Hiatea the Huntress

January 10, 2014

Hiatea is one of the most powerful members of the giantish pantheon, having taken over Annam’s responsibilities with Stronmaus after their father withdrew from active leadership of the pantheon. She is a dual aspected deity, representing both community and wilderness, and has adopted the firbolg and voadkyn as her primary followers. Hidden by her mother upon her birth, she worked to prove herself worthy of her parentage, and appearance before Annam as a masterful hunter triggered his revelation that his extreme preference for sons may have been the cause of so much evil in the race of giants. Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »


Memnor the Deceiver

December 10, 2013

Memnor is one of the more interesting of the evil giantish gods. As patron of evil cloud giants, he is directly opposed to Stronmaus and Annam, and in myth, is often said to be brother of one or the other. His worship is fairly complex, as it is subtle and focuses on charm and deception. In my research for divinities in other sources, I stumbled across an adventure in Dungeon #16 that offered a perfect opportunity to craft an alternate persona for Memnor, as not all of the giants know of his evil; the adventure “Palace in the Sky” by Martin & John Szinger included a very brief mention of a deity named Vilya in an evil cloud giant castle which I was able to incorporate into Memnor’s description as a false god of the openly evil cloud giants (as opposed to evil cloud giants within larger giantish society). Enjoy!  Read the rest of this entry »


Hit Dice for Monster Deity Avatars

September 1, 2013

I came to the realization recently that I’ve been doing some of the hit dice for the giant deity avatars incorrectly. The avatars of many of the giants, as well as other deities that are essentially divine versions of powerful monsters (for the most part only dragons), should actually include a monster Hit Die component; calculating them as human or demihuman deities doesn’t really give them as many hit points as they probably should have. I had noticed that the avatars for the Elemental Deities in Faiths & Avatars, as well as the entry for Null in Cult of the Dragon did this, although the Hit Points don’t quite match how they should be calculated, at least as I understand it. I’m sure this won’t be of interest to many people, as almost no one actually uses avatars in game play, but I have to “get it right” due to my obsession with the format.  :) And, well, I figure it would be beneficial to anyone else who is like me and is creating their own deities using the full Faiths & Avatars format.

To calculate the hit points for such an avatar, the basic process is the same as that described in Faiths & Avatars, but you can add, say “20-HD Giant” or “20-HD Dragon” (similar to how Akadi’s avatar is a 30-HD Air Elemental) to the list. Hit points are still generated in descending order of magnitude, however, with Constitution bonuses only applying towards class hit dice. For example, you created a deity whose avatar is a 24-HD Dragon, a 36th level wizard, and a 30th level Priest with a Constitution of 18. The highest hit points for the first 9 “levels” would come from the Priest class, at 8 + 4 hp each level (maximum class hit points per hit die, plus Constitution bonus), for a total of 108 hit points. For “levels” 10-24, the most hit points would come from the monster hit dice, for a total of 120 hit points. Then for the next 6 levels, the avatar would get hit points from the Priest class again, for 12 hit points, followed by the last six levels from the mage, for another 6 hit points. Thus, the avatar would have a total of 246 hit points.

This sort of calculation would really only apply to deities who are essentially divine versions of powerful monsters. In general, unless the god matches an existing monster with 10 hit dice or more, it is best to calculate them as normal for a humanoid avatar. A good example is the god Stalker, from the goblin-kin pantheons; he doesn’t really match any existing monsters except maybe a shadow, and a shadow only has 3 HD. You could of course list him as a 20-HD Shadow, but there’s really no reason to, as it doesn’t offer anything to the avatar that can’t be arrived at through a description of his appearance and powers. Having normal class levels commensurate to the avatar’s power makes Stalker powerful enough on his own.

Of the deities in Monster Mythology, only the actual giantish deities, the dragon deities, Jazirian, Koriel, Shekinester, Emmantiensien, Great Mother, and Gzemnid would probably warrant this treatment.


Surtr the Black

August 10, 2013

Surtr is the patron of fire giants, and of the same generation as Thrym and Skoraeus. Like his brother Thrym, he has also become obsessed with the affairs of the Aesir, in part due to his hatred of the god Freyr. He is much more patient than his chaotic brother, and is willing to wait until the right time to make his move and lead his armies against Asgard, and slowly builds the strength of his warriors. Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »


Thrym, the King of Ice

July 25, 2013

Thrym is of the same generation of giantish deities as Skoraeus and Surtr, and like them, he has chosen to be patron to one specific breed of giant, the frost giants. His narrow focus on just one breed of giant, evil nature, and obsession with Freya and the other Aesir and Vanir have made him a disappointment to his father Annam. Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »


Gorellik the Loner

July 10, 2013

Gorellik was once the primary patron of gnolls and flinds, but as those races have turned to other gods, he has languished and lost power. I’ve always thought Gorellik was an under-appreciated deity in the game, and a pretty interesting individual. I’ve tried to embellish his history a bit with some additional speculation on his origins, and set him up to be a more useful deity to DMs who want to make more varied gnollish cultures. Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »


Kostchtchie, the Demon Prince of Wrath

June 26, 2013

Kostchtchie is another tanar’ri prince who is a true success story. Once a mortal human, he has risen to the rank of Abyssal lord and beyond, to become a true divinity. He is a hateful power of violence who lives in a realm of harsh ice and snow. He has attracted worship from the most violent and power hungry amongst the frost giant race through promises of wizardly magic, power over dragons, and priestly magic. Enjoy!

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Skoraeus Stonebones, the Living Rock

June 16, 2013

Skoraeus is of the same generation as Thrym and Surtr, and like them, has become the patron of one of the breeds of giants. Unlike his brothers, he is not evil; but their evil has cause him to turn away from the wider world to focus solely on his followers. As a god of crafts and artistic creation, he is still venerated by the other giant breeds, however.

I’m trying something a bit different with this post. I’ve noticed that the PDFs come up on Google much more often than the blog posts, so I’m making the deity entries in-line so they come up instead. Feedback is appreciated. This will not be the end of the PDFs, but I need to think about how to make them easily available but not have Google searches end up on them rather than the blog itself. Enjoy!

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Refnara the Moon-Biter

May 10, 2013

Refnara is the old Gnoll goddess of fear, mentioned solely in the adventure “To Bite the Moon” in Dungeon #48. There was quite a bit in that adventure to extrapolate from, and I drew upon a bunch of ideas I had floating around to make quite an interesting deity, I think. Enjoy!

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Baphomet, Demon Lord of Minotaurs

April 10, 2013

Baphomet, like Yeenoghu, is a tanar’ri power who has gained enough power to become a full-fledged deity, adopting minotaurs as his followers. As he believes he is the master of all beasts, he spends a great deal of time creating and modifying new monsters; similarly, many wizards with a desire to do the same are drawn to his service. Enjoy!

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