Clerics and deities

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by benz72

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.

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.