D&D General The purpose of deity stats in D&D.

[Upper_Krust]

For me stats are for the fun of it. 3e was my favorite version, because gods were gods. The god of death could just will you dead and you would be. It was fun to read their stats and abilities, even if I never once used them in game play. Plus the stats give them a sense of presence within the game and removes them from just being flavor text.

Yes I always got a kick out of the crazy abilities of the gods in the original Deities & Demigods...how did Ra get Anti-Magic Shell that doesn't impede his own magic!?

 

[Upper_Krust]

Y'know, its funnny you bring up Disney and whatnot on this when DC actively does not use the Indian deities in it any more, despite one having played a bit of an important role in a Wonder Woman book. Like, they downright had the bants going on, you could ship it

So, yeah, there isn't just a clear 'yeah you can use these' on the Hindu gods

That's interesting - I bought 18 Days (Grant Morrison & Mukesh Singh) a decade or so ago. I thought that was DC Comics, turns out its Dynamite Comics though.

"Overgod" is such a stupid term. Like I cannot express how much I actively dislike this as a concept. It isn't a concept for anything but RPG esque powerscaling and is so far from something in an actual religion that I just mentally blot out any ideas of it

I would use Overgod as a catch all for those in the Tier above Immortals rather than a specific rank of deity:

Immortal Tier: Gods, Primordials (Demigod, Lesser God, Intermediate God, Greater God)

Empyrean Tier: Overgods, Great Old Ones (Elder One, Old One, Ancient One, First One)

 

[Upper_Krust]

There may well have been some of that thinking involved, but there's also the game-side design practicalities to consider.

In the 0e-1e era alignment was a Big Deal. The deities were to a large extent representative of and core to their alignments, which makes a pantheistic system (with one or more discrete deities per alignment) immensely more game-useful and design-friendly than a monotheistic system where one deity has to try to cover all the bases.

I've run up against this myself when designing setting pantheons - if a society is monotheistic, how can that deity represent and support Clerics of all alignments at once? One alternative is that there's only one alignment of Cleric in that whole society, which isn't much fun for anyone. Another is that the deity says "Screw it, I don't care what my Clerics do or think as long as they worship me", which would quickly lead to the rather silly situation (see far too often in reality!) where Clerics to the same deity go to war against each other.

Seeing stuff like this, whether posted by you or anyone else, makes me immediately want to dismiss whatever else is being said in that post.

Typically Clerics and Worshipers can be one alignment step removed from the Deity's alignment (or preferred alignment). So a Neutral deity could have clerics and worshipers of any alignment. A Neutral Good deity could have any Good, CN, N and LN alignment.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Just wanted to clarify that Gary did have some input according to Jim Ward. The only thing specific I remember is that Jim wanted the cap for the greater goods to be 1,000 HP and Gary insisted on 400 HP.

Yes I forgot about Jim mentioning that.

400 hp is certainly better for Interactions, though as I recall, all our (1st Edition) deity vs. deity fights were over within 1 round because of high damage numbers and both sides were always Hasted (which doubled your attacks back in the day). Ideally same power characters/deities should need 3-4 rounds to defeat a peer (unless they get lucky).

So in hindsight 1000 hp might have worked better, but as I posted earlier in the thread Gary wanted to redo all the Monster Manual Immortals with d12s for Hit Dice. So I guess a few years after Deities & Demigods he might have considered Jim's suggestion was better in retrospect.

 

[Upper_Krust]

From my middle school days and reading way to many Thor comics, I enjoyed seeing Thor statted up cause I then went searching for Hercules to see who would win like in the comics simplistic and childlike to say the least at that time in my childhood. I did the same with marvel rpg and Thor and Herc and hulk back then, along with Zeus vs Odin in both RPGs.

Mjolnir aside they are equals in the Marvel Comics. My favourite storyline is Thor #418 featuring Hercules and Thor, where Thor lets himself get beat up by a group of villains to have his friend (Hercules) snap out of his crisis of confidence (long story but relating to the previous issues and Herc getting humbled by Cosmic beings and losing his mojo).

