fighting deities question

[Rickenbacker]

Just the very subject title is enough to make you chuckle. I never used (3e.) Deities & Demigods myself, but I got it recently just for kicks to flip through & saw plenty of super high, godly ACs. I wondered about the natural 20 rule- If a deity had an AC of say, 65 & a mortal PC of lower level tried hitting it during melee, would a natural 20 still be a hit?

My gut reaction is NO chance of hitting unless it was tried by an equally epic level pc.

 

[the Jester]

By the RAW, a natural 20 hits.

There is an alternative rule option for treating a natural 20 as a 30 instead, though, and I used that in my 3e epic campaign.... in which the pcs eventually killed Asmodeus dead, allowing Lucifer to regain the throne of Hell, fought deities (even if the fights were brief and served to trick the deity in question into manifesting so that another deity could spring his trap) and convincingly won the Great War of Ethics between Law and Chaos (of which the Blood War is only a part) for Chaos, leading to thousands of years of... well... chaos.

 

[nijineko]

even if it hits, they are not likely to damage the being in question what with dr, er, and other protections. i would describe such a non-damaging hit as a parry or a block on the part of the being in question, preferably with a snappy one-liner with extra cheese or cool depending on the being in question.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Seconding The Jester, a 20 would hit.

Seconding Nijieko, you'd have a hard time landing any damage.

 

[Dozen]

My gut reaction is NO chance of hitting unless it was tried by an equally epic level pc.

Hey, what do ya know. IIRC, Deities do have DR/Epic. Lemme check... yep, they do. Like it was said before, it doesn't really matter if they are hit with a nat 20 - they just shrug it off. They still should be hit, normally; a given entity's godly power makes a big difference.

 

[Li Shenron]

Just the very subject title is enough to make you chuckle. I never used (3e.) Deities & Demigods myself, but I got it recently just for kicks to flip through & saw plenty of super high, godly ACs. I wondered about the natural 20 rule- If a deity had an AC of say, 65 & a mortal PC of lower level tried hitting it during melee, would a natural 20 still be a hit?

My gut reaction is NO chance of hitting unless it was tried by an equally epic level pc.

If they follow a different rule, the same book must say so! I think I remember something mentioned in Faith & Pantheons (FR's version of Deities & Demigods) but it could have been related to attack rolls by the deities, not against them, that maybe they don't even have to roll for attacks but just assume they rolled a 20 or something like that. I can check for you if you want, but my guess is that Deities & Demigods has the same rules since Faith & Pantheons came soon after that.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Now, keep in mind even if they do have DR, if you manage to do enough damage, you'll still roll over the reduction and still make a dent.

They've got plenty of Hitpoints, however, and plenty of ways to keep alive, but yes, you can deal damage to a Deity if you hit them hard enough, about one-out-of-twenty times.

 

[delericho]

Just the very subject title is enough to make you chuckle. I never used (3e.) Deities & Demigods myself, but I got it recently just for kicks to flip through & saw plenty of super high, godly ACs. I wondered about the natural 20 rule- If a deity had an AC of say, 65 & a mortal PC of lower level tried hitting it during melee, would a natural 20 still be a hit?

Yes. "Deities & Demigods" states that deities don't automatically miss on a natural 1, but says nothing about them not being hit on a natural 20. It appears, therefore, that the designers actually considered the issue, and decided that that combination of exceptions was the right one.

That said, it's a more or less moot issue: "Deities & Demigods" is almost completely unusable - in order to have any real chance against a deity, a PC must be into the very high epic levels. But not only are the Epic rules quite broken, they are also very different (and largely incompatible with) the rules for deities.

 

[nijineko]

not sure where you are seeing incompatibility between epic and deity rules. to really understand the epic (and deity) rules, one needs to look at what they were basing it off of. d&d has long enshrined the idea of potential ascension. now, i admit i would have done it a bit differently myself, but i find them pretty well workable, though i do toss in minor tweaks here and there.