D&D General Killing Gods

[dave2008]

I think it is hard to discuss killing or not killing gods without a understanding of what constitutes a divine being. For some it is an omniscient and omnipotent entity, for others it is a powerful spirit creature. There is a large gulf between the two, but I think they can all be described as gods of some sort.

Look at the Greek gods: they could be fought and wounded by mortals, they could also lift mountains, and transform mortals into anything they wished. They needed nectar and ambrosia for their youth and immortal vigor, but could survive having their liver torn out of their body every day. They fit the model of D&D gods fairly well.

 

[MarkB]

I think it is hard to discuss killing or not killing gods without a understanding of what constitutes a divine being. For some it is an omniscient and omnipotent entity, for others it is a powerful spirit creature. There is a large gulf between the two, but I think they can all be described as gods of some sort.

The way I'd tend to work it is that they start out closer to the former, but can be brought down to the latter in the course of a dedicated campaign that includes forging alliances with other powerful entities, eroding their belief and influence level in the mortal realm, and finding some way to isolate them from their power. You don't just rock up to a higher plane and throw down with them.

 

[Maxperson]

They killed the god of fire 3 times because they kept failing to find the First.

It would have better if he was a trick relighting god of fire.

 

[Maxperson]

I am fan of having different tiers of "gods." What I consider demi-gods or quasi-deities (think Princess Mononoke) are killable by mortals, but more powerful exalted entities are not. They are, however, still able to be killed, you just need to be equivalent to divine status to do it.

Unassailable gods are simply not interesting to me.

Yep. Anything higher than demigod is unkillable absent direct aid from another god or a specialized artifact created by a god for that purpose.

In my 41 years of DMing, my players have killed 0 gods. There was one campaign where the gods got locked out of Toril by a powerful artifact made for that purpose. No divine spells or abilities worked and the gods could not see what was happening. Except for the PCs. They were all children of the divine and through the connection of blood, could draw power from their parent. They ultimately found and destroyed the artifact, but they were all pushing 20th level by the time they found it.

 

[dave2008]

The way I'd tend to work it is that they start out closer to the former, but can be brought down to the latter in the course of a dedicated campaign that includes forging alliances with other powerful entities, eroding their belief and influence level in the mortal realm, and finding some way to isolate them from their power. You don't just rock up to a higher plane and throw down with them.

That is a way to do it (and seems to be the WotC approach), but I prefer to elevate PCs to gods (or nearly so) if they want to challenge gods.

Both work, just depends what you are looking for.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, it wasn't D&D, but I was a player in a Dungeon World game and we ended up killing effectively wizard demigods. The TL;DR: different schools of magic had special Towers, which had to be constructed over places of power, usually intersections of underground (visible) ley line energy conduits. Each Tower had its own Avatar, chosen by whatever method the Tower's originally establishing wizards preferred. All told, there were five towers to start with, but the number changed a bit over time due to our interventions:

• The Black Tower of Necromancy: We destroyed it down to its very foundation, which released a huge amount of evil magic into the world, much of which was absorbed by other Avatars. This was...not good, so we had some cleanup work to do. I'm afraid I don't remember what its Avatar was called, as he/they didn't deign to appear at Avatar gatherings.
• The Red Tower of Evocation: Survived, but temporarily went on the warpath as a result of the above evil-magic stuff. Led by the Incendiary. She temporarily became the "Inferno" after absorbing the evil magic, and tried to assault another Tower. We never actually visited this tower, but we did defeat the "Inferno" and strip away the evil magic, restoring her to being the Incendiary.
• The Gold Tower of Enchantment: We erased its magic, but not the physical Tower itself, allowing a new one to replace it (see below). Led by the Allmind, a psycho-enchantment hive mind of many different wizards. He was (or perhaps "they were") even more screwed up by the evil magic, and basically went full Borg, but we took them down and eventually persuaded them to let go of the magic (hence why the tower went dormant rather than being destroyed).
• The Rose Tower of Song: Bard magic! The TL;DR here is that a White Tower wizard (see below) entered the tower from its base, while the "Inferno" tried to lay claim to the tower from its apex. This resulted in a new Tower that blended Gold, Red, and White magic: illusions and beguilement, energy and passion, and precision and words, blended together. She became the Novelist, and was relatively cooperative.
• The Green Tower of Conjuration: Another affected by the evil magic. Led by Summoner Prime Starmaster, whom we defeated as she/they were trying to found their own new Black Tower but under the Summoner Prime's control. By using the Tower's magic, we instead inverted the evil necromantic energy, and used it to bring back a race of rabbit-people that had nearly gone extinct. All of them were green-furred as a result, and probably natural Conjurers. The Tower still stood, but we did defeat its Avatar and stripped them of their power; a new one would need to be chosen.
• The White Tower of Artifice: My personal contribution to the mix. The White Tower was among the oldest towers, and had weathered problems like this before. Its Avatar, the Archivist, was a genuinely good sort. She worked to make the world a better place through magical tools that anyone, not just wizards, could use. Bit stuffy though, very by-the-book. She essentially allied with our party.

