A question on deities and demigods

[blasto652]

I was wondering can a greater deity remove a lower deities divinity?I ask this because i heard a story where somthing like that happened and i wanted to know if there are any rules for this in dnd?

[gkathellar]

Not under any kind of normal circumstances, no.

I mean in theory I guess they could try to kill all of the Lesser Deity's worshipers, but in practice holy war is a spectacularly bad idea that leaves a god extremely vulnerable.

[blasto652]

One of the ideas that was brought up to me was somthing like the head of a panthion could do this (I ask this because i have a deity that commonly does things a few gods dont like such as commonly interacting with the mortal plane even going down there talking to people and interfearing with them.) (He is an elven deity named tarlin god of the moon and stars in my world he is a lesser deity)

[gkathellar]

You're under no obligation to follow the precedents set by other D&D settings, which have a very particular view of what gods are and how they function (or by Deities and Demigods, which isn't worth the paper it's printed on). Gods in your setting should follow whatever rules are thematically appropriate.

[Bakkan]

You're under no obligation to follow the precedents set by other D&D settings, which have a very particular view of what gods are and how they function (or by Deities and Demigods, which isn't worth the paper it's printed on). Gods in your setting should follow whatever rules are thematically appropriate.

Couldn't agree more. D&D has a rich mythology, but it definitely treats godhood as something that is, under nearly all circumstances, permanent until death. If something else works better for you or appeals to you more, use it.

[hamishspence]

In the Evermeet novel, we saw Corran stripping Lolth of her godhood and reducing her to "demon princess" - she had to do a lot of cultivating of the drow to get her godhood back.

So powerful deities reducing the power of lesser deities of their own pantheons, has a certain amount of precedent in the fluff, even if the rules don't cover it in detail.

[lbuttitta]

The system of transfer of divine ranks was deliberately developed to be vague and thus receptive to DM decision, so you can decide whatever choice would best fit your campaign.
RAW, however, there's no way to take a deity's divine ranks except via death or, if the lesser divinity recieved the ranks from the greater, recalling them.

[fire_insideout]

Overdeities can take away the divinity from any god that operates within their sphere of power, as recently discussed in this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?526032-Overdeity-Portfolios-by-Divine-Rank).

Note that an Overdeity is not the same thing as a greater deity.