Deity Stats


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Any splat books for Pathfinder that have the Gods stat blocks?

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Nope.

And I believe none every will. James Jacobs has commented on this - they're not really interested in statting out the gods.

Best you're ever going to get is stats for demon princes, lesser demigods, etc., and that only if Paizo ever creates a above-20 ruleset.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
DGRM44 wrote:
Any splat books for Pathfinder that have the Gods stat blocks?

The closest it comes, as far as I know, is Demon Lords (who are terrifying and near CR mid 20's or higher), one of whom is Treerazer in the Inner Sea World Guide.

The d20pfsrd has up the stats for some of the Divine Heralds as well (from APs and such?), who are powerful outsiders, but not even nearly on the scale of a Demon Lord.


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I think it's always something of a mistake to try and stat True Gods. I mean, beings who are supposed to have been part of the creation of the Universe.

Take Sarenrae and Asmodeus. Between the two of them they are supposed to have split the planet of Golarion in half and encased Rozagug inside an interdimensional space which they filled with Hellfire and elemental fire, then locked with a series of interdimensional filters and then just zipped the planet back up.

So, while it's always kinda cool to want to see the possible stats on a God because every Epic player dreams of being able to take on a God, just look at it this way. Ask yourself (realistically) what kind of power it would take to open a planet, create a planet sized dimension, create a God-Holding planar binding, create a dimensional anchor (also God Sized), create a barrier that prevents almost all interplanar travel, summon enough magical energy to fill a planet sized pocket dimension with said never ending fiery torment, and then put the planet back together, without having broken the planet into chunks. Then say to yourself, how EXACTLY do I expect people to portray THAT much power numerically?


Did 3.5 ever stat the Gods?

Also, if Pathfinder will never stat the Gods, then how do you run a successful adventure to the other planes?


I imagine like this:

Party goes to another Plane. Party encounters listed stat'd beings of said Plane. Profit?

Party encounters God: Dead? Flee? Diplomacy?

Party attacks God: Dead

Sovereign Court

I don't know, which diet do you want?

On a serious note, there is no need to stat deities. There are plenty other insanely powerful outsiders in the outer planes.

3.5 did stat the gods, and made them too weak. To me gods below CR80 are just not gods.

Gods should be philosophical entities, not creatures to be killed.

Dark Archive

DGRM44 wrote:

Did 3.5 ever stat the Gods?

Also, if Pathfinder will never stat the Gods, then how do you run a successful adventure to the other planes?

Without interacting with the gods?

As written, Pathfinder characters should be no match for the gods anyway, so what's the point?
Nascent demon lords are not even demigods. They have domains, though, and are possible endgame opponents.
If you need deity (not diety) stats that badly, Escape from old Korvosa has the stats for Achaekek. He's CR 30. That's a 3.5 book, though.


Haven't some of the Gods been killed? How did that happen?

Dark Archive

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DGRM44 wrote:
Haven't some of the Gods been killed? How did that happen?

I'm pretty sure not by the hands of a level 20 party.


The only Pathfinder God that has been listed as "dead" is from the Golarion campaign setting and it is not known what killed him or if he is truly dead.


Jadeite wrote:
DGRM44 wrote:
Haven't some of the Gods been killed? How did that happen?
I'm pretty sure not by the hands of a level 20 party.

Even if a party tried to take on a god, with a being that could write an entire planet, I'm sure unwriting a group of four or five level 20s wouldn't be too difficult.


It would still be really cool to stat them and then slay them! YES! We used to love our Dieties and Demi-Gods book back in the day.

Btw, what is the 3.5 book that stated the Gods?


originalazrael wrote:
Jadeite wrote:
DGRM44 wrote:
Haven't some of the Gods been killed? How did that happen?
I'm pretty sure not by the hands of a level 20 party.
Even if a party tried to take on a god, with a being that could write an entire planet, I'm sure unwriting a group of four or five level 20s wouldn't be too difficult.

To be fair, consider Cayden Cailean, who sorta drunk-stumbled into divinity. If a drunkard can stumble through the Test of the Starstone while on a bet, I'd wager that a level 20 party probably could, as well. Moreover, I'd bet a set of juiced up 20s could then proceed to do a whole heck of a lot, assuming they don't splinter.


