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

[dave2008]

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?

The 4e Dawn War pantheon handled this pretty well. Providing explanations for why mortals might pray to Bane or Tiamat and what they get from it. I'm not as familiar with other D&D myths, but you could take a similar bent.

 

[Aldarc]

Hearing so many people talk about how 4E did this well is music to my ears, and it makes me wonder how well the Nentir Vale and all the 4E lore would have been received had it all been attached to the 5E system instead.

 

[dave2008]

How else would you define evil except for self-centrism?

Personally I don't define evil as I don't think it exist. However, in the context of D&D it covers a lot more than self-centrism. Heck, it can be argued even "good" acts/people are self-centered (in that even good acts are truly, subconsciously maybe, done for our own benefit).

 

[dave2008]

Hearing so many people talk about how 4E did this well is music to my ears, and it makes me wonder how well the Nentir Vale and all the 4E lore would have been received had it all been attached to the 5E system instead.

As an alternate world yes, but not at the core I think. It was too much change for some.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

I have a lot of gaps too, mostly in that I've never played an editions earlier than 3rd

The point of the material world vs the outer planes is a weird one. All of the Gods live in the Outer Planes, but they care about and interact with the material world. Same with devils and demons. Asmodeus lives in the Nine Hells, and most of his plots involve the mortal world.

So, both groups are associated with an outer plane, both groups are focused on and concerned with the Material, where they have worshippers and devotees.

And then we get to the sticky part. If the gods are seperate and don't require worhsip to be powerful, like the Nerull cults mentioned earlier, then they are like the Demon Lords and Arch Devils.

If the gods require worship to exist and grow more powerful from it, then why do Evil Gods exist and are equally powerful? Most of the evil gods are worshipped by small cults, just like the Demon Lords and Archdevils are. In fact, I'd put forth that Asmodeus has more cults and worshippers than Nerull or Umberlee. So why would they be gods and he is not?

And round and round we go, trying to justify a difference that I think is so murky by this point in the game, that it doesn't have a place anymore. Just make the Demon Lords and Archdevils "as unto Gods" mostly by weakening the good gods to not be all-smitingly-powerful, and continue with the Evil gods fading away.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Hearing so many people talk about how 4E did this well is music to my ears, and it makes me wonder how well the Nentir Vale and all the 4E lore would have been received had it all been attached to the 5E system instead.

The Dawn War was excellent mythological storytelling, and the Raven Queen was one of the best takes on a Death Deity in years.

In fact, a lot of it hung together very very well.

 

[prabe]

I have a lot of gaps too, mostly in that I've never played an editions earlier than 3rd

The point of the material world vs the outer planes is a weird one. All of the Gods live in the Outer Planes, but they care about and interact with the material world. Same with devils and demons. Asmodeus lives in the Nine Hells, and most of his plots involve the mortal world.

So, both groups are associated with an outer plane, both groups are focused on and concerned with the Material, where they have worshippers and devotees.

And then we get to the sticky part. If the gods are seperate and don't require worhsip to be powerful, like the Nerull cults mentioned earlier, then they are like the Demon Lords and Arch Devils.

If the gods require worship to exist and grow more powerful from it, then why do Evil Gods exist and are equally powerful? Most of the evil gods are worshipped by small cults, just like the Demon Lords and Archdevils are. In fact, I'd put forth that Asmodeus has more cults and worshippers than Nerull or Umberlee. So why would they be gods and he is not?

And round and round we go, trying to justify a difference that I think is so murky by this point in the game, that it doesn't have a place anymore. Just make the Demon Lords and Archdevils "as unto Gods" mostly by weakening the good gods to not be all-smitingly-powerful, and continue with the Evil gods fading away.

As I either implied or stated outright, my own solution was to have my setting be cut off from the gawds. There were gawds that interacted with the world, then Something Happened. I could live with something on the lines of what I gather Theros does, where the gawds aren't aligned; or something where the gawds have aspects with different alignments.

That said, I think that if you have good gawds, you need something to oppose them. Those things can be explicitly evil gawds, or they can be Mighty Fiends of whatever sort you care to use. It's just a matter of aesthetic balance to me. I also wouldn't allow tieflings without aasimar.

In my own setting, I had to differentiate between Asmodeus as Lord of the Nine and Asmodeus the Evil Gawd, because while he isn't able to do gawd-type things, he is still able to do Archdevil things. This is why I have such a distinction in my head, even if it may not be clear to anyone else.

 

[Bohandas]

There's a difference betwen "people are flawed, and corruption is everywhere" and "the theological pinnings of a religion have suddenly changed so that selfishness is now a virtue". I'll leave you to figure out which one this is.

Prosperity theology - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[5atbu]

Good point. Better strip them out.

Gods or fiends?

 

[pemerton]

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.

How else would you define evil except for self-centrism?

In terms of malice and harm.

I'm not sure this thread is the right place for a debate about moral theology.

That said, given that a generally-accepted moral teaching is "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you" I think it's fair to say that "putting yourself before others" is morally doubtful according to a lot of mainstream outlets. The degree of morally permissible self-regard is a contested matter. It's widely but universally thought that the answer is some, and that only a saint acts with literally no self-regard.

"Malice" seems, fairly clearly, to be a case of not doing unto others as one would have them do to oneself. The moral framing we should give to non-malicioius harm is a different matter, but that's where notions of fall and providence might come into play.

I don't see that any of this gets in the way of having a D&D campaign in which all divinity is good. It requires a little bit of reconceptualisatio of evil high priests and the like: rather than conjuring up necrotic forces (which sounds like evil as a distinct source of power) they might have to be framed as literal manifestations of corruption (so eg their curses and foul magic literally drain away the goodness and life in things, a metaphysical metaphor for falling away from truth). But that doesn't seem too hard.