D&D General The Role and Purpose of Evil Gods

[Voadam]

This all drives home the point that the D&D texts have not, historically, marked any clear contrast between "archfiends" and evil gods.

Some D&D texts have marked clear distinctions between archfiends and evil gods. This has varied across time and source and edition.

To recap and repeat a little:

1e DDG says treat all the existing archfiends as a lesser god, so none of the archfiends is as powerful as a greater evil god like Bane and none of them can grant 7th level cleric spells the way greater evil gods can.

3e BoVD says archfiends are not gods and do not grant spells. It also says if you want them to grant clerics spells then make them divine rank 1, the weakest of five ranks of demigods.

BoVD page 123
"The demon lords and archdevils described in this chapter cannot grant spells to clerics. Instead, they act as patrons for clerics who devote themselves to abstract sources of divine power, and they assist the clerics of evil gods. They have worshipers who perform sacrifices in their name, but they don’t run organized religions the way gods do.
If you want the demon lords and archdevils to have organized faiths and grant spells, it’s easy to do so. Chapter 6 identifies which domains each archfiend would be associated with (see the Cleric Domains section in the spell lists). If you have the Deities and Demigods book, you can give each demon lord and archdevil divine rank 1 and adjust their statistics accordingly."

3e DDG page 23
"For game purposes, each deity has a divine rank, which is similar to a character’s level. A deity’s divine rank determines how much power the entity has and serves as a way to compare one deity to another. Here is a quick summary of divine ranks.
Rank 0: Creatures of this rank are sometimes called quasi-deities or hero deities. Creatures that have a mortal and a deity as parents also fall into this category. These entities cannot grant spells, but are immortal and usually have one or more ability scores that are far above the norm for their species. They may have some worshipers. Ordinary mortals do not have a divine rank of 0. They lack a divine rank altogether.
Rank 1–5: These entities, called demigods, are the weakest of the deities. A demigod can grant spells and perform a few deeds that are beyond mortal limits, such as hearing a grasshopper from a mile away."

So archfiends in core are not gods and do not grant spells but there is an option for a DM to put them at the power level of the weakest demigods.

3.5 Fiendish Codex I says:

Page 57 "Some of the demon lords described in this chapter originally appeared in Book of Vile Darkness. They have been updated to conform with the revised (v.3.5) D&D rules. Slightly less powerful than their previous incarnations, they better serve as major villains for high-level—but not quite epic-level—D&D campaigns."

Page 82: "Clerics who worship demon lords cast spells in the same way as other clerics do, but their Abyssal patrons do not directly grant them spells. Rather, the demon lord serves as a focus through which the cleric can access divine energy—his spells are in fact drawn from the chaos and evil of the Abyss itself."

Later 3.5 Dragon Magazine Demonomicon articles put them at higher power level.

The Fiendish Codex II says that archdevils are as close to a god as you can get without actually being gods.

Page 141 "Statistics for archdevils in their true forms do not appear in this book, because the actual power level of such a being should vary depending on the nature of your campaign. An archdevil is as close to a god as a creature can be without actually being one. It should be nearly impossible for nonepic adventurers to slay an archdevil, and combat with an archdevil should be something that happens only in the most high-powered campaigns."

In 4e demons are explicitly corrupted elemental primordials and not divine gods. In 4e Asmodeus was a divine angel who killed a god and ascended to become a god himself, and I am not sure what the status of the corrupted angel archdevils are on the cosmic god measurement scale. Exarchs either for that matter.

 

[pemerton]

I've still never encountered Roger E. Moore's Orcish gods as I've never read a word he wrote.

Huh? He wrote the articles in Dragon Magazine which were then republished, near-verbatim, as an Appendix to Unearthed Arcana. If you've never read this stuff then how have you even heard of these non-human deities beyond DDG?