Serisan wrote:
originalazrael wrote:
Jadeite wrote:
DGRM44 wrote:
Haven't some of the Gods been killed? How did that happen?
I'm pretty sure not by the hands of a level 20 party.
Even if a party tried to take on a god, with a being that could write an entire planet, I'm sure unwriting a group of four or five level 20s wouldn't be too difficult.
To be fair, consider Cayden Cailean, who sorta drunk-stumbled into divinity. If a drunkard can stumble through the Test of the Starstone while on a bet, I'd wager that a level 20 party probably could, as well. Moreover, I'd bet a set of juiced up 20s could then proceed to do a whole heck of a lot, assuming they don't splinter.

Fair point. And the GM, er, I mean Gods, could always roll a 1. :P


I doubt you will see stat blocks for Golarion gods. Now in game that was pulling heavily form Saberhagen's Book of Swords sure I could see stat blocks for gods, some myhtos allow for Deicide but I think it could be extrapolated fro PF's extant uber-outsiders and by using the 3.5 Deities and Demigods book.

Shadow Lodge

DGRM44 wrote:

Did 3.5 ever stat the Gods?

Also, if Pathfinder will never stat the Gods, then how do you run a successful adventure to the other planes?

Contrary to a belief that absolutely nobody has, the planes contain beings other than full-on gods.


idwraith wrote:
The only Pathfinder God that has been listed as "dead" is from the Golarion campaign setting and it is not known what killed him or if he is truly dead.

Well Mortals do not know what killed him, the gods are not saying. Also he has been judged, nothing can come back from the dead once they have been judged.

Shadow Lodge

Serisan wrote:
To be fair, consider Cayden Cailean, who sorta drunk-stumbled into divinity. If a drunkard can stumble through the Test of the Starstone while on a bet, I'd wager that a level 20 party probably could, as well. Moreover, I'd bet a set of juiced up 20s could then proceed to do a whole heck of a lot, assuming they don't splinter.

There's a difference between managing to stumble through a dangerous dungeon while drunk and killing a god, who almost certainly is trying to avoid being killed.

As for how gods have been killed, most of the gods that have been mentioned as being killed in Golarion's history were killed by other gods. The few that mortals have killed, in my opinion, should involve a deux ex machina (or would that be ex-duex machina :P) akin to the Starstone. I don't think you should be able to kill a god just by swinging a sharp metal stick at it or throwing some mortal magic at it.

Owner - House of Books and Games LLC

In short, there's four ways I know of to get stats for deities, none of them using Pathfinder rules:

1. Make 'em up yourself and use the 3.5e SRD rules on divine abilities.

2. Use the D&D 3.0e book Deities & Demigods as a baseline and update it to Pathfinder. Of course, those aren't Golarion deities, but you could extrapolate, and those rules (but not the gods) were updated to 3.5e in the SRD.

3. Use Craig Cochrane's Immortals Handbook: Ascension as a basis for creating the deities. But you still get to make the stats yourself.

4. Use the old, old The Primal Order book as a basis for creating the deities. Yet again, you still get to make the stats yourself.

Personally, I use all of the above in bits and pieces. And as far as CR of the gods, that depends on the power. Demon princes and the like might be as low as CR30 for the really wimpy ones, probably up to around CR80. Demigods will probably run CR40-60, while lesser and greater gods will start at around CR60 and run up to CR-. Not all gods are all-powerful.

(CR- as in I'll never bother writing stats for, say, the Lady of Pain, the King in Yellow, or whatever qlippoth lord is truly at the far side of wherever the Abyss leads.

As an aside, I read a funny take on the whole divine thing recently, it was a book called Divine Misfortune by A. Lee Martinez, and it posits that all of the gods are out there, on the web, looking for followers. One couple ends up with Lucky the Racoon God as their god.


Dragonsong wrote:

I doubt you will see stat blocks for Golarion gods. Now in game that was pulling heavily form Saberhagen's Book of Swords sure I could see stat blocks for gods, some myhtos allow for Deicide but I think it could be extrapolated fro PF's extant uber-outsiders and by using the 3.5 Deities and Demigods book.

Even in those books it took a sword made by the gods to kill a god. Still no need to stat a god as the sword killed anything.


Hama wrote:


3.5 did stat the gods, and made them too weak. To me gods below CR80 are just not gods.

It was my understanding that they didn't stat the gods, per se, but they statted the avatars of the gods as a carry-over from 2E.

