Create a pantheon

I have a god of war that is about the destruction of evil, one that is about the destruction of big ass monsters and one that is about using violence for good things, like justice or protecting the innocent. All three don't really like each other.

Huh, interesting. Wonder what kind of shit storm will happen if that get know to the people.

Just have them fight a big war to see who comes out on top.

This. Make bloody paladins of the three gods fight each other for the title of true war god.

You know what you must do.

Maybe OP (and Veeky Forums) should be less of a war-obsessed manchild and instead design a pantheon oriented more towards things that would actually matter in the day-to-day life of a society.

Also:
None of these are properly war gods, then. Especially the second and third.

Why didn't all of the living gods just pool all of their powers together and just the smite the shit out of Kratos or cast him off into the Void?

>Create a pantheon
>They are all lolis

That's so voided of any imagination.
>"Lolis! XD XD XD"
>"Cute grrls gods!"
Might as well not include gods in the setting.

There's literally nothing wrong with it. If you want to keep it realistic, don't be worried as long as they're gods of something else too. This "something else" should grant the details for their aspect of god of war.

Keep in mind that, if you want realism, you should have like half a dozen of fertility deities though. And knowing people, you probably have one or zero.

Most polytheistic cultures didn't just have one war god, there's usually several, with many differing remits - the god presiding over just war and military justice is rarely the same deity as the one presiding over slaughter.

Check how many you get in the same pantheons, even with some being more regional, and others going out of style at times, there's still a range of war gods in most pantheons
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_deities

Right. Like, Ares was just as much a god of virility, and warfare wasn't Athena's primary concern. But the point is that this being Veeky Forums, there is going to be waaay too much attention given to warfare, violence, and vicarious power fantasies.

Or you can make them all overstylized little girls

And they themselves go
>"Lolis! XD XD XD"
>"Cute grrls gods!"
to the point where greek gods seem to be a reasonable bunch

Tolkien's setting didn't have a god of war at all until it needed one. Tulkas wasn't called in until Morgoth started fucking everything up. Prior to that he was among the countless Ainur who stayed with Eru outside of Ea.

Can gods be "birthed" in your setting, in any manner?

Also real world pantheons tended to have multiple deities who were patrons of war in some context or another.

>OP makes a thread about gods of war
>surprised that the thread is about gods of war
Silly user, can't even read.

>His setting only has three war gods

HA

>if you want realism, you should have like half a dozen of fertility deities though.

>cavemen circa 80,000 BC
>"Thog, you just make up fertility goddesses because you big man-child who wants to paint big tits on cave walls!"
>"Gorb be realistic, paint manly war gods instead!"

>they start wars over who gets to be the god of war

>Rome
>3+ gods of war
>Norse people
>5+ gods of war

Dude, this sounds like a fantastic idea that makes a lot of sense for so many reasons that other anons are pointing out. Any god of war should, well, be at war, and war is a messy, confusing business. Having multiple gods of war that fight with each other is a great way to embody war in a divine sense. I'm stealing this for my own future pantheons.

Greeks had two gods of war and pretty much every Norse god was a fighter if some sort, so I fail to see the problem

>5+ norse gods of war

Odin and..... Maybe Tyr?

Thor. Freya. Frigga in some tales. Others as well.

It turns out that gods in myth were multifaceted beings, and almost all the norse gods got involved in war.

For my first campaign as the DM I am creating the world instead of using an adventure, but I'm not sure I should just use existing pantheons or invent the gods myself.

Being Warriors doesn't make you a god of war really.

Thor was thunder, lightning, storms, oak trees, strength, the protection of mankind, and also hallowing, healing and fertility.

Frigg is wisdom and the law of women.

Freya is ove, sex, beauty, fertility, gold, seiðr, war, and death.

Her brother Freyr was a Fertility god.

Fuck, Pretty much everyone in the Norse Pantheon is about fighting, fucking and making peace.

I commend your creative spirit, but I urge you not to overburden yourself and burn out trying to make too much, especially for your first campaign. Consider ripping as much as you can from preexisting sources and tweaking things as you see fit.

