New Deity Speculation


General Discussion

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Liberty's Edge

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I think it is a matter of which tool feels more natural

The black raven wrote:

I feel that the use of Channel Energy during a fight is the perfect illustration of why Evil gods use Negative Energy :

- Channel Negative Energy and you definitely hurt your living opponents. Maybe you also hurt some of your friends, but that's the price to be paid and does not matter so much.

- Channel Positive Energy and you definitely help your living friends. Maybe you also heal some of your opponents, but that's the price to be paid and does not matter so much.

For Evil gods, hurting your enemies is more important than helping your friends, thus Negative Energy is their choice.

For Good gods, it is the opposite.

For Neutral gods, there is not one energy absolutely better than the other with concern to the god's basic approach to life. Both are valid and thus it defaults to the cleric's outlook.

I would liken negative energy to poison and positive energy to a healing kit. Both are Neutral but their appeal to Good and Evil characters is different


Torbyne wrote:
Tom Kalbfus wrote:
Torbyne wrote:

So i suppose the best way to speculate would be to look at what a space faring society would value and figure out portfolios for the gods.

For instance, there is a planet of sentient undead so perhaps we have a neutral or big N little e NE god of undeath? Pharasma would probably have some words on the subject.

Also, Pathfinder has already established that in setting Stars are fountains of positive energy that are the origin point for Souls in the Prime Material while Blackholes are portals of negative energy and connected to the shadow plane. Some new space deity or deities that center around the roll of astrological phenomena and life cycles seem plausible.

I could see an opening for a new god of mind and knowledge considering we have a few telepathic/psychic races in the setting and one would think knowledge in general is much more highly respected.

If you want to have your hit points healed, I wouldn't suggest diving into a star. I envision a kind of dualistic universe, one part science, the other part magic. In science for example, there aren't four elements, but four basic forces in the Universe, there is Gravity, Electromagnetism, the Weak force and the Strong force. All of these forces make up everything we see and can touch in the Universe, in the Universe of Starfinder, there is also a fifth fundamental force called Magic!

True but this is also the same setting as Pathfinder which does not have physics as we know it. Stars really do spew out souls and are brimming with positive energy. Also, probably a lot of fire too and i agree that you shouldnt be throwing your ill and crippled masses into stars to help them but still. Soul Spewing.

Likewise, Black Holes are chock full of nasty undead things that are barely contained in addition to being crushing gravity wells.

So lets just break out the spelljamming helms and crystal spheres while we're at it? Spelljammer has decidedly different physics, I thought Starfinder is science and magic meet halfway. So tell me, does a fusion reactor onboard a ship also spew out souls? A fusion reactor does the same thing that a star does, only on a smaller scale.


The Raven Black wrote:

I think it is a matter of which tool feels more natural

The black raven wrote:

I feel that the use of Channel Energy during a fight is the perfect illustration of why Evil gods use Negative Energy :

- Channel Negative Energy and you definitely hurt your living opponents. Maybe you also hurt some of your friends, but that's the price to be paid and does not matter so much.

- Channel Positive Energy and you definitely help your living friends. Maybe you also heal some of your opponents, but that's the price to be paid and does not matter so much.

For Evil gods, hurting your enemies is more important than helping your friends, thus Negative Energy is their choice.

For Good gods, it is the opposite.

For Neutral gods, there is not one energy absolutely better than the other with concern to the god's basic approach to life. Both are valid and thus it defaults to the cleric's outlook.

I would liken negative energy to poison and positive energy to a healing kit. Both are Neutral but their appeal to Good and Evil characters is different

Black Holes are basically made of gravity, so tell me, is gravity evil? Without gravity, there could be no life on planets because they could not hold onto atmospheres, and in fact could not hold themselves together, and wouldn't form in the first place.

I am hoping for a more 50/50 setting rather than one that is 90% magic and 10% physics. I think stars should not be magical, they should work the same way they do in our universe. Magic is a thing separate, it should be the exception to the way the Universe works. The Universe general operates by the laws of physics until magic says otherwise. Also magic is not everywhere, if it was, there would be no use for fighters and rogues, everyone would be a wizard and everyone would have magical appliances at home, and a flying carpet to take one to work.


The Sideromancer wrote:
Captain collateral damage wrote:
I could kinda see an argument that positive energy isn't always good aligned, as it can still kill you and the Jyoti are Neutral, but generally it's good aligned as, you know, good deities give it to their clerics, and to say that negative energy isn't evil goes against basically every instance of stuff with negative energy ever.
Except for the inflict spells (no descriptors, Good oracles can use them), Cleans on negative-affinity creatures, and the Enervation/energy drain spells.

Why do you want to assign morality to things without intelligence. gravity does not have to be good or evil, only things that can actual think can have morality, mindless forces of nature do not. You need normal to contrast the fantastical, you shouldn't see swarms of people riding on broomsticks and flying carpets during rush hour! This is not Operation Chaos!


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Tom Kalbfus wrote:

{. . .}

So lets just break out the spelljamming helms and crystal spheres while we're at it? Spelljammer has decidedly different physics, I thought Starfinder is science and magic meet halfway. So tell me, does a fusion reactor onboard a ship also spew out souls? A fusion reactor does the same thing that a star does, only on a smaller scale.

