More on deities and how RPGs treats them.

[Username17]

What are you suggesting then? That when a PC becomes powerful enough he or she can take on the god that gave them their powers in the first place? It all seems a little like biting the hand that feeds you.

Really I'm suggesting that you should probably do it like actual Pantheistic systems. So in this model, a "Cleric" is just a Wizard who happens to pay homage to a particular deity. And if they become more powerful than that god, they just get counted as a god.

The whole "god conduit" thing only makes "sense" with omniscient omnipotent gods, and that's retarded.

-Username17

[Digestor]

I always liked the notion of "god" being a super being who's ascended a certain state... hell, Vecna was a lich who became a god, means he started off as a mortal somewhere - that makes things pretty neat and leaves just a crack of room to actually allow for deicide or other related events for some hardcore plot finales. I just think that unless the DM weaves a really good story, it'll fizzle and fail and go down as lame.

[RandomCasualty]

1153625323[/unixtime]]
Really I'm suggesting that you should probably do it like actual Pantheistic systems. So in this model, a "Cleric" is just a Wizard who happens to pay homage to a particular deity. And if they become more powerful than that god, they just get counted as a god.

That ain't a god, that's a high cleric.

If gods don't grant spells, then why have them at all? I mean a "god" by this definition is no more a god than some beholder who starts a cult. If you don't perform miracles, answer communes and grant spells, then you're really not much of a god in the D&D sense.

Seriously, if this is your paradigm, why have gods at all? They really have no power over their worshippers and are more just like priest kings. And it's totally in their best interest to off their followers before they get too powerful and depose them, especially if they're evil gods. If Gods can't control granting followers spells, then they're nothing.

ANd I can just see the commune results. That would be laughable.

"You know, I havent' been to waterdeep in a couple months... I got no clue what's going on there. To be honest, I'm not even still sure if my temple is still standing. Look, why don't you commune back to me when you figured some stuff out, I'm kinda curious what's going on out there myself. And seriously is sunday a holy day still? I always have trouble remembering that. I been wanting to put the ranks in knowledge religion, but I never quite got around to it. Knowledge skill dont' help ya kill the last god. heh. Seriously those holy scriptures were just some drivel I came up the last time I got really wasted... I don't even remember saying all that stuff..."

"WHat? You want to know where I'm hiding... um... I'm not telling... Why? Um... cause I don't want you to come kill me and try to become the next god. The spell text says I have to answer? Are you fucking shitting me? Alright fine... It says I have to give a yes/no, have fun playing 20 questions asshole... You'll never find me... Now stop contacting me... no wait, actually this is costing you XP to cast isn't it... actually keep calling me... I seriously don't care if you ask questions.. you can just babble incoherently.. I um... value your correspondence and stuff..."

[Username17]

If gods don't grant spells, then why have them at all?

Because it's a fantasy setting, and fantasy settings have gods? What they don't have, generally speaking, is people who get spells granted to them by gods. Really, that appears pretty much nowhere in any source material. I have no idea why D&D latched onto it (other than the gradual progression of the "Moses" class into a customizable spellcaster class that I've watched over the course of my life).

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1153673122[/unixtime]]
Because it's a fantasy setting, and fantasy settings have gods? What they don't have, generally speaking, is people who get spells granted to them by gods. Really, that appears pretty much nowhere in any source material. I have no idea why D&D latched onto it (other than the gradual progression of the "Moses" class into a customizable spellcaster class that I've watched over the course of my life).

Well, priests granting miracles and working magic is actually fairly common in mythology, it just usually happens to be not spellcasting, but rather petitioning gods for help.

However this is a game and playing a class whose sole class ability is "Can ask for help and mighty get heard" is a terrible mechanic, so it was condensed into something that looks like spellcasting, as opposed to, "Mighty Poseidon, the infidels have defiled my daughter, punish them with your wrath!" Spells are a mechanical way to represent having the favor of Ares or the wrath of Poseidon on your side.

