So, howdy.

This time I am curious how folks handle cleric domains when there are no “God of X” style manifested or personified concepts. This means that a deity cannot be said to be a “god of time” or even “includes time and death and fate” in their areas of oversite. I am talking about something that completely has none of that, but still has 15 deities. They are just the powers that be, all equally useful for all the things, but none of them useful for giving a particular cleric the talents that go with any of the domains and special stuff.

These gods don’t even dwell in the outer planes except maybe as a vacation home, and they probably have one in all the planes.

so yeah, curious how you would or do handle such a thing.

Just because a deity for a particular sphere of influence isn't mentioned in the books doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It just means you have to make one up. There are gods of everything. There are the big powerful popular gods that people worship today, like the ones mentioned in the books. But there are also older gods that people may have long ago forgotten about, but who might return if just one person finds that one lost book and reads that god's name aloud and becomes their first cleric in a thousand years. There are gods who were stripped of their godly powers and banished by other gods as punishment, and now they walk the Earth, undying but not immortal, either striving to atone for their transgressions or plotting their revenge. And there are gods of all the little things that people often overlook, like the God of Arepo, who reminds us that the most important events in our lives are not the big ceremonial events, but rather the small and tender moments. No one ever laid on their death bed and wished that they had won just one more trophy. They wish they could play with their dog one last time. They wish they could hear their baby's cry one last time. They wish they could relive that perfect summer evening when they sat by the lake in the warm breeze and watched the fireflies come out.

This is a fantasy game set in a fantasy world full of fantastic things. Give in to that. Indulge that. If you don't see what you need - just create it! 

Quote from AnzioFaro >>

Just because a deity for a particular sphere of influence isn't mentioned in the books doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It just means you have to make one up. There are gods of everything. There are the big powerful popular gods that people worship today, like the ones mentioned in the books. But there are also older gods that people may have long ago forgotten about, but who might return if just one person finds that one lost book and reads that god's name aloud and becomes their first cleric in a thousand years. There are gods who were stripped of their godly powers and banished by other gods as punishment, and now they walk the Earth, undying but not immortal, either striving to atone for their transgressions or plotting their revenge. And there are gods of all the little things that people often overlook, like the God of Arepo, who reminds us that the most important events in our lives are not the big ceremonial events, but rather the small and tender moments. No one ever laid on their death bed and wished that they had won just one more trophy. They wish they could play with their dog one last time. They wish they could hear their baby's cry one last time. They wish they could relive that perfect summer evening when they sat by the lake in the warm breeze and watched the fireflies come out.

This is a fantasy game set in a fantasy world full of fantastic things. Give in to that. Indulge that. If you don't see what you need - just create it! 

 
in this case, the gods already exist — a full pantheon of 15 — but they are not gods of anything. Nor is there a goal to make them such. They are intended to not be gods of anything. That is the design choice.

the question is not how to change the gods. That won’t happen. 

the question is how does one handle domains when there are no gods of anything. No spheres of influence, no specialty or area of focus.

I got seriously bored of gods of something after 40 years of worldbuilding, lol. I am indulging in even more creative efforts around them now.

I am so confused. They are gods but are not? what does that mean? there is so much missing here to even understand what you are asking.

The clerics and paladins don't have to have a divine god power them. They can swear to a concept or ideal or general power or whatever.

I am also confused. 

I'm not sure what you're asking for then. 

So... there are gods... but none of them DO anything... and none of them are gods OF anything... 

Then what is the relationship between the deity and the cleric? Why do people follow the deity? Why do people revere the deity? What do people ask the deity for help with? Are the gods just super-powerful beings from another dimension who all decided to just chill out in this realm for whatever reason? Why do they grant powers to clerics? What do they ask for in return? 

Quote from TheEmptyScroll >>

I am so confused. They are gods but are not? what does that mean? there is so much missing here to even understand what you are asking.

The clerics and paladins don't have to have a divine god power them. They can swear to a concept or ideal or general power or whatever.

 
Paladins swear an oath that is binding — break it and they lose their gifts.

