What Makes a Deity?

[Upper_Krust]

That would eb cool beyond words.

Mike responded to my question.

How hard fought was that victory, did Mabelode and his forces even have a chance of winning or even injuring the two Elder Gods?

Very hard. Almost everything worth doing is!

Question: King of the Swords related question for Mike - Moorcock's Miscellany

So my guess is that Rhynn and Kwll were about the minimum level required to beat Mabelode and his forces. Although what that level is (and indeed the nature of Mabelode's forces) we can only speculate.

If we measure the Sword Gods as roughly equal (Level 38 Solo opponents) then I would place Rhynn and Kwll each at Level 42 Solo opponents.

If we split the power of the Sword Gods (Arioch 35, Xiombarg 38 and Mabelode 41) then I would place Rhynn and Kwll at Level 44 Solo opponents.

 

[S'mon]

If we measure the Sword Gods as roughly equal (Level 38 Solo opponents) then I would place Rhynn and Kwll each at Level 42 Solo opponents.

If we split the power of the Sword Gods (Arioch 35, Xiombarg 38 and Mabelode 41) then I would place Rhynn and Kwll at Level 44 Solo opponents.

It's clear that within the 15 planes of Corum's local universe-cluster, Mabelode > Xiombarg > Arioch, but elsewhere in the universe this is different; AIR in one crossover story Elric is surprised to learn about the above hierarchy and comments that on his plane (Young Kingdoms) Arioch is the equal of Xiombarg and Mabelode.

Destroying (eg) Arioch locally of course does not affect Arioch's aspects elsewhere in the multiverse, just as killing Elric would not affect Corum.

Note that the Sword Ruler version of Arioch had to have come from Elsewhere - originally the 15 Planes were dominated by the Lords of Law, who were ousted by the Chaotic Sword Rulers. This can be dealt with via the 1e Manual of the Planes approach that a Greater Power can create Lesser Power aspects of themselves, 'budding off' lesser gods - who can then possibly grow to become Greater powers themselves. This allows for a multiplicity of Ariochs who still remain connected to a degree and exist within the same probability-line (as opposed to just having multiple versions of anyone existing in different probability lines).

 

[Hereticus]

What Makes a Deity?

This is the way I see it in 4.0E.

Level 01 to 10: Hero
Level 11 to 20: Paragon
Level 21 to 30: Epic
Level 31+: Deity

This is the way I described it in my 3.5E game:

Powerful celestials, infernals, fey creatures, elementals and even mortals consider themselves to be god-like. While there is no litmus test one must pass to refer to themselves as a god, referring to yourself as a god will surely invite a challenge from other powerful creatures aware of your claim.

 

[Budalic]

In my 4E Astral Pirates campaign, gods and primordials are just beings of great power, created by single entity very similar to monotheist, all-powerful God. That entity doesn't care for worship, but gods do.

Like the Greek pantheon, gods (and primordials) are petty, vengeful and vein - they have exagerated virtues and vices (compared to humans).

Gods (and primordials) have great, but not infinite powers: they can influence entire planes, they can be at multiple places simultaneously, and they certanly cannot be destroyed without participation of other dieties. Primordials are imprisoned by gods. Some were destroyed.

Other powerful creatures fall into 2 groups: A) servants of dieties and B) various smaller independent creatures.

A) includes devils, angels and similar folk. Their power comes directly from gods.

B) includes archfey, demons and similar:
Eladrin are pragmatical - they don't want to worship anyone. Instead, they have court of 33 archfey. They are no match for entire pantheon of 11 gods, but can severely punish any single one. So the gods leave them alone.
Demons have similar status - primordials are imprisoned, and they have resources to make an open invasion of abbys very costly for any diety - or even for multiple of them.

Needles to say, the campain ending will seriously shift "divine balance".

 

[Hereticus]

There was just a thread about DMs that "railroad" their players. I was recently in a game where the DM would constantly do that. We would want to stop and explore an interesting area, or do something other than jump right into the next epic battle. We would want to do things like role play, or investigate the castle we just took. but as always, if we didn't react right away, the world was about to end.

At first powerful creatures would help us when we bit off more than we could chew. After the battle they would take our stuff away that we shouldn't have. the gods and their minions were constantly interfering, either for us or against us.

