Trolling A god! (we previously stole a pagoda.)

[jintoya]

Alright everyone, this thread is essentially going to be coming up with ways to aggravate a god.
i will likely be epic level before the real showdown with said god, but this is Orochi, god king of monsters, so his powers are essentially...having 8 heads and being a big bag of phallic objects...last time i crossed him he (just found this out by trying to resurrect them with my pile of funds) burned the souls of children to create energy to enhance his troops....or just for the hell of it...i cannot tell, point is, he has angered me, and i will get him.

here is where the thread comes in, he is astral projecting himself to material plane, pseudo-possessing people and making avatars...they are kinda like watered down versions of himself...and i am not dumb enough to go to his realm, so i am going to make him REALLY mad instead so he eventually shows up in person.

last time he put all the children in a pagoda, so i just stole the whole pagoda and by the time i arrived, he torched about 30 of them...trying to avoid a repeat.
this is an oriental style campaign, keep that in mind when suggesting anything to do with monsters....there are no true dragons in this setting (so far) and custom gods. (but most have some rough equivalent.)

here's the catch, he is astral projecting...each head individually, so at worst, there are 7 more child burning monster lords out there. and i do not yet know what his goals are.

il likely update this post as the thread goes on, but i work on a boat and my work schedule is odd as a result, i have a campaign session today and tomorrow, but i wont likely find another Orochi head avatar this session, but maybe wed/thu i might. (DM vacation, so the next 9 days are possible D&D days.)
my character is a warlock/druid gestalt style character,
this is a solo campaign now
im level 15 (subject to change rapidly)
my race is a custom to the campaign setting fey that controls crows and things like crows
i have just about all the books for D&D and will be getting the PF books soonish, but if its got an SRD then its probably allowed, so if i don't have the book, but i can access it, its good to go.
the "is it fun though?" rule applies to this campaign.

[jintoya]

il keep this post to catalog all the ideas.


taking all the people and replacing them with greater fetches.
Getting celestial involvement to essentially sue the reptilian pants right off him. (did this.)
draw out and eliminate his military leaders, causing a likely upset and power vacuum to disrupt his actions.
getting hell involved, Orochi is burning souls, some tartarians might want to know about this. (might do this today)

[DrMotives]

I'm curious how you stole a pagoda. I like to imagine it was "A dog, a plan, a canal, pagoda".

[Bronk]

Those who use astral projection are connected to their original body via a silver cord, and targeting the cord and cutting it kills the character. It's invisible unless you're on the astral plane, but it's still there. Meanwhile, their body is in suspended animation. The spell can be dispelled. Three possibilities I see are:

1: Find a githyanki silver sword capable of cutting silver cords, track down each of these astrally projecting avatars, drink a potion of 'see invisibility', sneak up on them, and kill them using their silvery off switch. Do this for each of the 8 heads, and you're good to go... there's a lot of lore that says that you have to kill a god on it's home plane, and the astral projection spell specifies that that's what happens.

2: Try to track down as many of the astrally projecting head avatars as you can. If you find all 8, that means that wherever the god's body is, all 8 heads are in suspended animation, and therefore as helpless as it's possible for a god to be. You could then find out where that is and kill it without the heads knowing until it's too late, and you'd just have to deal with the god's minions along the way.

3: When you find a astrally projecting head, find a way to dispel it, sending it back to it's body. It may have a high caster level to overcome, so you might need to use 'greater dispel magic' and find a way to boost your caster level, or even going so far as to find a way to cast a 'disjunction'. This isn't as deadly to the god as the first two ideas, but it would be less dangerous for you and would still be highly annoying.

[jintoya]

I'm curious how you stole a pagoda. I like to imagine it was "A dog, a plan, a canal, pagoda".
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?588511-I-am-trying-to-steal-a-palace-Physically
There's the thread, it was interesting.

