Playing a hero on the level of Deities & Demigods

[tkdco2]

The heroes presented in Deities & Demigods are overpowered compared to regular characters. Several of their ability scores are 18 or higher. They have class combinations that are illegal in the 1st Edition rules. If you stick to the rulebook, you'll never be able to match these heroes.

This is how one group figured out how to play heroes like the ones in Deities & Demigods. It's a brilliant idea. Note that they usually played one-shot adventures with their characters.


www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PoL2p164BA

[tombowings]

In 2012, I ran an online one-shot in which I allowed players to play as any god/demi-god/hero/etc for that book. It was fun. We had Thor, Cthulu, and Agni teaming up to escape Dante's underworld. Everyone had a blast. I wish I still had my notes. Unfortunately, they're in stuck a box on the wrong hemisphere.

[hamurai]

Interesting ideas, thanks for sharing!

[jeffb]

www.drivethrurpg.com/product/144651/Exemplars--Eidolons

Works quite well for "Heroes of Myth " or "Demi-God" style play

[geoffrey]

Here's my take on it:
www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17429

[tkdco2]

Interesting ideas here! I prefer lower-level play, but I wouldn't mind a one-shot game with powerful characters.

[Falconer]

I once statted up the Fellowship of the Ring (and a few other LotR characters) with no concern for advancement or strictly adhering to the class structure. The idea was simply to grab whatever spells and abilities seemed to meld with the characters. For example, both Frodo and Aragorn could turn undead, because it’s a thing they do in the books. If you just approach it on that level, it works just fine. You can do this with any literary/mythological character. And you can then extrapolate a race/class out of it.

[Deleted]

Some players in my 90's campaign became Immortals which is roughly the same power level, and the game shifted at that point to more of a "Black & White" style game, although we didn't call it that because that computer game hadn't been made yet. Basically one of those "make moral decisions, grey and grey, can't save everyone" type campaign. The threat of dying or being destroyed was much reduced but occasionally a threat due to "Great Outsiders" like Cthulhu taking an interest in the mortal realm, but it was usually more of a top-down RTS game at that point. Civilization meets Sim City type deal.

[tkdco2]

I have the Immortals Set from the BECMI line, but none of my characters ever got powerful enough to use the rules.

[Deleted]

Nov 28, 2020 13:45:57 GMT -6 tkdco2 said:

I have the Immortals Set from the BECMI line, but none of my characters ever got powerful enough to use the rules.

When I ran BECMI I had an abundance of youth and free time, and a captive audience of siblings and classmates. Those were halcyon days, I tell you.

[tkdco2]

Nov 28, 2020 14:53:48 GMT -6 @ampleframework said:

Nov 28, 2020 13:45:57 GMT -6 tkdco2 said:

I have the Immortals Set from the BECMI line, but none of my characters ever got powerful enough to use the rules.

When I ran BECMI I had an abundance of youth and free time, and a captive audience of siblings and classmates. Those were halcyon days, I tell you.


Those were the days. I had those as well, but I played MERP, mostly solo. My friends occasionally played MERP, but they preferred AD&D. Nobody wanted to play B/X or BECMI.

[Deleted]

I don't recall if anyone was specifically doing MERP in my hometown. I think maybe it was out of date by the mid nineties. I did get myself involved in some Runequest and later some Warhammer, both Fantasy and 40k, and I was more into that than D&D for many years, simply because that's where my friends were and that's how we approached gaming back then.

But, yeah, Deity & Demigod level play is... perhaps something that interests me far, far less in 2020 than it maybe did in the mid-nineties. Back then it was "more stuff and more power = better gaming" and that's not my current mindset with these things. Like maybe back then I'd play Hexen or Diablo on the pc and use all the cheats, and now I crank the difficulty all the way up and enjoy feeling weak and powerless, and my approach to trpgs tend towards "O/AD&D at low levels" flavor. For me that's just where the tension and/or magic lies.

[tkdco2]

My sweet spot for D&D or MERP goes from level 4 to level 7. The characters are sturdy enough to take some damage but are far from invincible. Of course, MERP critical hits can instantly kill a character, and one of my groups adapted them to our AD&D campaign.