Homebrew - Warring Powers
Have you ever wanted to have two gods fighting each other while your players were striking down minions and helping their god defeat some other uppity god who thought it was cool to be evil? Well, we’ve all been there… Or at least, I’ve just been there. I wanted my players to fight along with the gods and give them a chance to influence events without it all being handwaved away. This simple system doesn’t require much load on the DM or player’s part. It happens at the top of the round and provides a way to mechanically talk about how the gods/archfiends/elder evils/etc are doing in the fight by providing a base idea for the DM and players.
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Warring Powers
So what exactly is a power? A power is a god, elder evil, archfey, archfiend, primordial, lich, or anything else that is so powerful that they are a force to be reckoned with and it isn’t a given a bunch of upstart adventurers could defeat them without the help of artifacts crafted specifically to kill them. The term power is from Planescape and is just a useful catch-all term for such individuals.
This system is designed to handle when two ‘powers’ decide to go to war with each other and fight. This is obviously a very rare event that might happen once a campaign, if that, and we want it to be an awesome and powerful moment. Except then you run into a wall. How do you deal with such a thing? Sure you could handwave it and just describe it going on in the background, but that has a certain type of hollowness to it that makes it not have that risk. If the DM is just describing events unfolding, the risk behind it all doesn’t really feel as if it has weight behind it and feels predetermined. Sure the DM could just tie how well the events are going for the players to how the gods are fighting, but even that has a sense of pre-determination.
The System
My goal for this is something simple, with as few stats as possible, and can be completed inside of a few minutes at the start of a round. While I recognize that I like crunch, and this often presents itself in a lot of what I make, I restricted myself as much as possible for this. This is probably a system that a DM would use once and so I can’t add in a bunch of bells and whistles, which means it needs to be simple. It’s also something that they are going to want to grab that can be quickly bolted on to whatever they are doing, which means it needs to be flexible.
Basics
With that said, here is how it works:
The powers roll their Power Die. They then get a number of points they can spend on their Offense/Defense for this turn.
They secretly assign these values and present them to each other simultaneously.
Points in Offense determine how much damage they do to each other, while Defense reduces the amount of damage they take.
That’s the basics. Pretty easy.
Beyond the Basics
Without getting too deep into it, the only thing that I left out in the above steps is how you determine a power’s Health, Power Die, Special Attacks, and a few various other tidbits. Basically, the creation of the powers as well as minor actions they can take in a fight to attack foolish mortals and help their side overcome the other.
Health for a power is going to be quite low at first glance with most having anywhere between 20 to 50 points. Each point of health they have is worth about 100 hit points, so when you consider that, they are frightening and horrifying to fight and destroy - which is kind of the point, they are gods after all.
Special Attacks are spells and other abilities that gods can cast on their army, or the opposing army, to help their mortals and worshipers. While they aren’t going to be too focused on providing support, it's an important element for them for if all their worshipers are killed - well, that’s bad for their life expectancy. Most powers rely on worship to survive and if you remove all of them, the deity has no way to gain their strength. These special attacks are based on spells, and other effects, and strip out a lot of minutiae. It could be a blanket bane spell on all their enemies for a round or they could just raise a massive army of undead for the conflict to replenish their undead army. These abilities aren’t incredibly powerful solely because this isn’t the power’s main focus. Their main focus is the other deity trying to kill them and so these are just side abilities to help the players feel like they are fighting alongside a being of immense power and fighting against them.
Assigning Powers Power
So let’s say you are on board and want to make your own power. Well, it’s pretty simple. You have six decisions to make to create your new power.
1. What is their power level?
There are 5 pre-determined stages of power: Intermediate Demigods, Greater Demigods, Lesser Powers, Intermediate Powers, and Greater Powers. Intermediate Demigods are your archfey, archfiends, and others who are powerful but simply can’t hold a candle to the gods. They have the lowest Health and Power Die simply because they don’t have the strength and magic to hold up for long against another god’s divine wrath. The greatest of the powers are the Greater Powers who will be the leader of pantheons, ancient elder evils, and the most powerful primordials who are locked away in their prisons. These beings are so powerful that destroying them is going to be impossible for pretty much everyone except a few rare individuals and a handful of gods.
