I am trying to pick a unique deity for 2 of my characters and have a few questions regarding this topic:
1) What effect does a deity have on your character? Can you choose to be an athesist? Pros/Cons, please.
2) Are deities tangible? Meaning are you able to interact with them?
3) Can you change your deity?
I would also like to hear some deity recommendations you might have for my 2 characters. I am ok with them not being traditional to the race I selected:
Obsidian: CG Female Drow Warlock. I am not interested in Lolth as she seems to be CE and my character is struggling to balance her desire to be "good" with the desire to do whatever she pleases. My character is often found at the bottom of a bottle, gambling, or spending her parents fortune in some boutique store. SOMETIMES she might pass a coin to an urchin or two. I would like a deity who might encourage these selfish desires.
Levine: LE Female Blue Dragonborn Barbarian. I haven't developed this character as much but I am picturing her as an opportunistic soldier. She obeys orders but everything in between is grey. I am looking for a Thor/Zeus-like deity to match with her natural lightning ability.
Thank you for the input!
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“Magic is distilled laziness. Put that on my gravestone.” ― Kurtis J. Wiebe, High Fantasies
1) They have a lot of effects yes you can choose to be an atheist but have a deity can grant divine intervention or even bargaining. Pro is that if you have a good deity they may or may not summon an angel for you if (DM’s discretion) you’ve done so much good and you need one more ounce of power left to fight against the BBEG. A bad one will steal your power or use you as eternal servant. Eg. A good Deity is the Raven Queen, serving her is neither good or bad, generally related for death.
Divine Intervention can range from the DM granting the sanctuary spell for you and your party due to your roleplay interacting with your deity and succeeding in such check or (DM’s discretion not needed at all if you’ve done something that beckons your deity to grant you that boon).
Bargaining can range from giving power to exchanging your life for another's. Eg. one party member is dead, you choose to sacrifice your life for his instead resurrecting that character and killing yours.
2) Yes, they can appear in anyway the DM describes them to be before you. Usually, during combat, they’d stop time and converse with you for either a bargain or grant a divine intervention.
3) Yes and no (DM's discretion), if you are very loyal and you change though there maybe consequences. Or if you’re a higher member of the caste.
There's actually a very not well known but infamous in the dnd community drow goddess that is good and her name is Eilistraee.
Eilistraee was the chaotic good drow (She can be quiet selfish Chaotic Good means act in what their conscience tells them to do so she isn't evil she just wants you to have no regard for laws and care for yourself) goddess of beauty, song, dance, freedom, moonlight, swordwork, and hunting, within the drow pantheon known as the Dark Seladrin She was the patroness and protector of the few dark elves who longed to return to the surface and live there, at peace with other races, and to abandon the endless conflicts and intrigues that dominated the lives of most drow. She was often referred to as the The Dark Maiden, the Lady of the Dance, or Lady Silverhair, and sometimes The Dark Dancer, among other titles Briefly, she was known as The Masked Lady, while her faith subsumed that of the Masked Lord Vhaeraun, her divine brother. Her name was pronounced variously as "EEL-iss-TRAY-yee",] "eel-ISS-tray-ee", "eel-iss-tray-yee", or "eil-iss-tray-yee"Eilistraee pronounced her own name "AISLE-iss-try-ee", while Elminster Aumar, Qilue Veladorn , and the rest of the Seven Sisters pronounced it "Isle-ISS-tree", even when addressing the goddess face to face.
1: Generally the deity your character worships doesn't matter unless your a cleric, maybe paladin and a handful of subclasses. So if it does affect something, its flavor and story and not mechanical. For example, were you go in the afterlife but at that point you've rolled up a new character.
Depending on the setting, ''Atheism'' is kind of impossible. If your in the Forgotten Realms, there's so much proof gods are real that you would have to be insane to think there weren't any. However, there's another word ( I'm forgetting what it is) for people who recognize the gods exist but refuse to believe that they actually are gods, instead they believe they are very powerful beings like primordials or elementals or stuff like that.
Meanwhile, a setting like Eberron has gods whose existence is a bit ambiguous despite there being people with divine magic. Mainly because those gods haven't physically manifested on the world. That and some gods in the settings are a bit of an abstract concept instead of a person, like the Silver Flame.
2: Again it depends on the setting, Forgotten Realms they technically are (well, their avatars are anyway), but it's rare.
