highly vague and complicated question...

[Stormthorn]

Ok, so we have a war god. Lets say he has the half-dragon and half-fiend templates. He has a divine rank of 17 (remember, war god?)

He has 80 character levels, and enough of those are caster levels to make him an epic caster.

He has at least 500 high-level fiends as bodyguards.


How many umbral blots would i have to throw at him to kill him?

Is it even possible?

Im open for suggestions how a lower ranking god could kill a higher ranking god.

[Douglas]

Even with a deliberately terrible build, umbral blots would be unable to harm him significantly and he would be able to kill them pretty quickly. You could drop him in the middle of an infinite plane completely packed with umbral blots, and he wouldn't even get noticeably bruised.

[Stormthorn]

I see. Im asking this because im RPing a god against several other gods. None are rank 17 war gods, but mine really does use umbral blots. (rank zero gods are assumed to have a CR of 20-30, just for referance)

In fact, he uses them well to destroy whole cities in a single night.

Guess greater dieties are beyond them tho.

What about a gargantuan sized (with extra HD to match) psuedonatural umbral blot? It gets like 40 tentacle attacks that deal at least 6d6 damage even if they cant disentigrate the god.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Divine rank beats everything except equal or higher divine rank, basically.

A deity with divine rank 1+ can't auto-fail saves, so if it's got Fort +37 or higher, the Disintegrating Touch is 100% useless.

That's it. An infinite number of umbral blots can't in any way affect any deity, like douglas said. The 5d6 damages are pretty irrelevant.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Watch out for spells, though. Some spells seem innocuous, but they'll be able to set you up the bomb.

[Douglas]

What about a gargantuan sized (with extra HD to match) psuedonatural umbral blot? It gets like 40 tentacle attacks that deal at least 6d6 damage even if they cant disentigrate the god.

A single such creature? No chance, the deity will slaughter it. An infinite horde of them? If the diety's build is sufficiently terrible, they might be able to take him down. If the deity is built at all well (a casual player putting a little effort into it is all that's needed), however, it goes back to him not even getting bruised.

[JoshuaZ]

I see. Im asking this because im RPing a god against several other gods. None are rank 17 war gods, but mine really does use umbral blots. (rank zero gods are assumed to have a CR of 20-30, just for referance)

In fact, he uses them well to destroy whole cities in a single night.

Guess greater dieties are beyond them tho.

What about a gargantuan sized (with extra HD to match) psuedonatural umbral blot? It gets like 40 tentacle attacks that deal at least 6d6 damage even if they cant disentigrate the god.

: That might help but if it is a war deity it is going to have a lot of stuff that is going to make many of those tentacles rarely hit. You have one minor advantage; natural 1s don't automatically fail against a deity but natural 20s on attacks are still definite attacks, so you should be getting each turn at least 2 attacks that actually hit. Still, this isn't like to be enough.

I'd suggest if possible a more indirect attack; send a few of the umbral blots against major centers of worship of the deity. In many settings fewer worshippers make a deity weaker (if this is true in your setting is something your character would presumably know since it is a deity also yes?).

[Stormthorn]

I'd suggest if possible a more indirect attack; send a few of the umbral blots against major centers of worship of the deity. In many settings fewer worshippers make a deity weaker (if this is true in your setting is something your character would presumably know since it is a deity also yes?).

A more powerful diety has more worshipers and more otherworldy monsters, but they have to gain power though extreme action, and then the faith flows in.

Rank 12 vs Rank 17.
Rank 12 has a +10 Outsider Dread Keen Longsword with one special feature.
It inflicts wounds on gods as if they where five divine ranks lower than they actualy are.

Odds of Rank 12's success?
(form what i understand, a rank 12 cant use any divine abilities on the rank 17, but the rank 12 still gets saves and such against the reverse)

[Azerian Kelimon]

Depending on the choices, the level 12 is screwed.

Now, if we're talking about a godsbane weapon, the level 12 has a mean fighting chance if it's abilities are chosen correctly.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Oh yeah, and even with a lower save, deities have "Transmutation immunity." It's a bit unclear, but would arguably make them categorically immune to disintegrate.

Alter Reality beats just about anything. A war deity is sure to have Annihilating Strike, which means every attack destroys the target. Divine Fast Healing is pretty nice, too, even if pseudonaturals can get through the deity DR (why deities don't get DR x/epic and alignment is beyond me).

And so on.

Really, if you'll stat out an example deity and the pseudonatural umbral blot, it'll help assess who'd win. Pseudonaturals are ridiculously powerful (makes sense; many epic monsters are supposed to fight on somewhat even terms with deities), so it's hard to say without seeing some numbers.

A 171 HD pseudonatural umbral blot (where are you going to get one? Seriously, the idea of a deity in most settings commanding more than one umbral blot at all is pretty far-fetched to me) would have an attack bonus of something like +147, and 42 tentacle rakes for damage 2d8+23 each.

I guess if you give it Power Attack, it could deal some nasty damage, what with the BAB of +128. Depends on the deity's AC and how hard it is to get DR X/- as a deity (not very, if you've got Epic Spellcasting).

