I'm curious to know how some of the Hero-Deities or Quasi-Deities received their status in Greyhawk.
When the pantheon was created, I'm sure that Greater through Intermediate Gods, and even Demi-Gods were created from scratch. But I've had the feeling that the Hero-Gods and Quasi-Deities had ascended.
Does anyone have any details on this concept or how you might go about having a very high-level PC ascend?
It has been a while, and this is not necessarily GH specific, but I have a vague recollection of the process being spelled out in the 1e Deities and Demigods.
Well, the snide answer is "be mentioned as an important historical figure in any 1e source book and someone is bound to come along and make you a hero deity for the heck of it...."
Anyway... Lesser, Intermediate, and Greater Gods generally started out as gods, though St. Cuthbert is a potential exception and Vecna (if you use him as a god) definitely is. Demi gods are often, though not always, ascended mortals.
Hero-Deities and Quasi-dieties are all ascended mortals. The LGG seems to make most of them sponsored by an existing god. The older material essentially just makes them the equivalent of "epic" characters: guys who got really powerful and took up plane travelling and other shenanigans eventually resulting in becoming supramortal.
The 1e DDG does talk about ascended mortals, but not spedifically in terms of Quasi and Hero deities, which were invented after the Deities and Demigods book was published.
Well, the snide answer is "be mentioned as an important historical figure in any 1e source book and someone is bound to come along and make you a hero deity for the heck of it...."
Anyway... Lesser, Intermediate, and Greater Gods generally started out as gods, though St. Cuthbert is a potential exception and Vecna (if you use him as a god) definitely is. Demi gods are often, though not always, ascended mortals.
Hero-Deities and Quasi-dieties are all ascended mortals. The LGG seems to make most of them sponsored by an existing god. The older material essentially just makes them the equivalent of "epic" characters: guys who got really powerful and took up plane travelling and other shenanigans eventually resulting in becoming supramortal.
The 1e DDG does talk about ascended mortals, but not spedifically in terms of Quasi and Hero deities, which were invented after the Deities and Demigods book was published.
This is a great refresher of what I thought happened, but I suppose I must rephrase my question.
I assume that Gygax made the first Hero-Gods, but then it seems that the pantheon has sat still (not counting trends with Vecna, Orcus, Iuz, and a few others). Essentially, everything else has stayed the same unless you as the home DM created something else. If this is the case, how do you feel about characters who've reached Epic status (20+ levels) achieving a Hero-God or Quasi-Deity status in Greyhawk (in effect retiring the PC)? Do you think that this upsets the balance of the setting or would have other negative repercussions?
Honestly, I don't have the experience as a DM to have any idea of what to do in this situation. This is the first time I've allowed a character to achieve this level. I use 3.5 rules to play, and my group and I enjoy them, it does make conversion a bit of an issue, especially if you want to remain faithful to the setting. I've run Greyhawk as my background campaign for 16+ years, I've never seen the things that 3.0 and 3.5 could produce.
Well, the snide answer is "be mentioned as an important historical figure in any 1e source book and someone is bound to come along and make you a hero deity for the heck of it...."
Oh!!!!! Don't get me started on that! Its one of my worst pet peeves about how certain people, who shall remain nameless, messed up GH canon. Every famous person to ever exist becomes ascended? Give me a break.
::breathe! breathe!:: Anyways....
Aluvial wrote:
I assume that Gygax made the first Hero-Gods, ...
If you have the Dragon Archive CD (or are an old-timer like me and have all the original magazines), the issue that EGG described the hero/quasi deities in, including Kelanen and Murlynd, (I can't tell you the # right now because I'm at work... SHHHHHH!!!!!), he describes the single-minded dedication to some ideal, great quests and feats, sponsor, etc... required before that status can be attained.
Quote:
... how do you feel about characters who've reached Epic status (20+ levels) achieving a Hero-God or Quasi-Deity status in Greyhawk (in effect retiring the PC)? Do you think that this upsets the balance of the setting or would have other negative repercussions?
Well, I personally (Maldin) became ascended after playing around with the Codex of Infinite Planes for several years. No, wait....
The correct answer is... after running a continuous 25 year Greyhawk campaign, where several characters broke 20+ level... nobody has ever ascended, nor are even close to any such thing. No pc has ever had the pure dedication, completed the miraculous quests (ALONE!!! - ascension is not based on a party's average group performance!), nor had the sponsors to deserve such a miraculous (overused, yet correctly utilized here) gift. I have NPCs in the high 20's, and none of them have the "stuff" to become hero-/quasi-deities either, although they have been far more dedicated to their clearly planned (easy to do as a DM, impossible to maintain as a player) goals and beliefs.
And once a player has a character that has become ascended... how does the DM resist the player's urge to continue playing that character? It would be world-destroying (or at least campaign-destroying). Best not to be tempted.
Denis, aka "Maldin"
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Well, I personally (Maldin) became ascended after playing around with the Codex of Infinite Planes for several years. No, wait....
The correct answer is... after running a continuous 25 year Greyhawk campaign, where several characters broke 20+ level... nobody has ever ascended, nor are even close to any such thing. No pc has ever had the pure dedication, completed the miraculous quests (ALONE!!! - ascension is not based on a party's average group performance!), nor had the sponsors to deserve such a miraculous (overused, yet correctly utilized here) gift. I have NPCs in the high 20's, and none of them have the "stuff" to become hero-/quasi-deities either, although they have been far more dedicated to their clearly planned (easy to do as a DM, impossible to maintain as a player) goals and beliefs.
And once a player has a character that has become ascended... how does the DM resist the player's urge to continue playing that character? It would be world-destroying (or at least campaign-destroying). Best not to be tempted.
Denis, aka "Maldin"
This is how I feel about my group in general, but I have one player who I made a proxy of his dwarven deity to pull the characters around my story for a while. He is really into it, wrote up a great backstory that I've been using to plot the game around, and really lives up to the hype. Should he advance? Perhaps, but if he does the game ends there for him. I agree that Greyhawk has a really tough 'standard' but would a lot of the rest of you find this practice in poor keeping to the 'standard?'
I had a PC who rose to godhood once upon a time... but it wasn't in GH. A half-elf rouge who became the god of WTF, a servant of the reater god of chaos.
I'd say that as long as your player is happy to retire the character after deity status has been achieved it should be allowed. This should probably not be used too often, in my opinion, since it cheapens the experience and takes away from the reward a player will get when and if the character reaches this level.
I've always thought that the dwarven pantheon could use some additional support.
There was some good discussion on this subject a few years ago on Greytalk; if the Archive gets online again anytime soon, search for the term "apotheosis" and that should call the relevant discussion up. _________________ Allan Grohe (grodog@gmail.com)
http://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/greyhawk.html
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