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Kol Korran
2015-04-13, 02:47 PM
Hey folks, I come again asks for imaginative ideas and inspiration for a situation in my campaign. Though the system is in Pathfinder, and the world is Golarion, system and world knowledge are not that essential. I seek help in making a pivotal discovery and evolution of a character in my campaign more meaningful, special and memorable. So naturally I come to you folks for help! :smallwink:

We play the Wrath of the Righteous Adventure path, which is really all about great impossible heroics, fantastic feats and so on (Or so it proclaims). The mage in the party is a woman is is angry at the gods, whom she sees as arrogant, whimsical, and refuses to worship any of them. The gods in this world are quite present, and are sort of humanoid in psyche, attitude and the like (Some of them are ascended humanoids). Soemwhat similar to Forgotten Realms deities, or to the old Greek deities.

She has voiced her disrespect and dislike of the gods for quite some time now. However, in a strange turn of events, she was also bestowed with some divine power, which are basically the accumulated prayers of generations that were held in an artifact that broke, with the last words of the prayers as "Our last prayers are with you now". This power allowed her to make amazing feats of magic (Mythic rules, but it's not important). She has sort of rejected thinking about the source of her power till now.

Now, the party just came upon a special artifact, THE McGuffin of the campaign (I altered this quite a bit from the AP itself, so few spoilers)- The Lexicon of Paradox. This semi- intelligent tome is the work of generations of mages, living in a country where reality and the proximity of outer planes is thin, where they explored the boundriers and extremes of magic. Or, s the guardian manifestation of the book said: "I am the improbable, the impossible, made real." The tome is a collection of works tryign to find ways to make impossibilities happen.

The player in question ate it up, and seized upon an opportunity- When the guardian sought to see if they are worthy, the player said he wishes to study paradox, to make n impossibility happen- make himself divine source of power, but without connection to the gods. (In this world ALL divine power comes from the gods). In game terms he seeks to gain the "Divine Source" Ability, which enables him to cast spells from cleric domains, and grant spells to any who would follow the character, but flavor wise he seeks no connection to any god. As to domains, he seeks to unlock the "good" and "healing" domains, seeing divinity's role as that of helping mortals, assisting and aiding them.

The player wishes to play it out as first defiance against the gods, then possibly a sort of reconciliation with them, as the character partly understand the role of gods, as she herself is worshiped. But that's a vague idea currently, we'll see how the campaign develops.

The idea I discussed with the player is that once the character has time, she studies the tome and unlocks this power. I initially planned something boring like will saves for mental ability damages, and skill checks, but this seems... quite unfitting, for something as epic as stealing/ unlocking the power of divinity.


EDIT: Due to some questions in the following post, I would like opinions on some big questions that may pertain to this research:
- What is divinity? and divine power?
- What are the gods? What makes links them to divine power?
- How might one do to become a god? (Golarion has some ways, but I'm asking about less specific ideas)
- How is divinity shaped by the divine being? How does it shape it? The world, and vise versa?

So I am thinking of making this a far more interesting roleplay experience. My basic idea is as follows:
- Through studying the tome, the character comes upon 3-5 situations, dealing with the semi intelligent research itself, past researchers, the prayers, gods, or maybe even the forces behind locking divinity. Each such "encounter" is meant as a short roleply encounter, dealing with the philosophical, personal, ethical (and so on) issues raised by this pursuit. They take place in the character's mind, or in infinity, or similarly strange and odd metaphysical places.

- Each encounter poses a question of a sort, one that the character needs to answer. There is no right answer, and it will be somewhat open ended. This way the character sort of creates itself the path to unlocking divinity. I will prepare for some potential answers, but the player might well surprise me.

- Each answer affects the character, research, or the world somehow, shaping it. I like the idea of it changing the character most of all, a change to divinity. Power wise it should not be significant, enough to be noticed, not enough to be unbalancing, but mostly cool flavor. I want the change to feel more than just "Hey, an extra ability". I'd like it to feel like a small but meaningful journey. The changes can be beneficial or detrimental, but hopefully both.

