D&D General The Role and Purpose of Evil Gods

[Chaosmancer]

So D&D has had sort of two traditions about fiend lord type beings.

1 They are flat out deities, they have clerics.

2 They are explicitly not deities, they do not grant spells to clerics.

With a bit of overlap where only some are deities and some are not.

If you go with them as deities then the original question of why have Erythnul the god of Strife in Greyhawk when you have demon lords becomes why have deities of the demon group alongside deities of the devil group alongside evil gods of the Oeridian pantheon in Greyhawk alongside evil gods of the Suel pantheon in Greyhawk, alongside the Orc pantheon, etc. all in the Greyhawk cosmology.

The desire seems to be to have a world cosmology with multiple different possibly overlapping groupings of evil deities. This is a bit tautological but just wanting a multiple pantheon world similar to how for Conan's Hyperborean world the evil Stygian god Set is not a part of the pantheons of the northern Cimmerians or Picts who have different evil gods and there might be demons and Cthlhulhu mythos beings in Hyperborea as well separate or connected to the gods.

This would be an interesting take, if it mattered whether or not you acknowledged the entities. If Orcus can only attack places where the name of Orcus is known, or the existence of these beings is obscure and uncertain, then having multiple overlapping pantheons makes a lot more sense. But that isn't the general sense I've gotten.

I do agree though that the writers very much seem to have worked without thinking of the cohesiveness of what they were building.

 

[Maxperson]

I disagree optional rules are official options, not homebrew.

You do know that equivalent doesn't mean exactly the same, right? Official "homebrew" option are still not default rules no matter how you slice it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I meant more that there aren't any canon reasons why gods and arch-things aren't after each other's jobs all the time. But anyway. I'm not 100% convinced there's any real purpose for any gods (or, any gods that are verifiable by mortals, at least). This thread has encouraged me to come up with no-gods universe. Which will get put with all of the other settings I've come up with that I will probably never use.

Evil gods exist in real-world mythology, even if purely evil gods are rare. For example, I'm no expert on Finnish legends, but their Loviatar seems to be about as evil than her Faerun counterpart--but a lot cooler, judging by the poem written. So while there's no real reason to have evil gods, I don't think that there's a reason to say that one shouldn't include them--or that they are interchangeable with arch-fiends.

Oh, there is absolutely a purpose in an immensely powerful cosmic evil. I can see that easily. What gets me about the "not conflating archfiends and gods" is that, well, that was commonly the case. Beings like Belial and Pazuzu and others were gods of other cultures, that the records we have now call "demons" because they were the gods of those people's enemies. The monster Python that Apollo slays to free Delphi is actually a protector God of the Minoan people, to give another example.

So, with synectrism and other such factors, it actually makes a lot of sense. Because the majority of the beings whose names we associate with demons and devils were gods, just other people's gods. The idea that Archfiends are just evil gods is rooted in this same concept.

The 2e Planescale MC says that that night hags are always willing to trade for knowledge and magic, and for certain favors: "lower planar powers ... agree to not enter night hag territories" and "liches destroy creatures who refuse to trade with hags" in exchange for larvae." I imagine there's plenty of other things that can be traded as well--services, slaves, and so forth.

Also, it doesn't seem like night hags have to search all that hard for larva. They're listed as having the frequency Common and the organization Masses, and the flavor text for the entry had some adventurer encounter a night hag with a herd of several thousand larvae. (The 2e entries for both night hags and larva have tons of plot hooks. I miss the 2e monster writeups.)

We also don't know the exchange rate. For all we know, a potion of healing might be worth one larva. Or a dozen larvae. Healing might be hard to come by in the lower planes.

Sure, but the same still applies, making a deal with a mortal is a guaranteed soul.

