The Problem with D&D Gods (and how to make your own)

[@onimonkey]

For the fellow Umberlee lovers, in one game I ran, the temple of Umberlee was decorated with water filled glass coffins that people were drowned in. In the main chamber, Umberlee spoke through the mouths of the drowned dead.

[@Phourc]

That is siiiick!

[@danielskovbjerg4562]

YOOOOOOO

[@RPGFanboy14]

That's an awesome bit of world building

[@maxdino26]

Oooo that's pretty cool.

[@_fedmar_]

sick af 🔥🔥🔥

[@ggoodaysir]

imagine being a god and an animated hat starts clowning on you like this

[@iona2225]

A god: "No, no, no, not him!" *The celestial entity yelled in terror.*

[@ThatReplyGuy]

I don't need to imagine.

[@ragoth6207]

Most probably wouldn't notice

[@cheyennebielawski723]

If i was a god id have a sense of humour... And laugh my ass off

[@patricklippert8345]

Ironically it wasn't a fedora

[@FishfaceTheDestroyer]

Shinto has a quintillion gods, but you also have to remember: each one of those gods has multiple faces, and many of those gods are secretly the same guy.

[@ToMo_VOX]

I believe there's some old dnd 3e lore stating that the Elven gods and human gods are reflections of each other and essentially the same thing with a different coat of paint to please each race/reflect their beliefs, which makes the whole Elven superiority thing super funny

[@crazy4bricksthebrickbrothe722]

I’m reminded of Blind Io of Discworld fame, who became as powerful as he was by basically pretending to be the myriad of more localized lightning gods, in other words, stealing their thunder.

[@sarahthesarah2850]

This is how I run it. If a diefied being is good bad or whatever depends on the people's relationship with said being. One person's god is another person's satan.

[@diablo.the.cheater]

@@ToMo_VOX That is literally how it works in the Elder Scrolls universe, elves and humans worship the same things with different names, to the point that they even split a god due to worshipping him wrongly on porpouse

[@sanserof7]

Same in Hinduism and probably in most polytheistic religions

[@hookshot320]

Fun, potentially live-saving tip: It's funny you bring up the "no service" thing in horror movies, because even if your phone says no service you can still call 911 and have it work. Cellphones ping off every tower, not just their own provider's network, because of this they are legally required to let emergency calls go through on ANY tower it can ping off of. Even if it's out the network and you have "no service."

[@InternationalAwesomeFoundation]

In most places, yes, though there are parts of the world which are simply beyond the reach of any cell tower. I live in Alaska, personally, and sometimes when driving between towns you have to be aware that if something happens to you all you can do is pray that somebody else drives by.

[@theapexsurvivor9538]

​@@InternationalAwesomeFoundationyep, I live in Canberra, Australia, and while there's a lot of cell towers in the immediate area, a half hour drive can take you out of range of anything except satellite coverage. It's just one of those things you have to be prepared for.

[@d3str0i3r]

@@InternationalAwesomeFoundation there's also to consider, you may also be unable to get signal because you're too close to the cell towers, a lot of cell towers have a deaf zone around them where they can't hear you

[@CharlesGriswold]

@@InternationalAwesomeFoundation I live in Washington State, and there are places in the mountains where you can't call 911, because there is absolutely no cell phone signal.

[@peppa4412]

God of signal lost. It rules over these weird spaces where no one can notice you or you can reach out to no one.

[@Atlas3060]

I recall one homebrew I was especially proud of. It involved Life and Death's gods being a married Halfling couple. Life was the mother, always cheerful, always wanted to feed her children (the world's people) but also one who would talk to her husband about someone's passing. Her husband, Death, was a rather dour faced grump of a Halfling but never really mean. He knew someone's end scared them, so he took it as a stern but loving father approach to let you know the end was happening. A new death experience or something like reincarnation could be something as simple as them talking over a kitchen table while you sat between them, as if parents wondering what to do with a naughty child. Death telling his beloved, "This one's time is now sweat pea." while she patted your hand to settle you down and say "Ooooh but pumpkin, this little one really does need to say goodbye to their spouse, please, just at least one last message?!" She knew her husband's work was important, it created room for hers, but like all creators it was sad to see her babies go. He loved how she built things, but also knew he had to put things away when their time was done. There was no struggle for ultimate power in the cosmos, there was simply hot apple stellar pies, the smell of sweet weed grass from Death's pipe, and a crackling fire you could admire while they weighed your options if you were a soul of great significance to them.

[@adastic]

That's amazing. I love the simplicity of it, and yet it's one of the most touching and evocative portrayals I've seen in recent memory. Thank you for sharing

[@peterhousen7974]

Genuinely in love with this portrayal. Thank you for sharing!

[@Dragoninja26]

Wow, that's a great way to do it and also great presentation. You do deserve to be proud of it

[@3nertia]

That's, that's .... beautiful!

[@brookejon3695]

Phenomenal writing. Great job. I'm absolutely stealing this for my group. 💜

[@LadyTsunade777]

One good explanation I've seen for having _huge_ numbers of gods in a setting, with many or even most overlapping, is: different cultures incidentally worshipping the _same deity of a thing/concept but in their own ways._ For example, maybe culture A that lives near the peaks of a mountain range worships Icaros, the handsome young man God of the Sun; while culture B that lives in the deep shadowed valleys and into the underground worships Scoura, the sun-bleached elderly woman Goddess of the Sun; and culture C across the ocean worships Phlrgl, the radiant sunfish God of the Sun; BUT these are in actuality all the _same singular entity._

[@diablo.the.cheater]

That is the way, mostly because thats what happens IRL as well.

[@mythshaper5053]

When I was creating my homebrew setting I made it on the surface seem like there were hundreds of gods, but if players actually dig deeper into the lore they would find, for example, that no there are not 40 ocean gods, there are 40 cultures that all have a different name and interpretation of a singular ocean god.

[@theemeraldenderman3007]

Now that I like 👍

[@hz.kemalpasa2997]

I tried taking this a little further. Common folk have dozens of sea and river gods, scholars have a single water god with different representations in various cultures, but only a select few almost uncovered the secret that it's just the aether shaping itself according to mortal collective subconscious. Basically people are gaslighting the essence of reality into pretending to be different deities. Somewhat ripping off American Gods.

[@LethargicScientist]

I did something similar with the beastfolk in my campaign setting. The tabaxi worship a cat, the aaracockra worship a bird, the locathah worship a fish, etc, and they all worship this entity monotheistically as the creator of their entire race. However, it's actually just the same entity in different guises, and therefore the worship and domains of this entity are relatively consistent across all of them, even if there are major doctrinal differences.

[@DevinDTV]

syncretism 101

[@Thunderscreamer]

I love how you made a whole video warning against gods as “Plot Contrivances” without ever saying “Deus Ex Machina”

[@llewelynshingler2173]

Even though that would apply to Primus quite well.

[@WouldbeSage]

​@llewelynshingler2173 or maybe that would be... Machina ex Deus

[@noblesseoblige319]

In his defense, they are a bit different. One is basically Wish spell. Something impossible happening because it needs to for the story. The other is more "suuuuure that happened. That incredibly specific thing happened in that specific way. Let me guess: and them everyone clapped?"

[@Thunderscreamer]

@@noblesseoblige319 I'm going to level with you, I studied creative writing & I have no idea which of those two is supposed to be the Plot Contrivance & which is the Deus Ex Machina 😅

[@noblesseoblige319]

@@Thunderscreamer lmao fair point. Deus ex machina is the "wish" one. It's something impossible that just sorta happens without reason or much warning. Like back when a god (Deus) came down from a crane (the machina) to just sorta solve the problem, such as just resurrecting someone. Rarely was there foreshadowing or even a hint that a god was paying attention. It just sorta... Happened. Because plot. The other one is the plot contrivance. It's when something that really strains the realm of believability, but still technically possible. Like lex luthor from superman. Lex is a super rich person with a predesposition against anyone better than himself, except he's already better than anyone... Except for the ONE alien with godlike powers that just so happens to be from the same exact tiny town he's from (despite being super rich and not having a good reason to ever live there, even as a kid), who also just so happens to have been a friend, and who also just so happens to have no desire to appear strong while acting as Clark. Yes. All those could happen. But ALL happening at once is very, very contrived. If someone posted that happening on Facebook, literally no one would ever believe it, because it's so absurdly coincidental that it's legitimately hard to believe.

[@BluegrassGeek]

Yes, animism! This is my personal favorite take on doing a D&D pantheon. Just make everything have a spirit, and you have to appease them if you don't want bad luck, or just need a boost. You can have minor side quests about how to pacify the river spirit so you can cross without having to travel days to find a bridge, etc.

[@ALookIntoTheEulenspiegel]

We already have that in Faerûn, if you want nature spirits, it's the Fey. They absolutely fill the "local nature spirit you need to appease/who can help you" niche. That's basically what Dryads and the likes are, after all, with there being Fey for basically anything.

[@zacks.5991]

I think the funniest about the D&D (Specifically Forgotten Realms) gods is that they were like, "Ao the overgod, he keeps the others in their lane," but that wasn't enough so then they were like, "There is the Luminous Being, they keep everything in check because they are the DM, the DM is a canonical god and whatever they say goes!"

[@joendeo1890]

I think a more plausible explaination is that gods are actually a large astral entity which physically takes up space, which is their personal realm. The reason so few gods directly interevene is for two reasons: first is that manifesting their power directly leaves them open to being weakened by rival deities. Secondly is that there are many more planets than Toril. And so the attention of the gods is divided and scattered. There are hundreds of world ending scenarios all the time. Which feeds back into point one.

[@thorveim1174]

​@@joendeo1890second explanation is the best one for me: yes the gods are powerful enough to solve everything with ease, but they are too busy elsewhere to do so and may not even know what's going on as a result

[@DefinitivNichtSascha]

@@joendeo1890 I quite like the explanation with there being so many different planets and crystal spheres that divide the gods' attention. Worlds end and and new worlds come into being all the time (each time you start a new setting, for example).

