D&D 5E Why the heck does D&D have Hecate as Chaotic Evil

[Jer]

Arawn is Neutral Evil? Nuada is Neutral? Does this guy just have it in for Celtic and Greek gods or something? Ptah is LN and Arawn is NE? I mean, who came up with this gibberish?

God it's like a bad day in 2nd Edition. Absolute massacre.

I don't have time to sit down and look but I wouldn't be surprised if they aren't exactly the 2e alignments for the gods just copied over without thinking about updating them.

I mean, how about don't assign them alignments, for god's sake? If you're going to be this ignorant...

I personally think that assigning Law/Neutral/Chaos to gods is moderately appropriate if you can define what you mean by those three terms, but except in the really obvious cases "good" and "evil" will be incredibly hard to assign because most gods have historically been both what we would think of as good and evil. Because the concept of a god being all good or all evil is something that post-dates most of the mythology that surrounds these gods.

 

[Scribe]

Arawn is Neutral Evil? Nuada is Neutral? Does this guy just have it in for Celtic and Greek gods or something? Ptah is LN and Arawn is NE? I mean, who came up with this gibberish?

God it's like a bad day in 2nd Edition. Absolute massacre.

If Ptah is LN, Arawn should be LN, frankly, and Nuada is basically the same guy as Tyr, who this dude would NO DOUBT characterise as LN or LG. Awful. I genuinely haven't seen something this outright ignorant with historical deities since 2E, though I probably missed something (guessing there may be a similar list I'm forgotten in one of the core books).

I mean, how about don't assign them alignments, for god's sake? If you're going to be this ignorant...

Precisely why I would be surprised to see a big picture product on the gods at this point in time.

Not saying you are wrong here BTW, but I'd be shocked if Wizards is going to touch real world religions and gods.

 

[Jer]

The interpretation of Kali they had back then was that of Kali as a Goddess of Destruction, but as a mother Goddess she is much more than just that and it's a simplistic and biased Western outlook for her.

I guarantee that the interpretation of Kali mostly came from old books that were heavily influenced by (if not actually written during) the British occupation of India. The same kind of stuff that led to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom being hard to watch now.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I personally think that assigning Law/Neutral/Chaos to gods is moderately appropriate if you can define what you mean by those three terms, but except in the really obvious cases "good" and "evil" will be incredibly hard to assign because most gods have historically been both what we would think of as good and evil. Because the concept of a god being all good or all evil is something that post-dates most of the mythology that surrounds these gods.

I do agree L/N/C would be a lot easier to assign, but if you can only assign half an alignment, don't assign an alignment, unless you're running BD&D/BECMI/RC D&D etc.

And yeah it does indeed post-date it.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

I'd guess Hecate was probably characterized as evil in early D&D because of her association with Medea (her priestess) and the murder of Jason's sons by their mother in Euripides.

As a pre-Olympian, chthonian deity she represents a chaotic, pre-rational state from a Greek perspective, so I don't think it's entirely incoherent. But reducing real-world deities to D&D alignments is never really going to work, as you always end up missing about 90% of their significance.

 

[Lanefan]

No gods, in any setting, should have alignments.

That would completely butcher my pantheon system as the core deities in it are in part defined by, and in turn define, their alignments. You simply can't have one without the other.

Yes, it's very intentionally a universal and top-down alignment system.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That would completely butcher my pantheon system as the core deities in it are in part defined by, and in turn define, their alignments. You simply can't have one without the other.

Yes, it's very intentionally a universal and top-down alignment system.

How so?

Would the D&D police come around to your house and torch your documents and wipe your HDD, then force you to tape all future D&D sessions and send them to them? If so surely 5E already got you into massive trouble with the WotC D&D police because alignment is an non-required concept now?

I'm pretty sure DMs can still override generalities for their home games, and I think it's fair to say WotC have lost their "pass" for assigning alignments to deities.

 

[Jer]

I do agree L/N/C would be a lot easier to assign, but if you can only assign half an alignment, don't assign an alignment, unless you're running BD&D/BECMI/RC D&D etc.

Even thinking about it a bit more - L/N/C is somewhat difficult to assign in that most cultures would think of their gods as "lawful" with their enemies as "chaos". Zeus is "chaotic" in the sense that his actions are the actions of a tyrant who never faces consequences for what he does, but he keeps the Titans and the Giants at bay and imposes (his) order on the other gods so the universe can function in the way that it does, so in that sense he's "lawful".

I think this falls into the "thinking too much about alignment can only reveal how brittle alignment is" rule of thumb, so I agree with you that the best thing to do is either leave alignment off the gods entirely or maybe just avoid using real world gods at all if Wizards can't bring themselves to do that.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Even thinking about it a bit more - L/N/C is somewhat difficult to assign in that most cultures would think of their gods as "lawful" with their enemies as "chaos". Zeus is "chaotic" in the sense that his actions are the actions of a tyrant who never faces consequences for what he does, but he keeps the Titans and the Giants at bay and imposes (his) order on the other gods so the universe can function in the way that it does, so in that sense he's "lawful".

I think this falls into the "thinking too much about alignment can only reveal how brittle alignment is" rule of thumb, so I agree with you that the best thing to do is either leave alignment off the gods entirely or maybe just avoid using real world gods at all if Wizards can't bring themselves to do that.

Yeah I was thinking the exact same thing about Zeus, just now but couldn't quite figure out how to put it - he's simultaneously a capricious, flighty wanker who does what he wants, not what he should (and many stories paint him in a terrible light even by the standards of the era), but he's also the "lawful" ruler of the pantheon, and better than those titan fellows!

Prometheus and his punishment are particularly interesting in this context, because obviously from a human perspective Prometheus (a titan!) is a total good guy, and Zeus a horrible jerk, but also Zeus is enforcing his law.

 

[Parmandur]

I think with real-world/historical gods, they shouldn't ever give them alignments, at this point. Like, if we look at 1E/2E, they got obviously wrong far more often than right, and from this little list, there's been ZERO improvement since 2E. I mean, don't they have anyone who did classics? Or Welsh/Irish mythology? Come on. They must.

In fact, I'd go further.

No gods, in any setting, should have alignments.

Instead, describe their ethos and how they act, and what their values are. Then the players and the DM can decide what alignments are compatible with them.

This would be huge for the Forgetten Realms, which in classist D&D polytheism fashion, has plenty of AWFUL-sounding "technically Good" gods, who just really don't sound good from their behaviour or beliefs like our good buddy Clangeddin, who believes genocide isn't a dirty word, it's a necessity (hey take it up with him not me!), who is, and I quote "Lawful Good". And you have people like Mask, who, frankly, is nicer and less horrible than a lot of the "Good" gods who (when not mysteriously dead), usually "Neutral Evil" (admittedly 5E did fix this to CN, that's interesting).

But just ditch the alignments, outline their values and beliefs.

Not to defend it, but these are the Alignments from 1E, unchanged in the 5E PHB. They just put tables in using the old Pantheon lists and assignments, the only change was the 5E Domain suggestions (these are all Knowledge gods).

Personally, I wouldn't touch any real world gods if I were making a mass market product.