 

[pemerton]

As stated earlier, someone might not own said book. Deity and Demi Gods. This means that for all intent and purpose, using only the DMG, PHB and MM, these are not gods. Individual DM might do it. Most do it, even I. But using core books only? Nope.

I knew quite a few DM that only had the core books. They did not owned any other books save maybe a "module" or two, and even then, it was OD&D (B1 and B2). So discussing something that is not in the core books with them was pointless

What edition are you referring to?

In AD&D, the MM (p 20) says that Asmodeus is "the Overlord of all the dukes of Hell [who] rules by both might and wit. . . .
His mighty palace rests upon the floor of the lowest rift in Hell's ninth plane." The PHB (p 120) says that the Nine Hells is one of the "the Outer Planes which are the homes of powerful beings, the source of alignment (religious/ philosophical/ ethical ideals), the deities." Sahuagin are devil-worshippers with clerics, which tends to imply that Asmodeus has clerics and grants spells and is functionally a god; the Sahuagin entry also mentions the possibility that they were created by a lawful-evil god but doesn't identify who that may have been.

The MM has little to say about gods as such. Water elementals are rumoured to have a god-like king on their plane. A "demented godling" may have created catoblepas. Tritons worship the god Triton (does this make the Greek Gods "core"?). The Wand of Orcus kills "any creature, save those of like status (other princes or devils, saints, godlings, etc.) merely by touching their flesh" (p 18). This certainly implies that "archfiends" are on a par with saints and godlings. Neither of those is a defined term.

Saints appear also in the DMG, as possible sources of components for the manufacture of healing potions. They do not appear in the PHB. Most of the PHB's discussion of gods/deities is in relation to clerics, each of whom "is dedicated to a deity, or deities" (p 20). The discussion of how deities grant spells etc doesn't tell us who they are, or whether or not Asmodeus et al are among them: after all, we are also told both that druids "hold trees (particularly oak and ash), the sun, and the moon as deities" (p 221) and that "Clerical spells, including the druidic, are bestowed by the gods" (p 40). So the concept of deity seems pretty capacious!

Other mentions of gods, godlings and deities in the PHB tend to put archfiends on a par. Here are the examples I found:

The Gate spell (p 53) may summon a "demon, devil, demi-god, god, or similar being".

The caster of a Shapechange spell (p 93) "is able to assume the form of any creature short of a demi-god, greater devil, demon prince, singular dragon type, greater demon or the like."

Turning Undead (p 104) can also affect "lesser demons, devils, godlings and paladins".

In astral planar combat (p 120), "Only very powerful creatures (demon princes, arch devils, godlings, gods, etc.) can do more than destroy the astral body".​

The claim that no one using the core AD&D books would imagine that there are clerics of Asmodeus, Orcus etc; or that no one using those books would treat the archfiends as analogous to, or as, evil gods, is completely implausible in my view. If they read the entry on Sahuagin, then they will in fact think the opposite!

And this is driven home further by the fact that it was so common to have clerics of devils and demons (as is seen in T1 Village of Hommlet, for instance). I can't imagine any AD&D player or referee who came across the clerics of Zuggtmoy in T1-4 woud have had their mind blown!

Kossuth is the greater deity ruling the elemental plane of fire vs. Kossuth is the most powerful primordial ruling the plane of fire.

To the best of my knowledge Kossuth (and the like beings of the other elements) was first mentioned in MotP, building on the allusions in the elemental entries in the AD&D MM. (Eg, p 38, "The rule of all fire elementals is reported to be known as the tyrant.")

