Greetings and well met my fellow travelers and adventurers! I am the DM of a very loose campaign where i really just let my players imagination run wild and enjoy their characters to the fullest extent they can take them, while accepting the chance that every encounter no matter how big or small, could result in their characters death. I've got everything from homebrew demons and weapons to official unofficial stuff that will leave even my most experienced players scratching their heads on what just happened to their party lol.
Anyways to the point. I kinda let one of my players get carried away and is well on the path of divinity if it keeps going unchecked or unchallenged. While I'm greatly enjoying the monster fights and near deaths almost as much as my player is, its getting to the point that I need something, or someone, to be a clear and direct threat to challenging his reign and power, like a god. As a player I don't do much with divine stuff, its never been my cup of tea. But I want to do what I can for my player and give him a challenge that isn't a giant wave of enemies or one of my own characters buffed up to be a challenge. Admittedly my own imagination is running out of steam. So, how does one make a killable god character or how do i keep it interesting for my character that's beginning to eclipse the rest of the party? any advice and guidance will be greatly appreciated and welcome.
Greetings and well met my fellow travelers and adventurers! I am the DM of a very loose campaign where i really just let my players imagination run wild and enjoy their characters to the fullest extent they can take them, while accepting the chance that every encounter no matter how big or small, could result in their characters death. I've got everything from homebrew demons and weapons to official unofficial stuff that will leave even my most experienced players scratching their heads on what just happened to their party lol.
Anyways to the point. I kinda let one of my players get carried away and is well on the path of divinity if it keeps going unchecked or unchallenged. While I'm greatly enjoying the monster fights and near deaths almost as much as my player is, its getting to the point that I need something, or someone, to be a clear and direct threat to challenging his reign and power, like a god. As a player I don't do much with divine stuff, its never been my cup of tea. But I want to do what I can for my player and give him a challenge that isn't a giant wave of enemies or one of my own characters buffed up to be a challenge. Admittedly my own imagination is running out of steam. So, how does one make a killable god character or how do i keep it interesting for my character that's beginning to eclipse the rest of the party? any advice and guidance will be greatly appreciated and welcome.
How about not letting them run wild and eclipse the party. They can only do that if you, as the DM, let them. I’m glad you and your group are having fun but things like this can happen when you allow things to go to far. Or introduce homebrew that may or may not be balanced.
I wouldn’t say you have to be mean about it but maybe all of a sudden some power or item that this character has that is making them this powerful stops working or fails at vmcertain times. Drop hints that these issues stem from another power that is interfering or trying to hold them back. Try some things to restore some balance to the party (unless the rest of the players are happy taking the back seat to this character).
Doesnthe god have to be killable? It’s a god. It can do whatever you need it to do to advance the campaign while providing fun for the party and the particular character. Just be aware if you allow the character to kill this god and get their power, and the divide in party balance widens, you might have some unhappy players at your table.
But these are just my thoughts not knowing anything about your group or campaign. Take it for what you think it’s worth
Why would a god even want to fight? They have no reason to. Nothing to gain, everything to loose.
They could just wave every character away with a simple wish spell. Any equipment the character has the god just wipes it away, If your player has any power granted by a divine being the god will just make a deal with them and poof those powers are pulled away.
Real gods do not fight mortals except for sport.
And if the mortal does manage to win what does he get and from whom? A god who is now his enemy and who sends ever greater enemies after him. If he is nice. If he is vengeful the god could kill EVERYONE the character asks for help or cares about.
Sure go ahead and fight a god. If the player wants immortality which is the FIRST step to becoming a god like being then make that a lifetime quest and keep it just out of reach of the character. The second step is to become unkillable somehow. No god is even going to worry about anyone who is not a true immortal.
Without knowing the paths and requirements for achieving divinity in the campaign, it's difficult to know the status of the character and where possible pitfalls could occur. A divine-designed showstopper for the character's journey would likely look organic without any proof it was divine intervention. Most divines who meddle with non-divines influence situations rather than taking things into their own hands. Such showstoppers don't necessarily kill the character but does end (or possibly completely reset) the character's journey to divinity.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
For starters, if you feel your player is eclipsing others and the campaign, that is a major, major problem—the kind of problem which can kill a campaign. Be very careful of indulging that behavior.
That said, your question is not whether you should do this, but how to do it if you decide to do so. Generally, there are two ways to make a god fight winnable.
