D&D General Clerics and Divine Ascension

[DEFCON 1]

I'm not seeing the OPs suggestion that the PC cleric is "replacing" the deity (in other words, the other creature ceases to exist or is no longer divine)... but rather that the PC is absorbed into the deity and becomes one with it. Sort of a "collective unconscious" of all divine beings ever to rise up under a specific domain to become one with it. That in itself doesn't bother me at all, especially if you don't like to think of "gods" as specific individuals. Yes, there are certain settings where the gods are just people who can plane shift, have almost infinite power and not die from natural causes (like the Forgotten Realms gods)... but in other settings (like Eberron) the "gods" might just be concepts and having your spiritual essence become one with the concept would make sense and be fine.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

All of the gods of all pantheons have agreed that the prime plane is untouchable like that, under pain of death by every other god coming after you.

Citation needed.

 

[Umbran]

No god would ever allow that.

Absolutes don't serve well for such things - we could imagine several scenarios where this could be appropriate.

They would promote a mortal to their seat if, for some reason, they could no longer hold the position themselves. If the deity were dying, for example, they might choose a successor. Or, you could imagine a god who was themselves a former mortal (or an entire cosmology of former mortals) and they just get frelling tired of it all and want to retire from the responsibility.

Also, for a god whose portfolio were based on change, shapeshifting, or reincarnation, this might be a thing they do. A god of trickery could do this as part of a major plan...

 

[Maxperson]

Citation needed.

From 2e Planescape, but the compact has been mentioned elsewhere as well.

"The Prime Material Plane is a major point of contention among the powers. ... The primes may be clueless, but they have faith. They believe without having to see, and that's a rare gift - especially on the Outer Planes, where belief is made flesh. The gods ... know that belief is power, and they see sustenance ... in the uptapped faith of the primes.

That's why the powers don't allow each other directly on the Prime, why they have priests and proxies, and why they wage holy wars against each other. 'Course, the gods don't always stop to think: If one pantheon dominates and the rest die out, might not the winning powers eventually fade away too? Perhaps the gods feed off one another as much as they feed off mortals.

Just about all the powers in the multiverse have a stake in the Prime, and they don't want to mess up such valuable ground. ... Avatars, ..., aren't strong enough to cause such devastation. The gods agreed to make their avatars weak enough to be taken out by a very powerful mortal. ... Simply put, gods who start warring on the Prime are just begging to have every other power in the multiverse eliminate them."

 

[Maxperson]

Absolutes don't serve well for such things - we could imagine several scenarios where this could be appropriate.

They would promote a mortal to their seat if, for some reason, they could no longer hold the position themselves. If the deity were dying, for example, they might choose a successor. Or, you could imagine a god who was themselves a former mortal (or an entire cosmology of former mortals) and they just get frelling tired of it all and want to retire from the responsibility.

Also, for a god whose portfolio were based on change, shapeshifting, or reincarnation, this might be a thing they do. A god of trickery could do this as part of a major plan...

Yeah. There are some reasons you could come up with, but as a general ascension thing, I don't see it.

 

[Umbran]

Yeah. There are some reasons you could come up with, but as a general ascension thing, I don't see it.

As a general thing, no, unless this was specifically part of the cosmology - if one of the cosmology's themes is "circle of life, all things die eventually" for example. Or if the pantheon were all previously mortals and needed to turn over their mantles and retire on occasion.

Oh, I can see one other case, that very specifically doesn't often happen in RPGs. If the very nature of the sphere of influence changes, I could see a god needing to pick a successor from his servants that better represents the issues of the day, for the gods are otherwise eternal and unchanging. For example, the nature of war changed between Colonial American times and WWI. And then again after WWII. In such times of change, I could see the God of War elevating a general who best exemplified the style of war of the day to their seat.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

From 2e Planescape, but the compact has been mentioned elsewhere as well.

"The Prime Material Plane is a major point of contention among the powers. ... The primes may be clueless, but they have faith. They believe without having to see, and that's a rare gift - especially on the Outer Planes, where belief is made flesh. The gods ... know that belief is power, and they see sustenance ... in the uptapped faith of the primes.

