Six years ago, I (with a lot of help) killed Mystra in a Forgotten Realms homebrew ran by a very creative DM; was a long campaign lasting maybe eight months. Since then I've always allowed that possibility should the players reach the level my teammates and I did, but I've noticed (at conventions, alternative DM/GMs, etc) that many GMs would never let the players reach such levels of power and/or allow them to snuff out the divine. So I'm curious:
- Ever kill a deity/had players kill a deity?
- Would you let players approach those levels? If so, would you let them try and off a god? Maybe an evil one?
- What if the scenario were along the lines of sealing up Rovagug? Perhaps finishing him for good?
While I haven't had a character powerful enough to defeat a deity, I have stolen from one. That same character was also on the path to becoming a deity himself but we stopped playing shortly before we got to that point. That was a really fun character.
I do know people who have characters that have gotten powerful enough and killed deities though. They were AD&D characters.
All of my answers are for DnD in many of its incarnations. NOT for other gaming systems.
Point one. no/no
Point two. That is a tough one. Gods in my campaigns don't have stat blocks. There is no "level" to attain. You could be Epic 40, and be nothing to a god. Avatars of gods are different, and I have played games where my characters have encountered/became an avatar. Killing an Avatar I would allow, but it would NOT be a 'common' happening. Good,Lawful,Chaotic,Evil or otherwise.
Point three. Never. Maybe sealing up one of his spawns. But if the Alliance of dieties and angels could not seal him up for good (his spawns still escape out) then mere mortals have zip chance. A pipe dream if you will. But that answer is for Golarion. I have ran a planescape campaign that dealt with the destruction of a "dead" god in the Astral Plane. But heck, that was a campaign.. and the god was already dead with no worshipers. So not sure that would really count.
I have ran a planescape campaign that dealt with the destruction of a "dead" god in the Astral Plane. But heck, that was a campaign.. and the god was already dead with no worshipers. So not sure that would really count.
This campaign sounds very familiar.
I've played in a few really high level game and dmed one long term game that got to level 21. In my experience the really high level epic games usually tend to be short lived. Either the players have overstepped their power level or the dm under values the players abilites. Causing either significant party loss or a cake walk by the players.
I found that preparing an epic level game required more and more planning so aa not to skimp on the power level of enemies, whether they be monster or npc villains. So much so that it was more of a chore to prepare the game than it was fun.
Its not so much a question of can you so much as can you keep you and your players interest at such high levels
I have ran a planescape campaign that dealt with the destruction of a "dead" god in the Astral Plane. But heck, that was a campaign.. and the god was already dead with no worshipers. So not sure that would really count.This campaign sounds very familiar.
This particular god's name was from a Jack Vance book of same name. Emphyrio. And I liberally stole some things from that novel as well. Introducing living puppets and a race that bio created them. All and all, it really didn't go that well. Despite my loving Planescape material ( and owning most of it at one time ), it turned out people prefered my gamemastering style in AMBER Diceless, Cyberpunk or Darksun. Oh well. It is good they still like me.
Epic level GM: You do realize that what you're doing will make your god angry, don't you?
Epic level party: Meh. We can take him.
What happens when a cleric is a higher level than their god?
I am of the opinion that PCs should only be able to take on the lowest level deities, and probably not even that. I have a different take on epic levels than most people seem to have, and they way I run things, even the lowest level gods are way beyond what any PC is likely to ever achieve.
My thoughts:
1-20th level: "Normal" play, from novice to near-epic
20th-40th level: Epic play. You can lay waste to armies and cities. Congratulations, you're probably the best in the world.
41st-60th level: Now you are starting to get into quasi-divinity territory. People can start worshipping you and you can start granting lesser abilities.
60th-80th level: The minimum levels required to think about qualifying for Divine Rank 0.
I've thought about figuring out the levels of different deities, but in the end my thought is it does not matter. Deities are so far above what any PC will ever get in any of my games that basically they can do whatever they want.
Now as a player, I've killed Saturn once. I was on the Starship Enterprise and just rammed his spaceship at warp factor 8. The resulting matter/antimatter explosion destroyed him, but because of my armor, I survived. I retired my character, however.
