| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 09 Jul 2014 : 15:16:24
I have been trying to come up with a set of rules that determine how and why a deity behaves. I havent got anywhere near numbers yet but i have a vague writeup of how it all hangs together.
Now i'm working on experience points being the baseline for everything so that the only thing that distinguishes mortals from divine beings is the ascension process (which i'm not covering) and the amount of experience.
1 - HD: So we have a range of power levels from Demi-Power to Greater Power. Just for a quick classification i decided on:
Demi Power = 20 - 29 HD
Lesser Power = 30 - 39 HD
Intermediate Power = 40-49 HD
Greater Power = 50+ HD
Its just a rough outline but it means that some mortals are more powerful than Demi Powers but i reckon everyone could name those mortals within 30 seconds.
2 - Divine Energy: I'm expressing this in experience points because its a system of accumulated power that everyone already uses.
Mortals accrue experience by killing creatures and using their skills. This is horribly inefficient and when level 20+ is reached it can take many years to gain enough experience to reach the next level of power (gain a level).
So for deities i thought they could gain experience points/divine energy from worship.
For example, every being that performs an act or says a prayer in a god's name grants him 1 experience point. Every act that is encompassed by a god's portfolio grants him one experience point. Every being that dies and passes on to his gods realm grants him the accumulated total of his experience point count.
To me this explains how gods can exist that have no worshippers (the acts that promote a god's portfolio provide some power. It also explains why gods prefer organised churches (devout clergy pray more often so it ensures a regular income of xp). Of course all of this only applies within the area a pantheon covers.
3 - Activity: As characters get higher in level they gain access to better abilities. Some of these abilities (particularly powerful spells) require the expenditure of xp to fuel them.
For gods pretty much every divine salient ability requires an xp expenditure to operate. The most expensive ones are creating and maintaining and avatar, and creating a home plane for your deific essence.
Other uses of divine energy include sending manifestations or messages to the Material Plane, sending divine servants to the Material Plane, granting spells to worshippers, communicating with the faithful, creating a chosen (almost as expensive as an avatar)
If a god uses up too much of his divine energy (i.e. he spends his experience points on using abilities) then once they drop below 20 HD worth of experience they can no longer perform any divine abilities until they have progressed beyond the minimum experience count, this includes being able to grant spells to clergy members.
Once gods have crossed the minimum threshold of divine energy it is difficult to recoup that loss because people start to abandon worship of the god when he is no longer actively aiding them (they think he is dead).
4 - Avatars: All gods must have at least one avatar, and that is resident on his Home Plane (essentially that avatar houses the god's divine essence so of course it is more powerful than a normal avatar). This also means that even Demi-Powers who are newly created begin consuming their divine energy straight away.
Only the Greater Powers, or sometimes a consortium of Intermediate and Lesser Powers can gather together enough regular divine energy to create and maintain the expenditure needed for a Home Plane in the Outer Planes.
Other gods must form an alliance with a god with a Home Plane on the Outer Planes in order to live there.
Those whose essence is not resident on the Outer Planes are bound to the Material Plane. These Material Plane bound gods (usually Demi-Powers) may only have one avatar.
If a god is killed on his home plane then he is slain permanently so gods are at their most vulnerable when they are a Demi-Power and they are bound to the Material Plane. The Mulan gods are unusual examples of Greater, Intermediate, and Lesser Powers that were Material Plane bound and so when they were killed fighting the Imaskari or in the Orcgate Wars they were permanently destroyed.
Talos frequently aided morals in ascending to divinity, only to bar them from his Outer Planar Home, forcing these Demi-Powers to reside on the Material Plane where they rapidly consumed their divine energy. Once burned out, Talos would absorb their followers into his own church and increase his own power.
5 - Power Level: This is of course tied to the number of HD a deity has in that gods with 34 HD are lesser powers. However certain beings (primordials, archfey, demon lords) are exceptionally powerful before they ascend to divinity. As gods these beings do not gain enough divine energy (experience) from their followers to maintain their current level of power, so if they are a 50HD primordial and go no a spending spree of divine energy, sending avatars across the world, creating Outer Planar Homes, etc. They will quickly burn through their HD until they level out at the level of power their worshippers provide them.
This tactic was put to good use by the Dark Three who went on an epic quest to bind and slay the 7 lost primordials of Faerun. This gave them an extensive divine energy reserve so that when they did ascend they could use up all that energy on performing miracles and acquiring worshippers through awe inspiring acts of power.
