D&D General The Role and Purpose of Evil Gods

[Maxperson]

Then Helldritch wanting to shut down discussion of anything that isn't core DnD, like the example I used involving Orcus and Kelemvor was inappropriate, because we can disucss those things. But he claimed "that's homebrew, we shouldn't take about it"

That's between you and him. I'm not sure why you want to argue with me about it.

No, there aren't. We've been discussing this for nearly 500 posts. We have found evidence that Archfiends grant clerical spells, up to and including 7th level and higher. We have them answering prayers. We have them served by clerics. We have them just as powerful as various gods. We have them creating new species. These are all the things we have been told only gods can do.

Yes, there are. At best you and @pemerton have found a few things that bring the lines closer together, but the fact remains that in most editions, the rules say that archfiends cannot grant spells unless the DM changes it. I'm really not sure why you think that finding a very few examples of such changes in adventures and such think that it means that archfiend = god in all ways. The rules are clear that they are not the same, even if they have similarities. Even Pemerton is only arguing that those examples blur the lines.

There is no discernible difference, unless you stick to only certain passages, instead of looking at the whole. And, obviously, if you select only certain portions of the game and its history to follow, you can make any position seem irrefutable.

Yes. Those passages being the actual rules.

And here is the thing Max, I think you are making the same mistake that Faolyn has been making. You assume I have some purpose beyond this. You assume I'm going to take an admission of redundancy to advocate for removing something from the game. Or for changing something in the game.

I just disagree with your position that they are redundant. They are not. Even if you assume some sort of deific equivalency, they still occupy different roles. Archdevils exist to tempt mortals and collect souls that way, as well as rule layers of Hell, which takes a lot of time and effort. They don't act like or want to be setting gods(excepting Asmodeus) and don't occupy those roles, even if you give them the same sort of portfolio.

All I am doing is showing that in the history of DnD, taken as a whole, and across editions, Archfiends and Evil Gods have been practically identical. There has not been a consistent distinction made, and narratively they fill the same roles. That's it.

And you have failed. They are not practically identical. One side is focused on ruling planes, tempting mortals, fighting a blood war, and the bigger cosmic picture. The other side is concerned with local power and how that power is focused on a specific plane. You can't change that even if you do assume that archfiends are all true gods.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, you were reading into it an implication. So maybe you shouldn't do that. Because, Kelemvor ALSO didn't get followers and use that power to become a god, therefore, I wasn't implying that was the case for either.

Yes he did. I read the novel. He got the spirits of the dead to follow him and believe in him. That power of follower belief is what gave him the power to take on Cyric and become the god of the dead.

Also, it is interesting that we want to say that Orcus being a mortal first because he became a larva and then a demon is somehow notable, if that is how all Demons are made. Additionally, you are implying he kept his personality, which is not normal for larva.

It is notable. Only like one in a million larva ever get promoted. And few of the next rank get promoted. And so on. Orcus is a one in a billion at least individual, which is very noteworthy.

And no, nothing I said implied that he kept his personality. Nothing in the lore does, either.

So, your assumptions about my post seem to have caused issues that were not in the original post, by bringing in a factor I never brought in. Followers were not part of the example for a reason.

Heh. I didn't make assumptions, you just assumed that I did.

 

[Maxperson]

Aside: It has always interested me, and sometimes left me wondrous, while observing an unrelenting cross-bombardment of words that essentially end, almost every time, at détente.

I enjoy the argument, which at times has gotten me in trouble with my wife.

 

[Faolyn]

I took @Chaosmancer's point to be that they can't be misconceptions, and doubly can't all be misconceptions, because they are acts of invention and so they tell us all that there is to be known about Vecna. (And also, I guess part of the point was that they can't be misconceptions that Vecna is happy with outside the context of someone authoring something about Vecna which is treated as true rather than a misconception.)

My point was that, if Vecna is actually the god of secrets but people think that he's also the god of necromancy, that would be a misconception. Vecna, being the god of secrets, would probably be quite happy with all misconceptions, if they are misconceptions held by his worshipers.

I don't think what people make up for themselves can count as canon, can it, more-or-less by definition?

I'm talking about in the books. People have posted quotes from various D&D books dating all the way back to 1e. Plus there's homebrew stuff people have made up.

 

[Faolyn]

Which I think puts me in agreement with @Chaosmancer, and the OP, and maybe @Faolyn (? I'm not sure about that last one, as Faolyn seems to have agreed with Chaosmancer about functional overlap/redundancy but still seems to be disagreeing about stuff that I'm not sure I fully follow).

Nah. Or rather, yeah, there's redundancy from a purely mechanical standpoint but no more than with anything else in D&D, and certainly no worse than having Bane and Maglubiyet in the same setting. There's no redundancy from a storytelling perspective, and having them both even increases storytelling possibilities. Plus, it's not like you have to worry about a realistic divine ecosystem.

 

[Maxperson]

Plus, it's not like you have to worry about a realistic divine ecosystem.

I guess that means that I can stop watering all the gods I planted in my garden.

 

[Lanefan]

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?

Ah, sorry. I've read those many times but (as is often the case) never even looked at the author's name.

I thought you were referring to some novel(s) or other.

 

[Lanefan]

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 me that passage suggests nothing more than a) the pantheons are presented as an opt-out system and b) recommends opting out of some of them at your-as-DM's choice in order to avoid bloat.

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.

Of course. A DM is always free to homebrew in her own deities alongside some or all of what's presented, or even opt out of the whole lot and replace them with pantheons/deities of her own creation. Nothing controversial there.

The publication of DDG doesn't give those particular pantheons any special status in the D&D canon.

