Tag Info

Some very simple things first...Understand the differences between 'deity' and 'religion'. If your character sheet has the listing, 'deity' on it, it is not doing you any favors. Cross it out and replace it with 'faith' or 'religion'. A religion is normally the man-made, socially organized, interpretation of the place of the gods or philosophy in that ...

Considering only core and "core plus" (books that mention gods as part of the default setting)… Rao may fit your needs admirably: the Flan god of reason, serenity, and peace, his followers avoid violence—except when absolutely necessary to defend the rationally-chosen course of action. As we well know from humanity's history, many conflicts arise from the ...

For a D&D reference I'll point you to the related Wikipedia article (it bears a good summary of the Raven's Queen back history). For a real-world mythological reference, this post goes to a fairly good level of analysis on Greek and Norse mythologies.

This is from Deities & Demi-Gods page 56 Deities do not have challenge ratings.Entities of this sort are so far above the realm of mortal heroes that determining their level of power in re Relation to mortals becomes almost meaningless. After that it also goes on to say... If you feel the need to calculate a Challange Rating for a deity,try ...

Buy Book of the Righteous, from Green Ronin. It is the most complete "create a whole living breathing religion" supplement ever produced for D&D. Beyond that, take inspiration from the complexities of real world religions. The "Dwarves facing the sacred mountain" is a good one. Also remember Rl religions are not homogeneous, there are all kinds of ...

Define the base tenets, not just the "spheres". Define the nature of the religious "text". Is it Oral Recitations (Hymns, songs) Written texts (Scripture) continuing revelation Tradition pure ritual define who is in charge ranks of clergy who picks clergy how long clergy are trained for how the clergy promote within their system define what is required ...

You seem to be on the right track (at least so far as RAW is concerned). Rules for creating a god are laid out in the SRD: Most deities are 20 HD outsiders with 30 to 50 character levels as well. These additional character levels beyond an effective character level of 20th follow the rules for epic levels. Avatars are created via a divine feat. The ...

I cannot find any with a brief look through relevant books for Avandra. Since Avandra is the Goddess of Travel, it could be she does not have a realm, preferring to roam the planes. According to Wikipedia, with no clear source: Like Avandra, Melora has no astral dominion, preferring to wander the cosmos.

The other answers give good replies. What I will add is that remember that religions are comprised of people. The ceremonies, rituals, and customs add a lot to how the players perceive the religion (or any organization) but where comes down to is the people that are part of the religion. Think both of the typical and the atypical members. Remeber not to make ...

Assuming that you're setting agnostic, a forgotten realms Tormish paladin could certainly be holier-than-thou: Torm: Torm became the master of Celestia after the heroic self-sacrifice of the legendary Tyr (who perished decades ago when defending the upper realms against an overwhelming demonic incursion). He now shines as the beacon of pure law in the ...

I haven't seen you mention a setting, but the Church of the Silver Flame is what you're asking for, down to the holier than thou. The Silver Flame is not an anthropomorphic deity. It is a celestial force comprised of a vast multitude of noble spirits. It neither requires sacrifices of gold or spices, nor does it want praise in the form of prayer. ...

James at Grognardia has a unique take on his Dwimmermount Dwarves. One of the best I ever seen. My more Tolkienish version can be found here. Basically all the non-human, non-elves sentient races were magically mutated from base human stock by demons during the Godswar at the beginning of history. The Dwarves were one of the early attempts but were found to ...

I'd think hard about the source of the religious practices. In our history, some religious practices can be seen as practical advice. E.g., many religions have prohibitions against marrying a close relative. Why? Well, the gods or God said so, but it's also just a bad idea. Taboos often arise from that sort of practical consideration, even if they wind up ...

You can also add other general practices from real-life religions. Like finding a cleric to confess your transgressions to before heal spells will work on you. Or tithing 10% of your silver to the sacred pool to gain a blessing. There are other things you can do as well. If your character is militant, they may be called on to lead a battle against ...

