Yeah, even when you get into old myths, very few of them let mortals outright overpower and defeat a god. Trickery could get you some mileage, but generally only until you died and found out why gods can afford to be patient. Really, the idea of mortals killing a god is a concept that could well trace its pop culture roots to D&D, ironically. But yeah, 5e makes it pretty clear deities are plot devices, not characters the way a king or archmage is. Without an express plot device of your own, you ain't gonna do more than inconvenience them for a bit. Looking over the DMG, they're described more as an aspect of the setting than anything else. In short, operating within the broad lore and guidance given for the system, "how can you kill a deity?" is largely a non-starter. Homebrew naturally opens the door to "however the DM is willing to make/allow it to happen", but classical references don't give us many points of inspiration that don't involve divine meddling, so it mostly comes down to pop culture and/or just making it up yourself. At which point literally anything is fair game. People have tossed around a few different concepts, myself included, but you'd be hard pressed to point to an example that's more than two or three decades old of mortals ganking a deity purely under their own steam.
Greek gods took physical form, but they could not be killed. Norse gods could be killed, but only by foes of similar power levels or in the case of Baldr, by the one thing in existence he was vulnerable to, which still had to be powered up by Loki's magic to make it a deadly weapon.
Once something's powerful enough to call themselves a god and get away with it, killing them is much more difficult than some schmuck just poking them in the kidneys with a pointy bit of metal.
Depends on the bit of pointy metal.
But overall i agree, it's not a simple task (or else everyone would do it). But i think one always needs to have SOME kind of answer to these kind of issues... at least if you are going to make interaction with a God, a thing in your game. That said, i do wish people would be a bit more creative. It's kind of disheartening that so many of the "answers" just boil down to "well in this lore book" or "well, according to the DMG/PHB/ETC... You would need to do XYZ"
Still kind of like my idea of giving Gods a physical form, and then basically forcing that form through the eye of a needle. Sure it might not outright kill them (they are a god afterall). But that sure as shit would leave them in a weakened state. Perhaps enough for a powerful being to bind them to the material plane; then slaying them with very high level abilities.
But overall i agree, it's not a simple task (or else everyone would do it). But i think one always needs to have SOME kind of answer to these kind of issues... at least if you are going to make interaction with a God, a thing in your game.
That doesn't really follow, at least not as a hard principle. As I said earlier, the DMG material for gods talks about them as simply a part of the setting, like the landscape. Even with 9th level spells, players don't have the power to alter the terrain of an area on a large scale (best option I can find is Meteor Swarm, which only covers four 40 ft. spheres within a mile of each other). There's really no reason a DM cannot simply declare that the gods are out of the reach of any mortal, no matter how powerful they are. Doesn't mean the players can't meddle in their affairs in some way, but straight up fighting them? Based on the material, that's like trying to fight a hurricane or a mountain range.
I would imagine the first quests would strengthen the temple where you made your introduction to this sect. Then, they would send you on a quest to get a substantial item and bring it to their cathedral or whatever sort of worship hall they held in high regard. This would engratiate you to their strongest clerics.
These fellows talk with you about your goal and conclude you need to open a gate to another plane. They begin questing you to gather things you will need to face down this God. Each time you leave on a quest, they confer with their God for guidance. They may even prepare scrolls and stuff that they hope will assist you and your party.
Eventually you take the leap, travel through the portal, and face them.
That doesn't really follow, at least not as a hard principle. As I said earlier, the DMG material for gods talks about them as simply a part of the setting, like the landscape. Even with 9th level spells, players don't have the power to alter the terrain of an area on a large scale (best option I can find is Meteor Swarm, which only covers four 40 ft. spheres within a mile of each other). There's really no reason a DM cannot simply declare that the gods are out of the reach of any mortal, no matter how powerful they are. Doesn't mean the players can't meddle in their affairs in some way, but straight up fighting them? Based on the material, that's like trying to fight a hurricane or a mountain range.
Suppose we just have different interpretations of how things could/would play out.
You want to keep your Gods as invincible aspects of the world. I want Gods that are beyond human comprehension of power, but still able to be harmed/killed if the need arises.
On a personal note, i get a kind of RAW=the word of god vibe from your posts. Was looking for a bit more ROC/ outside the box thinking, when the question was asked.