I dislike the gods.... i miss the Immortals
So, ya would let player kill the gods (Aliens creature).. and maybe even take their place if they could get up enough followers :)
Note = This is Assuming i allowed gods in the game in the first place. Which i do not, so to each his own.
1-20th level: "Normal" play, from novice to near-epic20th-40th level: Epic play. You can lay waste to armies and cities. Congratulations, you're probably the best in the world.
41st-60th level: Now you are starting to get into quasi-divinity territory. People can start worshipping you and you can start granting lesser abilities.
60th-80th level: The minimum levels required to think about qualifying for Divine Rank 0.
wow 80
I would think =
1-20 = Normal Play
21-39 = Epic play
40-50 = Immortal Prestige class for 10 levels.
50 = Max
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- Ever kill a deity/had players kill a deity?
- Would you let players approach those levels? If so, would you let them try and off a god? Maybe an evil one?
- What if the scenario were along the lines of sealing up Rovagug? Perhaps finishing him for good?
1. Nah. Although....MY PLAYERS STAY OUT
2. It wouldn't really be a level dependant thing. Don't use stats for full-on gods anyway. They could certainly try, but in my games it's impossible to just use simple force to actually kill a god. It's going to take more than a +2526235 vorpal sword and epic level magic to take one out, and it takes more than some ambiguous MacGuffin to do the trick. You're trying to take out someone whose flesh is metaphor and bleeds quantum physics. Things get weird. Not only is there the matter of his worshippers, there's also the very ideas, concepts, and elements he embodies that must be confronted, averted, subverted, or converted in new directions.
Such an undertaking is probably going to play out more like The Sandman than just some big battle.
Yeah, Planescape fan here.
Also, the multiverse will certainly take note and act accordingly. If it's people overthrowing some tyrant god that is choking the soul out of a planet, aces, gg. If it's a bunch of loonies trying to do deicide just to do deicide, the Achaeceks of the multiverse are probably going to be paying a visit.
3. They can try, but honestly, as mentioned above, if it took an alliance of gods and planar entities just to seal him away, such an attempt is more likely to end in disaster for the world than anything else.
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Depends on the campaign.
In Golarion, probably not. It doesn't really fit with the setting as written.
In my own campaign settings, possibly. But my own campaign setting assumes a lower power-level. Essentially most NPCs wouldn't be higher than 6th level or so. So a God could be statted up at CR 25-30, and if the PCs reach level 20ish then they might be able to challenge and defeat a god.
Of course there should be repercussions.
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Six years ago, I (with a lot of help) killed Mystra in a Forgotten Realms homebrew ran by a very creative DM; was a long campaign lasting maybe eight months. Since then I've always allowed that possibility should the players reach the level my teammates and I did, but I've noticed (at conventions, alternative DM/GMs, etc) that many GMs would never let the players reach such levels of power and/or allow them to snuff out the divine. So I'm curious:
- Ever kill a deity/had players kill a deity?
- Would you let players approach those levels? If so, would you let them try and off a god? Maybe an evil one?
- What if the scenario were along the lines of sealing up Rovagug? Perhaps finishing him for good?
1 - Kyuss, undead demigod, at the end of AoW AP. And Adimarchus (demon prince of sorts) at the end of SC AP. But they were not killed, just banished into oblivion for an age or so.
Also, an Atropal (undead demigod) in an epic game - a one-shot - with his unliving brachyurus pack, after being greatly weakened. They were destroyed for good.2 - No. Gods have no stat blocks or levels in my games. A statted deity is just an avatar or incarnation or fragment of essence. If killed/destroyed the deity suffers a (major?) setback, but is unkillable. Only other gods can kill a god, and even then is not so easy.
3 - I wouldn't like it at all. Removing for good or severely limiting what is essentially a DM narrative tool is not a good solution. Preventing a manifestation, its escape from the underworldly jail, killing a spawn of Rovagug or a savage priest who is about to become a vessel for its god, allowing thusly to escape its prison, after an initial transformation? Fine to me. Removing the tool from the campaign? Wrongbad in my book.
Never been a fan of world-shaking events that change drastically the setting.