But here we'll just have to disagree, I think; as to me their putting those deities into DDG does make them core.

 

[Lanefan]

While this is a well-thought out post, I'm not sure why you are breaking down my statement like this. You seem to agree with my perception that restricting our discussion to only "core" DnD and not discussing settings is misplaced, and you also seem to agree that having the realms as the baseline, while saying the core is setting agnostic is a bit weird.

I'm trying to differentiate between the Realms being "the" baseline (which it isn't) and an example of a setting (which it is).

Okay, let me ask you this. What do we know about the Egyptian Pantheon in DnD that makes it in anyway different than just taking a list of Egyptian Gods from a Middle School History text book and putting them in the game?

Nothing; other than that TSR did all the work of statting them out* for us in DDG so that we don't have to and then published the results, and in so doing made those pantheons official.

* - whether one agrees with the stats given is another issue entirely. I here merely point out that they were statted at all.

 

[Voadam]

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

I completely agree with that point. That is different though than saying D&D texts have never made a clear distinction. As I said before "This has varied across time and source and edition."

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.

And 2e D&D also has the Guide to Hell which says the archdevils do not grant cleric spells.

Page 37: "The Lords of the Nine are devils of incredible power. While many gods have a domain to rule, each lord has an entire layer of Hell under his or her command. Despite this power and prestige, the lords are not gods-at least, the lords of the first eight layers are not. Asmodeus is a special case; he is dealt with at the end of this chapter. For the purpose of the following discussion, ”the lords” refers to the lords of the first eight layers.
The nature of the lords is a topic of continued discussion throughout the planes. While they are obviously not powers in the traditional sense (after all, they have no mortal followers), they seem to have near total control over entire layers of Hell. Some scholars think it’s only a matter of time before the lords become true powers, while others think they belong to a separate category of higher power altogether. The truth is, the lords themselves don’t even know the answers to these questions. Some of them think they know, but only Asmodeus understands the true state of affairs."

The lords of the nine are the archdevils.

Page 48: "In truth, Asmodeus is a greater power, just like Jazirian. However, the Twin Serpents predate the rule of belief in the planes. They neither gain power from the adoration of mortals, nor lose it from lack of worship. They have no priests and can grant no spells."

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.


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!

Maybe I should have said official 3.0 baseline instead of "core" so as to distinguish from the other core discussion going on.

That last sentence strikes me as a distinction without a difference. What is at stake in the distinction being drawn?

For the most part. It is very similar to "should be treated as." I can think of one advantage in the 3.5 PH rules for clerics though if you are not worshipping a god and your power instead actually comes from a force like Chaos and Evil. You do not risk violating the code of conduct of your god and becoming an ex-cleric:

3.5 PH page 33:

"A cleric who grossly violates the code of conduct required by his god (generally by acting in ways opposed to the god’s alignment or purposes) loses all spells and class features, except for armor and shield proficiencies and proficiency with simple weapons. He cannot thereafter gain levels as a cleric of that god until he atones (see the atonement spell description, page 201)."

In older editions (1e comes to mind) gods can be more directly involved with their clerics and even redirect what spells a cleric memorizes, either out of divine wisdom of what they will need or withholding spells as punishments for transgressions.

1e DMG page 38: "If they have not been faithful to their teachings, followed the aims of their deity, contributed freely to the cause, and otherwise acted according to the tenets of their faith, it becomes unlikely that they will receive intermediary aid unless they make proper atonement and sacrifice. There can be no question that such clerics must be absolutely exemplary in their activities, expressions, and attitudes if they dare to contact their deity directly! In the former case, where the unfaithful cleric desires third through fifth level spells, the minions (angels, demi-gods, or whatever) will be likely to require the cleric to spend 2-8 days in prayer, fasting, and contemplation of his or her transgressions, making whatever sacrifices and atonement are necessary thereafter, before freely granting those powers once again. Sacrifice and atonement will probably be left to the discretion of the cleric, and it is possible that the minions of the deity will empower him or her with spells to complete these steps, but the cleric had better do the correct thing, or face the consequences."

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.

So this last bit with the deathpriest is 4e.

4e requires clerics to be devoted to a specific faith which is usually, but not always a god 4e PH page 61: "All clerics choose a specific faith to which they devote themselves. Usually this faith is the worship of a specific patron deity—for example, Moradin, Pelor, or Erathis. Sometimes clerics are devoted to churches that venerate groups of deities or even philosophies."

So I am not sure RAW in the PH it matters whether their faith is in a non-god being. My understanding of the 4e lore is that cleric power comes from the astral sea, but I don't see that as inconsistent RAW with a clerical faith in something not tied to the Astral Sea.

But then we come to the Deathpriest Hierophant from the 4e Monster Manual page 209:
"CULTISTS OF ORCUS ARE DEMENTED INDIVIDUALS, and this deathpriest has risen to their highest ranks. He is not a cleric, since Orcus lives in the Abyss and cannot grant divine magic to his priests." He gets three powers, an Aura of Decay, a Vision of Death, and a Word of Orcus. He does wield a mace like a cleric (or a warlock). Not sure I'd say his powers are clearly evoking 4e cleric themes over warlock ones or whether it is just monster power because monsters and NPCs are explicitly built on different rules than PCs.

The Deathpriest of Orcus on page 210 has powers of a Death's Embrace aura, an at will Ray of Black Fire, and a Dark Blessing. Also armed with a mace. The Deathpriest looks more like a 4e warlock than a cleric to me with the at will ray.

4e of course has its own lore distinctions of gods being tied to the Astral Sea and ideas and belief which are different from other editions of D&D.

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.

Consistently is definitely the key word there.