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I've had this idea in my head for a while now. I want to run a campaign in a setting that was created by an Elohim and manipulated by an Anunnaki. These beings are the closest thing the setting has that comes to a god. That would also mean that there wouldn't be a source for divine magic. There wouldn't be any use for an afterlife. Souls don't exist, when you die you're dead. Outsiders aren't created from souls, or they just don't exist.
This leads into character development where players can't play clerics, sorcerers with infernal bloodlines, etc. A lot of things would have to be reimagined or scrapped. I realize there probably is a different system out there that can do this better, but I really like the monsters in Pathfinder.
Or I could just leave all of it in, and downplay most of it by not letting the gods play a role in this campaign... until the PCs find out the gods aren't real. Honestly, this could be the best plot twist ever or the biggest disappointment for an invested player.
The best thing I've come up with so is ripping off the story of Prometheus. The Anunnaki tought the humans how to use divine magic. That doesn't really work, because Anunnaki don't use divine magic.
So what would be the best way to handle this? Are there other pitfalls I need to avoid?
There's the mechanical vs flavor question.
1. Do you want a game with the mechanical challenge of NOT having divine classes? This is one experience.
2. Do you want a game without divinity in general, but not any necessary change to the mechanics itself?
In the second case, you can make those who grant divine powers NOT divinity, just powerful eldritch abominations who grant pieces of their power to mortals to advance their goals.
probably the easiest way to handle this is to say that divine magic is powered by belief and that gods aren't required. This would allow you to leave everything pretty much intact while adding some interesting twists.
Perhaps the heads of of the various religions actually know the truth about the gods not existing. The problem is that knowing the truth destroys your faith which subsequently causes you to lose the ability to cast spells. For this reason most organized religions are quite motivated to keep the truth hidden. After all, if everyone knew that the gods weren't real it would cause their organization to lose considerable power (both figuratively and literally).
Sorcerers could be something similar. They believe that they get their powers as the result of their bloodline but it's their own belief that's causing the "bloodline powers" that they have. This means that they become a mixture of arcane and divine magic.
Of course anyone in denial of the truth would probably retain any divine powers/abilities they have. Though perhaps in a diminished capacity (maybe they keep what they have but can no longer gain access to more powerful spells/abilities)
In any case you'll either need to remove every class that's powered by divine magic (which is probably about a 3rd of the classes in the game since it's not just clerics but rangers, druids etc.) or it will need to be powered by something else. Whether it be faith, mutations, or something else.
Eat the gods?
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Okay, I think I need to address some of these ideas. Maybe I didn't explain my idea good enough, so I'll try again:
LordKailas: I don't think that someone who's playing a divine spellcaster will think losing all of his spells is an interesting twist. By the end of the campaign the players should know that the gods don't exist. At this point I'm thinking of just letting them tap into a "divine force". At one point in history, the Anunnaki came and taught the humanoids how to use it, much like Prometheus taught humans how to create fire. Ofcourse Anunnaki don't have divine powers, so now I'm wondering if I should just use Spheres of Power instead so that I can easily give the Anunnaki divine powers.
Joey Cote: There are extraplanar beings, just no demons, devils, angels etc. They don't fit into the bigger picture as the Elohim simply didn't create them. This means the players wouldn't be able to summon or call angels and demons, but that can also be solved with Spheres of Power, so I'm really starting to lean in that direction.
Mechanically, a no divine magic is pretty fun when you sub in stuff like Psionics and Spheres.
Technically Druids/Shamans/some Oracles don't get their powers from Gods.
The gods of a household back in Roman times could just as easily be real or imagined ancestors as personified concepts. Sometimes there was a former Emperor in there too. Ancestor worship could provide divine magic without having to have Zeus or Sarenrae running around.
If you do decide to remove divine magic then the main hole to be filled in game mechanics is condition removal. Make sure that NPC alchemists or bards or witches or whatever are around that can do this for the party - people in town you can go to to get blindness removed, not GMPCs I mean.
I've been tinkering around with a similar idea for a campaign world.
There was a God war roughly two millennia ago and the gods ended up destroying themselves. The faithful learned to power their own magic through belief (think of it like an electrical grid that suddenly loses the power company... the infrastructure to get power to all of the homes are still there, but no source... and then one day people start installing generators that feed back into the grid). The more faithful in the world, the more power to go around, until things are back to normal. Now, however, people believe in general concepts (the power of love, for example) and those who can tap into that source have "divine" power.
It does require a player to work a bit to pick domains/favored weapons, and develop a creed that fits their devotion, but I thought it sounded fun and different. It also allows for fun RP possibilities when two people have differing ideas on what is the "right way" for the same devotion that isn't always possible in the normal rules.
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I would suggest dragonlance for the mechanics. No clerics, Bards don't get cure spells, no abyssal/Celestial/Infernal bloodlines would be added to that, you might consider Alchemist churgeons as the replacement of clerics as branches of magical study into healing.
