In over a week's worth of discussion, many, many rules have been posted from the various editions showing how archfiends and gods are different.
There is never going to be a single consistent rule because we're dealing with scores of different sources written over five editions. You are demanding the impossible and refusing to except what actually has been shown.
And many, mnay, rules have been posted from the various editions shwoing how they are the same. Yes, there is inconsistency. That's the point. There is not a single, consistent rule, and Archfiends have danced back and forth over the line multiple times. That's because there is no issue with them crossing that line, no differences in how the game functions. It doesn't actually matter one way or the other, so it has been done both ways.
And this is showing that you either don't know or don't care about the differences that other people have between gods and archfiends. In probably most games, and certainly in the base game, gods don't require contracts. The fact that you can imagine such a thing doesn't change the base expectation.
Again, huh?
The difference between a god and an archfiend is that an archfiend is going to require a contract signed in blood on a crossroads on a moonless night? What if... they don't? Yeenoghu isn't well known for his contract writing skills.
And, your point wasn't "what are the baseline expectations people have" (which still doesn't have all archfiends doing this one incredibly specific thing) but was "what stories can be told". So, actually, in regard to the question "can this story be told" being able to imagine something DOES provide the answer. And, for example, I can think of Murmur, a god from the Wraith's Haunt novels who is very well known as a god of contract and deal making. Though again, no blood-signed contracts on a crossroads on a moonless night, which you seemed to insist had to be the only way to do these contracts.
And that's not even a Planescape thing. It's a "stands to reason" thing--if you're fine with using them, then I can use them two. Two reasons.
One, if gods are dependent on belief, then human beliefs are going to change them. The fact that in the Realms one god impersonated another one without any dire changes is less about how gods work and more about the writers wanting to keep the Status Quo--if only because it would be difficult (especially in the more rules-heavy editions when the impersonations took place) to get across the idea that two faiths were merging into one in a series of game books and adventures. Heck, if the writers tried to use the idea of a god being changed by mortal belief in 3x, they'd probably have to have lists involving number of worshipers involved and the percentage change that there would be an effect and what the save DC is to avoid it.
And two, because the gods in question (Shar, wasn't it?) weren't trying to corrupt other religions. They were taking over, or using them to hide. If anything, this was the god trying to grab onto more portfolios.
Okay? But neither of these prevents a god from doing the thing. Yes, a god could be affected by human belief and shifted, perhaps merged with another god. This could be true, but like I said, it isn't going to be true for all settings. Maybe they start starving and dying and a new god bursts out of their chest, fully formed from the new religious beliefs.
The point is, you presented "Being X impersonating or corrupting the religion of a god" as a story that you can only tell with Archfiends, but that is wrong, you can tell that story with other gods, and the risks, if they even exist in the world you are using, may not prevent that story from still making sense. Doubly so since you once again admit this is a story that HAS been told with gods.
Yes, I think Nerull and Erythnul care about people. Not as people or as individuals, but as status symbols, or as income, or as food. They care about people in the same way that a farmer cares about livestock. Even the worst farmers who warehouse all their animals in horrible conditions don't want them to all die unnecessarily. There are certainly some gods who don't care or encourage their worshipers to kill each other, but they're likely not very smart, or are confident that they have enough worshipers to sustain them anyway. Or they managed to grab onto some other source of power.
Well, first of all, Nerull is "The Foe of All Life" and does want everything including his own worshipers to die.
Secondly, if we are talking about "care about them as a source of income" or "care about them as food" then... yes, Archfiends also care about their worshippers. Much like a mob boss cares about his lackeys, kill them if they get out of line, but they have uses and can further his plans, so he doesn't want them to just all keel over and die for no reason.
So, by your own definition, then yes, Archfiends care just as much about their worshipers as some evil gods.
I had never applied the Planescape model to Eberron. In fact, I have pointed out at least once before that Eberron isn't connected to Planescape at all.
Then universally applying Planescape and telling me that certain stories are actually impossible because the rules of planescape state "X" is kind of misplaced, isn't it? After all, we have at least one setting you acknowledge doesn't follow those rules.
