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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 1718374" data-attributes="member: 2067">You're thinking monotheism. You're thinking exclusionary religion. That's not classic polytheism as it is represented in D&D. The idea that a Everything can also = Good as represented in Judeo-Christianity is a relatively recent and strange idea. The most powerful being in existence is benevolent -- that's frickin' radical, and goes against what most people would consider common experience ("if he's all-powerful and good, why do bad things happen?"....it takes impressive theological philosophy to wrap your mind around that, not something that a lot of societies can really afford the time for...people today even struggle with that Problem of Evil). So if Everything is not Good, if all power is not also all benevolent, it makes sense that Evil would have some power. You can't banish Evil from the world, because Good doesn't encompass It All. As represented in the PHB, there's no Good Tyranny. There's no Good Undeath. There's no Good Assassin Deity. These are things Evil has power over, and Good has no power over... So if you want to avoid those things, it makes sense to not only make those gods happy, but also the gods opposing them happy. For instance, if you wanted to make sure your grandma wasn't re-animated as a zombie, you'd sacrifice to Nerull (so that he doesn't hate you for not sacrificing to him, and re-animate your grandma out of spite), and Pelor (so that if Nerull wants to animate her, her can help lay her to rest again). If you want to avoid tryanny, you sacrifice to Hextor ("please do not empower your servants to rule over us") and to Heironeous ("please give all our leaders divine guidance").  Just because you don't like the god doesn't mean you can ignore them...they have a real and measurable power in the world. There are, of course, exceptions. No high elf of goodness prays to Lolth, becauase she has been excommunicated, so to speak. The elves have disdained all use of spiders, poison, dominatrixes, etc. that Lolth represents. They have no use for a god of that because as far as they are concerned that does not exist; it's not part of their world, and it's not part of reality, and to note it is to give it power. They don't pray to Lolth to not sick spiders on them, because in their mind, Lolth has no power over spiders. But Nerull isn't an outcast from the pantheon. He may not be nice, but he governs a force that really is in the world. And powerful figures will destroy those they don't like, if they can. They can destroy you. You stop that only by making sure Nerull doesn't hate you -- by sacrificing to him. Of course, this is in the view of the commoner. The cleric probably has a very different view of the situation.</blockquote>

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