D&D 5E Divine Avatars

[cbwjm]

Something I've been playing around with is the creation of quick avatars for the gods, one of those things that I may never use but I have the idea so I'll write it down in case I decide I want to use it later on. In my homebrew game, while I could create avatars similar to Tiamat or the Ice queen from Rime of the frostmaiden whose name escapes me at the moment, I've decided that if I want to create an avatar, that the following rules will apply.

I should note that I don't have incredibly powerful godly avatars. The gods themselves are powerful but their avatars are a mere sliver of their power.

When the gods send an avatar into the world, they have the following statistics.

• They have two classes at 20th level, hit points are based on the class with the highest hit die size with maximum hit points.
• Their ability scores use the following array: 18, 18, 20, 24, 24, 30.
• Their proficiency bonus is equal to a 20th level character, i.e. they have a +6 proficiency bonus.
• Saving throws are equal to those of all their classes. If they have less than 4 proficient saves due to class crossover, add additional saves until they have 4.
• Their avatars will exemplify only a single domain at a time. They can cast their domain granted spells at will. They gain all special abilities of one of their domains.
• They can cast plane shift at will.
• They have resistance to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage and to all other damage types.
• They are immune to poison and disease.
• They are immune to the charmed, frightened, and poisoned conditions. Add other conditions on a case by case basis.
• They have more spell slots than standard if their two classes both grant spell slots and one is a full caster. In this case total the number of spell slots for each level. E.g., a sorcerer/paladin will add their spell slots together. A paladin/ranger will count as a full caster and have up to 9th level spell slots. Just think of it as from level 21, go back to the start of the spell table and start adding additional spell slots.
• If they have two separate spellcasting classes, all spells use the more favourable spellcasting modifier. E.g., the mage is a wizard/sorcerer with intelligence 30 and charisma 24, his spellcasting ability modifier is +10 for all spells for both the wizard and sorcerer.
• If a class grants cantrips, they can use any cantrip of that class.

How this speeds up creation for me is that for starters, I'm not considering what their stats are, I have a default array and their hit dice are set at 20 dice of their best class so I don't worry about considering how many hit points to give them, I just quickly calculate it from their best class and whatever score I chose for their Constitution. I don't worry about considering special abilities since I can just use the base classes for their powers (with a couple of extras as noted above), even then, I don't need to use all of them. For the god The Destroyer (Barbarian 20/Fighter 20) I might just use rage, reckless attack, and a couple fighting styles and action surge.

This is the Mage, the god of arcane magic. A quick write up, I haven't added in spells but this would give me enough to get going. The longest part of this write-up was getting all of the domain spells, especially since I went and looked up the 6th-9th level spells that an arcana cleric gets.

The Mage
Wizard 20/Sorcerer 20
Str 18, Dex 20, Con 18, Int 30, Wis 24, Cha 24
Hit Points. 200 (20d6+80)
Proficient Saves. Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma
Innate Spellcasting. Spell Save DC 24, spell attack +16.
At Will - detect magic, magic missile, magic weapon, Nystul's magic aura, dispel magic, magic circle, arcane eye, Leomund's secret chest, planar binding, teleportation circle, disintegrate, power word pain, power word stun, wish
Spell Slots 8/6/6/6/6/4/4/2/2

Like I said at the start, I may never use this in a game, but I find it fun to come up with ideas like this in my free time.

If you were to create an avatar for a god, perhaps for a final battle, how would you go about it? Would you follow the stat blocks of Auril (that's the name of the frosty goddess, right?) and Tiamat or do you have another method? I could definitely see a mythic trait being added to them to change the way they play and make the fight more epic in scope.

 

[Weiley31]

Well Frostmaiden Auril is a "weakened" version of Auril. Tiamat, in Tyranny of Dragons, is pretty much "suppose" to be her as she's summoned into the material plane. So Frostmaiden Auril would probably be the power level of a lesser avatar with some boosts, while Tyranny Tiamat would be more of a guideline to base a deity on.

Please note: this would be if your following basic 5E. If your using any kind of "epic" version, then this advise probably goes out the window.

 

[Stalker0]

If you were to create an avatar for a god, perhaps for a final battle, how would you go about it? Would you follow the stat blocks of Auril (that's the name of the frosty goddess, right?) and Tiamat or do you have another method? I could definitely see a mythic trait being added to them to change the way they play and make the fight more epic in scope.

If you want parties to fight these people, one of the things to keep in mind is... the PC chassis tends to be heavy on the offense and light on the defense. 200 HP and an 18 AC can be killed very easily by a high level party. So in theory it will really come down to what spells they have available head of time to determine if they can "take the pain" long enough to deliver it.

That said, in your example, the character has wish at will (I assume because the domain had it). That's going to be a no no, realistically that character just wins. It goes beyond CR in my opinion, as it literally just reshapes the world to make itself completely an utterly invincible, and nothing can stop it. Everything else on the list is fine, even other 9th level spells would likely be ok....but wish is in a league of its own and needs to be treated as such. Maybe 1/rest kind of thing.