Those who use astral projection are connected to their original body via a silver cord, and targeting the cord and cutting it kills the character. It's invisible unless you're on the astral plane, but it's still there. Meanwhile, their body is in suspended animation. Two possibilities I see are:

1: Find a githyanki silver sword capable of cutting silver cords, track down each of these astrally projecting avatars, drink a potion of 'see invisibility', sneak up on them, and kill them using their silvery off switch. Do this for each of the 8 heads, and you're good to go... there's a lot of lore that says that you have to kill a god on it's home plane, and the astral projection spell specifies that that's what happens.

2: Try to track down as many of the astrally projecting head avatars as you can. If you find all 8, that means that wherever the god's body is, all 8 heads are in suspended animation, and therefore as helpless as it's possible for a god to be. You could then find out where that is and kill it without the heads knowing until it's too late, and you'd just have to deal with the god's minions along the way.
Killing a god is never this easy, they get gold threads, only god slaying weapons can cut those, it's kinda to stop me from having done this already, god souls are nearly indestructible, but when I get his physical body slain, it's all a matter of hiding them so he can never be put back together.

At current he described me as "a pest" so obviously I wasn't trolling hard enough, hence this thread, and he is unlikely to fall for the same trick twice.

Edit: also, he has proven so far that he likes military strength, so his minions are likely a well trained army of clerics, cultists, soldiers and generals... Hence refusing to go to him... He is a bit helpless at that point, but the army won't be.

[MisterKaws]

Are you a full Warlock on that side? A full Warlock/Druid gestalt of about level 25-30 could definitely stand toe to toe with low DR Deities, by abusing Epic Magic, and there's no fear of them outrunning you with Dark Transient(perfect teleport and perfect plane shift, at-will).

Talking about that, you should look into researching his Divine Rank in-game. Should involve a trip to some cleric/archivists, but it's definitely important. He's definitely not a Demigod, though, since he has Avatars. Doesn't seem like a Greater one, though, but you gotta be careful. Especially, don't involve too many people with a fight against a god, since they can sense any event relating to them which involves a large number of people.

By the way, if you go inside their domain, always have a ton of Planar Perinarch spells prepared. Otherwise you're just going to die in a single thought of theirs, by changing the planar properties to include null magic and temporal stasis in a 100ft radius around you.

Also, just a side thought, but if there's a minor god of shadows of some sort, you could pick Shadowmaster as your first epic feat and just go hunt them to steal their Divine Rank. You'd be basically immune to all of their strongest abilities. And then, after that, you'd be fighting Deity to Deity with Orochi.

[jintoya]

Are you a full Warlock on that side? A full Warlock/Druid gestalt of about level 25-30 could definitely stand toe to toe with low DR Deities, by abusing Epic Magic, and there's no fear of them outrunning you with Dark Transient(perfect teleport and perfect plane shift, at-will).

Talking about that, you should look into researching his Divine Rank in-game. Should involve a trip to some cleric/archivists, but it's definitely important. He's definitely not a Demigod, though, since he has Avatars. Doesn't seem like a Greater one, though, but you gotta be careful. Especially, don't involve too many people with a fight against a god, since they can sense any event relating to them which involves a large number of people.

By the way, if you go inside their domain, always have a ton of Planar Perinarch spells prepared. Otherwise you're just going to die in a single thought of theirs, by changing the planar properties to include null magic and temporal stasis in a 100ft radius around you.

Also, just a side thought, but if there's a minor god of shadows of some sort, you could pick Shadowmaster as your first epic feat and just go hunt them to steal their Divine Rank. You'd be basically immune to all of their strongest abilities. And then, after that, you'd be fighting Deity to Deity with Orochi.

Interesting idea, I'll look into the idea of just becoming a minor deity myself.
Orochi is not a major deity, divine rank around 8 or so.

[Bronk]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?588511-I-am-trying-to-steal-a-palace-Physically
There's the thread, it was interesting.

Killing a god is never this easy, they get gold threads, only god slaying weapons can cut those, it's kinda to stop me from having done this already, god souls are nearly indestructible, but when I get his physical body slain, it's all a matter of hiding them so he can never be put back together.

