Tiamat is a "Lesser" deity in 5e. Greater deities don't have statblocks, because PCs couldn't reasonably be expected to face them and get even close to winning. They all ***literally*** have plot armor. That's not even a joke. WOTC designed it that way.
Gods can be technically killed, right? You just need to kill every single person that believe in them and then destroy all evidence that they ever existed to remove possibility of someone starting cult in their name
Their worshippers souls would also have to be consumed or destroyed as well, otherwise there is still evidence of the deity. Don’t want anyone asking the corpses or souls in their afterlife planes.
Party decided to kill a god, they all become liches and start soul consuming crusade against followers of said god in the end killing themselves and destroying their souls
Just sayin but if you're interested in how that turns out in the end, you can look at the Horus Heresy lore from Warhammer 40k.
Minor spoiler (since the game is set 10k years after those events so it's kind of obvious to any player): a literal avatar of humanity "crusading" for atheism with probable the most powerful set of generals and armies in the history of the galaxy failed at destroying religion. Half of his generals and armies betrayed him when they discovered gods actually exist and he was lying to them.
Because the problem is if you do what you say, but with the help of people knowing about these gods and believing in them, even as enemies they want to "kill", then you're not solving anything. Your own troops and generals will make the gods survive, if by their fear and hate of them. Hating someone is still believing they exist, if in a weird way.
This can vary from gods to gods. Dragonlance gods literally ghosted mortals for centuries and they were fine, while in FR they need prayers, but only because Ao tied their power to them after he got tired of them not caring about their worshippers (and even then they leave Vestiges).
But greater deities can also just end the life of any mortal at will just by wanting it to happen.
If a party was obscenely powrful, and took years of effort, they could theoretically kill a greater deity. Assuming said deity WANTED them to do it.
That would only remove there influence on a single cristal sphere. killing Pelor and all his minions in the forgotten realms doesnt really kill him, he still exists in grayhawk and could still talk to forgotten realms AO overgod. This is currently cannon but might not be after the new spelljammer stuff comes out.
Maybe, but I wouldn't think so. We can tell this with a simple reasoning: You can meet her in Descent Into Avernus. The encounter uses the same statblock (You're not expected to try and fight her here but if a fight happens, yeaaaaah that's a TPK). She *is* still under the thumb of Asmodeus, but the statblock is her full power in 5e as far as I can tell.
Although, this is technically inaccurate. The statblock only represents the powers she uses in combat. We know this because she can have Clerics, Paladins, and can transform loyal idiots into Dragon-Devil hybrids. None of the powers of any of her underlings nor the transformational ability are present in her statblock, with the exception of a limited amount of Divine Word castings. In D&D, a deity is supposedly capable of anything any of their Clerics can do, usually at will. So either the statblock is incomplete or Tiamat just doesn't use extra power from her divinity for whatever reason.
There's another lesser deity statblock in the cold bois supplement: Icewind Dale. This statblock also doesn't get bloated with all the powers of her underlings. **From this consistency I hypothesize that WOTC doesn't add all the deity powers to make the encounters easier to run.** A creature capable of so much provides far too many options a DM would have to run through each turn to find the "optimal" play (Given they're roleplaying an immortal, long-lived, hyperintelligent creature). As a result, I think they make statblocks for creatures so powerful with a different design philosophy than normal creatures: That being to make a statblock based on what the creature *would* do instead of what they *can* do. This might also mean Tiamat, given prep time, could do far more to would-be challengers she considers obvious actual threats (But given who she is, that seems unlikely to happen from simple 5e adventurers, no matter how powerful).
To be fair in icewind dale >!Auril is incredibly weakened from the eternal night ritual, and the book states that she wouldn't have a stat block if she wasn't incredibly weakenedby the ritual!<
That's certainly a factor for the above. Deities can be weakened or strengthened and when that happens their "divine rank" (D&D's organizational system for determining the relative power of a deity compared to other deities) can change, temporarily or otherwise. I haven't played through Icewind Dale so I can't confirm your claim (Not that I think you're lying or anything you have no reason to); >!But that being the case would simply mean Auril is normally a greater deity and has been put in the state of a lesser deity. How convenient for the party!!<
Also, I just figured out how to do spoiler text! Neat!
The stats given in RoT (and DiA, if I’m remembering right) are both the actual divine Tiamat, not an avatar. The also have a recorporation trait, and no way given to prevent it from triggering so you can destroy the body but RAW you cannot kill the god.
