pm'd to avoid further derail :)
Isn't that the default, except for Nerull, way back in Greyhawk, in the *seventies?*Dunno what your D&D exposure has been, but, uh...
The Forgotten Realms:
Myrkul (NE)
Cyric (briefly, from Myrkul's death until 1993 or so) (CE)
Jergal (LE, shaded to LN by the time Kelemvor traipsed along)Dragonlance:
Chemosh (NE)Birthright:
The Cold Rider (NE)Ravenloft:
The Eternal Order (NE) (Yeah, yeah, false deities, everything in Ravenloft is shaded nasty-still counts)D&D Interpretations of Real-World Mythology:
Arawn (NE)
Kali (CE, and bet your butt THAT rubbed some folks the wrong way)
Hel (NE)Also note that I'd never heard of Nemorga until today, and Urogolan is similarly niche, and Kelemvor's ascension was presented as kind of a big change when it happened. No, Pharasma's not unique, but to someone who came up through the official D&D settings, she's definitely relatively novel.
Yeah, really, instead of looking at D&D, you should be looking at actual mythology. Evil death gods (or at least as the primary death god) are pretty rare. I can think of...Hell, maybe? That's about it.
Rovagug to me makes perfect sense, since he is an Uber-Qlippoth final solution to the whole demon problem. Let's just unlease a giant monstrous god on the material plane to eat everything, so we don't have to worry about any more pesty mortals feeding demon growth on the planes. Probably the most straight forward and understandable god there is in the Golarion pantheonRovagug. I never really 'got' the Chaotic Evil mindset anyway, and he's pretty much the definition of it. (Lamashtu at least seems to have some goals, other than 'flip out and wreck everything.')
Rovagug and Gorum are kinda on the bottom of my list. Destruction for destructions sake I find boring. I need devious, plotting evil gods with a plan. Lamasthu while disgusting and on my "hate" list does indeed have some goals.
Edit: I like that there exist such gods, variety is a good thing, someone must be boring too :)
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Whichever deity is in charge of updating "Additional Resources"...
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Edit: I like that there exist such gods, variety is a good thing, someone must be boring too :)
Yeah, I should caveat that as well, in that I totally see the storytelling use of nihilistic gods like Tharizdun or Rovagug or some of the Elder Gods/Great Old Ones, despite not actually wanting to play a cleric (or even lay worshipper) of one.
There are reasons why one could work with, or even be friends with, a cleric of Asmodeus or Urgathoa or whomever, so it's useful to have an evil god or two that's just evil for evil's sake, and more obviously 'these people gotta die.'
That said, I've never been a fan of gods that seem evil just to be evil. EverQuest had gods of hate, fear and disease as their top three evil gods, and I couldn't imagine why anyone would worship a god of any of those things. (Urgathoa I can get, because she's not *just* a god of disease, she's also a god of immortality and serving your hunger and basic selfishness, which is at least a common mortal failing, above and beyond 'spreading plague!' which is, thankfully, somewhat less popular...)
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I dunno. Someone worshiping any evil god makes sense in the context that said gods gives sadists, nihilists, and bullies superpowers.
I mean, having a all-powerful role model that tells you that your twisted psycho-sexual desire to destroy everything around you would probably enable a lot of people who otherwise would have just been mundane antisocial jerks in the real world.
Yeah, really, instead of looking at D&D, you should be looking at actual mythology. Evil death gods (or at least as the primary death god) are pretty rare. I can think of...Hell, maybe? That's about it.
And if we were talking about mythological concepts instead of deities in a tabletop roleplaying game, this might mean something. As my remark on Kali should indicate, I'm hardly unfamiliar with the concept in real-world myths, it's just sort of irrelevant to the context we're in here.
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We're talking about how "unique" a deity is.
Being very similar to an existing fictional character makes them not unique.
Mythological figures are fictional. Ergo...
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Rovagug to me makes perfect sense, since he is an Uber-Qlippoth final solution to the whole demon problem. Let's just unlease a giant monstrous god on the material plane to eat everything, so we don't have to worry about any more pesty mortals feeding demon growth on the planes. Probably the most straight forward and understandable god there is in the Golarion pantheonRovagug. I never really 'got' the Chaotic Evil mindset anyway, and he's pretty much the definition of it. (Lamashtu at least seems to have some goals, other than 'flip out and wreck everything.')
