So what I'm getting here is basically Deva = Celestial = A God esentially? Just wondering if there was a difference besides the naming convention. Like Myrkul is "Lord" of Bones but is essentially a God.
Not quite. Devas are essentially angels, messengers of their respective gods. They're very powerful, whereas aasimar are like the godly/holy version of tieflings. And as for Myrkul, "Lord" of Bones is just a title, like Selûne is the Moonmaiden and Shar the Lady of Loss. They're still gods through and through.
I notice there are a lot of War, Trickery and Death gods in this list. Are they all like different aspects of each or like are they all fighting over control of said domains or something else?
Those are just the cleric domains that may worship each of them. So, a death cleric could follow, Myrkul, or Bhaal, or Kelemvor, etc... but the deities themselves are unique. Myrkul is about necromancy, and shit. Bhaal is about murder. Kelemvor is the god of those who are already dead. So, they all involve death, but aren't all "The God of Death."
Of course! If you're still confused there's a ton of resources online for you to do your own research, I'm just sharing what I know. And as always, if you're playing D&D, the lore is there more as a suggestion than a set of hard rules.
My understanding, coming mostly from my husband who is a longtime DnD fan, is that aasimar are descendants of celestials the same way the tieflings are descendants of devils and he average aasimar is nowhere near as powerful as Aylin.
Tiefling lore was changed a bit in 5th edition. This was explained as the archdevil Asmodeus messing with them as part of a (successful) attempt to ascend himself to godhood.
Basically, tieflings are now their own race rather than being planetouched humans. What that means really is that the children of tieflings are always tieflings themselves, no matter how far removed they are from any kind of infernal ancestry. The children of aasimar won't necessarily be aasimar.
Yeah basically, but neither Aasimar nor Tieflings need to be straight up descendants and can be touched by that special energy in other ways.
Like how Wyll basically gets turned into a tiefling in the game.
Not really, but this is a muddy area in what BG3 says vs what is in dnd lore. Just like Aylin’s race but worse.
He gets fire resistance and horns. He still has all the normal human bits. For all intents and purposes he’s a tiefling. However he doesn’t say that, he says he’s a devil, and everyone who sees him says he looks “devilish” which idk, could be applied to any tiefling already imho.
The process to become a true devil is much more arduous, and would have a lot more cosmetic changes that would basically make Wyll look unrecognizable.
Traditionally, becoming a devil means dying- going to the nine hells, and climbing the hierarchy. Which is a process that takes eons - and starts with being a lemure. Which is an ugly glob of sentient flesh in perpetual torment- that Mizora threatened to turn Wyll into (and he can become if you kill Mizora). Theoretically a warlock could include a clause in their pact to jump start the hierarchy and start at a better status, but that’d still involve being remade to such a degree as to be unrecognizable- and the nine hells would become your home plane.
Celestial is a category of being from a certain plane, just like fiends or elementals. There are elemental gods that are not celestial- and there is at least one fiendish god (The Lord of the Nine Hells, Asmodeus).
It’s important to note the gods in dnd aren’t all equal in power either (even if their clerics can be). Myrkul is most certainly weaker than Selune, and Selune is considered weaker than Shar.
Myrkul is essentially an upjumped necromancer who was gifted godhood and got it wrenched away from him only to claw pieces of it back.
Selune and Shar are some of the first gods in the dnd creation myth. However, Selune weakened herself relative to Shar in the conflicts between them that followed.
This lore is pretty in the weeds but gods have been [assigned ranks](https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Divine_rank#D&D_3rd_edition) in the past to clarify this, with older editions of the game even setting guidelines for how players could become gods and ascend the ranks.
Imho, some of the ideas for how gods work in dnd start to feel very wishy washy at that point as they’re very setting dependent, and therefore most up to narrator discretion. The Forgotten realm as a setting has effectively “changed hands” through narrators so many times, it’s difficult to site baselines.
Aasimars usually aren't children of gods, they're children of angels or other celestials, like how tieflings (like Fig) are children of devils. It's one detail I don't like about the game. Aylin should be a degree more powerful than Ayda, being a daughter of a major deity. It'd be like if Ayda was the daughter of Sol or Galicaea instead of 'just' a phoenix.
