Antimagic Field and Demigods

So I saw an interesting question posted the other day. Does Antimagic field suppress the magic and supernatural abilities of beings like Demon Lords and Empyreal Lords?

On the one hand, they're entities capable of granting divine spells, so they are technically deities. On the other hand, it's often made clear, both in lore and expectations of what players should be fighting and killing, that there is a distinct difference between a true deity and a being simply capable of granting divine spells. A player can become the latter, if you're using Mythic rules.

From a gameplay perspective, it's another toss up. If anti magic field does suppress demigods, then it's basically a huge button to remove many of their most powerful traits immediately and render them vulnerable to say, a bunch of NPC's with bows. Which doesn't seem that fun.

If it doesn't, then any given Demon Lord or Empyreal Lord could cast Antimagic field, fly into the air and be functionally immune to 95% of player builds while retaining near full lethality, which also seems kind of unfun.

What are your thoughts?

These sentences sound like demigods are no deities:

Every deity and demigod knows the power of faith to change lives, shape nations, and alter the destiny of whole worlds.

Whether one's patron is a deity, demigod, or something else doesn't affect the level of divine spellcasting a worshiper can achieve.

Somewhere between gods and mortals stand demigods: semidivine creatures with enormous power and obscure agendas.

However, the same books lists "Demigods" among "Other deities" in the table of contents, and the index puts them at the same place as Core deities. Might be for simplicity.

My personal take: If it has stats somewhere, it's no deity, hence affected by Antimagic Field. I find the spell to be a big legacy mess, but a CR 25+ creature might be able to simply kill off its user with melee attacks anyway.

If it has a stat block, it is not really a really a deity.

One thing to keep in mind is that it does not affect Artifacts. Creatures at this level often have at least one artifact and may often have more. I could see a GM considering a demon lords unique weapon as an artifact.

Even without magic creatures at this level are still powerful. Even in an Antimagic Field Kostchtchie is still a huge creature with a 48 STR with damage reduction, energy resistance and regeneration plus a bunch of other abilities I have overlooked.

The party probably loses more than the demon lord.

From a gameplay perspective, it's another toss up. If anti magic field does suppress demigods, then it's basically a huge button to remove many of their most powerful traits immediately and render them vulnerable to say, a bunch of NPC's with bows. Which doesn't seem that fun.

Where does it say that an Antimagic field suppresses DR?

Plus, most of the demigod's DR requires epic weapons to bypass it, and epic weapons are lesser artifacts. If it requires a lesser artifact to bypass it, there is a good argument to say that a demigod DR is equivalent to a lesser artifact and unaffected by the AM field.

Onestep wrote:

From a gameplay perspective, it's another toss up. If anti magic field does suppress demigods, then it's basically a huge button to remove many of their most powerful traits immediately and render them vulnerable to say, a bunch of NPC's with bows. Which doesn't seem that fun.

Where does it say that an Antimagic field suppresses DR?

It suppresses the magic of the arrow, so they count as mundane arrows, but Monster Damage Reduction is "Ex or Su". You should check on a case-by-case basis to see if it is affected, and most of the time the Bestiaries don't say if it is Ss or Ex.

Plus, most of the demigod's DR requires epic weapons to bypass it, and epic weapons are lesser artifacts. If it requires a lesser artifact to bypass it, there is a good argument to say that a demigod DR is equivalent to a lesser artifact and unaffected by the AM field.

Fair point on the DR not being mentioned, though my natural assumption has been to follow 3.5's example of which types of DR are supernatural and which are EX.

I'm not certain where you got 'Epic weapons are lesser artifacts' from though. You just need a weapon with a total of +6 (including the enhancement value of additional traits like Vorpal) to overcome Epic DR. By that standard, a +2 Brilliant Energy longsword would overcome Epic DR.

And such a weapon would be suppresed by AMF.

For such beings, it's probably a good strategy to use AMF unless they're fighting a being they know isn't impacted by AMF.

Diego Rossi wrote:

Onestep wrote:

From a gameplay perspective, it's another toss up. If anti magic field does suppress demigods, then it's basically a huge button to remove many of their most powerful traits immediately and render them vulnerable to say, a bunch of NPC's with bows. Which doesn't seem that fun.

Where does it say that an Antimagic field suppresses DR?

It suppresses the magic of the arrow, so they count as mundane arrows, but Monster Damage Reduction is "Ex or Su". You should check on a case-by-case basis to see if it is affected, and most of the time the Bestiaries don't say if it is Ss or Ex.

Plus, most of the demigod's DR requires epic weapons to bypass it, and epic weapons are lesser artifacts. If it requires a lesser artifact to bypass it, there is a good argument to say that a demigod DR is equivalent to a lesser artifact and unaffected by the AM field.

Fair point on the DR not being mentioned, though my natural assumption has been to follow 3.5's example of which types of DR are supernatural and which are EX.

I'm not certain where you got 'Epic weapons are lesser artifacts' from though. You just need a weapon with a total of +6 (including the enhancement value of additional traits like Vorpal) to overcome Epic DR. By that standard, a +2 Brilliant Energy longsword would overcome Epic DR.

