Weapon to kill a god

[Someonelse]

I'm running an epic level game where the PCs are working their way up to killing a god. I wanted to give them an artifact to help (and come up with a macguffin for the next phase of the adventure) and I had this idea. I just wanted to bring it here to get some feedback on it. Is this a useful item? Too useful? Or not good enough? If you have any other ideas I'm open to suggestions.

Here's what I have: The Labrys of Eternity's End is a +10 Adamantine Vorpal Great Axe, it radiates an anti divinity field at a radius of 10ft. Within this field all gods are treated as DR0. Confirming a critical hit with this axe kills a god outright.

This axe means the god they are fighting is denied their divine bonus to attacks, AC, saves, etc, and they cannot use any of their salient abilities. It's as if they were suddenly dropped down to divine rank 0.
What do you think?

[Uncle Pine]

Turning a god into a DR0 entity already shuts it down a lot (because otherwise most deities can simply wish you dead with their salient abilities). Confirming crits at epic levels is terribly easy, so I would think about that ability a bit more because you could end up seeing gods dropping like flies.

[CartmanTuttle]

3.5 has some great rules for making epic weapons, you could just build something off of them. Mostly it depends on what deity it is (Portfolio, Alignment, etc).

[Someonelse]

I don't think crits are all that easy. Gods are epic and my group and I are power gamers, when I stat out a god their AC is ABSURD. I mean 100+ kind of absurd. Even losing their divine bonus to AC they will be hard to confirm against.

As far as I know there are no strict rules for gaining divine rank by killing gods. So for this game I'm doing it like a form of XP, if my party of 6 PCs kills a DR6 deity those six divine ranks are divided evenly among the PCs, so they each gain 1 divine rank.

So, I've made a slight modification: The Labrys of Eternity's End is a +10 Adamantine Vorpal Great Axe, it radiates an anti divinity field at a radius of 10ft. Within this field all gods are treated as DR0. Confirming a critical hit with this axe kills a god outright. However their divine essence cannot be absorbed by the wielder, the axe draws the power into itself. This overwhelms the axe, which cancels out its power, it takes 100 years per divine rank absorbed for the axe to return to its intended form. Until that time it is treated as a masterwork axe.

So two things: 1 is that I'm counting on my players' greed to hold them back, they want that divine rank. And 2, this axe can really only be used to kill a god once in the course of a single game. After that the axe is overwhelmed with power and cannot be used again for its intended purpose for a few centuries.

[Uncle Pine]

I don't think crits are all that easy. Gods are epic and my group and I are power gamers, when I stat out a god their AC is ABSURD. I mean 100+ kind of absurd. Even losing their divine bonus to AC they will be hard to confirm against.

As far as I know there are no strict rules for gaining divine rank by killing gods. So for this game I'm doing it like a form of XP, if my party of 6 PCs kills a DR6 deity those six divine ranks are divided evenly among the PCs, so they each gain 1 divine rank.

So, I've made a slight modification: The Labrys of Eternity's End is a +10 Adamantine Vorpal Great Axe, it radiates an anti divinity field at a radius of 10ft. Within this field all gods are treated as DR0. Confirming a critical hit with this axe kills a god outright. However their divine essence cannot be absorbed by the wielder, the axe draws the power into itself. This overwhelms the axe, which cancels out its power, it takes 100 years per divine rank absorbed for the axe to return to its intended form. Until that time it is treated as a masterwork axe.

So two things: 1 is that I'm counting on my players' greed to hold them back, they want that divine rank. And 2, this axe can really only be used to kill a god once in the course of a single game. After that the axe is overwhelmed with power and cannot be used again for its intended purpose for a few centuries.
Or someone could play a <insert ageless race, for example elan or necropolitan> Cleric, prepare Sense Weakness and Surge of Fortune, autocrit the first god he runs into even if he's not proficient with the weapon in question, plane shift to the Far Realm, wait 100 years per divine rank absorbed there and plane shift back. Rinse and repeat.
Everything keeping in mind that the time ratio between Far Realm and Material Plane is N/A:0.

[CartmanTuttle]

Or someone could play a <insert ageless race, for example elan or necropolitan> Cleric, prepare Sense Weakness and Surge of Fortune, autocrit the first god he runs into even if he's not proficient with the weapon in question, plane shift to the Far Realm, wait 100 years per divine rank absorbed there and plane shift back. Rinse and repeat.
Everything keeping in mind that the time ratio between Far Realm and Material Plane is N/A:0.

Only problem I see with that plan is contending with the...natives of the Far Realm.

[Someonelse]

Only problem I see with that plan is contending with the...natives of the Far Realm.

