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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 8408365" data-attributes="member: 2209">Some D&D texts have marked clear distinctions between archfiends and evil gods. This has varied across time and source and edition.To recap and repeat a little:<a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/110198/Deities--Demigods-1e?affiliate_id=17596" target="_blank">1e DDG</a> says treat all the existing archfiends as a lesser god, so none of the archfiends is as powerful as a greater evil god like Bane and none of them can grant 7th level cleric spells the way greater evil gods can.<a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/3723/Book-of-Vile-Darkness-3e?affiliate_id=17596" target="_blank">3e BoVD</a> says archfiends are not gods and do not grant spells. It also says if you want them to grant clerics spells then make them divine rank 1, the weakest of five ranks of demigods.BoVD page 123"The demon lords and archdevils described in this chapter cannot grant spells to clerics. Instead, they act as patrons for clerics who devote themselves to abstract sources of divine power, and they assist the clerics of evil gods. They have worshipers who perform sacrifices in their name, but they don’t run organized religions the way gods do.If you want the demon lords and archdevils to have organized faiths and grant spells, it’s easy to do so. Chapter 6 identifies which domains each archfiend would be associated with (see the Cleric Domains section in the spell lists). If you have the Deities and Demigods book, you can give each demon lord and archdevil divine rank 1 and adjust their statistics accordingly."<a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/130333/Deities-and-Demigods-3e?affiliate_id=17596" target="_blank">3e DDG</a> page 23"For game purposes, each deity has a divine rank, which is similar to a character’s level. A deity’s divine rank determines how much power the entity has and serves as a way to compare one deity to another. Here is a quick summary of divine ranks.Rank 0: Creatures of this rank are sometimes called quasi-deities or hero deities. Creatures that have a mortal and a deity as parents also fall into this category. These entities cannot grant spells, but are immortal and usually have one or more ability scores that are far above the norm for their species. They may have some worshipers. Ordinary mortals do not have a divine rank of 0. They lack a divine rank altogether.Rank 1–5: These entities, called demigods, are the weakest of the deities. A demigod can grant spells and perform a few deeds that are beyond mortal limits, such as hearing a grasshopper from a mile away."So archfiends in core are not gods and do not grant spells but there is an option for a DM to put them at the power level of the weakest demigods.<a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/51643/Fiendish-Codex-I-Hordes-of-the-Abyss-35?affiliate_id=17596" target="_blank">3.5 Fiendish Codex I</a> says:Page 57 "Some of the demon lords described in this chapter originally appeared in Book of Vile Darkness. They have been updated to conform with the revised (v.3.5) D&D rules. Slightly less powerful than their previous incarnations, they better serve as major villains for high-level—but not quite epic-level—D&D campaigns."Page 82: "Clerics who worship demon lords cast spells in the same way as other clerics do, but their Abyssal patrons do not directly grant them spells. Rather, the demon lord serves as a focus through which the cleric can access divine energy—his spells are in fact drawn from the chaos and evil of the Abyss itself."Later 3.5 Dragon Magazine Demonomicon articles put them at higher power level.The <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/28730/Fiendish-Codex-II-Tyrants-of-the-Nine-Hells-35?affiliate_id=17596" target="_blank">Fiendish Codex II</a> says that archdevils are as close to a god as you can get without actually being gods.Page 141 "Statistics for archdevils in their true forms do not appear in this book, because the actual power level of such a being should vary depending on the nature of your campaign. An archdevil is as close to a god as a creature can be without actually being one. It should be nearly impossible for nonepic adventurers to slay an archdevil, and combat with an archdevil should be something that happens only in the most high-powered campaigns."In 4e demons are explicitly corrupted elemental primordials and not divine gods. In 4e Asmodeus was a divine angel who killed a god and ascended to become a god himself, and I am not sure what the status of the corrupted angel archdevils are on the cosmic god measurement scale. Exarchs either for that matter.</blockquote>

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