Your opinion on god killing?

[Wombat]

And that's not necessary. The point is that the Norse gods were killable.
That can be debated. Pretty much every thing and being was sworn into not to harm Baldr, except that little mistletoe that did it.

I dunno, that's kind of a skewwed take on the legend.

The point of the legend was that Baldr was protected against all harm, by weapon, by fire, by wood, by stone; mistletoe was no included because it was assumed to be too harmless.

It was Loki who learned of this vulnerability; he made the spear of mistletoe and gave it to blind Hodr as part of what was assumed to be an amusing contest -- Let's Throw Dangerous Things At Baldr. Hodr didn't even really know what he was throwing, aside from the fact that it was a spear.

After Baldr was killed, Helr agreed to return him to the living if every single creature wept for him; only one trollwife, actually Loki in disguise, did not do so.

So in the end it was a god that killed a god, through the agency of magic and/or divine intervention.

I can spot no real instance of mortals-killing/destroying-gods in Norse, Greek, or other standard European mythology. I do not claim anything wider as I am not really as well read on the wider topic.

 

[Knight Otu]

Hmm, it seems my sister has most of my mythology books... I've got one here that says "...Snakes swore not to bite him..." (translated, of course). And it never seemed to be important to me that Hödr was a god - it was much more important that he was Baldr's brother, and that he was blind, as an added insult to Baldr's death.

As for mortals killing gods... Chiron's death (or at least, eternal suffering until relieved) was more of an accident than a concious act, and Hercules was driven to suicide by centaur blood, as far as I recall. These might or might not count. Achilles was killed by a mortal arrow, but I believe it was guided by a god.

 

[Epametheus]

The gods are manifestitions of concepts, given thought and form (and energy). The god of Truth is not actually Truth itself, but if Truth itself could think and act, it'd be very much like the god of Truth. Basically, a diety is a powerful spirit; how powerful depends on the god's standing.

If a god dies, the concept they represent doesn't die with them. Loki, Tyr, and Surtr may all die in Ragnarok, but Deceit, Honor, and Fire will not die with them.

Looking to Chinese mythology -- Son Wukong, the Stone Monkey, was a once-mortal demon who fought most of the Chinese pantheon put together to a stand-still. One of the few gods that could face Monkey in single combat was born from the union of a god with a mortal woman.

Ordinary mortals could not stand against him, but Sun Wukong often met mortals who had transcended, and who could hold their own against him or even overcome him. Those with proper training could attain fantastic power, putting them on par with many lesser dieties. Occasionally, a great mortal who lacked proper spiritual training would still ascend to godhood upon the moment of death; Guan Yu, the God of Honor and War, was one such mortal.

Godhood, and the power to challenge gods, is beyond the reach of nearly everyone, but some attain the power -- and perhaps, the madness -- necessary to try. Occasionally, one of them even succeeds.

The victory of mortals over the powers that be should be incredibly rare, but I have no issues with it actually occuring, especially if it's already established in a campaign that the gods can die.

 

[GreyWanderer]

At the end of the Black Company series (Soldiers Live) by Glen Cook, Goblin drove a spear into the sleeping (weakened, in a coma) Shiva - like goddess that had been manipulating the company. The magical explosion set off by Croaker drove it into her, destroying her.

This spear had been worked on by the wizard One - Eye for most of his life; it was his Magnus Opum and was certainly an Epic level item.

I hope I didn't mix up One-Eye & Goblins names. Please forgive.

Can't wait for The Black Company sourcebook to be published by Green Ronin this fall to see what its stats are!

Grey

 

[Tinker Gnome]

It seems to be sort of split here. I agree that the concept of gods being omniscient came mainly from monotheistic religions.

 

[Aaron L]

Before you can answer this question you must answer another: Do you consider gods to be beings or plot devices?

To put it into comic book terms, do you like to think of gods as Galactus and Darksied or as the Endless (Dream, Death, Destruction, etc)?

Most of the people here posting that they don't like the idea of gods being killed seem to me to view gods as plot devices, and not beings. There is nothing wrong with this! I, however, don't like to view them that way.


I take the Great Old One view of gods as otherplanar alien beings who can be killed, by each other, or by anything else with enough power. I am fully in favor of giving stats to gods, as a major concept of my campagin world is a war of many thousands of gods, each killing each other, that all at one time were the last representative of their mortal race and ascended to godhood. At different times these gods were killed by other mortals who then assumed godhood themselves.

I give gods no special immunity from death. They are not embodied concepts or universal laws given a face.

Now, just to contradict myself, I DO use Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath and Yog-Sothoth as embodied universal law/Endless, so I don't find the idea disgusting or anything. I just like to have both. In D&Dg terms, I place these as uberdieties, all divine rank 21+, and don't bother statting them. They can't be touched, as long as the concept exists, the embodiement will exist.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Before you can answer this question you must answer another: Do you consider gods to be beings or plot devices?

