What CR should a god be?

[Cerubus Dark]

Has anyone battled a god like you'd battle a monster in 3E yet?

Quite funny really.

The only way to battle a god in my campaign is to first steal their divine spark. Not as easy a task as it sounds, but it is possible. I see the current listing of gods / demigods as regular mortals who through luck and skill found the orginal divine sparks and assumed deityhood. They can be killed afterall, but as I said you have to know about the divine sparks in order to take them. They are very protective of that information.

 

[Zappo]

Huh, anything from CR 1 upwards. You have to decide what a god is before you can assign a CR, and that's 1) non-trivial, and 2) very heavily campaign-dependant. There are settings and mythologies where gods aren't even necessarily more powerful than mortals.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hello dead!

Your Epic level characters will be so powerful one day that they're gonna want to bash a god and steal its loot. So what CR should a god be?

Depends on the power of the deity.

I think they're around CR 40 in Deities & Demigods. That is: 20 HD of Outsider and 20 character levels. (I notice that some mortals that have attained godhood don't get the 20HD of Outsider. That would suck.)

As a number of people have pointed out, they are slightly tougher than that. The actual CR is probably akin to HD + Levels + (Divine Rank x 2). However, some of the Salient Divine Abilities are a trifle unbalanced so be careful with things like Alter Reality, Annihilating Strike and Avatar.

But once your PCs have clobbered all the gods, then they'll wanna keep going. What's the CR of the Overgod?

Depends on your definition of what an Overgod is, but I would suggest in and around CR 300-1000.

Has anyone battled a god like you'd battle a monster in 3E yet?

Many gods are indeed monstrous, though most are intelligent, resouceful and have a support network of servants, followers and allies to draw upon should you anger them. Most won't even dirty their hands fighting mortals (unless they are gods of war of course) and leave that business to subordinates.

There are few deity encounters which would unfold as a 'typical' monster battle. Possibly loner deities like Laogzed (of the Troglodytes); Urdlen (of the Gnomes) or Sekolah (of the Sahuagin) might be your best bet.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi Angcuru!

I think any god should have CR *insert infinity symbol* when dealing with mortals.

So does that mean you turn your back on the mythology that either gave you or inspired such beings in the first place?

It's a GOD. As in "I don't like you, so you explode like a blood sausage. I control reality and you are real, so boom, you die."

Isn't that an appeal to authority though?

I guess the first course of action in such campaigns is to define what a god is.

It does seem as though the word has been hijacked by christianity in modern culture.

The Overgod doesn't have a CR, never should have one.

'He' does have a CR, whether you wish to acknowledge it or not, or indeed define it, is another matter entirely.

A mortal going against, Ao for example, would be like a dust mite going up against a gigantic super-enormous deadly thing of death + a billion.

What about a god going against Ao? Or the Lady of Pain? Or Io? Or Ahriman? Or Ahriman wielding the Lady of Pain while riding Io, versus Ao?

But that's just me.

So you fully admit some campaigns might see the use for it...just not yours? Fair enough.

And honestly, they shouldn't get an opportunity to fight gods to begin with, since once a god with it's omniscience etc. etc. discovers that this dude might be a potential threat, that dude is going to experience a good hard smiting.

This takes us back to the definition of what a god means.

Given that D&D gods are steeped in the legends of heroic myth rather than revolve around the mantra of modern western religion. It seems that the former is more appropriate. In examining the gods of myth, we clearly see that they are (as a rule) not omniscient, nor omnipotent etc. etc.

Likewise any casual research on Overgods from myth will show they are not wholly immune to godly threats, just as gods are not wholly immune to mortal antagonists.

The introduction of epic mortals of course begins to blur the lines between mortal and immortal, and given that all power (even overpower) is relative, at a certain level an epic character will exceed Ao in power.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi Umbran mate!

I'm another in the "gods are not an appropriate challenge for PCs" camp. The powers of epic level characters may seem godlike compared to most mortals, but that's but a seeming. I figure a god is the kind of entity that can make a world. PCs simply cannot touch that kind of power.

I'm curious how you figure a god is the kind of entity that can make a world?

How many gods outside Skyfather level or above have you ever read achieving such a feat?

