Number of deities and divine power

Two years ago I dug out my old copy of The Primal Order and it made me think about the economics of divine power. I have since read Alex's thoughts about Pneuma and I'm thinking of seeing how well I can work the concepts of primal energy with it. Goodchecker lists almost 4000 deities and that number matches pretty well to the number of 10+ level characters in a world of 400 million people (rough estimate of Earth's population around 1000 AD). With that I could match the power levels of dieties in Primal Order to the character levels in ACKS:

  • Supreme deity = level 14
  • Greater = 13
  • Lesser = 12
  • Supported demigod = 11
  • Demigod = 10
  • Godling = 9

Therefore there would be one pantheon (with it's own supreme deity) per each empire run by an 14th level emperor. Also there would be one deity of some level for each character of name level or higher. The total number of deities (including the minor godlings) would be around 10 000. What this means in the campaign would depend on the interest and activity level of the deities.

In an epic campaign where the deities are constantly meddling in the affairs of mortals, every name level character should have their own patron deity and should be able to call for their help reliably. Also the power level of the deities should be pretty close to the characters, meaning that they could be defeated by characters of the appropriate level.

In a campaign where the deities are far away and not responsive to the pleads of mortals the actual power levels of the deities could be a lot higher than the characters'. Depending on what percentage of their power they gain from their followers and how much of the power they return to their faithful the deities may not have a great deal invested in even high level characters. This coud be calculated from the divine energy budget to find out the chances of a deity responding to a particular request for divine intervention depending on the level of the petitioner (and of course modified by their activities in support of the deity).

I'll have to calculate the budgets on pneuma. They will be different to primal energy as that is based on the square root of the number of followers and also on dead souls, planes controlled etc.