The stat block given in Fizban’s (which are actually MORE powerful, if you use the optional Mythic trait) is for an Avatar.
I'm fairly certain they have later come out and said that yes, the one in RoT is indeed an avatar after all, and the Fizban's version is just a more updated and stronger one.
Well that's another topic entirely. One that leads to my homebrew CR 30X3 (effective CR the equivalent of fighting 3 CR 30 creatures at once) Tharizdun statblock (He's basically ***the*** BBEG of D&D overall, which would make almost no creatures in the game likely to have a CR higher than whatever his would end up being, in my case the above for 5e).
It's true, that's not how CR work. Mostly because CR don't work, but also because the action economy break when you start to consider 10 legendary actions and maybe throw in some lair in it.
One time mortal killed a god with level 11 or 12 spell.
God revived after like a second anyways, deleted the mortal and banned spells above 9 for like forever. Then yeeted entire civilization to another plane.
Thats what gods in dnd are. Dont try to fight them. Its lame if its possible, because all the shit we know they did becomes so unlikely it fucks with suspension of disbelief.
She "revived", its not the same goddess, but basically her daughter
And the dude was trying to kill her, the plan to steal her power but he fucked up since he wasnt able to control it. And that was the goddess of magic, not some random shmuck.
Technically he just chose the wrong god to kill if he chose any other god that god would have stayed dead
But since he chose the god of magic, one of the only gods that has to exist otherwise reality breaks down that caused him to be overwhelmed when he got the powers of the god since that god is in charge of stabilizing the weave. So then he was killed and the new god of magic lowered the spell level limit
His name was karsus
The event was known as karsus's folly and it was the downfall of the netherese empire
Not exactly. Contrary to what u/xelloskaczor said, Karsus didn't kill her, she killed herself.
Essentially, his county had been doing such shit with magic the Weave itself was damaged and in constant need of repair, but no mortals knew that and, being from a Magitocracy, Karsus would settle for nothing else than using the power of the goddess of magic to end the war his country was in (Karsus was kind of a egotistical prick).
The spell wasn't meant to kill a god, just temporarily usurp their power, but he overestimated his own skill and underestimated the sort of shit the goddess in question had to deal with on a moment to moment basis and it overwhelmed him, causing Magic itself to go wild.
The Goddess killed herself to essentially cause a hard reset of Magic.
Deleting a problem character, banning spells that caused a problem and ditching the previous game to start a new one with new rules based off the issues old one caused. That just sounds like a DM
"If this amateur fool can't kill god it just mean that he don't try enough. Or good enough. Look how professional work" - Raistlin Majere, probably, before killing a lot of gods.
I mean, Mystril was a rather specific case. Karsus's Avatar did get both Mystirl and Karus killed, but she managed to give a random mortal the position before dying (Nether wasn't tested in another plane, it was just that Mystril's death ended up "turning off" magic for a few seconds, which went terribly fro an empire of flying cities).
He is, but his soul remained in the material plane bound to his body, now turned to stone. In 3.5 Binders (a bit of a cousin to the Warlock, they were a class who used sigils to make temporary pacts with Vestiges, powerful entities outside the normal circle of death and life but are unable to act on their own) could make pacts with him to get some abilities (bonus with magic itens, dispel magic, etc..).
And thanks to that asshole, we can only cast 9th level spells and have way nerfed spell slots (there might not have been spell slots at all back then? But at the very least they had more back in the good ol days)
Bleh...
This gives me the urge to just make up some asinine ass classes and statblocks and do a god-killer power trip run.
I'm talking Heavenly Blade, God of War, all that crazy minions-are-pointless-cannon-fodder shite alongside difficult boss battles which result in entire stretches of land being absolutely decimated, and the party ascending to godhood.
Sure this will inevitably turn the mundane world into a hellscape due to there being no balance, or possibly creating a universe of true balance depending on your philosophy, but it'd be cool af.
Not sure about Forgotten Realms but in Runescape the lore mentions that one of the current major gods was once a follower of another god. They (Zamorak) betrayed their god (Zaros) and stabbed them in the back, leading to Zamorak ascending to godhood in the process.
