D&D General The purpose of deity stats in D&D.

[Maxperson]

Maybe your copy is different than mine, that paragraph doesn't have any such information in mine:

Hmm. I misread the first post and thought you were talking about how it worked in D&D. Completely missed the real life portion of it. Whoops!

It could come from the Osiris myth. He was killed and his body spread around Egypt(the prime plane), but Isis was able to gather the parts together and bring him back. He wasn't truly dead forever.

Apparently, dying gods who rise again was not that uncommon.

Dying-and-Rising Gods: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier Blogs

Easter this year lands most fittingly on April Fool’s Day. Because indeed, the resurrection of Jesus is akin to the greatest prank in history. Not because anyone actually faked it (though the evidence we have left, remains fully consistent with their having done so: see Robert Price’s chapter...

www.richardcarrier.info

 

[Mannahnin]

Hmm. I misread the first post and thought you were talking about how it worked in D&D. Completely missed the real life portion of it. Whoops!

It could come from the Osiris myth. He was killed and his body spread around Egypt(the prime plane), but Isis was able to gather the parts together and bring him back. He wasn't truly dead forever.

Apparently, dying gods who rise again was not that uncommon.

Dying-and-Rising Gods: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier Blogs

Easter this year lands most fittingly on April Fool’s Day. Because indeed, the resurrection of Jesus is akin to the greatest prank in history. Not because anyone actually faked it (though the evidence we have left, remains fully consistent with their having done so: see Robert Price’s chapter...

www.richardcarrier.info

You've confused the discussion he and I were having about deities and worshippers with a different thread about killing deities. We weren't talking about deities being killed, we were talking about deities needing the worship of their followers, and the related idea that their power is related to how many worshippers they have. And where this idea derives.

D&D General - The purpose of deity stats in D&D.

beings who created the planes of existence. - even in a small way, such as appearance. In D&D terms, I find little to suggest that the gods are creators on that scale.

www.enworld.org

My recollection is that this comes from some fantasy pulp fiction. IIRC, for one example (which I have heard of but not read, so I may have the details wrong), there's a virtually impotent god like this in L. Sprague de Camp's The Goblin Tower.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You've confused the discussion he and I were having about deities and worshippers with a different thread about killing deities. We weren't talking about deities being killed, we were talking about deities needing the worship of their followers, and the related idea that their power is related to how many worshippers they have. And where this idea derives.

Discworld deities work in this way, and that is rather well known setting. I don't know if it originated the idea, but I'm pretty sure that it does not exist in any real mythology. It is a game/fiction rationalisation of how the divine works.

 

[Mannahnin]

Discworld deities work in this way, and that is rather well known setting. I don't know if it originated the idea, but I'm pretty sure that it does not exist in any real mythology. It is a game/fiction rationalisation of how the divine works.

Yeah, I think it's a rationalization which originated in sci-fi/fantasy, and carried over to RPGs. Good call on Discworld, though The Colour of Magic wasn't until 1983, and I'm sure the concept is older.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I have conflicting feelings on this topic. I enjoy ending campaigns in fighting gods as much as the next person, but from a worldbuilding perspective I prefer my gods to be transcendent supreme entities that are difficult to prove even exist. ...

So for worldbuilding, I prefer gods to not have stats. But for gameplay and story, I prefer gods to have stats.

I think it depends on what you want out of your gods. Are they more for their own personal involvement in the story, or as a driving force for the clergy and faithful.

Seems to work that way IRL as well. There are plenty of stories about (ex.) the Greek gods fighting and fornicating and getting into all sorts of trouble that were told around the campfire and during the oral tradition performances and whatever; and then you would go to the temple of Poseidon to bless your ship or the oracle of Apollo to have your fortune told and the same god was treated much more as an immutable force of the heavens.

 

[dave2008]

Hmm. I misread the first post and thought you were talking about how it worked in D&D. Completely missed the real life portion of it. Whoops!

It could come from the Osiris myth. He was killed and his body spread around Egypt(the prime plane), but Isis was able to gather the parts together and bring him back. He wasn't truly dead forever.

Apparently, dying gods who rise again was not that uncommon.