 

[Upper_Krust]

I played in a long campaign where this was part of the central premise. There was this one Christian-flavoured monotheistic god, and it turned out it had become such by eating the other gods, absorbing their power and erasing their names. Eventually we managed to free these other gods and defeat this deity. Oh, and the characters became gods as well in the end. So the world went form polytheism to monotheism and back to polytheism.

Sounds really cool.

I was trying to think where I had seen stats for the Canaanite Pantheon, I thought it was one of the Monsters of Myths and Legends from Role-Aids. But while I think they added a few, that wasn't one of them. Not sure if you saw those books back in the day?

 

[Upper_Krust]

This seems backwards logic.

Its all about facilitating interaction.

Pantheons are generally cosmologically designed to be on their own, not balanced next to other pantheons.

Well the Pantheons from Deities & Demigods, expounded upon in Manual of the Planes were balanced with each other. As were the Unearthed Arcana Humanoid Pantheons. The Pantheons are also (loosely) balanced against the Demons and the Devils, and presumably the Daemons, Slaad and Modrons.

Multi-pantheon great wheel and Marvel is not the way things must be in D&D.

That's true, but for D&D with Immortal PCs its by FAR the best option.

A monotheistic cosmology by definition does not need to be compared to other pantheons at all, the one deity is the only one that exists period.

I agree, but we are talking about Religions and Interactions here, not Cosmologies.

Interaction between Mortals and Deities requires stats for deities.
Interaction between Pantheons/Religions requires some approximation of parity between the Religions - otherwise there is no reason why one wouldn't squash the other.

If you want a One-God Cosmology or a One-Pantheon Cosmology then you are just limiting the expansion of your play. Not to mention it becomes more difficult explaining the Demons, Devils, Orc Gods, Elf Gods etc.

If all these groups have their own "Pantheon/Hierarchy" then explaining how everything co-exists becomes easy.

There is no must from a game design perspective here.

I would say for those seeking to allow PCs to ascend to divinity that the multi-pantheon setup IS a must.

But certainly for those sticking to mortal play there is no right or wrong answer either way.

 

[Upper_Krust]

If we assume that the gods are real, and actually personifications or at least in charge of their portfolios, having multiple pantheons with duplicate gods for same roles always seemed weird to me. On my world Artra, there is only one god of death, only one god of war etc. And they may have different aspects and people may know of them by different names, and different cultures might emphasise different collections of gods, but ultimately, on the metaphysical level, there is just one pantheon.

Voadam raised the Cosmological issue and I think if you have a limited number of gods they could be the Personifications of those things. However, that would imply (to me) there is nothing above them Cosmologically.

Therefore if you have multiple Pantheons, multiple Gods of War (for instance) then the implication is that they are not the Personifications of the things they represent and there must be something above them. I would always lean towards the latter idea because it then expands options.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Makes sense. Also love that Thor story (and Thor comics in general). The Seth storyline was my first exposure to Marvel Thor back in the late 80s, and he's been one of my favorites ever since.

Its such a darn good story, I love it to bits. The three Asgardians guarding the throne of Odin knowing they have no chance of survival just to stop Set sitting on it still gives me goosebumps to this day.

Plus the perspective on the art when Surtur reaches forward to grab Thor has massively impacted the art in my book. That's EPIC right there!

 

[Mannahnin]

The version I'm thinking of involves a very complex, expensive, and time-consuming ritual spell that invests a target with divine power (the acquisition and use of which there are also rules for). Since the results provide mechanical models for what divine ascension means, the resulting PC is perfectly playable, if beyond the scope of most campaigns.

Pathfinder's Golarion has a neat ascension path built into a dungeon that three core major gods used to ascend, the Test of the Starstone in Absalom.

Never fully detailed for PC use, but narratively a mythic big deal in the setting..