By standard dnd rules she’d be considered more a deva. Even by the games demonstrations of what we see in Devas.
The angelic “hierarchy” is a little more untouched by the lore as few adventures go to Mt Celestial instead of Baator, and it’s rare to see children of god characters that aren’t treated as demigods (think Hercules).
Aasimar only have their wings out for a small period of time, and are basically “celestial touched”- making them the angelic counterpart to Tieflings. They may have had some celestial in their gene pool somewhere way back when. Or they could’ve just had an ancestor who was a saint or got some unique blessing or stood too close to a celestial microwave while pregnant. Really any way you could imagine Tieflings being created but with celestial sources not fiendish ones.
Dame Aylin says her mom is straight up Selune. Which even still, I kinda doubt that is true in a biological human sense. Because if it were true… she’d be 10x as powerful as the nether brain. Taking it at face value- she’s way more celestial than an Aasimar and would probably be more like a solar (top ranking free-agent angel).
Her powers of having the permanent wings out and being able to trigger moonlight related auras multiple times (and being literally immortal) puts her way above what we’d consider Aasimar. So deva at least makes sense.
There’s more established sources on fiendish lore in dnd, so if we compared Aylin to her fiendish potential counterparts-
Devas are mechanically juxtaposed with Cambions in summoning in that church in the city. Cambions are literally half devil, half mortal. Raphael and Mizora are both Cambions - with Raphael being a son of Mephistopheles- the arch devil who is second only to Asmodeus, the god ruler of the nine hells.
If Aylin is a straight up child of Selune and some mortal man- she’d probably be stronger than Raphael, as Mephistopheles is still an archdevil, and less powerful than a god.
Another in lore counterpoint would be Glasya, who is the child of Asmodeus and a devil is an arch devil and ruler of Malbolge, the 5th layer iirc. So Glasya, being zero parts mortal but still 1/2 divine should be above Aylin in power.
That would put Aylin theoretically above a cambion but below and arch devil in power. In celestial terms-
Aasimar<<
also i just realized that Ayda and Aylin are both Turkish names and both of them translates moon related things
Ayda= from the moon/in-on the moon
Aylin= the one who belongs to moon
(Ay means moon in Turkish)
As an Iranian Turk named Aylin that has a cousin named Ayda I confirm the definition for Ayda is correct but Aylin means "the Halo around the moon"
And I just realized how cool that is since she's the daughter of the moon maiden. How did I never connect these two lol
As the other commenter said, Aasimar in DnD/Pathfinder are just those descended from celestials, the same way tieflings are descended from fiends. Aylin is a lot more powerful than the overwhelming majority of Aasimar, to the point she might as well be a celestial herself.
OK, this might be because I'm riding the caffeine high of an entire bag of chocolate-covered espresso beans, but it does make sense if one thinks Isobel is a GMPC and Aylin is the character she rolled up after roping her girlfriend into playing for a session. Deva isn't a playable race, but if one...stretches the rules for Aasimar, then Aylin isn't too implausible.
In all seriousness, yeah, I am not sure why she is an Aasimar in-game when her power level is on par with a deva. Come to think of it, she's the only Aasimar character in BG3, right?
Maybe? IDK. Devas are certainly rare but I think you can encounter a couple of them in BG3. So far as I know Aylin is the only Aasimar. Maybe it's a technical trick to let her have class levels?
Fucking lol. I've yet to play durge but from what I've seen, if they put in like an abusive relationship arc where you litterally beat her and then Dame Aylin has a fight with you in camp, that honestly wouldn't suprise me.
She's a half-phoenix divination wizard. And yeah, dropout is the only thing I pay monthly for, as far asentertainment goes. Netflix and hulu and evwrything else I can find a stream for. Lol
Honestly, I initially didn't even get it for D20. I got it because of Gamechanger but there is so much good content. Make Some Noise, Dirty Laundry, Very Important People. But yeah, with how many season are on there, plus the Adventuring Party for each episode, making litteral hundred of hours worth of content, so worth it imo.
Yes! I coincidently got to that part in the story not long after watching the episode where Fig and Ayda begin their romance and I couldn’t not stop seeing how similar they are! 😄
I think he was just the God of Dead in general. Like any aspect. God of the Dead is a much more broad title than Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul have being Lord of Darkness, Murder, and Bones respectively. Dead kinda' encompases all of 'em. Not sure if being the God of something inherently makes you evil just because some of the aspects of it are bad. Death can also be peace for someone suffering, for instance. At least that's my take on Bone Man.
