Gods.Demigods and Heroes 3.5

[Alzrius]

3e: What a mess (and this is coming from someone who loved 3e).

Yeah, I think even the most ardent of 3E-supporters feel the same way.

Avatars were downgraded to Aspects, and were weak-sauce.

I don't think it's correct to say that aspects were just downgraded avatars. Remember, Deities and Demigods had avatars; they were literally just the gods at 50% power though - this made avatars suck, because they were exactly the same as gods (with all of the problems with stat blocks, powers, etc.) just at half strength.

Check out the Miniatures Handbook, for example. I never agreed with the idea that being able to fight Demogorgon at 10th level was a cool thing. It takes away some of the majesty and power of these entities.

Well, the way I always looked at it was that aspects were clearly far, far below even an avatar; they were a minor recreation of a deity's power, and defeating Demogorgon's aspect was the equivalent of giving Demogorgon himself a bloody nose - now he knows who you are, and he's out to get you. Defeating an aspect means that things are going to get worse down the road.

And then, the deities themselves were terrible.

Man were they ever.

Stat blocks that sprawled over pages... 95% of which was completely useless. Who cares that Thor has +23 Use Rope skill (+25 with bindings)? Who cares that Vecna can cast flare 3/day? And why even include the greater gods? They always maximize their dice rolls, and were out of reach of even the lesser gods in a fight.

I think the major problem wasn't that the stat blocks had largely useless stats for deities (you could make the same argument about how balors have ranks in some Knowledge skills, for example), but that the powers - and indeed, the way the stats themselves were constructed - were unimpressive and lacking in meaningful flavor. The god of magic can't cast epic spells? The god of combat has the same BAB as the god of love with the same Hit Dice and divine rank?

The whole system was just not created well, and didn't accomplish a large degree of what I think most people, players and DMs, wanted.

At that point, you should just go back to the 2e days - you can't fight them, period.

I wouldn't go that far. People who want to fight the gods should be able to; just write the gods better.

 

[Lord Zack]

I think that with regards to religion in D&D, the focus has been too much on who the Gods are and not the religion that people practice. Certainly, the mythos is important, but the practices, dogma and organization should not be neglected. Certainly they warrant more than a couple of paragraphs. However, I do believe that gods should be able to be challenged by
PCs and thus stats might be useful.

 

[mach1.9pants]

I couldn't agree more, my PCs very very very rarely (i.e. never in 25 years of gaming) encounter gods and only once or twice encounter avatars etc. But they deal with 'churches' all the time. More info on that would be a much better idea, also more powers etc for PCs/NPCs too!