PDA

View Full Version : Is there an official Neutral god?



The Eye
2017-05-22, 11:15 AM
Is there an official Neutral god, in the sense it's not a god of balance or a god who is not strongly pro or against good and evil but a God who believes that the notion of Good and evil is not real and must educate the other races that evil and good are nothing but perspectives? is there such thing?

It can be form anywhere, D&D, pathfinder, rela myths or any obscure literature books.

GungHo
2017-05-22, 12:08 PM
Is there an official Neutral god, i the sense it's not a god of balance or a god who is not strongly pro or against good and evil but a God who believes that the notion of Good and evil is not real and must educate the other races that evil and good are nothing but perspectives? is there such thing?

It can be form anywhere, D&D, pathfinder, rela myths or any obscure literature books.

Nothing i am really aware of in Pathfinder, Forgotten Realms, or Dragonlance.

Pathfinder Neutrals are more gods of nature or concepts. Nethys and Gozreh are close to "two halves of the same coin". Pharasma just wants a natural cycle of life.

FR neutrals are likewise natural or conceptual. The closest would have been Tyche before she was split, but she was joined as fate rather than a "this is all an illusion" thing.

Dragonlance neutrals just wanted to keep the universe balanced, as all good or all evil both lead to horrible consequences.

Darth Ultron
2017-05-22, 12:12 PM
I don't think so....good and evil ARE real in the game. They are not just ''made up things''. There are plenty of neutral gods, but none have that type of ''anything is whatever I say it is until I say it is not'' kind of real world thinking.

Red Fel
2017-05-22, 12:42 PM
Yeah, there are plenty of gods of balance, but technically, in any setting where objective morality is a thing, objective morality is a thing.

Now, a god of balance who avoids leaning Good or Evil for any number of reasons? There are plenty of those. Apathetic gods of knowledge. Opportunistic gods of mercantile. Equal-opportunity gods of death. But within any system where alignment is an explicit and quantifiable force, the only gods who would advocate the position of "Good and Evil are just constructs" are gods of madness, who are themselves in denial about the absolute fundamental forces of their universe.

Outside of settings with an objective alignment system, your question becomes meaningless. Where there are no objective measures of Good and Evil, there isn't a measure of Neutral either, and thus no Neutral deity to espouse those opinions.

The Eye
2017-05-22, 12:46 PM
That's what I thought. Thanks anyway.

Segev
2017-05-22, 01:04 PM
Io, the Concordant Dragon, is a neutral god of balance.

Boccob, the god of wizards and knowledge, is a neutral god of I-don't-care-about-morality-just-let-me-study-darn-it.

Eldan
2017-05-22, 01:11 PM
The Rilmani are outsiders who actively fight for neutrality. Sadly, they never got much material aside from a few mentions in Planescape.

tomandtish
2017-05-22, 04:43 PM
Is there an official Neutral god, in the sense it's not a god of balance or a god who is not strongly pro or against good and evil but a God who believes that the notion of Good and evil is not real and must educate the other races that evil and good are nothing but perspectives? is there such thing?

It can be form anywhere, D&D, pathfinder, rela myths or any obscure literature books.

As Red Fel noted, the issue isn't that there aren't gods of balance. There are a few.

The issue is that there aren't any balance gods who actively deny that good and evil are real. To do that would be to deny the actual nature of quite a few of the outer planes. In D&D, good and evil have objective weight, so a god that denied their existance would either be insane or so focused on their portfolio (which would not be balance) that they are apathetic everywhere else.

LibraryOgre
2017-05-22, 05:31 PM
This is something of a scenario that crops up in comics and annoys me to no end.

You have a cop in the standard DC or Marvel universe who encounters, say, a dragon corpse. He then denies that it could be a dragon corpse, because there's no such things as dragons. Like, Thor was literally interviewed on the news last night, after saving Earth from an invasion by trolls. Fin Fang Foom is a thing. And you're going to say that dragons don't exist and expect me to take you seriously?

