Have you ever played a deity?

[With a box]

is that even possible to make a campaign for deities?
is there a published one?

[Crake]

is that even possible to make a campaign for deities?
is there a published one?

I feel like any game where you're deities may as well just be free-form roleplay

[FocusWolf413]

Are high level wizards just not powerful enough for you? Did you try gestalt casters? The issue with dieties is that they're just too powerful. Every problem a dm had with casters is nothing compared to a diety. The most common salient divine ability, alter reality, can replicate ANY NON EPIC SPELL AT WILL. Other abilities let them automatically hit, automatically dispel magic, create nonresistable effects, or sever magical connections permanently. Just play a normal epic campaign.

[The Evil DM]

TSR came out with rules for immortals on top of their basic game edition but you need ride in a time machine to see that system. It was close to Deity play.

Wiki can be found here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_Immortals_Rules

Someone on amazon wants $999.11 for a new sealed version of the box :)

[jaydubs]

I've never played or run one. But I'm currently running a campaign where my players frequently run into gods, and they often come out on top. (They're level 7.)

The thing to remember is that the power of deities depends entirely on the setting. They can range from omnipotent, to barely above mortal. So one option you have is to just create a setting where deities have a much more manageable power level.

Examples of such in fiction:
-American Gods
-Supernatural
-The Malazan series

Alternatively, remember that absolute power is a lot less important than relative power. If the PCs are fighting other gods, cosmic threats, so on and so forth, then you can run more of the high-powered variety.

[BWR]

There are games like Nobilis where you play gods. Sure, you have a boss who gave you your god powers but you are still a god. A fascinating game, well worth looking into. There's also Scion which is White Wolf's game for epic heroes who advance to full gods. It's not nearly as imaginative or fanciful as Nobilis, but there are more mechanics to codify what you can and can't do (though according to some the mechanics kind of break down past the Hero stage)
As for personal experience playing gods...sort of. One of our games has for the last x years featured reincarnated gods rather heavily. They aren't at full power but they do have some abilities beyond what most people get. They have been PCs, DMPCs, NPCs, plot devices and everything in between.

Currently I'm running a Mystara game where the PCs are just about to embark on their quest for Immortality. If and when they manage that, we'll see if I can throw together some PF update of the Immortal rules and run a short game for those characters.

[Karl Aegis]

Yes. You get eaten by dragons. It's very anti-climatic.

[Jack_Simth]

is that even possible to make a campaign for deities?
Yes. The trick, as jaydubs mentioned, is deciding what constitutes a deity. If you're using 3.5 Divine Rules (really 3.0, but that's OK) (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/dnd35/soveliorsage/divine.html) for it? The game goes to the best book delver at Rank 1. See, you get 20 Outsider hit dice, 30+ levels, a VERY NICE base stat array, and oh yes: negligible requirements for Alter Reality (other than Divine Rank 1) which grants EVERY (nonepic) SPELL IN THE GAME FOR FREE. Essentially they're all Wizard+ if they want to be. Any (or rather, every...) magic item via duplicating Wish for no XP cost. All the time in the world (repeat duplication of Time Stop), every buff spell ever (Alter Reality to get it up, Alter Reality to make it stick forever). Easy minionomancy via Ice Assasin or Simulacrum to power Epic spells (as they have the feat slots and the class levels available to make it possible). For all practical purposes, there is no optimization ceiling with even a rank-1 deity. At this point, as Crake noted, you might as well be playing freeform.

However, if you do NOT use the 3.5 rules for it, and make up your own... yes, it's entirely possible. Expect game balance to be a work in progress at best, however.


is there a published one?Not that I'm aware of.

[Vrock_Summoner]

Well, yes, but it wasn't D&D. A game concept like this doesn't really work for D&D, for two reasons.

One, the mortals already break everything so hard at high levels that in order for the gods to be impressive and, y'know, godlike in comparison, they pretty much need to be able to do anything and everything simultaneously. Heck, the only reason Clerics exist rather than the deities just using their limited omniscience and mega power to solve all their own problems is that the gods are presumed to be locked in a constant game of cosmic chess where each turn has a three-second timer. Oh, and the gods are all playing every other god with a different alignment simultaneously. While cooking breakfast for their families, having ethical debates (or frat parties, for the CN and CE) with the only gods they aren't playing speed-chess with, and writing checks to all the Clerics asking them for spells. And that's about how hectic it is on their personal time slowed demiplanes (or, heck, they're gods, so probably just planes). Actually, I suppose this is reason 1.5: screw playing a deity, your character wouldn't believably have enough free time to do anything else ever. (Reason one, in case it wasn't clear enough, is that anything you did find time to do would either be utterly trivial or literally impossible, because that's just how the upper echelons of D&D work.)