The 2e book suggests that larvae only show up on the Gray Waste. Since the only major fiends that live there are the night hags, neither demons nor devils can gather larvae on their own without going to another plane and invading night hag territory. I can't find info on them for 3e (it probably exists; I just can't find it), a small entry I found online for 4e shunts "soul-larvae" to the Shadowfell (which I'm guessing replaced Hades as the place for evil souls to go), and their 5e statblock is missing... everything useful or interesting about them. Sigh.

The 2e MC says that larvae are the only way to make imps and quasits (and that imps and quasits can then be turned into higher-ranking fiends). But 5e says that lemures can be turned into imps, and lemures don't start as larvae; they're also created directly out of souls. I'm guessing maybe manes can be turned into quasits? So larvae are back to being food (4e apparently gave benefits to creatures who ate a larva, because nothing's just food anymore), a fuel source, and a currency.

So, back to souls. Have you read or watched Good Omens? Specifically, the bit at the beginning of the story (but not the very beginning), where the demons Crowley, Hastur, and Ligur are recounting the Deeds of the Day. It's a 30+ year old book, and this particular scene is more about establishing character than plot, so I'm too lazy to spoiler it. Hastur and Ligur have spent a lot of time tempting two people, thus securing those two souls for Hell. Crowley tied up all the mobile networks in central London for half an hour during lunchtime, thus ensuring that millions of people became frustrated, meaning a lot of those people will take out their anger on others, who will take out their anger on still more people--meaning millions of people got a little bit more evil and, therefore, a little bit closer to Hell.

So that's the problem with signing souls. If you need a lot of souls (one of the plot hooks in the 2e MC was that the baatezu were making a doomsday device and needed millions of larvae to power it), then individual contracts aren't going to cut it. Getting individuals to sign away their souls is, as Crowley put it, craftsmanship, but this is what I mean by it's icing: it's honestly not enough for any major purposes. It ensures that the soul goes directly to the signer. But what's one soul? Well, in D&D, that soul would be probably start out as a higher-ranked fiend, which is definitely useful for a variety of reasons--but it won't be useful for food, fuel, or currency.

This is why there are cults, because it's extremely likely that the cultist's soul goes directly to the fiend it worshiped. But it's not totally guaranteed that this will happen, because redemption is a thing--and in at least some earlier editions, there was the atonement spell, which I imagine could be used to cleanse a soul.

Now, it's possible that an arch-fiend would also gain power from being worshiped--I think someone else posted a quote that suggests Asmodeus does--but I'd say that indicates that the arch-fiend in question is either actually on the cusp of godhood or anything can gain power from being worshiped. D&D only barely touches that latter concept, probably because it would be difficult or at least page-consuming to come up with actual rules for it.

Perhaps instead of being a duality, the difference between gods and arch-things is more of a continuum. The more god-like you are, the more power you gain from worship and the more you can create and control, and the more arch-thing you are, the less dependent you are on mortals (going with the idea that gods die without worship but arch-things don't) and the more you can interact with the Material World without damaging or altering it. There's benefits to both sides.

I've never seen nor read Good Omens, been on the list.

But, well, this is where I think economies of scale and subordinates come in. Does Glasya go and personally tempt and write contracts for all mortals? No, but she has her minions do it, with the contracts being written to pledge people to Glasya. Then, like a used car salesman, the contract writers get a bonus if they do well.

And if you have to invade the Grey Wastes to get the larva, then that makes the mortal worship sending people straight to hell or the abyss quite lucrative, because then they don't need to trade the hags.

So, again, I think there are more benefits to mortal worshipers than just dealing with the Blood War. Especially since these tempations and deals are still happening, even with the Blood War going on.

That would be cool. I do wish that things like this were given more time in D&D. At the very least, a fiend should be able to split a soul into two (perhaps using eldritch machinery, because eldritch machinery is always fun), even if the soul was originally a single thing.

Agreed. You have to dig back into older editions for some of these metaphysics, or make your own.

