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If it has stats, you can kill it.
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Sure, we can give deities a state block. It will be like Caine's stat block in Vampire the Masquerade. It only needs to say "You loose"
Or we could not, and say we did.
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If it has stats, you can kill it.Okay. Prove it. Take any quasi/demi deity that has been statted, for example, an Archdevil or Empyreal Lord, and make a player character whose level is 20 lower than their CR, since a player’s CR is equal to level.
You are allowed to increase the level by as much as you want, but for every level, the “deity” gets +10 fast healing, +10 SR (until it reaches SR 100, then it instead is immunity to anything that has spell resistance), +10 DR/Epic (until it reaches DR 50/Epic then it becomes DR 50/- and the increase is now +10 DR/-) and +10 to all resistances (except the things it is already immune to of course, and when it becomes resistance 100, it instead becomes immunity), for every 2 levels, it gets 10 more HD, including everything that comes with an increase to HD, and for every 3 levels, it increases every ability score by 5.
Go ahead and make a build that can beat this. Oh, and because technically Mythic is an option to players, you can have up to 10 Tiers in Mythic, but for every two tiers, your CR increases by 1 (mininum increase of 1), which could cause your opponent to become stronger. However, no more Mythic Tiers than half your level, because it doesn’t make sense for, say, a level 5 character to have 10 Mythic Tiers, for example, which I’m sure you can agree to.
I’ll be awaiting your build and the opponent you choose. I’ll stat up the opponent though if they get an increase.
Games tend to have holes in them due to unintended stacking allowances that let you create things like the old 3.5 Pun Pun character, and anything with a statblock has a chance to fall prey to those.
Also if Paizo makes the deity they're not going to try to cover every loophole, and some splat will allow a player to use some unexpected combo.
Of course the GM can just make up something on the fly to say "nope that doesn't work", and that is exactly why no stats are needed. If players want their deities to be defeated they can make their own stats up. Using the most powerful monster as a base can be the start. And if the GM is just going to have moving stats they can do that without Paizo's help.
Another reason why this doesn't need to be done:
Most groups never even think of taking on actual deities, and that was even in 3.5 when gods had stats so it would be a wasted of time, and printed paper. Many also never reached the level of power needed to defeat anything better than a deity with a rank of 1, which was only a minor deity, and still was around a CR25 to 27 range encounter.
edit: There's no point in having stats for the sake of having stats is basically what I'm getting at.
If you do want deities to be able to lose you can just give them whatever stats you want based on your game or even just use some powerful monster and reflavor it while changing a few abilities so the players don't catch on.
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If it has stats, you can kill it.Okay. Prove it. Take any quasi/demi deity that has been statted, for example, an Archdevil or Empyreal Lord, and make a player character whose level is 20 lower than their CR, since a player’s CR is equal to level.
You are allowed to increase the level by as much as you want, but for every level, the “deity” gets +10 fast healing, +10 SR (until it reaches SR 100, then it instead is immunity to anything that has spell resistance), +10 DR/Epic (until it reaches DR 50/Epic then it becomes DR 50/- and the increase is now +10 DR/-) and +10 to all resistances (except the things it is already immune to of course, and when it becomes resistance 100, it instead becomes immunity), for every 2 levels, it gets 10 more HD, including everything that comes with an increase to HD, and for every 3 levels, it increases every ability score by 5.
Go ahead and make a build that can beat this. Oh, and because technically Mythic is an option to players, you can have up to 10 Tiers in Mythic, but for every two tiers, your CR increases by 1 (mininum increase of 1), which could cause your opponent to become stronger. However, no more Mythic Tiers than half your level, because it doesn’t make sense for, say, a level 5 character to have 10 Mythic Tiers, for example, which I’m sure you can agree to.
I’ll be awaiting your build and the opponent you choose. I’ll stat up the opponent though if they get an increase.
First of all, people are really clever, given time. I reject your proposal to create a single PC, and instead I choose 6144 level 5 casters, which is a CR of 30. You can have https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/devil/archdevi l/archdevil-belial/ and that comes out to 22 CR "increases", so 220 fast healing, immunity to all spells, elements, etc. DR 240/-. 110 extra HD (d10's) with the bonus from his 35 extra Con from your other absurd/arbitrary guidelines gives him an extra 4235HP, so we'll say 5k health overall.