HappyElf
2017-05-22, 05:53 PM
If you change it from "good and evil are constructs" to "good and evil are irrelevant and we should replace them with better systems", I guess Obad-Hai and Wee Jas are probably the closest of the greyhawk gods (which are the only ones I know)

Mr Beer
2017-05-22, 09:18 PM
This is something of a scenario that crops up in comics and annoys me to no end.

You have a cop in the standard DC or Marvel universe who encounters, say, a dragon corpse. He then denies that it could be a dragon corpse, because there's no such things as dragons. Like, Thor was literally interviewed on the news last night, after saving Earth from an invasion by trolls. Fin Fang Foom is a thing. And you're going to say that dragons don't exist and expect me to take you seriously?

Or in the X-files, Agent Scully saying 'well the explanation CAN'T be supernatural dammit!', when she's spent the last year or so meeting mutants, telekinetic ghosts, sentient AIs, mind-controlling aliens, werewolves etc.

Bohandas
2017-05-23, 10:41 AM
The closest thing I can think of in D&D is the heretical sect mentioned in the Dragon Magazine article on Hextor which held that Hextor and Heironeous were actually the same entity.

Closest thing I can think of in real world mysticism are the Keepers of the Sacred Chao, who hold this kind of belief not in regard to good and evil, but rather in regard to order and chaos, maintaining that order and chaos are so inextricably linked and entwined as to be essentially the same thing

Closest things I can think of in real world philosophy are moral relativism, cultural relativism, nihilism, and cosmicism.

Bohandas
2017-05-23, 10:49 AM
In D&D, good and evil have objective weight

Yes, but that doesn't necessarily make them any more philosophically meaningful than electromagnetism or gravity


This is something of a scenario that crops up in comics and annoys me to no end.

You have a cop in the standard DC or Marvel universe who encounters, say, a dragon corpse. He then denies that it could be a dragon corpse, because there's no such things as dragons. Like, Thor was literally interviewed on the news last night, after saving Earth from an invasion by trolls. Fin Fang Foom is a thing. And you're going to say that dragons don't exist and expect me to take you seriously?

IIRC this character archetype is known as a "flat earth atheist". Also, you left out the judge and the mayor's aide from Ghostbusters II.

SimonMoon6
2017-05-23, 11:08 AM
This is something of a scenario that crops up in comics and annoys me to no end.

You have a cop in the standard DC or Marvel universe who encounters, say, a dragon corpse. He then denies that it could be a dragon corpse, because there's no such things as dragons. Like, Thor was literally interviewed on the news last night, after saving Earth from an invasion by trolls. Fin Fang Foom is a thing. And you're going to say that dragons don't exist and expect me to take you seriously?

My favorite was when Batman, who has frequent encounters with Deadman (who is a ghost), later denied the existence of ghosts.

2D8HP
2017-05-23, 11:21 AM
While Law vs. Chaos came from Poul Anderson's Three Hearts & Three Lions, Michael Moorcock (who's stories popularized this claptrap) introduced The Cosmic Balance (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_and_Chaos#The_Cosmic_Balance) into the mix.

Bohandas
2017-05-23, 05:35 PM
I think the gods of the Cthulhu Mythos canonically existed in 1e D&D, (but they were later removed from for some reason. Not sure why; IIRC Lovecraft's stories were public domain by the time D&D came out and it can't have been because it was derivative to have them because they left in a lot of stuff that was highly derivative of other stuff).

Anyway the whole idea of the Cthulhu Mytbos is that good and evil are meaningless concepts. Though in D&D most of the deities did ping as evil.

veti
2017-05-23, 05:50 PM
I think the gods of the Cthulhu Mythos canonically existed in 1e D&D, (but they were later removed from for some reason. Not sure why; IIRC Lovecraft's stories were public domain by the time D&D came out and it can't have been because it was derivative to have them because they left in a lot of stuff that was highly derivative of other stuff).

Anyway the whole idea of the Cthulhu Mytbos is that good and evil are meaningless concepts. Though in D&D most of the deities did ping as evil.

