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How about:
"A god’s ability to influence planes and creatures is far beyond the comprehension of mortal beings" or
"confrontation between beings of near-infinite power could destroy entire worlds and still end in a draw".
Is that enough?
>"A god’s ability to influence planes and creatures is far beyond the comprehension of mortal beings"
That is basically saying "Gods are above what humans can do because they are above what humans can do", which is a cop out answer.
>"confrontation between beings of near-infinite power could destroy entire worlds and still end in a draw"
So, if I understand you correctly, someone has to be able to destroy the world while fighting their equal to be classified as divine? Well, I admit PCs can't do that. At worst they can decimate tens of square miles of the surface. However, please then explain why no gods "dare to oppose Mantis God openly":
The Mantis God has an uneasy relationship with most of Golarion's deities, as they do not approve of his heavy-handed purpose and methods. None dare to oppose him however, at least not openly.
the death of Aroden and the snake God have proved that Gods can die, therefore a God would prefer to fight another God straight out and not be assassinated by the God of assassins.
Also, Achaekek's wiki page doesn't list a CR in his template box, or in the categories. That was removed when the stat block was retconed at the same time this line was retconned "he isn't a true deity but an entity created by the Gods."
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Deities can perform Divine Intervention (Core Rulebook, page 402), which is basically "Change the plot however they feel like".That isn't a description of a "Thing they can do that sufficiently powerful characters can't" though. An example would be, like, "In such and such AP a god froze a volcano, and there is no spell that would freese a volcano" or something similar.
EDIT: Also, a lv20 wizard MR 10 Archmage does that every day before breakfast.
Just as an example, Lamashtu's ascension changed the general attitude of wild animals on the planet.
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How about:
"A god’s ability to influence planes and creatures is far beyond the comprehension of mortal beings" or
"confrontation between beings of near-infinite power could destroy entire worlds and still end in a draw".
Is that enough?
>"A god’s ability to influence planes and creatures is far beyond the comprehension of mortal beings"
That is basically saying "Gods are above what humans can do because they are above what humans can do", which is a cop out answer.
>"confrontation between beings of near-infinite power could destroy entire worlds and still end in a draw"
So, if I understand you correctly, someone has to be able to destroy the world while fighting their equal to be classified as divine? Well, I admit PCs can't do that. At worst they can decimate tens of square miles of the surface. However, please then explain why no gods "dare to oppose Mantis God openly":
The Mantis God has an uneasy relationship with most of Golarion's deities, as they do not approve of his heavy-handed purpose and methods. None dare to oppose him however, at least not openly.
Because it has been ret-conned (the Mantis God stats you're talking about are from pre-Pathfinder days, iirc) that those stats are for a weak form of the Mantis God, and not his true abilities.
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The issue between a lvl20/MR10 character and a deity is that they aren't even playing the same game. The character still references rules and (usually) rolls dice to determine what happens. The deity is playing a narrative game that is entirely a conversation with the GM of "may I do X?", to which the answer is always "yes".
Deity: Can I perfectly and proactively react to this character's actions and counter all of them?
GM: Yes.
Character: Hey! That's not fair!
GM: Quiet, it's still deity's turn.
Character: But it's always deity's turn!
GM: And your point is...?
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A character of any level with three mythic ranks can be a demigod. It's a really low threshold- you just need at least one domain that you can grant spells to worshippers with. Demigods can be mortal and often do have stats. Typically they're in the CR 26 ballpark because they had to become very powerful first, such as in the case of demon lords.
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30 is the highest published CR that I'm aware of for first-party products. Gods in Pathfinder don't have stats, so therefore they don't have CRs either (because if it has stats, it can be killed). Gods do exactly what the GM says they do, whatever that thing may be.
The 1st edition D&D gods had stats. It's cute looking back at them. Here's the stats for Ares if you use the equivalent numbers in Pathfinder (they did weird things for AC, to-hit, etc.):
AC: 22
Hit points: 333
Melee: Spear 2 attacks at +9 to hit, 5d10 damage or 2 attacks at +9 to hit, 3d10 damage
Str: 21
Dex: 25
Con: 24
Int: 20
Wis: 9
Cha: 22
Special attacks: Successful attacks with his spear also cast Cause Fear.
