D&D Homebrewery Guide - Deities

Deities are a little bit difficult because they are responsible for a lot. They could be responsible for anything from being a big part of creating the world down to a specific aspect of it such as watching over the process of death. They have a significant impact on any given world and thus you should consider all of their traits, their responsibilities regarding and impact on the world, and their effect on mortals such as their religion, their practices and their culture.

Who Are They?
A good way to start is figuring to an identity. Who are they? What is their name? What do they lord over? What are they responsible for? How does their power manifest in the mortal world beyond granting spells to spellcasters?

For example: A sun goddess may be called Sola and be responsible for making sure that the sun rises before travelling the sky and setting. She may lord over the sun, the day, the seasons and the harvest since they are all connected. A manifestation of her power in the world may be as simple as the sun being brighter in summer than it is in winter or the effects on nature that the changing of the seasons have (such as falling leaves in Autumn).

What Do They Lord Over?
What they lord over can be a vast set of things. Though many deities might be the lord of one particular, broad concept such as the sun, what they lord over does not have the be so limited. Take the aforementioned example - the Sun Goddess Sola is also lord of the day, the harvest, and the seasons. She could also lord over other closely related concepts such as the giving of life which has - historically in the real world - been associated with deities that lord over the sun, the dawn, etc.

So you deity can be called the Lord of < X > where < X > may be the most important aspect or the overarching concept that encapsulates all that they lord over, but they may still lord over many other things.

What Are They Responsible For?
What are they responsible for doing? Did they help create the world and tame the elements that make it up? Did they create the various forms of life that make up wildlife of your world? Did they create the sun or the moon? There are many once-off things that a deity can be responsible for, the easiest of which to attribute to a deity is an act of creation.

Other deities can be responsible for ongoing processes such as the travel of the sun across the sky, maintaining the laws of nature, or enforcing mortality like the Horseman Death and his Reapers. This can also tie in with the (Divine) Domains of the deity [ See Later Section ]. For example: A deity who is responsible for enforcing mortality and watching over those who die is likely to have the Death Domain.

How Does Their Power Manifest?
Some deities may have their powers manifest in cool ways around the world beyond what one might typically expect. For example, a deity of the night sky might be responsible for something akin to the Northern and Southern Lights. Though this is not a required aspect of any deity, it could add flavour, depth or simple awesomeness!

(Divine) Domains
From the Forgotten Realms Wiki page on Divine Domains:

''Divine Domains were a specific areas of interest for deities, particularly to do with the magic and spells granted to their faithful. Clerics of a particular deity choose two of the deity's domains to focus upon, and gained access to extra spells within those domains. A deity could have as many or as few domains as it pleases, although it was usual to have at least four.''

''Some domains naturally opposed one another, such as evil and good, or chaos and law. A cleric must conformed to the alignment requirements in order to focus on these domains, even if they belonged to their deity's portfolio.''

Much like a Player Character's Alignment being determined by their choices and actions rather than their Alignment determining their choices and actions, a deity's domain(s) work similarly - their domains are determined by who they are and what they do. For example - two domains that our aforementioned example deity Sola could have are Life and Light since both are fitting with being a Sun Goddess.

A number of domains - including the main eight that are Death, Grave, Knowledge, Life, Light, Tempest, Trickery and War - can be found on the Forgotten Realms Wiki page for Deity Domains.

It is recommended that each deity has at least two domains for the sake of Clerics having at least two they can choose from. Your description of your deity should also be flexible enough to allow for a Dungeon Master to extrapolate to up to four domains if you haven't listed four already. This allows for greater flexibility for Dungeon Masters and Players alike who use your deity.

Using our previous example, Sola may also be associated with the Healing Domain because of the association between the Sun and life, and also be associated with the Time Domain because of the connection between the Sun and the day (and thus time).

History
A deity can have a very active history. They may have been involved in creation or some other major event that shaped the world in some way or another. When considering a deity's history, consider who they are and what they lord over. This will help you to dictate the sort of history they will have. For example: A Sun God(dess) is unlikely to be involved with the creation of nature (birds, beasts, trees, etc) which would instead be the realm of a Nature God(dess).

Another thing to consider is how much of a particular deity's history is known to everyone else (including other deities). Did a lot of their history happen before the birth of mortals? Did they spend a lot of time out of sight and mind of the other deities as they shaped their own plane of existence (e.g. Heaven)? Did they tell or give visions about these secret histories to anyone that did not already know them (and/or would such knowledge ever be granted)?

The history of a deity can add a lot of depth to a deity and directly relates to what they're responsible for in the world.

Culture
A deity can influence culture in a number of ways on a small scale all the way up to a large scale. Cultures can even be born from the teachings and whatnot of a deity. With this in mind, think about how your deity will affect the world as well as who might worship them.

For example: A deity that is associated with the harvest - such as a Sun Deity - may be popular with farmers but less so with nobility. Such a deity will have a profound presence in and effect on the lives of farmers and may even dicate (to an extent) their behaviours. Meanwhile, the nobility may recognise the deity, their place and their importance within the pantheon they worship, but said deity will have very little to no presence in or impact on their lives. An aspect of culture that could arise from such a deity is a festival among farmers during the time of harvest where farmers give thanks for another year of crops.

Pantheon vs Individual Deity
This is a tricky one. On the one hand, you may have the idea for only one deity. On the other hand, a single deity may be hard for a Dungeon Master to include in the pantheon that they have. Pantheons are easier for Dungeon Masters to transplant into their own game because they are a cohesive unit - a Dungeon Master can use them with relatively minimal alteration (if any).

Consider then an individual deity - yes, there may be Dungeon Masters looking for an individual deity, but there is an inherent problem in this process. This problem relates to the deity being generic enough to be applied to many different settings and fill a need in the most generic way possible so that any two Dungeon Masters can relatively easily transplant the deity into the game while being specific enough for the cool parts such as characteristics and themes to shine through.

This is not to say that Pantheons should not be written with a certain level of genericism, but you as an author can afford to be a bit more specific when writing pantheons because all of the deities are related to each other by - if nothing else - being part of the same pantheon.

So when writing a deity, consider whether you are writing it as part of a pantheon or as an individual deity since this will dictate how flexible your deity has to be. A pantheon is a group of deities that - collectively and individually - do not need to be as flexible as a deity that has been written independently of a pantheon. Regardless of this, any deity or pantheon has to be flexible and generic enough such that Dungeon Masters who include them in their games can apply them to their games with relative ease.

Pantheons
When writing a pantheon, remember that it is not as simple as "Here are some deities - Let's go!" Are there different deities for different races such as Humans vs Elves? Or do they worship the same deities but know them by different names and likenesses? Or are the deities known universally with regards to their name, likeness, powers and domains, etc etc etc? The easiest way to write a pantheon is to write the universal one.