Because building just one god is so passe.
Iron Gods AP spoilers contained herein, you have been warned.
What I am looking for is an extrapolation on the process presented in the last book of the Iron Gods AP, The Divinity Drive.
Assume the homeworld where Numerian space tech originates has been found and claimed by the PCs. Assume the process for crafting a deity is known as well.
Assume tech artifacts all get their own Mythic item creation feats.
What does the god crafting process look like?
How should Memory Facets be priced?
What of the required Computer Core and Divinity Drive?
The AP itself suggests allowing PCs to attempt to craft new Memory Facets to enable new granted domains.
One assumes that without worshippers a crafted proto deity wouldnt be much more than a glorified robot.
If you're curious, this idea springs from an IRL Mythic Iron Gods campaign where the PCs have repaired the crashed ship and taken to the stars.
We've claimed the ship's homeworld and are gunning to end the Dominion of Black for good. No small task.
This thread is to help me hammer out ideas and to inform our GM.
The tech artifact Extinction Wave Device does what I'm looking for, but on too small a scale. The Dominion of Black is a truly vast organization possibly commanding Dyson Spheres even (in our game anyway).
So I got to wondering if what I needed wasn't a deity or ten to get the job done.
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I wondered how Unity's plan to achieve godhood worked. The module describes Unity's planned actions, but not the metaphysics on how those actions relate to godhood. The module gives two sets of plans, one for Unity to acheive world dominion and godhood and the other for Casandalee to acheive only godhood.
My players are clever, so I fed them information from Becrux and Casandalee and their followup questions shaped a workable metaphysics. The Divinty Drive is a repository of divine energy with extradimensional emphasis. Left running unattended for millennia, it leaked energies that turned the cyberspace from Unity's circuits into a divine demiplance called the Godmind.
The Godmind was Unity's tool for overriding people's will. However, it was limited to the location of the Divinity spacecraft (it is the reason no-one could teleport inside the Divinity), but once the spacecraft is in orbit, then the Godmind could become a loop and tighten around the planet. Unity could not get the entire Divinity into orbit, but the shuttle in secondary engineering would be enough. Unity's primary goal was not to ascend further into godhood; rather, it wanted to control the world. But mind-controlled worshippers would probably enhance its divine power.
The option for Casandalee is to take over Unity's connection to the Godmind and use it to absorb all the divine energy out of the Divinity Drive to directly achieve godhood. It would be best that the Divinity Drive was up in the sky in the shuttle away from people, because transferring the divine energy would create an enormous explosion. The Memory Facets would stabilize Casandalee's mind during the process and let her claim domains, too.
A third option that I am preparing is that Casandalee and the party will expand the Godmind into the Drift, which is the hyperspace that permits easy faster-than-light travel in Starfinder.
I could have come to different conclusions, but my players were happy with my answers.
What does the god crafting process look like?
Create well-defined imaginary place inside the subject's mind. This could be a dream of a living person or a cyberspace for an electronic person. Add divine interdimensional energy to stabilize the imaginary place into one that people can visit, and get the person to put their soul inside as an avatar of him- or herself. Then feed enough divine energy into the new demiplane to convert it into an afterlife plane. The more domains the plane can claim, the more the god can serve worshippers. Worshippers can be the source of the divine energy, but they are no longer necessary once souls of the deceased reside there after death.
The Divinity Drive can serve as a tool for gathering, storing, and transmitting divine energy.
How should Memory Facets be priced?
Memory Facets are listed as technological artifacts, and the minimum price of a technological artifact is one million gold pieces. But the Iron Gods adventure path does not treat the memory facets as artifacts; rather, they seem to be minor quest items. The first memory facet, the inhibitor Facet, is the treasure for defeating a CR 6 advanced wraith. In Palace of Fallen Stars Baron Kronsieg Drund is willing to sell a discipline facet for 5,000 gp.
Fortunately, Lord Fyre created a thread on pricing technological items: Technology: The Wires Behind the Magic.. The formula is:
1) Start with an item from science fiction, such as a laser pistol or magboots.
2) Describe its operation in a single paragraph using Pathfinder rules. Thus, it will operate a lot like a potion, magic item, or medieval weapon.
3) Construct a magic item that does the same thing. Apply a 40% to 100% penalty to the item's cost for not using a magic item slot or not requiring the spell on a spell list. The price of that magic item is the price of the technological item.
4) Apply the disadvantages of Androffan technology: it is either single use or requires charges from batteries.
Most memory facets give an enhancement bonus to a stat and grant an abillity that resembles a feat or class ability. For example, an aggression facet gives a +2 bonus on all attack rolls and weapon damage rolls, and grants Deadly Aim and Power Attack as bonus feats. The bonus is about 4,000 gp and two feats would be around 30,000 gp each, and doubling that for slotless would be around 128,000 gp. An instinct Facet gives a +6 bonus to Wisdom (36,000 gp) and grants Combat Reflexes as a bonus feat (30,000 gp), which doubled is 132,000 gp. So let us go with 128,000 gp, since the power of 2 up front looks appropriately digital.
The technological disadvantage is that the memory facets work only when plugged into a computer or robot's facet slot.
