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I mean, the gods of Golarion can, as they are presented in various rule books of Pathfinder, directly interact with the mortal world. They can send heralds and other minions to do their bidding, they can create miracles (why would they always wait for a high level cleric to ask them for it?), etc. Why don't gods take a more active role in shaping the world they took a part in creating? During the entire course of Golarion's history, there is barely a mention of gods taking part in mortal lives. Sure, I know about Aroden, but there are many other gods, too! If Abadar wants citys, why dosen't he come down to earth and direct the efforts to urbanize the world? if Zon Kuthon wants pain, why dosen't he just cause endless torment to every living thing with his power? if Serenrea wants justice, why dosen't she send her heralds to lead the army of her followers?
In short, why do gods hold back and not just get what they want? they are, you know, gods :P
Repercussions. Any direct divine intervention would provoke a like reaction from one or more opposing deities. Imagine what would happen to world then?
Mutually assured destruction. If one of the major gods meddles in the affairs of mortals, than more will, each one further breaking the threshhold on what is considered "too much meddling" at the time. With so many powerful gods with various spheres of influence that other gods may or may not be against (Abadar vs Gozreh, Sarenrae vs Asmodeus), as well as alliances and hatreds (All the good gods versus various evil gods), it'd implode on itself with holy wars and gods fighting gods and that kind of war would shatter the face of Golarion as we know it. As we've seen with the fight against Rovagug, the greatest of the gods want to keep this world in tact for their own purposes, instead using subterfuge and their minions to do their bidding without causing too much trouble. For example, Cheliax being tempted by their diabolic masters, or, for a lot less subtle, the Worldwound and the Demon Lord invasion. Mind you, demon lords are a lot less powerful than the full-fledged gods, so there is a large difference between Deskari making the incursion and Lamashtu.
It's why countries these days don't just invade or nuke enemy countries, instead using espionage and flimsy reasons to go to war. With that much power on all sides, you want to be more surgical, subtle, and above all, have people on your side.
Repercussions. Any direct divine intervention would provoke a like reaction from one or more opposing deities. Imagine what would happen to world then?
So the God's version of the MAD docterine?
Would make sense to me. Does also bring up some interesting character ideas: Cold War Spy like characters ....
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It's why countries these days don't just invade or nuke enemy countries, instead using espionage and flimsy reasons to go to war. With that much power on all sides, you want to be more surgical, subtle, and above all, have people on your side.
Except that gods are very different from countries in one very important aspect - what they are risking is not their own existance, but just thier tools in the mortal world.
Besides, according to your own logic, why would gods grant mortal their power at all? why would a cleric be able to cast spells in the first place? When a cleric casts "Miracle", a god will provide her with the devine power she needs. So are gods playing a game at making strong enpugh clerics to cast miracles through? (kind of like trying yo get your pawn to the opposing side in chess to make it into a queen?) There's no evidance of that, either. It seems that in the established, official Golarion lore, gods are VERY passive... they are just sitting back and allowing mortals to try and sort things out amongst themselves.
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It's why countries these days don't just invade or nuke enemy countries, instead using espionage and flimsy reasons to go to war. With that much power on all sides, you want to be more surgical, subtle, and above all, have people on your side.Except that gods are very different from countries in one very important aspect - what they are risking is not their own existence, but just their tools in the mortal world.
Besides, according to your own logic, why would gods grant mortal their power at all? why would a cleric be able to cast spells in the first place? When a cleric casts "Miracle", a god will provide her with the divine power she needs. So are gods playing a game at making strong enough clerics to cast miracles through? (kind of like trying yo get your pawn to the opposing side in chess to make it into a queen?) There's no evidence of that, either. It seems that in the established, official Golarion lore, gods are VERY passive... they are just sitting back and allowing mortals to try and sort things out amongst themselves.
Except that all of the gods save Rovagug either need souls (Asmodeus to run Hell's bureaucracy or Lamashtu to keep making demon larvae) or value life enough to want to protect it and free will in their own way. It's somewhat like the containment policy of the Cold War. While these gods don't want to simply step in themselves for each and every planet, they do want to make sure that they become a facet of a life-form's culture and religion. And so that's where clerics come in. They are the agents of each deity and are "legal" as far as divine intervention goes because mortals are making their own decisions on who to venerate and whose word they should spread. And the heralds generally act more as intermediaries between worshipers and their gods, but again, when they act on their god's will, it's still a lower (and thus, more acceptable) amount of power and influence than if the god intervened themselves.