I don't think you're a liar. I think you really believe that you are telling people that they're redundant and nothing else. But maybe you're just not as good at writing that sort of nuance, because you've been saying that it's wrong. Wrong for me to assign gods the way I do. Wrong for people to have more than one faction because the factions will feel "flatter and less interesting." You haven't used the word "wrong," but everything you've been writing has been saying it anyway.
For instance, you say:
And you think you're saying "use either." But what you're actually saying is "don't use both. Pick red or yellow, but only one of those--and don't even think about using orange."
If you prefer having a setting where there's only evil gods or only archfiends, that's fine, that's for you. And I can easily see a setting where there's only one of the two. But you're not saying "I prefer." You're not even saying "if you pick only one, you get these benefits that you wouldn't get if you picked both."
You're saying "everyone should pick one of these two options because I say so, and anyone who says differently is doing it wrong." You're saying "I only need one lord of oozes," but are looking down on anyone who chooses to use both, saying it's too hard to do it "right"--meaning that you are elevating yourself to be the judge of who is playing the game correctly.
I'm reminded of a quote by Isaac Asimov, on why he didn't write dystopias or utopias. "You can't build a symphony on just one note." You can create a richer and possibly even more realistic setting by having a mess of different lower-planar beings. It's not like real world mythology has neat little divisions.
No, you just aren't reading me with an open mind. That quote? I'm not saying you must pick red or yellow, but can never pick orange. Pick orange if you like, I'm just saying that you don't have to pick orange. Red, Yellow, or Blue are all valid other options. Yet you seem to get inscensed when I say that Red and Yellow are interchangeable, telling me I am wrong and that I should stop pushing my preferences on people.
I'm not looking down on people who try and do both, but I am speaking from experience when I say that is harder to do well. Do you think it is looking down on someone to say that it is harder to play ‘The Last Rose Of Summer’ by Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst than it is to play the Third Violin Concerto KV216 (Movement 1) by Mozart? No, it is acknowledging difficulty. Writing a good story with two highly similar factions is hard. Unless you have a good reason to do so, why make your life more difficult? If the only reason you keep a Demon Lord of Ooze and a God of Ooze is because both were written... well, that doesn't sound like a good reason to me. That sounds like you just feel obligated to include everything that exists.
Do you want to do it anyway? Okay, go ahead. I'm not going to judge you for it. But, I would hope that by pointing out that you don't have to, people see that it is a choice. Because until I really started thinking about it, I didn't think it was supposed to be a choice. I thought I was supposed to include all these things and make all of them work together. But you don't. You can choose, and you can swap gods and demons with no consequences.
First off, Ghaunadaur is the god of oozes, abominations, rebels, and outcasts (and dismal caverns, in 4e), and is/was once a member of the drow pantheon. His worshipers include oozes, drow, aboleths, and ropers.
Juiblex is the demon of oozes and shapeless things. His worshipers include oozes, "the insane," "desperate and diseased individuals," and aboleths.
So there's some overlap, but far less than you think.
Like, oozes, the only part I was referencing? And Ghaunadaur only got rebels and outcasts because he was working with Lolth, and those were his drow aspects. If you don't have him part of the drow pantheon, then those don't make sense.
Now, the FR Wiki says that Juiblex is an aspect of Ghaunadaur. So problem solved for you: you can have them both and they're the same thing!
How is "this demon Lord is an aspect of a god" solve anything? Though that is a bizarre wrench to throw into cosmologies if Demon Lords can just be reflections of gods.
But that sounds like a 3x/4e thing where they consolidated deities, so let's say that they are actually totally different gods. Well, there's still not as much overlap as you claim. They have three things in common: oozes, aboleths, and preferring he/him pronouns. I see no reason why either aboleths or (intelligent) oozes can't worship two different but similar entities (except for the idea that aboleths would deign to worship anything; I'm going to assume they don't worship either god but instead just get power from them). A lot of humanoid gods are fairly similar, after all.
So lets look at the FR Wiki again. Ghaunadaur wants basically one thing: sacrifices, especially "willing" sacrifices. What he gets out of those sacrifices, I don't know, but the entry also says that he really likes watching big monsters kill and maim people, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the purpose of these sacrifices is so that Ghaunadaur can watch people die messily.
