The Immortals Handbook

[Upper_Krust]

Hey

Hello again mate!

Perhaps the "time lords" are doing this to prevent you from revealing all of their secrets

I thought I outranked them, they must be ganging up on me.

I dunno if it would be pointless, I could imagine a campaign based around characters that are reincarnated into higher and higher forms until they are "enlightened" enough to percieve the true nature of these beings, or something like that :goes off to design this campaign:

Its easy to assign limits to divinity once you know what deities can create.

I like this idea too! A campaign (sort of like planescape...) in which there exist multiple mythologies alongside each other.

Indeed, our campaign has always been like this. Though I can see why people would sometimes want a closed cosmology with a single pantheon.

I have always thought of Brahma as being sort of like The Force from Star Wars, encompassing all things at once as the fabric of creation itself, but if multiple cosmologies exist alongside one another I can totally see it this way too, since that statement can usually describe the "top man" of any mythos. I'll go see if I can find that book at my local library, it sounds very interesting.

I don't think you will find it at the library, its a RIFTS sourcebook, its a fantastic book, but don't take my word for it:

http://www.hillcity-comics.com/role_play/pal/pal811.htm

http://www.epinions.com/content_28001144452

http://www.top-book-reviews.com/reviews/0916211681

http://dungeons-and-dragons.us/0916211681.html

I would probably say, with the exception of the 1st Edition Deities & Demigods/Legends & Lore by TSR, that Pantheons of the Megaverse is my favourite RPG book, and the amazing thing is I don't even have the RIFTS RPG, nor do I know the rules.

That does sound fascinating! I've always been interested in "Elder God" type beings, probably because there only seems to ever be enough information about them to whet my appetite even more.

Yes, most books have a habit of avoiding the issue...of course I avoid no issues.

And I appreciate all of the great ideas you come up with, and how you always respond to everyone's questions with so much thought.

Well, thank you so much for the kind words.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi Fieari mate!

Argh! Everything you're saying just makes me want it more and more and I can't have it until you're finished! Argh! Argh! Argh! My money is BURNING to get into your pocket man!

Sorry mate, I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying.

It seems I may have to readjust my thoughts on relative power levels if you're saying that the incarnation of Time is a mere (heh, mere) Elder God.

Cronos, of Greek mythology was not the incarnation of time.

A Time Lord has to be something more fundamental than that, and yet not as powerful as a Supreme Being. That's quite a tricky balance!

Tell me about it.

Would an incarnation of Wisdom fall under the "Time Lord" category? I don't know of any in Earth Mythology, but what I mean is the embodiment of the ability to have knowledge. The fundamental difference between that which can be known (ie, everything) and that which can't be known (ie, nothing we can begin to imagine, by definition). It seems to me that without such a thing, you can't conceive of anything else. That the concept of a concept can't exist without it. That a Supreme Being would have to first create Wisdom before anything else... see Law of Self Contradiction

Am I thinking in the right direction, at the very least?

Thanks for the link. Some interesting postulation, though I always try to explain things physically as well as metaphysically. So even if you were right, you would only be part right.

 

[Cheiromancer]

Upper Krust,

Have you ever given thought to someone dropping a nuke on an immortal? Godzilla, say, or something more powerful. I'm thinking that a nuke would do very high damage of various types- fire, sonic, force and impact damage, and probably ability damage too (though poison immune creatures might be immune to radiation poisoning).

I'm just curious if you've statted up nuclear weapons.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Nuke the site from orbit...its the only way to be sure.

Upper Krust,

Hi Chieromancer mate!

Have you ever given thought to someone dropping a nuke on an immortal? Godzilla, say, or something more powerful.

Yes, not just nukes but also contemporary and futuristic weaponry.

The trick is first to determine whether you are running a real-physics setting or a comic book physics setting (like d20 Modern).

In a realistic physics setting a 10 ton bomb is going to kill the typical Demigod, whereas in a comic book physics setting a Demigod might survive a 1 Megaton Blast.

This also gives us the hit points of planetary bodies. Earth for instance has slightly less than 1 billion hit points (real physics), and less than 100,000 hp (comic book physics).

Godzilla could just about take a very low yield nuke (real physics), or virtually survive the explosion which wiped out the dinosaurs (comic book physics).