Two, it doesn't fit, because D&D isn't a narrative-focused game. Not to say you can't tell great stories in a D&D campaign, not at all. But that's not what the rules were designed around, that's not what everything was written for. At the end of the day, D&D is primarily a game about problem-solving, mixing elements of chance, tactics, and larger strategy, on not just a combat level, but on every level. It's about coming up with a way to solve your problems, including the problem of not having the right thing to solve another problem. Thing is, deities are, like, deities. As alluded to above, any problem a deity or group of deities can solve will be solved trivially, and if there is something they can't solve, there isn't anything bigger to turn to find a solution. In a more narrative-focused game, like Ars Magica (ignoring for the moment that its non-God gods are far from even limited omniscience or omnipotence), or CoC, or most horror games (though it's hard to be scared when you're a god) there can be great stories to tell regarding your inability to do much more than weather the storm, and in one game I played even a fun little exploration in the jealousy a god might feel on account of being one of the only ones in the universe without a higher power to feel reassurance from. There can also be great stories to tell about how you steamroll everything without considering the consequences, especially in games where those consequences have the potential to become big problems.

There are a couple of ways to do interesting things with D&D-level gods, but even those don't really match what D&D is all about. Let's say you're the god from above who just ticked off your worshiping base by solving a big problem in the easiest way without considering the consequences. And let's say you need genuine, not-magically-induced worship in order to survive. (So you can't, for example, magic their minds into loving you more, and you can't just threaten to wipe them if they don't worship you because then it wouldn't be genuine.) Congratulations, now you have one of the few kinds of problems that a god can solve, but can't do so by just snapping their fingers... But what kinds of D&D-appropriate sessions can you draw out of that premise alone? If you focus on the roleplaying portion of it, then it's basically freeform, because any physical obstacles that come up can probably be solved so easily as to not bother looking up how to come about that solution in the books. If you focus on the narrative aspect, you're using a system that's totally not designed for it, and it probably won't turn out much differently than freeform, as noted above. If you try to do it the proper D&D way, by either winning them over with skill checks or doing things for them, you run back into the "it's either beyond boringly easy or completely impossible no matter what" issue from earlier.

Really, just skip doing D&Deities. It doesn't work, on any level.

[jaydubs]

An example of how you might run a low-mid power deity game in a 3.x/PF system.

-The mortals in the world are basically E6 characters. (They cap at level 6, and get extra feats for experience.)
-You cap, say, demi-gods at level 9. These function as divine servants for your PCs.
-The PCs get to be level 12. Decide whether you want to let them level further, or run... I guess you would call it E12.
-Give the demi-gods and gods better point buy scores. Gods don't age past a certain point (unless they want to).
-Give the PCs special abilities related to whatever type of god they are.
-You throw slightly above CR stuff at your PCs, with some things being refluffed for the situation. For instance, in traditional D&D hierarchies, a Nalfeshnee is a mid-level demon. In this setting, it's either a dark god of some sort, or a demon prince. And for something like dragons, you just cut off the end of the age spectrum. Young adult gold dragons, are just elder gold dragons and as big as they get. Etc.

The way I see it, at the end of the day a deity campaign is about 1) RPing a deity and 2) playing a character much more powerful than the general populace. And that's not so hard to do if you have a setting that isn't full of high level characters running everywhere.

[Milo v3]

I once had a campaign where any creature that is an Outsider is a deity, ... and then one of the players asked to be a tiefling...