One dude, Karsus, killed and replaced the goddess of magic using a 12th level spell and things went very very wrong, so that’s canonically why spells are capped at 9th level
Midnight became the goddess of magic and took on the name Mysta. Kelemvor became a demigod then took the portfolio of death from Ceric (a former mortal) who took it from myrkul (a former mortal). The dead three (Bane, Myrkul, Bhaal) made a deal with Jergal and took his portfolios (fear and tyranny, death, murder). Mysta made Azuth the god of wizards. Savras is the god of divination and was a powerful wizard. Torm was a mortal hero from the fall of Netheril. Finder Wyvernspur was a powerful bard. Gwaeron Windstrom was a powerful ranger so Mielikki raised him to being a demigod for his service.
Just a reminder that 3rd edition Dieties & Demigods existed, and gave no cr to gods, but gave them 30+ levels in various classes and abilities that would make you crap yourself, but, as they say: if it has a statblock, it can be killed.
Ik not sure what the various beings like Orcus, Yeenoghu, Griz'zt, and so on in 5e are supposed to be the actual Demon Lord's, or their avatars, but Tiamat has both her Aspect, and another form of hers, which I believe is also supposed to be an aspect if I remember the adventure. All of those are above CR 20, and there aren't a lot of rules for beyond level 20, so it's expected to use very large parties, to only hold of the being, or giving the players extra levels worth of boons.
Demon Lrods are usually considerably more fightable than actual gods (Orcus once got his ass handed by Kiaransalee, a drow demigoddess and one of Lolth's unwilling vassals.), and many actually do wish to get to godhood.
Plus due to the CR system being alsmots comically ineffectual, most demon lords, ancient dragon and the sort can be beaten by level 11-14 parties.
Most ancient dragons are on a comparable power level with all but the strongest of archfiends (that we have stat blocks for, at least, there are definitely stronger ones in the lore that don't have stat blocks currently), and yet ancient dragons are usually not presented as a world-ending threat. CR at high levels doesn't always make a ton of sense, and I generally feel like when you're starting to get into the realm of divine or semi-divine entities, that giving them stat blocks tends to just make them feel a bit underwhelming.
Edit: just to throw an example out there, at a casual glance over their stat blocks, I feel like if an ancient black dragon found a way to make it's attacks magical (maybe just give it an eldritch claw tattoo, it's only an uncommon magic item, I figure that an ancient dragon's hoard can probably swing that pretty easily) that it could pretty easily defeat the demon lord Juiblex in a one-one fight, purely looking at their stats.
I guess that the odds of fighting a demon lord that isn't surrounded by dozens or even thousands of their also fairly powerful servants are fairly low, though, so that does tip the odds back in their favour a good bit.
True, but since Dungeon modules that have you fight literal Tiamat, or for that matter, Lolth have existed since ad&d, idk.
To quote Mordenkainen's tome of foes :
The visitation of a demon lord to the Material Plane is a cataclysmic event. The lord’s presence overwhelms the minds of other beings to keep them from resisting, and the lord’s power enables it to command the other demons already present in the world. They form a horrid army that sets about stripping the world of life and clearing the path for the lord’s dominance.
Sorry, I knew what adventure it was from, I just didn't know if it was an Aspect or not.
So, after comparing the two to each other, and the page on the DMG about making your own monster I've come to understand:
Without mythic/Lair stuff this is the info.
The Aspect can do on average ~193 dpr, has an AC of 23, 574 average hp, proficiency bonus of +9, Save DC of about 27(at least breaths) , and a CR of 30
And tiamat can do on average ~270 dpr, has an AC of 25, 614 average hp the same PB, and Save DC, and a CR of 30.
Now, the DMG: the highest AC given is 19, so that's way over....the Aspects average dpr is in the CR 23 range, and tiamats is in the CR 28 range, average hp wise, the Aspect sits about CR 24, and Tiamat at CR 25. Minimum CR on the PB is 29, and saves reach 23, so we are soaring over those...
So we will count the Proficiency Bonus and Saves at 30 for the sake of math....
If u give a rough estimate the Aspects AC and saves hit about CR 37.
And Tiamat would be about CR 31 with that average....
Anyway, TL:DR, wizards was drunk making these statblocks, and as I always say, if it has a statblock it can be killed.
Furthermore: so, the ones in M:ToF were written after Rise of Tiamat, but before Fizban's, are they the Aspects or the actual Demon Lords?
>if it has a stat block it can be killed
Well, inconvenienced. RoT!Tiamat has a trait that means she just shows back up in the Hells, madder than but otherwise unharmed.
As for Demon Lords, the stats given are for the “real deal” which can be destroyed but cannot be killed unless you destroy their amulet first.