3: Yep, if you worshipped a sea god because you were a sailor but move inland to become a farmer, it makes sense you would start worshipping the god of agriculture instead. Even Clerics can change their god, though in their case the new god is hopefully willing to lend you power. Paladins technically don't need gods in 5e.
I would like a deity who might encourage these selfish desires.
Just to make sure, you didn't mean to put selflessdesires?
If not then it sounds like she doesn't have a reason to have ''good'' desires in the first place. If it's a traditional Drow society, she should pretty evil from the get go since selfish is the norm. Even in a more neutral setting, if she REALLY wants to be selfish, she can just be. As for gods, I don't think we have enough to tell. generally someone who does whatever she pleases would CE so Lolth is unfortunately the best one.
If did mean selfless, then Eilistraee is the one to go for. Though if anyone found out you worshipped her, it would not end well for you.
She's a warlock so unless your pact is with a god it won't matter who you worship as long as whatever deal you made is fulfilled. though if your god and the type of deal you made conflict, it can make for good roleplay.
I am looking for a Thor/Zeus-like deity to match with her natural lightning ability.
Lawful alignments and storm gods tend not to mix. I can't really think of any that work here. Bane, god of tyranny might fit your character but he isn't a storm god.
Thank you for the input! I should have phrased it differently. The previous reply hit the nail on the head of what I was looking for.
"She can be quite selfish Chaotic Good means act in what their conscience tells them to do so she isn't evil she just wants you to have no regard for laws and care for yourself"
So not quite selfish but not quite selfless.
Why might it end badly? Haha, that warning makes me want to go this route even more.
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“Magic is distilled laziness. Put that on my gravestone.” ― Kurtis J. Wiebe, High Fantasies
Thank you for the input! I should have phrased it differently. The previous reply hit the nail on the head of what I was looking for.
"She can be quite selfish Chaotic Good means act in what their conscience tells them to do so she isn't evil she just wants you to have no regard for laws and care for yourself"
So not quite selfish but not quite selfless.
Why might it end badly? Haha, that warning makes me want to go this route even more.
Assuming it's a traditional Drow society, then any worship of a god that's not Lolth is very dangerous. Lolth want's complete control over the Drow, so worshipping a god whose agenda insists on tearing down everything Lolth has built would make you a prime target by anyone wanting Lolths favor. So basically 95% of Drow will want you dead and/or sacrificed, or at the very least captured if your city isn't as filled with Lolth crazed zealots.
1: Atheists in most D&D settings are either objectively insane or just plain stupid. Atheism is the active belief that gods are not real, and when you have classes that get actual magic power from gods (clerics) an individual has to be either incredibly ignorant, delusional, or just dumb to not at least acknowledge their existence. Some settings are exceptions to this, like Ravnica where the gods of that plane are dead and/or have left (to the point of being more like Great Old Ones, you can look up the Nephilim on the Magic the Gathering wiki if you're really interested) and clerics get their power from philosophical ideals that are revered (if not actively worshipped, like with the Orzhov church) such as life, order, and balance. But in a setting with gods, atheists are just dumb. A character can be non-religious and indifferent or even scornful of the gods of their world, but that is not what an atheist is. If a character is not a cleric there isn't any requirement for them to actively worship or otherwise revere a specific deity (though divine-adjacent classes like paladins or divine soul sorcerers mesh well with the practice, lore-wise), but unless they have an active disdain for the gods they probably have one or more they'll say a prayer to here and there, even if it's just privately without making it known to others. That being said, you don't have to be a divinely empowered priest (cleric) to revere a god or goddess and follow their philosophy as a guide to your goals, behavior, etc and there are enough of them in most settings that it usually isn't hard to find one that matches favorably with the character.
2: In most settings, deities do not manifest or take direct action in the Material Plane (or most other planes). They all do tangibly exist somewhere, most often one of the outer planes (like Mount Celestia, the Abyss, etc), or some private demiplane (which are often located within or adjacent to one of the outer planes or the Astral Sea, which is the interdimensional void either between planes of the "space" that the other planes float around in depending on the cosmology of your setting). Unless you have powerful magic (such as the plane shift spell) and, most likely, approval/permission to enter such a divine realm your character is not going to actually meet their god in person unless they somehow get said deity's attention and are brought to them by divine fiat (aka the DM says your god invites you into their actual house).