[Crissa]

1153616666[/unixtime]]If a clerics god dies or dismisses them then I for one expect to see that cleric approached by recruiters for other dieties within 24 hours.

The same for large communities of worshippers. If the god of spiders dies then the drow are totally going to be standing there with the God of Octopi manifesting before them and saying "Hey whatsup, I got eight legs too! Lets conquer the underdark in MY name."

I really fail to see the problem in that.

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

1153691109[/unixtime]]

1153616666[/unixtime]]If a clerics god dies or dismisses them then I for one expect to see that cleric approached by recruiters for other dieties within 24 hours.

The same for large communities of worshippers. If the god of spiders dies then the drow are totally going to be standing there with the God of Octopi manifesting before them and saying "Hey whatsup, I got eight legs too! Lets conquer the underdark in MY name."

I really fail to see the problem in that.

There isn't a problem with it if it's a rare occurance. But having gods who are no better than 15th level characters or so means that this is going to be a monthly occurance. It mgiht even be the case where the PCs go from god to god eliminating the entire evil pantheon. Then what?

And that's pretty problematic, because eventually you wont' have any gods left. Be kind of crappy if the drow end up in a cycle of worshipping the latest flavor of the month. You want your world to have some stability.

[Lago_AM3P]

There isn't a problem with it if it's a rare occurance. But having gods who are no better than 15th level characters or so means that this is going to be a monthly occurance. It mgiht even be the case where the PCs go from god to god eliminating the entire evil pantheon. Then what?

And that's pretty problematic, because eventually you wont' have any gods left. Be kind of crappy if the drow end up in a cycle of worshipping the latest flavor of the month. You want your world to have some stability.

That actually happens quite a bit in fantasy. It's not usually the evil gods who get ganked, but the kind of thing where all of the representatives for a force on the 'good guy' side (such as elemental lords, dragons of magic, or even the forces of nature) get killed and there's a huge gap in the power structure is quite common in some fantasy literature.

It even has the side effect where the forces of evil get more powerful and people start suffering and dying and empires get conquered and the story doesn't necessarily get crazy.

Sometimes, like in Final Fantasy VI or Grandia II, nothing happens that society can't recover from. People just scratch their heads and move on. And these games had gaps in deific leadership that lasted hundreds of years.

Unless the killing of a god would instantly destroy the campaign setting, I don't see the problem with that. Even monotheistic religions like Christianity don't automatically explode if God is just suddenly Not There. Granted, some crazy things might happen like Satan deciding to take over the world with his new demon armies, but all's fair in love and war.

The only problem that occurs when you game mechanically tie one character's special effects to a deity and then decide (essentially randomly) that a character experiences a surge or a drought in power for no real reason, like you seem to be suggesting would be a problem with easily-killable deities.

Of course, no one has to design a setting like that. Or if they do, no one has to force the DMs to note compensate the PC getting screwed by it.

[Username17]

It mgiht even be the case where the PCs go from god to god eliminating the entire evil pantheon.

So you're saying that the player characters might kill Mephisto, Diablo, and Baal sequentially after a hard fought campaign? Gasp! How could anyone have fun doing that?

Then what?

Then the campaign is over or you discover the presence of a newer, even more hard core villain. That's what happens whenever the PCs defeat any major campaign nemesis.

You want your world to have some stability.

No you don't. You want to tell a story. The game world moves forward, it doesn't stand still. Since the campaign has a beginning, a middle, and an end, it is entire permissable for the game world to be unrecognizable at the conclusion as well. After all, when the campaign ends, the players don't interact with the world anymore.

It's like a book. The only reason you might want to leave the world alone is if you are writing as part of a series that you don't expect everyone to read every book of. So if you are writing Startrek Fanfic, for example, you need to leave the characters and the technology level pretty much where it started. But if you're writing a stand-alone story, the sky is the limit.