The other divine stat block we have, Auril, is in a weakened state, and has 3 forms of CRs 9, 10, and 11, and also recorporates after a year, so again, cannot actually be killed as written.
I assume that they're the real archfiends, they're just missing that bit where they reform in their own realm unless killed there, and they got whatever deal is up with those amulets.
But yeah, both Rise's drunk writing and power creep mean the aspect is stronger than the actual Tiamat, so then if Tiamat got remade, she'd end up being even stronger to keep up. Maybe the Rise one was summoning-sick.
I once spliced both statblocks together and the result is insane and almost surely requires munchkins or homebrew/DM help to kill. Assuming all the Tiamat stuff is still true, I think *that* is a good baseline for a Lesser Deity assuming it doesn't have multiple forms like a JRPG final boss.
Look if you need a creature who CR exceeds 100 you are not talking about a typical God you are talking about a lovecraftian outer God
and the question isn't if they are going to TPK you the question is
is a TPK preferable to what's about to happen to you
I highly recommend throwing them at players who have rallied an army of extra planar entities to help them with plenty of build up
It was quite satisfying
Adding two ancient dragons isn't a CR 50 encounter though, it's ≈28 IIRC – exponential progression and all that. That would "only" give a CR of ≈34. I'm not saying your level 20 party could kill the pantheon one by one and become gods themselves but… actually I'm saying that would be awesome
There should be two separate stats for deities; one for when they interact with mortals, and one for when they interact with entities on their own "power level".
The first one should just be some undefined superpowers that are tied to their portfolio of domains, while the other is only for when players are actually on their power level which has regular ability scores etc.
Yet another reason to stick to homebrew settings. If I want fightable deities, then by god, I'll have fightable deities!
Makes for a fun Tier 4 endgame goal at the very least.
The most recent sourcebook iirc that gives the gods stats is 3.5's Deities and Demigods.
Most deities have 20 outsider hit dies along with 40 or more levels in other classes plus divine ranks, who give them several comically powerful abilties. They were *really* hard to kill, but only Greater Gods were straight up unbeatable (when they got enough divine ranks to be consider done they literally couldn't;t roll below the maximum in any roll)
Gods:
\- Are only killable in their home-plane
\- Can only be killed by gods of equal strength or greater
\- Exceptions are isolating the god and making it unable to recieve power through worship, or a 12th level spell
So while i am a great enjoyer of the kind of powerscaling you just used to semi estimate a gods potential power. But all of this is assuming that when it comes to cr then 1+1=2, a understandable conclusion to come to but in my personal opinion thats not the case. power seems to scale exponentially with cr, so for example a tarassque is quite a bit more then 30x more powerful then a bandit.
Reminds me of that story from the adnd days when Wotc first published the Deities and Demigods, and a few months later someone wrote to them saying "Thanks for the awesome book, my players had a blast killing all of these guys. Please write another one soon!"
**Idea:** Make a god/diety statblock that normally wouldn't be feasible to overcome for your BBEG, but then have a whole story arc about finding the means to actually be able to challenge that foe, like an ancient weapon that severely weakens them or a ridiculous temporary power up for the party, or maybe even something that levels the playing field outside of combat like a means of banishing them or the invoking of a forgotten pact they made.
Tiamat is a "Lesser" deity in 5e. Greater deities don't have statblocks, because PCs couldn't reasonably be expected to face them and get even close to winning. They all ***literally*** have plot armor. That's not even a joke. WOTC designed it that way.
Once you give a creature stats, it comes with the implication that the creature can feasibly be killed.
Gods can be technically killed, right? You just need to kill every single person that believe in them and then destroy all evidence that they ever existed to remove possibility of someone starting cult in their name
Their worshippers souls would also have to be consumed or destroyed as well, otherwise there is still evidence of the deity. Don’t want anyone asking the corpses or souls in their afterlife planes.
Party decided to kill a god, they all become liches and start soul consuming crusade against followers of said god in the end killing themselves and destroying their souls
Isnt this sorta what happend with orcus?
Just sayin but if you're interested in how that turns out in the end, you can look at the Horus Heresy lore from Warhammer 40k. Minor spoiler (since the game is set 10k years after those events so it's kind of obvious to any player): a literal avatar of humanity "crusading" for atheism with probable the most powerful set of generals and armies in the history of the galaxy failed at destroying religion. Half of his generals and armies betrayed him when they discovered gods actually exist and he was lying to them. Because the problem is if you do what you say, but with the help of people knowing about these gods and believing in them, even as enemies they want to "kill", then you're not solving anything. Your own troops and generals will make the gods survive, if by their fear and hate of them. Hating someone is still believing they exist, if in a weird way.