I realize this doesn't fit your edited guidelines, but I think this is a key (general) point where most RPG religions are lacking: Add a little mythology. It doesn't have to be a lot. Even a single simple story about each god (with cameos providing extra appearances) should do it. This has the benefit of bringing the religion alive in a show-don't-tell ...

Many pagan religions were concerned with rituals to keep evil forces at bay or guarantee the successful functioning of the world as we know it. Sometimes people sacrificed to gods to keep them placated. Sometimes people sacrificed or otherwise observed in order to keep the fields fertile, the sun rising in the morning, or in the case of the Maya, the ...

The monster manual has rules for creating monsters starting on page 296, I would recommend reading the entire section to get a feel for what the CR of a creature should be based on its abilities, ability scores, etc. Drawing from those rules, in a very general way: CR is about 1.5 times it attack modifier plus 2, CR is roughly 13 plus total AC, Monsters ...

In the D&D3 Encounter Level system, adding +2 Challenge Rating is roughly equivalent to doubling the number of opponents, and +3 CR is like tripling them. You can use this equivalence to estimate CR. If a tweak doubles your attacks and defenses, that's roughly like adding another creature, so it's worth +2 CR. Adding Divine Rank 0 gives your boss ...

In the Faiths and Pantheons splatbook, you can find the full stats for more than 100 major and minor deities in the Forgotten Realms. In addition to that, the free Faiths and Pantheons web enhancements on the wizards site (1, 2) offer some tips on challenging players with your deities.

Depending on how you (or your friend) wants the final encounter to go, it might be reasonable to say that the actual stats are simply absurdly high without necessarily spelling them out, BUT providing some weakness the characters can exploit. Perhaps some specific weapons forged by another deity, perhaps long ago, they can retrieve tow hich he is ...

Two things: one, you could worship a god that doesn't have your alignment, purely because what the god stands for is what you want: an example would be a lawful good paladin of Erathis, Ioun or Kord, which are unaligned deities, because he fervently believes in Civilization, Knowledge or Battle as the ways to bring the world forward. In a way, this would ...

Without laying out some cash for a source book, do it the hard way - trial and error. Get a willing accomplice, some copies of the PC character sheets, and run a few encounters until you feel that the Avatar is balanced enough for the actual campaign. Playtesting - it's a good thing :)

I like to make up holidays. Like so: Bahamutmas: The date of Bahamut's birth, or perhaps the day of the birth of his first children with Tiamat. The chronicles are unclear and the dragons aren't clarifying. It is said that Bahamut has a child who poses as each of the races (yeah, player races). This holiday, for non-dragons tends to be about them, ...

Commonly, I find Dwarven religion to be associated with tunnels, gold, and for some reason, ale. This results in a typical Dwarf venerating ancestors who are renowned for their drinking prowess, hoarding his personal wealth as a point of pride, and believing he is descended from some ancient race that perhaps "crafted" Dwarves wholesale out of rock in the ...

I'd think about the symbols, animals, enemies and verbs that seem most dwarf-related to me: Symbols: axe, beard, anvil, hammer, tunnels, treasure. Animals: Bear, boar, bat. Enemies: Orc, goblin, troll, elf, dragon. Verbs: Mine, feud, slay, yell, craft, forge, steal, carve. I'd take religious holidays that I know, mesh them up with the stuff above and ...

I like to look to real world religions for inspirations. So what is a dwarf in your setting? Do you play up their tendency towards order and given them a rich, ritualized religious tradition like Catholicism, orthodox Judaism or Islam. Or are they more no nonsense, like . (I just realized that pigeon holing a bunch of religions might come off as ...

I think making the Gods fickle and the religions that worship them full of contradictory caveats. Perhaps the commandments of the gods are vague or by following one rule, you break another. You then get arguments between factions within a given religion. Also have people of different religions can either be at war with each other or using religion as an ...

One of the things we're doing with the Dark Golden Age setting at bySwarm is something that any GM could do that wants to make religion more meaningful. In order for a character to continue to receive spells from their deity, they must do something on a regular basis that ties into the god's pantheon. A god of fire might require that expensive incenses be ...