Kill the gods, your experience

[RFisher]

None of my groups have ever considered PCs directly battling deities. Indeed, we actively ridiculed such. In our opinion, a deity could merely snap it's fingers & the PCs would be obliterated.

Which is exactly why, one day, I'm going to run a "kill the gods" campaign. (^_^)

So, I'm just wondering if any ENWorlders have actually participated in a game that involved deicide. Tell us about about it.

 

[Dykstrav]

When Faiths and Pantheons came out, I knew someone that decided to run a Mortal Kombat style game where Faerun was being invaded by a pantheon from another plane, and all the gods joined together to fight the invaders (yes, D&D meets a 90's video game). All the players were actually playing several of the Faerunian deities in what were essentially street fights across the planes. The premise just didn't sound like a fun game to me (fights with gods seemed like the game would crawl to a snail's pace). But all the DBZ junkies signed right up.

From what I understand, some people actually enjoyed the game but most of them got bored when a single round of combat between two deities took twenty minutes to go through. Only four of the Faerunian deities survived, apparently by betraying their fellows to the invading pantheon.

Guess there are some people who actually enjoy powergaming out there.

That being said, I'm currently designing a campaign that will feature Iuz as the main scapegoat for the character's troubles. But since the expected levels will be from 1st to about 15th level, they aren't supposed to actually battle Iuz himself (although it may be possible to actually walk up to him and start swinging). The real cause of their problems is politicking between various power blocs and factions of the Flanaess, who are trying to pin their problems on the most obvious villain. So to discourage players from thinking that they're supposed to take Iuz himself on, I'm actually statting him up as an epic cleric/assassin with divine ranks and intend to show the characters these stats. Seeing what a CR 36 demigod that commands an entire empire and a religion in his own name can do would take the wind out of my sails to fight him.

 

[Nightfall]

RF,

No but I've considered it. Usually it involves a powerful artifact or a being that is more powerful than the gods (like an Elder Titan or just a Scarred Lands one.) In any case my advice, killing gods should only be done in the Forgotten Realms. There's too many to begin with anyway.

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

In my last FR game there was a Demigod that the PC's had to kill. She was trying to take over from another dimension. They won but not after a casulty.

Ive always been interested in a God game, I could just never come up with a good idea for why your playing or killing the Gods (Not some lowly Demigod).

 

[Tinner]

Back in the days of junior-high, my first group and I did the stereotypical "Kill our way through D&Dg" routine. We had an epic battle with Azmodeus. IIRC we somehow managed to trick him into touching a Trap the Soul gem, there might have also been a big fight on the Astral Plane where we cut his silver cord too ... that was a looong time ago.

More recently, I ran a campaign wherein the evil gods had gotten wind of a way to swing the balance of power in the universe, and were slowly assassinating the other gods, using mortal's as proxies/pawns. The PC's were drawn into the game as pawns of the gods of good.
The end result was Tiamat betrayed everyone, and stole all the divine power for herself. Bahamut then recruited the (now-Epic level) PC's as his soldiers, and they battled the Queen of Evil Dragons across the heavens. In the end, the two dragon gods died, and their death released an enormous wave of divine energy, which the PC's absorbed.
The now Divine rank 1 PC's became the gods of a new universe built in their image.

 

[Lanefan]

I tend to fall into the "most deities would squash a party of high-level PCs like bugs" camp, though I've had parties deal directly with (or against) greatly-weakened deities e.g. Tharizdun in his Forgotten Temple.

I never understood why the deities were statted out at all, as giving them stats implies they are...somehow...defeatable. When I started DMing, one of the first changes I made was to decide the divine stat blocks presented in Deities and Demigods simply did not exist, period. The way I see it, even a deity cannot kill another deity directly; deities get their power from their followers, so to weaken the deity you need to take out all the followers...and for quasi-universal deities such as Moradin and Corellon, with followers on just about every world ever played, that's gonna take a while.

Lanefan

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

There have been very few instances of deific combat in my campaigns. One batte (with Helm of FR) ended with the character level-drained and bereft of his paladin status. Another managed to end in a stalemate (with Ares).

So, I basically fall into the category of deities always whomping mortals.

That being said, a gaming group did manage to defeat Orcus back in 1e. It took a lot of teamwork and luck. I'd think that if one was to start a deicide-based campaign, it'd be best to start (relatively) small, with a demon prince.

 

[DonTadow]

A couple of campaigns ago, I was in a campaign where Vecna was trying to enter the Faerun Pantheon. His head cleric needed to collect a set of artifact arms that would allow him to maintain the breech into the land. We were all faurites picked by our dieties in secret to find the armanents first. In the end, we were duped, and had to destroy a weak vecna as he entered the Faurun plane. We defeated him, loss two pcs during the fight and the ramifcations are still being felt in the campaign I run.

 

[Mystaros]

The whole "Kill the gods" thing comes from the sword & sorcery side of literary game influences. Conan was killing "gods" left and right in the tales, as were most adventurers in pulp tales of the day. The same was true in a lot of pre-Christian era tales, where the gods were immortal (i.e., did not age or die of age), but could be killed... i.e., mortals could kill the gods. The difference in power between mortal and god is, generally, lot slimmer in non-monotheistic religions, whether you are dealing with the Greek gods or otherwise.

So a "god-killing" campaign is quite viable, once you throw off the modern, monotheistic-driven viewpoint of what the power of a god should be. And even under the "gods are incredibly mightier than mortals" ideal, if you use avatars/aspects as the method by which gods must interact directly with the mortal plane, you are still on a relatively similar playing field with high-level, let alone epic-level characters.

 

[Lanefan]

So a "god-killing" campaign is quite viable, once you throw off the modern, monotheistic-driven viewpoint of what the power of a god should be. And even under the "gods are incredibly mightier than mortals" ideal, if you use avatars/aspects as the method by which gods must interact directly with the mortal plane, you are still on a relatively similar playing field with high-level, let alone epic-level characters.

Instead of avatars/aspects, I use the idea of minions - very high-powered servitors of the gods - who do much of the day-to-day interactions. The Norse Valkyries are an example of what I mean; Christian Angels might be another. And minions are quite defeatable, if you've got a spare very-high-level party handy to do so.

That said, I still like the idea of having the actual non-defeatable deity show up on rare occasions....

Lanefan