Special defenses: Anti-magic shell at will. Immune to poison and petrification. Equivalent SR is about 25 or so.
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>"A god’s ability to influence planes and creatures is far beyond the comprehension of mortal beings"
That is basically saying "Gods are above what humans can do because they are above what humans can do", which is a cop out answer.
>"confrontation between beings of near-infinite power could destroy entire worlds and still end in a draw"
So, if I understand you correctly, someone has to be able to destroy the world while fighting their equal to be classified as divine? Well, I admit PCs can't do that. At worst they can decimate tens of square miles of the surface. However, please then explain why no gods "dare to oppose Mantis God openly"
No. I just quoted these lines from the Inner Sea Gods book to prove that they are far more powerful than you give them credit for. It's not like in D&D where you can pick a fight with Zeus and win if you're strong enough. These are on a very different level.
Also, that part about Achaekek is deprecated.
Despite some disapproval over his amoral methods, none of the gods have ever chosen to directly oppose him.This is the correct text.
Sure, some characters can go far. A 20th level tier 10 mythic character can be edging on the powers of a demi-god. But they're still far from true gods.
I am not sure where you got that wording. I checked two pathfinder wikis, and both agree with me.
>The issue between a lvl20/MR10 character and a deity is that they aren't even playing the same game. The character still references rules and (usually) rolls dice to determine what happens. The deity is playing a narrative game that is entirely a conversation with the GM of "may I do X?", to which the answer is always "yes".
That is basically saying "Deity trumps character because deity trumps character" which is circular reasoning.
And here is the thing. Demon lord Pazuzu is CR 30. His ex-ally, Lamashtu, became a god by killing a true god. She just damaged him enough with minions to the point where she was able to finish him. Not demonic lords, just ordinary demons. After she killed him, she was almost killed by Pazuzu.
That means that a deity(a true deity) can be killed by a CR 30-ish creature with ordinary minions. That level of power is absolutely reachable by PCs at lv20mr10.
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This thread here is basically the reason why I don't have an issue with a certain Deity's love for trumpets...
Hurting or killing a deity also requires plot. Unlike a level 20 mythic 10 character, who can be hurt pretty easily with an antimagic field up and killed with an artifact, deities require the GM to invent a weakness. Deities can be weak enough under the right circumstances for a CR 30 creature to kill them- when the GM decides that.
If you want another example of what deities can do, the backstory of the new Starfinder line includes deities wiping out several hundred years of memories and history in the known universe and removing a planet.
>"A god’s ability to influence planes and creatures is far beyond the comprehension of mortal beings"
That is basically saying "Gods are above what humans can do because they are above what humans can do", which is a cop out answer.
>"confrontation between beings of near-infinite power could destroy entire worlds and still end in a draw"
So, if I understand you correctly, someone has to be able to destroy the world while fighting their equal to be classified as divine? Well, I admit PCs can't do that. At worst they can decimate tens of square miles of the surface. However, please then explain why no gods "dare to oppose Mantis God openly"
No. I just quoted these lines from the Inner Sea Gods book to prove that they are far more powerful than you give them credit for. It's not like in D&D where you can pick a fight with Zeus and win if you're strong enough. These are on a very different level.
Also, that part about Achaekek is deprecated.
Despite some disapproval over his amoral methods, none of the gods have ever chosen to directly oppose him.This is the correct text.
Sure, some characters can go far. A 20th level tier 10 mythic character can be edging on the powers of a demi-god. But they're still far from true gods.
I am not sure where you got that wording. I checked two pathfinder wikis, and both agree with me.
>The issue between a lvl20/MR10 character and a deity is that they aren't even playing the same game. The character still references rules and (usually) rolls dice to determine what happens. The deity is playing a narrative game that is entirely a conversation with the GM of "may I do X?", to which the answer is always "yes".
That is basically saying "Deity trumps character because deity trumps character" which is circular reasoning.