The copyright status of Lovecraft's works is messy to this day. In the late 70s, when this was originally an issue, it was even more so. I think the bottom line was that Chaosium had paid Lovecraft's estate for the rights to gamify his works, and that left TSR with a tangled mess of both copyright and trademark issues that they just didn't have the stomach or lawyers to work through.

I would say that Lovecraft was a pioneer in pointing out the subjectivity of what we call "good" and "evil". To us, those concepts are defined very firmly in human terms. To a being who barely notices that humans even exist, it follows that from their perspective, our ideas of G&E are about as interesting as an ant's sense of duty to its colony. That doesn't stop them being monstrously evil from our point of view - it just forces us to admit that there's not a lot we can do about them.

Bohandas
2017-05-23, 07:58 PM
The copyright status of Lovecraft's works is messy to this day.

It can't be messy now. He died over 75 years ago, that means his work would be public domain by now even if the Mickey Mouse Protection Act had been in force back then.

S@tanicoaldo
2017-05-23, 08:22 PM
One of the Gods of Nehwon from the Fritz Leiber books was described as a god of Neutrality and law in the D&D book about Lankhmar.

But I have read all the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories and never saw that being refered in the original source.

I think that's the closest you can get.

2D8HP
2017-05-23, 08:30 PM
It can't be messy now. He died over 75 years ago, that means his work would be public domain, by now even if the Mickey Mouse Protection Act had been in force back then.


Arkham House Books had the rights back then, and so they stopped TSR from having the Cthullu Mythos after the second printing of Deities & Demi-Gods (I hope I can find my copy of the 1st printing in my parents house someday!).

Cthullu is mentioned (under Warlocks) in the 5e PHB now, but for many years TSR was trying to get out of accusations of D&D leading to "demon worship", so although Chaosium (who had the game rights from Arkham), said "go ahead, just give us a one line mention", TSR said, "naw forget it".

Also, both Chaosium and TSR both got permission from (then living) Fritz Leiber, and (still living) Michael Moorcock to use their creations, but TSR dropped Moorcock's Melnibonean pantheon, and Chaosium gave up Leiber's Newhon pantheon.

Moorcock is no-longer the mellow hippie he was, and I personally heard him say (at a book signing) how angry he was about letting games be made from his characters.

Herobizkit
2017-05-24, 05:09 AM
The 2e Complete Priest's Handbook had a True Neutral philosophy called the Divinity of Mankind.

"This is not a god, but a philosophy, and one so compelling that it generates magical energy
which priests of the philosophy can tap..."

This philosophy states that mankind (specifically, the human race, including half-elves reared
among humans, but excluding dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings) is nearly a divine being, and
should do as much as he can to achieve perfection: physical, mental, and emotional perfection,
always and in all ways. The philosophy encourages men to strive for the physical ideal and to
learn as much as possible of the world.

So that's the idea that the priests promote. They cooperate in all sorts of educational, artistic,
and competitive enterprises, seek to counsel people in every aspect of living their lives, and
provide sanctuaries for people to meditate on the priesthood's teachings.

Earthwalker
2017-05-24, 07:14 AM
DOOP: God of neutrality. Tell my wife I said.... Hello.

The Eye
2017-05-24, 08:21 AM
The 2e Complete Priest's Handbook had a True Neutral philosophy called the Divinity of Mankind.

"This is not a god, but a philosophy, and one so compelling that it generates magical energy
which priests of the philosophy can tap..."

This philosophy states that mankind (specifically, the human race, including half-elves reared
among humans, but excluding dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings) is nearly a divine being, and
should do as much as he can to achieve perfection: physical, mental, and emotional perfection,
always and in all ways. The philosophy encourages men to strive for the physical ideal and to
learn as much as possible of the world.

So that's the idea that the priests promote. They cooperate in all sorts of educational, artistic,
and competitive enterprises, seek to counsel people in every aspect of living their lives, and
provide sanctuaries for people to meditate on the priesthood's teachings.

