Defeating a D&D god

[Jdvn1]

Would anyone else would like to answer/discuss my opening question?

Is the ELH the only source of potential god-killers? What specific monsters in that book could do it?

Hecatoncheires could more than likely do it. CR 57. Full Attack: 100 greatswords +73 (2d6+20/17-20) melee; or 100 boulders +55 (2d8+20/19-20) ranged.

At least, depends on the god. I know Ra has an AC of something like 106 or something.

 

[fanboy2000]

One problem is calculating a gods CR. At 60 HD, they are about CR 60 before sailant divine abilities are calculated in. Any deitiy with Alter Reality is going to be tough. Also, not all campaigns allow gods to die by mortal hands. IMC, not even epic level monsters can challenge deities because they don't have divine rank.

As written, no monster in MMI-III and the FF can challange a lesser-deity, though posibly a demi-god, because they don't always have 60 HD.

I would say though, that a Great Wyrm (40 HD), with Divine Rank could take down a god. This seems to me a good way to go. Make the dragon really old, give it another 20 or so HD, and give it DR or say 5. Now we have something even the gods frear.

 

[Jupp]

IMC gods cannot be killed. The only way to "remove" them would be to ban then into a place they cannot escape, chain them to a place or freeze them into a huge block of ice. They are not dead, just "Sorry, the boss is currently out of the office".

So, I would go the greek way. Greek mythology had that nice way of silencing gods witout killing them. Or you could incorporate the Titans into your campaign. IIRC they where the only ones that could actually kill the gods, because they where their children.

Edit: The great Modron March adventure als had a nice way to kill a god. "The Last Word" spoken by Orkus/Tenebrous to kill the Modron entity Primus.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

According to some people who wrote in to Dragon magazine over a decade ago, their characters had already enslaved all the gods and they currently work in salt mines underneath the characters' keep. Contact that guy. He probably knows how to kill some gods.

 

[Shemeska]

According to some people who wrote in to Dragon magazine over a decade ago, their characters had already enslaved all the gods and they currently work in salt mines underneath the characters' keep. Contact that guy. He probably knows how to kill some gods.

It was probably something like:

Mr So and So,
Parents' Basement
C/O Mom and Dad

 

[Jhamin]

You also have to decide what you mean by "killing" a god.

If you mean dropping it's HP past zero, that is one thing. If you mean going to it's home plane and destroying it, that gets even tougher.

One of the bennies of being in a pantheon is that other gods on your team can ressurect you. This is supposedly why the Olympians haven't kicked out Loki yet. If everything else went bad he is at least smart enough to run and bring them all back later.

 

[Jhamin]

As for who can kill a god (in the "past zero hp" sense)

The divine ranks are critical, the more a god has the more exponentially difficult it is to off them. When you start having lots of divine rank you start to have powers like "kill anything without divine rank at will", "automatically get a 20 on any roll", and "gain immunity to one type of damage".
Thus, when you decide how hard it will be to kill Hades you not only need to look at his 40 character levels, his +5 Unholy Bastard Sword, his xxx/Epic damage reduction, and so on. You also have to assume that he will always hit and always threaten a critical.
This is assuming his DC 46 Save or Die Death Touch power that he can throw anywhere he can sense 17 times/day doesn't deal with the problem first. The portfolio sense power gives this a pretty good range.

Imhotep on the other hand is a level 20 expert, but he also only has one divine rank. He gets the basic immunities all gods get, but doesn't have alot of the uber god powers. He is by far the weakest true god in the Dieties & Demigods book & could probably be offed by most CR 22+ monsters.

 

[CRGreathouse]

Are you including Imhotep's divine/salient abilities in the "Expert20" label? The gods are more than leveled classes.

Absolutely -- he only has 2 SDAs, and they're not helpful in melee. His spell-like abilities would be the only way he could be effecitve in combat.

I actually ran a sample combat with him against a low-epic character. Imhotep won by retreating, Crafting (as a free action) a longbow, and shooting the other character, then using his spell-like abilities to trap and drown him.

 

[MoonZar]

Maybe i'm wrong, but i think that all stats about god in books are only the stats of their physical form.

Okay you can kill this physical form, but the essence and mind of the god still exist and alive, this will just take time to generate another physical form.

I guess this different from setting to another how to kill a god, but I think that even if you find a way to kill a god, he'll always reborn if he still have followers who give him power.

I think that a god trully die only when he's forgotten...

 

[MoonZar]

Using the 3e stats yeah, but keep in mind that these are the same beings with a long history of being on par with true deities, and exceeding the power of true deities in some ways when on their home plane, and some of them are in fact deities (or were before all of them were retroactively made into 'level bosses' for PCs to beat up and loot).

By 3e stats a weak deity could smack around the most powerful archfiends (Demogorgon, Mydianchlarus, Asmodeus, etc) but Asmodeus exiled the Orcish and Goblinoid pentheons from Baator, the fiends collectively force any non fiend deities from having any active roll in the Blood War, the yugoloths carved a 40 mile+ tower from the spinal column of a deity they killed, Prince Levistus of Baator was slowly winning a war against both Sekolah and Set (both of them true deities), etc. The 3e stats do not reflect their history and flavor. And when history and flavor run up against watered down and inappropriate stats, I'm willing to sacrifice the stats on the altar of quality control.

For the most part it's a standoff between archfiends and true deities, and they largely avoid the affairs of the other. Gods have a devotion to the prime material and their worshippers and their portfolios while archfiends will have older, more base desires of the promotion of their alignment and their own personal power in their home plane, and they'll be less concernd with the prime material. A true deity is largely unquestioned within their own deific domain but outside of those domains the archfiends control the utter bulk of those planes/layers of planes of the lower planes.

Under the right circumstances a deity might kill an archfiend assuming they're willing to live with the consequenes of other fiends going after them and other deities going after them for upsetting the status quo. But also by the same token an archfiend might likewise go after a true deity. I've had an instance in my own campaign of an archfiend getting into a direct conflict with the avatars of two deities and it ended rather poorly for the avatars in the end, though the fiend had some wind taken out of its sails by the experience and made an exit back to its home plane almost immediately thereafter to avoid any larger scale retribution that it wouldn't be capable of withstanding.

Personnaly i think this sad to represent devil/demon lord and prince with stats. They are more the plane conscious according to me and the stats are only their physical form.