The Material Plane is finite. Or rather, even if space is infinite, each world is a finite area, and outside of really long-range teleportation and Spelljammers each world is isolated. The Hells and the Abyss have truly infinite living area. Demons are destructive, but they're also like a cancer: they destroy by growing and choking out all the healthy life--but when the life is gone, that means that the cancer is also destroyed (although with demons, it's because they would turn on each other if there were no non-demons to play with). Demons will eventually truly destroy a planet and take themselves with it. Now, for the average demon, this is no biggie. They can't think that long-term. But the demon lords are smart enough to know better. They know how to pace themselves. They're not going to send entire armies through to the Material just for funsies.

Also, doing so would attract unwanted attention from other fiends (who might interfere, if only to keep the invaders from becoming too powerful), good celestials (who need to protect mortals), and the gods (who want their worshipers unharmed), as well as mortal heroes.

Sure, but I interpretted your original assertion as without the Blood War Demons would just ignore the Prime and focus on infighting in the Abyss. That isn't the case.

Edit:


D&D is full of redundancies. Ogres are redundant with hill giants and verbeegs, which I can't believe they brought back. Orcs are redundant with goblins who are redundant with kobolds who are redundant with xvarts. Orogs and ogrillons are redundant with each other. Dragons are redundant with each other. Giants are redundant with each other. Pixies are redundant with sprites.

D&D is full of redundancies. It's a messy, complex system. That's part of its charm.

to an extent. But that doesn't mean that all of us like the redundancies.

 

[Chaosmancer]

1st bolded part.
And I consider that many showed you the exact opposite of what you "showed" us. The evil gods are in fact, far more meaningful than archdevils and demons as the later can grant spells only if optional rules are used. As soon as you use an optional rule, you homebrew.

I disagree, optional rules are not homebrewing. And I think the inconsistencies in this (such as witchlight having a cleric of orcus with spellcasting in 5e) just shows that this is not a hard and fast line.

2nd bolded part.
Again more or less wrong. In the Realms, Orcus started as mortal. In any other setting, he sprang into existence in the abyss. Spontaneously existing or, in 4ed, is a corrupted primordials. FR is homebrew too... Just like Greyhawk, Dragonlance (in which there are no demon lords and no arch devils by the way, so they're not always there) or any other setting. For this, we have to restrain to corebooks or books that take the general angle.

"Every setting is homebrew" is a rather extreme take that I disagree with. Every setting can be different, but that doesn't mean we can't discuss things within those settings. Also, since I was speaking of Kelemvor, a god in the Realms, then the fact that Orcus started as a mortal in the realms means.. I was completely correct. Both of them started mortal, and become different types of beings. And comparing those types of beings is exactly what I was doing.

On a more general take.
Problem is that godhood can change from world to world and even editions to edition. If we keep to 5th edition per say, it will depend on which pantheon you take, homeworld and even which optional rule you take.

This is why that in an earlier post, I have started to wonder not about the relevance of archdevils or demon lords as gods but the relevance of the cleric themselves. If worshipping a concept is enough to have access to divine spells what is the purpose of the gods? Why have clerics in a party as Bards and Artificers can heal too (and bard can even take the raise dead and other spells as a secret so..)? Why go into the trappings of religion when your friendly bard can do exactly the same healing as your war/forge/light/(insert any domain save healing here) cleric can? And that character will be a bit more polyvalent, will not rely on a church or will not try to "convert" you to a religion you might not want to hear save for the healing... By removing the divine miracle aspect of healing, 5ed has more or less rendered the cleric a non necessary redundancy of an earlier age/system. This troubles me quite a lot. More than I thought so (now that I have a few hours of sleep... damn the nightshifts).

Heck, for all I now of what is written in the 5ed PHB, you could decide to worship the bunny in your barnyard and you'd get divine spells just by taking the cleric class? Is that really what we (or at least I) want?

