D&D General The Role and Purpose of Evil Gods

pemerton said:

This is incorrect. In DDG, in the section on Non-Human Deities, it is stated that the various archdevils, demon princes, slaad lords etc are lesser gods. They can have clerics.

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I see it. I can admit when I'm wrong. Thanks for pointing it out.

Chaosmancer said:

I agree with all of this to an extent. The oddity comes with the fact that if we consider Demon Lords and Archdevils to be multiversal powers, with a near infinite reach into various primes (as seems to have been attested and accepted) then we have to grapple with the fact that they have more worshippers than any god.

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How so?

If one assumes there's more than one life-bearing world in the Prime Material universe(s), and that the deities are universal, the Prime Material worship strengths would be vaguely even, in sum total.

All the worship the Demon and Devil Lords get from the Abyss or Hell is cancelled out by all the worship the other deities get from the spirits in their own lands of the dead (e.g. Valhalla/Gladsheim/Niflheim for the Norse deities, etc.); as Hell and the Abyss are just land-of-the-dead variants.

RoughCoronet0 said:

From what I have seen Ao is specifically the Overdeity and Supreme being of the Forgotten Realms, having control over the goings on within Realm Space and only Realmspace and answers to an even more powerful being.

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And no matter what universe you're in that more-powerful-being's first name is Dungeon, and its last name is Master.

Helldritch said:

Ok. I did say it was over simplified you know? If you do not invest in a sphere (prime material for 1ed) you do keep your powers but you can be rapidly contested by the powers of that prime and winner takes all. Investing in a prime when your not strong enough is a dangerous undertaking as PP lost are regained slowly through exp. And if you get too weak, some power below you in your prime might be tempted to have a bite at you. Nothing prevented an immortal to make an avatar and use its "mortal" powers to get renown and fame and get worshipers bit nothing would stop hostile powers to do the same. It was a matter of carefully playing the game and evaluating the risks.

And, I do not visit the forum all the time and sometimes, answers can be missed, or even over due at times and ni longer relevant. I am sorry if it has caused you troubles.

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Okay, so what happens if you conquer a prime, and then start spreading to other primes simultaneously? It seems to me that would mean you might lose influence in a single prime if another power kicks you out of that Prime, but it says nothing about your personal power, or the ability you have if you stopped investing broadly and focused.

One of the origins of the Nine Hells is that they may be eight prime worlds taken over by Asmodeus and his forces. IF we consider this true then Asmodeus has at least 8 realms where he controls 51% of all of it. This would make him dramatically powerful. Again, more powerful than pretty much any evil god.

Helldritch said:

Nope. PP To go back in time. PP To make sure that the adventurers will meet and PP to make sure they will make the necessary adventures to complete the task ahead. All these are temporary expenditures with no bearing on the strength and power of the immortal.

What is permanent is a permanent expenditures are PP bet with the opposing deity. PP directly spend after to act directly. Which would be added to the bet.

The immortal set was a game of influences and careful calculations. At least, that is how we played it and it was a blast to play.

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So contacting an individual on another plane and offering them power in exchange for doing you a favor would cost PP, correct?

That is creating a warlock, which Asmodeus does all the time. We can easily assume that if he is working in near infinite planes, that he is doing this a lot, and therefore would have a massive store of PP.

Again, I'm less concerned with the Primes, and more about the individuals outside of the primes, since we have decided that this must be a multiversal conversation

Faolyn said:

Being stretched thin does make Asmodeus weaker. Even if there are literally ten million Asmodean clerics stretched across a million Material Planes, most can't communicate with each other across planar divides. They have no ability to work together to perform any great deeds, and may even end up working at cross-purposes at times. Whereas there may be only a few hundred Banite clerics in Faerun, but since they were a very organized group in Ravenloft, I imagine that's also the case in the Realms as well (the faith hasn't taken over Ravenloft because it's under a curse where it will never be able to gain a foothold in any domain other than Hazlan and Nova Vaasa).

