Godhood as epic prestige classes?

[victorysaber]

Has anyone tried this before? Making divinity an epic prestige class?

After all, demigod, lesser deity, intermediate deity, greater deity, and (to an extent) overdeity are all broken into nice 5 rank denominations.

Perhaps the epic prestige classes could look something like this

DEMIGOD
Prereq: Divinity Feat, 50 HD
HD: d8
Class Features: Divine Salient Ability every two levels, Divine Rank, No Failure on a Roll of 1, etc... basically all the features of divinity, that slowly upgrade to the next level.

LESSER DEITY
Prereq: Divinity Feat, 10 levels of Demigod, 70 HD
HD: d10
Class Features: Divine Salient Ability every level, Divine Rank, and the continued upgrading of divine abilities.

DIVINITY (feat) - You gain divine rank 0.

Something like that. Has anyone ever broken down divinity into epic prestige classes?

 

[Morrus]

Well, PrCs don't have class levels as a prerequisite. But conceptually it could work. As a pre-req, I'd include some MAJOR role-playing task or requirement of some kind.

 

[Psion]

Sort of, kind of, not exactly.

In my Trinalia campaign world, I stole the "different kinds of immortality" from Palladium's Mystic China. The one "true immortality" (i.e., without forbidding drawbacks) was internal alchemy. If the character was slain after achieving this, the character would be reborn and eventually grow up and recover past memories. Though such characters weren't deities in the traditional D&D sense, they were certainly headed that direction.

In Mystic China, there were various stages of immortality. It only seemed natural for me to translate this into PrC levels. Of course, leveling up is difficult... it generally requires you to die first.

 

[Celebrim]

I've thought about running a campaign for gods before, but I've never tried it.

There are alot of things you aren't considering IMO. The chief of which is that Divine Ranks are far more powerful and offer far more benifits than any other class. Even Divine Rank 1 is huge. The 'Diety' class is heavily front ended.

The other thing for me is that by flavor, being a diety should feel very different than being anything else and you don't capture any of it.

I think that it isn't enough just to earn XP. You can't become a more powerful deity by killing any non-diety. Also, even earing XP should be hard, as your ECL should go up by a certain ammount above and beyond your class levels each time you earn a divine rank (as if a template was applied to you), say +5 ECL per divine rank.

I think that in addition to XP, you'd need some sort of 'Divine Pool' equal to the XP you need to advance to the next level. Your divine pool would be principally filled by having pious worshipers who prayed and offered sacrifices to you (you could also obtain divine points for killing beings with divine rank, and possibly a few other ways). Let's say your typical diety gains 1d6 'Divine Points' per 1000 worshipers per week (or per day maybe). He then has to pay upkeep costs - divine points to empower his clerics spell casting, divine points to create an aspect or avatar, divine points spent to power epic spells or artifact creation (say at a 1=1000xp exchange rate), divine points to create sacred sites, possibly even divine points to exert his salient powers. After that, if anything is left over, he can apply them toward gaining his next divine rank. Such a campaign would be focused on expanding the dieties base of worshipers, dealing with overly demanding or wayward clerics, protecting his worshipers from the mechanitions of rival dieties, trying to obtain powerful and trust worthy servants, trying to obtain sacrifices which are above and beyond the ordinary (for bonus divine points), and trying to get along with other more elder gods that may not take kindly to this upstart.

I've never had oppurtunity to try such a thing, but I think there would be two big pitfalls. The first is that if you weren't careful you could end up with alot of book keeping. Maybe not any more than if the PC's held a powerful seat in government, but that's still alot. The second is you could never really do such a campaign justice beyond the first couple of divine ranks. Eventually, a mere mortal player and a mere mortal DM just couldn't keep up with the complexity of having a character with a divine attention span capable of being in multiple places at the same time. Campaigns would have to take the perspective of a single avatar of the diety, with alot of handwaving and DM control of what the other Avatars are doing (which is presumably as important or nearly so as what this one is doing).

But, it could be fun.

 

[Sejs]

DIVINITY (feat) - You gain divine rank 0.

Needs pre-reqs. Lots of 'em. Like divine sponsorship (or similar elevating criteria), a portfolio (no just being a god of .. whatever, you have to be a god of -something- or you don't get in) and X number of worshipers/follows. At a start.


Bear in mind that even with a DR of 0 you still get the following:

-Max HP per hit die.

-increased base speed: a medium biped with DR 0 has a base speed of 60'. Some may be faster or slower from the norm depending on their individual particulars. A god of messengers would be faster, a god of turtles slower, etc. All gods have a burrow and swim speed equal to their base speed regardless of form, and a climb speed of 1/2 their base speed. If they have a fly speed (again, assuming a medium creature) their base fly speed becomes 200'.

