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

[cbwjm]

Because people make choices for reasons. We don't even know it was Ed Greenwood who created Umberlee, other people worked on the Forgotten Realms.

And frankly, IT DOESN'T MATTER.

People make choices for a mixed up bag of reasons. You want to do something different in your setting, or add another sea god to the Forgotten Realms? Go ahead, there is nothing stopping you.

Ed did create her though, he talks about his pantheon way, way back in dragon 54. I only know this because I looked it up last night because I was reading this thread and it got me interested in what he came up with. An interview I found online mentioned dragon 54. What I find interesting is that Selune is opposed to her. Sailors in the forgotten realms likely pray to Umberlee to protect them from storms at sea but they pray to Selune as the goddess of navigation to guide them. Below is what he has to say about Umberlee (minus the game mechanics for her powers).

UMBERLEE This goddess contests the fate of ships at sea eternally with Selune (Note: In my world, far more currents hamper coastal shipping than aid it.). She is rarely seen, preferring to set currents and winds in motion from afar, or send forth great sharks to engulf swimmers or shipwrecked sailors.

 

[dave2008]

Not in the way the worship or nature of "evil" deities is in D&D. I mean, Ares was an unpleasant individual, but not a satanic sort of force, more a personification of mindless violence. The titans represented a sort of primordial evil (although not completely), but they were explicitly outside the pantheon of gods. None of them had priests or clerics cackling in temples dedicated to evil. The most destructive group of worshippers in the Hellenic world were in fact the Bacchites, and no one would consider him "evil".

Set was originally one of the patron gods of egypt, and only ended up demonised, so to speak, thanks to his adoption by the Hyksos invaders. After that he was certainly an adversary, but also active worship of him effectively ended. There were no "priests of Set" wandering around causing havoc. The malign figures of a religion might be given an offering, hoping to draw away their attention, but no one would worship them in any organised way except for the crazed lunatics which most rulers would be driving away as a matter of urgency.

Kali wasn't evil, and Loki only seems as such in our minds because many of the interpretations of Norse mythology were coloured by early Christianity filtering into Scandinavia which changed the significance of him and Ragnarok. We are viewing a lot of these classic religions in a Christian-inspired lens, making us search for the "good" and "Evil" members of the pantheons.

A lot of D&D's problems with evil gods stem from its refusal to have much in the way of post-Antiquity religions (monotheisms and the like) but at the same time wanting to have organised religions complete with priestly hierarchy and big buildings in the middle of cities. D&D settings present polytheisms but then have them act like monotheism, complete with priests of Bane operating unhindered in civilised centres. No one would tolerate religions of open evil - the priests would be pelted with rotten fruit and driven from every town and city.

Clerics are based on Templar Knights more than anything else, so it seems strange that we are so resistant to actually having them in religions where they might make sense.

I don't disagree with your comments, but they are not the whole story:

1. D&D (at least the D&D you are comparing to) deals with "real" provable deities. That is viscerally different than RL mythologies and religions.
2. You understanding of, or at least your description of, RL mythologies and religions is based on a scholarly perspective of texts / archaeology. However, that is not how people live their beliefs. No to mention the fallacy of monotheism. The beliefs of the everyday person are not bound by the writing in a book, parchment, or tablet. If sailor's catch is low and his/her family starves, I have a good bet he/she thinks whatever sea god they believe in is evil.
3. You don't have to worship a deity to believe in it or believe it is evil.

Also, I was referencing worship specifically which really seems to be the thrust for your response. On that point, I refer back to point #2 - it is really hard to know how people really worshiped. If we look are contemporary worship, there are so many different ways it is practiced you would miss a lot if you just read a few books (which is essentially all he have about antiquity).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I don't disagree with your comments, but they are not the whole story:

1. D&D (at least the D&D you are comparing to) deals with "real" provable deities. That is viscerally different than RL mythologies and religions.

Setting specific. Certainly not the case for Eberron.

And so far as believers are concerned, all deities are "real and provable". That is what being a believer means.

You don't have to worship a deity to believe in it or believe it is evil.

That's kind of the point. People who believe in their deity do not believe them to be evil. People believe other's people's deities are evil.

Note that in the ancient world the idea that someone else's deity did not exist would not occur - they exist and are evil, because foreigners are evil.

 

[Aldarc]

Except real world pantheons and religions did have evil deities in their own pantheons and belief systems. They would not necessarily worship them, but they were still often part of the belief system. When you deal with absolute statements like this about real world beliefs operating in a certain way, you are bound to be contradicted. As I said - which you some how ignored - Yam was an evil Ugaritic deity who was regarded as evil by the Ugaritic people.