The gods do a lot of things, and they are gods. They are the ones who enforce oaths, who empower clerics, who reshape the world by whim and will. They do indeed have divine wills to empower them, and Clerics exist to serve a God.

but they are Gods — they are the parents of all the planar creatures, immortal and all powerful, each, individually. And they need worshippers, and they sorta messed up a while back, lol.

Quote from AnzioFaro >>

I am also confused. 

I'm not sure what you're asking for then. 

So... there are gods... but none of them DO anything... and none of them are gods OF anything... 

Then what is the relationship between the deity and the cleric? Why do people follow the deity? Why do people revere the deity? What do people ask the deity for help with? Are the gods just super-powerful beings from another dimension who all decided to just chill out in this realm for whatever reason? Why do they grant powers to clerics? What do they ask for in return? 

 
they all do a lot of things, but none of them are gods of anything. There is no god of spells, no sky god, no leader of the other gods, no god or hope or thought or rain.

all of them can do all of it. 

The job of a cleric is to get people to follow the god. People follow the gods because they can get boons. These gods can be invoked during Ordeals and will protect the deserving and loyal.

I don’t think they are at the revere stage again yet. The Clerics have to restore that part, by winning folks over. People ask the deities to help with anything and everything.

They are from the same dimension, and indeed they created the 28 other dimensions of the 7 Planes. They did not create people, though they have reshaped people.

They grant power to clerics in order to win people over to worshipping them counting coup by baptism. Of note: you cannot enter the consecrated space of a god you are not sworn to. No matter what level or by what power, it cannot be done.

They ask that people worship them. 

There are fifteen of them divided into three Hosts. Each is distinct. And there are other Powers in the world, but they do not need worship, nor benefit from it. Just these fifteen.

so, how does one handle the domains for clerics? Because this isn’t about the gods, this is about the domains.

Still very confusing. Gods, by their nature, are manifestations of concepts, and their being is tied to said concept. The people don't need to recognize it as "The God of Time" but it is still the god of time by its very being, and so his powers and gifts are time related.

If you already have the idea of the god, then you know what "thing" they are tied to, take the domains of the closest concept and find a justification. (I still feel I didn't understand because you still gave no additional information)

BTW clerics can also swear to an ideal, just differently than paladins and stuff. Not all worlds have divine gods, and some don't use the concept.

Quote from TheEmptyScroll >>

Still very confusing. Gods, by their nature, are manifestations of concepts, and their being is tied to said concept. The people don't need to recognize it as "The God of Time" but it is still the god of time by its very being, and so his powers and gifts are time related.

If you already have the idea of the god, then you know what "thing" they are tied to, take the domains of the closest concept and find a justification. (I still feel I didn't understand because you still gave no additional information)

BTW clerics can also swear to an ideal, just differently than paladins and stuff. Not all worlds have divine gods, and some don't use the concept.

 
Um, the nature of a God is inherently ineffable and beyond mortal Ken — otherwise it wouldn’t be a God. So to describe it as a manifestation or personification or whatever as the only nature of a god is to undermine what the concept of a deity is.

these deities have no concept. They are not tied to any thing. All of them are equally “in charge” or equally a personification or manifestation of every discrete thing you can imagine and then ones that no one alive can imagine. if you had a parallel, the all of them are basically all a version of the Abrahamic deity or the concept of the All. All of them are that way. There is no eternal opposition of a devil, however — there is no good or evil or law or chaos involved here.

Qetza is just as likely to burn someone who pissed him off as he is to party with someone he liked.

You suggest that I pick one, and the issue is I can pick all of them for all of the gods. Hence the questions being about how others handle it.

what happens when a cleric of domain X meets a cleric of domain Y and they are both clerics of the same Power and their domains oppose each other?

just as easily, I could say that none of the domains apply. So what domains would they get, since that is the nature of a cleric in 5e.

the problem isn’t the gods. The problem is the domains.

as an example of the write up for just one of them. Do not get caught up by the name — she was originally called Kelly Weber.

Well the domain system in D&D is based on gods as personifications of a concept, of their domains. If you forgo that, you lose that guiding system.

Just pick whatever domains feel appropriate in your head based on their personality or worship form or something. 

Quote from AEDorsay >>

So, howdy.