Interesting concept . . . we've already heard of hyperdrives tearing off bits of other planes when they are used, so why not fusion reactors emitting nano-souls?

* * * * * * * *

For another deity elevation possibility, how about Groetus casting off his small bloated moon disguise and being revealed to be the sentient supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy?

Liberty's Edge

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Because Besmara as deity for Space Pirates is a much more convincing case to get the CN elevated deity spot ;-)

In the end, there can be only one


I leave the realms of magic and science separate. Magic is sort of a cheat code, when someone casts a spell, it is as if someone is hacking into the program that is simulating the Universe, that is the way I look at it. Remember the movie the Matrix? Starfinder is just like that, or in my view of it, magic should be treated that way.


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Tom,

Starfinder might throw us for a loop on the setting, perhaps one of the things that caused the Gap was the gods remaking some fundamental rules of creation in an attempt to stave off the necessity of Groetus or to remove Rovagog and to do that they had to change how souls themselves were created and processed through life. It could be that Stars pull double duty as both massive scale fusion reactions and portals to the plane of positive energy while any sufficently large gravity well will also tear a hole through the prime material into the heart of the plane of shadow.

it can still be both basically.


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Tom Kalbfus wrote:
The Sideromancer wrote:
Captain collateral damage wrote:
I could kinda see an argument that positive energy isn't always good aligned, as it can still kill you and the Jyoti are Neutral, but generally it's good aligned as, you know, good deities give it to their clerics, and to say that negative energy isn't evil goes against basically every instance of stuff with negative energy ever.
Except for the inflict spells (no descriptors, Good oracles can use them), Cleans on negative-affinity creatures, and the Enervation/energy drain spells.
Why do you want to assign morality to things without intelligence. gravity does not have to be good or evil, only things that can actual think can have morality, mindless forces of nature do not. You need normal to contrast the fantastical, you shouldn't see swarms of people riding on broomsticks and flying carpets during rush hour! This is not Operation Chaos!

So that is an interesting can of worms... in Pathfinder there are things that are innately evil no matter who does them or for what reasons. And there are naturally occuring events that create evil things or otherwise act out things that are innately evil. As the easiest example, anything that creates undead is evil (and also involves negative energy to do so but that digresses from the point) undead can also be created from certain events involving death of evil that spawn the things. a large enough battle can give rise to ghosts or dying/being killed on ancient evil sites or by pre-existing undead can result in always-evil-undead making. Basically dying in the wrong place can be evil because your dead butt comes back as a tortured soul or zombie or some crap. Hopefully that evil doesnt actually weigh on your soul but the universe still labels it objectively evil. should you run some long range detect evil spell at a black hole in Pathfinder it will ping as innately evil aside from all the undead in it just because it is a portal to an evil place.


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Blatant speculation:

A certain special someone from Iron Gods.
Brigh.
A couple of deities from other worlds that are a lot more significant in the Pact Worlds than they ever would have been on Golarion
Some non-Nethys deity of magic- since magic is very much a part of this setting


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i would like a magi-tech god, not a cyber punk thing but a god of progress and all with domains of Knowledge, Magic and Technology... though now that i think about it, we may not have domain lists for gods any more since i dont think any core classes have them... Mystic maybe? But they are so strongly associated with divine magic that if you give any class access to a god's domain than that is the de facto divine caster.


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The Raven Black wrote:

[QUOTE=UnArcaneElection[ {. . .}

For another deity elevation possibility, how about Groetus casting off his small bloated moon disguise and being revealed to be the sentient supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy?

Because Besmara as deity for Space Pirates is a much more convincing case to get the CN elevated deity spot ;-)

In the end, there can be only one

I agree for Besmara, but not with the last part of what you said -- if we get 2 deities for each named alignment and have 20 in the core, that leaves 2 extra, meaning that Chaotic Neutral has a 2/9 chance to get 3 total -- for instance Besmara as the elevated home deity, Azathoth as the elevated alien deity, and Groetus as the elevated in between deity.

Liberty's Edge

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Were I the designers, I would have stuck to simple rules for the allocation of deities. One would be no two deities of the same origin (old core, minor, new) for the same alignment.

Which entails that the alignments with 3 deities will get one of each origin.

Of course I could be utterly wrong about this :-)

Dark Archive

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There seems to be room for CN and CE deities, and Calistria seems to be a logical choice, since elves and their planet still exist.

Besmara becoming one of the 'big 20' would indeed be pretty awesome.

Umbral Reaver wrote:
That makes me wonder. What do future fey do? But that's another topic entirely.

Capricious 'aliens' big on crop circles and abductions?


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Calistria drops out of the core 20.

Which, I suspect is hand-in-hand with elves shifting out of 'core races.' Even while they're still present, the point is to de-emphasize both.

Dark Archive

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Cole Deschain wrote:
Some non-Nethys deity of magic- since magic is very much a part of this setting.

Ooh, I hadn't even noticed that Nethys wasn't there (which makes some sense, since he's explicitly a Golarion mortal-turned-god, but then Iomedae made the cut, so who knows...).

