NOW LIVE! -- ZEITGEIST: Death of the Author for D&D 5E on Kickstarter! Murder. Conspiracy. Secrets. A remote manor. An adventure for D&D 5E.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6537447" data-attributes="member: 6790260">While I'm not as up-to-snuff on the specific details of Exarch-ness in 4e, in general I'd say that they aren't really on the same level as a "Lesser Deity." I'd probably organize things more like this:Overdeities(no subcategories)Deities    Greater Deities    Primordials    Intermediate Deities Lesser Deities    Titans    Lesser Deities    Hero Deities (or possibly in the level below)Quasi-deities    Exarchs     Demigods    Vestiges    ProxiesOverdeity is its own thing: if there's a hierarchy, Overdeity sits at the top, a deity who can boss around everyone else. In general, I usually think most settings lack one, or if there is one it's extremely standoffish. (A character idea I've had, though, is a Paladin with the heterodox belief that his god is a becoming Overdeity--not one yet, but eventually will be one.)Deities, unqualified, are those entities which are capable of sweeping change and which have core "portfolios" with generic application. Greater deities in particular: though they may have very close affiliation with a single race (e.g. Corellon to elves, Bahamut and Tiamat to dragonborn, Moradin to dwarves), their concepts and precepts are valued by many races. Intermediate deities are their peers who may have narrower interests, but still remain fairly big players (so, for instance, Lolth would probably be an Intermediate deity under this scheme). Primordials are, of course, the more "material stuff-of-existence" supernatural powerhouses, the Elemental Chaos equivalent to the Astral Sea's Deities: where deities might be described as "concepts given life and sentience," primordials are forces given life and sentience.Lesser deities are still deific, but with very clearly narrow application. A god revered exclusively by a single race, or the god that watches over a single city, etc. might qualify as this. (I say "might" because my aforementioned example of Lolth probably straddles a line here.) They're still true gods, capable of directly influencing the world, but their scope is substantially smaller. If a true deity were like a nation or an empire, a lesser deity is like an individual state (in the US sense) or, possibly, on the lowest end a county--still powerful and influential, but not at all on the same scale.Quasi-deities really aren't "deities" at all, which is why I put the "Hero deities" with the lesser ones (presuming they really do have deific, divine-spell-granting, etc. powers). Quasi-deities can run a spectrum of power and some might even be more powerful than lesser deities, but they experience severe limits or total lack of ability in areas that all "true" deities should perform just fine in. Vestiges, for example (to continue the political analogy) are like the ghosts of prior political eras or fringe political parties--they have some influence, and sometimes even rise up to touch the national level, but they're not really main players. Exarchs would be more akin to the heads of particular departments within a government--their power is an office appointed by their superiors, not (usually) a position ensconced by law. Like the various "[Issue] Czars" that have cropped up in US politics in the past decade or two.</blockquote>

Verification