Talk:God (3.5e Prestige Class)

Ratings
== Progress ==

Working on this, I'll keep updates here.

And here is the first update. The class is "done". Quotations, because salient abilities are still being made as we speak. However, since they should be even in power to "obtain sphere", you have a good idea what you are expecting. With that in mind, I open this to review. Too strong? Too weak? Flavor issues or broken loopholes? It's "done" because anything you find is certain to be patched or altered. Specifically, the scaling of the entry class is one I take particular focus on. Please, have at it. -- Eiji-kun 04:14, 28 August 2012 (UTC)


 * This is going to be a somewhat empty criticism, and I'm sorry for that ahead of time, but it's really hard to say whether it's too strong or too weak without anything to compare it to. Any such comments would be based purely on preference, and that's not something I really want to complain over. So if you want to set this as the baseline (subject to revision if any weird power jumps or loops break out) and write up the alternatives, that's probably fine. But I really do need an alternative for this, because otherwise it's basically balanced by virtue of not allowing you to take anything better or worse than itself. - Tarkisflux Talk 04:34, 28 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. The way I've been balancing so far is putting comparisons between 21st and 1st, and 40th and 20th.  Of course, at 1st you don't already start out as a superhuman, but still I try.  The God class is, mostly, focused on unkillability as the rest of the powers (SLAs and the like) are mostly horizontal growth.  By this level, everyone is already packing 9th level spells or equivalents.


 * Your opinion matters though, I actually do want to know a bit of your preference. I'm not going to consider something good or bad on someone's preference alone, but I do like to know my audience.  If I make something that is seen as a wretched idea for these levels by a lot of people, I probably should consider making something more palpitable for the masses (or, at least, make my case why this should be).


 * But yes, this will be a baseline of sorts. If the base looks plausible, I can move onto other meat. -- Eiji-kun 04:44, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Archive
Here are the archives from the former quasi and demigod talk pages, for sake of history.

Quasideity
So this begins the long deity project for Complete Epic. I've come to provide a basic explanation of what I'm doing. First off, I'm making deityhood into a template/class. The template is mostly for DMs to slap on creatures, but PCs (who probably won't jump up X many CR when they become gods right away) can take the class to gain the power over the course of the adventurer. They will be identical... the template is actually LA 0 with 5 RHD, which this class effectively is.

This also means that a CR 30 Demigod will actually be equal in power to a CR 30 mortal. The reasoning behind this is that even in canon, there are many powerful non-gods: The Lady of Pain, Elder Evils, Archfiends, and the like. Each of these could go toe to toe with many gods, and possibly win too, yet they lack divine rank. Thus it occurs to me that "godhood" is a status, like "Dragon Type". Those of the "God Type" have some similar powers; divine realms, being hard to kill, buttloads of immunities, portfolios, etc., but this is no indication of their actual power.

I face the following problems to come. For one, Complete Epic is rogue level, which is madness given this is epic and I have to deal with wizards and psions flying around farting thunder. The other is that very few people have a good eye on what rogue balance is once you get high level. They do alright up to about 25, then it gets murky. Uncharted territory if one will, I'll just have to do my best. I do have my chart on my side. I'll be using it often.

Now I have to determine if what I have now is "rogue". I started with gods, as I find it mentally easier to make gods first, and match the epic classes to that rather than the other way around. The boatload of immunities will mean slightly less than normal, as one part of epic levels I'm doing is many feats and classes designed specifically to breach immunities or leave them half effective. You can see such a design philosophy in the Searing Spell metamagic feat, and others.

I do appreciate help in balancing these things for rogue, if you have an idea. As of the moment I'm debating LD over the strength of this class, which I am told is currently too WEAK.

Finally, there's one thing I do need aid on, concerning the clarity of how I am managing divine ranks. What I figure I'd do is that you have a potential to gain unlimited Effective Divine Ranks. Whenever you gain divine rank from any source, it adds to your effective divine rank pool. However your divine title (quasi, demi, lesser, immediate, greater) depends on your actual ranks.

Which is to say you can have 15 effective divine ranks, which means you can choose to take enough templates/levels to be a intermediate deity, but you don't have to. You can remain, say, a demigod, with your ranks capped at 5 even though you have 15. You can use the spare divine ranks for stuff (the only example of using them right now is giving them away, but I plan more). It's a resource, and you need to maintain a minimum for whatever level of god you are.