Planar travel is available to PCs as early as 13th level without assistance from NPCs. Plane Shift is on the class list for every full caster except Bard. I think most people would agree that a party lower than 13th level would usually lose a fight with a god, so assuming the party will be level 14+ by the time they make their attempt, they really don't need the church, as I see it. The church can provide magic items, sure. Regular adventuring in a few high level dungeons would essentially yield the same benefit. And that's what the church is gonna have you do anyway, so you might as well choose your own hours.
If PCs were intended to actually be able to kill gods in 5E, we'd have gotten stat blocks for the gods. It's hard to do ROC for something that's completely beyond the scope of the actual rules unless you're really asking for a homebrew/third party splatbook with actual rules.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Planar travel is available to PCs as early as 13th level without assistance from NPCs. Plane Shift is on the class list for every full caster except Bard. I think most people would agree that a party lower than 13th level would usually lose a fight with a god, so assuming the party will be level 14+ by the time they make their attempt, they really don't need the church, as I see it. The church can provide magic items, sure. Regular adventuring in a few high level dungeons would essentially yield the same benefit. And that's what the church is gonna have you do anyway, so you might as well choose your own hours.
Regarding planar travel, your options are either Plane Shift, whose endpoint is not in the caster’s express control beyond “somewhere on the designated Plane” without a teleport circle on the other end, and Gate, which very expressly can be nixed by a deity on their home turf. So there really isn’t any point in the game where the players can just pop in on a deity without DM cooperation.
This is not to say it cannot or should not happen at all, just that everything about the system and material for these situations places the power pretty firmly in the hands of the deity/DM. If the DM wants to run with this narrative, then you kids have fun storming the castle, but it’s demonstrably not an intended aspect of the system the way squaring off with a being like Zariel or Orcus is.
Again, not saying this can’t/shouldn’t be a campaign, just that it’s one you can’t really map out within the system guidelines. It will basically just boil down to the DM setting whatever plot coupons they think sound good for the party to collect/clear, such as the example I described a while ago.
If PCs were intended to actually be able to kill gods in 5E, we'd have gotten stat blocks for the gods. It's hard to do ROC for something that's completely beyond the scope of the actual rules unless you're really asking for a homebrew/third party splatbook with actual rules.
going to be honest. This really reads as "I like my box and everything inside of it. I don't believe you, when you say there exists things outside of my box"
I mean the whole point of the question was to think outside of the rulebooks. Come up with your own hair brained idea for how to do the "impossible", beat the "unbeatable".
If PCs were intended to actually be able to kill gods in 5E, we'd have gotten stat blocks for the gods. It's hard to do ROC for something that's completely beyond the scope of the actual rules unless you're really asking for a homebrew/third party splatbook with actual rules.
going to be honest. This really reads as "I like my box and everything inside of it. I don't believe you, when you say there exists things outside of my box"
I mean the whole point of the question was to think outside of the rulebooks. Come up with your own hair brained idea for how to do the "impossible", beat the "unbeatable".
No, the point is that D&D is a game and games have rules, that's what makes them games and not stories. If you have a box but you want to ship something that doesn't fit in the box, the correct answer is to get a different box. But since you want an "outside the rules" answer, fine. Bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish. That is every bit as valid a method of killing a god as any other.
If PCs were intended to actually be able to kill gods in 5E, we'd have gotten stat blocks for the gods. It's hard to do ROC for something that's completely beyond the scope of the actual rules unless you're really asking for a homebrew/third party splatbook with actual rules.
going to be honest. This really reads as "I like my box and everything inside of it. I don't believe you, when you say there exists things outside of my box"
I mean the whole point of the question was to think outside of the rulebooks. Come up with your own hair brained idea for how to do the "impossible", beat the "unbeatable".
No, the point is that D&D is a game and games have rules, that's what makes them games and not stories. If you have a box but you want to ship something that doesn't fit in the box, the correct answer is to get a different box. But since you want an "outside the rules" answer, fine. Bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish. That is every bit as valid a method of killing a god as any other.
See. Sure it's just a Star Trek reference, but you bothered to think (at least in part) outside of the confines of the rule books. Doesn't it feel nice to not be blindly bound to arbitrary rules and systems. Doesn't it feel nice to actually think for yourself.
