What level is deicide possible?

[magic9mushroom]

No Pun-Pun, no Omniscificer, etc.

What level would you have to be to kill a) a demigod, b) a lesser god?

I'm not going to ask about the higher ones because Rejuvenation would seem to put a damper on things - if there's a way around it, tell me.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Level 21 with a Full-Spellcaster and access to both these boards and as much Gouda as you can fit in a BoH. Epic Spellcasting+Tippy can let you do anything.

[Graymayre]

Level-any bard.

Create a religion so popular that everyone stops worshipping other gods to worship yours. Since gods' power comes from prayers and faith, they should die within the week (or atleast become absolutely powerless).

P.S. I think the title should be edited, I thought you were just mispelling decide at first. :smallsmile:

[magic9mushroom]

Level 21 with a Full-Spellcaster and access to both these boards and as much Gouda as you can fit in a BoH. Epic Spellcasting+Tippy can let you do anything.

How would you do it though?

@Graymayre: You're likely to eat Life And Death rather fast if you try that, as the effect isn't instantaneous. Besides which that's well beyond what a 1st-level bard can do.

[Paramour Pink]

I think Deities and Demigods mentions that the gods can become sustained for weeks by one act that drops directly into their domain, or soemthing crazy like that. So the bard would need to inspire a religion so powerful that it somehow sidesteps every single act that could possibly maintain any god. That wouldn't be possible, so you'd have to target the main gods, and for the other half you need a task force to deal with them. And then we find ourselves right back to the question of "what kind of power level is needed to kill a god?" :smalleek:

[Graymayre]

@Graymayre: You're likely to eat Life And Death rather fast if you try that, as the effect isn't instantaneous. Besides which that's well beyond what a 1st-level bard can do.

Ah! but you are forgetting the Law of Conservation of Prayer:

Faith cannot be destroyed, simply transferred from one being to another.

As your deity gains more faith, others lose theirs. Basically, your faith slowly makes you more protected while simultaneously making other deities weaker! :smallsmile:

Honestly, I just said level-any because I couldn't really think of a proper level, but I do not doubt that its atleast "possible" (however improbable) for any level 1 bard to do it. :smalltongue:



I think Deities and Demigods mentions that the gods can become sustained for weeks by one act that drops directly into their domain, or soemthing crazy like that.

But why would someone act for another god if everyone worships yours :smallbiggrin:

[Khatoblepas]

Any character capable of making people Fanatic about them.

Get enough worshippers worshipping you, and you become DvR 0. Keep it up, and you'll soon gain enough worshippers to take on the god head on.

That will mitigate the Life and Death thing. x3

[Sstoopidtallkid]

How would you do it though?Read the Epic Spellcasting rules. Gate-Chaining+Mindrape gets you an infinite number of Solars adding slots to your spell, reducing the DC. Make a spell to give you more Divine Ranks than Ao. It's not complicated, just incredibly, incredibly cheesy.

Or, as they said, be a Diplomancer, meaning level about 4(DC 60 only needs level 2, DC 90 shouldn't be that much higher) to turn anyone who's indifferent(half the population) into Fanatics. You don't need them to stop worshipping their own Gods, just to start worshipping you. Once you get Divine Rank 1, Diplomance another god to kill whoever it is you want dead.

[magic9mushroom]

Any character capable of making people Fanatic about them.

Get enough worshippers worshipping you, and you become DvR 0. Keep it up, and you'll soon gain enough worshippers to take on the god head on.

That will mitigate the Life and Death thing. x3

You need a LOT for that. And in-game sanity with respect to rules would seem to indicate that people won't stay Fanatic for very long away from you.

And then you're still left with the quandary of needing enough character levels. Which is the whole point of this thread.

[magic9mushroom]

Read the Epic Spellcasting rules. Gate-Chaining+Mindrape gets you an infinite number of Solars adding slots to your spell, reducing the DC. Make a spell to give you more Divine Ranks than Ao. It's not complicated, just incredibly, incredibly cheesy.

Or, as they said, be a Diplomancer, meaning level about 4(DC 60 only needs level 2, DC 90 shouldn't be that much higher) to turn anyone who's indifferent(half the population) into Fanatics. You don't need them to stop worshipping their own Gods, just to start worshipping you. Once you get Divine Rank 1, Diplomance another god to kill whoever it is you want dead.

Gate Chaining = infi loop = "Pun Pun, Omniscificer, etc."

No.

Diplomancing Gods doesn't work, they're immune to Mind-Affecting, besides which half the population isn't going to stay Diplomanced. Common sense.

[Paramour Pink]

But why would someone act for another god if everyone worships yours :smallbiggrin:

Nah, you misunderstand. For example, say I'm a level 5 Commoner. I don't have a god I worship. I just don't care about them. But sometime in my life, maybe for just for my family (doesn't matter why or for who), I do something incredibly noble. Heironeous is going to *instantly* pick up on that single act, and feel it for weeks. All because of one little act. It doesn't have anything to do with worship, but it has to do with behalving in a way that a particular god would want you to.

I'm not sure where it says that if you stop worshipping a deity, they stop existing, but I do know that Deities & Demigod book says that each god is sensitive to everything that falls into their domain.

[Alysar]

:smallsigh: Anyone want to explain the gouda thing to me? Or was he just being bizarre and absurd?

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Gate Chaining = infi loop = "Pun Pun, Omniscificer, etc."Be clearer in the OP if you're banning Epic Spellcasting. For fighting gods, most people assume the whole of the ELH is allowed.
Diplomancing Gods doesn't work, they're immune to Mind-Affecting, besides which half the population isn't going to stay Diplomanced. Common sense.Diplomacy isn't mind-affecting. And you don't need half the population to stay Fanatic, you just need enough of the population to worship you at one time for you to get Divine Rank 1. That shouldn't be a huge portion of the population, just turn one city into your loyal slaves. Plenty of regional gods have less worshippers than you would at that point.

Edit:
Anyone want to explain the gouda thing to me? Or was he just being bizarre and absurd?Epic Spellcasting has no limit, by RAW, on what it can accomplish. Rather, the capabilities of the spells you're writing are determined by Spellcraft checks, "mitigation" that reduces the check needed by making the spell more expensive to cast(XP components, requiring multiple spellcasters, etc) and what you try to get it to accomplish. Chain-gating involves abusing the Mindrape and Gate spells to get an arbitrarily high number of Solars under your command , making part of them bring in even more Solars, and having the rest devote spell slots to your Epic spell. At which point the only limit on the spell is how much you can imagine. :smallbiggrin:

[magic9mushroom]

Be clearer in the OP if you're banning Epic Spellcasting. For fighting gods, most people assume the whole of the ELH is allowed. Diplomacy isn't mind-affecting. And you don't need half the population to stay Fanatic, you just need enough of the population to worship you at one time for you to get Divine Rank 1. That shouldn't be a huge portion of the population, just turn one city into your loyal slaves. Plenty of regional gods have less worshippers than you would at that point.

I'm not banning Epic Spellcasting. Gate-chaining is infinite loop abuse. Hence banned on grounds of retarded.

Diplomacy isn't Mind Affecting... until you hit Fanatic. Fanatic IS Mind-Affecting. And getting a whole city to worship you is again ridiculous, and also likely not enough - most gods in D&D are innately that way, not raised by prayer.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

I'm not banning Epic Spellcasting. Gate-chaining is infinite loop abuse. Hence banned on grounds of retarded.Which is the same as banning Epic Spellcasting. Look at the Spellcraft DCs and the mitigation. The only way to make Epic Spellcasting viable is to use cheese. Otherwise, you're spending time and XP in order to spend XP to cast a spell that's weaker than the non-Epic version.
Diplomacy isn't Mind Affecting... until you hit Fanatic. Fanatic IS Mind-Affecting. But you don't need gods to worship you, you just need a few to help you kill one of their own. That's "Friendly", which isn't mind-affecting.
And getting a whole city to worship you is again ridiculous, and also likely not enough - most gods in D&D are innately that way, not raised by prayer.We're killing gods here. You don't want ridiculous?
And if one city isn't enough, get a second. You're level 4, meaning +8 Cha mod. That's 9 days before the city falls out of your control. Get a Wizard Fanatic to teleport you to a second one. Then a third. You can probably have 4-5 cities bowing in your direction at one time fairly easily.

[magic9mushroom]

Which is the same as banning Epic Spellcasting. Look at the Spellcraft DCs and the mitigation. The only way to make Epic Spellcasting viable is to use cheese. Otherwise, you're spending time and XP in order to spend XP to cast a spell that's weaker than the non-Epic version.

Not exactly true. Without Gate-chaining you can still hit huge DCs with the right items. Ring of Spellcraft +30 and non-epic INT items gives you 76 hittable DC at level 21. Epic items push it way further.


But you don't need gods to worship you, you just need a few to help you kill one of their own. That's "Friendly", which isn't mind-affecting.

Um, no. Something like that would require Fanatic. You're trying to make them break an agreement and screw with the cosmos.


We're killing gods here. You don't want ridiculous?
And if one city isn't enough, get a second. You're level 4, meaning +8 Cha mod. That's 9 days before the city falls out of your control. Get a Wizard Fanatic to teleport you to a second one. Then a third. You can probably have 4-5 cities bowing in your direction at one time fairly easily.

No, I don't want ridiculous. I want "If a crazed mage wanted to slay a god, how high a level would he have to get?"

And huh? level 4 +8 Cha?

And how are you going to talk personally to each of the people in the city for 1 minute in 1 day?

[Alysar]

Anyone want to explain the gouda thing to me? Or was he just being bizarre and absurd?

Epic Spellcasting has no limit, by RAW, on what it can accomplish. Rather, the capabilities of the spells you're writing are determined by Spellcraft checks, "mitigation" that reduces the check needed by making the spell more expensive to cast(XP components, requiring multiple spellcasters, etc) and what you try to get it to accomplish. Chain-gating involves abusing the Mindrape and Gate spells to get an arbitrarily high number of Solars under your command , making part of them bring in even more Solars, and having the rest devote spell slots to your Epic spell. At which point the only limit on the spell is how much you can imagine. :smallbiggrin:

... How does that explain the gouda? Is 'gouda' a slang term for something else, or is cheese a spell component or something?

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Not exactly true. Without Gate-chaining you can still hit huge DCs with the right items. Ring of Spellcraft +30 and non-epic INT items gives you 76 hittable DC at level 21. Epic items push it way further.But nowhere near powerful enough to actually be used in a game. DC 76 Epic spell costs 684,000 GP, 27,360 XP, and 2 weeks to create. How is that remotely doable at level 21?
Um, no. Something like that would require Fanatic. You're trying to make them break an agreement and screw with the cosmos.Get a group to gang up on one deity they've been feuding with. Getting Correllian annd the other elf gods to kill Lolth shouldn't be that hard.
No, I don't want ridiculous. I want "If a crazed mage wanted to slay a god, how high a level would he have to get?"Then look at CRs.
And huh? level 4 +8 Cha?Venerable Half-elf paragon(or Spellscale non-paragon) with a starting 18 and a +2 item.
And how are you going to talk personally to each of the people in the city for 1 minute in 1 day?I was thinking much more giving speaches. Not as personal, but it may still work.

Edit:Gouda is slang for cheese, which is slang for anything overly broken in terms of abusability.

[magic9mushroom]

But nowhere near powerful enough to actually be used in a game. DC 76 Epic spell costs 684,000 GP, 27,360 XP, and 2 weeks to create. How is that remotely doable at level 21?

It isn't. I was giving an example.

[quote]Get a group to gang up on one deity they've been feuding with. Getting Correllian annd the other elf gods to kill Lolth shouldn't be that hard.

