Optimal Number Of Gods in a Pantheon

I said this. But that was a typo.

I was meaning to say this

>Creating mythology that's actually true

Why would you do this? Half the fun of mythology is the fact that it's messy and inconsistent as all hell, with every story and character having a bajillion variants, because they were originally passed around orally and every storyteller embellished shit as they went along.

You could quite reasonably have your players wander into a random town and find a shrine to a god that they've never heard of, because shit's not standardised and people will worship whatever they want.

The detailed creation story and the pantheon are not for my player but for myself. I like to have a firm grip on creation and gods when I am worldbuilding. The difference to real life is that the world I am building is quite literally created by gods.

The players will not know these details but will get glimpses of it every now and then depending on where they visit and their background. Not every information they are going to get is going to be solid truths. As you said different cultures and societies have different beliefs but I like to give all of them at least a baseline to build from.

>The players will not know these details but will get glimpses of it every now and then depending on where they visit and their background.

I can guarantee that no-one will care, and you'd get the same results by pulling shit out of your ass.

I have a player whose studying philosophy and she loves lore about mythos, gods, creation myths. The party sometimes goes out of their way to learn little tidbits about different views of different cultures. As to reward their behaviour I try to create quests where the party could use that knowledge to gain a little edge and they absolutely love that kind of shit. I think even though most of my campaign doesn't revolve around gods, they feel like coming one step closer to cracking the biggest mystery of the universe everytime they get a little piece of lore.

I suggest you find better players, ones that are not completely murderhobos and actually interested in the setting they are playing in.

>How many gods are too many gods?
Nine. Eight is just fine, yes.

Get the fuck out of here you elfjew. Talos is a god, get over it.

>a handful of minor ones

You play Pyre yet? The way the lore is handled in that game sounds like that style

21 gods sounds like a decent number. And if there are any holes in the canon, you can either make a new god, or just use natural science

Whats wrong with lesser deities and demi-gods?

I love Pyre and yes that is very much my style. If my players don't want lore about myths then I am fine with it, it doesn't take away from my campaign or my enjoyment from it for that matter but I love worldbuilding and will do it regardless and my players seem to like it too so that is a big plus. I just don't want to go overboard with it to such an extent that it will start sounding silly. However, from what I gathered and the from the comments, 21 seems like a fine number, yes.

Is that a real life slann mage priest?

Nothing, that's why the greeks had a shitload of them and not merely a handful

My setting has two main religion:
Germanic centered around the main gods of Woden, Tiwaz and Thor and pseudo-christian centered around the Sacred Flame symbolizing the divine concept. Both have minor aspects such as lower ranked gods or saints, but these are the four choices my players have for worship, minor ones only come up when they encounter them. I feel 4 is a good number as you can cover most concepts within that and people still manage to remember them and don't make wrong decisions based on mistaking Wee-Jas for Obad Hai, leading to a TPK

By my experience the best number is 6

Sacred Flame kinda sounds like The Light from Warcraft. I wanted to do something like that but never figured how to cultivate a religion around an idea, not a God.

If you want polytheism then go with 6-12 major gods that are easy to remember and shitloads of lesser ones, local ones, deified heroes and rulers e.t.c.
Everyone knows and worships gods of sun and moon, but goddess of clay on the river banks is also a thing (not making shit up, there is one in sintoism)

Please tell me you don't have one God for each alignment.

Then it seems like I am all set.

There are some natural overlaps but I do not worldbuild around alignments.

Not to be negative but their domains seem like shit
Mix it up a bit my friend. Let the god of war also be the god of agriculture. Let the god of healing also be the trickster. Or something like that. That sort of stuff entices the fantasy and also brings some philosophy to each god.

I appreciate your criticism as this the most basic template I come up with to create a pantheon as a first step.

I shall look into spicing it much more like you described.

20 tops, 7-10 for a core set. A good way to go is just to have a core orthodox pantheon set up by some empire thats long since fallen out of relevance, a few regional gods, and then just establish that there are hundreds of others you'll run into from time to time.

It's most definitely a 'god', it's like the silver flame from Eberron or the Light from Darkest Dungeon for example. It's just a disembodied nebulous god that has no 'humanoid' form

>A mortal is a god
??????
Am I a god?

>not ALL of them

>Greeks had 12 primary gods, a handful of minor ones and assorted nature spirits
Greek had hundreds of gods. Most city states had their own incarnated god.

I simplified.
Counting minor deities is a bit tricky since many of them are Mycenean in origin and were later partially absorbed by greater deities or separated again. Like Paean became an aspect of Apollo and later re-emerged as Asklepios

You just described every ancient culture ever

Jep, I did. Especially mediterranean ones.

One is the optimal number.

330 million, most of them known only to a single family or even forgotten altogether.

>Fartoris

Now I want an elder scrolls game where you you Deus Vult the Thalmor and spread the word of talos

Many pagan faiths does not seem to have had a strict hierarchy among the gods, or at least not in any form that we would recognize today. The sources we have on Greek and Norse pantheons, for example, show clear signs of having being influenced by Christianity on this front which does have a strict and clearly defined hierarchy.

T. Trinitarian

I have some basic good ones, some basic "too alien for the human mind to comprehend" good ones, couple bads and if the players can come up with their own god thats cool and written well enough I'll allow it.

I do the same with races.

There's still at least basic Father-Son hierarchy

Make as many gods as you want. Any gods that interest me I'll pay attention to, the others are just explanations for why certain things happen in the rest of the setting. As long as you don't expect a player to file off specific information about the gods like some sort of shitty test, do whatever you want.

Not him, but Talos is objectively real and a god in Elder Scrolls lore. He mantled Lorkhan. You even meet him in Morrowind as his aspect Wulf.

Altmer are just assblasted a human (and a Nord, of all things) ascended.