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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 7730733" data-attributes="member: 8461">Personally, I've always seen this as a feature and not a bug. I like the idea that ultra-powerful characters can eventually challenge deities. The problems, to my mind, were always two-fold: 1) "ultra-powerful" characters became the province of rules lawyering and point-whoring, often to the point of completely eclipsing actual role-playing, rather than being the natural conclusion of long character progressions over the course of an epic campaign (i.e. if you ever wanted to reach that level of power, you better be prepared for the long haul and hope your character makes it!), and 2) Deities tended to be treated as lone NPCs rather than individuals at the head of vast, powerful organizations that they'd built up around them. Challenging a god should be more than a matter of planeshifting to their home (or gating them to yours) and rolling for initiative; rather, it should be like a modern-day group of mercenaries who declare war against a major military country. You're not just going to walk right up to the commander in chief and pull a knife on him or her. (And whatever tricks you have, you better believe that a divine hierarchy will have those and then some.)By contrast, crafting deities as being of mystery and lore always struck me as being not only comparatively easy to do, but also - to be completely frank - rather boring. Most PCs don't want to get in-depth readings about old legends, but rather want to be out their living their own. Hearing the story of when J'dal fought the Sun-Serpent is useful only insofar as it relates to actual play; background material is nice, don't get me wrong, but window-dressing is far less of a priority than on being able to introduce something more directly relevant to an adventure. That tale becomes far more interesting if it gives a clue on J'dal's secret weakness when the PCs are figuring out how to potentially force him into a direct conflict.There's also the fact that, insofar as world-building goes, knowing the exact capabilities of the largest players on the field (i.e. gods) helps to design top-down campaign worlds that avoid problems of internal logic. Being able to clearly define why the gods don't just fix everything, or why they prefer to use mortals in a cold war rather than just duking it out across the mortal world, etc. helps the GM to avoid pitfalls if and when their campaign ever gets to the point where those questions become directly relevant. Most campaigns won't ever get that far, to be certain, but I like that there's something out there for those that do.To that end, The Primal Order remains one of the best RPG sourcebooks ever written.</blockquote>

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