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

[Voadam]

Pathfinder's Golarion has a neat ascension path built into a dungeon that three core major gods used to ascend, the Test of the Starstone in Absalom.

Never fully detailed for PC use, but narratively a mythic big deal in the setting.

Also Pathfinder 1e mythic characters had some mythic powers that could be taken to empower followers with clerical spells if I recall correctly.

 

[cranberry]

I don't know why they provided stats other than for potential fights with PC's, but at the very least, it provides some objective way to judge relative strength/power among deities.

Should mortals even be able to fight deities? Don't get me started....

 

[Micah Sweet]

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

Depends on you mean by "conventional weapons". Pretty nebulous term in a fantasy world.

 

[Weiley31]

I don't know why they provided stats other than for potential fights with PC's, but at the very least, it provides some objective way to judge relative strength/power among deities.

Should mortals even be able to fight deities? Don't get me started....

The Devil STILL hasn't lived down that embarrassing defeat down in Georgia.

 

[Clint_L]

I don't know why they provided stats other than for potential fights with PC's, but at the very least, it provides some objective way to judge relative strength/power among deities.

Should mortals even be able to fight deities? Don't get me started....

In my D&D campaign, deities are just things that are worshipped. Quite a few of them are also extremely powerful entities, which is often how they've been able to build out their following, but they are not qualitatively different from anything else. So them having HP and being killable is totally feasible. Though mostly, you would be taking on an avatar unless you confront them right in their home or something.

 

[cbwjm]

I do quite like 5e's take where greater gods are beyond the power of mortals to meet let alone defeat. Any of them you end up fighting it is the avatar. Lesser gods though, in their case you're fighting them. There might be more to it, but it's something like that.

 

[Voadam]

In my D&D campaign, deities are just things that are worshipped. Quite a few of them are also extremely powerful entities, which is often how they've been able to build out their following, but they are not qualitatively different from anything else. So them having HP and being killable is totally feasible. Though mostly, you would be taking on an avatar unless you confront them right in their home or something.

In mine clerics tap divine power directly as their spell casting tradition and do not need gods to do so. So a worshipped god with spell casting clerics might not even exist at all.

Or they might be an actual normal giant or dragon or a super powerful numinous being.

I have used gods showing up in games and interacting with PCs but it generally has not been fights. Mostly similar to powerful beings like Baba Yaga showing up.

 

[Alzrius]

In mine clerics tap divine power directly as their spell casting tradition and do not need gods to do so. So a worshipped god with spell casting clerics might not even exist at all.

Or they might be an actual normal giant or dragon or a super powerful numinous being.

I have used gods showing up in games and interacting with PCs but it generally has not been fights. Mostly similar to powerful beings like Baba Yaga showing up.

I'm always reminded of the "faith, force, or philosophy" idea from AD&D 2E's Complete Priest's Handbook, which was what it said could grant a divine spellcaster their magic. I found it intriguing at the time, but while I could see it as coming from a force, it was harder for me to wrap my head around a philosophy being the actual source of magic...that had ramifications that went in a different direction than what I liked for my campaigns.

As it is, I prefer to have an intelligent power granting divine magic, simply because that dovetails better with the idea of the mortals using it being subjected to some sort of oversight. Of course, the idea that divine spellcasting PCs will be called to account for their actions by their church, god, or other higher (or lower) power is fairly unpopular these days; I seem to recall someone saying that 5E 2024 explicitly says that such characters can't have their powers revoked.

 

[pemerton]

Depending on metaphysics, scope of the campaign, and mythological inspirations, PCs fighting and killing gods might be completely appropriate. If gods are basically just really powerful people that hang out in some celestial palaces, then they in principle seem pretty killable.

Now personally I am not a huge fan of such concept of gods, I like them to be more transcendent and more fundamental. The Great Gods of Artra are not just people with powers, they are cosmic forces. Killing Belet Ummur, the Shepherd of of the Dead, would result fundamental changes to the structure of reality, as death itself would cease to be. Even killing gods whose domain is less abstract, would cause unravelling of the reality as we know it. Killing Ator, the Yellow Sun or her consort Rana the Red Sun, would cause these celestial objects being destroyed, which even aside the role of these deities as masters of creation and destruction, would probably lead to extinction of all life on Artra.

These two paragraphs don't have to be in contradiction: if the PCs are "mythic" beings, then it makes sense that they might bring about "mythic" changes to the world. And if mythic change means changing or dethroning or killing deities, then that is a thing that PCs might do.

In my 4e game that I described above, killing Torog meant that imprisoned beings broke free (at least until one of the PCs took on the mantle of god of imprisonment and punishment: Session report - the party comes close to a split, but not quite). Killing Lolth ends the sundering of the Drow from their surface cousins. Killing Orcus means that souls are no longer diverted from the Shadowfell to a horrible fate of undeath. Etc.

I think the biggest flaw (or missed opportunity) with having Deity stats in D&D is that, with the exception of the Gold Box & Wrath of the Immortals, for the past 5 Editions D&D never had rules for PCs ascending to divinity.

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

Huh? The 4e PHB has Demi-god as an epic destiny option. Epic tier PCs are gods, or chief servitors/exarchs of the gods, or rivals of the gods.

And the combat rules permit the resolution of combat between the PCs and gods, while the skill challenge rules permit the resolution of other sorts of struggles the PCs might have with divinities or similar sorts of beings.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I do quite like 5e's take where greater gods are beyond the power of mortals to meet let alone defeat. Any of them you end up fighting it is the avatar. Lesser gods though, in their case you're fighting them. There might be more to it, but it's something like that.

Where does it say that?