Dying-and-Rising Gods: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier Blogs

Easter this year lands most fittingly on April Fool’s Day. Because indeed, the resurrection of Jesus is akin to the greatest prank in history. Not because anyone actually faked it (though the evidence we have left, remains fully consistent with their having done so: see Robert Price’s chapter...

www.richardcarrier.info

The question we were asking was: do gods need worship? Some people say that gods do not exist without those who worship them. That seems to be the model in some D&D settings (Theros, possible FR), but I don't know of any real work mythologies or religions like that.

It also not a system I use in my games. In my setting, gods can use the power of worship (while other immortal cannot), but they don't need it. The extra power gain from worshipers allowed gods to rule the cosmos, so it is important to them. It is, however, not needed for them to survive.

 

[Alzrius]

The earliest mention I've found of deities needing mortal worship in D&D comes from Gary Gygax's "Deities and their Faithful" article in Dragon #97 (May, 1985), which says the following:

Their power comes from those who believe in them; without followers, any deity is consigned to operations on some other plane of existence, without the means to touch upon the Prime Material.

This is interesting, since it suggests that mortal worship isn't necessary for the gods' survival, but rather is necessary for them to access the mortal world (though I suspect that the use of "Prime Material" there is meant to note that they can manifest upon other Material Planes, since this predates Spelljammer by a number of years).

Of course, the article then goes on to assign point values to worshipers based on Hit Dice, and that the number of worshipers a god has directly influences the god's hit point total, and that gods also gain "power points" from worshipers of the same alignment (which is what lets the gods use their abilities), I suspect this was more about how he thought it should work than anything the game was predicated on.

 

[Mannahnin]

The earliest mention I've found of deities needing mortal worship in D&D comes from Gary Gygax's "Deities and their Faithful" article in Dragon #97 (May, 1985), which says the following:

This is interesting, since it suggests that mortal worship isn't necessary for the gods' survival, but rather is necessary for them to access the mortal world (though I suspect that the use of "Prime Material" there is meant to note that they can manifest upon other Material Planes, since this predates Spelljammer by a number of years).

Nice digging.

Of course, the article then goes on to assign point values to worshipers based on Hit Dice, and that the number of worshipers a god has directly influences the god's hit point total, and that gods also gain "power points" from worshipers of the same alignment (which is what lets the gods use their abilities), I suspect this was more about how he thought it should work than anything the game was predicated on.

Synnibarr used that power points (god points) based on number of worshippers concept.

 

[Upper_Krust]

We know that some deities gain power from worship (and seek that worship as a consequence), we also know immortals (in their totality) do not necessarily require worship to exist (as many don't look for it).

Therefore the relevant question is not "do immortals require worship?" but "what do immortals gain from worship?"

Its a question I only came up with a good answer for (in a way I think mechanically and philosophically makes sense) fairly recently. I won't go into mechanical specifics here, since its in the new book (out soon-ish ), but I think it also solves the dilemma of Immortal PC Players not being interested in having worshipers if they can just gain immortality via EXP; which was something I noticed with the 3rd Edition Immortals Handbook. If Immortals do not need/benefit from worship, then it just becomes a largely redundant mechanical feature which players could not be bothered to engage with.

So therefore for immortals; 'worship' must have some benefit to offset the trouble of "looking after" worshipers...or in the Player's case offset slightly more book-keeping.

Additionally I think the difference between those immortals actively seeking worship and those that do not perfectly explains the whole Gods vs. Anti-gods setup we often see in Mythology (where sometimes Anti-gods are called Asuras, Titans, Giants or something else).

 

[Voadam]

We know that some deities gain power from worship (and seek that worship as a consequence), we also know immortals (in their totality) do not necessarily require worship to exist (as many don't look for it).

I think this is fairly case specific.

In 1e Deities and Demigods and in the 5e DMG gaining sufficient worshipers is a possible path for ascension.

In 2e and on FR it is a world specific stricture imposed by the FR overgod Ao on FR gods to tie them closer to their worshipers by tying their deific power to worship. In canon this is a point in time change by Ao, there was a time when gods were not tied to worship.

In contrast 1e Greyhawk for instance had greater gods being specifically remote and not caring about worshipers while Xagyg ascended by trapping demigods and magicking himself into godhood.