Clerics and deities
 

So the Cleric, and the Evil Cleric in DFRPG seem to be, rather generic by design. How would one go about making them specific to a deity if your setting has specific gods and goddesses?

Re: Clerics and deities
 

If you don't mind a bit of a Norse flavor, Doug Cole's Hand of Asgard is quite good. It gives each diety some extra powers, choices, and customizes the spell list.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

Have you looked at Dungeon Fantasy 7: Clerics? If you're familiar with GURPS it contains a lot. Even if you aren't, it customizes the spell lists. It may contain some spells not in DFRPG, though.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

I was thinking of how Faerun deities would work with DFRPG. Looking at it and what I've got(and remember) for Forgotten Realms, the Druids won't need any changing; I know there's a Scout-Druid build from GURPS DF 3 so that will give rangers a little magic, for example, the Needles of Mielekki are basically rangers and druids. But what about war deities? Or evil gods? I know there's the Evil Cleric, but there are several evil gods in Faerun; how would one make them distinct? Could be my memory if faulty and there wasn't much distinction between them in AD&D 2ed either, so it might not matter..

I will check out DF 7 and see what it says; most likely it will have the answers I seek. Thanks!

Re: Clerics and deities
 

That was definitely the idea with that, and hopefully losing a few spells that aren't in the DFRPG won't cripple it. Sample/preview here, the book's Web page here.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

It looks like this is a blended GURPS Dungeon Fantasy / Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game discussion. While the games are compatible, they aren't the same. The latter game cuts out some troublesome spells, and tweaks the cleric's template and abilities slightly.

As has been pointed out, if you want to match clerics to gods and don't mind following the full-on GURPS path, Phil Masters's excellent GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 7: Clerics is the place to look.

But if, as is more appropriate for this forum, you want to stick to the DFRPG, then I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Kevin Smyth's Hand of Asgard. That can easily be made generic to do for the DFRPG what Clerics does for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. It works specifically within the DFRPG framework, and is as "official" as it gets, since Kevin (and Doug Cole) ran everything by me for approval.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

As Kromm notes above, this is more properly "Kevin Smyth's Hand of Asgard." While I provided some Nordlondr reference material, served as a sounding board, and did the production stuff, it's his name on the front of the book for a reason!

Re: Clerics and deities
 

I can see where the edges betwixt GURPS DF and DFRPG are getting blurred here. Easy to do, as the rules are more or less the same...
I got my answer though; in fact DF 7 is what I'll be needing, and I'll be getting Hands of Asgard and DF 7 as soon as finances allow. I was just wondering about using DFRPG in a specific setting,since "old school" AD&D was also setting agnostic, like DFRPG is setting agnostic. But to do that would mean taking DFRPG out of it's framework a little, which I don't mind doing at all.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

Sorry about that, my mistake. Still a great book though.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

No worries! I was basically "Doug publishes his own stuff!" for a while, but over the last year or so I've branched out, bringing the works of five other authors to fruition under the GB banner. So credit where it's due, etc.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

And here's a mini-review of the fine Dungeon Fantasy 7: Clerics book; there are likely more to be found through a search.

To the OP: I wouldn't overthink a purchase of this book; even if not a DFRPG supplement, the book offers a lot of great stuff for just a few coppers. There's plenty you can nab as-is, or use as inspiration and guides for creating your own cleric variants.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

Where's the mini-review?

Re: Clerics and deities
 

D'oh. I just invented a new computer action: "Copy and forget to paste".

Get Religion with Dungeon Fantasy 7: Clerics

Re: Clerics and deities
 

The last PC I played was a cleric, and it was the most fun-to-create character I've ever made. I did read DF7, which helped me think about the variety of deities and religions that are possible, but character I created fit fully withing the DFRPG rules.

Beyond that, I'm going to respond to your question a little differently from others: not with resources but with an approach to character building.

I'd recommend starting with the deity/mythology/religion itself before you even look at the character build or cleric abilities. Ask yourself questions like these:

• What sort of god/gods is it?
• What is the creation myth?
• What are some tenets of the religion?
• What customs and rituals to followers practice?
• What phrases, expressions, idioms, oaths, curses, or prayers do followers use?
• What do followers see as their purpose in the world?
• How do other religions see them?
• How do lay people see them?

For my character, some answers were:

• She is a god of death.
• She was one among many Elders. When the other elder's killed her, it gave rise to the sacred rite of death and put the chaos of the Elders into the proper order of life.
• No being of flesh is sacred in life. No being of flesh lies unholy in the holy ground.
• Ease the suffering of the dying; bury the dead.
• "Praise the Holy Dead."
• To teach the living not to fear death; care for the dying; honor the dead. (Oh, and of course destroy undead creatures, as they go against the order of things.
• They are looked on with suspicion and fear by other religions and some lay people. They have been nearly wiped out by those who see them as evil. My PC was the lone survivor of a temple that was destroyed by a more "main-stream" religion.

These sorts of details dictate many ads, disads, quirks, skills, and spell choices. And even where the specific spell and skill choices are somewhat limited, having a clear understanding of the religion lets you play the character in a way that feels unique and nuanced.

(As a side note, I had to think about why a cleric who worshiped death would have a healing powers, seeing as that is the primary function of clerics in DFRPG. Finding a way to justify that within the dogma of the religion felt like the sort of thing actual religions do all the time. . .)

Re: Clerics and deities
 

There's also GURPS Religion. It's for 3rd edition, but it has a lot of material about real-world religions and how to make fictitious ones.

http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/Religion/

Only $12. *wink*

Re: Clerics and deities
 

I’ve used both DF7 and Hand of Asgard for my DFRPG games. I have always loved clerics. You could easily customize the FR pantheon for DFRPG. Many flavors of Evil are possible.

Please share your ideas here! I’m sure others will benefit, even if they’re not using the Realms.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

I will! Most likely I'll start a another thread on here.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

I've been musing on this a lot since philosophy of religion is my major. AD&D and the earlier systems weren't really "setting agnostic." The original materials assumed a vaguely medieval (Catholic) sort of cleric---that is, a monotheistic or dualist world. All clerics were identical, and calling yourself a "cleric of Thor" or "a cleric of Athena" or "a cleric of Teddy the Bear God" was what we in philosophy call "a difference without a distinction:" ---that is, an illusory difference only. All good clerics had identical spells and identical requirements (no edged weapons etc.) and got identical perks at higher levels (followers, tithes etc.) so the only real difference was whether you were a "good" cleric or an "evil" one--and evil clerics were always NPCs/monsters. There were no "neutral clerics;" Eldritch Wizardry introduced druids as the "clerics" of True Neutral, defending balance in everything. DFRPG seeks to emulate the "old-school dungeon crawler" experience, and thus took over that sort of cleric. If all "good" clerics respect everyone's excommunications, have access to the same spells, share the same advantages, disadvantages and skills, they really are the same religion. Unless you move beyond DFRPG and bring in different spell lists for different gods, they're all basically the same faith. After all, Muslims, Jews and Christians all worship the God of Abraham, but even they don't recognize each other's excommunications.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

Sadly yes.

But really, I think the simplest fix for that in a D&D-like game is to realize the gods actually exist here, and therefore do not interact with each other in any way at all like real world religions do. They're more like neighbors, and the good (and to some extent evil) ones are all on the same side. There really [aren't] "separate religions", all the Good gods cooperate because that's the nature of Goodness, and clerics probably get their powers from the same fount of Good or Evil as the gods get theirs, not from any particular god anyway.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

That's one way. In Hinduism, many monistic or monotheistic teachers treat the various gods and demigods as expressions of the One. The gods could also be seen as intermediary beings between the One God and the mortal realm. And if I didn't teach this stuff, I might be content just to not think about it too much, which seems to have been the original plan in D&D.

I have just begun running DFRPG and had to move before my first campaign got to the point where anyone but me was asking these sorts of questions, but I think druids make a better template for polytheism than the "cleric." It seems the generic DFRPG cleric serves a deity that is source and patron of Light and Life, and has pretty much exclusive command of Life (Healing spells, with some Light and nourishment magic, wards against evil and harm, etc.) and not much else. Druids control weather, which is the realm of deities such as Thor, Zeus, Indra, Baal and so on. The Celts and Norse had god-talkers who didn't necessarily specialize in only one deity, as I understand it. Greek religion had their gods as separate and often competing, but still somehow part of the same extended family; I could see a priest of Zeus honoring the excommunication of a blasphemer of Artemis or Ares. But Socrates was executed for "introducing foreign deities" among other things, presumably because of his tendency to exclaim, "By the Dog, god of the Egyptians!" This leads me to see the "barbarian" religions as more similar than different, and if I had a player who wanted to be Norse-like my first impulse would be to suggest they be a "druid."