If you have a good way of wording this, I appreciate. -- Eiji-kun 03:54, 19 August 2012 (UTC)


 * The ability to pass around divine ranks is potentially troubling, depending on what you can do when you stockpile them up. It could work as long as the benefits are more linear than the normal progression system, such that having a bunch of rank 1 piles is about as good as having a single rank 15 pile. That said, I'm not sure what you even gain by keeping them. If you're rewriting a bunch of high level rules anyway, why not scrap divine ranks and just give out the deity bits as LA 0 stuff, where each subsequent deific status replaces the previous one? - Tarkisflux Talk 06:42, 19 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Noted, I'll keep a watch on how I use those divine ranks then. At the moment the purpose of stockpiling them is safety.  It's not much use here to the quasideity, but to demigod and above, one of the things I was rolling around my head was the ability to self respawn by sacrificing divine ranks (becoming weaker).  Besides that, I'm encouraging the acquisition of ranks in general if they want to go up (typically by amassing followers since the other ways usually bring trouble from someone), effectively making the class pre-requisites "must have XXXX followers", or ranks obtained by other ways.


 * Scrapping divine ranks. Hmmm.... I'm fond of the idea of it being some special "spark", but I'll consider altering or removing ranks.  I'll need to think on it.  However... I'm not very good at making LA 0 templates (as it implies an even trade, you don't get something for free).  Plus, I do have in my head that the ranks of gods have this logical progression... Quasideities are +5 CR, Demigods +10 CR, Lesser +15, Intermediate +20, Greater +25.  Thus I have worked towards building the deities to match their CR rather than match the CR to a pre-existing deity setup, which might end up arbitrary.  It also ensures, for example, that Greater Deities are going to be CR 45 minimum, which seems suitably epic when you're considering facing off against a Zeus or a Odin while the quasideities like Heracles would be a "mere" CR 25.


 * I'll sit on it for a bit, thanks for the input. This class may be "workable" but I'm sure it'll mutate a dozen times more before I'm satisfied. -- Eiji-kun 06:52, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Demigod
When ahead and posted the next layer, so others can see how this go. Compare this to quasideity.

Here, the big draw is harder to show. It's the portfolios which will be giving the most power. To expound, portfolios will grant either... A) A domain, which functions much akin to a Sphere. A power and a series of SLAs, 1/day.  This also determines your actual domains and as such, is based on current domains.  B) A salient ability, which I'm tearing a new one in the name of balance. Consider these feats, related to augmenting their Divine Home and giving them various thematic powers appropriate for their type of god. Also, if we ever complete them for Complete Sublime, Styles go here too for the martial-minded gods. You can get Moderate/Major Spheres/domains by taking the same thing multiple times, thus you can have a case like Apollo.... main gimmick is god of the sun (major Sun Domain), minor gimmick with music (minor Music Domain), and probably some salient abilities like a fire aura and stuff like that.

And as always, it gets fuzzier to tell the power level the higher we go. This goes to Lesser, Intermediate, and Greater. -- Eiji-kun 05:38, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

(Continuing) Partly inspired by Tarkis's comments elsewhere, and for my own personal notes here I also present an alternative idea which, at the very least, will be able to compress all of these classes into one. It effectively makes it a 25 level class, and it has the pre-req that you need the quasideity template (gained by rank 0 and not a class level), and to take levels in "God" you need rank equal to the level you want. That is, you have 6 ranks? The most levels you can go on is 6, until you get more somehow. And the class adds or improves the aspects of the template (mostly adding, especially if this is an LA 0 template, I'm not sure how I could do quasideityship justice at LA 0 unless I pull my LA into RHD trick, but that's practically taking "Level 0" in "God").

I do like this idea. I'm just struggling on how to pull it off mechanically. All well and good though to stop here with the deities, as I'm mostly concerned with quasi and demigods right now. Comments welcome. -- Eiji-kun 07:00, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Divine Traits to Emulate
Consider this my to-do list. These are the various divine traits I seek to emulate. You can see most of them already as part of the classes.