Cool that's what I was looking for. Even better that is a philosophy and not a god. Thanks.

tomandtish
2017-05-24, 09:51 PM
I think the gods of the Cthulhu Mythos canonically existed in 1e D&D, (but they were later removed from for some reason. Not sure why; IIRC Lovecraft's stories were public domain by the time D&D came out and it can't have been because it was derivative to have them because they left in a lot of stuff that was highly derivative of other stuff).

Anyway the whole idea of the Cthulhu Mytbos is that good and evil are meaningless concepts. Though in D&D most of the deities did ping as evil.


The copyright status of Lovecraft's works is messy to this day. In the late 70s, when this was originally an issue, it was even more so. I think the bottom line was that Chaosium had paid Lovecraft's estate for the rights to gamify his works, and that left TSR with a tangled mess of both copyright and trademark issues that they just didn't have the stomach or lawyers to work through.


There were a lot of copyright issues with the first printing of 1980's Dieties & Demigods.

Cthulhu Mythos: TSR thought it was in the public domain. Turns out Arkham House had the rights to it, and had licensed them to Chaosium/

Melnebonian Mythos: TSR got rights (they thought) from Moorcock to use it. Turns out he had already licensed it to Chaosium as well.

The second printing of the 1st edition (also in 1980) creditied Chaosium for the use of Melnebonian Mythos (Cthulhu was still being argued). By 1981 the Cthulu issue had been settled (TSR did not have rights) and they didn't want to pay Chaosium any money, so they ran a second edition of the book without those two mythos.

Marlowe
2017-05-24, 09:55 PM
While Law vs. Chaos came from Poul Anderson's Three Hearts & Three Lions, Michael Moorcock (who's stories popularized this claptrap) introduced The Cosmic Balance (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_and_Chaos#The_Cosmic_Balance) into the mix.

The Andersen book is why Fey are Chaotic when, as nature spirits, it would make far more in-game sense if they were Neutral.

GentlemanVoodoo
2017-05-25, 02:02 PM
Op: Two gods from D&D that come to mind are Auppenser, a neutral god of psionics and forth editions Raven Queen. Or you could just make up your own.

Dorath
2017-06-05, 04:41 AM
Primus, The One and the Prime, lord of modrons and ruler of Nirvana. Known for enforcing strict law and order over the plane, and punishing any that would disrupt it, regardless of alignment.

Segev
2017-06-05, 03:46 PM
Primus, The One and the Prime, lord of modrons and ruler of Nirvana. Known for enforcing strict law and order over the plane, and punishing any that would disrupt it, regardless of alignment.

He's LN, not TN. From the OP, I get the impression he's looking for TN.

Wraith
2017-06-06, 03:36 AM
This is something of a scenario that crops up in comics and annoys me to no end.

You have a cop in the standard DC or Marvel universe who encounters, say, a dragon corpse. He then denies that it could be a dragon corpse, because there's no such things as dragons. Like, Thor was literally interviewed on the news last night, after saving Earth from an invasion by trolls. Fin Fang Foom is a thing. And you're going to say that dragons don't exist and expect me to take you seriously?

To be fair, this is not as self-defeating as it immediately sounds because the Marvel and DC universes are so rife with weird things.

There's Magic, and Shape-Shifters, and Psychics who can project images, and Hypnotists, and Hologramatic-Projection Technology..... Any one of those things can explain the appearance of what looks like a Dragon without actually being a Dragon. To see Thor fighting trolls is not automatically proof of the existence of Dragons.
One would have to be very narrow minded, short-sighted and impressively sceptical to NOT jump to that conclusion, of course - if there's something as incredible as magic, then why not Dragons also? - but logically speaking it's not an entirely unreasonable state of mind to disbelieve until specific and verified evidence is provided, if only to rule out the alternatives. :smallsmile:

Starshade
2017-06-06, 06:11 AM
I had the impression this isn't strictly only about game gods; I can find something from real life Asia, if you want histories about divine beings who don't believe good and evil really exist. Also maybe a few philosophers, some historical, a few maybe even alive. :smallsmile:
In D&D; I assume the "no good and evil" makes such a deity more fit for Eberron, where the system allows a lot of ambiguity.

