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

[prabe]

Some cosmologies are clean, some have overlap. A messy cosmology with overlap can leave a lot of room for interesting edge cases and variations. It is about what you want in a game. I am fine with clean cosmologies (I've made plenty of my own). But I think the broader appeal a game has, like say D&D) the more you are going to want some overlap, some messiness, so a lot of different flavors can be found.

The beauty of this of course, if you don't have to remove anything. Everyone is free to make their own cosmology in their own campaign, to make their own setting and publish it. I think that is a better approach that saying evil gods should go because their roles is maybe similar to other entities in the setting.

I don't disagree, really. I think it's probably easier to remove something than write up something to add. Removing the gawds from my setting was the easiest way for me to come up with something I was happy with.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

That was the name, cool name. I stole it for a completely different type of enemy.

And yeah, the Abyss likely doesn't care, but my players sure would.

"You face the minions of the Lord of Poison."
"You mean [A]?"
"No, the other one"
"You mean {B}?"
"No, the other other one"
"You mean... [C]?"
"No."
"Yeah, I don't think we've heard of this guy before. What is his name again?"

I made a 5E version of Azuvidexus once, although it was pretty much just a slight edit of Yeenoghu's statblock from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. He was pretty much just a glorified guard beast for a lich who had found out Azuvidexus' true name. I replaced the flail attack with a tail attack, added a swallow effect to the bite, and gave him entangle and wall of thorns. He ended up swallowing the ranger's animal companion, entangling one PC, casting wall of thorns, and swatting another PC through the wall of thorns with his tail attack before getting taken out by the party paladin, who had ridden a pegasus over the top of the wall of thorns to deliver a decapitating divine smite.

As for redundant demon lords, I imagine that there's a high mortality rate among demon lords in general (the big names excluded, of course). Several of those demon lords of poison could have already killed each other or died in other ways.

My personal favorite poison-related demon lord is Shaktari, Queen of the Mariliths. I even found an eight-armed marilith miniature to represent her with!

 

[Bohandas]

One issue that's always troubled me is why, if there are evil gods, is the divine energy siphoning "Ur-Priest" class necessarily evil? However I consider that to be more of an Ur-Priest issue than an evil gods issue.

 

[pemerton]

If you were to install e.g. one big bad overlord versus one good overlord instead, then you get a problem if players get enough power to confront the big baddie: If they win they destroy the balance as well as their biggest challenge, ending the campaign.

I don't see why that would be a problem. It souinds pretty awesome.

IIRC I think the silmarillion refers to the Valar as gods on at least one occasion

That may be clarified in further writings of Tolkien, but when I was a young teenager in the early 80's with no internet to look things up, and reading The Hobbit and LotR for the first time, I interpreted it to be there was the one top god, who created a group of lesser gods, the Valar, and another lower group similar to demigods/angels, the Maiar. Even if that is not the "official" definition of them, that is how I have always viewed them.

I think the only reference to religion in LotR is when Denethor and Gandalf refer to the "heathen kings" who had themselves and their family members burned. Farimir refers to "the Nameless One" being "named in honour" but it's not clear whether this is meant to refer to worship in a literal sense. And in any event it's clear it would be worship of a false god.

The Silmarillion begins with the Ainulindalë which is an account of the creation of the world by Eru The One.

The elves revere the Valar but don't worship them as gods. Elves don't seem to have any religious practices at all. The Gondorian face west before they eat, to remember Numenor and the lands (of Elves and the Valar) that lay beyond it. But they don't pray to or supplicate the Valar.

I think it would be possible to have a similar approach in D&D.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

D&D places far more emphasis on the actual "god" part of religion, rather than the culture and traditions that grow around religion and form most of its practice. Again, this is very much viewing religious practices through a modern lens (vis a vie, "having a personal relationship with god") than actually modelling how religion was practiced prior to the 19th century.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Good thread with some thoughtful comments.

I suppose I don't really consider gods, elementals, faeries, spirits, demons or angels as fundamentally different from one another in many ways, so I don't really understand the precision of nomenclature that some people seem to crave. What makes a god a god? is an interesting question, because when you start to analyze any single dimension...well, it's elusive, isn't it?

I think the only reference to religion in LotR is when Denethor and Gandalf refer to the "heathen kings" who had themselves and their family members burned.

