D&D 5E Are "evil gods" necessary? [THREAD NECRO]

[Aldarc]

Sure, but regardless of the ideological history of the deities, cultural evil deities do exist within the worldview of those cultures. Debating when they became evil kinda moves the goal posts about whether evil deities exist in pantheons.

 

[Voadam]

That explanation doesn't really work in-setting. Inside the world of Faerun the causality would work the other way around; umberlee is evil and that's why the sea is treacherous.

I do not think that is the general cosmology of the Forgotten Realms. Mystryl was the Weave of magic which fits that style but that was a specific case that seems to be an exception. Azuth is the god of spellcasters but he was mortal before that and there were spellcasters before him. When the gods were reduced to avatars during the Time of Troubles there were wild magic and dead magic zones which can be attributed to Mystra not being there to smooth out the Weave, and Bhaal did something with the life forces of assassins (its been a couple decades and I do not remember the specifics), but I don't remember a lot more happening in-world to the fundamentals of the world for the deific portfolio areas with the change in gods other than the change in AD&D editions from the out of world perception.

There are tons of ascended FR deities who became gods of things that existed beforehand. They seem to be champions of their domains, not determinants of them. There are interloper gods who come in and overlap with existing domains. I am not aware of descriptions of the fundamentals of the world changing when the Untheric and Mulhorandi pantheons entered the world. What I remember is the descriptions of their politics and their wars with orc pantheons.

It seems more like there are divine domains that individual gods can nonexclusively access and take from each other and lose or give to a disciple.

 

[Zsig]

It would be very weird to have good gods but no evil gods. That would be even more arbitrary than the already arbitrary alignment rules...

Not that I care much about it either way, but if you're going to do it, go ahead and remove alignment entirely.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Perhaps that's what it means to some people, but that's not really the case. Faith is about believing despite the object of that faith being unproven. It's the difference between believing and knowing.

I'm trained as a scientist, and one thing that teaches you - there is no such thing as "knowing" something, just varying levels of uncertainty.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I would say just the opposite is true. The real world is packed full of things that exist "just because". Things that exist that are irrelevant to the PCs and the adventure are what give a world it's depth - the illusion that it exists independently. The Lord of the Rings (and the Hobbit, which mentions the fall of Gondolin) are chock full of references to things that are of no relevance and are not explained. That what makes Middle Earth feel so deep, when the fantasy worlds of other authors feel so shallow.

I'm not 100% up on my Tolkien lore, but I'd argue that not a single thing in Middle-Earth existed "just because". I have no idea why the Balrog was in Moria. Reading the trilogy gives me no insight into this. But, I do know that in other works Tolkien actually explained the history of that Balrog and explained exactly why it was where it was. The Fall of Gondolin is never explained to us in the Hobbit, but it is still an intentional part of the world and is mentioned because of the ripple effects it had.

Everything in Middle-Earth was placed with an intent.

To put it another way, you don't just throw an empty pyramid into the middle of a plain, with no purpose, story or hook. Why is it there? I don't know, just because. Somethings just exist in the world for no reason.

It is a massive pyramid, someone had to have built it, it had to have a purpose, it can't exist "just because" it has to have a reason. And if it truly doesn't, then why did you even bother telling us about it. It might as well be a tree, or a stone, or a cloud. It add nothing.

Because the author (Ed Greenwood?) Chose to make her evil. It matched his perception of the sea. All Art is subjective.

But FR has a plethora of gods - if you want to add another sea god with a different temperament there is no reason not to. In certain editions the rule for the FR was "all casters of divine spells must choose a god" but also "if you can't find one you like make one up".

Woo. Wonderful.

And a complete cop-out. Weren't you just complementing Tolkien for his believable worlds? Do you think Sauron was evil "just because, and if you don't like that you can just make a good version of him."?

We don't care about authorial intent, not in this case, because the rules have been set out for us, and we are trying to make sense of them.

Umberlee is a Goddess of the Sea
She exists because people worship her
She is evil and cruel
People only worship her out of fear
There does exist a good god of the sea
If everyone worshipped him instead, Umberlee would die and the seas would be safe.

So why hasn't that happened? Why did people start worshipping Umberlee? We've been given the rules and the characters, but the story is nonsensical.

Except real world pantheons and religions did have evil deities in their own pantheons and belief systems. They would not necessarily worship them, but they were still often part of the belief system. When you deal with absolute statements like this about real world beliefs operating in a certain way, you are bound to be contradicted. As I said - which you some how ignored - Yam was an evil Ugaritic deity who was regarded as evil by the Ugaritic people.

Alright, but here (to tie this back to the OP) is the question. How many of those religions with explicitly evil Deities also had powerful demons that were threats to the gods that were not tied to those gods.

For an example, from what I know of Norse mythology none of the Aesir were evil (barring some twisting of Loki at the end), none of the Vanir were evil.

The enemy were the Jotuns and the Fire Giants. And they weren't gods, but they were as powerful as the gods.

Or take Hindu Mythology (which I have an admittedly limited knowledge of) there are no evil dieties worshipped, but their are evil spirits and demons that the gods fight.


DnD though has both. We have Evil Gods, we have Demons, and we have the Devil. All three are existing simultaneously as foes of the gods of good. But do we need them to? Why have redundant aspects.

Especially when you start looking back at things like, who you fought if you were opposed to say Bane.