The most common explanation for why deities don't stroll about the Material Plane or regularly directly intervene in it's affairs is that the other gods don't let them. Either by some treaty or mutual threats, they do not directly meddle in mortal affairs because doing so would inevitably bring them into direct conflict with other gods, many of which aren't exactly on friendly terms with each other, and the ensuing divine throwdown would lay waste to everything they were trying to affect in the first place (much like how Godzilla ends up trashing the crap out of Tokyo every time he "saves" it from other kaiju), thus defeating the point of it all. So they act indirectly, be sending heralds and other agents such as celestials, fiends, various fey, etc and they grant powers to specific worshippers (clerics as well as, depending on how the lore works in a specific game, possibly paladins, divine soul sorcerers, or any other class with divine magic [which technically isn't a mechanical distinction in 5e like it was previously). Those agents act on their patron deity's behalf, spreading their philosophy and doing works according to their will. Personally, I like to have my cleric PCs explain their magic functioning by them acting as a conduit to channel their god's power into the Material Plane. Mechanically, divine intervention is a cleric class feature, and even at level 20 there's only a one in five chance that an extremely powerful (and presumably highly favored) servant of a deity is able to make the connection so that their god can more directly intervene (and even then it's up to DM fiat as to how it actually functions).
3: If you're meaning is "Can a character switch their worship to another god" then there isn't any reason they can't. Some religions may not take well to "deserters" or "heretics" and followers thereof may seek to punish the character, but actual worship is up to the individual. If a character is a cleric and actively gets their power from a god, then changing teams will probably (per DM discretion) require in character justification for why they've lost faith in the first deity and what has changed to make another god/goddess deem them worthy of serving as their annointed and empowered representative.
For the Dragonborn, I would suggest Kurtalmak. If you were to worship any draconic deity it would be him. Kurtalmak is the Kobold god of war and mining, he is put down as lawful evil but his character more describes a chaotic neutral. Although he is seen as vengeful, he stresses more on loyalty to the tribe(in your case, wherever she is from). Dragonborn don’t worship Bahamut because they do not believe that a dragon god can be good. But Kurtalmak is a Kobold god, being draconic but not a dragon.
Kurtalmak has direct ties to the material plane mostly because he is trapped there for eternity. He does not use Devine beings to do his bidding but relies on his mortal clerics to bring about his work. He was actually the first Kobold in existence. He was the king of a grand empire before Garl Glittergold, god of gnomes, caved in the roof to his capital city, killing most of the inhabitants inside, Kurtalmak survived and was transformed into a god by Io, the original god of dragons.
I am not sure what would happen if you decided to change deities.
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Hello explorers :)
I am trying to pick a unique deity for 2 of my characters and have a few questions regarding this topic:
1) What effect does a deity have on your character? Can you choose to be an athesist? Pros/Cons, please.
2) Are deities tangible? Meaning are you able to interact with them?
3) Can you change your deity?
I would also like to hear some deity recommendations you might have for my 2 characters. I am ok with them not being traditional to the race I selected:
Obsidian: CG Female Drow Warlock. I am not interested in Lolth as she seems to be CE and my character is struggling to balance her desire to be "good" with the desire to do whatever she pleases. My character is often found at the bottom of a bottle, gambling, or spending her parents fortune in some boutique store. SOMETIMES she might pass a coin to an urchin or two. I would like a deity who might encourage these selfish desires.
Levine: LE Female Blue Dragonborn Barbarian. I haven't developed this character as much but I am picturing her as an opportunistic soldier. She obeys orders but everything in between is grey. I am looking for a Thor/Zeus-like deity to match with her natural lightning ability.
Thank you for the input!
“Magic is distilled laziness. Put that on my gravestone.”
― Kurtis J. Wiebe, High Fantasies
1) They have a lot of effects yes you can choose to be an atheist but have a deity can grant divine intervention or even bargaining. Pro is that if you have a good deity they may or may not summon an angel for you if (DM’s discretion) you’ve done so much good and you need one more ounce of power left to fight against the BBEG. A bad one will steal your power or use you as eternal servant. Eg. A good Deity is the Raven Queen, serving her is neither good or bad, generally related for death.
Divine Intervention can range from the DM granting the sanctuary spell for you and your party due to your roleplay interacting with your deity and succeeding in such check or (DM’s discretion not needed at all if you’ve done something that beckons your deity to grant you that boon).
Bargaining can range from giving power to exchanging your life for another's. Eg. one party member is dead, you choose to sacrifice your life for his instead resurrecting that character and killing yours.
2) Yes, they can appear in anyway the DM describes them to be before you. Usually, during combat, they’d stop time and converse with you for either a bargain or grant a divine intervention.
