Killing Gods

[pawsplay]

A lot of DMs seem squeamish about statting gods. For comparison, I thought I'd list some fictional sources in which gods bite it, or at least take some nasty bruises.

Norse Mythology - Gods have died, and at the end of the world, all the gods will die.

Greek Mythology - Tangling with Zeus or Ares is a bad idea, but some pissed off Greeks took a few shots at Aphrodite to get her off the field. She went crying to Zeus, who basically replied, "What in the Sam Hill is a love goddess doing on a battlefield, Aphrodite?"

Sleipnir - A great Poul Anderson story about a modern soldier recruited into Odin's army, who ends up killing a few giants and a god or two.

Elric - Elric has made a career of whacking gods and archfiends.

Dragonlance - That rascally Raistlin.

Final Fantasy - The protagonists in the game regularly defeat monsters that have already defeated the gods or whatever Powers that be.

Conan - He's killed a minor serpent god or two.

As far as gods manifesting and doing whatever they feel like, the only one I can think of who could give himself any ability and often chooses to do so is Krsna. Otherwise that kind of behavior is more in keeping with Star Trek aliens, the Beyonder, or that weaselly Dungeon Master from the cartoon.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

A lot of DMs seem squeamish about statting gods.

It has nothing to do with squeamishness. It has to do with how you want to portray godhood in your world. Some DMs choose to use the Dragonlance (which is D&D in disguise) or Final Fantasy outlook, in which gods are nothing more than beings with more power than mortals. They use the same rules, and have much the same kind of interaction with the universe. The numbers are just bigger.

Other DMs, like myself, tend to prefer a different outlook. To use a fictional reference like you did, I perfer a vision of godhead more akin to the Endless, from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. My gods are embodiments of fundamental concepts such as death, fate, joy, truth, etc. They cannot be destroyed because their existence is outside of the realm of life and death. They cannot be replaced. They cannot be truly understood. And no, they cannot be defeated. They created the universe, and are not subject to the rules of their creation. Although they may be subject to other rules of which mortals are unaware.

Having said that, what's the point of giving such a being stats? It would wind up being something like "infinite hp"--"infinite attack bonus"--"infinite spells" etc. Instead, I stat out avatars if the need arises, which can range from 1st-level commoners to 20th-level warlords, depending on their purpose.

 

[Altalazar]

I also use the outlook of no stats for gods - they are beyond stats, beyond actually having anything to do with the world directly at all. Clerics really get most of their power from themselves, though they still are devoted to a particular diety and each cleric class is unique, based on which diety it is.

Dieties aren't beings at all - I mean, how can you really "slay" love? Or war? Or disease? Or justice/revenge? You can't - but you can "worship" them in the sense that you make them important and try to bring it to others.

You forgot my favorite god, though:

Klingon: "We Klingons killed our gods more than a millenia ago. They were... more trouble than they were worth." - Worf

 

[A'koss]

Although I have run gods in the past as omnipotent window dressing I've never really enjoyed portraying them that way. In my post-Ragnarok campaign, the gods are now mortal (Idunn and her apples that granted immortality were swept away in Surtur's fires). Mortal, but still beings of mythic power and majesty.

Originally posted by Altalazar:
Dieties aren't beings at all - I mean, how can you really "slay" love? Or war? Or disease? Or justice/revenge? You can't - but you can "worship" them in the sense that you make them important and try to bring it to others.

I see gods not being these concepts, just the best representatives of them.

Originally posted by Lord Pendragon:
To use a fictional reference like you did, I perfer a vision of godhead more akin to the Endless, from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. My gods are embodiments of fundamental concepts such as death, fate, joy, truth, etc. They cannot be destroyed because their existence is outside of the realm of life and death. They cannot be replaced. They cannot be truly understood. And no, they cannot be defeated.

Right... However I should point out that Morpheus was captured by a mortal occultist in the beginning of his series who had meant to capture Death in order to achieve eternal life. Morpheus was trapped (and forced to serve) for 70 years before he gained his freedom and punished those who trapped him.