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1-20th level: "Normal" play, from novice to near-epic20th-40th level: Epic play. You can lay waste to armies and cities. Congratulations, you're probably the best in the world.
41st-60th level: Now you are starting to get into quasi-divinity territory. People can start worshipping you and you can start granting lesser abilities.
60th-80th level: The minimum levels required to think about qualifying for Divine Rank 0.
wow 80
I would think =
1-20 = Normal Play
21-39 = Epic play
40-50 = Immortal Prestige class for 10 levels.
50 = Max
You really should entice the players with expansion settings with additional levels. Well, it works for WoW...* ;-)
*rant time!
oh and answer to the OP's poll...
point one: no/no
point two: sure, but I don't think that'll be an issue for anytime soon.
point three: Sure, sealing up sounds fine, but not permanently. Always the bittersweet moments in the game for the sacrifices of characters in sealing up a crazed god, but only for a short while in the scheme of things. I wouldn't want it permanently.
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Owner - Johnny Scott Comics and Games
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Never killed one as part of a campaign, but in 1E, we used to do one offs with our highest level characters going up against the gods as statted up in the old Deities and Demigods book. Sometimes we killed the god, sometimes he got us. If I remember correctly, we never could take Zeus down...Either way, it was just a way to blow off some steam or take a break from a campaign.
Good times, those...
Point One: No and no
Point Two: No, I've not yet played to epic levels and don't plan to anytime soon, but even if I did I'd never allow a player in my games to kill a deity. Tricking one or temporarily inconveniencing one, sure, but never slaying one. I take a page out of Greek mythology when it comes to mortals interacting with the divine. Sure Prometheus managed to steal fire and Arachne weaved well enough to make Athena jealous, but Prometheus ends up chained to a rock and eaten every day while Arachne ends up turned into a spider. Even when a mortal gets away with inconveniencing a god, such as when Diomedes injures the goddess Aphrodite in the Iliad, the gods have the last laugh as the mortals will die one day and the gods endure.
Point Three: I think sealing Rovagug temporarily would be a good campaign, but I would have it require a major sacrifice by the players and I wouldn't have it be a permanent solution either. One thing I liked about Call of Cthulhu is that the investigators could never stop the Old Ones, but they could take down a cult or stop a ritual and delay the destruction of the world, usually at the cost of their lives and sanity.
Six years ago, I (with a lot of help) killed Mystra in a Forgotten Realms homebrew ran by a very creative DM; was a long campaign lasting maybe eight months. Since then I've always allowed that possibility should the players reach the level my teammates and I did, but I've noticed (at conventions, alternative DM/GMs, etc) that many GMs would never let the players reach such levels of power and/or allow them to snuff out the divine. So I'm curious:
- Ever kill a deity/had players kill a deity?
- Would you let players approach those levels? If so, would you let them try and off a god? Maybe an evil one?
- What if the scenario were along the lines of sealing up Rovagug? Perhaps finishing him for good?
Are you kidding. My last campaign was based arround killing the Pantheon. The Gm wanted to do a reset of his homebrew world, so the gods had to go.
In that world, we were able to start doing it arround level 15, and there was a lot of custom ritual magic involved.
The campaign before that was effectively about killing the god of the world that was like Rovagug. Though, in that world each time he created a spawn he needed a piece of himself, and since he had created so many he was no longer as big on his own. The combined forces of humanity were stronger than the divine champions of yor. They also had the last angel on their side (who became a god to be killed in the next campaign, after the player slept with himself and had half-angel kids).
I should clarify, it all depends on the campaign. That was a campaign designed arround the idea that they were mortals who became gods. Thus they only had the power humanity put in them. I tend to not stat gods myself, but if I were, they would get unlimmitted full rounds every round, at whatever initiative they want, have infinite divine and arcane casting at epic levels, and be able to bend reality related to their domain at their will. They can unmake you with a thought, regardless of how powerful you think you are.
What it comes down to, for me is: killing gods is the kind of thing that would have happened in one of the AD&D games I was playing in junior high school -- and never since.