 

[cbwjm]

Yeah, maybe wish at will is overpowered, it was a pretty quickly thrown together avatar to see how quickly I can throw an avatar together with some set guidelines. Will the players fight them? Who knows! I could see them going up against an avatar as the end game of a campaign which ends up putting a spanner in the plans of the god setting them back to square one or enabling the gods on the celestial planes to cast them down simultaneously.

Really though, this is one of those things I like to make rules for to see what I can create. Most of the time, if the players are meeting an avatar, they won't be in the position to harm them or they won't know that it is an avatar.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Something I've been playing around with is the creation of quick avatars for the gods, one of those things that I may never use but I have the idea so I'll write it down in case I decide I want to use it later on. In my homebrew game, while I could create avatars similar to Tiamat or the Ice queen from Rime of the frostmaiden whose name escapes me at the moment, I've decided that if I want to create an avatar, that the following rules will apply.

I should note that I don't have incredibly powerful godly avatars. The gods themselves are powerful but their avatars are a mere sliver of their power.

When the gods send an avatar into the world, they have the following statistics.

• They have two classes at 20th level, hit points are based on the class with the highest hit die size with maximum hit points.
• Their ability scores use the following array: 18, 18, 20, 24, 24, 30.
• Their proficiency bonus is equal to a 20th level character, i.e. they have a +6 proficiency bonus.
• Saving throws are equal to those of all their classes. If they have less than 4 proficient saves due to class crossover, add additional saves until they have 4.
• Their avatars will exemplify only a single domain at a time. They can cast their domain granted spells at will. They gain all special abilities of one of their domains.
• They can cast plane shift at will.
• They have resistance to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage and to all other damage types.
• They are immune to poison and disease.
• They are immune to the charmed, frightened, and poisoned conditions. Add other conditions on a case by case basis.
• They have more spell slots than standard if their two classes both grant spell slots and one is a full caster. In this case total the number of spell slots for each level. E.g., a sorcerer/paladin will add their spell slots together. A paladin/ranger will count as a full caster and have up to 9th level spell slots. Just think of it as from level 21, go back to the start of the spell table and start adding additional spell slots.
• If they have two separate spellcasting classes, all spells use the more favourable spellcasting modifier. E.g., the mage is a wizard/sorcerer with intelligence 30 and charisma 24, his spellcasting ability modifier is +10 for all spells for both the wizard and sorcerer.
• If a class grants cantrips, they can use any cantrip of that class.

How this speeds up creation for me is that for starters, I'm not considering what their stats are, I have a default array and their hit dice are set at 20 dice of their best class so I don't worry about considering how many hit points to give them, I just quickly calculate it from their best class and whatever score I chose for their Constitution. I don't worry about considering special abilities since I can just use the base classes for their powers (with a couple of extras as noted above), even then, I don't need to use all of them. For the god The Destroyer (Barbarian 20/Fighter 20) I might just use rage, reckless attack, and a couple fighting styles and action surge.

This is the Mage, the god of arcane magic. A quick write up, I haven't added in spells but this would give me enough to get going. The longest part of this write-up was getting all of the domain spells, especially since I went and looked up the 6th-9th level spells that an arcana cleric gets.

The Mage
Wizard 20/Sorcerer 20
Str 18, Dex 20, Con 18, Int 30, Wis 24, Cha 24
Hit Points. 200 (20d6+80)
Proficient Saves. Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma
Innate Spellcasting. Spell Save DC 24, spell attack +16.
At Will - detect magic, magic missile, magic weapon, Nystul's magic aura, dispel magic, magic circle, arcane eye, Leomund's secret chest, planar binding, teleportation circle, disintegrate, power word pain, power word stun, wish
Spell Slots 8/6/6/6/6/4/4/2/2

Like I said at the start, I may never use this in a game, but I find it fun to come up with ideas like this in my free time.

If you were to create an avatar for a god, perhaps for a final battle, how would you go about it? Would you follow the stat blocks of Auril (that's the name of the frosty goddess, right?) and Tiamat or do you have another method? I could definitely see a mythic trait being added to them to change the way they play and make the fight more epic in scope.

Great idea for quick avatars. However, how did you come up with 200 HP? Similarly, why 20 HD instead of 40 (for each class being at lvl 20). I would think the hit points would be: 300 (40d6 + 160)

 

[cbwjm]

Great idea for quick avatars. However, how did you come up with 200 HP? Similarly, why 20 HD instead of 40 (for each class being at lvl 20). I would think the hit points would be: 300 (40d6 + 160)

I was looking at this as sort of a hybrid class system rather than standard multiclassing (that is for each character level you have two classes) so ran with maximum hit points of the highest die size for their classes, in this case 20d6 since they are both wizard and sorcerer. However, you could definitely grant them the maximum hit points of each class if you want them to be tougher. I think perhaps using the mythic rules from the Theros book to effectively double their hit points would also be a good idea.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I was looking at this as sort of a hybrid class system rather than standard multiclassing (that is for each character level you have two classes) so ran with maximum hit points of the highest die size for their classes, in this case 20d6 since they are both wizard and sorcerer. However, you could definitely grant them the maximum hit points of each class if you want them to be tougher. I think perhaps using the mythic rules from the Theros book to effectively double their hit points would also be a good idea.

Ok, I was assuming average HP from both classes.