Ascendancy to Godhood

[Blue1005]

Does anyone have any printed works they can direct me to for how a PC may be able to ascend to Godhood? Also, about how one may be able to slay a God? Planning on perhaps making this a premise for an adventure if I can find any sort of printed rules to guide. Thanks

[Alleran]

There are no hard and fast rules. It might be possible to (over many epic levels) turn into a true dragon and then reach DvR 0 through the Dragon Ascendant PrC, or with shenanigans to get divine rank with Pun-Pun, but beyond that it's up to the individual DM.

[Blueiji]

Appendix 2 in the Deities and Demigods sourcebook for 3.5 has rules about ascension to godhood for PCs. Although the SRD carries some information from that sourcebook, I don't think it has information on ascension, unfortunately.

It does have the rules on giving stats to the gods and fighting them however, so that solves one half of your request.

Here's a link to the SRD page that features content from Deities and Demigods. (http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/divineRanksPowers.htm)

EDIT: Oh, and by the way, nice username Blue1005, in case you couldn't tell, I'm also a fan of that color.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Appendix 2 in the Deities and Demigods sourcebook for 3.5 has rules about ascension to godhood for PCs. Although the SRD carries some information from that sourcebook, I don't think it has information on ascension, unfortunately.

It does have the rules on giving stats to the gods and fighting them however, so that solves one half of your request.

Here's a link to the SRD page that features content from Deities and Demigods. (http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/divineRanksPowers.htm)

^This.

Though, IIRC, DDG only gave some basic outlines on ascendancy, with no hard and fast rules cited as the default.

Ascendency is left entirely within DM perview, more so than most anything else in the game.

Fighting gods on the other hand is just a matter of being strong and clever enough. The gods are mostly just 20HD unique outsiders with 30-40 class levels and a host of divine abilities. Cutting their HP's out from under them, while a monumental task since most have large values for DR/epic and fast-healing, is just as effective a kill as it was for a hobgoblin at level 1.

Even a group of level 20 T1's would have a hell of a time with deicide, no matter which method they choose, provided they went after a demigod. You're not taking down a lesser or intermediate god before epic. You'd probably have to be somewhere around level 50 to even have a slim chance at a greater god, the utter broken'ness of epic spellcasting not withstanding.

[Alleran]

Even a group of level 20 T1's would have a hell of a time with deicide, no matter which method they choose, provided they went after a demigod. You're not taking down a lesser or intermediate god before epic.
You can put down a demigod fairly easily, depending on the demigod. Imhotep, for example, is weak enough that a group of level 15-ish characters could probably pull it off.


You'd probably have to be somewhere around level 50 to even have a slim chance at a greater god, the utter broken'ness of epic spellcasting not withstanding.
I think Tippy came up with a method of killing a Greater God. It requires Illithid Savant and extreme shenanigans.

[tyckspoon]

^This.

Though, IIRC, DDG only gave some basic outlines on ascendancy, with no hard and fast rules cited as the default.

Ascendency is left entirely within DM perview, more so than most anything else in the game.


Well, there is *one* hard-and-fast: If a god makes you a Proxy, you become a god for as long as you remain a proxy for that god- the process transfers 1 Divine Rank from the god to you. But that's not so much 'ascending to godhood' in your own right as 'for some reason an existing god found it necessary to invest a fragment of its own power into you so you could do a job for it.'

[Kelb_Panthera]

You can put down a demigod fairly easily, depending on the demigod. Imhotep, for example, is weak enough that a group of level 15-ish characters could probably pull it off.


I think Tippy came up with a method of killing a Greater God. It requires Illithid Savant and extreme shenanigans.

To be fair, Imhotep is easily the weakest god printed. He's a 20th level expert with no Outsider HD and divine rank 1.

I don't think there are any others that show quite that level of fail. Most have, at the bare minimum, either 20 racial HD and/or 10-20 levels of a PC class. One's even a 40 HD dragon.

Edit: Just checked, all of the other demigods in DDG have at least 30 total HD between racials and level.

[Aharon]

You can put down a demigod fairly easily, depending on the demigod. Imhotep, for example, is weak enough that a group of level 15-ish characters could probably pull it off.