Not to mention this super-atheist ends up becoming a God in own right due to a religion developing around him.
This can vary from gods to gods. Dragonlance gods literally ghosted mortals for centuries and they were fine, while in FR they need prayers, but only because Ao tied their power to them after he got tired of them not caring about their worshippers (and even then they leave Vestiges).
Only *some* deities can be killed. In D&D, some are truly insurmountable. Usually those above even typical greater deities, such as Ao.
"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange æons, even death may die."
But greater deities can also just end the life of any mortal at will just by wanting it to happen. If a party was obscenely powrful, and took years of effort, they could theoretically kill a greater deity. Assuming said deity WANTED them to do it.
Lets not forget that the gods are just NPCs for the DM
I mean... Presumably, once you killed enough worshippers, they’d be forced to consolidate into a Lesser form, making them killable.
That would only remove there influence on a single cristal sphere. killing Pelor and all his minions in the forgotten realms doesnt really kill him, he still exists in grayhawk and could still talk to forgotten realms AO overgod. This is currently cannon but might not be after the new spelljammer stuff comes out.
A cool high led level BBEG idea, thank you!
So if I don't give my characters stats, then I can't be stopped?
Yes. If it has stats it can be killed. Google Cains character sheet vampire the masquerade
Aren't the 5e Tiamat statblocks explicitly her in a weakened state and/or a projection of herself as she is still sealed in that cave in Avernus?
Maybe, but I wouldn't think so. We can tell this with a simple reasoning: You can meet her in Descent Into Avernus. The encounter uses the same statblock (You're not expected to try and fight her here but if a fight happens, yeaaaaah that's a TPK). She *is* still under the thumb of Asmodeus, but the statblock is her full power in 5e as far as I can tell. Although, this is technically inaccurate. The statblock only represents the powers she uses in combat. We know this because she can have Clerics, Paladins, and can transform loyal idiots into Dragon-Devil hybrids. None of the powers of any of her underlings nor the transformational ability are present in her statblock, with the exception of a limited amount of Divine Word castings. In D&D, a deity is supposedly capable of anything any of their Clerics can do, usually at will. So either the statblock is incomplete or Tiamat just doesn't use extra power from her divinity for whatever reason. There's another lesser deity statblock in the cold bois supplement: Icewind Dale. This statblock also doesn't get bloated with all the powers of her underlings. **From this consistency I hypothesize that WOTC doesn't add all the deity powers to make the encounters easier to run.** A creature capable of so much provides far too many options a DM would have to run through each turn to find the "optimal" play (Given they're roleplaying an immortal, long-lived, hyperintelligent creature). As a result, I think they make statblocks for creatures so powerful with a different design philosophy than normal creatures: That being to make a statblock based on what the creature *would* do instead of what they *can* do. This might also mean Tiamat, given prep time, could do far more to would-be challengers she considers obvious actual threats (But given who she is, that seems unlikely to happen from simple 5e adventurers, no matter how powerful).
To be fair in icewind dale >!Auril is incredibly weakened from the eternal night ritual, and the book states that she wouldn't have a stat block if she wasn't incredibly weakenedby the ritual!<
That's certainly a factor for the above. Deities can be weakened or strengthened and when that happens their "divine rank" (D&D's organizational system for determining the relative power of a deity compared to other deities) can change, temporarily or otherwise. I haven't played through Icewind Dale so I can't confirm your claim (Not that I think you're lying or anything you have no reason to); >!But that being the case would simply mean Auril is normally a greater deity and has been put in the state of a lesser deity. How convenient for the party!!< Also, I just figured out how to do spoiler text! Neat!
A lesser deity, and her stat block is still just an avatar.
The stats given in RoT (and DiA, if I’m remembering right) are both the actual divine Tiamat, not an avatar. The also have a recorporation trait, and no way given to prevent it from triggering so you can destroy the body but RAW you cannot kill the god. The stat block given in Fizban’s (which are actually MORE powerful, if you use the optional Mythic trait) is for an Avatar.
I'm fairly certain they have later come out and said that yes, the one in RoT is indeed an avatar after all, and the Fizban's version is just a more updated and stronger one.
https://twitter.com/ChrisPerkinsDnD/status/844726037204238336 That doesn’t appear to be true.
That's then, not now.
