A couple years ago I took the Demon subdomain and created the Abyss domain to replace it. The process used might be useful for combining other domains, using a subdomain as a starting point. For instance, the Heroism subdomain (Glory domain) might be useful in bridging Glory and War, and the Defense subdomain (Protection domain) actually is a nice fit to the War domain, and could be used to bridge Protection and War (‘Guardian‘ seems like a good domain name here). Knowledge and War might merge by way of Tactics (which is already a subdomain of War).
The Season subdomain (Weather domain) is even more interesting to me, since it could be used to merge Weather with the elemental domains to get a domain for each season:
- Weather + Water = Winter
- Weather + Earth = Spring
- Weather + Fire = Summer
- Weather + Air = Autumn
There are many ways this could be done. It may prove interesting to explore them.
Nice adaption of existing material, I also like the idea of seasonal domains.
Thanks Sean. I like the results I’ve been getting.
I think the specialized domains fill a gap for me. The core domains are quite broad in their application, and tend to be pretty generic in their implementation — especially the spell choices. I want to keep those, but I’d really like to see more focused, specific ones that aren’t as commonly used.
Subdomains went partway toward that, but still didn’t seem different enough. Also, they go weird where there is more than one associated domain.
I like the seasonal domains as well, they almost exemplify what I’m trying to describe above. Each is quite specific, and each probably won’t be held by more than one or two gods.
I’m working on a series of posts here, each presenting a different specialized domain, showing how I constructed them. I’m thinking of a product bundling these domains with revised polyhedral pantheons text, include the non-core (or non-PRD) spells, maybe (probably) an alternate cleric. As part of that (either on the blog or in the book) probably include a pantheon presenting the results, some NPCs, and so on.
Pingback: Specialized Domain: Guardian | Keith Davies — In My Campaign - Keith's thoughts on RPG design and play.
Pingback: Heavy Lifting: Guardian Domain | Keith Davies — In My Campaign - Keith's thoughts on RPG design and play.
Pingback: Specialized Domain: Abyss Domain | Keith Davies — In My Campaign - Keith's thoughts on RPG design and play.
Pingback: Hybrid Domain: Abyss Domain | Keith Davies — In My Campaign - Keith's thoughts on RPG design and play.