But if you really want hard mode on sorcerer's might limit them to Arcane Bloodline only.
I have a campaign world I wrote up for fun where there are no gods, but clerics instead subscribe to ideologies that power their spells. This was a steampunk setting so all the ideologies are about technology, economics, politics, and other cultural issues of the Industrial Revolution, but you could just as easily tailor yours to the themes of the setting.
I would also like to draw your attention to the Elder Deep One, which is able to grant cleric spells through its Deific ability. Like the Annunaki, they have their basis in ancient Near Eastern mythology via the Phoenician/Philistine god Dagon, though the Lovecraft flavour might distract from what you're going for.
Use abstracts such as love, peace, war, etc... act in place of the devine.
Same system, no gods.
"divine" Casters could simply be channeling a connection to the positive or negative plane
Just have your clerics pick two domains, and decide their alignment, eschewing any decision of deity preference. Paladins now have a code of ethics. Press play.
Just have your clerics pick two domains, and decide their alignment, eschewing any decision of deity preference. Paladins now have a code of ethics. Press play.
NeoExodus setting has a God known as the Kaga.
The Kaga is an arcane construct created to be the God of humanity and help them rebel against the first ones who had enslaved them.
Clerics of the Kaga still use the cleric spell list but they are considered Arcane Casters with their holy symbols as an Arcane Focus.
So maybe you could use something similar. An Arcane source of "divine magic" that Clerics tap into
My old gm created a setting where the gods had disappeared, and each god had left obelisks that their casters had to make pilgrimages to every time they gained enough levels to reach a new spell level, they'd do a ritual and your holy symbol would get a new rune representing your mastery.
the thing was, without actual gods, the church had to police adherence to doctrine and philosophy, and you could get priests who were wildly out of alignment with the doctrine of their god.
On top of that without the obelisks casters couldn't advance so holy wars became about destroying opposing faiths obelisks so as to cripple their priesthood.
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There's no reason you can't just say divine magic is just another type of sorcery, cast in the same way that wizards do their thing. Just say people in the world call them white mages. It can mechanically function exactly the same if you want, you're just reflavoring descriptions. No need to rewrite rules unless you really want to.
If you're looking for a game without healing and resurrection, rewriting all that would be a prohibitive amount of house rules. In that case, I'd suggest using a different RPG rule set.
Create a system where people get divine power from large groups of less powerful creatures. Druids drawing from lower creatures, clerics drawing from fellow believers, others drawing from their community's trust in them, cabals of more powerful creatures and so on.
The exact group you draw power from is probably kept somewhat secret to prevent your power source being sniped. You'd also have some entertaining options like pestilence druids bringing their power source with them and spreading it to others, and oracles encouraging a type of behavior that created a more specific ideal that empowered them, maybe spreading their curse by blinding or crippling others.
Divine casters would probably learn some of the specifics early on, but know to keep them secret and that they weren't privy to all the secrets.
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Current idea: Mortals were taught how to use magic from the "divine force" by an Anunnaki. Both divine and arcane magic come from this source. In essence, divine and arcane magic are the same thing, although the way you access it may be different.
Over centuries, mortals have mostly forgotten the origin of magic. Religious organizations have sprung up and offer different explanations on the origin of magic. Some mages believe magic is a science, whether arcane or divine. Shamans are animistic, and believe that every spirit has divine potential. Clerics of one religion claim they follow the one true god who has gifted them divine powers, and all other religions call on evil spirits. Another religion claims a holy being taught them how to tap into a divine force.
The problem is still that I feel like I'm going to have to take away a core aspect from at least one of the PCs as soon as the truth comes out. Another problem would be that I don't like adding religions that don't add to the story.
Consider the incantation. Lets say the Spellcasting language is the one used by the Anunnaki. Humans can grasp the phonetics of it but they don't actually know what they are saying. Just some vague translations that amount to the names of various spells.
Where as the actual incantation could be along the lines of
"System Access - Healer caste authorization rank 2 - Cure Moderate Wound"
"System Access- Warrior caste authorization Rank 1 - anti-personal artillery - Magic Missile"
but to humans it's all just "Ia ia lac liliac masrazi ak nophatius"
The different types of magic could actually be a breakdown of the Social castes of the Anunnaki.
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Consider the incantation. Lets say the Spellcasting language is the one used by the Anunnaki. Humans can grasp the phonetics of it but they don't actually know what they are saying. Just some vague translations that amount to the names of various spells.
Where as the actual incantation could be along the lines of
"System Access - Healer caste authorization rank 2 - Cure Moderate Wound"
"System Access- Warrior caste authorization Rank 1 - anti-personal artillery - Magic Missile"but to humans it's all just "Ia ia lac liliac masrazi ak nophatius"
The different types of magic could actually be a breakdown of the Social castes of the Anunnaki.
Oh, that's good.
You also don't have to ever have "the truth come out"
You also don't have to ever have "the truth come out"You mean have the Anunnaki and the Elohim not return in the third act? Then I kinda don't have a campaign, so uhm, no.