The first is to have the party fight a lesser god - something extremely niche which has divinity, but isn’t a major player in the pantheon or which is otherwise weakened in some way (like Auril in the Frostmaiden campaign). You’ll want to look at high CR monsters to give that appropriate feeling of challenge. This, however, feels more like a run of the mill monster fight - a hard one, but still a regular fight.
The other option is to give the party a fight where the fight seems entirely impossible through combat alone. Perhaps they have to hold out for a set period of time to charge some weapon. Perhaps they have to activate certain ritual stones (you could even make a puzzle out of that). Something where they have to fight to slow down the God, but can’t win through fighting alone.
By way of example, I did this to a party a couple sessions ago in one of my campaigns. For story reasons, a god needed to die to set up events much later in the campaign. The fight started with the party having to hold out against monsters fleeing the god, then having to “fight” the god itself. The god was represented by an infinite health Tarraaque (dropping it to zero stunned it for a turn and then it healed to full) and the party had to keep him from attacking an NPC using a ritual for ten rounds. It was brutal, drained all their resources, and still felt hopeless but for the beloved NPC managing to complete a ritual (which killed him in the process and gave one of the campaign’s BBEGs a weapon she needed to advance her own goal).
The notable takeaways - the fight felt appropriately godly, there were real and emotionally trying consequences to their fight, and, most importantly, it was worked into the campaign’s story itself.
If you’re going to do this, do it in a way that makes the story better for everyone. They’re killing a god—that’s the kind of fight you don’t throw out to indulge a player, you use it because you’re trying to shape major elements of a campaign.
A while ago I did find something from AD&D about ascending to godhood and put it in another thread which I cannot currently find but I'll pop it on here when I do.
Untl then, a notion that might be worth putting into the players mind is that of "Faith". Faith is used to sustain the Gods, should a god run out of "faith" then they die and they become a physical husk that floats into the Astral Plane. The only way to usually make any god run out of faith is to kill all their followers which is largely impossible, but it maybe the case that mortals can and have ascended to the status of God, only to die straight away as they did not have any followers or believers to sustain their new godly form.
So if this particular player wants to have their character become a god they will need to foster a group of followers to sustain them after the ascension takes place, the character would need to perform various heroic acts, blessings and miracles to foster this belief in their followers and the final acts to becoming a god could involve one of their followers becoming a cleric with the character bestowing the cleric powers and the character having to best an avatar of another god, maybe using the Empyrean as an example for the avatar, should the character win then they can take one aspect of the gods power and then over several fights they might usurp the god completely but if the character lose then they die and are unable to be resurrected by any means including by use of wish or true ressurection spells.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
* Need a character idea? Search for "Rob76's Unused" in the Story and Lore section.
PS to previous post........I found the other post Imentioned, rather than link the whole other thread I'll just copy and paste the ad&d method to ascend to godhood bit but the tldr is becoming a god wasn't possible but you could become a demi god in service to a god:
There was a method in AD&D, I'll summerize as best as i can:
Step 1: Be a minimum of 20th level and all ability scores had to be 13+. Once this process of ascending has started the character could no longer gain class levels and must now act with a new "higher" purpose in mind. This Higher Purpose was one which would help gain the attention of an exisiting entity that would act as a sponsor, usually a Deity but in 5e you could extend that to the various Fiends, Fey, GOO and other creatures powerful enough to grant powers to a Warlock.
Step 2: Find a "Sponsor". The character must then make an offering to this sponsor (usually another god of similar alignment to the character) and the value of this offering must be of a GP value at least equal to the XP of he character. So for 5e that would mean an offering worth at least 355,000 gp.
Step 3: The character must make a journey to the "abode" of their sponsor and present their offering. Finding and travelling to this "abode" was an adventure in itself but getting there did not guarantee an audiance with the sponsor. If the character has been true to the principles of their "higher purpose" the sponsor is likely to accept their offering, however, there was a chance the Sponsor would be offended and destroy the offering forcing the character to effecticely start over and create a new offering and try again.
Step 4: Assuming the sponsor accepted the offering it would then assign the character an "heoric task" designed to test the mettle of the character. Examples given were: Found a new Dynasty, Create a Magic Item or Spell that others seek to imitate, Destroy an artifact of an opposing God, Find and defeat an avatar of a rival God or Build a lasting monument to the sponsor. This task was something that would take several adventures to complete.
If all of this was successful the character would become a Demi God and a companion to their sponsor, HOWEVER, at that point they became NPC's and were no longer playable as a character, the end goal being to add to the campaign world rather than play as a god in the world.