You would fight clerics and cultists of Bane, and you would fight Devils. Because Bane didn't have angels, he had Devils serving him... but all Devils follow Asmodeus, so why would Bane have Devils? Because they were the Lawful Evil outsiders. Or Lolth having demons that follow her.

If they are using Demons and Devils anyways... why are they not Demon Princes and Archdevils? It would fit perfectly. Or, remove the Demon Princes and Archdevils and have all the antagonists be evil gods, and the followers of evil gods are demons and devils. That also works.

But both is just messy for no reason.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I'm trained as a scientist, and one thing that teaches you - there is no such thing as "knowing" something, just varying levels of uncertainty.

Empirical knowledge is uncommon, however it isn't nonexistent.

1+1=2. Leaving aside pedantic wordplay (changing the meanings of the symbols) this is factual, and can be said to be known.

To a lesser, but nonetheless very real extent, we can reasonably be said to know things about which we have a significant body of evidence. While in the strictest sense of the word, I don't know that the sun will rise tomorrow, I reasonably know that the sun will rise tomorrow.

Then there are things that we believe but do not know. Free will, for example. That is something that is unproven but some people believe. Others believe in determinism. I have my own beliefs on the matter, but I don't claim to know.

I think even in a world like that of the Forgotten Realms, which is high magic and where deities meddle frequently, for most people the existence of those deities would nonetheless be a matter of faith. Most people probably have never seen a deity. Even if they had, couldn't it simply be the trickery of a wizard or other powerful entity? Clerics can cast spells, but what if their power is just another form of magic? After all, bards and druids can both duplicate a variety of clerical spells. For most people in the Realms, I would argue that the existence of gods is unproven. There's certainly evidence to support their existence (moreso than Eberron) but for many it would still come down to faith.

 

[Aldarc]

Alright, but here (to tie this back to the OP) is the question. How many of those religions with explicitly evil Deities also had powerful demons that were threats to the gods that were not tied to those gods.

Facebook status: "It's Complicated."

DnD though has both. We have Evil Gods, we have Demons, and we have the Devil. All three are existing simultaneously as foes of the gods of good. But do we need them to? Why have redundant aspects.

IMHO, it depends on the sort of stories that you want to tell/explore in your world.

 

[prabe]

Opinions incoming!

So, if you have gawds in your setting, you need to decide what you want to do with them. If you want them to be (inter alia) exemplars of alignments, then you need all the alignments represented (for the same reason that if you want to include either the Book of Vile Darkness or the Book of Exalted Deeds you need to include both of them). Omitting any alignment from your collections of gawds would seem to me to imply some weird imbalance in the setting, and good gawds without evil gawds to oppose them seem purposeless from a storytelling perspective.

Gawds do not need to be aligned. There has been discussion upthread about this. In addition to arguably making the religion/s in your setting seem more realistic, allowing your gawds to transcend alignments gives you ways to have any gawd be antagonistic to your characters, or allied to them. The various sects and cults can be various degrees of right or wrong about how they see the gawds they worship. The gawds might come into conflict for reasons having nothing to do with alignment, which can set up a choice between competing goods--my own personal favorite kind of decision in fiction.

Of course, you can decide you don't want gawds in your setting. That can work just fine, too. There's some work figuring out if and how clerics (and maybe paladins) work, and what if anything serves the social and shrinkological roles of religion. Going this route has had a tendency in my campaigns to make Demon Lords and Archdevils more important (which casts the absence in official lore of archangels, et al. into something like stark relief). You also need to figure out how gawdhood works, and if there used to be gawds why there aren't gawds now.

 

[Bohandas]

I do not think that is the general cosmology of the Forgotten Realms. Mystryl was the Weave of magic which fits that style but that was a specific case that seems to be an exception. Azuth is the god of spellcasters but he was mortal before that and there were spellcasters before him. When the gods were reduced to avatars during the Time of Troubles there were wild magic and dead magic zones which can be attributed to Mystra not being there to smooth out the Weave, and Bhaal did something with the life forces of assassins (its been a couple decades and I do not remember the specifics), but I don't remember a lot more happening in-world to the fundamentals of the world for the deific portfolio areas with the change in gods other than the change in AD&D editions from the out of world perception.

There are tons of ascended FR deities who became gods of things that existed beforehand. They seem to be champions of their domains, not determinants of them. There are interloper gods who come in and overlap with existing domains. I am not aware of descriptions of the fundamentals of the world changing when the Untheric and Mulhorandi pantheons entered the world. What I remember is the descriptions of their politics and their wars with orc pantheons.

It seems more like there are divine domains that individual gods can nonexclusively access and take from each other and lose or give to a disciple.

What the heck do the gods even do then? Are the Athar explicitly right?

Alright, but here (to tie this back to the OP) is the question. How many of those religions with explicitly evil Deities also had powerful demons that were threats to the gods that were not tied to those gods.

Not sure if I'm understanding the question correctly, but the mesopotamians worshipped Pazuzu, the god of famine and locusts, in the context of him being so aggressively awful that even the other evil spirits avoided him. The idea was that when he was invoked all the other evil gods would leave

 

[Chaosmancer]

Omitting any alignment from your collections of gawds would seem to me to imply some weird imbalance in the setting, and good gawds without evil gawds to oppose them seem purposeless from a storytelling perspective.

This is something I keep coming back around to in this thread.

Why can' the good gods be opposed by Archdevils and Demon Lords? Why must it be evil gods?