Dark Powers: Why are they weaker than deities?

[HuManBing]

I just wanted to float this question for you to consider. Why did TSR and WotC and then WW choose to keep the DPs as being subject to deity powers? How would it change the Demiplane's physics (or metaphysics) if they were gods in their own right within the Demiplane?

For me, the idea of a godly set of DPs is quite interesting. One long-dead campaign from about 10 years ago saw a greater deity's avatars trapped in Ravenloft, where the deity had no direct ability to counter the DPs. Unable to kill off his avatars, and unable to reform new ones, that deity began a slow decline, until the PCs were able to destroy the avatar and allow it to reform on the Prime Material world.

I also like the idea of rewriting the Holy Symbol and Icon powers so that they will allow a cleric unrestrained access to his or her deity. In other words, they're the only artifacts that allow a direct channel to an outside deity's power. Several threads which I have since deleted mention this idea in GC campaigns.

[Jester of the FoS]

Well, why is a US state less powerful than an inmate beacuse some escape from prisin all the time?

[HuManBing]

Eh? I don't understand the logic behind your post.

Note that this is not meant as a criticism. I genuinely don't see what you're trying to get at.

My question is whether the powers of, say, Pelor, should be able to trump the will of the Dark Powers in Ravenloft without limits, or whether it's reasonable to say the DPs can thwart godly intervention within Ravenloft.

I'm only in my first semester of law school but I may eventually be able to comment on your post once I get more classes under my belt.

[Jason of the Fraternity]

Why did TSR and WotC and then WW choose to keep the DPs as being subject to deity powers? How would it change the Demiplane's physics (or metaphysics) if they were gods in their own right within the Demiplane?

Depending on how you would play out the Dark Powers within your campaign, I don't forsee there being a big change in the demiplane's physics (or metaphysics). The Dark Powers already have a great deal of power and influence within the demiplane. What happens if you official label them as deities versus powerful unknown entities?

Personally, I run my own campaigns with the Dark Powers being all powerful within Ravenloft. They don't use these powers very much, but it does prevent deities from entering and/or interferring directly with people inside the demiplane (i.e., similiar to the effect that the Lady of Pain has within Sigil). Outside of Ravenloft, however, the Dark Powers lose this awesome might and are subject to the standard conflict with deities and other powerful beings.

[alhoon]

Mmm... HuManBing? Why do you think the WW books don't propose DP as deities?

They can stop even demigods (rank 5) from escaping, so they according to the rules for Deities, they are Lesser gods themselves.

[Jester of the FoS]

Well, if, say, the State of New Jersey can't keep a single manslaughter-er behind bars does that mean it's less powerful than him. So, by extension, are the Dark Powers weaker than gods because they can't necassarily hold one?

[Jasper]

As far as I know the DPs were never subject to any outside power due to sort of unpoken pact. Once in Ravenloft all contact with any other power or plane other then the near etherial (No gods reside there other then maybe Ezra) and once in Ravenloft the god looses all contact with the follower taken by the mists.

Its also in the makeup of the multiverse (2nd ed verson of it anyway) the etherial plane was only able to be acsessed by those either on the inner elemental planes or by those on a prime material plane. As nearly all gods reside on one of the fifteen outer planes and cannot travel into the etherial they would not be able to directly attack the demiplane and would need to send a weaker avatar or proxy. Even then the Avatar or proxy must find the demeplane and then find the few loopholes that would allow that follower out.

[HuManBing]

Alhoon: my viewpoint is that the DPs should be entirely unrivalled power, within in their demiplane. That means they not only trump lesser deities, but greater ones as well. Even things like artifacts should not work entirely right (except for the Holy Symbol and Icon, but those are for reasons inherently to do with Barovia and the Demiplane's formation). Clerics of various faiths can cast spells, but only on sufferance of the DPs. Yagno Petrovna draws his Zhakatan magic straight from the DPs themselves.

Jester: Oh, I see where you're coming from now. You're talking about Vecna, right? (I initially thought you were talking about normal mortal PCs who escape the demiplane.) In Vecna's case, Vecna was clearly a demigod. Canon rules have stated that the Dark Powers cannot counteract the powers of gods, but they say nothing about demigods.

Clearly, lower-planar fiends and demons cannot compete against the will of the DPs. I'd be willing to take that even further and say that avatars of all deities cannot break the DPs' control once they are in the Demiplane. My question is why the designers wanted to say that the DPs could not block the influence of true deities even in their own realm.