To put it into comic book terms, do you like to think of gods as Galactus and Darksied or as the Endless (Dream, Death, Destruction, etc)?

Most of the people here posting that they don't like the idea of gods being killed seem to me to view gods as plot devices, and not beings. There is nothing wrong with this! I, however, don't like to view them that way.


I take the Great Old One view of gods as otherplanar alien beings who can be killed, by each other, or by anything else with enough power. I am fully in favor of giving stats to gods, as a major concept of my campagin world is a war of many thousands of gods, each killing each other, that all at one time were the last representative of their mortal race and ascended to godhood. At different times these gods were killed by other mortals who then assumed godhood themselves.

I give gods no special immunity from death. They are not embodied concepts or universal laws given a face.

Now, just to contradict myself, I DO use Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath and Yog-Sothoth as embodied universal law/Endless, so I don't find the idea disgusting or anything. I just like to have both. In D&Dg terms, I place these as uberdieties, all divine rank 21+, and don't bother statting them. They can't be touched, as long as the concept exists, the embodiement will exist.

That is how I do it also. Although beings like Azathoth would not represent universal concepts, and even he/it could be killed.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

I take the Great Old One view of gods as otherplanar alien beings who can be killed,

As you noted, this is a key difference. I don't define the term "god" as merely a being with more power than other beings ("mortals"). Godhead is to transcend mortality in a way that goes beyond more fireballs or greater damage reduction.

To answer your question, closer to the Endless, although even Gaiman doesn't go quite far enough for me.

 

[Alhazred]

A central element of my homebrew setting is monotheism. There is one Church (pseudo-medieval, pseudo-Catholic), which promulgates the worship of a single divinity (essentially the god of Christianity, more New Testament than Old). Beneath this god are a myriad of paragons which act as foci within the Church vis-a-vis various aspects of the fatith (essentially the racial gods and 'abstract' gods created over the years by TSR/Wizards/3-party publishers, done up as medieval saints and demons). Some are allied with the god (the good D&D gods, such as Moradin and Pelor) and encourage the faith toward obediance and unholding the tenets of the faith. The demons (the evil D&D gods and fiends, such as Asmodeus and Orcus) represent fallen angels and seek revenge against God and seduce mortals, including entire races (ex. orcs, drow, etc.).

While God himself is untouchable, the paragons - though immortal and extremely powerful - are not eternal and omnipotent. I've found that this mixture allows PCs to confront pillars of the religion and even defeat them (well, at least the evil 'pillars'), or else use the fall of a paragon, whether good or evil, as a plot device wherein the PCs witness the calamnity which follows the death of a paragon, quest to learn what toppled the paragon, defeat those responsible, mayhaps even resurrect it. This has spurred on lots of adventures.

 

[Olive]

If the story leads me that way, that's what we'll do. Something like a final confrontation with a dark power that has plagued the world for 30 levels could be a pretty gripping, epic thing.

I would never do it more than once in a campaign. To this end, I find books full of statistics blocks for deities a bit less than useful.

I'd only probably have god killing perhaps once in a campaign as well, but that doesn't mean that stats for gods are useless. I don't stat things merely so that they can be killed, I stat them so I know what they can know about the PCs, how they can interact with the PCs.

People see books such as D&Dg as being like an uber-Monster Manual, which seems to me to be an astoundingly uncreative way to use it. A huge amount of mythology involves the gods interacting with mortals. It is useful to know how they would interact. Or at least I might very well find it useful as the PCs approach higher levels (or if the damn player of the cleric actually engaged with her religion...)

On the first page somebody mentioned greyhawk as an example of a campaign where having stats for gods is useless. As I pointed out in a different thread on Greyhawk, Zagyg's imprisonment of the gods is a major campaign event. How on earth would you role play something like that without knowing if it can happen to the gods in question?

While god killing might be tough or even impossible in your campaign, interacting with the gods won't be if they are anything like the gods of greyhawk, dragonlance, FR, or the greek or indian pantheons. The idea of gods being totally beyond the mortal ken seems very rooted in judeo-christian-islamic ideas of divinity, which aren't necessariy the norm in a DnD capaign.

And if gods aren't totally beyond mortal knowledge or understanding, then stats might be crucial, especially as the campaign reaches higher levels.

There is more to this. Kamakazee Midget's long un-updated Deity-a-Week thread always allocated the salient divine abilities in his otherwise almost completely fluff-orientated deity write ups. The reasons for this is that knowing what a god can do will help you make up legends about that god, or to understand they way the god will relate to his worshippers etc. Stats for gods become a very interesting way to understand religions in this context.

Of course, YMMV, but I think a lot of people say 'no god stats, it's a munchkin idea' without actually ever considering the implications of that comment.