Those deities that are more thrifty with their divine energy may maintain their level of deific power far above what their actual worshippers provide. The Draconic pantheon is a prime example. In ages past dragons were more numerous and the gods were very powerful. As the millennia passed, the number of dragons declined, as did the number of believers among dragons. However certain gods like Kereska are noted as being of Greater Power level despite only having enough worshippers for a Demi or Lesser Power status. This can only be achieved through very thrifty management of their divine energy which artificially keeps them at Greater Power status.
This means Kereska has been very inactive in the Realms and is unlikely to gain new followers, but should she be attacked by another deity then she will be able to fend off beings such as Lathander for a brief period of time. In doing so however she will burn through her divine energy and probably drop to a more realistic level of power appropriate to her worship.
Anyway, thats my rational behind gods in Faerun. I'm looking to develop it further, and maybe even assign numbers to it (for instance how much xp it takes to create and maintain an avatar).
Any thoughts or ideas. Can anyone see any potential problems with this. And any ideas for further development would be helpful. |
| 22 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 15 Jul 2014 : 13:02:41
Come up with a real framework now for the rules behind deities. The Immortals Rules was an excellent reference (thanks Arcanamach).
50000 to create an avatar with very little maintenance.
100,000 per sq mile to create/increase the size of a divine realm.
1000 per sq mile to maintain a divine realm.
Magic is usually performed using raw magic and so is a lot like ritual casting (epic magic) so deities can literally do anything. It costs 1 xp per skill point required to perform the ritual.
spells sent to priest to memorise are 1 xp per level (priest pays any additional xp cost on casting). Deity's can themselves use spells for the same cost (in that instance they pay additional xp cost and converted gold to xp cost on a 1 to 1 basis upon casting).
Magic (both spell and ritual) can be manifest anywhere within the pantheon that the god belongs as well as anywhere on the divine realm of the god.
All gods on the planes get a base 100 xp per day.
Planar bias adjusts divine realm costs as well as amount of xp gained per day. Planar Bias is calculated by a point step difference between the deity's alignment and the alignment of the hosting plane of the divine realm. This bias is used to multiple the creation/maintenance costs and divide the xp accrued per day.
Planar Bias is also increased by not having subtypes that match the requirements of the plane (so not having a fire subtype but choosing the Elemental Plane of Fire as a home for a divine realm).
I think that covers everything. And i know have a reason for Lolth's Silence that is credible within the rules laid out above.
Of course i have written out the rules in full and i'm going to put them in my magazine. |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 15 Jul 2014 : 09:41:20
Ooh and you regenerate power points/experience points at a rate dependent upon how complimentary your alignment is to the plane you designate as your home plane.
That gives me plenty of interesting ideas, especially regarding lolth's silence |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 15 Jul 2014 : 09:36:31
Oooh, im loving this Immortals boxed set.
The Faiths and Avatars book could have almost been written using the rules laid down in the Immortals Rules.
The most interesting thing i have found so far are the 5 spheres. 4 spheres are available to the player (Matter, Thought, etc). The last sphere is interestingly enough entitled entropy.
Entropy is not necessarily evil, it is seen as the balancing force. Everything has to end, because if not the universe will be destroyed by conflict.
When things get out of balance the positive forces begin to overpopulate, creation runs riot as it were. There becomes too many people, too many gods, too much of everything. In that instance conflict always ensues and thus a balance was created to counter the 4 other spheres.
Entropy is that counter balance. As the positive forces (those of creation) increase so too does entropy.
Now this immediately brings to my mind the excesses of the godswar and the innumerable gods themselves. Entropy as we know it (that tiny sphere of annihilation) must be the manifestation of the end of everything and it grows larger in order to bring balance to creation.
I always imagined Entropy as concentrated anti-deific energy designed purely to destroy the gods, but it seems it is actually designed to destroy everything and it is a natural part of the cycle of the universe. |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 14 Jul 2014 : 20:39:52
Just located my copy of the Immortals Rules (the gold box is a bit ripped but the books are fine).
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| The Arcanamach |
Posted - 12 Jul 2014 : 18:22:32
I have to say I just sort of ignore the whole astral body thing. Seemed a bit too far-fetched to me (sort of like crystal spheres) so I never used it. Gods don't have actual bodies in my homebrew...they're beings of spirit who can manifest bodies. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 12 Jul 2014 : 12:26:35
The one thing I see missing here, and its a kind of big piece, is the tie between a god and their corpse on the Astral plane. This is a long established rule. However, that being said, do material plane bound deities produce an astral planar corpse? Using the mulan gods as an example, the people of Unther have the flesh of their deities interred in god tombs according to Dragon 358. So, when a deity drops below X HD, and they have an outer planar presence, do they create a "god-corpse", and do they continue to have a material body/avatar? If they are material plane bound, they might continue to exist, but maybe their avatar is destroyed and they are forced to inhabit a newly formed material body (or even maybe get reincarnated.... maybe as a goat or a bear)? |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 11 Jul 2014 : 16:03:15
Cheers.