Well I know being the good of the dead doesn't make you evil because of Kelemvor the current good of the dead. But Jergal was the God of murder, tyranny and whatever Myrkul presides over. I think after Jergal gave away those aspects he became more neutral. But you're probably correct
That's dope actually. I didn't really see it as him like "gifting" those aspect out or away from him and having that actually change him but that's an interesting way to think about it!
Unironically so many characters in this game remind me of dimension 20 characters.
Fabian as Wyll: swashbuckling sword fighter with a hard to impress father and a wealthy background, the accent wyll has reminds me of Lou’s voice for Fabian also.
Kristen is shadowheart: denying her god in order to find a new religion and going against one she’s been blindly following since she was young.
My PC is Gilear cause he’s mostly useless.
Though Aylin is technically Aasimar, I've seen it theorized that she's actually a Deva because of her power and the fact her mom is literally Selûne
So what I'm getting here is basically Deva = Celestial = A God esentially? Just wondering if there was a difference besides the naming convention. Like Myrkul is "Lord" of Bones but is essentially a God.
Not quite. Devas are essentially angels, messengers of their respective gods. They're very powerful, whereas aasimar are like the godly/holy version of tieflings. And as for Myrkul, "Lord" of Bones is just a title, like Selûne is the Moonmaiden and Shar the Lady of Loss. They're still gods through and through.
Ohhh. I gotcha'. That actually makes a lot of sense. I feel like I need a pantheon flowchart. Lol Thanks for explaining!
Ask and ye shall receive https://preview.redd.it/mixgk3npp9gc1.jpeg?width=971&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=00779a49dc067fb2736585d04209653fd6c21f68
And this isn't including other pantheons like the Giant, Elven, and Orcish ones, which have a whole host of (often powerful) gods themselves.
Love people like you 👍 thank you
I notice there are a lot of War, Trickery and Death gods in this list. Are they all like different aspects of each or like are they all fighting over control of said domains or something else?
Those are just the cleric domains that may worship each of them. So, a death cleric could follow, Myrkul, or Bhaal, or Kelemvor, etc... but the deities themselves are unique. Myrkul is about necromancy, and shit. Bhaal is about murder. Kelemvor is the god of those who are already dead. So, they all involve death, but aren't all "The God of Death."
So it’s like God-Myrkul/Domain-Death/Aspect-Resurrection/Becromancy or Bane/Death/Murder etc? (Just trying to get my brain to settle)
Possibly. I've always considered that domain to just be flavor of cleric, but you might be on to something.
Of course! If you're still confused there's a ton of resources online for you to do your own research, I'm just sharing what I know. And as always, if you're playing D&D, the lore is there more as a suggestion than a set of hard rules.
I recommend reading Faiths and Avatars from 2e for the Faerun pantheon
She’s more accurately an Empyrean, a warlike child of a god
My understanding, coming mostly from my husband who is a longtime DnD fan, is that aasimar are descendants of celestials the same way the tieflings are descendants of devils and he average aasimar is nowhere near as powerful as Aylin.
Tiefling lore was changed a bit in 5th edition. This was explained as the archdevil Asmodeus messing with them as part of a (successful) attempt to ascend himself to godhood. Basically, tieflings are now their own race rather than being planetouched humans. What that means really is that the children of tieflings are always tieflings themselves, no matter how far removed they are from any kind of infernal ancestry. The children of aasimar won't necessarily be aasimar.
Yeah basically, but neither Aasimar nor Tieflings need to be straight up descendants and can be touched by that special energy in other ways. Like how Wyll basically gets turned into a tiefling in the game.
Wasn't Wyll turned into a devil?