We don't see priests, or places of worship in the book. But Varda is called upon on multiple occasions. When Aragorn is crowned Elessar, Gandalf invokes Eru and the Valar. As part of the narrative description of Theoden's wrath, he is likened to Orome who is a "god" - maybe this alludes to the difference in understanding between the Northmen/Rohirrim and the Gondorians. Then there's the Black Numenorians, Easterlings etc. - they regard Sauron as a god. I imagine that Sauron probably likes temples and sacrifices and that sort of thing...

But I agree that in general religion is very understated.

 

[dmgorgon]

gives me an idea. I might just remove all moral relativists and their true neutral gods from my game.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

D&D places far more emphasis on the actual "god" part of religion, rather than the culture and traditions that grow around religion and form most of its practice.

I agree with this 100%. But...

Again, this is very much viewing religious practices through a modern lens (vis a vie, "having a personal relationship with god") than actually modelling how religion was practiced prior to the 19th century.

Here I have a problem. "How religion was practiced prior to the 19th century," is a very, very expansive category. There is a poem known as "The Sister's Message" - it is an ancient Mesopotamian tract - maybe 4000 years old? Anyway:

As I was strolling, as I was strolling
as I was strolling by the house
my dear Inanna saw me
O, my brother, what did she tell me? What did she tell me?
What more did she say to me?
O, my brother of love; allure
The sweetest of sweet things.

I think the poet had "a personal relationship with" Inanna. The poem goes on - it is sort-of written from a woman's perspective, although a man undoubtedly wrote it - and is confiding in the goddess; maybe asking her for romantic advice; there is also a heavy erotic subtext. There are other tracts, thousands of years old, which bespeak other - very diverse and very complex - understandings of the notion of "deity." I think we fundamentally underestimate and misrepresent people in ancient cultures when we portray their personal religious experience and understanding - and how they construe divinity - as somehow different, inferior, less evolved, less informed than our own.

 

[pemerton]

We don't see priests, or places of worship in the book. But Varda is called upon on multiple occasions. When Aragorn is crowned Elessar, Gandalf invokes Eru and the Valar. As part of the narrative description of Theoden's wrath, he is likened to Orome who is a "god" - maybe this alludes to the difference in understanding between the Northmen/Rohirrim and the Gondorians. Then there's the Black Numenorians, Easterlings etc. - they regard Sauron as a god. I imagine that Sauron probably likes temples and sacrifices and that sort of thing...

I think this all goes to your point about precision of nomencalture - with which I agree.

The passage about Theoden says that he was "borne up on Snowmane like a god of old, even as Orome the Great in the battle of the Valar when the world was young." I think this is like the reference to "heathen kings". As you say, it reflects a persepctive of those who are mistaken about the nature of divinity.

Gandalf, in crowning Aragorn, says "Now come the days of the King, and may they be blessed as long as the thrones of the Valar endure!" Is this a prayer? And to whom? I would read this in conjunction with Gandalf's declaration, before the Balrog, that "I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor." Also his statement to Denethor that "I also am a steward." In this sense Gandalf is on a par with the Valar, who are also servants (of the one) and stewards (of Middle Earth).

The idea of proper fulfillment of one's office is obviously a major recurring theme in LotR. And it informs its presentation of the relationship of creation to creator. I personally think D&D could handle this if someone wanted it to. But it would require a different backstory from the typical approach to clerics and their gods.

 

[Bedrockgames]

If the two pairs of shoes fit...

Does it fit though? I can appreciate wanting a streamlined and well thought out cosmology, like I said, I've made plenty myself (I like to think my Sertorious setting is pretty well organized cosmologically). But I also think D&D isn't even attempting to make something like that. Sometimes you want something that just draws more freely off of real world myth and legend. If you look at a lot of real world cosmologies, they often evolve organically and there are gods and creatures doing double duty with roles leftover from earlier versions. I don't play D&D very much any more, but I used to. And I always felt with D&D you just kind of wanted as many flavors of supernatural as possible so if you saw something cool in a movie or book you wanted to incorporate you could easily find something to tie it to, and ideally you would have multiple options to pick from so it fits what you want in the campaign. Which I think is one of the benefits of redundancy. But it isn't redundancy itself that makes it interesting, it is that by having overlap you are allowed to have greater variety, and not just one lord of darkness or something.