Now, is Asmodeus actually gathered a large chunk of spellcasting clerics and warlocks in one area, they'd definitely beat Bane's clerics--but he hasn't done that so far.

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I don't think it makes him weaker overall. I think it could make him weaker in the particular prime plane... but in every plane we have Bane, Asmodeus is also a god. So he is equal in power to Bane in Faerun and Exandria, then has hundreds of thousands of additional strongholds of various strengths.

This would mean that taken all together, Asmodeus is stronger, far stronger.

Faolyn said:

But anyway, all of this is besides the point. There's no particular reason to have evil gods, but then again, there's no particular reason to not have them either. And no reason why you can't have both evil gods and arch-fiends. Arch-fiends could be the generals of the evil gods. Or they could have their own little Blood War and are keeping each other so busy fighting amongst themselves that they aren't constantly attacking the Material world.

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I agree with you. We could do many things. However, what I have been attempting to do is to demonstrate that the two biggest supporting reasons for evil gods that have been given :1) They are the only source for evil clerics and 2) They are far more powerful than Demon Lords and Archdevils. Are incorrect.

By demonstrating this, I'm hoping to show that yes, there is no particular reason not to change things, because the practical differences are minuscule.

Faolyn said:

However, I think there's one thing you're forgetting when you said "that if we are considering Archfiends to be in a near infinite number of planes" which is: none of those planes exist unless the DM wants them to. I, personally, don't have that sort of multiverse in any of my homebrew settings, and it plays only the most minor of parts in my Ravenloft games (and only then in the sense of, if you're playing an Outlander, you came from "another world."). Asmodeus has no presence on millions or billions of worlds because there aren't millions or billions of worlds. If I were to run a Planescape or Spelljammer game, that might change, but I haven't run one of those yet, and I probably won't. And if I did run something Planescape like, it would probably be one world and it's associated planes.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that a majority of DMs are like that. I'd guess that actually relatively few DMs really care about the multiverse, especially in the sense of how it powers the various gods.

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I wasn't going to argue on a mulitversal level to begin with, but then Maxperson began insisting on it, and no one has really stepped in to say that isn't how it is supposed to work until you have.

The designers have indicated their intent multiple times to have the multiverse be real, from Dream of the Blue Veil to the new Echo of Dragonsight, so, at least from the designers standpoint, it is a legitimate position. And since homebrew could adjust the power anyways, and the question is more looking towards what the consequences of that would be, looking at the wider multiverse makes sense.

Faolyn said:

Well, what would you like it to be?

In a much earlier post ITT, I posited that gods can actually create a permanent thing out of nothing. How much a god can create on its own probably depends on its power level and portfolio, but it's something. Arch-things, no matter how powerful they are, can't create ex nihilo. They can transform something that exists into something else (again, probably depending on its power level and portfolio), but they have to have an existing thing first.

So that's my practical difference.

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For me I have no practical difference. But if the only part I cared about in this discussion was what my own personal homebrew is, then I'd have been done with this conversation a week ago. The point of the OP, and the direction of the discussion is to find practical differences in the larger canon game.

Does it matter in the face of wanting to homebrew? No, it doesn't. But I still find it a worthwhile discussion.

Faolyn said:

Or you could go with this. That being a god means you finally got accepted into the god club, and arch-things are just too déclassé to be allowed in. Not being in the god club means any mortal who worships you is going to be seen as slumming it. There's probably some arch-things who have wheedled their way in by being PAs or arm-candy for some of the gods.

Yeah, OK, this is also silly, but it's still plausible. I mean, they probably wouldn't use that sort of terminology, but who knows?

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Sure, but that is clearly not the intent of the designers. Their intent is the thing we are looking for. I don't need justification to make the changes I have already made.

Faolyn said:

Physically, yes, Jazirian would be weaker than Bane. The two gods may have equal powers, but they're expressed differently. Now, if Jazirian was given the opportunity to, I dunno, create a field of peace and love around it, then Bane would at have at least a chance to succumb to it and end up being too mellow to fight.

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I agree.