The purpose of the gods of good is to give incredibly powerful beings that are on the side of the players and the civilization. Whether or not Orcus is a god, he is anathema to life. And while a bard is pretty powerful, no single bard is going to be able to stand toe to toe with Orcus and prevent the destruction of the world.

There are fascinating worlds to homebrew in which the gods are dead and the Artificer Lords and their "god-machines" protect the world instead, but I don't think getting rid of the divine entirely is a neccessary result of all of this. Religion is always going to happen, it is too ingrained in the human mind.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You do know that equivalent doesn't mean exactly the same, right? Official "homebrew" option are still not default rules no matter how you slice it.

Funny coming from you, who not a few weeks ago insisted that equivalent must mean exactly the same, and tried dismissing my arguments because of that.

 

[Lanefan]

"Every setting is homebrew" is a rather extreme take that I disagree with.

Why?

With a recent exception noted below, every setting is homebrew or was at some point; only some managed to get the stamp of officialdom on them somewhere along the line.

Forgotten Realms? Ed Greenwood's homebrew.
Greyhawk? Gary Gygax's homebrew.
Mystara? started out as Blackmoor (Dave Arneson's homebrew) then got morphed and expanded a few times.
Eberron? Keith Baker's homebrew.
etc.

Perhaps the only published settings that have never been homebrew at any point are the recent M:tG-based ones, which are (I think) corporate-designed all the way.

 

[Helldritch]

Nope. In 2e there was just one Orcus and he was the same for all D&D settings, every entity was.

Nope. 4ed Demonomicon of Iggwilvs (which is supposed to apply to all setting save where stated otherwise)
P.8
"However, not all demons wanted to see the shard lay waste to the astral realms. The primordials Demogorgon, Orcus, and Baphomet, already in the throes ofdemonic transformation, feared rightly that Obox-ob's actions would grant him control over all the cosmos. They attacked the Prince of Demons before he could reach the Astral Sea, flinging Oboxob and the shard down again into the vortex beneath which the Abyss had formed. Where Obox-ob struck, the Abyss was sundered, forming a deep fissure into which the sea drained away in a boiling storm."

So Orcus was a primordial at some point.. When he died, he became Tenebrous as of 4ed and got reinstated as Orcus...
In 1ed he was just a demon prince and it was just assumed that demons would just spring into existence in the abyss. At some point, there were only 6 Demon type VI in exsitence (Balor etc...) MM1 1ed, p19.

So going through all editions, we will see inconsistencies, modifications to suite the tastes of the writers at the time.

I disagree, optional rules are not homebrewing. And I think the inconsistencies in this (such as witchlight having a cleric of orcus with spellcasting in 5e) just shows that this is not a hard and fast line.

That you disagree or not is of no consequences. All optional rules are homebrew. Whether or not a DM applies them is a table's choice. Thus it is homebrewing as no two DM will have the exact same optional rules from every books printed so far. I do not use TCoE yet, I did translate and put the variant artificer that was added in there for my campaign. So the combination of official options IS homebrewing.

"Every setting is homebrew" is a rather extreme take that I disagree with. Every setting can be different, but that doesn't mean we can't discuss things within those settings. Also, since I was speaking of Kelemvor, a god in the Realms, then the fact that Orcus started as a mortal in the realms means.. I was completely correct. Both of them started mortal, and become different types of beings. And comparing those types of beings is exactly what I was doing.

Again, that you disagree has no bearing of wether it is or not. Again in some setting Orcus does not even exist! In the above quote from the Demonomicon of Iggwilv in the 4ed. Orcus was formerly a primordial that was corrupted into demonic form... we are far from a mortal as mortals did not existed yet... So you were right for Orcus in the Realms. But wrong on so many other realm. That is why I usually go for Core or General books that are supposed to be applied to all settings (unless said setting say otherwise)

The purpose of the gods of good is to give incredibly powerful beings that are on the side of the players and the civilization. Whether or not Orcus is a god, he is anathema to life. And while a bard is pretty powerful, no single bard is going to be able to stand toe to toe with Orcus and prevent the destruction of the world.

