Getting a Diety on the Material Plane (my players stay out!)

[CreganTur]

I'm working on a campaign that I'll be running in a month or two that revolves around the idea of an evil cult trying to open a gate for their diety to physically come onto the material plane to bring in a new era of darkness... blah, blah, blah.

I know how I want this to be done from a flavor and story aspect, but I don't know if there are any current rules about this or if diety's can come onto the material plane at will already (which makes my plot pointless). So, I'm just looking for whatever information those more knowledgable can provide.

[Yora]

Since gods under 3.5e rules are just very powerful outsiders, a simple plane shift or gate spell cast by themselves should be enough.

But maybe the deity actually doesn't want to go himself, but he does offer the cultists the option to summon an avatar of him. After all, a god has to look over cults all over the world and maybe even on thousands of different worlds. And then there are his minions in his devine realm, and he has to protect his realm from other gods and fiends. So he can't just leave for a week and have his assitants do all the work while he is gone to some backwater planet. Or other gods have banded together to keep a barrier up that prevents gods to go to the material plane and he needs someone to open a portal for him from inside.
The rules for avatars or aspects don't adress this I think, but it would make sense that it still takes some effort by a god to make and control one. And he could demand of the cultists that they supply the supernatural energies that will be needed to create the avatar.
And there you're completely free in deciding, what the cultists will have to do to prepare.

[rweird]

If he wants to go to the prime material plane, he can. He doesn't need a cult or anything, unless he is imprisoned somehow (Good luck doing that). Maybe he is trapped on some other plane so the cult needs to go there, free him, and then the reign of darkness shall begin!

[Eonir]

There is a spell from one of the fiendish codices IIRC that puts a larger HD cap on Planar Binding, but for only evil outsiders. With that, it wouldn't be far of a stretch for an epic spell that does the same thing, but to even a greater extent. With a little DM fiat your evil cult could be using circle magic/combined casting or whatnot and "bind" your dark god, thus solving both problems. The god will be on the material plane AND be a slave to your cult.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Since gods under 3.5e rules are just very powerful outsiders, a simple plane shift or gate spell cast by themselves should be enough.

But maybe the deity actually doesn't want to go himself, but he does offer the cultists the option to summon an avatar of him. After all, a god has to look over cults all over the world and maybe even on thousands of different worlds. And then there are his minions in his devine realm, and he has to protect his realm from other gods and fiends. So he can't just leave for a week and have his assitants do all the work while he is gone to some backwater planet. Or other gods have banded together to keep a barrier up that prevents gods to go to the material plane and he needs someone to open a portal for him from inside.
The rules for avatars or aspects don't adress this I think, but it would make sense that it still takes some effort by a god to make and control one. And he could demand of the cultists that they supply the supernatural energies that will be needed to create the avatar.
And there you're completely free in deciding, what the cultists will have to do to prepare.

I have to defer to Yora in this case. No self-respecting god would leave their plane (unless they were forced to) to listen to their mortal worshippers.

[rweird]

I have to defer to Yora in this case. No self-respecting god would leave their plane (unless they were forced to) to listen to their mortal worshippers.

Then I guess a bunch of the Deities and Demigod gods aren't self respecting. Read it, a whole lot of them wander the material plane in disguise.

[XQNP]

There is a spell from one of the fiendish codices IIRC that puts a larger HD cap on Planar Binding, but for only evil outsiders. With that, it wouldn't be far of a stretch for an epic spell that does the same thing, but to even a greater extent. With a little DM fiat your evil cult could be using circle magic/combined casting or whatnot and "bind" your dark god, thus solving both problems. The god will be on the material plane AND be a slave to your cult.

This spell is called Implore and is from Dragon Magazine 336. It's basically a 9th level planar binding with a 24 hd cap (it could also be 22, as it contradicts itself, but 24 makes more sense given the 6 12 18 planar binding progression). Of note: the creature takes a -4 penalty on will saves and charisma checks while under the effect of the spell, and explicitly makes no attempt to subvert orders. However, every time a specific creature is called, it gains a cumulative +1 on saves against further bindings (a bonus that disappears after a year of inactivity. The spell costs 50XP per HD of the called creature.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Then I guess a bunch of the Deities and Demigod gods aren't self respecting. Read it, a whole lot of them wander the material plane in disguise.

That's Forgotten Realms. That's a whole other kettle of fish when you're talking about the divine.

[rweird]

That's Forgotten Realms. That's a whole other kettle of fish when you're talking about the divine.

I have no idea what the forgotten realms pantheon is, I'm talking about the standard pantheon found in PHB. Pretty much all I know about forgotten realms is there are a whole bunch of epic level NPCs that meddle with everyone's business and Elmister or however his name is spell orders the PCs around to do things that he is to lazy to do and cannot die because gods would bring him back.

If a god wants to attack the material plane, other gods would respond, so if the cult summons him and he tries to do something that makes a difference, it will drag most of the gods in, so he probably wouldn't want to go. The avatar might be a good idea, or a proxy.

[Kuulvheysoon]

I have no idea what the forgotten realms pantheon is, I'm talking about the standard pantheon found in PHB. Pretty much all I know about forgotten realms is there are a whole bunch of epic level NPCs that meddle with everyone's business and Elmister or however his name is spell orders the PCs around to do things that he is to lazy to do and cannot die because gods would bring him back.

