D&Deities

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 5:21 am

I've been meaning to do this for a while: Get some thoughts on Dungeons and Dragons deities to get something sorta coherent.

The long and short of it is I've been thinking about a campaign where the party has found the gods have had a great big to-do and decided to wipe mortals out--or nearly so--and restart mortal civilization, and decide to fight even unto the gods. Basically, reading Lord of Light and replaying God of War right after reading Preacher does some weird things to you. And I read the Iliad a year or two back so I guess that's an influence, too.

But I like the setup and since the party is against the gods as a whole there's no END to the enemies that can show up and be thematic, the list of stuff which would try to attack you seriously runs to 'everything'.

The problem is trying to make up rules for facestabbing deities (eventually), deciding how gods can fight back without just murdering you with a heart attack, and deciding metaphysics and the rules the gods abide by. The rules run something like this:

-Keep direct interference to a minimum; mortals are supposed to advance your agenda. If you pick 'em right, they will.

-If you directly interfere, any rivals or enemies will also be allowed a commensurate direct interference.

-The rules are different for gods which haven't yet achieved their own slice of the Planes. Hero-deities and demi-gods and small gods are allowed direct action, but are answerable to the higher gods who fit their stripe.

-Gods ARE allowed retribution--like curses and all--in cases of extreme blasphemy or direct insult.

Now the other problem is making some sort of rules for how widely gods can affect their various spheres of influence. I'm considering either some sort of [Deity] tag and a template or something which says, "hey, deities can actually control their damn areas of godliness. The god of the sea knows if you throw a winebottle in the ocean as an offering and can send you adverse weather if you curse his name when telling of your old exploits."

And then there's deciding the manner in which gods can be killed. +4 or above magic weapon? Arbitrary Plot Device? They just can't?

This is sort of to hash out my thoughts. I welcome comments and ideas here. I fully expect folks to disagree with me because pretty much no one agrees on what a god is, what it does, or how it does it. And no one ever has. But the idea is to get something a bit more concrete than "SALIENT ABILITIES AND FUCKING EPIC ADVANCEMENT WOO YEAH"

spongeknight · Post by **spongeknight** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 5:47 am

Well, the first thing you want to do is set what "level" the gods are at in your campaign. Even with the Divine Salient Abilities and forty random class levels, the gods printed in the Deities & Demigods book will get wrecked by epic dragons and high-level casters. Is that something you want, or do you want the gods to be the strongest things in the setting? Is the level/CR cap at 20th level, or will this go into epic? As soon as you set what level the gods are you can fill in the blanks from there. Personally I'd suggest having level 20 as the absolute cap for mortal characters just so you have a kinda good baseline for what your players will be throwing around when they actually fight the gods.

Also don't use the Epic Level Handbook or Deities & Demigods, those books are terrible.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 6:28 am

As far as portfolio control goes, you could do a lot worse than just saying they have the ability to sense their purviews and anything which directly interacts with it--the wine bottle example--and the ability to use any spell with descriptors linked to it as @will spell likes.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 6:32 am

spongeknight wrote:
Also don't use the Epic Level Handbook or Deities & Demigods, those books are terrible.

Wasn't planning on it, believe me.

I'm gonna say the gods are the strongest things in the setting. Apart from players.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 6:46 am

High-level D&D does not really work, so obviously anything past that point is fucked beyond compare. The first thing I think you should do is decide what level range your campaign is going to run from, and then build gods to be level appropriate challenges for a party of that level, and then tack on a bunch of you-must-be-this-badass-to-even-try abilities to keep out the riff-raff and then the sorts of non-combat abilities that let gods do god things. There's no shame in declaring that the gods are level 12+stuff because the campaign is supposed to stop at 10, and honestly that would probably work better than letting your PC's go to 20 and expecting battles that gave satisfying results.

