Creating a pantheon... kinda
First, it's worth explaining why I needed a "pantheon" in the first place. In my TTRPG, characters are built around what I call a "Domain", which is the closest equivalent to what other systems call "Classes". I didn't want Domains to be mere professions, since anyone can become a warrior with enough training. A Domain needed to feel special and magical, something that sets the "Awakened" apart from ordinary humans and connects them to the ancient era. My setting isn't medieval fantasy either, so Warriors, Clerics, and Wizards were out of the question. With that in mind, the unifying theme I settled on was gods, and specifically divine domains (hence the name "Domain"). There are explanation as to why I chose that theme and how it connects to my lore but that's a topic for another day.
Long story short, I now had to take every god humanity ever worshiped and sort them into groups of scopes - easy. The issue is that divine domains are tricky, because religion and mythology is tricky. The separation of domains is not clear cut within one mythology, much less when comparing different ones. A single god can be tied to war, death, wisdom, and poetry all at once, while two gods from different cultures can cover the same ground with completely different personalities, so at the end it's bound to be a bit vibes based.
For game design reasons - and because I'm a sucker for Greek Mythology - I decided to go for 12 domains, each one with their own themes, and I tried to look through multiple mythologies and find common themes and common grouping of themes to select three for each domain. Some of them were 100% necessary from how often they show up: Sun, Death, Storms, War, etc; while others were less frequent but still felt necessary. This is the list I ended up with:
| Domain | Themes | Example gods |
|---|---|---|
| Herald | Fate, time and knowledge | Thoth, Odin, Chronos |
| Relentless | Strength, hunting and war | Ares, Artemis, Sekhmet |
| Reaper | Death, rest and plague | Hades, Anubis, Hel |
| Specter | The moon, shadows and cold | Selene, Chandra, Skadi |
| Radiant | The sun, shelter and cycles | Ra, Apollo, Surya |
| Kindred | Emotions, bonds and oaths | Aphrodite, Frigg, Hera |
| Sylvan | Forests, earth and harvest | Demeter, Gaia, Freyr |
| Conduit | Storms, wind and travel | Zeus, Thor, Hermes |
| Abyssal | Water, riches and monsters | Poseidon, Njord, Varuna |
| Mirage | Lies, illusions and luck | Loki, Tyche, Dionysus |
| Shaper | Creation, change and art | Hephaestus, Brahma, Ptah |
| Perpetual | Life, blood and birth | Isis, Freyja, Hathor |
I'm happy with most of them, I think they have a good base for mechanics and they cover a wide array of themes in the same sphere. i tried to pick very varied themes for each domain so that I have good fuel when creating my abilities. That's not to say that this list will be final, there is like a 90% chance I remodel everything at some point, but I think it works for now.