A god of energy and forces, and also magic, would possibly have some play in a universe full of suns and gravity and possibly energy weapons, as well as ye olde magical fireballs and lightning bolts.

One of the Lovecraftian 'Elder Gods' or 'Great Old Ones' making the bump to a 'big 20' god could be interesting. With the disappearance of an entire world, I could see nihilistic end-times cults being a thing among the survivors, thinking that the disappearance of Golarion was just a test-run of the mechanism by which the universe will be devoured/transformed/replaced.

Nothing says 'apocalyptic' or 'end times' like your entire world being destroyed, so the cultists of such entities would likely be feeling pretty smug and saying 'I told you so' right about now. Others would just be asking the eternal question, 'what's the point?' and partying in the ashes, convinced that the universe is on it's way out anyway, so why bother with silly rules or morals or planning for tomorrow or leaving anything for the children to inherit.


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That assumes most of the population didn't vanish with the planet. It doesn't have to be an 'end times' scenario.

One day the folks in various colonies and stations wake up and their home planet has just wandered off. They're effectively ex-pats with no way to ring home, but it doesn't necessarily mean things were terrible.

It would also explain Asmodeus seeing a sudden drop in popularity. Assuming Cheliax survived however many centuries, without a Cheliax insisting he's the Prince of Law and pushing up his numbers, his worship can shrink to small cults here and there. But, he could still have a big following on Golarion... wherever it happens to be.

As for Lovecraftian stuff... it would make more sense to have distinct gods they could lay claim to, at least for the core 20. They seem to like protecting their IP, so adopting Lovecraftian material (as part of the core setting) rather undermines that. Which rather explains leaving Asmodeus and Lamashtu behind as well.


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Set wrote:

One of the Lovecraftian 'Elder Gods' or 'Great Old Ones' making the bump to a 'big 20' god could be interesting. With the disappearance of an entire world, I could see nihilistic end-times cults being a thing among the survivors, thinking that the disappearance of Golarion was just a test-run of the mechanism by which the universe will be devoured/transformed/replaced.

Nothing says 'apocalyptic' or 'end times' like your entire world being destroyed, so the cultists of such entities would likely be feeling pretty smug and saying 'I told you so' right about now. Others would just be asking the eternal question, 'what's the point?' and partying in the ashes, convinced that the universe is on it's way out anyway, so why bother with silly rules or morals or planning for tomorrow or leaving anything for the children to inherit.

The only way I see Lovecraftian entities having a shot at a grown-up seat would be as a CE replacement for Rovagug, who managed to be both one of the main 20 in Pathfinder and also a deity whose followers were fringe nihilists. In that case it's a zero-sum swap--instead of a handful of idiots worshiping the earth god of everything going away, it's a handful of idiots worshiping a space god of everything going away.

I'd personally be more interested in seeing Groetus called up as a main CN deity, and any two other non-Lovecraftian CE entities bumped up to replace Rovagug and Lamashtu. (I'd particularly love to see Abraxas and Ghlaunder, respectively, to have a god of forbidden knowledge in the age of the Gap and an insectoid deity of consumption where a major antagonist is called "the Swarm".) Lovecraftian fiction is inherently about the fears of the majority being corrupted by foreigners; embedding one of those entities in the fabric of the main setting as a main-20 deity de-fangs all of them by making them no longer foreign.

Groetus is as nihilistic as anything of Lovecraft, but also already fundamental to the setting--and also already a planar celestial body of sorts, making sense to heavily associate it with a space-focused setting where damaging the fabric of outer planes is a central and common mechanic.


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On the topic of lovecraftian stuff- part of me expects that Yog Sothoth will get one of the two Chaotic Evil spots. While his cultists are thoroughly insane, they might intigrate themselves slightly better in society than, say, Rovagug's.

Now with that said, I do expect the other CE slot to go directly to some deity of mindless destruction, because there has to be at least one of those.


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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Tacticslion was concerned about the lack of Shelyn, but I look at it in a different direction, and was mentioned once in a conspiracy theory thread somewhere...

What if this whole pre-revelation realization of the 'Gap' thing was part of what 'broke' Dou-Bral, necessitating his 'rebuild' as Zon-Kuthon?

Now that the torturous paradoxical 'future knowledge' is now safely past, he's now on the mend, but with a wiser, more sober understanding of what pain means to people, and why it is important to have pain as well as beauty?

EDIT: tl;dr -- "Life IS Pain... anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is trying to sell you something."


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Michael7123 wrote:
On the topic of lovecraftian stuff- part of me expects that Yog Sothoth will get one of the two Chaotic Evil spots

But Yog's not Evil... many of his followers are, and a couple of Pathfinder-related websites list him as such, but he's a solid CN.

Shadow Lodge

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I wouldn't mind seeing some "familar" names, just not the ones we're expecting.

Imagine Coyote, including how he is worshiped in WB cartoons, as a trickster and pargdim of technological screw ups, patron of Acme Galactic (run by Asmodeus corp).

Imagine Thor, as a protector and defender of communities being very Erastil like, but younger and more warlike. He was on earth patron of small folk and colonists (Iceland was dedicated to him) as well as warriors.

Maybe Lovitar is why Callistra doesn't have a more intergalactic presence.

