D&D General The Role and Purpose of Evil Gods

[Faolyn]

In D&D, it might be worth considering where the gods come from. If the gods were here first, then perhaps there was a grab bag of portfolios of every possible facet of existence, and so some gods just drew the "evil" aspects. Perhaps that's what turned them evil in the first place. It's hard being made the god of murder while remaining a good being. OTOH, if mortals made the gods out of their belief, then sure, fear and hatred and other evils would create evil gods.

Of course, people aren't going to be the only ones making gods, in such a setting. I'm reminded of The Flesh from The Magnus Archives--an entity that represents the fear of physical mutilation and being butchered as nothing more than meat, born out of the fears of livestock and other animals bred as food. And because it was an animal-created Fear Entity, it interacts with humanity weirdly.

And there's a third option (the Discword option), where you have godlings that latch on to any belief or strong emotion and gain power from them. Imagine a murder of passion. Some godling is nearby and is empowered by the fear and anger behind the murder, and that causes it to seek out similar events. Eventually, it becomes a grown-up god of murder.

As for archfiends (and archfey, and... archangels), personally, I don't see a problem in also having them, even if they have portfolios similar to those of various gods. They're trying to become gods, after all, and while there may be (by the cosmology's RAW) a wide gulf between such creatures and actual gods, worshipers aren't going to be able to see that gulf, assuming they even know it exists.

 

[Scribe]

Of course, people aren't going to be the only ones making gods, in such a setting. I'm reminded of The Flesh from The Magnus Archives--an entity that represents the fear of physical mutilation and being butchered as nothing more than meat, born out of the fears of livestock and other animals bred as food. And because it was an animal-created Fear Entity, it interacts with humanity weirdly.

Yikes, that's quite horrific.

 

[Faolyn]

Yikes, that's quite horrific.

If you haven't listened to The Magnus Archives podcast but like eldritch horror (that doesn't rely on Lovecraft), give it a go.

 

[Larnievc]

Thoughts

The way I look at it is that gods are personifications of concepts in the world. So as murder is a thing that happens there is a god of murder.

Rather than the god of murder being a god who happens to really like murder, it IS the concept of murder personified because of how sentient brain infer agency in pretty much anything.

In the magical world of D&D that inference is enough to generate a god that then can feed on prayers and offerings and have it’s own independent existence.

 

[el-remmen]

In my previous homebrew, I had reams of details about various pantheons, the cultures that developed and/or adopted them, the gods and figures that emerge from those pantheons, and so on.

In my current homebrew, I decided any god can be introduced with lots of overlap or many differences, just by assuming that over time such customs and beliefs are shared, stolen, adopted, forgotten, reconstructed, etc. . . The gods are unaligned and followers/priests of any god can be of any alignment. Yes, there could be a chaotic evil cleric of the goddess of healing and mercy. The gods may grant spells, but they are also distant and unknowable and the details of what is proper worship is for mortals to debate and war about. Thus followers of the "God of Tyranny" probably see him as a god of order and stability and the cruelty of his draconian edicts is a sacrifice to have those crucial things and ultimately "good."

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I tend to make it so that gods aren't particularly interested in souls (that is more of an alignment things for devils, demon lords, archangels, etc.), but are interested in humanoids/fey/dragons/monstrosities (and possibly elementals) behaving in certain ways. They tend to work with outsiders who have complementary goals. So Asmodeus (God of Tyranny) wants for more people to buy into tyranny (or at least tolerate it). Tyrannies are great for LE (you like hurting things, but you want to be respectable), so he offers some devils power (making them pit fiends) in exchange for doing work for him promoting tyrannies, and a lot of devils are eager to make this deal. NE and CE can also help the cause of tyranny (CE is a great excuse to impose tyranny), so Asy might make a deal with yugoloths and demons (although he usually does this under the table to keep the devils, his main source of minions, happy).

I generally keep the gods in the transition zone outer planes (Ysgard, Pandemonium, Carceni, Beast Lands, etc.) leaving the "pure" alignment planes to the demon lords, devils, archangels, prime modrons, and greater empyreans.

