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

[Voadam]

Where does it say that?

2014 5e DMG page 11:

Greater deities are beyond mortal understanding. They can't be summoned, and they are almost always removed from direct involvement in mortal affairs. On very rare occasions they manifest avatars similar to lesser deities, but slaying a greater god's avatar has no effect on the god itself.
Lesser deities are embodied somewhere in the planes. Some lesser deities live in the Material Plane, as does the unicorn-goddess Lurue of the Forgotten Realms and the titanic shark-god Sekolah revered by the sahuagin. Others live on the Outer Planes, as Lolth does in the Abyss. Such deities can be encountered by mortals.
Quasi-deities have a divine origin, but they don't hear or answer prayers, grant spells to clerics, or control aspects of mortal life. They are still immensely powerful beings, and in theory they could ascend to godhood if they amassed enough worshipers.

The whole divine rank sidebar in 14 is a weird "how it is in 5e D&D" thing in a section on Other Religious Systems for your campaign. It is inserted between mystery cults and monotheism. The Whole Gods of Your World section is set up to be all about DM choice of setups.

GODS OF YOUR WORLD
Appendix B of the Player's Handbook presents a number of pantheons (loose groupings of deities not united by a single doctrine or philosophy) for use in your game, including the gods of established D&D worlds and fantasy-historical pantheons. You can adopt one of these pantheons for your campaign, or pick and choose deities and ideas from them as you please. See "A Sample Pantheon" in this section for an example.
As far as the game's rules are concerned, it doesn't matter if your world has hundreds of deities or a church devoted to a single god. In rules terms, clerics choose domains, not deities, so your world can associate domains with deities in any way you choose.

 

[cbwjm]

@Voadam beat me to it but yeah, that book that nobody seems to read has some good stuff in it.

 

[Piperken]

I've not played in or run a game where characters run into a deity and directly engaged them; I suppose tables have had that play out in terms of whether or not they're successful in defeating, or at least banishing, foiling, etc. said deity.

My younger experience I recall with Deities & Demigods, was reading it from cover to cover and just enjoying the pleasure of that, mainly because it was fascinating seeing how designers attempted to represent these otherworldly beings in terms of game mechanics, and comparing that with the folklore/myths I had read about them.

Depending on setting, I imagine if I had a table that was interested in defeating or supplanting a deity, in addition to that taking a long time; how that would be resolved, would be in a way that was not expected.

Otherworldly beings just break expectations.

 

[Micah Sweet]

@Voadam beat me to it but yeah, that book that nobody seems to read has some good stuff in it.

My view on deities in D&D has been an amalgam of 1e and 2e for over 30 years. Never seen any reason to change it, other than allowing the means for PCs to join their ranks.

 

[cranberry]

The Devil STILL hasn't lived down that embarrassing defeat down in Georgia.

That was fought with fiddles, not swords...

 

[cranberry]

In my D&D campaign, deities are just things that are worshipped. Quite a few of them are also extremely powerful entities, which is often how they've been able to build out their following, but they are not qualitatively different from anything else. So them having HP and being killable is totally feasible. Though mostly, you would be taking on an avatar unless you confront them right in their home or something.

I respectfully disagree. IMO, deities should be more than a bag of hp that high level PCs have a good chance of defeating.

Not just tier 4 vs. tier 5.

More like tier 4 vs. tier 347.

 

[Voadam]

That was fought with fiddles, not swords...

Performance checks duel.

 

[Voadam]

I respectfully disagree. IMO, deities should be more than a bag of hp that high level PCs have a good chance of defeating.

Not just tier 4 vs. tier 5.

More like tier 4 vs. tier 347.

Ridiculously high tier only removed untouchable gods can be fine.

I like having a more Greek style world where there is god stuff running from dryad of that specific tree to local river god or Naiads up to Demeter who stops all crops from growing when grieving and Gaia who is the Earth.

I don't like the idea of having say defined demon lords being rivals of gods who are ridiculously above them because of divine status. Orcus and the Raven Queen for instance if the Raven Queen can just wave her hand and erase Orcus. This leads to things like diplomacy among omnipotent gods not to do certain stuff which is less fun for me personally as a game narrative.

 

[Clint_L]

@Voadam beat me to it but yeah, that book that nobody seems to read has some good stuff in it.

You mean like that stuff he quoted that I ignore? I don't need WotC telling me how to run my D&D world, though I appreciate their suggestions.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't like the idea of having say defined demon lords being rivals of gods who are ridiculously above them because of divine status. Orcus and the Raven Queen for instance if the Raven Queen can just wave her hand and erase Orcus. This leads to things like diplomacy among omnipotent gods not to do certain stuff which is less fun for me personally as a game narrative.

The simple answer there is to just promote Orcus and some others to full-deity status.

The way I see it, for the Good-Evil* balance to remain in place there needs to be about the same number (and same power) of deities on each side.

* - and-or Law-Chaos, and-or Male-Female, etc.