The Distribution of Gods Across the Alignment Spectrum

[themourningstar]

I am working on a home brewed setting, and am going through it step by step.. The assignment I just finished was my "God list". I started by writing out a list of gods that I felt the setting needed for various reasons, then moved on to the gods whose concepts I liked. Then, I wrote out a description similar to that provided in the PHB: Name, title, small bit of background, alignment, domains, worshippers, and favored weapon.

Now that I am done with it, I made a chart for my document that lists the 9 alignments, and the gods that are worshipped in each. I ended up with 8 good deities, 6 neutral, and 16 evil.

My question is, should I have an equal, or at least more equal, distribution of good versus evil? Or do you guys feel it is more a matter of having all the basic niches covered- because I feel like I have that done. I just had several evil concepts that I wanted to include.

As always, thanks a ton for any input guys. :)

[Domriso]

Depends on how you view the gods. Are you going for a standard D&D set up, with the gods interacting with the world to an extent? Are you taking other real-world religious settings into account (such as Roman household gods, or Hindu fractured deities)? There's a lot of a unanswered questions here.

[themourningstar]

The gods interact with the mortal races in my setting, but except for a few rare exceptions, they cannot enter the world. Any being with a divine rank of 0 or higher (Hopefully Afroakuma doesn't murder me for saying that o_o) cannot enter the material plane.

[Domriso]

So they interact through followers? Can they directly interfere with the world? Do more powerful gods govern broader aspects? Are there "divine lite" beings, which have less than a Divine Rank of 0?

In essence, most settings rarely need a more specific set of gods than what you already have, because most players don't delve too deeply into the theology of the worlds they play in, unless they are capable of directly interfering with the gods themselves. But, if you want to create more convoluted cosmologies, then there are all sorts of ways to play with it.

[themourningstar]

So they interact through followers? Can they directly interfere with the world? Do more powerful gods govern broader aspects? Are there "divine lite" beings, which have less than a Divine Rank of 0?

In essence, most settings rarely need a more specific set of gods than what you already have, because most players don't delve too deeply into the theology of the worlds they play in, unless they are capable of directly interfering with the gods themselves. But, if you want to create more convoluted cosmologies, then there are all sorts of ways to play with it.

The gods are physically incapable of entering the world- similar to the Ptolus campaign setting. Any extra planar being without divine ranks may enter, such as a solar or a balor, provided they have some normal way of doing so. The rules are worded so that not even avatars can enter the world- the gods can communicate with their followers, and receive their souls after they die, but they will have no direct physical access to the actual world.

The fluff is that the Elder gods nearly destroyed the previous universe- the Progenitor gods sacrificed themselves to start the world over, and in doing so changed planar physics so that divine beings cannot enter Aeryandor. There are only four current exceptions to this: The male and female aspects of Nature, an ascended avariel goddess, and Vecna. (Nobody even knows how he even came into the universe, but hey, it's Vecna.)

I am on the fence about "divine lite" beings- ascending to godhood is a very real possibility, as probably half of the current generation of gods are ascended beings.

That being said, I think that having filled the niches, I am ok. Quite a few of the evil gods are minor anyways, while almost all of the good gods would be classified as "Greater". As long as the power structure between good versus evil makes sense, I am satisfied.

[Yora]

Having twice as many evil gods than good ones does not have to be a problem, as long as the good ones are more powerful on average.
It's easy to imagine three powerful good gods who stand together and unite the people against the bickering cults of two dozen minor evil deities.

There are also a couple of settings in which all gods are good, ecxcept for a single very powerful one.

[themourningstar]

I am going to go with the concept that the Good Deities are individually strong, and united are very strong. Some of the Evil Deities are strong, and some are weak, but they lack the ability to combine their power.

Thanks for all the feedback guys :D

[Frozen_Feet]

Having twice as many evil gods than good ones does not have to be a problem, as long as the good ones are more powerful on average.

Or, you can just accept that Evil's winning and deal with it. :smallamused:

[Deepbluediver]

Having twice as many evil gods than good ones does not have to be a problem, as long as the good ones are more powerful on average.
It's easy to imagine three powerful good gods who stand together and unite the people against the bickering cults of two dozen minor evil deities.
That's similar to how I always envisioned it- the evil gods are willing to go to greater lengths to achieve their ends, but they (and their servants) also don't cooperate nearly as well and have a tendency to betray each other at the first opportunity.

Edit: Reading the rest of the thread, that's what the OP decided to go with, I think.