A bigger play into this comes from Book of the Damned 1: Princes of Darkness, where many of the good deities banded together against Asmodeus to fight for the free will of all life forms. Good deities tend to try and spread worship without actively forcing people into their with shows of strength and direct intervention sans miracle. Now, good deities are more likely to work together and it would be rare for, say Erastil, to sabotage Cayden. It's about the same with evil deities minus the sabotaging of each other. No god wants to fight a war on all fronts. Yet all gods, in their own way, want to make sure that each city on each country on each planet in the Material Plane is on their side and against the enemy (generally good vs evil).
Now, you mentioned that they aren't risking their existence, but, they are! When Aroden was killed, it showed that gods can be killed. Remember, while he was the least of the gods, he was still a full-fledged god, not a mere demigod. So now, any god that decides to meddle directly and walk the planet like Aroden did puts themselves at risk of being killed by whatever obliterated Aroden.
Except that gods are very different from countries in one very important aspect - what they are risking is not their own existance, but just thier tools in the mortal world.
Except in the Pathfinder setting a god can be destroyed (die). And they can be killed by other gods. So if there were open warfare amoung the gods it not only would cause grave damage to the world, but I would expect some gods to cease to exist.
Balance. The gods balance each other's power.
Because Gods are also mysterious. Their plans and goals are - while not utterly beyond the comprehension of mortals - longer ranging than what can be garnered by the results of immediate, direct and confrontational power-plays. The Gods are capable of subtlety, and the scale of their endeavors is bigger than "DO IT NOW."
They're also the shepherds of their purviews. Their job is encouraging mortals to embody the elements for which they stand. If you want to teach a child, you provide an example, but then you let the child do it themselves. Followers don't learn if you do all the heavy lifting for them.
Ham-fisted, immediate and overt displays of direct power are not conducive to either of these goals. The Gods are playing the long game.
Also, because your suggestion is extremely deprotagonising.
Or maybe their power is exaggerated? After all, for what we know they could be much less powerful than their worshipers claim.
Also, the various books imply that the outer planes are in a continual state of conflict. The Gods spend a fair amount of time seeing to the upkeep and defense of their domains, as well as planar politics.
Or maybe their power is exaggerated? After all, for what we know they could be much less powerful than their worshipers claim.
Given that the power scale of deities in Golarion has generally been stated to be "Powerful enough that we don't plan to stat them," this seems unlikely.
Though we know they can be killed.
Not having the stats is not the same as being all-powerful. Or even very powerful.
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Not having the stats is not the same as being all-powerful. Or even very powerful.
It is when the stated reasons have generally been because the power of straight up deities is beyond the scope of what the system can generally mechanically represent at this point. The Gods aren't statted because their power is beyond the scope of most pathfinder games. The devs have essentially made statements to this effect in the past.
You can run with the idea that Gods are actually weak, but that's not the canon interpretation.
I also didn't say "all-powerful." Gods can be killed. This is also canon. It's rare enough, however, that a God's death has only happened a handful of times, and usually it's at the hands of something of equivalent power.
Reality in Pathfinder is a balance of forces. If the gods start to exercise the power to warp that balance, and even start to destroy worlds, how far can they go before they bring everything - even themselves- crashing down as that balance is tipped? The gods are not infallible- the need for mortal champions proves that. So in any contest between them it becomes a board game upon the mortal realms, with the added complexity that the board pieces have the free will to pick which side they want to play for (or even decide not to play!). And the gods risk everything by playing, but they can't NOT play. By giving up the board, they risk becoming one of the forgotten gods and simply fading away.
They are both the most powerful and powerless entities in the game.
Or you can go by what JJ said...
Golarion is an egg shell taped together around a nuclear explosion. It is also just one of countless worlds each god has interest invested in. So they may have bigger things to deal with than Golarion at this moment, and also don't want to accidentally wake up ol' grumpy Rovagug.
I think this is it exactly. What is it that all of the gods of Golarion (well, except Groteus, but I don't think he really wants to end the world so much as he's got a lawnchair, a beer and a fiddle ready for when it does) have in common? A desire to see the Rough Beast remain in his prison. It isn't just that the gods are afraid to move against each other because they are afraid of the consequences of the gloves coming off. It's that they are terrified that those consequences might include the release of Rovagug. You know, the world eater? The godslayer? The one thing known that is so powerful that several gods had to band together just to bind him?