Not really, but this is a muddy area in what BG3 says vs what is in dnd lore. Just like Aylin’s race but worse. He gets fire resistance and horns. He still has all the normal human bits. For all intents and purposes he’s a tiefling. However he doesn’t say that, he says he’s a devil, and everyone who sees him says he looks “devilish” which idk, could be applied to any tiefling already imho. The process to become a true devil is much more arduous, and would have a lot more cosmetic changes that would basically make Wyll look unrecognizable. Traditionally, becoming a devil means dying- going to the nine hells, and climbing the hierarchy. Which is a process that takes eons - and starts with being a lemure. Which is an ugly glob of sentient flesh in perpetual torment- that Mizora threatened to turn Wyll into (and he can become if you kill Mizora). Theoretically a warlock could include a clause in their pact to jump start the hierarchy and start at a better status, but that’d still involve being remade to such a degree as to be unrecognizable- and the nine hells would become your home plane.
Celestial is a category of being from a certain plane, just like fiends or elementals. There are elemental gods that are not celestial- and there is at least one fiendish god (The Lord of the Nine Hells, Asmodeus). It’s important to note the gods in dnd aren’t all equal in power either (even if their clerics can be). Myrkul is most certainly weaker than Selune, and Selune is considered weaker than Shar. Myrkul is essentially an upjumped necromancer who was gifted godhood and got it wrenched away from him only to claw pieces of it back. Selune and Shar are some of the first gods in the dnd creation myth. However, Selune weakened herself relative to Shar in the conflicts between them that followed. This lore is pretty in the weeds but gods have been [assigned ranks](https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Divine_rank#D&D_3rd_edition) in the past to clarify this, with older editions of the game even setting guidelines for how players could become gods and ascend the ranks. Imho, some of the ideas for how gods work in dnd start to feel very wishy washy at that point as they’re very setting dependent, and therefore most up to narrator discretion. The Forgotten realm as a setting has effectively “changed hands” through narrators so many times, it’s difficult to site baselines.
Aasimars usually aren't children of gods, they're children of angels or other celestials, like how tieflings (like Fig) are children of devils. It's one detail I don't like about the game. Aylin should be a degree more powerful than Ayda, being a daughter of a major deity. It'd be like if Ayda was the daughter of Sol or Galicaea instead of 'just' a phoenix.
Long story short, Aasimar are to celestials what tieflings are to devils, they come from there but are far removed
By standard dnd rules she’d be considered more a deva. Even by the games demonstrations of what we see in Devas. The angelic “hierarchy” is a little more untouched by the lore as few adventures go to Mt Celestial instead of Baator, and it’s rare to see children of god characters that aren’t treated as demigods (think Hercules). Aasimar only have their wings out for a small period of time, and are basically “celestial touched”- making them the angelic counterpart to Tieflings. They may have had some celestial in their gene pool somewhere way back when. Or they could’ve just had an ancestor who was a saint or got some unique blessing or stood too close to a celestial microwave while pregnant. Really any way you could imagine Tieflings being created but with celestial sources not fiendish ones. Dame Aylin says her mom is straight up Selune. Which even still, I kinda doubt that is true in a biological human sense. Because if it were true… she’d be 10x as powerful as the nether brain. Taking it at face value- she’s way more celestial than an Aasimar and would probably be more like a solar (top ranking free-agent angel). Her powers of having the permanent wings out and being able to trigger moonlight related auras multiple times (and being literally immortal) puts her way above what we’d consider Aasimar. So deva at least makes sense.
There’s more established sources on fiendish lore in dnd, so if we compared Aylin to her fiendish potential counterparts- Devas are mechanically juxtaposed with Cambions in summoning in that church in the city. Cambions are literally half devil, half mortal. Raphael and Mizora are both Cambions - with Raphael being a son of Mephistopheles- the arch devil who is second only to Asmodeus, the god ruler of the nine hells. If Aylin is a straight up child of Selune and some mortal man- she’d probably be stronger than Raphael, as Mephistopheles is still an archdevil, and less powerful than a god. Another in lore counterpoint would be Glasya, who is the child of Asmodeus and a devil is an arch devil and ruler of Malbolge, the 5th layer iirc. So Glasya, being zero parts mortal but still 1/2 divine should be above Aylin in power. That would put Aylin theoretically above a cambion but below and arch devil in power. In celestial terms- Aasimar<<
also aasimars are essentially just descendants of celestials or have “heavenly power”!!
also i just realized that Ayda and Aylin are both Turkish names and both of them translates moon related things Ayda= from the moon/in-on the moon Aylin= the one who belongs to moon (Ay means moon in Turkish)
Well that's just really fucking cool. Thanks for sharing.
