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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 5429871" data-attributes="member: 8461">Only in terms of not having stats - the 2E deity books still laid down various prohibitions against direct actions that the actual deities themselves could take.That said - while there's no way to prove it without official 3E stats for the Sorcerer-Kings - I'm still of the opinion that comparing a true deity to one of the Sorcerer-Kings would show that an actual god was stronger by far (though, again, the official 3E deity stats were quite lame).I also always thought that Dregoth wanted to become a deity partly because that'd somehow let him reach 30th level. It was stated that being 29th level, he couldn't advance, and suffered the "pain" of an incomplete transformation or something like that.To be fair, these had their own subtleties about them.The Dark Powers of Ravenloft were strong enough to defeat a demigod, and even imprison one. But stronger gods could come and go as they pleased (see Die Vecna Die, and also the entry for the horn of valhalla magic item in the Ravenloft Campaign Setting, IIRC), and even affect Ravenloft from other planes, though the Dark Powers could interfere with that somewhat (see The Awakening).The Black wasn't what kept the deities away from Athas, IIRC; it was the Grey. That's apparently what filled Athas's crystal sphere and replaced the Border Ethereal (and kept out spelljammers).The Phlogiston just stopped planar travel. Gods could go into a crystal sphere and then enter the Phlogiston directly (hence how the Mulhorandi pantheon went from their native sphere to Realmspace).The Lady of Pain, for her part, was evenly matched against a greater deity (see Die Vecna Die). While it was stated that she could take on her "true" form to battle Vecna directly, she knew doing so would immediately destroy Sigil and destabilize the planes.But I wouldn't go so far as to call these "anti-deity gimmicks." It just shows that there are effects, locations, and beings that are beyond the gods, even in 2E. Other examples were the Spire of the Outlands, the Serpent (which guided Vecna), Jazirian and Ahriman (see The Guide to Hell), the Apocalypse Stone (it was called something else in the adventure of the same name, but close enough), the Dragon of Shades (see College of Wizardry), and others.Orcus was a god in 2E also, albeit a dead one.Yeah, but that's getting away from the original point, which is that the Sorcerer-Kings weren't equal to true deities in 2E, which I think would also be true in 3E - unfortunately, there's no way to know for certain, though I maintain it's a fairly safe bet.I was looking at that as being an extension of just raising their class levels that high. Those are, after all, epic spells by another name. In fact, I believe we're even told that in DM's Option: High-Level Campaigns in beginning of the section of epic magic. It was something like "10th-level spells have many names, such as elven high magic or psionic enchantments. Here, we'll call them true dweomers."</blockquote>

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