That doesn't really follow, at least not as a hard principle. As I said earlier, the DMG material for gods talks about them as simply a part of the setting, like the landscape. Even with 9th level spells, players don't have the power to alter the terrain of an area on a large scale (best option I can find is Meteor Swarm, which only covers four 40 ft. spheres within a mile of each other). There's really no reason a DM cannot simply declare that the gods are out of the reach of any mortal, no matter how powerful they are. Doesn't mean the players can't meddle in their affairs in some way, but straight up fighting them? Based on the material, that's like trying to fight a hurricane or a mountain range.
Suppose we just have different interpretations of how things could/would play out.
You want to keep your Gods as invincible aspects of the world. I want Gods that are beyond human comprehension of power, but still able to be harmed/killed if the need arises.
On a personal note, i get a kind of RAW=the word of god vibe from your posts. Was looking for a bit more ROC/ outside the box thinking, when the question was asked.
Notice how the majority of people were basically ignoring your OP? And I agree, Gods are unstoppable forces the same way storms or earthquakes are unstoppable … so take a look at the spells and tell me a player shouldn’t be able to challenge the divine, especially at Epic levels (17th to 21st and up). I’d honestly start ignoring a number of users here, they either tell you it can’t be done, or that it’s your game and then imply whatever you want to do - because it’s your choice - is totally wrong and against the spirit of the rules.
It is probably easier to kill a god after becoming a god. And probably much easier to become a god than to kill a god while still mortal. Becoming a god takes more than drinking a potion of longevity each decade, but with many powerful entities providing spells to warlocks, there seems to be a nice path.
Become 20th level. steal the power of a serious entity such as an Arch Fey or Tanari Lord. Make packs that require the Warlock to claim they are a cleric. Grant them more powers as they recruit more followers, and bring more people to sign pacts. Eventually you have as many worshipers as a lessor deity. After centuries or millennia of building up your powerbase you should have some solid ideas about the 10th level rituals needed to become a god. You are probably much higher than level 20 by this point in time. Maybe even level 40.
Or take a shortcut and find some Demi God running around having fun and use a magic jar to become them, while retaining your mind. Now you can start giving out real clerical magic, not just pact magic that is pretending to be divine.
Steal the Tablets of Fate and chisel your name onto the list. This will take more than a standard set of stonecutting tools, but there should be some crazy powerful magical items designed for this purpose. If not you can always craft and enchant them.
Once you are a god you are more or less on equal footing and just need to figure out the right moment and method to kill the god you want dead.
Or wake up Tharizdun and kill all the gods. Although this would likely be more difficult than wiping out a pantheon and twisting the race to the diametrically opposed alignment. All the gods want to keep him sleeping.
Here's some wild ones for ya. 1) Collect every sword in the entire world and melt them down to create one really enormous sword. Wait for the presence of this gigantic sword to attract the attention of an unreasonably large swordsman who surely must exist somewhere in an infinite universe. Pay him to stab god with the big sword. 2) Compose a song so beautiful it can move a god to tears, but so complex that no one will ever be able to play it. Force the god to grapple with the fact that they'll never hear it. Hope the god dies of grief. 3) Find a way to move the entire population of the universe out of the universe and into another universe. If you're lucky, the god does the metaphysical version of starving to death. 4) Fly a huge payload of alchemist's fire into the god's mouth.
But overall i agree, it's not a simple task (or else everyone would do it). But i think one always needs to have SOME kind of answer to these kind of issues... at least if you are going to make interaction with a God, a thing in your game.
That doesn't really follow, at least not as a hard principle. As I said earlier, the DMG material for gods talks about them as simply a part of the setting, like the landscape. Even with 9th level spells, players don't have the power to alter the terrain of an area on a large scale (best option I can find is Meteor Swarm, which only covers four 40 ft. spheres within a mile of each other). There's really no reason a DM cannot simply declare that the gods are out of the reach of any mortal, no matter how powerful they are. Doesn't mean the players can't meddle in their affairs in some way, but straight up fighting them? Based on the material, that's like trying to fight a hurricane or a mountain range.
Actually, this is what's been bothering me. The historical perspective.