Golarion is an egg shell taped together around a nuclear explosion. It is also just one of countless worlds each god has interest invested in. So they may have bigger things to deal with than Golarion at this moment, and also don't want to accidentally wake up ol' grumpy Rovagug.
Or end like him.
@James Jacobs: Yeah, please don't publish rules for deities.
Creative Director
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Take a look at what happened when one good god decided to use an overt act of power: Desna killed the demon lord Aolar...and she almost started a planar war.
That's an excellent example of why the gods don't get personally involved in things.
When a god gets involved in the affairs of things less powerful, be that a deity getting involved in the affairs of a demigod (as was the case for Desna, or as was the case for Aolar who personally stepped in to kill one of Desna's worshipers, which was the start of that escalation), or a deity stepping in to crush a mere mortal, that tends to get the other deities worked up and angry too.
Kinda the same reason we've not blown ourselves up with nuclear bombs, really. It's always a possibility, and we've come close a lot of times, but so far we've managed to avoid it as a race simply by resisting that urge for mutually assured codestruction.
I would also note that playing as an adventurer where a deity would just step down and solve problems directly would be pretty boring. What's the point of rolling up a group of adventurers to fight the undead hordes if Iomedae just showed up and did it for you?
Kthulhu wrote:
Does that make Desna the Kim Jong-il of the good gods?
JJ:No.
LOL!
If you stat something PC's will try and kill it. It made a joke of deities in dnd.
Deities don't meddle because opposing deities will counter and soon it will escalate into religious wars. Deities, in other games, increase in power do to the number of people that worship them. Religious wars only hurt them in scope of power leaving them vulnerable to other deities.
Besides when kids fight over their toys usually the toy justs gets broken.
Clerical powers, however, are good promotional abilities.
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Until we publish actual rules for how deities work, there won't be a reason why the gods don't use more of their power.
Which is in and of itself a good reason NOT to publish deity rules.
Because the deities need to work in mysterious ways.
This is an excellent example of a well-thought personal opinion on the subject.
Of course, if it represents Paizo's official stance on the topic, then it kind of leaves everyone with a different opinion wanting.
As Creative Director, more often than not there's no difference between personal opinion and what we end up doing for Golarion.
AKA: We can't publish an infinite number of books to appeal to all possible play styles. Although it certainly feels like we're trying to some weeks! ;-)
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Why not have a more direct hand in shaping the world?
A few reasons come to mind that I didn't read here.
1)Because mankind is doing a pretty good job already.
Why be directly involved in something that a work force of millions already does? All you have to do is gift spells to the clergy, offer guidance to the most faithful, and on occasion throw out something that displays your power. The followers of the gods are doing a great job at doing what they are told to do, and thus removing most of the need of the gods to be directly active.
2)Because being directly involved creates bad followers.
If you had a child and you did everything for them, you made a big deal out of every time they got hurt, and you gave them everything they wanted you have a spoiled child. If Abadar came down and built all the cities, or if Gorum fought all the wars, that would spoil their followers. Doing too much for your followers creates followers who do not know how to do anything for themselves. This could mean that you actually lose your followers because they won't really be able to do anything to be considered faithful enough to enter your realm after death.
3)Because allowing the followers to do almost everything creates awesome followers.
Lets face it, the truly faithful, loyal, and devote followers are the ones who will do anything for their gods. If you do just enough to show your influence and offer guidance to people who ask for it and will truly follow it, you can foster and grow followers into powerhouses. Now, the every day follower won't be becoming anything history will remember in their lifetime, but that is just human nature. A large group can also be fostered to be something amazing. Look at Nidal or Mendev for good examples of nations packed full of followers who are doing some pretty fanatical things for their god. Lastly, powerhouse fanatics inspire and influence potential powerhouse fanatics.
4)If a potential war in heaven starts up, you want to train and build an army as soon as you can.
This is related to #3. By using mortal life as a training ground you can train your army early. When your followers die and make it to your realm in the planes, you don't have to do a whole lot of direct action to prepare them as soldiers against your enemies. The best of them you can make into heralds and powerful planar allies. If you used too much direct influence in the mortal life, you have #2 as problem, and you will either have a weak army or no army at all when the war breaks out.
*Edit: Added #4*
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They do. All the time. Constantly.
You just never notice.
God Entity: Bender, being God isn't easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you. And if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch, like a safecracker or a pickpocket.
Bender: Or a guy who burns down a bar for the insurance money.