On p 40 of the MotP we are told the following:

The tyrant-king of all elementals is known by many names, all of which sound like the rush of super-heated air from a foundry or the crackle of lesser matter being immolated . . . Kossuth is quick to judge, and his judgments always revolve about what is best for his dominion in general and himself in particular. . . . Kossuth is a Greater Power, the primal power behind all flame, and as such is unslayable in his home plane and has all the abilities afforded a Greater Power in Appendix IV . . .​

Does Kossuth have clerics? Worshippers? From that entry, we can't tell. He is certainly less interesting as a character than Imix is! To the best of my knowledge, the working up of Kossuth as a god in the more typical sense is a 2nd ed/FR thing. That impression is reinforced by this webpage: Canon:Kossuth - Dungeons and Dragons Wiki

 

[pemerton]

Some D&D texts have marked clear distinctions between archfiends and evil gods. This has varied across time and source and edition.

Yes. My point is that this distinction has not been clearly drawn across the body of texts considered as a whole.

One of the earliest and most famous modules, T1, has a cleric of the "Demoness Lolth".

You have noted that T1-T4 has clerics of the demon queen (? lady?) Zuggtmoy.

I've pointed to Ed Greenwood's near-canonical article in Dragon 91, which refers to clerics of the archdevils.

The early AD&D 2nd ed product City of GH boxed set has a scenario with clerics of Asmodeus, and one of them has a 7th level spell memorised.

1e DDG says treat all the existing archfiends as a lesser god, so none of the archfiends is as powerful as a greater evil god like Bane and none of them can grant 7th level cleric spells the way greater evil gods can.

But as I've just noted that was not always adhered to in published material. Even within a given edition: contrast Carl Sargent's treatment of Iuz's abiity to grant spells (as I cited upthread from Iuz the Evil) to the Hierarch in the City of GH boxed set.

3e BoVD says archfiends are not gods and do not grant spells. It also says if you want them to grant clerics spells then make them divine rank 1, the weakest of five ranks of demigods.

<snip<

So archfiends in core are not gods and do not grant spells but there is an option for a DM to put them at the power level of the weakest demigods.

And as I've noted, in 3E Tiamat appears both as a god (DDG) and as a powerful dragon more like her AD&D MM entry (MotP). I don't know which of those is supposed to be "core". And I'm not sure how BoVD counts as "core", rather than as just another suggestion to add to the mix!

3.5 Fiendish Codex I says:

<snip>

Page 82: "Clerics who worship demon lords cast spells in the same way as other clerics do, but their Abyssal patrons do not directly grant them spells. Rather, the demon lord serves as a focus through which the cleric can access divine energy—his spells are in fact drawn from the chaos and evil of the Abyss itself."

That last sentence strikes me as a distinction without a difference. What is at stake in the distinction being drawn? Especially as we already have a wide range of accounts of where spell energy comes from (eg in his DMG (p 40), Gygax says that the energy for spells - whether clerical or MU - comes from the positive and negative material planes; memorisation pertains to the spell pattern/formula, not its energy).

In 4e demons are explicitly corrupted elemental primordials and not divine gods

But they have cult worshippers who are, from the point of view of both mechanical and story function, indistinguishable from the anti-clerics and evil high priests of Book 1 Men & Magic: the Deathpriest of Orcus, for example.

I'm not disputing any of your sources (except I'm not sure how BoVD counts as "core"). I'm arguing that over the whole range of published material there is no general pattern of distinguishing Asmodeus, Orcus etc from evil gods in terms of cosmology, whether or not they have clerics, etc.

Of course there has been some hesitation about flat-out asserting that devils and demons are gods (in core material I think 4e is the first time that is said for Asmodeus). At least one of the original authors was an observant Christian; and the game is published in one of the most religious countries in the world (ie the US). But beneath the use of phrases like "should be treated as", "like beings", etc no concrete distinctions in terms of mechanics or fiction have been consistently drawn.

 

[pemerton]

the Norse and Egyptian etc. pantheons (public-domain material all the way) were officially written up and published by the game's producers back in the 1e days and thus were then established as part of the game's core lore.

What do you mean by the game's core lore?

DDG (and before it, Gods, Demigods and Heroes) presents various pantheons statted up MM-style. It also presents King Arthur and his knights in the same format.

