Ability Score Generation (Deific)

[AmberVael]

Okay, so I doubt too many people would have use for this, but-
When looking over the deities in the Deities and Demigods handbook, I noticed that they never really list how to make your own stats for them... they just kinda say "Oh, you can have one ability score that is yea high (list score)"

So when I needed to make a deity for my crazy epic stuff, I was like-
Wtf? How do I make balanced scores?
So I came up with the following rough system:

Deific Point Buy:

Each ability score starts out at 20.
Rank 0 entities have 40 extra points.
Rank 1+ entities have 50 extra points.

Each extra point above 20 point may be bought on a point by point basis, but-
The max score you can by for one ability is 36.

After this you apply level/HD stat bonuses as appropriate. As far as I could tell, it actually represented most deities pretty well. A few had 4 higher/lower, but not much else. It was pretty standard, for a rough system.

So in case anyone happened to need it...
Any thoughts, comments?
Anyone think I am crazy for having to stat out a deity?

[Ackapus]

Anyone think I am crazy for having to stat out a deity?

Not if you want to do an epic campaign...



The problem with taking on the gods is that if your PCs aren't up to the challenge, they can merely quest around the planes to level up some more ("Hey, I know! Let's go dungeon crawl through the Abyss again!") and by the time they're high enough to beat the gods hands-down nobody wants to play anymore.

I never got to ACTUALLY creating my deities, but I did look over the system. Aren't there some creatures in the ELH that have ability scores above 36? I don't have my ELH on hand, but looking in my Lords of Madness I see an Elder Brain has a Con score of 38 and a CR of only 25. Heck, an Elder Eidolon has a Str of 42 and a CR of 15! I'd say up those limits, or do away with them.

Personally, I found the entries in Deities & Demigods to be fairly weak. In re-creation, I was thinking the 20 levels of Outsider may become 30, and take all relevant class levels up another 20 levels.

[Lord Iames Osari]

You're forgetting that the limit of 36 is before things like level/HD-based ability increases, inherent bonuses from self-granted wishes, any racial mods you think are appropriate (i.e., an elven god would probably have elven racial modifiers, etc.)

[AmberVael]

After application of level/racial bonuses, you can quite easily bump up the score to about 50.

[Gralamin]

And then theres Thor, with his godly strength score (80s to 90s I believe)

[AmberVael]

Ah... no. I don't believe any god I looked at had an ability above 60. The high/mid forties were average, some had 50, and some had a little over 50.

This ability score average spanned all ranks.

[Gralamin]

Deity and Demigods, Page 193. Thor has a 92 in Strength.
(Fairly enough he has an item which doubles his strength score though)

[AmberVael]

Aha. See? My generation method still works then.
I looked mostly over the Greek deities while doing this.