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Pale wrote:
Hama wrote:


3.5 did stat the gods, and made them too weak. To me gods below CR80 are just not gods.
It was my understanding that they didn't stat the gods, per se, but they statted the avatars of the gods as a carry-over from 2E.

Without digging out my books and looking it up, this is what I recall - two separate teams created the 3e books Deities and Demigods and the Epic Level Handbook. The rules in those books had no relation to each other, and both were released about the same time.

Thus, the gods were statted to be relevant to a non-epic campaign, with no mention of epic material, and the ELH made no mention of deities other than when discussing the Abomination type.

The ELH material was updated to 3.5e in a PDF, and there was a short PDF update to Deities and Demigods as well - all of this is available in the SRD. But in any case, they did stat the gods, it was just in 3e not 3.5e.

That's how I remember it, anyways.


voska66 wrote:
Dragonsong wrote:

I doubt you will see stat blocks for Golarion gods. Now in game that was pulling heavily form Saberhagen's Book of Swords sure I could see stat blocks for gods, some myhtos allow for Deicide but I think it could be extrapolated fro PF's extant uber-outsiders and by using the 3.5 Deities and Demigods book.

Even in those books it took a sword made by the gods to kill a god. Still no need to stat a god as the sword killed anything.

I was thinking more about the origins of the Gods in that series of books they are not the "pillars of creation." They have a genesis after the creation of the world and can be killed (even if it take supremely extraordinary means)

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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gbonehead wrote:

Nope.

And I believe none every will. James Jacobs has commented on this - they're not really interested in statting out the gods.

Best you're ever going to get is stats for demon princes, lesser demigods, etc., and that only if Paizo ever creates a above-20 ruleset.

Actaully, if we decide we're NEVER going to do a post-20th-level ruleset, that also opens the doors wide for us to stat demon lords and demigods. I've statted up plenty of CR 28 to CR 32 demon lords in my time, and they work fine without epic level rules. The thing is that WHATEVER we choose to do, I want things like demigods and demon lords and what-not to represent the top tier of bad guys you'd fight, be that in a game that goes to 20th level, or to 30th level, or to 36th level (my current favorite nomination), or to 100th level. Until we know FOR CERTAIN what our level cap is... I can't design demon lords to serve as end-time boss monsters because I don't have any metrics to base their powers on.

In Pathfinder & Golarion, we have essentially 3 different ranks of "deity."

1) NASCENT DEITIES: We have things like nascent demon lords (like Treerazer) who can grant spells but are only CR 21 to CR 25. These guys are meant to fill the role of "let's kill an evil god as a capstone for this 1st to 20th level campaign" basically.

2) DEMIGODS: These guys are what mortals can (in theory) fight and defeat if the mortals are powerful and lucky enough. Demigods include things like demon lords, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and some regional deities like Achaekek (the mantis god) or Besmara (the pirate goddess). Whatever "CR" demigods end up at will occupy about the same niche as nascent deities do right now—+1 to +5 over whatever that ultimate, final level cap ends up being.

3) DEITIES: These are NOT things mortals can fight. They can oppose them, and given the right combination of legendary feats, they can even be defeated, but they won't ever have stat blocks. At least, not unless we decide to do a "Deity level ruleset" or something like that, but even then... I'm not keen on letting actual combat stats out for deities. The game would probably have to be completely different to accommodate that type of play experience.

A note about Mythic level play: I've seen lots of folks worry that post 20th level play (something I've been calling "Mythic levels") would basically just be a bunch of impossible to defeat overpowered PCs who never meet anything that challenges them. Let me be clear—that is NOT what I envision these rules would be for. The types of stories I'd want to be able to tell (in the form of adventures) that would require Mythic level rules would be things like, "Go into the Abyss and defeat the demon lord," or "Face off against the ten-thousand-strong orc army with only you and your three friends," or "Create a new world for your followers to live on and then defend it from horrific things that want to destroy it," or "Go to the outer planes and work directly for the deities themselves," or "Take the test of the Starstone to become a demigod" and so on. Could you do these story lines withe the current rules? Sure... but it'd feel weird and be kinda awkward and in some cases would require some new rules support. Would these stories not challenge PCs? Not if they were done right.

Whew... that kinda turned into an essay. Sorry about that. Been a lot of "epic level threads" lately and I wanted to get all that off my chest, I guess! :-)


James Jacobs wrote:


Some good stuff including this tidbit:

In Pathfinder & Golarion, we have essentially 3 different ranks of "deity."

