You become a god after selling your soul

[Calthropstu]

How would you, as a gm, rule what happens? Obviously you now grossly outrank whatever you sold your soul to. You also are immortal.

Interested to get some perspectives.

[Rynjin]

...How would that even work? I don't understand what would prompt such a scenario in the first place.

[Jack_Simth]

How would you, as a gm, rule what happens? Obviously you now grossly outrank whatever you sold your soul to. You also are immortal.

Interested to get some perspectives.

Up to DM whimsey, mostly. Depends in part on how the contract was written.

If payment is due when you shuffle off the mortal coil ... you have shed mortality:
You may end up a deity that's enthralled to the associated demon/devil/whatever.
You may have to settle accounts some other way after a trip to mechanus for arbitration (some form of payment is due, but what was originally promised can no longer be fulfilled).

If payment is due upon death, well... deities can be killed. I might suggest finding a way to void the contract prior to that event occurring.

However: Generally going to be a moot point. Deities are NPC's.

[J-H]

The buyer of the soul is now much richer or more powerful, depending on what the soul is to be used for. He now owns the soul of a deity.

If there was not an ironclad "no-takebacks" clause in the contract, he and/or his associates, allies, and family are about to have a bad time.

[Jack_Simth]

The buyer of the soul is now much richer or more powerful, depending on what the soul is to be used for. He now owns the soul of a deity.

If there was not an ironclad "no-takebacks" clause in the contract, he and/or his associates, allies, and family are about to have a bad time.
Unless, of course, he sold the contract to someone who has a reasonable chance of collecting....

[Kelb_Panthera]

Gods are immortal but not unkillable. The contract simply lies in an incomplete state until something separates it from your body. That something just won't be the passage of time.

That is, of course, assuming you retain your creature type or at least the augmented subtype. If you become a true outsider then your body and soul become one and you are bound to the service of whatever owns you now. Its ability to enforce that ownership will be up to the mechanism that allowed it to buy your soul in the first place; devils have you by the Pact Primeval and you may be compelled by the laws of reality or other gods to uphold your end, for example.

[Luckmann]

How did someone weaker than a deity elevate someone to godhood? I think the idea of someone endowing another with more power than they themselves have is patently absurd.

That said, owning the soul of a deity can't be bad. As far as owning souls go, he's just sitting on a dyson sphere in terms of energy production.

[Florian]

I´d have said "nope" to the apotheosis in the first place.

The mortals state includes the disconnect of body and soul, the immortal state begins with Outsider status and a huge part of that is the merging of body and soul as one entity. You have sold your soul, given it away, there is no real proceeding beyond that point.

[Crake]

I´d have said "nope" to the apotheosis in the first place.

The mortals state includes the disconnect of body and soul, the immortal state begins with Outsider status and a huge part of that is the merging of body and soul as one entity. You have sold your soul, given it away, there is no real proceeding beyond that point.

To be fair, owning a soul and having a soul are two different things. You may have forfeited ownership of your soul in the pact, but when that happened, you still had your soul in your body, it's not gone anywhere. And as others have pointed out, it depends on what the clause of the contract is. If it's based on your death, and you can ascend to outsider status without dying (definitely possible), at which point you merge your soul and your body, then it would actually become IMPOSSIBLE for the contractor to collect, since your soul is destroyed upon your death.

[Malphegor]

To be fair, owning a soul and having a soul are two different things. You may have forfeited ownership of your soul in the pact, but when that happened, you still had your soul in your body, it's not gone anywhere. And as others have pointed out, it depends on what the clause of the contract is. If it's based on your death, and you can ascend to outsider status without dying (definitely possible), at which point you merge your soul and your body, then it would actually become IMPOSSIBLE for the contractor to collect, since your soul is destroyed upon your death.

Any legal document worth a damn (ahem) would probably have a clause regarding if the purchased item, in this case the soul, is no longer obtainable within the lease of services rendered.

What was the collateral in the event that payment could not be tendered? Are souls owned by the client now considered equal to the soul promised? If they are a god, can collection of follower’s souls begin?

[Raxxius]

You ain't collecting.

Should have intervened pre godhood.

[noob]

Any legal document worth a damn (ahem) would probably have a clause regarding if the purchased item, in this case the soul, is no longer obtainable within the lease of services rendered.

What was the collateral in the event that payment could not be tendered? Are souls owned by the client now considered equal to the soul promised? If they are a god, can collection of follower’s souls begin?

Since when does gods owns the souls of their followers?
Maybe they go in an afterlife near that god but nothing says the gods have any right over those souls.