God Entity: Yes, if you make it look like an electrical thing. When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
Let's assume there is a god for whom one of her domains is "courage". Does it matter if she appears in all her glory to sway the course of a battle? It might to humanity, but to the gods, the deity of courage hasn't accomplished much.
Imagine you're a parent at your child's softball game. Do you jump in when they're at bat and hit the ball for them? No, you want THEM to hit the ball. Thus, the Deity of Courage would want those soldiers on the battlefield to find their own courage, because it validates her as a deity. They are "creating" something by being courageous, and she is made all the more important thereby.
I like to think the Prime Material Plane is where the deities make things "real". It's the ultimate game.
Got into this bit of nonsense with Greenwood three decades back. Told him if you allowed gods to get killed, parties would find that was the thing to do. In the 90s, I heard that a convention panel was held on how to kill specific FR gods and a poll was taken as to how many gods a party had killed! Ed was supposed to be in the audience.
I laughed.
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Dot.
(Still totally wishing for god-stats, though.)
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The butterfly Effect theory
The gods are in fact all doing everything they can to shape the world but not in as overt means as mortals might recognize. From the perspective of the divine small minute events ripple into other events which in turn trigger more events down the chain.
The gods spend most of their time and power starting small ripples and countering the ripples effects of their peers. The game is so complex and on such a scale that it defies mortal comprehension.
The butterfly Effect theory
The gods are in fact all doing everything they can to shape the world but not in as overt means as mortals might recognize. From the perspective of the divine small minute events ripple into other events which in turn trigger more events down the chain.
The gods spend most of their time and power starting small ripples and countering the ripples effects of their peers. The game is so complex and on such a scale that it defies mortal comprehension.
They do. All the time. Constantly.
You just never notice.
God Entity: Bender, being God isn't easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you. And if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch, like a safecracker or a pickpocket.
Bender: Or a guy who burns down a bar for the insurance money.
God Entity: Yes, if you make it look like an electrical thing. When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
A combination of the above two, along with the "Cold War" analogy, and a "What happens when a large number of opposing creatures have the power to instantly do anything and everything they want, but instantly negate everything that everyone else does that they don't want, and each of them always "goes first" at the same time?" (Answer: not much of anything, except on what a slim majority agree on) is generally how I look at it.
This means that since (at least) a slim majority think it's "cool" to give pawns/mortals powers in exchange for worship and let them partially decide the fates of the worlds, than such a thing works.
The thing is many of them are likely doing the super-power thing super-subtly, to try and sneak things past each other while trying to negate the super-power things the others are doing at the same time.
Because being super-obvious about it would be pretty awful and escalate things much too quickly and then worlds start cracking apart and Rough Beasts start getting free and no one wants that.
... at least they would be if Golarion cannon ever goes that route. :)
Also, the CalebTGordon answer is a pretty good answer.
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The gods can't do everything even if they wanted to. The president of a large corporation runs the business, but he doesn't do every job. He can't. He delegates authority because he can't be in all places at all times doing all things.
Look at Aroden's first herald. He lets her watch the shop just once while he's overseas setting up new contacts and BANG! Dead herald. Now he's gotta go out and put an add in the paper advertising the open position, wade through endless reams of out of work loser wannabes trying to get in on the "godthing". He was lucky to get Iomedae, sure, girls got major issues but at least she's trainable. And of course theres the time effort and cost of training the newbie in the hopes they don't foul up like the last one.
No. Gods aren't just gonna jump in and start micro-managing everything. It doesn't work for mortals, it doesn't work for them. Besides, dying for a cause is something mortals do, not gods.
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Because the Gods are busy cavorting and stealing your marvellous sunset city, oh, and they're kind of afraid of you master dreamer...
Now hop on this giant, scaly bird-horse-monster and I'll show you the truth of the Divine. No, really...
I wonder if the normal Gods have any say in a place like Leng when their silly followers decide to go chasing dragons...
I sometimes think it's too bad we carry around this modern notion that the gods have to sit, sidelined while the human world figures it self out. Yes, it understandably mirrors our understanding of a practical, logical world where non-weather, non-natural disaster cause-and-effect are largely human-made (as opposed to your basic random cosmic event, such as meteors and solar rays) and are all around us, every day.
But that is a modern concept. To ancient peoples, the Greeks, for instance, the gods got involved all the time, and even though the result was often disastrous, it didn't stop them.