Maybe some SF references---Malcom of Thousand Alias, god of smugglers and pirates. Of course that's not really his name (it's Han, no it's really...). Or a group of "the twelve" deceased/minor dieties whose worship is almost extinct, but were once patrons of a major civilization that was wiped out by sentient constructs.

Silver Crusade

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Loviatar is from Forgotten Realms so her chance of showing up is absolutely zero.

If you're talking about the mythological Finnish deity of death and disease with the same name I don't really know what she has to do with Calistria.


Cole Deschain wrote:
Michael7123 wrote:
On the topic of lovecraftian stuff- part of me expects that Yog Sothoth will get one of the two Chaotic Evil spots
But Yog's not Evil... many of his followers are, and a couple of Pathfinder-related websites list him as such, but he's a solid CN.

Oh? I was looking at archives of Nethys, they list him as CE. If he's CN, I still think it's actually rather likely for him to get a spot, maybe as a deity of Magic and knowledge, in addition to eldrtich wierdness.

Silver Crusade

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Michael7123 wrote:
Cole Deschain wrote:
Michael7123 wrote:
On the topic of lovecraftian stuff- part of me expects that Yog Sothoth will get one of the two Chaotic Evil spots
But Yog's not Evil... many of his followers are, and a couple of Pathfinder-related websites list him as such, but he's a solid CN.
Oh? I was looking at archives of Nethys, they list him as CE. If he's CN, I still think it's actually rather likely for him to get a spot, maybe as a deity of Magic and knowledge, in addition to eldrtich wierdness.

Yeah I went and checked. Wake of the Watcher, In Search of Sanity, and Inner Sea Gods all list Yog as CN.


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Kerney wrote:

I wouldn't mind seeing some "familar" names, just not the ones we're expecting.

Imagine Coyote, including how he is worshiped in WB cartoons, as a trickster and pargdim of technological screw ups, patron of Acme Galactic (run by Asmodeus corp).

Imagine Thor, as a protector and defender of communities being very Erastil like, but younger and more warlike. He was on earth patron of small folk and colonists (Iceland was dedicated to him) as well as warriors.

Maybe Lovitar is why Callistra doesn't have a more intergalactic presence.

Maybe some SF references---Malcom of Thousand Alias, god of smugglers and pirates. Of course that's not really his name (it's Han, no it's really...). Or a group of "the twelve" deceased/minor dieties whose worship is almost extinct, but were once patrons of a major civilization that was wiped out by sentient constructs.

So a joke setting with both IP issues and cultural appropriation issues? That doesn't seem like a good idea at all.


Rysky wrote:

Loviatar is from Forgotten Realms so her chance of showing up is absolutely zero.

If you're talking about the mythological Finnish deity of death and disease with the same name I don't really know what she has to do with Calistria.

No, Lovitar is a Babylonian Deity, TSR did not invent her, but borrowed her from Mythology. She is in Deities and Demigods. I miss those days when you just consulted Deities and Demigods instead of inventing your own gods and goddesses that mean nothing to most people.

Silver Crusade

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Tom Kalbfus wrote:
Rysky wrote:

Loviatar is from Forgotten Realms so her chance of showing up is absolutely zero.

If you're talking about the mythological Finnish deity of death and disease with the same name I don't really know what she has to do with Calistria.

No, Lovitar is a Babylonian Deity, TSR did not invent her, but borrowed her from Mythology. She is in Deities and Demigods. I miss those days when you just consulted Deities and Demigods instead of inventing your own gods and goddesses that mean nothing to most people.

Searching provides zero results for a Babylonian Lovitar, do you have a link?

And I'm the opposite, I absolutely love gods custom made for a setting, way more so than ones taken from RL mythology.


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I'm aware of the previously-mentioned Finnish Loviatar. For Babylonian mythology, the closest thing to the Loviatar of Forgotten Realms that springs to mind would be Ishtar, and we don't really want to remember that movie...


Details, details, I didn't have Deities and Demigods in front of me, If she is a Finnish goddess, that's fine. The point is, she's thousands of years old, thus not trademark able. There are a lot of novels written about the Greek Deities, the Norse Deities, the Roman Deities, even the Egyptian Deities, and instead we get Grimish, Corble, Goneb, Tymere, and a bunch of other unrecognizable names, except for people that are familiar with one particular setting by one author. In the old days, we just opened up the Deities and Demigods when someone rolled up a cleric and asked the player to pick which one his character worshipped, I one time rolled up a cleric of Thor, who spent most of his time sacking dungeons, leading armies, and later on building a kingdom.

Silver Crusade

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Okay, but if you you read either of those deities you'd know aside from the name they are 100% different. So no, the Forgotten Realms Loviatar is very much trademarked by Wizards of the Coast, the real world Finnish goddess of death and disease is not.

You like using real world deities in a fictional setting, cool.

Not a lot of people do. Especially if said fictional setting has their own deities.


The "real world" deities are just as fictional as the fictional ones, the main difference is the "real world" deities have legends and stories to back them up. People don't say, "Athena, who's that?" There are stories about the gods of various mythologies, you just have to look them up, but if you invent one and make up a name for it, and assign a portfolio to it, you are basically starting with a blank slate, and your players don't know what to expect. If you want to fully flesh out your gods, you got to write stories about them, even before the players get involved. With established historical deities, you don't have to do that.

