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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6699294" data-attributes="member: 4937">I find that a much broader definition than you think it is.  With that definition, every person is also a god, assuming at least that this appearance of free will is not merely a delusion. In general D&D deities are rarely of that order of being.  Most D&D deities are capable of having very broad influence over their portfolio but aren't in fact necessary and at all times sustaining their portfolio so that without them it would cease to have being.  Most D&D deities are not creators of the universe they find themselves in, any more than the pagan deities of Greek, Egyptian, and Sumerian myth that they are largely drawn from conceptually are the creators of their universe.  Uranus can get himself chopped into little pieces and killed, and the sky doesn't cease to have being just because the sky has been killed.  In most polytheism, gods exist because things do, not the other way around, and those things can continue existing without the gods.A better model of orders of being is presented by Terry Pratchett's discworld.   Most gods in the setting are brought into being by the power of mortal belief.  This isn't to say that they aren't in fact potent and sometimes necessary, as for example belief in the Hogfather is apparently literally sustaining the Sun.   But these gods are really actually pretty small on the cosmological scheme of things, as Death is in fact of a higher order of being and not apparently dependent on human belief or appointed by the gods but by some higher order of being still.  Death is following some sort of cosmological rules that have been set by someone else.   The Death of Discworld turns out to be a vassal of a being who incarnates the Death of all things given the name, Azrael (the angel of death), and belonging to an order of beings called 'The Old High Ones'.  Since Death is given the name of an angel, it's implied this lord of all deaths is also a vassal of some yet higher power - presumably something capable of creating the race of Great Atu and the discworld itself and not merely something bound to it.   And we might even suppose that this being was in fact subject to yet some higher power - the creator of creators.</blockquote>

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