Unearthed Arcana: Strange Gods (Dragon #398)

[Mentat55]

The Unearthed Arcana article "Strange Gods" has been posted (DDI subscribers only):

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Strange Gods)

Highlights:

• a lot of fluff about fickle, remote, or alien gods
• rolling a d20 each day to determine the strength of your connection to the divine
• one alternative Channel Divinity power each for avengers, clerics, paladins, and runepriests and an alternative cleric attack power to replace healing word
• a series of tables where you can randomly generate a god and his/her/its alignment, personality, quirks, appearance, domains, etc.

That last one reminds me somewhat of the random lower planes monster generator in the 1st ed AD&D DMG.

 

[The Little Raven]

Divine Identification is seriously messed up. It suggests it should have multiple targets, but has a range of Personal and no Target line. It then has a Special entry that says it targets one additional ally within the burst, with no qualifier.

 

[chitzk0i]

Rune of elemental attuning is pretty niche and should only be considered if you're firmly committed to being a second leader in a party. On the other hand, Subversive Word is pure, unadulterated crazy. And by crazy, I mean awesome.

 

[Nyronus]

So, I am totally digging the Random God table in the back.

Particularly my Good alien lizard god of Wilderness, Vengeance, and Undeath who seeks vengeance against another deity, is coarse, amiable, blood-thirsty in the extreme, is not known by other gods, is tolerant, loves chatting with mortals, is reliant upon a phylactry, and whose followers love arguing with people of other faiths, and settling said arguments with arm-wrestling and poison drinking.

... I really wish I had room in my pantheon for this diety.

 

[samursus]

This was a great article... kudos to the author... and more of the type of quality I would like to see in DDI. I may never use it, but it makes me *want* to!

 

[Aegeri]

Rune of elemental attuning is pretty niche and should only be considered if you're firmly committed to being a second leader in a party.

The irony is that in my IRL game I'm starting soon, that is actually a really amazing rune to have in that campaign (as being able to choose your elemental damage like that is an incredible advantage). I think you underestimate as well the utility of being able to take advantage of energy type vulnerabilities and similar with that rune as well. It is pretty niche though, but it has a really solid niche that is worth considering in certain types of campaigns.

Not that I will ever see a runepriest played again and the only one I did see met his end at a shadow (whoops).

 

[Mentat55]

I thought Specter's Shield is pretty buff -- give an enemy a penalty to all defenses equal to the paladin's Charisma modifier? That just screams action point nova craziness.

 

[Zaran]

I thought it was a good article as well. Although I believe replacing both Healing Words for Subversive Word is a bad idea.

 

[kaomera]

Kiss the tentacle, indeed! =]

I'm digging the options to ditch healing (ugh), now they just have to come out with them for non-divine leaders.

Unfortunately the "Apendix N" link does not seem to be working... =[

Divine Identification is seriously messed up. It suggests it should have multiple targets, but has a range of Personal and no Target line. It then has a Special entry that says it targets one additional ally within the burst, with no qualifier.

It's also a Chanel Divinity power but lacks the standard CD "Special" line - I think it pretty clearly got munged by being shoved up against the page break. Hopefully we'll see a fix up soon...

 

[webrunner]

I generated a god that was surprisingly consistant:

good
unknown origin
goal: dedication of followers to a code
curious and wicked
mammalian and shimmering
bloodthirstiness: rip them to shreds
hated by: all gods
encouraging attitude
a few true believers
interest in a particular animal type
haunted by spirits of victims
followers whisper to unseen people and shun/hurt cats
wilderness and death domains

Other than "alignment: good" it's a pretty consistent anti-cat god.

Sucks cuz I like cats.