Deific Portfolios (Rules)

Every deity has certain aspects of existence over which it has dominion, power, and control. Collectively, these aspects represent the deity’s portfolio.

Deities are intimately concerned about and involved in their portfolios, and they are often strongest in power when acting within the bounds of their portfolios. The portfolios of deities within a pantheon rarely change, but this can happen. If a deity dies, returns from the dead, gains or loses divine power, or radically changes personality, portfolios can change. One or more deities may share certain portfolio elements. For example, Boccob and Wee Jas of the D&D pantheon both have magic as an element of their portfolios.

Portfolios represent important topics and concepts in the lives of worshipers. The more important an idea is to a group of worshipers, the more important it is for a major deity to control that portfolio. For instance, if you’re building a pantheon for a culture that depends on the sea for food or trade, then the portfolio element sea should belong to a greater deity. Similarly, people often threatened by earthquakes or volcanoes likely associate the portfolio element earth with a greater deity.

The following list contains many aspects of existence that could be elements of a deity’s portfolio. A pantheon may ignore some aspects of existence, and it may emphasize others by giving the same ones to multiple deities.While this list is not a comprehensive list of possible portfolios, it should be enough to get most people started.

abundance, adventure, agility, agriculture, air, animals, arcane knowledge, archers, art, artisans, arts and crafts, athletics, balance, bards, beasts, beauty, birth, brawling, cats, chaos, childbirth, chivalry, cities, civilization, cold, commerce, common sense, communication, conflict, conquest, courage, crafts, creation, crocodiles, dance, daring, darkness, death, desert storms, destruction, discipline, discord, disease, distance, drama, drought, drow, dueling, dwarves, earth, earthquakes, elves, endurance, engineering, envy, evil, evil dragons, exploration, family, fate, fathers, fertility, fighters, fire, fitness, flora and fauna, foresight, forests, freedom, gambling, gemcutting, giants, gnomes, good, good dragons, grief, halflings, harvest, hate, healing, hearing, hearth, home, honesty, honor, horizons, humor, hunting, husbands, illusion, insects, intrigue, jewelers, jewelrymaking, journeys, judgment, justice, killing, knowledge, kobolds, law, learning, lies, life, light, love, loyalty, luck, madness, magic, malice, marriage, massacres, medicine, men, merchants, mercy, metal, mining, mirth, moon, motherhood, mountains, murder, music, nature, night, nobility, orcs, pain, panic, passion, planning, poetry, pranksters, prophecy, protection, rage, rain, rebirth, retribution, revelry, river hazards, rivers, roads, rogues, running, sea, seasons, secrets, serpents, shepherds, sight, sky, slaughter, sleep, smithing, spiders, spies, sports, spring, stone, storms, strategy, strength, strife, suffering, sun, supreme, swiftness, tactics, territory, theater, thieves, thunder, trapmaking, travel, trees, tricks, trust, truth, tyranny, ugliness, undead, underworld, valor, vanity, vengeance, vice, victory, war, watchfulness, water, wealth, weather, wetlands, wild beasts, wilderness, wind, wine, winter, wisdom, wit, wives, women, woodlands, writing and zeal

While a deity might have a wide selection of seemingly unrelated portfolios, they are important, because any domains that the deity grants to their clerical followers will always be related to their portfolio. For example, a deity with Dance, Love and Bards as portfolios would never grant access to the War Domain. Generally, the more powerful a deity is, the more will be in their portfolio. For every divine rank a player obtains, they may add a domain to the list of domains they grant access to. These domains must be selected from choices relevant to their portfolio.