The Mortal God

[FadedC]

I am in agreement. In no campaign I've run (since 1979) have gods had stats. Not only could they not be killed, but there was never any proof of their existence. As for followers, you can't call it faith, if you have proof.

Hmm.....wouldn't being able to invoke major divine miracles in your dieties name and use spells to commune with his celestrial servents count as pretty good proof? D&D mythology never really required you to take much on faith, even if the god himself didn't show up much.

I voted for the diety having massive stats, although that's not entirely accurate. I don't think fighting a diety should be anything like fighting a monster. If he does have traditional stats it should only be for a final weakened form after the players have everything that needs to be done to shrink it down to something killable. The excerpts I have seen suggest that the designers agree with this, and that you won't be able to just march into the demonweb and take on Lloth.

 

[med stud]

I don't care if gods are statted or not. Even if I would have killable gods IMG I don't think I would use them as opponents and god hunting is most likely a thing my players wouldn't concern themselves with.

Personally I have always have had gods as anthropomorphic representations of concepts, like war, love, fertility, etc. As long as the concept exists, the god exists. If the concept grows, the god gets stronger. That way the god of war wants war to happen as much as possible, all the time, to grow strong. So those gods can be slain but it is extremely difficult; an epic feat to be sure, but not one that is solved with swords and fireballs.

 

[Jedi_Solo]

The stats "need" to be there.

Someone is going to want to run a game where a god's head is mounted and hung over the fireplace. There can be stats for this kind of game.

If someone doesn't want to go god-hunting over the long weekend the stats can be ditched and the fight can never happen.

 

[Irda Ranger]

I say stat 'em up. People who don't want them can ignore them.

There's a lot of cool questions that are raised when you kill a god. Does his portfolio disappear? If you kill the Devil, is there still evil in the world? Does evil still exist, but is weaker and its priests without spells? Or is there a 'nexus', a natural terrain feature of the Astral Sea that is where 'evil' exists, and if you kill the guy who lives there at the moment, how long before a new guy is drawn to it?

Answering Yes/No to any of those questions are valid answers during world-creation.

I like the idea of how "the Endless" die in the Sandman Chronicles. It's not that "Dreams" die, just that a point of view died, instantly replaced by a successor who was someone wholly new, but also Dream (because Dream (the embodiment of Dreams) really is Endless).

 

[captaincursor]

I personally would never have my PCs out there trying to kill the gods because for the most part I like my deities remote. However I want WotC to do the design and development work to playtest out the scenario and provide me with the tools so that should I decide to include that in a campaign, so I can feel confident about running it, and that it will be fun for all involved.

 

[Mistwell]

I am in agreement. In no campaign I've run (since 1979) have gods had stats. Not only could they not be killed, but there was never any proof of their existence. As for followers, you can't call it faith, if you have proof.

Of course you can have faith with proof.

I have proof my deity exists.

I have faith that deity is watching me, is capable of intervening in my favor, and may do so.

 

[Mirtek]

I don't like gods being defeated by mere mortals. However I could live with 30th level being the mortal level cap and level 31+ being part of the immortal tier.

So a mortal (level 1-30) can't defeat a deity, but a "lesser immortal" (level 31-32) has a fighting chance against a weaker demigod (level 33-33) and after that a level 33+ character is a deity in his own right and capable of challenging other deities.

That requires the powerjump from 30 to 31 being bigger than from 20 to 21 or 10 to 11. An ideal opportunity to realse a 4e immortals supplement like the old OD&D immortals supplement.

So the paragon PCs first become immortals themselves and then the can challenge other immortals.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Shouldn't there be a "it depends of campaign and setting" option? That is my vote.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Nope, can't say I like it. A mortal avatar for a god, maybe. Killing the god itself, not as much. I know most people probably disagree with me on this.

Nope, I'm with you 100%. One of the biggest errors made in 1E IMO was giving the gods stats to begin with, and turning pantheons into some sort of epic Monster Manual.

If players want to fight gods, leave that to the DM to figure out for that particular campaign.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

There should be avatar stats, not stats for gods/god/flying spaghetti monster.