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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8408474" data-attributes="member: 42582">Yes. My point is that this distinction has not been clearly drawn across the body of texts considered as a whole.One of the earliest and most famous modules, T1, has a cleric of the "Demoness Lolth".You have noted that T1-T4 has clerics of the demon queen (? lady?) Zuggtmoy.I've pointed to Ed Greenwood's near-canonical article in Dragon 91, which refers to clerics of the archdevils.The early AD&D 2nd ed product City of GH boxed set has a scenario with clerics of Asmodeus, and one of them has a 7th level spell memorised.But as I've just noted that was not always adhered to in published material. Even within a given edition: contrast Carl Sargent's treatment of Iuz's abiity to grant spells (as I cited upthread from Iuz the Evil) to the Hierarch in the City of GH boxed set.And as I've noted, in 3E Tiamat appears both as a god (DDG) and as a powerful dragon more like her AD&D MM entry (MotP). I don't know which of those is supposed to be "core". And I'm not sure how BoVD counts as "core", rather than as just another suggestion to add to the mix!That last sentence strikes me as a distinction without a difference. What is at stake in the distinction being drawn? Especially as we already have a wide range of accounts of where spell energy comes from (eg in his DMG (p 40), Gygax says that the energy for spells - whether clerical or MU - comes from the positive and negative material planes; memorisation pertains to the spell pattern/formula, not its energy).But they have cult worshippers who are, from the point of view of both mechanical and story function, indistinguishable from the anti-clerics and evil high priests of Book 1 Men & Magic: the Deathpriest of Orcus, for example.I'm not disputing any of your sources (except I'm not sure how BoVD counts as "core"). I'm arguing that over the whole range of published material there is no general pattern of distinguishing Asmodeus, Orcus etc from evil gods in terms of cosmology, whether or not they have clerics, etc.Of course there has been some hesitation about flat-out asserting that devils and demons are gods (in core material I think 4e is the first time that is said for Asmodeus). At least one of the original authors was an observant Christian; and the game is published in one of the most religious countries in the world (ie the US). But beneath the use of phrases like "should be treated as", "like beings", etc no concrete distinctions in terms of mechanics or fiction have been consistently drawn.</blockquote>

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