I have noticed that this makes some gods better fits for paladins than clerics, but I am fine with that.

My 4e/Pathfinder derived pantheon is:

Raven Queen: goddess of fatalism (cycles of nature, karma, prophesy, anything that says the world is to big for people to affect)
Saint Cuthbert: god of proceduralism (doing this by the book or else)
Bane: god of harsh discipline
Gruumsh: god of toughness (and machismo--so he is more fun, albeit occasionally annoying, god than in most D&D)
Sekolah: god of hunting
Asmodeus: god of tyranny
Tiamat: goddess of greed and vanity (also claims vengeance, but this is disputed)
Deep Duerra: goddess of hegemony
Vecna: god of secrets (powered by both those who do terrible things to keep a secret and those who do terrible things to unearth a secret)
Zehir: god of assassins and "professional" murders
Lolth (& associates): goddess of strife (more Cold War than open war).
Lagozed: god of violently defending your territory
Kord: god of athletic improvement
Correllon (& associates): god of art
Cayden Cailen: god of folk heroes (formerly god of drinking, but he is aspiring to be better)
Desna: goddess of travel and personal transformation
Sarenae: goddess of rehabilitation and redemption
Garl Glittergold: god of subtle goodness
Yondalla: goddess of agriculture
Erastil: god of families and tight-nit communities (not quite as rural focused as his PF counterpart)
Bahamut: god of nobility
Moradin (& associates): god of quality manufacturing and construction
Iomedea: goddess of communal discipline (popular with orders of monks, orders of paladins, and orders of knights).

They have organized religions (although some cases, how organized they are is debatable) to do the day to day work to push their portfolios, and most people will call on them for blessings when engaging in action related to the portfolios. A wood carver might call on Moradin to make her work good quality and Correllon to make it beautiful (and in private on Tiamat to make a lot of money off of it).

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[pukunui]

I appreciate the lively discussion this post has engendered! Lots of food for thought. Thank you all for your input.

 

[Charlaquin]

Evil gods don’t really make sense as a naturalistic thing. But then, none of how D&D deities work does, because they aren’t naturalistic. They’re part of the highly constructed system of the D&D cosmos.

 

[Lanefan]

Skipping straight from the OP to here; to answer the OP:

Why do evil deities exist?

--- to give evil PC and NPC Clerics something to pray to
--- to cancel out the good deities and thus keep the universe in balance
--- to give DMs a source of opposition for heroic-type PCs and-or a source of rivalry or annoyance to the not-so-heroic types
--- because any society has its evil or undesirable aspects (death and disease being two common examples) and a society's religion is naturally going to reflect this somehow

I've no problem with some major demon/devil types being promoted to divinity, if only because doing so saves me the work of having to make those deities up from scratch.

 

[pukunui]

Skipping straight from the OP to here; to answer the OP:

Why do evil deities exist?

--- to give evil PC and NPC Clerics something to pray to

In terms of D&D specifically, I think this is really the source of it right here. That being said, as I mentioned upthread, 5e hasn't made it easy for evil clerics.

You've got the overtly evil Death domain in the DMG for your clerics of gods of murder, death, the underworld, undead, etc.

Clerics of evil storm gods can choose the Tempest domain, and clerics of gods of slaughter and warfare and such can choose the War domain. Clerics of tricksy gods can take the Trickery domain.

And that's about it.

Yeah, sure, an evil cleric of a god of magic could choose the Arcana domain.

The Nature domain as written doesn't really fit the more negative, evil nature gods like Auril and Umberlee, though. They really need cold/winter and sea domains respectively. (To get around this problem, the designers made Auril's priests in Rime of the Frostmaiden be frost-themed druids rather than clerics.)

I've no problem with some major demon/devil types being promoted to divinity, if only because doing so saves me the work of having to make those deities up from scratch.

Again, I'm not proposing turning demons and devils into gods. I'm going for more of a Judeo-Christian "God vs the Devil" feel, rather than D&D's usual polytheistic approach.

It's funny that D&D used to strive for a medieval Europe aesthetic except for its religions, which take a more pre-medieval/pre-Judeo-Christian approach.