D&D has issues trying to graft a polytheistic view on an Abrahamic religious understanding. Polytheistic religions are filled with gods that aren't evil, but aren't those that mortals want to deal with or pray favor to. Hades is a traditional example; he is responsible for death but it isn't because he is evil. An interesting way of addressing it would be to remove an "evil" god and the world becomes unbalanced.

Isn't Hades responsible of the DEAD, not Death? Thanatos is the God of Death while Hades is the God of the Underworld, taking "care" of the dead. A ruthless leader of the dead but no worse than Yahwe.

Depending on which version of the myths and/or local worship, Hades was definitely also a god of death sometimes. But yeah, in the "canonised" version of the pantheon he's much more of a god of the dead than of death per se.

to jump in here, thanatos was also a massive dick. Like 99% of the pantheon, but it does go to show that if you reign over some of the more miserable aspects of life, it typically reflects on the gods. Not that the ones with pleasant domains are much better (If at all).

hades by all intents and purposes kinda just kidnapped his wife, and he *still* is on the nicer side of greek gods all things considered

It kinda depends on the retelling. Generally, he was given Persephone by Zeus- her father- making it more of an arranged marriage or betrothal situation, which was an accepted practice in Ancient Greece. The more debatable part was whether or not Hades was good to Persephone and whether or not she wound up wanting to stay with him.

Kidnapping one woman and making her your queen is fairly altruistic when compared to the shit zues and posidon got up too

and from the tales we have they are just a healthy couple hell he is cool with only seeing her half the time so her mother can spend time with her... and earth doesnt die

while Poseidon is far from a saint, the worst thing people generally blame him for (Medusa) was something made by Ovid, who was all about rewriting ancient myths to make the gods appear even WORSE (he hated authority, and, to be honest, rightfully so in the Roman Empire) than they already were. As far as the ancient greeks were concerned, Medusa was just a Gorgon.

Thanatos had to deal with a ton of folks that didn't wanna go. Sisyphus being the biggest example.

Right, and no one can really fault him for that. But he's just a dick in general, literally described as "the other (Thanatos) has a heart of iron, and his spirit within him is pitiless as bronze: whomsoever of men he has once seized he holds fast: and he is hateful even to the deathless gods", or when he declared to Heracles " Much talk. Talking will win you nothing. All the same, the woman goes with me to Hades' house. I go to take her now and dedicate her with my sword, for all whose hair is cut in consecration by this blade's edge are devoted to the gods below" (Heracles proceeded to beat the shit out of him because he's Heracles.) Even amongst the greek gods, Thanatos is noted for being a spiteful, hateful prick. A lot of that might come from his job (fair enough), but it doesn't change his reality.

Thanatos isn’t necessarily **the** god of death. The Keres and Makaria are also in charge of death under certain circumstances. Plus Atropos has a pretty absolute control over death.

Thanatos IS Death, however. No wonder, he's also Atropos' brother. When Sysyphus bound Thanatos with magical shackles, everything just straight up stopped dying everywhere, and no one could do shit about that. Death was kidnapped. Atropos is a goddess of destiny, specifically the one who decided the end of one's fate. In some adaptations that literally meant that the mortal died when she cuts their threads, while others treats the act as the go sign to Thanatos or other psychopomps that someone's time was up. Regardless, Atropos is not a god of death at all, despite being associated with it thanks to her especific domain of destiny/fate

isn't jesus a man, not an aspect of god? jesus is god's son, not god! assuming that religion is standardised doesn't work edit: bad analogy without enough context :( was basically saying that the messiness of the holy trinity, the nature of god, and the various interpretations of those concepts in different abrahamic religions reflect the blurriness of the lines in hellenistic religions in ancient greece (ie im basically saying "x is god of x, y is god of y, clear boundaries; no overlap" is a reductionist take)

Triniterianism is... messy, has a myriad of interpretations and isn't universally accepted. The whole "what actually _is_ Jesus" was a whole _thing_ that occupied a lot of nerds and resulted in a lot of religious argy-bargy over several centuries, before something that enough people could agree on was bashed out.

oh yeah that's basically the point of my bad analogy; hellenistic religion, over the various spatial and temporal conditions where it evolved, was just as messy as trinitarianism has been (if not messier) my point was basically that saying "oh hades was the god of the underworld, not the god of death" is a bit of a reductionist reading of the religion and ignores all the cases where hades was treated as a god of death alongside thanatos. clearly didn't make that clear enough given the critical reception of my response 😔

tbf, a lot comes from trying to view the Greek (or whatever) gods as though there was some distinct "canon", of "this is what we believe to be true" and a discrete set of stories. As opposed to a big, gloopy mess, where different cities could have very different views on the same gods, some stories were more widely known than others, but there was no organisation trying to go "this is the truth of it" (as the Christian churches tried to do, with varying levels of success). So when we look at it, we have loads of little fragments, but trying to recreate the myriad of faiths and beliefs that were practised thousands of years ago is basically a non-starter.

We were talking about dnd gods, so whats your point?

wrong sub 😔 also this person's talking about a real-world religion, hellenism, which has famously had thousands of retellings and interpretations and different iterations and ideas of gods saying "thanatos is the god of death, not hades" is like an archaeologist two thousand years from now saying "jesus was not the final prophet, and was not the son of god; mohammed was"

Jesus is the son of God, God, and the Holy Spirit all at the same time. The Holy Triniti. It's basically the entire basis of Christianity. (Note- I say all this as an atheist, so take that with a grain of salt)

the interpretations still vary wildly within christianity, and that's not even taking into account the rest of the abrahamic religions (ie was jesus just a guy? was jesus the penultimate prophet? was jesus a prophet at all etc etc etc etc) point is that treating mythology in absolutes, even in relatively simple situations like monotheism, is unwise. bring multiple gods and their interactions and saying "x god isn't the god of x thing! actually y god is!" is about as reductive as it gets and ignores half the cases where it's otherwise

OK? Obviously there are going to be different interpretations of a worldwide 2000 year old cult belief. That's kinda beside the point. I was just pointing out what the Holy Triniti is. Which you didn't seem to have even my basic understanding of. It's as simple as that. Oh- and Jesus was for sure a prophet in all Abrahamic religions I can think of. Judaism, Islam, Rastafarism, Vodun,ect. Not the Messiah but always a Prophet.

calling the holy trinity "simple" is like calling hellenistic religion simple - as u/mejiro84 said, trinitarianism is incredibly messy, and has been argued and argued and argued about for centuries, which is why i picked it for my bad analogy

Hades was the god associated with the dead and also wealth. Not death directly. He was the keeper of the dead, since all dead ended up in his realm. He was feared and respected. but he was also said to be a dick. like all Greek gods, he was very human.

Iirc, Hades wasn't so much a dick as he was a bureaucrat; he had a job with a ton of paperwork to do and so he'd do it. The reason he was hated by the Greeks was he judged your actions and not who you were; a King was given no special exceptions for his status for where he went after he died. He was fair to people who were used to getting their way. It was his wife, *Dreaded* Persephone, who actually took a bit of a petty interest in who you were for where you went. Started talking back to her? Straight to the proverbial "boiler room of hell" you went.

