Sample deity writeup in FH?

[megaplayboy]

Steve L(or anyone in the know): will there be any kind of "sample" deity writeup in Fantasy Hero? If not, are there plans to include some kind of writeup(s) in one of the campaign books?

It just occurred to me, after seeing the bit about deities in the Free Stuff Hero Universe pdf, I'd really like to see one of these 7500 point "greater god" suckers


(or even a 2500 point "demigod" would be nice)

[Steve Long]

No, there's no "example deity" in FH.

Nor do I have any particular plans to include any in future setting books. I've got enough to do without trying to stat out 7,500 point characters that oughtta be left to the GM anyhow.

[Talon]

Just figure how much Perk: Deity costs and you're all set.

[McCoy]

Do you really need to stat out dieties? They should be plot devices, not characters.

[Nolgroth]

Originally posted by McCoy
Do you really need to stat out dieties? They should be plot devices, not characters.

I think, at 7,500 points, a character would become a plot device. There is a break-point where the overwhelming power that a several thousand point character has, is not worth the effort.

On the other hand, you can probably stat out the usable abilities of the deity to about 1,500 to 2,000 points and then define a bunch of priestly abilities with the Usable by Others Advantage tacked on to it. I'm sure you could jump up the points at least a few thousand points. The next question would be; What's the point?

I would personally define only the mortal world (avatar) of the deity and leave the massive spell database to a simple spell database. One little trick I might impose is that the priestly abilities fade or disappear when the deity takes on mortal form. Perhaps limit them to those priests in the direct presence of deity.

[Monolith]

Just use Dr. Destroyer in your FH game as an avatar of a god of evil. If you FH players can beat DD they can beat anyone.

[megaplayboy]

Originally posted by Steve Long
No, there's no "example deity" in FH.

Nor do I have any particular plans to include any in future setting books. I've got enough to do without trying to stat out 7,500 point characters that oughtta be left to the GM anyhow.

Fair enough. If anyone wants to take a crack at "generic greater deity/lesser deity/demigod" writeups, I'll start a new thread

[Lord Liaden]

If you'd like to see an example of a god designed for a fantasy HERO game, Aaron Allston updated game elements of his excellent Mythic Greece: the Age of Heroes sourcebook to 4th Edition HERO on his website, www.aaronallston.com . The updates include a package for a "basic god", which comes to over 2,000 points without any individualized abilities. The interesting thing about Allston's approach is that it reflects the combat limitations of many gods in the myths: although their magic powers are tremendous, in a physical conflict gods could be injured by the greatest heroes of legend. That makes it easier to actually run the gods in a game and give your players a chance to thwart them. If you didn't want some or all of the gods to be so vulnerable, though, it would be easy to eliminate some of the Limitations that Aaron built into them, boost Characteristics appropriately, and/or add major attack Powers like Zeus's thunderbolts.

This will take you right to the page with the updates: http://www.aaronallston.com/gamedown/mg-fix11.html

[NuSoardGraphite]

Originally posted by McCoy
Do you really need to stat out dieties? They should be plot devices, not characters.

That depends on the type of deity you want to represent.

In some mythologies, Gods/Dieties aren't Omnipotent, in fact, in most mythologies they aren't. They are simply superpowerful beings far beyond our abilities, but not unkillable. In many stories, Gods are often tricked by mortals.

So having a "writeup" for a deity isn't necesarily out of the question. Especially if one is going with the Greek, Norse, Celtic or Japanese definition of "Deity".

[tesuji]

didn't Zena wipe out most of the greek pantheon in her last season? Even without her Great Cleavage feat, a party of seasoned adventurers ought to be in the running.

[Agent X]

If you are going with the idea of deities being roughly equivalent to 1st Edition D&D in capability you could convert some of the Greyhawk deities into Champions. I've sketched it out before and they can be pretty interesting.

One of my Benchmarks in conversion for 5th Edition:
Strength 18(00) = 30 in Hero
19 = 35
20 = 40
21 = 45
22 = 50
23 = 55
24 = 60
25 = 65
This is based off the character guidelines in Hero 5th Edition which states that 30 is the pinnacle of human strength, 31 being superhuman. 18(00) is the pinnacle of 1st Edition AD&D human strength and from there I just arbitrarily decided a step of 1:5.

