Discussion:How does one kill a diety?

How do you go about killing a diety?

Leviathan 09:29, 18 April 2008 (MDT)

Self-explanatory. How do you go about killing a diety?

Lord Dhazriel 09:52, 18 April 2008 (MDT)

Depend on the campaign you are in. In mine deities are unkillable only banishable. Some deity may be banished forever to an extraplanar prison called oblivion ,but first we must know how to do it. They are no static rule in D&D about deities' death.

TK-Squared 09:53, 18 April 2008 (MDT)

Hitting them REALLY HARD? Generally, if you want to kill a diety, you should go flat out with the God Killing Artifact, then run away, summon Tereberous and bind him to Orcus and let the GREAT POWERFUL BEING kill them.

Or, you don't without being a diety yourself.

Sam Kay 09:55, 18 April 2008 (MDT)

Ah, well, you get really powerful, march onto the deities home plane and start a fight with the deity and see how far you get.

Oh, and these edit conflicts are getting really anoying...

Leviathan 11:26, 18 April 2008 (MDT)

I think something along the lines of a campaign were the goal is to kill a diety, but first one must gain divine rank and travel to the diety's plane sounds awesome. That combined with the idea Sam Kay threw out there on my discussion about a mature campaign, about an evil cult taking over and one must travel to the abyss and find help from a being presiding there. A killer storyline is being brainstormed here. Thanks for the help everyone.

Oh, and I'm not all that familiar with this editing websites to discuss forum-like, so if I'm going about something all wrong you can tell me. I have no idea what you mean by editing conflicts.

Eiji 13:22, 18 April 2008 (MDT)

I addressed this as a contingency in my plot recently since it's possible.

God's stats are absurdly up there. The hard way is to level up to a crazy amount and fight them as normal, with low chance of success and a high chance they'll respawn. It's very difficult to keep them down.

There IS an item called Pandora's Box in my campaign which helps strip off several of the god's divine goodies and makes them more like a high level character. In such a state, it's simply a really really tough boss.

Of course once you start killing gods, expect all the rest of the goods, good and evil, to be on your case. They probably don't like the status quo being disrupted by mortals.

Lord Dhazriel 13:32, 18 April 2008 (MDT)

I also made a powerful artifact who have the ability to kill gods, very hard to obtain as hard to use. Think well before killing a god, they are the highest more powerful being in existence. Once you bring down a god no more challenge really await you...which is sad. From what i read in deity & demigod, good luck.

Hatman 14:37, 7 May 2008 (MDT)

You guys honestly dont know how hard you are makeing this sound. Killing a god is easy. Just take away thier folowers and you take care of the bigest problem. With no worshipers, a god is no different from any other high to epic level enemy. Getting rid of the clergy is a problem all by itself, but doing this makes them so much weaker.

TK-Squared 14:38, 7 May 2008 (MDT)

Dieties don't actually require worshippers. They just like 'em.

Hatman 14:43, 7 May 2008 (MDT)

But you need worshipers to get divine rank, right? If you dont have divine rank, you are not a diety, right?

Sledged-20080507162729

Sledged (talk) 2008 May 7 16:27 (MDT)

Only if you're playing in a world that requires deities to have followers, like Forgotten Realms. Otherwise there's no worshiper/follower requirement for any deity of any rank. Also, deities can have other minions such as epic-level angels, devils, demons, clergy members, and if there powerful enough other less-powerful deities. And that's just the minions. You might have to deal with a deity's allies or superiors. You might have to get through all of them to get to the target deity. Then there's making sure they don't come back, which is a whole other issue.

There's no better laugh than the one that you're ashamed to share with your mother. —Stephen Notley, creator of Bob the Angry Flower A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. —Ford Prefect in "Mostly Harmless" by Douglas Adams

Hatman 14:23, 8 May 2008 (MDT)

This is why you dont do this until you are epic level yourself. Clerics are way easier to kill than outsider minions. I even think there is a poison in one of the books that retards the spells of divine casters. The outsider minions can be taken care of fairly easily too, it is just a matter of how prepared you are. I have never tried this, but it cant be too hard. I like the Forgoten Realms, it is a world where anyone can rise to greatness. The time of troubles was way cool, I mean nobodies like Cyric became greater deities over night.