[ShurikVch]

Yes. The trick, as jaydubs mentioned, is deciding what constitutes a deity. If you're using 3.5 Divine Rules (really 3.0, but that's OK) (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/dnd35/soveliorsage/divine.html) for it? The game goes to the best book delver at Rank 1. See, you get 20 Outsider hit dice, 30+ levels, a VERY NICE base stat array, and oh yes: negligible requirements for Alter Reality (other than Divine Rank 1) which grants EVERY (nonepic) SPELL IN THE GAME FOR FREE. Essentially they're all Wizard+ if they want to be. Any (or rather, every...) magic item via duplicating Wish for no XP cost. All the time in the world (repeat duplication of Time Stop), every buff spell ever (Alter Reality to get it up, Alter Reality to make it stick forever). Easy minionomancy via Ice Assasin or Simulacrum to power Epic spells (as they have the feat slots and the class levels available to make it possible). For all practical purposes, there is no optimization ceiling with even a rank-1 deity. At this point, as Crake noted, you might as well be playing freeform. It's so not true!
Firstly, you may have 20 Outsider hit dice and 30+ levels, but it's not guaranteed: just check the Erbin from Deities & Demigods - no Outsider HD at all, and even in his Intermediate Deity incarnation he is "only" 20 level
Secondly, no "VERY NICE base stat array" is guaranteed too. Please, show me the RAW which says different.
Thirdly, Alter Reality is problematic, but it's not a mandatory: Azuth, for example, doesn't have it at all (Also, Cha 29 is limiting a bit)

[Inevitability]

I once had a campaign where any creature that is an Outsider is a deity, ... and then one of the players asked to be a tiefling...

And? I'd like to hear what you did there.

[Milo v3]

And? I'd like to hear what you did there.

It was thankfully not too bad, since the gods influence was limited based on their racial hit dice and since tiefling have no racial hit dice, we ended up deciding that the tiefling was god of one of the other characters shadows. It was nice for some roleplaying, where he could make that character's shadow insult himself.

[NichG]

Yeah, I played in a campaign with a character who was a former deity who lost most of his power when his universe collapsed (came in at Lv3 as a Swordsage; being able to cause my fists to catch on fire at will was a 'deific ability'). I wasn't sure how far that campaign would go power-wise.

Turns out, it went pretty far. By around the 1/3rd mark, the PCs were easily as powerful as Deities-and-Demigods style D&D deities. By the end of the campaign, I don't know what exactly you'd call us.

[Clistenes]

I have never played a deity, despite being very interested in both the worldbuilding fluff around them and in the whole mechanics behind them.

The reason I haven't played them are:

1.-Not knowing people interested in trying it.
2.-Not knowing how to handle the XP stuff; I have an idea of how a deity should gain Divine Ranks when slaying a divine foe, strenghening its portfolio or when gaining followers, but, what when it beats a challenge or obstacle? how do you calculate the XP and level-raising?.
3.-Alter Reality would become ridiculously powerful and complex...any deity having it should have ALL the buffs ALL the time, giving it a several pages-long list of bonus, immunities and other stuff...

[TrollCapAmerica]

Really if Alter Reality is pushed back a little a party of Demigods could be interesting to play. It would probably play out like an Epic level gestalt game

The Immortals Handbook was pretty neat for this sorta deal too. Because ya know Neutron star golems are awesome

[comicshorse]

Not DnD but there was, and books are still out there, 'The Primal Order'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Primal_Order

[johnbragg]

We did it one time in a free-form roleplay oneshot. We started with epic-level D&D characters who were then deputized by the collective of D&D gods to go be gods for a Material Plane where demons and devils had wiped out the native gods and taken over.

My CN gnome tinkerer-type (would have been an artificer or alchemist or something if those splatbooks had been published yet.) ended up as the shiny happy god of healing and paladins, because (in his/my opinion) they needed shiny happy paladins and healing way more than was clearly what they needed way more than cool steampunk gear or magic items. (He started as a wannabe Hephaesteus, but ended up creating a Mithras-type).

[Jack_Simth]

It's so not true!
Firstly, you may have 20 Outsider hit dice and 30+ levels, but it's not guaranteed: just check the Erbin from Deities & Demigods - no Outsider HD at all, and even in his Intermediate Deity incarnation he is "only" 20 level
I never said anything about "guaranteed" dude. But that's because the book is pretty light on "must" and "always" statements, and uses "usually" all over the place. So really, that goes back to exactly my point: it comes down to "deciding what constitutes a deity". If a 1st level Rogue that can't do much of anything is a "deity", then you've got a funny definition.

Oh yes, and note that Erbin is just in the Web Enhancement, not the actual book....



Secondly, no "VERY NICE base stat array" is guaranteed too. Please, show me the RAW which says different.