Seeing as they haven't done it already, I'd have to disagree.


Then look at CRs.

But a mage can kill things well above CR if he's prepared. Also, gods have no CR.


Venerable Half-elf paragon(or Spellscale non-paragon) with a starting 18 and a +2 item.

Ah.


I was thinking much more giving speaches. Not as personal, but it may still work.

Sanity would say that you'd have to spend a bit longer than a minute in that case.

And can you please leave some room between your paragraphs so I don't have to dissect it when replying please?

[Emperor Tippy]

Commoner 1 if the circumstances are contrived enough.

Assuming non absurdly contrived circumstances, by level 20 if you build it right and use Illithid Savant (the most powerful PrC in existence, more powerful than Planar Shepherd or Incantatrix). Assuming that Illithid Savant is banned, level 21.

Epic Spellcasting using permanent summons for mitigation to cast an Origin of the Species spell that turns you into a creature that would be CR 500 or so if it was a published race and gives you several hundred thousand utterly loyal follows (who's loyalty can't be altered in any way) of an equal power level.

If you want to get it done earlier you can do it by Gate Raping a Great Wrym Prismatic dragon (doable before level 10 if you really try) and having it use it's epic casting to get the same end effect, just at a lower level.

[Undead Prince]

No, I don't want ridiculous. I want "If a crazed mage wanted to slay a god, how high a level would he have to get?"

Sounds pretty ridiculous to me.


And how are you going to talk personally to each of the people in the city for 1 minute in 1 day?

Level 3 Cleric + Domination domain (with Spontaneous Domain Casting) + Heighten Spell/Divine Metamagic: Heighten + Enthrall = plazas, squares, markets, streets with hundreds (thousands?) of people attentively listening to your drivel for 1 hour +1d3 rounds. You're effectively making a Diplomacy check against each of them simultaneously (interaction for 1 minute). You can also make a Rushed Diplomacy check at -10 penalty, which only requires 1 round.

So yeah, a Diplomancer can convert cities pretty quickly.

[afroakuma]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a deity just be able to pull the exact same cheese?

[Undead Prince]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a deity just be able to pull the exact same cheese?

Perhaps it's their Strategic Deterrent. I.e. no deity uses the cheese in fear of retribution/mutually assured destruction.

[Pink]

This question of yours is kinda pointless if you're not willing to accept plausible if highly powered answers. Afterall, taking down a deity in itself is a high powered task. The kind of wizard that would want to achieve that goal would totally also be the type of wizard that would realize that by gating in solars and mindraping them and so on, he'd be able to obtain an untold power source. If you are just looking for raw levels, CR, like's been said.

[Yukitsu]

Level 15, with the right caster level boosters, requiring the eschew materials feat.

Boost your caster level to at least 20, then make a simulacrum of Vecna. Boost the simulacrum's caster level to 30, and make a simulacrum of Pelor. Have the simulacrum of Pelor kill the simulacrum of Vecna, since the simulacrum is technically of the same divine rank as normal Vecna. The simulacrum of Pelor has a higher divine rank, and can just smite Vecna.

Pros: Kills a god without cheese really early.
Cons: Really expensive (50 000 GP, 20 000 EXP) and doesn't accomplish very much.

[magic9mushroom]

This question of yours is kinda pointless if you're not willing to accept plausible if highly powered answers. Afterall, taking down a deity in itself is a high powered task. The kind of wizard that would want to achieve that goal would totally also be the type of wizard that would realize that by gating in solars and mindraping them and so on, he'd be able to obtain an untold power source. If you are just looking for raw levels, CR, like's been said.

There's a difference between infilooping and normal cheese.

There's also a difference between stinky retarded unrealistic cheese and normal cheese.

Deities have no CR.

And it can be done at level 17 without ubercheese, through Theurgic Specialist (Evocation). I'm wondering how much below that it can be pushed.

[Narmoth]

Well, I have a cleric 1/paladin 5/blackguard 7 who will start take 3 lvls in ordained champion (Complete Champion) (not of Hextor, so he won't get any of the military power of the class) for 3 lvls, and then maybe 3 lvls of soulguard (Fiendish Codex II). So, when will he be powerful enough to challenge St.Cuhbert, whom he was a paladin of, and get away with it?
Requirements:
- he should face the god in person, not the gods avatar
- he should survive
- he should defeat St.Cuhbert in battle
- St.Cuhbert doesn't need to be killed, only defeated
- the paladin should be able to survive the defeated, and angered gods revenge

[Undead Prince]

Level 15, with the right caster level boosters, requiring the eschew materials feat.

Boost your caster level to at least 20, then make a simulacrum of Vecna. Boost the simulacrum's caster level to 30, and make a simulacrum of Pelor. Have the simulacrum of Pelor kill the simulacrum of Vecna, since the simulacrum is technically of the same divine rank as normal Vecna. The simulacrum of Pelor has a higher divine rank, and can just smite Vecna.

Pros: Kills a god without cheese really early.
Cons: Really expensive (50 000 GP, 20 000 EXP) and doesn't accomplish very much.

1. You don't kill a God, you (at best) kill a simulacrum of a god.


Simulacrum creates an illusory duplicate of
any creature. The duplicate creature is
partially real and formed from ice or snow.
It appears to be the same as the original,
but it has only one-half of the real
creature’s levels or Hit Dice (and the
appropriate hit points, feats, skill ranks,
and special abilities for a creature of that
level or HD). You can’t create a simulacrum
of a creature whose Hit Dice or
levels exceed twice your caster level.

And of course, he wouldnt have any divine rank.

2. You don't even receive anything, XP or otherwise, for doing so.

It's like making sock puppets of two gods fight each other. Totally pointless.

[Samb]

Beat Vecna with a lvl 14 party in that last adventure module for AD&D. It was alot of fun and not easy at all.

One-on-one is a bit harder.

I had a flayer spawn psychic that later became a illithid savant, took the intellect devourer's steal body ability and went to the astral plane to eat the brain of one of the god "isle" till he got alter reality. Then he just took one over with his steal body ability and made it permanent with alter reality. The DM then made his character a NPC...... don't know if that counts since the gods that he "ate" were comatose, but it was very creative.

[magic9mushroom]

Well, I have a cleric 1/paladin 5/blackguard 7 who will start take 3 lvls in ordained champion (Complete Champion) (not of Hextor, so he won't get any of the military power of the class) for 3 lvls, and then maybe 3 lvls of soulguard (Fiendish Codex II). So, when will he be powerful enough to challenge St.Cuhbert, whom he was a paladin of, and get away with it?
Requirements:
- he should face the god in person, not the gods avatar
- he should survive
- he should defeat St.Cuhbert in battle
- St.Cuhbert doesn't need to be killed, only defeated
- the paladin should be able to survive the defeated, and angered gods revenge

Something huge. At least St Cuthbert doesn't have Life and Death. He does have Alter Reality, though. Big nasty. That's Wish/Miracle at-will, while you're hammering on his 1000 HP/69 AC/+37 Fort/+34 Ref/+44 Will. And no save-or-dies because of divine immunities, besides which you don't have the casting for it.

[Yukitsu]

And of course, he wouldnt have any divine rank.

2. You don't even receive anything, XP or otherwise, for doing so.

It's like making sock puppets of two gods fight each other. Totally pointless.

Meh. Meets all the needed criteria for the challenge for what I care. Has salient abilities, is ridiculously powerful, and gets killed. You don't need to gain EXP for the encounter to win this challenge.

[Nohwl]

i saw a thread on gleemax a while ago that was about killing tiamat in one round. it might be helpful.

http://forums.gleemax.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-389626

hopefully it works.

[Lamech]

One would need mind blank on at all times to plan this whole thing out. After that it shouldn't be to hard to use whatever level of cheese you want to kill a god. Then it really just depends on how abusive you want to be. Or you could use diplomacy to have someone bigger do it.

[sentaku]

Make sure you can't die.
Create a long lasting, really large area of effect which puts everyone into suspended animation.
Now well no one can do anything:
Make sure everyone things your awesome.
Wait for the gods to loose power.

Now have everyone come out of suspended animation
You should have a massive amount of worshipers, thus you can have a divine rank.
Have fun.

What level does one need to do this?

[afroakuma]

Once again, though, one shouldn't attempt to off a deity with cheese. Any god worth his or her salt can use the same cheese (and better), faster than you can blink, along with new and wondrously sadistic kinds of cheese.

If this is not the case, then one of two things has happened:

A) You are a god, of greater divine rank than your opponent.

B) You're not fighting a god.

[Gamiress]

This reminds me, does anyone remember where they might have listed Lolth's CR? I can't find it.

[magic9mushroom]

Deities have no CR. Stated outright in Deities and Demigods.

[magic9mushroom]

Once again, though, one shouldn't attempt to off a deity with cheese. Any god worth his or her salt can use the same cheese (and better), faster than you can blink, along with new and wondrously sadistic kinds of cheese.

If this is not the case, then one of two things has happened:

A) You are a god, of greater divine rank than your opponent.

B) You're not fighting a god.

c) You played the batman game better than the god.

[afroakuma]

In which case, you're not fighting a god, or you yourself are a god.

[Gamiress]

Deities have no CR. Stated outright in Deities and Demigods.

Funny, I remember seeing a lot of lesser powers statted out in the past...

[magic9mushroom]

In which case, you're not fighting a god, or you yourself are a god.

Non sequitur.

[magic9mushroom]

Funny, I remember seeing a lot of lesser powers statted out in the past...

They're generally demon lords or archdevils. Not full-fledged gods.

And the gods are statted out. They just don't have a CR.

[afroakuma]

Non sequitur.

I should think it does follow that a mortal, whose existence spans (normally) a pitiful fraction of a deity's, whose power spans a pitiful fraction of a deity's, who manages via Batman exploitation of abilities that can be accessed by mortals (which by definition are therefore accessible to the deity as well) to slay a deity, a being who by very definition out-Proper Nouns Proper Noun (given Proper Noun is a mortal), should be smart enough to guess that the aforementioned feat couldn't be that simple.

Conversely, when a deity is slain by being out-Batmanned, it can be discerned that, as a deity can become the optimal Batman up to its own power level, its slayer must necessarily be at least its equal (and therefore a deity).

If a mortal manages to lay low a deity by conventional heroic methods, that's one thing. But when the cheese comes out, expect the gods to do the same and be better at it.

Every time a wizard says a deity's name, or comes within range of a holy site or a worshipper, that deity's going to be able to get him on radar. Long before an ambitious wizard gets to the point where he could have a chance against even a demigod, that demigod's going to know. You're going to be on his list, and the first gate you ever open is going to have a decked out, pissed-off planar being waiting to step through and have a "discussion" with you about plots against its patron.

[Narmoth]

Something huge. At least St Cuthbert doesn't have Life and Death. He does have Alter Reality, though. Big nasty. That's Wish/Miracle at-will, while you're hammering on his 1000 HP/69 AC/+37 Fort/+34 Ref/+44 Will. And no save-or-dies because of divine immunities, besides which you don't have the casting for it.

Aw, come on, there has to be a way?
I'm not going to take arcane levels, but almost anything else is possible.

[magic9mushroom]

Aw, come on, there has to be a way?
I'm not going to take arcane levels, but almost anything else is possible.

Well, ok, Legendary Commander powering Epic Spellcasting could do it with the Heal seed, using negative energy to bring him to 1d4 hit points and then Energy to kill him. As could the old "I summon X, where X is CR 2000" fallback. All you need to do then is stop him teleporting out.