Sledged-20080508152152

Sledged (talk) 2008 May 8 15:21 (MDT)

“ This is why you dont do this until you are epic level yourself. ” —Hatman That goes without saying. The question is how epic do you have to be in relation to your target deity? If you're talking 21st level epic, you'll probably get creamed by any deity except possibly hero deities. If you're talking 70th level epic, taking on even a greater deity should be a stroll in the park. “ Clerics are way easier to kill than outsider minions. ” —Hatman That's a completely subjective statement. Whether or not it's true depends on many factors, most importantly the level of the cleric in the relation to the outsider minions, and how optimized they are. “ I even think there is a poison in one of the books that retards the spells of divine casters. ” —Hatman There's no reason to believe that a similar poison couldn't exist to effect the PCs. “ The outsider minions can be taken care of fairly easily too, it is just a matter of how prepared you are. ” —Hatman It's not just how prepared you are, it's also how powerful the minions are. And there's no reason to believe you'll be going up against only the standard package minions. There can be more powerful versions of them, either through advanced HD, through added class levels, both advanced HD and class levels, or by being deities themselves. “ I have never tried this, but it cant be too hard. ” —Hatman difficulty = f(PC level, PC optimization, PC prep, deity level, deity rank) Anyway, the real question is "what level should you be to consider taking on a god of X rank?"

There's no better laugh than the one that you're ashamed to share with your mother. —Stephen Notley, creator of Bob the Angry Flower A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. —Ford Prefect in "Mostly Harmless" by Douglas Adams

TK-Squared 16:20, 8 May 2008 (MDT)

You're practically screwed if the diety has Alter Reality anyway.

Lord Dhazriel 16:36, 8 May 2008 (MDT)

You are completely screwed if they have the Divine Splendor power (kill every mortals with no saving throws in a area of minimum 160 feet!)

Sam Kay 09:28, 9 May 2008 (MDT)

Just mortals? In my CS, elves are immortal...

Sledged-20080509093526

Sledged (talk) 2008 May 9 09:35 (MDT)

A reason to play an elan.

There's no better laugh than the one that you're ashamed to share with your mother. —Stephen Notley, creator of Bob the Angry Flower A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. —Ford Prefect in "Mostly Harmless" by Douglas Adams

Hatman 14:25, 9 May 2008

I made a mistake, the outsider minions can only be killed on their own plane. I dont mean just defeated killed, I mean killed killed, as in dead not sent back to it's home plane. You are right about the poison thing. I wonder what a super imp would be like. I want to see super imp! But seriously, I am thinking that an adventure like this would be cool. What I like about D&D is that nothing is imposable, dificult, yes. Imposable, no. You guys are makeing this sound way too hard. So hard that no one should even make an atempt at doing such an adventure. I think that going to kill Vecna would be awesome! LETS GO KILL VECNA!!!

Lord Dhazriel 22:14, 17 May 2008 (MDT)

By mortal I mean, that is no deity. So basically they can kill a lvl 500 instantly no saves, it not a death effect so no immunity bother. In theory they could be able to kill the deity if they do not get in the range of the aura... the range is determined by divine ranks so... a deity with 20 divine rank would have a divine splendor of 200 feet. I doubt even your uber elfking would be able to defeat a deity with such a ridiculous power...

Hatman 08:16, 20 May 2008

That is why I said get rid of the folowers and the divine rank goes away and the aura isnt a problem.--Hatman 08:16, 20 May 2008 (MDT)

Sledged-20080520092607

Sledged (talk) 2008 May 20 09:26 (MDT)

Once again, a deity's power being tied to the number of its worshippers is specific to Forgotten Realms, and Forgotten Realms only. To the best of my knowledge, no other world (Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Eberron, Planescape, Kingdoms of Kalamar, etc...), has this variant rule. So killing worshippers isn't going to do anything to the deity except attract its attention.

There's no better laugh than the one that you're ashamed to share with your mother. —Stephen Notley, creator of Bob the Angry Flower A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. —Ford Prefect in "Mostly Harmless" by Douglas Adams

Lord Dhazriel 18:28, 20 May 2008 (MDT)

Greater deities have millions of worshippers! Even with a elven lifespan your aren't going to kill them all. Killing millions of people won't make you much friends....

Hatman 15:49, 3 June 2008

This is ture. The one of the bigest holes in the plan, you need friends to back you up. If you find a way around that, let me know.

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One of two things: The deity power to follower solution is irrelevant because; their is no rule (in Greyhawk or Deities & Demigods) saying explicitly that divine rank is at all related to worshiper number.

Second, a deity has a tremendous arsenal of instant death-dealing abilities, here's a few

Thrown (in which case the range can be miles/divine rank) or melee Vorpal weapon + divine rank >16 = decapitation The already mentioned Divine Splendor Annihilating Strike: Instant death, a very high Fortitude save negates Life and Death: Instant death, no saving throw, range within one mile per divine rank

That's not to mention the fact that they have any spell at will, can go first in combat regardless of their initiative roll, and can reform within a few days regardless of the way they were dispatched.