Silver Crusade

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Tom Kalbfus wrote:
The "real world" deities are just as fictional as the fictional ones, the main difference is the "real world" deities have legends and stories to back them up. People don't say, "Athena, who's that?" There are stories about the gods of various mythologies, you just have to look them up, but if you invent one and make up a name for it, and assign a portfolio to it, you are basically starting with a blank slate, and your players don't know what to expect. If you want to fully flesh out your gods, you got to write stories about them, even before the players get involved. With established historical deities, you don't have to do that.

And most if not all of the Golarion full deities have histories and their own mythologies, that or a blank slate to work with. That's the fun thing about them, being able to make stuff up. I'm not all that interested in importing real world deities. To me that's boring. Those are deities with mythologies and historiew tied to that specific world.

Your players don't know what to expect only if you don't give them anything to expect.


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Tom Kalbfus wrote:
The "real world" deities are just as fictional as the fictional ones, the main difference is the "real world" deities have legends and stories to back them up. People don't say, "Athena, who's that?" There are stories about the gods of various mythologies, you just have to look them up, but if you invent one and make up a name for it, and assign a portfolio to it, you are basically starting with a blank slate, and your players don't know what to expect. If you want to fully flesh out your gods, you got to write stories about them, even before the players get involved. With established historical deities, you don't have to do that.

No. Instead, you have a bunch of armchair scholars who assume that just because someone has a certain name that everyone should know, for a fact, that she's Finnish or Babalonian or is about disease and rot instead of torture and torment or...

... no wait.

Okay, unfair, because that was a home made (but published!) deity that just happens to have a name to coincide with a "real world" goddess.

So, instead, lets look at Athena. Or, wait, do you mean Athena? Because those two - despite being "the same" are exceedingly different, to my reading.

... or do you mean Athena?

(No. You do not mean that last one.)

And I mean, this guy - clearly chaotic good, right? Everyone can agree on that, right? Surely no on could have disagreements, arguments, or real-life fury at such a suggestion. And this dude is totally neutral evil and an assassin, despite,

Quote:
Despite modern connotations of death as evil, Hades was actually more altruistically inclined in mythology. Hades was often portrayed as passive rather than evil; his role was often maintaining relative balance. However he was depicted as cold, stern, and gave all his subjects equal treatment in regards to his laws. Any other individual aspects of his personality are not given, as Greeks refrained from giving him much thought to avoid attracting his attention.

The problem is not nearly so easy as you suppose. And everyone is going to bring their own baggage (positive or negative) to the table with "real world" deities, whether made up or not.

Sure, they do that with entirely fabricated "setting" deities, too, but with setting-specific gods, there is zero preconceived expectation that can be reasonably put towards a publisher for "getting it right" - something that can justifiably be put towards of a publisher with something that already exists (even if it's impossible to "get it right" by everyone's accounting).

That's a whole grand load of less hassle.

Also, it's fun for some creators to be able to stretch creative muscles, instead of needing to play inside someone else's really, really old sandbox.

Also, also, for those of us who like playing in someone else's sandbox (which is one reason why we like to use other peoples' settings), it can be refreshing to see a new sandbox, to tell entirely new stories - something that's kind of difficult when almost all the stories that can be told have been told about some.

And, you know, you can easily have "stories about them" (that is the new gods) "before the players get involved" anyway.

It's all up to you.

(That said, it may be very easy to simply paste names and myths over published gods' "stats" - Iomedae becomes Athena, if you want to do that sort of thing, for instance - which kind of allows for the best of both worlds.)

EDIT: Man, I was pretty cleanly ninja'd, but oh well! XD

Dark Archive

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Rysky wrote:
And most if not all of the Golarion full deities have histories and their own mythologies, that or a blank slate to work with. That's the fun thing about them, being able to make stuff up. I'm not all that interested in importing real world deities. To me that's boring. Those are deities with mythologies and historiew tied to that specific world.

[tangent] I prefer one or the other. Either adaptations of real world deities like Set and Thor and Loviatar, or completely made-up fantasy pantheons of Madriel and Heironeous and Nethys. A mix of both, like Camazotz in Greyhawk, or Tyr in the Realms, or the Egyptian gods in old Osirion, muddles things, for me. If the faux-Egyptian Osirioni have Osiris and Isis, why can't the faux-Viking Ulfen have Odin and Freya, or the faux-Greek Iblydosans have Hermes or Artemis? [/tangent]

As for Loviatar, yeah, as a goddess of pain and sado-masochism, she's totally a Realms invention, with Talona being more 'faithful' to the concepts behind the mythological Finnish Louhi (and more thematically similar to Urgathoa, than Calistria).

I'd prefer few or no real-world deities as part of the Starfinder pantheon, not even Ptah 'Opener of the Ways' and (in my head-canon, patron of stargates and boom tubes), who was used to good effect in Spelljammer, or the Mesoamerican deities that lived on different planets (like Quetzalcoutl/Kukulkan, who was associated with Venus, IIRC).