This pseudonatural 171 HD umbral blot has CR ~73 and twice the HD of the hypothetical deity, though. And the deity can still destroy it with one hit, assuming it has Annihilating Strike. The umbral blot's Fort save is a measly +57, so the deity only needs to deal (57 - divine rank) points of damage for the PUB to have a mere 5% chance to survive.

Really, the sure way to beat any challenge as a deity is Epic Spellcasting. Any deity that doesn't have it deserves to be destroyed by upstart mortal epic wizards.

[Stormthorn]

A war deity is sure to have Annihilating Strike, which means every attack destroys the target.

Still offers a fort save, which means its unlikely to kill another god.

Also, i dont got any pseudonatural umbral blots. I have thousands of normal ones tho. We are high-creation dieties and I make them over centuries.

What about the Greater Ruin spell?
Or some other epic spell?

[Azerian Kelimon]

You want to use standard epic spells? PUH-LEEZE! Those are very weak. Make your own, or steal homebrews from here. I remember one named Thor's Hammer that did a LOT of d6's of physical damage, which could work for a war god.

[Douglas]

What about the Greater Ruin spell?

Automatic half damage (greater deities get natural 20s automatically), and he'll have a LOT more hp than that. If he has Mettle (a single level dip in Pious Templar is one of the easy ways to get it), then automatic no damage.

Pretty much all the sample epic spells WotC published are near worthless by the level at which you can research and cast them.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Or some other epic spell?

If you have an epic spell that deities aren't immune to and that doesn't offer a save, you're golden. If you're a deity yourself, creating that is a piece of cake. Of course, all the other deities will have created it too. The game will become a fairly boring competition of "Who can nuke the others first".


And yes, Annihilating Strike is useless against deities of rank 11+ (with lower-rank deities, all you need to do is deal more damage than the other deity's Fort save bonus); I was talking about smashing the pseudonatural umbral blot.

[bosssmiley]

Divine rank beats everything except equal or higher divine rank, basically.

A deity with divine rank 1+ can't auto-fail saves, so if it's got Fort +37 or higher, the Disintegrating Touch is 100% useless.

That's it. An infinite number of umbral blots can't in any way affect any deity, like douglas said. The 5d6 damages are pretty irrelevant.

Tsotha-lanti's right IMO. Basically the Portfolio Sense power of gods gives them precognition of any major threat to their portfolio happening x days (x = their Divine Rank) in advance. In effect, the war god knew the Umbral Blots were coming over a fortnight ago.

Batman only wishes he could be so prepared!


It might be a little more "Amber" than "The Mighty Thor"/"New Gods", but the best take on lower ranked gods subverting the power of higher ranked ones I've seen was the system used back in OD&D's "Wrath of the Immortals". Basically, if you pulled off a major plot against another god he lost the faith of his followers and you (by taking public credit, subverting his cult, w/e) gained some of it.

Pwn another divinity sufficiently flamboyantly (or enough times in succession) and the enemy lost DvR and you stepped up a level in the divine pecking order. Of course, you still had a more powerful god with a grudge against you kicking about the place...

[Tsotha-lanti]

It might be a little more "Amber" than "The Mighty Thor"/"New Gods", but the best take on lower ranked gods subverting the power of higher ranked ones I've seen was the system used back in OD&D's "Wrath of the Immortals". Basically, if you pulled off a major plot against another god he lost the faith of his followers and you (by taking public credit, subverting his cult, w/e) gained some of it.

Pwn another divinity sufficiently flamboyantly (or enough times in succession) and the enemy lost DvR and you stepped up a level in the divine pecking order. Of course, you still had a more powerful god with a grudge against you kicking about the place...

There's a cool Faerûnian example of similar trickery; Cyric, having murdered Bane - using a sword that was actually Mask, another deity - during the Time of Troubles and assumed his portfolio (along with Bhaal's and Myrkul's), took over most of his church. Cyricist pogroms cleansed Zhentarim holds of Banites and forced them underground, and so on.

But some years later, while Cyric was hatching a plan to gain even more converts by commissioning an artifact book, the Cyrinishad, Oghma and Mask meddled, and the scribe wrote a book titled The True Life of Cyric, which described his insanity, his plotting, and how he came to power. This book had the opposite effect, breaking the faith of those who heard it. This weakened Cyric, and strengthened both the hardcore Banites and the new cult of Iyachtu Xvim, "Son" of Bane; Bane came back and began regaining his following.

So yeah. Deities shouldn't fight with spells and umbral blots and Annihilating Strike. That's awesomely, endlessly boring. They should fight through champions, artifacts, and epic intrigues that span the entire world.

For more ideas, check out Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series, or the Shivering Isles expansion to TES: Oblivion, or a host of other cool books and games with similar themes.

[Emperor Tippy]

With proper epic spellcasting you can take out the higher ranked god. Hell with proper epic spellcasting you can create a solar system per turn as a standard action and as an Ex ability (I love origin of the species ).

But as has been said, the Umbral Blots are worthless.

[martyboy74]

And all you have to do is mindrape a few prismatic dragons.