D&D General The Role and Purpose of Evil Gods

[Lanefan]

This strikes me as a weird view of what we know of the mythologies.

Zeus is considered a god of justice among other aspects, but he is also infamous for being outright terrible in many ways. Generally the Greek gods were powerful, vain, capricious beings who felt they were better than others and would punish those who would tick them off but also strike out randomly (disease from Apollo's arrows comes to mind). This is in part because part of their function was as an explanation or personification for random bad things in the world, and part of the folklore characterization of them.

This is why I prefer the Xena-Hercules versions of them for my game, where one key feature of each deity is dialled to eleven.

 

[Faolyn]

Kelemvor came up before, and how when Cyric stopped being the god of the dead and before Kelemvor took over, no one could die... but there are a half a dozen gods of death in the various racial pantheons. So, it makes no sense that "death was dead" when other beings in reality were still in charge of death.

I don't know from the Realms. Was it that nobody could die, or no humans could die, and humans just assumed that meant nobody else could die either?

I suppose you could say the racial gods of death are actually psychopomps, or they're all just different aspects of the same god.

 

[Minigiant]

Okay, let us say this is true. So, why do we want it to be true?

What value do we get over saying that Orcus doesn't have supremacy over undead Diety X does? Because Orcus's power base would then be built on the back of Diety X, who could just rip away all of Orcus's undead minions to use for his own purpose, correct?

And, instead of being "a bigger fish" we could just make Orcus the biggest fish, which seems to lose very little, except for the idea that gods are the most powerful, and therefore we'd make things more complicated by giving Orcus more power over his currently equally powerful rivals.

Short Answer: Story.

Medium Answer: D&D is mostly focused to aid players and DMs. If Orcus is the God of Death, you can'tplay a G or N adventurer with necromantic powers.

Longer Answer: 4e and later Exandria made their death god nonevil and kept Orcus as the undeath focused demon prince so that Good, Evil,and Neutrality have access to necromancy. Orcus was made the 2nd biggest death fish for motivation.

The DM gets an easy motivation for the death cult NPCs and monsters.
The player gets to keep their goth human paladin or stripper shadar kai rogue.

Now you could do multiple death gods. I have 2 settings with multiple death gods. I once played a game where the DM used modified Greek Gods and Hades + Persephone (N), Thanatos (N), Erebus (E), Iapetus (E) and Hermes (G) were options for death clerics and paladins.

But power struggle of unequal sides is easy mode for divine relationship. That and squicky stuff.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I don't know from the Realms. Was it that nobody could die, or no humans could die, and humans just assumed that meant nobody else could die either?

I suppose you could say the racial gods of death are actually psychopomps, or they're all just different aspects of the same god.

I believe it was claimed that nobody could die, but I don't know if they showed any non-human examples. I'm going off of poor memory.

But, the Elven Goddess of Death and the Afterlife being a mere psychopomp while the human god is the true god of Death... yikes. And they certainly aren't different aspects, because the entire plot point was Cyric killed death and took over, then Cyric was defeated and Kelemvor took over. Sehanine Moonbow or Urogalan never died. Or if they are aspects, then they only killed an aspect of the god of death, took over an aspect of the god of death, and remade only an aspect of the god of death's domain... which is not how it was presented.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Short Answer: Story.

But it makes for a poorer story.

Medium Answer: D&D is mostly focused to aid players and DMs. If Orcus is the God of Death, you can't play a G or N adventurer with necromantic powers.

Um... sure you can? There is nothing about Orcus in terms of alignment and goals that isn't pretty much equally true of Nerull. Nerulls's titles include "The Foe of All Good" and "Hater of Life". So you can't exactly have a G adventurer worshipping Nerull either.

So, in the status quo we have an unquestionably evil being in charge of death and the undead, so it being a different unquestionably evil being shouldn't really change anything.

Longer Answer: 4e and later Exandria made their death god nonevil and kept Orcus as the undeath focused demon prince so that Good, Evil,and Neutrality have access to necromancy. Orcus was made the 2nd biggest death fish for motivation.

The DM gets an easy motivation for the death cult NPCs and monsters.
The player gets to keep their goth human paladin or stripper shadar kai rogue.

Now you could do multiple death gods. I have 2 settings with multiple death gods. I once played a game where the DM used modified Greek Gods and Hades + Persephone (N), Thanatos (N), Erebus (E), Iapetus (E) and Hermes (G) were options for death clerics and paladins.

But power struggle of unequal sides is easy mode for divine relationship. That and squicky stuff.

