Why are there no Agricultural or Fertility Domains?


Rules Discussion


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In real mythologies it's hard to find ones where no agricultural deity exists sans those cultures that were hunter-gatherers. Erastil certainly has farming connections, but no actual Agricultural domain exists. Similarly, you can't throw a stick at a given pantheon without hitting some fertility deity and certainly Calistria could fit such a role.

Other domains might also be possible, but those two always stand out to me because they're so ubiquitous.


The closest to agriculture would be nature and I think the closest to fertility would be either healing or passion. It's not a perfect one to one comparison. I'm not sure if Paizo would plan on creating any more domains, but if they do it will probably be in the Lost Omens Gods & Magic book coming out in 2020.

Edit: Actually the Lost Omens Gods & Magic book description does say:

"You'll also discover new domains, feats, and spells to customize your character, and an exhaustive index of hundreds of deities from the Pathfinder setting you can worship (and the mechanical benefits of doing so)."

So that is almost a definite yes to new domains. As for if Agriculture and/or Fertility will be included, as you say those are very common domains for real world mythologies. It would be less likely that we would never get rules for those domains.

Liberty's Edge

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Well, there aren't Domains in the mechanical sense largely because they wouldn't be very interesting for adventurers and other PCs.

As for why no God has them as areas of concern...several actually do. Pharasma is the Goddess of childbirth as well as death, and Erastil the god of farming as well as hunting, just as two examples.

There's not a conventional fertility Goddess per se in the core 20 (and I think Calistria would be a bad fit for such a role, for the record), but you must bear in mind that the Core 20 deities are not really a pantheon in the sense of real world pantheons, where the Gods were all related and discovered/invented as a group. The Core 20 deities are only related inasmuch as they are the 20 most popular Gods in the Inner Sea region, not any other specific reason.

Sovereign Court

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Probably the most "fertility" goddess is Lamashtu in the core deities but I wouldn't exactly call her fertility rituals anything conventionals.

Family domain seems to be used for fertility.

Nature is indeed as close as it would get as of now, for magical agriculture.

You could probably make up fertility ritual or harvest rituals fairly easily with low DC rolls. I imagine some villages would take part in such rituals and could be a fun thing to do for your players during downtime.


Well the Family and Passion domains kind of work depending on the fertility you are looking for and Shelyn is very much a love goddess. Nature fits good enough for agriculture as agriculture is kind of limited.

If you are willing to look at PF1e and port over a few subdomains or deities, then the Growth subdomains fits well with agriculture. And Love subdomain kind of fits with fertility.

(Btw Pharasma is also a birth deity since Pharasma's clerics also work as midwifes).

Edit: welp should had previewed before submitting to avoid the ninja.

Just to make sure Shelyn kind of fits for a fertility deity in a pure love kind of sense, Pharasma is more birth, and Calistria is more lust.


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Deadmanwalking wrote:
Well, there aren't Domains in the mechanical sense largely because they wouldn't be very interesting for adventurers and other PCs.

While the PCs are important, from a world-building standpoint it seems really short-sighted and if you're into studying religions old and new (as I am) completely baffling. Fertility was considered super important - not just sex, but also abundance in terms of animals and plants.

While Nature can take care of Agricultural stuff, the focus is really more on the wild aspects of nature. It also doesn't have animal-related domain spells despite dealing with both plants and animals.

Quote:
As for why no God has them as areas of concern...several actually do. Pharasma is the Goddess of childbirth as well as death, and Erastil the god of farming as well as hunting, just as two examples.

I didn't say that none had them as areas of concerned. I even mentioned Erastil. I just thought that (as a concept) Agriculture is different enough from Nature to warrant its own Domain. Fertility, similarly, is (in my opinion) a concept different than either love or lust since it tends to focus on more than that.