So you have a player role up a cleric and you give him a list of names of gods and ask him to pick a patron deity, and to him they are just a bunch of meaningless names. So he picks one at random, and the GM asks him who he wants to sacrifice to his new God? the player goes "What do you mean?" "The god you picked for your cleric requires he make a human sacrifice once a month in order to grant his spells," says the GM.

Dark Archive

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Tom Kalbfus wrote:
So you have a player role up a cleric and you give him a list of names of gods and ask him to pick a patron deity, and to him they are just a bunch of meaningless names. So he picks one at random, and the GM asks him who he wants to sacrifice to his new God? the player goes "What do you mean?" "The god you picked for your cleric requires he make a human sacrifice once a month in order to grant his spells," says the GM.

As opposed to the real world mythological deities, which often have thousands of pages of (often-times contradictory) information on their practices and beliefs? You can find stories suggesting that Odin is Chaotic, Lawful, Good or Evil, sometimes in the same story. Zeus, wild-tempered god of rape and cheating on one's spouse, and sometimes statted up as Lawful and / or Good? Hera, apparently goddess of being cheated on, and really bitter about it, since she isn't really goddess of anything else, like the sun, or love, or war, or the hunt. Her Domains must be 'angry glare' and 'attempt to kill husbands bastard kids again.'

Most mythological deities range from hundreds of inconsistent portrayals (popular ones like the Greek or Norse gods) to a single sentence that tells an adapter little or nothing about what sort of alignment or domains or favored weapon they might have.

If anything, a made-up deity is far less likely to cause the sorts of strawman problems you are speaking of.

A player is far more likely to have trouble with the sacrificial requirements of worshipping Huitzilopochtli or Sekhmet or Enlil (and just as unlikely to know them off the top of their head) as some made-up god like Chauntea or Trithereon or Cayden Cailean.

There's also the fun potential to share the creation of your setting's gods with the players. If there's one person who plays the cleric, and they want to play a cleric of an archer goddess of community, song and the hunt, then you can build one into the setting for that player, and let *them* decide what the god's favored animal, traditional colors, holy days, etc. are, within reason. (Obviously if their contribution is 'best mechanically optimal favored weapon and five domains that I like most' then, as GM, you can say 'nay, nay.')

Instead of coming up with a dozen deities on your own, and hoping that at least one of them resonates with one of your players, allowing the players to have some input (or at least players who are up for playing characters to whom religion might be particularly important, like clerics, paladins, druids, etc.) both takes some of the workload off of the GM, and invests those players in the setting, since they were part of building it.


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Tom Kalbfus wrote:
So you have a player role up a cleric and you give him a list of names of gods and ask him to pick a patron deity, and to him they are just a bunch of meaningless names. So he picks one at random, and the GM asks him who he wants to sacrifice to his new God? the player goes "What do you mean?" "The god you picked for your cleric requires he make a human sacrifice once a month in order to grant his spells," says the GM.

Wow. Either you're really forgetful and didn't mention alignments at all, or your player is really bad at reading deity description information.

... or one of you hasn't read the setting description and discussed it with the other.

This is a really terrible example all-round because it involves bad communication on everyone's part, and, frankly, that applies just as much to anything, published or not.

I mean, honestly, I could think that "Isthar" sounds like a pretty freakin' awesome name, or "Gilgeam" but, if I wasn't aware of my mythology...

Or maybe you'd be more comfortable offering them a list of names that includes "Maui" - that way they only have to choose between six different mythologies, a movie, and a Hawaiian island... unless they are intimately aware of the Korean Kingdom of Silla, the early Christian convert in New Zealand, the modern politician, the Linux distribution, the smart phone, the Navy ship, computing tool, the dolphin kind, the natural gas field in New Zealand, or the north island in New Zealand.

But most probably, they'll think of the Disney film.

I mean, going back to Athena, I think it's worth disambiguation, between Athena and Athena Polias who are two totally different Greek gods who have two totally different worship rites, and your entire point hinges on wanting them to know how to properly worship the gods, right? That means they have to be familiar with that kind of stuff, otherwise, they're doing it wrong, and you don't want to cheese her off, you know? But hey, at least she's lawful good.

I'm not going to say you're wrong in the desire to have Athena or other "real world" gods and their myths as a fundamental part of your game.

But I am going to suggest that you're wrong in assuming it's any easier.

You may (or may not) be an expert on the subject, and be aware of their natures, secrets, histories, rites, alignments, and expectations. That means nothing for players who may (or may not) share your particular level of education.

It matters not one whit the extent of your knowledge about anything - it's entirely on you, as GM, to educate your players on your expectations and what is needed from them. Or, if you've failed to do that, and don't feel like making your player change their character concept, to change the assumptions you'd been working under.

I shudder to think what a group of PCs would actually accomplish in a genuine ancient Greek setting.

And I guaran-daggum-tee that the Olympian and Norse pantheons would not get along, if they shared the same world. Zeus would have none of that Odin nonsense, without a reason that is entirely absent in the myths... meaning it's a "make your own" situation, meaning you're already diverging from the myths, meaning that no matter how well educated, your players can't know that stuff, yet...