For me, that's the same sort of cop-out that you get in Lovecraftian literature, where you have the evil "Great Old Ones" and "Outer Gods", but the good "Elder Gods" trump them in power. (And the Call of Cthulhu sourcebook even rejects that part of the pantheon because it gives the PCs too much of a comfort blanket.)

[brothersale]

I've always viewed the DPs as being related to the Lady of Pain and the Serpent (the one Venca serves), powerful elder beings that tolerate gods for their own incrutable purposes, and that only the efforts of another of their kind can possibly challange them, hence why the gods fear the Demiplane, its a physical reprensentation of something they would be best to avoid or end up getting squashed.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

The idea that the DPs are something fundamentally different from deities -- some say weaker, some say stronger -- is mostly rooted in the simple fact that they don't seem to have, need, or want worshippers. The idea that gods desire worship, and may actually depend upon it for their power and/or survival, goes back to very early in the 1E era of D&D; since the Dark Powers are inherently meant to be mysterious, having whole religions, priesthoods, and so forth that centered around them would have spoiled that.

The notion that the DPs are weaker than gods -- or, at least, than deities as a collective whole -- was deliberately left ambiguous throughout the product line. Whether or not an avatar could escape Ravenloft was even mentioned as an as-yet-unresolved mystery, when the rules for using new cleric spells from the 2E Tome of Magic inside the Land of Mists were published! Even Vecna's escape isn't definitive proof of how strong the DPs are or aren't, as he had acquired some insider-knowledge about how Ravenloft's planar fabric is sustained, hence didn't necessarily break out by brute force, alone.

Of course, the plain fact that Ravenloft is tiny compared to other, more conventional worlds, and is an extremely recent creation also, suggests that the Dark Powers play things out on a far smaller stage than the ones deities are typically assumed to prefer. This may not prove them to be weaker, but it certainly leads many people to think in that direction; one doesn't easily imagine the likes of D&D's Zeus or Odin being satisfied with a world with barely half a million total inhabitants.

[Darkknight]

NOw I may be looking at this wrong, but extra planar creatures such as demons are given a reality wrinkle. They have been given a space of their own. I have always seen this as an area that the dp's can not influence. BUt again as Jester says, if they can not completely dominate everything in the land it makes no matter.

I have always seen the DP's as gods, but their land is warped and they must follow the rules. That is why I see the reality wrinkle as a free zone for that entity. With each binding ceremony that the demon does the wrinkle shrinks and thus the DP's get a closer hold on that creature that has been defying them.

I would have any greater divine entity that somehow found its way in as having it's own wrinkle.

[Bloody Morgan]

Outsiders certainly do odd things to the nature of the demiplane, as represented by their Reality Wrinkles, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that the Dark Powers themselves are removed from them. After all, people within the wrinkle still have to make Powers checks, the special rules of the demiplane still apply, etc.

[Jakob]

NOw I may be looking at this wrong, but extra planar creatures such as demons are given a reality wrinkle. They have been given a space of their own. I have always seen this as an area that the dp's can not influence.

Hmmm... A space the DARKLORDS cannot influence.

[Jester of the FoS]

Reality wrinkles usurp the power of darklords, not the Dark Powers. They're evil-er than most lords and thus take over the land in small areas.

[Carmilla]

In my ravenloft campaigns, gods do not really exist, but people think they do.
Which means that Ezra is not a godess, people believe her to be and that's all, her clerics get their spells form the Dark Powers and no one has an idea about their mistake.
So gods are creations of humans, and the only real god-like powers are the DP.

As for the gods of other planes, in the case of outlander players......
Well, gods live in the outer planes.
They have never heard of the Land of Mists.
They do not know about the Demiplane's existence,therefore they do not know that they cannot enter it or interact in any way with it.

Clerics of various religions continue to have spells ,olny they get them from the DP, and depending on how sadistic I feel, a cleric might even have this strange feeling that the bond with his deity is fading away....
Of course, the DP will not let the poor cleric understand that his deity is so far away .Instead, they will use visions ,dreams, apparitions and anything else they ( or I) can think of to proove that nothing is wrong.But the feeling remains.

Deities cannot enter the Demiplane, cannot see inside, cannot interact with it in any way.

That's my intrepretation of Ravenloft.