There are also a couple of settings in which all gods are good, except for a single very powerful one.
LotR and Middle Earth being the most well-known one, I think.



In my own personal cosmology that I prefer to use, the gods mostly embody somewhat abstract concepts, and the most powerful is the god of power and ambition. But he's not destroy-the-world/chaotic-evil, and the runner up on deific power-level chart has a real hate-on for him. She would gladly fight him to the death, but he won't engage her in that manner because it would leave him weakened and vulnerable.
So essentially, the good deity doesn't have the power to destroy the evil one outright, and the evil WON'T put himself on the line to destroy the good one.

That's how I chose to explain it.

[Stoneback]

Monolithic evil is unrealistic. And it's always easier to get followers by offering to harm someone else in order to help the supplicant than it is to gain followers by telling them to eat their peas.

So, 9/8/16 sounds reasonable to me.

[Honest Tiefling]

I think that even if the evil gods are equally powerful, it'll be fine. A high number of evil gods means that there is more for heroes to do. Some settings have the issue that without the DM inventing a big baddie to destroy or threaten things, there isn't a lot for a ragtag group of heroes to do. And even if some evil gods could work together, there is still a lot of competition.

My concern would be more of how to not make it too dark if that wasn't your intention.

[Grytorm]

And you can have some of the evil gods not be particularly malicious and proactive. Just kind of a jerk.

[Millennium]

It's not necessarily a problem to have more Evil gods than Good ones. But it does mean that you need to come up with at least one reason why, given this, Evil hasn't won.

I say "at least one" because from a realistic standpoint, different churches probably have different explanations. Some might say that Good is inherently stronger or smarter. Others might say that Good is better at cooperation. Still others might point to an idea that Evil feeds on itself, granting short-term power that eventually fades: all you really need to do to beat it is to outlast it.

You can come up with interesting explanations for Evil churches too. Some, especially on the LE side, might claim that Good somehow cheats. Others might say that Good talks a better game to the masses, even though it ultimately fails to deliver. A few might even say that it just hasn't been prioritized; Evil will get around to it eventually, but there are more important things to deal with. Some could claim that Good is allowed to stick around and stay strong, because Evil needs opposition to build its strength upon and test that strength against.

The bottom line is that there's really no right or wrong when it comes to balancing Good and Evil deities, or not balancing them. The only trick is that you need your status quo to make sense in the minds of the characters, but that's only a matter of explanation. There are lots of ways you can do that.

[Scootaloo]

My question is, should I have an equal, or at least more equal, distribution of good versus evil? Or do you guys feel it is more a matter of having all the basic niches covered- because I feel like I have that done. I just had several evil concepts that I wanted to include.

As always, thanks a ton for any input guys. :)

if you want to emulate real-world religious practices to some degree, make the gods neutral. They have good aspects, they have evil aspects, they have lawful and chaotic ones, which all come togehter to add up to "neutral."

Where the slighment comes in is in the cleric - or hte religion's - perception of that god. Let's take the Egyptian god, Horus. He's a sun-god, regarded as pretty heroic and valiant and all that. So he has a hero-cult around him as the primary religion. Neutral good. There's a solar druid sect around him as well. True neutral. But he also raped and murdered his uncle Set, to avenge Set's murder of his father - so maybe there's an aspect of Horus worship that revolves around taking power over your enemies by any means necessary, and enshrines revenge as holy sacrament - Neutral evil. All three use the wadjet amulet as their holy symbol - so are you dealing with an adventuresome lawful good cleric, a pious and ascetic druid, or a scheming liar of a worshiper using you to get revenge on someone else?

Set, for his part, is kind of a basrtard in general... but he's also a god of hunting and the wilderness, and the power of storms. So one Set cult might be about dark magic and seizing power through dark methods... another might simply be a coastal society who reveres him as a guardian against storms, who fills their nets with fish without even a glance at his darker aspects.

[ZeroZeroStyx]

I think the most important think is that most of the aspects are covered.

I play Pathfinder and I created a barbarian pantheon of animal-like Spirit-gods. I ended up with one for each alignement, and another-one for true neutral, and made sure all the Pathfinder domains were covered by at least one god.

I think that the most important thing to have in mind is that a player will say "I believe my PC will be a follower of a god of (Insert here a concept)" and that you can tell them "Ok, this (or even better, these) God(s) seems to be the kind of god you wanna workship". Most of the players want their characters to workship gods of classical concepts, but you better be ready for anything they might throw at your face ! :smallwink: