D&D General The Role and Purpose of Evil Gods

[pemerton]

In a very real sense, 4e gods are living concepts. Something about what hope IS, exists in Bahamut and in Pelor. Something about what storms are exists in Kord. Etc. When you kill Tiamat in the end of Scales of War, you aren't JUST defeating a powerful supernatural force of evil. You're literally making greed, envy, and malice less impactful in the world. That doesn't mean greed will cease to exist, but it does mean that her death should herald an age where the things she embodied are weakened:. Charity, kindness, and benevolence will flower in the wake of her destruction. These could, of course, eventually become problems in their own right (e.g. these good things being warped into extreme and oppressive things), but at least for the time being, vice will be diminished and virtue will thrive.

You wouldn't get that kind of result from killing a "mere" fiend or celestial. Kill a powerful angel and sure, the forces of good have lost a powerful member, but you haven't damaged the cause, you haven't hurt Good-ness itself. Take out a succubus, even the queen of the succubi, and you'll certainly cause a stir and probably weaken Abyssal ambitions due to the resulting infighting, but you won't make Evil-ness less prevalent. Killing a deity-level figure, on the other hand, has serious implications that go beyond the direct personal schemes and servants of the dead god.

Succubi are tricky because - in 4e, at least - devils and hence fallen angels.

But anyway, just as killing Tiamat should reduce the amount of greed and envy in the world, so killing the Queen of the Succubi should reduce the amount of lust and sexual wrongdoing, shouldn't it?

 

[pemerton]

This is the point though. Demons and Devils don't serve the gods, or if they do that is bizzare. Again, why are Devils that serve Asmodeus, a being of tyrannical law, working for Bane? Do they have an alliance? Why?

Many D&D works assume that evil gods have demon, daemon and devil servants - eg Druaga (in the DDG), Incabulos (in WoG), many evil gods (in MoP), etc.

I tend to agree that this is not terribly coherent. Hence why I prefer 4e's take, which gets rid of a lot of that sort of cruft.

 

[Minigiant]

This one bothers me a lot. It implies that the gods can just dismiss the plans of Asmodeus or Yeenoghu. That their schemes and plots and plans to destroy or conquer the world are just theater that the gods can ignore.

And yet, that can't be right, can it? Because the entire plot of the Blood War is that if the Demons or Devils win, themn they might threaten the multiverse. So, those forces have to be serious threats. The schemes and agendas of those leaders can't be ignored or dismissed. So, we are right back to where we started. We have evil gods to give the good gods an foe they can't afford to ignore. Meanwhile, they can't afford to ignore Demon Lords and Archdevils... so we already have them fulfilling that same role.

Okay I'll say it.
Many of the old setting pantheons and plotlines don't make sense.
They are cobbled together with little thought on interaction.

Interpanthoen wars, interpanthoen wars, lesser major power wars, vertical wars, and proxy wars don't make sense not being connected.

The problem isn't evil gods.
Its that early game designers didn't take background story seriously. Too many gods. Too many not gods. Too many writers. Too much "X would be cool. Let's add it" Not enough plot connections.

 

[Chaosmancer]

No. It's an imperfect analogy(like all analogies are) in that sense. What I'm saying is that Asmodeus must look at only the big picture for his job like a CEO does. He has to be concerned with all of the prime settings in the multiverse and he cannot possibly become concerned with the little details and still be able to function. Bane on the other hand only has one world to be concerned with, so he can be focus on mid level details, like mid-management. He will engage plots and then direct lower management(his high priests and adventuring clerics) to fulfill those, leaving the little details to them.

They function like a CEO(Asmodeus), mid-management(Bane) and lower management(Banes high priests), but Asmodeus cannot tell Bane what to do. That doesn't mean that if tyranny on Toril dips 30% for 3 years straight that Asmodeus is not going to be concerned. He might direct a pit fiend or other major devil to figure out what is going on.

But then what happens if Tyranny reaches 100% in Toril, because Bane conquers the world. Is Asmodeus just going to sit back and let Bane rule a corner of the multiverse?

 

[Chaosmancer]

<rant mode engaged> Man am I sick of the conceit that all things Mythos related are by definition so much "moooaaarr awesome" than everything else. So much more awesome they have to be locked away in another reality that's so mind bending awesome that even the gods don't dare go there because they couldn't cope with all the awesome. When did this idea become the defacto paradigm of game settings? Who's to say Babylonian Marduk, no stranger to fighting primordial chaos, wouldn't chew Cthulhu up like Friday night's deep fried calamari?

If I had to take a stab at it? I'd say it is because of threats. The idea of Mythos stuff from Lovecraft is that they are the biggest fish, that they threaten reality just by waking up. For that to stay true, for them to be threats beyond threats, then they also must be terrifying to the gods. Because we can understand and know the gods, and Lovecraft is "things we can't comprehend"

For me personally, they didn't get "locked away" they are coming to threaten reality from outside of it. To my mind, they are "endlings" they conquered, consumed or otherwise were the last thing in their home reality, and then went between realities looking for more. This makes them scary for a few reasons, and the main reason the gods in my worlds are worried about them is because the one god who fought them directly was corrupted and twisted. It isn't that they can't fight them, it is just that they haven't figured out how to do so safely, and the big sacrifice play isn't needed yet.