The same place where you have taken what DR is Su. Misremembering 3.5.

My thoughts on it as an Anti Demon Lord tool.

It is range personal. And fairly specific to oracle/clerics and wizards/sorcerors. Most of these do not want to be within 10 feet of a demonlord, as their own abilities will also be disabled.
Demon Lords still hit like bricks.

A brown fur transmuter gets around that, as does a relatively specific combination of Skald (which can cast it via spell kenning) with a share spell animal or phantom companion class (although that companion will almost certainly be one turned by a demon lord.

It's the one time and place where the Arcane Archer prestige class is actually useful. Two level in arcane archer gets you imbue arrow, letting you shoot your AMF field out away from you so your beat stick team mates can try to capitalize on it.

Of course, demonlords are still stronk and doesn't completely trivialize the encounter.

My group actually had this exact issue pop up, with Dagon wrapping himself in an Antimagic-field to attack a city.

Our consensus, after about an hour of debate, was that anything Mythic could ignore an antimagic field. The basis for this was that Mythic powers can create artifacts (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alternative-rule-systems/mythic/mythic-heroes/#Le gendary_Item_Ex), so Mythic powers, by default, have to be on the same tier as artifacts if not higher.

So Dagon himself, as a Mythic-tier creature and demigod, was immune to anti-magic field, but any of our Mythic powers, equipment or spells that had Mythic enhancements was also immune. Made it a fair bit of fun, since the party wizard had to be even more creative than the norm about what spells to Mythically empower, and it made the party feel more important since it gave a reason all the NPC's in the city were basically helpless against something with a stat block.

Except for one NPC ranger with Clustered Shot who ended up taking off about 100 of Dagon's HP, I guess.

Thanks for your input all. Overall, people seem to think that AM should work on demigods, but it's a risky play for either the party or demigod to try.

That's kind of where I was at in my own thoughts, so if this pops up in a campaign, that's probably what I'll run with, maybe with some caveats for mythic stuff.

For a Rules thread it should be close to RAW with Mythic rules.

IMO it is a more nuanced topic. You have the regular game, mythic material, and then deity/deific considerations. I don't think it's the black/white or dualistic situation as portrayed in the OP opening statements.
IMO PC's should never encounter deities directly in a TTRPG. In dreams, via avatars, agents, and champions, via clerics and such, sure. That's a more subtle use to inject some GM/author information and guidange to the PCs/actors.
Heroes are on their way and some have a spark of divinity. After that you have demigods and such who are divine. In summary I think it's a bad idea to have an Idea/Jungian Archetype/Philosophy interact directly with a PC as a mortal unless there's some level of abstraction/subterfuge.

In a book it's okay as the character do what the writer wants/needs them to do or say and to make a point. There isn't communal independent agency in the mix.

Actually, being in an Antimagic Field is going to impact the party a lot more than it will the demigod. They usually retain their stats and size and a significant amount of their defense. The party on the other hand usually relies on magic for a lot of those things. When you +6 belt of physical perfection no longer functions all your physical stats drop by 6. Dagon on the other hand is still a huge creature with a STR 44, DEX 25 and a CON of 40. He still has the following attacks bite +39 (6d6+35 /19-20+ grab), 4 tentacles +34 (2d6+17 /19-20 +grab) and a reach of 15 ft. (30 ft. with tentacles). And his AC is still 46 and regenerates 30 points per round.

My group actually had this exact issue pop up, with Dagon wrapping himself in an Antimagic-field to attack a city.

Our consensus, after about an hour of debate, was that anything Mythic could ignore an antimagic field. The basis for this was that Mythic powers can create artifacts (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alternative-rule-systems/mythic/mythic-heroes/#Le gendary_Item_Ex), so Mythic powers, by default, have to be on the same tier as artifacts if not higher.

So Dagon himself, as a Mythic-tier creature and demigod, was immune to anti-magic field, but any of our Mythic powers, equipment or spells that had Mythic enhancements was also immune. Made it a fair bit of fun, since the party wizard had to be even more creative than the norm about what spells to Mythically empower, and it made the party feel more important since it gave a reason all the NPC's in the city were basically helpless against something with a stat block.

Except for one NPC ranger with Clustered Shot who ended up taking off about 100 of Dagon's HP, I guess.

To add to this there's a large number of mythic abilities that specify you aren't affected by non-mythic powers e.g immune to non-mythic diseases, poisons, curses, polymorph etc. So its not unreasonable to rule that non-mythic generally doesn't affect mythic or has limited effect depending on the individual great old one/archdevil//Empyreal Lord/Demon Lord/etc's abilities and powers.

Mythic anti-magic on nethys lets you . . .

Select a number of spell schools equal to half your tier. Spells and effects of the chosen schools are unaffected by the antimagic field.

Presumably this would be your spells and effects not anyones. Similarly Nethys's entry on demigods.. say's they rely on their own abilities to affect change. So you could combine the two mythic abilities that negate non-mythic options e.g. all curses do nothing to them anywhere but if you engage them in their own home realm they are more powerful still. Such as drawing an army from the soil given time.