[@brookejon3695]

I hate the Luminous Being lore. I fully reject that.

[@howdigethere7843]

​@brookejon3695 "Luminous has declared Luminous non-cannon"

[@abramfriesen9472]

Apos'trophee Hyphen-Name must be stopped before he overruns all Examplia.

[@Rabble_Rouser]

A D&D campaign set around the idea of saving a literal novel. Characters fight words and eventually phrases. The more complex the word or phrase the higher the level.

[@abramfriesen9472]

@@Rabble_Rouser The campaign world could be called Lorem Ipsum!

[@mdpenny42]

Gotta steal this name for use in a homebrew campaign 😋

[@abramfriesen9472]

@@mdpenny42 Feel free! 😆

[@WTFisTingispingis]

Somehow, Apos'trophee Hyphen-Name returned.

[@patrickstar5136]

20:25 As a dweeb who went trough a mythology phase I'd like to point out that the greek and roman (not sure about the norse) mythology also had tons of minor gods of whatever the local landmark was. But since the religion isn't really practiced anymore people only tend to know/care about the big 12.

[@Deadpool-ri3rq]

More a big 14. Hades and Hestia aren’t Olympians but they’re of equal importance.

[@cameronsitton501]

​@@Deadpool-ri3rq Thank you for pointing this out!!! Even for pantheon-building, the idea of a forgotten/brushed off god of equal power is _such_ a fun concept to play with!!!

[@diablo.the.cheater]

My favourite of the Norse is the Ratatoskr, a freaking squirrel that gossips, funniest shit I have ever read about.

[@dovahdood]

roman’s had lares (name might be wrong) which were gods of households 😂

[@pipedream2556]

Yeah but in terms of story telling with that pantheon there were never universe-destroying threats poised to wipe out their millions of followers in the old greek myths, the Trojan war was about as big as it got in terms of the danger to the humans the gods need to worry about losing. Everything else was either a smaller conflict between humans that the gods wouldn't NEED to worry about if they didn't feel like intervening, or it was conflicts between gods themselves, or the titans or giants, basically there's a precedent for them actually getting involved when it was a big deal, but when it wasn't they could meddle or they might not. That's how we got the stories from that period that we did, where humans could have adventures or tragedies without the deities coming in and fixing everything, but in D&D it NEVER stays as contained and personal, so that structure for the gods just doesn't work the same as it did for greek mythology, and you're left wondering why they're not all getting involved to take over handling the threat instead of just one giving a single human of a small group some limited support and hoping it all works out 😅

[@ninryu4]

Pointy Hat: "DnD has too many gods" Shintoism: "that's cute"

[@normanclatcher]

Hinduism: "eh? y'all say something?"

[@CreamCakes420]

25:02 yoink

[@haihuynh8772]

Any religion ever: "lol, lmao, even".

[@BagelBagelBagelBa]

@@haihuynh8772 excluding monotheistic religions ofc

[@haihuynh8772]

@@BagelBagelBagelBa Monotheistic religions have saints, angels, demons, and what not. Worshipping one deity doesn't mean having no other deities.

[@Pengalen]

I'd just like to point out that, in the Greek pantheon, there are at least, like 135 named deities that have specifics known about them and are all directly related to the core pantheon. This does not include the endless variety of nymphs, daimones and other nebulous deity like things that are in fact the god of that rock over there, that are not specifically named.

[@opuntiaechios9683]

Yeah I was gonna say, the argument here seems to be against polytheism in general. Many polytheistic religions had gods with overlapping spheres of influence or even redundant gods. And very rarely (as far as I know) are there stories where an entire pantheon takes an interest in a specific story or event usually it's only 1 or a small handful.

[@catocall7323]

With the greek daemon being a very close analog to the lesser kami in Shinto.

[@apjtv2540]

The "two god" idea is one I've used myself, with the God of Law and the God of Chaos in my own setting. Law didn't represent "good", but rather rules, order, peace and stability. Chaos, likewise, wasn't "evil" but represented change, freedom, energy and transformations. One could only intervene when the natural balance of the world shifted too far in one direction. So the God of Chaos could only intervene if the world was becoming too rigid or the entire world was being conquered by a single great tyrant. It kept the gods very much real, while explaining why the players were only interacting with one of the two gods. Because they only existed to maintain the balance.

[@KaiHung-wv3ul]

Very reminiscent of Ying and Yang, cool!

[@3kojimbles895]

This is just shin megami tensei

[@jldragongames]

Pointy Hat, please make a tip of the hat video about ttrpg travelling, it tends to be SO boring, its aways either a boring timeskip or some goblin encounters, i love the concept of traveling and just dont know how to execute it well, and its also such a big part of an adventure, thank you.

[@westerstorm744]

Yes please

[@blakebrady9002]

Seconded

[@Lilith_Harbinger]

One way is to not make it a time skip. Describe the places the party passes through. If they reach a city, is there anything interesting about that city? does it hinder the travel? Introduce optional side quests, such as characters asking the party to deliver things to where they are going or resolving local issues. These can happen in the middle of the road as well. If your players skip a side quest or something special in a city, you can always introduce it later.

[@alechs]

you might wanna look into Matt Colville's running the game videos. he has one about making travel interesting. I'm not sure I remember what it's about, but I'm sure it'll have something to help.

[@darkpaul1uxgaming269]

Oh my God. If he did video on this. I would be so happy.

[@morganhann4488]

So ive had players ask some of the questions you pointed out, and my answer was 1. They only appear to certain cultures, like an elven moon goddess and goblin moon goddess will only appear to elves and goblins 2. They are helping stop other ends of the world and you get help from the clerics god since one of their followers is with you 3. They only appear to their favorite followers And 4. They are busy making their domain function

[@chronoatog5650]

5. There is 233 gods in the current trimmed down from 3e->5e all fucking about (213 gods + 20 demon/devil lords that are close to diety power.), good luck balancing 233-X (you where using) more characters into your story. Also don't forget about every fucking demi god that should also being helping!

[@morganhann4488]

I mean, yeah, but trimming the options of gods that interact with the players and make the story seem like it's more centralized on a small part of a larger system that is being influenced by other gods and their champions helps enough that my players have an easier time with suspension of disbelief. If it bugs them too much, whoops- there's another adventuring party headed southwest to do a job similar to my party headed southeast, and they happen to meet in a tavern the night before their paths split again. The gods are doing more than the party gets to see, but they see evidence of that every now and then, and the characters they play are special because they are the ones who end up doing the thing that does save the world. And I have a built-in way to save them from a party wipe (which the group I play with has asked to avoid) by just dropping in a random high-level npc.

[@penultimatechimera7981]

huh, i should probably include this in the vague pantheon i've got for my worlds... then again, i should also flesh them out more... but they're all MY gods atm, which makes it pretty easy!

[@rpgcraftsman520]

2 was the first one that came to my mind. And if there's multiple Material Planes, well...

[@IrishKatana]

For my pantheon they were originally one god that ruled over the world, but so many problems kept popping up they would sometimes over reach with fixing things, and soon things became to much for them that the world fell to chaos and all life was snuffed out. Now armed with the knowledge of their former self they decided to make a pact to not help out too much and to mostly guide them, safe for the trickster god but they’re the weakest of them because they were formed from the leftover fragments.

[@chronickitsch]

Eberron has an interesting approach to the divines. It’s even more nebulous and ambiguous. It’s basically like the gods may or may not even exist but it’s the faith of the followers that generates divine magic

[@LethargicScientist]

I like this approach even better. If you want to explain why the gods aren't bothering with your bullshit, being able to say "the gods maybe aren't even real" is a good draw card to have.

[@andrewfornes5320]

I loved our Eberron playthrough. I played as a Warforged Cleric who was on a mission with others of my race to create our machine god. Our clerical powers came from our original program that was created during war times & we were actually all made for healing & didn't know that. During the time of peace, when we tried to find a purpose, almost all of us came to the same idea and formed up. The "God" was pretty much going to become a sort of "soul-factory". One that could harvest souls of recently deceased people before their soul reached whatever came after & would infuse said soul within us. It was dark and we were stopped.

[@Firegen1]

The Queen of DnD God making is Jasmine Bhullar. Hands down. She infuses all her gods with grandeur, mystery and mischief and creates game dynamics to improve engagement over a boring hope roll of the dice. I wrote this on Desi Quest and I'm kinda glad she saw it. If you are gonna create deities then there is a plethora of incredible history and myth to pull from, learn from, design with. I want to design gods from both from ancient German and Zimbabwe.

[@imjustdandy9799]

I completely agree! I haven't started desi quest yet but her worldbuilding for The Battle For Beyond was incredible!

[@void-creature]

My favourite pantheon of fictional gods are "the Hours" from Cultist Simulator/Book of Hours. They feel incredibly strange, alien and at times paradoxical, like something mortals can just genuinely not fully comprehend, just partially grasp.

[@ryuhere4014]

Fellow cultist lets go!!!

[@travislyonsgary]

They really embody principle alienation. They had times as humans but the perspective understanding to become what they were made them more

[@void-creature]

@@ryuhere4014 we go around the night in circles...

[@3nertia]

For those us who aren't in the know, could you maybe give an example, please?

[@brentkeller5209]

@@3nertiathe Wolf Divided, the living wound of the blow that slew the Sun In Splendor, hour of Agony, hate, and annihilation, it wants to hurt and be hurt, it wants to burn the world so that the juices come out and it may feast. The Moth, hour of chaos, yearning, passion, and identity, born from the primal madness of humanity it hunted The Wheel, subverting the wheels identity by cutting off its fingers, hair, then everything else, it then wore that identity before emerging from it like a cocoon. The Forge, Hour of fire, creation, transformation, destruction, ingenuity, and progress, she loved the Sun in Splendor, and so she changed him, for as the concept of perfection any change for the sun would break it. Were she capable of sadness she would regret this act. This doesn’t really do justice to the sheer scale and alienness of the hours but it’s a start if you want to follow it further.

