Because I've posited this same thing to you before, or very similar things, and gotten the same result. I feel very safe in assuming your answer, because most times my assumption has been correct.
And were you right this time? It doesn't seem so.
Can they? Show me what archfiends have actually created ex nihilo?
Actually, since at least some gods are more powerful than archfiends, are you surprised that they can do all the things that an archfiend can do? And there are plenty of of things that gods can do that archfiends can't. As was pointed out on the site you linked, it's not uncommon for fiends to make deals with gods wherein the god grants the spells for the fiend. That was the answer in Planescape, although it took me a while to find it (Faces of Evil).
Can you show me a god who created ex nihilo? Because interesting when this came up before, I couldn't find a single god who had done so.
But, also, we can easily say that they can. Because there existed plenty of wizard spells in older editions that were creation ex nihilo, and being ancient beings of supreme magical power, they likely could do so.
Demigods and cambions are not the same thing. And since some creatures, including mortal humans, can become gods, it's not surprising a cambion could also become a god.
Funny you should say that since Iuz, a Cambion, is refered to almost exclusively as a Demigod. Additionally, I've been told that Demigod is merely a status in DnD, not actually being born of a mortal and divine being.
So are golems and lycanthropes. So what?
It's this thing called pointing out similarities.
Using magic items and spells, not innate powers. I just checked: not a single archfiend from MtF has any healing magic, not even fallen angel Zariel. Unless you count animate dead.
And what's wrong with using a spell? That's what the gods do too. There is also not a single mention of magic items, so you are just assuming.
You claimed they could do both. Were you wrong?
They can, but I don't think it would work doing it the way you are proposing.
No they don't. That's not how intermediaries work.
Really? Then how does praying to an intermediary work?
OK, you clearly don't know what phrases means. So, homework time for you. Pick a real-world religion. Now look up some of the prayers in that religion.
Heck, I'll pick a simple one: "our father, who art in heaven." Now imagine changing "heaven" to some other location. Or changing "father" to "mother" or "brother." Imagine multiple changes made over decades or centuries or millennia.
Yeah, let's imagine that. I'll take one from a polytheistic religion though. Like this one:
"Lady Aphrodite, Beloved Goddess of all the world’s beauty, of love in all forms, and of purest desire,"
Now, let's see... I'll change it to this "Lord
Aphrodite, Beloved God of all beauty, of love of my brother, and of purest desire,"
Now, here's a question. Is this a prayer to Apollo or Aphrodite? Sure, this may change Aphrodite from a goddess of all love and beauty to a god of male love and beauty, but they are still praying to Aphrodite. And changing that? That's really hard to actually do.
You're thinking very small here. Imagine a culture--like some real world cultures--that divides right (dexter) and left (sinister) and decides that means anything done with the left hand is bad or tainted. If your ritual involves using your right hand and you change it to your left, you have tainted the entire ritual. The ritual is either perverted or, depending on the mythology, is now aimed at a different power.
But in most cases, the rituals are going to be bigger, more important. Imagine a literal baptism by fire, such as if the ritual involves branding every baby or child when they reach the right age. New iconography can be inserted, new rituals or prayers or songs added. Imagine inserting new taboos or even minor demands, or removing such things.
I'm thinking small because it has to be small to start. You can't shift things too far too fast, and so the changes have to be small and gradual. If you go to a catholic church and say "and now we brand the child with the mark of the beast" NO ONE is going to be fooled. That takes a lot of time to build up to that point.
And again, I think it is more likely that these rituals are perverted, but not aimed at a different power, because the intent of the ritual is still aimed towards the original deity. Warping them perhaps, but not cutting them off.
No, having sects shouldn't automatically kill the god, because all the prayer is going to the same god. At most, it would cause the god to have "multiple personalities" if the sects had very different interpretations--like one said the god was a peace god and the other said it was a war god. But that's less likely to happen.
Exactly, and so that is the more likely outcome for changing the rituals and phrases. Not the death of the god, because the prayers are still going to the same god, but a warping of that god to match the interpretations.
Since that was a completely fictional example, I could also rewrite that and say that Spike didn't become Gloopy's boyfriend. I'm willing to rewrite.
But that wasn't what you originally wrote, so I responded to that original writing.
Don't know, don't care.
Status Quo is God, as the TV Tropes page says. Having gods attack one another allows for the game to develop mythology. Not having any lasting consequences allows for the writers to not constantly have to rewrite new lists of gods or keep track of their shenanigans.
So, you don't know or care about other gods killed gods, but you want to make it a major point of your argument that Gloopy is going to get punished for killing Pistil. Sorry, you can't have it both ways. There is no reason to assume any more consequences for him than faced by any other DnD god guilty of the same crime.
If they're playing in my world, they find out what my world's rules are. Or I correct them if they make a faulty assumption.
I'm not playing in your world though. I'm trying to have a discussion. And if you want to keep yelling at me for assumptions based on trying to have that discussion, that's on you.
I wasn't aware that if you didn't make sure every single faction in your game worked perfectly, even if those factions had little to no bearing on the game itself, then the entire game would collapse. I'm sure you also track the migratory patterns of every dragon as well.
You seem to think that if a person includes gods or archthings in their games, that they must be major players. Has it ever occurred to you that most people have them as background info and only bring them out when and if they're needed? That people only treat such entities as major players if they're needed to be that, not simply because they exist?
