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Message: <blockquote data-quote="paradox42" data-source="post: 3255973" data-attributes="member: 29746">Well, since I responded to the other thread with a high-level view of my pantheon, and it's very clearly imbalanced by CRG's definition, I may as well weigh in here with my own thoughts.The most obvious imbalance is that the three Greater gods are all gods of Magic. There are no other Greater deities in this world to oppose them, so this can only mean that magic is a very, very powerful force on this world. And so it is- my world has many house-rules to reflect this change, all based on the fundamental premise that magic is in everything in this world. Every person, every creature, has at least the potential to become magical.To this end, no class in my world doesn't have some sort of supernatural power available to it. Fighters, for example, traditionally the focus of non-magically-inclined people, gain Spell Resistance at 21st level automatically, and starting from 12th have the ability to Craft Magical Arms & Armor- they can take the feat (even as a bonus Fighter feat) even without ever having taken spellcaster-class levels to get it. That's just one example, but it illustrates the point- I tinkered with even the most basic of the base classes to add magic to them. I was actually doing this even in the 2nd Edition version of this same world, since it was obvious to me that an imbalance like this had to have consequences within the world-reality itself.A less obvious imbalance comes from the fact that those same three gods are all disdainful or actively hostile to intelligent Undead- every now and then one of them will use it as a really terrible curse to put on somebody he hates, but it's very rare otherwise. Mindless undead, like skeletons and zombies, are seen as tools rather than creatures in their own right- so while they are frowned upon, they aren't actively discouraged by any of the three except the Good one since he prefers people to do things for themselves (and this explains why the Animate Dead-type spells have the Evil descriptor). In fact, my Evil god's motivation is on the surface identical to that which CRG used for Hades; the god- Cenob by name- hates undead because they are essentially keeping themselves beyond his grasp. In the world background I actually have written several more complex plot-points for where his dislike for undead comes from, but I won't go into that now- though I will note that there is at least one Atropal sealed in a prison-cocoon somewhere in the world.What this means, among other things, is that sentient undead on my world are exceptionally rare- vampirism is an unknown and very scary disease, carcasses moulder away in graves instead of being eaten by ghouls, mummies only exist on other planes of existence, and liches are unheard-of- actually since there is an actual Immortality spell in my game world, most spellcasters who might otherwise choose lichdom to avoid death have another, better option available to them anyway. Knowledge (Religion) checks concerning undead creatures have much higher DCs in my world than they do elsewhere; this was actually used as a plot-point in one game of mine that happened to involve a lich. None of the party members knew what it was or how it could be dealt with and stopped, except for one solitary priest of the Time goddess whose most interesting character quirk was that he was born off-plane. He was human, but specifically a planar human rather than a native to the world. This carried several disadvantages for him mechanically, but he took full advantage of this particular RP advantage when it happened to come up.This means that, as a DM, I've been forced to avoid using many off-the-shelf published adventures, because they assume a level of "undead penetration" into my world which simply isn't there in fact. Level drains come from high-level spellcasters using Energy Drain or one of its siblings, not from Wraiths or Spectres- there are few or no Wraiths or Spectres around to do the draining. Vampires only exist when they arrive from off-plane, and even then they don't survive long unless they "go underground" and become very circumspect about their dealings with (and feedings upon) mortals. Ironically, in the metagame this has meant that few players play Clerics, and those who do rarely invest much in their turning ability- except to use it for other purposes like Divine feats. When Undead do show up in my games, they can be significantly more powerful than they would be elsewhere, because the existing PCs aren't taking advantage of their vulnerabilities.Those are the two most obvious imbalances in my world, based upon the pantheon, and I could go into a lot more detail about both of them if I wanted to (or thought people would be interested in more detail)- but this post is long enough already. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /> I'll leave further discussion of these two, or other imbalances which exist in my pantheon, for another time.</blockquote>

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