Now, Juiblex is described as the simplest of the demon lords to understand, because he wants nothing more than to keep existing while surrounded by goo. And that if he can be said to have a goal, it would be to dissolve everything into goo to surround himself with.
So these two entities are already quite different. And then you can homebrew even more differences, if you wanted to. You can give Juiblex something of a personality and have him actively driving people insane and diseased. Maybe he causes people's brains to turn into gray oozes. You can focus on Ghaunadaur's portfolio as the god of rebels and outcasts, or of ropers.
Yes, you can make them more different, I never said you couldn't. But if you focus on Ghaunadaur as the god of rebels and outcasts... then he isn't really the God of Oozes any more, is he? And while Jubilex is described as simple, he is also described as completely alien and not potentially having other plots, just that no one understands them. So he could easily have a personality, just not a human one.
But, all you seem to really be doing here is making them different, but not addressing them being used as the Demon Lord of Oozes and the God of Oozes in the same story about oozes. Which indicates to me that you at least acknowledge that that scenario would be difficult, because everything you posted was about ignoring them both being focused on oozes and highlighting their other aspects to prevent that overlap.
Fun fact time: my father actually writes comics for a living (as well as other, non-comic things), and has written and edited for DC, Marvel, and other companies for many decades now. It's actually how I got into D&D--he did some writing for TSR, back when they had a comics line (sadly, my dad doesn't game), and when I expressed an interest in the game, they gave me the core 2e books.
Balancing all of the different super hero origins? All it takes is practice and familiarity with the characters. Some people have encyclopedic knowledge of the characters and issues. I've nearly always preferred non-super hero comics, but I can still name at least a few characters with each of the powers on the list without looking them up.
So, you are trying to tell me that a long-time professional in the writing field has an easier time dealing with a difficult writing challenge? Is that supposed to shock me?
Side Note: It is really cool that your dad does comics, and that sounds like a fascinating thing to discuss in normal circumstances.
But, yeah, if you do something difficult long enough, then it gets easier. That doesn't make it less difficult to begin with though.
You mean, look at movies instead of the actual comics?
Why not look at the Batman/Superman crossover "World's Finest" from the old Batman: the Animated Series and Superman '90s cartoons, where Batman and Superman met for the first time and had to fight a team-up of Luthor and Joker. It was a well-written and fun story, and I will die on the hill of Kevin Conroy is Best Batman.
Because those are examples of the thing being done well, and you seem to understand it can be done well. I wanted to point out that it can be done badly, so I pointed to two different recent movies where it was done badly, and the major critiques were leveled at "trying to do too much".
Again, you seem to take me saying "this is hard to do well" to mean "this is impossible and no one has ever succeeded". That isn't what I am saying, I am saying it is hard to do well. World's Finest is a great episode where two completely different characters work well together. But something like Suicide squad had nearly a dozen fairly similar characters, all with the same story, and it diffused the interest.
So you finally understand that you can have both gods and archthings in a single setting and it's just as good as having only one?
The fact that you believed I didn't understand that is your problem, it has nothing to do with anything I actually said.
Did you not read what I wrote? I said "It's universal as of every setting published in 2e." One of these settings was made for 2e. Eberron was made for 3x, Nerath was made for 4e, and Theros, Ravnica, and Exandria were made for 5e.
And Dark Sun is a special case because it's completely and specifically sealed off from both the outer planes and from the rest of the Material universe (closed sphere; no spelljamming).
Yes, I did read what you wrote "It's universal
as of every setting published in 2e." The term "as of" is "used to indicate the time or date from which something starts."
So, your post read that way says "it is universal from the time of every setting published in 2e", which indicates it would be universal for all future settings as well. If you only meant to say that it is universal for most settings in 2e, that is a very different statement, and one that I don't see the point in. I said "it isn't universal" meaning for all settings now. Responding "but it was for some of them back in the day" doesn't really make my statement wrong.
Because I guess you also haven't read any of the other posts I've made on this exact same subject multiple times already in this thread.
I'm sorry, you've never stated what rule in the books prevents me from making a Demon Lord a fundamental cosmic force of the universe. To me, it seems like they can quite easily fill that role, being tied to dark impulses like murder, wrath, undeath, envy, lust, ect.