Translation: there are no factions unless the DM wants there to be. I could literally have every single god and archthing ever invented in D&D in my game, even the gods who were referenced once in an adventure and never mentioned again, and there would be no issues whatsoever. Because they're background info. Which gods do the PCs worship? Which gods do the NPCs worship that are important enough to mention? OK, cool, that's good. And then, if I decided I needed to focus on an undeath-related power for a while, I could grab whichever undeath-related god or archfiend I like the best for the adventure at hand.
You may not like that (because of "redundancy"), but the factions problem doesn't exist.
Anyway, in the real world, there are zillions of overlapping gods. Why can't the same be true in a gaming world? You kept harping about Bane only being a Thing on one continent. That means there are other war gods as well (lots if you include non-human gods). They manage to share space just fine.
So, instead of accepting that doing more things is more difficult than doing fewer things, you resort to strawmanning me as figuring out the migratory pattern of dragons, then go on a long tangent of how you can choose to ignore everything and that's fine.
You know what I would think of a world with hundreds of active gods, constantly not mentioned of interacting in anyway? That it was incoherent, and not very well thought out. And, I'd be right, because you are literally promoting putting them in and not thinking about it until they come up. Which, hey, that can work, but that doesn't mean you did a good job world building.
Games are not novels. You can't plot an adventure that tightly. Players will always disrupt the plot if you do, frequently have very different ideas about what's going on than you do, and will do whatever they want. Forcing the players to follow your plot is bad GMing.
I don't love confusing stories. I love games where I'm not railroaded.
And I never said I do force players to follow a prescribed plot. That is you making false assumptions and strawmanning me based on your biases. Again.
You asked me to define "writing well" as universally as I could. I did that. You then counter me answering your question by basically saying your question never mattered.
It provides context for D&D as a whole. It provides zero necessary context for the adventure itself. Are the players required to know who Bel is? I don't believe so. The players don't even have to know who Tiamat is, or what her history in D&D is. I assume you don't want to gatekeep D&D and limit it to only people who are versed on decades of canon lore?
I'm sorry, are we players in a game right now? I thought we were two people fairly well versed in the canon lore having a discussion about canon lore? If I'm supposed to be playing a game should I roll up a character? I've got a few I've been wanting to try, but I'd rather not play Rise of Tiamat, it isn't really my cup of tea.
Celestial in 5e D&D means "from the upper planes;" Fiend means "from the lower planes." Empyreans are celestials, but they can be any alignment. Possibly this means that evil gods can't produce empyreans. Possibly it means that we've given more thought to the matter than the actual game designers.
Why not? Evil Gods exist in the Upper planes.
From what I've read, most people decided that was an avatar and not actually the god for that exact reason. But canonically, that's Tee herself.
Of course, as has been repeated many a time, Lolth had 66 hp. While I too prefer less-fragile gods, there's nothing really to say that gods have to have a ton of hp and high-damage attacks. Unfortunately, Tee's statblock doesn't reflect the other abilities a god should have. It was early in the edition. Hopefully she'll be cooler if she's statted up in Fizban's.
Lolth doesn't have 66 hp in DnD 5e. She is unstatted.
If you want to say that he's a god in your game, then cool, that's fine. You want to say that he's 100% a god and people need a reason to have him not be a god, you need to defend it.
And I have. Repeatedly. What is with you and ignoring all the evidence I provide so you can turn around and tell me I'm not providing evidence?
First off, which "he" are you talking about? It's been a while since you've used a name. If you're talking about an archfiend, there's nothing to suggest that they have the power to do so. At least not without first casting something like commune.
Yeenoghu the entity I was providing evidence for? And yes, there is plenty of evidence that him and Levistus answer prayers regularly. Like the fact that it literally says they do.
And yet you were cool in saying that because you had your homebrew Tana being openly worshiped, it proved that all archfiends could be openly worshiped as well.
Yes, because in that part of the discussion, as I told you three times and then and three times since then, we were discussing "what stories are possible". Since I made a story, it was possible, I know you have trouble following this, but different parts of our massive discussion have different levels of evidence. That's why I keep correcting you and clarifying.
Maybe in 2e when he was a god, but not in 1e, 3x, 4e, or 5e where he was a demon prince. He doesn't t answer prayers and in 4e, he specifically got Erythnul to grant spells for him, according to the site you linked. He's not listed in any list of deities in 5e. Would you like to name what core books you're talking about?
Go open MtF. In the archfiends section, there's not a single reference to either cleric or prayer. Just cultists.
Heck, go to the warlock section in the PHB and read: A warlock is defined by a pact with an otherworldly being. Sometimes the relationship between warlock and patron is like that of a cleric and a deity, though the beings that serve as patrons for warlocks are not gods. A warlock might lead a cult dedicated to a demon prince, an archdevil, or an utterly alien entity—beings not typically served by clerics.
So while it doesn't rule out the idea that an archthing may have a cleric, it does specifically say that archthings aren't gods. (Likewise, the cleric section mentions gods, philosophies, and forces and says nothing of archthings). I'd go so far as to say that if an archthing has a cleric, the cleric is getting its power from a philosophy or force, not the archthing.
The 5e Monster Manual. The 5e DMG. And a bit from the 5e Volo's guide. As I have referenced them. Repeatedly.