Apart from 1 and 5 i can go for all those rules. I try not to have any must haves because then i have to think up of a reason why they are there.
For number 1 the methods of ascension are many and varied. Yes a god can sponsor a being to ascension, but i reckon there are many other methods, and just believing in a god can cause its creation (obviously you need to reach a certain threshold of worshippers first). Who would sponsor an idea?
Ultimately Ao says whether gods get created or not and for me that makes Ao the ultimate sponsor of everyone and he doesnt seem like the type to give out divine realms to live in. If you get another god to sponsor your bid for ascension then yes you are likely to get a free place to live, but if not then i reckon you have to do it the hard way.
That way Material Plane living is the default and not a choice (although it can be a choice some gods take for the reason you gave and maybe because they like living there).
And given the problem with the Mulan deities i can't see rule 5 working, for me anyway, because some of them were greater,intermediate, and lesser gods and they were quite clearly material plane bound (the canon explanation for how they werent is just too complicated and unworkable for me to entertain, i like simple and sensible).
I realise i violate canon in many places above but thats just how i roll nowadays it seems. |
| The Arcanamach |
Posted - 11 Jul 2014 : 15:41:44
Just for my own homebrew I go with this:
1. Newly elevated deity is given their own plane by patron deity (all new deities have to be sponsored in some way or at least have a deity willing to 'take responsibility' for them).
2. The premise is that there are an infinite number of planes, including demi/proto-planes. The godling is given one of those as a home.
3. Most are given 'quarters' on their sponsors home plane (for protection, if nothing else).
4. Most godlings remain on the Material Plane, however, for many years as they need to work very directly with mortals in order to cement their strength.
5. Once they reach 'lesser' power they are REQUIRED to abandon the Prime if they haven't already.
6. I also have this notion of Pantheonic Planes that are held in tandem with all other deities of a given pantheon. Thus, Olympus is the home of all of the Greek gods (it's like they all have Embassies there). But, in my homebrew, Olympus isn't an 'alignment' plane as it's a United Nations sort of place for the Greek gods instead.
7. My cosmology is the Great Wheel, but it's tweaked somewhat to fit the above notion.
Anyway, I'm now working on yet ANOTHER project so busy busy busy. But don't worry, I WILL get to proofreading for you. |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 11 Jul 2014 : 13:55:15
Well that is an angle i hadnt thought of and kind of helps with some ideas and anomalies. Particularly the ones where deities of a similar bent dwell on the same home plane. Your patron deity gives you a small portion of theirs to make your own. If they are feeling particularly generous they may create a small plane elsewhere outside their domain for you to live in.
Of course if there is no patron deity then you are a Material Plane bound deity.
If your patron does not give you a home plane then you are a Material Plane bound deity.
It looks like the act of creation of a plane is the expensive bit. Maintaining it is less expensive but probably not free. I cant wait to get my hands on the immortals boxed set and put some numbers to ideas. |
| The Arcanamach |
Posted - 11 Jul 2014 : 13:42:53
I don't have time to read everything right now but to respond to the issue of creating/maintaining a divine home: in the Immortals boxed set a newly ascended deity was given a very small plane by his patron deity. As said deity grows in power he/she/it is expected (and really needs to) expand that plane and eventually go to a full-on infinite plane at the higher echelons of power. |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 11 Jul 2014 : 12:57:50
I'm not sure thats entirely true since some deities remain bound to the material plane.
Gargauth and Gwaeron Windstrom, Lurue, Karsus, Red Knight, Siamorphe, Ulutiu, and Eschodow are all based on the Prime Material Plane, specifically Toril.
Now given that in 2nd edition gods could only exist on planes that matched their alignment they could not band together gods whose portfolios were linked but their alignments were widely differing.
So for me Mystra, Azuth, Savras, and Velsharoon should all live together on the same plane (and in 3rd edition they might, i havent checked) because they all serve Mystra and she is likely to allow them to dwell on her plane (she controls what can and cant happen there and they liekly each get a small portion of the plane to control - although she can usurp that control whenever she wants).
However in 2nd edition lore because of the great wheel (which i love) it doesnt allow this to occur and thus the deities are spread across the planes.
Given that the immortal boxed set has rules for creating and maintaining planes (thanks for the pointer Arcanamach i will read it as soon as i find a copy) we have precedent for the idea that creating a plane has a cost.
The fact that only Demi-Powers are found on the Material Plane leads me to believe that the cost is too high for them to create a plane themselves (although there are always exceptions).