When I run into someone at a convention or whatever who's talking about a campaign that they played in and I didn't, and they mention killing one or more gods, it almost always sounds an awful lot like the aforementioned campaigns played when I was 12.
I'm sure the concept could be done in a cool way, but mostly it comes off as the closest RPG equivalent of especially trashy paranormal romance novels with sparkle vampires.
In my younger years of roleplaying one of my group-mates eventually created her own demi-plane and created life in it that eventually began to worship her as a deity (we had the Archmage third party supplement that TSR threw a huge TSR'y fit about and it had rules for very cool epic arch-magic).
She was enroute to demi-god status when she drew the attention of several deities in the 1990's Forgotten Realms pantheon whose portfolios she was essentially "stealing cable from." It resulted in her actually being sealed away for all time because even the deities weren't able to remove her divine spark as it occured outside their areas of influence. Of course then all the novels and deity killing fiction came about reducing the awe inspiring divinity of the FR gods to something akin to the most popular kids on the planet slap fighting one another and stealing portfolios as if they were literally manila folders.
Back to the OP. For MY personal tastes for roleplaying:
1) Other than the above semi-deity interaction, no probably not.
2) Even at epic levels the best I'd allow is slaying of a Deity's personal seneschal or other high level servant beings (something I was glad to see in the Paizo crew's pantheon). That being said I would create these beings at such a high level of power that the players would still feel like god slaying arse kickers if they won the day. I just don't see how you would fight Love, Hate, Trickery...ideology in general...it just makes my head go woozilwozil.
3) I would support a holy war waged by the followers of deities where the victors could give their god the upper hand in doing something like sealing a deity away from a number of itterations of the material plane. But as far as the PC's actually slamming the prison door? Probably not.
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Sure why not.
If the players are powerful enough and if the god has made himself vulnerable (probably for a good reason) and if the players jump through a bunch of hoops, steal several magic footballs, have a watertight plan and a legion of backup, then maybe.
To be fair though this shouldn't be a casual thing. It should result in their total obliteration even if they succeed and this plotline should only ever come from the GM. If a player in my group were to say "Hey let's go kill Rovagug!" I would laugh in their face.
In conclusion if it's the culmination of a huge plotline then OK, if it's the players idly messing about then no.
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** spoiler omitted **I have ran a planescape campaign that dealt with the destruction of a "dead" god in the Astral Plane. But heck, that was a campaign.. and the god was already dead with no worshipers. So not sure that would really count.This campaign sounds very familiar.
Sounds exactly like "Dead Gods" to me
Man was that a good adventure. Happy times.
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To be fair though this shouldn't be a casual thing. It should result in their total obliteration even if they succeed and this plotline should only ever come from the GM. If a player in my group were to say "Hey let's go kill Rovagug!" I would laugh in their face.
I'm no fan of mortals killing gods, but it's proven to be possible in Golarion. The Whispering Tyrant killed Arazni. So while it would certainly be dificult to kill Rovagug, it shouldn't be completely impossible.
Now, in any campaign I was running that didn't have such a history, a 999th level character would pose no more threat to a god than would a kobold commoner.
I'm no fan of mortals killing gods, but it's proven to be possible in Golarion. The Whispering Tyrant killed Arazni. So while it would certainly be dificult to kill Rovagug, it shouldn't be completely impossible.
OTOH, it's also Golarion canon that even the other gods ganging up on Rovagug (specifically) couldn't kill him and had to settle for trapping him.
I haven't really had players commit deicide since the monty haul days of yore. 1e Deities a Demigods for the win.
For me you can interfere with the plans of the gods (who are petty, vengeful and cruel like good Olympians) but actually destroying their immortal essence is pretty damned difficult.
For me CR 21-30 represents Demon Princes, Lords of the Hells, Powerful Celestials, and Quasi-Deities and Demigods. CR 31+ represents the primary manifestations of the deities.
Gods can die, go into torpor as the faithful die off, and even be resurrected by enough faith or the deific actions of another god (Think resurrection of Osiris).
A concord between the actual deities generally limits them to acting through intermediaries, demigods (who retain a connection to the prime), and manifestations of their power. Manifestations might be really low CR all the way up to CR 30 brutes. Anything more powerful requires a relaxation of the rules the deities place upon themselves.