A 1st Edition AD&D Storm Giant = a person with a 30 strength and 30 points of strength of growth - so it suits my tastes, maybe not yours.

[megaplayboy]

Essential "deity" checklist:

1. Full Life Support
2. Universal Translator
3. Extra Dimensional Movement
4. Regen from Death
5. Clairsentience, and special detects
6. teleport without error, probably global range
7. heightened stats--superhuman for greater deities
8. "portfolio"/domain skills at superhuman levels
9. some kind of mechanism for granting spells
10. shapeshift
11. spot defense
12. a vari-pool(or two)

[NuSoardGraphite]

Originally posted by tesuji
didn't Zena wipe out most of the greek pantheon in her last season? Even without her Great Cleavage feat, a party of seasoned adventurers ought to be in the running.

Between herself and Herc, they wiped out not only the Greek pantheon, but several deities of other pantheons as well (Babylonian, Greek, Norse etc)
The show pretty much used that as an excuse as to why there are no more pantheons today...slick.

[Thirdbase]

Dieties have, in my world, a VPP, Cosmic of course, with an infinate number of points in the pool.

[Markdoc]

I don't think you can have a "representative" deity - even the brief number of postings here show a wide range of extremes, from the "essential deity powers" list - most of which were absent from deities in classical religions - through to the "giant cosmic power pool" comments which have more to do with the monotheistic pantheons with all-seeing, all-powerful gods, fashionable today.

To take a simple example, that everyone loves: old Norse hammer-thunder god.

Giant Cosmic power pool? Not in the comics, and not in the classical legends either.

Essential "deity" checklist:?
1. Full Life Support? Nope, he had to breathe and could be driven out of a long house by choking smoke.
2. Universal Translator? Hard to say - everybody in the classical legends speaks Norse :-)
3. Extra Dimensional Movement? Yes - the world tree pretty explicity includes normal and not-normal places.
4. Regen from Death. Nope. Thor had an appointed day of death (but then, so did everybody in Norse mythology), but when he was dead, he was dead.
5. Clairsentience, and special detects? None described. His senses seem to be entirely human.
6. teleport without error, probably global range? Definately not. When Thor wanted to go somewhere, he walked, rode or took a boat.
7. heightened stats--superhuman for greater deities. Well, we know he was really strong, and possibly had a high DEX. The stories also suggest high CON and probably a pretty good PD/ED as well. But his INT score does not seem to have been enormous and he could be outrun by a human, so his move - and probably his SPD - can't have been that high.
8. "portfolio"/domain skills at superhuman levels? Again, maybe he was really good at things which are not described in the legends, but in general he seems to have spent most of his points on STR and CSL :-)
9. some kind of mechanism for granting spells. This is more game mechanic than legend stuff, so, yeah, why the hell not.
10. shapeshift? Nope.
11. spot defense? Not sure what this is...
12. a vari-pool(or two)? This is possible. Thor could do things no-one else could do (drink the sea down a couple of inches, shift the Midgard serpent, kill things real good) but there are many things he could not do (fly, turn invisible, run on water, etc). So maybe a pool for STR feats...

I picked Thor because everybody is familiar with him, but pick any classical god (Susanoo, Ares, Diana of Ephesus, whatever) and you will find a similar portfolio of limited powers.

I'd agree with SteveL 100% on this. Just define your gods as you want them. Stat out powers if you want, but really, Gods are as campiagn specific as the geography of your world and about as easily transferrable.

In may game, if a real god actually entered play (not gonna happen) and was offended by a PC, the response would probably be: "The deity thinks the world into a form in which neither, you, your companions or any of their families have ever existed. New characters, everyone". So I don't really need any stat.s :-)

OTOH, I have had demi-gods/heroes/immortals enter play, and for them I can quite often just swipe a published hero or supervillian and change their outfit - 250 to 350 points is plenty in most fantasy mileus to embarrass the pleb.s.

cheers, Mark