This time I am curious how folks handle cleric domains when there are no “God of X” style manifested or personified concepts. This means that a deity cannot be said to be a “god of time” or even “includes time and death and fate” in their areas of oversite. I am talking about something that completely has none of that, but still has 15 deities. They are just the powers that be, all equally useful for all the things, but none of them useful for giving a particular cleric the talents that go with any of the domains and special stuff.

These gods don’t even dwell in the outer planes except maybe as a vacation home, and they probably have one in all the planes.

so yeah, curious how you would or do handle such a thing.

 There isn't a requirement for a singular God to oversee a particular Domain. There could be several that influence a single Domain, or there could be one that moves among many, or all Domains. The DM sets how the God, or Gods, interact with the world, and if they are responsible for divine magic in this particular world. If your Council has no task separation, or division of work, then they altogether, collectively, are responsible for granting Divine gifts. 

I might take whatever inspiration I could from Forces and Philosophies in the DMG. Treating the worship of the divine entities as more of a Force or a Field of energy, rather than a specific origination that something is derived from. This might allow for the player to chose a specific Domain for the ideals and goals that it might represent, instead of the Deity it is represented by. Very much like a Paladin Oath which isn't always divine, but driven by the individual's will or devotion to an ideal.

Let's circumvent the nonsense around 'gods have to represent concepts'...that's a result of a polytheistic and historical hangover. To my mind what you're describing is something more akin to Christianity's holy trinity if they were individual deities and not just aspects of the same being.

In short, the Christian God does not have dominion over any one particular set of phenomenon, but rather all phenomenon. What you've created is a pantheon of many gods who also have dominion over all phenomenon? Hopefully, I've got that correct?

In which case belief in any entity can be separate from the phenomenon the mortal worshipper specialises in. 

Stealing a little here from Stargate, might I suggest that the gods in your system have a little bit of competition between themselves? If they gain power from their worshippers, perhaps they've got a friendly little game going on between themselves to see which individual god can get the most worshippers. There's no reason then that worshippers can't be guided down particular paths by every single god in the pantheon. 

In the same way you could imagine a Christian priest being a specialist in Baptisms, or Saints, Funerary rites, Relics, Miracles, Evangelism etc, I could easily imagine a world in which these gods of yours can guide their worshippers down each of the different domain paths. God A is likely going to need acolytes that deal with funerary rites (grave domain), however God B is also going to need the same acolytes. 

I see no reason you can't do what you're doing. If the world works that way, it works that way. WotC's worldbuilding is afterall one of their weaker areas, so feel free to throw it all out. We are comfortable as GMs throwing away other aspects we don't see as fitting into our world like different player species or even subclasses...no reason you can't throw out WotCs way of divinity working.

I've never been persuaded of the need for a deity in order for a universe to exist. Likewise, I've rarely been moved to play a cleric. For that reason, I went with a universe without gods. I added religions, because they are a strong motivation in human life, and in order to preserve divine magic as granted spells, I've got sufficiently advanced ancient astronauts masquerading as angels. Because there are no gods, players who want to be clerics or religiously motivated don't need to justify their choice of domain or their personal gnosis. Our world has had syncretic traditions in various times and places, so it should be possible to find the same in an invented world. Shouldn't it?

I don't see why a god can't grant their cleric certain abilities that resonate with an aspect of their powers or virtues. So a Light cleric of Cybele is granted fire spells because fire is beautiful and essential for life and the welfare of others. Or maybe you decide that the Light domain is too discordant with her personality, and you only allow players to choose Cybele as their deity if they go Life domain or Oath of the Ancients. It's really up to you. If you think an empathic and nurturing deity could also cherish and rely upon a follower whose goal in life is to fight for beauty, then maybe War Clerics of Cybele are a thing. It will come down to how you want, and if you want, to justify it. 

Just because you don't have a God of X doesn't mean you can't have a Cleric of X. Cleric Bob prays to God Foo, saying "I'd like to make sure my people never go hungry' and is given powers that elsewhere would be called Nature Cleric. Cleric Ann prays to God Y and says 'there's too much corruption in this city, I need to be able to help more' and gets Order Domain powers. Look at them as toolsets to accomplish whatever task is either that cleric's calling, or for a duty that a given god wants them to help perform. Or make your own, doing some mix-and-match.