However all gods seem to want to move to the outer plane and i think that is because as a god tied to the material plane you are dead if your avatar is killed. So it is in a gods interest to move to the outer planes as soon as possible. This likely requires allies/patrons if you cant afford to create one yourself.
Perhaps Fermata was its own divine realm and Finder did have enough power stored (or stolen from Moander) to create a very small plane for a few years. Maybe after being attacked several times, or he wasnt getting enough worship coming in to maintain the plane and so abandoned it later and moved to the Gates of the Moon.
For me the whole point of having a plane of your own is added security. Even gods have enemies (usually other gods) and if you are killed on your planar abode then you are dead. If you own the plane you create the rules of that plane which gives you a significant advantage over invaders. Furthermore you can fill that plane with beings you create, allied creatures, divine servants, etc.
If your realms is only tiny, you probably cant fill it with a lot and should Bane send an army of his divine servants, fiends, worshippers, and an avatar or two to come and kill you then there isnt a lot you can do about it in your tiny manor house. In that instance moving to a huge country sized planar abode filled with divine servants and two or three other allied gods (and their servants) does look more attractive. |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 11 Jul 2014 : 12:32:45
Well, again, in 2E, almost every deity has their own realm. And the realms are tied to their deity -- a divine realm without a deity will eventually fade away.
Fermata wasn't a big realm; it was barely more than a nice manor and the grounds. But it was still a realm, and it was still all Finder.
Perhaps the creation of a realm isn't something the deity has to expend power to do -- perhaps having a realm is a function of godhood. After all, a deity's followers will, upon death, go to the deity's realm -- so the deity has to have one. |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 11 Jul 2014 : 11:40:56
He does in in 3rd edition (Faiths and Pantheons), but not in 2nd edition (Powers and Pantheons). |
| mhamza |
Posted - 11 Jul 2014 : 11:34:19
I thought Finder shared a plane with Selune |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 11 Jul 2014 : 08:38:09
Damn, i used to own all the DnD boxed sets (the red one the blue one the immortal set, i think there were about 5), but i stashed them in my parents loft and cant find them anymore.
I had no idea rules like this were even in there. Maybe i read it once a long time ago and have subconsciously drawn upon it.
As for Faiths and Avatars, that and the P&P and Demihuman Deities books are always my first point of reference for gods, i just cant imagine how Finder could have his own home plane (although if he stole it from Moander then that might make it easier).
I prefer sensible lore over newer lore, and if it dont fit well i'm gonna change it.
I never did like the world tree view of the cosmology and i keep the great wheel (it at least makes some kind of sense), however it is a bit annoying that gods exist all over the place in random planes.
3rd edition did have one good idea with the cosmologies and that was having gods from the same pantheon (for smaller and demihuman pantheons anyway) occupying the same home plane, and those gods of complimenting portfolios occupying the same home plane.
I tend to merge the two cosmologies and have the great wheel, but with the more powerful gods creating their home plane out of a portion of that plane. Its kind of like a country within a continent. The continent being celestia for instance, and then within that Tyr, Torm, and Ilmater have created their own little section of the plane (House of the Triad) that they have complete control over, and can allow who they want to live there.
That way Heliopolis for me exists in Arborea i believe, but is home to all the Mulan deities (including Set), even though their alignments do not match that of the encompassing plane, as long as they do not leave Heliopolis then they are safe.
But thats aside. Finder simply cant be powerful enough to create his own plane so either:
1 - He stole the plane from Moander and shifted it to a place in the cosmology more befitting his alignment.
2 - He is living on Arborea with another unknown deity from another plane, or perhaps he came to an agreement with the cosmic entity that represents Arborea and so is allowed to live there.
3 - He has some random super powerful artefact that fuelled the creation and maintenance of his home plane (hate this idea because it is deus ex machina again - yuck)
4 - He was much more powerful than demi-power level as a mortal and used up much of that power creating the plane and has been burning through the rest of his reserves maintaining it. He seems arrogant enough to take this option, believing that everyone would worship him. Of course things dont work out that way (and in my campaign Moander rots him inside out and is reborn - because Moander is much more interesting than another god of music). |
| The Arcanamach |
Posted - 11 Jul 2014 : 06:45:37
dazzler: the old DnD Immortals boxed set had extensive rules for gods...some of which you have intuitively already drawn upon. For the gods under those rules they use Power Points but the PP are drawn directly from XP. Some PP are lost when used and some PP is regained after use. It all depends on what the PP were used to do. Expanding their home plane, for instance, requires a permanent expediture of PP and thus must be regained through their actions. Casting basic spells, on the other hand, uses PP but they are regained very quickly (basically from the xp gained from their worshippers).