[afroakuma]

I would seriously hesitate to try Epic Spellcasting against a deity, especially an Intermediate or Greater Deity. They'll do it first, and they'll do it better.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

I would seriously hesitate to try Epic Spellcasting against a deity, especially an Intermediate or Greater Deity. They'll do it first, and they'll do it better.That can be said of any tactic, though. They're gods. This is essentially a request for cheese, with all cheese banned as soon as someone suggests it.

[SoD]

1. You don't kill a God, you (at best) kill a simulacrum of a god.



And of course, he wouldnt have any divine rank.

2. You don't even receive anything, XP or otherwise, for doing so.

It's like making sock puppets of two gods fight each other. Totally pointless.

Not pointless (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0561.html)! If it turns out that Pelor and Vecna are siblings, that makes it even better!

[afroakuma]

That can be said of any tactic, though. They're gods.

The point I'm trying to make is: if you're actually facing a god, you should go about it the old-fashioned way. If you start pulling serious cheese, expect likewise - and your foe is more qualified by far.

[Yukitsu]

I just realized that a commoner 1 with a vorpal shuriken can possibly kill some god somewhere. It would have to be a bad god, and the odds are one in 400.

[afroakuma]

Nope. All deities are immune to death effects.

[Yukitsu]

It's not tagged as being a death effect, despite it's requisite spell being a death effect. Hence why it works on vampires.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Meh. I still haven't found any character below level 40 that can defeat Ereshkigal, cheese or no cheese.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103476


Pun-Pun? Life-and-Death the first time he attempts to become a Pun-Pun.
Word? Sorry, Instant Counterspell.
Astrally-projecting from a timeless inaccessible plane? Life-and-Death across planar barriers.
Chain-Gate? Sorry, Gate prevented (all deities can block gates)
Diplomancer? Silence as an immediate action. Sorry, can't hear you.

[afroakuma]

It's also not applicable to shuriken.

And it's not a death effect for a very good reason: it doesn't kill.

I'm pretty sure most deities will just chuckle at the loss of their head. Some don't even have heads. And I can think of at least one with five.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Actually, vorpal does destroy most humanoid deities... as long as the weapon used can deal lethal damage to the deity. If the weapon cannot deal lethal damage, vorpal doesn't work.

Then we have Infinite Deflection, contingent Ressurection and other stuff.

[afroakuma]

Actually, vorpal does destroy most humanoid deities...

Instance of this?

[chiasaur11]

Meh. I still haven't found any character below level 40 that can defeat Ereshkigal, cheese or no cheese.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103476


Pun-Pun? Life-and-Death the first time he attempts to become a Pun-Pun.
Word? Sorry, Instant Counterspell.
Astrally-projecting from a timeless inaccessible plane? Life-and-Death across planar barriers.
Chain-Gate? Sorry, Gate prevented (all deities can block gates)
Diplomancer? Silence as an immediate action. Sorry, can't hear you.

How do you prevent the Pun-Puning?

All any diety would see would be a Kobold (ex) Paladin popping out of existence. And if everyone who summons Pazazu, buys a candle of invocation, or learns advanced shapeshifting is murdered, seems a bit too proactive.

[The Glyphstone]

Out of curiosity, Belial, have you ever made a homebrew monster/character/deity that a party would actually be capable of defeating without the exact knowledge of its abilities that it always seems to require?

[Belial_the_Leveler]

How do you prevent the Pun-Puning?
Any greater deity of magic can sense any magic used several weeks before it happens and remembers several weeks after it happens. In addition, they can use remote sensing to perceive the event when they sense it. So if somehow uses shapechanging magic to turn into a Sarrukh, BAM, you're dead-several weeks before you attempt to do it. The Sarrukh race is already dead so the instances would be limited and an evil deity doesn't care about overkill anyway. Besides, if your death was wrongful, they can ressurect you equally easily.


Out of curiosity, Belial, have you ever made a homebrew monster/character/deity that a party would actually be capable of defeating without the exact knowledge of its abilities that it always seems to require?
Yes, as long as they know what general power level to expect and they are of the required level. E.g. a level 70+ party can take on Ereshkigal and win if they are careful even without knowing her exact stats.

[Samb]

There are some modules that let you fight and kill/defeat gods. Lloth and Venca come to mind, and that should give you some idea.
But it should be noted that when you do beat/kill the gods it is always because they are:
1) somehow weakened, busy in some way with other things,
2)or there are special items out there just to kill that god.

Vecna was a greater god in Sigil and used most of his power to stay in Sigil, and the Sword of Kas and the hand of Vecna were used together to make him even more vulnerable.

Orcus had an item in Dead gods that let him slay the god of Mordon, this was after Orcus had risen and not a god himself.

Why is everyone talking about theorticals when concrete examples are right before. Gods have been killed and your assumptions about their power should be based on that (canon).

[afroakuma]

There are some modules that let you fight and kill/defeat gods. Lloth and Venca come to mind, and that should give you some idea.

Lolth was at that time a pseudo-deity, being more of a Demon Prince (and statted accordingly) in those early editions.


Vecna was a greater god in Sigil and used most of his power to stay in Sigil, and the Sword of Kas and the hand of Vecna were used together to make him even more vulnerable.

You also didn't kill him, merely weakened him to the point that he got mailed out of Sigil the fast way. And yes, it took a hell of a lot to get there.


Orcus had an item in Dead gods that let him slay the god of Mordon, this was after Orcus had risen and not a god himself.

Tenebrous had an ancient magic at his disposal, so powerful it was literally eating away at his being just knowing it. And Primus was not a god.

[Samb]

Lolth was at that time a pseudo-deity, being more of a Demon Prince (and statted accordingly) in those early editions.



You also didn't kill him, merely weakened him to the point that he got mailed out of Sigil the fast way. And yes, it took a hell of a lot to get there.



Tenebrous had an ancient magic at his disposal, so powerful it was literally eating away at his being just knowing it. And Primus was not a god.

Like I said, unless extraordinary circumtances exist, one cannot defeat a god.
I think Primis was a god since in Orcus' description it said that a god was killed on his quest for his staff.

[afroakuma]

The god he killed was Maanzecorian. Actually, I think he picked off one or two more.

[magic9mushroom]

The point I'm trying to make is: if you're actually facing a god, you should go about it the old-fashioned way. If you start pulling serious cheese, expect likewise - and your foe is more qualified by far.

Um... what?

Your argument is nonsensical.

What makes "the old-fashioned way" any more likely to succeed, given that it takes longer and thus gives them more opportunities to use cheese on you?

@Belial: Research a carbon copy of Dictum, since Instant Counterspell doesn't stack with Improved Counterspell. Also, you seem to have forgotten that Eldritch Theurge should only give 1/2 advancement after level 10. And you didn't explain half the abilities.

Besides that:

Yes, you, as the DM, can horribly optimise monsters to shred the PCs.

You want a medal?

[afroakuma]

Um... what?

Your argument is nonsensical.

What makes "the old-fashioned way" any more likely to succeed, given that it takes longer and thus gives them more opportunities to use cheese on you?

A good DM. :smallsmile:

[Samb]

any DM that is any good would out chess any PC. Gods are the prototype of all cheese, and there should be no way a god can be killed unless the story calls for it.

Anyone read the dragonlance novels were that evil dragon queen was killed? The elf king that killed her was at most level 5. So should we assume any level 5 elf fighter can take on a god? No because another god had to give up his divinity for her to be slain.

If pun-pun was to exist and wanted to kill the gods (or become one) a DM would simpily have to make use of the fact that gods are not bound to space-time and just kill pun-pun before he was even born. The wizards boards already have a time traveler build to do this and I'm sure a god could easily do this as well.

[lsfreak]

If pun-pun was to exist and wanted to kill the gods (or become one) a DM would simpily have to make use of the fact that gods are not bound to space-time and just kill pun-pun before he was even born. The wizards boards already have a time traveler build to do this and I'm sure a god could easily do this as well.
Emphasis mine. I don't know what the build details, but unfortunately for that argument, the gods have very real stat blocks. They can't just do something because they feel like it. If we're going by RAW, yes you can kill a god, because you have everything you need to kill them. Whether or not a "good DM" would let it happen is irrelevant in this thought experiment - by RAW you can.

[afroakuma]

Whether or not a "good DM" would let it happen is irrelevant in this thought experiment - by RAW you can.

I concur that RAW does give you that ability. I also argue that by RAW, a deity can out-cheese a PC without breaking a sweat.

What I am saying is that a good DM will play the god to its appropriate level and scope of power as compared to the game at large. If the players are all method actors who enjoy the epic storytelling, the deity will still be a master challenge. If the players twink out their characters, marry Tippy and Batman and take over the Elemental Plane of Cheese, the deity will still be a master challenge. Harder, actually, since deity cheese can include autofailing some of your spells and uncapped miracle at will.

[Samb]

I concur that RAW does give you that ability. I also argue that by RAW, a deity can out-cheese a PC without breaking a sweat.

What I am saying is that a good DM will play the god to its appropriate level and scope of power as compared to the game at large. If the players are all method actors who enjoy the epic storytelling, the deity will still be a master challenge. If the players twink out their characters, marry Tippy and Batman and take over the Elemental Plane of Cheese, the deity will still be a master challenge. Harder, actually, since deity cheese can include autofailing some of your spells and uncapped miracle at will.
Exactly. While players can get as creative as they want a god also has all the means to do exactly the same cheese and more if they so desired. If a DM can't figure out a combo used by the the PCs and copy it then he/she is a bad DM. Just look at the RAW and you can clearly see that they have alot more to work with when it comes to "cheese".

They are all at least 20 HD (almost always with 20 class levels as well) and get bonuses to every stat according to their rank. Rolling ones does not mean it will automatically fail saves (so even luck might not factor into it), a mere 6 ranks makes them immune to almost everything, even when it isn't your turn a god can still do profollio free actions (up to 20). And you can bet they can do any and everything a mere PC can do.

The time magic trick basically works like this: a time traveler that is older than pun-pun (hence able to travel further back than pun-pun), prestores some power into a jar/item to power his time travel. He uses it to travel back and the jar "refills". He keeps on doing this until he at the time where he can kill pun pun's parents. That is an over simplication but the bare bones of that build.

Now one of the most reliable to even out the playing field is the spire right under Sigil where even greater gods' powers are annulled. Good luck with that though.

[magic9mushroom]

I concur that RAW does give you that ability. I also argue that by RAW, a deity can out-cheese a PC without breaking a sweat.

What I am saying is that a good DM will play the god to its appropriate level and scope of power as compared to the game at large. If the players are all method actors who enjoy the epic storytelling, the deity will still be a master challenge. If the players twink out their characters, marry Tippy and Batman and take over the Elemental Plane of Cheese, the deity will still be a master challenge. Harder, actually, since deity cheese can include autofailing some of your spells and uncapped miracle at will.

Except that there is no logical reason why the deity won't use cheese anyway. You've invoked DM fiat in a theoretical thread.:smallannoyed:

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Research a carbon copy of Dictum, since Instant Counterspell doesn't stack with Improved Counterspell.
Says who? In any case, a greater deity of magic will know the spell you research a dozen weeks before you research it. It can also invent new spells without researching them.

Eldritch Theurge should only give 1/2 advancement after level 10.
You're thinking of Mystic Theurge. Warlock isn't a caster and thus a dual caster progression should not apply. Epic Eldritch Theurge should just progress Eldritch Blast and spells, like Arcane Trickster progresses Sneak Attack and spells.



Yes, you, as the player, can horribly optimise your build to shred the monsters. But if the DM optimises exactly as much as you do, odds are you get TPK.
Fixed it for you. And the above is exactly why deicide in low levels isn't really possible.


Except that there is no logical reason why the deity won't use cheese anyway. You've invoked DM fiat in a theoretical thread.
Because it doesn't have to. And because if the DM optimises more than the PCs, the fight isn't fair. In a fair fight-that is, a fight where both the deity and the PC optimise equally well and are played equally competently-the PCs will usually lose.

[Heliomance]

It's quite easy, actually, though it does require lots of cheese.

Two words. Lucky Shuriken.

[magic9mushroom]

Says who? In any case, a greater deity of magic will know the spell you research a dozen weeks before you research it. It can also invent new spells without researching them.

Invent without researching, yes. Invent without researching in the middle of battle on someone else's turn, no. And I'm not going to get into the whole foresight thing, because it a) doesn't make much sense and b) can be negated by time travel.

[quote]You're thinking of Mystic Theurge. Warlock isn't a caster and thus a dual caster progression should not apply. Epic Eldritch Theurge should just progress Eldritch Blast and spells, like Arcane Trickster progresses Sneak Attack and spells.

Of course I am, and any sane person would use the analogy rather than ignoring it.


Fixed it for you. And the above is exactly why deicide in low levels isn't really possible.

...

Monsters are inherently optimisable more than PCs, because the DM can just make things up, as you do in your deity. And to optimise monsters for combat (especially against the PCs specifically) in many cases breaks verisimilitude and is hence a no-no. Playing intelligently sure, playing as if the monster's mission is to kill the PC no.


Because it doesn't have to. And because if the DM optimises more than the PCs, the fight isn't fair. In a fair fight-that is, a fight where both the deity and the PC optimise equally well and are played equally competently-the PCs will usually lose.

You didn't answer my question.

[bosssmiley]

BECMI: Ideally only when you become an Immortal yourself (effectively level 37+)
1E: super high level (~20th+), probably with the help of crossover Gamma World tech
2E: Not possible (see "Planescape")
3E: Epic Level Joke Book territory (20th+), but only with a DM asleep at the wheel
4E: super-high level (~25th+)

Stabbing godlings in the face and taking their shineys is an ancient and honourable part of the D&D character life cycle. :smallwink:

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Invent without researching, yes. Invent without researching in the middle of battle on someone else's turn, no
Yes, actually. All abilities take a standard action to use unless they state otherwise. Then the deity can use twin Celerity as an immediate action, timestop as the first action to invent the spell needed to counterspell and put up a Twinned Spellshift then any spell that gives immunity to daze, counterspell and choose "backlash" as the option in the spellshift. Then you have to make 2 DC 666 fortitude saves or not only lose the spell but be dazed yourself for 24 hours because the spellshift is also persisted.

Or, if you don't particularly like titanic spell combinations, the deity could grow 1600 feet tall as a free action and do attack of opportunity with Annihilating Strike dealing a crapload of damage and you'd have to make a DC 666 fortitude save or be utterly destroyed. In both cases you either die or lose the spell you spent days trying to cast.


And I'm not going to get into the whole foresight thing, because it a) doesn't make much sense and b) can be negated by time travel.

Nope and nope. Powerful deities in all myths have been known to know the future to some extent or posess near-omniscience; it makes perfect sense. Also, there is no time-travel without performing a chaotic act (disrupting the timestream), time-related act (duh) or magical act (the magic used to initiate the timetravel). Any deity with Chaos, Time or Magic as portofolios will sense your attempt to time-travel several weeks in advance and can easily prevent it if they wanted. For reasons to want to stop you, the possibility of deicide is enough.


As for DM fiat, monster optimisation and making things up, there is no need to. Any greater deity can craft artifacts, given time. Any greater deity can get infinite time by manipulating time traits. So they can make whatever artifact they want and the potential godslayer has no say in it.

For my own deity, nothing has been made up. All powers are either normal SDAs grouped up for simplicity's sake, template abilities or class abilities. The sole exception is her divine realm being all of the netherworld but there is a precedent; Deities and Demigods lists several deities that have special domains.
The epic progression for Eldritch Theurge doesn't work if you try to make it like Mystic Theurge. MT just progresses spells. ET has a crapload of abilities that aren't spellcasting. Eldritch Blast damage. Damage Reduction. Spellblasts. Eldritch Spellweave. How do you handle those? In any case, even for half progression of caster level, the Divine Rank bonus of +19 still reaches the listed CL of 75. (it's already intentionally lowered to avoid blasphemy crap)
The artifacts are artifacts. Deities can make those. Even so, all their abilities can be replicated by standard spell effects or existing item effects. Pick an artifact and I'll describe how to acheive the same effect via spells/items.

[afroakuma]

It's quite easy, actually, though it does require lots of cheese.

Two words. Lucky Shuriken.

Shuriken cannot be used as a melee weapon, so they cannot have the vorpal ability.

In any event, deities shouldn't die simply because some lowly mortal magic removed the head of their corporeal form. They are more than uber humanoids. And again, vorpal is tricky, because it is an ability ruled by DM fiat. It doesn't explicitly kill things, it decapitates them, and notes as an afterthought that many kinds of creatures cannot live without their heads.


Invent without researching, yes. Invent without researching in the middle of battle on someone else's turn, no. And I'm not going to get into the whole foresight thing, because it a) doesn't make much sense and b) can be negated by time travel.

A greater deity of magic is likely to be holding the reins on your time travel. Enjoy the first million years.


And to optimise monsters for combat (especially against the PCs specifically) in many cases breaks verisimilitude and is hence a no-no.

To not optimize a deity against a cheese-wielding PC flat-out disintegrates verisimilitude.


You've invoked DM fiat in a theoretical thread.:smallannoyed:

Which is unfortunately the factor you've neglected. Deities moreso than almost any other opponent are DM fiat incarnate. The question isn't, and cannot be, "when would my cheese be advanced enough to kill a god?" because the answer is by definition: When you are a stronger god.

[magic9mushroom]

Nope and nope. Powerful deities in all myths have been known to know the future to some extent or posess near-omniscience; it makes perfect sense. Also, there is no time-travel without performing a chaotic act (disrupting the timestream), time-related act (duh) or magical act (the magic used to initiate the timetravel). Any deity with Chaos, Time or Magic as portofolios will sense your attempt to time-travel several weeks in advance and can easily prevent it if they wanted. For reasons to want to stop you, the possibility of deicide is enough.

You don't get it.

If they sense my timetravel and stop it, they've just created a time paradox and the universe tears itself apart. If they don't, I timetravel to an extent such that they can't anticipate anything because it's too far in the future. And am then very careful to not create a paradox myself.

The problem with foresight isn't that it's unprecedented. It's that it violates causality and opens a huge squirming can of worms that no DM wants to deal with.

[afroakuma]

If they sense my timetravel and stop it, they've just created a time paradox and the universe tears itself apart.

Er... from not letting you play in the time stream? From holding the door shut? That's like saying a deity who senses fission and annuls it will cause a nuclear explosion.


If they don't, I timetravel to an extent such that they can't anticipate anything because it's too far in the future.

I have bad news: said deity doesn't neet to see that far into the future, because it will be there. And killing you in a future you can time-travel to won't cause a paradox. Heck, it won't even cause one duck. :smallbiggrin:


The problem with foresight isn't that it's unprecedented. It's that it violates causality and opens a huge squirming can of worms that no DM wants to deal with.

In a game where mortals have spells that can tell them the future, this argument is irrelevant.

[Yukitsu]

Shuriken cannot be used as a melee weapon, so they cannot have the vorpal ability.

As far as I can see, the only restrictions are that it must be on a slashing weapon. I can find no indication that it must be a melee weapon.


In any event, deities shouldn't die simply because some lowly mortal magic removed the head of their corporeal form. They are more than uber humanoids. And again, vorpal is tricky, because it is an ability ruled by DM fiat. It doesn't explicitly kill things, it decapitates them, and notes as an afterthought that many kinds of creatures cannot live without their heads.

Exceptions are stated. They are humanoids, and mostly not undead, making them vulnerable to the effects, except for cases such as Vecna. Deities and demigods doesn't state any form of immunity to the effect in any particular gods stat block either, and since HP damage can kill them, one would assume some form reliance on having their body not in pieces to survive.

In addition, assuming an ubercharger did manage to connect, a god can and will die from a lowly mortal mundane lance punching through him. Gods are not invincible for arbitrary reasons from everything below godly.


Which is unfortunately the factor you've neglected. Deities moreso than almost any other opponent are DM fiat incarnate. The question isn't, and cannot be, "when would my cheese be advanced enough to kill a god?" because the answer is by definition: When you are a stronger god.

Gods as written aren't actually that well made or optimized. It's simply a matter of picking the right god.

[Alleine]

YIf they sense my timetravel and stop it, they've just created a time paradox and the universe tears itself apart.

Care to elaborate how?

Lets not forget to mention anyone who tries to upset time or deities has a horde of inevitables to deal with, Quaruts and Varakhuts respectively. Granted if you're in a god-killing mood the inevitables will likely prove a minor annoyance.

[afroakuma]

As far as I can see, the only restrictions are that it must be on a slashing weapon. I can find no indication that it must be a melee weapon.

It's undeclared, but check the tables. They narrow what is and is not allowed per type. Ranged weapons cannot be vorpal, wounding, dancing, defending, of disruption, spell storing etc. per the Ranged Weapon Special Properties table.


Exceptions are stated. They are humanoids

In shape only. Most are of the outsider type.


and since HP damage can kill them

HP damage can kill ghosts. Ooze swarms. HP doesn't represent just corporeal stability.


one would assume some form reliance on having their body not in pieces to survive


A deity is immune to polymorphing, petrification, or any other attack that alters its form.

So it's not a death effect - is it form-altering? That would disqualify it. Vorpal needs classification to determine whether a deity is inherently immune or not. Is it precision? Massive damage?

The point is moot, since the shuriken would have to be Epic to get through the deity's DR, and if the deity has other DR, such as DR X/good, the better always applies.

And of course, we're neglecting celerity/greater teleport as a counter to epic vorpal cheese.


In addition, assuming an ubercharger did manage to connect, a god can and will die from a lowly mortal mundane lance punching through him.

Not in one shot he won't. If your ubercharger is twinked out enough to do that much damage in one shot, expect gratuitous unpleasantness to show up in his path during the last charge he'll ever try.


Gods are not invincible for arbitrary reasons from everything below godly.

Gods as written aren't actually that well made or optimized. It's simply a matter of picking the right god.

They're not intended to be. They're also not intended to be fought, and certainly not by optimizers. Should they be, they should be given their due. It's no less than giving a dragon a hoard of magic that it never uses. A deity has the knowledge, powers and resources to do terrible things to anyone who tries doing things the fast way.

My point was that, given a weapon that has a chance (no matter who throws it) to kill a god, said beings will not let that weapon exist, since they run the world. If an epic vorpal shuriken exists, and the gods have no problem with it, then it isn't something they're threatened by. The only counter for this are things like the Snarl, which the gods can't rid themselves of. Vorpal is a mortal enchantment; by definition, the gods can put the kibosh on it.

[Kaiser Omnik]

I'm not necessarily against the idea, but... Why do so many people want to take out gods? Have you not read Greek tragedies? Hubris is bad and leads to much suffering :smalltongue::smallwink:

[Yukitsu]

It's undeclared, but check the tables. They narrow what is and is not allowed per type. Ranged weapons cannot be vorpal, wounding, dancing, defending, of disruption, spell storing etc. per the Ranged Weapon Special Properties table.

Fair enough. And thus, we merely switch the weapon in question to a thrown axe.


In shape only. Most are of the outsider type.

Right. Outsiders that have heads.


HP damage can kill ghosts. Ooze swarms. HP doesn't represent just corporeal stability.

HP damage for the most part destroys the above, it doesn't kill them per se. Things that "die" when reduced to 0 as opposed to reduced to -10 are different in this regard, yet gods die at -10.


So it's not a death effect - is it form-altering? That would disqualify it. Vorpal needs classification to determine whether a deity is inherently immune or not. Is it precision? Massive damage?

It's no more form altering than a massive axe swing to ones neck. If it doesn't have any tag describing such a type, it merely doesn't fit into any of those types, and as such works on its own logic.


The point is moot, since the shuriken would have to be Epic to get through the deity's DR, and if the deity has other DR, such as DR X/good, the better always applies.

The vorpal property does not require any damage to create its effect.


And of course, we're neglecting celerity/greater teleport as a counter to epic vorpal cheese.

Not all gods have alter reality or full wizard spell casting.


Not in one shot he won't.

Yeah, they can.


If your ubercharger is twinked out enough to do that much damage in one shot, expect gratuitous unpleasantness to show up in his path during the last charge he'll ever try.

Not all gods have alter reality or full wizard spellcasting.


They're not intended to be. They're also not intended to be fought, and certainly not by optimizers. Should they be, they should be given their due. It's no less than giving a dragon a hoard of magic that it never uses. A deity has the knowledge, powers and resources to do terrible things to anyone who tries doing things the fast way.

Not all gods by any means. Even assuming intelligent play (which not all gods deserve) one cannot say that they are capable of being unbeatable by "mere mortals" because not all dieties have the resources required to do so, even if they think up a method.


My point was that, given a weapon that has a chance (no matter who throws it) to kill a god, said beings will not let that weapon exist, since they run the world. If an epic vorpal shuriken exists, and the gods have no problem with it, then it isn't something they're threatened by. The only counter for this are things like the Snarl, which the gods can't rid themselves of. Vorpal is a mortal enchantment; by definition, the gods can put the kibosh on it.

Not all gods have alter reality, and the abolishment of forces different from the divine (ie. the arcane) are largely out of their jurisdiction as far as defining the laws of their use. And again, gods can't simply re-write the rules of the universe. Even alter reality has limitations to it, including when used against mortals. Abolishing the rules of magic to unmake reality is within the realm of overdieties, whom are not inclined to help the mere dieties any more than Pelor would swoop in to rescue dirt farmer Ted when he's being attacked by kobolds.

[Heliomance]

Shuriken cannot be used as a melee weapon, so they cannot have the vorpal ability.


The Lucky Shuriken build has nothing to do with being vorpal. It involves taking small shuriken for the 1d2 damage die, and adding an ability that lets you reroll any time you get a 1 on a damage die, and an ability that lets you reroll and add any time you roll max damage - ie, 2. That can kill anything.

[Yukitsu]

It's an infinite chain, and as such was banned by the OP.

[Heliomance]

It's not a chain of anything. It's a single attack that happens to do infinite damage.

Be that as it may, there are only two ways to kill a god. Either by using Real Ultimate Cheese - which gets shouted down every time it's suggested - or by being very high Epic.

[Dr Bwaa]

If they sense my timetravel and stop it, they've just created a time paradox and the universe tears itself apart.

I see what you're trying to say here, but it's not true. You mean to say that the progression is:

1) I time travel
2) two months before that, the deity senses the time travel and prevents me from doing it
3) This makes the deity unable to sense the act, causing a paradox.

However, the deity doesn't have to sense your actual travel, presumably you can't just time-travel at will; you need a spell or power or ritual or whatever first. A deity able to sense your time travel will also sense the creation/discovery of the ritual or whatever, and simply stop you from completing it or just send someone to kill you sometime between you doing the ritual and your actual time travel.

The other reason that this doesn't work is because all deities have this foresight, not just in relation to time things. Thus, they are always informed of things to come which effect them, their followers and their domains, and if this is the case, then all the actions they take are influenced by that information, including actions that would cause what they foresaw never to occur. Therefore, we actually are forced to accept the "Matrix/Heroes/half-a-dozen other things" theory of foresight, which is that when one sees into the future in any way, one sees the future as it would have unfolded had it not been forseen, given that the seer's new knowledge irrevocably changes, as soon as it is acquired, the future to which it refers.

It occurred to me that certain Greek myths deny this theory, but even they generally concur (but differently). Most of the stories relating to Prophesy in any way (just pick one) have three phases, all the same:

-Person A hears prophesy somehow relating to himself, usually badly
-Person A desperately tries to avoid this fate
-Person A causes the prophesy to be fulfilled, through actions that he would not have taken had he not heard the prophesy in the first place.

Again, we have knowledge of the future coloring decisions in the present (as it must!). In the Greeks' case, Fate already took into account that Person A would hear the prophesy, and told it accordingly. Whereas, if a God looked into the future and saw you time-traveling to kill him, he is not bound by the ancient Greek Fates, and simply kills you off before you complete your agenda. This alters the future that he saw, but not the past, and does not create a paradox because the progression, rather than the one at the top of this big post, is as follows:

1) it becomes two months (or whatever the limit is on this deity's foresight) before I time travel. The deity learns of it.
2) The deity kills me or otherwise prevents my future time travel.
3) A new future is revealed to the deity, in which he lives.

The logic behind this is that it has probably happened an arbitrary number of times already, because by its nature, no trace would have been left; the story would remain untold, because the only one who ever saw the future in which I successfully time travel was the deity who stopped me from doing it.

That, right there, is why no one kills deities. They know what you're doing months in advance and stop you before you're ready (If you think you can stop them from stopping you, then why weren't you killing the deity then instead of three months later? You weren't, because you weren't ready, which means you cannot keep them from foiling your plans.

At best, you're going to have to choose a God who cannot sense your intents to time travel and so forth, and try to slay him. Assuming you could then time travel* you travel far into the future and do all your preparations there. Then, you travel back to a time too far out for the god to have sensed his death before you time traveled (thus keeping you from being auto-slain on principle), so somewhere in between your original time jump date and whenever you went to do your preparations. Then you slay the God, ensuring that he won't be around in the future to mess up your preparations.

*You can't rightly assume this. Were I the God of Time I would auto-fail any time-traveling spell or effect on principle, just because of this sort of foolish mortal behavior.

Conclusion:
A bard with the fanaticism bit seems at least possible, given that while you're becoming a deity yourself your goal is truly just to 'help people, make friends, blah blah whatever whatever' and you manage, therefore, to keep the deities from preventing your ascension. Meaning that I'm standing with those on the side of "When you are a stronger God."

[Lamech]

A plan to kill a deity:
Greater deities are a pain in the ass to kill, they can see into the future, auto get 20's, ect. They are much to difficult to eliminate with out resorting to artifacts. Intermediate deities on the other hand can NOT see into the future, so no killing you before it happens, of course, depending on interpretations of mind-blank and portfolio sense, you thinking about you killing them might count so lets go down to lesser deities.

First off, don't be an idiot, have a mind blank up at all times, don't say their name or get close to a place of worship. If your victim knows your planning this they WILL kill you. I would suggest some self researched anti-scrying things too. I also suggest not even thinking about diecide until your nice and wrapped up in anti-scries.

We need to have a method of attacking the deity, if I'm allowed to use artifacts, DMM persisted time stops and get a sphere of annilation touching the deity and leave very quickly, or just use a fate card and erase the deity from the timeline. But really where's the fun in that?

So here will be my build to slay the deity, beguiler 20 and tainted scholar one, and I'm going to need a con of 34 I think to pull this off. Get a corruption score or 122, cast wish and teleport one deity per caster level into a nice hot star. Unless one of them has a really high will save (+63 or more) they need a natural twenty, spell resistance doesn't work 'cause of beguiler 20. You just got a lot of xp! I suggest leaving the cosmology very quickly, then a dimensional anchor would be a good idea to keep the same thing from happening to you (which deities conviently are immune too, so no they can't protect themselves with it.)

P.S. The wish version is the transport travelers, its nicely defined. Tainted scholar is from hero's of horror, replace with circle magic or some other method of DC boosting in taint isn't running around. Beguiler is from PHII.
Although a summary is a lethal attack and not get seen before firing it.


They're not intended to be. They're also not intended to be fought, and certainly not by optimizers. Should they be, they should be given their due. It's no less than giving a dragon a hoard of magic that it never uses. A deity has the knowledge, powers and resources to do terrible things to anyone who tries doing things the fast way.
Are they powerful? Yes, I think its safe to assume they can kill your character as a standard action. Do they have a lot of knowledge? Yes. Are they all knowing? No, at least not according to the standard rules; dieties have very powerful, but defined and defeatable methods of info gathering. Of course, a DM is free to change it, but by core they lack omniscience.


My point was that, given a weapon that has a chance (no matter who throws it) to kill a god, said beings will not let that weapon exist, since they run the world. If an epic vorpal shuriken exists, and the gods have no problem with it, then it isn't something they're threatened by. The only counter for this are things like the Snarl, which the gods can't rid themselves of. Vorpal is a mortal enchantment; by definition, the gods can put the kibosh on it.
They don't run the world. They are powerful, and have large amounts of resources. But they don't even make a habit of killing Ur-Priests. There ablities are defined. The gods have to see something coming to use there powers to stop it. Thats often ignored in kill a god things, but getting the first shot is possible if one is careful.


The Lucky Shuriken build has nothing to do with being vorpal. It involves taking small shuriken for the 1d2 damage die, and adding an ability that lets you reroll any time you get a 1 on a damage die, and an ability that lets you reroll and add any time you roll max damage - ie, 2. That can kill anything.
What ablities are these and what book are they in? I'm in a campaign where I was told to make the most optimized character possible and I want to demonstrate stuff like this.

[Flickerdart]

There's a reason that gods don't just reshape reality the way they feel like it, and need mortals to do it for them. That reason is: other gods. Maybe Vecna likes your style, and when you charge Mystra with your lance, is going to help you out a bit so that Mystra can't deity-cheese you down. Or at least stop Mystra from interfering until you're face to face. If gods could tell the future and just delete people from reality, you wouldn't have St. Cuthbert, or Vecna himself, because opposing gods could just snipe them off before they got uppity.

[Gamiress]

Numbers aren't everything.

I have a character whose raison d'etre is to storm the Demonweb Pits and put Lolth to the sword. He's fully aware of the consequences of failure, and they're what keeps him awake at night. The DM likes the idea.

It's the DM's job, at this point, to have the party fight something related to Lolth once or twice an adventure. Someday, when we're high enough level to justify it, maybe my character will get his chance. Maybe Lolth will kick his ass laughing, toss him back out of the Abyss and let him stew on it.

The situation is almost entirely DM fiat here. I think the question should have been phrased more like "What level can a party fight a deity?" In which case I'd say high 20s is a good spot for a DM to say, "wanna challenge a god?"

[Alleine]

PCs can actually have a good chance to take out a god, depending on which god it is they're after. Any of the main deities would be able to zap almost anyone because they're all pretty up there in terms of Divine Rank. Your best bet is nail all the demigods, they are pathetically weak as far as gods go, and there is a very real chance of beating some of them. Case and point: Zuoken, god of monks.

[afroakuma]

Right. Outsiders that have heads.

*shrug* DM's jurisdiction whether a headless god dies. I'd say a god's chosen form has no bearing on its actual entity, myself.


HP damage for the most part destroys the above, it doesn't kill them per se.

Well, let's be fair, you can't kill a ghost. :smalltongue:


It's no more form altering than a massive axe swing to ones neck. If it doesn't have any tag describing such a type, it merely doesn't fit into any of those types, and as such works on its own logic.