Beleriphon
2017-06-06, 11:45 AM
This is something of a scenario that crops up in comics and annoys me to no end.

You have a cop in the standard DC or Marvel universe who encounters, say, a dragon corpse. He then denies that it could be a dragon corpse, because there's no such things as dragons. Like, Thor was literally interviewed on the news last night, after saving Earth from an invasion by trolls. Fin Fang Foom is a thing. And you're going to say that dragons don't exist and expect me to take you seriously?

Its not a magical D&D dragon. Its an alien that looks like a dragon, or a bioengineered something but dang it isn't a magical D&D style dragon.

Psyren
2017-06-07, 09:22 AM
Cool that's what I was looking for. Even better that is a philosophy and not a god. Thanks.

Well heck, if you were okay with a philosophy that makes this much easier. You didn't even need that obscure 2e one, your PC could have just invented one and begun worshiping it.


Yes, but that doesn't necessarily make them any more philosophically meaningful than electromagnetism or gravity

The point is that they don't have to be philosophically meaningful. They exist. Your post is like saying "life and death have no philosophical meaning." Even if that statement is true, you still have to acknowledge that those things exist, and to do otherwise is insanity. Thus, there are no gods who reject the very concept of life and death.

Since a philosophy can grant spells though (which seems to be what the OP is truly after) then that's okay.



Anyway the whole idea of the Cthulhu Mytbos is that good and evil are meaningless concepts. Though in D&D most of the deities did ping as evil.

Because most of those entities and their followers take it a step further. "Good and evil are meaningless, therefore sapient life's desire to self-determinate is irrelevant" is where they cross the line. If they stuck only to killing each other and driving each other insane, way over there somewhere, they'd be neutral.

Devils_Advocate
2017-07-08, 08:46 AM
Oh, well, if you're looking for philosophies, the Bleak Cabal from Planescape are pretty heavily nihilistic. Sure, good and evil exist, but you're not supposed to be good, or lawful, or anything. Nothing is supposed to do anything and nothing means anything.

Insistence upon nihilism is fairly weird for any character, though, whether mortal or divine, since by their own admission nihilism isn't objectively better than anything else. (Which isn't to say that you can't insist upon your philosophy based on something other than its purported objective superiority; it's just that that's so standard that anything else is rather unusual.)

Kind of like how it's weird to want to get a bunch of people who don't exist to fictitiously believe in solipsism. But then, I guess when nothing is real you start taking all the figments of your imagination pretty seriously, huh?

Planescape has a solipsistic faction too, incidentally: the Sign of One. And the Divinity of Mankind sounds pretty close to the Believers in the Source, too, except for the racism...

I definitely advise reading up on the Planescape factions if you're interested in ideologies that have nothing to do with alignment.

Eldan
2017-07-09, 07:02 AM
Because most of those entities and their followers take it a step further. "Good and evil are meaningless, therefore sapient life's desire to self-determinate is irrelevant" is where they cross the line. If they stuck only to killing each other and driving each other insane, way over there somewhere, they'd be neutral.


Then, whispered Castro, those first men formed the cult around small idols which the Great Ones shewed them; idols brought in dim aeras from dark stars. That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return.

If that's not chaotic evil, nothing is.

Pugwampy
2017-07-09, 10:16 AM
The Dice Gods are the one true neutral gods and the Dungeon Master is their prophet .

RedMage125
2017-07-10, 02:29 AM
The 2e Complete Priest's Handbook had a True Neutral philosophy called the Divinity of Mankind.

"This is not a god, but a philosophy, and one so compelling that it generates magical energy
which priests of the philosophy can tap..."

This philosophy states that mankind (specifically, the human race, including half-elves reared
among humans, but excluding dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings) is nearly a divine being, and
should do as much as he can to achieve perfection: physical, mental, and emotional perfection,
always and in all ways. The philosophy encourages men to strive for the physical ideal and to
learn as much as possible of the world.