Rovagug and Gorum are kinda on the bottom of my list. Destruction for destructions sake I find boring. I need devious, plotting evil gods with a plan. Lamasthu while disgusting and on my "hate" list does indeed have some goals.
Edit: I like that there exist such gods, variety is a good thing, someone must be boring too :)
Rovagug I think works more as a sort of ticking time bomb...an underlying threat that other bad guys may look to exploit in some fashion. As well as something sitting in the background that provides common ground for the rest gods and a benchmark for them to say "well at least I am not that bad/crazy.
I don't know if I would run a campaign where his cult was the "big bad", but I could certainly see running one where they were used as pawns by opportunistically by other villains.
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Gorum is about conflict. When you get down to it, the only sensible thing to worship is conflict. Death can be overturned, time is mutable, love can turn to hate, rage can be quelled, nature burned, cities destroyed, order can be built over chaos and all orderly system tend towards chaos. In the end, conflict is the only thing that is eternal.
Yes, eventually you will die a final death due to old age. But what happens then? Pharasma judges you then you go to your afterlife where you may be eaten which is a conflict. You may become an outsider and be drafted into millennia-old war. Even if you die, conflict survives. Should Groteus ever get off his fat ass and end the universe, who's to say that will actually end anything? Life sprang from the mysterious Source before; why wouldn't it do so again? And in that new universe, there shall be conflict.
Thus Gorum teaches to embrace this conflict rather than pull the wool over your eyes and pretend that peace is achievable or even preferable. All peace is but a truce at best and a deflection at worst. Even if you stop a major war, there will still be fighting afterwards. Banditry often rises during times of war, the soldiers who celebrated "peace" would have to march home and fight another battle. Or they would return and prepare for a future fight. Should they retire to work their farms, they must fight the soil for their yield. Ever tried plowing? It's very difficult even with modern tools. A medieval fighter had to fight the land itself in order to survive.
So Gorum's conflict is not "pointless." In fact, it's the only thing that matters. Yes destruction happens but he isn't stupid. Gorum would not have you destroy all for no reason. He expects victory, not annihilation.
Now to actually answer the question. Groteus is boring to me. He's just the angry moon from Majora's Mask. His clergy is just those guys with the "End is Nigh" signs who scream at people on street corners. Yawn. At least Pharasma's clergy is dickish in a way that could make them good villains.
That last line is weird to me. IMO Pharasma's clergy is the most interesting thing about her.
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The only God that bugs me is Cayden Chilean, and it is nothing at all about his nature or game mechanic, ect.
I just hate his stupid face.
I want him to look like a old drunk bum who accidentally became a god. Perhaps looking like the character Frank from the Showtime series Shameless. Ha ha ha
Have Cayden look like a bum, ha ha ha
Don't hate me 'cause I'm beautiful
Don't hate me 'cause I'm beautiful| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Rookie. A deity must use a loud booming voice! Because it's cliche.
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If I use my inside voice, can I get out? I swear! Nothing consequential will be destroyed.
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Rookie. A deity must use a loud booming voice! Because it's cliche.
Clichés feel too much like traditions. And everyone should know how I feel about those.
#ChaoticForLife
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You should see what happens when you crank the tunes! You'd think no one on Golarion had heard Heavy Metal before...
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Rookie. A deity must use a loud booming voice! Because it's cliche.Clichés feel too much like traditions. And everyone should know how I feel about those.
#ChaoticForLife
hashtag just chaotic stuff brother yeah yeah
my best frend brayden brolean got it so right
Rookie. A deity must use a loud booming voice! Because it's cliche.Clichés feel too much like traditions. And everyone should know how I feel about those.
#ChaoticForLife
hashtag just chaotic stuff brother yeah yeah
my best frend brayden brolean got it so right
Are you not Neutral Evil, Zyphus? I think a god ought to know his own alignment.
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Rookie. A deity must use a loud booming voice! Because it's cliche.Clichés feel too much like traditions. And everyone should know how I feel about those.
#ChaoticForLife
hashtag just chaotic stuff brother yeah yeah
my best frend brayden brolean got it so right
Are you not Neutral Evil, Zyphus? I think a god ought to know his own alignment.