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 7:12 am

Originally Lolth was just some high level demon, and you could travel to the Abyss, stab her in the face repeatedly, then take her legs as trophies or whatever. She got a bit of an upgrade over the editions, but if you want to go back to god killing you should consider just rolling back the levels and capping the game at whatever level you're comfortable with. Decreasing divine power also enforces the minimum interference thing - they just can't be in more than one place at a time. They get a bunch of servants and do things through followers because that's how it has to be done. The whole "in charge of everything" bit is just a convenient lie to keep challengers down. If you want extra mechanical stuff behind them, go the mcguffin route so that their portfolio / responsibilities can be stolen.

Wiseman · Post by **Wiseman** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 9:27 am

There's this god base class if you want to change the definition of a deity. Touhou themed, but pretty workable.

http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?t ... #msg107499
Also comes with it's own martial school.
http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=7007.0

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 9:36 am

If you want the campaign to involve the facestabbing of multiple Gods and you want advancement to happen inbetween make sure you don't set the floor of a God's power too high. You definitely want some also-ran Gods that the players can beat up on their way to the Zeus or Odin figure that presides over the Pantheon.

I'd also stick to a Greek-style feuding pantheon of Gods that the players can play off against each other. Having them temporarily put aside their differences to wipe out the mortals means there are divisions and old rivalries that can be exploited by savvy players. The Greek image of Gods as basically super powered humans with limited fields of attention is better for this type of game than the omnipotent, omniscient monotheistic view. These Gods shouldn't be omni-anything, just so much more powerful than the average person that they might as well be.

Having the players defeat Gods and gain powers from their portfolios Megaman-style could be cool. Basically balanced like getting Artifacts as treasure but inherent abilities rather than wielded items. The crux of the campaign could be the players realising that they are becoming more Godlike and having to choose between becoming the new Pantheon and returning to the old way with them in charge or refusing the role and allowing mortals to decide their own destinies. Could lead to some interesting RP opportunities.

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 10:43 am

I've always wanted to run a game where PC's buttstab the gods (I wanted to do it as my first D&D campaign when I first DM'd in fact). Sorta reminds me that Golarion (Pathfinder setting) has an interesting cosmology where it sounds like cool high level adventures. Then, they consider Gods indendent of high level characters, which is strange. Given the very-high levels are broke, you may as well set the Gods at 16th-20th characters (adding those [Deity] tag fiat-ish god powers). With other more minor gods at a possibly somewhat lower level, like 10th+ or such (Poor Imhotep).

This here is a good chance to use some [Tome] Classes may've always wanted to try. There are some that make great for gods, like Koumei's Time Mage, or Soulborn (get their own divinely morphic realm), Blackguard (literal embodiment of sin and evil).

When in doubt, few weeks back, I had discovered this one god-slaying RPG called Mythender. It's a very hands-on game, demanding Literally Hundred+ Dice, but it is super free, and right up alley for ultimate power fantasy I've wanted to do for a decade.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 3:14 pm

I propose that the D&D Gods can't actually directly affect mortals because deities are simply too 'big' to interact with them under most conditions. (It'd be a little bit like a human trying to kill a single ant in an anthill, with a baseball bat. Now imagine trying to heal a single ant in an anthill, with a baseball bat.)

That's why there are clerics, to provide an interface between gods and mortals.

So: what if the Gods need clerics just as much as mortals need them? Without individuals to focus and transmit mortal faith, the Gods can't replenish themselves, and become merely very high-level entities. They were counting on mortals continuing to worship them while they gathered the power to wipe out (most) civilization. But if someone goes around persuading and/or slaughtering their priests...

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 6:37 pm

The easy way to do this is in 3e is to just set a level cap. Mortals stop gaining levels somewhere in the 8-12 range, (they can still advance via gear upgrades and potentially gaining templates or other wackiness) and deities start about 2 levels higher than where you set the mortal cap. There's enough rules framework to make the gods as broken as you want at those levels, but you're not working with the nonsense of the ELH or D&Dg and you still have a rules framework.

