Hello Paizionians! Having recently read the premise for 4e's "Prince of Undeath" [don't hate me!] where
The questions are: How to kill a god and what happens to then when they die? In Forgotten Realms gods die all the time. But since I'm not a FR fanatic what happens to their bodies and souls when they die? Does simply doing the deed grant you the portfolio and followers of the deceased? How do you kill the divine? Obviously you'd need special tools but what would these be? Do you have to bind the ex-deity to something to prevent his wrath or regeneration? How do you keep the transferance of power from the knowledge of the pantheon and beyond? In FR how do other gods respond to deicide?
I'm also extremely interested in the fall of Aroden from the PFRPG CS if someone would paraphrase it I'd be ever so thankful.
Bear in mind I'm using a homebrew so any advice goes. It's just that FR has the most murder of gods.
Thank you all!
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The questions are: How to kill a god and what happens to then when they die? [...] Does simply doing the deed grant you the portfolio and followers of the deceased? How do you kill the divine? Obviously you'd need special tools but what would these be? Do you have to bind the ex-deity to something to prevent his wrath or regeneration? How do you keep the transferance of power from the knowledge of the pantheon and beyond?Bear in mind I'm using a homebrew so any advice goes.
You ought to check out Monte Cook's Requiem For a God. I think it'll cover a lot of the questions you are asking.
The questions are: How to kill a god and what happens to then when they die? In Forgotten Realms gods die all the time. But since I'm not a FR fanatic what happens to their bodies and souls when they die? Does simply doing the deed grant you the portfolio and followers of the deceased? How do you kill the divine? Obviously you'd need special tools but what would these be? Do you have to bind the ex-deity to something to prevent his wrath or regeneration? How do you keep the transferance of power from the knowledge of the pantheon and beyond? In FR how do other gods respond to deicide?
Since you're familiar with how often gods die in FR, you can use the historical FR to determine what happens when gods die. Namely, someone takes over for that god (sometimes it's whoever killed the god, sometimes not). The god's body often detonated and did rude things to the environment when that happened (Mystra's final death obliterated her entire realm, for example), but to continue the historical commentary, a god's body will end up in the Astral Plane. Heck, the githyanki built their capital city on the body of an ancient dead god.
To kill a god, well, there have been a variety of ways to do that and it's up to the DM to determine what works. Broadly speaking, it usually takes another god and/or an artifact (in some campaigns, mere mortals can do this too). You don't have to have special tools (unless the DM says so), but remember that a god has DR X/epic and in the FR another god was considered mandatory (if in oddball ways). A god who dies can return if their worshippers generate enough faith to revive the deity, otherwise the god stays dead; the exception was when Ao revived Torm at the end of the Avatars Crisis.
To keep the deicide secret: good luck. Lleira was killed by Cyric and this was kept secret but it took the death of the goddess of illusions (Lleira) by the up-and-coming Lord of Lies (Cyric) using Godsbane (an avatar of Mask, god of shadows). Usually, the death of a god is quickly known as those portfolios a god deals with become unusually erratic until someone takes over. Also, that god's clergy will know--they suddenly stop receiving spells.
How do gods react to death of one of their own? Varies. In FR, the gods react based on their alliances and their alignments basically. In your homebrew, however, your gods might not care (if it was a god they all didn't like) or might be very very afraid (if this is the first time deicide has occurred). You've got plenty of wriggle room.
In addition to the excellent suggestion of Requiem for a God, some of this is discussed in the Deities & Demigods book from 3.0 in great detail. Since yours is a homebrew world, you get to make everything up yourself. I advise you to actually ignore the FR; I loved that world, but gods have died too many times there for it to have an impact anymore, and I think the death of a being that represents a fundamental aspect of the universe should be dramatic to say the least.
The answer is simple:
"Whatever you want"!
It's your world. You decide how gods can die (if at all), and what happens if they do (if anything), and if these things are known.
As for your idea: I think that if it was possible to kill the Death God to steal all souls for hell, Asmodeus would still not do it: Once you did that, every other deity will want him dead. And unless the one who wrests that power from him is impartial, the deicide will continue. And continue. And continue.
The result would likely be a world without gods (or no world at all if the world needs gods), or a weird monotheistic thing.
It should be pointed out that lots of non-fantasy gods have died and yet come back from the dead anyway. Osiris was killed by Set and for good measure was chopped into little bitsy pieces and thrown in the Nile. Isis gathered up the bits (except the naughty bits, which were eaten by fish, but she made new naughty bits out of clay) and put him back together and breathed life into him. Meanwhile, Baldr was kill by Hod after Hod was set-up by Loki, and Baldr went off to Hela's hall, and she said she'd let him out if every creature in the world shed a tear for him, and this would have worked except the giantess Thok didn't cry (and was possibly Loki in drag).
In fact, there are some gods--Cernunnos springs to mind--where the whole point of them is that they die ever year but are reborn. And it's not just the guys who do it either. Persephone is female but very firmly has the whole "death and rebirth" portfolio.
In 2nd ed Planescape the Astral plane was littered with the remains of Dead Gods. There was even a 2nd edition adventure named Dead Gods, where appropriately enough Orcus is trying to come back from the dead.
