When a Cleric becomes stronger than it's god

[Teapot Salty]

Hey guys. I was wondering, what happens when a cleric becomes stronger than his god? I mean at level 1 sure, your channeling the might of something stronger than yourself. But at epic levels, does this mean that you can only be as strong as your god? Can you get stronger then them? And as always, go nuts.

[Slipperychicken]

Can you get stronger then than them?

Not unless you're picking up divine ranks, no. Between all the ridiculousness divine ranks (and don't forget SDAs) give, there's plenty of stuff to ensure the god will always be top dog, including this bit:

Spontaneous Casting
A deity of rank 1 or higher who has levels in a divine spellcasting class can spontaneously cast any spell it can grant.

So yeah, no matter what the Cleric can do, his god can do it better. And his god also has hilariously OP abilities which let him stomp on mortals like they were ants.

[galan]

at some point, i think it's hard to still worship a god. I mean, sure, you *agree* with him, but worshiping someone weaker then you? doesn't make sense to me. at this point, the cleric probably gets his spells from ideology\idea- and even if the ideology is very similar to what your god said before, you earn power thorough yourself and not thorough him.

the other option is to kill your god and become him. Not sure this will work in every case, but sometimes..

edit: Slipperychicken- in a world where pun-pun lives, can you honestly say there is *no* way of being stronger than a god?
oh wait. maybe your god is pun-pun

[Slipperychicken]

edit: Slipperychicken- in a world where pun-pun lives, can you honestly say there is *no* way of being stronger than a god?
oh wait. maybe your god is pun-pun

Yeah, unless you pull some pun-pun level cheese or start bribing your GM, there isn't a RAW way to get divine ranks. There are ways to defeat gods as a mortal, but it's an uphill battle which relies on a lot of luck, the gods being uncharacteristically stupid, and the PCs' perfect knowledge of the game system.

I am basically saying that a greater deity played with any degree of intelligence should squash mortals, even assuming the unbuffed statblocks listed in the books. And that's not even considering the legions of angels, worshipers, allied gods, and other minions the deity has at its disposal.

[hymer]

at some point, i think it's hard to still worship a god. I mean, sure, you *agree* with him, but worshiping someone weaker then you? doesn't make sense to me.

I can see a lot of reasons to worship someone, and them being powerful could be one. But not the only one by far. If that was the case, only the most powerful gods would get worshipped.

That said, if we are to go into the spirit of the thread, I guess someone who ascended to their god's level would become a partner and companion, and probably a sort of apprentice. At least if we're talking about very good beings. An evil god would squash their worshipper long before they could become any sort of threat.

[FlayerIV]

Assuming the following:

A. The god doesn't kill the character when they start getting close.
B. The god isn't already an epic level 40+ odd character far and beyond the character's power.
C. The players don't have a 'God killing' device but do know a mechanical loophole that can be exploited to destroy them.

Then the simple answer is this:
What are the OTHER gods going to do about it?

[YossarianLives]

I sort imagine at that point the god would pretty much just be saying...

OK man I'll give you power just don't hurt me.

[endoperez]

So yeah, no matter what the Cleric can do, his god can do it better.

That gives me an awesome idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO23WBji_Z0

It's gonna be a pleasure to give you a lesson in marksmanship.
You couldn't give me a lesson in long-distance spitting!
Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you.
No, you can't.
Yes, I can.
No, you can't.
Yes, I can, YES I CAN!

Anything you can be I can be greater, sooner or later I'll be greater than you.
No you're not.
Yes I am!
No you're not!
Yes I am YES I AM!


Instant quest generation, just add an inappopriate challenge!

[galan]

I can see a lot of reasons to worship someone, and them being powerful could be one. But not the only one by far. If that was the case, only the most powerful gods would get worshipped.