Reynard · Post by **Reynard** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 9:19 pm

Well, people here mostly said everything already.

The first thing you need to do is decide what levels PCs will have. You can make rules/fluff for face-stabbing gods at E6, but you need to know gods are supposed to be face-stabbable at E6, rather then at level 30.

The second thing you need to decide upon is metaphysics. Are gods simply high-level people or are they belief manifested?

In former case you just need a bigger sword.

In latter case you can't do anything to gods themselves. Facestabbing is only temporary setback (if it is even possible), but gods are developing applied eschatology only because mortals believe it's time for the end of the world. So, instead of deicide, you need to face-stab the doomsday prophets, and persuade the general population that everything is okay.

Or gods can be something in-between. For example:

"God of [Something]" is a template character gets for being embodiment of this [Something]. And he keeps template as long as he keeps being this embodiment. If you are the best archer in the world, you'll become God of Archery. You just need to unambiguously prove it.

Defeating current God of Archery in a formal contest is the easiest way, since he can't just off you instead of proving his superiority: until he defeats you his powers simply wont work against you. Moreover, if he tries to avoid contest in any way (requests his followers or god-friends to kill you) he'll immediately lose his mojo (and the next schmuck who wins big archery contest will become new God of Archery).

Of course, if you represent serious threat to someone like an Apollo (Archery, Divinations, Music) challenging him to rock off might not be enough. He just might accept loss of Music, as long as he gets to simply turn you into pincushions with his Archery. Staying in shadows and sending someone else to challenge him might be better idea.

Btw, this gives some motive to the coming Apocalypse - gods are proactively eliminating potential challengers.

Either way you need to decide on level and cosmology before getting anything concrete.

Insomniac · Post by **Insomniac** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 11:18 pm

The way I understand deities is that the are just the coalescence and incarnation of their planes. It doesn't really matter if you go down into the Abyss and whack Orcus. Sure, it means you're a Bad Motherfucker and your Bag of Holding is the one with Bad Motherfucker written on it, but another demon gets the power, fills the power vacuum and the Abyss would just eventually generate something of Orcus-level again.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Feb 18, 2015 2:28 am

Well what are the mechanics of being a god and granting powers to your clerics then? That's the part that I'm not clear on when it comes to Dungeons & Deities.

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Feb 18, 2015 3:16 am

You could grant powers from portfolios rather than the deities. That way deities are actually drawing from the same source, just with more gusto. A god benefits from worship by promoting their portfolio.

Could create a mechanic (either advancement or a power point schedule) for worshipper dependency for deities in using powers and spells.

Censure could be a deity power where you cut off casting for a worshipper- which typically is a terribly shitty idea anyway. Better off cursing in another fashion as a lesson or just smiting. Don't want to force a cleric into enemy camps.

More often a deity wouldn't censure a follower but their portfolio couldn't have its mojo drawn from a cleric who has lost faith.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Wed Feb 18, 2015 4:37 am

A trick you can use is that when the god of magic gets stabbed, it fucks up magic for a while, and leaves scars all over the magic-scape where it doesn't work right for longer than you care. So if anyone hears you're gunning for Mystra, it's not just Mystra you'll have to worry about, but every Lich and Archmage across the relevant region.

Druids protect the god of the forest because they don't like the idea of every tree dying all at once, but the god of the forest is probably less tough than the highest level Druids. If you want to cut off a city's water, just kill the god of that river, whatever and wherever it is, maybe a giant carp, maybe old man willow, maybe an epic elf druid-barbarian gestalt with a lot of pet carp dragons.