1) NASCENT DEITIES: We have things like nascent demon lords (like Treerazer) who can grant spells but are only CR 21 to CR 25. These guys are meant to fill the role of "let's kill an evil god as a capstone for this 1st to 20th level campaign" basically.

As a big fan of Harbinger House I love extrapolating on this idea.


James Jacobs wrote:

A note about Mythic level play: I've seen lots of folks worry that post 20th level play (something I've been calling "Mythic levels") would basically just be a bunch of impossible to defeat overpowered PCs who never meet anything that challenges them. Let me be clear—that is NOT what I envision these rules would be for. The types of stories I'd want to be able to tell (in the form of adventures) that would require Mythic level rules would be things like, "Go into the Abyss and defeat the demon lord," or "Face off against the ten-thousand-strong orc army with only you and your three friends," or "Create a new world for your followers to live on and then defend it from horrific things that want to destroy it," or "Go to the outer planes and work directly for the deities themselves," or "Take the test of the Starstone to become a demigod" and so on. Could you do these story lines withe the current rules? Sure... but it'd feel weird and be kinda awkward and in some cases would require some new rules support. Would these stories not challenge PCs? Not if they were done right.

Whew... that kinda turned into an essay. Sorry about that. Been a lot of "epic level threads" lately and I wanted to get all that off my chest, I guess! :-)

An essay that the forum has been crying out for, though.

I'm glad to hear it put that way. Quite a few of those adventures can and should be handled as high-level core rules material, though. I continue to think that making those adventures at 18th-20th would tell you if there even needs to be a 21st+ book.

The more this debate rages, the more I appreciate the Core Rulebook's "Here's what to do if you need it" approach. The CRB doesn't tell you not to do it, and it doesn't encourage you to do it, it just tries to help — that's just about the perfect approach for a rulebook.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what Paizo does on this front eventually, but it shouldn't be a knee-jerk reaction. I'd like it to address an actual, carefully-considered need.

Grand Lodge

Much appreciated James. I'm sitting here staring at the 3.0 (subsequently 3.5, as it has conversion rules in the back) Deities and Demigods handbook, and it has write-ups for gods AND their avatars, though some of them simply don't use avatars so they don't get write-ups.

That means that the stats you see are the stats for the gods themselves (by the way: Thor can beat pretty much any other god in single combat, he goes first he automatically hits, he confirms a critical on anything but a 1, and without crits, buffs, power attack, or raging he does 464 points/turn), which means you can totally kill them (not Thor though, he will wreck you in ways you've never even heard of.), and some of the gods are very unimpressive.

You don't even have to be that high-level to kill them, in at least one case (Apep)is something you can kill reliably around level 17 if you have an incredibly dangerous group.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Evil Lincoln wrote:

I'm glad to hear it put that way. Quite a few of those adventures can and should be handled as high-level core rules material, though. I continue to think that making those adventures at 18th-20th would tell you if there even needs to be a 21st+ book.

I agree, actually. But I don't want to jump the gun and do those storylines as an 18th or even 20th level adventure only to be faced with rules for Mythic Level play a few months or years later, when those adventure plots would have made PERFECT support material.

In a way, deciding NOT to do Mythic Level play is just as desirable from my viewpoint as an adventure writer as would be deciding TO do Mythic Level play.

It's the limbo between that's the most frustrating to me.


idwraith wrote:
The only Pathfinder God that has been listed as "dead" is from the Golarion campaign setting and it is not known what killed him or if he is truly dead.

That is not true. A lich killed a deity. The specifics of it are not mentioned so he may have found some artifact that weakened the god first. The specifics are up to the individual GM at the moment.


DGRM44 wrote:

Did 3.5 ever stat the Gods?

Also, if Pathfinder will never stat the Gods, then how do you run a successful adventure to the other planes?

You can stat out your own gods. Making them for your group is the best way to do it anyway if you plan on taking one down.


voska66 wrote:
Even in those books it took a sword made by the gods to kill a god.

That's what I did in my Star Wars D20 game. I had the players find a rusted sword, that was no stronger than a dagger. However, at full power it was an instant kill for a god. They were told it was a great weapon of immeasurable power. That gave the players a chance to work on fixing up the sword, (getting someone to unrust it, another to charge it, etc), if they desired, making it get stronger and stronger as it got more fixed up.