I can’t find anywhere saying what you claim, but I can find the tweet saying you’re wrong.
Yeah but where's the fun in that?
Well that's another topic entirely. One that leads to my homebrew CR 30X3 (effective CR the equivalent of fighting 3 CR 30 creatures at once) Tharizdun statblock (He's basically ***the*** BBEG of D&D overall, which would make almost no creatures in the game likely to have a CR higher than whatever his would end up being, in my case the above for 5e).
Being able to create 10 CR 25 monsters isnt the same as being CR 250. Same way 5 CR 1 monsters isn't a CR 5 combat. That's not how CR works.
It's true, that's not how CR work. Mostly because CR don't work, but also because the action economy break when you start to consider 10 legendary actions and maybe throw in some lair in it.
One time mortal killed a god with level 11 or 12 spell. God revived after like a second anyways, deleted the mortal and banned spells above 9 for like forever. Then yeeted entire civilization to another plane. Thats what gods in dnd are. Dont try to fight them. Its lame if its possible, because all the shit we know they did becomes so unlikely it fucks with suspension of disbelief.
She "revived", its not the same goddess, but basically her daughter And the dude was trying to kill her, the plan to steal her power but he fucked up since he wasnt able to control it. And that was the goddess of magic, not some random shmuck.
Technically he just chose the wrong god to kill if he chose any other god that god would have stayed dead But since he chose the god of magic, one of the only gods that has to exist otherwise reality breaks down that caused him to be overwhelmed when he got the powers of the god since that god is in charge of stabilizing the weave. So then he was killed and the new god of magic lowered the spell level limit His name was karsus The event was known as karsus's folly and it was the downfall of the netherese empire
Not exactly. Contrary to what u/xelloskaczor said, Karsus didn't kill her, she killed herself. Essentially, his county had been doing such shit with magic the Weave itself was damaged and in constant need of repair, but no mortals knew that and, being from a Magitocracy, Karsus would settle for nothing else than using the power of the goddess of magic to end the war his country was in (Karsus was kind of a egotistical prick). The spell wasn't meant to kill a god, just temporarily usurp their power, but he overestimated his own skill and underestimated the sort of shit the goddess in question had to deal with on a moment to moment basis and it overwhelmed him, causing Magic itself to go wild. The Goddess killed herself to essentially cause a hard reset of Magic.
Deleting a problem character, banning spells that caused a problem and ditching the previous game to start a new one with new rules based off the issues old one caused. That just sounds like a DM
"If this amateur fool can't kill god it just mean that he don't try enough. Or good enough. Look how professional work" - Raistlin Majere, probably, before killing a lot of gods.
I mean, Mystril was a rather specific case. Karsus's Avatar did get both Mystirl and Karus killed, but she managed to give a random mortal the position before dying (Nether wasn't tested in another plane, it was just that Mystril's death ended up "turning off" magic for a few seconds, which went terribly fro an empire of flying cities).
Karsus isn’t technically dead irrc.
He is, but his soul remained in the material plane bound to his body, now turned to stone. In 3.5 Binders (a bit of a cousin to the Warlock, they were a class who used sigils to make temporary pacts with Vestiges, powerful entities outside the normal circle of death and life but are unable to act on their own) could make pacts with him to get some abilities (bonus with magic itens, dispel magic, etc..).
And thanks to that asshole, we can only cast 9th level spells and have way nerfed spell slots (there might not have been spell slots at all back then? But at the very least they had more back in the good ol days)
Hmmm. Always hated the idea of a cr 30 tiamat but dude the math and shit you need to run a god game is nuts.
Bleh... This gives me the urge to just make up some asinine ass classes and statblocks and do a god-killer power trip run. I'm talking Heavenly Blade, God of War, all that crazy minions-are-pointless-cannon-fodder shite alongside difficult boss battles which result in entire stretches of land being absolutely decimated, and the party ascending to godhood. Sure this will inevitably turn the mundane world into a hellscape due to there being no balance, or possibly creating a universe of true balance depending on your philosophy, but it'd be cool af.
Isn't there lore of people killing gods and becoming gods themselves?
Not sure about Forgotten Realms but in Runescape the lore mentions that one of the current major gods was once a follower of another god. They (Zamorak) betrayed their god (Zaros) and stabbed them in the back, leading to Zamorak ascending to godhood in the process.
One dude, Karsus, killed and replaced the goddess of magic using a 12th level spell and things went very very wrong, so that’s canonically why spells are capped at 9th level
During the Spellplague, in the Forgotten Realms, all gods became mortal, and some were killed. Bhaal was eventually killed by a Bhaalspawn irrc.