I'm actually not all that ancient, but since I started playing at 11 my memory stretches back to the very earliest days of D&D, only a few years after Gary Gygax invented not only the game but the whole roleplaying game genre. Fighting a god was NEVER a thing back in the day, it was ALWAYS assumed to be impossible and in fact laughable to talk about even trying. Nor was it expected that you would interact directly with the gods.
God killing was introduced, to be quite honest and blunt about it, to whoop up the game to appeal more to the testosterone-stupified adolescent male who wanted to play out their power fantasies, with the explicit goal not of improving the game but of selling more product.
It was the beginning of this creeping commercialization of a very fine game that has seen less and less DMs (proportionately) over time make their own campaign worlds as was the original intention, and more and more games set in prechewed prepublished "official" campaign worlds that now have some very fine DMs and players; but they were originally only intended to be a crutch to lean on while you were learning to do it the way it had been intended, but you hadn't served enough of your apprenticeship and developed your roleplaying chops enough to do it on your own. Most of the players I grew up with would have been at least a little offended if I'd tried to run a Greyhawk campaign with them *(the official world before the Realms); they would have considered that I couldn't be bothered to take the time to craft them a world of my own: that I was either too lazy or didn't care enough about them to do it right.
And though, as I say, some very fine DMs and players have since developed in those published campaign worlds, IMHO it is IN SPITE OF how the multinational corporations have dumbed down D&D, not BECAUSE OF their actions. And its not just WOTC. Gygax made his own company to make and sell D&D, TSR. That was a fine company for a while, but near the end money was already starting to creep in; then the 500 pound gorilla TSR was bought by the 1000 pound gorilla White Wolf (originally the maker of Vampire: the Masquerade and other World of Darkness RPGs); then that was bought by the 2000 pound gorilla Wizards of the Coast, which is where we are now
.. whoop up the game to appeal more to the testosterone-stupified adolescent male who wanted to play out their power fantasies ..
Wait, what? Don't you think that might be a little judgemental? I'm pretty much as high testosterone as you can get without outside additives, I'm old enough to also remember when the game first introduced the idea of gods you could fight - and possible defeat - and while I surely like my power fantasies, I also like my roleplaying, and I've never seen any appeal in fighting gods. Also, having muscles in no way impedes my ability to cogitate.
I think you may be instinctively assigning positive qualities to people like yourself - and negative qualities to people like me - entirely incorrectly.
Eh, this is propably not a discussion for this forum, so let's leave it there? I just didn't want to let that stand without counterargument =)
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Let's take this back to something you said way back on page 1...
No specific god is mentioned. No details are given at all to work off of. Meanwhile, despite this topic being covered many many times, not just in video games but also in both classic and modern literature, you seem to want an answer that no one else has thought of before.
"Get that legendary thing" is among the solutions seemingly deemed un-creative.
It begs the question as to what you are actually looking for in an answer here.
Also back on page 1, you said
Given that, it is really as simple as saying 'I look at the god funny and they die from an overload of righteous indignation.'
When there is effectively no DM, you simply win.
And if you are expecting any of us to come up with some completely new, unique method, again, completely without any further details or context, it is probably best not to expect much.
trim this quote down a bit so it's easier to get to the reply...
Oh no doubt that my hopes for this thread have changed a bit since the first posting. The ideas have started to bend more towards DM ways to make it work, and less PC ways.
my issue (currently) is less about "get the legendary thing" being boring and played out. It's about the fact that people are defaulting to well known pop culture/ religious references. And are doing so wholesale. Take the person who used "how to kill Baldur" for example. If you just quote the story word for word, that's dull and bad story telling. It's a well known enough story, that people are going to call you out if you change nothing. Change like 3-5 things (be they names, the deadly substance, the location, etc...) and it's less horrible story telling, because you have to work a little bit harder to pin point where the reference is coming from.
You are correct that without specifics, anything and everything COULD work. And to some level that is kind of the point. The more specific you are, the less out of the box someone is going to be about finding an answer. Why bother trying to become a god, to kill another god. If you can just slap God #2 with a particularly smelly fish (literally any kind, just has to be stinky) to kill them? Why come up with a complex story arc, if you can just google the obvious reference point for the God; and simply metagame an answer from that. Again using Baldur as an example. Why would your character think to immediately start looking for mistletoe upon fighting a human avatar who seemed to ignore most/ all damage thrown at it?