Quote:
There's not a conventional fertility Goddess per se in the core 20 (and I think Calistria would be a bad fit for such a role, for the record), but you must bear in mind that the Core 20 deities are not really a pantheon in the sense of real world pantheons, where the Gods were all related and discovered/invented as a group. The Core 20 deities are only related inasmuch as they are the 20 most popular Gods in the Inner Sea region, not any other specific reason.

Personally I think that a Goblin goddess of fertility would have been highly amusing, but I do know what you mean. I look forward to more expanded materials because I like world building a lot. That's why I think details tend to end up bugging me.

Temperans wrote:

Well the Family and Passion domains kind of work depending on the fertility you are looking for and Shelyn is very much a love goddess. Nature fits good enough for agriculture as agriculture is kind of limited.

If you are willing to look at PF1e and port over a few subdomains or deities, then the Growth subdomains fits well with agriculture. And Love subdomain kind of fits with fertility.

(Btw Pharasma is also a birth deity since Pharasma's clerics also work as midwifes).

I honestly can see Agriculture as a subdomain of Nature since it deals with such a specific area. That said, I have real issues seeing Agriculture as limited in a wider view. Without agriculture, there could be no settled areas, no towns or villages or so on. People would likely still be hunting and gathering.

As for Fertility, again it gets important. It's probably less so on a world with healing magic where the death rate of infants is probably fairly low, but there are people who want to have a child or children and who would want to pray to someone for that to happen. Similarly, having fertile animals and crops would be important.


Lamashtu kind of already is the goblin goddess of fertility, which is hilarious and gross, as goblin things are in general.

In general though, Agriculture and Fertility are just not very adventure-focused, so it makes sense that they'd be omitted in core. Erastil is a god of all things rural and his portfolio includes both farming and hunting, even if he doesn't provide adventurers with the ability to magically tend a farm, because that's not what his adventuring clerics do. But you can still expect farmers to look to him for verdant crops and fertile livestock. As for human fertility, Pharasma is a goddess of birth as well as death, and grants healing. Natural to assume that couples trying for a child would give her prayer, as she directs the passage of the River of Souls through the material plane. But clerics of Pharasma are highly trained agents of her church tasked with the destruction of undead; they aren't going to be full time midwives.

So basically, it's not a lack of lore support for those domains as much as a divide between fluff and gameplay, because PC clerics are explicitly adventurers. Non-adventurering domains will take a back seat in the development process just because players won't be using them as much. Besides, in 1e, we had NPC adepts to represent noncombatant priests, village shamans, and the farmer who went out of his way to learn folk magic. Those characters don't even get domains, and they're far more likely to be tending to farms and assisting births than clerics. In 2e we don't have NPC rules yet, but I fully expect noncombatant, non-adventurer NPCs to follow different rules.


It’s not great core content. We’ll get more content, and that will be a better place for it. Nature, Family, and Passion do a good enough job while also working for adventurers. That’s what core needs to aim for- good coverage for PCs.


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Fertility would probably lead to some pretty cringey stuff from some players.


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Honestly, I see Domains as the mechanical side of things, which is why Starfinder doesn't have domains. A God's portfolio more explicitly gives us agriculture and fertility stuff.


I've played this one before more than once and I found it amazing.

It's third party but i think it's an amazing healing one.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/cleric/domains/3rd-party-publ ishers-domains/everyman-gaming-llc-subdomains/agriculture/


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Sounds like you're looking for Jaidi, Erastil's wife, goddess of agriculture (with the family domain), who, in universe, has received much less attention since the fall of Azlant (somehow). I kinda wish she was given more importance, but she only has stats for worshippers in 2e, no full write-up. And yes, nature and family are the domains that would be most closely associated with concerns of agriculture and fertility.

Shadow Lodge

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Yeah, the main things you might want to look at (4 years ago) are Erastil's wife Jaidi, the goddess of agriculture, and their daughter Halcamora, empyreal lord of farmers, gardeners, revelers, & vintners.


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It should also be noted that the thread necro links to a PF1E domain, not a 2E one.

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