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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
The Role and Purpose of Evil Gods
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<blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 8437970" data-attributes="member: 2209"><p>The mechanical importance of the specific gods has changed over the course of D&D.</p><p></p><p>In OD&D, B/X, and BECMI it mattered very little, clerics were clerics with the same powers regardless of the god, with some variation for Lawful vs. Chaotic clerical powers. I played in a number of B/X games where there were plenty of PC and NPC clerics but no explicitly defined gods.</p><p></p><p>In 1e AD&D the status of the god limited the level of the spells you could get as a cleric but otherwise clerics generally got powers that only varied by whether the cleric was evil versus good. <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/110198/Deities--Demigods-1e?affiliate_id=17596" target="_blank">1e Deities and Demigods</a> added in specifications about worshiper alignments for specific gods in the pantheons it offered and defined a number of deities by power level. <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17392/World-of-Greyhawk-Fantasy-Game-Setting-1e?affiliate_id=17596" target="_blank">1e World of Greyhawk</a> added to this in the boxed set with some campaign world specific gods giving out tailored bonus powers to their clerics, sometimes in return for an increased xp requirement. In 2e clerics were generally mechanically generic clerics like in 1e, but you also got specialty priests and an explosion of god specific specialty priests with hugely variable themed powers and spell selections. For 2e specialty priests which gods were in the campaign was generally a big mechanically important issue.</p><p></p><p>In 3e clerics were the same except for their domains which varied by god. It had a default pantheon which I saw regularly used as a generic D&D one in games so many players could generally count on making a sun-domain Pelor cleric as defined in the <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/148008/Players-Handbook-35?affiliate_id=17596" target="_blank">PH</a> unless their DM said they were specifically using a non-default deity setup. prestige classes for clerics could be god specific or not.</p><p></p><p>In 4e there was a defined default pantheon but the individual gods did not impact the mechanics of the cleric class.</p><p></p><p>In 5e it is like 3e in tying the domain portion of the cleric class to specific gods, but there is no default pantheon or defined list of deities with domains, only suggested ones and no default.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Voadam, post: 8437970, member: 2209"] The mechanical importance of the specific gods has changed over the course of D&D. In OD&D, B/X, and BECMI it mattered very little, clerics were clerics with the same powers regardless of the god, with some variation for Lawful vs. Chaotic clerical powers. I played in a number of B/X games where there were plenty of PC and NPC clerics but no explicitly defined gods. In 1e AD&D the status of the god limited the level of the spells you could get as a cleric but otherwise clerics generally got powers that only varied by whether the cleric was evil versus good. [URL='https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/110198/Deities--Demigods-1e?affiliate_id=17596']1e Deities and Demigods[/URL] added in specifications about worshiper alignments for specific gods in the pantheons it offered and defined a number of deities by power level. [URL='https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17392/World-of-Greyhawk-Fantasy-Game-Setting-1e?affiliate_id=17596']1e World of Greyhawk[/URL] added to this in the boxed set with some campaign world specific gods giving out tailored bonus powers to their clerics, sometimes in return for an increased xp requirement. In 2e clerics were generally mechanically generic clerics like in 1e, but you also got specialty priests and an explosion of god specific specialty priests with hugely variable themed powers and spell selections. For 2e specialty priests which gods were in the campaign was generally a big mechanically important issue. In 3e clerics were the same except for their domains which varied by god. It had a default pantheon which I saw regularly used as a generic D&D one in games so many players could generally count on making a sun-domain Pelor cleric as defined in the [URL='https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/148008/Players-Handbook-35?affiliate_id=17596']PH[/URL] unless their DM said they were specifically using a non-default deity setup. prestige classes for clerics could be god specific or not. In 4e there was a defined default pantheon but the individual gods did not impact the mechanics of the cleric class. In 5e it is like 3e in tying the domain portion of the cleric class to specific gods, but there is no default pantheon or defined list of deities with domains, only suggested ones and no default. [/QUOTE]
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