[Bronk]

How would you, as a gm, rule what happens? Obviously you now grossly outrank whatever you sold your soul to. You also are immortal.

Interested to get some perspectives.

Well, you don't need a soul to become a god. There are plenty of undead gods out there, for example, and they definitely didn't start with a soul!

And you don't need a soul afterwards either. Whatever you were to start with transcends to become the new god.

Meanwhile, the husk of the deity's former physical body is left behind to become a hunefer, which is an epic and very angry creature.

Now, the soul dealer is in an interesting pickle. On the one hand you have a full on god who might want that soul back, perhaps save their soul, or to resurrect their previous self, or to hedge their bets as a method of deific regeneration, or perhaps just to tie up loose ends. But there's also an extremely angry and bitter epic creature with all the mortal body's former memories who may very well want the soul! So, whoever has the soul should be extremely motivated to unload it at the earliest opportunity!

I would think the soul dealer could trade it back to the god at a profit, or use it as a smokescreen if the hunefer caught up to it. But, if the dealer knows he's outclassed, and he's hung on to the soul for this long, now would be the time to kick it up the bureaucratic chain! Sounds like he's a devil, so a soul with that much potential worth would now easily get it promoted to a new level, which would put him in a new form, which in turn would make it easier to dodge potential powerful claimants.

[Necroticplague]

Well, you don't need a soul to become a god. There are plenty of undead gods out there, for example, and they definitely didn't start with a soul! All the undead gods i can think were intelligent undead, which actually explicitely do have souls.

(Undead creatures are powered by negative energy. Only sentient undead creatures have, or are, souls.)
Sure, a lich might be keeping it in a box somewhere else for safekeeping, but they still have one.

Back to the topic at hand: DM fiat. It depends on the exact nature of the Pact used. As an agreement between Upper and Lower gods, the Pact Primeval (i.e, the 'book' when Devils say they do things by the book) probably has some clause or combination of clauses that covers it.

Personally, I would just say 'what makes you think the original still owns it'? That is, if you become a god, the devil that owns it isn't gonna have much value in that Pact (since they won't collect in any reasonable timeframe), so they'd sell it off to someone who perceives it as having value, much like a mortal selling bad mortages to get some kind of return. This process would likely repeat until it a being that could potentially collect ends up holding it. And then the newly formed god would have to deal with that potential collector, and all the Hell they could make for them and their followers. For while the Evil god or Lord would be prohibited from incredibly direct action (by the terms of the before mentioned Pact), they could certainly act to make things a pain for the rest of time.

[Mechalich]

Selling your soul is an act of subordination - it means giving some other being control over the most essential aspect of the self. Philosophically this ought to prevent divine ascension, how can one who is willingly a slave transcend their current state of existence? Even if is doesn't do that, the subordination remains in place. The new deity is still beholden to whomever controls their soul, which, in D&D at least, is ultimately another divine being. If you sold your soul to a Devil, ultimately Asmodeus owns it - he's a deity with subordinate deities and surely has no problem adding another one to the pile. You might retain a level of independent, several of the other Lords of the Nine do, but you're still his minion, god or not. The same thing is true for an abyssal lord, elder evil, or pretty much any other entity that would buy your soul, somewhere up there on the chain is deity who is now the boss of you.

[Manyasone]

Selling your soul is an act of subordination - it means giving some other being control over the most essential aspect of the self. Philosophically this ought to prevent divine ascension, how can one who is willingly a slave transcend their current state of existence? Even if is doesn't do that, the subordination remains in place. The new deity is still beholden to whomever controls their soul, which, in D&D at least, is ultimately another divine being. If you sold your soul to a Devil, ultimately Asmodeus owns it - he's a deity with subordinate deities and surely has no problem adding another one to the pile. You might retain a level of independent, several of the other Lords of the Nine do, but you're still his minion, god or not. The same thing is true for an abyssal lord, elder evil, or pretty much any other entity that would buy your soul, somewhere up there on the chain is deity who is now the boss of you.

Hey, mate. On a completely different note. Do you still have resvier pdf's?

[Bronk]

Meanwhile, the husk of the deity's former physical body is left behind to become a hunefer, which is an epic and very angry creature.

Slight adjustment to my thoughts, which were impeded by a recent reading of the new 'House of Secrets' comic, and it slipped my mind that yeah, the prospective deity still has possession of his or her soul when they ascend...

The soul collector has a claim on the soul, but the soul doesn't exist anymore... it's a god now. If indeed it was a deal with a devil, the contract probably, eventually, hearkens back to the Pact Primeval, and the claim could ascend through a number of powerful infernal and celestial courts. However, who was the deal made with? Not the soul itself! I suggest that it would eventually shake out that the only remaining part of the selling side of the original deal was the mortal body, and that's what is now the hunefer!

