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

[prabe]

This is something I keep coming back around to in this thread.

Why can' the good gods be opposed by Archdevils and Demon Lords? Why must it be evil gods?

That depends on whether your gawds are actual gawds, or merely trumped-up planar rulers. The Archdevils and Demon Lords rule entire layers of the Hells or the Abyss, but those layers are the extent of their rulership (Asmodeus excepted; apparently these days he's effectively a gawd). Actual gawds have influence across multiple planes, and actually have some rulership/authority over things in the Material. Also, gawds answer prayer; demons and devils answer summons. Also, also, gawds derive power (or at least something real) from being worshiped or appeased or propitiated; planar rulers don't--devils, for instance use souls as currency among themselves but they don't necessarily become more powerful directly by collecting more souls.

If the only beings you have that are deriving something real from being worshiped, and/or are answering prayers, and/or are having direct influence on happenings on the Material are good, then the only gawds you have are good. And that seems to me as though something is out of balance.

So, IMO, you need gawds of all alignments, gawds with no alignments, or no gawds at all. I went for the third, because it seemed the simplest; YMMV.

 

[GreenTengu]

It does strike me that D&D tends to do evil gods very badly.

The first issue is that there are "demons and devils" who basically feed on there being chaos and suffering in the world, and that's in and of itself a fine idea, though since they are fundamentally opposed to all gods-- then evil gods cannot be the same thing.

So what benefit is this "evil god" going to be getting that is fundamentally opposed to what empowers devil and demons?

Furthermore-- whether it be an evil god or a demon, it needs to be able to grant its followers something of meaning and value. Yet, all too often, it feels within D&D that the followers gain nothing and instead simply get disfigured or infected or have their freedoms or abilities curtailed. If that's what's happening, then why on earth is anyone following such a god, or demons for that matter?

I suppose if it was a God of War, then probably their sole goal would be to drive people to cause wars, often entirely unnecessary ones, whenever possible and it could grant those who are particularly faithful strength. That really makes so much sense that I can hardly imagine that there should ever be any sort of good-aligned "god of war" with perhaps the good aligned equivalents being like "god of justice" where they avoid outright wars whenever necessary so as to avoid innocent casualties and inflict their aggressive powers narrowly upon the evil doers.

But if you have like-- "god of disease" or "god of death" or "god of famine" or something-- what on earth could they possibly be offering their followers?

I think WarHammer does this pretty well. Their evil gods involve a "God of War" who grants one strength in battle and often empowers one to exact revenge on those that have wronged them but having the power becomes addicted and soon one is just making war on everyone, a God of Excess who can grant one beauty and riches but when ones every base desire gets fulfilled easily they are driven to do more and more extreme things that cause greater and greater harm to others in order to satiate their boredom, a "God of Change" who can help one with their revolutionary plans or help them discover lost lore or magic in order to have the power to change the world-- but the more power one acquires, the more flippant and reckless they become with it and the more they want to acquire and closer they want to guard what they know so they can keep having leverage over others, and a god of plagues who grants his followers ever lasting life, immunity to pain, and ever-lasting jovial feelings even as their bodies bloat and become hotbeds of viruses and bacteria that they spread to the world as the god simply wants the world to be filled with more and more life-- which means more and more bacteria, fungus and viruses.

But the motivations behind why someone would join a particular cult or follow a particular god never seems particularly well explored in D&D. Instead it so often comes down to simply "they are evil for the sake of being evil" and the question of "what are they actually getting out of this?" is not nearly often enough considered.

 

[Voadam]

What the heck do the gods even do then? Are the Athar explicitly right?

The gods mess around with each other and with mortals and doing their own thing, a lot like in Greek myths.

I'd say the Athar view, which I understand as the Gods are powerful beings period, is fairly spot on.

In FR you've got gods who have always been gods Shar, Selune, etc., and then ascended mortals who are now gods (Finder Wyvernspur, Cyric, Azuth, etc.) and interloper gods from elsewhere (Tyr, Unther pantheon, Mulhorandi pantheon). A lot like the Roman pantheon in having all three (original gods, deified dead mortals, and other nations' gods). All of them are gods, they grant cleric powers and their reasonably faithful followers go to their specific outer planar afterlife. After the Time of Troubles the Gods' powers are tied to worshipers, which also means they were not before hand.

 

[pemerton]

There are many real-world religions which posit that divinity is solely good, and that evil is not an affirmative force, is not able to create, but is merely an absence or lack or falling away.

There's no reason in principle, that I can see, why a D&D world couldn't be similar.

And on a different point:

In 4e D&D alignment is primiarly a marker of attitude and conduct, not of metaphysical allegiance. Metaphysical allegiance is characterised differently: primordials created the material world, gods imposed structure and intelligibility and consciousness upon it (ie roughly the gods are forms to the primordials' matter), and demons are the destroyers of both form and matter.