The person who responded before this post, actually did a really cool job of coming up with an answer. It's a bit of the tried and true "become a god yourself" but it goes into more detail as to HOW you would go about doing that. Heck it's possible they are referencing some tropes, but it's not the same tropes that anyone with with even a passing knowledge of geek culture would be like "Oh, you mean like (sci-fi/fantasy character or Real Life religious dogma) "
I mean to be honest, all of the ideas i have are things I would 10,000% never let my players do themselves. But could totally justify having a (non divine power level) NPC do. But a lot of that has more to do with the fact that it would take a character a VERY VERY long time do accomplish, and no group wants to wait around while their buddy pisses off for 100's if not 1000's of years.
.. whoop up the game to appeal more to the testosterone-stupified adolescent male who wanted to play out their power fantasies ..
Wait, what? Don't you think that might be a little judgemental? I'm pretty much as high testosterone as you can get without outside additives, I'm old enough to also remember when the game first introduced the idea of gods you could fight - and possible defeat - and while I surely like my power fantasies, I also like my roleplaying, and I've never seen any appeal in fighting gods. Also, having muscles in no way impedes my ability to cogitate.
I think you may be instinctively assigning positive qualities to people like yourself - and negative qualities to people like me - entirely incorrectly.
Eh, this is propably not a discussion for this forum, so let's leave it there? I just didn't want to let that stand without counterargument =)
Since I'm certainly willing to leave it there, I will admit I went a little too far in my grumpiness and got carried away; and to say I'm sorry. When I started typing, my ORIGINAL intent was not to imply much less state as sweeping a generalization about males and specifically adolescent males as I wound up typing. And I totally retract that generalization (not least because I was an adolescent male myself in those days and so don't have any place talking so harshly).
My first impetus was simply the memory that the group I mentioned was either explicitly admitted by the company or widely believed to be the target audience for introducing god killing into the game, and it was either admitted or widely believed that it was for the purpose of making it more appealing to them so that more of them would buy it
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Famh Thrawn Fiadhaich - 'half elven' sorcerer (wild magic) 2, Sleeping Gods - A Dragon Warriors campaign in the Lands of Legend
Quspira Inirali - tiefling cleric (Life domain) 4, Painted's "He'll be the father of my child"
---RETIRED HEROES' REST HOME---
Sae Ivui Nailo - wood elf rogue (inquisitive) 5 , Sea of Death: Captain Hailstorm's Lost Treasure
Ryshraxea "Shra" Naranthi - tabaxi artificer 1, Nyx's Tomb of Annihilation - Group 1
Allow me to add: Sometimes, testosterone makes young males do stupid things. The rest of us lack that excuse =D
And now, back to our god-killing topic of the day.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
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Yeah, even when you get into old myths, very few of them let mortals outright overpower and defeat a god. Trickery could get you some mileage, but generally only until you died and found out why gods can afford to be patient. Really, the idea of mortals killing a god is a concept that could well trace its pop culture roots to D&D, ironically. But yeah, 5e makes it pretty clear deities are plot devices, not characters the way a king or archmage is. Without an express plot device of your own, you ain't gonna do more than inconvenience them for a bit. Looking over the DMG, they're described more as an aspect of the setting than anything else. In short, operating within the broad lore and guidance given for the system, "how can you kill a deity?" is largely a non-starter. Homebrew naturally opens the door to "however the DM is willing to make/allow it to happen", but classical references don't give us many points of inspiration that don't involve divine meddling, so it mostly comes down to pop culture and/or just making it up yourself. At which point literally anything is fair game. People have tossed around a few different concepts, myself included, but you'd be hard pressed to point to an example that's more than two or three decades old of mortals ganking a deity purely under their own steam.
Depends on the bit of pointy metal.
But overall i agree, it's not a simple task (or else everyone would do it). But i think one always needs to have SOME kind of answer to these kind of issues... at least if you are going to make interaction with a God, a thing in your game. That said, i do wish people would be a bit more creative. It's kind of disheartening that so many of the "answers" just boil down to "well in this lore book" or "well, according to the DMG/PHB/ETC... You would need to do XYZ"
Still kind of like my idea of giving Gods a physical form, and then basically forcing that form through the eye of a needle. Sure it might not outright kill them (they are a god afterall). But that sure as shit would leave them in a weakened state. Perhaps enough for a powerful being to bind them to the material plane; then slaying them with very high level abilities.
