Deities and Demigod: crudy rules!?!?

[Ancalagon]

Greetings

I bought the book. Amazing art, one of the best published by WotC.

However...

The thing is though... how usefull is this book? Some chapters (like attitudes of the gods, monotheism vs duality vs animism vs polytheism) are very usefull, but they are a short part of the book.

The great bulk of the book is devoted to gods and their stats. Sure, there is a short part about the church and the dogma but is woefully short. And players interact with churches 99% of the time, not gods.

I'm realy questioning the value of the "god rules". I have to read a whole bunch of divine abilities and feats to make sense of them first of all.

Second of all, they SUCK!!!!!

Let me demonstrate.

Example one: skill checks. Intermediate deities and above always take 20 on their skill checks. This leads to moronisism. For example, St-Cuthbert has a sense motive of 100 (!). This mean that someone with a bluff of 99 will ALWAYS fail against St-Cuthbert sense motive. On the other hand, Olibdemara (with a bluff of 103), will always succeed on his bluffing rolls againts St-Cuthbert... unless of course St-Cuthbert casts an empowered maximised wisdom boosting spell, raising his sense motive to 104, and always calling Olibdemara's bluff! This is pathetic.

Same goes for Greater deities, who always roll a 20 on their attack roll. Either they hit 100% of the time, or they miss 100% of the time. If one changes his AC or to hit by 1 (say, a bull strenght spell), it could change the result from always missing to always hitting.

Example 2: Now this is even worse. There is an ability (called annihilating strike), that allows a deity to utterly destroy something or someone with one blow (the victim deity would have to be of a divine rank lower than the attacker to be affected). They get a save.

Let us take St-Cuthbert again, who has this ability (ware the cudgel). Now, the save DC is 20 + rank of deity (15 in this case) plus damage dealt... St-cuthbert's mace does 1d8 +44, so the save will be about DC 84. Few deities can make that save to begin with. Now, St cuthbert can use his divine might feat, smithe AND feat of strengh all at once. This would boost his damage by 39. If he wields his mace 2 handed (no reason not to, he doesn't use a shield apparently), that would increase the damage by a further 13. The DC is now about 136, wich not evenn Zeus could make.

Now, all gods of equal or higher rank than St-Cuthbert (15) are imune to this, but all of rank 14 and bellow can be destroyed in one blow. That is an interesting cosmology!

Would you allow a feat to a character that allowed him to kill any character of lower level than him automaticaly???

Add to this the mistakes I'm starting to spot (abilities not being defined in some cases, stats not matching the description (st-cuthbert is describe as wearing armor, but gets no armor bonus...) and all that, I have to conclude that the rules given are, well, pretty flawed. I haven't looked at them very thourouhgly, but I'm worried.

So, in point format:

-the rules are bad
-who is going to use those rules anyway?
-bulk of the book is devoted to those rules

I think the conclusion is evident. If I wasn't so impressed with the art, I would be realy uspet at buying it.

Ancalagon

 

[Andrea Mayfair]

Haven´t seen it yet,but from what I´ve heard here,it must be "una auténtica chorrada de suplemento".

Anyways, I don´t DM D&D so why do I care?

 

[Xeriar]

This is not a problem so much with the Deities and Demigods rules so much as it is a problem with Dungeons and Dragons rules period.

Vorpal weapons, Coup de Grace weapons, Harm, Power Word Kill, Miasma, Slay Living-Destruction-Implosion-Dissolution etc. can all be quite potent effects if twinked. And they really are easy to twink, unfortunately.

D&D starts out silly and ends up stupid. Why does someone with a 1 strength have even a decent (7.5% I think) chance of overpowering someone with a 21 strength (-sixteen times- as strong). This isn't just an extreme case, there are examples like this all over.

It becomes a Battle of the Bonuses, to see who can twink out the highest numbers at any given point. So people run up insane bonuses on skill checks just because their stats or levels went up.

Trying to apply reality and sense to d20, or any incarnation of D&D is pointless, IMO. The game is there for the fun.

 

[ruleslawyer]

There's an easy way of dealing with this.

Deities' special ability to always get a 20 on a skill check (or greater deities' ability to get the best possible result on any die roll) do not apply to deities of equal or greater rank. Bye bye certainty.