In this framework, devils are divine: Asmodeus is a god just like Bane, and lesser devils are comparable to Banes exarchs, angels and the like. The fact that both are evil tells us something about their outlook and behaviour (they're not nice - they're responsible for unahppy aspects of the world, like war and tyranny) but not their metaphysical role.

There are only three CE gods in the core 4e pantheon: Gruumsh is a god like the others but wild and brutal and as destructive as he is creative, and so in a sense he marks the metaphysical limit of what a god can be. Lolth and Tharizdun are gods who have sided with the chaos of the Abyss. (This is explored further in The Plane Above.) So the relatoinship of these gods to demons is pretty clear.

This metaphysics and theology is not perfect. There is a degree of overlap between the Aybss and the Far Realm which isn't really resolved in the published 4e books (and in my 4e campaign I had to come up with my own resolution to this).

It's also not really clear why Lolth is CE but Vecna is not. It makes for good gameplay that Vecna and Orcus are rivals rather than part of the same faction, but the metaphysics of it are a bit obscure.

Still, I think it's a cosmology that mostly answers the thread question.

 

[Chaosmancer]

That depends on whether your gawds are actual gawds, or merely trumped-up planar rulers. The Archdevils and Demon Lords rule entire layers of the Hells or the Abyss, but those layers are the extent of their rulership (Asmodeus excepted; apparently these days he's effectively a gawd). Actual gawds have influence across multiple planes, and actually have some rulership/authority over things in the Material. Also, gawds answer prayer; demons and devils answer summons. Also, also, gawds derive power (or at least something real) from being worshiped or appeased or propitiated; planar rulers don't--devils, for instance use souls as currency among themselves but they don't necessarily become more powerful directly by collecting more souls.

See, this here is part of the issue.

Orcus does have influence across multiple planes of existence. At a minimum he interacts with both Greyhawk and Faerun. But Kelemvor and Nerull do not, they exist only in one of those realities each.

Authority over things in the material? Orcus created Ghouls and Liches, Bodaks as well, whom he can see out of the eyes of. Yeenoghu is a massive authority over Gnolls, as is Baphomet for Minotaurs. In the same way that Gruumsh or Tiamat has authority over their children.

What is the difference between a prayer and a summons? Asmodeus isn't forced to answer you if you invoke him, which his cults do all the time. In rituals that could be seen as prayers.

Deriving something real from being worshipped? They get the souls of mortals who worship and act in their names. Being in a Devil cult is a 1-way trip to the Nine Hells.

So, they seem to fit every criteria you have for gods.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

There are many real-world religions which posit that divinity is solely good, and that evil is not an affirmative force, is not able to create, but is merely an absence or lack or falling away.

There's no reason in principle, that I can see, why a D&D world couldn't be similar.

Because D&D defines "evil" differently. In D&D terms good is putting other before yourself, evil is putting yourself before others.

A lot of the issues people have here is confusing a real world Christianity based definition of evil with the completely fantasy Gygaxian definition of evil.

D&D calls a lot of folk evil who in the real world we would simply label selfish.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

My game has never included Good and Evil gods.

Instead, I have two pantheons - the Gods of Order (The Architects) and the Gods of Chaos (The Madgods). The Gods of Order strive to reduce the world to a stagnant, meaningless reality, completely devoid of change and unpredictability. The are opposed by the Gods of Chaos, who struggle to destroy the laws of physics that hold the universe together and replace them with pure randomness. Both pantheons are equally and utterly inhuman (neither Good nor Evil). The inhabitable universe exists in a delicate state of equilibrium between both ideals.

 

[Sadras]

My game has never included Good and Evil gods.

Instead, I have two pantheons - the Gods of Order and the Gods of Chaos. The Gods of Order strive to reduce the world to a stagnant, meaningless reality, completely devoid of change and unpredictability. The are opposed by the Gods of Chaos, who struggle to destroy the laws of physics that hold the universe together and replace them with pure randomness. Both pantheons are equally and utterly inhuman (neither Good nor Evil). The inhabitable universe exist in a delicate state of equilibrium between both ideals.

Brilliant, both pantheons seem absolutely terrible. Who do the PCs support in your game?

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Brilliant, both pantheons seem absolutely terrible. Who do the PCs support in your game?

My players think the Madgods (the Gods of Chaos) are more fun - so they typically side with them.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Because D&D defines "evil" differently. In D&D terms good is putting other before yourself, evil is putting yourself before others.

A lot of the issues people have here is confusing a real world Christianity based definition of evil with the completely fantasy Gygaxian definition of evil.

D&D calls a lot of folk evil who in the real world we would simply label selfish.

Got news for you. Selfishness is evil in Christianity too.