And it's own logic is DM fiat, with some exceptions granted to specific creatures to either explicitly die (vampires) or explicitly survive (golems, other undead).


The vorpal property does not require any damage to create its effect.

Fine, not explicitly, but would you as a DM say that a weapon incapable of damaging a foe can still sever a portion of its body?


Not all gods have alter reality or full wizard spell casting.

Some do, and they can employ that particular cheese. Others can just use miracle to grab the wizard spell of their choosing. At will, no less.


Not all gods have alter reality or full wizard spellcasting.

Not all characters have a full complement of the exact suite of feats and magical items needed to pull off an uber-build. Wait, they do? What a coincidence, this deity likewise has abilities you didn't see coming, on the grounds that the power level of this campaign is different!

If you're twinked out enough to one-shot a deity, that deity should likewise be twinked out enough to retroactively burn you from existence down to your third birthday. You can't say, "my character has access to more sourcebooks than god X." God X was designed to incorporate as little outside of core as possible, and that self-supported. I wouldn't send a core-only Szass Tam against a Compete Arcane, Complete Mage, Magic of Faerun and Spell Compendium-wielding party.


Not all gods by any means. Even assuming intelligent play (which not all gods deserve)

I'll grant that, although even Hercules has Int 20.


one cannot say that they are capable of being unbeatable by "mere mortals"

Verisimilitude demands it. Unless your "mere mortals" are the first of their kind ever, there's no excuse for someone not to have beaten them to the punch if it's that easy.


because not all dieties have the resources required to do so, even if they think up a method.

Taking Deities & Demigods entirely at face value leaves out godly minions, worshippers and real portfolio influence. Planar ally spells send for one of the deity's servants, of which he's got enough to send a fair number. You have to be able to wade through uncountable minions, impossible planar conditions, uncapped miracles etc. to get to a deity, while it can spend an unreasonable amount of time cracking off obstacles on an impossible scale. The book even says it: deicide is simply not the cut-and-dried affair that taking down a solo monster is. Among other things, they're likely to wield an artifact or two to supplement their powers. The Sword of See It, You Die poses a problem for many adventurers, especially when combined with the Shield of Open Your Eyes.


Not all gods have alter reality

My point here was that, of all gods combined, one or more will have it.

and the abolishment of forces different from the divine (ie. the arcane) are largely out of their jurisdiction as far as defining the laws of their use.

Vorpal is within those bounds.

And again, gods can't simply re-write the rules of the universe. Even alter reality has limitations to it, including when used against mortals.

But they can collectively say, "this thing made by mortal magic, which one of us governs, can't harm us." Or alternately, "this thing is beyond mortal magic to make."

[Yukitsu]

You're moving the goalposts. It's not "Commoner 1 with vorpal axe can kill all the gods as they conspire against him." but rather, it's "commoner 1 with vorpal axe can kill a single god one in 400 times." Nor is this some "uber build" with which we can claim the gods should have some splat access. This is a DMG only character. He doesn't even use the PHB because he's an NPC class. Power level of this campaign is really, really low, not high, so I can't fathom why gods should have extra arbitrary abilities anyway, and to point this out "If you can succeed, something is wrong, and as such we have to change it so you can't succeed" is simply an argument that could lead to a circular form if questioned. If people can succeed, then they can succeed, and if power gaming is required to succeed, then it is acceptable.

[afroakuma]

It's not "Commoner 1 with vorpal axe can kill all the gods as they conspire against him." but rather, it's "commoner 1 with vorpal axe can kill a single god one in 400 times."

As a god, would you be comfortable knowing that the weakest yahoo on your world has a 1/400 chance of killing you? Especially when stronger yahoos abound?


Power level of this campaign is really, really low, not high

The commoner one, right? And yet he's got a vorpal throwing axe. Damn those far away trees with their heads that think. :smalltongue:

I was responding to two different ideas there; sorry. For the commoner one, the response was, "Given that any random person wielding this thing would have a 1/400 chance of instantly killing any one of us, shouldn't we collectively collaborate on its nonexistence?"

Come to think of it, the idea of one god keeping a spare hidden away is actually kind of a cool plot hook. Hmm...


I can't fathom why gods should have extra arbitrary abilities anyway

Flavor, function, abilities beyond combat and stuff for combat?


and to point this out "If you can succeed, something is wrong, and as such we have to change it so you can't succeed" is simply an argument that could lead to a circular form if questioned.

Have you met Pun-Pun? He is the incarnate example of the DM needing to apply exactly this logic. In this case, if any average mortal has a chance to kill any deity with a magic item that can be purchased at 12th level, then there's something a little wacky with your cosmology.


If people can succeed, then they can succeed, and if power gaming is required to succeed, then it is acceptable.

If one is power gaming, one's foes should join the fun. I'm fine with some serious minmaxing, provided there's no whining when something savage crashes the party.

[Samb]

I feel like most people that say "cheese> gods" is missing out on what that point of the pun pun thought experiment was about. It is to point out that something is very broken with the system. The idea that vorpal weapons can kill a being made of thought is just silly. Trying to kill them in their own realm is even more ridiculous. Everyone has beaten an avatar, but beating a god is another issue.

People, please look at all the examples of gods being defeated by mortals and see what extraordinary conditions need to be met for that to happen. Can you kill/defeat gods? Yes, it has happened and in canon material too. But always with very specific and hard quests.

Under mundane conditions The outlands are the best place for god-killing since the closer you get to the "center" the more divine power is sealed. That's it. There's a reason why the Athar haven't been wiped out yet.

The Deities and demigods leaves the decision of whether a god can be killed or not to the DMs, but canon material clearly states you can. Now if you want to tell me exactly how you would go about doing that, without any extraordinary circumstances then maybe you have an argument.

The OP asked at what level can you kill a god? Please just answer the question instead of just saying "they have HP hence they can be killed" or "they have heads hence they can be killed" How will you get their Hp to zero? How will you hit a metaphysical organ? How will you bypass all its defenses, its uncapped wishes, its 20+ free actions, its immunities?

Not one of you ever got specific enough hence all your arguments are null. All your cheese is easily done when you consider that most gods have 30-50 class levels (not including their HD), and hence more feats (and better feats) at their disposal than you can poke a stick with.

Here's the challenge: assuming that the gods are just as creative as you, but you can be as high level as you want, and no specific artifact or cosmic event were to occur,
at what level would be would be needed till your sheer quantity of feats and spells overwhelms a god's quality of spells/feats. No more philosophical debates just pure and simple logic.


PS a simple estamate as to how long it will take for said PC to reach this epic of epic level would be nice. The factol of the Fated was a human around 600 years old and was a 20 ranger/ 20 cleric just to give you perceptive. Mortality should not be a limitation in this experiment (just become a Lich! That's what Venca did and it worked out pretty well for him).

[Yukitsu]

As a god, would you be comfortable knowing that the weakest yahoo on your world has a 1/400 chance of killing you? Especially when stronger yahoos abound?

Considering there aren't likely to be 400 people willing to try it, and that the stronger yahoos still only have a one in 400 chance, I'd be fine with it.


The commoner one, right? And yet he's got a vorpal throwing axe. Damn those far away trees with their heads that think. :smalltongue:

I was responding to two different ideas there; sorry. For the commoner one, the response was, "Given that any random person wielding this thing would have a 1/400 chance of instantly killing any one of us, shouldn't we collectively collaborate on its nonexistence?"

Come to think of it, the idea of one god keeping a spare hidden away is actually kind of a cool plot hook. Hmm...

That's just the thing. Gods can easily emulate wish and miracle and a few specific things above and beyond that, but they can't rewrite the fundamental workings of magic, including the erasure of spells and magic, or the magic items. All they can do is spam disjunction, and hope that the likely enraged adventurers don't get 400 irate commoners to throw things at them.


Flavor, function, abilities beyond combat and stuff for combat?

It's one of those david and goliath cases. David shouldn't have won, but his 3 nat 20s happened, and the DM was nice enough to not fiat the goliath as immune to rocks for the sake of proving a point.


Have you met Pun-Pun? He is the incarnate example of the DM needing to apply exactly this logic. In this case, if any average mortal has a chance to kill any deity with a magic item that can be purchased at 12th level, then there's something a little wacky with your cosmology.

Pun-pun requires certain real in game decisions made by the DM, mainly how specific NPCs interact with certain characters. Pazazu has no real reason to grant a wish as opposed to helping the paladin in any other way, and even given the high DC, knowing that Pazazu can aid you via the wish spell is pure assumption on the player part. Even given a knowledge 40 check it isn't guaranteed that you know that he can cast wish, and a DM should have the right to at the very least, randomize the order in which snippets of information are given.

Once the player gets a candle of invocation on the other hand, it's pretty much up for grabs, though I do recall that the recent method requires a book that is incompatible with normal cosmology, and thus with Pazuzu and a normal game setting.


If one is power gaming, one's foes should join the fun. I'm fine with some serious minmaxing, provided there's no whining when something savage crashes the party.

This isn't a game though. This is asking when a party can theoretically beat a single god. Without DM fiat, the party can do so at level 1, or at higher levels with cheese.

[magic9mushroom]

My point was that, given a weapon that has a chance (no matter who throws it) to kill a god, said beings will not let that weapon exist, since they run the world. If an epic vorpal shuriken exists, and the gods have no problem with it, then it isn't something they're threatened by. The only counter for this are things like the Snarl, which the gods can't rid themselves of. Vorpal is a mortal enchantment; by definition, the gods can put the kibosh on it.

Then why do Epic weapons exist, seeing as they bypass deific damage reduction?

The gods aren't omnipotent. They're very powerful, but they don't seem to have the ability to change the way the world works.

EDIT: Most of what Yukitsu said, I'd like to second. And as the OP, I'd like to state:

Gods as written in the D&DG book.

Also, as to those who are wondering what I was talking about with paradoxes:

If a deity uses its foresight to know that you're going to use time travel, and prevents it, it shouldn't have known about it in the first place, as it never happened. Hence it won't have known, and won't have stopped you, so it will know. Paradox.

The act of preventing something through foresight is inherently paradoxical, as the foresight is retroactively nullified by doing so. Paradoxes in D&D are implied to tear reality apart, so a god probably won't make them.

[afroakuma]

Considering there aren't likely to be 400 people willing to try it, and that the stronger yahoos still only have a one in 400 chance, I'd be fine with it.

Would you go cross a crosswalk if you knew that one of the 400 cars passing it that day would be gunning for you? The threat is there, and you can avoid it simply by not crossing that crosswalk. Now apply to a society of people who can locate this madman driver, take his car and toss him in jail. Would you not?


That's just the thing. Gods can easily emulate wish and miracle and a few specific things above and beyond that, but they can't rewrite the fundamental workings of magic, including the erasure of spells and magic, or the magic items.

A god with access to miracle can delete a magic item. Instantly. Anywhere. All it has to do is know about it and have six seconds to work with. Chances are, it can accomplish both long before you get within throwing axe-throwing range.


All they can do is spam disjunction, and hope that the likely enraged adventurers don't get 400 irate commoners to throw things at them.

That's a pretty expensive proposition. Not to mention, many gods have access to circle of death, and almost certainly at least one of the aligned words. Get Out Of My House is rarely so emphatic as when it kills a legion of peasants with godslayers.


It's one of those david and goliath cases. David shouldn't have won, but his 3 nat 20s happened, and the DM was nice enough to not fiat the goliath as immune to rocks for the sake of proving a point.