I don't have exact ides for the encounters as of yet, but I hope to come up with them till the meeting. Suggestions are welcomed! Also any other way you think might be cool to make this transition fun and memorable.

erikun
2015-04-13, 03:15 PM
The first, and most obvious question: do you want to be running encounters where the player is the only one doing anything? Doing so would require individual sessions with the player, unless everyone else just wants to sit around and watch. The other option is to "bring everyone else along" but have them deal with lesser distractions. Perhaps there are phantoms or other hazards than need to be fought off, and having the others there to defend the PC would help her focus on her research and discovery, when it would normally require a much higher level character to do it alone.

Secondly, what kind of conclusion do you want to be working towards? Having the dice determine the outcome of a situation will only get you so far. After all, the question of "What is divinity?" is not exactly on your d20. :smalltongue: Is it something that will be easy to achieve, if the player wants it? Does achieving divinity separate from the gods require killing the gods? Does it require a large sacrifice? This is some sort of big metaphysical question here for your game world, and it would have interesting results regardless of what the answer is. I mean, would the PC in question be willing to go through a 100-year ritual in order to gain their godless divinity? Would the sacrifice of just one million innocent (or even guilty) lives be enough to tempt her with a "shortcut"?

What are your player's thoughts on this subject?

Sith_Happens
2015-04-13, 03:21 PM
After all, the question of "What is divinity?" is not exactly on your d20. :smalltongue:

*rolls*

I got a 12, is that good?:smallconfused:

Kol Korran
2015-04-14, 03:35 AM
The first, and most obvious question: do you want to be running encounters where the player is the only one doing anything? Doing so would require individual sessions with the player, unless everyone else just wants to sit around and watch. The other option is to "bring everyone else along" but have them deal with lesser distractions. Perhaps there are phantoms or other hazards than need to be fought off, and having the others there to defend the PC would help her focus on her research and discovery, when it would normally require a much higher level character to do it alone.
The party will most likely have some "Down time" in between adventures soon enough. I was thinking of having such short and small "encounters", in between the doings of the other characters in town. I was hoping to keep the encounters short and quick, taking up about 10 minutes each, but spread out.

I did not think to have the other players play in these mini encounters, but that is quite n intriguing idea. I'm not sure that they themselves will be appropriate, but perhaps representations of them, or maybe they could play other roles? Intriguing...


Secondly, what kind of conclusion do you want to be working towards? Having the dice determine the outcome of a situation will only get you so far. After all, the question of "What is divinity?" is not exactly on your d20. :smalltongue: Is it something that will be easy to achieve, if the player wants it? Does achieving divinity separate from the gods require killing the gods? Does it require a large sacrifice? This is some sort of big metaphysical question here for your game world, and it would have interesting results regardless of what the answer is. I mean, would the PC in question be willing to go through a 100-year ritual in order to gain their godless divinity? Would the sacrifice of just one million innocent (or even guilty) lives be enough to tempt her with a "shortcut"? All of these re good questions, and part of the purpose of this thread- to discuss what it might mean to "create /unlock/ gain/ steal" divinity, and what might be required for it.

The process of the research in itself should be able to accomplish it, sort of like finding a loophole in the fabric of the world/ universe/ magical laws/ divinities and using it to get the job done. It may have some world affect, but on the whole it should be subtle, not obvious and ground shaking (The campaign assumes the world basically goes s it is, I'm altering some stuff up, but not to that extent) As such, a long term ritual is inappropriate, as is a great sacrifice (Though that question may arise in the mini encounters).

But the BIG metaphysical questions- What is Divinity, What is a deity, what is divine power, how does one access it and so on, I have no direct answer for... I've started thinking of these, but was also hoping for suggestions and ideas from the playground.


What are your player's thoughts on this subject? I've emailed him a bit earlier, he hasn't answered yet.

The Evil DM
2015-04-14, 04:58 AM
I have put a great deal of thought into this. My own campaign universe has a very detailed creation myth that defines how Angels, Demons, Gods and other immortal races were all created. I am preparing to release several stories so I don't want to go into total detail for copyright but will give a basic outline of the connection between mortals and gods - in my universe.

The Universe was created by a force of will that is present in all things and in all space. In effect, this force of will triggered an event that can be compared to big bang concepts from physics.

As I studied ancient eastern and western philosophies such that I could include references from many cultures into the creation myth of the universe I noticed several trends. Most notably that our real life ancestors describe the state of man in terms of Mind, Body and Spirit (Eastern) or Higher Soul, Spirit and Body (Greek) and a few other descriptions that lead to a trinity within a mortal.

So I have used that in my campaigns. Mortals consist of three parts:

Soul - It is connected to the outer planes, which I call the planes of consciousness and includes the heavens and hells. The soul is the mind, personality and alignment of the character

Spirit - It is the primal, instinctual elements of the character, and it is connected with the Elemental planes where life force and anima are integrated with matter.

The outer planes (consciousness) and inner planes (elemental spirit) intersect at the prime plane bringing Consciousness and Life Force to mortals across the universe.

How this helps to define divinity is in the connection between gods and mortal kind. In my story, the gods originally created what would become mortals without consciousness. Mere bodies with instinctual behaviors - incidentally animals have both a body and spirit in my worlds. The gods then used these creations in a vast war causing death by the billions across billions of worlds. The Indomitable will of the universe was dismayed by the carnage at this scale and forced a cataclysm, tore the power of consciousness from the gods and gave it to mortal kind. As a punishment the gods were then forever linked to their creations.

In the pantheons and religions of my universe the gods compete for followers because as alignment and deeds synchronize with the will of the god, the god becomes more powerful for the god and his followers are in effect all pieces of a shared soul. Divine magic and the knowledge of the deity comes from the collective consciousness of the deities followers.

With this in mind, all mortals have some degree of divinity but those who have true believers can ascend. In the case of what you are doing, to parallel this line of thinking your player would need to find followers who are true believers.

Anyway - that is my take on it.

Karl Aegis
2015-04-14, 08:10 AM
Where is his divinity coming from? Their reputation with the mortal realm, whether through fame or infamy? The harvesting of immortal power others' divinity like how most dragons and demon princes achieve the powers of a god? They became a custodian of a certain place where raw magic energy leaked into them?

If they got their divinity from an item, someone else was probably using that item to hide away some of their own divine power. Someone may or may not come looking for it. It really depends on whether they think that amount of divinity in the hands of a mere mortal is inconsequential or not. Most dragons would probably just eat the newly divine and harvest their power for themselves.

You can certainly try to become the source of divinity if you wanted to. All you need to do is have your character attack the DM directly and steal his power to grant spells and govern rules. Your PC would become the grossest DMPC imaginable, but the gap between true divinity and actual DM powers is pretty big.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-14, 10:33 AM
It sounds like what you're describing for the PC is a vision quest -- an inner journey that reveals some profound truth, either about oneself or the nature of the universe.

Each chapter of this tome describes some kind of shamanic ritual that purifies the character or strips away their preconceptions about reality. This could involve exotic spell components for teas or burning, bloodletting, pain or sensory deprivation, sweat lodges, meditating on a mountaintop/desert, etc. They help to achieve an altered mental status. In a fantasy campaign the ritual could literally allow them to travel to the spirit world or astral plane or whatever.

NichG
2015-04-14, 12:47 PM
The key to paradox is to find the tipping point, where obviously distinct things become indistinguishable and therefore become able to be redefined. So to help him seek the paradox of divinity, the book must bring the character to situations in which the nature of divinity is maximally ambiguous, and eventually enable the character to ask the universe a question (by action or intervention), whereby the act of answering definitively reshapes the nature of the divine and therefore allows the character their 'in'.

