I'm going to be blunt here, I am not a fan of "God Killer" games. In fact while I find reading the stats a bit interesting once they started showing up in D&D 3.5 is when I started to worry about weather I'll keep liking the game. Once I heard my friends talking about going toe to toe with gods and winning I knew things were heading down a slippery slope.
To me a god is a freaking near all powerful being and a hero no matter what "Level" isn't going to stand a chance toe to toe with them. Yes Hercules could stand to the gods, but he was half god already and to face an aspect of a god they have sent down to the world is something that could be won, but to face a divine being and leave them dead just doesn't sit well with me. In turn if a hero some how finds a way to gets a god's attention and deliberately pisses them off I'm not afraid to either slaughter the character or (In rare cases where a god knows it is in their best interest that the character not die) make their life a living hell.
The pure idea of god having stat block which like I said earlier can be a fun read in practice I also find nonsensical. "Oh loo the can cast so many level 9/Legendary spells compared to me." no they can do that without thinking, what they "cast" that's limited per day would be the stuff of creation and nearly without limits. And YES I actually do have a way to quantify that kind of power, but that's being saved for next week. What is a God's Strength Score? Hmm Well lets see, what is the max available for any threat your books? Take that and probably Double it. In D&D terms creatures attributes cap out at 30 (+9), and god would be at least 40 (+14) and that's just to saves have a real number to them. In Savage Worlds they would probably have a score around D12+10 (d12+2 is the utmost most powerful a hero ever gets unless a setting specifically gives them a chance at a few more).
Is the fair or balanced? No it is not, but a balanced fight with a god isn't a fight with a GOD. What balances the scale is age and wisdom. A being as powerful as a god usually is far to preoccupied with their own crap to even notice a player unless the world/universe is at stake. They have probably seen the way interacting with mortals can really screw stuff up and are unlikely to lend a direct hand in things. In most of my worlds the gods actually have rules in place both to allow free will (as only freely choosing the worship them is the source of their power) and to prevent the abuse of power from other gods. Something to remember is most fantasy, and even history, has more than one god and they all have agendas. Sometimes they work together, but it is rare that they ALL work together. This fact is actually part of the balance of their power I'll be talking about next week.
Now I've talked about gods, but haven't really dealt with "demi-gods" and that's because I personally have a hard line of being a diety. Either you are a true god or you aren't. That isn't to mean that these beings don't exist, but jsut that they aren't actually gods. These are usually characters that by one way or another have found a way to wield even a taste of the power of a god. They can cast out powers on the gods level, but they weren't born with it and probably are VERY limited on when and how they can wield this power. They are mortals that wish to be god and often pretend to be them. Some have found ways to bypass aging and seem immortal, but at the end of the day they were born mortal and that is what they are.
Next week I'm going to go a bit more into the detail of the powers of the gods and even how high level players can go about getting a taste of this power as well as the consequences that short-sighted heroes might face in an article called "Turning it to 11". Take what you want from the title...
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