[@dman1456]

"How do I make this relatable to brain rot...?" **proceeds to attack your mind in multiple atrocious and unforgivable ways**

[@lupussilvermoon7341]

No way, I was literally writing my settings pantheon when I got this notification!!!

[@majesticgothitelle1802]

How many pantheons do you have in your world

[@lupussilvermoon7341]

@@majesticgothitelle1802 Two. I have a group of three ancient and powerful goods who created the worlds, and another one of minor gods, which are essensally just manifestations of the prayers of mortals.

[@majesticgothitelle1802]

@AutumnExistsProbably I'm building my world with many nations are Territories of pantheon and alter earth which real world pantheon. My version of the Italian nation is ruled by Greek deities, British nations rule by Celtic deities, Nord nation deities rule by Norse deities, Russian by Slavic and then lesser nations are not ruled by a smaller pantheon or no deities at all. My trying to create my version of Europe by using mythological locations in the settings building. Placing with no pantheon are acting like natural borders, harsh environments or rules by solely by mortals. Sun and Moon deities are part of an council to agree with the cosmic body rotation and schedule. Sea and Ocean god respect the nation ocean within their territory. But all deities are originated from primordials. Titan are deities that become a land, ocean, mountain, forest or cosmic body. Like titan sol become the sun and Selene the moon and are the name of them too My alternate earth where every pantheon, myth, folklore, legends, cryptid, public domain literature are real. With multiple tropes.

[@DanniReykjalin]

​@@majesticgothitelle1802 Sounds so cool! I'm making a pantheon with just so many gods that I made (mostly) from scratch. Often these gods rule over the same domain, such as the four gods of the seasons (spring, summer, autumn and winter) ruling over nature, and I always have good and evil versions of every cleric domain. After watching this video I may need to reconsider how I make my gods, but it hurts to just throw all that hard work away.

[@christianhenderson686]

You are now obligated to create the God of pointy hats in your campaign

[@silverdust4197]

Fun fact about Azura from Elder Scrolls : Her symbols are the Sun and the Moon , but she is the goddess of neither She is vaguely the god of twilight , but mainly its an EGO thing (as is with most Daidric Princess to be honest) She is Vain , that is why she uses the sun and the moon as her symbols despite not having any dominion over them nor creating them .

[@danielcrafter9349]

She ain't Aedra (Order), tho.... so literally not a "god" per cannon, but a "demon" She's Daedra - Chaos

[@cherrybomby6355]

Daaaa dey still a god tho…. Just not one that put thr power into the creation of the mortal plane or was just purposely left out of the Fox/Lorkan great trick

[@cherrybomby6355]

Daedra doesn't mean chaos at its simple definition, just refers to a god that didnt partake in the creation of neirn/mortal plane The Aedra and Daedra are both wuite chaotic in their own way as well, and the architects of mundus Magnus is a daedra even though they made the blue prints for the mortal plane, simply bc they ran away befor they got caught in the trap, (creating the sun via the tear in space they made when escaping )

[@Cheerybelle]

​@@danielcrafter9349 Subdivisions of the et'Ada are ultimately arbitrary. It's just the Altmer perspective, hence the names of "our ancestors" and "not our ancestors". There are even disagreements across faiths for the same entities, and some faiths, rightfully, have no real categories for the et'Ada, seeing them all as spirits. Also, even if we are going by the Altmeri faith, the Aedra weren't even considered wholly Anuic, being resultant of the interplay of Anu and Padomay. Basically, it's complicated, and simplifying Daedric Princes to being demons, like common Daedralings or Dremora, is far too reductive.

[@Cheerybelle]

Yeah, Azura's sphere is twilight, vanity/ego, boundaries/thresholds, prophecy (distinct from fate and divination), and the Lunar Lattice (the cycle that gives the Khajiit their forms and the original boundary protecting Mundus from the forces of Oblivion long before the lighting of the Dragonfires). She's also considered among the nicest and most compassionate of the Daedric Princes, but she definitely has a vindictive streak. She doesn't take betrayal well and is inclined to dish out (sometimes pretty widespread) curses whenever such happens.

[@jamesm0823]

Well, I didn't really think about gods when making my campaign, but my little sister decided to play a paladin that took an oath to the god of concrete, and my friend is playing a warlock that made a pact with Barbossa. Yes, Hector Barbossa from pirates of the Caribbean. Yes, he met him while out at sea.

[@sorabrend5274]

"so you wanna make a god" no please not again! I have had to make so many gods, entirely due to my own hubris of worldbuilding and homebrewing EVERYTHING for my campaigns and then deciding that ill write a book about it, which meant i had to add and rework SO MUCH

[@jimjimson6208]

I feel this pain

[@pacozk1]

Are we the same person?

[@chriscortez2036]

23:02 I think Theros does this pretty well. There’s only 15 gods- 5 major ones & 10 minor ones. They’re also literally based on the Greek pantheon, so they’re all petty, powerful, & unpredictable. It gives plenty of options for adventures along with reasons for why the gods don’t always intervene (and even when they do, it’s not always a good thing).

[@Trefox87]

I love that one of the main stories in the Theros set is largely about the sun god being the patron of a planes walker that lost her memory so he could send her on a dangerous mission to kill a new god, only for it to lead to him I think trying to kill her with his super sun spear he gave her so she wouldn't become to strong herself and her instead taking the spear to a different plane and the sun god now just being down his super spear and a champion

[@greedier-7661]

Dnd also has a reason... Dnd Gods can only see and know what their believers see and is around them.

[@karsonkammerzell6955]

@@Trefox87 He's actually a LOT like how they depict Imperius in Diablo lore; very skilled, very powerful, very arrogant, and very adamant that his word is the best word.

[@chriscortez2036]

@@karsonkammerzell6955Yep, that describes Heliod, the sun god of Theros, perfectly. He seems nice on the surface, but is actually a self-righteous control freak. He literally killed his most loyal champion because he was jealous of her power & knowledge as a planeswalker.

[@LordBardon50]

I will say that I'm pretty sure there isn't a difference between the mono color and 2 color gods in theros, at least, not in major and minor ways. At least in the theros dnd book, basically the way its setup is that Kruphix is likely the strongest cause he can lock them all behind a divine barrier of sorts. Then it's probably Klothys due to her being one of the presumably oldest. After those two, the others are of comparable power levels and depend more on how many worshipers they have.

[@SamuPohjala]

I like the approach fear and hunger took and have started implimenting it in my games. In fear and hunger the old gods are "dead", they have abandoned humanity and disappeared, but being eldritch beings their essence lingers. Their traces haunt the world, giving powers to those who worship them, but in the end being just a thin shrowd of their true selves. The traces power is still far greater than any mortals or ascended beings could ever be.

[@ADADEL1]

The fun thing about making lots of small gods (and why my home setting is really Exalted inspired) is that you can actually give people a reason to worship them. When the gods aren't amazingly powerful then they can actually show up and participate in their rituals that bring the rains, be a resident in the city that they protect, have office hours in academies, have family drama with their mortal descendants, etc. One of my favorite groups of them in my setting is a series of villages whose gods are petty, heavily drunk, only think between their legs, and who's head priest's main job is to be more of a babysitter than anything else. But they give the residents the ability to breath underwater for a time which makes life in the freezing islands even really possible, so they are fiercely protected out of survival.

[@blackjack2526]

I was literally searching if anyone mentioned Exalted especially the animism part of this video!

[@christianschmid1440]

In my setting, the material plane was ripped from all the other planes by a huuuuge magical accident. sadly most of the gods weren't present in the material plane at that time and so they are not able to interfer in this plane anymore. the hole the devine absence left behind is now filled by 'proto-gods' which are basically local deities that form spontanously and have random domains and effects. a rose-god might cause random rose bushes to bloom near streets or a god of death starts to terrorize a village not really knowing what he is doing yet. They are basically baby gods who try to figure shit out along the way. And its quite fun and gives great opportunity for quests.

[@LunaWarrington]

This sounds awesome You seem like an amazing dm to have

[@spicysalad3013]

I love that it's kind of adorable as far as gods go

[@KegTamashii]

If you don't mind me sharing, this reminds me of a TTRPG system called Godbound.

[@grimaussiewitch]

Yoooo that sounds fun!