During the final battle the bad guy became a deity and we had to fight him. But hey, we could make god calls before each swing and do an extra hundred points of damage ('m not making this up).

During the battle I found an interesting way to use anti-magic, but it didn't work. Every item that everyone had was considered an artifact.

That was one of the worst games I ever played in. it was about the players' characters playing a bit part in the DM's story.

I especially found this terrible because in my past groups we had not used gods to intervene in the world, and there were no artifacts. Sure there were intelligent and sentient items, but there were no items that were considered artifacts. The DM needs to facilitate the players' game, not take it over.

 

[Haltherrion]

Obviously there is canon (feel free to share; I know some of you are subject matter experts on D&D canon and I'd love to know if there's an official line on this) but I'm mostly interested in your own take on these beings. How does it all work in your setting?

The nature of gods is one of the defining characteristics of any setting I work up. It varies for me but I like to experiment with these things.

Here's some I've used over the last 15 years (before that, they were usually home grown but essentially like the ones you find in the core D&D material).

• There were two gods, both banished ("interdicted") from the world for a while for undue meddling by a creator being who rarely interceded in mortal affairs. The campaign centered on the end of this interdiction period when the gods were returning to the world. I considered not having any clerical powers in the game but that is hard to pull out of D&D so I just had clerical powers come from the ether (like wizard powers). The gods sent messages in dreams; were physical creatures (the "good" one had actually turned to stone and was a floating island the players visited).
• In another game, the world was young (about 2500 years old) and did not have gods at first. Certain firstborn beings grew very powerful and godlike, even raising huge chunks of the earth into the sky (wrecking the rest of the earth in the process). At some point, the prime-creator as before, banished these god-like beings from the mortal realm. In the last 300 years, they found ways to interact with mortals from their place of exile and provide powers (clerical in nature) to select followers and so have become essentially gods.
• In the current campaign, the gods are very much norse in spirit. They are beings who live in the high mountains of the world. They were once mortal but achieved immortality when they drank the blood of a felled creator (the Titan). They actually meddled little in mortal affairs (except to adventure among them) until the unclaimed souls of the dead were used to raise terrible armies that nearly destroyed the world. Since then, they see to the disposal of souls (claiming some for their own a la Valhalla). They also meddle in mortal affairs to prevent mortals from ever again creating empires that might threaten them. Actual cleric powers (channeled powers in 4E speak) come from spirits that are much like the conception of local spirits worshipped in the ancient world- tied to a grove or river or other place with limited geographical domain but able to manifest and even have offspring. Characters with channeled powers need to attune to particular spirits to gain particular channeled powers.

Lots of different ways to cut it but for me, the nature of gods helps define the entire setting and usually the PC's role in it.

 

[The Little Raven]

Then again, IIRC, the Torog writeup basically said, deities can only be bloodied, not killed (unless the deity _wants_ to be killed). That would work for me as well.

Deities are the closest to being true immortals because of discorporation. When they reach Bloodied, they discorporate and reform later. In order to prevent this discorporation, one must provide certain items, personages, or circumstances in order to keep the deity fighting to the death. One example is slaying five of Tiamat's consorts (one of each standard color) in order to truly kill her.

 

[Ugulu the Barbarian]

Someone brought up the topic of portfolios and I think thats an interesting point. I think if we take a look at Earth's mythology you can clearly have multiple Sun Gods (or whatever) all co-existing. In such cases (which I like to call an open cosmology*) the destruction of such a god won't have far-reaching consequences - though it might cause an eclipse or dark clouds over the land where the god is worshipped. In essence, when you have multiple beings representative of one portfolio, then either they are subordinates (either knowingly or unwittingly) to a more powerful entity which IS 'the Sun', or simply that each such beings 'tap' the portfolio in the same way mages tap magic.

*As opposed to a closed cosmology where you have only one figurehead for each portfolio.

I disagree. Well, at least I think I do. Let's say that you're running a Historical/Age of Mythology like Campaign or something. If Hades was to kill Hel, it woulds be very different. You'd then have a Patheon short one God. What would happen next then? I have no idea, but it definately wouldn't be a minor occurence.

Then again, that's also different from some Pantheon where ... Hmm, wait, that's what you said... I was confused.