Full force manifestation of the godhead on the mortal planes is a catastrophic event for mortals in close proximity to the manifestation. There is a reason why gods use clerics and other servants in order to get stuff done.
Mr. Fishy ran a black-op againist Takisis to rescue a dead adventuring buddy. Mr. Fishy would have whiped her but the lesser dragon diety that was helping Mr. Fishy made Mr. Fishy leave before the gate closed. Mr. Fishy was furious...he had that b&+#! right where he wanted her.
Mr. Fishy was going to let it go. But then someone say that Mr. Fishy's character was an easy meal...Mr. Fishy declared thatif Mr. Fishy is an easy meal it's because he jumped in you mouth to stab your brain. Next thing Mr. Fishy knows he's storming the Abyss.
I am of the opinion that PCs should only be able to take on the lowest level deities, and probably not even that. I have a different take on epic levels than most people seem to have, and they way I run things, even the lowest level gods are way beyond what any PC is likely to ever achieve.
My thoughts:
1-20th level: "Normal" play, from novice to near-epic
20th-40th level: Epic play. You can lay waste to armies and cities. Congratulations, you're probably the best in the world.
41st-60th level: Now you are starting to get into quasi-divinity territory. People can start worshipping you and you can start granting lesser abilities.
60th-80th level: The minimum levels required to think about qualifying for Divine Rank 0.
I've thought about figuring out the levels of different deities, but in the end my thought is it does not matter. Deities are so far above what any PC will ever get in any of my games that basically they can do whatever they want.
Now as a player, I've killed Saturn once. I was on the Starship Enterprise and just rammed his spaceship at warp factor 8. The resulting matter/antimatter explosion destroyed him, but because of my armor, I survived. I retired my character, however.
Assuming that the difference between mortals and gods is a difference in degree, not a difference in kind. I don't see why a swordsman should become a god when he reaches zillionth level; to my mind he is probably just a zillionth-level swordsman.
I'm actually more curious to hear how GMs handle players who want to try reaching the Starstone to become Golarion deities. What sorts of challenges do you put them through?
1. Like a lot of the others, did the God War thing when I was a teenager in AD&D but not since. These days, I have absolutely no interest in taking on Gods.
2. I have no interest in running epic level campaigns so no.
3. I lean toward what others have said: If existing Gods banding together couldn't do it, PCs wouldn't be able to either.
I should clarify the "Rovagug" question a little bit:
I didn't intend for Rovagug to be the subject, but rather "if you would not allow players to face a deity, would you let them seal a troublesome one away?"
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I should clarify the "Rovagug" question a little bit:
I didn't intend for Rovagug to be the subject, but rather "if you would not allow players to face a deity, would you let them seal a troublesome one away?"
Yes and no. I would certainly allow them to provide a key element to the seal. Or even better to provide a way to renew a pre-existant seal.
I wouldn't allow them to be able "all by themselves" to lock away a god-level entity, unless they're already well into epic range and the deity is really lousy - as in lowly demigod of malfunctioning earplugs - and without allies of any kind.I don't think any pantheon (the whole range from good to evil aligned ones) would take lightly the notion that a bunch of lucky and determined mortals could throw them in a magical jail for any lenght of time.
Then again, I don't find particularly appealing the idea that heroes could overthrow the setting status quo that much even in theory, so it's kinda subjective.
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In conclusion if it's the culmination of a huge plotline then OK, if it's the players idly messing about then no.
If the players are idly messing about, the god should crush them without a problem. If the players want a serious story about mortals enraged at the gods setting out to bring out their downfall, that should be considered. Plotlines don't all have to spring from the DM after all.
In a FR campaign starting at 20th level, we killed Gilgeam (? the Gilgamesh stand-in), but I think he had been stripped of his divinity. He went down like a punk!
I didn't intend for Rovagug to be the subject, but rather "if you would not allow players to face a deity, would you let them seal a troublesome one away?"
Actually, that one I'd be in support of. Sealing a deity away would be possible (in my game) without the characters getting all crazy epic-leveled.