Again, I never said anything about "guaranteed" dude. But that's because the book is pretty light on "must" and "always" statements, and uses "usually" all over the place. However, if you look at the FAQ (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/files/DeitiesDemigodsFAQ10252002.zip), it includes:
All the deities in Deities and Demigods have a standard
array of ability scores (similar to the standard array for NPCs
in Chapter 2 of the DUNGEON MASTER’s Guide). The standard
array is 35, 28, 25, 24, 24, 24. To this standard divine array,
the Deities and Demigods designers added +1 for every 4
class levels a deity had and +1 for every point of divine rank.
Certain deities also received racial ability adjustments for the
races they created or rule over. For example, Corellon
Larethian received elf racial adjustments.
(Copy paste, because it comes as a PDF from WoTC)

Granted, it does say "there’s no reason for you to give your deities any ability scores except the ones you think they should have" but that goes right back to my main point - it comes down to "deciding what constitutes a deity".

Thirdly, Alter Reality is problematic, but it's not a mandatory: Azuth, for example, doesn't have it at all (Also, Cha 29 is limiting a bit)With a base stat array that gives you a 35 and a 28 to play with, then grants you several +1's after that... no, not really limiting. Also, of couse, I'm assuming that when you turn the players into deities, you let them build their characters, and they'll want to do some optimization. What was I thinking?

So... yeah, while you're correct in that it's not guaranteed... it is pretty much the default for deities in 3.5.

[ShurikVch]

The Immortals Handbook was pretty neat for this sorta deal too. Because ya know Neutron star golems are awesome Yeah, Immortals Handbook is awesome, because:
1) No less than five HD/levels per one Divine Rank - no more Overgods of 1st level :smallbiggrin:
2) You can't use your domain SLAs unless it's level ≤ half of your HD/levels, so you will be unable to spam Wish until 17th level
3) Alter Reality required, among other things, Spellcraft 70 (so you wouldn't get it until 66 level), and even then you need to spend six SDA slots to take it
4) Divine portfolios grant you not just benefits, but disadvantages too, which couldn't be negated without losing portfolio. You couldn't take opposite portfolios (unless you take that one Transcendent ability which grants you all portfolios at once; Transcendent will cost you 36 SDAs)


So really, that goes back to exactly my point: it comes down to "deciding what constitutes a deity". If a 1st level Rogue that can't do much of anything is a "deity", then you've got a funny definition. Dude, please, check actual mythological deities. Not all of them are equally overpowered.


Oh yes, and note that Erbin is just in the Web Enhancement, not the actual book.... OK, let's check deities which are the actually printed.
Bahamut, Tiamat, and Apep are all dragons, no Outsider or Class HD.
Vecna is Undead, no Outsider HD.
Hercules and Imhotep are Outsiders, but have no actual monster HD, only Class.
Same about the Azuth, Bane, Cyric, Kelemvor, Mystra, Torm, and Uthgar.
Kyuss is Aberration (Extraplanar) without any racial HD.


Again, I never said anything about "guaranteed" dude. But that's because the book is pretty light on "must" and "always" statements, and uses "usually" all over the place. However, if you look at the FAQ (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/files/DeitiesDemigodsFAQ10252002.zip) I doesn't known about it, but still, there is pretty damn big difference between "you got those scores just because you are a deity" and "we give those numbers to some existing deities, so they look cool, but still not ridiculously overpowered".

[Blackhawk748]

-The Malazan series

This is a great example. The gods in this series are pretty limited in their power, just never mess with them at their own schtick, they will win. Basically they are all really good at what they should be good at. For example, Hood God of Death (and a pretty cool guy) is very good with death and necromancy magic, as well as decent at divination, just dont ask him to start enchanting things. Fener God of War, really good at fighting stuff, also a pretty cool guy.

Basically, while limited, they are still immensely powerful and nigh on unkillable in their own realm as i feel a god should be.

[Jack_Simth]

Dude, please, check actual mythological deities. Not all of them are equally overpowered.True. But pretty much all of them are mind-blowingly awesome in a few ways, not something where there's liable to be thirty people in a large city that could take out in a reasonably fair fight.

OK, let's check deities which are the actually printed.
Bahamut, Tiamat, and Apep are all dragons, no Outsider or Class HD.
Vecna is Undead, no Outsider HD.
Hercules and Imhotep are Outsiders, but have no actual monster HD, only Class.
Same about the Azuth, Bane, Cyric, Kelemvor, Mystra, Torm, and Uthgar.
Kyuss is Aberration (Extraplanar) without any racial HD.And how many deities do they stat up?