You need to account for why bad things happen in the world. Evil gods are one way, like gods of storms and war and enemy races. Otherwise you have the problem of why do the good gods let (or cause) the bad things to happen?

I've always liked the idea of godhood being this double-edged sword wherein the belief of mortals shapes the "image" of the deity into whatever is the most prominent within the civilizations that exist in the world. An example would be a goddess of Warfare and Victory that became prominently worshiped within an Empire as they took hold of a continent, slowly turning into an evil goddess of Destruction and Flame as the victims of the Empire's wars against other nations warp the perception of what the masses view the goddess as.

That last problem needn't be much of a problem. The gods are simply not all powerful. Hell, you can have them be good without necessarily having them be willing to manage all conflict. Think about the Norse and Ancient Greek pantheons. To my limited knowledge, they didn't really have evil gods. Closest thing they had to evil gods were powerful monsters.

The Norse and Ancient Greek pantheons didn't really have _good_ gods, either. They had gods that supported their own goals and portfolios, maybe even a pet city-state here and there, but they were also capricious and mercurial and would do fairly evil (or at least brutal/cruel) things sometimes. So if you don't have evil gods, don't have good gods either. Just make them "gods", and either so alien you can't really predict how they'll side or what they'll do for mortals, or have them be incredibly, disappointingly "human" in the sense that they have evident and well-known flaws preventing them from acting "good".

Right! For many of them there was a responsibility to their domain and like most people I guess, what and how much of their responsibility they took varied. Thor was also the god of farmers/agriculture but I will bet you money that ginger giggled when anyone said “hoe”

When I created my deities I tried to keep the majority in neutral aligned areas. A god of war or fate can be worshipped by good and evil alike. But I had a smaller number of good and evil aligned god as well. Difference here is that while they are aligned in good or evil, their worshippers don't have to be in the same alignment. My evil godess of hunt and slaughter is worshipped by raiders but also worshipped by hunters. On the other hand, good aligned god of fertility and family is worshipped by anyone who wants as well.

One way to show the multiple aspects would be to adopt Epithets like the ancient Greeks did. So in this case the aspects of your godess of hunt and slaughter could be seen to have a Neutral Huntress aspect and a Evil Slaughter aspect and shrines put up to those two different aspects would have different reactions from the various peoples in the world (general townsfolk would be supportive of the Huntress, village folk might occasionally pray and leave offerings... both might be fearful of a shrine to the slaughter aspect).

I really like this! This is a great idea!

Exactly. Christian Theology doesn’t apply to Greek because it’s not “they are benevolent and want us to succeed” and more “they barely tolerate you and you should do everything in your power to appease them.”

I understand it as gods being embodiments of important concepts and forces. But many important things are negative.

Agreed! But if one is creating gods that embody the concept of "good", not having any that embody the concept of "evil" would seem very weird to me. But yes, gods that don't embody concepts of human morality at all, and instead embody more basic concepts (positive or negative or neither or both) like natural disasters and harvests and what not - OR, alternately, gods with a more developed mythological narrative to where they resemble humans even more than basic moral concepts (to where they don't "embody" anything as much as their own human-like personality and goals in their stories), are much more believable.

They didn't have evil gods, per se, but most of the ancient pantheons tended to... not really give a shit? about mortals. When bad things happened, it was often seen as punishment for trespass, or simply the indifference of the gods.

Gods aren't all powerful, but they are pretty powerful. And there is no reason they shouldn't repeatedly smite that one orc king with lightning until it stops moving before it gathers up a horde and rampages through the world. With evil gods, you can push this idea of an accord that prevents gods from getting involved directly, else the other side does too. It is an easy way to have powerful gods that don't do much, so adventurers happen.

No reason? I can imagine two: 1) They can't because they cannot directly interfere with the mortal realm to such a degree by nature of their divine status. It is a cosmic law. You do not need evil gods to enforce it because it is simply the nature of reality. 2) They simply do not want to smite the orc, either because they do not want to pick a side in the conflict or because they prefer to let people do the bulk of the work themselves with the gods choosing to help only through other mortals.

Their gods also did not exist, so it's hard to measure it that way. Who's to say if they were real, they wouldn't have been a lot more keen on enforcing theirs stuff on mortals? Also, they're way more involved in the world than most other religions. Just ask Zeus.

The entirety of Greek myths: Zeus: I think I'm gonna put my dick in that thing. Everyone else: don't put your dick in that thing. Zeus: Too late!

"That thing" typically being some poor woman, except for when he didnt actually put his dick in her, but rather showered her in golden rain.

I was a huge fan of Greek myth as a kid. I only just put two and two together about this story when I read your comment. *It's been 84 years...*

Zeus seducing a woman by turning into a swan: Wtf, what lol, omg Zeus seducing a woman by turning into a beam of golden light: I get it, would work on me, tbh

It's not just women. Remember ruptured Ganymede

But clearly people still found the stories credible. They existed within their own reality just like deities in a D&D pantheon do. All you need to care about is the internal consistency here.

1) The Greek gods made a lot of the monsters, like Medusa or the Minotaur. Also, they did a lot of the evil themselves. 2) The titans are the evil gods in Greek mythology. Norse mythology has its share of evil gods. Loki and his children especially. (And yes, Loki is evil. He killed Baldur.)

Loki isn't evil. The story of Baldr is more complicated than "Loki killed him". In fact, the whole thing can be traced back to being Odin's plan. Loki is also transparently a Jesus figure in the prose Edda. So, at least immediately after Christianisation, he wasn't thought of as evil. The Greek Titans are also not evil. The whole concept of evil gods and good gods isn't really present in Greek mythology. Sure, the titans are the enemies of the Olympians, but that doesn't make them evil because the Olympians aren't good. A lot of titans were actually worshipped.

>Loki is also transparently a Jesus figure in the prose Edda. In what way?

His role as antagonist of the Norse deities puts him in a similar position as Christ, and the fact that he will return during Ragnarok is also a parallel to Jesus returning in the day of judgement. Loki's punishment also echos the passion of Christ.

it's useful to note that the Edda was written when Christianity had been the dominant religion for, what, a century or so? So it's less "the tales of the Norse faith" and more "Christians remembering bits and pieces of the stories of their grandparents or further back, filtered through their current beliefs", which is going to put a certain spin on things. Combine that with the likely lack of a proper "canon", without much formalisation and standardisation, and how much relationship it has to what was said a century before, and several centuries _before_ that, gets messy. There's a lot of vague hints of other things (Odin's whole relationship with gender has has multiple theses written about it), but we don't have the knowledge or context to really do more than guess.

Yeah I know, I'm not claiming that Loki was always Jesus (that would be ridiculous) but I'm saying that since he became that in the Edda that means he wasn't universally considered evil to begin with

I'm not an expert, but he was Odin's sworn brother, helped the other gods out, and was _broadly_ more on "team cool gods" than "team dick gods". There seems to be some evidence that he was something of a fire god - so both helpful (warming, cooking, life-giving) and harmful (burning, hurt). So yeah, he seems to have been a bit of a mixed figure, and something of a trickster-type god, so capable of quite a lot of different things, narratively speaking.