What actually happened, was that the rest of the party wanted to discard or sell it, but another player was decided to keep it. Because it was so weak, it was always at the back of his mind, and halfway through the game, he decided to get the rust cleaned, in which it became a 1d6 weapon instead of 1d4. The player then realised the power in the weapon, and continued to get it fixed up, (sometimes he had to wait for the right cash to come into hand, other times he had the Diplomat convince someone to take care of it), but at the end of the game, when they encountered the god, since the sword was weaker than his main weapon, he never thought about it till he was on 3hp, in which he went for broke. Because the sword had been fully upgraded, it was unblockable and instant kill against gods, and the party just barely won against the god, (which they attacked first, instead of using Diplomacy). So in the end, the sword which the party was ready to ditch at the beginning of the game became the deus ex machina.

*Note: I never even gave the god stats, except for HP and Saves. This God didn't even have a BAB or anything.

Perhaps you just need to do something similar to that?


wraithstrike wrote:
idwraith wrote:
The only Pathfinder God that has been listed as "dead" is from the Golarion campaign setting and it is not known what killed him or if he is truly dead.
That is not true. A lich killed a deity. The specifics of it are not mentioned so he may have found some artifact that weakened the god first. The specifics are up to the individual GM at the moment.

Are you talking about Arazni, wasn't she a demi-god?


Interesting stuff. I'm actually in the middle of working on a template that I plan to use for exactly this. If it works the way I'd like it to, I'll be able to write up a 20th level character and apply the template to get a fairly powerful entity that could represent something close to a Nascent Deity. (A MUCH weakened Demigod was my original intent from a storytelling perspective, but stat-wise that's probably what I'm looking at.)

I used the old Paragon Creature template from 3.5's Epic Level Handbook as a starting point, and added some powers with respect to their domains. Tweaking the numbers is proving difficult, however. I'd like something that a powerful 20th level party could fight, as I'm not prepared to create epic rules other than, maybe, an E20 type of rule.


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James Jacobs wrote:

In Pathfinder & Golarion, we have essentially 3 different ranks of "deity."

1) NASCENT DEITIES: We have things like nascent demon lords (like Treerazer) who can grant spells but are only CR 21 to CR 25. These guys are meant to fill the role of "let's kill an evil god as a capstone for this 1st to 20th level campaign" basically.

2) DEMIGODS: These guys are what mortals can (in theory) fight and defeat if the mortals are powerful and lucky enough. Demigods include things like demon lords, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and some regional deities like Achaekek (the mantis god) or Besmara (the pirate goddess). Whatever "CR" demigods end up at will occupy about the same niche as nascent deities do right now—+1 to +5 over whatever that ultimate, final level cap ends up being.

3) DEITIES: These are NOT things mortals can fight. They can oppose them, and given the right combination of legendary feats, they can even be defeated, but they won't ever have stat blocks. At least, not unless we decide to do a "Deity level ruleset" or something like that, but even then... I'm not keen on letting actual combat stats out for deities. The game would probably have to be completely different to accommodate that type of play experience.

What is Pathfinder's take on D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations?

The part relevant to this discussion begins with "Analyzing Aragorn" about 1/4 of the way down the page.

Scarab Sages

seekerofshadowlight wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:
idwraith wrote:
The only Pathfinder God that has been listed as "dead" is from the Golarion campaign setting and it is not known what killed him or if he is truly dead.
That is not true. A lich killed a deity. The specifics of it are not mentioned so he may have found some artifact that weakened the god first. The specifics are up to the individual GM at the moment.
Are you talking about Arazni, wasn't she a demi-god?

She was merely a herald of Aroden. Not quite a "GOD"


Well a few places now list her as a God which is why I thought he meant her.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

wraithstrike wrote:
idwraith wrote:
The only Pathfinder God that has been listed as "dead" is from the Golarion campaign setting and it is not known what killed him or if he is truly dead.
That is not true. A lich killed a deity. The specifics of it are not mentioned so he may have found some artifact that weakened the god first. The specifics are up to the individual GM at the moment.

There are more than that as well. We've had a LOT of deities die/get killed in the history of Golarion. Aroden's is only the most recent.


James Jacobs wrote:
SNIP ... to 36th level (my current favorite nomination), SNIP...