Also, please have in mind the manner in which you wish to address current real-world active religions and participants thereof when engaging in such. Because Jewish, Christian, and Muslim believers may have a genuine and entirely justified issue with their God portrayed in various ways; for that matter, so might any of the many various sects of Hinduism, or those Roman Neopagans, or any sort of religion that has current revivalist adherents. We have to be respectful to others in all things, after all, or that makes us jerks using them for our own pleasure, no matter their preferences.

Basically, you're asserting that one way of world building is better. It's not. Neither is it worse. It is merely different. All are cool, but all have their own drawbacks and things that must be overcome.

That you like the one more is entirely fine.

That you suggest it is "better" is... not.

EDIT: Also what Set said. I'm really good at being ninja'd. XD


Anyway, all this fussiness, but I'm totally bucking for Besmara to ascend to being the queen of the space pirates.

That would be... Piradical~! A~hah~! :D


Looking at non-Inner Sea gods, Shizuru, Qi Zhong, Kofusachi, General Susumu, and Lao Shu Po all seem like they could undergo minor adaptations (like Iomedae would have to) but otherwise fit reasonably well into a Starfinder setting.

Sadily, without Irori, most of the Vudran pantheon doesn't seem to fit well, thought Dhalavei, Vasaghati, and Vineshvakhi could work a bit.

From here, creatures like Achaekek, Alseta, Brigh (!), Groetus (!), Lissala, Milani, Naderi, Pulura, Sivanah, and Zyphus.

From the elves, in addition to Calistria, Yuelral has strong potential.

I kind of wore myself out on the giants, dwarves, and goblins - none of the ones I noted had much potential. Pretty tired, at present.

Those Empyreal Lords are lookin' pretty fo'shiggity-schweeeeeet, as do the eldest.

Oh! One conspiracy theory to explain "the gap" that I happened to stumble across while looking at Vudrani gods...

:D


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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

There is a different game out there where characters are theoretically the offspring of deities.

And much like Tacticslion mentions above, there are frictions even between factions that 'on the surface' would appear to be aligned via alignment.

See Odin/Zeus, Amaterasu/Ra, Coyote/Loki, etc, etc.


(Oh: also, I am known to occasionally really enjoy use "real world deities" in my games, and still plan on running a solo game called "Dionysus' Daughter" (or something similar) for my wife at some point. For the record.)

In any event, I plan on importing Erastil and Shelyn at the very least.

It could be an interesting insight to the origins and mysteries surrounding Erastil. While Shelyn is "from Golarion" as it were, I could see appeal being pretty important. I do suspect that, as gods who have seemingly changed dramatically in the past, an event like The Gap clicks have changed them again.

On interesting concept is that they are part of the reason for the gap and are either trying to redeem the word, bringing it into ultimate enlightenment, or hunting monsters it's emitting/guarding from predators waiting to pounce.

Either way, lingering (and now probably somewhat alien, to various degrees) cults of devotion and worship would make sense...

Shadow Lodge

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Rysky wrote:

You like using real world deities in a fictional setting, cool.

Not a lot of people do. Especially if said fictional setting has their own deities.

One word on the subject, (plus all the named Devils, Demons, and Ephemeral Lords)--Lamashtu.

Oh, and Asmodeus.

In fact, Paizo's products are full of appropriated deities and to put it bluntly, I assumed most people on the forums were aware of that. So mentioning, Thor, Coyote, and a Finnish dame were intentional.

They've also had references to movies and TV very cleverly not disguised, just visit Ravenmoor or fight a bodythief, so me suggesting the same is gee moment..


Rysky wrote:

You like using real world deities in a fictional setting, cool.

Not a lot of people do. Especially if said fictional setting has their own deities.

Kerney wrote:

One word on the subject, (plus all the named Devils, Demons, and Ephemeral Lords)--Lamashtu.

Oh, and Asmodeus.

In fact, Paizo's products are full of appropriated deities and to put it bluntly, I assumed most people on the forums were aware of that. So mentioning, Thor, Coyote, and a Finnish dame were intentional.

They've also had references to movies and TV very cleverly not disguised, just visit Ravenmoor or fight a bodythief, so me suggesting the same is gee moment..

To some extent, certainly, however, while Asmodeus has some solid similarities in interests (if neither appearance, nor specifity of sin, nor scope, nor weakness, origin, nor possible death at the hands of a young husband... sssooooo...), Lamashtu only has a passing similarity to "herself" (in terms of, "She's a monster, and menaces mothers") - several of that goddess' "things" have been given to Urgathoa, and bears strikingly little semblance.

They've also noted that many of their references are strictly and carefully undetailed to help them avoid any issues - thus said references become homages and references rather than solid links to the subject.

Certainly the Pathfinder Asmodeus is like no Asmodeus other than those supposed by renaissance Christianity, and Tiamat - a character referenced in D&D and ancient mythology, is being handled, at best, with a 10' pole (which is also noted to be on purpose).

Heck, "Absalom" is one of the most prominent references in the setting, and that's a major Biblical character.

So, you know, they're basically the "real world" equivalent the same way that Loviatar was...