So that's the idea that the priests promote. They cooperate in all sorts of educational, artistic,
and competitive enterprises, seek to counsel people in every aspect of living their lives, and
provide sanctuaries for people to meditate on the priesthood's teachings.
That's funny, because my buddy once ran an epic game , more like a prologue to his main story he was going to start, set hundreds of years in the past (since people rarely get to play with Epic rules). My characters (because we all made several) were all Ur-Priests, part of an organization called Der Bruderschaft Der Mensch (German for Brotherhood of Man, or Mankind). They adhered to a philosophy like this. only they took it a step farther, and believed that all of the "gods" of the D&D were simply very powerful mortals who had seized upon this power mentioned in the philosophy, and it was because of them that there was death, disease and so on in the mortal plane. They would, as Ur-priests, STEAL this power from these "great liars and deceivers", in an effort to weaken them, and raise mankind to its true, immortal, potential.

And they referred to all clerics as "godslave". They were fun.


The Dice Gods are the one true neutral gods and the Dungeon Master is their prophet .

And they do exist! I have witnessed their power! My very first time as a DM, one of my players (who had read some FR novels, but never played before) made a 1/2 drow ranger who dual-wielded scimitars. I was rolling in the open (did not yet even own a DM screen), and, at level one, got critically hit with a hobgoblin's halberd (1d10+something times 3). He died instantly. The Dice Gods had spoken, and his character needed to die.

Eldan
2017-07-10, 03:02 AM
Der Bruderschaft Der Mensch

That translates as "The Brotherhood and The Man". What you want is "Die Bruderschaft des Menschen". Sounds still weird ,though. Maybe "Bruderschaft der Menschen", "Brotherhood of Men". Still sounds like an 18th century student fraternity with a lot of drinking, but at least works grammatically.

TheManicMonocle
2017-07-10, 04:49 AM
Arguments can be made that Cthulu is true neutral, but first you'd have to win the argument that Cthulu counts as a god.

It is mentioned in a few stories that Cthulu wishes his followers to deny morality.

Eldan
2017-07-10, 05:00 AM
Arguments can be made that Cthulu is true neutral, but first you'd have to win the argument that Cthulu counts as a god.

It is mentioned in a few stories that Cthulu wishes his followers to deny morality.

Yes, but in D&D, denying objective morality so you can go around gleefully murdering everything you see is Chaotic Evil.

Now, you can argue that the Old Ones themselves aren't actually like that, but the Cult of Cthulhu is definitely CE.

Max_Killjoy
2017-07-10, 08:52 AM
The 2e Complete Priest's Handbook had a True Neutral philosophy called the Divinity of Mankind.

"This is not a god, but a philosophy, and one so compelling that it generates magical energy
which priests of the philosophy can tap..."

This philosophy states that mankind (specifically, the human race, including half-elves reared
among humans, but excluding dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings) is nearly a divine being, and
should do as much as he can to achieve perfection: physical, mental, and emotional perfection,
always and in all ways. The philosophy encourages men to strive for the physical ideal and to
learn as much as possible of the world.

So that's the idea that the priests promote. They cooperate in all sorts of educational, artistic,
and competitive enterprises, seek to counsel people in every aspect of living their lives, and
provide sanctuaries for people to meditate on the priesthood's teachings.

Anyone interested in expanding on this for their setting, look to Greek humanist philosophy (Classical and Hellenistic periods).

Max_Killjoy
2017-07-10, 08:56 AM
Arguments can be made that Cthulu is true neutral, but first you'd have to win the argument that Cthulu counts as a god.

It is mentioned in a few stories that Cthulu wishes his followers to deny morality.

"Denying morality" broadly comes to two flavors... overstatement of rejection of an ossified and stifling morality, or claiming morality doesn't exist in order to open the door to actual evil.

Jay R
2017-07-10, 09:11 PM
A god of, "Hey, man, whatever."

If I had one in my universe, I'd name him Zonker.