Using Cleric Domains to Craft Your Gods

On Tuesday I tweeted out:

Okay, let’s create a new pantheon mashing together Cleric domains to create interesting new gods. I’ll be including domains from the Planeshift pdfs and one or two from UA stuff. Let’s see if we can make something interesting. #DnD

— Mark Meredith, Dice Monkey (@MarkMeredith) December 11, 2018

Followed by the list of Cleric Domains:

Arcana, Ambition, City, Death, Forge, Grave, Knowledge, Life, Light, Nature, Order, Protection, Solidarity, Strength, Tempest, Trickery, War, Zeal

Now, naturally, you could include these together easily. “War/Death” “Order/Protection” But let’s throw some in there that at first don’t seem to match up. What interesting gods can we get?

Some of the responses I got back were great! Here’s a selection of them:

Forge/War – They are the religious military industrial complex; most importantly Army Engineers.

Solidarity/Death – The Union of Necromancers. We should all get along because we are all the same in death.

Arcana/Ambition – It is what wizards worship

— mmaranda (@mmaranda) December 11, 2018

Light/Trickery – 2 sides of a coin. The Light side is always probing for what is false and what should be seen/known. The Trickery side is covering up that which should be left alone or just creating more opportunities for light shine through.

— mmaranda (@mmaranda) December 11, 2018

Forge/War – a god of weapons, armour, and the tools of warfare. A god of industrialised war, siegecraft, and ever-more-inventive forms of destruction. Maybe with Knowledge as a third associated domain, covering strategy and tactics, though that softens the concept overall.

— Nathan Dowdell, mostly awake (@N01H3r3) December 11, 2018

My eyes went to Life & Order, which could be very interesting. I like that it could be the kind of Lawful Good/Neutral concept that doesn’t necessarily make the best decisions, “life but only in the most rigid, controlled situation”. Feels very realistic to me also, very “human”.

— Dannysaurus 🦖 (@Bartoneus) December 11, 2018

So there’s some really great ideas here. In my own setting, Teranern, the God of Gods, Kyr’Ephaldin, is Order and Solidarity, while his wife Andrela, goddess of prophecy, would be Knowledge and Tempest. However, as I begin thinking things through, perhaps I should mess around with some domains to make for interesting combinations. What would Light/Death look like? Or Arcana/Forge?

I think too often, game masters or setting designers too readily combine those that make sense together, but by mixing these up, you can make for some really interesting pantheons. In the future, I’d like to start showcasing my setting, and I may end up mixing up my gods a bit by changing up the Domains that would be associated with them.

I’d love to hear your combinations. How can your domains merge together to create something more interesting?