[@zenmaster8]

My material plane was also ripped from the material plane due to a magical accident but instead of leading to the proto gods like yours, the god of magic was killed split into the 8 domains of magic. These gods are not very active in the world due to basically being asleep and all help they give is just radiation from their rest. But now the other planes have started to reattach to the plane due to magical experimentation so there may be new god players if we end up actually getting to play again

[@luckypeanut9943]

I always go into campaigns with a preset list of dieties, the players dont know which are cannonical and which are purely regarded. I did a cleric campaign and it was an absolute blast having them all discuss how their diety shaped their practice/influenced their multiclassing: -The knowledge cleric going into druid due to believing the truth comes from the land itself -The very confrontational 'challenege your problems like the raging storm' tempest cleric putting levels into monk to accent their signature 'thunderclap' gauntlets -what started as an atypical healer life cleric ended up taking a paladin's oath of redemption after losing an important npc. Having counterspell in such a magic heavy setting was absolutely vital for how far they got Probably one of my favorite campaigns having DM'd with how everyone was so comitted to the roleplay

[@RedBlitzen]

An explanation for lack of obvious divine intervention that's usually worked for me is the peace treaty. There's an agreement between all the gods that limits and controls how they can intervene and stuff. It's followed (at least on paper) because 1. The other option is literal open war between the gods which makes nuclear war look like playing with firecrackers or 2. The treaty is enforced by the most powerful beings known to exist. This forces the gods to act subtly and indirectly almost all of the time. And even if they are willing to break the treaty they have to do it VERY infrequently, VERY subtly, or by exploiting loopholes so they don't technically break it. Ideally all three. Meanwhile the beings enforcing the treaty are fine with it being broken. Sure they'll hammer anyone FOUND to be in violation of the treaty but they don't look any harder than they have to because the treaty is a means. Not an end. It exists to keep conflicts between gods at a manageable level. No more, no less. And if the players ever want to see the treaty, just point at a random toddler and ask them if it's reasonable to try to teach them the entirety of a 1,547 year old nation's labyrinthine legal code in one year. Even if specific clauses are quoted to them, those aren't the actual clauses. They're the translated and extremely simplified clauses with most of the context removed. This also sets the stage for a really cool event. A god not bound by the treaty! Maybe they were imprisoned long ago and are trying to /just did break out. Maybe they were locked away by the treaty signers because they wouldn't sign on? Or are they completely new to the scene? A newly ascended god who has none of the experience or power of even the next youngest deity but don't have to follow ANY of the rules. Or were they already a god, just not one here? A god from elsewhere (another plane? another planet?) where the treaty doesn't exist. Or a different one is used instead that doesn't cover here. Are they looking to expand here or are they a Unicron or Galactus type that just travels around eating worlds? Lots of possibilities. Especially if you're the type that likes rules shenanigans.

[@christopherbravo1813]

I kinda had a similar idea. I haven't DMed any campaigns (yet!) but I currently have an idea for some kind of system-possibly one enforced by one or many celestial beings, possibly an intrinsic part of the cosmos, or possibly-as you described yours-an agreement between the various celestial and infernal powers, in which if one side intervenes in the material plane in some way, the other is permitted to perform interference of the same degree. If one god empowers a certain champion to some degree, a god of an opposing alignment is then allowed to do the same for one of it's own. If a god sends any sort of message to one of his followers, a rival god is permitted to do the same. If an Angel shows up on the Material Plane to carry out a specific god's will, then the forces of Evil have legal grounds to dispatch a Fiend of approximately equal power in response. I could go on, but I think you get the idea by now. That being said, it is entirely possible that gods of a more *twisted* disposition -especially those of Chaotic Evil- might actively seek ways to circumvent the current system. A few miniscule acts here, a couple minor cults there, an infinitesimally small demonic incursion elsewhere...stuff that might get past whatever is running the system but would *certainly* have an impact in the long run. ...unless of course, bands of Adventurers just so *happen* to show up in time to prevent these acts from occurring, thus preventing the balance of Good and Evil/Order and Chaos from being disrupted, whether or not they had the intention of doing so.

[@chronoatog5650]

This here, also I feel a big issue with Pointy Hat is he only looks at faerun and goes "WHY CANT WE BALANCE A STORY OF 233 gods" *motions to Grey hawks 6-7 god per good/evil/neutral* *motions to Eberrons 10 civilized gods, 10 uncivilized gods (anti-society), 5 neutral gods* My biggest issue with pointy hat is it feels like he ignores EVERY setting where this is a non-issue, for faerun which is made to be basic, pick up and play and not complicated where the DM can hand-wave anything with why is X is because of a god and shit is going on everywhere and one god abused a loophole that AO cant stop em.

[@Sazandora123]

I run with a similar setting too. The gods are bound by a complex, rigid set of rules they themselves codified and enforce, and rulebreakers are punished so heavily it discourages them from even doing that in the first place. Most of them are also rather distant from mortal affairs and just focus on running their specific jobs, but they have a veritable army of lesser deities that do interact with the material world on a regular basis. And they are also all basically aliens with godly powers. The universe began with the gods basically retconning away their own past as aliens and creating a brand new universe where they have *always been* gods.

[@christopherbravo1813]

@@Sazandora123 I feel like we've been here before. Have we been here before? XD

[@TheClergyGamer]

A divine Cold War.

[@karelklenor9441]

Holy Moly, you wouldn't believe that, but that was actually my first problem with the DnD worldbuilding. I made up three gods, with similar concepts such as yours (two that are basically dichotomy and the third one is for the balance) and players loved them! They were easy to remember and they were so extremely powerful that no one would just ask: Why are they not involved? If they were involved, the planet would just get annihilated. Loved this! Good job!

[@stefschouwenaars9562]

Me too! One of my first homebrew gods was a godess who aged as her aspects went through the 4 seasons and who died every winter and was reborn in the spring. I even assigned which classes usually worshipped which aspect but I never ran that campaign : (

[@spicysalad3013]

@@stefschouwenaars9562 that sounds like an awesome concept

[@stefschouwenaars9562]

@spicysalad3013 you have unknowingly given me permission to loredump: i made it so that in the enemy of the worshippers of the season god, the tribal elves prayed for protection against an evil interpretation of that same godess, more of a fierce nature god instead of the god of surviving together, but when asked they say they have long worshipped that god before meeting the humans that praise the godess. I also made it so that in the more urbanized areas, the religion loses its aspects of charity and working together to survive the winter because those in power didn't like that part of their religion.

[@Ravenovia]

I’d actually argue that it might work to have *four* gods with the second method, less dependent on epithets but small enough in number to keep the idea of “unknowably-powerful-few”. Plus, a lot of notable reference points come in sets of four that you can mix and match…which I will explain with my own set of four. 1.) The four classical elements of Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. 2.) The four classical temperaments of Choleric, Melancholic, Phlegmatic, and Sanguine. 3.) The classic RPG lineup of Mage, Expert, Brute, and Healer. 4.) If you’re in a game with a heavy focus on the alignment system, you have the four extreme alignments of Lawful Good, Lawful Evil, Chaotic Good, and Chaotic Evil. I don’t use this one too much personally, but I still wanted to mention it. Mix and match a few of those, and you’ve got a set of four deities who feel very different from each other but are easy to remember! A Chaotic Good-Sanguine-Healer-Water goddess will feel *extremely* different to a Lawful Evil-Phlegmatic-Brute-Water god, even if they’d technically both be categorized as “sea gods”, meaning that your pantheon will feel unlike any other!

[@chicken_person]

Funnily enough, what I did for my homebrew world was a mixture of both of the ideas that were described - one extremely powerful creator deity who only cares about observing its creations and doesn't care whatever happens so long as the entire world isn't destroyed, and a huge number of "spirits" created by the creator deity that rule over very specific concepts/phenomena - for example, one rules over static electricity, while another rules over peas. The spirits have agency to support who/what they wish to, but they were created ultimately to be loyal to the creator deity, so they have little true conflict among themselves.

[@joendeo1890]

Sounds similar to the Yoruba religion of Orishas.

[@trollsmyth]

Animism is one of my faves, especially if Fey are going to be big in the campaign as it's easy to blur that line between deity and just really powerful fey thingy.

[@capadociaash8003]

“There’s not enough room for two fey gods here” “Oh your a fey alright, just not a god” “Oh yeah? What’s the difference” “Presentation!”

[@NotVecna]

24:32 This is part of why I think Curse of Strahd works so well and resonates with the community. It utilized a very clear dichotomy. Whether the deities are real or not only adds to the intrigue.

[@ALookIntoTheEulenspiegel]

Agreed, Umberlee is fantastic, I love her. And as for the main issue: it's simple, really. Just don't have your group fight a threat that would DESTROY THE WORLD. It's cliché and not only would you have to ask "Where are all the gods"? But also: "Where are all the other epic level adventurers? Where the Dragons? The Titans? The elven Archmages? Where is every single being, powerful and knowledgeable enough to help with this threat that would end their existence forever?" With everything less than a world ending threat, it's simple: acting through anything other than clerics is very taxing for the gods and they simply can't afford to do it, unless it is extremely important. Your cleric's deity can help because you literally have a direct line to them in your party. It makes sense. But everyone else isn't going to sacrifice a lot of divine power, just to increase your chances of defeating the local pirate lord, or evil King. They need that power for their own clerics and their good deeds and they simply can't have their clerics helping with every single good deed in the world. And besides: having fewer gods wouldn't solve this problem. You would still have to ask: "Why aren't they helping more, instead of us fighting it out with mostly just our own skills?"

[@illTemperedSeaBass]

There *are* ways to make the "everyone else should be saving the world with us" thing work, but most of them would turn the campaign into less of an RPG & more of a War Game, & all the rest would involve global, if not extra-planar politics that most players would be bored to tears by, only for the reward of further listening to the GM explain how their allies wind up playing the game for them. While it would be cool to have a TTRPG that manages to transfer from RPG to War Game as needed (I'm trying to make one myself, & there probably are a few already), DnD *is not that game.* DnD can barely handle a party of 4 without falling apart & leaving 70% of the ruleset unwritten & on the part of the GM to figure out. A lot of people bring up the idea that other gods & other parties are off on their own potentially world-saving quests, & while it's a perfectly fine answer, I've always loved the idea of taking this, these lovable- or love-to-hateable-, world-building side-characters off on their own thing, & ending it all in a climax where they were actually addressing different parts or pieces of what you've been dealing with all this time, & now you're altogether, one final army of the Free People battering down the Gates of Mordor. All along, they *were* helping save the world. They were just doing jobs you never saw.

