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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8402276" data-attributes="member: 6801228">This may shock you but I'm not looking for a confrontation or a fight. I'm looking for a discussion. If you go back to the OP, you will see that I DIDN'T ask what to do with them. I'm not the OP. I just offered some insights. Are there examples of what you describe where the forces of evil are weaker and more numerous? Yes. As you said, Judeo-Christian and Muslim practices do feature exactly that motif. Is it the most common trope in the world? I don't know for certain, but I don't think it is. And even if it is, it seems to me that in polytheistic frameworks like what you see in DnD you are far more likely to have forces of evil be equally powerful or more powerful. See, I think that Evil Gods exist in DnD historically for two reasons. 1) To give us evil clerics 2) Because people were throwing all sorts of ideas at the wall to see what sticks. That's why we have dozens of overlapping deities, because people just made up a new force for their adventures constantly. This has led to a plethora of being mentioned once in a magazine and never again. Or maybe once in a magazine and then making a cameo in an adventure, then getting tied in with someone else's origin story. But, if we ask the question "why do demons and devils exist in DnD" the answer is a bit self-obvious. Of course we have demons and devils to act as the incarnations of evil. That just makes sense. The third point I'm getting at, the disconnect comes in why the most powerful demons and devils aren't basically gods. And this is where polytheism ran face first into monotheism. It is very easy to see a being like Typhon as "Demon Prince" being the child of Gaia and Tartarus (easy to make the comparison, though it is inaccurate since Tartarus isn't evil in greek mythology) and was more than a match for the Olympians until Zues used his thunderbolts, one version of the myth having the entire pantheon flee to egypt in the face of Typhon. And "evil 'demon' that challenges the gods" is a very, very common trope in polytheistic religions. And while the Gods win, it isn't a curb stomp and it is often only the most powerful of the gods who win. However, in DnD, "gods" are the highest tier of beings and far more powerful than the demons and devils, so it is goes that even a non-combatant god, like Hestia, would be able to destroy a demon prince with little effort... which just isn't how the mythologies around this would go. Heck, it is heavily implied in the story of Pirithous that a mortal man could kidnap a goddess (though putting Persephone in her proper context makes that laughable, Dread Persephone is far scarier than her well-known mythology implies. Minoan's man.) Which rounds us back to the point that has been brought up a few times. Other than "because the game was built with this fact" what value do we get from "God" being a more powerful and higher order of being? Sure, we have the story of Orcus trying to become a God to be more powerful and do stuff... but we already have gods of undeath who have that power he seeks. If Orcus becoming a god of undeath was truly a world-threatening event, then the existing gods of undeath would be threatening the world and a much more serious threat. There doesn't seem to be a compelling reason not to make the Gods, Archdevils, Demon Princes (seriously, I want a better title for them), Archfey, Primal Spirits, ect all about the same power. I think it makes for a more compelling battlefield to get involved in if Orcus or Graz'zt CAN threaten the throne of Pelor or Amaunator, and the PCs can get powerful enough to tip that balance. As it stands, the only way to make that story happen is to have the Demon's first severely weaken the god, then attack. While the gods stand so far above everyone and everything else as to not really get involved except through agents.</blockquote>

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