That doesn't really follow, at least not as a hard principle. As I said earlier, the DMG material for gods talks about them as simply a part of the setting, like the landscape. Even with 9th level spells, players don't have the power to alter the terrain of an area on a large scale (best option I can find is Meteor Swarm, which only covers four 40 ft. spheres within a mile of each other). There's really no reason a DM cannot simply declare that the gods are out of the reach of any mortal, no matter how powerful they are. Doesn't mean the players can't meddle in their affairs in some way, but straight up fighting them? Based on the material, that's like trying to fight a hurricane or a mountain range.
I would imagine the first quests would strengthen the temple where you made your introduction to this sect. Then, they would send you on a quest to get a substantial item and bring it to their cathedral or whatever sort of worship hall they held in high regard. This would engratiate you to their strongest clerics.
These fellows talk with you about your goal and conclude you need to open a gate to another plane. They begin questing you to gather things you will need to face down this God. Each time you leave on a quest, they confer with their God for guidance. They may even prepare scrolls and stuff that they hope will assist you and your party.
Eventually you take the leap, travel through the portal, and face them.
Suppose we just have different interpretations of how things could/would play out.
You want to keep your Gods as invincible aspects of the world. I want Gods that are beyond human comprehension of power, but still able to be harmed/killed if the need arises.
On a personal note, i get a kind of RAW=the word of god vibe from your posts. Was looking for a bit more ROC/ outside the box thinking, when the question was asked.
Planar travel is available to PCs as early as 13th level without assistance from NPCs. Plane Shift is on the class list for every full caster except Bard. I think most people would agree that a party lower than 13th level would usually lose a fight with a god, so assuming the party will be level 14+ by the time they make their attempt, they really don't need the church, as I see it. The church can provide magic items, sure. Regular adventuring in a few high level dungeons would essentially yield the same benefit. And that's what the church is gonna have you do anyway, so you might as well choose your own hours.
If PCs were intended to actually be able to kill gods in 5E, we'd have gotten stat blocks for the gods. It's hard to do ROC for something that's completely beyond the scope of the actual rules unless you're really asking for a homebrew/third party splatbook with actual rules.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Regarding planar travel, your options are either Plane Shift, whose endpoint is not in the caster’s express control beyond “somewhere on the designated Plane” without a teleport circle on the other end, and Gate, which very expressly can be nixed by a deity on their home turf. So there really isn’t any point in the game where the players can just pop in on a deity without DM cooperation.
This is not to say it cannot or should not happen at all, just that everything about the system and material for these situations places the power pretty firmly in the hands of the deity/DM. If the DM wants to run with this narrative, then you kids have fun storming the castle, but it’s demonstrably not an intended aspect of the system the way squaring off with a being like Zariel or Orcus is.
Again, not saying this can’t/shouldn’t be a campaign, just that it’s one you can’t really map out within the system guidelines. It will basically just boil down to the DM setting whatever plot coupons they think sound good for the party to collect/clear, such as the example I described a while ago.
going to be honest. This really reads as "I like my box and everything inside of it. I don't believe you, when you say there exists things outside of my box"
I mean the whole point of the question was to think outside of the rulebooks. Come up with your own hair brained idea for how to do the "impossible", beat the "unbeatable".
This was a test post hello
No, the point is that D&D is a game and games have rules, that's what makes them games and not stories. If you have a box but you want to ship something that doesn't fit in the box, the correct answer is to get a different box. But since you want an "outside the rules" answer, fine. Bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish. That is every bit as valid a method of killing a god as any other.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
See. Sure it's just a Star Trek reference, but you bothered to think (at least in part) outside of the confines of the rule books. Doesn't it feel nice to not be blindly bound to arbitrary rules and systems. Doesn't it feel nice to actually think for yourself.
Notice how the majority of people were basically ignoring your OP? And I agree, Gods are unstoppable forces the same way storms or earthquakes are unstoppable … so take a look at the spells and tell me a player shouldn’t be able to challenge the divine, especially at Epic levels (17th to 21st and up). I’d honestly start ignoring a number of users here, they either tell you it can’t be done, or that it’s your game and then imply whatever you want to do - because it’s your choice - is totally wrong and against the spirit of the rules.