[@ALookIntoTheEulenspiegel]

@@illTemperedSeaBass I mean, that's fine and good, in theory, but since it's D&D, it will probably end with the player characters fighting the big villain in direct combat. even just one of the many epic level monsters and characters helping them would increase the chances of saving the world exponentially in that case, so why aren't they doing it? Is it really necessary for every single one of the 500 epic adventurers and beings to fight the bad guy's minions? And why aren't they giving the group every magical item they could ever need, in order to increase their chances of saving the world? Everyone in the world wanting the group to succeed can kind of break a lot of the elements of the game that make it fun, so while the "everyone else has to do something else" can work, it usually feels very forced and leaves open questions like "can't they at least give us all magic items?" and "can they really not spare ANYBODY?". If you really want to force the "save the world" angle, and I highly recommend you don't, because if the stakes becomes that big, they ironically become too big to still be taken seriously, then I would go the route of only the player characters knowing that the threat is real and genuine. Or that they simply can't tell anybody, because it would make the villain accelerate his plans. Or because they were cursed not to. Basically: for a story like that to work, without throwing up weird questions, the solution would be that the rest of the world can't know that it needs to be saved. And those who do know, must be incapable of helping or sharing that knowledge themselves.

[@richardorta8960]

Cleric contacts his goddess to deal with an evil cleric. Evil cleric's patron answers by mistake. "Well this is awkward."

[@Монс-й1ь]

"Sunlight Fighter on the line" "Uhh... Put him on hold"

[@Aaa-vp6ug]

Plot twist: they have the same patron, one is the angry fursona of the other.

[@Aaa-vp6ug]

Plot twist: Both have the same Patron One is the angry fursona of the other

[@richardorta8960]

@@Aaa-vp6ug I was thinking secretly dating but this is a whole lot funnier! 🤣 Good Cleric: "Mother, why are you in a wolf suit and calling yourself Mac?" Evil Cleric : "YOU'RE NOT A REAL WOLF, DAD! ... Mom?"

[@Aaa-vp6ug]

@@richardorta8960 Inspired By God himself! (God= Sole root of all things, Satan= Sole root of all evil, both cannot be true simultaneously unless they are one and the same)

[@StygianNightmare]

For DMs this dudes channel is indispensable. His experience in game design and game theory is crazy high and the he approaches issues in D&D and offers ways to solve them is such a gigantic boon! Not just tier lists and lore dives, but unique and creative actions to take to improve your gameplay. 👌

[@scottmartin5990]

Option #3: do both. My world has both creator gods (vasr, ineffable beings who built the world and who rarely intervene beyond granting powers to clerics with little oversight) and mortal gods (ascended mortals who have limited powers, including limits on how many clerics they can empower, but can effectively act as the hands-on ceo of their church).

[@samuelazzaro]

17:09 Or do what IRL religions did/do and have it be a situation where the gods: 1) Just do not care unless it directly relates to them 2) Have their be bigger fish to fry/things for them to worry about 3) Have their interference in another god's domain be a big taboo

[@theapexsurvivor9538]

Or 4) Give subtle assistance. (Totally not just claiming they did something while they were off chasing nymphs) Why wasn't the god of archery helping the party? Well you remember that time the fighter got a nat 20 to shoot that guy? Yeah, that was them. The 3 nat 1s before that? Should have offered some better snacks, and stop hogging the best portions for yourself. Chance encounters with helpful/harmful equipment and NPCs is pretty much always how the influence of non-patron gods is handled. Usually because most gods don't have much of a dimmer switch for their powers and aren't interested in sinking an island to help an idiot who didn't actively ask for their help (gods don't enjoy Deus Ex Machinas in their plays any more than we do...)

[@keetard]

I also wondered why he didn't mention any of this because Forgotten realms religious orders and gods are just p much that. They work in their own territories. Ao and his rules are also like "don't get in the other god's business". BG3 did this well. there are different gods working against the Absolute crisis in their own ways. Tyr (or Helm? I forgot) literally asked daddy Jergal to come back to put these dead three back in their place while Mystra tries to do it her own way by telling Gale to go Kaboom. The evil gods shown in the game are also doing their own things.

[@69Kazeshini]

5) Have the gods create a pact in which they can't personally interfere with certain events, if they do that leads to a divine nuclear mutual destruction. In order to win whatever conflict each god uses adventurers as proxies. They choose adventurers to be their prophets/messiahs, have them fight other chosen warriors and give them advice from time to time but not physically interfere.

[@Bluepuertorican5]

This video legit gave me the inspiration to minimize my Pantheon to 3 gods cause I want to have less gods and more “titan-like” creatures as well.

[@EgoreTR13]

"Lesser Deities have no gyatt, L rizz and get mogged by Sigma, Intermediate and Greater Gods... Skibbidi."

[@ThelordHayden34]

I’m 16 and I don’t even know what that meant

[@zero_ehxe]

I’m 40 and didn’t get any of that, either. I’m sure there’s a sweet-spot somewhere… Maybe someone in their thirties is “ROTFL” right now?

[@TheRetroBassist]

I'm 38 and I have no idea what he meant with all that gibberish lol.

[@DiannaManz-ts4vk]

Must be Thieves’ Cant. 😂

[@thedoomslayer5863]

It's for the brain rotted TikTok zoomer gen.

[@tigerfalco]

"No god of Blacksmithing" - Hephaestus would like to have a word.

[@killianjoyus7903]

I don’t know if Pointyhat noticed or not, but he totally skipped Forge domain when he was going through his gods

[@philipgibson2643]

Yeah noticed that too. Maybe putting it under the sun God's creation aspect

[@aengusdedanann181]

@@killianjoyus7903 30:39

[@Abedeuss]

There's SEVERAL gods of blacksmithing. Hell, I think Dwarves have at least two or three.

[@irvs5922]

@@killianjoyus7903he literally placed it under the second aspect of the moon god

[@IHaveAName1824]

"is vaugly aware of the concept of the sea" killed me

[@Wyvernil]

"D&D has too many gods" could really translate as "The Forgotten Realms has too many gods". I recall that they did try to pare down the number of gods in 4th Edition Forgotten Realms, but people hated it, so they walked it back in 5E. The number of redundant gods could be chalked up to alignment; there's room for both the malevolent death god that wants to extinguish all life and replace it with undead, and the benign death god that sees undeath as an abomination. It's hard to play as a benign cleric of death when the evil death god is the only option.

[@samfish2550]

I will say when you break it down more to a-c from here, d-i from there, ect. Different races and cultures..... Shame we don't ever see them pair them down into pantheons. Plus you could then frame God's that don't fit as part of a obscure/forgotten/dead pantheon. Then it makes sense why there aren't many worshipers.

[@aetherkid]

I like having gods claim to be all-powerful deities of death, but they're actually petty little things. Stronger than any mortal, sure, but really Just Some Dude (tm) bragging. Explains why there are 500 gods. It's just 500 strong dudes with ego problems, not OmniPotent Omniscient Badasses.

[@samfish2550]

@@aetherkid that explains why they exist but it still raises questions about why and where they are worshipped. Though that is just a general issue with evil gods. Like Orcus for example. Man is allergic to the idea of having good pr. I like to try to add to it because I find head cannoning what kinda propaganda a cult as stupid and unrewardingly self sabotageing as his would use to snare new members. Those explanations are just that though, and as a result of us cults and their members always just feel like one dimensional goons. (For those curious about how I run him, it's less based on him being different than he is, but in him being an honest and egalitarian god of death. He tells no lies, demands of you openly and without compromise. But death and undeath as he offers it is mindless, quiet, numb, and neutral. No more cruel kings, no fear for your soul due to not being able to afford proper burial rights. Simply numb, eternal existence free of want, fear, pain, bias, discrimination and cruelty.)

[@brookejon3695]

Easy, simple solution. All the gods of death are one god. There are different expressions of and perspectives on that god. Different cultures may even have different names for that god, but the entity receiving their worship/fear is the same guy. Now you've got your death cult maniacs and your natural order folks worshipping the same guy. Y'know, like how real religions work.

[@chronoatog5650]

Yep, hit the nail with the issue. I feel a big issue with pointed hat is his videos pretty much feels like he only knows of Faerun. Faerun 5e (less then 3)- 233 gods Eberron: 25 gods Greyhawk: 20 gods

[@jbraborn]

"Maybe one day we'll do Mechanus" Can that day be tomorrow? Mechanus is dope

[@owlboy_9995]

Excellent video. Beautifully produced. Visually stimulating next level memes & witty repartee. Tip of the fedora to your organization. This is really primo caliber KZbin here. …but…it’s “couldn’t care less”. ❤️

[@LiminalQueenMedia]

RIP Sophie indeed. I really feel like she was one or two more albums from breaking through to mainstream

[@NexxtTimeDontMiss]

Never heard of her

[@LiminalQueenMedia]

@@NexxtTimeDontMiss You should give her discography a listen. Its awesome

[@leonardoromano7275]

​@@NexxtTimeDontMissshe is the creator of Hyperpop, she produced for many important artists and she unfortunately passed falling from a roof trying to take a photo of the moon

[@frostynoms5517]

Rest in peace Sophie :(((

[@TheGlader2]

I used gods in my D&D games as theme parks basically, they'd have their own cities or temples and the party could buy thematic items from gift shops at the exits where you can buy overly priced but sometimes useful magical items. Oh, but for my Cleric I would have their god give them quests, which doing these quests would give them special points which they could spend on thematic items like the ones in the gift shops, but instead of buying them you can get them through godly favor basically. Also Pointy Hat's art is really good, if you read this keep up the good work.

[@StefanoTheBrazilian]

I am currently running two games in the Forgotten Realms. In the first one that's nearly it's end, nearly all the Gods are suffering from a Plague (they literally just found Loviatar's nearly deceased body in the last session) and since we don't have any clerics on that group, it's easy to keep it simpler. In this campaign the greater deities that aren't dying, are fighting to keep reality stable enough (like Mystra, who's using all her power to keep the weave from collapsing yet again) so the players have only themselves and thr lovecraftian-esque outer-goddes of Hope (my own creation) to help them. In the second campaign, the villain is just a dude who wants the party to get lots and lots of artifacts, just so he can rule his specific part of the world (imagine him as Victor Von Doom) which is something most gods don't need to worry about, except by three specific deities which have some interest in either the dude or the artifacts that he's asking the psrty to collect.