I for one would like to throw my fanboy support in for some future point having a Mythic level of play available as well as the level 36 as the top point for leveling. The ideas you listed are great stuff and I would like to see Paizo develop those at some point.

Contributor

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DGRM44 wrote:
Also, if Pathfinder will never stat the Gods, then how do you run a successful adventure to the other planes?

*twitch*

Owner - House of Books and Games LLC

James Jacobs wrote:
gbonehead wrote:

Nope.

And I believe none every will. James Jacobs has commented on this - they're not really interested in statting out the gods.

Best you're ever going to get is stats for demon princes, lesser demigods, etc., and that only if Paizo ever creates a above-20 ruleset.

Actaully, if we decide we're NEVER going to do a post-20th-level ruleset, that also opens the doors wide for us to stat demon lords and demigods. I've statted up plenty of CR 28 to CR 32 demon lords in my time, and they work fine without epic level rules.

Excellent point; I'm doing that for this weekend. But they're cooler with them :)

James Jacobs wrote:
The thing is that WHATEVER we choose to do, I want things like demigods and demon lords and what-not to represent the top tier of bad guys you'd fight, be that in a game that goes to 20th level, or to 30th level, or to 36th level (my current favorite nomination), or to 100th level. Until we know FOR CERTAIN what our level cap is... I can't design demon lords to serve as end-time boss monsters because I don't have any metrics to base their powers on.

(innocent look)

James Jacobs wrote:
In Pathfinder & Golarion, we have essentially 3 different ranks of "deity."

Yeah, that's how I see it. The deities typically are unkillable, yet don't take to kindly to mortals thinking about it .......

James Jacobs wrote:
A note about Mythic level play: I've seen lots of folks worry that post 20th level play (something I've been calling "Mythic levels") would basically just be a bunch of impossible to defeat overpowered PCs who never meet anything that challenges them. Let me be clear—that is NOT what I envision these rules would be for. The types of stories I'd want to be able to tell (in the form of adventures) that would require Mythic level rules would be things like, "Go into the Abyss and defeat the demon lord," or "Face off against the ten-thousand-strong orc army with only you and your three friends," or "Create a new world for your followers to live on and then defend it from horrific things that want to destroy it," or "Go to the outer planes and work directly for the deities themselves," or "Take the test of the Starstone to become a demigod" and so on. Could you do these story lines withe the current rules? Sure... but it'd feel weird and be kinda awkward and in some cases would require some new rules support. Would these stories not challenge PCs? Not if they were done right.

+1

For me, above-20th-level is about incredible (yet mortal) challenges, not about striding into the realms of the gods, kicking butt and taking names. But that's just me, and there's clearly plenty of people out there who do want to kick butt and take names.

Todd Stewart wrote:
DGRM44 wrote:
Also, if Pathfinder will never stat the Gods, then how do you run a successful adventure to the other planes?
*twitch*

Oh, that's just mean - I can't even begin to guess which of the many options you're twitching about :)

Paizo Employee Creative Director

gbonehead wrote:

Oh, that's just mean - I can't even begin to guess which of the many options you're twitching about :)

I suspect he's actually twitching about the concept that you can't do outer planar adventures without having deity stats.

Which is blatantly incorrect. There are PLENTY of outer planar adventures out there that don't need deity stats at all. We've done several of them. We'll do them again.

It's just a fundamentally incorrect assumption that you need deity stats to do anything on the outer planes. There are deities on the Material Plane, after all... so by that logic we wouldn't be able to do adventures at all.


Hudax wrote:

What is Pathfinder's take on D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations?

The part relevant to this discussion begins with "Analyzing Aragorn" about 1/4 of the way down the page.

Take a look at Sandpoint, quaint town of 1250 souls, unable to defend itself from goblins. [in theory, the actual math works out differently]. Look how many NPCs are above that 5th level threshold.

Oddly, look at the basic math from DMG, and it suggests that the highest level person in Sandpoint should be 2nd level, which DOES coincide.

So the official Pathfinder answer is "yes to both". I can easily (and have) made a top-down analysis of Sandpoint, and plugged the NPCs back into the lower slots WITHOUT THE PCs NOTICING A DIFFERENCE. Players notice the flavor of NPCs more than the crunchy bits.

I have also run an abortive attempt through Runelords running the NPCs as they are in the Gazeteer. "All these NPCs are so spiffy. We'll never be that great..."

