3.5 Rebuild Poll Part 14

[bhu]

That will happen regardless of what we make.  People will always have house rules.  I wouldnt let it get to you overly much.

Honestly? What the hell is the point of even discussing rebuilding 3.5 then?

The point is to try to do better.  But better is relative from person to person.  I realized from the beginning, whether or not we succeed in doing better, whether or not we do worse, there will always be people who disagree with us.  And they will always modify their campaign, because no matter how well we do, some personal quirk of theirs will cause them to be pissed off at what we have written, regardless of what it is we have written.  There will always be clueless or asshole players/DM's regardless of how well thought out any system is.  While we should keep that in mind, we shouldnt let worrying about it hamstring us in making decisions because we worry about how DM X will run his campaign.  If he wants to still punish paladins for breaking their vows, he will.  No rule we write will discourage him.  And if thats what his players want (and oddly enough some do) then they'll agree with him.  But it isn't something we should let upset us in the design process.

[veekie]

Essentially, yeah, we make the base rules solid, so it can withstand a certain degree of tweaking by DMs AND at the same time require minimum tweaks to make it function for a range of settings.

The issue with clerics and deities is a non issue really. Cleric/Paladin power is a construction of their class structure. Mechanically, their deity has no relation to the class except for defining it's theme and fluff aspects, and yes, RAW, your cleric may eventually become more powerful than his patron.

This does not change matters. See for example, the President of the USA. A good number of soldiers could punk him in a straight fight, but they obey anyway. Alternatively, having one of your worshippers hit a level of power equivalent to divinity is empowering for the patron as well, and your former god of shepherds is now the ascendant god of an entire world, with dominion over many things.

Anyway, from a game design and toolkit point of view, we need to allow design room for Small Gods(Shinto kami, Taoist spirits/dragons/demons/deities/immortals, Christian saints, etc), to big time gods(Thor, Amaterasu, Shiva, Pelor, etc). Whether design guidelines for unique outsiders, or a full blown divine rank system, allowance DOES have to be made, or the many DMs and players seeking to include divinities in their game(regardless of which side of the screen) would be forced to either do without, or create extensive houserules, of debatable viability. These don't necessarily need to be combat monsters, nor omnipotent in any sense, most mythological gods(except for monotheistic faiths) are far from omnipotent, though they are still well above most mortals. Yes, even creator gods, being able to use Genesis and Origin of Species doesn't require omnipotence, just a lot of power.

Divinities too broad to be embodied(certain varieties of overgods, the creative principle, etc), don't need to be statted, as they are by definition, untouchable and unknowable(and indeed, a perfectly viable option for DMs who prefer untouchable gods). This section houses the truly omnipotent varieties of deity.

[Midnight_v]

I think... I think I prefer the unique outisder for most of these dudes...

[bihlbo]

I think there's an inherent problem in talking about deities in D&D beyond simply fluff terms. There are so many conflicting concepts of divinity from around the world that D&D simply cannot refer to gods as offhandedly as it does. I also think D&D should not give a concrete definition to deities, but leave the whole mess up to the folks playing the game.

Deities should be named, characterized, tied to a religion, and otherwise very loosely defined. No amount of effort on the part of any designer can overcome the preconceived notions of players about gods.

Basically, my vote to this poll is "Do not include this information in the game."

[Midnight_v]

Right well...
Thank you for that amazing bit of insight.
Glad that was filed under "other" 
M_v cause D&D has pretty much always dealt with dieties in that same off hand manner you speak of.
Which you know people have been enjoying that style obviously for 30 some odd years ... so you know... "do not include that information" is kind of uhm...
Its really kind of a dick move to all those people who do want you to spell it out for them.

I mean really one could just use the SRD instead of the core books and no campaign books at all ever.
Its like an Obberoni fallacy going down. Just because Dm's will "do what they want" doesn't mean we shouldn't provide balanced rules for people who want/need/use them.

I mean there are just as many people who use Gods as don't so me... there's no need to deny something to people they're probbably expecting.

[bihlbo]

Its really kind of a dick move to all those people who do want you to spell it out for them.

Not nearly as bad a move as spelling something out for people who don't want to hear their players say, "But that's not D&D! Deities are supposed to have stats and interact with their followers!" This is the kind of thing that should be left up to the particular setting you're using, and should not be detailed in the core rules.

Or did I miss something - was the topic of the question concerning which setting we liked the best, instead of how we would remake the core rules of D&D 3.5?

[DaveoftheRave]

A section detailing popular d&d/fantasy deity archetypes would be good.

There could be descriptions of generic Death, Nature, Sun, etc. deities with examples from different settings.

This is essentially what core is anyway, just instead of the name in big letters have the archetype in big letters and examples below it.

You could also have a sidebar about having a world without deities or however you want.

"But that's not D&D! Deities are supposed to have stats and interact with their followers!"

Then they don't know what D&D is.  The solution here would be to educate the player about P&P RPGS, which are quite different than the MMOs they're used to.

[Bauglir]

Its really kind of a dick move to all those people who do want you to spell it out for them.

Not nearly as bad a move as spelling something out for people who don't want to hear their players say, "But that's not D&D! Deities are supposed to have stats and interact with their followers!" This is the kind of thing that should be left up to the particular setting you're using, and should not be detailed in the core rules.

Or did I miss something - was the topic of the question concerning which setting we liked the best, instead of how we would remake the core rules of D&D 3.5?

Actually, this is why I think we ought to include default rules. It's better to have rules in place that a DM can ignore than to have no rules at all. Make clear in the description that whether or not to use these rules is a decision completely up to the DM, etc, and go from there.