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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 1611275" data-attributes="member: 18280">Gods IMC's Current CosmologyFor most of my DMing experience (25 years and counting...getting old here!  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/paranoid.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":uhoh:" title="Paranoid    :uhoh:" data-shortname=":uhoh:" /> ) gods have been unkillable in worlds that I've created.  However, I've always enjoyed stories (like some of the Conan ones) where a mortal can defeat, if not kill, a god.  And also, I am reminded that satyrs and dryads (for instance) were originally "small gods of wood and field" or something like that.  When I set up my campaign world, I wanted the gods to be involved on a regular basis, even at low levels.  Which means that really minor gods (esp. faerie lords, beast lords, and ancestral spirits) might make appearances.  So what's a poor DM to do?When I devised my cosmology (first post in my story hour, link below), I decided to include imprisoned Elder Gods (ala Lovecraft), slumbering Titans, and a War in Heaven.  The War in Heaven included casualties, which means that someone in the Celestial/Infernal sphere was capable of dying.Now, I had decided to deal with "spirits" before I dealt with "gods," and the "gods" originally were the most powerful of the spirits.  They simply declared themselves gods.  Done deal.  Now, where does the divine power come from?For that, I went to the idea of true names.  The idea is that everyone and everything has a true name that absolutely describes its nature, and its place in the universe.  By manipulating an object or being's true name, you can alter its nature or its relationship to other beings/objects.  IMC, all magic is devolved from knowledge of true names.  With arcane magic, the practioner is manipulating information he has learned; with divine magic, the practioner is imploring spirits/gods to manipulate information that they know.  This makes divine magic require patrons, but it is also easier to learn.  Also, depending upon who your patrons are, divine magic might be safer.With this as a basic setup, it becomes necessary to believe that gods can be killed.  I also decided that mortals could become gods (necessary if ancestral spirits are "gods"), and made sure that the players had at least one example in their starting documents.  Obviously, anything the PCs can kill is likely to be a minor manifestation, but I range "divine" or "semi-divine" encounters from CR 1 to 48 (so far).  In my cosmology, most demons, devils, and celestials can grant at least a couple of low-level spells, and even some fey creatures can do this.A very different worldview that I typically run, but it's also very much fun.   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Raven Crowking</blockquote>

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