Hope that helps a little.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
* Need a character idea? Search for "Rob76's Unused" in the Story and Lore section.
Divine Predominance. The deity can choose to apply a penalty or a bonus of 5 to any die roll made by a creature within 60 feet of it.
Unstoppable Offense. The deity ignores all AC bonuses granted by armor against targets of its attacks.
Celestial Influence. Celestials recognize the deity as superior. Creatures of this type are friendly to it, and follow its commands without hesitation or question. <You may replace Celestials with Fey or Fiends, depending on which would be most appropriate. Or, you may target a certain type tag that is not class-related, and is not "shapechanger.">
Also consider giving them these action options:
Summon Celestials. The deity summons 1d6 + 1 devas, or 1d4 - 1 planetars. The summoned creatures are friendly to the deity, and follow its commands without question or hesitation. <You may replace these with creatures more appropriate to the deity in question, if they do not fit. For example, an archfey would summon fey creatures.>
Feel free to customize these as much as you like to fit the deity in question, and give them various magic powers related to their domain.
I would never let things get this far without a huge rework of the whole level and magic system. 5E is not built to handle immortality or anything beyond a combined level 20 character.
For a character to become a god several things need to be asked and answered. How does a god gain and keep his power? His knowledge of magic and the power to use it? Followers who somehow pass onto him a bit of power through their belief and worship? Birth. They were just born a god? Were they created as a god or turned into one by another god?
Next we have to figure out the exact powers and levels of a god. Obviously they are far beyond the mundane power of a level 20 character. Even a wizard with access to the whole list of spells and then a few extra falls far short or god hood. Even an immortal character falls far short because of the lvl20 limit. Even creatures with a life span in excess of a thousand years never break the lvl20 limit and even if they did they would still fall short of actual god hood.
First off, if I as a character, learned of someone in the world I was playing in was an immortal I would hunt him down at least to just find out how it happened. Who wouldn't want immortality especially if they strive for god hood?
Look at the level system as a tiered population chart. Level 0 has millions of lvl0 people in it. By the time a character reaches level 20 he is on a small group of people possibly as small as a thousand in a whole planet. Of those thousand. the few who are trying for more drops to a maybe a hundred. And they more than likely know of each other. At least by reputation. Why would they not try to steal knowledge from each other or even a few get together to work to gaining godhood?
The best a character should be able to do is to become a Celestial type being working for their god. possibly an extremely long life leading to immortality. Most gods are just like regular real people, at least in this game system. so why would they want to make someone their equal if not their possible better? Thats just one more person who might destroy them in the future. Even the other gods might not like it and work to eliminate the new guy.
I think one way to approach this would be to have divinity be a finite thing. Basically, if you want to be a god, you need to replace an existing god.
This could be as simple as "defeat the god you want to replace," but I think it would be a lot more interesting if they had to prove that they would do a better job. This could include all matter of tasks or quests tailored to the god's domain and its followers.
Ultimately, a god isn't just a powerful being. It has a purpose and a function in the greater cosmos. Make the player think about that - about why they want to become a god and why or why not the universe would accept them in that role.
Greetings and well met my fellow travelers and adventurers! I am the DM of a very loose campaign where i really just let my players imagination run wild and enjoy their characters to the fullest extent they can take them, while accepting the chance that every encounter no matter how big or small, could result in their characters death. I've got everything from homebrew demons and weapons to official unofficial stuff that will leave even my most experienced players scratching their heads on what just happened to their party lol.
Anyways to the point. I kinda let one of my players get carried away and is well on the path of divinity if it keeps going unchecked or unchallenged. While I'm greatly enjoying the monster fights and near deaths almost as much as my player is, its getting to the point that I need something, or someone, to be a clear and direct threat to challenging his reign and power, like a god. As a player I don't do much with divine stuff, its never been my cup of tea. But I want to do what I can for my player and give him a challenge that isn't a giant wave of enemies or one of my own characters buffed up to be a challenge. Admittedly my own imagination is running out of steam. So, how does one make a killable god character or how do i keep it interesting for my character that's beginning to eclipse the rest of the party? any advice and guidance will be greatly appreciated and welcome.
How about not letting them run wild and eclipse the party. They can only do that if you, as the DM, let them. I’m glad you and your group are having fun but things like this can happen when you allow things to go to far. Or introduce homebrew that may or may not be balanced.
