Designing a Pantheon: Faction Analysis

The first two factions I created in this pantheon had no interactions at all, as far as domain assignments are concerned. I added four more factions and started to see some interactions, including some potentially unreliable or even compromised faction members.

One thing I didn’t check, though, was the distribution of domains between and among the factions. I know which faction has ‘the deity of fire’ (the deity with Fire as the primary domain), but which factions have fire deities (deities with Fire as the primary or secondary domain)?

I suspect this could be illuminating, so let’s take a look. How deities with each domain are in each faction?

DomainPrimary FactionAlignmentF1F2F3F4F5F6None
AirF1N2112
ArtificeF1N31
ChaosF3CN132
CharmF6LG13
CommunityF5NE13
DarknessF1N312
DeathF3N1212
DestructionNoneLN1111
EarthF5N1221
EvilF5NE1131
FireF2N312
GloryNoneN121
GoodF6NG231
HealingF6LG13
KnowledgeF4NE22
LawF6LN132
LiberationF1CN211
LuckF2N31
MadnessNoneLE1111
MagicF4N123
NobilityNoneNG211
PlantF4N31
ProtectionF5NE112
ReposeNoneCN1111
RuneF3CG121
StrengthNoneN211
SunF2N24
TravelNoneN1111
TrickeryF3CG31
WarF2LE211
WaterF4N312
WeatherNoneCN121

One thing I learned, if I want to do this kind of analysis I definitely want to add it to my workbook. This was pretty tedious.

Anyway…

Each domain is accessible by 2 or 3 factions. Each faction provides access to 12 or 13 domains. Non-factioned deities provide access to 20 domains.

This feels like good coverage, all things considered.

I see the deities with the following domains in each faction (with alignment tendency for the faction).

  • Faction 1 (CN): Air, Artifice, Chaos, Community, Darkness, Earth, Healing, Liberation, Madness, Magic, Nobility, Rune, Travel.
  • Faction 2 (LE): Death, Destruction, Evil, Fire, Glory, Law, Luck, Protection, Repose, Strength, Sun, War, Weather.
  • Faction 3 (CG): Chaos, Charm, Darkness, Death, Destruction, Good, Liberation, Luck, Repose, Rune, Trickery, Weather.
  • Faction 4 (NE): Earth, Evil, Glory, Knowledge, Liberation, Magic, Plant, Protection, Repose, Strength, Travel, Water.
  • Faction 5 (NE): Air, Artifice, Community, Earth, Evil, Fire, Knowledge, Madness, Plant, Protection, Travel, War, Water.
  • Faction 6 (LG): Air, Charm, Death, Destruction, Good, Healing, Law, Madness, Nobility, Rune, Trickery, War.
  • No Faction (N): Air, Chaos, Darkness, Death, Destruction, Earth, Evil, Fire, Glory, Good, Law, Madness, Magic, Nobility, Repose, Strength, Sun, Travel, Water, Weather.

These are… not nice factions. Even the ‘LG faction’ has some relatively dark elements (Death, Destruction, Madness, War). Domains that might otherwise be assumed ‘nice’ (including Glory, Luck, Liberation, Protection) are in factions that lean toward evil.

Closing Comments

This is probably going to be more work to explain than if the domain-alignment associations were closer to common expectation, but none of them feel exceptionally wrong. Unexpected maybe, but workable. More importantly, the combinations are already sparking ideas and I think they’ll bring me somewhere interesting.

I do want to revise the workbook to make these analyses easier. The current workbook supports only one set of weights (i.e. what I’m now calling a ‘faction’), I’ll want to expand that to probably six or eight. I’m pretty sure I’ll also want to make it easier to set thresholds for faction membership, and count deities with each domain in each faction. It looks like I’m going to learn some more Excel, I don’t know even how to do some of these calculations. But I will soon.

TL;DR: good domain coverage between the factions, good faction coverage between domains, and very good coverage by non-factions deities (which surprised me a little considering how few non-factioned deities I have). I feel like the deities and their factions might take a bit of explaining, but that the effort will be worth it.

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