Deities and Demigods: Bane

[FourthBear]

Didn't the Forgotten Realms steal Lolth from Greyhawk, and do almost exactly what you've described here?

Pretty much nearly *all* of the Forgotten Realms pantheon were taken from other sources and repurposed with the same names into the Realms. Loviatar, Ilmater, Tyr, the entire Mulhorandi pantheon, the monstrous deities, Oghma, Silvanus, Mielikki and many others. Others are very similar to gods in other works, but the names have been changed. Each was reworked to fit into the Realms, with only a faint nod to their source material. Early on in the Realms Dragon articles, I think Greenwood made some statements about how the gods of various pantheons from around the multiverse tended to come to the Realms in a mixed bag fashion.

IMO, it's practically fitting that Bane has been taken from the Realms and reworked into a new pantheon, alongside Pelor, Ioun and others. Yes, it will likely create some confusion, but that never seemed to slow down other such syncretic pantheons much.

 

[Upper_Krust]

They mentioned in a podcast/article a long time ago, that a greater god like Moradin would be around level 38 solo.

Indeed. I think we have seen that Level 35 is probably the ceiling limit for stats that can be used in current Epic Games. So I doubt we will see any Greater Gods statted by WotC in the near future.

They do include a pair of aspects (one an elite Level 26 and the other an elite level 29).

Mere appetisers when I'm looking a main course.

Wondering why they include a pair of Aspects though...especially given they are so close in power?

 

[Ktulu]

Ari...I think I want to bear your children. AWESOME article, in my opinion. This is exactly the kind of fluff I want from a deity description. I don't care how many hitpoints he has or what his nifty weapon is called. I want to know how to use him in my campaign, how the players should react, and all that jazz.

Oh, and a dozen cookies for the good/bad omens. Fricking inspired!

Now I need a Raven Queen one. Seriously. Get to work.

 

[Nai_Calus]

Mmm, delicious delicious fluffiness. Now this is what I'm talking about. Don't like the kind of things the god goes for, but it's a great, interesting article that gets my brain juices flowing.

Problem is that that's the name of an already existing god. What's the point of using the name, and creating a god that's just like him, if they're not the same guy? What's next? Introduce a wizard who exists in the core world named Elminster, who looks and acts just like the Realms version of Elminster, but is a wholly separate guy?

Even worse, they altered the holy symbol of the Realms Bane to match that of Core Bane! Why do that if they're not the same guy? I like the article just fine, but if they were going to have a guy in core who calls himself Bane, and acts just like the Bane in the Realms, then he should be the same guy. If not, then he shouldn't have been called Bane to begin with.

That's the exact problem I have with 4e's Corellon. He has the same name and is associated with magic and things with pointy ears, and... Uh, that's the end of the resemblance. It's not even just like the real Corellon Larethian of previous versions. Where's my beloved CG Corellon Larethian, patron of arts and music and magic and fighting and all things elven?

Forgotten Realms I guess. Which, yeah, they changed his symbol too, to that incredibly dull eight-pointed star. I liked the crescent moon. :<

I won't argue with that, since the 3e deity images were horrendous. However, that illustration looks more like a high-level BBEG to me than a god.

Conceptually speaking, the best illustration of a divine being I've seen in all D&D books is Tempus on Veiros and Deiros, from 2e Faiths & Avatars:

I wonder to this day who drew the picture of Corellon Larethian in 3e's D&DG, why he or she thought the eyeshadow, terrible anatomy, holding a longsword in his left hand and a longbow in his right, and the disturbing resemblance to Hillary Clinton was a good idea, and who on the art staff also thought it was a good idea and approved it. (The image has spawned the nickname Clintellon Hilarian amongst my group. *facepalm*)

My favourite illustration of a god is unsurprisingly of Corellon, it's the Todd Lockwood image that's on the cover of 2E FR's Demihuman Deities, with him putting Gruumsh's eye out. It's a great image of a iconic scene with the two of them.