I wouldn’t say you have to be mean about it but maybe all of a sudden some power or item that this character has that is making them this powerful stops working or fails at vmcertain times. Drop hints that these issues stem from another power that is interfering or trying to hold them back. Try some things to restore some balance to the party (unless the rest of the players are happy taking the back seat to this character).
Doesnthe god have to be killable? It’s a god. It can do whatever you need it to do to advance the campaign while providing fun for the party and the particular character. Just be aware if you allow the character to kill this god and get their power, and the divide in party balance widens, you might have some unhappy players at your table.
But these are just my thoughts not knowing anything about your group or campaign. Take it for what you think it’s worth
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
Why would a god even want to fight? They have no reason to. Nothing to gain, everything to loose.
They could just wave every character away with a simple wish spell.
Any equipment the character has the god just wipes it away,
If your player has any power granted by a divine being the god will just make a deal with them and poof those powers are pulled away.
Real gods do not fight mortals except for sport.
And if the mortal does manage to win what does he get and from whom?
A god who is now his enemy and who sends ever greater enemies after him. If he is nice. If he is vengeful the god could kill EVERYONE the character asks for help or cares about.
Sure go ahead and fight a god.
If the player wants immortality which is the FIRST step to becoming a god like being then make that a lifetime quest and keep it just out of reach of the character.
The second step is to become unkillable somehow.
No god is even going to worry about anyone who is not a true immortal.
Without knowing the paths and requirements for achieving divinity in the campaign, it's difficult to know the status of the character and where possible pitfalls could occur. A divine-designed showstopper for the character's journey would likely look organic without any proof it was divine intervention. Most divines who meddle with non-divines influence situations rather than taking things into their own hands. Such showstoppers don't necessarily kill the character but does end (or possibly completely reset) the character's journey to divinity.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
For starters, if you feel your player is eclipsing others and the campaign, that is a major, major problem—the kind of problem which can kill a campaign. Be very careful of indulging that behavior.
That said, your question is not whether you should do this, but how to do it if you decide to do so. Generally, there are two ways to make a god fight winnable.
The first is to have the party fight a lesser god - something extremely niche which has divinity, but isn’t a major player in the pantheon or which is otherwise weakened in some way (like Auril in the Frostmaiden campaign). You’ll want to look at high CR monsters to give that appropriate feeling of challenge. This, however, feels more like a run of the mill monster fight - a hard one, but still a regular fight.
The other option is to give the party a fight where the fight seems entirely impossible through combat alone. Perhaps they have to hold out for a set period of time to charge some weapon. Perhaps they have to activate certain ritual stones (you could even make a puzzle out of that). Something where they have to fight to slow down the God, but can’t win through fighting alone.
By way of example, I did this to a party a couple sessions ago in one of my campaigns. For story reasons, a god needed to die to set up events much later in the campaign. The fight started with the party having to hold out against monsters fleeing the god, then having to “fight” the god itself. The god was represented by an infinite health Tarraaque (dropping it to zero stunned it for a turn and then it healed to full) and the party had to keep him from attacking an NPC using a ritual for ten rounds. It was brutal, drained all their resources, and still felt hopeless but for the beloved NPC managing to complete a ritual (which killed him in the process and gave one of the campaign’s BBEGs a weapon she needed to advance her own goal).
The notable takeaways - the fight felt appropriately godly, there were real and emotionally trying consequences to their fight, and, most importantly, it was worked into the campaign’s story itself.
If you’re going to do this, do it in a way that makes the story better for everyone. They’re killing a god—that’s the kind of fight you don’t throw out to indulge a player, you use it because you’re trying to shape major elements of a campaign.
A while ago I did find something from AD&D about ascending to godhood and put it in another thread which I cannot currently find but I'll pop it on here when I do.
Untl then, a notion that might be worth putting into the players mind is that of "Faith". Faith is used to sustain the Gods, should a god run out of "faith" then they die and they become a physical husk that floats into the Astral Plane. The only way to usually make any god run out of faith is to kill all their followers which is largely impossible, but it maybe the case that mortals can and have ascended to the status of God, only to die straight away as they did not have any followers or believers to sustain their new godly form.
So if this particular player wants to have their character become a god they will need to foster a group of followers to sustain them after the ascension takes place, the character would need to perform various heroic acts, blessings and miracles to foster this belief in their followers and the final acts to becoming a god could involve one of their followers becoming a cleric with the character bestowing the cleric powers and the character having to best an avatar of another god, maybe using the Empyrean as an example for the avatar, should the character win then they can take one aspect of the gods power and then over several fights they might usurp the god completely but if the character lose then they die and are unable to be resurrected by any means including by use of wish or true ressurection spells.
