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<blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8021711" data-attributes="member: 7016699">The shifting truths of the canon over nearly fifty years make these distinctions harder to make and/or keep clear. The fact I barely interacted with 2E and never did much more than skim the PHB for 4E means there are doubtless gaps in my knowledge of what the realities are and/or have been.That said, a different way to think about it is that gawds have spheres of influence in the Material, planar rulers do not. The Demon Lords you mention (along with Lolth and Asmodeus, among others) are oddments and at least appear to straddle the boundaries; I believe errors were made in creating the canon so they do (which is part of the reason things operate differently in the world I'm running). Basically, in my view, if an entity is primarily focused on and concerned with and worshiped in the Material, that entity is a gawd; if an entity is primarily associated with and draws its powers from an Outer Plane (or a layer thereof) it isn't.There is, I believe a qualitative difference between praying to a gawd and summoning a being from an Outer Plane to come do your bidding (or do you a favor in exchange for your soul). I'd say it has to do with the concrete expectations: If you do the ritual correctly the devil will appear; prayers are rarely guaranteed so precisely.As to devils and souls, there's nothing in how the devils acquire the souls of mortals that requires the mortals to worship them. Most of those souls, they acquire by making deals with mortals (and as I understand it they mostly turn those souls into proto-devils to be used as fodder for the Blood War). Gawds are made more powerful by being worshiped; they don't need to store souls in some metaphorical vault.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="prabe, post: 8021711, member: 7016699"] The shifting truths of the canon over nearly fifty years make these distinctions harder to make and/or keep clear. The fact I barely interacted with 2E and never did much more than skim the PHB for 4E means there are doubtless gaps in my knowledge of what the realities are and/or have been. That said, a different way to think about it is that gawds have spheres of influence in the Material, planar rulers do not. The Demon Lords you mention (along with Lolth and Asmodeus, among others) are oddments and at least appear to straddle the boundaries; I believe errors were made in creating the canon so they do (which is part of the reason things operate differently in the world I'm running). Basically, in my view, if an entity is primarily focused on and concerned with and worshiped in the Material, that entity is a gawd; if an entity is primarily associated with and draws its powers from an Outer Plane (or a layer thereof) it isn't. There is, I believe a qualitative difference between praying to a gawd and summoning a being from an Outer Plane to come do your bidding (or do you a favor in exchange for your soul). I'd say it has to do with the concrete expectations: If you do the ritual correctly the devil will appear; prayers are rarely guaranteed so precisely. As to devils and souls, there's nothing in how the devils acquire the souls of mortals that requires the mortals to worship them. Most of those souls, they acquire by making deals with mortals (and as I understand it they mostly turn those souls into proto-devils to be used as fodder for the Blood War). Gawds are made more powerful by being worshiped; they don't need to store souls in some metaphorical vault. [/QUOTE]

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