The local god of agriculture is then really fucking important to your game, and being a Cleric of that god is a legit thing for players to care about, keep the baddies away. Maybe you can even negotiate your way into the role, let the old god retire back to mortality and have their life back. Then you can go conquering other agriculture gods.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Wed Feb 18, 2015 4:46 am

tussock wrote:A trick you can use is that when the god of magic gets stabbed, it fucks up magic for a while, and leaves scars all over the magic-scape where it doesn't work right for longer than you care. So if anyone hears you're gunning for Mystra, it's not just Mystra you'll have to worry about, but every Lich and Archmage across the relevant region.

Druids protect the god of the forest because they don't like the idea of every tree dying all at once, but the god of the forest is probably less tough than the highest level Druids. If you want to cut off a city's water, just kill the god of that river, whatever and wherever it is, maybe a giant carp, maybe old man willow, maybe an epic elf druid-barbarian gestalt with a lot of pet carp dragons.

The local god of agriculture is then really fucking important to your game, and being a Cleric of that god is a legit thing for players to care about, keep the baddies away. Maybe you can even negotiate your way into the role, let the old god retire back to mortality and have their life back. Then you can go conquering other agriculture gods.

I would play the hell out of this.

Wiseman · Post by **Wiseman** » Wed Feb 18, 2015 5:07 am

tussock wrote:A trick you can use is that when the god of magic gets stabbed, it fucks up magic for a while, and leaves scars all over the magic-scape where it doesn't work right for longer than you care. So if anyone hears you're gunning for Mystra, it's not just Mystra you'll have to worry about, but every Lich and Archmage across the relevant region.

Druids protect the god of the forest because they don't like the idea of every tree dying all at once, but the god of the forest is probably less tough than the highest level Druids. If you want to cut off a city's water, just kill the god of that river, whatever and wherever it is, maybe a giant carp, maybe old man willow, maybe an epic elf druid-barbarian gestalt with a lot of pet carp dragons.

The local god of agriculture is then really fucking important to your game, and being a Cleric of that god is a legit thing for players to care about, keep the baddies away. Maybe you can even negotiate your way into the role, let the old god retire back to mortality and have their life back. Then you can go conquering other agriculture gods.

I like this idea, and I have a possible way to go about it. Some of the giants I've created are described as being worshipped as gods. So perhaps refluffing the fire giant statblock could represent the god of a volcano (with some extra abilities added onto it to represent this). And if you kill that god, the volcano erupts. A storm giant could represent a sky or weather god, perhaps over a specific region. The ocean giant a sea god, death giant (obvious). ect.

Perhaps this could be a template applied to any monster to refluff it as a god (my genies would make good candidates as well). I'll get to work on that.

EDIT: Rough Draft
Any suggestions?

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Wed Feb 18, 2015 6:53 am

Thanks for all the responses and discussion, and keep 'em coming. This is really interesting reading and I'll probably end up with the level cap approach.

Reynard · Post by **Reynard** » Wed Feb 18, 2015 11:44 am

Wiseman:
> Any suggestions?
Unless you are going Touhou-god route (PC class) don't use mortal XP or stats to determine power of god template.

If you want quantifiable differences between gods, make template power dependant not on previously acquired XP, but on power of portfolios god controls. Something like +10 divine HPs and +1 divine AC per "divine level".

P.s. If you are thinking shinto-gods, I'd say killing god of volcano should stop volcano eruption, not start it.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Wed Feb 18, 2015 2:10 pm

Do the Gods feel the need to actively smite civilization? Or can they just step back and stop regulating the dangerous aspects of the world and expect civilization to be wiped out?

Does civilization actually need Gods? Or does it just think it does?

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Wed Feb 18, 2015 9:59 pm

momothefiddler wrote:
tussock wrote:A trick you can use is that when the god of magic gets stabbed, it fucks up magic for a while, and leaves scars all over the magic-scape where it doesn't work right for longer than you care. So if anyone hears you're gunning for Mystra, it's not just Mystra you'll have to worry about, but every Lich and Archmage across the relevant region.