I’d say just because a god doesn’t oversee a particular portfolio, doesn’t mean it’s worshippers don’t. The people will superimpose meaning upon each of the various gods and sort them into the different domains, even if the gods don’t care one way or another what the people are doing. 
For example, this one time Jane the commoner met god #3 at the oceanside. When she started telling people about it, everyone decided that #3 must favor oceans. Now, people think of #3 as a god of the oceans, even though the god was just looking to get some shave ice, and wasn’t much interested in the ocean. Still though, the temples to that god tend to be on beaches, and tempest clerics tend to worship that god now.
The gods become Rorschach tests where people see what they want. 

This also allows for some nice theological debates. Like Jane had also observed #3 kept its back to the ocean, so there’s a different sect of worshippers that rejects the ocean, and embraces some other trivial detail from Jane’s encounter, and that becomes a different domain also ascribed to that god. And now there’s an occasional civil holy war.

For their part, the gods are happy to get worshippers, and hey, if you want to say I’m god of the oceans, knock yourself out. As long as I get my sacrificial offerings, I’m happy.

In one of my settings I had five gods on the Prime Material Plane. Instead of clear domains, they had personal qualities, personalaties, expertises and interests. These overlapped a bit too. 

Basically all of the gods had similar powers, which seeemed like omnipotency to mortals. In truth, not all gods able to do the same things, because they didn't have the skills. 

I had a sort of a god of magic, who was able to create passive magical bloodlines (sorcerers) and create ways for mortals to use magic (wizard spells and bard songs). He was also a god of arts. 

The "goddess of nature" was just heavily into biology and nature etc, and her biggest achievement as a god was evolution. She was also the only one able to passively prolong someone's life. Other gods had to actively keep their followers alive. 

The god of crafts had a love for minerals and a great understanding of all handyworks. His masterwork included the manacrystals that mortalkind used for magic and electricity. 

There was a god of war, who planted the seed of war and violence etc. This was necessary as the plane was under constant threat of invasion, so they needed to wage war among each other in order to learn the skill of warfare. 

And one more god who was into knowledge and lust and love and responsible for many of the vast emotions present in mortals. 

So all in all, the gods were all pretty similar beings, but like mortals, they had very different interests. These gods were chosen to rule the Prime not because they were the strongest, but because together they were able to create a diverse world with diverse life. 

So in this setting the domains were the many personal interests of the gods and therefore very flexible

Thank you all! I was worried last night for a bit there, lol. I will go through all those comments to the point I started. On my iPad, so no quotes.

I was there when spheres of influence were introduced as a way to guide spell selection, so I know the origin. One of the flaws of that kind of thinking is that restricts the creativity of the DM and reinforces the overall sameness of different systems. Rather annoying, and part of why I asked how other would handle it.

Kaavel: I took a great deal of inspiration from the section you mention. Some quirks: divine power is sourced in the deities. Who everyone is mad at, and so they don’t call them Gods, they call them the Powers That Be. Can’t live with em, can’t make ‘em go away. They are all Greater Deities, but they are living and embodied in the real world. Cybele shows up in soup kitchens for the poor. Divine powers are specifically derived from them — if it isn’t, then it is not divine but rather eldritch, mystical, arcane, or primal. There are also Vestiges, but they tend to fall more closely into the animism category and so are the province of Druids.

Aquilain: Yes, if you ignore the bolted on dualism, the Abrahamic stuff is a good parallel for their positioning. You are correct in your summation.

separating belief from dominion is good solution. There is a competition of sorts: more worshippers means a more solid base and more “oomph” to power. More oomph to power means a stronger and longer foundation of Self, and they avoid backsliding to become Vestiges, who are chthonic horrors akin to Lovecraft’s fears, lol. However, all Clerics have to be able to perform all the core rights. Baptism, marriage, et al, because that is their job.

but the idea is good. The foundation mechanically is a bit of a crutch, but I can see that working for others. As for throwing things out, lol, well, I ask these questions in part to inspire others to thinking — and I am bending the rules to fit the world, not the world to fit the rules because as this example demonstrates, the rules have become their own problem in terms of creativity, and so my solution is very brutal, but not for everyone.