SHUT UP PHARASMA UR NOT MY MOM
I AM TOO AS COOL AND CHAOS AS RAIDEN RAGLAN
Rookie. A deity must use a loud booming voice! Because it's cliche.Clichés feel too much like traditions. And everyone should know how I feel about those.
#ChaoticForLife
hashtag just chaotic stuff brother yeah yeah
my best frend brayden brolean got it so right
Are you not Neutral Evil, Zyphus? I think a god ought to know his own alignment.
SHUT UP PHARASMA UR NOT MY MOM
I AM TOO AS COOL AND CHAOS AS RAIDEN RAGLAN
...I am a goddess now? Huh, I guess this explains why I sit around all day and do nothing.
Aroden. He was a lawful neutral human-supremacist jerk. He encouraged conquest, empire building, and other sources of extreme misery, often at the expense of "less civilized" humans and non-humans in general. He discouraged building positive bonds with other species and instead pushed for dominance.
For all of my complaints against her, Iomedae is still a great many steps up from Aroden. Him dying also got us Milani, a fairly neat deity. Cheliax collapsed and created a neat setting of infernal temptation instead of conquering some more peoples.
As for the Worldwound and the Eye of Abendego I don't think Aroden's death was more than mildly associated with them at all. The Worldwound was Areelu Vorlesh and Deskari working together (along with a few dupes) to bring their planes together, while the Eye of Abendego is, I think, Gozreh containing and bleeding off the energies of a link to Abaddon. Sacrificing what is now the Sodden Lands to save the rest of the planet seems very fitting for them.
Also: Jatembe is more awesome than Aroden in basically every way, I think, and I would much rather have him be focused on than Aroden.
Jatembe wasn't a god.
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Jatembe wasn't a god.
And even without being a deity he's far more awesome than Aroden.
Don't forget almost getting his ass handed to him by a mortal Wizard, that was quite the achievement.
Don't forget almost getting his ass handed to him by a mortal Wizard, that was quite the achievement.
Yeah, when it turned out that the Whispering Tyrant was only a CR 26 (barely enough to qualify as demigod status) as a mythic lich, meaning he was even weaker as a mortal. So a GOD actually got into a fight with some at max CR 24 mortal and not automatically winning is mindboggling to me. The Tar-Bathon is the most striking example of the fluff running against the mechanics I've ever come across in Pathfinder.
Pretty sure that Jacobs said somewhere that Aroden wasn't immediately a full blown god after completing the Starstone Test and slowly climbed up to that rank over the centuries.
Could explain why the Whispering Tyrant wasn't immediately b+~$#slapped by the God-Emperor of Mankind.
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Rookie. A deity must use a loud booming voice! Because it's cliche.Clichés feel too much like traditions. And everyone should know how I feel about those.
#ChaoticForLife
hashtag just chaotic stuff brother yeah yeah
my best frend brayden brolean got it so right
Are you not Neutral Evil, Zyphus? I think a god ought to know his own alignment.
SHUT UP PHARASMA UR NOT MY MOM
I AM TOO AS COOL AND CHAOS AS RAIDEN RAGLAN
My god.
Zyphus is the Kylo Ren of the Golarion pantheon.
It all makes sense now.
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The Tar-Bathon is the most striking example of the fluff running against the mechanics I've ever come across in Pathfinder.Personally I find it kind of refreshing with how overly protective the writers at Paizo tend to normally be about the deities.
But if you think that's bad that's not the worst thing Aroden's been involved in... Milani was a Chaotic Good cleric of a Lawful Neutral deity. How's that for fluff-mechanics disparity? Horrible.
She was considered a saint and had Aroden as a Patron, but her mortal class/levels/alignment have not been revealed to my knowledge. She could have also very well even been Lawful before Aroden's death.
Don't forget almost getting his ass handed to him by a mortal Wizard, that was quite the achievement.Yeah, when it turned out that the Whispering Tyrant was only a CR 26 (barely enough to qualify as demigod status) as a mythic lich, meaning he was even weaker as a mortal. So a GOD actually got into a fight with some at max CR 24 mortal and not automatically winning is mindboggling to me. Tar-Bathon is the most striking example of the fluff running against the mechanics I've ever come across in Pathfinder.