And the fact that that's just not going to happen within the scope of this game. If a player tried that I would make their character an NPC. I'd ask them to make a new character and lay off the shenanigans. This game is happening within a relatively short period of time (weeks, months, maybe years, but not centuries), so even 100 year wait is not something they could reasonably do. If they use this item every deity in the pantheon will know about it, they will not sit idly by and allow the god killer to rest on his laurels.

[Aharon]

Seems like a useful weapon.
Problem is still getting within 10 ft. of the god.
Also, what happens if the God isn't medium size and not completely in the radius?
Also, the God has effectively DvR 0 when it is killed by the axe, so there's no waiting time :smallbiggrin:

[Someonelse]

Seems like a useful weapon.
Problem is still getting within 10 ft. of the god.
Also, what happens if the God isn't medium size and not completely in the radius?
Also, the God has effectively DvR 0 when it is killed by the axe, so there's no waiting time :smallbiggrin:

Yes, getting up in the god's face is the first hard part.

As long as the radius includes at least one 5ft square of the deity's space it would work against them, just like a colossal creature in an antimagic field.

Well of course the aura of the axe only dims the deity's divine rank, it doesn't erase it. So when the deity dies its ranks are still there and they're absorbed by the axe.

[Zaq]

Traditionally, I feel like a sprig of mistletoe might be a good start. No one would bother to defend against something so unremarkable.

[Uncle Pine]

Only problem I see with that plan is contending with the...natives of the Far Realm.
What? There's nothing wrong with the natives of the Far Realm. Oh, unless you're talking about the off-chance of becoming INSANE? BUT there's nothing wrong in becoming INSANE! Right?
In general, I wouldn't expect an epic spellcaster/group of adventurers that didn't actively decided to travel around the Far Realm trying to establish connections with the locals and instead minded their own business to encounter many problems. The only real risk is that of becoming insane, but it's a Will save so there are simple ways to never fail one (specifically spending 3,000 gp on a novice ring of diamond mind keyed to Moment of Perfect Mind).


And the fact that that's just not going to happen within the scope of this game. If a player tried that I would make their character an NPC. I'd ask them to make a new character and lay off the shenanigans.
Sorry, I was expecting this level of optimization because:

Gods are epic and my group and I are power gamers
Maybe applying it to every god is a stretch, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone held on those two spells to kill a very specific and annoying god who's hindering the PCs' plans.


This game is happening within a relatively short period of time (weeks, months, maybe years, but not centuries), so even 100 year wait is not something they could reasonably do. If they use this item every deity in the pantheon will know about it, they will not sit idly by and allow the god killer to rest on his laurels.
The thing is, deities don't need to sit idly for 100+ years. As soon as he killed the deity and plane shifts to the Far Realm, time starts to flow only for the Cleric. For everyone not in the Far Realm, the Cleric effectively disappears and reappears (with the weapon fully charged) in the same istant.
However, keep in mind that deities can generally see what's going to happen weeks before it takes place, including PCs' actions. This, along with divine abilities like Alter Reality, Divine Splendor and Life And Death, should make it nearly impossible for PCs to even approach a deity in the first place and is part of why appropriately running a godslaying campaign should be extremely convoluted.
So if the PCs decide to go killing a god, most of the time they've been dead for a week. Should this not happen because all the deities portfolio senses have stopped working, there'll be no downtime between "the PCs slay a god" and "the PCs come back from the Far Realm with the weapon fully charged" for the portfolio senses-less deities to act in between, but only if they are actually been stripped of their portfolio senses. Otherwise, how did the PCs approach the now dead god?

Tl;dr I'm curious about how you're planning to run the quest the PCs will have to go through to approach their first target(s), if you have time to write about it. I have never run this kind of campaign before so it would be interesting to learn on the subject.

As for the weapon, if you know your players won't abuse it, it should be fine as long as you think your whole story arc of godlike proportions will be fine even if a single god suddenly disappears because s/he has been slain by it.

[Remuko]

Its a Vorpal Axe make the Vorpal effect work as its supposed to. Not on a confirmed crit but on a Nat 20 only. Otherwise I think it sounds awesome. Though I'd probably have also made it a Morphing weapon, so that no matter who wields it, it can shift into a weapon type they are proficient with.

[Someonelse]

I actually don't have a specific plan for how they are going to do it. That's up to them. I have the god and his minions statted out with details about their home and its defenses. And that's it. Otherwise I'm freestyling.

Without digressing too much, I'll say that I'm not afraid of the Far Realm trick because there is no Far Realm in this campaign. This game is set in the world of Ptolus, which is a prison plane. I'm re-imagining the Ptolus setting as a sort of penal colony for gods and other powerful beings. So you have beings of all alignments walking around with divine rank. Most of them are DR10 and below. The god the PCs are going for is DR16. These minor deities are constantly fighting, higher powers protect the people of the world, if the squabbling of minor deities threatens the safety of the common people they will meet some very powerful beings who I don't have stats for because that's how powerful they are.