Klingon: "We Klingons killed our gods more than a millenia ago. They were... more trouble than they were worth." - Worf

Heh...

A'koss.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Right... However I should point out that Morpheus was captured by a mortal occultist in the beginning of his series who had meant to capture Death in order to achieve eternal life. Morpheus was trapped (and forced to serve) for 70 years before he gained his freedom and punished those who trapped him.

I did not say that I'd adopted the Endless wholesale, only that I perferred an approach akin to them.

Though, referring to The Sandman, I always got the feeling that his failures were more due to his personality, rather than he being overpowered. Still, in any case not really relevant to the matter at hand. My "gods" are outside of mortal contentions.

I can understand people who wish their "gods" to be beings which can be interacted with. I do not abandon interaction entirely. However, the idea of Godhead has always been to me a matter of being. A man might interact with an ant, but no matter how experienced the ant, if he angers the man he's going to get squashed. Man and ant are just different orders of being. That's just my take, of course. Everyone's bound to have a very personal opinion regarding divinity and its nature.

 

[A'koss]

Originally posted by Lord Pendragon:
I did not say that I'd adopted the Endless wholesale, only that I perferred an approach akin to them.

Though, referring to The Sandman, I always got the feeling that his failures were more due to his personality, rather than he being overpowered. Still, in any case not really relevant to the matter at hand. My "gods" are outside of mortal contentions.

No, I understood what you were saying and I never said there was anything wrong in handling it that way. The Sandman reference allowed me to illustrate a point (that I agree with) in that if you're savvy enough, powerful enough or just plain crazy enough, you can achieve the impossible. Call it the Mortal Factor if you will, in that there is nothing beyond your ability if you're canny enough. A mortal found the chink in Morpheus's armor, whether it was psychological or an exploitation of a weakness in his power - a mortal found a way. D&D is the game of heroes, doing "the impossible" is part of the job description.

A'koss.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

D&D is the game of heroes, doing "the impossible" is part of the job description.

Fair enough. I like to see it differently. Basically, no matter how canny the hero, he's not going to move the Sun.

 

[A'koss]

Originally posted by Lord Pendragon:
Fair enough. I like to see it differently. Basically, no matter how canny the hero, he's not going to move the Sun.

Give him a big enough lever...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

A good example for this among RPG settings is Exalted, where the average party can not only kill gods, but is actually more powerful than most gods at character creation...

In the game, there's millions of god who all (at least in theory) work for a Celestial Hierarchy. The PCs most likely won't be able to touch the most powerful gods (though it's not impossible - after all, pulling off crazy, epic stunts like that is the whole point of the game), but they can slaughter gods of villages, minor roads, or isolated springs in great numbers if they want to, and killing gods of whole cities shouldn't be too difficult, either. Though they do risk censure from the Celestial Hierarchy if they do that...

 

[Mouseferatu]

My view of the gods changes based on the needs of the campaign setting. In the Roman campaign I ran, the gods were physical entities, since they were, in fact, the Roman variants of the Olympians.

In Selion, my longest-running and most complete homebrew, I take the "gods are embodiments of concepts and are thus beyond mortal understanding" approach. They have no stats. They have no physical forms unless they want to, and those forms are by definition avatars only.

However, that doesn't mean mortals have no influence over the gods. I take the "mortal belief empowers and defines the gods" to its logical extreme in Selion. Over hundreds and thousands of years, as mortal belief in a particular deity changes, that deity changes to match. The gods may have created mortals, and may inspire their worship, but their worship very literally gives the gods definition.

As an example, in my first campaign set in this world, one of the PCs was a powerful wizard. I ran several long campaigns with that group, and they wound up as heroes with continent- if not world-wide renown.

I later ran a campaign set thousands of years later. The story of the first party had passed into myth. Part of that myth was, people came to believe this particular wizard was in fact an avatar of the god of magic. He wasn't, but the belief that he was became so prevalent that his name and personality replaced those of the original god of magic. In short, a mortal didn't ascend to godhood--but a god changed and evolved to take on the personality traits and part of the identity of that mortal.