Re: Clerics and deities
 

I've also thought a lot about the socio-economic implications of this magic system. Most people are practical; if 99% of the population are farmers, they're going to want someone around doing druid magic (Animal and Plant college spells). But they also have babies, and the DFRPG spells for clerics are a lot more helpful to midwives: healing, curing, reducing pain and so on. So any village that can manage to have both sorts of magic available, will want both a shrine run by a healer/midwife cleric, and a sacred grove that houses a druid to bless the fields and placate the spirits and faeries who live either in the fields and meadows or right next to them.

I imagine there would be some regions where the local lord was Intolerant and tried to suppress all religion but his/her preferred magic system, others where the lord allowed both. What happens to the adventurers if they unknowingly enter the realm of Prince Brian the Pious, and find that anyone who uses the wrong sort of Esoteric Medicine is liable to be burned at the stake?

Re: Clerics and deities
 

The thing is these depend on the gods not being real, or hating each other. If the gods did exist, cooperate with each other and communicate with their followers, Prince Brian gets an angelic visitation explaining that we on the side of Good don't burn our allies for wearing the wrong color hat and he can desist or face divine punishment.

Many of the kinds of religious disputes that happen in reality simply do not make sense in a setting where the gods are accessible to answer questions and rule on disputes. Serious internal religious disputes are right out - you can [ask] God if he prefers to be called YHWH, Jesus or Allah and wants you to murder the heretics who get it wrong, and get an answer that depends on His preferences rather than yours - and while interreligious disputes are still possible, gods that are on the same side have a motive to take actions to keep them from becoming bad enough to damage their shared causes.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

In the Middle Ages, the question was posed, how could tell if you received an angelic visitation, and received the Word of God, or if you were visited by the Devil, and given bad information to lead you into sin? The generally accepted answer was that humans have a conscience, and that through the exercise of reason and the power of the Holy spirit, you could discern a divine message from an evil one by whether it seemed like it was good. The problem here is that this is not helpful at all if you had a visitation along the lines of, "Name your firstborn Kevin," or something, which doesn't have a clear good or bad outcome; you would have to know the ultimate divine plan to judge whether this was being suggested for divine or infernal reasons. In between, there are plenty of areas where one viewpoint predominates, but other people still come to different conclusions, even looking at the same divine commands, because they ascribe different purposes to them.

Training your followers to look for regular bulletins and direct divine communications about how to resolve various issues is a recipe for disaster. You won't teach them what you intend for them. Instead, you'll teach them reliance on external authorities. Your worshippers will be ripe for poaching, corruption, and misdirection by rivals and hostile entities. The priests of your religion won't be particularly spiritually perceptive, but simply obedient. Ideally, if you are a wise and powerful deity, you'll instruct them in a general way such that they can fend for themselves, and fulfill your agenda without much direct guidance. Then, when you do turn into a goose or something and appear in a vision, the instructions you offer will clearly further your ends.

Deities who simply speak in a booming voice whenever they want something are purely ineffectual. They are vulnerable not only to the deception of demons and hostile gods, but their worshippers are vulnerable to simplistic charlatans.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

DFRPG does have the option of good clerics and holy warriors who are Intolerant of all religions but their own. I've wondered whether or not to even allow separate "good" religions; again, it has that "difference without a distinction" problem. But there definitely are at least three forms of spirituality, since there are three forms of Esoteric Medicine. I was assuming that a cleric who was Intolerant of Any Religion but Own was intolerant of druids and martial artists. But if that cleric is not only intolerant of people who have a spirituality that doesn't use Sanctity, but also of other "good" religions, then Intolerant could wind up being rude to literally everyone outside their own community. That should affect the point value, which would really complicate things, so I personally would try to avoid it. But clearly there aren't any angels going to King Brian the Pious (aka "that intolerant prick") and telling him "God loves druids, so be nice to them."

I'm also assuming that wizards are not another "religion" unless they've been Excommunicated. There are some historical examples of Christian monks and believers who practiced alchemy, for example, as well as good wizards and witches in various fairy stories new and old.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

Most members of a religion are not clerics or holy warriors and being a druid, martial artist, or wizard does not preclude a character from being a member of most religions.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

That very much depends on the religion. It might even depend on the Disadvantages of a key person making that call. For example, in the reign of King Charles I of England, Archbishop William Laud decided to enforce church uniformity on the Puritans and religious nonconformists; in our terms, it seems he was Intolerant not only of other religions but even of variants in his own religion (Puritanism was a reform movement within the Church of England, not a separate faith or even a denomination). His Intolerance helped trigger the English Civil War.