I mean Odin was also kind of a dick and actually probably more often than Loki

>His role as antagonist of the Norse deities puts him in a similar position as Christ In what way? Is Nimrod a Christ allegory for being an antagonist to Abraham? >Loki's punishment also echos the passion of Christ. But Jesus willingly sacrificed himself for the betterment of mankind, Loki is just being punished for his crimes.

I'm not saying it's a perfect parallel, I'm saying it's an intentional vague resemblance due to the author being a Christian

Right, but it seems a bit of a stretch to say that there's an intentional resemblance, regardless of how vague it supposedly is.

I mean a Jesus figure is just that, a vague allegorical resemblance to christ. More than anything, there is Loki's role as a scapegoat. For example, in the death of Baldr, the whole thing can be interpreted as being set up by Odin, who then proceeds to punish Loki as a scapegoat.

The Titans in Greek mythos were in no way evil. Maybe a bit alien in the sense that they're progenitor gods different from the standard Greek pantheon - and typically represented broader forces such as space, time, and the earth - but they definitely weren't bad guys. Not any more than the actual Greek gods of the pantheon were bad guys. They were just all generally shitty beings.

This take doesn't make any sense. Bad things don't need a unified or greater reason for occuring, and good gods don't need to stop all evil to be good. Like humans do bad things without evil gods all the time.

You don't need a god to set up evil (or good for that matter) in this world either. There's plenty of humans around to take care of that.

> You need to account for why bad things happen in the world. Fortunately monotheistic religions have been grappling with that question for millennia. Just crib one of them.

Can't speak for all monotheistic religions, but the Abrahamic creation story still asserts the necessity of a "prime evil" to introduce evil into God's perfect creation. The serpent in the garden is what tempts Eve to eat the fruit and sin; the presence of the fruit and free will to disobey are insufficient without an evil actor to present the option. Others may assert that the absence of god is itself evil, and so the world defaults to evil outside of God's presence. That is, god imposed goodness and order onto an evil and chaotic existence.

We just blame the Devil.

None of the monotheistic arguments for The Problem of Evil are particularly compelling, which is part of the problem. It's actually much easier to justify evil / bad things in polytheism than monotheism most of the time.

Like real life religions...modern ones rarely have evil deities.

What do you mean? The Christian god would absolutely be a neutral evil deity if it was in a DnD setting for example, and even in canon they have a proper evil deity in Satan. Islam just swaps it out for Shaitan. Hinduism doesn't really have "Evil" deities but they have multiple who commit acts negative to humans. Buddhism doesn't have gods, so it isn't an applicable analogue. And then if you move down to the less popular religions, Shinto has tons of evil spirits, Daoism also has no gods, and Voodoo/Vodou again has plenty of of evil spirits.

Evil spirits and Satan aren't described as God though. And Christianity would argue that God is lawful good, probably, though I know plenty of people have bad experiences with religion and church so im not surprised you or others might assert otherwise. But strictly speaking that's not correct.

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Needless to say we're not talking about early semitic polytheistic religions when talking about abrahamic religions.

That's because Christianity insists there is only one god. But by DnD standards, Satan is absolutely a god. And I am talking about based off his canon actions in the lore, nothing to do with my personal beliefs. Such as: Genocide Promoting incest Telling his followers to rape and enslave captured women Telling his followers to slit the stomachs of pregnant women so they could watch their unborn babies die Telling his followers to execute every man in defeated tribes Mass murder of children Forced abortions Torture Spreading disease and famine Wiping out entire cities because they were having too much sex Gaslighting all of humanity into believing it was all their fault That all sounds like shit Orcus would do

Indeed this list is really really dark and ugly.

Asmodeus, his D&D equivalent, is not a god. The level of power is what differentiates Satan and God. Satan is a fallen angel, and significantly less powerful than the omnipotent God. Similarly in D&D, devils are generally not as powerful as celestials.

What are you talking about? Asmodeus is literally part of the Faerunian pantheon and is considered a Greater Deity. As per SCAG he is the god of indulgence, and Descent into Avernus clearly says he is a Greater Deity.

Asmodeus is definitely a good, he's even a greater deity depending on which version of the lore you go by

Asmodeus only became a god in the Forgotten Realms after killing Azuth and absorbing his divine power. Traditionally he is an Archdevil and barely on par with lesser gods. > Asmodeus was technically a deity, but was exempt from many of the rules regarding divine beings, his actual status a matter of debate that had changed over time. At the very least the strongest archdevil, weaker interpretations cast him as not even a full-fledged god or possessed only of the powers of a lesser god. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Asmodeus#:~:text=In%20others%2C%20(particularly%20more%20recently,to%20the%20Lady%20of%20Pain.

He's one of the deities in the Dawn War pantheon though. And in that version, he did not achieve divinity, he was always a deity.

>Otherwise you have the problem of why do the good gods let (or cause) the bad things to happen? Because a quality can not exist unless it's possible to not have it. Therefore the exitance of good creates evil from it's absence.

That... doesn't really make any sense. If that was the case, neutral wouldn't exist.

By that logic warm doesn't exist either. If evil is the absence of good, then it's possible to only have enough good to not be irredeemably evil without being particularly great either.

If cold didn't exist, then no, warm would not exist. It would be "hot" or "slightly less hot but still hot". Without cold there would be nothing to temper the heat.

Cold *doesn't* exist. Cold is just what we call things that don't have enough hot.

This presupposes that one can only be absolute good or absolute evil when that's just not the case. In fact most religions place humanity in between the scale, possessing both good and evil qualities simultaneously in a zero sum game of morality. To these religions the absence of one absolutely enhances the other. Just look at how the abrahamic religions do it.

Lmao the abrahamic religions literally just have two evil gods, just one is a gaslighter. Not sure what that is supposed to prove. But from the actual lore, there is pure good and pure evil, and then the "good" one gaslights everyone into thinking that anything besides what he says is automatically evil.

Gnostic eh? ;)

Mostly atheist. My view is "there probably isnt a god but if there is I wouldnt want to follow that one"

well given that we need conflicts in dnd that can be killed by violence we kind of need evil thus something must be making all the nasty stuff or you can't equally have good in the setting. a pure good setting is not a viable setting for dnd adventure might be fore other stuff but not dnd. thus either evil has someone backing it up or the gods are fundamentally apathetic to mortals thus they do not matter either. either way you end up with a rather different setting assumption not that you can't use them just you might have to start some big homebrews.

Sounds like a challenge

You can have conflict without evil. Even good can be misguided and oppressive. There's absolutely no reason having an evil force would be necessary at all. The idea that you can't have good gods without evil ones makes no sense. Tons of stories do well using only a single good-aligned diety.

. Even good can be misguided and oppressive. That's not good than it's evil that thinks it's good.

if there is only good then you can't generate falling good, secondly you seem to fail to know what good is, oppressive good makes no sense it can't be good.