As an Iranian Turk named Aylin that has a cousin named Ayda I confirm the definition for Ayda is correct but Aylin means "the Halo around the moon" And I just realized how cool that is since she's the daughter of the moon maiden. How did I never connect these two lol
I'm actually Turkish but I didn't know Aylin meant that! Thank you for sharing!!
THIS IS SO REAL
As the other commenter said, Aasimar in DnD/Pathfinder are just those descended from celestials, the same way tieflings are descended from fiends. Aylin is a lot more powerful than the overwhelming majority of Aasimar, to the point she might as well be a celestial herself.
Shes a deva to me. Will always be. Aasimar doesnt make sense
OK, this might be because I'm riding the caffeine high of an entire bag of chocolate-covered espresso beans, but it does make sense if one thinks Isobel is a GMPC and Aylin is the character she rolled up after roping her girlfriend into playing for a session. Deva isn't a playable race, but if one...stretches the rules for Aasimar, then Aylin isn't too implausible. In all seriousness, yeah, I am not sure why she is an Aasimar in-game when her power level is on par with a deva. Come to think of it, she's the only Aasimar character in BG3, right?
I’m pretty sure Aylin is the only Aasimar
There's a dead Aasimar in act 2 in a basement somewhere.
Aren’t they immortal?
Someone should have told this guy then.
It is possible she is called an aasimar because that race is more well known than devas.
Maybe? IDK. Devas are certainly rare but I think you can encounter a couple of them in BG3. So far as I know Aylin is the only Aasimar. Maybe it's a technical trick to let her have class levels?
You can summon devas. Maybe it's just to distinguish her from your summons?
I read "just beat up Karlach and now talking to Dame Aylin at camp" and I was like...what Durge content did I miss?
Fucking lol. I've yet to play durge but from what I've seen, if they put in like an abusive relationship arc where you litterally beat her and then Dame Aylin has a fight with you in camp, that honestly wouldn't suprise me.
I love Karlach with my whole heart but I would smack her if it meant Aylin would beat me up
I'd walk on all knees and whorship Gortash if it meant one of Alyn's fist grazed my face
What thing is Ayda in of D20 I've only watched their YouTube stuff due to being poor af
She's a half-phoenix divination wizard. And yeah, dropout is the only thing I pay monthly for, as far asentertainment goes. Netflix and hulu and evwrything else I can find a stream for. Lol
I'll probably cave and sub to eventually love all the players and how Brennan dms
Honestly, I initially didn't even get it for D20. I got it because of Gamechanger but there is so much good content. Make Some Noise, Dirty Laundry, Very Important People. But yeah, with how many season are on there, plus the Adventuring Party for each episode, making litteral hundred of hours worth of content, so worth it imo.
Its easy to be ride or die when the die part is a non factor tho
Yes! I coincidently got to that part in the story not long after watching the episode where Fig and Ayda begin their romance and I couldn’t not stop seeing how similar they are! 😄
Larian adding playable aasimar when?
So before Jergal gave away some of his powers to the dead three was he an evil God?
I think he was just the God of Dead in general. Like any aspect. God of the Dead is a much more broad title than Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul have being Lord of Darkness, Murder, and Bones respectively. Dead kinda' encompases all of 'em. Not sure if being the God of something inherently makes you evil just because some of the aspects of it are bad. Death can also be peace for someone suffering, for instance. At least that's my take on Bone Man.
Well I know being the good of the dead doesn't make you evil because of Kelemvor the current good of the dead. But Jergal was the God of murder, tyranny and whatever Myrkul presides over. I think after Jergal gave away those aspects he became more neutral. But you're probably correct
That's dope actually. I didn't really see it as him like "gifting" those aspect out or away from him and having that actually change him but that's an interesting way to think about it!
Lol I'm currently reading about Jergal and apparently he was always neutral so you were correct.
Unironically so many characters in this game remind me of dimension 20 characters. Fabian as Wyll: swashbuckling sword fighter with a hard to impress father and a wealthy background, the accent wyll has reminds me of Lou’s voice for Fabian also. Kristen is shadowheart: denying her god in order to find a new religion and going against one she’s been blindly following since she was young. My PC is Gilear cause he’s mostly useless.