The Starstone

[Nicola The Necromancer]

Just a thought, the Starstone is the physical nexus at which worshipers energy leaves the material plane for the outer planes. The closer a gods followers are to the stone, the more power that god receives from them. A local deity with many followers in the system where the stone is located can have the same power as a galactic spanning deity who's followers are farther away from the stone.

Because of this, various deities have done everything possible to get their followers close to the stone. OOC this explains why every planet, even the gas giants, in the core system is teaming with intelligent life, while other systems might only have one planet inhabited by one intelligent race. In the core system, it is worth the expenditure for deities to create/ship in exotic life forms that can live on non-terran worlds. In other parts of the galaxy, this type of life arises only rarely and then from natural evolution.

I would suggest the following "rules" to help explain the cannon setting:

1. The Starstone must always exist.

2. The Starstone must always be accessible.

3. No deity shall attempt to seize the stone by force. No showing up with armada's of your followers.

4. The Starstone must be guarded. Those who fail the test of the Starstone have their souls destroyed by the stone. Only the strongest must be able to reach the stone so that weak do not obliterate themselves.

5. The Starstone must always be possible.

[HWalsh]

Uhm. The Starstone doesn't collect the energy of worshippers. It turns people into Gods.

[Shinigami02]

While this works for a home-game of course, for anything more broad than that there has been absolutely nothing to even imply that the "Gods need Worshipers" thing is even a thing in Path/Starfinder default setting.

[Lost In Limbo]

Check out the Pathfinder wiki's article on the starstone here.

The starstone was essentially formed from the combination of multiple layers of epic-level magic and the sacrifice of two gods.

But again, you do you in your own campaign. I'm just highly amused by the multiple levels of shenanigans that went into the thing according to the official backstory.

[Mad Paladin]

Shinigami02 wrote:

While this works for a home-game of course, for anything more broad than that there has been absolutely nothing to even imply that the "Gods need Worshipers" thing is even a thing in Path/Starfinder default setting.

If anything, they avert that pretty hard in a number of places. Which is good, because I was getting sick of that trope in fantasy.

[Metaphysician]

I mean, having more worshippers is *beneficial* for a deity, but it has always struck me that, in Pathfinder, this was more about expanding the scope of your domain. A God of War doesn't need people praying to him, and is still a god even if his name is forgotten. However, he *does* get more powerful, the more people are, well, waging war. Likewise, Abadar's expanding church makes him more powerful, simply because they generate more cities, more laws, and more trade. If they all stopped worshiping Abadar, but keep living in cities, following laws, and doing business? He continues to sit pretty.