So, as with the answer to many other Pathfinder questions, is this: "There is a broad spectrum of possibilities; find what works for you and your group."


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
James Jacobs wrote:
Cool stuff about Epic/Mythic

I would not cancel my subscription over that!!


I will admit I'm not as well versed on the Golarion world as others. Aroden was the dead God I knew about but since I've only been getting the supporting material and not the adventure path's themselves (never enough money!) I haven't gotten to know Golarion as well as I'd like too.

I've always loved the idea of PC's reaching massive deific levels of power, yet never considered that even THEN they'd be equal to the greater gods.

I mean, if you look at Greek Mythos where the Gods drew power from their worshipers then you'd have to consider that no trumped up Demigod adventurer would be able to touch a God with a globe spanning church of followers empowering them.


James Jacobs wrote:
be that in a game that goes to 20th level, or to 30th level, or to 36th level (my current favorite nomination), or to 100th level.

Thanks for replying. I just don't see the need for any level above 20th, but I am still early days with this game. However, I can only imagine the power of the 20th level pcs...in fact I think at 10th level they will be incredible. If the Gods are 36th level then I suppose that would make sense.

It would be great to be able to become a God and then battle other Gods for supremacy and destroy them...now that would be really cool! :-)

Edit: My question above about running otherworld adventures without Diety Stats should have included that the adventure type I am commenting about is waging war with the Gods themselves on a "personal level".

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James Jacobs wrote:
gbonehead wrote:

Oh, that's just mean - I can't even begin to guess which of the many options you're twitching about :)

I suspect he's actually twitching about the concept that you can't do outer planar adventures without having deity stats.

This. :)


DGRM44 wrote:

Thanks for replying. I just don't see the need for any level above 20th, but I am still early days with this game. However, I can only imagine the power of the 20th level pcs...in fact I think at 10th level they will be incredible. If the Gods are 36th level then I suppose that would make sense.

It would be great to be able to become a God and then battle other Gods for supremacy and destroy them...now that would be really cool! :-)

Edit: My question above about running otherworld adventures without Diety Stats should have included that the adventure type I am commenting about is waging war with the Gods themselves on a "personal level".

I think you misunderstand the scale. 36 would be the cap of PC power, BAB, Saves, HD stop. This would place fightable gods ( Demigods) at CRs 37 to 41. True gods would be way the heck above that. Even under 3.0 OGL diety stating guidelines/rules they were typically 60 (20 Claas 1 / 20 Cleric / 20 Outsider HD) plus a whole raft of rules saying if a dieity had a higher rank they could more or less kick the tart out of anything under them. One of these was portfolio sense which let a god know days or weeks in advance of anything related to them so if you decided to off a god he'd know before you though the actual though.

Again because your new the OGL base you'll have to take the word of use who've run games that high either in 3e D&D or due to Pathfinder APs. There is a great amount of stuff to do post 20.

Good example would be Second Darkness

Spoiler:
Assume the PCs failed at stopping the ritual and the meteor strike. This new plot line of a dust cloud winter could easily take the players past 20 in just trying to keep civilization alive

Actually most APs at their high end if failure happens play could easily extend.

If you want God vs God combat this is really something a 3rd party would have to do. I know I for post 20 but a certain point Paizo really can't support play at that level. Personally I already see a few ways to mimic god fights using base Pathfinder rules and some point achievement system Paizo has used in their APs, but I'm not sure people who want god play would go for it because you can't have a god smash a CR1 goblin this way.

Liberty's Edge

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James Jacobs wrote:
A note about Mythic level play: I've seen lots of folks worry that post 20th level play (something I've been calling "Mythic levels") would basically just be a bunch of impossible to defeat overpowered PCs who never meet anything that challenges them. Let me be clear—that is NOT what I envision these rules would be for. The types of stories I'd want to be able to tell (in the form of adventures) that would require Mythic level rules would be things like, "Go into the Abyss and defeat the demon lord," or "Face off against the ten-thousand-strong orc army with only you and your three friends," or "Create a new world for your followers to live on and then defend it from horrific things that want to destroy it," or "Go to the outer planes and work directly for the deities themselves," or "Take the test of the Starstone to become a demigod" and so on. Could you do these story lines withe the current rules? Sure... but it'd feel weird and be kinda awkward and in some cases would require some new rules support. Would these stories not challenge PCs? Not if they were done right.

I really want to play those stories.


Me too. I would love to play those stories

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