3) Yes and no (DM's discretion), if you are very loyal and you change though there maybe consequences. Or if you’re a higher member of the caste.
There's actually a very not well known but infamous in the dnd community drow goddess that is good and her name is Eilistraee.
Eilistraee was the chaotic good drow (She can be quiet selfish Chaotic Good means act in what their conscience tells them to do so she isn't evil she just wants you to have no regard for laws and care for yourself) goddess of beauty, song, dance, freedom, moonlight, swordwork, and hunting, within the drow pantheon known as the Dark Seladrin She was the patroness and protector of the few dark elves who longed to return to the surface and live there, at peace with other races, and to abandon the endless conflicts and intrigues that dominated the lives of most drow. She was often referred to as the The Dark Maiden, the Lady of the Dance, or Lady Silverhair, and sometimes The Dark Dancer, among other titles Briefly, she was known as The Masked Lady, while her faith subsumed that of the Masked Lord Vhaeraun, her divine brother. Her name was pronounced variously as "EEL-iss-TRAY-yee",] "eel-ISS-tray-ee", "eel-iss-tray-yee", or "eil-iss-tray-yee"Eilistraee pronounced her own name "AISLE-iss-try-ee", while Elminster Aumar, Qilue Veladorn , and the rest of the Seven Sisters pronounced it "Isle-ISS-tree", even when addressing the goddess face to face.
Search Eilistraee forgotten realms for more info.
1: Generally the deity your character worships doesn't matter unless your a cleric, maybe paladin and a handful of subclasses. So if it does affect something, its flavor and story and not mechanical. For example, were you go in the afterlife but at that point you've rolled up a new character.
Depending on the setting, ''Atheism'' is kind of impossible. If your in the Forgotten Realms, there's so much proof gods are real that you would have to be insane to think there weren't any. However, there's another word ( I'm forgetting what it is) for people who recognize the gods exist but refuse to believe that they actually are gods, instead they believe they are very powerful beings like primordials or elementals or stuff like that.
Meanwhile, a setting like Eberron has gods whose existence is a bit ambiguous despite there being people with divine magic. Mainly because those gods haven't physically manifested on the world. That and some gods in the settings are a bit of an abstract concept instead of a person, like the Silver Flame.
2: Again it depends on the setting, Forgotten Realms they technically are (well, their avatars are anyway), but it's rare.
3: Yep, if you worshipped a sea god because you were a sailor but move inland to become a farmer, it makes sense you would start worshipping the god of agriculture instead. Even Clerics can change their god, though in their case the new god is hopefully willing to lend you power. Paladins technically don't need gods in 5e.
Just to make sure, you didn't mean to put selfless desires?
If not then it sounds like she doesn't have a reason to have ''good'' desires in the first place. If it's a traditional Drow society, she should pretty evil from the get go since selfish is the norm. Even in a more neutral setting, if she REALLY wants to be selfish, she can just be. As for gods, I don't think we have enough to tell. generally someone who does whatever she pleases would CE so Lolth is unfortunately the best one.
If did mean selfless, then Eilistraee is the one to go for. Though if anyone found out you worshipped her, it would not end well for you.
She's a warlock so unless your pact is with a god it won't matter who you worship as long as whatever deal you made is fulfilled. though if your god and the type of deal you made conflict, it can make for good roleplay.
Lawful alignments and storm gods tend not to mix. I can't really think of any that work here. Bane, god of tyranny might fit your character but he isn't a storm god.
It sounds like Eilistraee is exactly what I am looking for. Thank you!
“Magic is distilled laziness. Put that on my gravestone.”
― Kurtis J. Wiebe, High Fantasies
Thank you for the input! I should have phrased it differently. The previous reply hit the nail on the head of what I was looking for.
"She can be quite selfish Chaotic Good means act in what their conscience tells them to do so she isn't evil she just wants you to have no regard for laws and care for yourself"
So not quite selfish but not quite selfless.
Why might it end badly? Haha, that warning makes me want to go this route even more.
“Magic is distilled laziness. Put that on my gravestone.”
― Kurtis J. Wiebe, High Fantasies
Assuming it's a traditional Drow society, then any worship of a god that's not Lolth is very dangerous. Lolth want's complete control over the Drow, so worshipping a god whose agenda insists on tearing down everything Lolth has built would make you a prime target by anyone wanting Lolths favor. So basically 95% of Drow will want you dead and/or sacrificed, or at the very least captured if your city isn't as filled with Lolth crazed zealots.
Opinions coming from a cleric main.