Oh, and re: a greater god's ability to get the best possible result on a die roll: the god will ALWAYS save and will ALWAYS hit due to the natural 1/natural 20 rule for saves and attacks. If you implement the variant rule in the DMG, then the god's attack rolls and saves will simply be treated as a roll of 30.

 

[Crothian]

As much as people don't like to be reminded of it, there is a way in the rules to handle this and every situation. Rule 0. It might seem like an easy anser but it works. Change it to fit how you see it should be.

 

[android]

that's incorrect

sorry ruleslawyer, that's incorrect. they are treated as 20's, yes, but the book also specifies that the roll must still be made to determine criticals. this means they never blunder, but they don't critical on every attack. they still have to roll the d20 for that.

 

[loviatarfrostbringer]

I read a copy of the book, and I agree that the art is very good (I especially like Athena, Bast, Ares, and Nike).

I also agree that the players should almost always interact with the church and religious intermediaries (planetars, divas, etc.). I find it ludicrous to actually give statistics to a deity. IMHO No player character should ever defeat a deity (without the aid of another deity)...exceptions I can see being made for lower level demi-powers (enough mythology to back that scenario up). I only see the power-gamers (aka "munchkins", I apologize to any that word offends) oogeling and awing over the book and actually adapting it into their game. Put simply, a deity should literally thrash any PC-level character 99.44% of the time. I would only use the book myself for determining a rough basis for an avatar's power level (and even then, take the book with a really big grain of salt).

I like the ideas presented for the most part, but it is too too too too powerful & unnecessary to actually quantify a deity's power (when one could just simply wave a hand and have a mountain fall on your head).

We now return you to your regularly scheduled propaganda.

 

[Caliber]

Re: that's incorrect

sorry ruleslawyer, that's incorrect. they are treated as 20's, yes, but the book also specifies that the roll must still be made to determine criticals. this means they never blunder, but they don't critical on every attack. they still have to roll the d20 for that.

They don't critical on every attack, but do they critically threaten? I don't own D&D (hehe) so I am actually curious. It sounds plausable that a Diety might critically threaten every round ...

As for the all or nothing thing, I agree that a Diety of equal or greater power should negate the automatic roll abilities of a lesser diety. It makes battles between unevenly matched Gods even more uneven but hey, Phil, God of Spoons shouldn't pick on Jack, God of Sharp Pointy Things anyway.

And just to keep up the pattern of rambing, back in 2E I remember gods getting all kinds of immense abilities (like 100% MR) against mortal magic but maybe only 20% from diety spells (if that) Just some food for thought.

EDIT: [Re-worded first paragraph to better represent what I meant.]

 

[kreynolds]

Re: Re: that's incorrect

They don't critical on every attack, but do they critically threaten?

Yes. Gods with this ability automatically hit and threaten a crit with every single attack they make, no matter what. I bought the book on Friday, and I absolutely love it.

 

[Xeriar]

They don't critical on every attack, but do they critically threaten? I don't own D&D (hehe) so I am actually curious. It sounds plausable that a Diety might critically threaten every round ...

No, you actually roll to determine the threaten/autohit part (if AC greater than their to-hit). It more or less means that they will usually be auto-hitting unless someone has a seriously twinked AC.

As for the all or nothing thing, I agree that a Diety of equal or greater power should negate the automatic roll abilities of a lesser diety. It makes battles between unevenly matched Gods even more uneven but hey, Phil, God of Spoons shouldn't pick on Jack, God of Sharp Pointy Things anyway.

A good way of dealing with it (leave the take 10 in, probably). If you think of each rank of deification as an overpowered, munchkinized template, you get the idea better. A deity's rank is far more than 'just a level'.

The book is written to support 'Immortal Rules' style play (with a far greater amount of DM leeway - Good Thing), but also details how interaction with deities go. Usually through remote communication, proxies or avatars (as is appropriate).

As for (non-deified) players defeating deities... Probably not gonna happen, save for quasi-deities and maybe demigods if they are extremely powerful. In neither case will they win unprepared.

I do find the idea of playing gods interesting though, however I'm not sure how well it would work with the book as is. The powers seem story-based, more than balance-based.