If Druids are not a different religion in DFRPG terms, then I don't know what is, or how "Intolerant of other religions" could possibly work. It seems to me that Sanctity and Nature represent two different spiritualities, since both get their spells from Power Investiture (i.e. as gifts, not as proto-science). Chi is a little more debatable, but I think three different sorts of Esoteric Medicine implies three different "religions," with the possibility of more.

ON THE OTHER HAND, here in Roundworld we see religions (particularly Chinese and Japanese) where the idea of opposing religions seems absurd to most people. In China, traditional religion blends Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, even to the point of traditional paintings of the "Three Friends" of Lao Tzu, Confucius and the Buddha all depicted together. In Japan Buddhism and Shinto are one faith to most people. The only people who seem to distinguish are the priests and monks of the different groups, who have professional reasons to specify their particular "faith." So it wouldn't be unthinkable for a single religion (say, Illuvatar, or Unitarian Universalism, or Mahayana Buddhism) that embraces chi practicing martial artists and Nature-channeling Druids. But then, when we see PCs who chose the Disad "Intolerant of All Other Religions" (not just the "evil" ones), who are they not tolerating? Some other officially "good" religion that is distinguished from theirs for some totally arbitrary (i.e. non-game related) reason, like geography?

As to wizards, since a lot of them are Excommunicated but not all, I assume the Good Religion accepts the practice of wizardry just as most faiths accept philosophy and science, but that some (notable) number develop heterodox views and get themselves labeled "heretics." Example: Descartes remained accepted as a good Roman Catholic while Spinoza got Excommunicated by his synagogue. Gotta run.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

One of the points I've been trying to make here is that in a dungeon fantasy type setting where gods obviously and detectably Bless, Curse or Excommunicate people, answer prayers, and occasionally work miracles, is that "person" is the god. You can't really extrapolate too much from how real world religions behave to how they would in a universe the gods were more obviously active.

That said, yeah the idea that other religions are bad and in opposition to ours is somewhat unusual in any polytheistic culture, and may even be nonexistent outside of places where the religion has been captured by the state (i.e. where the condemnation is less about the actual religious differences than it is about lack of loyalty to the government)

Both. Plus people most of us would classify as in their own religion who worship the wrong god, or worship their favorite god in the wrong way, or who worship exactly like they do but favor a different High Priest candidate.... Intolerance is really good at finding distinctions most people barely even notice.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

I've long said that the stereotypical dungeon fantasy setting doesn't have any religions. It has a collection of alternate magicians' guilds that have a side gig selling undead killing acid and specialty magic items. The fact that they are aligned with one or another powerful entity is window dressing.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

I'm interested in this question of how much we can/should "extrapolate." I see that the first principle has to be what is fun; I see the "maximum fun principle" invoked in the DFRPG rules several times. On the other hand, what's "fun" for me as a philosopher and religionist is musing on the implications of the rules as written. The rules as written have all clerics gaining identical powers and spells from whatever deity they claim to represent, which suggests to me that there is only one God (or maybe two, the God with powers of Light and Healing versus the Devil with powers of corruption and harm). So far I've had limited experience running DFRPG but a lot of GM experience overall with several systems. Some consciously consider their "theology" and some just assume something. AD&D and its predecessors just assumed; most sci-fi settings ignore religion or assume atheism, and so on.

And of course, a lot depends on what interests the players (including GM). I've read Jung, Freud, Joseph Campbell, Tolkien's essays on Beowulf and fairy stories, and other theories of the roles of mythic archetypes and their social and psychological implications, so I gravitate towards questions of what stories we might be telling ourselves through our popular culture (perhaps unconsciously). I'm also interested in the ethical stories we tell ourselves, or tell about ourselves. (For example, ever think about the fact that Ukrainians refer to the Russian invaders as "orcs"? What does that say about their enemy--or for that matter, what does it say about orcs?)

To me, extrapolating from real-world religious views in my RPG is only slightly less natural than extrapolating from real-world combat. If I care enough about the religious part of the society to want it to be consistent and believable, I have to start somewhere and follow established principles. But an RPG probably needs to be simpler and more reasonable than reality. There are a lot of ways to do that.