Eapiv: back four years ago, we almost went that direction. It is very much the kind of structure we are using now in our sandbox, and fits easily within the current system. My players wanted something that “wasn’t like every other D&D world”. We ended up this way because they also wanted gods that actually did intervene in an ordeal.

Theologyofbagels: another theologian in the thread! Woot! (That’s the MA in my creds, lol). More seriously, Cybele is an airhead dealing with several hundred year old trauma by aversion, psychologically.  Indeed, all the PTB are as complex and complicated as any other person, just more so having all that power. She could do all of them, as any of the assorted domains falls within her purview. The issue there is what happens when to clerics serving her come from antithetical domains to each other and have to spend the night in the temple, and how do I adjudicate piety properly?

some of this is handled by the underlying and so far hinted at aspect of The Gods pissed everyone off after a huge war that wiped out over a billion people and left four thousand three hundred twenty one families as the only survivors where they all chose sides among them. Then they vanished for 250 years, and no cleric could heal or tend wounds or any of that stuff. No other healing classes available at the time. So people turned their backs on them and now Clerics have to work to earn the trust and faith and worship of all the Powers back.

hard to do some of the domains as they aren’t exactly the kind that makes trust possible, lol. Cybele was the reason for the 500 year long war, too.

pocketmouse: That is a good solution. Personally I like it better than some, and it is close to my own solutions, which is to create entirely new Domains — but I also redid the cleric class as a whole, so not a solution that many would do and I am curious to get ideas like yours and the others. Thank you.

My solution to the question was easy for me: I redid the entire Cleric class, but that doesn’t work for most people who want to stay closer to rules but also want something that isn’t a generic fantasy world (although I call Wyrlde a generic fantasy world, lol).  So I want to know how people would solve it within the existing rules, so I can learn new ways of getting through stuff, like several of you have given here.

WotC does suck at worldbuilding — but that is because they have to build to a greatest common denominator, and that is always a low bar. They want us DMs to create the broader stuff, the worlds and such, and the stuff they make is a template for us, a guideline. This is a circumstance where they failed DMs, because the domain system pushes them towards a very Eurocentric version of deities (not a good thing or a bad thing, just a thing) that conflicts with many real world inspirations and figuring out how to step around that without turning into me (who just says screw it, I will create it from scratch, because I have been homebrewing and ttrpg developing since 81) is a part of what I like to do.

so, how do you deal with this challenge, those who come after?

Quote from Xalthu >>

I’d say just because a god doesn’t oversee a particular portfolio, doesn’t mean it’s worshippers don’t. The people will superimpose meaning upon each of the various gods and sort them into the different domains, even if the gods don’t care one way or another what the people are doing. 
For example, this one time Jane the commoner met god #3 at the oceanside. When she started telling people about it, everyone decided that #3 must favor oceans. Now, people think of #3 as a god of the oceans, even though the god was just looking to get some shave ice, and wasn’t much interested in the ocean. Still though, the temples to that god tend to be on beaches, and tempest clerics tend to worship that god now.
The gods become Rorschach tests where people see what they want. 

This also allows for some nice theological debates. Like Jane had also observed #3 kept its back to the ocean, so there’s a different sect of worshippers that rejects the ocean, and embraces some other trivial detail from Jane’s encounter, and that becomes a different domain also ascribed to that god. And now there’s an occasional civil holy war.

For their part, the gods are happy to get worshippers, and hey, if you want to say I’m god of the oceans, knock yourself out. As long as I get my sacrificial offerings, I’m happy.

 
that is cute, lol. Belial would hate it and Lamia would very politely inform Jane to pound sand. Forever. Starting now, lol. And the funniest part is that as I read that, I immediately thought of Ululani, who adores fishes and sea life but hates water, and during the War she was in charge of naval battle and proved better than the guys who directed the land based ones.

That is cool! Some of these gods would allow that (and I may have to do that, because it is the kind of quirky that solves a separate problem), but others would be “nope” and bang, pow, lightning bolt from a clear sky.