At current he described me as "a pest" so obviously I wasn't trolling hard enough, hence this thread, and he is unlikely to fall for the same trick twice.

Edit: also, he has proven so far that he likes military strength, so his minions are likely a well trained army of clerics, cultists, soldiers and generals... Hence refusing to go to him... He is a bit helpless at that point, but the army won't be.

I've never heard of gods getting gold threads... where does that come from?

Basically, by using astral travel, he's forgoing his usual godly protections and replacing them with other protections that are very good but have exploitable weaknesses, including the third 'dispel or disjoin' idea I put up there before I realized you had already responded.

As for not going after his generals, I think that's exactly the kind of thing you should be doing - either through force or stealth, and after a lot of planning and research - especially because you're a druid/warlock, and in a solo 'rule of fun' adventure.

Here's a fourth idea, not related to astral projection but to the setting, which you said is an oriental style campaign. Now, this would be more DM dependent than usual, but a staple of that type of campaign is a ramped up celestial bureaucracy, filled with lung dragons and celestial daimyos and whatnot. Here this guy is, trampling all over the world, probably in violation of all sorts of treaties, agreements, and pacts ... maybe even the Pact Primeval, if that's a thing in your campaign, and you could work out a way to file multiple very annoying lawsuits against him, enforceable by the planar powers. For example, he's using astral projections instead of avatars, breaking the numerical and power limitations on avatars... Illegal! He's falsely and directly interfering with other faiths... injunction! He consigned kid's souls to unfair disintegration... Court order! You might try sending inevitables after him too...

[jintoya]

I've never heard of gods getting gold threads... where does that come from?

Basically, by using astral travel, he's forgoing his usual godly protections and replacing them with other protections that are very good but have exploitable weaknesses, including the third 'dispel or disjoin' idea I put up there before I realized you had already responded.

As for not going after his generals, I think that's exactly the kind of thing you should be doing - either through force or stealth, and after a lot of planning and research - especially because you're a druid/warlock, and in a solo 'rule of fun' adventure.

Here's a fourth idea, not related to astral projection but to the setting, which you said is an oriental style campaign. Now, this would be more DM dependent than usual, but a staple of that type of campaign is a ramped up celestial bureaucracy, filled with lung dragons and celestial daimyos and whatnot. Here this guy is, trampling all over the world, probably in violation of all sorts of treaties, agreements, and pacts ... maybe even the Pact Primeval, if that's a thing in your campaign, and you could work out a way to file multiple very annoying lawsuits against him, enforceable by the planar powers. For example, he's using astral projections instead of avatars, breaking the numerical and power limitations on avatars... Illegal! He's falsely and directly interfering with other faiths... injunction! He consigned kid's souls to unfair disintegration... Court order! You might try sending inevitables after him too...
The army I was talking about is likely guarding his helpless form, he likely has some of his forces spread around, but he is using his ability to possess people in order to take over whole kingdoms by either rising to power or directly possessing a Lord. (So he isn't using his private military strength, he's using other people's... But if I could draw them out...)

As for the gold thread thing, that's houseruled because of gods having nigh indestructible souls, at best, under normal circumstances, it would only return him to his body...I already considered it due to it's "I WIN!" Nature and in the spirit of fun, we decided gods don't have that loophole.

I had not even thought about seeing what the celestial plane looked like in this campaign, I've mostly been focusing my attention on the feywilds and saving various nature spirits (think Spirited away) but my DM isn't heavily legally savvy, so I'll check with her and see... But orochi was hiding his nature and trying to play the part of royalty when I found the first one... So it could be a good idea to get the celestials involved... If nothing else it will divide his attention and slow his plans... And irritate him. (My character hates dragons... But the enemy of my enemy, right?)

I don't have any contacts on the plane, my god resides in the feywilds... But I'm sure she will answer a prayer, I never ask for anything from her, just do good in her name, and she probably had contacts up there.