even in a polytheistic system, priests could be required to be henotheistic.
However, I could easily be wrong about all that.
Neither the wikipedia Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism nor Ancient Greek religion is clear on that, though, and I may simply be reading into it incorrectly.
* No, it goes no deeper than an ancient Mesopotamian Culture.
** Do not interpret this as bashing Wikipedia. It's great! I link to it all the time! However, it's to be taken at face value, and as a source for spurring your own research instead of actual truth.
On Aton-- Aton was a new, all encompassing Sun deity a single Pharaoh (Atonakon though I know that is spelled wrong) installed as the official, mono-theistic religion of Egypt to replace the other pantheon (Ra, et al).
This lasted in Egypt basically as long as this one Pharaoh lived and was then immediately re-replaced by the old polytheistic pantheon and Aton was demoted to being one of the deities and a lesser one at that (subordinate to Ra, and stylized as the god of the disc of the sun).
Of course. . . historically speaking this change to Aton/mono-theism happened at the exact same time as a certain set of slaves who later popularized the concept of mono-theism were present in Egypt. . .
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Only monotheists would see it otherwise. Or the most hateful gods that have no allies, no tolerance, no acceptance of different faiths and their gods.
There is a big difference between say a follower of Zeus offering a prayer to Poseidon for a safe voyage, than a Priest of Ra consistently offering prayers and attending devotions to Coyote.
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On Aton-- Aton was a new, all encompassing Sun deity a single Pharaoh (Atonakon though I know that is spelled wrong) installed as the official, mono-theistic religion of Egypt to replace the other pantheon (Ra, et al).
Akhenaten, husband of Nefertiti. His son, Tutankhamon, was originally named Tutankhaten, but changed it to reflect return of worship to the traditional Egyptian pantheon.
A player in a group ive been invited to asked the GM if he would be allowed to be dual god worshiper but only use the in game mechanics of one of the chosen gods. The GM house ruled yes to this specific instance but im trying to get a feel what the masses would do so i can get a baseline for the masses AND a group ive never played with.
The character in question is a worshiper of both Abadar and Asmodeus because he ADAMENTLY believes in the law and is a part time lawyer when hes not in church or adventuring. The character is mechanically a LN (Abadar's alignment and legal for Asmodeus) cleric of Abadar since he wanted his domains.
what say u?
I've no issue with you worshiping a pantheon. Frankly I don't even think domain restriction is important because you can literally just throw domains together as desired when making a deity. I see no balance concerns, play the character you want, I'd say.
If the character worships two gods not directly in opposition to one-another, but only derives his power from one, then there isn't anything to "houserule." If the character were mixing and matching, getting powers and domains from various gods, THEN the GM would have to houserule.
What this thread is talking about, is fluff. You don't houserule fluff. You either accept it, or work to rewrite it.
Now, if the two gods he chose were diametrically opposed, some houseruling would have to be necessary, since alignment versus powers and choice of spells comes into play.
But as the OP described it, there is no real houseruling necessary. It's fluff.