 

[Coroc]

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.




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?




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.




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?



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.



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.

onhow many angels rule a domain/ plane, hm it seems them celestials are less treacherous

 

[Fanaelialae]

And so far as believers are concerned, all deities are "real and provable". That is what being a believer means.

Perhaps that's what it means to some people, but that's not really the case. Faith is about believing despite the object of that faith being unproven. It's the difference between believing and knowing.

 

[Umbran]

Stop trying to wiggle out of the hole you dug yourself into.

Hey, @Aldarc , I get the point that saying "there are no FACTS" is not consistent with making assertions about what another person may have thought (because that person did or did not think that - there are facts in there)...

But, this was a tad... vehement. A lot of "can you see" which is making it personal. Not red text and warning points worthy but... do watch it going forward, please? Thanks.

 

[Aldarc]

Fair enough. I was frustrated and felt that I was getting gas-lighted. But there was no need to escalate.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Except real world pantheons and religions did have evil deities in their own pantheons and belief systems. They would not necessarily worship them, but they were still often part of the belief system. When you deal with absolute statements like this about real world beliefs operating in a certain way, you are bound to be contradicted. As I said - which you some how ignored - Yam was an evil Ugaritic deity who was regarded as evil by the Ugaritic people.

I suspect that Yam only became "evil" after the cult of Ba'al prevailed and recast the deity in the role of Ba'al's antagonist. Ba'al was a relative newcomer to Ugarit, and the story of "which of the two should have a 'house'?" should be understood in the light of one cult displacing another. Yam is otherwise attested in theophoric names and was (venerated? placated?) by the Phoenicians.

Yam got sucked into the symbolism of the primordial conflict between Ba'al/Yhwh/Marduk and Tehom/Tiamat in the Late Bronze Age, but I don't think we have any clear picture of how the deity was regarded prior to the ascendancy of Ba'al Hadad's cult.

 

[DEFCON 1]

So as I've been doing a little bit of research and review in preparation to hopefully run a Theros game soon... the one thing I found that I liked about learning about the Theros gods is that the information has been all about their personalities without any moral judgments made about who they are (which usually comes out in D&D by having alignments assigned to all of them.) The stuff I've read about the deities have all come from the articles for the CCG and it has been compelling to see them not through the "alignment" lens.

The things I've really enjoyed have been that all 15 gods (or almost all-- Mogis I need to look into a little more) have portfolios that cover both good things and bad things. Even someone like Pharika, the God of Affliction... she is associated with grief, old age, poisons, assassins, the mother of gorgons (medusai)... but also medicine, antidotes, patron of doctors and such. That I think is cool. ALL parts of society would have reason to revere her, as opposed to just trying placate her so she doesn't kill them (the trope that many "evil gods" seem to get burdened with.) It seems like plenty of people could and do worship Pharika openly without being looked at askance by the rest of society.

This is the kind of thing that I like. You can have gods that are jerks-- from all accounts it seems like Heliod is a right a-hole despite being like the head of the pantheon and the quintessential White mana deity-- but the things they watch and have domain over inspire worship from all of society, good and bad. This makes much more sense to me, as I think gods should tend to try and reach as many people as possible.

But as I looked through everything, the only one that I questioned on this part was Mogis as I said above... because it seems like he has domain over wrath, pain, violence, and bloodlust (as well as patron of the minotaur.) Which means-- first-- we again get the same tired trope of the "monster" peoples defaulting to an "evil" patron deity (which has been done to death and the points we've been having countless threads over in the last week or so. ) And second... Mogis has a portfolio that does not appear to warrant reverence by most of society, merely appeasement. "I don't want to be hurt, so I pray to Mogis not to hurt me." Or "I don't want the violence on my doorstep, so let me make an offering to Mogis." Whereas (just based on the stuff I've read) the peoples who do revere Mogis are the ones who are looking to rain fury and destruction upon their enemies and which would inspire the idea of the character being assigned the "evil" attribution.

Now I'm hoping I've just missed some other parts of Mogis' portfolio that have less negative connotations... OR that the violence of war is so prominent in Therosian life that driving out your enemies before you is actually seen as a very positive thing. And I'm hoping that when I get the actual book it will go into much greater detail about Mogis and give us information about why he should not be thought of as just an "evil god" about mindless fury but instead have some actual weight and variety to him. Hopefully they haven't just given his twin brother Iroas all the "good" stuff and he got saddled with just the bad. Because that just seems too easy and not very compelling. But if that is what happened... I'll want to to in and rework the portfolio to give Mogis some neutral or positive aspects to his domain over battle and war that would warrant reverence from even so-called "good" and "neutral" members of society.