But I can totally see a setting where GOO's are like the infection in a wound in reality, and the gods can drive them off with some regularity. Because defeating Primordial Chaos is their bread and Butter. It is a different style of GOO though.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Many D&D works assume that evil gods have demon, daemon and devil servants - eg Druaga (in the DDG), Incabulos (in WoG), many evil gods (in MoP), etc.

I tend to agree that this is not terribly coherent. Hence why I prefer 4e's take, which gets rid of a lot of that sort of cruft.

Agreed, 4e was what really cemented a lot of these ideas for me. I've taken the role and idea of the demons pretty much straight from 4e, as the entropy that threatens the foundations of reality. I did pull them apart from the Elemental Chaos though, and make that a far more... neutral force.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Okay I'll say it.
Many of the old setting pantheons and plotlines don't make sense.
They are cobbled together with little thought on interaction.

Interpanthoen wars, interpanthoen wars, lesser major power wars, vertical wars, and proxy wars don't make sense not being connected.

The problem isn't evil gods.
Its that early game designers didn't take background story seriously. Too many gods. Too many not gods. Too many writers. Too much "X would be cool. Let's add it" Not enough plot connections.

I'd agree. But I think part of the way to clear that up is to look at balancing the cosmic scale.

I like mirroring. I'll admit it. So having the Astral Realms mirror the style of the material world has an aesthetic appeal to me. So, since the material world is divided into kingdoms ruled by various powers, with a variety of alliances, then I like doing the same sort of thing in the astral realms.

The Abyss is the badlands, an open sore where monsters pour forth constantly. No one controls it, but there are a variety of powerful warlords there that threaten the civilized world.

The Nine Hells is an Evil Empire. It is divided into districts ruled by a council, and despite being relatively small, they are growing and dangerous.

The Realms of the Gods are an affiliated set of city-states. Each pantheon (my world is divided among the racial pantheons mostly) has their place, and the gods don't really get along great, each is trying a different model for the best system of government, but they are allies and they all agree that they'd rather one of their rivals end up on top instead of Asmo or the Demons.

The Feywild is an old kingdom, ruled by two queens and overseen by multiple smaller duchies, who could really care less about what the wider world is up to, because they know they are the most awesome.

The Far Realms is the ocean stretching to the horizon, where foreigners not from the continent sometimes arrive, with disastrous results.

Ect Ect Ect

Picturing it in this manner then makes it easier to conceptualize what is going on. It is far easier to move the pieces and set-up these conflicts. But part of that set-up requires things to be relatively balanced. If the Demons want to destroy all of reality, and the Feywild offers no beings really capable of standing up to demonic forces, then smart Demons target there. The gods aren't really going to step in to save the Fey. And it makes the Fey lesser if they need to be saved by other powers.

And the closer the margin between the powers involved in a conflict, the easier it is to justify a single grain of rice (adventuring party of PCs) tipping the scales. They can't personally permanently kill Asmodeus, but they can cause a tactical retreat by tipping the scales back out of his favor.

 

[Minigiant]

This is why the 4e Dawn War cosmology is often praised. It felt purposely designed from the start to have most of the elements to feel logical to the players and DMs who would be running the characters. Any major power that needed to been changed or eliminated to make the web of relationships work was.

The old default of multiple tight pantheons is harder to design well. That's likely why the 5e DMG suggests a loose pantheon of one god per cleric domain. This way yo only have to make sense of 1-3 evil gods.

 

[Maxperson]

But then what happens if Tyranny reaches 100% in Toril, because Bane conquers the world. Is Asmodeus just going to sit back and let Bane rule a corner of the multiverse?

First, that would never happen. There are too many other gods and peoples who would resist Bane's followers. But for the sake of argument, why would Asmodeus care if Bane rules Toril? He has a multiverse to worry about and wouldn't have time to rule even a small slice of Toril, let alone the entire thing.

 

[Voadam]

In REH's Conan stories, though, we have priests of Mitra and of Ibis who serve a similar role to "holy" men and women in Christian folk tales.

And Thoth-Amon the evil spellcaster is a priest of Set.

Lots of the Hyperborean gods are dark or evil. Conan's Crom is generally not considered a salvific benign deity. "Crom's Devils!" was a common oath in the comics.

And clerics and paladins in AD&D were very mediaeval Christian - heavily armed and armoured miracle workers - until DDG pushed them in other directions!

Arneson created clerics as a van Helsing vampire hunter, then Gygax took them and mixed in Bishop Odo the Norman knight who apocraphally used a club so as not to spill blood, combined with every holy miracle turned into spells he could think of (sticks to snakes out of the Old Testament, etc.) to make a fighter/magic-user hybrid with healing and some of its own flavor who could not use magic swords like the fighters could.

1e also gave clerics level titles like Lama and had this picture to introduce cleric spells: