The more I play D&D 4th Edition the more I like it. Like many of you, that means I consider transforming the World of Greyhawk to fit into some of 4th Edition's design philosophy. One of the issues that goes beyond rules is the cosmology. I've ALWAYS thought that Greyhawk way, way too many deities. The diminished cosmology offers a great chance to adjust (what I consider) Greyhawk's bloated deific ranks.
This issue of abundant gods comes into focus when considering a Temple of Elemental Evil conversion. We have St. Cuthbert and Iuz, famous and longstanding Greyhawk personalities. Fortunately, when talking about ToEE, we only have those two to worry about. So, who are they and how to they fit into the 4th Edition cosmology? I don't like either of them, and have never mentioned them outside of ToEE in my home campaigns (not even in Living Greyhawk adventures). So, I am very interested to see how others would treat and categorize them in a 4th Edition ToEE adaption.
I was thinking of Saint Cuthbert as an Oerth-bound celestial servant of Bahamut, or simply an aspect of the great Paladin-God himself? How about Iuz as a high-ranking, high-powered abyssal servant of Gruumsh, Tharizdun or Vecna. Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil makes ties to Tharizdun, perhaps it can work with him.
I am sorry . I have to disagree with you on the part of Iuz. Iuz is a major part of a lot of Greyhawk history ( at leats a lot fo stuff from my own campaigns).
From the top of my head I remember:
-His involment in the ascension of Xagyg ( involuntary of course)
-He he prevented Vecna from ascending to greater god ( with the help of some pesky Pcs)
-He was involved in the 7 swords fiasco(He disguised himself as Vatuun)
-The whole Greyhawk Wars thing
-His empire almost conquered the whole north
-His relationship to Grazzr & Iggwilv
(and these are from official adventures, I cant even begin to count the times he or one of his lackeys have been major antagonist or allies in all of my years playing or DMing Greyhawk)
On the part of too many deities, yeah. There are too many. I'm recently trying to port the specialy priest flavor from 2nd edition to 4E. I have decided to cull a lot of deities. Or at least just relegate them to demigods and not give them an actual cult base.
If we were to actually reduce all of the greyhawk pantheons, what gods would we keep?
I propose a total of 25 gods, with a maximum of 5 gods per pantheon ( Flannes,oeridian,humanoid,demi-humanoid, etc).
I was thinking of Saint Cuthbert as an Oerth-bound celestial servant of Bahamut, or simply an aspect of the great Paladin-God himself? How about Iuz as a high-ranking, high-powered abyssal servant of Gruumsh, Tharizdun or Vecna. Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil makes ties to Tharizdun, perhaps it can work with him.
If this is the way you're going I'd make Cuthbert's patron Moradin. They seem a closer match to me based on the description in the PHB. Iuz is tougher if you're looking for a match out of the 4e evil gods. Gruumsh is a match with Erythnul, Bane is Hextor, Vecna is Vecna, which is problematic in itself IMO. Maybe Tiamat. I'd just have Iuz be his own thing and make up a Channel Divinity feat for his clerics.
Why identify GH gods with non-GH 4e gods? I'm of the opposite opinion on the number of gods. I don't think there are enough. Most of them are just flavor anyway so I don't sweat all the details.
NPC flavour is entirely DM driven so check out 1e, 2e, and 3e speciality priest/domain powers and just hunt around for similar powers. Clerics of Heironeous wear chain mail and wield battle axes (you heard me, I said AXES dammit), just give your npc priests those things automatically. It's shame that pcs will have to pay for many of these things with feats but some specialty powers might be attainable by re-tooling the flavour of exisitng clerical powers.
I'm still hoping that Dragon will help us out with divinity feats for Greyhawk gods in due course.
I really want to reintroduce the specialty priest back in greyhawk, but I am holding out to see if they post some extra feats on dragon mag.
My basic idea is to have each deity have specific trained skill, a divinity feat and a weapon prof. I wil actually change the Turn undead ability for the divinity feat and make Turn Undead a feat that can only be chosen by the deities who allow turning/revoking Undead.
Its just a simple fix, but it goes along for the simplicity of 4E design. My only regret is that players then will choose deities basely on the abilities granted and not on Roleplaying factors.
Well, Greyhawk does have too many deities if you add in the swarms of gods that have been retrofitted to the world since the original Folio and Boxed set.
There aren't /that/ many gods in the original list and they cover all the bases pretty well. Why add johnny come lately gods like Moradin, Bahamut, and so on if it means deleting the originals?
I'd stick to the original GH boxed set plus the non-human gods from the 1e Deities & Demi-gods like Corellion, Moradin, Garl, Kurtalmak, Maglubyet, Gruumsh, Yondalla, Vaprak, Stronmous, etc and use the Norse giant gods Thrym & Surtur, Yeenoghu for gnolls, Lolth for drow etc. Al'Ackbar is quite important too.
It is a bit racist for there to be multiple human gods but it would make more sense if the non-humans simply worshipped the appropriate racial aspect of a human deity. So Ulaa and Ehonna have a large non-human following, Syrul could be a patron of goblins, Wee Jas could be a patron for kobolds, and so on.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
Canonfire! is a production of the Thursday Group in assocation with GREYtalk and Canonfire! Enterprises