The whole Far Realm thing is a technicality anyway, with a little hand waving it turns out that that 100 years has to be on the prime material plane, so they just wasted 100 years for nothing.

As for the rest of it, I'm just running a combination of material from the last three games I ran, but I'm upgrading everything. Tacking on some epic levels to all the bad guys, giving divine rank to their leaders, etc. If/when it comes up that some challenge is easy because they're epic, then so be it. They win and we move on. No biggy. I'm going to place the axe as the main treasure for a dungeon I've already written and run a few times for other groups, but the original story line doesn't work in this game, so I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with some reason for them to go do it. This axe works perfectly.

[Vaz]

Doesn't have to be a Far Realm, can be any genesis'd Demiplane with a Time Trait set at 10 trillion to 1.

[MisterKaws]

The weapon is useless without an anti-divination feature, since any decent deity will use Alter Reality divinations(or Alter Reality Metafaculty in some games) at least once every ten minutes to check if any sort of god-slaying artifact was created, and after they know it was created, they just need to constantly sense this item and avoid getting into its AoE.

[Efrate]

Give the weapon the ability some of the elder evils have that makes it undetectable to divine magic (barring said deity holding it), cranked up to 11 so gods of divine rank X or less cannot sense it, or maybe one the god who made it can, or some such. It is an artifact toss powers on it.

Depending on your gods and your characters it might be a cakewalk regardless, a lot of the statted deities are pretty much trash and any capable party can take them down at much lower levels than intended. Unless they have the divine abilities to detect from quite a ways. Then there is always vecna blooded. Or allying with another deity just to fly in under the radar.

[Avigor]

Give the weapon the ability some of the elder evils have that makes it undetectable to divine magic (barring said deity holding it), cranked up to 11 so gods of divine rank X or less cannot sense it, or maybe one the god who made it can, or some such.

This. Also, I'd suggest instead of the artifact (whether you keep it an axe or make it a morphing weapon as was suggested earlier) just disabling divine rank outright and insta-killing a deity before going inert for 100 prime material years, have each crit effectively "absorb" one divine rank from the deity (permanently knocking it down a peg) in such a way that if you use it to soften an enemy deity, you cannot get as powerful by absorbing whatever's left than if you didn't use it to damage said deity, to make it a balancing act of "do I want to weaken him but get less or keep him powerful to get more"; also, throw in that anyone holding it (benefiting from the anti-divination property) when the deity dies only gets half the normal absorbed power boost as the weapon absorbs some of what they would otherwise have gained, and it's after the quickening that the weapon goes inert.

A good way to segue this into another campaign that isn't focused on killing one specific opponent could also be to have part of the artifact's lore be that those ranks it "absorbs" becomes up for grabs later in some kind of cosmic contest or somesuch, giving the players a 2nd chance to gain whatever ranks they missed out on by using it earlier.

[dhasenan]

I'd do it like this:


Several people can bond with the artifact in a ritual that takes several days.
The ritual requires specifying which deity to target.
The artifact hides them from the deity's direct notice (through divine knowledge of the relevant portfolio and through divination).
The artifact also defends the bonded people from the deity's salient divine abilities.
If any of the bonded people kills the deity, the artifact destroys the deity's soul entirely. It's dead beyond the hope of resurrecting.
When the bonded people are all dead, the artifact reverts to its default state, not targeting any deity and not protecting any mortals.
When the deity is dead, the artifact returns to its creator, a Divine Rank 20+ deity.


That solves the reuse problem. It means the deity can't just scry for people plotting to murder them once per day and then nuke theme from orbit. It means Rejuvenation doesn't let the deity resurrect automatically.

If I were a paranoid deity, I would get the Avatar salient divine ability and hide out on my personal godly plane.

[Griggory]

I don't think crits are all that easy. Gods are epic and my group and I are power gamers, when I stat out a god their AC is ABSURD. I mean 100+ kind of absurd. Even losing their divine bonus to AC they will be hard to confirm against.

To imply that your group is power gaming because you are optimizing AC is kinda misleading. Even the implication that a high AC would be this gods primary defense against attacks from the axe suggest that you are playing a low optimization campaign (nothing wrong with that, but you might get better answers if you know what amount of optimization or power gaming you are using).

To answer your question about the axe is that it doesn't matter. Since high level 3.5 is all about preparation, any decently played deity won't let some dumb-dumbs with a god slaying axe get even close to him. So what really matters is how the god is played, what SDA he has picked etc. The axe is completely irrelevant to the equation.