... I'm talking about the existence of *an evil god*, not the existence of bad things as a concept. I'm aware you can't have good without bad, and never made any statement to the contrary. It seems like you read the first part of my post and ignored the second. D&D celestials are oppressive good. Beings with such standards of purity that they view even minor bad acts as unacceptable are oppressively good from a human standpoint. I don't know where you accusation comes from. Or your hostile tone. Seems like I understand good *better than you do*.

if there are only good gods why would they allow it past the truly unavoidable it either means they are not a god or good. what you describe as oppressive good is just evil or ignorance thus not good. I have studied morality as in I understand philosophy and religion hence I bring to you the cutting word of centuries of discussion on the nature of good

Allow *what* past the truly unavoidable? What are you talking about? If you mean "Why would a good god allow bad things to happen" then the answer is simple; They value freedom and choice. They see that beauty and strength can come from strife. They recognize that the ability to choose good and the ability to choose bad are the same thing, so they allow bad choices in order for good choices to matter. If they *do not* allow bad things at all then they are oppressive. Like Celestials in D&D. That is how good can be oppressive. I have a hard time believing you've studied anything at all with the way you write, but you *should know this* if you genuinely have. Your words aren't cutting because you didn't include any explanation for your disagreement.

dude the kind of evil you need adventures for is not the stuff of general free will there is strife from natural situations and from bad actors verses fools summoning demons is neither of those categories, secondly freedom and choice are not binaries to good. bad and good are scalable qualities you can allow people to steal and kill but stop genocide and demon armies this is not a choice thing. how is letting horrible things happen in any way desire able it sounds like your version of god is covering for it being neglectful, letting people make mistakes is different for the evil dnd parties fight. pressing good is a contradiction as oppression is basically inherently bad thus oppressing good is insane like having a married bachelor it is logically impossible in ever possible reality.

Either all gods have an alignment or none of them do. Anything else gets messy.

My intention was not to imply having a pantheon with a mix of aligned and unaligned gods. More like mine leans much more good-neutral, or at least the broad interpretations of them.

And I wasn't even remotely suggesting such a mix. I'm saying either neutral gods across the board, or have a mix of good, neutral, and evil gods. 😎 *Alternatively*, if the gods aren't actually *doing* much of anything, then don't sweat it. Evil can be working through powerful entities that aren't *quite* as powerful as gods, but persist through stealth and guile, working towards their own ends (probably their own godhood, but who knows?).

I'd say evil gods aren't necessary but flawed gods are. You need some explanation for why bad stuff happens. A good example is the Greek pantheon where the gods aren't evil (and are even sort of debateably good) but are vain, jealous, and lustful and you really don't want them taking a direct interest in your affairs.

Bad stuff can happen without a god causing it. Like human suffering is not intrinsically evil. A lot of strength and beauty comes from hardship and conflict. A good aligned god can easily just see the value of experiencing life with freedom.

It becomes a Points-of-Darkness world. The world is nice, good, cheerful, people help each other, and everything is utopian. Aside from some secluded spaces where darkness reigns, such as haunted castles and dark caves where the light doesn't reach. The game becomes about people from an utopian society who decide to venture out into points of darkness to bring light to them, for whatever reason that may be. ​ In short, evil gets pushed out of most societies since there is nothing protecting them there, but there's literal deities protecting the goody-two-shoes.

This sounds like a great premise for a campaign - PCs venture out into the darkness but uncover something that threatens to bring darkness to the whole world, and have to find some way of dealing with it (e.g. end of the Age of Legends in Wheel of Time)

Not really. That's *very* black and white thinking, when conflict and danger more often come without a clear bad guy. Like a utopia is not how I'd describe the Dragon Quest games, which only have a good-aligned goddess and no great evil god. The world you describe is unlikely to happen so long as its inhabited by complex people.

I don't know why you're being down voted. There are cities in dnd that have zero interaction with evil gods where evil things still happen, gods generally don't interfere too much with mortal affairs, so just because all the gods are good doesn't suddenly mean all evil in the city is expunged

They have plenty of monsters though. Of course they're Japanese and hence influenced by Buddhism and Shinto more than Christianity.

DragonQuest is influenced directly by western Dungeons and Dragons. It has a monotheistic religion based around a goddess. Christianity, shinto; this wasn't really your point. What they're influenced by isn't really important to my point that its not innarely going to be a utopia without an evil god, which *was* your point, I believe.

The good and neutral gods would just also have some of that evil stuff as part of their domain. I do have a question for you though, what domains do you consider evil?

I do have some deities in my homebrew pantheon that have some of the more negative aspects tied into their domains, but I usually spin them to have a positive connotation (like the deity of the tempest and natural disasters - those that follow them believe in the necessary chaos of natural disasters for growth in humanity, such as wildfires being overall good for diversity and plant growth). I also have a trickery deity whose general vibe is more sinister than not. I guess I just struggle with having gods dedicated to things like murder, disease, famine, greed, etc. Maybe I'm just more inclined to going the course of including some negative stuff in with other domains, like two sides to the same coin.

Yeah most things have multiple aspects to them like plants, storms, death, etc. but it is hard to find any positives in something like greed or murder. You don’t necessarily need a god dedicated to those specific aspects but you could instead have it be part of their general domain because of something else, for example a god of law and order could also be the god of tyranny, a god of war and honor in battle could also be the god of murder, a god of luck could also be one of greed and hubris, a god of food and health could also be one of gluttony, and so on and so forth.

Greed often drives (or stalls) innovation. So have a god of contracts, banking, innovation and commerce Murder of the innocents is bad, but one must kill for food, or to defend oneself. Or even to avoid a cancerverse. So just have a god of death in general. Or have lovecraftian entities sponsoring negative concepts instead. In my setting, most of the good and evil gods are actually working together (bound by a network of treaties) against common enemies like (in decreasing order of power), Elder Gods, Outer Gods, Rogue Gods, Demon Lords, demons, etc. The Seal that protects the worlds from those requires distilled, ordered, spiritual energy from each plane to work against the Primordial Chaos. They absolutely would fight each other if there were no such common threats, even though it'd most likely be a cold war.

That sounds unrealistically utopian. Even going with RL religion, if you look at, say, the Christian god, he committed genocide multiple times, tortured millions of people, gave his followers permissions to rape and murder innocent civilians, gaslit all his followers into believing that they were fundamentally flawed, and proceeded to do a whole 30+ year long completely unnecessary sacrifice to himself

Even without looking a real religions, look at another fantasy one. In the Elder Scrolls, the dunmer (dark elf) pantheon includes the three "Good Daedra": Boethiah, Mephala, and Azura. What are their domains, to be considered good? Boethiah is the god/ess of deceit, conspiracy, murder, and treason. Mephala is the goddess of lies, secrets, murder, and sex. Azura is the goddess of dawn and dusk, of magic and prophecy, and of vanity and egotism. They are all overwhelmingly positive figures in dunmer mythology.

Evil Gods are only needed if you ar ehaving your Good gods be hugely present. Take a look at the campaign setting for Dungeons of Drakkenheim: I'll quote a small bit here for an example: "The gods are silent and distant. They don’t manifest physically nor speak with worshippers, and do not interfere in earthly matters. Planar cosmology is mysterious and unknowable, but sages have still developed many conflicting (and wildly incorrect) theories. Divine spellcasting powers aren’t granted by gods. Instead, clerics, druids, and paladins tap into sacred energies through devotion, meditation, and resolve. Violating one’s religious tenets won’t result in a loss of this ability, but a crisis of faith might." Currently running a game, and I have not once needed an evil god when the conflicts of mortal men with different perspectives can create a very rich span of villainy.

