D&D General The purpose of deity stats in D&D.

[Upper_Krust]

1e's Deities and Demigods did have a section about divine ascension.

Well, sort of...of course lets not forget those brief seven paragraphs ended with...

"...Naturally ascension to divinity effectively removes the character from the general campaign..."

So it suggested a few vague pre-reqs for Ascension...that basically led to your character being retired.

And there are other D&D-style 3pp games out there that address this area as well.

Most seem to take the 'extra 10 levels' route. No doubt easier to balance that way, but can that stat Zeus (for example)?

I'd love to see a swing at it using 5e as a base. It would be a fascinating supplement for Level Up!

I am sure some crazy person will eventually get around to it.

 

[James Gasik]

What's always confused me is why WotC never bothered to incorporate The Primal Order into D&D. It's a fantastic resource for how to use divine entities in the campaign, and it's something they published before purchasing D&D!

 

[Weiley31]

There are some rare examples of 5E god stat blocks here and there. We have Tiamat in Tyranny of Dragons along with both her and Bahamut in Fizbans. Full Powered Orcus is the final boss of the Rappan Athuk mega dungeon. Vecna

Spoiler

,despite being depowered, is here as well in 5E

. Zargon has appeared with a stat block via Goodman Games and WoTC.

The Nightfell 3pp campaign setting has a CR 30 Stat block for a Spider Queen demon type thing that would probably serve as a good proxy for a Lolth stat block for 5E. And finally The Star Shaman's Song of Plangea seems to have a subsystem for making deities.

So, there are options for such things in 5E. Ya just have to look around/improvise.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It might not imply that the PCs will fight the gods but it very strongly implies that they can fight them, or at least try to.

And that's not something I want. Try to fight a deity in my setting and your lifespan becomes measured in seconds, if that, no matter what level you are.

Even fighting a divine minion (e.g. a Valkyrie or an angel or similar) is a quick way to die unless you're high enough level to probably be ruling the world already; and most of the time minions are to deities as people are to minions.

Definitely there is a strong 'can'. I am just saying when I first read it, this wasn't my first thought as a GM

There is also the question of whether the actual stats they went with were where they intended to set them. If you are setting up a world where contending with gods is possible, I have found it to be really tough to find the right power level. I've been working on god stats for one of my settings and it takes tremendous fine tuning to get them to the level you want

 

[Remathilis]

There are some rare examples of 5E god stat blocks here and there. We have Tiamat in Tyranny of Dragons along with both her and Bahamut in Fizbans. Full Powered Orcus is the final boss of the Rappan Athuk mega dungeon. Vecna

Spoiler

,despite being depowered, is here as well in 5E

. Zargon has appeared with a stat block via Goodman Games and WoTC.

The Nightfell 3pp campaign setting has a CR 30 Stat block for a Spider Queen demon type thing that would probably serve as a good proxy for a Lolth stat block for 5E. And finally The Star Shaman's Song of Plangea seems to have a subsystem for making deities.

So, there are options for such things in 5E. Ya just have to look around/improvise.

I always opted for the Planescape/2e model saying that stats for such things are avatars rather than their actual forms. So Tiamat and Bahamuts stats in FGD are their avatars, not them and killing those doesn't destroy them, just weakens them, and often foils their plans. Ditto for Vecna in Eve of Ruin or even Orcus and other Demon Princes. The best you get is a long respite, but they always come back and killing Lolth doesn't stop millions of drow from getting cleric spells. Only deities can kill deities, and PCs aren't deities.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, sort of...of course lets not forget those brief seven paragraphs ended with...

"...Naturally ascension to divinity effectively removes the character from the general campaign..."

So it suggested a few vague pre-reqs for Ascension...that basically led to your character being retired.



Most seem to take the 'extra 10 levels' route. No doubt easier to balance that way, but can that stat Zeus (for example)?



I am sure some crazy person will eventually get around to it.

The version I'm thinking of involves a very complex, expensive, and time-consuming ritual spell that invests a target with divine power (the acquisition and use of which there are also rules for). Since the results provide mechanical models for what divine ascension means, the resulting PC is perfectly playable, if beyond the scope of most campaigns.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I always opted for the Planescape/2e model saying that stats for such things are avatars rather than their actual forms. So Tiamat and Bahamuts stats in FGD are their avatars, not them and killing those doesn't destroy them, just weakens them, and often foils their plans. Ditto for Vecna in Eve of Ruin or even Orcus and other Demon Princes. The best you get is a long respite, but they always come back and killing Lolth doesn't stop millions of drow from getting cleric spells. Only deities can kill deities, and PCs aren't deities.

I like the idea of PCs questing for the means to get around the "only deities can kill deities" rule, such as a god-killing artifact, ancient magic from the beginning of time, investiture of power, and what have you.

 

[cbwjm]

What's always confused me is why WotC never bothered to incorporate The Primal Order into D&D. It's a fantastic resource for how to use divine entities in the campaign, and it's something they published before purchasing D&D!

I think it might be because it's a pretty cumbersome method for determining the power of gods. It was an interesting read but I wouldn't really want to integrate it into my games unless it was incredibly reduced in scope to make it more useable.

 

[Remathilis]

I like the idea of PCs questing for the means to get around the "only deities can kill deities" rule, such as a god-killing artifact, ancient magic from the beginning of time, investiture of power, and what have you.

There are always exceptions, but the idea that you can kill Orcus or Vecna with conventional weapons is absurd to me.

 

[Alzrius]

What's always confused me is why WotC never bothered to incorporate The Primal Order into D&D.

I don't know the answer, but I'd guess it had something to do with Peter Adkison's being able to retain the rights to the Primal Order series of sourcebooks when he left WotC. Clearly, he wanted to make sure he never lost control of it, so that might have played a role.

As it is, there's evidence to indicate that a follow-up product, "The Military Order," ended up being part of the Miniature's Handbook (affiliate link) back in 3.5, as per Shannon Appelcline:

The major expansion to D&D Miniatures Games comes in chapter 6, which converts the skirmish-level play of the game into mass combat. Jonathan Tweet says that these new mass-combat rules came from "a set of mass battles rules independent from D&D" that Wizards had been working on previously. That likely means they were drawn from "The Military Order", a generic "capstone" book that Wizards had been developing in the early '90s … before the success of Magic: The Gathering (1993) caused them to set aside their early RPG work.