Wrong again. 1ed Orcus has been killed by countless groups and even individuals. Even gods were killed. Raistlin, comes to mind. He had succeeded. And what about Cyric? He killed a god too and he was a mortal.

There are fascinating worlds to homebrew in which the gods are dead and the Artificer Lords and their "god-machines" protect the world instead, but I don't think getting rid of the divine entirely is a neccessary result of all of this. Religion is always going to happen, it is too ingrained in the human mind.

Agreed. But what purpose are left for the clerics if everyone can heal? This is where I am starting to wonder the "relevance" of the cleric class. If evil gods can be so easily discarded, why not discard all gods...

 

[Minigiant]

There's another aspect not spoken here.

Legitimacy

Evil gods are part of the cosmic order. They run part of the setting's rules. They are only the winning side of the pantheon wars. They are legit.

Evil devils, demons, great ones, vestiges, primordials, titans, yokai, fey, and elementals don't run the show. They can only dream to.

This is something D&D often forget.

Fiendish cults and mystery cults are supposed to stay hidden cults at the periphery of civilized society.

A devil who isn't a god getting a legitimized church or formal standing in a city is supposed to be a big deal and should send crusader a-smiting.

They are trapped in Hell or the Abyss for a reason. The gods, including the evil ones, will it

 

[pemerton]

The OD&D examples are just supposition of what might have been possible. The anti-clerics MIGHT have been a satanist, rather than a cleric of an evil god.

Then there were modules like The Keep on the Borderlands with mention of demons and evil clerics, and even an evil demon rite that the clerics perform, but nothing I saw that says outright that they worship demons. They could just as easily be evil clerics that deal with demons, because they are evil.

Then there's the dragon magazine from 1995 that explicitly says they cannot grant spells.

The 3e manual of the planes that's iffy on the status of Asmodeus, so it's a DM's call on whether he's a god or not.

The 3e Deities & Demigods says that they cannot grant spells.

The Fiendish Codex says that they don't grant spells.

In 4e Asmodeus is a god, so his ability to grant spells doesn't imply that the non-deity archdevils can grant spells. I don't know if anything further is said in that edition.

5e is the same.

So only the 1e Deities & Demigods makes them all gods. The vast majority of the time they cannot grant spells.

I posted classic D&D clerics of Lolth (a Demon Queen as per D3 and FF - when republished in DDG she was relabelled as a lesser god, along with all the other archdevils and demon lords).

I posted references to devil worshippers, with priest and clerics, in WoG and the MM (Sahuagin) and in Dragon 91 - that last one coming from Ed Greenwood, and therefore describing his conception of the Forgotten Realms c 1984.

I posted references to clerics of Demogorgon (in DDG). I posted 2nd ed AD&D clerics of Orcus and of Asmodeus.

I posted material from 3E - the BoVD and the DDG - that expressly contemplates clerics of archdevils and demon lords.

I posted references to 4e cultists of Orcus, Demorgoron and Yeenoghu who look just like clerics.

You and @Helldritch seem to be either ignorant of, or deliberately ignoring, all this material in order to assert a uniformity that is simply not there in the actual published material.

D&D has always been good with Do as I say, not as I do. I always assumed that these were exceptions and not the rule.

And as I said, being considered does not mean you are as one thing is said in one book and is contradicted in an other. I never said there was no priest. But that these priests were not the norm. The vast majority would be stuck with 1st and 2nd level spells but such rare individuals such as Banak in Bloodstones could have better spells could and did happen.

I don't understand what "norm" you are referring to. Or what "rule" these are exceptions to.

I found the examples I've posted in a few minutes of looking through my shelves for stuff that I remembered. Lareth the Beautiful, for instance, is one of the most famous NPCs in the history of D&D; and the Horned Society and its Hierarchs is hardly an obscure Greyhawk reference. Sahuagin, the "devil worshippers" in the MM with their clerics who are in no way confined to low-level spells are also not obscure.

