Editing God (section)

==Gods in D&D==
''See also: [[Gods of Dungeons & Dragons]]''

Pretty much every setting has some sort of fantasy pantheon, since gods are usually required for clerics and paladins to get their God-given powers. Still, some manage to put a twist on the typical formula.

===Dark Sun===
Athas of the [[Dark Sun]] setting is an interesting variation in that it's one of the very few settings where gods very definitely don't exist. Depending on the setting you prefer, they either noped straight outta there when they saw how fucked up the world was or were all killed by the [[Archomental|Primordial]]s. In their absence, clerics get their power from the [[Elemental Planes]].

===Eberron===
[[Eberron]] leaves it mainly ambiguous, as the gods don't really act directly. Ever, so they might not exist. Clerics and paladins do get magical powers, but it stems from belief, not actual God-given poets. This works so that even followers of religions known out of character to be scams, like Cults and [[Path of Inspiration]], can get spells, as can [[Heretic]]s.

===Forgotten Realms===
The [[Forgotten Realms]] have a truly ridiculous amount of gods, with each race (except humans) having their own pantheon, and each continent is the exclusive turf of a non-racial pantheon. The only one of real interest, however, is the Faerûnian pantheon. That's where you have [[Mystra]], [[Helm]], [[Deneir]], and all the other cool guys. The only time the gods really did anything unusual was that one time they came down to solve their petty squabbles in Faerûn. In terms of religion, the world of the Forgotten Realms may be strict, as people are required to believe and follow one of the many deities in order to be brought into their paradises.

Three particular deities, [[Ilmater]], [[Tyr]] (from Norse mythology!), and [[Torm]] are venerated as the Triad.

Those who have no gods are known as the Faithless - they were atheists or people who lost their patron deity either by being rejected, or their patron god has died. They would face a worse fate, for their souls would be doomed by the death god [[Myrkul]] to be melded into a wall around the City of the Dead. Occasionally, demons would steal souls from the wall to create more demons.

The deities of the Realms are a unique blend of "homegrown" deities and gods from historical polytheistic pantheons, which in older editions is often directly said to be a result of those gods choosing to give up on Earth and go looking for a powerbase in the Realms when monotheism began taking over.

===Greyhawk===
[[Greyhawk]] is a bit closer to real life, in that each of the human races/ethnicities has their own pantheon of gods, but just as the ethnicities have mixed with each other, so have the pantheons. Most follow a mixture of Flan, Oeridian, and Suloise gods, with the rare Baklunish god in there.

===Krynn===
[[Dragonlance|Krynn]] stands out compared to the [[Forgotten Realms]] and [[Greyhawk]] in how ''small'' its pantheon is. Oh, it's still pretty big, even dividing itself internally into three alignment-based sub-pantheons (Good, Evil, Neutral), but the list is far smaller than that of the other two big settings. Another major unique element is that there's no racial or cultural pantheon list - well, they ''exist'', but they're explicitly just mortals putting alternative names and looks on the real gods.

===Masque of the Red Death===
On [[Masque of the Red Death|Gothic Earth]] there is no character class linked to deities, unless one decides to count the antagonistic Red Death as a deity, which would make all spellcasters so to a degree. The sole divine caster class, Mystic, draws their power from understanding the spirit world. Gothic Earth is still Earth however, so all religions around in the late 1800s do exist there, just without mechanical power. By contrast, D&D's ''other'' Urban Fantasy setting, [[Urban Arcana]], allows any deity from Earthly religion to grant spells to faithful, but also allows the same of deities of Shadowkind that have fallen to Earth. [[Dark Matter]], which D&D briefly adopted as a campaign setting, features "functional religion" as a provable enough fact and has magic from both dark cults and a Christian secret society explicitly exist (with other sources presumable). Unlike arcane magic, divine magic is not fully documented and replicateable on demand, at least not by the Hoffman Institute that serves as the default viewpoint/PC employer.