[@michaelhockman3420]

Asking your players to make the lore for the deity they worship is way more fun then you might think! It’s great and takes a lot of pressure off of you to create something perfect for your game.

[@apnapalm]

i know this is my 3rd comment on this video, but every time i watch him, i am blown away by how well written and edited pointy hat's videos are. its honestly some of my favourite on youtube period.

[@zero_ehxe]

What is the KZbin etiquette on this? Because I comment on videos as I watch them, so I find myself in your situation often 😅

[@shay212]

One of my friends made a character who was a daughter of Umberlee. She was basically lawful evil (her character sheet said good neutral, but we all knew lol), constantly finding npcs to sign contracts with her mom despite hating her because she was a terrible mom. But she also wanted to find a way to overthrow her, but settled for taking over the carnival she worked at and dating her long time crush. She wouldn’t admit anyone in the party was her friend, BUT, she said she’d give us a discount on admission. Which was the equivalent of giving us all friendship bracelets. She’s also the reason my druids companion badger became a warlock with one attack per combat encounter lol it was so much fun.

[@justalilchilly8501]

My world, The Cairn, only has one god. The Void. It is where everyone gets there magic from, it controls everything, yet it has no physical form and cannot be directly communicated with. Eventually it is going to get tired and make some smaller gods to keep things running while it takes a nap, and I love the idea of “The God of… that mountain over there idk” because that is totally the way The Void would handle it. It has so much care for the world that it would definitely make thousands of gods for a type of item or specific place.

[@rohancooray194]

Similar to the Voids in Dishonored and Divinity: Original Sin 2! Although you've got your own take on it where it can choose to create what it wishes, rather than being an entirely unconscious force.

[@justalilchilly8501]

@@rohancooray194 Something I think is kinda funny, I started making my world and The Void, and not even a week later I got Dishonored 2. The Void in The Cairn was originally just my thing, but now it has become partly inspired by The Void in Dishonored. The main difference is that, in Dishonored, most people fear The Void, or at least the witches that get their power from it. In my world, it is accepted as part of life. It is seen less as a “god” per say, and more so a force of nature that can somewhat be reasoned with.

[@Redbean3141]

That's my idea now

[@justalilchilly8501]

@@Redbean3141 Nooooooooooooo

[@Jenn-lq9yu]

Also in regards to the gods not getting directly involved with major mortal threats like BBEG Wizard threatening world domination, in the Forgotten Realms Ao the Overgod has forbidden the gods from directly intervening in the material plane or in mortal affairs. Ao is basically the DM of the Forgotten Realms and can literally strip a god's entire portfolio and power with a snap of his fingers, no matter how powerful that god is. So disobeying him and directly interfering with the mortal realm is basically a death sentence for a god. For context, the Time of Troubles when the gods were all made mortal and a shit load of them died was literally Ao grounding the gods for stealing his fancy stone tablets that actually didn't matter at all, but he was just mad that they did it.

[@ricucci-hillmusic]

The second option just sounds like “Make a trio of gods and they’re all Hermes with 100 domains* and I’m here for it.

[@rsparks1104]

I actually did the "Level 20 party kills a god" thing. It was the end of about 15 years of regular campaigning, in which Tharizdun had been mentioned in whispers as the big bad. After a massive protracted adventure in the Astral Sea, where my players were searching for an answer to the sudden invasion of ancient demons across the planes, they wound up in the Abyss- the *bottom* of the Abyss, where Obox-ob, leader of the obyriths, and his army were waiting in a chamber above the chained body of Tharizdun for the players to arrive, so he could perform a ritual to spread his maddening influence across the universe. During the fight, he wound up using the Jathiman dagger (an ancient artifact said to be able to kill a god) to free a small aspect of Tharizdun, siccing him on the players. What followed was a knock-down dragout fight of truly epic proportions that ended when the bard flew across the battlefield and planted the dagger in the avatar, earning him the moniker "Godslayer." The final showdown took three full sessions from start to finish, including multiple plot twists, important character deaths, and an Avengers portals moment where everyone the players had helped on their journeys showed up to provide backup. It's not something you can just plop into a campaign, but there's something to be said for just how dramatic a showdown with a literal god can be.

[@anthonydarwolf6061]

Umberlee campaign idea: Umberlee has made a deal with a group of high priests to consolidate her power over the sea. Basically, the priests force coastal people to worship her and donate gold to her temples, giving Umberlee more power. The priests will get a cut of the gold and she leaves their extravagant ships alone. She gets so powerful that many minor sea gods get worried and start a proxy war with her, choosing those they deem worthy to take down the high priests and try to get local kings to banish the warship of Umberlee.

[@Noxamilian]

i fixed the god issue in my own campaign with literally doing the unthinkable and creating a "great old one" who feasts on the flesh of the gods and had killed and eaten all but a couple of gods in the distant past, but in the present is trapped within a sword and that sword was being weilded by my hexblade warlock player. we had a good time with that idea

[@josephperez2004]

13:43 Yeah, that was my 4e Campaign. It got pretty far but never finished. Basically had three Gods (Asmodeus, the Raven Queen, and Zehir) who were secretly linked to the players. They didn't find out until the late campaign and the plan was to have them resurrect a forgotten god (who was the Raven Queen's lover, Asmodeus' master, and Zehir's greatest kill) to help save the world.

[@Daron-h3b]

Gods, finally! I had so many conversations with my DM what is God in dnd

[@scotthuffman3462]

Future campaign idea: Too many gods in Faerun. Gotta thin out their numbers.

[@kitcobb6046]

Gorr the God-Butcher in the Forgotten Realms

[@alguienanonimo6455]

OH MY GOD I JUST GOT HOME AND WAS GONNA START WRITING A GOD-CENTERED CAMPAIGN (sorry for bad english i'm ñ language)

[@danielbn1558]

Él también lo es, así que aunque comentes en español si lo lee lo entenderá

[@alguienanonimo6455]

@@danielbn1558 no sabía ese dato jajgjajdjsj

[@ChrisTomalty]

I love you so much I’m currently pulling my teeth building a pantheon for my homebrew setting and this snapped some things into place. You might enjoy an article series called Practical Polytheism, which is a fun exploration of how the concepts behind polytheism can trip us up as DMs when we’ve only experienced monotheist societies. It crystallized how I’ve felt about CR’s most recent campaign and the weird way they treat the gods as kind of optional. Polytheistic societies aren’t concerned with if they like their gods - worship revolves around the public completion of ritual rather than personal conviction. If you’re impious, you’re not just someone who’s chosen to not prioritize spirituality, you’re putting your whole community’s relationship with gods at risk. Umberlee is a great example in this vein, but the traditional example of Ares. No one likes Ares, but you have to deal with him.

[@MsAirnation]

Yes! I've also read this and it helps so much. Gods were more like natural phenomenon you had to deal with rather than people to have a relationship to

[@jeremiahthemessiah]

Another banger this has helped so much I got so stuck with my home brew when one of my players expressed such a big interest in religion and gods and without going overboard I really wanted to include it- fantastic as always

[@yummyfrostboro2934]

He was so brave for this one, the variety of settings across the community at large is a treasure.

[@AshaCrone]

Honestly, makes me happy with places like Eberron- the religion tends to reflect the way people actually worship, and the only person who knows if the gods are even remotely real is the DM. That makes faith a genuinely important thing to having cleric powers, but it means that there are places for schism, for different interpretations, and for there to be faiths and paths of divine power that are not driven by anthropomorphic personifications. It really makes things more interesting and mysterious.

[@irinaiturri]

I prefer much more this approach

[@chronoatog5650]

I feel the issue is pointed hat only talks about Faerun, and wants a setting like Eberron/Greyhawk which are less gods (like sub 25 each) and all have more of a hand in the setting. Faerun is generally made so you can have a DM/players quickly understand the world/faiths/etc, but yeah doesn't make sense.

[@AshaCrone]

@@chronoatog5650 Faerun and the Forgotten Realms got popular because of the books and everything sort of snowballed. It’s a dozen different settings in a trench coat at this point with all of the gods being real without any real thought of how this would work. Ironically this kinda reminds me of the problem of divine hiddenness- why don’t gods make their will known in obvious and unambiguous ways in the real world? And that’s why it’s never actually a thing in the FR- we simply have no idea what a world with active gods would look like. But the gods are present because so much mythology is used as an inspiration in DnD. Tiamat is a Babylonian goddess for heaven’s sake, lol. But since it’s a mishmash and the gods have to be unequivocally real, we get the mess in Faerun.

[@Boggboy]

Pointy Hat makes a god of darkness, sleep, death and sex, gives them the Trickery and Death domains, and tries to convince us he didn't do all this just for an extremely elaborate "la petite mort" joke.

[@SicklySeraph]

I was interested in writing a campign setting where all the old gods stopped existing with new ones taking their place so this perfect timing!

[@bikuta9804]

My favorite way of making gods follows the "few but powerul" idea, they're so powerful that they can't touch their creations, having to live in an astral plane who only they have access to and manifesting on the material plane with only a .1% of their power, thus, making them way stronger than any lvl 20 player, but still weak enough so that their presence doesn't collapse their creation, wich in turn, leaves them weak enough where a cult could capture and "kill" it. This way, they don't feel like plot holes and the "can't touch their creations" make space for many story ideas about the relation of the gods and the world

[@spicysalad3013]

I have a story where gods can live together in "the void" or live in their individual creations, but they can't touch each other's creations cos it's the equivalent of sticking your hand in someone's skull and vigorously stirring their brains around - NOT GOOD. So if a world-ending problem comes up, each god is forced to work alone with just the help of whatever lesser gods, demigods, clerics or whatever they've been able to amass. They can talk to each other pretty freely and brainstorm solutions, but the actual *doing* is down to one god and their own resources by necessity. helps answers the question of "why can't they just ask someone for help" "because the world will implode and the god might go mad from the trauma, thems the rules and nobody can change them" technically one god could send an army of mortals to help another, but coordinating that is super dangerous as well and might leave the helping god vulnerable to an attack of their own

[@bikuta9804]

@@spicysalad3013 That's such an amazing idea omg, thank you so much for sharing it, i'll definely adapt into my god baking recipe

[@petre1758]

I actually have that in my setting, kind a. A ton of dnd gods are fully canon, but all of them are gods of concepts, like murder or self sacrifice, etc, and because they are so abstract they cannot manifest in the material realm at all, and can basically only express themselves through their clerics. And planar travel is rare and dangerous. But instead I rebranded Demigods as basically Shinto deities. So while a god of forrests is locked out of the material for being too vague, a god of a particular forrest is right there, in the forrest.