I never said all of them do, just that it's the default. It's the "usually" rule. So unless you're playing unusually weak deities for one reason or another (which, of course, gets back to my point of "deciding what constitutes a deity") you're going to be building based on the defaults.



I doesn't known about it, but still, there is pretty damn big difference between "you got those scores just because you are a deity" and "we give those numbers to some existing deities, so they look cool, but still not ridiculously overpowered".I never said all of them do, just that it's the default. It's the "usually" rule. So unless you're playing unusually weak deities for one reason or another (which, of course, gets back to my point of "deciding what constitutes a deity") you're going to be building based on the defaults.

[Ettina]

Yes. The trick, as jaydubs mentioned, is deciding what constitutes a deity. If you're using 3.5 Divine Rules (really 3.0, but that's OK) (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/dnd35/soveliorsage/divine.html) for it? The game goes to the best book delver at Rank 1. See, you get 20 Outsider hit dice, 30+ levels, a VERY NICE base stat array, and oh yes: negligible requirements for Alter Reality (other than Divine Rank 1) which grants EVERY (nonepic) SPELL IN THE GAME FOR FREE. Essentially they're all Wizard+ if they want to be. Any (or rather, every...) magic item via duplicating Wish for no XP cost. All the time in the world (repeat duplication of Time Stop), every buff spell ever (Alter Reality to get it up, Alter Reality to make it stick forever). Easy minionomancy via Ice Assasin or Simulacrum to power Epic spells (as they have the feat slots and the class levels available to make it possible). For all practical purposes, there is no optimization ceiling with even a rank-1 deity. At this point, as Crake noted, you might as well be playing freeform.

I disagree. The simple option to make things challenging for a diety is to make their opponents dieties as well. It explicitly states on several occasions that certain diety abilities don't work against dieties of equivalent or higher rank, and with the others, well, if your opponents have those advantages as well, it'll still be pretty challenging.

[Ruethgar]

I have played one god before, however it used rules for lesser gods found in a Legends and Lairs book rather than Deities and Demigods' divine ranks. Essentially it just let you grant spells from one domain and support priests up to about 1/3 of your CR. You still had to maintain a certain number of followers for even that paltry power so Leadership was a must. It was a lot of fun, especially when the king that had employed our party on a suicide war mission suddenly got a legion of zealots fighting against him when I called for a crusade against the man who would see their god dead. Good times.

However as stated before, true gods with divine ranks are extremely powerful. Anything with a lower rank is weak, anything higher insta kills you so it is all about the RP.

[Jack_Simth]

I disagree. The simple option to make things challenging for a diety is to make their opponents dieties as well. It explicitly states on several occasions that certain diety abilities don't work against dieties of equivalent or higher rank, and with the others, well, if your opponents have those advantages as well, it'll still be pretty challenging.
You apparently don't quite get what's intended by "no optimization ceiling".

A Rank-1 deity with Alter Reality gets:
Infinite rounds (just repeat Time Stop via the at-will Alter Reality for every other action; you always get at least two rounds out of Time Stop, so....).
Infinite wealth (at-will XP-free Alter Reality to duplicate Wish for the magic item creation clause)
Infinite arbitrary minions (at-will XP-free, Component-free Alter Reality to duplicate Ice Assassin from Frostburn)
If the deity snagged a domain with Time Stop (such as, say, Trickery), then the deity can share the infinite rounds with its Ice Assassins, too.

Add these together, and this means that if the rank-1 deity who's doing a bit of optimization wants, the game suddenly explodes with an arbitrarily large number of fully ascended pun-pun minions if desired in the space of one standard action (which can be immediate, or even Contingent if needed with a modest amount of preparation).

It's not Very large vs. Very larger.
It's infinity +1 vs. Infinity +10.

You may as well play freeform.

[NichG]

Alter Reality isn't as much of a stumbling block if you extend the system in other ways. Its just Wish at-will with some permanency shenanigans added on. Yes, that requires rethinking your approach to the game quite a bit, but its not really that different from running for a group willing to use self-resetting traps of Wish or other wish-loops. The permanency shenanigans are a little worse than running for someone who is using sources of free Persistent Spell and amped up custom magic items, but not that different. And if the group isn't willing to use that kind of stuff, they're not going to really break Alter Reality as much as it could conceivably be broken (e.g. making a list of a zillion permanencied buff spells).