PS to previous post........I found the other post Imentioned, rather than link the whole other thread I'll just copy and paste the ad&d method to ascend to godhood bit but the tldr is becoming a god wasn't possible but you could become a demi god in service to a god:
There was a method in AD&D, I'll summerize as best as i can:
Step 1: Be a minimum of 20th level and all ability scores had to be 13+. Once this process of ascending has started the character could no longer gain class levels and must now act with a new "higher" purpose in mind. This Higher Purpose was one which would help gain the attention of an exisiting entity that would act as a sponsor, usually a Deity but in 5e you could extend that to the various Fiends, Fey, GOO and other creatures powerful enough to grant powers to a Warlock.
Step 2: Find a "Sponsor". The character must then make an offering to this sponsor (usually another god of similar alignment to the character) and the value of this offering must be of a GP value at least equal to the XP of he character. So for 5e that would mean an offering worth at least 355,000 gp.
Step 3: The character must make a journey to the "abode" of their sponsor and present their offering. Finding and travelling to this "abode" was an adventure in itself but getting there did not guarantee an audiance with the sponsor. If the character has been true to the principles of their "higher purpose" the sponsor is likely to accept their offering, however, there was a chance the Sponsor would be offended and destroy the offering forcing the character to effecticely start over and create a new offering and try again.
Step 4: Assuming the sponsor accepted the offering it would then assign the character an "heoric task" designed to test the mettle of the character. Examples given were: Found a new Dynasty, Create a Magic Item or Spell that others seek to imitate, Destroy an artifact of an opposing God, Find and defeat an avatar of a rival God or Build a lasting monument to the sponsor. This task was something that would take several adventures to complete.
If all of this was successful the character would become a Demi God and a companion to their sponsor, HOWEVER, at that point they became NPC's and were no longer playable as a character, the end goal being to add to the campaign world rather than play as a god in the world.
Hope that helps a little.
Consider giving them these special traits:
Also consider giving them these action options:
Feel free to customize these as much as you like to fit the deity in question, and give them various magic powers related to their domain.
To continue from my previous thread.
I would never let things get this far without a huge rework of the whole level and magic system. 5E is not built to handle immortality or anything beyond a combined level 20 character.
For a character to become a god several things need to be asked and answered.
How does a god gain and keep his power?
His knowledge of magic and the power to use it?
Followers who somehow pass onto him a bit of power through their belief and worship?
Birth. They were just born a god?
Were they created as a god or turned into one by another god?
Next we have to figure out the exact powers and levels of a god.
Obviously they are far beyond the mundane power of a level 20 character. Even a wizard with access to the whole list of spells and then a few extra falls far short or god hood.
Even an immortal character falls far short because of the lvl20 limit. Even creatures with a life span in excess of a thousand years never break the lvl20 limit and even if they did they would still fall short of actual god hood.
First off, if I as a character, learned of someone in the world I was playing in was an immortal I would hunt him down at least to just find out how it happened. Who wouldn't want immortality especially if they strive for god hood?
Look at the level system as a tiered population chart.
Level 0 has millions of lvl0 people in it. By the time a character reaches level 20 he is on a small group of people possibly as small as a thousand in a whole planet. Of those thousand. the few who are trying for more drops to a maybe a hundred. And they more than likely know of each other. At least by reputation.
Why would they not try to steal knowledge from each other or even a few get together to work to gaining godhood?
The best a character should be able to do is to become a Celestial type being working for their god. possibly an extremely long life leading to immortality.
Most gods are just like regular real people, at least in this game system. so why would they want to make someone their equal if not their possible better? Thats just one more person who might destroy them in the future. Even the other gods might not like it and work to eliminate the new guy.
Rob76
There also was a method in BECMI where you could get a pc to immortality.
BECMIs version of gods.
Had to get to level 36, then start down one of 4 paths to immortality. (very distilled explanation)
Game over man... Game over! -- Pvt. Hudson
I think one way to approach this would be to have divinity be a finite thing. Basically, if you want to be a god, you need to replace an existing god.
This could be as simple as "defeat the god you want to replace," but I think it would be a lot more interesting if they had to prove that they would do a better job. This could include all matter of tasks or quests tailored to the god's domain and its followers.
Ultimately, a god isn't just a powerful being. It has a purpose and a function in the greater cosmos. Make the player think about that - about why they want to become a god and why or why not the universe would accept them in that role.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm