[3.X] Gods, angels, demons (and other fantastical creatures) in modern fantasy

[Amiel]

Gods, angels, demons (and other fantastical creatures) manifest wholesale in our modern-day world; please assume D&D or PF deities and cosmology.
What forms would they take?
What professions would they work in?
Would they adopt a guise?
How would they influence the world?

[hamishspence]

Urban Fantasy fiction might be a good place to start. A god (Odin) is CEO of a big security company in the Dresden Files series. In Urban Arcana, a demon (Bael) is also in big business.

[Cheers]

I'm not entirely sure how each individual deity would express itself but I think I know how the world would respond.

MASS. CHAOS. In one fell swoop all fundamental physics are disproven. Conservation of energy becomes a mere footnote with creatures capable of teleporting, granting whishes etc....
Pilgrims would travel from all over the world to be witness to their chosen deity, to receive their blessings, or to beg/pray for a miracle. Every nation in the world is going to try find a way to persuade said deities to support them. The entire economical/political world stage is going to be overturned depending on who these deities are going to support.
Religious tensions are going to skyrocket! In religious countries laws will be overturned based on the whim of their patron deity. New religions will be formed (for unknown gods) and old religions will fall (for gods now known to not exist).

On a more ethical level comes the question of the afterlife. If hell is proven to exist, would people still risk breaking holy laws? If heaven is proven to exist, how would we view death? Would we quickly envy the dead knowing, for certain, they are in paradise? Would this lead to mass suicide? A great many would become fanatic believers of their chosen deity overnight at least.

If you assume the gods to be mortal, it becomes easier to think of them as WMDs (or supermen). The country that has most can exert enormous amounts of pressure on others up until the MAD scenario sets in. It would most likely result in an arms race with countries either having the support of a deity, or ammasing enough firepower to compensate for the lack thereof. Maybe a new cold-war, This time more about religion than culture.

This is all just a quick 5 minute speculation of course. The real consequences are probably far more pronounced and intricate than this. Consider ithis a musing and little more.

*EDIT: removing spelling errors

[Erik Vale]

Not quite the above, but pretty much.

And evil being as it's displayed normally, said period of chaos would occur and anyone that didn't then get to hyper defended self supporting cities guarded by angels/etc quickly dies.

[Doorhandle]

I'm not entirely sure how each individual deity would express itself but I think I know how the world would respond.

MASS. CHAOS. In one fell swoop all fundamental physics are disproven. Conservation of energy becomes a mere footnote with creatures capable of teleporting, granting whishes etc....
Pilgrims would travel from all over the world to be witness to their chosen deity, to receive their blessings, or to beg/pray for a miracle. Every nation in the world is going to try find a way to persuade said deities to support them. The entire economical/political world stage is going to be overturned depending on who these deities are going to support.
Religious tensions are going to skyrocket! In religious countries laws will be overturned based on the whim of their patron deity. New religions will be formed (for unknown gods) and old religions will fall (for gods now known to not exist).

On a more ethical level comes the question of the afterlife. If hell is proven to exist, would people still risk breaking holy laws? If heaven is proven to exist, how would we view death? Would we quickly envy the dead knowing, for certain, they are in paradise? Would this lead to mass suicide? A great many would become fanatic believers of their chosen deity overnight at least.

If you assume the gods to be mortal, it becomes easier to think of them as WMDs (or supermen). The country that has most can exert enormous amounts of pressure on others up until the MAD scenario sets in. It would most likely result in an arms race with countries either having the support of a deity, or ammasing enough firepower to compensate for the lack thereof. Maybe a new cold-war, This time more about religion than culture.

This is all just a quick 5 minute speculation of course. The real consequences are probably far more pronounced and intricate than this. Consider ithis a musing and little more.

*EDIT: removing spelling errors

This would pretty much be the result, but I would;t say it would necessarily disprove conservation of mass or completely destroy the old religions. For one, said beings could be taking energy from elsewhere or an unknown source, and they may consider the gods, powerful as they are, to merely be powerful beings rather than the one truly ommicent deity.

What I would like to see is the sort of enchantments you would put on a machine-gun...

[Erik Vale]

Yes, I'd like to see a Conductive Energy [Cold, to cool the barrels and provide unlimited ammo] light machine gun wielded by a warlock [For damage of xdy cold for the bullet + EB damage per bullet]. The cooling would allow you to fire non-stop.
Add distance and it becomes more of an artillery piece. Cast it on the gun with the highest rounds/sec you can find [in the case it's not a LMG]
*Serach*
Ok, it seems to be the M134 Minigun, so the warlock will probably need a tripod, but he gets 600 attacks per round, probably doing something along the line of 3d8 cold + EB per bullet. Anyone want to be on the receiving end? Because even ethereal a level 1 warlock would turn you into so much mist... However someone with infinite deflection would be perfectly fine due to the horrible attack penalties that would be applied, as long as 1's don't count as failures, in which case statistically you'll be hit every 400th shot assuming the warlock needs a 20 to hit and you a 1 to fail... And that'll be 3 hits every 2 rounds which is still rather painful, and probably more than the warlock could natively put out.

Oh, and does anyone remember that limbo resident from PF that, if it kills you, explicitly breaks you down into a mass of neutrons, protons and electrons, the one we decided best case would effectively cause a neutron-bomb like explosion. And being a chaos resident it probably didn't care about radiation... The world gets quite thoroughly nuked as part of these events.