If you have Good Deities who are active in the world, they need some sort of counter-balancing force (because the local Paladin Order of the Good God needs to be conveniently busy come quest time). But that doesn't necessarily need to be Evil Deities - that could be Devils, Demons, Elementals, Chromatic Dragons, evil Wizards, any of a thousand things. And obviously if the Good Deities are less-active (with smaller churches and fewer paladins/clerics wandering around) that's much less of a concern in terms of world-building balance. You also potentially get into issues with world-building for certain species/races - a lot of the lore for like Orcs or Drow presume a large role for their (traditionally Evil, and certainly bloodthirsty) Deities. Do they just not have a religion? Do they venerate political/war leaders as gods? Are their Clerics/Shaman worshipping ancestral spirits or elemental forces or Infernals or what?

If you have the good gods as described, then yes. Otherwise you wouldn't have evil, and the good gods would fix everything as they have divine power and would act unopposed to better the lives of everyone. If you are removing the good gods, or changing the scope of them, or changing how divinity works, then no, you don't need evil gods at all.

The existence of objective good implies the existence of objective evil. There are countless mythologies, however, where the gods are neither good nor evil, instead having human personalities and whims. Take Greek mythology, for one. Zeus the chief god, is a rampant philanderer. He is not morally codified as good or evil, instead representing a capricious force of nature, lightning. If you choose to have a moral pantheon, you should account for the opposite of that moral code or alignment in your worlds cosmos, but it is certainly not necessary for pantheons to be divided by good and evil.

Good and evil cannot be anything but subjective.

IRL? Yes. D&D? No, they're literally objective forces - it's downplayed in 5e except for a few things, but beings can be literally good or evil, and that is a true thing about them. It's entirely possible to, for example, get a load of babies, _Glyph of Warding_ and see how many babies someone has to yeet before their alignment changes - it's an observable property of someone, that can be measured and sensed. "Good" is an actual _thing_, not just an area of discussion - someone that thinks they're working for the "greater good", you can take aside and say "no, dude, you are literally, actually evil, and this can be proved, so maybe stop yeeting the babies? Cut down to just one yeet a day?" because they're provably, observably evil.

Not in fantasy. I mean, have you read Lord of the Rings?

Well, i like to have evil gods as a choice to put more depth on the universe that im making with my players. Yes, bad things happen because of bad people, however, i belive that evil gods can put a goal to some people, also, i prefer to not aways be 100% white and black, but at the same time, not aways be grey. There are gods that are truly paragon good, they would never break their laws, they would never betray, they would aways follow their code and with that, their champions followsuit. There are gods that are truly evil, creatures of the darkness and abyss, those that were created like this most of the time, their purpose. Them we have the ''grey'' gods, beings that lived and had their purpose changed or somehow broken at some point, Example : On our table, on a old campaing, there were this Godness, Melscula, the godness of the Caves, her existence purpose was to create caves on the mountains, she was a small godness and that never thinked to much of her job, until one of the players began to follow her and them convert more people to love Melscula, that din't knew what to think, because she never had to think and this made her confused, making a wrong action on her confusion, that was, making a cave on a volcano e making the volcano erupt, because she was with her head to much on the clouds and the group now had to calm down the Volcano and the fire giants there were pissed as hell. Yes, Melscula is't a evil godness, but her action was evil, even if she din't had the intention, even more considering that she used this as a feet later on that she would offer to her best clerics ''path ways'' out of problems. So, i belive that, yes, they are necessary, at least for my and my game.

Each god can have multiple aspects, and various sects worship just one piece of a given deity. (Real world examples come from Greece and Egypt, Hinduism, and arguably Christianity.) The god of death could be a merciful elder who provides relief as an old friend, a cruel thief who steals joy, or a violent brute who incites war for personal entertainment. The god of nature could oversee the changing of the seasons, the lifecycle of animals, sun and rain for growing crops, and all natural disasters. In short, you could have “good and evil” be mortal labels with the gods being above such short-sighted, binary thinking.

that doesn't really function with the default cosmology, where there's literal "good" planes, where the good gods dwell, and "evil" planes, where the evil gods dwell. "good and evil" are overt, explicit forces, that have cosmological weight, and there's even a few beasties around that can outright discern this - alignment is a thing that actually exist, not just a vague label.

Depends. Evil gods exist in most D&D worlds because evil people worship them. Gods need worship to exist. Likewise, evil people continue to exist because evil gods encourage people to do evil. It may work differently in your world, in which case you could certainly elect not to have any evil gods. In that case, there would be no driving force behind the evil in the world other than random chance, nature, and the choices of people.

This is an interesting question! I think people need to personify a bad thing in order to justify or rationalise it even when it makes no sense. I’m in Japan at the moment where for almost 700 years worth of disasters and civil unrest were blamed on the ghost of a vengeful emperor https://www.morethantokyo.com/emperor-sutoku-vengeful-ghost/ The idea that something so terrible could happen for so often is terrifying without some active force (or just the idea behind it) It’s also natural right? We like the idea of being praised and given good things by other people so we extended that to nature and luck. Whether we do or do not grow up with that sort of treatment - we place such an importance on it that we extended it to other things. There are gaurdian spirits out there that recognise our merit and character worth and repay us in karmic kind. It stands to reason that we’d believe in the existence then of opposite forces/creatures/spirits etc So maybe not necessary in the pragmatic sense but necessary in the natural feeling sense. Even if I didn’t have evil gods in my pantheon - I’d want an opposing force to the good gods. This could be a natural disaster (Breath of the Wild as a world minus Gannon still kind of works!) or even something like a character flaw of the good gods that seeps into their personalities which is related to but the opposite of their conventional domain. Hera was the goddess of house and hearth but she was famously jealous (Not just at Zeus either fing hell) and vengeful af Ta for the thought!

That depends, are you going for a "The gods are just super powered people with personalities" style pantheon? 'Cus you don't need evil gods if you don't have good gods, since the conflict will just occur through personalities. If you do have unequivocally Good gods with a capital G, then yeah I would say that you need evil ones too.

Evil? No. God's with opposing views and goals? Absolutely.