These published examples are not rare. They are a dime-a-dozen! You may not have followed the lead of the published material in your own play, but that doesn't establish any facts about the material itself.

I'm also having trouble following your attitude towards the relationship between what is published and how the game is played. Upthread you were contrasting D&D with some unnamed games, on the basis that in D&D "not everything is set in stone". But now you're describing D&D as "do as I say, not as I do". I don't exactly what you think it is is being said - given how typical these clerics/priests of demons and devils are in the published material - but I also don't understand why you now seem to be lauding conformity to some notional norm or rule rather than things not being set in stone.

From my point of view, the bottom line is that the D&D materials, for most of the life of the game, have been replete with clerics who worship devils and demons, and have access to a full suite of spells. Some of the earliest published examples are Lolth clerics (Lareth, the many Drow in G3, D1, D2 and D3) but there are many others and they are found across editions.

Does anyone know whether T1-4 has clerics of Zuggtmoy? I don't have a copy; but I wouldn't be surprised if it does.

 

[Faolyn]

Oh, there is absolutely a purpose in an immensely powerful cosmic evil. I can see that easily. What gets me about the "not conflating archfiends and gods" is that, well, that was commonly the case. Beings like Belial and Pazuzu and others were gods of other cultures, that the records we have now call "demons" because they were the gods of those people's enemies. The monster Python that Apollo slays to free Delphi is actually a protector God of the Minoan people, to give another example.

So, with synectrism and other such factors, it actually makes a lot of sense. Because the majority of the beings whose names we associate with demons and devils were gods, just other people's gods. The idea that Archfiends are just evil gods is rooted in this same concept.

Yes, but. And that but is that these entities not only actually and provably exist in D&Dland, but have defined powers and abilities. And again, we don't have stats for gods of any alignment in 5e (the actual god, not just an avatar), but we do have stats for arch-things. So what's the difference between a god and an arch-thing? I don't know.

To move away from Bane and Asmodeus for a moment, gnolls probably consider (inasmuch as they can consider anything) Yeenoghu to be a god--but he's not. He's a demon lord. So back to the main question: what is a god? If it's just a title given to something that's worshiped (or venerated, sacrificed to, whatever), then Yeenoghu--and Asmodeus, and Orcus, and anything else that has followers are gods. If there's something else that differentiates them? Then again, I don't know.

So, again, I think there are more benefits to mortal worshipers than just dealing with the Blood War. Especially since these tempations and deals are still happening, even with the Blood War going on.

Yes, there are benefits to having mortal worshipers. But unlike gods, fiends don't have to rely on them. If their supply of mortal worshipers was completely cut off, they'd be inconvenienced, but they wouldn't die.

And quite frankly, fiends are never going to get as many worshipers as any of the regular gods get.

Sure, but I interpretted your original assertion as without the Blood War Demons would just ignore the Prime and focus on infighting in the Abyss. That isn't the case.

They wouldn't ignore it entirely, but I doubt it would be a main target. Unless a handy portal appeared.

to an extent. But that doesn't mean that all of us like the redundancies.

No, of course not. But there's a huge difference between "I don't like these redundancies" and "these redundancies should not exist at all." And you've been leaning towards the latter.

And I say, why not? Sure, they can be annoying, because the average setting doesn't really have room for or need that many types of low Hit Die humanoids, especially if each of them has a culture of their own. But they can also be useful, especially if each of those low Hit Die humanoids has a culture of their own. Same for gods and arch-things. Hell has interesting conflicts--not all of which are actually combative--because of the rivalries of Bane and Asmodeus.

Any of these issues could spill out to the Prime and make for interesting drama. Imagine if you had an elf cleric get looked down upon by fey because he follows Corellon and not the Seelie Court.