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Mar 3, 2010 -- 8:22AM, lorika wrote:

I just don't understand why half the LFR gods have PHB equivalents so characters can use any new content that comes out for them and the other half of the gods don't.

My guess is that it wasn't actively planned in that way.

The list of deities in the PHB is (a) pretty short, and (b) really a mish-mosh of deities from different sources.  You have a couple of deities they pulled from the Greyhawk pantheons (such as Pelor), you have a few which they pulled from the FR pantheons (such as Bane), you have the traditional "non-human" deities (Moradin, Corellon, etc.), which were already established as existing in the Realms, but were originally created for "core" D&D 30 years ago, and you have a few (such as the Raven Queen) which were created expressly for 4E.

So, when you take the list of deities in the PHB, and remove the deities which were already established as being in the Realms (and the evil deities), you're left with a list of 8 deities.  The CCG shows the "equivalents" to those deities in the Realms, based largely on trying to match up their spheres of influence (though, as has been discussed in threads about the Raven Queen and Kelemvor, the matches aren't always precise, because the natures of some of the deity "matches" aren't the same).

I'm fairly certain that these "equivalencies" were created to (a) allow LFR players to use the deity-specific rules items in books like Complete Divine, and (b) to account for players who don't have access to the FRPG, and start out by creating a character solely using the PHB.

As you note, that does leave a number of greater gods in the Realms which don't have an "equivalent" in the PHB (not to mention all of the exarchs and primordials).  There are simply far more gods in the Realms than in 4E's "core" pantheon (and, if you think it's bad *now*, you should have seen it in the 3.x era, when the list of FR deities was considerably larger). 

It's clear that the LFR staff didn't attempt to "reverse-engineer" a best-fit for each of those deities, probably because (a) it could cause confusion, since you'd have to designate a PHB deity as being an "equivalent" for multiple FR deities, and (b) there simply isn't a good fit for many of those other FR deities in the PHB.

Mar 3, 2010 -- 7:01AM, Madfox11 wrote:

Huh? I fail to see the problem. If you worship Moradin, you cannot pick the implement of Kord either and how many deity related PPs are there in the core books? The FRPG actually has FR deity related PPs (from memory Selune and Sune)

Amaunator, Selune, Sune and Kelemvor.

and I have seen a Tymora one somewhere as well.

It was in Dragon 365 (Luckbringer of Tymora).  Dragon also gave us a Banite class (not that PCs can take it).

Divine Power gave PPs to Moradin and Correllon.
PHBR: Dragonborn gave one for Bahamut.

Dragon magazine gave us one for the Raven Queen.

Mar 3, 2010 -- 8:22AM, lorika wrote:

I just don't understand why half the LFR gods have PHB equivalents so characters can use any new content that comes out for them and the other half of the gods don't. 

Because it's a throwback to the beginning of the campaign when the FR books hadn't even been released yet.  Don't worry, there's no great conspiracy.  You couldn't do an equivalency for every FR deity anyway... there's too many and too few PHB deities.

Thus the reason I said there's no real good reason to keep the equivalency rule around.  The number of rules items that require worship of a PHB deity for divine characters is a extremely small percentage.

Not counting Eberron PPs, the ones I listed above... that's it.  Seriously.  That's all the PPs in the Compendium that require worship of a deity that are usable in LFR.  10 Non-Eberron Deity specific PPs out of 397 (which includes Eberron) which means 2.5% of all PPs in are LFR-usable deity specific. (9 if you take out Bane since that PP can't be taken by LFR players)  So if we took out the Raven Queen PP, and the unplayable Bane PP, those 2 PPs are 0.5% of all PPs you'd be giving up.

Now, it's possible that not all of them showed up in my search.  For example, the Luckbringer didn't at first because the compendium has it's pre-reqs as just "Cleric class."  It didn't have the "must worship Tymora" entry that the article has.  I am 99% sure that's a typo.

There are 4 Epic Destinies that require worship.  1 is Eberron, 1 is Bahamut, and 2 are Raven Queen.  Out of 74 Epic Destinies.  That's 2.7% of all EDs being PHB specific that you'd be giving up.

And of course 11 holy symbols.

The one place you may "fall short" is in the feat department.  From what I can gleen from the compendium:

19 feats require Raven Queen
1 requires Ioun
1 requires Pelor
2 require Erathis
3 require Avandra
2 require Sehanine
1 requires Melora
2 require Kord

31 feats for PHB deities (and it illustrates their Raven Queen fetish).  Although with a total of 2097 feats in the compendium, that's still running 1.5%.  (yes, I know not all 2097 feats will apply to a specific divine character)

So to recap... if we were to scrap the equivalency rules, we'd be giving up 1 PP, 2 EDs, 31 Feats, and 11 holy symbols.  Sure, others may come out in the future, but the overall totals of everythign will be increasing as well, so unless we get inundated with deity specific options, those percentages are unlikely to change much.  IOW, we wouldn't be losing much.

Mar 3, 2010 -- 9:05AM, kenobi65 wrote:

Mar 3, 2010 -- 8:58AM, Uthrac wrote:

Maybe someone will write an article for Dragon . . .  

That's probably a very elegant solution.  Write up an article with holy symbols for the "uncovered" FR gods, and so on. :D

Sounds like a good solution to me!    It would be a shame to see players avoiding the worship of certain deities just because there are fewer rules options for them.  (I think the game world would be more rich and interesting if not every single divine character worshipped Tempus...  )

Mar 4, 2010 -- 4:42AM, lorika wrote:

(I think the game world would be more rich and interesting if not every single divine character worshipped Tempus...  )

And, I suspect the vast majority of *that* is due to the still-frakking-overpowered RRoT feat.

(Parenthetically, I do play a cleric...of Selune. )