Though I also have a soft spot for the illustration in the Planscape book On Hallowed Ground. Sure, it's like the stereotypical frilly pansy elf image, but, well, yeah. It's Corellon. He's *the* frilly pansy elf.

(Yes, yes I am a Corellon Larethian fanboy.)

Speaking of which, despite my annoyance with 4e's core Corellon bearing only a vague resemblance to the old one, I can't wait for them to do an article like this on him. I wanna hear more about him, see if that changes my mind. And of course see if the new one bears any physical resemblance to the old one, and whether he gets a good picture or the traditional terrible one. And whether they bring back the old thing with him being male, female, both and neither. >D

Though yeah, looking forward to more of these on any of the new gods. The wealth of information available on most of the gods in the older editions makes playing a cleric a lot more fun.

 

[Obryn]

And it still annoys me about the 4e alignments, when this Bane is quite clearly Lawful Evil.

If you check the description of the Evil alignment, it's basically Lawful Evil.

-O

 

[Shemeska]

Didn't the Forgotten Realms steal Lolth from Greyhawk, and do almost exactly what you've described here?

Except in those cases, they were the same deities. It wasn't two different gods sharing a name. Lolth was lolth, just worshipped on two different worlds (among many others) in the same cosmos.

 

[frankthedm]

Still sounds a lot like Hextor, as I know they once mentioned they were going to use Hextor before they replaced him with Bane. I'll admit the Hextor does sound too sorcerous to have anything to do with a God that should be a War God.

Hextor LOOKS like exactly like a he-man villain with his name would.

Can He-Man defeat the many arms of...
HEX-TOR?​

http://wizards.com/dnd/images/war_drums_gallery/Aspect_of_Hextor.jpg​

IMHO Hextor ought to be depicted like a six armed, stern looking angel not like the spawn of an orc and a marilith.

And it still annoys me about the 4e alignments, when this Bane is quite clearly Lawful Evil.

Yes it is annoying, but since wotc is going the K.I.S. for the S. route, it makes sense. Lawful Neutral, Chaotic good and chaotic Neutral have always needed more explanation and codification in D&D. Ditching those basically required also making lawful evil disappear, but it made writing the books easier.

 

[Obryn]

Yes it is annoying, but since wotc is going the K.I.S. for the S. route, it makes sense. Lawful Neutral, Chaotic good and chaotic Neutral have always needed more explanation and codification in D&D. Ditching those basically required also making lawful evil disappear, but it made writing the books easier.

Alignment plays a smaller mechanical role in 4e than in any previous edition of D&D. You can more or less disregard the entire system and be fine. By the same token, you can make as many new alignments as you'd like, and also be fine.

Thank goodness.

I told my players they could basically put down anything they'd like for alignment, and I'll be good. If one insists he's Lawful Neutral or Chaotic Good, so be it.

-O

 

[catsclaw227]

Great article, Ari. Evocative, with a idea-factory of a back-story. There's a LOT of fluff stuff in this article and I can already envision a lot of subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways to incorporate it into my game.

If these articles keep coming, the DDI is becoming even more and more worth it every month (week!).

 

[catsclaw227]

There was an interesting little tidbit in a sidebar about churches in the default Points of Light setting. I wonder if this is how it is for ALL PoL dieties or does this breakout only apply to Bane's church.

EDIT: And mods, if you want me to clip out the quote, I can. I don't want to violate the site policy for quoting from WOTC content, though I am guessing that this rule applies to wholesale cut and paste, not small bits to help with a discussion on the thread topic.

NO UNIVERSAL "CHURCH"

Just as the "points of light" setting presumes individual communities are rarely linked into large kingdoms, so too are the world's religions made up of autonomous sects, without monolithic governing entities. There are no "churches," in the sense of worldwide theological authorities that oversee all practitioners of a given faith.

Thus, a temple or sect of Bane in one community is different—at least in the details, and frequently in major practices—from any other. It also means that followers of Bane aren't necessarily in agreement on religious matters. It's possible for two or more Baneworshipers to prove competitors, or even downright enemies, spilling blood over matters of theology or as each attempts to conquer territory held by the other.