Why would gods and goddess need help from otherworldy beings?

Question

Whenever there's a problem in the gods and goddess worlds like some extinction level threat that would destroy their world or when their races want to genocide other races or when they don't like how their world is developing. They always resort to reincarnate otherworldly beings who died and summon otherworldly beings from another world or through summoning rituals by their worshipers. They always give their blessing, benefits, abilities etc to those otherworldly beings that far exceed the natives. Same thing with those who they summon forcefully including to send them back. Unless some gods and goddess are narcissistic and arrogant don't give them anything. But here's a thing why can't the gods and goddess solves those problems them. They might not be omnipotent beings but they are creator of their worlds. So, they are virtually omnipotent to their worlds. Why don't they give those benefits and world breaking abilities to their worshipers? Sometimes those otherworldly beings themselves become problem because of mistreatment from native worlds when they are still weak and some of them let them do what ever they want.

So, Why is that? Why do they need help from otherworldly beings when they could do it themselves.

Answer 1

Maybe because they have a "no direct influence" policy, they "hire" someone to do the job : if the god A does something, the goddess B will also do something because "now it's allowed", and things will get out of hand, similarly to nuclear deterrance : you can send a nuke to country X, but they will throw every nuke they have on you.

The hero, because they are not from this world, isn't restricted by the world's "natural" laws (for example, infinite growth, regeneration...), and because they will likely see this world as a game (or a book), they will more easily do "irreversible things" (it's a game afterall, I'm not really killing this dude, right?) without thinking about the consequences because it's the thing to do, I was told to do it.

Having someone clueless about your world is also a double edge sword :

• if you're lucky, the hero will use your words as their only guide, won't question your logic or your means : you are the only thing they "know" for sure in this unknown world !
• if you're not lucky, you might have summoned the "doubtful hero", the one that will investigate and do the right thing to do, maybe not what has to be done. They will do their job well, but that's maybe not what you want them to do (but if the other gods are doing something shady, you can use the hero to mess with the gods' plans)

And last but not least, the hero will be like a cute puppy that will do what you want, because you will give them a treat (getting levels, hidden powers, wealth beyond mesure...). I think the benefits outmatch the problems, because in the end, as a god you can remove this "unnatural being" from your world, it's not interfering, it's "restoring balance"

Answer 2

Some ideas on a scale of decreasing neediness -

Maybe the gods didn't create the world.

Look at some of your classics :

• Zeus didn't create the world. The Titans did. Zeus, a child of Titans, locked them away, or defeated them. Or, maybe the Titan's left and Zeus set up shop, laying out the story of his brilliant defeat of his betters.
• Odin didn't create the world either. Ymir created the world. Odin was part of an alliance of gods that defeated Ymir.
• Neither did the Egyptian pantheon create the world. The self-created god Atum did. He still rules, presumably; but isn't mentioned often.

So, in these cases, if your gods are on a similar level as the Norse, Greek, or Egyptian pantheons, then they are renters in a house built by someone far greater who is either gone, or at the very least uninvolved in everyday life.

There would, necessarily, then, be a one (maybe several) degrees of things that are just beyond them.

A Level Up:

Slightly more powerful than the pretenders that did not make the world, would be someone who did with the help of a vast army of usually unacknowledge servants. So, it could be Slartibartfast (Hitchiker's Guide) gets all the credit for making Earth, but it was actually done by the efforts of trillions of workers over billions of years and paid for by the mice.

These aren't "creating the world with a single word" kind of powerful creatures. So, there are plenty of imaginable situations where they'd want to bring in someone more individually capable of fixing a problem than they are.

Two Levels Up:

Here might be creatures that do fashion the world all by themselves, but it's certainly not a trivial effort, or easily repeatable, effort. Lister (Red Dwarf) is the creator of the universe. It's all his, but it's accidental.

Or, the Architect and the Oracle (Matrix) single-handedly created the Matrix; but it's no trivial matter for either one of them to make a change. They reach completely outside the universe to have their software peers help with tasks, or their robotic peers take shortcuts to help solve especially challenging problems (like people waking up and Zion).

Three Levels Up:

These are creatures that not only created the world, but did it effortlessly, and could put in a whole week of universe building before taking a slight breather.

Nothing happens that these creatures don't at least tolerate, if not explicitly start.

Why would they "need" help? They don't. Reasons given for them asking anything of another creature are :

1. it is part of the maturing process of the creature [the deity is still creating],
2. the deity is taking a moment to reflect on his/her work [maybe testing it; maybe merely appreciating it] providing the work an opportunity to self-express,
3. the deity has peers and there is some sort of mutually-assured-destruction set of agreements preventing any friction between the peers from escalating into a universe-destroying "hot war",
4. the deity has peers and the world has been destroyed and rebuilt COUNTLESS times -- heroes recruited from inside or outside the universe might be cheating but it's within what the worlds-weary gods will tolerate before one of them flips over the table [this idea from "Order of the Stick"]
5. the deity(ies) don't care about the world, and they don't care about the hero decision either; the hero decision isn't getting any thought -- the deity is calling that particular hero (or a hero from that world) out of habit, or was an idea on their list of things-to-try [from "Supernatural"],
6. the deity(ies) might love their world too much. He/she may be unable to adjust anything (“they are all perfect just as they are”) or bear the idea of hurting one of their creations with the heroes' role; the deity(ies) would rather have an outsider do it [from "The Magicians"]
7. the gods themselves may come from the hero’s world and the gods may have a bias for choosing heroes from their own kind [from “Ultima”] the heroes may, if given an opportunity to grow into their power, become threats to the gods themselves; or, other members of the pantheon may be former heroes who overstayed their welcome and can no longer be removed.