I'm not entirely sure where that 'the' came from, but now at least I can pretend that a random word did not randomly insert itself into one of my sentences.
She was considered a saint and had Aroden as a Patron, but her mortal class/levels/alignment have not been revealed to my knowledge. She could have also very well even been Lawful before Aroden's death.The Tar-Bathon is the most striking example of the fluff running against the mechanics I've ever come across in Pathfinder.Personally I find it kind of refreshing with how overly protective the writers at Paizo tend to normally be about the deities.
But if you think that's bad that's not the worst thing Aroden's been involved in... Milani was a Chaotic Good cleric of a Lawful Neutral deity. How's that for fluff-mechanics disparity? Horrible.
Coulda been an Oracle too.
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damn it! They figured it out! Looks like I'm going to have to accelerate the whole planet disappearing plan B.
Achaekek! You know what to do...
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If you read the write up for Milani, being Chaotic seems very out of character.
Yeah, besides wanting to take down evil empires and her church being mostly underground resistance cells, there's nothing really Chaotic about her. She sounds more Neutral Good to me.
She was considered a saint and had Aroden as a Patron, but her mortal class/levels/alignment have not been revealed to my knowledge. She could have also very well even been Lawful before Aroden's death.The Tar-Bathon is the most striking example of the fluff running against the mechanics I've ever come across in Pathfinder.Personally I find it kind of refreshing with how overly protective the writers at Paizo tend to normally be about the deities.
But if you think that's bad that's not the worst thing Aroden's been involved in... Milani was a Chaotic Good cleric of a Lawful Neutral deity. How's that for fluff-mechanics disparity? Horrible.
Inner Sea Faiths says she was a ranger back when she was mortal. Her alignment before Aroden got killed/murdered/passed way/sacrificed himself though is still a mystery.
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Inner Sea Faiths says she was a ranger back when she was mortal. Her alignment before Aroden got killed/murdered/passed way/sacrificed himself though is still a mystery.She was considered a saint and had Aroden as a Patron, but her mortal class/levels/alignment have not been revealed to my knowledge. She could have also very well even been Lawful before Aroden's death.The Tar-Bathon is the most striking example of the fluff running against the mechanics I've ever come across in Pathfinder.Personally I find it kind of refreshing with how overly protective the writers at Paizo tend to normally be about the deities.
But if you think that's bad that's not the worst thing Aroden's been involved in... Milani was a Chaotic Good cleric of a Lawful Neutral deity. How's that for fluff-mechanics disparity? Horrible.
Ah, Thankies.
Aroden. He was a lawful neutral human-supremacist jerk. He encouraged conquest, empire building, and other sources of extreme misery, often at the expense of "less civilized" humans and non-humans in general. He discouraged building positive bonds with other species and instead pushed for dominance.
For all of my complaints against her, Iomedae is still a great many steps up from Aroden. Him dying also got us Milani, a fairly neat deity. Cheliax collapsed and created a neat setting of infernal temptation instead of conquering some more peoples.
As for the Worldwound and the Eye of Abendego I don't think Aroden's death was more than mildly associated with them at all. The Worldwound was Areelu Vorlesh and Deskari working together (along with a few dupes) to bring their planes together, while the Eye of Abendego is, I think, Gozreh containing and bleeding off the energies of a link to Abaddon. Sacrificing what is now the Sodden Lands to save the rest of the planet seems very fitting for them.
Also: Jatembe is more awesome than Aroden in basically every way, I think, and I would much rather have him be focused on than Aroden.
Don't wanna rain on your parade, but a lot of Aroden's more "problematic" aspects from Humans of Golarion have gone the way of Erastil's sexism. In his most recent writeup in part four of the Hell's Rebels AP all the dominating other races and less civilized humans stuff is gone and James Jacobs himself has said that Aroden's main goal was making humans as awesome/advanced as they could be.
If toppling the government in La Revolucion isn't Chaotic then I don't know what is.
A holy war where both sides worship the same god. one believes magic makes you better than everyone else, the other believes that having magic means you have a duty to serve others.
I know I'm late to the thread, but Magi: Kingdom of Magic pretty much had this as an internal schism for the Mage King.
It's also pretty much the schism between the Chantry controlled nations ("Magic is meant to serve man, not rule over him.") and the Tevinter Imperium ("You're either a mage, or a slave. Sometimes you're a mage AND a slave, but at least you can work your way up, unlike the Muggles.") in Dragon Age.