Faolyn said:

So in reading up on Zargon of the FR Wiki. One, Zargon is a GOO, and it's safe to say that they work differently than gods or arch-fiends. Two, it appears that Zargon had "god-disrupting powers" and Asmodeus was immune to them because it's implied that he wasn't a god at the time. Three, Zargon had just been in a multi-day battle with a barbarian named Zenkar until Asmodeus took over the battle, which probably tired him out a bit. Four, Asmodeus killed off large amounts of Zargon's followers ahead of time, and offed most the rest while sealing it into stone, so if gods do need prayer badly, Zargon is SOL.

So basically, Asmodeus is a kill-stealer who managed to fit in the "no gods" loophole. It's kind of a "no man born of woman" thing. It's not really about power here.

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Well, there are some interesting things here though, aren't there? Why would killing off Zargon's followers matter? He is a GOO, not a God, so his follower's shouldn't be a factor at all. If they are, then any being with worshipers is empowered by those worshipers.

I admit I had forgotten about the God-Disrupting field, but that just raises questions of how that would work.

Faolyn said:

Well again, you would have to figure out what godhood actually means. So far, the 5e books don't say, so you have to make stuff up. It could be the creation thing I came up with; it could be that a god can make ten clerics for every one an arch-thing can make; it could be there's no practical difference.

It could even be that "god" is a species: you are born a god, or a god passes its divine DNA onto a mortal being via spiritual horizontal transfer when it dies, or maybe you're actually the descendant of a god and a mortal and your god-genes activated--but unless you have those god-genes, you're not a god. It's then just a question if arch-things can engage in god-diablerie.

The problem with saying that if Asmodeus is powerful enough to kill Bane, that it doesn't support having evil gods in a setting--well, then why have good or neutral gods either? Why not send Asmodeus after Tymora, or, I dunno, Psilofyr?

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This is missing the question in favor of looking at the counter-evidence.

The question is "what is the role of evil gods, when Archfiends and Demon Lords fill the same niche"

One of the answers given is that "gods are far more powerful than those lesser beings, so to have the biggest threats and to threaten the good and neutral gods, you need evil gods."

However, if it can be shown that Demon Lords and Archdevils CAN be as powerful as gods, then that answer is null. Gods aren't more powerful, so the Demon Lords and Archdevils can threaten the gods of good and act as the most powerful antagonists. Meaning that role is not exclusive to evil gods.

Faolyn said:

See, this gets into another question: where do gods come from? Did they come before mortals or did mortals dream them up? (If they came before mortals, then they probably can't need prayer to survive, because they would have died out before they invented mortals. Unless there used to be ambrosia a-plenty but it's all gone now.) Did they always have the same portfolios, or any portfolios at all, or did mortals decide that Bane was going to be the god of war and conquest? Was he always evil, or did he start out OK until mortals decided that war and conquest were generally evil things? Which came first, the god or the alignment?

I ask this because, as I also said earlier ITT, four of the six the orc gods don't have evil portfolios, but they're listed as evil because, well, orcs are Always Evil, so of course they would have Always Evil gods. They have an Evil god of Evil strength and loyalty, and an Evil god of Evil hearth and home.

Which is silly--sillier than a the god club. It's The Sims silly, where an Evil character eats Evil breakfast and takes Evil showers.

So, if you're questioning as to why there needs to be evil gods in a setting, figure out whether those gods actually need to be evil in the first place. Bane is war and conquest, but maybe he isn't conquering poor innocents and bringing forth a tyranny of brutal misery. I'm no expert on Hinduism, but according to Wikipedia, the goddess Kali "destroys the evil in order to protect the innocent." What if you change Bane to be similar. His purpose could be to destroy corrupt and evil nations and groups. You get some leeway of "what counts as a corrupt," which I'm sure some followers will take to mean "anyone I don't like," but it doesn't have to be like that.

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This is actually one of the major changes I did make. I like the idea that gods thrive on worship, but I can't square the circle of worshipping a being like Bane or Nerull who are evil for the sake of evil. So, I took a page from a poster in GiTP and made sure that all my gods had a legitimate reason to be worshipped. Beyond, I worship them because they are dangerous, because if that is the logic then everyone should worship Demon Lords, because they are also incredibly dangerous.

