Deity power level = Joke?

[Corathon]

Granting all priests an equal number of spells is not the same thing as having the same power level. It doesn't break verisimilitude in the least, because lesser deities have smaller churches, fewer worshipers, more narrow portfolios, and smaller divine domains.

Let's do the math.

Greater deity A has divine power X (coming from his 10,000,000 lay worshipers), which he can divide among his three avatars, five Chosen, twenty proxies, and 10,000 clerics (one cleric per 1,000 worshipers seems reasonable).

Let intermediate deity B have roughly one third of deity A's divine power because he has only about 3,000,000 lay worshipers. But he only has one active avatar, one Chosen, three proxies, and only about 3,000 clerics.

Not only can deity B grant his clerics the same level of power as deity A, but he has power to spare because he has fewer Chosen and proxies than his power level currently allows.

If you want verisimilitude, make sure that churches of weaker deities have fewer power centers, less cash, and less influence than churches of more powerful deities. Limiting clerics' spells is really poor design (and doesn't make sense, as I showed above).

Sammael, you made assumptions to prove your point. If the assumptions don't hold the proof doesn't either.

For example, you assumed above that the power of a deity is directly proportional to the number of worshipers. Maybe it goes as the square. or is exponential.

Maybe a greater god is known and worshiped on a hundred worlds, or a thousand, while a lesser god only has followers on 10 worlds - or just one.

Perhaps, just as a spell caster must be level n to cast mth level spells, a god must have a certain rank to grant spells of a certain level to clerical followers. After all, granting spells of any level to followers across the world (or the multiverse) is beyond the power of any mortal, so the argument that "gods are so much mightier than mortals" doesn't hold water either.

 

[Sammael]

I did not make assumptions. What I wrote is how things work in my campaigns, as well as many other campaigns I've participated in.

For your own campaign, you will certainly have to create your own assumptions. There is no one true answer to this question in D&D.

Or, rather, there is, but the original poster doesn't like it. In late 2nd edition, 3rd edition, and 4th edition, the general power of a god has nothing whatsoever to do with the power of that god's priests. If anything, a lot of demigods' specialty priests detailed in the FR accessory "Deities and Demigods" are far more powerful than the greater deities' specialty priests. So, the OP rejected the OFFICIAL stance, and I provided a feasible explanation for that stance.

 

[Barastrondo]

Hell, if everyone has access to the same level of spells and the same spheres, why even bother with more than one god?

I don't even want to picture a campaign setting where the deities and their churches are so bland and faceless that you can't differentiate between them without telling players what spells they aren't permitted to take.

 

[His Dudeness]

I think the reason for indicating the power level of deities is, as some have mentioned, more to act as a sort of guide for how prevalent deities are in the game world, and to give an indication of intra-pantheon interaction, than to measure their power in (what mortals would consider to be) a practical context.

If a certain deity is a demigod, then I can expect to find very few churches to them; the ones there are are probably limited to a relatively small region.

If a deity is a greater deity, then they're probably known the world over, though it may be under different names, etc.

I sympathize with the people who want their to be more of a practical context to the different deity power levels (that is, a game-mechanics context that operates at the level of mortals) - having that can really help to pin down why deities of a higher status are so much more prevalent among the populace - but it's hard to do that without punishing PCs for their choices. A cleric of a demigod who gets to the higher levels shouldn't suddenly find that they don't get the spells they were looking forward to.

It is not sudden and it is not punishing the PCs (weird concept that, first time I've heard such thing was in this thread). If the PC is going to play a cleric, he knows that if his deity is a demigod or has a lesser status he is going to be limited in power.

Want power? Follow a more important deity. Don't like it? Don't play a cleric.

I'm talking about 2E here, and mostly Forgotten Realms which is the sort of default setting for D&D.

I don't even want to picture a campaign setting where the deities and their churches are so bland and faceless that you can't differentiate between them without telling players what spells they aren't permitted to take.

Deities grant spells according to their portfolio. It would make no sense for a priest of Auril to cast Flame Strike, since Auril is called the Frostmaiden and is the enbodiment of cold. This is the same reason why priests of Auril can't cast spells from the Plant Sphere, because no plant grows in the pure cold that is her layer of Pandemonium.

Limitations are there to reinforce a concept and force the player to make a choice. As a player I find it interesting.

 

[prosfilaes]

It is not sudden and it is not punishing the PCs (weird concept that, first time I've heard such thing was in this thread). If the PC is going to play a cleric, he knows that if his deity is a demigod or has a lesser status he is going to be limited in power.

