Yes! Assuming the worship was genuine, and that other gods don't strike him down...
The morale penalty for changing religions, combined with the rules on relating morale to divine power from congregants, can be a useful guide here.
As per Pilgrim of Eternity (Star Trek Continues) can you hack out their faith reciever and de-god a god?
Additional question, in this model how do immortal beings (like intelligent magic items etc) feed their soul? Do magic weapons feed when they strike? and thus count as undead?
Not in any rules or mechanics I've written, no.
My current interpretation is that some forms are structured in such a way that the soul can reside in them without decay, but also without any bleed off.
the glaive can't lick stuff though
and by lick stuff I mean persue intellectual pursuits befitting a wizard
I feel like there needs to be a barrier to entry for godhood. Like, you need a "bank" of at least 10,000 divine power (or some other number) or you can't access any of it. (but then you can spend 10k on one big thing and be powerless for a bit.)
I'm also unsure about how I want to model the distinction between gods and demigods, and how saints and champions fit into the picture.
This actually fits nicely with some thoughts I’ve been having about immortality.
Basically, I’ve been thinking that the more immortal something is, the more difficult it should be for them to affect the time stream, or more generally, events in the mortal world. A being that is truly immortal (cannot be killed no matter what) would be utterly incapable of any direct effect itself, it would only be able to work through a mortal (or semi-mortal, like a god) will.
(Side note: This also fits beautifully into the whole Ao/Normal gods divide, where you have an Overpower who is a true immortal, but needs the normal gods to trickle down to affect the world at all.)
An intelligent weapon would be pretty close to unable to have any effect on the world (it can still weigh things down, it might have spell-likes it can use on its own, but it can’t do a whole lot without a wielder), so in my thought-basis here, it should be pretty close to immortal. Indestructible by normal means, won’t age, won’t decay, but you can still cast it into the fires from which it was made (or have some other special condition to destroy it).
Assuming there are other gods (I'm thinking of Dark Sun and the Dragon-Kings).
You could require divine power to be spent for varying levels of Apotheosis - maybe X power to attain a certain level, and then X/100 or X/1,000 daily to maintain that level. It would also help explain the war for worshippers - if a god can't maintain a certain level of throughput in the divine economy, they slide from Greater Power to Lesser Power to Demi-Power.
One of the first thoughts when I read Alex's comment was that a perfect soul would be unchanging - incorruptible and eternal, yes, but also unable to learn or grow. A lich wants more time to gather more power; it's basically gambling that it can take in energy faster than it loses energy, and maybe eventually become a god (I see liches as the end result of a psychology that tries to reshape and redefine the universe to meet its whims). By binding themselves to an eternal form, a wizard who becomes a weapon is limiting themself to never being more than a fraction of what they were. It's the opposite of ambition and hubris, and would probably require somebody psychologically broken to voluntarily become a limited eternal being.
This could pretty easily be done using the transformation rules; simply figure out how much GP/special components it would cost to gain the HD/powers of each level of godhood, and make them spend it to gain them.
(With a maintenance cost or not, as you desire.)
Until you actually expend the cost to transform, you’re just a dude with some divine power, not significantly different from a cleric who has a congregation. Once you work up enough power, you transform, and gain actual godhood.
But by that logic wouldn't any wizard who thinks about it for more than five minutes chose being an intelligent glave over being a lich? Since the lich would have to consume the living to satisfy itself, while the glave can exist eturnally without issue.
[quote="koewn"]
Remember that scene from Clash of the Titans where Zeus et. al. are standing around a "board" of the world, and Perseus is a clay piece being put in play?
That's the game I'm imagining. Diety-level players moving heroes and kings around events, playing for points.
[/quote]
Or, the deities are clay figures themselves, standing 'on' the board of the godly realms, questing for treasure and power, expending divine power as rations, asking mortals to perform certain divine missions, rituals and sacrifices to aid them in their journey through spheres. As above, so below. If the various spheres of existence are simulacra of the primary sphere, maybe gods are hecrawling too?
Brilliant!
Makes sense!
Apotheoses really should have their own Magical Mishap tables.
A mad wizard aspiring to godhood is the sort of thing that tends to go wrong spectacularly.
Dark Sun canon has a good example of that, in fact.
(The fact that I wrote up some conversions for dragon-kings and avangion for our Dark Sun campaign is the reason why I went so quickly to the transformation rules in this thread; that’s what I used as a base there.)
I can’t remember right now if I wrote any new mishaps for it, I think I just said they’re always catastrophic.
Minor Mishaps: Accidentally become the god of baggy pants and embarassing anecdotes
ACKS Dwimmermount has a set of immortality rules. That's a decent start, at least. Gods aren't supposed to die.