I'm not saying you worship only the big and mighty. but at some point, worship as i can imagine it (and i admit that most of what i can imagine is bades on jewish people, so i'm probably not the best person for the job) require some.. distinction between the worshiped and worshiper. I would feel a bit silly worshiping someone weaker than me. taking commands from him? sure. worshiping? not me.

but again, maybe it's just me

[oxybe]

to me this begs the question: why should a god be all powerful? why can't a god simply be an entity that happens to have dominion over a concept, like money, water, etc...

having priests that are powerful enough to seal the god should it go corrupt would be a good cosmic safeguard, as well as a great plot point for a campaign: what if a corrupt priest starts abusing his god's power?

what if a corrupt and powerful priest of the wealth god imprisons this deity and starts profiteering off of the divine power?

now i'm not saying all gods should be modeled as such. if your pantheon has an Ubergod that oversees all creation, yeah, he should probably be an unstatted thing with his abilities being "i win". a war god should probably be a monster on the battlefield while a god of cities should probably have his strength reflect that of the community he watches over: strong when the town is united while weak and sickly when the town is in disarray.

a god of wealth/trade should have little to no reason to be a combat monster unless he's working on a big war economy (and even then i would prefer the god to be weak but helming a giant warmech/battleship or something of the sort) or be some sort of polymorphing death-dealing dervish, while a god of the crops might be simply a big talking wolf that occasionally likes to eat apples.

to me this is at least a more interesting concept that one of the entire pantheon being effectively a sentai of technicolor Zeuses.

[Incanur]

In an adventure I ran, one party cleric, who had long been his deity's champion, finally more or less merged with the god. This however came in the context of the party becoming temporarily mightier than any deity in order to save Toril from Atropus. I took inspiration for cosmic Marvel comics such as the Infinity Gauntlet arc and mostly threw out the rules. I wouldn't recommend having cleric as powerful as or more powerful than deities within 3.x rules. Everything breaks down at epic levels anyway, but salient divine abilities take that to another level. If you're using a system that can handle it, though, or can make up your own, go nuts!

[BWR]

to me this begs the question: why should a god be all powerful? why can't a god simply be an entity that happens to have dominion over a concept, like money, water, etc...

having priests that are powerful enough to seal the god should it go corrupt would be a good cosmic safeguard, as well as a great plot point for a campaign: what if a corrupt priest starts abusing his god's power?

what if a corrupt and powerful priest of the wealth god imprisons this deity and starts profiteering off of the divine power?

now i'm not saying all gods should be modeled as such. if your pantheon has an Ubergod that oversees all creation, yeah, he should probably be an unstatted thing with his abilities being "i win". a war god should probably be a monster on the battlefield while a god of cities should probably have his strength reflect that of the community he watches over: strong when the town is united while weak and sickly when the town is in disarray.

a god of wealth/trade should have little to no reason to be a combat monster unless he's working on a big war economy (and even then i would prefer the god to be weak but helming a giant warmech/battleship or something of the sort) or be some sort of polymorphing death-dealing dervish, while a god of the crops might be simply a big talking wolf that occasionally likes to eat apples.

to me this is at least a more interesting concept that one of the entire pantheon being effectively a sentai of technicolor Zeuses.

The problem is "how does a cleric, who gets his power from a god, become more powerful than the god giving him his power?"

[The Oni]

If the God is a reservoir, and the Cleric is a watercooler, and a Cleric's powers are clearly defined by how much water they can hold and efficiently use...then presumably no, the Cleric can't become stronger.

Unless...it's drawing from multiple reservoirs, or the god becomes weakened (intentionally or unintentionally). Suppose you're a powered-by-following god and nearly all of your followers just got murdered; you might still be pretty strong, but your level 20 Cleric may be stronger. But, if the God is weakened, fluff-wise the Cleric probably would be too.

[Knaight]

You probably want to specify which game here - the vast majority I've seen don't have this issue, because in the vast majority I've seen you never get anywhere near god-like power, even if the gods are the sort who are actually flimsy enough to do things like go into a mortal war, fight a bunch, get stabbed by a mortal, and go home to rest up.