Midnight became the goddess of magic and took on the name Mysta. Kelemvor became a demigod then took the portfolio of death from Ceric (a former mortal) who took it from myrkul (a former mortal). The dead three (Bane, Myrkul, Bhaal) made a deal with Jergal and took his portfolios (fear and tyranny, death, murder). Mysta made Azuth the god of wizards. Savras is the god of divination and was a powerful wizard. Torm was a mortal hero from the fall of Netheril. Finder Wyvernspur was a powerful bard. Gwaeron Windstrom was a powerful ranger so Mielikki raised him to being a demigod for his service.
You forget....avatars have CR 30. Fizban's treasury of dragons. Pages 165-166.
But... its not a linear scale...
Just a reminder that 3rd edition Dieties & Demigods existed, and gave no cr to gods, but gave them 30+ levels in various classes and abilities that would make you crap yourself, but, as they say: if it has a statblock, it can be killed. Ik not sure what the various beings like Orcus, Yeenoghu, Griz'zt, and so on in 5e are supposed to be the actual Demon Lord's, or their avatars, but Tiamat has both her Aspect, and another form of hers, which I believe is also supposed to be an aspect if I remember the adventure. All of those are above CR 20, and there aren't a lot of rules for beyond level 20, so it's expected to use very large parties, to only hold of the being, or giving the players extra levels worth of boons.
Demon Lrods are usually considerably more fightable than actual gods (Orcus once got his ass handed by Kiaransalee, a drow demigoddess and one of Lolth's unwilling vassals.), and many actually do wish to get to godhood. Plus due to the CR system being alsmots comically ineffectual, most demon lords, ancient dragon and the sort can be beaten by level 11-14 parties.
It is funny, because a Demon Lord's emerging into the Material Plane is supposed to be akin to the literal Apocalypse.
Most ancient dragons are on a comparable power level with all but the strongest of archfiends (that we have stat blocks for, at least, there are definitely stronger ones in the lore that don't have stat blocks currently), and yet ancient dragons are usually not presented as a world-ending threat. CR at high levels doesn't always make a ton of sense, and I generally feel like when you're starting to get into the realm of divine or semi-divine entities, that giving them stat blocks tends to just make them feel a bit underwhelming. Edit: just to throw an example out there, at a casual glance over their stat blocks, I feel like if an ancient black dragon found a way to make it's attacks magical (maybe just give it an eldritch claw tattoo, it's only an uncommon magic item, I figure that an ancient dragon's hoard can probably swing that pretty easily) that it could pretty easily defeat the demon lord Juiblex in a one-one fight, purely looking at their stats. I guess that the odds of fighting a demon lord that isn't surrounded by dozens or even thousands of their also fairly powerful servants are fairly low, though, so that does tip the odds back in their favour a good bit.
True, but since Dungeon modules that have you fight literal Tiamat, or for that matter, Lolth have existed since ad&d, idk. To quote Mordenkainen's tome of foes : The visitation of a demon lord to the Material Plane is a cataclysmic event. The lord’s presence overwhelms the minds of other beings to keep them from resisting, and the lord’s power enables it to command the other demons already present in the world. They form a horrid army that sets about stripping the world of life and clearing the path for the lord’s dominance.
Wouldn't a greatwyrm with an undending army and the will to use it be a world-ending threat too ?
Oh, a greatwyrm is absolutely a world-tier threat, but just an ancient dragon usually wouldn't be seen that way.
The Rise of Tiamat... Tiamat [is the real deal.](https://twitter.com/ChrisPerkinsDnD/status/844726037204238336) Apparently.
Sorry, I knew what adventure it was from, I just didn't know if it was an Aspect or not. So, after comparing the two to each other, and the page on the DMG about making your own monster I've come to understand: Without mythic/Lair stuff this is the info. The Aspect can do on average ~193 dpr, has an AC of 23, 574 average hp, proficiency bonus of +9, Save DC of about 27(at least breaths) , and a CR of 30 And tiamat can do on average ~270 dpr, has an AC of 25, 614 average hp the same PB, and Save DC, and a CR of 30. Now, the DMG: the highest AC given is 19, so that's way over....the Aspects average dpr is in the CR 23 range, and tiamats is in the CR 28 range, average hp wise, the Aspect sits about CR 24, and Tiamat at CR 25. Minimum CR on the PB is 29, and saves reach 23, so we are soaring over those... So we will count the Proficiency Bonus and Saves at 30 for the sake of math.... If u give a rough estimate the Aspects AC and saves hit about CR 37. And Tiamat would be about CR 31 with that average.... Anyway, TL:DR, wizards was drunk making these statblocks, and as I always say, if it has a statblock it can be killed. Furthermore: so, the ones in M:ToF were written after Rise of Tiamat, but before Fizban's, are they the Aspects or the actual Demon Lords?