There have been RPGs which explicitly dealt with ascension to godhood, though they've often been derided. SenZar and The World of Synnibarr, as well-known examples, and before them, Tom Moldvay's Lords of Creation.

Before my brother and I moved back to the East coast in '93, Raven made sure to fit in our immortal, demigod, and god quests, so our Synnibarr characters had a chance to ascend to deity status. That game had an explicit endgame of ascension after level 50, with various stages detailed. But you did have to quest.

These two paragraphs don't have to be in contradiction: if the PCs are "mythic" beings, then it makes sense that they might bring about "mythic" changes to the world. And if mythic change means changing or dethroning or killing deities, then that is a thing that PCs might do.

In my 4e game that I described above, killing Torog meant that imprisoned beings broke free (at least until one of the PCs took on the mantle of god of imprisonment and punishment: Session report - the party comes close to a split, but not quite). Killing Lolth ends the sundering of the Drow from their surface cousins. Killing Orcus means that souls are no longer diverted from the Shadowfell to a horrible fate of undeath. Etc.


Huh? The 4e PHB has Demi-god as an epic destiny option. Epic tier PCs are gods, or chief servitors/exarchs of the gods, or rivals of the gods.

And the combat rules permit the resolution of combat between the PCs and gods, while the skill challenge rules permit the resolution of other sorts of struggles the PCs might have with divinities or similar sorts of beings.

Makes sense that there is an overlap in the Epic Tier and lower ranks of Divinity.

But Demi-god as an Epic Destiny does not let a PC become, say, Zeus (for example).

I enjoyed 4E (my Level 30 Ranger was part of a Party that slew Orcus). But I don't recall any mechanics that made the character 'feel' like a deity. Powerful and super-heroic and indeed "Epic" yes, but there were no real trappings of Divinity: Worship, Divine Realm, Acts of Creation, etc. As such its like role-playing a king without a kingdom.

Right. 4E gives Demigodhood as an Epic destiny, but when you properly ascend at the end of your Destiny Quest you exceed 30th level and "graduate" from being a playable character.

Unlike in Synnibarr or Lords of Creation, say. I haven't read the latter, but in the former you have deity-level activities, quests, God Points gained based on your number of worshippers, etc.

I have never had the gods in my games need human worship and find the idea quite sill actually. I mean they existing eons before humans so why would they need our worship!

Other than D&D, has is (worship of deities) ever been a thing IRL mythologies or religions? It was not like Greek, Norse, or Celtic gods (the ones I am most familiar with) needed human worship. So where did this idea come from?

PS - I know it has been stated as a thing in some D&D context (dragon mag I believe - maybe others), but does it have any RL origins?

I'm not aware of it having a real life source. I think it comes from fantasy fiction and was popularized in D&D by the cosmology of The Forgotten Realms. I'm trying to remember if the concept was included in Deities & Demigods.

Ah, but they do have physical forms - it's just that those physical forms are either immune or highly resistant to anything mortals can throw at them. And PCs in my games have directly interacted with deities on numerous occasions, in (provided the PCs collectively have more wisdom than a kitten) non-combative situations.

What constitutes a "mortal" here is inherently subjective and relatively arbitrary though.

PCs near the top of the defined level scale in any edition of D&D are on the scale of the most epic heroes of any mythology. Capable of striking down multiples of powerful dragons or demons and other monstrous creatures who would be challenges for deities in most real world mythologies.

AD&D characters at high levels (especially with artifacts) are certainly capable of taking on deities.

5E and 4E (and probably 3E, but I never played Epic levels in 3E) make it a little easier and build the system to accommodate it better. They still generally define in the rules that to actually permanently destroy a deity is a super-epic quest which requires a unique process and special tools or weapons. Similar to destroying an artifact in 1E, but moreso.

For example in the first 1st-30th level 4E campaign a friend of mine ran, the finale involved defeating Orcus and then Vecna. But to kill Vecna we had to quest for the Sword of Kas and the Hand of Vecna, because he could only be permanently destroyed with the Sword, wielded in the Hand.