No, I don't think they "outweigh" them. I think that if you have a bunch of rules that say they are the same, and a bunch of rules that say they are different, then they are likely so similar that it is fine to say they are pretty much the same. Yes, you can make them more different, but if you don't go out of your way to make them more different, they are basically the same.
No, that just means that they were either written by different writers who didn't consult each other or who wanted to present different options, or they were written specifically to override the previous rules, most likely because they were part of a different edition.
Gods can absolutely use those sort of contracts though. So again, this is a story you can tell with a god.
Can but
don't, because D&D gods--outside of homebrewed individuals for individual worlds--don't do that sort of thing.
You are joking right? Like, I can't believe you seriously posted this with a straight face.
Strangely, I
can believe you didn't actually read what I wrote. Gods sometimes impersonate other gods for pretty much same reasons that humans impersonate other humans, and gods may even impersonate humans to walk among them or impart valuable gifts or lessons, but yes, it's out of character for one to impersonate another god just to get
worshipers.
So, has it occured to you yet that in this particular part of the discussion, over what stories are possible to tell, that I'm NOT excluding Eberron?
That's fine. But since the gods may or may not even exist there, and the archfiends are, IIRC, all imprisoned, it's entirely a moot point. For all practical purposes, Eberron doesn't have gods, it has religions. Religions that, unlike in just about every other D&D setting, have no alignment restrictions and practically no boundaries on what can be done in the religions name. Which is why you have a "good" religion like the Silver Flame that tried to commit genocide.
Only because you insist on reading every single thing in the worst possible light, so you can tell me how terrible of a person/communicator I am. Maybe stop doing that? I've never said that you should never pick both. I've literally said, multiple times "you shouldn't pick both without a good reason." I said that I MYSELF originally felt obligated to include everything, and that I can imagine others feel that way.
I also have never once said "don't bother trying"
If your sole reason is to say "don't pick both without good reason, because you don't have to feel obligated to include everything" then
why do you continue to argue this? Why do you continue to claim that evil gods and archfiends are all but identical and redundant? Why do you continue to dismiss every idea offered you with "no, because they're redundant"? Why do you continue to move goalposts? Why not accept that DMs who aren't you in fact do tell different stories with archfiends and evil gods, or accept that DMs would roleplay them in different ways? Even if Bane and Asmodeus had completely identical portfolios, they're still different people who would go about their goals in different ways.
If your only reason for arguing in this thread is
truly to say "don't pick both without good reason, because you don't have to feel obligated to include everything," then why do you care if other people argue otherwise? You would have offered your advice. After advice is offered, it's up to other people as to whether or not they take it. You're not required to continue to beat it into other people's heads until they accept it.
And most importantly, you haven't shown why it's
bad to have redundant gods and archthings! There are stories that can be told of two practically-identical entities vying for the same thing.
"You have been fighting for ages for people to accept your claim, that they're redundant and there's absolutely no reason to have both together"
I have only, as I have stated again and again and again and again and again and again and again have been arguing that they are redundant. I have never once said that there is absolutely no reason to have both together.
Yes, it is a choice. In part it is a choice because the two categories are fairly redundant. If they weren't redundant, you really wouldn't have much of a choice, you would need to include both. Just like you kind of need to have elves and dwarves, because they aren't redundant, they cover different things, and so you sort of need both to cover both things.
No, you've just been telling people that there's no stories that can be told that differentiate them. That's pretty much the same thing.
You don't "need" to have both elves and dwarfs. Sure, one lives "in nature" and the other lives "underground"... in D&D (and that's excluding the drow--or all those dwarfs that live above ground, like those albino dwarfs from Chult). But mythology has elves living underground as well (dokkalfar--which may actually be dwarfs), and quite frankly caverns are just as natural as forests are, and can be just as beautiful--and I'm talking about real caverns here, not fantasy caverns that have a full ecosystem. And at least
one popular depiction of dwarfs shows them living in a forest, in small groups of seven. Those guys just commuted to the Underdark for work.
But even if you go the standard route and differentiate the two like D&D does (which I would do), you still don't "need" them both. You don't need
either of them. You can easily have a world with no Tolkienesque races in it, especially considering the number of anthro races out there. Most people include elves and dwarfs because they
want to.
There is confusion that can be introduced by having DX the God of Candy and FO the Demon Lord of Candy. See, they both cover candy, and they are both concerned about candy, and pretty much their main defining traits are candy.
Now, if you wanted to tell a story where FO is the Demon Lord of Candy, but you decided you wanted DX to be focused more on being the God of Ice Cream, then you can eliminate this problem, but that is sort of just avoiding the question of how do you handle it when DX is the God of Candy, because you are deciding to stop really focusing on the candy part, by adding more things too him.
Except that Ghaunadaurs isn't just the god of oozes. He's the god of oozes AND abominations AND outcasts AND caverns AND subterranean things AND possibly some part of Elemental Evil. You're choosing to actively ignore all the things that make Ghaunadaur different from Juiblex in favor of the one thing they have in common (and moving those goalposts by saying "what if he's not part of the drow pantheon" when there's no reason for him to ditch part of his portfolio). It's like saying Talos and Umberlee are redundant because they're both the god of storms while ignoring all the rest of their portfolios.
See, my problem is I wanted to show an actual example of this using real parts of DnD, but instead of addressing the issue of "hey, there is a demon lord and a god who have the exact same job and powers, so that can be confusing" you decided to instead focus on literally anything else. So, now that I've removed that, do you see the issue I was talking about originally, about how if you have a god and a demon lord who have the same focus and the same powers, that that can be kind of confusing? Or are you going to say that it isn't confusing, because you are going to make one of them have a different focus, again, just like you keep doing.
Let's see the statblock for Ghaunadaur to see if he has the same powers as Juiblex. Have one handy? I'm sure at least one edition had stats for him. It sounds like something 1e or 2e would do.
Because you could, which again, was the actual question I was addressing. I even made sure to clarify it THREE TIMES in the post itself.
The only reason
you see those plots as interchangeable is because you're coming into the argument assuming that the gods and fiends are interchangeable and dismissing everyone who feels otherwise. You have shown repeatedly that you are willing to have gods act like fiends and fiends act like gods. And while that may be fine for your campaign, it's not the way that the game itself is written, or the way that the rest of us this thread are using them.
Very possibly. But the thing is, my point was that people probably wouldn't use the two of them together, because there is little point in using the two of them together. More than likely people just pick the characters and plot lines they like the most, but you seem to not understand that they could easily do that and switch the titles.
There is no reason Bane can't be an Archdevil. There is no reason Orcus can't be a god. The titles don't actuallly make that much, if any, difference.
Unless, like the many of us, you use some of the canonical rules and/or make up our own rules to differentiate them. Like gods can create clerics and archfiends can either create few clerics or can only create warlocks.
But you kept dismissing those rules. This is why I doubt that you're just trying to tell people that they're redundant so they don't feel obligated to have both. You have actively gone out of your way to scrounge up obscure rules in order to tell people that the ways they differentiate gods and archthings is wrong or has been overruled in a different source.
If you
really want to show people that they're redundant, then I would think that your goal would be to help remove those redundancies, even if it means completely homebrewing differences. But you haven't.