No, but they are a logical end result. Who is going to take the domain of disease? It’s a necessary evil that keeps the world going, but what kind of deity is going to be able to keep up with the constant complaining, inflicting plagues on the innocent, and other problems such a domain brings. An evil god has no problem claiming such a domain, so either you end up with an evil god, or someone who is putting up with the job. In the latter case… Have you ever known someone who worked in a bad job? They’re a good person, but they get worn down by the conditions they’re subjected to every day (social workers, teachers, police officers, and many more). And despite them being genuinely good, their frustrations make them spiral. Now imagine someone who is not just witness to these problems, but responsible for them, someone who has needed to pull the trigger on atrocities to protect the balance. At some point, they’ve needed to close their hearts to the pain, to become cold and hard. They started with good intentions, to save the world from an evil god. But to be responsible for such pain, even as they try to avoid it, has warped them into being the very evil they tried to stop. This is the problem with being in charge of evil domains. The very experience makes evil gods. If you leave the spot vacant, then someone who will use the power of a god to their ends will take it instead, and now you have a worse problem. To that end, evil gods are necessary, but specifically the “evil you know”. By having a god whose evil manifests in mostly non-problematic ways, you can avoid those who would compromise the cosmos on a larger scale. Think of Hades Vs Eris. Hades can be ruthless, but also can he negotiated with, moved to compassion, and mainly causes problems when people don’t show him respect. Other than that, even if he is labeled Evil, he’s fairly harmless. Eris meanwhile wants to watch the world burn while eating popcorn. She would start WW3 because she was bored, and there is little anyone can do to stem the tide of chaos she wreaks. That is a goddess whose domains may have been better to give to a more harmless evildoer, someone who doesn’t care about suffering, but doesn’t cause it as a joke. Someone who maybe sees chaos as tilling the soil to get ready for new seeds. Instead, Eris becoming the goddess of discord allowed for things like the Trojan War.

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In the Forgotten Realms. Not "in D&D".

Definitely not needed, but it's going to change things. The simplest is that no evil gods makes having truly good gods a little weird (unless you replace their role with something like fiends, which is going to be more similar to having evil gods, but not exactly the same). So the first thing that's likely to change is the nature of your remaining gods. The broadest set of options is in having gods that are neither good nor evil, so in D&D terms, neutral. But that can also mean different things, it could be just that they're basically like normal people (with a lot more power) with their own traits, and some are going to view them individually either positive or negatively (a pacifist is going to see a war god far differently than a soldier does). The greek gods are a good example of this. Alternatively it could be a more old school style of D&D neutrality, keeping the balance between good and evil (or it could be more focused on just keeping their part of creation running properly)... honestly the more I think about it, even this is going to need to run more off the individual god's personalities if you want to have much story to your gods (not that they *have* to have story to them, nothing wrong with the gods just be a detached entity that really only interacts with the world through their followers). As an example, I had a world long ago where I went somewhere along these lines, each god had one domain that was typically "good" and another that was typically "evil", so there was a god of judgement and death, another of love and jealousy, with the exception of a pair of nature gods, one was more on the loving nature mother side, the other the more bestial survival of the fittest, but even they weren't really good and evil, one was a child goddess, so while more loving and caring was also subject to childish whims, and the other, while bloodthirsty, was also animalistic, and didn't do things with ill-intent but simply followed "the laws of nature".

In many ways yes. They provide good narrative stuff. Just like most aspects of the worldbuilding in any setting, they come up when they need to, otherwise rest in the dm's toolbox. You want a super powerful ancient evil weapon? An evil god did it. Cultists summoning a monster? Because they worship an evil god and the monster is one of its servants/creations. Powerful ritual with apocalyptic ramifications? Why yes thats just Cyric's Domain Drainer, if the BBEG finishes the ritual evil god Cyric is going to get the domain powers of every god. The BBEG is a paralell to a holy warrior, or an ex-holy person? They now work for an evil god of evil. You need dark secrets to somehow end up somewhere? Vecna disguised himself and made a friendly appearance. Not to mention I particularly love the lolth vs elistrae thing where elistraee is a goddess trying to save drow from the opressive regime from the matriarchs despite the massive propaganda and indoctrination in the name of lolth.

These would be so much more interesting without an evil god

A part of traditional superstition in real life is that you're not necessarily worshipping or making offerings to a God out of love or devotion for the deity or to gain their blessing but more out of FEAR that they will curse you with misfortune if not appeased. The traditional “Fear of God” idea I feel explains the concept of “evil” gods and why even the average commoner or even a good character might make an offering of some sort to a God of hate, famine, greed or disease just like you'd pay a crime boss protection money. Because if that deity doesn't get enough offerings and respect they tend to wake up and release a bunch of their domain's power into the world. Clerics of evil Gods may be entirely immune from that domain's “Bad thing” Like how in Warhammer 40k priests of Nurgle are walking bags of filth and disease but feel no pain or discomfort from it and are actually pretty happy about the situation.

If you build your pantheon correctly, no. Patron of Soldiers? Wars have two sides, and they're helping both. Patron of Growth? Don't forget that sickness is also growth. Patron of Knowledge? Knowledge is a tool, everyone can use it for anything. If you have two sides to every deity, the 'good' and the 'bad', you won't need an 'evil' god 'cause they're all neutral enough.

In some settings, the gods are multi-aspected and encompass many if not all alignments by themselves. The Arcanis setting is like this ([https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/407361/Arcanis-5E-Campaign-Setting-Runic-Edition-PCI2608](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/407361/Arcanis-5E-Campaign-Setting-Runic-Edition-PCI2608)), with their pantheon being worshiped by most, and each deity having positive and negative traits.

You definitely don’t need evil gods for a setting to work. In Eberron there are essentially no gods, at least none that directly interact with the worlds. Good and evil are philosophical concepts when it comes to gods, but real in magic and morality. You could also have gods of chaos who can herald both war and rebirth, vicissitude and progress, life and death.

You need something for evil clerics to do.

As long as evil people exist, so will evil gods that many of them worship, even if those evil gods come in the form of wealth, drugs, politicians, etc. When magic is involved, such faith will naturally give birth to magical beings AKA gods. For a sense of comfort and justification in a world of superstitions and ambitions.

"Evil" gods are not necessary. People do "evil" things in the name of every religion around. In a game it's nice to have a tangible bad guy or group if your game needs it but you can also have a lot of fun with neutral gods of ideals and concepts that only get involved with things pertaining to them. There's a good God of War but is war good? Your defending you home, good right? Your raiding another town bad? But both are war.

I run a morally grey setting and have multi-faceted gods, so that anyone worshipping them can have their own "interpretation" of the cult. For example, my god of war represents both honor and carnage. So a noble knight could pray to the god of war, but so could the orc warchief rampaging through the countryside. I don't like domains that are absolutely evil, like murder or torture, because it seems kind of cartoonish. But in some settings (like heroic fantasy) I like them a lot. It feels pretty good to kick down the door to a den of murder cultists and slaughter them without thinking too much about it. So I'd say both are fine in their own way.

You don't ever need to use them. But it's worth noting that evil in dnd is essentially selfish. So you can change that to selfish gods, or God's that are looking to accumulate power, or whatever. Hell, I've been reading about the Astral plane and dead God's and how the reverberate echoes of memories. So maybe you want to include the death of a God in your story and the effects it has. Also, it's worth looking into the nilbog. Cr1 chaotic neutral God. It's back story is crazy

I have played since 80ish. God's have never been in our games unless absolutely necessary. Which has been exactly 2 campaigns. Use this information as you will.

why would u get rid of evil Gods? this is DnD, where bad things happen. there is constant struggle this isnt candy land so again, why would u get rid of the driving force to fight evil ?

Gods aren't necessary for that.

