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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
The Role and Purpose of Evil Gods
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<blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8401022" data-attributes="member: 6801228"><p>Haven't read the rest of the thread yet, but this subject has come up a few times, and the reasons are generally pretty simple, though I find them incredibly uncompelling. </p><p></p><p>1) People assume that Demons and Devils must be weaker than gods. This is the biggie, in all honesty, and I can see where the mixing of traditions led to this, but it has a serious problem if all the gods are good or neutral and the Lords of Evil are weaker than the Gods of Good. Which is the classic problem of evil, "why does evil still exist if it is weak" </p><p></p><p>And many of the traditional answers to that question don't work in DnD. Because they rely on conceits that many multi-theisitic mythologies and structures don't have. So, they made Evil Gods, beings just as powerful but malevolent. </p><p></p><p></p><p>I think though where this goes wrong is that the "problem of evil" doesn't exist in many mythological frameworks, because Demons/Devils ect AREN'T weaker than the gods. I'm probably oversimplifying, but look at the variety of "enemies of the gods". In Greek Mythology the major enemy of the Gods are the The Titans, and they are most assuredly not weaker than the Olympians. In Norse Mythology the Aesir fought and then aligned with the Vanir, but then both were fighting the Jotunns, who again were not "weaker" than the Gods. If you go into a more Shinto tradition with Yokai (very roughly "evil spirits") and Kami (Very badly misunderstood as "gods") you'll find not only are they not more powerful than each other, but at certain points in history, they were considered the same type of being, just one was more malevolent and dangerous than the other.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>2) And this is the other big thing. This removal of evil clerics, because we think that the Demons and Devils can't have clerics. And people want evil clerics. However, this line is way blurrier than a lot of people make it out to be. We've had clerics of Orcus in older versions of the game, and the Cultist Fanatic in the MM NPC section is clearly using clerical spells. </p><p></p><p>Since we have celestial warlocks, I'm fine letting Demon Lords and Archdevils have clerics. We have to remember that in real world sources, many of the beings we consider to be "powerful demons" like Baal and Beelzebul were actually gods of competing religions. So, in terms of the "source material" having clerics and priests of those beings is exactly what you would see.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Chaosmancer, post: 8401022, member: 6801228"] Haven't read the rest of the thread yet, but this subject has come up a few times, and the reasons are generally pretty simple, though I find them incredibly uncompelling. 1) People assume that Demons and Devils must be weaker than gods. This is the biggie, in all honesty, and I can see where the mixing of traditions led to this, but it has a serious problem if all the gods are good or neutral and the Lords of Evil are weaker than the Gods of Good. Which is the classic problem of evil, "why does evil still exist if it is weak" And many of the traditional answers to that question don't work in DnD. Because they rely on conceits that many multi-theisitic mythologies and structures don't have. So, they made Evil Gods, beings just as powerful but malevolent. I think though where this goes wrong is that the "problem of evil" doesn't exist in many mythological frameworks, because Demons/Devils ect AREN'T weaker than the gods. I'm probably oversimplifying, but look at the variety of "enemies of the gods". In Greek Mythology the major enemy of the Gods are the The Titans, and they are most assuredly not weaker than the Olympians. In Norse Mythology the Aesir fought and then aligned with the Vanir, but then both were fighting the Jotunns, who again were not "weaker" than the Gods. If you go into a more Shinto tradition with Yokai (very roughly "evil spirits") and Kami (Very badly misunderstood as "gods") you'll find not only are they not more powerful than each other, but at certain points in history, they were considered the same type of being, just one was more malevolent and dangerous than the other. 2) And this is the other big thing. This removal of evil clerics, because we think that the Demons and Devils can't have clerics. And people want evil clerics. However, this line is way blurrier than a lot of people make it out to be. We've had clerics of Orcus in older versions of the game, and the Cultist Fanatic in the MM NPC section is clearly using clerical spells. Since we have celestial warlocks, I'm fine letting Demon Lords and Archdevils have clerics. We have to remember that in real world sources, many of the beings we consider to be "powerful demons" like Baal and Beelzebul were actually gods of competing religions. So, in terms of the "source material" having clerics and priests of those beings is exactly what you would see. [/QUOTE]
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