What levels should the D&D Pantheon Gods be?

Jhaelen · Mar 19, 2009

arscott said:
Gugalanna, the sumerian Bull God, was slain by Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Gilgamesh is described as a demigod, but Enkidu is fully mortal.

In general, there are few circumstances where a clearly-defined non-god has killed a clearly defined god, but much of that is because deific status is never as well defined in mythology as it is in D&D. Real-life figures from greco-roman and egyptian history have laid claim to godhood. On the opposite side of the spectrum, celtic mythology survives only through christian adaptaions, and the celtic dieties are described as mere historical figures.

Thanks for the example - I'll have to look up what actually happened there.

I mainly asked in my previous post because I could only remember instances where demigods were involved.

Regarding your other examples: Now, killing someone claiming to be a god is something I'm completely comfortable with

arscott said:
What leads to the "deities can be slain by mortals" reasoning isn't so much mythological precident of actual deicide, but the mythological descriptions of gods and their powers. Compare the abilities evidenced by a 30th-level Wizard to the abilities evidenced by the norse god Loki, and your Wizard ends up kicking ass. Or consider the story of divine exploits that begins the Volsunga saga: The dwarves Hreidmar, Fafnir, and Regin are enough of a threat to Odin, Loki, and Thor that they can compel the gods to pay a weregild.

Well, yes, epic characters can do some awesome stuff, even in 4E. Most of them seem to be especially good at returning from the dead. However, that's something that is the archetypical hero quest, so it's not really indicative of god-like power. So I'm not convinced by that particular reasoning.

S'mon said:
Diomedes 'kills' Ares before the walls of Troy. As the Greek gods are immortal, Ares respawns back on Olympus.

Well, in D&D that would clearly have been an aspect of Ares. I'm fine with killing a god's aspect. It doesn't harm the god in any way. But actual killing, as in 'the god ceases to exist', doesn't happen in Greek mythology, as far as I remember. E.g. when the gods fought the titans, the titans were just eternally imprisoned.

S'mon said:
Normally it's deity kills deity, eg Loki getting Hodur to kill Balder. Mortal killing deity is common in fantasy fiction, Moorcock's Eternal Champion does it a lot.

I'm fine with gods killing gods, too. I just think characters shouldn't be able to do so.

Well, Moorcock's novels aren't real world mythology (though I admit they're inspired by it to a certain degree). Which gods are killed by which incarnation of the eternal champion?
Would you consider Arioch, Elric's patron demon lord to be a god? I'd say it's an example of, well, a demon lord.
I remember Corum fighting against the Fhoi Myore (sp?) but those would just be Fomorian Giants in D&D, not even close to gods.

Does anyone have any other ideas or examples from real world mythology?

Upper_Krust · Mar 19, 2009

Howdy Lurks-no-More!

Lurks-no-More said:
For my 4e uses, I'd decouple the power of a god from the numbers of their followers.

The idea that gods are powered by the faith of their worshippers, which began as a subversion of the older ideas, has become the de facto standard, so I think it deserves to be subverted right back.

It was never my standard but rather one of three options I presented in my Immortals Handbook: Ascension pdf.

Power - Quintessence through combat (Highlander style stealing a portion of another immortals power)
Glory - Quintessence through worship (Using an Event system to determine how much worship a particular event will give a particular character)
Resonance - Quintessence granted to a character from a supernatural source (another immortal via a pact, or some location imparting its power)

The total Quintessence determined your measure of divinity (which is added as a Divinity Template, Hero-deity Template, Demigod Template etc.).

I'm sure my 4E rules will be an extension of this.

(And, as I think I've said before, it solves the question of who in their right mind would worship a being like Torog, granting them godhood: the King that Crawls exists, no matter how much you loathe and fear him, and you have to deal with that.)

Sometimes fear itself can be a form of worship, for instance Sailors might not worship a monstrous Sea Goddess, but in making some sort of acknowledgement to her (throwing a gold piece overboard in the hopes of gaining calm waters) she is thus empowered.

Upper_Krust · Mar 19, 2009

Hey there resistor!

resistor said:
I think what's most interesting about this thread is the attitude shift from ~5 years ago.

When Deities & Demigods came out for 3e, it was pretty soundly derided for "Why in the world would we want stats for gods!?"

Soundly derided!? Perhaps by a vocal minority brought up on the back of 2nd Edition's lily-livered tomfoolery.

As I recall, when they first showed Tiamat's 3E stats in Dragon magazine everyone was pretty "kewl" about the whole thing.

3E did drop the ball on immortals by giving deities stats that:

A) Didn't use the epic rules
B) Set the deities too high so that their stats were basically irrelevant ~ or rather didn't give a staggered progression to divine power with demigods being the same level as greater gods (even if not the same divine rank)
C) Didn't give any functional rules for PC Immortals
D) Used the 3E rules - which get exponentially more intricate the higher you go

4E gods are far better handled.