>fighting, fucking and making peace
The three stages of a man's life.

It's why I enjoy the Norse Pantheon so much, they're so honest and raw.

Also Ironically Thor is never a War-god and is probably the most Paladin-like god of the Norse save for Tyr,

In some stories, Frigga and Odin work at cross purposes to make some ruler win a war. In others, it's Freya and Odin.

Protection of mankind involves war.

It's a very modern idea 'this god is only a god of war'. A Norse warrior might pray to any god to support him in battle. He could pray to Odin or Freya to survive this battle, to Thor or Frey that the elements favor him, to Frigg that he come home safely to his wife, to Modi that his just cause be favored, to Njord that his ship will not founder, to Ran that she take the other ship, and not his.

In my pantheon, the original god of war and strategy was the son of the goddess of lawyers and merchants.
Draw your own conclusions.

But those are the most important parts of humanity! And anyone who thinks otherwise isn't human and can be safely ignored.

>No True Scotsman
I know you're joking, but you could try harder.

If you have just one, they get lonely. Also don't have anyone to fight.

>Kalishnikov 4:7
Someone is trying way too hard.

so, AoS?

Yeah, you can stop acting like you're chill and have all figured out since you've been called out this time.

Didn't fertility deities mostly fall out of prominence after people formed villages and men became more dominant in the community?

They tried that. But Kratos is a PC, and thus, immune to plot bullshit that can be resolved via QuickTime event.

Not unusual. Athena and Ares both had war in their domain

Different avatars of the war god

Here is OP.

By this definition, I have only one god(dess) of war. While the two other gods are warlike, are other domains more present.

>create a pantheon
>4 different gods on sex

Not at all, because fertility, both in regards to childbirth and agriculture, would be the most important thing in the lives of most people, but it doesn't really lend itself to exciting gameplay. Although with a shift to a neolithic lifestyle, you do see many new deities and hierarchies emerge to reflect the new social dynamics.

oral, anal, vaginal, and hand holding

I was think MF, MM, FM, FF
MF being man taking charge during sex and FM bring the woman taking charge

>passionless sex, patron of women merely forced to bear heirs and prostitutes
>loving sex, part of a sphere of lovers, particularly in the realm of fertility and childbirth
>rape, also part of a wider sphere of devastation, often prayed to out of fear by potential victims and occasionally generals wanting to avoid looting and pillaging
>kinky sex, really only worshiped by those surrounding themselves in hedonistic pleasure. Has a smaller cult following as a god of general taboos

What about back if the knee

>Ares
>Athena
>Demios
>Phobos
>Nike
>Adrestia
>Nemesis

You need to step the fuck up, son.

Aztec
almost every god has war in its portfolio

Ceres was popular enough to be on the money.

Indeed. You can't have a war without an opponent.

Pefrect. One for each point on one of the Good/Evil or Law/Chaos scales.

1 Major God of War, and the other 2 are Minor Gods that represent specific aspects in war. One could be worshiped exclusively by soldiers to grant them protection in battle, and another by commanders in hopes of outwitting their opponent.

I once made a god that was basically Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner. He was all about the bonds of brotherhood between comrades in war, and was said to hunt down those who betrayed that bond. A fairly minor god that was treated more as a cult god among soldiers, like Rome's Mithras.

Could be rival heavenly warlords, with their followers warring almost constantly.

Just War, Unjust War, Fuck Me That's Brutal War

Why are you so bad at mythology, Veeky Forums? You can have overlapping gods in a pantheon, happens all the time. Norse myth has at least four related to war, if not more.

You're fine, actual pantheons are like that all the time. Take a look at mesoamerican mythology.

You're fine.
Almost every god in the Norse pantheon has a War aspect. War is one of the main things to pray about, really.