It is probably easier to kill a god after becoming a god. And probably much easier to become a god than to kill a god while still mortal. Becoming a god takes more than drinking a potion of longevity each decade, but with many powerful entities providing spells to warlocks, there seems to be a nice path.
Become 20th level. steal the power of a serious entity such as an Arch Fey or Tanari Lord. Make packs that require the Warlock to claim they are a cleric. Grant them more powers as they recruit more followers, and bring more people to sign pacts. Eventually you have as many worshipers as a lessor deity. After centuries or millennia of building up your powerbase you should have some solid ideas about the 10th level rituals needed to become a god. You are probably much higher than level 20 by this point in time. Maybe even level 40.
Or take a shortcut and find some Demi God running around having fun and use a magic jar to become them, while retaining your mind. Now you can start giving out real clerical magic, not just pact magic that is pretending to be divine.
Steal the Tablets of Fate and chisel your name onto the list. This will take more than a standard set of stonecutting tools, but there should be some crazy powerful magical items designed for this purpose. If not you can always craft and enchant them.
Once you are a god you are more or less on equal footing and just need to figure out the right moment and method to kill the god you want dead.
Or wake up Tharizdun and kill all the gods. Although this would likely be more difficult than wiping out a pantheon and twisting the race to the diametrically opposed alignment. All the gods want to keep him sleeping.
That's a good point.
Here's some wild ones for ya. 1) Collect every sword in the entire world and melt them down to create one really enormous sword. Wait for the presence of this gigantic sword to attract the attention of an unreasonably large swordsman who surely must exist somewhere in an infinite universe. Pay him to stab god with the big sword. 2) Compose a song so beautiful it can move a god to tears, but so complex that no one will ever be able to play it. Force the god to grapple with the fact that they'll never hear it. Hope the god dies of grief. 3) Find a way to move the entire population of the universe out of the universe and into another universe. If you're lucky, the god does the metaphysical version of starving to death. 4) Fly a huge payload of alchemist's fire into the god's mouth.
Actually, this is what's been bothering me. The historical perspective.
I'm actually not all that ancient, but since I started playing at 11 my memory stretches back to the very earliest days of D&D, only a few years after Gary Gygax invented not only the game but the whole roleplaying game genre. Fighting a god was NEVER a thing back in the day, it was ALWAYS assumed to be impossible and in fact laughable to talk about even trying. Nor was it expected that you would interact directly with the gods.
God killing was introduced, to be quite honest and blunt about it, to whoop up the game to appeal more to the testosterone-stupified adolescent male who wanted to play out their power fantasies, with the explicit goal not of improving the game but of selling more product.
It was the beginning of this creeping commercialization of a very fine game that has seen less and less DMs (proportionately) over time make their own campaign worlds as was the original intention, and more and more games set in prechewed prepublished "official" campaign worlds that now have some very fine DMs and players; but they were originally only intended to be a crutch to lean on while you were learning to do it the way it had been intended, but you hadn't served enough of your apprenticeship and developed your roleplaying chops enough to do it on your own. Most of the players I grew up with would have been at least a little offended if I'd tried to run a Greyhawk campaign with them *(the official world before the Realms); they would have considered that I couldn't be bothered to take the time to craft them a world of my own: that I was either too lazy or didn't care enough about them to do it right.