Upper_Krust · Mar 19, 2009

Hey Mouseferatu!

Mouseferatu said:
Because we know how accurate those are.

Exactly. Even if you get 200 people voting against and 100 people voting for thats still 100 people that want to buy that sort of thing.

Mouseferatu said:
Trust me, there's a huge demand for god stats, whether or not it shows on EN World. When my Bane article came out and didn't include stats for Bane (since he's above 35th level, and I was told that we're not statting up gods higher than that), there was a huge outcry on the WotC forums. Even though most people liked the article, a large number were upset that Bane's stats weren't included.

I have to admit I was upset. I was close to subscribing until I heard there were no Bane stats.

I put a CR 9732 monster (Neutronium Golem) in my Immortals Handbook - Epic Bestiary. Not that I thought the monster would get used, simply that I thought it might be interesting to show people what was out there.

To this day I have only heard of one person using the golem in play...but everybody who read the book loved the monster. In a sense I think that crunch, even unused crunch can be interesting fluff in its own right.

Upper_Krust · Mar 19, 2009

Shemeska said:
Yes, but that's the WotC forums we're talking about.

Do the people over in that forum not know what they want Shemeska?

Upper_Krust · Mar 19, 2009

Hello Jhaelen!

Jhaelen said:
I'm fine with gods killing gods, too. I just think characters shouldn't be able to do so.

So when characters are gods and/or demigods (As some epic 4E characters are) then you are okay with it. So in fact you are okay with Vecna's stats in 4E being Vecna the god, because Epic characters are in fact part divine themselves and thus not exactly mortal.

Well, in D&D that would clearly have been an aspect of Ares.

Incorrect. I don't remember reading it was an Aspect or Avatar. If anything its clear it was Ares himself. The god.

Under 1E rules Ares (battling on Earth) would have been banished back to his home plane (Olympus).

Under 2E rules it presumably would have been Ares' Avatar. Thus an utterly futile gesture where Ares risks nothing.

Under 3E rules Diomedes would have needed to be about 50th-level to even beat Ares (or his Avatar). Which seems unlikely.

Under 4E rules it could easily be the God himself, who discorporates after being Bloodied and reforms on the Astral Plane (Mt. Olympus).

resistor · Mar 19, 2009

Upper_Krust said:
Soundly derided!? Perhaps by a vocal minority brought up on the back of 2nd Edition's lily-livered tomfoolery.

I can only base this on what I have observed, but in the time I've been reading D&D forums (since 2002 or so), this is the first thread I've seen where the net sentiment on god-stats was positive.

While there certainly were some people who spoke out in favor of Deities and Demigods, the overall sentiment on it, in multiple threads of a span of years, seemed to be pretty constantly negative. Whether this reflects an attitude shift in the overall population, I don't know. But it's definitely a shift in the attitude around her.

Also, I'm not convinced it has anything to do with the mechanical implementation thereof. I don't recall many people deriding Deities & Demigods for being clunky or complicated, but for being a bad concept.

Darkness · Mar 19, 2009

resistor said:
When Deities & Demigods came out for 3e, it was pretty soundly derided for "Why in the world would we want stats for gods!?"

For many of us, it wasn't quite that clear-cut. Rather, a combination of factors made the book a lot less useful than it could have been.

One, quantity (of stat blocks) was a big issue. The number of people who want a 'monster manual' of deities (which DDG came somewhat too close to) is likely much lower than the number of people who want rules for PC demigods/gods or to fight a god at the end of an adventure or campaign.

Two, stats for good deities are generally useful to fewer people than stats for evil deities. DDG had lots of them.

Three, the gods as statted in DDG just were too powerful to be very useful to a lot of groups. You'd have to be pretty epic to take on one of these gods and the ELH rules just weren't very good. (Besides, level 35 or whatever is pretty away far from 3.x's "sweet spot" in any case.) Now, you could have advanced the PCs by ascending them to demigod status rather than by having them attain epic levels - but as I recall, this route wasn't that well-supported either.

If the DDG (and ELH) had been better/more useful, more people would have defended it. Of course, a lot of critics wouldn't have vanished or anything even then; it's also a matter of taste, after all.

Bold or Stupid · Mar 19, 2009

The Greek Gods didn't kill the Titans because they were family and if you kill family members you call the furies/erinyes down on your sorry ass. The Titans seized godhood by kill Uranus, their father (his death created the Furies, so no revenge).

Kask · Mar 19, 2009

Bold or Stupid said:
The Greek Gods didn't kill the Titans because they were family and if you kill family members you call the furies/erinyes down on your sorry ass. The Titans seized godhood by kill Uranus, their father (his death created the Furies, so no revenge).

Umm, no. Reread the original myths as written by the Greek authors. Uranus was castrate, not killed...