Ah, your longest answer holds part of the key. You are putting forth a change in settings and applying it across all settings. Greyhawk still has an evil god of death.

Now, yes, Forgotten realms has a neutral god of death now, this has occured in many places. However, what about the god of savagery? Malar I think his name is, who is a the god of evil lycanthropes and beasts. Why does he exist when we already have Yeengohu and Baphomet? Do we want to make him neutral so we have that aspect for PCs? I don't think so.

So, in the specific example of death, there is a change, but in other aspects there is not

 

[Faolyn]

I believe it was claimed that nobody could die, but I don't know if they showed any non-human examples. I'm going off of poor memory.

But, the Elven Goddess of Death and the Afterlife being a mere psychopomp while the human god is the true god of Death... yikes. And they certainly aren't different aspects, because the entire plot point was Cyric killed death and took over, then Cyric was defeated and Kelemvor took over. Sehanine Moonbow or Urogalan never died. Or if they are aspects, then they only killed an aspect of the god of death, took over an aspect of the god of death, and remade only an aspect of the god of death's domain... which is not how it was presented.

Maybe it's because Sehanine and Urogalan aren't just death gods. Urogalan is also about the earth and protecting the dead, and Sehanine has a ginormous portfolio including dreams, travel, the moon and stars, illusions, and mysticism. They survived because there was more to them than just death.

Or it could be because Cyric (and the god he killed) are only gods in the Realms, while Sehanine and Urogalan are gods throughout the Realms, Greyhawk, and basically every other setting that doesn't specifically have different nonhuman gods. So death would have to be killed off on every world for gods like Sehanine to die. I know that the multiverse thing was important back in 2e, especially when Spelljammer and Planescape came out. The Planescape Book On Hallowed Ground listed the gods of the Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Birthright as "Single Sphere Powers" whereas the racial pantheons and real-world pantheons were multi-sphere powers--and suggested that the Single Sphere Powers were weaker than the other gods, in large part because they were younger than the other gods.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm not sure where the conversation is at this point, but this is my view of the role and purpose of evil gods. The same as in the real world mythologies. The gods are aspects of life, both good and bad. The real life version of the gods of death or disease and often war, weren't nice. In D&D it's the same, only they have clerics with spells that try to further their god's domain, so a cleric of the god of disease is going to try and spread diseases around. That gives heroes something to do.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Maybe it's because Sehanine and Urogalan aren't just death gods. Urogalan is also about the earth and protecting the dead, and Sehanine has a ginormous portfolio including dreams, travel, the moon and stars, illusions, and mysticism. They survived because there was more to them than just death.

Or it could be because Cyric (and the god he killed) are only gods in the Realms, while Sehanine and Urogalan are gods throughout the Realms, Greyhawk, and basically every other setting that doesn't specifically have different nonhuman gods. So death would have to be killed off on every world for gods like Sehanine to die. I know that the multiverse thing was important back in 2e, especially when Spelljammer and Planescape came out. The Planescape Book On Hallowed Ground listed the gods of the Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Birthright as "Single Sphere Powers" whereas the racial pantheons and real-world pantheons were multi-sphere powers--and suggested that the Single Sphere Powers were weaker than the other gods, in large part because they were younger than the other gods.

I think you are approaching the issue from the opposite side of me. I was just saying that the idea of them being aspects of a single Death god is odd, because that isn't the presentation. It was instead presented that Myrkul, Cyric and Kelemvor are in charge of all death in the entirety of FR... when there are multi-sphere death powers floating around in FR who are more powerful and would keep the concept of death going.

 

[Faolyn]

I think you are approaching the issue from the opposite side of me. I was just saying that the idea of them being aspects of a single Death god is odd, because that isn't the presentation. It was instead presented that Myrkul, Cyric and Kelemvor are in charge of all death in the entirety of FR... when there are multi-sphere death powers floating around in FR who are more powerful and would keep the concept of death going.

Yeah, I was just blue skying about all being aspects of one god, or of one concept.

I actually can't find anything that says people stopped dying in the Realms for any reason, let alone a god's death. Are you sure you're remembering correctly? Or can you give me more details so I can do a better search for it?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yeah, I was just blue skying about all being aspects of one god, or of one concept.

I actually can't find anything that says people stopped dying in the Realms for any reason, let alone a god's death. Are you sure you're remembering correctly? Or can you give me more details so I can do a better search for it?

It was the novels, which probably makes it much harder to look up.

It was the Avatar stuff during the Time of Troubles, maybe the novel the Prince of Lies, but I am having trouble as well. I know it has come up and people have quoted the section though