That also relies on Imhotep not having his defenses up. He has Prismatic sphere at will, so he should be encased in a few of these at all times. Makes movement harder, but as an intelligent demigod, he probably knows that even mortals can easily destroy him (at most, he could have 1100 overlapping ones, but then he couldn't do anything else). He also has Foresight.

Depending on your definition of "Primary purpose is healing or building", he might also have Potions of any spells up to 6th level that have to do something with healing. Depending on your definition, this might include spells like Troll Shape.
Explanation:
4500 gp limit, and there's this PrC that can create high level potions, so these items exist, have a price, and thus Imhotep can create them and should have a few on his person.



I think Tippy came up with a method of killing a Greater God. It requires Illithid Savant and extreme shenanigans.

Wether his method works depends on your stance about what is fluff and what is RAW, and how they interact in edge cases (his method relies on using an aleax of himself, and the fluff section of Aleaxes says the creature only exists when created by a god):

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13001425&postcount=201

[Clovis]

As previously posted, ascending into godhood is by DM fiat. Technically, the overgod of your game/realm can make almost any creature into a god. If your campaign requires that one or several PCs attain a divine rank, make them do some truly horrendous quest and have Ao/whomever to reward the PCs.

Deicide pops up regularly here; it seems to be the favourite pastime for PCs :smallbiggrin:
Under SRD a god can only be killed within its realm/plane. If the physical manifestation of a god is destroyed outside its realm, the essence remains and its dispersed to rematerialize later (cf. lich). Therefore, to kill a god you have to get into its realm. Then you have to locate the god and cut through its defences, which may or may not include countless minions.
It's also good to remember when planning such an expedition that divine realms are divinely morphic; that is the gods can change their realms with but a thought... The implications are dire for deicidical PCs.
Also, gods can manipulate magic. You thought that sending an astral projection would protect your mage? Whoops, it's easy for a divine being to get through that. You thought that an AMF would nullify divine magic? Whoops, divine beings are immune to mortal magic like that. You thought that celerity would make your mage go first? Whoops, there's supreme initiative salient divine ability (I know, not all gods have that but then, if the PC mages are optimized, so are gods, played by DM). More experienced gamers/forumers can take this further.

[TheGeckoKing]

The Demigod Epic Destiny (here (http://web.archive.org/web/20090218080723/http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080428)) gives you a vague goodhood, the Dragon Ascendant PrC was mentioned, and some of the Abominations in the ELH technically were given an ECL players can use. But the lowest ECL is the Phane's 36, the Demigod's godhood is a massive "eh", and trying to acquire 12 Dragon Ascendant levels before your campaign setting has suffered a heat death/TO level cheese is laughable. On top of that, this fuss only gets you DvR 0/DM Fiat, so you're better off taking the Snake Blood feat and pestering your local Sarrukh for a favour.

Lastly, what people forget when god-killing is that all these gods have multitudes of Clerics on tap, to serve and protect them as they see fit. Boccob himself is a hard enough fight, but when you add his high priesthood of epic clerics (who are all probably Dweomerkeepers) who have a vested interest in the Uncaring One's existence, you're up the creek without a paddle.

[karkus]

Supposedly, if you are to kill a god (possibly even a demigod) you can take the portfolio of it and become a god yourself. There are some demigods that D&Dg states are only equivalent to 20th-level characters, so you could work your way up the "deific totem pole," so to speak. You kill a weak deity, then a slightly stronger one, and so on and so forth.

Bear in mind that the universe doesn't exactly take kindly to mortals killing gods, and in Epic Level Handbook, I believe, there are special Inevitables (the robot-people from Mechanus) designed to kill mortals attempting to do just that.

It almost specifically states, however, that there are no set rules to ascending to godhood, and that you and your DM must work out a half-homebrewed method of doing so.

[nyjastul69]

Requiem for a God by Malhavoc Press (3rd party, 3.0) is an 'event book' by Monte Cook on how a god's death might impact a campaign. It's not about deicide or how to ascend per se. I don't know if it'll be much help, but you might find some useful bits in it.

[TypoNinja]

There is a published adventure, for epic characters in one of the dragon magazines called Quicksilver Hourglass, it involves fighting, and killing a god, and has conditions that allow the party to ascend to godhood. I've deliberately avoided reading it, since my DM says he plans on using it on us eventually, so I'm afraid I can't help you much with the details.