In any event, I think few deny entirely that such influence is present, more that it seems less fitting for a setting like Starfinder, as there are no major mythological characters (to my knowledge, though I could certainly be wrong) that fit with such things.

Plus, the idea that having such entities ties you to their real-world equivalents is clearly falsified in the setting, meaning that all the delightful and delicious myth that was being invoked in their use is almost entirely wasted. Honestly, I'd forgotten the well-cited fact that Loviatar was a Finnish goddess - I'd learned it once, but it had been so long ago and had such little relevance to my life that she might as well have been entirely fabricated - and that's kind of the point. The stated purpose of these things is to invoke the already-extant myth and understanding of the characters, but nothing in PF really works as more than a passing nod or homage to the original character archetypes in the myths.

If we even had Athena, she would likely be a very important lawful good deity with a tendency toward *ahem* wrath and who focuses on honorable combat, and opposing evil or, perhaps, honoring the place and people you come from with skilled combat prowess and radiance or perhaps just a local goddess who protects a single city, town, or village.

None of that is to say there's no place for her, but rather, any place for her would be exceptionally similar to places and spaces that are already filled by other gods.

I would like to remind that there is nothing wrong with this - but it's up to Paizo to determine how much "real" and how much "unreal" - and if the purpose is to tell people who and what, exactly, you're dealing with, it's probably best not to name your creatures after more obscure and forgotten deities/myths. Unless it's your intent to just use that as a base template from which you expand into your own ideas. Which is also cool (though, as noted, not Set's favorite, which is fine). :)


I one time envisioned a world that had all the gods from the Deities & Demigods manual except for the Newhon and Cuthulu mythologies. Each group of deities would have his own region on the globe, the Norse and Finnish gods would be prevalent in Northern Europe, The Romans and Greek deities would preside in the south, the Egyptians would be on the other side of the Mediterranean. the Babylonian Deities would live in the Middle East, the Monotheistic religions would be absent in this setting, so no Jews, no Christians, no Muslims, so no one is offended! If there is anyone who seriously worships Thor in real life, too bad, I'm not going to worry about it, unless he has a hammer!


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I imagine another devil usurped Asmodeus. Probably Barbatos. He has a very alien feel to him. I'm really hoping the outer-planes and most of the gods went through major changes. It would be kind of boring if little changed in the cosmology of things.


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Tacticslion wrote:

Anyway, all this fussiness, but I'm totally bucking for Besmara to ascend to being the queen of the space pirates.

That would be... Piradical~! A~hah~! :D

Someone bring my leeches and rock salt!


Andrew Marlow wrote:
I imagine another devil usurped Asmodeus. Probably Barbatos. He has a very alien feel to him. I'm really hoping the outer-planes and most of the gods went through major changes. It would be kind of boring if little changed in the cosmology of things.

It would be potentially interesting, but I'm guessing that's not what's really happened. I do expect that we may just happen to see another devil-god - that may be one reason why Asmodeus is keeping low.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not certain that this has happened, but it feels like a possibility.

Tacticslion wrote:

Anyway, all this fussiness, but I'm totally bucking for Besmara to ascend to being the queen of the space pirates.

That would be... Piradical~! A~hah~! :D

Captain Killjoy wrote:
Someone bring my leeches and rock salt!

Huzzah~!

Dark Archive

Tom Kalbfus wrote:
I one time envisioned a world that had all the gods from the Deities & Demigods manual except for the Newhon and Cuthulu mythologies. Each group of deities would have his own region on the globe, the Norse and Finnish gods would be prevalent in Northern Europe, The Romans and Greek deities would preside in the south, the Egyptians would be on the other side of the Mediterranean. the Babylonian Deities would live in the Middle East, [snip]

I'd actually love to play in such a setting, one that, in lieu of having a Mulhorand or Osirion faux-Egypt, just has a real Egypt (if fantasy-d up a bit), or instead of an Al-Qadim or Qadira, has a real fantasy Persia, etc.

As I said above, I like one or the other. Either all fantasy stuff (pantheons, nations, etc.) or all historical analogues (fantasy Asia, fantasy Babylon, fantasy Scandinavia, fantasy Mesoamerica, etc.).


People like to create their own worlds, and their own gods, has anyone ever tried to make a Pathfinder/D&D setting based on the real geography of Earth, and perhaps some of its cultures as well. In a parallel Earth where Judaism, Christianity, and Islam never evolved, the Babylonians would take over the Middle East, the Egyptians would worship their animal headed gods, the Romans would worship their gods, and those gods would be worshipped in much of Central and western Europe, the Celtic mythology would hold sway in the British Isles, The Norse Deities would prevail in Scandinavia, Denmark and parts of Germany that were not Romanized by the Romans. The Greeks would worship their own gods that are similar but not identical to that of the Romans, There is the Japanese and Chinese gods in their own specific regions in the World, and of course the Hindu Indian gods, and across the Atlantic there is the Native North American and Central American gods and goddesses. What would this world look like? The Roman Empire fell, just as in our history, but it leaves behind a pagan rather than a Christian Europe, where a combination of Greek, Roman, Celtic, Finish, and Norse Deities are worshipped. Some of the Europeans have sailed across the Atlantic, and they have had their conflicts with the Native Americans and their culture.

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