D&D 5E Are "evil gods" necessary? [THREAD NECRO]

[Scribe]

I long ago did away with the hard-coded split between greater, lesser and demi gods as it just never made sense.

I replaced it with a system where there's four "ranks" of immortals:

--- Founding deities - these are the 21 real deities that run (and in one case pretty much is) the universe.
--- Aspect deities - these are all the other hundreds of spell-granting deities that different species, cultures, etc. worship; all are facades of one of the 21 but extremely few mortals ever come to realize this.
--- Immortals - immortal beings who do not or cannot grant spells but who are otherwise more or less god-like; these would include lost or forgotten deities
--- Minions - the immortal servants of deities, these are much like their original AD&D versions; and are what a PC might one day hope to become.

What about Godlets?

 

[cbwjm]

I like this.

But trying to reconcile in the fact that I also like "local" deities, nature spirits and such, AND Immortals that follow the path to godhood like in Basic, is hard.

I modify and adjust and the pendulum keeps swinging back and fort depending on the adventure.

It can be difficult. The amount of times I'll think "yes, this is what I like" only to think a short time later "actually, this other thing would be excellent".

I've thought of using gods, then small gods, concepts, no gods just the priest's conviction. It seems each time I start a new setting, things change.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I take the opposite view: every deity is intrinsically tied to and defined by its alignment and expects its Clerics to follow suit. Non-Cleric followers and worshippers have much more latitude, such that if a deity is, say, CG then its Clerics are also expected to be CG but it might draw followers and worshippers from any G or any C or even pure N, depending on other factors.

Put another way, a typical deity cares far more about what its Clerics do than what its lay followers do.

The exceptions are a very few cultures that have become pretty much monotheistic, in which case acceptance as a Cleric is based on culture rather than alignment. Orcs and Arctic Elves are two such in my setting: Gruumsh kills off anyone else who even thinks about becoming a deity of Orcs thus he's very intentionally made himself the only in-culture option they have, and to be a Cleric to him the only qualification is that you are an Orc; he'll soon enough tell you what to do and from there if your alignment wasn't Evil before, it is now. With Arctic Elves alignment is immaterial: if you're an Arctic Elf of any alignment you can become a Cleric to their one deity Tapoketa, and Tapoketa has exactly one domain: Arctic Elves.

I understand your way of thinking, but believe it to be silly when the "evil god" is the god of a domain that has nothing whatsoever to being evil and the god was just assigned the "evil" tag just to get more evil gods in the pantheon. At that point having all the priests be evil too just seems ridiculous.

The god of the sea is evil? Why? Just because some designer assigned the god that way? And now every water priest has to be evil too? That's just dumb in my opinion. God of fire is evil because fire can burn things down, and now ever fire priest has to be evil too? There's absolute zero reason why that should be the case, especially when the decision to make these gods evil was completely arbitrary by some book designer.

God of murder is evil... okay, fine. God of fury is evil? So be it. And those people who become priests of fury and murder are considered evil too... understandable. But darkness? The sea? Storms? Fire? Death? All things that has positives and negatives to them (along with almost every other domain-- the sun can cause just as many problems as darkness can)... but the people who care about those things are evil too?

Nope. Makes no sense and I would never design a world like that.

 

[Lanefan]

God of murder is evil... okay, fine. God of fury is evil? So be it. And those people who become priests of fury and murder are considered evil too... understandable. But darkness? The sea? Storms? Fire? Death? All things that has positives and negatives to them (along with almost every other domain-- the sun can cause just as many problems as darkness can)... but the people who care about those things are evil too?

I'd posit the following domains are either outright evil or are seen as such by the great majority of people:

Death
Disease and-or plague
Decay and rot
Famine and-or drought
Theft
Murder and-or random violence
War
Oppression
Fear
Wanton destruction (including natural disasters)
Undead and undeath
Demons, devils, and the underworld

That's just a short list off the cuff, and already gives loads of space for evil deities to find happy homes.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'd posit the following domains are either outright evil or are seen as such by the great majority of people:

Death
Disease and-or plague
Decay and rot
Famine and-or drought
Theft
Murder and-or random violence
War
Oppression
Fear
Wanton destruction (including natural disasters)
Undead and undeath
Demons, devils, and the underworld

That's just a short list off the cuff, and already gives loads of space for evil deities to find happy homes.

First of, I don't think all of those are obviously evil. There certainly have been a lot of gods of war and even death that have been seen pretty positively or at least partially positively.

And yeah, maybe things like disease are pretty undesirable, so one could reasonably see a god who brings it as evil. Or it could be just seen just a part of natural order. Also, who worships these deities? Would people perhaps worship the god of diseases in attempts to placate him, so that he would not bring that many diseases? Why would priests guiding such worship be evil?

Also, if you think "most people see these as evil" then certainly no alignment labelling them as such is needed? People can make up their own minds.

 

[Lanefan]

First of, I don't think all of those are obviously evil. There certainly have been a lot of gods of war and even death that have been seen pretty positively or at least partially positively.

Yeah, by evil people who want to promote war and death.

Also, if you think "most people see these as evil" then certainly no alignment labelling them as such is needed? People can make up their own minds.

In part, alignment is determined by perception; thus if something is generally perceived as evil, it probably is.

 

[Umbran]

I'd posit the following domains are either outright evil or are seen as such by the great majority of people:

Even if we accept that posit, I think then the real question is whether all cultures will necessarily have those as domains represented in their pantheons.

Like, death happens. But that doesn't mean there is a God of Death. It may be that instead the culture has a god of protection or the home or the family they turn to when they are grieving, and Death itself doesn't have a deific personification.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Gods of Death are guides to the other side.

Gods of disease, rot, drought and destruction were the ones you prayed to in a 'please don't' sort of way back in the day. Fear could fit here too.

Undead don't need to be evil and D&D should get over itself, especially if it thinks Death is evil, but escaping it is also evil.

Everyone Wars. It's the geopolitical version of pooping.

Theft is the proper solution a lot of the time, especially when there's Oppression

Murder is pretty stupid just in general because even if you're pro-murder, your scope is usually so narrow on targets that you don't need a god.

Really, I feel that any god with a domain should have booth positive and negative sects, even if the positive is just the 'please don't' mode.

And maybe some things shouldn't be domains.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Even if we accept that posit, I think then the real question is whether all cultures will necessarily have those as domains represented in their pantheons.

Like, death happens. But that doesn't mean there is a God of Death. It may be that instead the culture has a god of protection or the home or the family they turn to when they are grieving, and Death itself doesn't have a deific personification.

Sure. That's how it works in the real world. But if we posit that in fantasy world the gods are real and there is actually a person who is in charge of death, and can commune with priests and grant spells, there probably would be much more commonality.

 

[Voadam]

I'd posit the following domains are either outright evil or are seen as such by the great majority of people:
. . .
War

Athena?