Upper_Krust said:
paradox42 said:
While I had rules in previous versions of the game for beings beyond the level of actual deities (those U_K calles Sidereals, Eternals, and so on), I hadn't detailed them to the extent that U_K has, which makes Ascension quite helpful in that regard.
Glad you are still getting use out of them.
Of course what you could do is exchange my Elder Ones for your Demigods, Lesser Gods for Old Ones etc. Since that seems to better parallel your Hit Dice at least.
Actually I'd keep the powers essentially the same and just inflate the hit die limits, since the powers (as far as I can tell) are the primary add-on to the CR granted by the template. Obviously this will significantly alter the part that gets added from equipment, but I actually have significantly different assumptions for equipment anyway (for example, I wasn't planning on going with the four-artifact limit in an absolute sense), so no matter what that part of the ECL/CR change would have to be at least closely examined.Honestly, the power level of basic mortals in my game is very different from the base WotC numbers anyway, so I can't go with your assumptions even on that general principle since you based your numbers (at least for a starting point) on theirs.
My starting point is higher-power, so I have to inflate the deities to match, at the very least- if that makes sense.
Another part of this ties in with the fact that my world has a large number of "fantasy science-fiction" elements in it, meaning high-tech weapons like energy guns and starships in addition to the traditional sword & sorcery fare. Assumptions for deity power are just... different, in a setting like that. The explanation of where the power comes from is different, and the effects of using the power will be as well to keep internal consistency. The differences from the IH are small ones, to be sure, but they will require tweaks to make it all fit.
Upper_Krust said:
paradox42 said:
Though the flavor of the Ascension rules doesn't quite match my own notions,
Well I am sure certain people will have their own methods, although my versions are designed to maintain as much interaction as possible (between mortals, immortals and each divine status) while at the same time making sure each divine status is a tangible increase and not just a token one. Roughly speaking each Divine Status is worth two beings of the previous status.
Exactly. I wanted a larger power gap between my deities and mortals, and since my mortals are more powerful as a general base I have to greatly inflate the power of deities to get that. That said, I do still have plenty of interaction between deities and mortals in my game; the players are just made aware very early on that deities are
not to be trifled with.
Upper_Krust said:
Wait until I have things finished. I'd love to have the time to go over ever paragraph and add in something from the fifty notebooks of ideas I have scribbled down. But at the moment I am pressed for time getting the bare bones down.
No, that's fine; I'm certainly not saying your flavor is bad or wrong!
I just have a game setting that's very different from traditional sword & sorcery fantasy, so I have to explain things differently.
The particular example with Sidereals involves the in-game explanation for what the beings actually are- my players
have already encountered a Sidereal being, or at least the Divine-level "avatar" of one, and were given an explanation of what the "Overgods" actually are as beings. What I said was that deities have their power because their minds are housed, not in physical bodies like mortals, but in constructs of pure energy. They can form physical bodies to make interaction with the universe more convenient, but they don't need to to survive. In that light, the Overgods are another level entirely- they exist not as energy, but as patterns in the quantum probability waves that give rise to physical reality. They can form "avatars" of energy which are effectively deities in their own right, but they don't need to any more than deities need to form physical bodies. And of course those deity-avatars can themselves form avatars in physical form if the being wants to.
In light of that, your rules (which seem based on the assumption that Sidereals and other immortal beings are, in some qualitative sense, more similar to mortals than my flavor allows) may need some tweaking, particularly in the gaps between "levels" of the various entities. Thus, I will tweak them once I have more complete rules to examine and can see the complete spread- where it matches, and where it doesn't. Obviously, your explanations about Sidereals do match mine in one very interesting and important point- both of us have them as essentially "written" into the underlying fabric of the universe (or multiverse) itself. We just seem to differ on exactly how their power arises and a little on what they can do with it.
Upper_Krust said:
If people are enjoying it (even at this early stage) then it makes all the effort worthwhile.
Glad to hear it! This really is a monumental effort, and it's already surpassed Primal Order (the previous "definitive" work on game rules for deities in my collection) in utility and idea generation, in my eyes. I plan to get every IH book you put out, however long they take, and my players already know my game will be using the IH rules (or anyway as much of them as I can). In fact they already came up against a few critters from the Bestiary Volume I, but that's neither here nor there.
