Religion in D&D 5e

Today we’re going to talk a bit about religion in D&D, and how it’s changed over the various editions of D&D, and what effect those changes had on Through the years in D&D there have been more deities and pantheons than one can shake a stick at. In the beginning, D&D mostly borrowed their deities, either from real world pantheons, or a few from various novels that were popular at the time, and eventually from other campaign settings, like Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance, in those days Clerics were more worried about their alignment, either serving Law or Chaos, which was the forerunner of our current 9 alignment system. This system continued through AD&D and 2nd Edition. Then came the Satanic Panic, and all that jazz. So when it came around to 3rd Edition D&D made the move, understandably, to divorce itself real world pantheons. Now this wasn’t actually a new idea, there was already over 100 gods in the Greyhawk campaign setting, and a lot of those got used or adapted for the new edition. Then there were a million books for 3.5, and the list of deities became staggering, including other campaign settings, Dragonlance, Eberron, Forgotten Realms and others.

My point is that in these days, your Deity determined your alignment, to a degree, deities would accept followers that had an alignment within one step of their own. IE if your god was LG or Lawful Good, your character could also be Neutral Good, or Lawful Neutral, and also you usually had two or three Domains to pick from that would give you access to additional spells and abilities, that represented the different aspects of each deity’s portfolio. If you were a Paladin in these times, you were limited even farther to LG alignment and therefore Paladins were only called to serve by Deities that were one step away from lawful good, as in the example we used above.

In the time of 4th Edition D&D, Clerics and Paladins were much the same, with regards to religion, the alignment system had been cut down to 5, Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil, and Chaotic Evil, which covered a lot of ground and simplified things to a degree, though I think the concept of Unaligned alignment confused people a bit. I really enjoyed the 4th edition pantheon, rather than recycling one of the previous edition’s pantheons, they built a new one, picking and choosing, crafting something unique. A couple of awesome developments, were the creation of the Raven Queen, and the concept of evolution in the pantheon, which included fallen and deceased deities.

In the modern age, 5th edition has decoupled Clerics and Paladins completely from deities and alignment. No more restrictions. Clerical powers are tied to the Domains now, and the ties to any specific deity or pantheon of deities is only loosely implied and hinted at. While Paladins draw their powers from the Oaths they swear to uphold, their codes of personal conduct and honor, but again no ties to any pantheon or deities specifically. There are two likely reasons for this, the first is the desire to streamline game mechanics, that seems to be one of the corner stones of 5e design, the other is what I’m going to call inclusion. What do I mean by inclusion? Well, 5e has done a great job growing the brand, expanding the D&D community, and in order to keep a more widely diverse group happy is inclusion, humans depicted in a wide array of skin tones, women depicted not as damsels to be rescued, but as heroes in their own right, side by side with their male counterparts, even gender fluid Eladrin. The art teams have done great and subtle work in all these departments. And so Deities and Pantheons get relegated to the Appendix, and fall under the umbrella of “optional rules”. Which is not really a bad thing in 5e, since the “Basic Rules” are pretty stripped down and well, basic, and many optional rules are used in most people’s games to flesh the game out, to something more like what most experienced players are used to. In essence, these changes increase flexibility of both story telling, and variety. I’ve seen some clerics played who serve some very unexpected deities, you can also create some interesting domain/deity combos, perhaps you serve a deity known for death, but you choose the life domain, using the powers granted by this death deity to draw the death out of your allies, offering that potential death up to your god, and healing them. Another example, when I played a Life cleric, I made a hill dwarf, as is good and proper, and chose Moradin for my god, a deity perhaps more commonly associated with the Light or Forge domains, but to my cleric, Moradin was the All Father, and all beings were his creations, and it was my duty to keep them in good working order, on his behalf. The character also believed very firmly that Moradin was the one true god and that all other supposed divine beings were merely reflections of Moradin’s power as perceived by those with limited understanding of the greater divinity that is the All Father. Pretty fun character to play.

But this flexibility creates some builds that I feel are strange in a, yes, it’s legal, but should it be? Those of you that know me, will likely know what is coming, yes, I’m talking about the Paladin / Warlock multiclass combo, from a story side of the game it seems completely antithetical. The Paladin swears their oath, from which they derive their powers, optionally (depending on if you use deities or not) a Paladin is called by a deity, to which they swear their oaths. Then you bring in the Warlock, who make a deal, a pact if you will, with some strange entity, be they fey or demigod or fiend, etc etc. But how do you resolve swearing an oath to this god, with later making a deal with a lesser entity. The only way this makes sense in my mind is if you run on over to the DMG and find the Oathbreaker Paladin, then it works. But that’s just my prejudice I suppose.

Hope these tips and advice have been useful, and remember, it’s always darkest before the Don.