This choice helps determine every other decision when it comes to creating a power.
2. What is their Power Die?
The Power Die determines how much power a divine being has available to them for that round. This fuels their Offense, Defense, and Special Attack. It starts out as a 1d4 for the lowest powers and a 1d12 for the strongest. This value might be augmented for special powers that have unique artifacts that can increase their raw strength.
3. What is their Health?
Health is how healthy they are and how much abuse from another god can they handle before they are destroyed. This ranges from 15 to 100, though it could be more or less depending on how you see your gods and their worship.
4. What is their Defense?
One of the most important qualities of the powers is their natural resistance to damage from other gods. Demigods are assumed to have none, though that might not always be true, while the most powerful of them could have a base of 3 for their Defense. This helps the Greater Powers to stand up to a bunch of weaker demigods, able to bring down a dozen of them without being overwhelmed by their number. It’s a natural representation of their resistance and resilience to being stamped out from the multiverse.
5. What is their Range?
This is their combat-focused range. Since they are fighting to the death with another power, their attention is drawn to a specific, localized area around them. This starts small at only 75 feet but increases as the power level of a god does. This area is where their Special Attacks can be felt and the area around them is highly dangerous for everyone near them, but also quite beneficial as holy warriors might be healed, blessed, or any number of other effects.
6. What is their DC?
This is the (not) final decision to make for your power. The DC is important for their Special Attacks, as powers don’t are automatically assumed to hit each other, and is solely for the benefit of players. This DC is tied to the power level of a deity, starting at 21 and making its way up to 30, which is considered almost impossible. A level 20 character with a +5 in a stat will have a +11 saving throw in 1 or 2 stats, meaning it’s going to be almost impossible for them to not be completely devastated by a power - which makes sense, these individuals are insanely powerful.
7. (Optional) What is their Unique Ability?
Alright, I know I lied. I said 6, but there is an optional 7th question for those who like to plan more than 5 minutes before their session… weirdos. These simply give the powers more options to work with and augments their abilities based on the domains they oversee. Of course, some powers might have additional options or be able to select multiple domains, but that isn’t the assumption. Each domain provides a unique augment that can help swing the tides in their favor or protect their mortal army from harm. I just provided a dozen different augments based on the domains in the current official material so that DMs have a general sense of what a suitable augment for a power could be.
Finished
And that’s it. You just made your very first power! Create another one and you have a war going on for your players to take part in!
Characters & Powers
Of course, if you are going to have two gods fight each other, might as well drag your players into it and it’d be nice to know how they interact with each other. First things first, powers are going to create their avatar to take on their opposition’s army. This avatar is what the players are responsible for destroying while the two powers deal with each other. This avatar is not really covered in these rules, but DMs should augment existing stat blocks to represent the avatars as they are just basic monsters. I get a lot of mileage out of the Leviathan, Elder Tempest, Zaratan, and the Pheonix from Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes (2018) as well as a few other high CR stat blocks.
Once the characters have defeated an avatar, this removes health from the power, which helps make it so that they get to help out their god and that their contributions matter instead of just sitting on the sidelines of a great big combat.
There are a few more rules in there, but I won’t spoil them. They just cover attacking and being attacked by a power, as well as how to actually kill a power for good.
Wrapping Up the Fight
That’s the basics for taking on a power and having an epic moment in a campaign. This system is focused on taking as little as possible while still providing a very solid mechanic for your players to interact with and feel the sense of danger when it comes to this moment. I, and my players, had a lot of fun taking on an archfey with this system and I hope you can get some mileage out of it, or it at least inspires you to create your ideal system for your table.
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