Legend (3.5)

[Caldarin]

Okay, so, divinity in my world is handled Niel Gaiman's American Gods style, that is the more people that believe in a god, the more powerful he or she is.

religion is based around concepts (with the 4 alignments being the main ideas). there are no direct gods, but avatars of the concepts can be brought into existence if the belief in the force's existence is strong enough(this is how angels, demons, devils ect. come into being )

A similar thing happens when a mortal gains a huge, fanatical following. Their belief in his or her power begins to manifest, and in extreme cases, this can lead to the individual becoming immortal and god-like.

I'm thinking about giving PCs an extra stat called 'legend'. This starts at 0 for everyone and increases as they gain reputation. They would gain a bonus to intimidate and diplomacy checks equal to their legend score, and would gain a bonus to attack rolls, damage rolls, saves, and spell DCs equal to 1/3 (or maybe 1/2) of their legend score, reflecting how people telling stories about them gives them power

this could manifest in other ways as well, like if the character survives a fire unscathed and word of this exploit spreads, they might gain resistance to fire 5 or something...

the attack and damage bonus and other stuff would help offset the fact that my campaign is low on magical items

I dunno, let me know what people think

[Debihuman]

I think that rules in Deities and Demigods regarding Divine Rank cover this quite well. If you want a mortal to "ascend" to godhood, you can do that. Generally, it requires one to find out he or she has a deity as a parent, but obviously there could be alternate ways of doing this. Obviously, going from cult leader to actually being able to grant spells should be a long and arduous process.

I think that this goes beyond simple reputation although that is a factor. It would be hard to be worshipped if no one has heard of you. On the other hand, you could be a great hero and still not be "divine".

You could progress this much like a prestige class going from Adventurer to Idolized Hero to Cult Leader [as most religions start as cults] to Accepted Religious Leader to Hero Deity (Rank 0) to Demigod (Rank 1) and beyond.

Obviously this should span a lot of levels and you need to figure out when to award such status and at what level. Hero Deities really can't become into play until at least 21st level and more like after level 25. Then it's a matter of time before he or she becomes a Demigod I wouldn't give this out until at least level 30.

If you allow divine rank too early, you'll be looking at PCs who really aren't equipped to play in the sandbox of the gods.

Debby

[Caldarin]

Thanks for the input
It would most definitely span several levels. Gods and Demi Gods would have something like Legend 10, whereas an epic hero would have like 6

it's also a way to scare the crap out of PCs... because if they hear of a villain who can reported suck somebody's life out like a vampire, there's a reasonable chance that villain can bestow negative levels somehow (without using spells)