Basically, what it comes down to is that Alter Reality is just going to make the numbers bigger and mean that there's a certain set of options that everyone is going to have on the table. If you don't provide more interesting options, it risks the game becoming magical MacGyver, but you can figure out the holes in the D&D magic system and plug those with new SDAs or other high-scale abilities. For the numbers, the big issue is that it can be a lot of book-keeping if some of the players are serious about tracking down every possible bonus and others want a more relaxed game, so its worth considering just agreeing to something 'yes, you can have a zillion specific buffs with Alter Reality - lets just figure out a standard list and give it to everyone as a free template and move on'.

You probably do want to strip out epic spellcasting though. It makes it hard to create interesting distinctions.

Edit: I'll note that my character from the one campaign I mentioned found an item that was basically at-will indefinite Time Stop something like 10 sessions in. It was very useful, but not 'infinity' useful. And at deific scales, I'd certainly expect the inclusion of opponents who have abilities to steal your Time Stop, bubble it off from time, or do other stuff like that. Essentially, these things are only an insurmountable problem if you assume that the rest of the cosmos is being fairly passive and that you're limited to only stuff in the books (which, given the presence of SDAs that let you invent new things...)

[ShurikVch]

True. But pretty much all of them are mind-blowingly awesome in a few ways, not something where there's liable to be thirty people in a large city that could take out in a reasonably fair fight. 1) Large City may have, for example, Druid of 15 level - hardly an unworthy opponent
2) What is "reasonably fair fight" to you? Tarrasque in "reasonably fair fight" is unbeatable, because it can shrug off anything you can throw at it; and yet, Allip beat Tarrasque 2 times out of two
3) Please, don't forget about the Greater Teleport at-will. No deity (above Rank 0) will be caught unless want to


And how many deities do they stat up? Do you know what's common among the Hercules, Imhotep, Bane, Cyric, Kelemvor, Mystra, and Kyuss? (Not sure about the other ones) They are all ascended mortals. So, if you play Ascension game, you will use real numbers, not something out of your nose.


So unless you're playing unusually weak deities for one reason or another (which, of course, gets back to my point of "deciding what constitutes a deity") you're going to be building based on the defaults. And defaults are those ability score which you may get in real game. (And if not, you may as well just take the Pun-Pun and change the name)


A Rank-1 deity with Alter Reality gets:
Infinite rounds (just repeat Time Stop via the at-will Alter Reality for every other action; you always get at least two rounds out of Time Stop, so.... And enemy will go Melissan (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Amelyssan) on you! :smalltongue:
Also, what if enemy use the Time Stop first? Game Over?


Infinite wealth Like Wall of Iron doesn't give it to us already :smallsigh:

Infinite arbitrary minions (at-will XP-free, Component-free Alter Reality to duplicate Ice Assassin from Frostburn) Not infinite; if nothing, number is limited by turns

[geekintheground]

i have played in a diety campaign, and it got boring fast... to be fair, it had gone from an "epic gestalt" game to a "epic gestalt diety" game, where the only way to challenge us was to introduce something that was literally as powerful as the DM

[Jack_Simth]

1) Large City may have, for example, Druid of 15 level - hardly an unworthy opponent
The problem isn't that it has one that can slaughter one Erbin at Divine Rank 1. It's that it's liable to have twenty or thirty who can do so individually.


2) What is "reasonably fair fight" to you? Tarrasque in "reasonably fair fight" is unbeatable, because it can shrug off anything you can throw at it; and yet, Allip beat Tarrasque 2 times out of two
One not deliberately set up to be favorable to one or the other.


3) Please, don't forget about the Greater Teleport at-will. No deity (above Rank 0) will be caught unless want to
Dimensional Anchor.
Do you know what's common among the Hercules, Imhotep, Bane, Cyric, Kelemvor, Mystra, and Kyuss? (Not sure about the other ones) They are all ascended mortals. So, if you play Ascension game, you will use real numbers, not something out of your nose.
And yet, the stats for them in Deities & Demigods seem to use the exact same array as all the other ones. Funny, that.


And defaults are those ability score which you may get in real game. (And if not, you may as well just take the Pun-Pun and change the name)That being the trouble; anything with Alter Reality pretty much can.