I wouldn't say I hate such and such, but there are some deities I have a few issues with.
To start, Iomedae. She can be a bit likeable, but upon closer reading, there's something in her that screams "Strong Female Character", and that's just off-putting.
Then there's Asmodeus and his Moriarty-Complex. Everything always goes his way, he has a backup plan for the backup plan or his backup plan (Which was actually his plan since the begging, because using a backup would mean that his original plan failed, and that's just impossible), sitting at the top of what is described as the most organized hierarchy... I mean, I know a lot of this is fans impressions, not actual canonical material, but Asmy sometimes approaches Villain Sue territory.
Calistria is... She's the stereotypical mean girl, vain, narcissistic, rude and shallow that hides her unpleasantness behind a "empowered" discourse. The thing encouraging revenge against perceived slights is also disturbing. There are some parts of the world where asking someone to turn down the music because it's 1 AM and the neighbors need to sleep is a slight that warrants a drawn gun. That are people that think romantic rejection is a slight that deserves the cruelest punishments. And Calistria is ok with that. There's no authority that can say "this revenge was warranted, that other one was going overboard, you shouldn't have done that". The only one who gets to decide which "offense" deserves which punishment is me, with no other reason than my arbitrary whim.
She is, in short, the goddess of sociopaths. She should be Evil. The fact that she's the "main" deity of a race that is, supposedly, chaotic GOOD is throwing salt on the wound.
Last, but not least... I wish all Outer Golds, Great Old Ones and figures directly inspired on them (i.e.: Groeteus) could be obliterated from the setting.
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A holy war where both sides worship the same god. one believes magic makes you better than everyone else, the other believes that having magic means you have a duty to serve others.I know I'm late to the thread, but Magi: Kingdom of Magic pretty much had this as an internal schism for the Mage King.
Ah, you're an anime fan. That explains a lot!
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I wouldn't say I hate such and such, but there are some deities I have a few issues with.
To start, Iomedae. She can be a bit likeable, but upon closer reading, there's something in her that screams "Strong Female Character", and that's just off-putting.
{. . .}
Why is that off-putting?
Don't wanna rain on your parade, but a lot of Aroden's more "problematic" aspects from Humans of Golarion have gone the way of Erastil's sexism. In his most recent writeup in part four of the Hell's Rebels AP all the dominating other races and less civilized humans stuff is gone and James Jacobs himself has said that Aroden's main goal was making humans as awesome/advanced as they could be.
"Aroden is retroactively a less-horrible person" is great news, thanks!
I still don't like him, and think Jatembe is way more awesome, but he's now only roughly on par with the other "only really cares about this one group (with an inherent trait, like species)" deities. "Humanity’s Destiny Is to Spread Its Knowledge and Culture Across the World" is probably the part about what remains about him that annoys me the most.
The Lovecraftian deities are probably my least favourite, then; I don't think they're interesting and they're rather unpleasant. Even in a world where large numbers of people are massively superhuman and their minions, and even the deities themselves, can be fought by a well-prepared group with a solid chance of success.
I wouldn't say I hate such and such, but there are some deities I have a few issues with.
To start, Iomedae. She can be a bit likeable, but upon closer reading, there's something in her that screams "Strong Female Character", and that's just off-putting.
{. . .}Why is that off-putting?
Because a Strong Female Character does not refer to a female character who is strong, physically or otherwise. It refers to a stereotype, or a trope, of a female character who is written to be "strong" but in the end falls flat as a character. Hence the capital letters. There are quite a few articles written on the subject available on the internet, mostly by feminist people working in the entertainment industry. Do look them up.
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Because a Strong Female Character does not refer to a female character who is strong, physically or otherwise. It refers to a stereotype, or a trope, of a female character who is written to be "strong" but in the end falls flat as a character. Hence the capital letters. There are quite a few articles written on the subject available on the internet, mostly by feminist people working in the entertainment industry. Do look them up.I wouldn't say I hate such and such, but there are some deities I have a few issues with.
To start, Iomedae. She can be a bit likeable, but upon closer reading, there's something in her that screams "Strong Female Character", and that's just off-putting.
{. . .}Why is that off-putting?
Wat.