The Microcircuitry Workshop (room A15) in the Divinity says:
Treasure: Scattered among the lab equipment are a dozen
blank memory crystals, each worth 2,500 gp for their gem
quality. Once power is restored, this lab functions as a
nanotech laboratoryTG. At your discretion, the PCs may be
able to use the equipment here to create unique memory
facets (see page 64) for Casandalee. Doing so requires weeks
of study to master the technology, and rare and specialized
components requiring further adventures.
I view the blank memory crystals as mostly finished, but they need to be programmed. That is more a gigantic Knowledge(Engineering) skill check than crafting, and I would require programmer know certain spells or feats as a requirement.
What of the required Computer Core and Divinity Drive?
The computer core would be a true technological artifact, at least one million gp. The Divinity Drive is immensely rarer, say one billion gold pieces.
Fortunately, with my god crafting scheme, the Divinity Drive that the players already have can be reused. They just have to be careful that it does not explode and find a way to recharge its divine energy.
We've claimed the ship's homeworld and are gunning to end the Dominion of Black for good. No small task.
James Jacobs said that Androffan is based on the history of one of his post-apocalyptic roleplaying worlds. Thus, his Androffa lost its technology. For your Androffa, the Singularity where people ascend to higher life forms would be more appropriate. The humans remaining there could be like the Eloi from H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, living naively in paradise and protected by lots of little gods.
The Dominion of the Black are based on H. P. Lovecraft's alien monsters. They were too alien to be understood by humans, but I was not capable of roleplaying such aliens, so I based them on nature to give them playable motivations. I viewed them as scavengers. They lived on the scraps that no-one else wanted and thrived by heartless efficiency, wasting no resources. They even scavenge the knowledge of their victims through brain collection. A million years ago the god of destruction Rogagug destroyed many solar systems and the Dominion of the Black lives among the remains.
The Dominion of the Black probably has some god-like beings that could be harvested for divine energy. Godhood can be stolen--see the history of Lamashtu--and the theft seems tied to the domains.
Thank you Mathmuse for the detailed response!
It's definitely helped me clarify the idea.
One thing though, Mmillions or billions of gp would seem to be a large sum to the point of hyperbole. 200,000gp as the cutoff to the old 3.x concept of epic play would seem to be more than enough. At least it is for our games.
Especially when technological artifacts can be cheesefully manufactured via Simulacrum of Animated Objects of the tech in question. Not that I'm advocating such, just pointing out that it is RAW possible.
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EDIT Oh, and our Androffa was mid cataclysm when we found it. The old Gods had been reduced to lesser deities by their worshiper's reliance on technology. So the old gods had cleansed the planet of the humanoid races entirely. Which reduced the lesser deities to mere demigods.
The only sentient race left were the android decendants of those races. The old gods turned demigods were at war witht he android population of the planet and had nearly wiped them out when the PCs arrived.
The PCs undermined the last little bit of worship the demigods were recieving (Mythic Bard) and set about erasing all physical reference to them across the planet (Mythic Alchemist minionmancer) while bombarding the demigods themselves from orbit (Mythic Gunslinger) and engaging them on the ground so they couldn't interfere (2x Mythic melee types).
Several of the PCs had already become Mythic demigods themselves so replacing these murderous lackwits was a simple matter.
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I found this list of PF demigods and was curious as to how accurate/comprehensive it is?
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Demigod
I'm trying to get a feel for whether there's a commonality to the status of "demigod" mechanically or not. Failing that I'm curious just how powerful something is before "demigod" status is conferred to it.
I've also posted a sister thread to this one over on the GitP boards.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?546460-PF-How-to-Craft-a-Pant heon&p=22722699#post22722699
One thing though, Mmillions or billions of gp would seem to be a large sum to the point of hyperbole. 200,000gp as the cutoff to the old 3.x concept of epic play would seem to be more than enough. At least it is for our games.
Especially when technological artifacts can be cheesefully manufactured via Simulacrum of Animated Objects of the tech in question. Not that I'm advocating such, just pointing out that it is RAW possible.
I pulled the price out of my memory and I was wrong. A forum search found James Jacobs talking about the price of technological artifacts (http://paizo.com/products/btpy98i0/discuss&page=28?Pathfinder-Campaign -Setting-Technology-Guide#1359)
It's basically an artifact because the total gp cost went over 200,000 gp. Same reason we made the autodoc an artifact.Yay! It's here. I'm saddened that power armor is an artifact, but at the same time, the ASF was too high for me to use it for my plan anyway. I'll have to talk to my GM about using the section about making tech versions of magical items to reskin my previously planned clockwork construct armor into "power armor".
Aside from that, loving much of the stuff in here.
As for demigods, I rely on Pathfinderwiki myself, so I know only as much as you do.
I would have thought that universal gods such as Desna and Sarenrae would have a presence on Androffa, but I guess that did not happen in your game. They don't depend on only one planet of worshippers and would not drop down to demigod status.
That's hilarious because that's the exact same way our table seperated custom tech weapons from custom tech artifacts.
Only I wound up with prices that really were in the millions of gp when I theorycrafted some tech siege weapons.