1: Atheists in most D&D settings are either objectively insane or just plain stupid. Atheism is the active belief that gods are not real, and when you have classes that get actual magic power from gods (clerics) an individual has to be either incredibly ignorant, delusional, or just dumb to not at least acknowledge their existence. Some settings are exceptions to this, like Ravnica where the gods of that plane are dead and/or have left (to the point of being more like Great Old Ones, you can look up the Nephilim on the Magic the Gathering wiki if you're really interested) and clerics get their power from philosophical ideals that are revered (if not actively worshipped, like with the Orzhov church) such as life, order, and balance. But in a setting with gods, atheists are just dumb. A character can be non-religious and indifferent or even scornful of the gods of their world, but that is not what an atheist is. If a character is not a cleric there isn't any requirement for them to actively worship or otherwise revere a specific deity (though divine-adjacent classes like paladins or divine soul sorcerers mesh well with the practice, lore-wise), but unless they have an active disdain for the gods they probably have one or more they'll say a prayer to here and there, even if it's just privately without making it known to others. That being said, you don't have to be a divinely empowered priest (cleric) to revere a god or goddess and follow their philosophy as a guide to your goals, behavior, etc and there are enough of them in most settings that it usually isn't hard to find one that matches favorably with the character.
2: In most settings, deities do not manifest or take direct action in the Material Plane (or most other planes). They all do tangibly exist somewhere, most often one of the outer planes (like Mount Celestia, the Abyss, etc), or some private demiplane (which are often located within or adjacent to one of the outer planes or the Astral Sea, which is the interdimensional void either between planes of the "space" that the other planes float around in depending on the cosmology of your setting). Unless you have powerful magic (such as the plane shift spell) and, most likely, approval/permission to enter such a divine realm your character is not going to actually meet their god in person unless they somehow get said deity's attention and are brought to them by divine fiat (aka the DM says your god invites you into their actual house).
The most common explanation for why deities don't stroll about the Material Plane or regularly directly intervene in it's affairs is that the other gods don't let them. Either by some treaty or mutual threats, they do not directly meddle in mortal affairs because doing so would inevitably bring them into direct conflict with other gods, many of which aren't exactly on friendly terms with each other, and the ensuing divine throwdown would lay waste to everything they were trying to affect in the first place (much like how Godzilla ends up trashing the crap out of Tokyo every time he "saves" it from other kaiju), thus defeating the point of it all. So they act indirectly, be sending heralds and other agents such as celestials, fiends, various fey, etc and they grant powers to specific worshippers (clerics as well as, depending on how the lore works in a specific game, possibly paladins, divine soul sorcerers, or any other class with divine magic [which technically isn't a mechanical distinction in 5e like it was previously). Those agents act on their patron deity's behalf, spreading their philosophy and doing works according to their will. Personally, I like to have my cleric PCs explain their magic functioning by them acting as a conduit to channel their god's power into the Material Plane. Mechanically, divine intervention is a cleric class feature, and even at level 20 there's only a one in five chance that an extremely powerful (and presumably highly favored) servant of a deity is able to make the connection so that their god can more directly intervene (and even then it's up to DM fiat as to how it actually functions).
3: If you're meaning is "Can a character switch their worship to another god" then there isn't any reason they can't. Some religions may not take well to "deserters" or "heretics" and followers thereof may seek to punish the character, but actual worship is up to the individual. If a character is a cleric and actively gets their power from a god, then changing teams will probably (per DM discretion) require in character justification for why they've lost faith in the first deity and what has changed to make another god/goddess deem them worthy of serving as their annointed and empowered representative.
For the Dragonborn, I would suggest Kurtalmak. If you were to worship any draconic deity it would be him. Kurtalmak is the Kobold god of war and mining, he is put down as lawful evil but his character more describes a chaotic neutral. Although he is seen as vengeful, he stresses more on loyalty to the tribe(in your case, wherever she is from). Dragonborn don’t worship Bahamut because they do not believe that a dragon god can be good. But Kurtalmak is a Kobold god, being draconic but not a dragon.
Kurtalmak has direct ties to the material plane mostly because he is trapped there for eternity. He does not use Devine beings to do his bidding but relies on his mortal clerics to bring about his work. He was actually the first Kobold in existence. He was the king of a grand empire before Garl Glittergold, god of gnomes, caved in the roof to his capital city, killing most of the inhabitants inside, Kurtalmak survived and was transformed into a god by Io, the original god of dragons.
I am not sure what would happen if you decided to change deities.