The only way I can imagine deity slaying to be possible is if your DM creates artifacts that remove all or most of the aforementioned qualities that any moderately powered deity has.

Hatman

You know, all of this makes me want to play in a game where deities dont realy do much exept for grant divine spells to clerics and stuff. This has gotten way to complicated. This sounded like fun to begin with but not anymore. Too much work with not enough reward.--Hatman 21:19, 14 June 2008 (MDT)

Hijax 02:41, 6 August 2008 (MDT)

WHAT?!? not enough reward? any DM with a little ciculation on the top floor would give players TONS of reward killing a deity. first think about the gods minions. theyre going have VAST amounts of items, gold, and so forth, if you total them. and the deity will at the very least have a all-powerful artifact, related to the deities powers. possibly a whole set of battle gear, if its a war deity, or a set of spell thigys if its a more mystical one. only problem is, that the deitys physical for is going to be bigger than colossal. but a repeating of reduce object can fix that. i can surely see a scenario, in which you have to assist a god in killing another god. that would be cool.

Rheios  10:20, 23 February 2015 (MDT)

Worth noting that you could do it by somehow redirecting the faith of the God's followers. As, per Planescape rules, gods require Faith to exist. Its why the Material Realms are so much more important to deities than the outer realms. Their faith is more pure, as for most common folk they have no real evidence beyond some magic users that the afterlife will be anything like they're told. While the outer planars know and hence have proof, and less pure faith (also probably because they get to deal with the moral grays of the gods' choices.) One could argue, since the Planescape setting is the super-set of all other settings because of its inclusive nature, that this is the universal rule.

Yamamoto Kesuke

One assumption would be that you need to be a deity in the first place.

Another would be that you need a superbeast artifact to own them right in the face. But that only banishes them for a thousand years until they return to drown the world in darkness once more (followup campaign hook, anybody?).

A third would be that only losers kill gods personally. Number one, then all the other gods are angry at you and you die. Number two, you can't win. Period. Ergo, the correct answer is to contact a god amenable to your goals (or more than one) and have them do the deed. Less viscerally satisfying, less problematic, much more plausible.

Hatman

I think this task would be so much easier if every campaign had a Time of Troubles. --Hatman 13:25, 20 August 2008 (MDT)

Through Connections?

We've eatablished you cannot kill a god directly. I mean you would die in a head on a head on fight unless you have an ultra powerful ARTIFACT OF DESTRUCTION, and or weaken the gods power with a BLASPHAMOUS RITUAL (both two methods which would be thwarted from the get go by said God)

So my guess is you gain the fabor of another god to combat the targeted gods attempts to murder you before you get the ARTIFACT OF DESTRUCTION or weaken the god with a BLASPHAMOUS RITUAL.

For example, if your trying to kill Tiamat, what better way than to gain her archenemy Bahamutt as an accomplice to murder?

Trying to kill Bane and usurp his throne? Gruumsh can help! Heck, he's already laid seige to Bame's castle for you!

Killing a diety

 In my game world the whole point is that the Gods are seen as having a responsibility to 'raise up' the people to their level.  This idea is reflected in a common system of slavery
in the world where the 

owner has to educate and feed his slaves so that one day they can become his social equals. A mortal becoming a God is a rare thing but it did happen recently. Similar to the Time of Troubles in FR I have had 'Walks' where the gods have been cast out of the heavens by a diety whose sole duty is to make sure that they are 'raising up' the mortals. They must then find and regain their powers (which are scattered) in order to reascend to their plane. Problem is that this power can be found and claimed by anyone. In the last Walk A mortal found a way to draw together all the pieces of the power of the God of Death and then hunted down the cast out God (claiming the portion he already had) and then ascended to become the new God of Death. There were also incidents where one cast out God claimed portions of power formerly possessed by another god and therefore added this power to their 'portfolio'. A Cultural Diety which was formerly primarily concerned with Dancing and other Arts claimed several portions of power formerly possessed by a nature Diety and a War God. Now that God is a patron diety of Dancers, Artists, Brewers and Armorers. I enjoyed making similar 'Mashups' to other Gods as well.

On Killing Gods

I dont know if this has come up yet my my good friend User:Balthazar posted a page on this subject at:Killing Gods. Hope i could help. Bannanameds (talk) 17:15, 28 April 2017 (UTC)