So, for example, one could find the point in time when a god is most mortal, or when a mortal is most divine. Examples might be something like a time when a god fell in love with a mortal and sacrificed something about the nature of the universe on their behalf, or a time when a god was dying or being born. On the mortal side, you could have the moment that a great artist or scholar created a work that would be remembered for thousands of years, or even a case where a character from a storyteller's fiction became worshipped as a real god by a society. And of course, an exploration of the nature of divinity would not be complete without a brush with solipsism and the divinity that all mortals possess in their own dreams.

So that provides the palette - the joy and sorrow of gods being mortals, the joy and sorrow of mortals becoming gods, and the godhood that is already possessed. With those things, the character can 'paint' their own new form of divinity.

Or something like that, anyhow!

denthor
2015-04-14, 01:48 PM
All Divinity has an Alignment start there. start defining here value systems

What are her actions to moral good bad

If the character is in a tavern and this place is very busy does she wait for help paying the bill?

Does she leave the coin on the table hoping the right person picks it up

Does the character slip out the door and skip on the check.

Lawful Chaotic

Does the mage write reports keep detailed notes

Does she tell convient lies or out right lies

Does she care about where the spells fall only on the enemy and not on party members


Spells

What type does this mage cast?

Becoming a Deity is a trial and every move you make is scrutinized.

Have people come up to her on the street

Beggers down and out lower level 1st 3rd how does she treat them?

Have people seek out advice is she hard to get ahold of or easy and patient?

Have the character state and alignment them keep to it. or you change it however if the actions are wrong record and tell why you are not in agreement.

This will determine the type of followers and heroic or scum that may ask for favor.

Does this mage wipe everything from the board does it say "only one need deliver a message"

Does she help down comrads enemies? to stay alive

Oh and remember this may become a bother to character that is openly opposed to all gods.

Kol Korran
2015-04-15, 01:41 AM
Some interesting thoughts you got there! Thanks! I will respond in kind...


... Most notably that our real life ancestors describe the state of man in terms of Mind, Body and Spirit (Eastern) or Higher Soul, Spirit and Body (Greek) and a few other descriptions that lead to a trinity within a mortal.

So I have used that in my campaigns. Mortals consist of three parts:

Soul - It is connected to the outer planes, which I call the planes of consciousness and includes the heavens and hells. The soul is the mind, personality and alignment of the character

Spirit - It is the primal, instinctual elements of the character, and it is connected with the Elemental planes where life force and anima are integrated with matter.

This is quite interesting- Sort of "the elements of divinity", in a way. I will burrow from your ideas if I may, and will try to explore some of the basics of what makes Divinity in Pathfinder and Golarion different from the Arcane- what are it's fundamentals...

I am currently thinking of two aspects:
1) Life: The divine force in D&D and such is noted for it's ability to heal, and to affect life (Be it by channel energy, cure spells and the like), something that nearly no arcane power can do (Maybe wish, limited wish and the like). Arcane power has been able to use necromancy, but not cure power. Which means that the very idea and concept of life runs through divine power. It is true for druids, oracles and more. This is a sort of "Anima", and seems to be a core concept of divine power.

2) Ideation/ conceptualization: The gods embody/ represent concepts/ forces/ ideas, as do their servants. Yet the ideas can be shared/ propagated by different gods, and gods can die yet the ideas/ concepts/ powers still exist... Which means, that in a way, the concept god or divine entity stands for exist sort of by themselves... Also, these ideas are spread by the people of their faith, clerics and such can lose power if they stray too much from the idea, and so on. The ideas/ concepts are the very basis of divine power.

Some spells even take it a bit further. While a mage who seeks to fly, sort of just "wish it", and flies, a cleric harbors the pwoers of wind. Mages puts up barriers of energy and power, while divine casters usually tie such things to other ideas (Not always, but it is common enough).

