Demihuman Deities
I really don’t like demihuman deities. I’ve actually thought this way for the longest time, but only recently have I been able to articulate it properly.
The thing is, demihuman/humanoid deities not only cheapen and undermine the rest of the pantheon of their settings (i.e. why would my goblins worship Hextor, the awesome god of tyranny, when there’s a goblin god of tyranny around?) and, to me, also unavoidably come with the implication that the rest of the pantheon is human.
As far as I understand, the demihuman pantheons were originally added to D&D in Unearthed Arcana, a product that Gary Gygax himself admitted was rushed out, and the decision to include them was one of the few things that Gary actually didn’t like about the product. I’m not sure if his reasons for not liking them are the same as mine though.
I recently posted a picture of an Aspect of Hextor miniature in which I also outlined that his monstrous appearance was at odds with how I’d imagined him. Then it struck me: because Hextor was not one of the demihuman/humanoid deities, I had always assumed him to have a more human appearance.
Not only do I think that the monstrous appearance of Hextor makes him an obvious deity for lawful evil humanoids (including goblins, hobgoblins and orcs [at least pre-3e orcs]) to worship, but at the same time I wish there weren’t such things as gods of elves, gods of dwarves and an entire pantheon of giantish, gnomish and orcish gods.
4e sort of does this, but I think it only gets halway there: while the game goes out and says that there are human worshipers of Moradin and Corellon, those two gods (along with Bahamut, Sehanine and Gruumsh) are still problematic because they are still heavily associated with specific races. One of the best things that 4e does, however, is to remove the mess of gods for the various evil humanoids and state that most of them simply worship Bane, 4e’s basic god of tyranny.
If I ever decide to revisit the world of Greyhawk (which is highly unlikely) I’ll just make a blanket statement about there being no demihuman deities. Instead, if a character should choose to worship a specific deity, which is pretty much a non-issue for characters other than Paladins and Clerics, their choice of deity would be basically free, but at the same time certain races and classes would gravitate towards certain deities (i.e. dwarves towards Heironeous, elves towards Ehlonna etc.). Most of the evil humanoids would worship either Hextor or Erythnul, depending on whether they lean towards lawful evil or chaotic evil.
For those of you who read this far down, here’s a picture of an old-school Hextor.