I'm thinking that a nuke would do very high damage of various types- fire, sonic, force and impact damage, and probably ability damage too (though poison immune creatures might be immune to radiation poisoning).

It does force (shockwave), heat (fireball) and poison (radiation) damage.

I'm just curious if you've statted up nuclear weapons.

 

[Fieari]

That's assuming your Demigod there gets HIT by the nuke. I'm sure a demigod has a few tricks he could pull out to avoid having the thing actually blow up on him, yes?

 

[S'mon]

Re nuke damage - the direct radiation damage would be fire/heat damage, so ER (Fire) would count vs this. In D&D "Force" is magical force effects like magic missile & wall of force, so not relevant. "Sonic" isn't properly defined in D&D but appears to be the damaging vibratory effects of a sound wave, whereas a nuke's blast damage is _wind_ damage, a mass of air clobbering you all at once, ie it's simple _physical_ damage like you get from falling off a cliff or being hit by a steel longsword, so regular DR would count vs this (or vs the much smaller blast effects of hand grenades, dynamite, HE tank & howitzer shells, etc).

BTW as well as physical (blast) and fire (heat) damage, a high yield nuke in atmosphere will suck all the oxygen out of the area, which may cause asphyxiation effects, but godlike beings can probably survive this I'd guess. Note that creatures near ground zero will take damage both from the initial 'outward' blast wave _and_ from a secondary inward blast-wave as air rushes back into the near-vacuum created by the explosion. These effects could be several rounds apart for a megaton nuke, I believe.

 

[S'mon]

Radiation damage - I'm not sure if the direct effects of the Gamma radiation should be treated as anything other than heat (energy) damage, but I suppose there's a case for a save vs poison to avoid being 'sterilised' by the gamma rays. I would tend to assume immortals' bodies regenerate over time so they'd be immune to long-term radiation poisoning effects.

 

[Knight Otu]

There is a nuclear toxyderm (basically pollution elementals) in the Urban Arcana book for d20 Modern. It is also in the SRD. I've attached the relevant portions from the SRD file.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi Fieari mate!

That's assuming your Demigod there gets HIT by the nuke.

You know of course that some beings (like Godzilla) can duplicate atomic effects with various attacks.

In fact Atomic [Effect] is one of the powers in the book.

I'm sure a demigod has a few tricks he could pull out to avoid having the thing actually blow up on him, yes?

Well if the demigod knew the nuke was about to explode they could always disintigrate it (or similar). But that assumes they know its coming and have both the time and means to deal with it.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey S'mon!

Thanks for stopping by.

Re nuke damage - the direct radiation damage would be fire/heat damage, so ER (Fire) would count vs this.

Agreed.

In D&D "Force" is magical force effects like magic missile & wall of force, so not relevant.

I meant force in the traditional sense.

"Sonic" isn't properly defined in D&D but appears to be the damaging vibratory effects of a sound wave, whereas a nuke's blast damage is _wind_ damage, a mass of air clobbering you all at once, ie it's simple _physical_ damage like you get from falling off a cliff or being hit by a steel longsword, so regular DR would count vs this (or vs the much smaller blast effects of hand grenades, dynamite, HE tank & howitzer shells, etc).

Presumably Simon, any nukes you use in your campaign will be of the realistic physics damage potential rather than the comic book damage potential?

BTW as well as physical (blast) and fire (heat) damage, a high yield nuke in atmosphere will suck all the oxygen out of the area, which may cause asphyxiation effects, but godlike beings can probably survive this I'd guess.

This would have no effect upon deities, but I should add it to accomodate uppity epic characters who think they can 'take' nukes.

Note that creatures near ground zero will take damage both from the initial 'outward' blast wave _and_ from a secondary inward blast-wave as air rushes back into the near-vacuum created by the explosion. These effects could be several rounds apart for a megaton nuke, I believe.

Again relevant here (though rarely elsewhere) since beings will have a chance of surviving the initial blast.

Theres also the chance of kinetic impact damage from the missile itself, although targeting is likely to prove tricky unless the target is rather big. I wonder what the homing ability of a photon torpedo is, for those Cthulhu vs. the USS Enterprise moments.

Did Picard ever get killed off in that adventure you ran including him?