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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 8416419" data-attributes="member: 6915329">Because I've posited this same thing to you before, or very similar things, and gotten the same result. I feel very safe in assuming your answer, because most times my assumption has been correct.Can they? Show me what archfiends have actually created ex nihilo?Actually, since at least some gods are more powerful than archfiends, are you surprised that they can do all the things that an archfiend can do? And there are plenty of of things that gods can do that archfiends can't. As was pointed out on the site you linked, it's not uncommon for fiends to make deals with gods wherein the god grants the spells for the fiend. That was the answer in Planescape, although it took me a while to find it (Faces of Evil).Demigods and cambions are not the same thing. And since some creatures, including mortal humans, can become gods, it's not surprising a cambion could also become a god.So are golems and lycanthropes. So what?Using magic items and spells, not innate powers. I just checked: not a single archfiend from MtF has any healing magic, not even fallen angel Zariel. Unless you count animate dead.You claimed they could do both. Were you wrong?No they don't. That's not how intermediaries work.OK, you clearly don't know what phrases means. So, homework time for you. Pick a real-world religion. Now look up some of the prayers in that religion. Heck, I'll pick a simple one: "our father, who art in heaven." Now imagine changing "heaven" to some other location. Or changing "father" to "mother" or "brother." Imagine multiple changes made over decades or centuries or millennia.You're thinking very small here. Imagine a culture--like some real world cultures--that divides right (dexter) and left (sinister) and decides that means anything done with the left hand is bad or tainted. If your ritual involves using your right hand and you change it to your left, you have tainted the entire ritual. The ritual is either perverted or, depending on the mythology, is now aimed at a different power.But in most cases, the rituals are going to be bigger, more important. Imagine a literal baptism by fire, such as if the ritual involves branding every baby or child when they reach the right age. New iconography can be inserted, new rituals or prayers or songs added. Imagine inserting new taboos or even minor demands, or removing such things.No, having sects shouldn't automatically kill the god, because all the prayer is going to the same god. At most, it would cause the god to have "multiple personalities" if the sects had very different interpretations--like one said the god was a peace god and the other said it was a war god. But that's less likely to happen.Since that was a completely fictional example, I could also rewrite that and say that Spike didn't become Gloopy's boyfriend. I'm willing to rewrite.Don't know, don't care.Status Quo is God, as the TV Tropes page says. Having gods attack one another allows for the game to develop mythology. Not having any lasting consequences allows for the writers to not constantly have to rewrite new lists of gods or keep track of their shenanigans.If they're playing in my world, they find out what my world's rules are. Or I correct them if they make a faulty assumption.I wasn't aware that if you didn't make sure every single faction in your game worked perfectly, even if those factions had little to no bearing on the game itself, then the entire game would collapse. I'm sure you also track the migratory patterns of every dragon as well.You seem to think that if a person includes gods or archthings in their games, that they must be major players. Has it ever occurred to you that most people have them as background info and only bring them out when and if they're needed? That people only treat such entities as major players if they're needed to be that, not simply because they exist?Translation: there are no factions unless the DM wants there to be. I could literally have every single god and archthing ever invented in D&D in my game, even the gods who were referenced once in an adventure and never mentioned again, and there would be no issues whatsoever. Because they're background info. Which gods do the PCs worship? Which gods do the NPCs worship that are important enough to mention? OK, cool, that's good. And then, if I decided I needed to focus on an undeath-related power for a while, I could grab whichever undeath-related god or archfiend I like the best for the adventure at hand.You may not like that (because of "redundancy"), but the factions problem doesn't exist.Anyway, in the real world, there are zillions of overlapping gods. Why can't the same be true in a gaming world? You kept harping about Bane only being a Thing on one continent. That means there are other war gods as well (lots if you include non-human gods). They manage to share space just fine.Games are not novels. You can't plot an adventure that tightly. Players will always disrupt the plot if you do, frequently have very different ideas about what's going on than you do, and will do whatever they want. Forcing the players to follow your plot is bad GMing. I don't love confusing stories. I love games where I'm not railroaded.It provides context for D&D as a whole. It provides zero necessary context for the adventure itself. Are the players required to know who Bel is? I don't believe so. The players don't even have to know who Tiamat is, or what her history in D&D is. I assume you don't want to gatekeep D&D and limit it to only people who are versed on decades of canon lore?Celestial in 5e D&D means "from the upper planes;" Fiend means "from the lower planes." Empyreans are celestials, but they can be any alignment. Possibly this means that evil gods can't produce empyreans. Possibly it means that we've given more thought to the matter than the actual game designers.From what I've read, most people decided that was an avatar and not actually the god for that exact reason. But canonically, that's Tee herself.Of course, as has been repeated many a time, Lolth had 66 hp. While I too prefer less-fragile gods, there's nothing really to say that gods have to have a ton of hp and high-damage attacks. Unfortunately, Tee's statblock doesn't reflect the other abilities a god should have. It was early in the edition. Hopefully she'll be cooler if she's statted up in Fizban's.If you want to say that he's a god in your game, then cool, that's fine. You want to say that he's 100% a god and people need a reason to have him not be a god, you need to defend it.First off, which "he" are you talking about? It's been a while since you've used a name. If you're talking about an archfiend, there's nothing to suggest that they have the power to do so. At least not without first casting something like commune.And yet you were cool in saying that because you had your homebrew Tana being openly worshiped, it proved that all archfiends could be openly worshiped as well.Maybe in 2e when he was a god, but not in 1e, 3x, 4e, or 5e where he was a demon prince. He doesn't t answer prayers and in 4e, he specifically got Erythnul to grant spells for him, according to the site you linked. He's not listed in any list of deities in 5e. Would you like to name what core books you're talking about?Go open MtF. In the archfiends section, there's not a single reference to either cleric or prayer. Just cultists.Heck, go to the warlock section in the PHB and read: A warlock is defined by a pact with an otherworldly being. Sometimes the relationship between warlock and patron is like that of a cleric and a deity, though the beings that serve as patrons for warlocks are not gods. A warlock might lead a cult dedicated to a demon prince, an archdevil, or an utterly alien entity—beings not typically served by clerics.So while it doesn't rule out the idea that an archthing may have a cleric, it does specifically say that archthings aren't gods. (Likewise, the cleric section mentions gods, philosophies, and forces and says nothing of archthings). I'd go so far as to say that if an archthing has a cleric, the cleric is getting its power from a philosophy or force, not the archthing.Like you. You've made a bunch of mistakes and have ignored most of the corrections.</blockquote>

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