That's why the powers don't allow each other directly on the Prime, why they have priests and proxies, and why they wage holy wars against each other. 'Course, the gods don't always stop to think: If one pantheon dominates and the rest die out, might not the winning powers eventually fade away too? Perhaps the gods feed off one another as much as they feed off mortals.

Just about all the powers in the multiverse have a stake in the Prime, and they don't want to mess up such valuable ground. ... Avatars, ..., aren't strong enough to cause such devastation. The gods agreed to make their avatars weak enough to be taken out by a very powerful mortal. ... Simply put, gods who start warring on the Prime are just begging to have every other power in the multiverse eliminate them."

So, you haven't got a quote, and have in fact made it up? It's fine for it to be the rules for your campaign, but please don't claim it's official D&D lore.

That Planescape quote says absolutely nothing to support what you were claiming, which was:

Not between a few gods. All of the gods of all pantheons have agreed that the prime plane is untouchable like that, under pain of death by every other god coming after you.

And that's simply not true. There is no D&D lore I'm aware of that supports this notion that "every other god" will come after you for messing with the Prime Material. There's no trans-pantheon agreement not to mess with the Prime Material. It might be a bad idea in the sense that you're pooping where you eat and you're going to piss other gods off if you cause a huge mess and kill their worshippers, but that's a completely different thing from "under pain of death by every other god coming after you".

 

[Celebrim]

You didn't understand me. I'm not talking about promoting someone to servant level. I'm talking about the OPs idea that the servant becomes the god and takes over. No god would ever allow that.

Bit of a spoiler here, but I think the statute of spoiler limitations has expired.

In effect, doesn't 'Dream' do this in the 'Sandman' comics?

 

[Celebrim]

Citation needed.

Something like Planescape's 'Divine Compact' is a very common home brew setting trope in order to conveniently explain why the gods don't take a more direct role and instead only act through proxy. I have my own home brew version as well, that predates the publication of the setting.

However, as far as I know the 'Divine Compact' doesn't have anything like the legal teeth being described here. The Compact doesn't really specify what to do with deities that break the compact. While the Compact probably would intervene to stop non-signatories, if the signatories broke the rules it would simply mean the compact was over and everyone could break the rules. And in any event would only apply to the Planescape setting and not to all D&D settings generally.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

so really the idea i have for this is not a question of making sense, in many ways based on particularities of the given relationship between god and servant (this would often not work between particularly individualistic deities) then this may not occur, but i did state this as an option rather than a requirement.

but here's my reasoning. a cleric is a servant of a god, a clerics life's purpose is to try and understand their god's philosophy and nature better with no endpoint to what the idea of "better" can be, servitude and understanding. my argument is that in many cases a cleric going down this path will likely be so much like their deity by the point that they reach godlike power in mortal form that the 2 will barely be distinguishable and as far as the religion on the material plane is concerned this cleric is literally so close to a god with so much influence over the religion their word is basically that of the word's of their god, and if they dont disagree with their god (which they likely wont if they are playing their cleric as a servant of the best understood philosophy of the religion) then none of the material plane have any reason not to imagine this cleric as their god on earth.

furthermore my concept comes partly from some of the ideas passed around in planescape about the fate of petitioners (dead npcs faithful to the gods who exist in the god's outerplanar realms) who grow in power slowly over time as they begin to slowly understand more the philosophy of their deity until a point they are absorbed into the divine realm and into the essence of the god.

my idea is a bit of a flip side of this coin, for the cleric on the path to godhood (because the party is) they are becoming as much like their god in mortal form as possible, furthermore they are growing in power directly from that god, past level 20 were talking about epic power (if your playing a setting that goes past 20) and that epic power is tantamount to the power of very powerful avatars of the gods. i simply think at some point theres absolutely no reason for them and the god to not simply just become one and the same, from the gods perspective their servant basically is them as they rise in power become closer and closer to the gods right hand until no plot the god has is without their involvement. for the cleric they are becoming closer and closer to the enlightened philosophy of their deity, when we are on the boundry of godhood for this character distinguishing between the 2 is going to be very difficult from an inward looking outward perspective.

and ultimately this is just to serve the gm being able to come up with an acquitted solution to the problem of clerical divine ascent, if another alternative exists that is preferred then all the options rest at your disposal, this is just one i found interesting especially if you do decide to run a ascended campaign.