How to build a "sound and fury" Deicide character?

[Nettlekid]

By "sound and fury," I mean a character who raves and roars about their hatred of the gods and their intent to destroy them all, but who isn't actually about to do so. Yeah, I know, the gods statted out in Deities and Demigods are way weaker than a lot of fully optimized builds in this forum, but in an actual game scenario you're not exactly likely to meet a god, and if you do, I think it's totally fair that the DM says "Zap, all your powers don't work, zop, you're dust," because seriously, it's a god.

That said, I like the flavor of some deicidal classes (and races.) The Vashar (Vasharan?) from Book of Vile Darkness are like evil humans who are pretty much just evil all the time, but the one thing that stands out more than anything is that they want to kill the gods. Class-wise, we have Ur-Priests who steal their power from the gods, and the Defiants who disbelieve in them. Those are the things that come to mind, but there are probably more. Of course you could just have a character who wants to kill the gods without basing their build off of it.

What kinds of things could you do to make these not entirely empty threats, and really play it up, even if you're not actually going to come close to killing a god?

[JoshuaZ]

What kinds of things could you do to make these not entirely empty threats, and really play it up, even if you're not actually going to come close to killing a god?

Well, depending on the setting, being highly vocal about this sort of thing migt get you zapped anyways (or treated badly by the general population). But things you can do: argue with clerics, try to tempt them away from their religion. Kill clerics. Deface temples. Search for powerful forces that don't like the deities.

Your exact reason for deicide may matter. Someone who hates the gods because they don't like the idea of anything personally stronger than they are is very different than someone who hates the gods because they think they are doing a bad job running things.

Actual character builds- most of what you've hit on are reasonable starting points. One thing to keep in mind that if one is going up against a deity, according to RAW they don't fail a save on a 1, and they have very high saves, so spells which don't allow saves at all are your friends.

[Nettlekid]

I think a lot of deicide type characters want to kill the gods just for being there. That's what the Vasharan seem like, anyway.

What I was really wondering is, what kind of build would make thematic sense without necessarily being Caster 20 to nuke Olympus (or whatever the D&D equivalent is. All the outer planes at once?) And that said, although not likely strong enough to kill gods, strong enough so that if someone says "No, the power of my god strengthens me!" you can say "Ha, this is what I say to that!" and fight them.

[JoshuaZ]

I think a lot of deicide type characters want to kill the gods just for being there. That's what the Vasharan seem like, anyway.

What I was really wondering is, what kind of build would make thematic sense without necessarily being Caster 20 to nuke Olympus (or whatever the D&D equivalent is. All the outer planes at once?) And that said, although not likely strong enough to kill gods, strong enough so that if someone says "No, the power of my god strengthens me!" you can say "Ha, this is what I say to that!" and fight them.

Well, you could play as a Quell. They can stop divine magic. Or better, pick up Undead Leadership and then get a Quell cohort. And there's a spell in Spell Compendium "Divine Interdiction" which blocks some cleric abilities.

[Nettlekid]

Well, you could play as a Quell. They can stop divine magic. Or better, pick up Undead Leadership and then get a Quell cohort. And there's a spell in Spell Compendium "Divine Interdiction" which blocks some cleric abilities.

...Wow, Quells are pretty awesome. I'm definitely going to chuck a few in the next campaign I DM. Turning Clerics. Huh.

[ArcturusV]

You could also tap into causing some of the Evil Weather in BoVD. I seem to recall there was a rain that stopped all divine powers by anyone caught within the area that it is raining.

Which would be funny as hell, particularly if you coincided that with something like Zombie Mobs and Skeletal Attack Dragons.