D&D General Killing Gods

[Chaltab]

I mean that's fair. I've just yet to see what I think is a great argument as to why it shouldn't be part of the game for high level campaigns other than personal preference. Personal preference is a fine reason, of course.

Just trying to understand where people are coming from.

 

[Upper_Krust]

If you have a spectrum of divinity (and D&D always has) then I fail to see why mortals could not interact with the lower end of that spectrum.

Additionally, given that many of the most infamous monsters in D&D (Orcus, Tiamat, Demogorgon, Lolth, Vecna and so forth) have a long history of being "Boss" villains with stats, why should we shy away from that?

Thirdly D&D has made the occasional foray into allowing mortals to transcend their mortal limits (whether that be the BECMI Immortals set, Wrath of the Immortals or the Epic Level Handbook - to name the most obvious source material).

Lastly, mythology and fiction often draw on the idea of mortals battling demigods & gods (or indeed simply gods battling among themselves), therefore why deny even the possibility of similar stories in your campaign?

As regards using Immortals in 5e, perhaps all it needs is one good book...

 

[Aldarc]

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.

FWIW, the "mortals" in those stories were typically demigods with at least one divine parent. Many writers in the Greek world, at least those who believed in the gods on some level, felt that the gods were beyond mortals and that it would be hubris to oppose them.

I think that D&D's "god-killing" tradition is probably more indebted to Moorcock.

 

[MarkB]

FWIW, the "mortals" in those stories were typically demigods with at least one divine parent. Many writers in the Greek world, at least those who believed in the gods on some level, felt that the gods were beyond mortals and that it would be hubris to oppose them.

I think that D&D's "god-killing" tradition is probably more indebted to Moorcock.

There's also the Norse gods, their power levels seem all over the place between stories. Sometimes they're capable of astonishing world-shaking feats, others they're little more than adventurers making their way through the world and getting up to mortal-level hijinks. I don't think their mythology ever really presents them as fundamentally unkillable by mortals.

 

[dave2008]

FWIW, the "mortals" in those stories were typically demigods with at least one divine parent. Many writers in the Greek world, at least those who believed in the gods on some level, felt that the gods were beyond mortals and that it would be hubris to oppose them.

Agreed and some Greek writers who were less thrilled with gods were likely to make them seem more insidious an fallible.

FYI, Diomedes may have had some divine blood in him, but his parents were both mortal, held the distinction of being the only mortal to injure to gods in one day! IIRC he injured both Athena and Ares in the Trojan war. Though in at least one telling of the story he had Athena's help when he injured Ares.

 

[Celebrim]

The Religion in D&D thread made me think about how much I enjoy the RPG storyline of killing a god. It could be a minor god, a big animal like in Princess Mononoke, a tentacled thing from beyond the world worshiped by a cult, or facing off against a major god in their own plane. These stories are always so epic to me, and something I really enjoy.

When have you or your group faced off against a god in a D&D game?

In my homebrew it's certainly possible to kill a god in that there are gods that are explicitly dead. Killing a god however would not be very easy and would probably be impossible for a mortal in the case of major deities like Lado, Arete, Showna, and Erravar. Trapping a major deity in a situation where death is the possible outcome requires greater than mortals levels of planning and intelligence and magical power.

So it's never really come up because I've never played a single campaign for the likely 40+ years it would take to get PC's that could realistically consider it. Conceivably a high-level party could take on spirits of the greatest order and potentially kill them, like the grand-mother of apples, the prince of cats, the hungry beast, the lord of paradox, the seneschal of conformity, and so forth but even that is probably a very bad idea as those beings are friends and vassals of gods and killing one would have CONSEQUENCES. You would make enemies big time.

 

[jasper]

The Religion in D&D thread made me think about how much I enjoy the RPG storyline of killing a god. It could be a minor god, a big animal like in Princess Mononoke, a tentacled thing from beyond the world worshiped by a cult, or facing off against a major god in their own plane. These stories are always so epic to me, and something I really enjoy.

When have you or your group faced off against a god in a D&D game?

Yes. I lost count of how many we killed from the 1E Deities and Demigods first printing. We were so good, the ones were wiped out were removed from the 2nd printing.

 

[deadman1204]

I'm sorry, but... what?

This argument is completely incoherent.If there's no chance for the PCs to win, then it's not a fight, it's just the DM enacting their own childish power fantasy.

And if you can fight a god, the god still has a good chance of winning.

Thats the point. Why should the PCs be able to fight a god? The very concept is stupid. The gods should have infinite hp. They are a GOD. It should be impossible to fight them.

 

[dave2008]

Thats the point. Why should the PCs be able to fight a god? The very concept is stupid. The gods should have infinite hp. They are a GOD. It should be impossible to fight them.

Why? That is not consistent with real life mythology or the history of D&D. I mean it is OK for your personal beliefs, but doesn't really make any sense for D&D as a whole.

 

[Celebrim]

Thats the point. Why should the PCs be able to fight a god? The very concept is stupid. The gods should have infinite hp. They are a GOD. It should be impossible to fight them.

That's a very narrow view of what "a god" means. Historically "god" was typically just applied to things that were higher than men, so for example the dryads and nereids were gods - just small ones.

But even the big Olympian gods could be fought, especially if you were a hero with some gods blood in your veins. Homer for example records Aphrodite deciding to get in on the fun and like the other gods, arraying a chariot to participate in the battles of Troy - only to get a spear through her stomach for her troubles. She goes to whine to Zeus about it, and he's having none of it, "You want to act like Athena, Apollo, or Ares, that's fine but you take your lumps when you get them." Diomedes managed to wound Ares.