Surviving the angry god

[zazq]

I'm running a game and the party just pissed off a big nasty god. There is a plan to appease him, but in the meantime i want him to occasionally show up and make the party run away. I'd like him to do absurd damage, but not just kill characters. Is there a trick for paragon characters to survive a single hit that does a thousand damage? is it possible to build a paragon character who would be able to survive one? If not, i might have to settle for simply 100 damage, but that doesn't feel as cool. A level 11 defender has something like 80hp, meaning a 100 damage whack would be survivable. Aren't there autohealing items that trigger when you drop? those would let people survive even bigger god strikes.

Is there a trick to survive a thousand damage strike?
if not, how big of a strike could a tricked out paragon survive?

[Epinephrine]

Deal damage by the surge?
Make it a solid amount, plus a surge, with ongoing damage of a surge per round. Could kill them, but they'd have to prioritise granting saves to clear the otherwise potentially lethal ongoing damage. I had a striker having to make a heal check recently (wisdom dump stat, untrained), was pretty tense, but they needed their leader able to function, and he would have succumbed to ongoing damage at the start of his turn if she didn't manage to grant a save.

[Telwar]

There are one or two "Reduce damage to Zero" effects, but I *really* think you're barking up the wrong tree here. At most, take one of the statted-out deities, have them show up, use a big attack and go "...so, does AC 47 hit? Just wanted to make sure!" and then have it leave.

Or build an Aspect of the deity, give it that one big-ass attack, and then they have to fight the rest of a close-to-level-appropriate encounter.

[Kurald Galain]

There are some interrupt items that turn a hit into a miss, that would work. For example, bracers of escape.

I would take another approach and have the attack do push 50, prone, stun (save ends), daze/weaken (for the whole encounter) and slow (for the rest of the day).

[Inevitability]

Or build an Aspect of the deity, give it that one big-ass attack, and then they have to fight the rest of a close-to-level-appropriate encounter.

This. If the deity is pissed of, he'll likely send his aspects first. If the PC's know that killing the aspects off will enrage the deity, they may even decide to flee instead of fight.

[Dimers]

"...so, does AC 47 hit? Just wanted to make sure!"

"Just wanted to make sure, since I only rolled a three." :smallbiggrin:

Personally, I dislike that kind of plot attack when I'm a player. I would prefer the GM come to me and say, "The god would respond to the party's recent actions by swatting you silly at some random point, so I'm gonna fiat that, and I'd appreciate if you play along." If you want the huge damage to nearly-but-not-quite kill a PC and you think that's better for the story than leaving the players their full normal ability to affect their world, just say it outright, don't mask it with numbers.

[Laserlight]

Personally, I dislike that kind of plot attack when I'm a player. I would prefer the GM say, "The god would respond to the party's recent actions by swatting you silly at some random point, so I'm gonna fiat that, and I'd appreciate if you play along."

Concur. The point of being a player is to Do Things; if you need to put them in a situation where they Can't Do Things, just tell them what happens.

If I were GMing this, I wouldn't have the god simply attack. "That night, you have a terrible nightmare. In the nightmare, you are flung about and battered by a devastating storm. Icy rain chills you, irresistrable winds fling you against rocks, overwhelming thunder leaves you shellshocked and dazed. You are helpless.You hear a titan's voice saying "Foolish mortals, this is the merest whisper of the fury of Kord. Abase yourselves!" You awake from the dream with a yell of panic, covered with cold sweat, and you lose half your surges. Oh, and roll initiative, because your screaming has attracted a band of..."

[zazq]

Hey these Bracers of Escape are pretty neat, thanks! The god isn't really fightable, and while slide 50 is cute, i was looking for something more in the way of the Dahaka from Prince of Persia. The party has to deal with it because it keeps sometimes showing up, and while they can run, they might take a hit or two before getting away. If it doesn't do absurd damage, the party might think they can take it, which they shouldn't. He's just some big dude with a big hammer and a big attitude, no aspects or angels or whatever.

[INDYSTAR188]

In my game only Epic level characters can do damage to a diety. We have other houserules, like if you're pushed into a solid object you are dealt Xd6 damage for every square you would have been pushed if the wall wasn't in the way. So, lets just suppose said diety did come and hit you with a push 50 power and the wall was only 4 squares away, well... that would be 46d6 damage (and you would probably break the wall or something crazy too I'm sure). Does that much damage kill a player? I don't really know to be honest with you, it seems silly!

To be honest with you OP, I think dieties work best when they interact with the world through intermediaries, powerful dreams/signs, or even provide some kind of tangible negative effect.


players have a collective dream, giving them all an unreducible penalty for some time
a powerful servant(s) of that god appear and aid their enemies at the exact worst time
just as the party is trying to flee from the crumbling temple the steps disappear leaving the players falling
an appropriatly powerful avatar of the diety continues to appear and fight the pc's

If you find a trick to survive that much damage please post it in the thread, my Fighter|Warlord would desperately love to know!

[Inevitability]

In my game only Epic level characters can do damage to a diety.

That's an official rule. Though there may be one or two deities to who it doesn't apply.

[Excession]

It occurred to me that you could create a disease track for "disfavour of (insert god here)". Use religion rather than heal checks to cure, as the players attempt to appease the god via offerings and such. Difficulty and penalties are adjustable, but the disease system is quite good for tracking longer term things like this.

[ScrivenerofDoom]

100 damage?

Boring.

A truckload of conditions?

Boring.

Why not make this interesting? What is this deity the god of? What are its portfolios/spheres of influence?

You slap 100 damage on a character and, for all intents and purposes, they feel they just hit by a giant's critical hit. But you have Lolth curse them to attract spiders, or Talona curse them to always be surrounded by rats and for their supplies to spoil within minutes of purchase etc... and then you have the attention of the players and a lot more story-based ways they might be able to lift the angry deity's wrath.

I also love the disease track idea but, for the sake of making it interesting, make the effects consistent with the deity's nature. Using Lolth as an example. At the first stage, the PCs find their gear and lodgings infested with thousands of spiders. The next stage might be regular spider attacks. The stage after might be even more dangerous spiders and then, finally, abyssal spiders appear and the PCs find that they also vulnerable to poison. Upsetting in a deity of storms might begin with the PCs always in the middle of a storm that exists only several hundred feet around them to a tornado that seems to be actively hunting them.

And I am sure that with some thought you will come up with something much better than those half-assed ideas.

[Inevitability]

How about rising Bane's (or any other militant god) wrath causes legions of hobgoblins to hunt them down? Use swarm mechanics to represent the armies.

[Yakk]

In the default cosmology, gods do not walk the earth as part of a deal with the primal spirits.

Having agents of the god hunt them down -- an angel of punishment -- might work, and the fact that they are merely fighting a servant of the dude that they pissed off might help with scale.