[@corkscrewfork]

I'm super happy this video exists! I needed a lot of the information you presented, because my first ever campaign is going to have a big mystery centered around the gods and their lack of involvement. This gave me not only more information to keep in mind when dealing with the Old Gods, but also things to keep in mind while making the new ones!

[@alchemicpink2392]

Your Modron assumption re:Enunciation was correct. This audiovisual medium is within Mechanusian Compliance Code and therefore approved for Mechanus-wide broadcast.

[@MrBlack0950]

my personal method is to devide the pantheon into lesser gods, which are the local gods of petty things, and then the greater gods who are so powerful and indifferent that if you are doing something to attract their attention, you're doing something VERY wrong. the lesser gods get more screen time, and I've never actually had anyone manage to bring a greater god into the forefront of the story, they exist more for the abstract faith of a god that exists but works in "mysterious ways"

[@Alahyana]

The only campaign I was that mentioned a lot of gods is one 20 years ago where one police officer isekaid in our campaing (a guy, who is a police officer, was included way after we began the campaign) and he was really curious about this new world, so he asked about the gods and offended Selune and Shar because he confused them with each other! It was a crazy campaign that , for some reason, the group ended in a type of spaceship and the DM gave up!

[@MatthewLickers]

The semi-canon explanation in the *standard* D&D multiverse is kind of that there are theoretically infinite material planes but only the set amount of outer planes. Like Krynnspace, Realmspace, Greyspace, etc are all within the same setting and can be traveled between via Spelljammers or spells. So yeah there are a ton of gods there’s also a ton of problems going on at the same time so they’ve kinda got to pick and choose what they’re putting their attention into. Not to mention that each Material plane will be providing each god different amounts of worship and granting different amounts of power in their respective space

[@MatthewLickers]

And there’s also something about AO restricting how much the gods are allowed to interfere with the world as well

[@Necroskull00]

I make my own gods but have them have dual aspects, using alignment a Lawful good god can be Lawful neutral and Lawful evil because they represent the full spectrum of said domains.

[@matiasriquelmejara7367]

Undoubtedly you're remarkably good at those edits, I love the flair you put on these videos. Keep the amazing work!

[@8-7-styx94]

Whenever someone asks me as the DM why the gods can't or won't interfere I explain that while the gods are very much aware of the evil sorcerer only a limited number of their faithful are. So intervening on their behalf (in the mortal realm) is impossible because so small of a subsection of the populace is asking for help. If a much larger section of their following were to ask for help, they would. Which ties in nicely because if we're talking greater deities it would take half a continent asking the same thing for them to jump in. But it opens the way for some smaller deities to hop in and help out. If a requirement for interfering with mortals is the majority of the faithful themselves asking for it, it becomes an impractical goal but still a somewhat realistic one.

[@hugmonger]

Alright so I haven't gotten to the Twist but my advice for DMs to make the gods feel more meaningful is to replace "You succeed" or "you've failed" is with brief flavor snippets like "Pelor has blessed you" and sometimes even do so when the player knows they would have failed.

[@WouldbeSage]

Okay. But why doesn't Pelor just HANDLE shit himself?

[@hugmonger]

@@WouldbeSage You didn;t grow up religious did you? Or read much religious fiction.... Gods don't act outside their domain... and sure the saying goes "Everything under the sun is the domain of Pelor" but thats just a saying. You are blessed under the light of Pelor, but Pelor isn't some omnipresent titan who can just womp baddies himself, it is in the hands of the faithful that Pelor must put his hopes. Much like the River Kami in Shinto don't really leave their river's channel, Pelor can only be found in the heart of the faithful in the visage of the sun.

[@GretchenCooper]

Very informative video! I stumbled upon both of your solutions in my own worldbuilding endeavors (not a DM, just a worldbuilder), with a pantheon of angels in my sci-fantasy world, and a pantheon of four very powerful gods for my medieval fantasy. It's easy to get caught up in creating too many gods, so it's good to see creators helping fellow creators like this.

[@floofzykitty5072]

The Ginny D video where she tackles the misconception of "Artificers are too hard to fit into my world!!" honestly pairs well with this video when you consider that there's clerics and warlocks over here forcing you to not only have a pantheon/circle of gods and demons, but also ones that preside over specific concepts.

[@brianhowe201]

Clerics have been a problem for me honestly. It means that the setting needs a pantheon or gods that specifically give powers. This is a problem, because how magic works can really flavor a setting. Really the main classes and races of dnd kind of dictate a lot of the worldbuilding.

[@floofzykitty5072]

@@brianhowe201 Yeah in the setting I made, people rely mostly on faith since gods haven't been witnessed in a long time after most of them were killed. I really wanted to do a setting where all the gods were dead, but I had someone who wanted to play a cleric so I had to make some changes.

[@DiogoVincenzi]

@@floofzykitty5072 You could say that the divine energy comes from within. Maybe the character believes in some kind of entity, but it's their own faith that fuels their powers. This way you don't need a pantheon. I'd even let the player create the entity their character believe in. Could be an interesting quest at some point, to have said entity show up and just be a total asshole. Party defeats it, and then the cleric goes through a crisis of faith.

[@brianhowe201]

In one setting, I've thought about blending all of the different types of magic together in a kind of spiritual science. There's no hard line between wizards, clerics, and druids. it's mostly areas of study and philosophy. Also, there's faint magic inherent in everything. People sometimes tap into it without knowing, like people with uncanny intuition or empathy, or physical feats. And it allows people to grow past their normal limits. And objects can become imbued with power through strength of spirit and action.

[@forkme3165]

Bold of you to assume I allow Clerics or Warlocks either. Or Paladins, Rangers, Sorcerers, Wizards, Monks, Rogues, Barbarians, or Fighters. Or even play D&D. Very Bold.

[@DanielMWJ]

16:40 One thing to consider about having only two gods using you and the villain as proxies: Just because "your god" or "their god" are the only ones appearing, it doesn't mean the rest of their pantheons or domain allies aren't lending them power since it's *their* champions that are in position. Sure, they're still in the god pen, but them covering for your god to stick their neck out feels more satisfying than the other explanations besides concurrent apocalypses.

[@sinisternorimaki]

16:20 Answer: Because they are gods! You are lucky if even one of them directly notices you, let alone two or three. A lot of time they don't even pay attention to their own children, much less some random mortals!

[@FerretyZebra]

I wasn't prepared for the 10d4 psyquic damage on 1:20

[@Firstgenamerican21]

Our DM had the regular dnd pantheon in it. He decided to show that all the good gods were helping by doing something like in Greek myths. Each major and intermediate god gave one person in the party something until the whole group was covered.

[@fearjunkie]

I am so happy you've covered this. So many fantasy worldbuilding attempts burned out bc I struggled to define its gods.

[@llamatronian101]

Something I like about these two sun and moon deities is that there is a gap. The new moon implies, to me, a discontinuity where something foreign can leak into the world. Eclipses even more so.

[@thearchives1094]

1:25, my brain cells were justs slaughted by pointy hat, I demand Justice

[@Ghosty_YT307]

Same thing here

[@Saber9933]

Skipped the czepeku plug but i'm never mad to see it. They really do have a ridiculous offering and I love them.

[@joshuastamos2213]

I think that we sometimes forget that Greek mythology also had a lot of small gods, like gods of a single river ect.

[@tyrant351]

One thing I have decided to do with my "Gods" is that most of them are just universal forces made manifest. The only true gods basically never interact with mortals, they're preoccupied with maintaining their respective realms. Basically the FF14 approach of "Gods" vs "Primals" (i have not played Endwalker do not come @ me) The only people who can make True Gods interact with the Material Plane are the absolute nutcases who try to force shit to interact that shouldn't interact, such as trying to pull the Material Plane into the Fire Plane.

[@o_double_t_o]

This video is pulling me back into your content! Now I am feeling inspired to focus on my prep for a new table. Thanks!!

[@perilouspancakes]

pointy hat my beloved

[@mindlessscientist3772]

If you don't use either of these methods for any reason in your games, and want to explain the lack of gods, here are 2 major things to think about. 1. Power level: a very strong god has msny worshippers, even across many worlds if you use normal D&D cosmology. This means that if a whole city of people who worshipped them once a week dies, it's not too big a deal to most of them, so they won't send help. Now if it was a whole city of zealous worshippers who dedicated their lives to that God, now you have their attention. Gods aren't going to lend their aid in something that doesn't affect them, so if the story doesn't do so then of course they don't show up 2. Specialization. Even the most powerful gods are still pretty specific. The goddess of crops might have more power than any other god because almost every society farms, but it doesn't mean she can control anything that's not crops. Violent warband is coming to kill her most devout worshippers? She can't send a warband of angels against them, she doesn't have war angels. Most she can do is make the corn into healing portions. So there's some of the major reasons most gods won't get involved in the game's problems. Very few both care, and can do something about it!

[@maxblake5564]

Your mention of animism reminded me that in canon, Eberron druids are animistic. The druids of Eberron literally see every element of the natural world as possessing a spiritual essence, and they use their spells to communicate with these spirits. Check out the Player’s Handbook for further information.