Druids protect the god of the forest because they don't like the idea of every tree dying all at once, but the god of the forest is probably less tough than the highest level Druids. If you want to cut off a city's water, just kill the god of that river, whatever and wherever it is, maybe a giant carp, maybe old man willow, maybe an epic elf druid-barbarian gestalt with a lot of pet carp dragons.

The local god of agriculture is then really fucking important to your game, and being a Cleric of that god is a legit thing for players to care about, keep the baddies away. Maybe you can even negotiate your way into the role, let the old god retire back to mortality and have their life back. Then you can go conquering other agriculture gods.
I would play the hell out of this.

Pretty sure that's ripped directly from Exalted. So... have at it?

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Thu Feb 19, 2015 4:09 am

fectin wrote:
momothefiddler wrote:
tussock wrote:A trick you can use is that when the god of magic gets stabbed, it fucks up magic for a while, and leaves scars all over the magic-scape where it doesn't work right for longer than you care. So if anyone hears you're gunning for Mystra, it's not just Mystra you'll have to worry about, but every Lich and Archmage across the relevant region.

Druids protect the god of the forest because they don't like the idea of every tree dying all at once, but the god of the forest is probably less tough than the highest level Druids. If you want to cut off a city's water, just kill the god of that river, whatever and wherever it is, maybe a giant carp, maybe old man willow, maybe an epic elf druid-barbarian gestalt with a lot of pet carp dragons.

The local god of agriculture is then really fucking important to your game, and being a Cleric of that god is a legit thing for players to care about, keep the baddies away. Maybe you can even negotiate your way into the role, let the old god retire back to mortality and have their life back. Then you can go conquering other agriculture gods.
I would play the hell out of this.
Pretty sure that's ripped directly from Exalted. So... have at it?

Okay. I would play the hell out of this fluff if there were any mechanics worth playing to go with it? Sorry, I didn't think that needed to be said.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Thu Feb 19, 2015 4:11 am

Or no mechanics. Would probably better than shitty mechaics.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Thu Feb 19, 2015 9:33 am

I was spinning off the Godswar in the realms from 1989, plus Small Gods, plus whatever else. The gods would need immunity to scrying and detections, so it's not automatically common knowledge who they all are, or what all their portfolios might be. So they can totally sit on a throne in their temple or just chill in the street as suits their story. But if someone does hear who it is, they can just stab Archimedes and take his portfolio.

In GURPS terms some sort of Serendipity, so when the orcs blow through and kill most of the wildlife, there can be lots of little gods who can't directly combat that but will still survive it.

Divinity doesn't need to give you big stats, just standard PC-type plot immunity, awakening, no aging, and the inability to leave your sphere of influence without slowly dying (and then whatever touches your corpse, often some ravens or a fox or other scavenger, becomes the new one). Gods tend to be powerful simply because being powerful lets you avoid getting murdered for a longer period of time.

Gathering up a bigger zone makes you safer from empire-building gods when you sit at the middle of it. Multiple killers (or ravens) can split it back up again.

Does civilisation care? Someone's got the marriage portfolio, someone's the god of your city (maybe that old sacred tree in the middle, or the Undine in the big fountain). The government, trade, justice, the light of day. Good. You want those to locally exist tomorrow, surely. Someone's even the god of fertility, so if anyone kills them, all the children follow the next piper out of town and are never seen again, a lot of people never have kids again. Damn right civilisation cares, at least until the god of civilisation dies.

An unhappy god should have things in their area work out unfortunately. Forests don't get smaller because you cut trees, it's just that cutting trees upsets that particular god, proper ritual dancing with nymphs can help. People sacrifice seemingly random demands to them because they like it, and maybe that farm boy really will notice you afterward, maybe the plague will spare a few more lives, maybe you really will be with child.

Some cities have all the local gods turned to stone. Safer all around, never get sad, pretty tough to hurt, just don't give them any warning. Shame if someone picks them up and takes them to a museum in London, might do bad things to the financial and political stability of, say, Athens. Rules? Who needs rules.