And here is the thing. Demon lord Pazuzu is CR 30. His ex-ally, Lamashtu, became a god by killing a true god. She just damaged him enough with minions to...
Remember, Gods are awesome within their scope.
Outside their scope, they are just mortals in powers level.That is why she was able to kill him.
If he was in a forest his Dire animal friends would have saved him, but he wasn't. He was in her area where he was weak.
Then Pazuzu left her for dead, but she stabilized due to her empowered godhood.
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Since ending worlds is in discussion, that's something that's said Behemoths do in their description.
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Since ending worlds is in discussion, that's something that's said Behemoths do in their description.
Not end the world, remove it from its orbit and place it elsewhere, outside the detection of any spells.
@ Avoran - They'd do immense damage, but I think you're managing to actually over-rate mythic time stop. People operating in a mythic augmented time stop don't benefit from rest and thus can't actually get any powers back during it - they'd have to drop out periodically to use recuperate or even actually properly rest (to restore legendary items and recover all mythic power instead of just running on the fumes of 1 pt per hour.)
A mythic wizard trying to wallpaper the entire world in explosive runes or whatever would still require an enormous amount of time to actually do it; mythic time stop just means he's getting a day's work done every half-hour (because x 2 speed demiplane for recuperation time).
It' could certainly be devastating, but whether it'd actually be unstoppable would depend on who else happens to be on the planet.
In comparison, Sarenrae accidentally tore open Golarion all the way to the mantle with a single sword strike over at Gormuz.
Some fun with math -- the continental crust is about 25 miles thick, give or take a few miles for elevation. Stone has 15 HP per inch. So the crust is approximately 1,584,000 inches.
Meaning that Sarenrae potentially struck the entire city of Gormuz for about 23,760,000 damage with a single melee attack.
(Though it's more likely she "merely" struck for 2 to 3 million damage instead, since she was expecting to just crater the city, not punch through to the mantle. But Rovagug had been weakening the region, and thus greatly reducing the amount of "smite" needed to bust it all the way open.)
Now, with that number in mind for Sarenrae's basic melee attack, remember that she needed the back up of about a dozen beings just as powerful as she was just to subdue Rovagug long enough to imprison him.
Though in the long run, I suspect the main differentiation between god-like mortals/demigods and the actual gods are matters of scale and speed rather than power.
Essentially, a true god can perform in a standard action a project that would take Baba Yaga, Tar-Baphon, or a PC-peer decades or even centuries of work (even after factoring in spell abuses allowed by a super permissive GM).
In comparison, Sarenrae accidentally tore open Golarion all the way to the mantle with a single sword strike over at Gormuz.
Some fun with math -- the continental crust is about 25 miles thick, give or take a few miles for elevation. Stone has 15 HP per inch. So the crust is approximately 1,584,000 inches.
Meaning that Sarenrae potentially struck the entire city of Gormuz for about 23,760,000 damage with a single melee attack.
(Though it's more likely she "merely" struck for 2 to 3 million damage instead, since she was expecting to just crater the city, not punch through to the mantle. But Rovagug had been weakening the region, and thus greatly reducing the amount of "smite" needed to bust it all the way open.)
Now, with that number in mind for Sarenrae's basic melee attack, remember that she needed the back up of about a dozen beings just as powerful as she was just to subdue Rovagug long enough to imprison him.
Here's the thing with this; I think it's a bad idea to attempt to recreate an effect like that through damage, alone. As an example, a Great Red Wyrm's "Melt Stone" ability with its breath weapon allows it to melt stone in a 60-ft radius. It could target the ground and melt that deep in to solid stone, and it wasn't because it just inflicted 10,800 damage with its breath weapon. This shows me that creating a creator that large was simply an application of her melee attack.
Anyway, the GM is pretty much always in control of a Great Red Wyrm. This being the case, the dragon can cast wish for its greater effect, choosing to exponentially increase the radius of its next use of melt stone, GM approves, now said dragon proceeds to melt an entire mountain. It's all perfectly RAW, as well. A GM doesn't necessarily need a deity to do some serious destruction.