For Bane, I made him "The Iron Lord". He is about military and strict heirarchy, and he isn't "evil" in my setting as much as he is uncaring. He's looking at the big picture of making sure Humanity survives, no matter what.

For a being like Nerull... I just made him a Demon Lord. That makes so much more sense, since his goal is the destruction of everything, which is the basic goal of demons everywhere.

If I had a tertiary objective to showing that gods aren't necessarily more powerful than other beings, it would be to begin classifying these beings more by their goals and methods than by calling them all gods. Why have a Goddess of the Seas when you can have a primal spirit? Why have a God of Disease when you can have a Demon Lord? If being a god doesn't seem to make any practical difference, then we can expand the types of beings and make things more coherent. Or make everything a god, that method works too. I just find it more boring.

Chaosmancer said:

I don't think it makes him weaker overall. I think it could make him weaker in the particular prime plane... but in every plane we have Bane, Asmodeus is also a god. So he is equal in power to Bane in Faerun and Exandria, then has hundreds of thousands of additional strongholds of various strengths.

This would mean that taken all together, Asmodeus is stronger, far stronger.



I agree with you. We could do many things. However, what I have been attempting to do is to demonstrate that the two biggest supporting reasons for evil gods that have been given :1) They are the only source for evil clerics and 2) They are far more powerful than Demon Lords and Archdevils. Are incorrect.

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Has anyone actually said that evil gods are definitely the only source for evil clerics? It's clear that's not RAW in D&D, if only because of EGW--but I think that's a perfectly good distinction for DMs to make. I know I've mentioned it, but that's my houseruling on the subject. Are you assuming that people's personal houserules have to be RAW?

Chaosmancer said:

I wasn't going to argue on a mulitversal level to begin with, but then Maxperson began insisting on it, and no one has really stepped in to say that isn't how it is supposed to work until you have.

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Because as I said, I don't think most people really care. Maybe Maxperson has been insisting on taking in total number of worshipers per multiverse, I dunno. Maybe that's how his games go. But even taking dream of the blue veil into consideration, I don't think that D&D is assuming that we the DMs are actually going to sit down and count the worshipers across the multiverse to determine deity power levels.

Chaosmancer said:

Does it matter in the face of wanting to homebrew? No, it doesn't. But I still find it a worthwhile discussion.

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You have a tendency to go "Ah-ha! You said this thing, and now you're saying this other thing! It can't be both!" Which is both annoying and counterproductive, especially in cases like this. You haven't done that with me (this thread), but I've seen you do it to others here, so if you want a worthwhile discussion, you might want to tone that down.

Not every statement is supposed to be so absolute that it excludes anything contradictory.

Chaosmancer said:

However, if it can be shown that Demon Lords and Archdevils CAN be as powerful as gods, then that answer is null. Gods aren't more powerful, so the Demon Lords and Archdevils can threaten the gods of good and act as the most powerful antagonists. Meaning that role is not exclusive to evil gods.

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So I went through Mordenkainan's again and have come to the following conclusions:

1) Demons and devils (and therefore demon lords and archdevils) are focused on the Blood War. They recruit mortal worshipers primarily to gain an advantage in the war:

Mortals and Minions
Devils and demons are far from the only combatants in the Blood War. Both sides exploit the Material Plane's most abundant resource—mortal creatures, whose bodies and souls are both useful to the cause.

Devils constantly strive to recruit mortals into their ranks by offering them rewards in return for their service.

While they live, these cultists carry out the wishes of their archdevil masters, whether raiding an enemy outpost or gathering more members for the cult. When a cultist dies, its soul emerges in the Nine Hells and becomes another of the Blood War's immortal soldiers. Most of the evil souls consigned to an afterlife in the Nine Hells become lemures, which make up the vast majority of the hellish forces, but some mortal recruits who willingly accept a contract offer from a powerful devil can arrive as a lesser devil.