It's an anti-balance mechanism; unlike racial level limits, there's not even the claim that a demigod cleric starts more powerfully. It is punishing the PC for choosing a particular god. You're taking them off the list for any player who wants to play that character at higher levels; effectively, you're reducing the list of PC gods.

Limitations are there to reinforce a concept and force the player to make a choice. As a player I find it interesting.

As a player, I find the limitations on the monk mean that's not a viable choice for me to play. Already, I find making an effective character in D&D 3e clashes with roles I'd like to play. If you make certain gods give their clerics less power, then you're taking them off the list of characters I will play, which reduces my choices.

I can see preventing worshippers of demigods from casting higher level spells, but that makes clerics of them NPC classes. A PC cleric worshipping that god will be dead weight on a party at higher levels. If your intent is to make PCs worship greater gods only, that's fine, but let's not pretend that it's not making certain character concepts unviable.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

If I am playing a priest of a demigod and game hits 11th level then what do I get instead of the higher level spells?


Or do I just get house ruled out of power ?


Or to put it another way let's say 6 of us sit down to play at level 3 and plan on playing to level 17...say we have an adventure path, and two p s want to play clerics then why would they look at gods that stop granting spells after level x?

 

[Alzrius]

I should mention that I called the loss of higher-level spells when you worship a weaker deity "sudden" because I was presuming that the player that played a cleric who worshipped a weaker deity would be unaware (either from not reading the relevant section and not being told by the GM/other players) that they wouldn't be receiving the highest-level spells.

Admittedly, that was my bias - I assumed that someone who knew ahead of time that their character would never get their higher-level spells if they had their cleric worship a particular deity wouldn't knowingly choose that deity. Some players, admittedly, would find that to be an interesting challenge to role-play.

However, I do think that most players, after surviving through a campaign and reaching the level where they get the best spells, would be understandably upset at not receiving them due to a choice (one with no impact on their game mechanics otherwise) that they made at character creation.

 

[Corathon]

I did not make assumptions. What I wrote is how things work in my campaigns, as well as many other campaigns I've participated in.

For your own campaign, you will certainly have to create your own assumptions. There is no one true answer to this question in D&D.

That's fair enough. My point is that with different assumptions, the OP could have it his way also. Its not correct to make the blanket statement:

Limiting clerics' spells is really poor design (and doesn't make sense, as I showed above).

as you did in your previous post. It could make sense, it depends on the assumptions going into it.

 

[Pentius]

It is not sudden and it is not punishing the PCs (weird concept that, first time I've heard such thing was in this thread). If the PC is going to play a cleric, he knows that if his deity is a demigod or has a lesser status he is going to be limited in power.

Want power? Follow a more important deity. Don't like it? Don't play a cleric.

This is exactly what I was talking about with the design issue, though. What benefit does the game get by driving a wedge between people who like more mechanically powerful characters, and those who like lesser gods? You say verisimilitude, but there are plenty of ways to make it felt, in the fiction, that the Red Knight is less powerful than Tempus, without taking away her ability to let a high level follower cast Control Weather. Why pound this nail in with a screwdriver, when there are hammers available?

Deities grant spells according to their portfolio. It would make no sense for a priest of Auril to cast Flame Strike, since Auril is called the Frostmaiden and is the enbodiment of cold. This is the same reason why priests of Auril can't cast spells from the Plant Sphere, because no plant grows in the pure cold that is her layer of Pandemonium.

Limitations are there to reinforce a concept and force the player to make a choice. As a player I find it interesting.

Limitations aren't there to force a choice. They're there to make the choice for you. Now, I'm not saying that priests of the ice god ought to be stocking up on Fire spells, but in my experience, the ones who cared about that detail weren't taking Fire spells anyway, and the ones that didn't only get annoyed by the limitation. It's a net loss.

 

[Umbran]

I don't even want to picture a campaign setting where the deities and their churches are so bland and faceless that you can't differentiate between them without telling players what spells they aren't permitted to take.

Agreed. Church dogma, tennets, traditions, policies and temporal goals are far more powerful at evoking flavor than spell choice.

For my games, though, the gods are typically very distant. The PCs are never going to directly encounter any of them. I usually arrange it so that honestly, the PCs cannot tell for sure if spells are granted by gods, or spells come about by worship - through the power of will and belief of the cleric.