NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 8412534" data-attributes="member: 6915329">So, since you've done it in your campaign, it must be common throughout D&D?Sure, you can tell any story you like if you change the basic premises of the beings involved. And in D&D, one of the basic premises is that fiends aren't openly worshiped outside of evil communities.At this point, if there's enough worship of Tana, then maybe she is no longer a fiend and has become a god--just like how Lolth started as a demon queen and became a god as well as a demon queen. She may not have started out wanting or needing worship, but now she does.It seems to me that the reason you think evil gods and archfiends are redundant is because you have already combined them into a single type of entity, and you don't get that many of us treat them as separate entities with separate abilities and separate goals.Does this contract between man and god require you to sign it in blood? Is it made at the crossroads on a moonless night? Do you swear away your soul from where it's supposed to be going? No? Then it's not that type of contract and you know it.I'd say they don't do it because there would be too much risk of an evil god's own worship getting perverted or reduced, especially in a setting where gods are influenced by the beliefs of their worshipers and where gods rely on prayer.Because as I've already said, fiends don't care about worshipers, they care about souls. Forced conversions or murders aren't going to get them souls. They get souls of evil people in general, or of people who sign contracts with them. Gods care about souls.Right here is one of the major differences between gods and fiends, maybe the biggest one: gods die without belief; fiends don't.And that's the same as saying "I can tell this story with either giants or dragons, so there's no need for both." Or "I can tell this story with either elves or dwarfs, so there's no need for both."Yokai can also be seen as fey, considering they're part of the natural world.That wasn't me, I don't think, but I like it. Maybe it was me; I have a bad memory.Yeah, that was a stupid adventure arc. It was also stupid when he wound up in Ravenloft. The writers just liked Vecna and wanted to stick him everywhere they could. He shouldn't have been able to get into Sigil since gods can't enter the city (if he was a god at that point), and while the Dark Powers may actually be more powerful than gods, they're more about inventing their own gods than trapping them.There's no canonical benefits that I know of of a god choosing to also become an archfiend. If it wants control of an entire layer in a lower plane, it can attempt to seize the layer by force. Many evil gods already have fiendish servitors. They don't gain any more powers by becoming a fiend, but they do have their life force tied to one or more soul amulets, which is probably a step down for them considering that gods can only truly be destroyed if they lose all their worshipers.Sure. But Maglubiyet and Gruumsh are two gods (or rather, the heads of two pantheons of gods), and their battles rage across Acheron (and there, I think just part of one layer) and, to a much lesser extent, the Prime. But in the Prime, should goblins and orcs battle, it's as likely to be over territory and resources and just general jerkiness as it is to be because their gods tell them to. The Blood War is fought across almost the entirety of the lower planes and can spill out into other planes. Certain layers of certain planes get it the worst, but no lower plane is spared.And sure, coups can happen--but again, in D&D, it's far more likely to happen with fiends.Also, things like this may happen in various fictions, but do they happen in D&D? D&D tells different stories than novels do, because you can't control the actions of the players.Yes, because the petitioners want to merge with the plane. From the Planescape campaign setting: "At best, a petitioner has a shadowy recollection of a precious life, but little or nothing useful can be learned from these fleeting images. Petitioners mostly desire to attain some ultimate union of with the powers of their plane. This can be accomplished in a number of ways: good works, serene contemplation, steadfast faith, or vile notoriety, depending on the petitioner's alignment."Unlike in some real-world religions, petitioners who go to an evil god's afterlife aren't there to be punished. It's their reward. It may not be great by your standards, but the people who go there are literally happier their then they would be in one of the upper planes.Again, you're homebrewing here. "Can" isn't the same as "actually have been written this way."The souls that wind up in an archfiend's domain aren't the souls of worshipers, for the most part. They're souls that were stolen or bought. When the Wall of the Faithless was a thing, demons would steal souls out of it.I'm pretty sure that the souls of human sacrifices in D&D go to the plane they're supposed to, unless magic was used to make sure the soul goes to the realm of the being it was sacrificed to.And again, you're using "it stands to reason" as your claim here. No, sorry, you can't make stuff up and say its canon.Those are incredibly different things. A proxy isn't a slave or even a servant. It's an extension of the god's will. With rare exceptions, a person wants to be a proxy; it's an honor to be chosen. With evil gods, it means better standards of living and a chance for promotion. Proxies are servants, but not slaves or prisoners. You can't compare the two at all. Also from the Planescape campaign setting: "Some Outsiders think every planar's a proxy, but that just ain't true. Proxies are those beings--primes, planars, and even petitioners--specially chosen to act as agents of the powers. Usually, the body chosen is transformed into a creature favored by the deity--into an evil rutterkin or a good deva, for example. On rare occasions, the being isn't transformed, but is bestowed with special powers. Proxies are absolute servants, obeying the wishes of their deity as fully as is appropriate to that alignment. Those of good powers are unswervingly loyal and obedient, and those of evil powers are utterly difficult and tricky, even for their masters. On the Upper Planes, a proxy knows he can rise even higher through good service. On the Lower Planes, a proxy usually prospers by finding some clever and nasty way to create an opening for his high-up man."OK, let's go the other way around now, since I admit I mostly did fiends but not gods.Literal holy wars. Whether it's god v. god, god v. fiend, or something else, you can't do a holy war with at least one side involving gods. This can be a battle between faiths or protecting (or seizing) holy ground. The Blood Wars, BTW, are not (un)holy wars; they're wars of chaos v. law and of racial supremacy. Even the war between Maglubiyet and Gruumsh aren't really holy wars, because they're mostly about racial supremacy.The death of a god. What ramifications does it have for the world? In some settings, it means that whatever it is the god represented no longer functions. No more winter, no more people dying, no more functional forges, whatever. It could mean that all of a sudden lots of entities grab on to bits of the portfolio, like in Pratchett's Reaper Man. It could mean that whatever the god controlled now runs wild, free, and uncontrolled. The god of winter dies and now it snows whenever the heck it wants to. Or perhaps whatever the god controlled now acts naturally. Perhaps the existence of the god of murder spurred people into murdering each other for even minor things, but if that god died, then maybe people don't find themselves quite as prone to murder as they used to. The god of winter dies and now it snows only in winter, only when the temperature and humidity is correct (you know, like in the real world), rather than whenever the god got bored and decided to dump a blizzard on someone. How about those two?</blockquote>

Verification