If a god wants to attack the material plane, other gods would respond, so if the cult summons him and he tries to do something that makes a difference, it will drag most of the gods in, so he probably wouldn't want to go. The avatar might be a good idea, or a proxy.

My bad - I got Deities and Demigods mixed up with Faiths and Pantheons in my head.

[killianh]

RAW there isn't a really written reason as to why the gods don't just send avatars or go and deal with most problems themselves (especially dark gods with a special note to Tiamat and Lolth) but in the preface for Fiendish Codex I & II references are made to both the Pact Primeval and the the original banding together of the gods. It was in that time that the deities learned that good and evil were aspects of existence and not just the Order vs. Chaos they believed it to be.

You could state that it's the Pact Primeval that stops deities from interfering with the material plane outside of aspect summons, channelling, and granting of limited divine magic. There could be some universe-destroying threat should deities cross the planar boundary to the material plane, or and other fluff reason. But sorry, not actual reason by RAW.

[Voidling]

IMHO forget RAW for this, your a DM a can create what ever you like if it's over all fun for your players.

Heres some ideas

You could make it so that planer boundaries are harder to gate through then standard. Summons work because they have a very short time frame

the bigger the HD or level of a being the harder it is to leave it's home plane and the prime plan being even harder with out some sort of energy being use to keep it here

Ur-priests are dragging a god kicking and screaming into the prime plan for their own reasons

Deity politics stop Gods and demi-Gods running a mock on the prime plane.

Good gods know they will do more harm then good and want people to be good to each other of their own free will.

Neural Gods would know that it would unbalance the multiverse ect .

Evil Gods are scared than other God(s) will take the opportunity attack (trap) them or invade their plane or merge the planes with their own.


a few small changes or one big one at the start or learned by your PC while playing is all you really need to do.

[Kansaschaser]

Then I guess a bunch of the Deities and Demigod gods aren't self respecting. Read it, a whole lot of them wander the material plane in disguise.

It was always my understanding that the stats given for gods in books like the Dieties and Demigods and Faiths and Pantheons were just Avatars.

So these stats are just for the Avatars that the gods send to observe and/or do dirty work.

Lesser gods can create up to 3 Avatars at a time, Intermediate gods can have up to 10, and Greater gods get 20 of these Avatars. When an Avatar is destroyed, a new one can be created in 24 hours.

The Diety themselves never actually leave their plane of existance. Also, I think that the Dieties don't get stats, just their Avatars.

[CreganTur]

This gives me some really good ideas on how to shape the world of my campaign so my plot works and makes sense.

[Lord Tyger]

Also keep in mind, what the crazy evil cult believes doesn't necessarily need to be true. They could be summoning something that only tells them it's a god, (from a Demon Lord to an Elder Evil), or actually be in communication with a god but be performing a ritual that does something else completely.

[Kuulvheysoon]

It was always my understanding that the stats given for gods in books like the Dieties and Demigods and Faiths and Pantheons were just Avatars.

So these stats are just for the Avatars that the gods send to observe and/or do dirty work.

Lesser gods can create up to 3 Avatars at a time, Intermediate gods can have up to 10, and Greater gods get 20 of these Avatars. When an Avatar is destroyed, a new one can be created in 24 hours.

The Diety themselves never actually leave their plane of existance. Also, I think that the Dieties don't get stats, just their Avatars.

This... is a pretty damn awesome interpretation. Stealing!

[Gavinfoxx]

Why don't you use the Dicefreaks deities as a powered up example of how Deities work, rather than the stats given by D&D designers?

[Kasbark]

It was always my understanding that the stats given for gods in books like the Dieties and Demigods and Faiths and Pantheons were just Avatars.

So these stats are just for the Avatars that the gods send to observe and/or do dirty work.

Lesser gods can create up to 3 Avatars at a time, Intermediate gods can have up to 10, and Greater gods get 20 of these Avatars. When an Avatar is destroyed, a new one can be created in 24 hours.

The Diety themselves never actually leave their plane of existance. Also, I think that the Dieties don't get stats, just their Avatars.

I really like that way to look at it, although i think i would add a penalty to any god who got his Avatar killed. That way the players feel they have accomplished something if they manage to kill an avatar.

[Kansaschaser]

This... is a pretty damn awesome interpretation. Stealing!

I didn't make this up. I remember reading it somewhere in a 3.0 or 3.5 book. I think it might have been one of the Forgotten Realms books, but I can't recall which one.


I really like that way to look at it, although i think i would add a penalty to any god who got his Avatar killed. That way the players feel they have accomplished something if they manage to kill an avatar.

The only downside I remember reading is that the Diety has to spend 24 hours creating a new Avatar. Maybe since the Diety is busy, the clerics of that god have reduced spell capacity for that 24 hours?

I think the Lady of Pain is an actual Diety since she doesn't have stats. If she were to be given stats by someone, I would interpert that to be an Avatar, not the actual Lady of Pain. But, for some reason, I don't think she'd be the type to create and Avatar.

[Gavinfoxx]

The thing is, in a LOT of settings Deities aren't all that powerful. They have stats, they can and are killed, fairly often. They are not, individually, the biggest badasses in a fight; they just have control over some aspect of reality.