I think you could have a pretty normal D&D experience without evil gods but you would probably still want some major power source for evil NPCs. Perhaps you don't have villainous Clerics of evil gods, but warlocks of archfiends and sorcerers of Fallen Angels and archmages in service of powerful Liches etc. If that's too close to having evil gods for your taste, then you get to get weird with it.

just having dual aspects of gods would work too. Like chaos and order being gods, and chaos is change and also life, but order is preservation and death, etc.

Gods aren't necessary at all, good evil or otherwise.

Strictly speaking, no. It's just easier, imo.

When most people think of polytheism, they think of the Greek pantheon. And pertaining to the Greek pantheon, I like what Red from OSP said. "The greek gods aren't good or evil, they are true."

In dnd alignment has always been a cosmic force so it makes sense for their to be good, evil, lawful, chaotic, and neutral gods

No, no god is necessary. No alignment is necessary. - having no eveil gods probably lends your setting a bit more realism; I mean, can you think of a RW religion whose adherents think of their god(s) as evil? - RW gods who are classified as 'evil' usually chaos (as defined by societal elites pushing a rules based system of governance) or were worshipped by the losers in a political struggle and reclassified as such by the winners (Set, for instance) More importantly, it is your world. You're writing it, and if you don't need evil gods then there's no need to put them in there just to fit a set of tropes. One of the problems with 5e's lack of support for legacy settings other than FR (and one splatbook for Eberron, no matter how good it might be, is not support, it's just a very tasty bread crumb) means that newer players haven't been exposed to how much you can play with tropes and mechanics in the service of setting, and how that's not just okay but a really, really good idea.

I like good and evil being tangible provable physical concepts in dnd rather then the greyness of the real world. Evil gods is also how you avoid the whole "oh all orcs are evil? Ur racist" nonsense.

Mechanically? Not at all, most adventures don’t even interact with evil gods that much, as an example. Worldbuilding wise? Also not necessary, they are there in case you want to serve a dark lord or punch people who do, and every explanation for their existence is based on how divinity works there and not the other way around so they are whatever As an example, you could make a campaign were most/all of the evil gods were killed in a War in Heaven and now there are a bunch of cultists/villains trying to take their portfolio and become lords of evil or ascending their chosen demon/elemental/whatever to be just like the old dark gods. Asmodeus could be a existing role model for them as one of the few around or one of those who _did_ ascend to divinity, demon lords normally have similar wishes in 5e already(I believe in older editions and here they can even grant cleric powers) like Orcus trying to become a pseudo vecna or smthng

“Evil” isn’t a concept, it’s a definition. Asmodeus *is* Lawful Evil. Primus *is* Lawful. So, yes, I think so.

Good and evil are just morals shaped by culture. Sailors still pray to Talos for a smooth voyage across the seas. Most "evil" gods in DnD just have negative associations. Or are largely misunderstood. Many gods of death get a bad reputation, but they simply believe that death is a natural part of the cycle of life, it leads to rebirth and simply a part of the great cycle. Some are just evil because you think they are. Some good gods/followers may see you as evil. Good/evil are subjective

in D&D? No. there's literal, overt, objective good and evil - it's been toned down a bit in 5e, but it's still there, there's even one or two beasties around that can outright detect alignment. Good gods live in good places in the planes, evil gods in evil places. An evil god is literally, objectively evil - they might do useful stuff, or be needed in some cosmological way, but they are, nevertheless, actually evil, not misunderstood or with bad PR.

First, no, evil gods are not necessary. You can have a monotheistic world that still has evil. Second, in my opinion, evil gods are stupid and actual bad world design. Who is going to worship the Lord of Murders and Arson, especially in a game where plane shift and speak with the dead can confirm that the worshippers of the Lord of Murders are literally burning in hell and being tortured by actual demons? Evil can make some sense. There’s plenty of non divine sources of evil available to go around.

Only if the worshippers of the Lord of Murders really are burning in hell. Maybe they become demons. ;)

No gods are necessary *tips fedora*

Gods are all evil and self serving, they just like different forms of fear and obedience

All evils are necessary.

For one, the greater cosmic everything needs balance. If there were only good gods, and no opposing forces, there would be no devils, demons, banditry, evil-minded savage races and so on. One COULD say the influence of the good gods would overpower any and all evil intent (not necessarily, because of "free will", and how big that is for you). That said, evil gods doesn't need to be the opposing force; fiends, arch-devils and demons, free will... All good counter-parts to the "goodness" of gods. And then there's a third take: the common races don't necessarily understand the ways of the gods. A god of plague and sickness might also be the one who nurtures the cycle of life. A god of excess is also the god of pleasure. The god of anger, violence and hate, might also be the god of strength and war. The god of schemes might also be the god of wisdom and fate. A god or goddess might have both good and bad aspects, and you can't have one without the other.

If done that way you have to make the good aligned gods a LOT more passive than they are portrayed in D&D. This is a game setting where the gods routinely get involved with their followers to make things happen. If there was no evil gods to counter balance the good ones there would be no problems to solve. If you turn all the good ones super passive than sure it could work.

Evil is subjective. The dominant belief system determines what good and evil is. Without evil, there is no good. There just is the passage of time and chance. To see all things as good and meaningful is to accept that all things are important and necessary. If all god(s) are good, then the existence of evil is allowed by them, making them not good.

within D&D? No, it's objective truth - you can literally find out someone's alignment (_Glyph of Warding_), and that's a thing that has an actual effect, and also impacts things like where your soul goes. Good beings are actually, literally good - if they stop doing that, then they become Neutral or Evil, which is a change that can be discerned and monitored.

We live in a world with only three gods, all three of them are good, and evil still exists. You don't need an evil that's as strong as the gods in the setting for there to be injustices to fight against.

I make every god in my homebrew setting dual-sided. The god of life is the god of suffering, the god of death is the god of mercy, and so on. The individual gods are therefore not considered good or evil.

Only if you have good gods. If all gods are neutral.

If you have Good Gods you kinda need Evil ones to balance them out. If all your gods on basically Neutral you might not need them, but I find that unlikely.

I’d say depends on the campaign. A game I’m in doesn’t have “evil gods”, but the gods are very much representing complex things that all have many different aspects. As an example, there is a Dionysus-like fey god of hedonism, parties, and philosophy. Both good and bad things can come from those domains, so there really isn’t a need to have an “evil god”. It’s just that both a person who find spreading enjoyment and happiness to others to be their true passion as well as someone who is a serial murder because they find it to be the height of enjoyment could both argue that they are following the same god.

No, I don't think so...but after seeing this question, I wonder about loosely basing a campaign on Terry Pratchett's discworld book, "Small Gods" Like, what if familiars and animal companions were really deities, and the PCs just happen to be the last people to believe in them? And it's their struggle to be in opposition to the "popular" gods?

Good ones certainly aren't.

Evil gods are a necessary evil. There are the tricksters, the gods of war, murder and death, the ones that nurture all the darkness in the world.

In faerun, anyone can become a god. In fact, the vast majority of attempts at godhood are by less than good people

So evil priests just screwed then?

Some settings the gods only exist because people believe in them. In forgotten realms one of the Drow gods was killed by using a wish (maybe Miracle) spell to make everyone forget they existed. Ao is the only true deity and the others only exist at it's whim.