3) Power: Not sure exactly how to frame it, but gods and there seem to be a sort of "grab for power" (At least in Golarion) with an active competition for followers, power itself and more. There are even "levels" of godhood, gods can fall, can rise, can die. Power is IMPORTANT.

These are the things I got for now on the fundementals of divinity. I will ty to work them more on.


Where is his divinity coming from? Their reputation with the mortal realm, whether through fame or infamy? The harvesting of immortal power others' divinity like how most dragons and demon princes achieve the powers of a god? They became a custodian of a certain place where raw magic energy leaked into them?
he
I'm not sure where "usual" divinity comes from in Golarion (I need to make some research). I know tht four mortals gained divinity through passing some test at a location called "The Starstone", but the other gods re not like that, so I need to explore.

As for this character, I imagine her power coming from two sources: First, the artifact that broke and gave her her mythical powers- The Wardstone (Campaign specific), that is basically a nation wide protective item that drew it's powers from ages of prayers from many churches. It is the combined prayers of nations through time...

Secondly, from the Lexicon of Paradox itself. It enables some things that cannot be to... be. The impossible made possible. Not through a wish or such, but rather through research that finds some loophole or some breaks that might enable it.


It sounds like what you're describing for the PC is a vision quest -- an inner journey that reveals some profound truth, either about oneself or the nature of the universe.

It is EXACTLY the ide, only instead of a spiritul journey just into herself, the character will also explore the minds of the pryers of her own power, the thoughts and tribulations of the researchers of the lexicon, maybe even the gods themselves and so on. The Lexicon enables to make these "Journeys/ encounters" where she is at, her mind drawn to the weird landscape of the Lexicons research (Basically it's all in her mind).


The key to paradox is to find the tipping point, where obviously distinct things become indistinguishable and therefore become able to be redefined. So to help him seek the paradox of divinity, the book must bring the character to situations in which the nature of divinity is maximally ambiguous, and eventually enable the character to ask the universe a question (by action or intervention), whereby the act of answering definitively reshapes the nature of the divine and therefore allows the character their 'in'.

So, for example, one could find the point in time when a god is most mortal, or when a mortal is most divine. Examples might be something like a time when a god fell in love with a mortal and sacrificed something about the nature of the universe on their behalf, or a time when a god was dying or being born. On the mortal side, you could have the moment that a great artist or scholar created a work that would be remembered for thousands of years, or even a case where a character from a storyteller's fiction became worshiped as a real god by a society. And of course, an exploration of the nature of divinity would not be complete without a brush with solipsism and the divinity that all mortals possess in their own dreams.

So that provides the palette - the joy and sorrow of gods being mortals, the joy and sorrow of mortals becoming gods, and the godhood that is already possessed. With those things, the character can 'paint' their own new form of divinity.

Or something like that, anyhow!
This is some excellent stuff! Thank you! This might indeed be the loophole I was searching for! I think this will be a realization that may come to the character near the end of these "Mini encounters", (Or sooner, if she thinks of it), which might enable her to become the paradoxical divinity. Thanks!


All Divinity has an Alignment start there. start defining here value systems

... <good questions>...

The matter of alignment (Or more a question of morality) IS important, and deserves some place in her crafting her divinity. She hs proven herself to be much of a chaotic good person so far, (The campaign has been going on for some time), but ironing it into her shape of divinity could be interesting!
-------------------------------------------------

Thank you all for the contributions! Please continue to help me explore this idea!

Kol Korran
2015-08-01, 03:53 AM
last post in this thread (Sorry for the mini necro!). I just wanted to thank The Evil DM and NichG for their input! I used the ideas, suggestions, and material The Evil DM sent me in my session. If you want to check it out, you can check this post here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?321974-DM-s-campaign-log-Wrath-Of-The-Righteous-%28PF-amp-spoliers!%29/page6). Basically, just scroll down to the titles dealing with excerpts (There are three excerpts, in two titles). One of the charcters sought to gain a sort of "divine spark", and the excerpts are a sort of an education to that goal.

Thanks a lot! :smallbiggrin: