D&D 5E (2014) Are "evil gods" necessary? [THREAD NECRO]

[Coroc]

"Wicked" deities are usually how they are portrayed by the opposition (e.g. Ba'al in the bible, Hecate in Shakespeare). Kali was a god of destruction, but that recognised that destruction was a necessary part of the cycle of life, enabling rebirth.

If an antique deity was benevolent it was revered the normal way for normal reasons e.g. to grant a good harvest.

If the deity was "evil" instead e.g. of death then people tried to "appease" it rather, in terms of that they wanted to fend of its attention. Never the less it would not be shunned as such but still considered with respect and, as you wrote, as a necessary part of the pantheon, to cover the not so fun aspects of life.

 

[Eric V]

It's a good question. For writing a story, there probably needs to be some cosmological reason, the details of which can be cumbersome (why so many gods sharing portfolios, how do they all still exist, etc.)

When looking at it in terms of game design, having evil gods should be about player options. So, maybe players can play a dark paladin in the same group as a bunch of otherwise good PCs because of their common enemy (demons, for example). 13th Age does this; gods are left completely to the GM and players to define (and are called 'Dark' and 'Light') if at all, but the main antagonists of an outer planar sort are definitely demons/devils. This way, there is no toe-stepping.

Part of this question goes back to a now-closed thread about the necessity for alignment in the first place, IMO.

 

[Flamestrike]

Malar, Sivanus and Melikki. Not to mention half the elven pantheon.

Malar is beasts. But I'll give you Silvanus and Melikki (you could add Chauntea an arguably Eldath there as well) for 'forest'.

It looks like Silvanus largely runs the 'Nature' side of things with the other deities either being subservient to him or having a smaller subdomain or section they focus on (Eldath lakes and groves, Melikki does Autumn and Chauntea does agriculture).

 

[Umbran]

With all of this talk happening about the various peoples of D&D and whether they are inherently evil and is it due to their gods they worship and so on... it made me take a look at the gods themselves. And I realized that having a pantheon that includes "evil" gods seems to intrude and trod upon unnecessarily the path of devils, demons and other outer planar archenemies.

And, if those demons and devils are your thing, then cool.

But, it has been a long, long time since I used a demon lord for anything. I don't even need to use the typical (or really any) cosmology, as my game themes and action don't call for the PCs to go plane hopping.

 

[Chaosmancer]

With all of this talk happening about the various peoples of D&D and whether they are inherently evil and is it due to their gods they worship and so on... it made me take a look at the gods themselves. And I realized that having a pantheon that includes "evil" gods seems to intrude and trod upon unnecessarily the path of devils, demons and other outer planar archenemies.

We have entities such as Asmodeus, Orcus and all their archdevil and archdemon fraternity/sororities... whose domains and what they find important and control seem to often get superceded by gods that control or influence the same thing. And because of the fact the game is built around the Cleric as one of the four primary classes... gods always tend to have a much more prominent place in any campaign. The archfey, archdevils, and archdemons get a bit of play now due toe warlock pacts... but even still... the god pantheon of any setting seems to usurp and stand above those entities.

It makes me wonder if perhaps having gods with morality attached to them ends up just superceding the domains of devils and demons and are not really a good add to the game? If we have a Demon Lord of the Undead... do we need a god in the setting's pantheon that rules over the same thing? If we have a demon of fury like Yeenoghu, does having a god of fury as well like Gruumsh gain us anything?

I know some people will say that more enemies allows for more stories... but at the same time I do wonder if we've been giving the archdevils and archdemons short shrift because invariably we use cultists of evil gods more than we do demon and devil worshippers. And as a result it has given us things like the "all orcs are evil because they worship an evil god as their patron deity" kind of thing. Maybe the solution is to keep gods above and beyond the kin of mortal thinking and not attribute them the morality that we humanoids have by actually assigning them alignments? They have their domains, but there's no moral decision as to whether what they control is good or evil? Just a thought.

I'm going to start catching up on this thread, but I came to this same conclusion years ago. Evil gods didn't add anything to my games. Thematically, they were the same as Archdevils and Demon Princes, and their existance was an excuse to weaken those forces.

So, I took some evil gods, made them more neutral (Bane is the big one, who I put on more of a "Unify the world under my rule to protect it/ iron dictator thing. Not good per se, but not really evil either. Just extreme law and a penchant for war) and just upped the power of all the outsiders to make them threats to the gods.

Wondering what other people have said in this thread

 

[Bohandas]

4e was not the fist though, take Iuz, his demonic rank is that of a cambion, still on Oerth he has the powers and rank of a demigod, including the ability to grant spells to his followers. (2e)

"Cambion" is just a flowery tern for "Half-fiend"

 

[Bohandas]

One thing that always left me perplexed about evil gods in most D&D settings. If you are a faithful worshiper on one of them, you are guaranteed an afterlife of eternal torment. Doesn't sound too enticing. Their priests must have incredible marketing skills...

It's like a pyramid scheme. They think they're gonna make get a lot of money or influence serving Set or whoever but they're probably not going to.

 

[Chaosmancer]

As for archdevils, it's established that Asmodeus is the face of the Nine Hells. Even powerful underlings like Mephistopheles and Glasya have a hard time forming cults since they all answer to Asmodeus.

One thing I did for this, was to make the Nine Hells much less backstabby, and have each circle and ruler focus on different things. There still is backstabbing and betrayal (they all know that if they can defeat Asmodeus they get his power) but I just tone it down

So, Glasya's cult focuses... Malbolge, so I made them the "drugs and medicine" aspect of the hells. They deal with "cures" and peddling addictive substances, which gets a very different type of follower than Mephistopheles who focuses on arcane research and knowledge.

Gods often have some nebulously-defined ability to affect the entirety of reality just by existing.

The presumed ending of the 4E Scales of War adventure path depicts the ultimate destruction of Tiamat as lessening the capacity for greed in all mortals. A specific example given is that even the temple of Bahamut becomes more charitable thanks to Tiamat's true death, going so far as to get rid of fancy religious iconography. However, it also states that another entity, such as the archdevil Mammon, may attempt to claim Tiamat's former power over greed, rise to become the new god of greed, and through godhood inspire greed in the hearts of mortals again.

That's why Orcus and other lesser evil entities desire godhood. Why would he settle for animating the undead personally when he could kill the god of death, claim dominion over death, and then change the rules of the multiverse so that every mortal who ever dies reanimates as a ghoul or something?

There are massive problems with this idea though.

Take Orcus and let us say he kills Nerull. Nerull was an evil god of the dead who wanted to destroy all life and created undead servants to kill people... So, if Orcus becomes an evil god of the dead and wants to destroy all life by creating undead servants to kill people...

Doesn't that raise the question of why the heck Nerull didn't do the same thing? What is the point of Nerull and Orcus existing in the same setting when they are doing the same plots?

Or, take the idea that Bane is the source of all Tyranny. That means that if Bane is destroyed, the Nine Hells become less Tryannical? Asmodeus becomes less Tryannical because his entire source of power is tied to a God who is above him?

It highlights this issue in really weird ways when you essentially have these massive end-game bosses who are threats to all reality... but the concepts of the game imply that they are actually reliant of the power of entities that stand in opposition to them?

Why have good gods when there are angels (solars, planetars, devas)? Or lawful gods when there are modrons? Or chaotic gods when there are slaad?

Aside from a difference in power level and origin stories, I think you are getting hung up on the "tangible interfering" bit

Snipping most of this to focus in on your first bit.

I can name about 16 unique and powerful threats between the Archdevils and Demon Princes. Each of them ruling their own planes of existence with massive cults of worshipers for them per the rules of the game.

How many Angels rule their own Divine Realms? How many unique and powerful Slaadi can you even name?

This is the problem to an extent. If Orcus is only as powerful as a Solar, then why does he seem like this massive threat to the multiverse? He's just a servant of a god. How did he even create new forms of undead and end up ruling a layer of the Abyss? why isn't Nerull in charge and smacking Orcus around like a schoolyard bully?

Or Asmodeus. As one poster pointed out, he owns and runs and entire section of the Great Wheel by himself. The Nine Hells of Baator all bow to his will, but he is supposed to be massively categorically weaker than the dozens of gods that share Mount Celestia?

That doesn't seem to make sense.

Not everything has to have "a use". Some things just exit. See: quarks.