6144 Casters each summon 1 lantern archon each turn with Summon Monster 3. Lantern Archon's will only hit him with a 20, so that's an average of 307 hits per turn with their Light Ray, for 1d6 damage that bypasses LITERALLY EVERYTHING. Average of 1075 damage for the first turn, doubled the next turn, maxing out at 5376 damage by the fifth turn. He's dead. Even with insane statblocks, you don't want to pit yourself against the cheesiest and brightest in the game (of which I am absolutely not one of).Second of all, as has been pointed out, what's the point? The only way you can guarantee an unkillable god is to give them stats that make statting irrelevant. Immunity to everything? That's not really a statblock, that's just a longer way of saying "Eh, there's no stat block. I mean, I guess there can be one. Fine, he has infinite of everything useful, and zero of anything that could be harmful to himself. And regeneration (nothing), so if he is defeated he regenerates eventually and nothing can stop it. And a contingency spell which obliterates the universe if he could ever come close to dying. And..." you (hopefully) see the point. Or the lack of one. Either play the game as it's meant to be played, with guidelines that let you fudge things that need to be fudged, or tie yourself down with rules so strict that they would takes hundreds of books to contain.
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Again, if you want stats to exist for a deity but you want that deity to be impossible to beat it only needs to say "You lose".
Anything else is simply disingenuous. Giving it stats gives the suggestion that you can beat it. Giving it variable stats is like saying, "I don't want you to ever have a chance, bit I'll pretend like you do". Just be honest and say no in the first place.
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And somebody laser spammed while I was busy thinking up something involving Ratfolk, Leadership, and Tower Shields.
If you absolutely must have a stat block for a deity I suggest something like the Primal Order supplement put out by Wizards of the Cost. This was written before they bought TSR and acquired Dungeons & Dragons. The system was actually fairly interesting and worked well. It did not matter how powerful a mortal was because the only thing that could actually harm a deity was primal power. Mortals were unable to gain primal power, and if they did by definition they were no longer mortal. Sure you could defeat the avatar of a deity but other than having to use some of your primal power to create a new avatar it really did not make that much difference.
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I believe the initial claim was that something with stats could be killed, not that a single character could do if from a 30' distance. If you get to move the goal posts then of course you can always win.
A single iron colossus could kill all those thousands of level 5 casters. Also I agree with what people are saying: There's no point in giving something stats if your just gonna make it impossible to beat anyway.
In english 'you' can be singular or plural.
Edit: nevermind, no longer certain why I came here, happy gaming to all!
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No the initial claim was “If it has stats, you can kill it.” You is singular. If it was meant to be plural, it would would have said people.
In American English "you" is both the second-person singular and the second-person plural pronoun.
"Person" is a noun, not a pronoun.
So the sentence can be read as 'you (plural)' can kill it, or 'you (singular)' can kill it.
There's no need to use a noun in that sentence. Pronouns work just fine.
I believe the initial claim was that something with stats could be killed, not that a single character could do if from a 30' distance. If you get to move the goal posts then of course you can always win.No the initial claim was “If it has stats, you can kill it.” You is singular. If it was meant to be plural, it would would have said people.
I mean if you want to be that fastidiously literal about it, "you" would be referring to you, the real person. I'm reasonably certain that you are capable of writing big enough numbers on a piece of paper to kill any statted being in Pathfinder.
So, to expand upon what I said earlier, the whole exercize is pointless. Either the stats have a hole in them that allows the god to be killed my a clever character, or they are too powerful to ever kill.
If they can be killed through some loophole, then the exercize of statting them is pointless. Assuming of course, the premise that these gods are statted AND unbeatable.
If they cannot be killed, then the exercize is also pointless because it is the same as writing "You Lose" within the description box.
Either way, the time and energy put into statting the gods becomes a waste. The only time its appropriate to stat gods is when you plan on allowing them to be killed.
The grammar arguments about you are pointless anyways. Leadership is a feat so any of the followers and cohorts gained by the feat would be considered part of the “Character”. Although most GM’s would probably disallow chained leadership I don’t recall an actual rule against it. The characters Cohort could also take leadership to gain his own followers and cohort. The Cohort’s cohort can also take leadership to gain even more followers.
Also part of the character is his wealth. Since paying for the services of a spell caster is also in the rules nothing would prevent the character from using most of his wealth to hire the services of a spell caster. Since the hired spell caster also gets feats he can also take leadership.
I seem to recall that there was a exploit that allowed you to get a cohort of equal to your own level. If this was allowed you could actually gain infinite cohorts and followers. Combine this with hiring a spell caster and you can have an unlimited number of casters as part of a single character. So now you have an infinite number of 20th level casters who have an all have 2 6th level and 2 5th level casters as follower. Technically all of these characters are part of a single "character".
This is something that no sane GM would ever allow, but it shows why deities should not have normal stats blocks.
"I have an idea! Let's give a deity stats. Then, if my players make characters that can beat it, I'll just arbitrarily raise all of its stats to a million. Can you survive a +1,000,000 Everyone-Bane Vorpal Iwin longsword (1,000,000d6 + 5,000,000/2-20/x500,000)? I didn't think so."
How is this different from not having stats again?
Someone get the Neutronium Golem in here to show how stupid we can get with the numbers.
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Statting things you aren't intended to beat is a massive waste of time and design space.