That does not mean or imply or even come near to suggesting that every D&D world, be that a published one or not, has these beings as part of it. The DDG Intro even notes as much. From p 5:

The DM will have to consider with care before choosing which pantheon or pantheons to use in his or her campaign. The DM should consider the flavor of the campaign . . . Which pantheon(s) will be most appropriate to the milieu? (It is possible to imagine a campaign where all the gods in this book - and perhaps more - are co-existent. This would require a truly vast world, one large enough to contain all the worshippers necessary to sustain such a multiplicity of gods! Perhaps, as in the ancient world, such different pantheons are worshipped in different regions.)​

To the best of my knowledge, the first D&D product to actually present what DDG notes simply as a possibility is the original MotP - the precursor to Planescape. No attempt is made in the MotP to explain, in cosmological/metaphysical terms, how the various gods of fire, death, weather, the oceans etc are supposed to relate to one another. It's an incoherent shambles.

EDIT: And of course, nothing in DDG prevents anyone from making up their own gods, as REH did, as Moorcock did (his were published in the first version of DDG), as Leiber did (his were published in both versions of DDG), as Gygax did for GH, etc. The publication of DDG doesn't give those particular pantheons any special status in the D&D canon.

 

[Maxperson]

So, again, going forth that we cannot discuss anything that is tied to a setting, because all settings are homebrew is an extreme position that I find unhelpful in the discussion.

This is wrong. We can discuss sorcerer-king dragons from Athas, because those are actually tied to a setting. We can discuss the blood magic from Birthright, because that is actually tied to a setting. We can discuss the Time of Troubles, because that is actually tied to a setting.

There are lots of things that are actually tied to settings. The 5e core is not.

 

[Maxperson]

Because fighters can totally use lay on hands while the warlock is absolutely casting the same way as a wizard right?

There are differences between gods and archfiends as well.

But hey, nice try to be snarky and dismiss everything we've demonstrated throughout this entire thread.

You haven't actually demonstrated any sort of redundancy.

 

[Maxperson]

I was talking to you about Orcus and about Kelemvor. I was pointing out that both beings started as mortals, gained a bunch of power and worshippers, and one is a Demon Lord and the other is a God. And that there doesn't seem to be a significant difference between those two titles that we have been able to find. Which made your comment that a being like Orcus being "considered" a god but that being meaningless because you can be considered a First Nations individual but aren't because you don't match the bloodline kind of ridiculous

This is a bit disingenuous. Orcus did not start out as mortal in the same way Kelemvor did. He died and became a larva like all evil people who end up in the Abyss. Then he climbed the ranks as a demon. Then he gained followers. He did not start as a mortal who got followers and then used that power to become a demon lord like your post implies with the comparison to Kelemvor.

 

[Maxperson]

Since they are fictional entities any fictive reason should suffice within the prescribed limits of choice. Who's going to the Challenge THEM? Mother Hubbard?

They better hope not. Old Mother Hubbard would rip them a new one.

 

[Faolyn]

I will not apologize for trying to keep the record straight.

You're not keeping the record straight. You're nitpicking about something that nobody else really cares about.

The part that doesn't make sense is being told that all settings are homebrew, so we can't discuss them, but that the Realms are the baseline of the core game.

And... what, one person said that all settings are homebrew? Maybe two people? And here you're nitpicking one person's beliefs as if they're some sort of universal truth that everyone else clearly must also believe, and not accepting that whether or not that's the truth has no bearing on anything else.

I, for one, literally don't care that someone thinks that all published settings are homebrew. I doubt anyone but that person cares.

As for the FR pantheons... all of them? Do you think control over the fundamental nature of Truth isn't something that the various gods would fight and kill over, since they fight and kill over the idea of Murder? These aren't minor concepts.

No, I really don't. The gods who would fight over Murder are already murderous. They're already willing to use violence to get what they want. But the gods who are interested in Truth are not the type of beings who would shed blood over the concept, unless they felt that a god was trying to take Truth in order to pervert it.