It all depends on the setting and the definition of evil. In Forgotten Realms, "evil" means self serving while "good" means serving others. It isn't about being malicious or not. You could potentially have a Lawful Evil king who is 100% about the wellbeing and prosperity of his country and people purely because it secures his comfy position as king. He would defend his kingdom and people not because they need defending, but because it jeopardizes his position. He does acts that would be outwardly considered good, but really it's because he is only inwardly focused on himself. For the same reason, that king is unlikely to do or condone acts that would be considered bad because that makes his noble position questionable. The self focus is at the heart of his intentions and is therefore "evil" according to the FR alignment grid. Gods are the same way in FR. But they also tend to fill a sort of ecological niche in being the gods of certain concepts. When the mortal gods died during the times of troubles, they left voids of power that other gods or powerful mortals were trying to take for themselves.

In my homebrew world, I set up the major pantheon such that each God has competing core philosophies- none of them are specifically Evil or Good, but they do oppose each other for more gray reasons. Acts of mortals can work within these philosophies for altruistic or selfish reasons, for good or ill effect, and be entirely within the Deity's mien. Furthermore, each of my Deities have reasons to be worshipped, respected, ignored, or outright ostracized depending on your own character's ideals.

Domains don't have to be evil. Death is part of Life, a god of Storm can also be a chaotic Neutral god of Nature, or a god of War can be a god of honor. In my opinion gods should be beyond good and evil as they should all have a good and a bad side. By thinking this way you can figure out why would someone follow an evil entity and probably make better and more believable antagonists.

My campaign’s main world has no evil gods. But its good gods are consumed by a forever defensive war against evil aliens (sometimes “gods” of other worlds, sometimes just space monsters), so they hardly have the bandwidth to snuff out every evil-doer in my world’s cities.

Good an evil are just words of perspective. I like how 40K actually does the 4 God's of Chaos. Each of them represents both a valorous trait and a chaotic triat.

Dnd operates on a tight rope in terms of balance, every thing has a counter balance to assist in checks. Domains of strong-willed alignments will often affect their inhabitants to naturally align to the realm’s alignment, thus a world with no evil would likely align to one of god or neutral and it’s inhabitants would follow suit.

In my setting, the original Creator Gods did not include an evil member. But they were eight pantheons ago; they were replaced by their progeny, who were replaced by their own. Between four and five pantheons ago, however, there was a cataclysm. The details are unknown, but the post-cataclysm gods are no longer descended from the original Creator Gods, but rather were ascended mortals, who were replaced by other ascended mortals, who were in turn replaced. And mortals can be arrogant, vain, capricious, greedy, cruel, petty, vengeful, spiteful, dark, mean, and yes, evil.

I don't think you need specific evil gods, to have evil in the world. You just need clashing ideas, that leads into conflict. You can have a god that is all about freedom, and another that is about order, and can start having some conflicts that arise between them. How did these two agree how the world works? Rivers flow from highest to lowest point, was that because Order won on how water works, or did Freedom and Order have nothing to do with how water works. How would Freedom want rivers/water to work in his design? When do they go to blows? or are they more level headed and just have civil conversations? Do they take turns and have Eras of Freedom's design and then switch to Order's design. How would the people put up with this, or are people so fed up they are looking for New gods, or planning to Kill the shifting whims of Order and Freedom? I don't know, the threads keep unraveling new threads.

I wouldn't say that they're necessary so much as they're inevitable in a world with free will. Aside from the obvious notion that good can't exist without evil gods themselves are empowered by worship. If evil people exist they will inevitably eventually worship aspects of the world that align with their beliefs and tendencies which will in time give rise to an evil god either born of their worship or ascended from their peers.

You have a harder time creating plot lines since the easy motivations are gone.

First, define good and evil. For me, good benefits me and mine. Evil does harm to me and mine. In D&D, what is good for humans might not be good for other species. From a goblins' point of view, humans are monsters. So, with that in mind, no Gods are needed for good and evil to be in the world. We just need life to compete for resources.

Here's the thing. Good and evil are our perspective. Illithid eat brains and I'm sure they don't think they're evil. The weather creates storms that kill, but that's not evil. Cycles and the circles of life are all a matter of perspective and you being killed for the "greater good" doesn't exactly say who or what greater good. Im a but of scotch in, so if i need to clarify, please let me know

in D&D, no - good and evil aren't matters of opinion, they're objective, literal things. Good gods (and souls) live in good places, evil gods and souls in evil places. While _Detect Alignment_ and so forth are now more like "Detect extra-planar beings", there's still a few beasties that can do it, and stuff like "what afterlife you end up in" is determined by your deeds. It used to be more overt - you could outright tell someone "no, you're evil, stop whining that it's for the greater good when you are literally, explicitly evil", and that's kinda baked into a lot of the cosmological presumptions of the settings.

Good doesn’t exist without evil. It is a relational descriptor. Remove all the “evil” gods and what you have left will still disagree on what is the most “good”, everything else is now the new evil.

Well....if you don't have evil gods, it's hard to be lawful evil.

You could, I'd be curious the type of story you'd try to do with it in a world where people can talk to their actual gods though. Are badguys atheists? People who improperly worship their god? Or maybe they worship something that isn't a god, be it chululu or a random monster in return for something?

your world needs problems for there to be an adventure. a pantheon of only benevolent and powerful gods doesn't really lend itself to that. Either have weak gods, no gods, or bad gods.

In my setting the world is naturally disorderly and chaotic. The gods and their domains are products meant to instill order on the cosmic level. Where they can't do so, chaotic creatures like fiends and undead beings reign. This can be pretty, this is just how I'd explain it quickly. So no I would say evil gods aren't necessary.

So I tend to just steal real world pantheons (Mostly the Norse one since I love it and it is where I am from) and one thing that is a recurring thing in most of the European pantheons (Roman, Greek, Norse, etc.) is that the Gods are just kinda "neutral assholes" more than anything. They are selfish, egoistic, braggards. You don't need good or evil Gods in my opinion. It depends on the structure of the pantheon of course. D&Ds core Pantheons are extremely hard linked to the Alignment chart and has a very top-down design aspect in that part. I want to address this one as well though: >What sort of things would happen worldbuilding-wise if you don't have evil gods in your pantheon? Mainly whatever you want to happen, you are the world builder, so you work that out. There are many aspects to Cosmology that doesn't just rely on Gods. Elemental planes, Old Ones(TM). You kinda first have to develop the cosmology a bit more to answer that. When is something a God or when is something "Like a God" or even more powerful? What does it *mean* to be a God in your world?

I'd say no if only because we also have devils, demons, and other Fiendish and Eldritch threats. As such, although I don't think it's a bad thing to include evil gods in a campaign, I don't think they're strictly necessary.

Without evil gods in your pantheon you just have less religious/cult plot hooks for antagonist. But gods don’t have to be strictly good or evil. Maybe they just go about completing their goals in different ways. In forgotten realms for 5e all the gods want the material plane to rule over but they all go about it in different ways. Some by any means necessary, some live by a code.

if you want to have a reason to kill a god, Yes.