Anyway if you can get your hands on that set (it's the gold box) it could prove invaluable in your research. |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 10 Jul 2014 : 23:13:02
Well, just flipping thru Faiths & Avatars, powers without their own separate realms are the exception, not the rule. And that includes lesser powers. Ditto for lesser powers in Demihuman Deities.
It's your call which source you use, but keep in mind that 3E uses a different, smaller planar structure than what 2E used. In 2E, there were a lot more planes and they touched a lot more worlds than just Abeir-Toril. So some of the planes were host to multiple independent divine realms. Finder, for example, had a small chunk of Arborea, one of the planes of Olympus, where the Greek pantheon hung out.
When they retconned the planar structure in 3E, they got rid of the existing planar structure, and replaced it with something much smaller that didn't do much other than give the gods a place to live. And a lot of deities that didn't even live in the same neighborhood suddenly became neighbors or even roommates.
Officially, newer lore trumps older lore... But even though Faiths & Pantheons is the later source and has a little information not in the prior books, the deity books of 2E -- Faiths & Avatars, Powers & Pantheons, and Demihuman Deities -- are much more informative and richer sources of lore. There are few Realms resources, of any edition, that I recommend as highly as I recommend those books. |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 10 Jul 2014 : 21:55:20
Well I can see Laduguer and Deep Duerra having enough energy to maintain a home plane since they represent the entire duergar race.
Wooly you always find faults in my theories, which is always a good thing, but I shall have to for once use the Faiths and Pantheons book over Faiths and Avatars. In the 3rd edition book Finder is detailed as dwelling in the Gates of the Moon which I assume is Selune's plane (since she also lives there).
I cant think of any other way that a demi power can have his own outer planar abode. Although perhaps the high cost is not in the maintenance of the planar home (it would still have a cost), but it is the creation itself which is so costly.
If a being is able to take a planar home off another then they can skip a large portion of that cost. Perhaps Finder gained his planar home when he killed Moander, and then shifted it to a place more appealing to his nature.
I guess its the difference between paying 10000 to create it and 2000 to maintain it. Either way its really expensive for a Demi-Power to have all by himself and maybe it explains why Finder later moved to Selune's home because it was too expensive.
Finder was I believe a very powerful adventurer and he lived for a very long time so he was probably quite a high level when he became a god which might have given him some leeway of divine energy to burn through maintaining his planar home. |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 10 Jul 2014 : 20:56:19
In Powers & Pantheons, Finder Wyvernspur was a demipower, with a handful of worshippers, and his own independent realm on Arborea, in Olympus. His realm was called Fermata. |
| mhamza |
Posted - 10 Jul 2014 : 20:48:52
For your first question I can't think of any but for the second, Laduguer was an intermediate deity and he had his own realm called Hammergrim which was shared with Deep Duerra, a demipower. |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 10 Jul 2014 : 16:43:36
Well unfortunately i have run short of ideas at this point, i was kind of hoping people might have a few ideas to further it.
Numbers is the crucial thing. I just supposed that one prayer equaled 1 point because its always best to have it on a one to one ratio.
So going by a small church with say 500 people each granting 5 prayers a day and maybe doing 1 or 2 acts per day to promote the portfolio that is 3500 points a day almost guaranteed.
Then depending upon how broad the portfolio is and how well known the god is you could probably expect a Demi-Power to receive maybe 1000 invocations of his name/portfolio each day.
So lets say Demi-Powers have around 5000 bits of energy to play with each day.
Now granting spells is 1 point per spell level per person. At first people might say no way, but not all devout worshippers are priests so the god doesnt have to provide that to everyone, and not all priests will memorise an entirely new roster of spells they might not use them all so they can keep yesterdays spells and the god saves some energy from that.
So lets say 1 energy per clergy is given back to power spells so for this god it is 500 in total.
Then i reckon maintenance on the avatar is say 2000 points.
Maintaining an Outer Plane how about 10000 points
Of course i am just making this up as i go along here.
I need some numbers on the membership of established churches first i think to try and figure out how many clergy members are in the church of a greater deity, intermediate deity, lesser deity etc.
Does anyone have any examples of a lesser deity having their own Outer Planar abode (i.e. not living within the domain of another greater or intermediate deity).
Does anyone have an example of a group of Intermediate deities having their own Outer Planar abodes. I reckon if deities grouped together they could create a plane for themselves even if they werent greater deities (like the house of the triad but without Tyr and Ilmater who i think are greater powers). |
| mhamza |
Posted - 10 Jul 2014 : 16:20:08
Looks great, can't wait to see more |
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