I don't think Vecna is a meta-textual entity that is participating in the writing of DnD rulebooks. So, if you are trying to say that every writer has been misunderstanding Vecna's portfolio... well, the fact that it has been every writer kind of means that they didn't.

"Every writer" is the important part here. Dozens of people have written about Vecna, bringing their own beliefs and misconceptions about him. Do you really think that they all collaborated with other to make sure his portfolio was consistent? That there was some sort of board on the wall that contained all the info that must be kept canon no matter what and everyone was required to memorize it? I went to some TSR offices once, in the early 90s (they gave me some Monstrous Compendium Appendices!), and while I have a crappy memory I don't recall any such info boards.

And in-universe, people can think he's the god of magical secrets and be wrong.

And that has nothing to do with the debate. The debate is about the effect on the cosmic order and how that order changed with the apotheosis of a new deity. The personality of the gods involved doesn't matter at all.

No, the debate is on whether or not evil gods are necessary and if so, what's their role and purpose.

See, now this is something worth discussing.

Let's take Chauntea and Silvanus and make up a new ascending diety named Pistil.

Now, according to Maxperson's assertion, the cosmic order is maintained by the gods, and they have portfolios. Chauntea is in charge of agriculture, the growing of things by civilization with a purpose, and Silvanus is in charge of wild nature.

Let us say that Pistil ascends and becomes the Goddess of Flowers. Now, here is the kicker. Flowers are things that people cultivate as part of agriculture. They are also part of wild nature. This would mean that Pistil's portfolio was part of two different deity's portfolios.

Now, to me, that reads like a change in the cosmic order. Things that were under the control of Chauntea and Silvanus are now under the control of a third party who was not originally part of the cosmic order. The Cosmic order has changed, which Maxperson claims doesn't happen, because their claim is that the portfolio of "flowers" was unclaimed and therefore no one was in charge of it. (of course even that would be a change in the cosmic order, but that feels a little nitpicky)

And it doesn't happen--in Maxperson's campaign. But it could happen in our campaign, or in mine. (Do people need to preface every comment with "in my campaign"?)

So let's go with Maxperson's assertion that Flowers would be unclaimed, because neither Agriculture nor Wild Nature is Flowers, although flowers exist in wild nature and can be grown.

The existence of Pistil doesn't mean that either Chauntea or Silvanus lost control of flowers. Chauntea can make a field of sunflowers produce wonderful seeds; Silvanus can make a sylvan glen burst with floral colors. But if Chauntea wanted to turn a particular wildflower pink while Pistil wanted to turn the same flower yellow and it turned into a conflict of some sort, Pistil would likely win that conflict, because Pistil has dominion over flowers. This is literally no different than if Chauntea wanted to make a wild strawberry as big and tasty as a domesticated strawberry and Silvanus said no. Of course, since Chauntea is good aligned, and presumably Pistil is as well, any conflict between them would likely be minimal. Now, this isn't 100% the case. Chauntea, being older and more powerful than Pistil, may very well be able to assert her will over Pistil's and turn the flower pink. And if it a flower on a domesticated plant, then Chauntea might have enough dominion over it that she would have full control over it even without the power difference.

Now let's assume that Maxperson is wrong and that the portfolio of Flowers had been claimed, partly by Chauntea and partly by Silvanus. Pistil is created, took the portfolio for herself, and now Chauntea and Silvanus are slightly weakened. OK. Well, how they respond depends entirely on their personality. They may very well be OK with Pistil taking a bit of their power, in the same that that good parents don't mind if their children outshine them. Or, they may be furious at this intrusion. Or they might not truly be able to understand what happened, because their internal "script"--their divine DNA, if you will--has been rewritten, removing "flowers" from their makeup. Once Pistil appears, Chauntea and Silvanus may be able to remember having had flowers as part of their portfolio, but have no emotional or magical connection to them anymore. Perhaps, if Pistil were to die, Flowers would then return to Chauntea and Silvanus. Or perhaps it would be its own thing and not have an attached god until one took the portfolio.

