Killing Gods

[I'm A Banana]

It's not a matter of not wanting to kill powerful beings...that's not the problem. PC's do that every time they slay the NEcromancer King and save the princess.

It's a matter of changing the allegorical and philosophical significance of the beings that manufacture the reality for the world.

Take the moving the sun example. It's not a matter of killing the sun-god. It's a matter of when you kill the sun god, you also slay everything it represents and accomplishes. Symbolically, you kill light, you kill life, you kill truth, and you kill heat. The world becomes cold and dark and dead and decietful in the passing of the sun. Or, if the sun has a different archetype (perhaps being a harsh deity to a desert people), the world could become wet finally, and green, in the passing of the harsh and unforgiving, wrathful sun. The killing of gods in Norse mythology, for instance, has a cultural significance beyond the mythological details. In Final Fantasy (like in many anime), it's symbolic of the power and control behind it. You're not killing a God who is Evil, you're killing EVIL ITSELF.

When you kill a god, you don't just obliterate Thor. You change the nature of the campaing world itself, altering the dynamics and definitions of reality.

IT's also a measure of what gods mean to you in the campaign. If gods are just uberfey, or powerful outsiders, no big deal -- their death doesn't alter reality any more than the death of a pit fiend. If they're cultural totems and elemental creators, however, the deaths have more ramifications than a DM is willing to supply, and may be allegorically and symbolically impossible (to kill the sky god is to destroy the sky, for instnace, or to destroy the god of evil is to obliterate all true evil, and cannot be done in single combat).

Killing powerful things is done regularly. Killing laws that define reality....I mean, if Boccob suddenly died and all magic ceased to exist, that'd be a bit more than any 40th level barbarian shoul dbe capable of, ne?

 

[Si_RW]

i would agree that a character could not kill agod. yet if the character was tyring to possibly kill a minor or lower god this would be different. anyways to kill a god i would assume that you would have to have some kind of greater god on your side to even put a dent in the subject.

 

[GMVictory]

Killing gods in my campaign required lost rituals and incantations to summon and/or trap the deity. Or finding weapons that could destroy them. Or artifacts that could banish them to another realm.

I used an idea from Piers Anthony's "Incarnation of Immortality" series. Instead of the slayer replacing the slain, as in the books, the "godhood" (the power) sought out the most representative individual to replace the god slain.

In two cases that was PCs and in one case it was their most hated enemy, whom they had battled throughout the campaign. (This was an apocalyptic end-of-the-world campaign.)


*sigh* I wish I hadn't had to end that game. I even had planned out the aftermath of the Gods War campaign.

 

[fusangite]

I'll just chime in and agree with those who state that this is a debate about how worlds are structured. In some worlds I design, all gods are beyond the reach of mortals. In others, the most minor gods are within reach.

Also, just because a god can be killed within a narrative structure does not mean that it is a good idea to give the players the capacity to kill him. Unless you have a really strong metatext that ensures the characters interact in the right way and reinforce thematic elements of the game, it's often just too risky for the characters to have the chance, however remote, to destroy a necessary component of your world structure.

 

[hong]

When you kill a god, you don't just obliterate Thor. You change the nature of the campaing world itself, altering the dynamics and definitions of reality.

Hey, as long as you get to take his stuff afterwards, it's all good.

 

[Paka]

A Bad Attitude and 100 Levels
3E D&D and The Epic Level Handbook

The Gods have pushed it too far and now they must pay. It is time to kill them, all of them. Roll up a character, a reason why your P.C. is pissed at the pantheon and prepare to kick down the gates of heaven.

I'm surprised to hear people take such hard and fast definite stances. Some games, due to their tone and feel have killable Gods. Others, based on the books, literature or myths the game is inspired by don't.

Sometimes I feel like a nut and sometimes I don't.

 

[ruleslawyer]

A Bad Attitude and 100 Levels
3E D&D and The Epic Level Handbook

The Gods have pushed it too far and now they must pay. It is time to kill them, all of them. Roll up a character, a reason why your P.C. is pissed at the pantheon and prepare to kick down the gates of heaven.

100 levels won't help you against (Mass) Life and Death, my friend.

Amazing how reasonable folks on this board are being about the issue; I like you all!

The power of the gods is certainly a mythology/cosmology-dependent issue, and thus a campaign-dependent issue. I use (essentially) unkillable gods not because I have a problem with the notion that gods can be born and die (after all, I run an FR campaign), but rather because I a) don't want to take the time to stat them and b) feel like it's really, really difficult to properly run a god as a being with a D&D stat block. Think of it this way. You exist in a universe with theoretically unlimited access to magic. You have clerics who can cast pretty much any spell imaginable and create any item imaginable. You have your own plane or planes (or subsection thereof) to shape as you will. You are immortal, and thus have huge amounts of time to devote to making any preparations you want. How in heck is one supposed to run such a being? It gets very, very difficult. Sure, I can write up stats for Azuth, a lesser FR deity of spellcasters, but how do I deal with the fact that when mortal, Azuth was at least the equivalent of Elminster in power, that he's been around for thousands of years since, that he commands artifact-level items and has access to pretty much any spell (epic spells, even?) that he desires, and that he's served by the spirits of many of the most powerful mages who ever lived in the Realms? It gets difficult, and it's just not something I'm interested in dealing with. Thus, IMC, gods don't have stats. There might be a way to kill one, using some sort of artifact, special prophecy, divine-level monster, or a combination thereof, but the means aren't likely to wind up in the hands of my PCs, and thus will only be used as plot devices. Of course, in an Exalted-style (or 60+ level!) game, you probably need a different attitude, but I'm just not up to the challenge.