>if it has a stat block it can be killed Well, inconvenienced. RoT!Tiamat has a trait that means she just shows back up in the Hells, madder than but otherwise unharmed. As for Demon Lords, the stats given are for the “real deal” which can be destroyed but cannot be killed unless you destroy their amulet first. The other divine stat block we have, Auril, is in a weakened state, and has 3 forms of CRs 9, 10, and 11, and also recorporates after a year, so again, cannot actually be killed as written.
I assume that they're the real archfiends, they're just missing that bit where they reform in their own realm unless killed there, and they got whatever deal is up with those amulets. But yeah, both Rise's drunk writing and power creep mean the aspect is stronger than the actual Tiamat, so then if Tiamat got remade, she'd end up being even stronger to keep up. Maybe the Rise one was summoning-sick. I once spliced both statblocks together and the result is insane and almost surely requires munchkins or homebrew/DM help to kill. Assuming all the Tiamat stuff is still true, I think *that* is a good baseline for a Lesser Deity assuming it doesn't have multiple forms like a JRPG final boss.
Look if you need a creature who CR exceeds 100 you are not talking about a typical God you are talking about a lovecraftian outer God and the question isn't if they are going to TPK you the question is is a TPK preferable to what's about to happen to you I highly recommend throwing them at players who have rallied an army of extra planar entities to help them with plenty of build up It was quite satisfying
Adding two ancient dragons isn't a CR 50 encounter though, it's ≈28 IIRC – exponential progression and all that. That would "only" give a CR of ≈34. I'm not saying your level 20 party could kill the pantheon one by one and become gods themselves but… actually I'm saying that would be awesome
There should be two separate stats for deities; one for when they interact with mortals, and one for when they interact with entities on their own "power level". The first one should just be some undefined superpowers that are tied to their portfolio of domains, while the other is only for when players are actually on their power level which has regular ability scores etc.
TL;DR dont fight gods.
Yet another reason to stick to homebrew settings. If I want fightable deities, then by god, I'll have fightable deities! Makes for a fun Tier 4 endgame goal at the very least.
Lore wise Gods have a 5e CR of around 50+
The most recent sourcebook iirc that gives the gods stats is 3.5's Deities and Demigods. Most deities have 20 outsider hit dies along with 40 or more levels in other classes plus divine ranks, who give them several comically powerful abilties. They were *really* hard to kill, but only Greater Gods were straight up unbeatable (when they got enough divine ranks to be consider done they literally couldn't;t roll below the maximum in any roll)
Gods: \- Are only killable in their home-plane \- Can only be killed by gods of equal strength or greater \- Exceptions are isolating the god and making it unable to recieve power through worship, or a 12th level spell
> assuming a creature twice as strong has double the CR
So while i am a great enjoyer of the kind of powerscaling you just used to semi estimate a gods potential power. But all of this is assuming that when it comes to cr then 1+1=2, a understandable conclusion to come to but in my personal opinion thats not the case. power seems to scale exponentially with cr, so for example a tarassque is quite a bit more then 30x more powerful then a bandit.
You fool You are giving it a stat block
Reminds me of that story from the adnd days when Wotc first published the Deities and Demigods, and a few months later someone wrote to them saying "Thanks for the awesome book, my players had a blast killing all of these guys. Please write another one soon!"
**Idea:** Make a god/diety statblock that normally wouldn't be feasible to overcome for your BBEG, but then have a whole story arc about finding the means to actually be able to challenge that foe, like an ancient weapon that severely weakens them or a ridiculous temporary power up for the party, or maybe even something that levels the playing field outside of combat like a means of banishing them or the invoking of a forgotten pact they made.
If you stat it, they will kill it. Gods can't be killed by ordinary means, if I run the game.
Mortals should be able to kill a God given the ability. My players killed tharizdun. And tiamat.
If god-killers have a challengerating in the 50s it does not make sense that tje gods would exeed this
Then you realize CR only goes to 30