[@dicyanoacetylene6220]

On one hand, it makes sense for there to be so many gods, to the point that they overlap in their domains octuply, as every culture would end up creating their own pantheon to explain the the same world, like how it happened in our world. On the other hand, if the world was created by a deity/multiple deities that are able to communicate with their creations, then every culture should be able to know them. This gets even more confusing when you consider that those of significant cosmic importance, are timeless or otherwise observe an entirely different flow of time from the rest of us, where they can be affected by things that have yet to happen because they already have just not for the mortals. And things like belief in something making it real. So you end up with the original creation pantheon at the start of time running into deities from a culture yet to exist, all because that culture considered their deity to be an original creator deity, and so it always was. Or you have all these individual culturally relevant pantheons suddenly finding themselves merging with other gods and entirely new ones popping out of nowhere, and not to forget the entirely new over deity whose dream we are all just an insignificant speck on, all because the many different cultures decide to rationalize their different beliefs into a coherent narrative. And both of those stories are happening at the same time. Why yes, I did say "or" implying that it is either option 1 *OR* option 2. And, it is. But it is also both. Why? If there ever was an explanation, someone thought it out of existence.

[@CursedCommentaries]

It makes sense that the gods wouldent freak out everytime the world is in danger.people irl are like that and there is more than one world anyway lol

[@travusfaulkner1461]

Thanks for getting to that issue. I can't wait to look at this.

[@travusfaulkner1461]

Now, the next issue is teleportation and transportation. I am trying to figure out steam where steam engines, Horse powered, or magically powered vehicles. A way that a player can customize their characters' mobile homes. Creating a place that is the characters' a ways of travel. Some kind of cost for these modifications is that some are like a 3 charge or once every week. Giving a sense of time in the game. magical properties from a battle Smith black Smith. That should help to set a global economy. Giving gold a deeper value. Making it accessible to all players at any point in the game but maybe at level +3 medium difficulty and level +6 affordable. Another idea with traveling between planes Do it in a similar way with my idea with vehicles but in a different way being able to buy reality in different planes. It turns into the port keys to that place once every week you are able to build a home for the traveler, giving a sense of time and a hord in the game.

[@DawsonDDestroyer]

This concept covers the clerics domains but ignores; Ocean/Water, Secrets, Lies/Trickery, Shadows/Darkness, Air/Sky, Fire, Wealth/Prosperity, Earth, Seasons (Winter, Summer, Fall, Spring), Destruction or Natural Disasters/Calamity, Fate/Time, The Hunt, Hope, Justice, Love/Lust, Luck, Strength(physical), Trade, Travel, Twilight/Eclipse, Dream, as well as more generally good and evil domains such as; Tyranny, Vengeance, Torment, Suffering/Strife, Pride, Joy, Justice, Humility, Hatred, Greed, Generosity, Freedom, Envy, Corruption, Community, Chaos, Balance, and Animals(Not Exactly Nature). Sure you could tag a few of these as aspects of these gods but you would almost need to make one good and one evil or have them just have evil aspects which while it would have less bloat than overlapping gods it is much more confusing to have two gods with 12 aspects each some of which are incredibly evil. Not to mention you're ignoring monsters in their entirety, dragons are actual godly offspring, Tiamat is a god to the Chromatic Dragons while Bahamut is god to Metallic. Other monsters also have creator gods like the giants. Asmodeus and Vecna are two non-god beings that ascended to god-hood, I know if you craft your own world these characters can just not exist but you can't deny they're integral parts to understanding gods in DND, they don't all have to be good, Orcs and Goblins may worship different gods to Humans and Elves, if you want to erase their creator gods that's fine but it's kind of crazy to assume they follow the same two major deities. Even looking at the Yuan-Ti their whole business already revolves around a god of Multiple aspects heavily tied to snakes. And Kuo Toa literally believe their gods into existence. If real life worked with DND logic where belief created the gods and gave them power, we would have the same level of bloat if not more, but gods themselves would likely be heavily tied to the regions where their believers are most concentrated. Think of it like a band, they're not gonna play a concert where they have no fans but that doesn't mean they don't play concerts. Gods not being as worshipped in the area as well as the presence of evil gods stacked on top of the limited amount of intervention gods are allowed to do cause for only the most religiously devout to be heard. If you had 1 cleric in the party their god is being channeled through them, If you through a party of 5 clerics/paladins with 5 different gods then you will likely have 5 gods intervene. It's the players themselves that channel the gods power so the lack of a follower to act as a conduit is more than enough of an excuse for lack of a gods intervention. Additionally I want to add, If a character plays a fighter but roleplays religious activities such as praying every night before bed, leaving symbols of their god around, and openly fighting in their gods name, when Big Bad Wizard is gonna destroy the world you best believe that fighters god should help(assuming the DM is competent and any cleric or paladin doesn't feel as if their toes are stepped on), or likewise a Warlock if fervent in their veneration of their Patron should absolutely get help the same as a cleric. Also your idea lacks the concept that everyone always believes their god built them in their image. Elves will believe their gods are elven, Humans likewise, and Orcs will be no different. In dnd Lore if there was 1 god that created all the races that god would likely be split apart into several lesser versions to fit the ideals and visual preference of each race. And you seem to have ignored the part that is what allows evil gods to exist in the first place, Worshippers isn't the only way God's can maintain their power, The level or Worship itself effects the gods power. Ritual sacrifice and great deeds made in a gods name help bolster their power far more than just ordinary worship, so gods, particularly evil ones, with very few followers relative to other gods can still be as powerful as them. I think your idea would work as the two gods you made are the greater deities of the world, perhaps you can give an additional aspect to each one, the sun getting positive domains and the moon getting more evil domains for lesser sects or cults worshipping them. Then you can add the intermediate deities which can hold maybe as much power as a single aspect of the greater deities but having significantly more of them and maybe making some creation lore specific gods like Tiamate and the all father, more involved gods. Gods that are core aspects of a race like Lilith, Maglubiyet, Asmodeus, Bahamut, Gruumsh, Corellon, Etc... could all be kept as race specific gods as their creators (you can make your own but I just listed names), perhaps even allowing them to hold 1 or 2 of the same domains out of 3 or 4 total Domains each. And then have the Lesser Deities that only hold 1 domain each and fill out the rest of the unfulfilled Domains. Even that system just doesn't work well since God's having races makes so much more sense. Having this much bloat makes sense, so many different cultures and creator gods within the lore it only makes sense that the different cultures developed different religions. If you took just a handful of Real world cultures you could get more gods than what is in dnd, Just take Christianity, Norse, Greek(Or Roman), and Shinto. Christianity would give you a "True God" like Ao and sort of Asmodeus as Satan as just a main two. Then Greek has 12 Main gods that could be greater deities, as well as others which reach a total of at least 58 many of which hold the same domains at the same times. Then adding in norse with another 66 total, 13 of which are agreed to be the major ones. and lastly Shinto which throws in (from what google tells me) an extra 8 Million, 65 of which are considered the Main Gods ignoring the extra Kami. Ignoring the Kami that gives a total of 191 Gods between four different cultures. In dnd I could find over 50 fully unique PLAYABLE races ignoring halves or things like the different elements of genasi or variants of elves. Each one has thousands of years of history from the dawn of time likely having crafted their own religious beliefs, following an average we could see well over 2000 unique gods belonging to 50 pantheons basing it off real humans. This is also ignoring monsters like Dragons, Giants, and other monstrous races that are intelligent but not playable in official dnd material. It would make sense over time for a lot of these gods to meld into one another through thousands of years or for holes in some cultures be filled by others until the bloat is greatly reduced as gods would likely fight for dominion over their domains in a world they can interact with this would be double effective. I'd like to see an early dnd world where the DND equivalent of Zues Vs Odin takes place in which all mortals can spectate so in the end of the battle winner takes all until a more Ordinary Pantheon Size is reached. In total I counted a little over 150 Dnd Gods (In the forgotten Realms) but keep in mind almost every major race, monster or humanoid, all had their own Mini Pantheons with a handful of gods. Keep in mind most of these gods are likely Lesser or Intermediate meaning they have less strength over their domains and are less capable of interacting with the material plane, and many gods are largely evil and wouldn't help the players. Many are also neutral or wouldn't want to interfere with the material plane for their own reasons. Majority of Gods wouldn't care if some super powerful Evil Lich was attempting to take over the world, why would the god of Oozes (who is also a Demon Lord in the abyss) care about the material plane? Why would the main god of Goblins Care if they're enslaved by the Evil Lich(if they die sooner they get to serve him in the after life sooner)? Asmodeus would likely be happen as more death and oppression means it's easier to get souls into the hells to fight the blood war and it's easier to offer deals to Mortals who are in worse situations. Evil gods like Bane would be delighted in a world so full of strife. Mystra has no reason to stop a powerful Lich, as they're likely studying to further Magic and thus an asset to her more than 100,000 commoners killed by the lich could be. It isn't just plot convenience to not have most gods help, even to have one help is a world defining moment worthy of the heroes. I understand the complaining about the bloat within dnd gods but it makes sense to have 10x the amount of gods seeing as there is so many cultures in the world, humans alone with no tangible intervention created thousands of gods before our total population reached 1 billion. I'm pretty sure there was a large chunk of time in DND lore where gods literally walked on earth until they were eventually banned from the material plane, in which mortals literally helped kill gods. I could keep yapping on and on about how much sense it makes but I've already written a book nobody will read so I will conclude my Yapping session.

[@bencox3641]

You can just give all of the evil domains to a stand-in for Satan. My problem with having so many gods for DND is that it doesn't make sense for any kind of serious setting that is based on medieval Europe like most fantasy. So much of the social paradigm of that time period was based on the Catholic Church and its beliefs that a pseudo feudal society like most fantasy kingdoms and empires won't even be able to function under a polytheistic religion.