So, good luck to them collecting on that! But if they did manage it, you'd have a rogue hunefer out hunting a replacement soul, which could be the seed of a decent epic level quest.

[Calthropstu]

Slight adjustment to my thoughts, which were impeded by a recent reading of the new 'House of Secrets' comic, and it slipped my mind that yeah, the prospective deity still has possession of his or her soul when they ascend...

The soul collector has a claim on the soul, but the soul doesn't exist anymore... it's a god now. If indeed it was a deal with a devil, the contract probably, eventually, hearkens back to the Pact Primeval, and the claim could ascend through a number of powerful infernal and celestial courts. However, who was the deal made with? Not the soul itself! I suggest that it would eventually shake out that the only remaining part of the selling side of the original deal was the mortal body, and that's what is now the hunefer!

So, good luck to them collecting on that! But if they did manage it, you'd have a rogue hunefer out hunting a replacement soul, which could be the seed of a decent epic level quest.

I like this idea. *jots down*

[Gwyllgi]

How would you, as a gm, rule what happens? Obviously you now grossly outrank whatever you sold your soul to. You also are immortal.

Interested to get some perspectives.

Asmodeus: gimmie your soul.
Deified PC: come and take it goatman.

[Quertus]

Deities are NPC's.

Curiously, I find that deities make the best PCs.

That having been said, I see nothing to indicate that the individual in question is a PC.

[Blackhawk748]

Selling your soul is an act of subordination - it means giving some other being control over the most essential aspect of the self. Philosophically this ought to prevent divine ascension, how can one who is willingly a slave transcend their current state of existence? Even if is doesn't do that, the subordination remains in place. The new deity is still beholden to whomever controls their soul, which, in D&D at least, is ultimately another divine being. If you sold your soul to a Devil, ultimately Asmodeus owns it - he's a deity with subordinate deities and surely has no problem adding another one to the pile. You might retain a level of independent, several of the other Lords of the Nine do, but you're still his minion, god or not. The same thing is true for an abyssal lord, elder evil, or pretty much any other entity that would buy your soul, somewhere up there on the chain is deity who is now the boss of you.

Why would it? In DnD you become a god by gaining Divine Ranks, and there are a bunch of ways to do that. One of which is being worshipped. If the Pit Fiend Carl the Brutal owns my soul that doesn nothing to stop me from becoming a god. He may, because he doesnt want to deal with trying to collect on a god, but thats a different point all together.

To answer the question, its entirely subjective based upon the terms of the deal. Does the being in question get the Soul in X amount of time, when they die, or after a certaain goal is achieved?

[Bohandas]

It depends on where it happens. If it's on a chaotic plane and you stay on chaotic planes the fiend is SOL, even if both they and you are lawful. It'll be like that scene from the Wizard of Oz where Glinda tells off the Witch of the West "Rubbish, you have no power here! Begone!" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btPfmWrS6AY)

[lbuttitta]

How would you, as a gm, rule what happens? Obviously you now grossly outrank whatever you sold your soul to. You also are immortal.

Interested to get some perspectives.

If it were granting divine ranks, it would have to be a god itself, and so "grossly outrank" would be inaccurate.

That is, unless it's a fiat thing. In that case, just kill the contractor or find some other way to void the contract.

[Telonius]

If the soul isn't deliverable, I'd suspect that any Mechanus-style judgment would involve giving back the original benefit you got from selling it. So what exactly did you get in return for your soul? It would be easy enough if you traded it for riches or magic items, but otherwise it's going to be an interesting time of favor-exchanging.

[RedMage125]

I'm gonna side with the people who say the soul is now not collectable. For all the reasons given above.

The devil/demon is now SOL. Sometimes deals don't go the way we want them to, sorry about your luck, fiend.

[enderlord99]

Ever heard of a guy named Doresain?

[zlefin]

I'd say it depends heavily on the details; what were the terms of the contract, and how does becoming a deity in the setting work (in some places it would take the assent of a higher ranking diety or even an overdeity, which would affect the disposition considerably). (also what divine rank and what domains, in particular I'd say any deity tthat gets Chaos domain would automatically get out of contracts).
contract enforcement would be difficult, and also might simply not work. What happens to deities when they die is often different than for mortals; their soul/remains might simply be unaffected by the terms of the contract, especially if they're of a different alignment; I'd expect a deities remains to either go to a special place for such, or stay in the plane for their alignment.