I might also add that I only own the DFRPG and some of the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy books on religion etc. I don't have the Gaming Ballistic's stuff such as Hand of Asgard, as my last MIB points purchases have not been processed. Thus, I don't have the official expansions for how to introduce Viking polytheism into DFRPG without moving outside those limits and into a fuller GURPS system. I'm just looking at the assumptions and implications in the original box, and playing around with those ideas.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

Palladium is a whole other thing; you’re talking about Gaming Ballistic’s Hand of Asgard, I think. That’s a licensed DFRPG supplement.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

A few notes. Yes, I'm not Palladium.

For "Viking polytheism," that is a very overly specific explanation for what the book is, so it's worth repeating. All of my books are as widely useful as possible, so in many cases, the cultural/social stuff is fairly skin deep.

Yes, the imagery and terms feel Norse on the surface. They're clearly assigning belief to one of several divine entities.

But really, these are domains, like D&D domains, that you can map on to any god, set of gods, or singular god with many facets sort of thing.

The domains are:

Allfather - really information, foresight, wisdom, strategic war
Death
Fate
Law and justified violence
Health, Life, and Prosperity
Mischief/Outcasts
Magic, Beauty, Nurturing
Thunder, Storms, War frenzy
Protection and Warding
Wind, Sea, Storms, Merchants
Winter, Vengeance

(and I just noticed somehow Winter/Vengeance got left offf the Table of Contents for five years. Sigh. Will fix.)

But Hand of Asgard, while Norse/Nordlond flavor *because all my books so far are nordlond flavored to keep the writing within my license parameters* is meant to be more than just "Viking fantasy book."

Re: Clerics and deities
 

My mistake; I'll correct the earlier post.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

I don't know that your conclusion follows your observation.

If I pray to the transport god Ford and my friend prays to the transport god Chevy and that other guy over there prays to the transport god Toyota we may all derive similar capability from our prayer but that capability is delivered from actual distinct and competing entities.

I don't see any reason that (for example) gods couldn't have some subset of power to grant just like PCs and NPCs have some subset of powers to use and that different entities can use (or grant) identical powers.

As a thought exercise imagine you found a secret chapter in the Powers book that had the enhancement Grant to Followers Through Prayer [+10,000%] and build a few deities on a million points. I'll bet you could come up with some pretty interesting pantheons full of differently powered entities of various affinity, reliability, interests, and temperament.
Groups of deities could align themselves according to their philosophies just like humans (sapients generally?) do and work against those in opposition.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

In the case of DFRPG, I was struck by the Disadvantage Social Stigma: Excommunication. If you're Excommunicated, all the Good religions (all the ones PCs are allowed to play) blackball you. That's not how it works in real life; just the opposite in fact. In Western religions at least, to belong to one faith is to not be another. At best, they'll ignore each other's excommunications; they might even consider being excommunicated by the other group to be a positive. That's less likely in Asian religions, which tend to be more mutually respectful and syncretistic; but DFRPG seems to follow AD&D and others in treating a pseudo-Western setting as the default and chi using monks/martial artists as from "the mysterious East." If Thor and Athena and Ra are all mutually agreeing that a crime against one pantheon is a crime against all, and they all have the same spell list (as they do in the DFRPG boxed set), in what sense are they different religions? Sounds pretty Unitarian Universalist to me!

I also think the "Intolerant of Other Religions" disad limits how easily you can introduce separate pantheons, or even separate cults in the same pantheon. In GURPS an "Intolerant" trait would be worth more or less points based on how many other people it included. It's easy to have a settled value of -10 in a dualist world where there are a few major religious options; but how will that work if one player wants to follow Thor and another Ares and the GM wanted an Egyptian setting? It's much cleaner to just go with the fewest religious options demanded by the game.

All my musings depend, I suppose, on the premise that everyone is actually interested in role-playing and considers the religious leanings (or lack thereof) of their character to be an important part of the role. Ryan W is right about the way many players and game settings treat religion: as just another power. It's a very reductionist view that sort of fits the materialist/secular worldview of much of society today. And I'm not sure it's so far off from ancient views either; Greeks and Romans seem to treat "wizardry" and "clericalism" as basically the same sort of thing, just different ways to get power, with the main difference being how major and widely-approved the power you are invoking actually is. The guy who wrote a curse against his neighbor on a tablet and threw it into a pond wouldn't see himself as using a "different magic system" than he did when he went to the temple of Jupiter and prayed to the god to keep the Empire strong and the barbarians far away. TTFN

Re: Clerics and deities
 

In my mind at least they differ in the same way that the US, UK, South Korea, Japan, and Sweden can all be very interested in democratic principles, dedicated to their national interest, favor foreign trade, promote a strong cultural identity and still be very different.
Or, instead of comparing nationalism to religion let’s compare linguistics. One can ask for a glass of water in many different languages, all with the same meaning/effect and yet none of them will sound the same. In some games, there are no language differences; everyone speaks Common and the most mysterious thing you will find is a plot driven ‘ancient text’ that someone with the right background or skill needs to decipher. In other games different languages abound. They serve the same function in each of their societies, but I would find it odd to support an argument that Orcish=Elvish=Dwarvish just because they all have the same communicative effect.

Sure, if that’s the game you want to play, but others may find interest in those tensions and interactions. YMMV.

Sure, that makes sense, but again it depends on how sharply the GM wants to focus the lense (i.e. spend game time) on those kinds of problems, interactions, and solutions. Have a good day.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

Not the best example. For DFRPG, you probably don't get that distinction. You'd only have one transport god, not several. A more likely example would be Sun god vs Moon godess.

In one case, both may grant a divine spell like Continual Light. One would be bright like the sun, while uthe other would be soft like a full moon lit night. Only the Sun good would grant Sunlight which would do damage to monsters like vampires.

The Sun god clerics spell list and the Moon god clerics spell list would be different. There probably would be significant overlap in spells but each list would reflect the domain. Also the special holy powers would definitely be different. See Gaming Ballistics Hand of Asgard for fully worked out Nordic/Viking inspired examples. Note the are not too specific so just looking at the domains of the deities its easy enough to translate for other settings. For instance, D&D 5e setting Faerun's Sword Coast. Check out the Sword Coast book and use the domains to map to the closest equivalent.

Note Hand of Asgard also has some interesting Holy Abilities which are different from ones in DFRPG proper. Some are entirely different others are extensions. Good stuff.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

Why exactly would the elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, various tribes of humans, &c. all worship the same god of X? Is that in the sourcebooks somewhere that I missed?
My instinct is that most cultures would have divinities that were tailored to their needs, abilities, physiology and interest. I expect the shark man god of war looks very different from the dark elf god of war and both are also very different from the human god of war. Same for sun, sky, magic, food production, family, justice/law or whatever other anthropomorphized concept one might imbue with divinity.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

That depends on the setting metaphysics. If there is only one God of the Sun, and they are a certain way, then anyone who lives in that world and interacts with the divine has to take that into account.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

Very much so. Has this been established in DFRPG?

Re: Clerics and deities
 

It has not. Nor has it been established that each race has its own sun god. It's up to the GM. Hence "it depends on the setting metaphysics."

Re: Clerics and deities
 

Of course if they are that different, they may not in fact be gods of the same thing. The human god may actually be the god of loyalty, while the shark man god may be the god of battle frenzy serving the same basic function but with noticeably different spell lists. Similarly travellers may involve a different god of "travel" but one of them is actually the god of fair winds, while the other is the god of protection from attack. It all depends on how much you want to stack your pantheons.

Then again, you could go with the Roman perspective. There is only one sun god, one god of war, one god of the harvest. One god for each concept. They just have different names and appearances given to them by mortals.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

Functionally in game terms for DFRPG they are equivalent. The spell lists will be the same or rather close. That's my point. A Sun god and a Moon godess evoke very different aspects. Using the names listed an all being transport gods would lead to similar aspects and evoke similar spell lists. All of the names listed were for cars. So the spell lists would evoke things pertains to ground transportation.

Now let's say we have three deities:

1. godess of Luck - randomness, fate, luck, etc

2. Volcano god - fire, earth, stone, metal, forging

3. godess of nature - plants, animals, healing

The spells natural follow from the deities aspects. Give them whatever names are appropriate to the setting.

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Because there is just one god of X, who is objectively real and comes round and sets your house on fire if you try to deny the fact?

Depending on the setting.

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Of course, the same god may appear differently to two different cultures, for reasons beyond human understanding.

Re: Clerics and deities
 

...Or for reasons not at all beyond human understanding, if one assumes that gods basically farm humans for belief, and keeping different congregations happy by meeting their divergent cultural assumptions is just good stock management.

Sorry. I tend to let too much Discworld seep into my DF.