The game ended about two or three sessions before we would have hit the true final conclusion, where my character would have attempted to become the Avatar of a new Tower of divine magic, filling the void left by the Black Tower's destruction (since that would have remained a problem no matter what). He would use a place of power belonging to Bahamut, his deity, to invoke a Platinum Tower of Life: a place of healing and succor, but also one that demands respect for Death (whom my character had a...complicated relationship with), hunting undead things and allowing people a safe, sanctioned way to commune with the dead. The act of magic that I intended to establish the Tower was that we had recovered a whole caravan load of captured souls--souls that couldn't go to Death's realm, but that weren't technically alive either, among them my character's wife. The idea was to call on Bahamut, use the special artifact sword I had assembled, and parley with Death one final time to give these lost souls a chance to die properly, as they were supposed to, rather than being stolen away from both life and Death himself. This would have been the origin of the dragonborn race in this world: my character, and all the people brought back by the ritual, would be remade as dragonborn.

That sounds like a fantastically fun campaign!

 

[Maxperson]

One can analyze Japanese history through the lens of a succession of belief-systems, each one promising great things, triumphing over a decadent old system, bringing in its own flaws, and ultimately capitulating to a system that comes after. The current system is, for good and for ill, foreign capitalism, and the socioeconomic malaise of the past several decades has created a significant space for commentary on the downfall of the existing system and what might come after.

Hence: JRPGs kill gods because killing gods (and other sources of personal/social values) is a Japanese cultural symbol of sociocultural regime change.

That explains a lot of anime as well.

 

[Minigiant]

It would have better if he was a trick relighting god of fire.

That was the second fire god.

The first was an evil Genasi who turned the Church of Fire into Burning Wish Fulfillment.

The second wanted to restore the Church of Burnouts with cleansing fire of phoenixes. Which meant she just kept getting back up fresh as a daisy. Hotter every time. With new spells.

 

[Maxperson]

As the epilogue to one of my games the party had to work with the gods to face and defeat "Victory".

In the ancient times, when the gods warred with the primordials, they combined all of their power together into a single vessel, an entity known simply as "Victory". Victory's power was as simple as it was terrifying..... "all things lose to victory". Victory literally could not lose in any check or contest and could not be defeated. But the primordials are the essence of creation itself, they simply cannot die. And so Victory won every fight against them, but they always came back. At one point a primordial that came back managed to kill one of the gods. The gods were angry at Victory, thinking their creation was a failure. Victory went mad with rage and rebelled. The gods locked Victory away in a dome of infinite challenge....every moment Victory was presented with a new unique obstacle, he defeated each with utter ease but was immediately presented with another, holding him to this space.

Eons later, Victory escaped. The party went on an epic quest while the gods slowed down Victory. Many gods died in the battle. The party provided the most rare of ingredients to Moridan himself, who was able to construct an epic mirror of opposition. As Victory emerged triumphant, he was presented with the mirror, and a second Victory emerged. The two immediately locked into a grapple, and stood silent.....as both had to give their absolute all to prevent the other one from winning. Two creatures that cannot lose.....stood eternally in struggle. And so the two titans still hover over the world of Aiden to this day, locked in endless battle.

More backstory if your interested

Spoiler

After Victory's "failure", the gods created a different weapon. They pulled together all of their will and created "Destiny". Destiny bound all of reality under a single rule, "ALL things MUST have an end".

This power overwrought the innate immortality of the primordials and allowed them to truly be killed. With this new weapon, the gods won the war.

Destiny has been an entity in many of my games (as they are all connected into my living universe). Sometimes as a villain, sometimes an ally (and one time even as a lover, long story). Over time, Destiny was weakened by various campaing shenangans, and the rule was changed to "ALL things "might" have an end".

When Victory arrived, Destiny was there to meet him. However, Destiny's weakened form was no match for Victory's pure undiluted power. However, when Moridan created the mirror, Destiny used her power and influence to augment the mirror, giving it the strength needed to create a 2nd Victory.

That's a great story and I love seeing how other DMs minds work. Had I written that sort of story, I'd have had Victory be unbeatable not because he couldn't be beaten, but rather because any being who beat him became him.

 

[Maxperson]

Of course it's not unbridgeable. Mortals become gods all the time in D&D.

That really depends on the DM. In default WotC/TSR setting stories, yes. But not all DMs run gods as beatable like that and many don't have divine ascension, either.