-Deflection bonus to AC equal to their charisma mod. IF they're an outsider with 20+ racial hit dice (racial, not from class levels) they gain a natural armor bonus of +13.

-For every 20 extra ranks a deity has in a skill, they gain an additional +2 to the synergy bonus it would grant to any linked skill. A deity with 25 ranks in Knowledge (Arcana) would gain a +4 synergy bonus to Spellcraft checks instead of +2. With 45 ranks, a +6.

-Immunity to polymorphing, petrification, and any other attack that alters its form. Any shape-altering powers they themselves possess work normally on themselves.

-Immunity to Energy Dragin, Ability Drain and Ability Damage. Because they're immune to ability damage that also means certain other things don't work on them, such as most poisons and disease (that is, they're not expressly immune to poison and disease, the effects just don't slow them down any).

-Immune to Mind-Affecting Effects.

-Have DR 10/Epic.

-Energy Resistance (vs all) 5.

-Spell Resistance 32.




All that at Divine Rank 0.


That'd be one hell of a feat.

 

[Dagredhel]

Hi victorysaber.

The closest thing that I've seen in a WOTC source is the Dragon Ascendant PrC from Draconomicon.

The requirements are +30 BAB, be a true dragon, 6 feats, and consume your entire hoard.

Immortality is acheived only after 12 levels of the class.

Other god-like benefits include hit points per die speadily rising to maximum, immunities, and a deflection bonus to AC.

For the humanoid races, Green Star Adept and Renegade Mastermaker (? - not sure I'm getting the name right - the Eberron PrC that transforms into a living construct) seem to be the ways to go to avoid death by natural causes. (And undeath - or the positve energy equivalent - are always options.)

Using these published examples as a guide, you might want to work up a non-epic PrC that'll allow characters to avoid death from old age while picking up some of the baseline qualities of divinity.

To be honest, I've always felt that the PrCs that involve a transformation to outsider should probably include longevity as a side-effect anyways.

Once Epic levels are acheived, another home-brewed PrC could take the character the rest of the way towards acheiving demigod status.

Just my two cents.

 

[Anson Caralya]

I like the idea of an epic PrC that gets you to Divine Rank 0. Personally I think 40th character level should be about the end of the line for mortals, and if that's not equivalent to a typical DvR 0 demigod, it's pretty close. Make it a 5-level PrC suited for levels 36-40 and I think it could work. Although maybe it would need to be spread across 10 levels to keep the power ramp-up remotely reasonable.

I don't so much like the idea of an epic PrC that advances divine rank, for reasons others have already given -- I don't think growth in divine power is similar to an adventurer gaining experience; the political comparison is more apt.

 

[paradox42]

It's interesting that this question is asked when Upper_Krust is getting close to finally finishing his base rules for the Immortal's Handbook, Ascension.

Among other things, his rules break down divine 'tiers' such as Demigod, Lesser God, etc. as templates, and explicitly assign them level adjustments- so you could, in theory, take those templates and turn them into classes using the Savage Species paradigm. There are a couple of gotchas when compared to Deities & Demigods godhood, such as the fact that UK eschews the idea of Divine Rank 0 entirely, and the fact that the first two Divine Ranks don't actually make one immortal (they're used for 'Disciples' and 'Prophets' of a greater deity).

One of the characters in my 'Evil' game made a literal Deal with the Devil and got a couple of Divine Ranks, in fact, and I used UK's template to provide them. So far it's working out rather well in game- the character is frightfully powerful compared to the other PCs, but that's as it should be anyway given what he has- and the LA means that that character is gaining a lot less XP than anybody else is (to the tune of a couple hundred vs. over a thousand, for the same award). The rest of the party is catching up fast.

And Celebrim's ideas of how one advances divinity are a close match to the first chapter in the book, which explains how one acquires this 'divinity' stuff in the first place (in UK's scheme it's called 'Quintessence'). He's got ways to gain it through worship, fear, and even taking it from defeated enemies, and one of these days he'll get around to adding an explanation for how one can get it from a sponsor.

So yes, somebody's trying this, in a way.

 

[NilesB]

There already is one for Dragons in the Draconomicon, the Dragon Ascendant. It could be used as a basis for a similar class (or group of classes) for humaniods.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There already is one for Dragons in the Draconomicon, the Dragon Ascendant. It could be used as a basis for a similar class (or group of classes) for humaniods.

I definitely think this is the right system for an ELH revision/replacement.