LogFAQs > #897000214

Zeus posted...

Personally, I would really need to know more about the existing pantheon. If it's a predominantly male pantheon, I would likely just slot in a male.

In 4e it's literally just two gods that are explicitly spelled out - Corellon and Sehanine (who is female). In other editions/settings, the pantheon as a whole tends to be relatively balanced between male and female.

(If you really feel like deep diving, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elf_deities)

On the flip-side, even the Drow, as matriarchal as they are, have at least a few male gods (and genderless protoplasmic ooze monsters) in their divine hierarchy. The elves are pretty egalitarian in general (which makes sense, since they're probably the most heavily-influenced by Tolkien race in D&D, and the Valar of Middle Earth were basically paired off 7/7 male/female - by contrast, dwarves are like 99% beards and axes).



Zeus posted...

Likewise, I associate more aggressive tendencies (like "smite the shit out of evil") with males -- partly due to hormones and partly due to social acceptable behavior where a more peacekeeping role I'd be tempted to just flip a coin unless I had a very specific character design in mind.

To be fair, this is more a "smite evil in the cause of protecting innocents" case - like I said, for Pelor at least (who I'm using as a rough model for this), "protect the weak" and "help the helpless" are still in there as part of his tenants. For a real-world comparison, we're talking more Hospitallers than Templars or Teutonic Knights. It's more "defending", "protecting", or even "preserving" than it is "avenging" or "exterminating".

Another note to keep in mind, though - in the existing elf pantheon, their actual god of war and justice (who is probably the most violent and least "elf-y" of the entire pantheon) is female, while their god of healing and "mercy" is male. So the usual human (or real world historical) assumptions about male and female traits doesn't necessarily carry over.

(On the other hand, in the Greek pantheon Athena was the goddess of "good" war while Ares was the god of "bad" war, while their god of healing and medicine was male, so maybe it's not as unrealistic as one might think.)



Zeus posted...

For general characterization, I'm tempted to make suggestions but I'm not sure what would really fit within the existing canon and, quite honestly, I hate additions who feel off-type.

Feel free to throw out whatever ideas or suggestions you like. At worst I just ignore them all, at best, I might take an idea, or an idea might trigger an entirely different idea or way of thinking for me.

That's part of what I love best about brainstorming. Multiple people throwing out ideas, one idea playing off others, setting off a chain of new ideas and modes of thinking, changing perspectives, and generally creating a wealth of ideas to pick and choose from.

Plus, like I said, in the grand scheme of things this probably doesn't really matter, since I likely won't ever do anything with the idea anyway in the long run.


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