Demons generally have no regard for mortal souls and do not solicit them, but living creatures do have their uses. Groups of corrupted cultists dedicated to one of the demon lords exist all across the realms of the material world. For as long as these mortals do the bidding of their lord, they are allowed to live. From a demon's perspective, all other living creatures are nothing more than sheep ripe for slaughter, and demonic cultists share this view. These fanatics don't hesitate to slay other mortals if given the chance—and if their victims happen to be in league with devils, so much the better.

A casual observer might suppose that two forces of evil bent on exterminating each other would be an advantageous situation for the forces of good, but the combatants in the Blood War have no regard for collateral damage—and on the Material Plane, they can cause a lot of it. If agents of Asmodeus discover a thriving demon cult in a city, they might deal with the threat by starting a fire that not only destroys the cult but burns through several neighborhoods and kills hundreds of innocents. A demon might unleash a plague to kill every person in a town, just for the sake of claiming from its library an old book containing a map to a lost artifact. The fiends on both sides of the Blood War take the path of least resistance to their goals, heedless of consequences that don't affect them.

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2) But evil gods care about the Material Plane and their worshipers, and only care about the Blood War when it directly affects those two.

That's the difference between arch-things and gods, and that's the difference in their roles.

So, as long as you use the Blood War in your game, even as just the idea that it exists, somewhere in the multiverse, you can easily have both arch-things and evil gods with no overlap.

pukunui said:

Yeah, so as an example, the main religion in my setting is more or less a carbon copy of the Faith of the Seven from Game of Thrones. While the majority of the "gods" are goodly, there's the creepy and somewhat sinister "Stranger" who oversees the transition from life to death. Their role is closer to that of Anubis or Hades than Bhaal or Myrkul, however.

I will also have a miscellaneous collection of "Old Gods" who will include gods of storms and the sea and that sort of thing. Gods who embody the capricious, cruel, chaotic aspects of the natural world. But not gods dedicated to "civilized" concepts such as murder and tyranny.

I am also going to have a Lord of Light-esque religion that's very focused on "Good vs Evil" with one god that is good and is the creator/protector of life and the world and such. That god is opposed to a single god-like entity who is evil and is the creator/patron of fiends and other evil creatures. The night is dark and full of terrors and all that!

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Without having chewed my way through this thread (I will), and not knowing if you've already done it, I'd love to see a write up of your pantheon

Oofta said:

My campaign uses a mythology loosely based on Norse Mythology + Greyhawk demihuman deities. So Moradin is the forger of Mjolner and so on, the elven gods are the Vaenir. But even amongst the Aesir (human deities) there's gods that are good, evil and in between. Odin has good qualities and bad, being the god of magic and wisdom but also the god of battle and strife. People of all alignments pray for his favor in times of war and curse him equally. Aegir is the god of the sea and storms, so once again people pray for his favor and sacrifice before going out to sea. Of course there's Loki, who is a Jotun.

Jotun includes deities (including some that have joined the Aesir such as Skadi), giants and fiends. So we have Jotun gods Thrym and Surtr with their own domains. Avernus and The Abyss are just other domains in Jotunheim. While only the most powerful Jotun attract worshippers the only real difference is that if they have worshippers they have more influence in Midgard (the prime material plane).

There are forgotten gods who who only have a limited amount of "reserve" power available that occasionally pop up.

So the gods, evil gods and fiends are really more just a classification and what realm they reside in than anything else. Which is useful if I ever want to throw in a new protagonist such as a cult that wants to wake a Jotun deity that Thor had fought long and put into a coma. While a being needs to be powerful, it's really having worshippers that makes it a god.

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A write up of this would be awesome. It sounds really cool!

Whether archdevils and demon lords are deities and can grant spells has varied across editions and sources.

In the Book of Vile Darkness for 3e on page 123 for example it says:

"ARCHFIENDS AND CLERICS
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."

This was before warlocks which came out in 3.5.

Matrix Sorcica said:

A write up of this would be awesome. It sounds really cool!

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I have a wiki page, maybe when I'm not on mobile I'll provide a link.