As for being stronger than a god and worship of those weaker - it really depends on what, exactly it is a god of. Worshiping a god of battle that you can take out in a duel, defeat as a tactician with a somewhat inferior force, and better manage military logistics than is silly. If the god is instead all about leaving the material world behind and achieving enlightenment, being able to beat the snot out of them isn't really relevant.

[Rhynn]

If the GM decides to make gods that are weaker than mortals can become, that's the GM's problem. Why did they do that?

There's nothing wrong with PCs ascending to divinity and/or duking it out with gods, and there are a lot of "levels" of deities. A god might just be some dude on a throne. Maybe an immortal dude. Maybe an immortal and fairly powerful dude. Or a really big monster. Or it might be being as old as the cosmos.

A PC who ascends probably either gains access to or becomes a source of divine power. Divine magic coming from gods is an assumption or decision in world-building, anyway; there's nothing in D&D that necessiates that, and it was only AD&D that brought in that whole "gods give clerics magic" thing.

The notion that gods even have any measurable power level is an assumption, too, both mechanical and setting. Even if you're playing D&D 3.5, why would you give gods stats unless you're willing to accept that, at the very least, the players can build characters that, absent divine ranks, could kick the gods' assess? (Of course, any god with any good sense would be an Epic caster with access to far more consequence-free mitigation, time, and resources than the PCs will have ain any realistic campaign.)

How powerful is Issek the Jug, worshipped in Lankhmar? How powerful is the Highlord in The Deed of Paksenarrion? How powerful is R'hllor in ASOIAF? Those questions have no meaningful answer - they're gods, they don't operate on the same level with mortals.

But maybe you want your PCs to be Gilgamesh and Marduk, facing gods, or Harrek the Berserk skinning the White Bear, and so on. In which case the answer is "you kick that sorry punk's ass and take away his power and worshippers (and wear his soul as a cloak)."

The problem is "how does a cleric, who gets his power from a god, become more powerful than the god giving him his power?"

Taking the assumptions as given, the answer is, of course, "get more power from somewhere else."

[SiuiS]

at some point, i think it's hard to still worship a god. I mean, sure, you *agree* with him, but worshiping someone weaker then you? doesn't make sense to me. at this point, the cleric probably gets his spells from ideology\idea- and even if the ideology is very similar to what your god said before, you earn power thorough yourself and not thorough him.

the other option is to kill your god and become him. Not sure this will work in every case, but sometimes..

edit: Slipperychicken- in a world where pun-pun lives, can you honestly say there is *no* way of being stronger than a god?
oh wait. maybe your god is pun-pun

This only makes sense if god only means high power outsider, and not being magnitudes beyond concept.

[oxybe]

The problem is "how does a cleric, who gets his power from a god, become more powerful than the god giving him his power?"

hm... define power.

because the entirety of a cleric's power does not come from his god. hit points, defense scores/saves, attack bonuses, feats, etc... this kind of stuff doesn't leave even if a god rescinds his blessings.

all a cleric really does gain from a god, mechanically speaking, is spell selection and turn undead. becoming an ex-cleric means you can't cast spells and "turn undead" is turned off at the moment.

and that's it. there might be some cascading effects, like if you have feats that need TU charges to use, or the ability to make use of the CLW wand, but beyond that you're basically just a worse off fighter.

which means you're a bad adventurer (seriously, you're a sub-par fighter of your level) but with even a few levels under your belt you're still above and beyond the average non-adventurer in terms of everything.

a cleric draws some power from a god, but not all of it. as such his spellcasting can most likely be equal to what his god is capable of, at best. if the gods wants him to. the rest of his abilities, however are unhindered by his choice god.

so i guess my answer to"how does a cleric, who gets his power from a god, become more powerful than the god giving him his power?" is "by punching things until they give him a lot of exp. since, like many things in D&D, the mechanics and the fluff don't match up and we shouldn't get hung up on the specifics."

