Hi there Crothian
Crothian said:
The Divine and the Defeated is the first book on gods that I've seen published. Its by Sword and Sorcery. While it is a very detailed look at the gods in their game world.
I have the Divine & the Defeated. Its an interesting and well written book (I would certainly recommend it for anyone running Scarred Lands based campaigns), but the design and mechanics in the book (regarding Deities/Avatars) are heavily flawed; powers are assigned (seemingly) arbitrarily and the challenge ratings are off by more than 10 in some cases.
Crothian said:
I've seen that it would be real easy to use some of the info in it to create other gods.
If you overlook the fact that there is scant reasoning behind any of the stats...
...then it would simply be a case of determining Hit Dice (comparable to those detailed in the book) and arbitrarily applying Divine Qualities, then creating a few unique powers and maybe an artifact or two.
But you have to question why they included such stats in the first place. Since certainly at least the main Avatars are incapable of interacting with mortals of any level (available in Scarn) on anything other than arbitrary terms - in that there would be no point rolling any dice.
Without showing how characters could ascend past 20th-level they pretty much eliminated the need for statting the Avatars.
Without showing how Deities/Avatars are measured (as opposed to simply examples) you can only assume they had little reasoning behind any of the mechanics.
Crothian said:
Since it is the first diety book out there I was wondering if Upper Crust could comment on how easily it will be to use his book and the Divine and the Defeated.
Well at a base level both are D20 products so there shouldn't really be any problems. You would simply need to establish the power of the Avatars in the Divine and the Defeated (something conveniently omitted) in relation to WPS (and standard WotC dogma) Divinity.
eg. Coreans Avatar is approximately equivalent to a Demigod. You can therefore also assume Corean
himself is going to be a Greater God.
If you were going to adhere to the Worship Points System
verbatim then there are certainly a number of things you could change in the Divine and the Defeated:
Capping the number of attacks at 4 for instance (which can then be increased via Feats, Portfolios etc.). Divine Templates enable deities (among many other things) to deal more base damage in my system, so even assuming base 4 attacks overall damage will certainly be comparable.
You would also want to disregard most of the Divine Qualities especially 'Divine Immunity' and 'God's Avatar' in favour of the divine templates and portfolio templates.
Crothian said:
And if he could cooment on any similiarities or differences between the two.
The main similarity is that both are D20 system products.
The main difference is in what both books offer:
The Worship Points System presents rules for allowing player characters to become deities, and not just in the familiar guise of other Immortal based RPGs where the Deities are simply powerful characters, but outlining the fundamental relationship between a deity and their worshippers (something RPGs will mention but never detail).
So essentially its a combined: Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide and Monster Manual targeted towards Deity/Immortal characters - but not at the expense of the Core Rules as they stand.
The Divine and the Defeated doesn't tackle any of the difficult questions about divinity. Unlikely that was ever their intentions I suppose, but some questions should have at least been addressed.
As it stands it simply details the Deities/Religion of the Scarred Lands.
