One thing I like about this discussion is that it actually represents the thought process for my home setting- where the focus is on making such elements as countless gods, and countless ancestries feel quite natural by writing explicitly around them.
You adopt a Shinto approach to godhood, with countless minor deities that can be interacted with physically (any 'outsider' is a spirit, and could be appointed to an office of godhood, with many having jurisdiction no greater than a single family, or a village)
You create an age of sail setting, with international trading companies, and international adventuring guilds, and you deemphasize humans to be in even footing with all the other ancestries.
Boom, you have the basics of the Pantheon setting.
One thing I like about this discussion is that it actually represents the thought process for my home setting- where the focus is on making such elements as countless gods, and countless ancestries feel quite natural by writing explicitly around them.
You adopt a Shinto approach to godhood, with countless minor deities that can be interacted with physically (any 'outsider' is a spirit, and could be appointed to an office of godhood, with many having jurisdiction no greater than a single family, or a village)
You create an age of sail setting, with international trading companies, and international adventuring guilds, and you deemphasize humans to be in even footing with all the other ancestries.
Boom, you have the basics of the Pantheon setting.
I've tried to account for it in my own setting as well. There's one overgod, that people worship but doesn't grant powers to clerics or champions. There's three other deities that have as much power as the overgod but people don't know about them, they basically just make sure the universe functions. Then there's the six saints, mortals who ascended to godhood and grant power to mortals.
Now, I didn't come up with domains or anything to assign to the saints. I figure that different people worship the gods in different ways, and thus see the gods differently (kind of like how Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all worship the same God). As an example, one of my gods, Saint Dunas, could mechanically be represented by Torag or Pharasma, depending on who the cleric is. I feel it's a good way to get mechanical variety without filling the world with hundreds of deities.