And though, as I say, some very fine DMs and players have since developed in those published campaign worlds, IMHO it is IN SPITE OF how the multinational corporations have dumbed down D&D, not BECAUSE OF their actions. And its not just WOTC. Gygax made his own company to make and sell D&D, TSR. That was a fine company for a while, but near the end money was already starting to creep in; then the 500 pound gorilla TSR was bought by the 1000 pound gorilla White Wolf (originally the maker of Vampire: the Masquerade and other World of Darkness RPGs); then that was bought by the 2000 pound gorilla Wizards of the Coast, which is where we are now
Famh Thrawn Fiadhaich - 'half elven' sorcerer (wild magic) 2, Sleeping Gods - A Dragon Warriors campaign in the Lands of Legend
Quspira Inirali - tiefling cleric (Life domain) 4, Painted's "He'll be the father of my child"
---RETIRED HEROES' REST HOME---
Sae Ivui Nailo - wood elf rogue (inquisitive) 5 , Sea of Death: Captain Hailstorm's Lost Treasure
Ryshraxea "Shra" Naranthi - tabaxi artificer 1, Nyx's Tomb of Annihilation - Group 1
Wait, what? Don't you think that might be a little judgemental? I'm pretty much as high testosterone as you can get without outside additives, I'm old enough to also remember when the game first introduced the idea of gods you could fight - and possible defeat - and while I surely like my power fantasies, I also like my roleplaying, and I've never seen any appeal in fighting gods. Also, having muscles in no way impedes my ability to cogitate.
I think you may be instinctively assigning positive qualities to people like yourself - and negative qualities to people like me - entirely incorrectly.
Eh, this is propably not a discussion for this forum, so let's leave it there? I just didn't want to let that stand without counterargument =)
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
trim this quote down a bit so it's easier to get to the reply...
Oh no doubt that my hopes for this thread have changed a bit since the first posting. The ideas have started to bend more towards DM ways to make it work, and less PC ways.
my issue (currently) is less about "get the legendary thing" being boring and played out. It's about the fact that people are defaulting to well known pop culture/ religious references. And are doing so wholesale. Take the person who used "how to kill Baldur" for example. If you just quote the story word for word, that's dull and bad story telling. It's a well known enough story, that people are going to call you out if you change nothing. Change like 3-5 things (be they names, the deadly substance, the location, etc...) and it's less horrible story telling, because you have to work a little bit harder to pin point where the reference is coming from.
You are correct that without specifics, anything and everything COULD work. And to some level that is kind of the point. The more specific you are, the less out of the box someone is going to be about finding an answer. Why bother trying to become a god, to kill another god. If you can just slap God #2 with a particularly smelly fish (literally any kind, just has to be stinky) to kill them? Why come up with a complex story arc, if you can just google the obvious reference point for the God; and simply metagame an answer from that. Again using Baldur as an example. Why would your character think to immediately start looking for mistletoe upon fighting a human avatar who seemed to ignore most/ all damage thrown at it?
The person who responded before this post, actually did a really cool job of coming up with an answer. It's a bit of the tried and true "become a god yourself" but it goes into more detail as to HOW you would go about doing that. Heck it's possible they are referencing some tropes, but it's not the same tropes that anyone with with even a passing knowledge of geek culture would be like "Oh, you mean like (sci-fi/fantasy character or Real Life religious dogma) "
I mean to be honest, all of the ideas i have are things I would 10,000% never let my players do themselves. But could totally justify having a (non divine power level) NPC do. But a lot of that has more to do with the fact that it would take a character a VERY VERY long time do accomplish, and no group wants to wait around while their buddy pisses off for 100's if not 1000's of years.
Since I'm certainly willing to leave it there, I will admit I went a little too far in my grumpiness and got carried away; and to say I'm sorry. When I started typing, my ORIGINAL intent was not to imply much less state as sweeping a generalization about males and specifically adolescent males as I wound up typing. And I totally retract that generalization (not least because I was an adolescent male myself in those days and so don't have any place talking so harshly).
My first impetus was simply the memory that the group I mentioned was either explicitly admitted by the company or widely believed to be the target audience for introducing god killing into the game, and it was either admitted or widely believed that it was for the purpose of making it more appealing to them so that more of them would buy it
Famh Thrawn Fiadhaich - 'half elven' sorcerer (wild magic) 2, Sleeping Gods - A Dragon Warriors campaign in the Lands of Legend
Quspira Inirali - tiefling cleric (Life domain) 4, Painted's "He'll be the father of my child"
---RETIRED HEROES' REST HOME---
Sae Ivui Nailo - wood elf rogue (inquisitive) 5 , Sea of Death: Captain Hailstorm's Lost Treasure
Ryshraxea "Shra" Naranthi - tabaxi artificer 1, Nyx's Tomb of Annihilation - Group 1
Allow me to add: Sometimes, testosterone makes young males do stupid things. The rest of us lack that excuse =D
And now, back to our god-killing topic of the day.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.