If I choose to run a game in which the PCs take on gods, the CR is irrelevant, really. That kind of conflict should be a show-stopper. Once you've pulled that trick, you really cannot top it, so it probably ought to be a campaign ender. So, teh number of XP you get afterwards is probably moot.

To me that just all seems a bit half-hearted.

Why not run the battle properly, in which case use stats, and, by association CRs. I mean the players may really enjoy it and not want you to pull the plug "just because".

I think too many people get drawn to the idea that they have to continually top the last event, leading to adventures spiralling out of control. But its (immortal gaming) a lot more like a chess match than a boxing match.

 

[mercucio]

Dead,

First off, are they killing avatars or the deity?

Either way, I'd suggest the following formula:

BASE CR = Outsider HD + Class Levels (yes, full CR for outsider HD)
+6-8 CR for divine rank 0 to cover all your basic divine traits
+1 CR per divine rank

Thus Zeus would have a CR of 97 (20+50+8+19) if I recall correctly. I don't have DDG here with me at work but that's close enough =).

Realistically players should only be confronting demi-gods or avatars, but that is just my personal opinion.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey Fieari mate!

A guy on the forums going by "Upper_Krust" is writting a book called "The Immortals Handbook" which more clearly defines dieties in terms of abilities, stats, etc. It also scales upwards indefinatly, going all the way up to "Supreme Being" levels.

Most gods do have a CR by his system. That CR is quantifiable, but still such that no mortal could reasonably face one.

Well, a large party of 20th-level characters could possibly defeat a weak (relatively speaking) Demigod

Unfortunetly, it isn't... er... published yet. But he promises soon... that the text is basically all done, and it's just editing now.

I think someone cast slow on me a while back.

The reason I like this system better is that you can work out God vs God combat... but beyond that, you can run a game where the players are gods. Which might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I for one will enjoy it greatly.

I appreciate the love dude.

 

[dcollins]

Well, I can see battling a god's avatar, but not the deity itself.

Agreeing with S'mon here, but noting that the very idea of "avatars" is specific to one particular real-world religion: namely the (Indian) Hindu/Vedic pantheon. The idea of multi-part gods is really out of place when applied to any other real-world mythology (as I wrote on www.superdan.net/dndmisc/avatars.html ).

 

[Dogbrain]

Absolutely. In practically every real-world pantheistic mythology, gods are ultimately not immortal, they are not above pettiness, they can be hurt and even killed by moprtals.

Examples, please. Only those from actual mythology, none from modern novelizations, none that involve a character who is not truly mortal. Hercules was not truly mortal. His father was Zeus--and even then it was made plain that his mortal part had to go to Hades.

 

[Aristotle]

This is another one of those campaign specific issues, but I'll chime in anyway (it isn't as if anybody reads my posts).

I don't care if all the mortal vs. immortal conflict in various religions were half-gods or not. The point is that someone of great power went up against a god and it made for a great story. That's usually all that matters to me in my campaigns. That no matter what happens, the story was worth it when the dust settles.

I would have no problem with mortal characters, that have achieved a good many levels in prestige classes, taking on a god so long as the story was good and the game was fun. I think most of the published campaign settings are in fact set up for just this sort of thing (hence the levels and statistics for the gods in the books). And it has been a key form of conflict in various D&D products in the past (Time of Troubles in the forgotten realms and War of the Twins for Dragonlance both stand out in my mind). I understand the whole "gods are gods and they should be invulnerable" argument, but you have to understand that it is campaign specific.

In my homebrew there is only one true deity, and he is all powerful. Any mortal who comes within a hundred miles of him is instantly incinerated by the pure force of creation. He is absolutely invulnerable to mortal attacks. He *can* be killed, as the One God before him was; but this can only be done in a specific way (not even he knows exactly how). The only people who do know how to kill godly beings are the Arch Devils (a pantheon of demigods that were banished from the mortal realms for their crimes against the mortals as well as killing the original One God), and they aren't about to give up the secret as it is the secret to killing them as well.

If characters try to take on the One God or any of the Arch Devils in my homebrew those characters will die. No dice need to be rolled. But if the characters in my FR campaign get the opportunity to take on a god ... I guess we'll roll the dice and see who wins. Because that is how I see that campaign setting to be set up.