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Author Topic: Domains and D&D Deities  (Read 1828 times)

Pav

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Domains and D&D Deities
« on: September 02, 2017, 04:26:23 PM »
This is less a suggestion, more a question. A lot of deities on our list suffer from either having one domain, or having domains that don't fit. I understand that we use what we have within NWN's and PotM's limits, but could some revisions be made?

A few specific examples I could think of while glossing over the various deities -

Callarduran Smoothhands [m]   Earth    N
Flandal Steelskin [m]   Good    NG
Hathor [f]   Good                 NG
Hoar [m]   Travel   LN

This is just Forgotten Realms.

There are also deities that have inefficient domains that don't fully describe them, though this is an issue with D&D canon itself - I assume the point has been made before to change some of these and it was denied, but I will keep harping on the subject for the sake of my sanity.

Vecna - Evil, Magic, Knowledge... a God of necromancers and secrets, not having Death/Undeath or Trickery?

Bane - Destruction, Evil, Law... but no War or Strength, two of the pillars of his dogma?

You see my point by now. To clarify, again, this isn't a critique of the server, but rather D&D, and a question of whether or not we are willing to change this.

Crimson Shuriken

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Re: Domains and D&D Deities
« Reply #1 on: September 05, 2017, 09:34:01 AM »
In some cases the domains available reflect only those domains published at the time of the deity entry published and its just a nuance of timing.

However, that is rarely the case. Vecna as example, the Greyhawk designers had multiple opportunities to add the Trickery domain to him list had they thought it represented his portfolio. In the last revision of the deity list for Living Greyhawk campaigns his domains were listed as : Destiny, Dream, Evil, Knowledge, Madness, Magic, Mind, Oracle, Tyranny.
Its obviously a design choice at that point.

Most of the other deities you will find lacking two viable domains are (demihuman) racial deities and since we do not have the racial domains its been made possible for those that only have one of the core domains to slip through the cracks.

I believe way back when the religious resource thread was being worked on I breached this subject with Blue, and I think it was Callarduran Smoothhands that I specifically used as my example. His response was sensible, if you have a cleric concept that worships a deity that has only one viable domain then such things can be prescribed on an ad hoc basis.


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