No i mean you can leave it vague. You don't have to confirm or deny even if they come back. The annunaki and elohim CLAIM this. Is it true? What are the societal consequences if the party lets this information out?
As a coder who may have, in the past, used code that I didn't fully understand but got to work, I applaud this concept of spellcasting.
And primal magic events are purely sloppy coding that created a few... bugs.
It's black box coding where as you level up you get greater system access.
Awesome :-D
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ummm... why not just say that 'divine magic' is just another form of arcane magic, and ditch the gods entirely? it's your campaign world.
Clerics & other divine casters can have the same mechanics. There's no need to change anything.
If you want to keep the gods in Pathfinder for their associated domains, then tell the players that they have to choose purely for mechanical reasons and that that god does not exist in the campaign.
Keep it simple.
I ran a campaign like this fairly recently. This was my solution.
Firstly I didn't change the religions. Unless your world normally has gods running around doing stuff greek style, the gods not existing doesn't change much by itself. There are still philosophies that develop and myths that crops up to express that philosophy in story form. Divine magic is easily explained as strong belief acting upon the world in a very similiar but distinct way to arcane casting. A loss of faith can result in a loss of powers because they now lack the requisite focus/will required.
The biggest world change is with the cosmology. After all if there are afterlives that people can visit, the absence of gods would be quickly noticed. Firstly establish what planes you want to exist. Based on your description you probably don't want any of the major aligned planes existing. The other major categories would be the elemental planes, demiplanes, the first world, astral plane, shadow plane, and the ethereal plane. I would recommend keeping the ethereal plane at least because it is well tied in with game mechanics. The rest can be removed without problem. Now we pick which of the displaced outsiders to keep around and where they lived. Elementals and fey are fairly easy to place due to their strong ties to nature. Aligned outsiders are tricky because they form societies. I ended up creating their own homelands in exotic but fitting locations. Treating them the same way I would any native but powerful race. For instance angels had sky cities and demons came from the bottom of the underdark. The standard Pathfinder pantheon is actually pretty easy to separate from outsiders as only a handful are directly connected to them. However this isn't necessary. For example, Dragons are beings that exist in the material plane but are still central in Kobold religion.
Lastly remember that if you remove something from the world it should generally not remove player options. For instance bloodlines can easily be reflavored.
I like your approach Dastis, but I think it perhaps doesn't even require the removal of the aligned planes.
Just that the worlds internal myth has the gods be on a completely separate plane, unavailable to non-deities by any known means.
Angels and devils can stay exactly where they are, with both perhaps knowing the gods aren't real but using the idea of gods to twist mortals in the directions they desire.
You could run this as devine magic being powered by philosophies, where the idea of a god standing for justice is enough to empower a cleric of justice.
And failing to follow your belief or convictions in your own mind would be enough for your power to falter, but there would be no specific tenets that would break and cause you to fall, except those that you believe cause it to be so.
There are so many options that can be possible in this sort of setting.
You can have those that know the truth, that there are no gods and manipulate those who do for their own ends. Or another faction that tries to get the truth out, but is on the fringe because it's such a well established.
Perhaps this is a world where the gods really did use to exist, but they have all since disappeared and everyone who knows keeps up the charade because they don't know what to do or what will happen.
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I ran a campaign like this fairly recently. This was my solution.
Firstly I didn't change the religions. Unless your world normally has gods running around doing stuff greek style, the gods not existing doesn't change much by itself. There are still philosophies that develop and myths that crops up to express that philosophy in story form. Divine magic is easily explained as strong belief acting upon the world in a very similiar but distinct way to arcane casting. A loss of faith can result in a loss of powers because they now lack the requisite focus/will required.
The biggest world change is with the cosmology. After all if there are afterlives that people can visit, the absence of gods would be quickly noticed. Firstly establish what planes you want to exist. Based on your description you probably don't want any of the major aligned planes existing. The other major categories would be the elemental planes, demiplanes, the first world, astral plane, shadow plane, and the ethereal plane. I would recommend keeping the ethereal plane at least because it is well tied in with game mechanics. The rest can be removed without problem. Now we pick which of the displaced outsiders to keep around and where they lived. Elementals and fey are fairly easy to place due to their strong ties to nature. Aligned outsiders are tricky because they form societies. I ended up creating their own homelands in exotic but fitting locations. Treating them the same way I would any native but powerful race. For instance angels had sky cities and demons came from the bottom of the underdark. The standard Pathfinder pantheon is actually pretty easy to separate from outsiders as only a handful are directly connected to them. However this isn't necessary. For example, Dragons are beings that exist in the material plane but are still central in Kobold religion.
Lastly remember that if you remove something from the world it should generally not remove player options. For instance bloodlines can easily be reflavored.
My idea was to have a demiplane where most of the action happens, a transitive plane (I don't see much reason for there to be 3 of them.), other demiplanes of various natures (Including elemental planes.), and the Beyond which is where the Elohim comes from.