 

[carpedavid]

Just to toss out more ideas for others to plunder, here's how I've structured the gods in (one religion of) my campaign:

An original creator god created the world, the sun, the moon, aarvarks, and jam. He watched over the world for a while, populated it with dragons and fairy-kind, and then created the first generation of gods to run the world for him. These elder gods were few in number and embodied very broad concepts, such as life and death, nature, the sun and moon, war and conflict, etc. He also created servants for the gods - to fetch them coffee, make them biscuits, and occasionally intervene in worldly affairs.

Then the first god got sleepy and took a very long nap. This was a big mistake.

After untold aeons, the elder gods began to bicker about how to run the world. The embodiment of war wanted massive death and destruction, the embodiment of the four elements wanted balance and harmony, the embodiment of nature wanted to populate the world with lots of small, furry, woodland creatures, and so on. Without the first god to give them direction, their arguments became quite heated.

Eventually, they manifested in physical form on the surface of the world and came to blows. Mountains crumbled, rivers changed course, forests sprang forth, and cats and dogs began sleeping together. The end, was, as they say, nigh.

As the blood of the gods spilled upon the ground, humans were created. As it spilled upon the forests, elves were created. As it spilled upon the mountains, dwarves were created, and when it spilled upon the jungles, lizardfolk were created. Fortunately, for the newly-created sentient races, the end wasn't as nigh as it first appeared.

The gods fell, one by one, and their spirits fractured, creating an entirely new generation of gods: each less powerful and holding dominion over fewer fundamental concepts. These new gods took one look at what had happened to their parents, and vowed never to set foot in the mortal realm again. No-siree-bob, not for a million gold pieces.

The servants of the elder gods became the servants of the younger gods, and through their knowledge and the vestigal memories retained from their parents, the new gods ran the world pretty well for ten millenia. Except for that incident with the gnomes. They still don't like to talk about that one.

Unfortunatly, the creator god was still dreaming, so the new generation of gods also lacked direction. They, too, began arguing and almost came to blows. They were stopped by the god of the sun, who reminded them all that they swore not to do what their parents had done, and offered an alternative:

Why not, he suggested, get some mortals to fight for us - after all, they have to die anyway, being mortal and all. The rest of the gods agreed to the plan, chose mortals to serve as their champions, endowed them with tremendous powers, set them against one another, and sat back with a big bowl of popcorn.

The sun god's champion won, and he declared himself the king of the gods. However, because he was the embodiment of laws, justice, playing well with others, and sharing (in addition to that sun thing), he declared that, after a thousand years, they would have another battle, so that someone else could have a chance to be king.

So, every thousand years, the gods select another bunch of mortals, have them duke it out, and crown a new king (or queen) of the gods.

At any rate, the gods are the embodiment of fundamental concepts, and are therefore outside the ability of mortals to affect. They literally cannot be harmed by mortals, no matter how powerful the mortal. However, they can hurt each other when manifested in the mortal realm, hence the millenial battle-by-proxy.

Instead of creating avatars or manifesting physically or other silly things like that, the gods send their extremely powerful servants to the mortal realm if they need something done. Therefore, in my world, you'll never meet Dominus, the sun god, in person, unless you travel to the celestial realms. However, you could meet one of his celestial servants while you're on your way to the market. You probably wouldn't, but you *could*, and that's what's important.

To sum up, in my campaign, the gods are not statted. Mortals simply can't affect them if they don't want to be. They can affect each other, however, but only if they're manifested in the mortal realm.

 

[Wombat]

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.

Okay, about those dead gods...

Yes, gods die in Norse mythology (although there is a lot of debate over how much of this was due to the rise of Christianity in Scandinavia), but then again it is gods who kill gods -- Hodr, aided by Loki, kills Baldr, for example.

In Greek mythology, while in one tale (Illiad) there is a tale of a "mortal" wounding a god, it must be remembered that the mortal is of godly lineage, a very common factor in Greek mythology. The only gods who actually die in Greek mythology are killed by other gods.

Of the rest, well, the only one I have read where the god died is Elric -- Elric is in league with several gods, has been guided to a sword by one of the gods and that sword is discovered to be a massively powerful demon. Video games don't count as a source for mythological truth in my book.

Okay, you want to kill gods in your game, go ahead. I have no problem taking a whack at Avatars, but taking on a god? Only gods do that. And first campaigns.

Personally along that line, if we are to match modern books to modern books, I suggest a great WotC supplement -- Primal Order

 

[Psion]

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.

Deities can die in my game. And they are embodiments of primal concepts, too. But you can't slay the primal concept, only it's current representative, i.e., the god itself. Doing so often has a very real impact on reality. It doesn't change the primal concept, but it can change the world by changing how the concept interracts with the world. Anyone here ever read Piers Anthony's incarnations of immortality books?

I've never had a PC kill a deity and they are unlikely to be able to even now that they are epic levels. That said, gods do die, usually at the hands of other gods. In fact, it was an ugly divine war which led to the divine compact, an agreement between all deities that regulates what deities can and can't do, which they violate at their own peril.

I used to not toy with the concept of divine death, but Monte's Requiem for a God sold me on the concept.