And evil gods do not all have "evil cultist" followers. Some have hard-working priests busy interceding to stop the evil god stomping on people. Evil is not a synonym for antagonist. the world is full of evil, but most of it isn't trying to kill you.

1) When designing a world, having things exist "just because" is poor design. It needs to have a reason, or why waste the space creating it

2) Sure, Umberlee is "evil" because of the cruel sea. But, why not just make her neutral and moody? After all, the ocean is the bounty of life.

See, she is so specifically evil (the cruel ocean in a storm that destroys things) that you can say she isn't an atangonist, but in that case why not make her the neutral goddess of the seas? Sometimes she is beautiful, calm, and grants life and boons to the land. Other times she is wrathful and destroying everything. That actually fits better into how an ocean diety would be worshipped.


But, now take Zehir. Evil god of poison, darkness and assassins...

Who shares Darkness with 10 other entities, at a minimum, poison with 2 others and Assassins with at least 2 others. Most of them other gods.

And there are demon lords and archdevils of darkness, disease, poison, snakes, assassins, ect ect ect. Why so much overlap?

Because the sea is cruel. People go out to sea and don't come back. In polytheistic religions people try to find meaning in natural misfortune by blaming cruel gods. And they try to avert misfortune by appeasing the god with sacrifices.

If the god of the sea was good no one would ever drown.


And those alignments are symbolic of what they represent: the Sun is good, storms are chaotic, judges are lawful, etc.

If the god of the sea was evil, all fish would be poisonous and no one sailing upon the water would come back alive.

And why is the sun good? The sun can be a terrible force of destruction.


This is actually why I removed all nature deities from my game world. Most of the them became powerful spirits for the "old religion" of the druids. Because nature can be neither good nor evil, it is neutral and having a single god rule over that aspect just seems silly to me.

There is no reason why a tropical island dwelling culture in the Forgotten Realms couldn't worship a benevolent god of the sea. And FR does not say to anyone "your god aint real", so you could imagine different gods of the sea clashing as their worshipers clashed.

Which differs from Theros. Theros only has one god of the sea. If someone worships a different god of the sea, then that god isn't real.

This doesn't really work though with the idea that the dieties are their portfolios. If killing Umberlee removed seas from reality, because she is the sea, then how do you justify three, four half a dozen sea gods? Are they all the sea?

And if they aren't the sea, and are competing... why am I worshipping Umberlee to leave me alone when I could worship Valkur, one of her enemies, and ask him to protect me from her?

And, if I now have a god and the destructive enemy of that god no one is worshipping... Why do we have Umberlee instead of Demon Lords like Dagon or any of the dozens of others involved in being the lords of evil underwater creatures.

 

[Bohandas]

How many Angels rule their own Divine Realms?

There was the one with the impronounceable name who ruled the seventh heaven.

(speaking of which, how the heck did they manage to make the names of the arch celestials even less pronounceable than the demons? Compared to celestial paragons like Zaphkiel and Gwynharwyf, archfields like Zuggtmoy and Grazzt might as well be named Carol and Bob.)

If the deity was "evil" instead e.g. of death then people tried to "appease" it rather, in terms of that they wanted to fend of its attention.

Agreed. I find it useful to think of evil deities as the mafia. You may need to pay them protection money so they won't trash your store or beat you up

2) Sure, Umberlee is "evil" because of the cruel sea. But, why not just make her neutral and moody? After all, the ocean is the bounty of life.

Again, this seems to be a reversal of cause and effect

 

[doctorbadwolf]

True. But then again... if most tables do not run with evil PCs then the Clerics that show up in game are almost all worshippers of the good or neutral gods anyway. Which means the "good gods" are really the only ones that tend to get any play. Then otherwise the only times "evil gods" ever show up are when the Evil Cultist tropes are used... and that's when I wonder if cultists of an evil god are somehow more worthwhile or interesting than devil worshippers or demon worshippers instead?

I do think a lot of the lesser evil deities could be something else instead of gods.

Well ya can't have Chaotic Evil Drow without Lolth. She completely ruined em once she took em from Corrlleon.

Likewise, Tiamat is mandatory for Chromatic Dragons.

So yes they are necessary for things.

Nope. Pretty easy to have both of those without either goddess.