Answer 3

"Because screw them, that's why"

This question reminds me of a certain series I've read, and it explained the reason well: the mighty gods don't solve the problem l.... (drum rolls) because they don't want to. They want the war to keep going and their intervention is in fact the very reason it keeps going.

Yep, that's it,and it also explains a lot of things that don't quite add up in the classic "race A and race B have been at war for centuries and only the hero can defeat the big bad" cliche such as:

-how come race 1 and race 2 have been fighting for literal centuries in an active war but neither ever manages to shift the tides of the war on their own? Usually the only moment the hero comes by is when (insert bad guy race) suddenly became a lot more competent because a new bad guy rose to power or some other mighty weapon. Doesn't sound that unbelievable, until you start to wonder how in no other time in all of those centuries of war no other leader from each side has ever managed to tip the balance and outperform the enemy.

-in many stories the members of the "bad" race (and at times the members of the "good" race) are as 3 dimensional as a planisphere. They hate the summoned hero's team for existing and are hated back in return, and at no point whatsoever do the leaders of either side ever (safe for rare exceptions) seem to question this hate or whether keeping this war going is more beneficial than simply using diplomacy.

-wars are expensive and we've seen how wars at a roughly global scale can severely affect the economy of participating countries, especially if the war lasts several years, let alone several decades. Despite this, all sides don't ever seem fazed by the costs of maintaining a war over literal centuries. Corporations may rule the world to an extent but I find it doubtful that the industry of war is so profitable that both sides would be eager to keep killing each other for several centuries instead of simply trading with each other.

-the big bad has awoken and wants to conquer the world, and all of their minions are mind controlled so there's no talking things out: in such instances the hero team at the end of their journey is usually capable of wiping out entire armies on their own, usually thanks to the divine blessing they have. The idea looks fantastic, until you start to wonder how no one can become as strong as the big bad even if they're both from the same world. If they can't get as strong and the big bad is about as strong as the summoned hero, doesn't that mean that the big bad also plays by the rules of summoned warriors? If that's the case then who summoned the big bad? Why Is it that they can have the ability to be brought back after dying by his own followers every couple years after being defeated when sometimes not even the max levels summoned heroes have this ability?

That's right, the gods are incredibly powerful, incredibly ancient beings that created the world, but these gods aren't morally perfect and created the world solely to entertain themselves so they don't spend eternity doing nothing. They are the reason no one seems to question their situation. They're the reason different races will fight for centuries without ever getting tired of living in a state of war. As for why would they summon a hero? Because unlike the rest of the pieces in their war game, this one is a lot less limited by their control, they're unpredictable, they're free and they can reshape the course of the war in ways the gods wouldn't predict at first.

If you think that's absurd, then explain to me: what is the dungeon master in the world of a dnd campaign? We know the players are characters going through adventures, but the DM is essentially a God, creating and reshaping the world so everyone can have an adventure, and the story will continue so long as everyone is having fun, regardless how many enemies get killed or how much blood is shed throughout it (hell, sometimes certain players will murder innocent people for "the fun of it" or by accident and just pretend it didn't happen later). The only difference between the relationship between a DM and their players and the Gods and their summoned heroes is that the players are more or less in the same level as the DM, since even if the DM is extremely important, dnd requires more than the DM to be played. Unlike dnd, if the summoned hero refuses to play along, the gods can just kill them and summon another one.

Answer 4

"Because it's unsafe."

This can work either way. On one side, perhaps the fabric of reality of the world is damaged by the deities being directly present or by the deities directly intervening in the world they created. The damage causes some negative effect to occur, e.g. dark energy that kills life to leak in or something.

If we want to flip it around, when deities extend their presence into the world, it may damage or inconvenience the deities somehow. For a real world, analogy, humans build nuclear reactors but they can't safely walk inside one while its running; only robots can safely enter and do things on the humans behalf.

Answer 5

I can think of a few possibilities. You said they might not be omnipotent beings. If there's a hierarchy of deities, perhaps those on lower levels of that hierarchy are permitted to create things and put processes into motion, but are prohibited by those above them from interfering afterwards.

Secondly, what if they've been banished from a specific plane or somehow imprisoned by a more powerful being (again assuming the deity in question isn't omnipotent)? If they find a way to interact with the world they created, it would likely have to be in an indirect manner in that situation.

In the case of a deity that isn't omnipresent, it could be that they're away at another location and busy there. In that case, they would need some sort of agent to carry out what they want done on the world in question.

The deity might want to remain anonymous for some reason or another. In a case like that, they might make the decision that to interfere directly would be too revealing of their presence/existence, and as such, bringing in some other being to "do the dirty work" might be a way to avoid that.

This one feels a little more far-fetched, but let's take a deity who isn't all-knowing. You could be dealing with a situation where they lucked out and put something into motion that they don't fully understand. If that were the case, then they might need someone else to intervene to accomplish something they simply don't understand.