One of the best campaigns we ever ran, was one where I wrote a largely high fantasy world, with elves and what-not, but with certain Greek and Norse gods very, very involved in the goings-on in the world. All manner of power and chaos and craziness occurred, but it was a lot of fun. Once you get over the initial fear that the gods will somehow "take over" you realize they really are no more potent to your story than are any other high level NPCs, or characters in authority. They come and go capriciously, hand out quests and rewards, sometimes mess up fantastically with hilarious results, and generally can be used to move things along without any kind of railroading. You just need to let the players sort out what they want from the gods, and then you can have fun with their expectations.
Yes, you have to be careful about what the gods give as rewards. It changes the nature of what those rewards can be (occasional "get out of jail free" cards in the form of contingency spells or a temporary power, as opposed to gold or similar wealth). But it doesn't have to break the game, and it can be a lot of fun.
The cool thing is, none of the players balked. They remembered their Jason and the Argonauts movies, and some of them knew a lot about the gods concerned, so they understood that it was like one of those old Greek myths, where gods showed up and caused trouble. They really enjoyed themselves.
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I would just like to point out that a lot of gods *do* get involved with mortal affairs from time to time. Here are a few examples from Pathfinder supplements and fiction (in roughly chronological order):
*Ydersius personally led the armies of the serpentfolk against Azlant, only to be slain by a mortal.
*Zon-Kuthon stepped in and protected an entire nation of people from the horrors of the Age of Darkness in exchange for their eternal obedience.
*Nethys, in his early days as a god, took a personal interest in the rulers of his adoped homeland of Osirion, helping them to defeat Ulunat and later driving the second pharaoh insane, leading to the destruction of his own main temple.
*Ahriman (the demigod lord of the Divs) intervened in a war between Osirion and the Jistka Imperium in exchange for a really snazzy palace.
*Achaekek has personally bumped off various mortals on the cusp of achieving godhood. Why he allows some to succeed is anyone's guess, as none of the other deities seem to actually give orders to the Mantis God.
*Aroden did a whole lot of really dramatic stuff both as an immortal demigod-ish human and after his ascencion, and was believed to continue to walk Golarion over the following centuries under a number of mortal guises.
*The mummy Walkena (who seems to be godly enough to empower clerics) miraculously rose after millennia of inactivity on the eve of an invasion of Mzali by Sargavan forces and destroyed the invaders with fire from the heavens.
*Desna caused a minor miracle to save the (former) Pathfinder Eando Kline and prevent the re-awakening of untold numbers of ancient serpentfolk.
*An earthbound goddess of fireflies (whose name escapes me) scourged the Rechsend Plains in the Mwangi Expanse with an unstoppable plague of killer fireflies until her erstwhile progeny (who was incarnated as a young boy at the time) was brought to her.
That's just the examples I could think of right now, but hopefully I've made my point. Deities and demigods don't *constantly* intervene in the affairs of mortals, but they certainly do step in from time to time, and probably far more often than the world at large realizes.
The reason you don't see gods walking the earth very often anymore might have something to do with the number that have gotten killed over the years. Ydersius was beheaded by a mortal (though he's only semi-dead... not even mostly dead, really, since he can still grant spells), at least two Azlanti deities (Acavna and Amaznen) somehow died around the time of the earthfall, Shelyn's mother (the former goddess of love) died at some point, Lamashtu ambushed and killed Curchanus, and so on and so forth. Aroden is just the latest example of a disturbing trend, and the other gods may have learned to tread carefully lest they be next.
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There was also a movement in Ancient Greece against believing the gods did everything and were all powerful. The greatest minds were observing the natural world and starting to grow a real and lasting understanding of how it worked. On top of that, there were men and women who were very vocal about how they believed that the gods were not as active as people believed.
Look at some of the struggles between man and gods in Oedipus Rex. Several times there are monologs for both sides of the argument on if man needs the gods. In the end, while the gods did not take any direct action they won out in showing their great wisdom and power when it is revealed the prophecies they declared are correct.
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Natural laws are in place, and as evidenced by Aroden and a few others they can certainly die.
These are not completely omnipotent beings, and they do not have power over everything. The best I can come up with is that they can influence things within their portfolio. Sometimes their influence is stronger then normal, like a series of storms created by Gozrah because of his displeasure. Or everything going really well for a group of freedom fighters because of Cayden's influence.
The fact that they grant spells shows that their influence if most often through human followers. This doesn't mean that they need them. James Jacobs has said that the gods do not require followers to survive.
Why do natural laws and gods have to be excluded from each other?