And enemy will go Melissan (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Amelyssan) on you! :smalltongue:
Also, what if enemy use the Time Stop first? Game Over?
More like Xanatos speed chess, unless there's a true 0 prep time.



Like Wall of Iron doesn't give it to us already :smallsigh:
There's a significant difference between "I can produce X gp/day" and "My native abilities mean that I can take an at-will action to time stop, Wish up an item for free, time stop again, Wish up another item for free, Time stop again, Wish up another item for free and so on with no limit, then ready an action for when the time stop ends to still get a standard action to use against the opponent directly".


Not infinite; if nothing, number is limited by turnsWhen you have an arbitrarily large number of turns available as soon as your contingency goes off?

[NichG]

If wealth still matters, you aren't really in a story that is of the appropriate scale for deities. Artifacts of power, sure. But gold pieces?

Anyhow, stuff like Ice Assassin has the potential to break a non-deity campaign too. If you're in a campaign where 'infinite Ice Assassins' is a statement that belongs at the table, then a Lv20 Wizard will give you just as much trouble as an Alter Reality using deity since Ice Assassin is basically all you need to set up an infinite free Wish loop - so what difference is Alter Reality at that point?

[hiryuu]

Again, it depends on what you mean by "deity." Tons of cultures have deities that aren't any more powerful than normal PCs - Japanese culture, Pacific Islander culture, Australian aboriginal culture, most American cultures - in fact, you could class "folk heroes" as a type of deity. Cú Chulainn as one example.

Pathfinder can cover this decently well: Mythic Adventures has a Tier 3 ability that lets you grant domains to your worshippers.

At the moment, I'm running a campaign where "gods" are essentially just high level/high tier adventurers who've claimed aspects of the world. One player is slowly becoming the god of constructs and magically-created intelligences and the other is becoming a nature deity. It's been pretty fun so far.

[atemu1234]

I've done a party of quasideities once.

[Magma Armor0]

I had a friend who did once. The party was all normal folk, but one player played as a God (of Darkness, as I recall) and basically handed out plot points and sent people on quests that they couldn't meaningfully refuse. Was interesting, given that it wasn't the DM railroading, but a fellow player. Everyone knew what they were signing up for, though.

[Lord of Shadows]

Not quite playing deities, but I was with a group once that decided to each pick a Hero from the Deities and Demigods book, and the DM ran us through Tomb of Horrors. It was a riot, the only thing that saved us was one of the Heroes was able to cast an Alter Reality and omitted the dungeon from the world. That was the extent of our experiments with Divine-types.
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[ShurikVch]

The problem isn't that it has one that can slaughter one Erbin at Divine Rank 1. It's that it's liable to have twenty or thirty who can do so individually. Just how low exactly your estimations of Erbin? 9th level SLAs at-will is a thing. And Large City shouldn't contain more than 3 characters of maximal level.

One not deliberately set up to be favorable to one or the other. OK, would strategy "teleport from LoE all the time and Summon Monster IX (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/summonMonsterIX.htm) as often as possible" count as "reasonably fair fight" for you?

Dimensional Anchor. 1) SR 33 - 5% chance to penetrate
2) "AC: 45 (touch 32, flat-footed 30)" - even with both Divine Power (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/divinePower.htm) and True Strike (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/trueStrike.htm) our supposed attacker must roll at least 12 to hit, unless deity with Rogue class was somehow flatfooted

And yet, the stats for them in Deities & Demigods seem to use the exact same array as all the other ones. Funny, that. Still not a Rule, just examples

More like Xanatos speed chess, unless there's a true 0 prep time. Say, Time Dragon, after activating his racial Time Stop, may just go to the Past. I, personally, call it "negative prep time" :smallcool:

When you have an arbitrarily large number of turns available as soon as your contingency goes off? Contingency is double-edged weapon: what if enemy had it too? :smallamused:

Also, of couse, I'm assuming that when you turn the players into deities, you let them build their characters, and they'll want to do some optimization. What was I thinking? You are funny:
- Alter Reality is unbalanced! Horrible! Insane!.. So I absolutely should go and give it to my players as long as they not absolutely dump Charisma (one of most important ability scores for a deity) and as much as ask me to get it... Oh, and I also give them arbitrary ability boost which move access to Alter Reality from "difficult, but achievable" to "easy as pie"!