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

[cranberry]

Delete

 

[Voadam]

Nonetheless, my point is valid. Giving stats to either would be ridiculous.

Unless you want Jacob to wrestle with God. Or have a bard fiddle duel the Devil.

 

[cranberry]

Unless you want Jacob to wrestle with God. Or have a bard fiddle duel the Devil.

Yea, I guess in a fantasy game, you can do whatever.

 

[GreyLord]

Can you think of a real world mythology where a mortal became a god by usurping a god?

Chronos usurped Uranos's big role and was overthrown in turn by Zeus but none of them were mortals.

Hercules became a god by being raised by the gods at his mortal death by the hydra poisoned shirt, not by killing another god. One myth says Hestia stood down so he could take her place among the Olympians but he did not wrest her place from her.

D&D mythology has a few places of deicide as ascension path and I guess you could go with the Highlander movie as a template, but I can't think of an actual myth off the top of my head that uses killing gods as an ascension model.

Off the top of my head...ascended...though not even having to kill an immortal to become a deity.

Caesar...

Behold, my father become Deus (supposedly by Octavius).

Then there were some of the Pharoahs as well. And occasionally, if one killed the Pharoah and became Pharoah themselves, they would become the epitomy of a living deity.

 

[GreyLord]

You got pretty much all of the salient details wrong. That article ("The Politics of Hell," by Alexander von Thorn) was from Dragon #28, which was the August, 1979 issue. God was not given stats. And as for "every stat" being effectively undefined, that's true for his movement and psionic capabilities, but that's it:

View attachment 387770

Wierd quirks...

A Gigantic Dragon in BECMI/RC has better treasure than these guys.

Takhisis and Paladin have better stats (and we had a munchkin, monty haul party several decades ago that killed Takhisis...though 3/4 of that ridiculous party died doing so...come to think of it...Raistlin also killed her Single handedly...with a little aid from a very foolish cleric...hmmm).

Personally, instead of 333 HP...I'd have made it 666. However, seeing that 5e basically has inflated HP out the Wazoo....an AC of 28 and HP of 666 could fit with today's 5e game).

 

[dave2008]

It is a thing. These "Other" gods are just monsters you can kill.

Not like the one Gygax's family and community worshipped. THAT one can't be killed. And putting 'him' into the game would've resulted with backlash from people who might actually be a danger to Gygax and his buds.

But the gods of foreign cultures and dead cultures? Fair game for the game.

Same reason you can find the stats for Bane, Kiaransalee, and Mystra but not Ao, who is so powerful game stats don't represent him at all.

Because what you exclude from your fantasy games is just as important as what you include for the whole "Art is Politics" thing.

all gods have stats in my game (both Yahweh and Ao are overdeities btw)

 

[cbwjm]

I typically don't use overdeities in my games, unless I'm running FR in which case Ao is already established. I'm contemplating a Mediterranean mythic age setting, if Yahweh appears (currently it isn't a faith in the setting) he'll be just like the other gods, no more or less powerful. But then again, I'm not sure gods will be popping in to say hi, and if they do, it's probably an RP encounter rather than a combat one.

 

[Upper_Krust]

It is a thing. These "Other" gods are just monsters you can kill.

Not like the one Gygax's family and community worshipped. THAT one can't be killed. And putting 'him' into the game would've resulted with backlash from people who might actually be a danger to Gygax and his buds.

As far as I know Gygax didn't write or have any real involvement in the creation of Deities & Demigods beyond writing a Foreword.

The idea in 1980's America (and I am not American so I can only guess) was presumably...let's not offend the majority of people living in this country where we sell 90% of these books by having stats for "GOD". Instead lets use figures from mythology and characters from mythology books.

But the gods of foreign cultures and dead cultures? Fair game for the game.

I don't see a problem with using characters from mythology in any capacity.

So really your criticism is presumably based on the section on Hindu deities - or perhaps the Ancestral Spirits of the Native Americans? Maybe the Norse gods are having a revival - but I doubt you criticize Disney for their appropriation of those deities in Comic, Animated and Movie formats.

Not sure how familiar you are with Bollywood movies and television shows (I am) but India really seems to love dramatic depictions of its immortals in animated and live action format. I have also spoken to a few Indian roleplayers/DMs and none of the people I have gamed with or chatted to (at various London D&D meet-ups) have any problem with depictions of their deities.

I have not spoken to any Native Americans on the topic of whether they have a problem with the depictions of their gods in Deities & Demigods or similar books. However, I do possess maybe 50-100 books on mythology and these Native American spirits/deities are discussed, depicted and expounded upon within many of these books. A quick search on Amazon reveals there are over 1000 books on "Native American Mythology", so it seems like there is no one protesting Amazon about the matter.

Care to explain why you seem to be upset about the depiction of mythological figures in D&D?

Same reason you can find the stats for Bane, Kiaransalee, and Mystra but not Ao, who is so powerful game stats don't represent him at all.

I'd have stats for AO. There is a place for Monotheistic 'Overgods'. The Tier above the Immortal Tier seems to work fine.

However, you'll notice that while PC levels cap at 20 the Challenges in the Monster Manual go up to 30. Thus stats for Orcus and Tiamat have a purpose as challenges for groups of Level 20 characters. Stats for AO serve no purpose unless PCs can themselves become immortal (for which there are currently no official rules).

Thus even back in 1980, there was mechanically no point putting Monotheistic Gods into Deities & Demigods since they would logically have to be beyond Greater Gods and there were no rules for PC's becoming Gods (the suggestions for Ascension in D&Dg led to Character retirement from the game) to put PCs in a place where they could challenge Overgods.

I mean I suppose they could have just had an Overgod rank 'for fun' with 1000 Hit Points (as our AD&D campaign did back in the 90's) - though Overgods themselves never saw play; even if many Greater Gods (and Monsters with 400+ hp ) did in our very high level game where PCs could play as Gods.

Because what you exclude from your fantasy games is just as important as what you include for the whole "Art is Politics" thing.

I very much doubt you are offended by anything that was either depicted, or not depicted, within Deities & Demigods.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Also, if you do so, it would be nice if they were not completely misinterpreted. (D&D version of Mielikki is a nature goddess, like she is in the real Finnish mythology, so that's fine, but Loviatar is incorrectly made a goddess of pain in FR, whereas she's actually a goddess of disease.)

Is it possible that Jim Ward in doing the research back in the late 70's used a source that perhaps played up Loviatar's 'death' aspect rather than her 'disease' aspect?

...either that or maybe he didn't want multiple Finnish Plague Goddesses and took some creative license; I mean they did make her beautiful when she is meant to be ugly in the mythology.

 

[Upper_Krust]

I typically don't use overdeities in my games, unless I'm running FR in which case Ao is already established. I'm contemplating a Mediterranean mythic age setting, if Yahweh appears (currently it isn't a faith in the setting) he'll be just like the other gods, no more or less powerful. But then again, I'm not sure gods will be popping in to say hi, and if they do, it's probably an RP encounter rather than a combat one.

Why spend the time and effort making stats for something that is just too powerful to be challenged unless you first have the means to allow heroes to challenge it. I mean why put a Challenge Rating 100 monster in the Monster Manual...it would just be a waste of time and space. I'm all for Overgod stats; but the first purpose of stats is interaction. Immortal beings in the context of up to around CR 30 monsters makes sense in a game (largely) capped at Level 20. Once you have the potential for immortal play then higher CR stats makes sense.

The deities of monotheistic religions/mythologies work best as something beyond Greater Gods, since they would be the peers of entire Pantheons of Polytheistic gods, rather than peers of individual gods within a Pantheon.