Archdevils and Demon Princes as deities.

[The Serge]

Dude, they're not the same beings, any more than Lolth is the same for both worlds. I mean...Ehlonna...Mielilkelioiljeljka an a house rule, because it doesn't matter what rule is in place. It doesn't unbalance anything.

You're wrong about the former, correct about the latter. Lolth in the Forgotten Realms is the same Lolth from Greyhawk... just slightly altered to meet the needs relative to FR. On the other hand, Ehlonna and Mielikki (sp?) are two different deities (at least there's never been anything to suggest that they are one and the same).

Forgotten Realms has a number of what they refer to as "Interloper gods." These gods, like most of the Mulorundi Pantheon, the Seldarine, the Dwarves, and so on, all came the FR as their respective races did. The gods manifestation and myths associated with them were adjusted within this new world. Lolth's FR history is an example of this.

In many ways, this reflects the power of gods. There's a passage in the book that refers to the tense relationship between Clangeddin and Labelas Enoreth (sp?) due to a conflict between the two during the Time of Troubles. While this tenseness exists in FR, it does not necessarily exist elsewhere.

Does this complicate things? Sure, but how often have gods made sense (look at the real world, for crying out loud). But I think this makes for very interesting role-playing, world-building opportunities for enterprising, creative DMs.

As for the Demon Princes and the Lords of the Nine, I like the manner in which they are "worshipped" in FR 3ed. This makes them distinct from actual powers and reduces the number of servants they can expect to have since they require constant sacrifices. However, I am once again sensing a preference for demonic worhsip rather than diabolical. I've always been of the opinion that Asmodeus allows for priests through unique arrangements with the other Lords of the Nine (not with pacts with gods. That's silly). Yet, we rarely see this.

Incidently, in A Paladin in Hell by Monte Cook, the text explicitly states that the chief villainess in the adventure is a cleric of Asmodeus...

 

[I'm A Banana]

Ah, well that's a totally different issue now, iddin't it?

I can live with non-divine fiends. I actually like the thing that SKR suggested (the idea of the fiend giving part of it's personal power to those who make some sort of pact with them). The line between "godhood" and "really big fiend" is blurred by this...I suppose, in theory, any PC who got the right feats could start up their own cult.

Baiscally, a Cleric of Orcus (or whoever) isn't worshiping a true god, but a powerful outsider nonetheless. And when you think of gods in DDg terms, there really isn't a whole scad of difference.

Why did they change it so they were not "gods," at least in name, anymore? Perhaps to make a split in flavor, more than anything else. Making a pact with a demon is a bit more of a different process than going to church every week and saying a prayer here and there. There's 1,001 reasons not to have divine fiends, relating in no way to pissing off people who don't buy the books anyway. Many of them involve the dynamics and the flavor of the campaign in general. Obviously, if the fiends don't have the powers of true gods in the default setting, that's a particular flavor choice for it. If the fiends are deities in FR (which they're not...though what they are is still unclear), that's a particular flavor choice for it, and no one choice is better than the other.

There's lots of reasons that I can think of, personally, from a DM standpoint and from a crafting of my campaign's cosmology, to not allow big-time fiends to be gods. I don't know the reasons of WotC and/or Monte on this, but I don't need to. They don't need to justify their choice of flavor to me, and neither do the good folks over in the Realms.

I guess I just don't see a problem at all. The line is so blurry, and the title so relative...this is an issue for every DM to decide. And the collective DM of FR decided to have fiends that could be worshiped.

...odly enough, if the BoVD contains rules for worshipping fiends, it appears that GH made the same agreement, even if they aren't called "gods."

It's semantics that differentiate in flavor. What's wrong with that?

...and as for the whole Lolth thing...Well, the deities are nearly the same, but they do have different stats...however you want the campaign to explain this is fine, but there's no reason that the FR Lolth has to be related in any way, distantly or otherwise, to the GH Lolth, just like I can make a Pharonic god without any relation to anything in FR, and vice versa. I could introduce the worship of an Olympian pantheon based on debauchery and wickedness without having to rationalize it with the real Olympian pantheon at all, if my campaign needed it.

They can be linked, if you wish...Doesn't hurt me. But there's no reason any campaign has to impact any other campaign in any way.

 

[The Traveler]

Well, Manual of the Planes more or less states that Prime worlds like FR and Greyhawk are linked by the Plane of Shadow, and continues to perpetuate the "Multiverse" concept that 1E and 2E had.

This is what's troubling. I mean, I could take it if they just flat-out said "we're not following past continuity at all, this is new stuff," but they're not. There's a hundred and one holdovers of continuity from past editions, so these retcons seem increasingly random and arbitrary. I just wish I could see rhyme or reason to them.

MoP and D&DG are excellent toolboxes and give really great ways to mangle or completely reinvent the cosmology of a campaign world. It's just where they get to D&D canon that things get increasingly wonky.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think they're basically saying "We'll follow what ideas we want from 2e and 3e and ditch the rest."

So they want ungodly fiends. I fail to see the problem in this.... I mean, they wanted alignments, even though there was probably very little motivation to keep them in, so they did.

Plus, I think rather than having fiends be deities, they're having them be "something else," which grants powers in a different way, and makes them something quite different than what the 2e "clerics of fiends" were. So it's not like the fiends can't be worshiped anymore. It's just that they're a different kind of worship -- I'm happy with that.

 

[Psion]

Well, Manual of the Planes more or less states that Prime worlds like FR and Greyhawk are linked by the Plane of Shadow, and continues to perpetuate the "Multiverse" concept that 1E and 2E had.

Actually it doesn't. It has that as an "option", like the deep ethereal, etc.

This is what's troubling. I mean, I could take it if they just flat-out said "we're not following past continuity at all, this is new stuff," but they're not. There's a hundred and one holdovers of continuity from past editions, so these retcons seem increasingly random and arbitrary.

Nah. Of course they are going to chuck some stuff out and keep some others. Nothing unusual about that.

Now I'm not normally given to indignant footstomping about supposed "canon", but what DOES bother me is that they ever bothered to make the distinction at all. The decision on whether a creature is a fiend lord and if they are a deity could be totally independant. I see no reason to relate them or make them mutually exclusive. There is just no reason for such a statement.

Re: Sean's statement. Something about ducks comes to mind.

I think the essence of what is going on there is that when the BoVD comes out, the fiend lords won't have the stats of deities, and they want to justify it. But they didn't really have to say they are mutually exclusive. It would have been enough to say that they are independant.

Sort of like they did in PS. Smart, those PS authors.

 

[Gadodel]

IMC, they are DR "O" or "1", if they are a Proxy to some other Deity.