It's not one of those David and Goliath cases. David played smart, played different, and had the local DM on his side. The point to prove was entirely in his camp.

This is an altogether different and more important point: these are the gods. The sentient pillars of existence. If any given mortal could drop one with a pair of rolled 20s, it would have happened many times over already. There would be none left.


Once the player gets a candle of invocation on the other hand, it's pretty much up for grabs

Never. Pun-Pun is never up for grabs. If you succeed in creating Pun-Pun, even with the candle of invocation, then something is wrong.


This isn't a game though.

It's some sort of a game. :smalltongue:


This is asking when a party can theoretically beat a single god.

Excluding that which a sane DM would sit on.

But let's be fair: a single god doesn't guarantee us a vorpal target in any event. So no matter what the call would be, we can't say whether we're getting Kord, Tiamat or Ghaunadaur. Scratch vorpal from the equation. It's not practical for the OP's question in any event.


Without DM fiat, the party can do so at higher levels with cheese. (Quote edited)

Without DM fiat, the party can do so at higher levels without cheese as well.

[Samb]

So far afroakuma has stated very specific ways to counter mortal cheese, and the best everyone else can come up with a vorpal weapon!?

You fail most epically.

Simple questions people. What level can you kill a god without any specific artifact, cosmic event, pun-pun, or anything. Hell you are even allowed to have as much levels as you want! Straight one on one, no rule raping, no divine intervention.

Stop beating around the bush. WHAT LEVEL IS NEEDED TO KILL A GOD?

[Sstoopidtallkid]

So far afroakuma has stated very specific ways to counter mortal cheese, and the best everyone else can come up with a vorpal weapon!?

You fail most epically.

Simple questions people. What level can you kill a god without any specific artifact, cosmic event, pun-pun, or anything. Hell you are even allowed to have as much levels as you want! Straight one on one, no rule raping, no divine intervention.

Stop beating around the bush. WHAT LEVEL IS NEEDED TO KILL A GOD?How is the god played? That's the issue. If the god is played similarly to how WotC playtested D&D as being played, the god is killed at level 21 at worst. If the god is played using their access to just about everything and "anything you can do I can do better" mentality of Afrokama's, then by definition, you can't beat them, because they know your plan weeks before you do.

[afroakuma]

How is the god played? That's the issue.

Competently.


If the god is played using their access to just about everything

Let's not exaggerate - they do have certain stated limitations. Often very explicit, numeric limitations.


and "anything you can do I can do better" mentality of Afrokama's, then by definition, you can't beat them, because they know your plan weeks before you do.

My mentality is the following: given a cunning plan to gate in and mindrape an army of powerful outsiders to lead against a deity, said deity's going to get wise long before you pull it off. If you begin concocting a new epic spell, "Die Gods Die," someone's going to clue in and plaster you across a few planes. If you so much as breathe the word "sarrukh", you should be prepared to enjoy being incinerated from existence.

If you raid the city, slay the high priestess, rush through the portal that leads to the inner sanctum, take down the varakhut that's caught on to your plot, summon help to hold off meddling minions while you breach the divine protections shielding the throne room, and go in swinging with epic greataxes, the Spell Compendium itself and a rogue so good he's his own flanker, the god should stand up, dust himself off and put up a hell of a fight before falling straight back down.

[Samb]

How is the god played? That's the issue. If the god is played similarly to how WotC playtested D&D as being played, the god is killed at level 21 at worst. If the god is played using their access to just about everything and "anything you can do I can do better" mentality of Afrokama's, then by definition, you can't beat them, because they know your plan weeks before you do.

OKay lets take certain assumptions then:
1) average god of divine rank 15, 20 HD and 40 class levels of any job so 69 HD total.
2) has access to all feats/spells in all source books (epic included)
3) assume a player is also building this god
4) mortal cannot use any feats/abilities in deities and demigods (epic as well)
5) mortal can be as high level as he wants
6) no time traveling for any either side
7) no rule raping (anything that results in an infinite loop).
8) no extraordinary circumstances or divine intervention or middle of outlands

I am hoping that there is an answer to number 5. Maybe 200 would do I think, but you really need feats and spells that can bypass uncapped miracles, free actions, etc etc.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

If you raid the city, slay the high priestess, rush through the portal that leads to the inner sanctum, take down the varakhut that's caught on to your plot, summon help to hold off meddling minions while you breach the divine protections shielding the throne room, and go in swinging with epic greataxes, the Spell Compendium itself and a rogue so good he's his own flanker, the god should stand up, dust himself off and put up a hell of a fight before falling straight back down.But the God knows about that plan long before it happens, too, except that plan is even less likely to work than creating an Epic spell. Pick an optimization level for the god, stick to it, and then I can figure out how to kill it.

[streakster]

...and go in swinging with epic greataxes, the Spell Compendium itself and a rogue so good he's his own flanker ...

So we're talking what? A Kensai wielding an item familiar and a weapon of legacy, a rainbow warsnake and a dvati rogue? This sounds doable. :smallbiggrin:

[afroakuma]

OKay lets take certain assumptions then:
1) average god of divine rank 15, 20 HD and 40 class levels of any job so 69 HD total.

The OP explicitly asks for demigod/lesser god only. Max those. Divine rank 5 and divine rank 10, respectively, are as powerful as they'll get.


2) has access to all feats/spells in all source books (epic included)

Has access to what the players have access to. Outsmart the god on the world he lives in.


3) assume a player is also building this god

The DM will suffice.


4) mortal cannot use any feats/abilities in deities and demigods (epic as well)

I see no harm in the non-divine feats from that book. Mortals have no access to salient divine abilities, so I think this point is moot.


6) no time traveling for any either side

Flat concur. Most gods wouldn't, anyway. It's a dumb move for a god.


7) no rule raping (anything that results in an infinite loop).

Evident.


8) no extraordinary circumstances or divine intervention or middle of outlands

The circumstances are those needed to kill a god: he's at home. He gets home-turf advantage, and all the mad props that grants when one is a god.


Maybe 200 would do I think, but you really need feats and spells that can bypass uncapped miracles, free actions, etc etc.

That's by far an excessive estimate.


But the God knows about that plan long before it happens, too, except that plan is even less likely to work than creating an Epic spell.

Worked on Lolth. :smalltongue:

In seriousness: you would be less of a perceived threat to the deity. If they can't see the use in monitoring you, then you can actually get the jump on them. Doing something threatening on a massive scale beforehand is when they narrow their eyes and smite you.


Pick an optimization level for the god, stick to it, and then I can figure out how to kill it.

No: you pick the optimization level, accessible resources, and then give everyone the same pool to draw from. As I said before: Outsmart the god on the world he lives in.

Actually, I think that sums up my stance on this rather neatly. I like it.

[FatR]

So far afroakuma has stated very specific ways to counter mortal cheese, and the best everyone else can come up with a vorpal weapon!?

You fail most epically.

Simple questions people. What level can you kill a god without any specific artifact, cosmic event, pun-pun, or anything. Hell you are even allowed to have as much levels as you want! Straight one on one, no rule raping, no divine intervention.

Stop beating around the bush. WHAT LEVEL IS NEEDED TO KILL A GOD?
You know, that was answered, like, five times on page 1 of the thread. I don't care about this question either way, because I don't care about the standard cosmology, but what is the point of asking a question, then shouting down all answers? Also conditions like "no rules raping" in what amounts to an optimization challenge are stupid, never mind being totally pointless in general.

Also, if you want more specific answer, you probably should pick a specific god, instead of using some undefined entity that has access to everything a god potentially can access (i.e., everything), as opposed to things, written in his statblock by WotC.

[Yukitsu]

I swear I already responded to this. :smallconfused:


Would you go cross a crosswalk if you knew that one of the 400 cars passing it that day would be gunning for you? The threat is there, and you can avoid it simply by not crossing that crosswalk. Now apply to a society of people who can locate this madman driver, take his car and toss him in jail. Would you not?

Yup. Of those 400 that have the capacity to, only one tries. He only has a one in 400 chance of succeeding. I'm assuming that if each car represents a vorpal weapon, there isn't much chance of there being more than that in existance.


A god with access to miracle can delete a magic item. Instantly. Anywhere. All it has to do is know about it and have six seconds to work with. Chances are, it can accomplish both long before you get within throwing axe-throwing range.

Neither miracle nor wish can emulate 9th level spells, and the destruction of a magic item is a ninth level spell.


That's a pretty expensive proposition. Not to mention, many gods have access to circle of death, and almost certainly at least one of the aligned words. Get Out Of My House is rarely so emphatic as when it kills a legion of peasants with godslayers.

By the time someone organizes this, you would likely have the resources available to cast death ward and silence, but more to the point, hundreds of thousands of commoner 1s without vorpal weapons can get away, or infinitely more hilareously, hundreds of thousands of chickens.


It's not one of those David and Goliath cases. David played smart, played different, and had the local DM on his side. The point to prove was entirely in his camp.

I fail to see how an extremely unlikely shot was playing it smart. By all accounts his plan hinged rather highly on luck and a good throw.


This is an altogether different and more important point: these are the gods. The sentient pillars of existence. If any given mortal could drop one with a pair of rolled 20s, it would have happened many times over already. There would be none left.

The gods are not the pillar of existance. I believe you are thinking of the overdieties when you refer to dieties. As for if it can happen, it can only happen to a select few, weaker dieties, and considering how few demigods there are, I would bet that this does happen fairly frequintly.


Never. Pun-Pun is never up for grabs. If you succeed in creating Pun-Pun, even with the candle of invocation, then something is wrong.

I mean in the theoretical sense that it's possible. As I said, this isn't a game. This is theory.


It's some sort of a game. :smalltongue:

This is the most wordy game evar. :smallwink:


Excluding that which a sane DM would sit on.

A sane DM should give that to the player. If the player manages to pull it of in a real campaign, the fact that it was so unlikely should be rewarded. Note that since they don't have a CR, the reward isn't EXP, and it's not likely money, but it is something to talk about.


But let's be fair: a single god doesn't guarantee us a vorpal target in any event. So no matter what the call would be, we can't say whether we're getting Kord, Tiamat or Ghaunadaur. Scratch vorpal from the equation. It's not practical for the OP's question in any event.

Actually, I was thinking more Hermod. All those gods you mentioned are too big for this to work on.


So far afroakuma has stated very specific ways to counter mortal cheese, and the best everyone else can come up with a vorpal weapon!?

You fail most epically.

Simple questions people. What level can you kill a god without any specific artifact, cosmic event, pun-pun, or anything. Hell you are even allowed to have as much levels as you want! Straight one on one, no rule raping, no divine intervention.

Stop beating around the bush. WHAT LEVEL IS NEEDED TO KILL A GOD?

Still level 1 with a vorpal weapon. Vorpal weapons are not artifacts. They are merely an enchanted weapon, no more powerful than a +1 flaming burst, axiomatic longsword.

[FatR]

In seriousness: you would be less of a perceived threat to the deity. If they can't see the use in monitoring you, then you can actually get the jump on them. Doing something threatening on a massive scale beforehand is when they narrow their eyes and smite you.
Who cares about being less of a perceived threat, when you aren't an actual threat to being that will detect your raid and can smite you across the planes? You basically suggest, that a god's level of competence should automatically scale to that of PC's (usuing its actual abilties against competent godslayers, fighting weak ones head-on, so that they actually can be a threat), which makes asking what level is necessary to kill a god kinda pointless, because the threat level of an (undefined) god in question changes arbitrarily depending on whether you think that suggested tactics are cheesy or not.

[magic9mushroom]

@afroakuma: There is a line between what is "competent" and what is "I am armed with DM fiat and therefore WTFPWN you". In many cases, you are crossing that line, possibly by accident.