 * Maximum Hp per HD (Easily done, as I already have the extraordinary health trait.)
 * Speed Increases (Also easily done. I find it easier to express it as "your original speed x2/x4/x8/etc" and forgo the clunky chart ELH gives us)
 * AC bonus (I found the scaling troubling, and eventually dumped it. Instead, they get a flat miss chance, between 20% and 80%.  80% is powerful, and for greater deities, but by that level equal opponents will have many ways to lower or bypass even their miss chance.)
 * Bypassing DR/Alignment Subtype (no change here)
 * Damage Reduction (God DR is silly low, and DR/epic to boot. I changed it to cosmic, and inflated the numbers.  10/20/40/80/160.  The DR gets better with time, but on the other hand the greater deities are probably taking thousands of damage, so it evens out.)
 * Saving throws (Rank to saves is troubling, and I have not really found an analog. However due to the AC/SR change, it might be redundant.)
 * Immunities (Gods have lots of immunities, and I don't blame them. Being unkillable is a main godly trait.  So far, I decided to let people pick their own immunities one level at a time.  After all, there might be a warforged god whose immunities would be redundant, or a god who simply chooses not to be immune to blindness in favor of other things.  But what do I do when they run out of immunities?  Also, somewhat weaker than it indicates since "immunity reduction/bypass" is a thing I want to promote for Epic Level Beings.)
 * Divine Aura (I altered the changes and cleaned the effects, but Awe/Fear/Resolve is the same.)
 * Spell Resistance (Removed and folded into the AC miss chance, for the same reasons.)
 * SLAs (Greater Teleport and Plane Shift will be standard for the higher levels, demi, and then lesser. Also, SLAs done via domains.)
 * Domains (Domains are gained at 1 per rank, or spent on salient abilities. I define how these work above, like Spheres.  Also, I make them choose between a salient ability OR a domain.  This is also my explanation on why gods have a seemingly arbitrary number of domains.)
 * Minimum Roll (Unfair if PCs used it, DD helped me come up a good way to do this. Take the god's HD - the enemy HD.  The difference is the minimum you will roll on a d20, up to your minimum die.  Thus 40 HD - 38 HD on a demigod, aka minimum 5, is a difference of 2.  You can roll no lower than a 2.  40 HD - 30 HD = 10, but your minimum is 5 so you can roll no lower than a 5.  Promotes superiority over mooks, but gives little against even fights.  The no fumbles for rank 1 and above is just gravy.)
 * Create Magic Items (Minor changes in how it works, same fluff. Considering dropping and making a salient ability for crafting gods to pick up.)
 * Things I Added (Adapt Body. It seemed fitting.  Also, speaking while silenced.  And reviving... one thing that says "god" to me is difficulty to kill.  Much like a lich, you can't easily kill a god, and this is moreso the more powerful and primal they are.  God of White Rats?  Dead by sword.  God of the Sun?  Will require more than a sword to keep down for good.  This is the main "gimmick" I run with this "class".  While others might focus on spells or stabbing faster or whatever, I think deityship should be taylored on resisting the unresistable, and even when they die, they tend to come back if you don't do another step.)

Anyway, here's my notes for your digestion. Open Source Sourcebookmaking. -- Eiji-kun 07:19, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Other Class Progress
Since it's giving them a bunch of goodies at level 1 (in addition to the not-insignificant benefits of the LA0 Godspark template), it should probably not start advancing other classes until level 2, in the interest of keeping them at least somewhat CR-appropriate. --DanielDraco 14:49, 23 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me. I might need to remove more, after I finish making the salient abilities.  They should match in power with obtaining a domain/sphere, if its any indication. -- Eiji-kun 14:55, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

A few Considerations
1. Eiji under the Divine Aura, it states that the save DC is calculated using 10 + ½HD + Highest Ability Score, was that intended to be Highest Ability Modifier? As we are talking about an aura generated by a creature with at least 20 HD, so the highest ability score is going to be 30+ as a minimum. As it's currently written that means the save DCs are 50+ at level one of the class, is that intentional?

2. At level 3 they gain Adaptive Form, that among other things states they no longer need to eat, sleep, or breath to survive. As you have to have the Godspark template to qualify for this class, and the Godspark template grants those same traits, isn't this ability at level 3, redundant? (or at least that text is)

3. The Divine Home ability at 5th level grants an area that the God now claims for their own. The area calculation is Divine Ranks Squared x Miles. Is that a spherical emanation from a fixed point? Is it a shapeable area of cubes? If it's shapeable does it have to be contiguous? For example could a God choose to claim a ten foot wide swath around every major city on a planet, just to be a douchebag? :P

Everything else looks great. :) Tunganation (talk) 21:07, 3 March 2014 (UTC)


 * 1) Yes, that is supposed to be ability mod, good catch. Fixing.


 * I'll re-read it again, it may be redundant.


 * It is a sphere from a fixed point. I think I also specified it has to be in a divinely shapeable place (the material plane is not one of these places, several outer planes are).  I'll give the class a look-over.  Thank you for catching errors! -- Eiji-kun (talk) 21:21, 3 March 2014 (UTC)