Or perhaps there's no cosmic order and no single unit of a portfolio, and as many gods can claim an aspect as want to. Silvanus, Chauntea, and Pistil can all coexist without sharing portfolios, even if they have the same aspects. Just within the concept of War, there's a ton of overlap. Arvoreen, Gaerdal Ironhand, and Gorm Gulthryn are all gods of vigilance. Selvatarm, Tethrin Veralde, and Haela Brightaxe are gods of combat prowess. Ilnevil and the Red Knight are gods of strategy. And so forth. This number only increases when you include different settings. And this is without any suddenly-appearing ex-mortals-turned-god popping up.

See, the thing is, there's no single, canonical answer. Any of the above are perfectly acceptable answers. There are probably many other possibilities. It's ridiculous to assume that every gamer needs to use the same rule.

You are misunderstanding. I'm saying that Cuthbert changed the cosmic order by taking control of "honesty" which was likely part of the purview of Heironeous, since he was the God of Paladins and Paladins are super big into Honesty.

Cuthbert is more widely worshiped than Heironeous. Perhaps he's older.

And paladins may indeed be super big into honesty--but honesty isn't limited to paladins. Heironeous is the god of paladins, not the God of a Trait That Paladins Are Super Into.

I am not, never will, and never have claimed that Heironeous and St. Cuthbert are the same god. They aren't. The entire point is that St, Cuthbert became a god, and changed the cosmic order when he did so.

Nobody has claimed that you said that. Where are you getting this idea?

No.

You asked "now what". Well, if the question being discussed is over, the discussion is over. I've never been interested in how people address the redundancies, my entire goal in this discussion has been to show that they exist.

So, you're done in this thread then, right? You said your piece and in your mind, the discussion is over. What else are you here for?

You want to keep jumping into debating me on homebrew solutions, but that goes beyond the question being discussed. You want to say that I shouldn't get rid of, or I shouldn't remove, or all of these other things because you keep assuming I am pushing some sort of agenda.

I have not "jumped" on you for debating homebrew anything. However, you seem to think there is or should be a single answer that everyone should adhere to and that your claim that there are redundancies means that the discussion is over.

In which case, the answers are: no. You don't get to dictate that your way is the only way and no other discussion should be held.

Here is what I am pushing. The Archfiends and the Evil Gods are redundant. The Evil Gods have no role and purpose that cannot be filled by Archfiends of similar styles.

OK. So what?

You have established that the evil gods and the archfiends can do the same job. (Presumably, that means that you also believe that elven gods, and non-elven gods of nature, luck, the arts, and maybe even magic are redundant with archfey). Now what? You clearly think that the discussion should be over. So... is it bothering you that people are continuing to discuss the matter? Is it bothering you that people disagree with what you're saying? It certainly sounds like it.

Did you read the title of the thread? "The Role and Purpose of Evil Gods" not "Evil Gods in DnD". If we have determined that their role and purpose is identical to the role and purpose of Archfiends, just being the enemies of good, then there is little more to discuss.

So again, we have another problem. And that is, you are outright saying "They're redundant! There's no reason to have both! They do the same thing!" But other people are saying "Well, no, they're not. And here's why." And instead of saying "Huh, those are interesting ideas I personally wouldn't use," you're going off on tangents and insisting that everyone follow your lead on it because you seem to think that there can be only one true answer, discussion over.

In reality, there are either no canon differences between evil gods and archfiends, or there are lots of differences that have been presented in one book or another over the editions or that people have made up for themselves. Both of these statements are true, depending on which edition you're using, how you define god and archfiend (perhaps Orcus is a actually a god but everyone incorrectly thinks he's an archfiend), and how you want spells to be granted.