Since a role playing game is stand-alone and gaming group specific, there's no need for the world to stand still. This aint slashfic, it's original fic.

-Username17

[dbb]

Having a large number of people running around the campaign world who can kill gods can be problematic, either via straining credulity vis-a-vis there not being any of them who care enough about a particular god to actually do so, or via the roster of the gods being such a revolving door that nobody can actually keep up with who's in the pantheon from day to day.

This, however, is not just a problem derived from having killable gods; it's a problem also derived from having a large number of really badass NPCs. So yes, if you play in the Forgotten Realms, you're going to have some problems downgunning the gods to level 15 effectiveness, because there are literally dozens, if not hundreds of people in that setting who can kill level 15 characters all the way around the world as a standard action. But if you're playing in the Forgotten Realms at all, you've already come to terms with the notion that every significant good guy and bad guy in your campaign can be killed as a standard action by someone all the way around the world who doesn't even know who they are.

--d.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

1153763581[/unixtime]]
But having gods who are no better than 15th level characters or so means that this is going to be a monthly occurance.

WaitwaitWAIT, Whoa. Who said anything about having gods "who are no better than 15th level characters"? Noone's saying you can't make your gods uberpowerful and godlike, that's not even relevant to the conversation. What the discussion is about is wether it's possible to kill gods, not how may roadblocks you put in front of them or how easy they are to overcome.

-Desdan

[RandomCasualty]

1153766611[/unixtime]]Having a large number of people running around the campaign world who can kill gods can be problematic, either via straining credulity vis-a-vis there not being any of them who care enough about a particular god to actually do so, or via the roster of the gods being such a revolving door that nobody can actually keep up with who's in the pantheon from day to day.

Yeah, basically this is my point. It definitely screws over suspension of disbelief when the PCs happen to be the first people in presumably thousands of years who kill a god, when a god is weaker than a great wyrm. If a red dragon or balor can go popping gods left and right, the world doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense.

I mean sure, you can have your gods like frightened little children, hiding in corners with all their anti-divinations up so nobody finds them, but that to me is not worthy of the title god. It's best to leave godslaying stuff to plot devices when the plot specifically calls for a god to die, but without that, they're basically invulnerable except to other gods, and even then that's a titanic battle everyone wants to avoid.

While it is generally the goal to move a story forward, you need good reason to explain why it isn't a revolving door system of gods. If your story calls for a god to die, then you can just as easily handle it by having the PC's use some plot device artifact or some cosmic event like the Time of the Troubles. I just don't see what you gain by having a god who is weaker than a pit fiend. I mean solars and pit fiends are supposed to serve gods... how does it make sense if the solar can kill off his god?

[Lago_AM3P]

Having a large number of people running around the campaign world who can kill gods can be problematic, either via straining credulity vis-a-vis there not being any of them who care enough about a particular god to actually do so, or via the roster of the gods being such a revolving door that nobody can actually keep up with who's in the pantheon from day to day.

It might not actually be.

There are gods of apple trees and poetry out there--why would a badass warrior want to kill the goddess of love for no reason? Just to be an asshole?

Well, he might. There also just might be significantly fewer apple trees in the universe.

That might not actually be a problem--it depends on how important the position of godhood actually is. If all it means that you get some cool trinkets, a political position, and a power related to your theme then no one really cares. In the big picture, a deity like Kratos or Captain Planet getting killed doesn't mean jack.

Or it might just be really easy to replace the next god. If Big Brother gets killed that might actually represent a huge vacuum in the power structure. There's no one to lead the party (if you believe that Big Brother is real) and probably a lot of leadership decisions don't get made. However there's only a problem if Big Brother was the only one with the passwords to the nuclear missiles and the Operate Oceania's Power Plants. They can just pull the next Big Brother from their own party ranks and everything goes on hunky dory. So even if the individual deities are weak and/or killable, it doesn't actually make a lick of difference because a replacement can literally be made over the weekend.