[BWR]

Exactly. The spells (and turning/Channeling) are what make a cleric a cleric, and are the only source of power worth talking about when discussing a cleric. Getting power from somewhere else is fine, but then you are hardly talking about a cleric in relation to his god anymore. If you run with the idea that a god grants a cleric a measure of divine power in the form of spells (and whatever secondary ability), then I can't see how it's possible to gain more power than the god has to put in. A cleric who happens to have other sources of power, say wizard levels, that in whatever setting you play makes him more powerful than a god, but then you aren't really talking about a cleric that's more powerful than his god, but a wizard.

[Rhynn]

all a cleric really does gain from a god, mechanically speaking, is spell selection and turn undead. becoming an ex-cleric means you can't cast spells and "turn undead" is turned off at the moment.

Do 3.5 clerics lose spellcasting if they're in divine disfavor? Is that an explicit rule? Is there anything stopping them from going "oh I worship the idea of [whatever] and get spells from that now?"

Those are all setting assumptions, anyway. There's no reason D&D clerics need to be given their spells by gods, much less gods that are in any way tangible.

Fun note: in AD&D, there was an explicit level limit (3rd, IIRC) for which spells were granted by your god and which weren't; spells of a level below the limit were independent of the favor, access to, or even existence of a deity. This was sort of a big deal in Spelljammer.

The idea of pre-Crystal Staff Dragonlance having non-deity-specific clerics capable of casting 1st and 2nd level spells is kinda fun; it's just that they tend to get lynched. IIRC the lore sort of supports that, anyway - if the raising the dead that was a lost power of ye olden times.

[ElenionAncalima]

Seeing as how the cleric gets there powers from their diety...I would say logically this shouldn't be possible. The strongest cleric of diety X should still be weaker that diety X. If anything, GMs should be using that as a baseline to establish how strong a particular diety is.

[Joe the Rat]

If you give it stats, players will try to kill it.

If you think of deities as limited sources of power (not everyone is comfortable with bigger infinities), then a cleric drawing half of that power is conceptually putting them on equal footing. As the Cleric is a PC or NPC, he's going to have a whole bunch of wonderful toys to bring to bear as well - especially important if you intend to go usurping power. If we're talking PCs, we also have backup - it never hurts to have your adventuring party in tow when engaging in a little divinity-tipping. Yeah, equal draw of power, plus toys, plus friends. Oh, except the deity has divine artifacts and buddies of his own. Plus all the benefits of Divine Rank (for games where that's a mechanic).

Practically speaking, you might, depending on the game, be in a position to out-power a manifestation of your deity, but would be hard-pressed to out-power the actual source of your power. It's powering you, it's probably powering nigh-infinite other Clerics. Your god's not going to run out of spells in a day. The point where you exceed your deity's power is generally after s/he has sponsored your apotheosis, or you're in some sort of ridiculous "make the gods mortal so we can clean remake the rules of reality" plotline.

[NichG]

Dragon Ascendant is the closest thing to a RAW way to get divine rank short of TO/Ice Assassin tricks. It gets you basically everything that Divine Rank 0 gives you without explicitly calling it Divine Rank 0.

You also have to be a ~Lv40 True Dragon to complete the PrC.

I have, incidentally, had someone complete it in one of my campaigns, but he didn't actually worship anyone so this particular issue never came up.

Perhaps a more practical example though - I played a fallen deity in a campaign as a Cleric who granted himself his spells, and used things like Imbue with Spell Ability to 'grant spells' to worshippers. Thanks to some spells whose wording specifies 'this works better on someone who worships the same deity as you' I was able to convince a few of the other PCs to worship me for the practical benefits.

The funny thing was that there was actually a source to my spellcasting that wasn't me, and I actually found the thing at one point. The campaign ended up getting very high powered, to the extent where my character basically became as powerful as he used to be or more, and one of my downtime projects was resurrecting another fellow fallen deity. At one point the source of my spellcasting got wiped out, and I needed to find another sponsor; thankfully the guy I resurrected owed me some favors. So I think I did end up worshipping and getting spells from someone who was technically weaker than me, though it was kind of a formality.