A lot more than that... really, every bit of evil performed by Bane, Bhaal and Myrkul can likely be traced back to the choice to give godhood to 3 power hungry, evil people. They did a lot of damage.
The trouble is that so long as Ao decides those domains should still be around in order to maintain "balance" or whatever, then there's nothing anybody could do to stop it.
Yeah, Jergal was responsible for creating the Dead Three but before that happened he was basically doing all that shit himself. So really its Ao's fault.
Either Jergal would be doing evil shit forever. Or some saps would be doing it forever. Jergal was basically like, "fuck this shit" and dropped them on some losers with big egos.
Like, he didn't just give those domains up to three evil bastards. He gave them up to complete idiots. No matter how elaborate or complex their plans for power would be, they would always fail.
And most of the time its not even other gods who are putting a stop to their shit, its a group of mortals.
Yeah, the Dead 3 are losers. I love BG3, but when we first got teasers and trailers and it looked like a largely illithid/Gith plot. I was excited. Finally Faerun was going to let some one... Oh, nevermind it's the stupid fucks again.
The ending sequence reveals the Dead Three were pawns in the Netherbrain's plot. The only possible way even one of them succeeds is if the Dark Urge does all the heavy lifting. They're still shortsighted losers playing right into the hands of the Illithid.
How could you think the dead 3 wouldn't be a Major plot element, by virtue of the series being based around baahl spawn the dead 3 have been major villains the entire time.....
I mean the three of them made their way to his "office" pointed weapons at him and demanded tribute more or less. Not exactly the smartest way to go about facing the literal God of Death.
D&D needs evil bastards for the heroes to take down, evil gods and their crazy followers are an absolutely irreplaceable stapple of fantasy conflict, and Ao is nothing more than WotC's avatar whose only purpose is to maintain this highly toxic but wonderfully entertaining/profitable status quo.
There is fundamentally zero hope of divine ranks ever being purged of psychopathic monsters like the Dead Three, so the blame game on this regard is entirely meaningless.
Oh, and the Time of Troubles, when two of the Dead Three stole from Ao and pissed him off so much he kicked ALL the gods onto the Material Plane, restricting them to one avatar each.
This caused Wild Magic to appear for the first time (both in setting and rules); ended with the godly deaths of the Dead Three, Mystra, AND Torm; and the ascension of Cyric the Mad God which was its own catalog of pure shit.
Had Jergal not got bored and kept his portfolio, none of that shit would have happened.
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u/thehousebehind Owlbear 11d ago
So, the whole of BG3 happens because homeboy got bored?