Pathfinder gods I've been pooping into existence:

-Pa!huan (CN Great Old One)
Favored weapon = terbutje
D = Chaos, Fire, Plant, Void
S = Ash, Entropy, Growth, Stars
Holy texts: Tinder Hollow (observations made by twenty-four different worshippers, carved into a hollow log)
Holy days/events: Glade Burn (every new moon)

Pa!huan is an incarnation of the concepts of fire ecologies, mutations and natural cycles, spawned by the witless musings of a far-off idiot god-beast. Neither good nor evil, it's a massive plant creature thoroughly adapted to surviving where even the hottest flames burn. It observes the necessity of cycles in existence, regardless of whatever begins, changes, or ends in the process. Pa!huan's followers are to a tee abso-fucking-lutely deranged by the things they've witnessed and follow the whims of their patron deity as best they can. Setting wildfires, inducing horrific mutations in the unborn and ranting on the street corner are a few of their most common habits. Their version of a temple is a bonfire made the temple of another god. Or a hollow cairn next to a volcano.

-Pugio (N God)
Favored weapon = throwing arrow cord
D = Community, Healing, Strength, Weather
S = Family, Fist, Restoration, Tyranny
holy text: Pugio's 40 Laws (memorized and recited, only recorded on twenty cold iron plates)
Holy days/events: Midsummer Competition (eleven days across midsummer), Scapetorch Noon (first day of winter), War Season (first twenty days of spring)

Pugio is the patron deity of a particularly inbred and willfully ignorant ethnic group. Forty of their ancestral heroes met in the afterlife and fused together into a god that's sullen, insular, and horribly domineering. Pugio demands that his followers forsake the trappings of civilization and stick to what they know. Anyone who tries to go above and beyond that should be bullied into submission and their attempts destroyed as swiftly as possible. As a result of his teaching, his worshippers tend to form into whining, mumbling hordes, attacking cities, towns, and traveling strangers without warning. Pugio sees dogs as the only animal worth raising and even then they're just tools as best. His followers ride them, milk them, beat them and in due time eat them. Pugio's emphasis on bullying and attacking from afar means he has Tyranny as a subdomain of Weather.

>exclamation point in the middle of a name

Why? Is that supposed to be cute?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_clicks

I'd put Tyr first, but I get where you're coming from. I like how his great act of sacrifice was still a moment of trickery, though.

>three gods of war
>always at war with one another
>effectively the same diety copy-pasted but with slight changes in appearance
>followers argue and fight to the death over why their god is the undisputed best of the three
Thanks for the idea, OP!

Define pantheon. Do you mean like, the set of gods for the whole setting, or one of multiple groups of gods in the setting?

...

>worried about having too many gods of war.
>the two most popular settings, Forgotten Realms and Pathfinder, have three each.
Your good, OP

>The Highlander: Gods of Olympus

Most pantheons had major overlap between the gods. Like I swear half the Norse pantheon were either gods of war or gods of hunting.

Nonononono.

First you've got your god of missionary for the purpose of procreation. That'd be your basic fertility goddess.

Then you've got your god of orgies and casual sex. The typical Bacchus type; the temple is a meeting spot for singles and they hold orgies on holy days.

Then you've got the super passionate you-are-my-whole-world kind of god. New couples swear their love in her name, and creepy people pray to her for their crush to like them.

Then you've got the S&M god. Priests dress in black leather and latex, vestial subs attend to the temple, that kind of thing. May or may not condone slavery.

Then you've got the polyamory god. The orgy god was about having sex with a lot of people whose names you don't know; this one's about having sex with a lot of people who you DO know.

Then you've got the god of really bizarre shit that doesn't even tangentially relate to sex but that people get off on. The guy who fucks park benches or the women who can only get off by masturbating with bed frames belong here.

Then you've got the loli god that pedos pray to and whose worship is b&. Throw in some south park Super Adventure Club references.

The Greeks had at least 2, Ares and Athena. Ares was thegod ofthechaos of war, of violence and bloodlust, while Athena was th goddess of military planning and strategy. If you make sure there are subtle differences between what ech god represents, you're fine.

>having 3 gods of war
>not making them fight a huge battle royal alongside their servants

God of war of defense
God of war of conquest
God of war of slaughter/looting/pillaging/raping/etc.

>craft a golden falchion
>label it "For the Strongest"
>watch the world burn