Remember, mortals going after gods has a basis in fantasy. Usually, the mortal loses because the deity is a deity, and can do what the mortal does, except better. This is I presume your main point. But sometimes the mortal took the time, stayed under the radar, and did their research well, and they find the chink in the deity's (figurative) armour and vanquish them. Often because the deity is complacent or simply not a combat specialist.

This translates in D&D into using cheese.

Now, your attitude of "the deity will have extreme precautions set up and you'll get your face owned off" is perfectly correct in quite a few cases. For example, Vecna. He fought his way into godhood and is constantly scheming to unseat the other deities. Hell, he's the God Of Scheming. So, it's perfectly acceptable to assume that if a mortal goes to fight him, Vecna'll find out about it in advance, and even if he doesn't his paranoia means you'll likely be against every ward in the book to get to him. And even then, he'll have no hesitation to cheese you into oblivion with Alter Reality or Epic Spells used to their full extent.

I fully accept that, since that's how Vecna would act.

But not every god is that paranoid, and not every god has had the experience with how to break the system that Vecna has. For lack of a better example, take Kord or Gruumsh. Now, both of those are accomplished fighters, and you would NOT want to take either of them in a straight fight. But neither of them would have the guile required, or the inclination, to use their magic cheese (notably, neither of them have full casting in their character levels, Kord has no casting at all). So outcheesing them is possible. I'd call sticking a would-be Godslayer against every possible precaution and then blasting them with Alter Reality DM fiat in these cases, and would probably leave the game of such a DM.

Do you see what I'm getting at?

[Yuki Akuma]

Gods can't use epic spellcasting cheese.

None of them have more than 20 levels in any one spellcasting class.

[magic9mushroom]

Now, as to OP clarification.

Lesser Deity: Since he's the only one in the book that isn't paranoid, and is hence by far the easiest target, Bahamut. Assume you're fighting on the Material Plane, and you've gotten the drop on him.

Demigod: There aren't any in the book, so I'll homebrew one very slightly. Take Juiblex the demon lord (stats in Hordes of the Abyss) and give him divine rank 1 as suggested in Book of Vile Darkness. Salient Divine Abilities would be Divine Fast Healing and Alter Size. Portfolio is obviously Oozes.

Get to figuring out levels!

Only rule is, as stated before: No Infinite Loops.

[magic9mushroom]

Gods can't use epic spellcasting cheese.

None of them have more than 20 levels in any one spellcasting class.

Protip: You don't need more than 20 levels in a spellcasting class to take Epic Spellcasting.

Protip: If a deity has Divine Spellcasting then giving them Epic Spellcasting in exchange for one of their other feats is perfectly logical.

[afroakuma]

Yup. Of those 400 that have the capacity to, only one tries. He only has a one in 400 chance of succeeding. I'm assuming that if each car represents a vorpal weapon, there isn't much chance of there being more than that in existance.

You would take a 1 in 400 chance of dying, and ask your peers to submit to the same risk, even though you could reduce it to no chance whatsoever? Odd.


Neither miracle nor wish can emulate 9th level spells, and the destruction of a magic item is a ninth level spell.


Alternatively, a cleric can make a very powerful request. Casting such a miracle costs the cleric 5,000 XP because of the powerful divine energies involved.

Since the deity makes this request to itself, it can do whatever it wants with a miracle. Considering one of the suggested effects is a mass raise dead and another is a counter to a massively scaled up earthquake, I don't see it being unreasonable that a deity could mimic a 9th level arcane spell.


or infinitely more hilareously, hundreds of thousands of chickens.

Oh no... :smalleek: not... the vorpal chickens!!! :smallbiggrin:


I fail to see how an extremely unlikely shot was playing it smart.

Well, everyone else tried the same old way. And went smoosh. Going for the KO by hitting him in a spot nobody could reach was clever.


The gods are not the pillar of existance. I believe you are thinking of the overdieties when you refer to dieties.

No, I am thinking of FR, for example, where Mystra's death caused the Spellplague. I'm thinking of the Greek pantheon, wherein if Helios was slain, the sun would not rise again.

I suppose it comes down to how your cosmology runs, really. If you play Eberron, for example, and kill a god, its clerics will be the only ones to notice.




I mean in the theoretical sense that it's possible. As I said, this isn't a game. This is theory.


Sure, but it's not particularly helpful to the OP's question. "A level 1 party can do it." hinges on whether the deity even has a head, and whether they have resources far beyond that of the normal level 1 party. It's also extremely inconsistent. Similarly, saying Pun-Pun or Epic Spellcasting isn't helping, because they're known to be broken, and because published deities came out before the ELH, meaning abilities that they should have access to are replaced by knowing every single feat in the PHB, even the useless ones.


Actually, I was thinking more Hermod. All those gods you mentioned are too big for this to work on.


I wasn't commenting on size, I was commenting on "one head, five heads, no heads."


the threat level of an (undefined) god in question changes arbitrarily depending on whether you think that suggested tactics are cheesy or not.

Yes, it does. Note that they are assigned no CR.

The point is moot, though, because answers reliant on cheese don't help in any event. Lucky Shuriken isn't an answer, it's an untenable "I win" button that relies on a really tenuous combination of two things that never should mix.

If you're no threat, then even if it detects you, why should it smite you? Moreover, until you cross the threshold, you're not enough of a blatant threat to it for it to take any action that other gods would resent. Mind blank helps immensely with planning this sort of thing.

On the other hand, no amount of mind blank will stop a god noticing the preparations of a massive Epic Spell. Neither will it stop them from spotting an inordinate number of celestials leaking onto their world and not returning.


@afroakuma: There is a line between what is "competent" and what is "I am armed with DM fiat and therefore WTFPWN you".

Yes there is. There is also a line between "optimized" and "I can do in excess of 1000 damage with a single spell."


But sometimes the mortal took the time, stayed under the radar, and did their research well, and they find the chink in the deity's (figurative) armour and vanquish them.

Exactly. The raid method relies on you going in with something up your sleeve. The Sword of Kas against Vecna. One of Corellon's arrows against Lolth. Take your pick. You could go without, of course, and just bring suitably epic gear.


Often because the deity is complacent

Exactly. As long as the deity has reason to be complacent, you can catch him off guard.


This translates in D&D into using cheese.

See above. It does not.


But not every god is that paranoid, and not every god has had the experience with how to break the system that Vecna has. For lack of a better example, take Kord or Gruumsh. Now, both of those are accomplished fighters, and you would NOT want to take either of them in a straight fight. But neither of them would have the guile required, or the inclination, to use their magic cheese (notably, neither of them have full casting in their character levels, Kord has no casting at all).

Kord has 24 Int, 24 Wis and miracle at will. I'm pretty sure he can think of a few things.


So outcheesing them is possible. I'd call sticking a would-be Godslayer against every possible precaution and then blasting them with Alter Reality DM fiat in these cases, and would probably leave the game of such a DM.

In the same vein that I wouldn't want a player who insists that his hyper-powered Incantatrix is the only one he'll use, to the detriment of other players in the game. I have no problem with taking out the gods, but it should be a challenge, and not merely a mathematical, organizational or logistical one. If you're at the point where you make omelettes with Prismatic Dragon eggs and shake the hands of hecatonchieres at below 20th level, then what is even the point of going after a god? There's not even bragging rights. The DM at that point should just create arbitrary opponent X, ignore your rolls and actions for five rounds and have him fall over after doing exactly half your hit points in damage, since DM fiat is the only thing you can actually fight, and even that is obviously not an obstacle.

However:


Now, as to OP clarification. (Quote Edited)

Get to figuring out levels!

Only rule is, as stated before: No Infinite Loops.

There is clearly no further use for me here, if that is the only rule.

However, you'll get no better answer than what's already been given.

Level 1 with a vorpal throwing axe.

Level 21, at the latest, with Epic Spellcasting.

Several levels between, depending on your flavor of cheese. Incantatrix, ubercharger, Lucky Shuriken... etc.

[Yukitsu]

Gods can't use epic spellcasting cheese.

None of them have more than 20 levels in any one spellcasting class.

Given the nature of this conversation, I find your name hilareous.

[2xMachina]

If going by some poster's post, that deities know weeks before hand and can alter reality then it's impossible in all ways (and would work together all the time to make sure no deities die). And that kills the whole thought experiment. It's totally DM fiat, "Sorry, you die" before you even think of doing deicide.

If you wanna do deicide, choose a good target. Low Divine Ranks deities. Choose a DR 0 if possible (and without relations to any powerful god). Also, since the goal is to kill any 1 of them, you get to choose, so choose smartly. Don't go for the greater ones. Go for the ones without all the power.

DR 0's aren't that bad. Sure, quite strong, but nothing worse than a high lvl epic character.

[Lamech]

If going by some poster's post, that deities know weeks before hand and can alter reality then it's impossible in all ways (and would work together all the time to make sure no deities die). And that kills the whole thought experiment. It's totally DM fiat, "Sorry, you die" before you even think of doing deicide.Only the greater dieties have the future sight. So this means that killing greaters is out and killing any of their friends is out. A DM could orginize an alliance or something and say all gods are protected by a greater diety from mortal threats.
Secondly, dieties have defined powers. They can not alter reality in anyway they want. Granted most of them have the ablity to cast wish as a standard action, with out an xp cost, which is very very deadly.


Lesser Deity: Since he's the only one in the book that isn't paranoid, and is hence by far the easiest target, Bahamut. Assume you're fighting on the Material Plane, and you've gotten the drop on him.

Demigod: There aren't any in the book, so I'll homebrew one very slightly. Take Juiblex the demon lord (stats in Hordes of the Abyss) and give him divine rank 1 as suggested in Book of Vile Darkness. Salient Divine Abilities would be Divine Fast Healing and Alter Size. Portfolio is obviously Oozes.
I'm pretty sure 21 will do it with my wish into a star trick. I'm pretty sure it could be lowered to 17 with circle magic. I'm not good at these theoretical optimizations anyway, so getting it lower will be left to someone better.

And getting the drop on the dieties makes it a lot easier.

[quick_comment]

1) We know it is possible to kill dieties. Vecna did it. Karsus nearly did it and some other people in canon have done it.

2) Afaik, when you kill a god, you get to assume their portfoilo and divine ranks. I assume that is how Vecna et al got their divine ranks.

3) The best way is to start out by eating demigods. Start from the bottom. Once you have divine ranks yourself, things get much easier.

4) By canon, once you have epic spells, you can kill gods. Cast an awesome anti-scrying spell, perhaps on your own pocket plane with the fast time trait. Transmute yourself into some fearsome new creature. Raise an army of custom designed god-killing creatures. Then you research Karsus's avatar.
Epic mass plane shift to the gods plane. Cast Avatar, annihilate the god.

If you want to be extra safe, after you origin of species your minions, go do your research in the SDA-nullifying depths of that spire.

If you want to say that you cant research avatar because of Mystra, then just get shadow-weave and offer to make Mystra one of your targets.

[magic9mushroom]

I'm pretty sure 21 will do it with my wish into a star trick. I'm pretty sure it could be lowered to 17 with circle magic. I'm not good at these theoretical optimizations anyway, so getting it lower will be left to someone better.

And getting the drop on the dieties makes it a lot easier.

There is an extremely cheesy way to do it at level 13, at least against Juiblex. Against Bahamut it would take level 17.

Sublime Ur-Theurge with Theurgic Specialist.

[BlueWizard]

Epic level, for sure by 30th the game gets ridiculous.

When I run games at this level, every adventure has to be earth-shattering merely to get the players attention.