How rare is divine ascension?

[Halaster Blackcloak]

You know, mortals becoming gods. How rare is that? I've been going through the 1E Dieties & Demigods lately, and acccording to the rules there, it should be extremely rare if not almost unheard of.

First, the character who wishes to achieve divine ascension must be of significantly higher level than the average level of adventurer types in a campaign world.

Meaning that if your character exists in the Forgotten Realms, he has to achieve roughly 120th level.

But seriously...when you get into the higher level campaigns where divine ascension even becomes plausible, the average levels are in the upper teens. As it says in the book, if 15th level is the average in the campaign, then the character must hit 25th - 30th level.

Now this certainly rarely if ever happens. How many people have legitimately gotten a character to 25th or 30th level?

Secondly, the character's ability scores should be on a par with demigod-like scores. Which means lots of 20's, 21's, etc. Again, how many characters manage to get most of their scores into the 20's? That's damn near impossible in a sane campaign!

Third, the character needs a body of sincere worshippers. How does the average character manage to get such followers? It would seem that most characters will never be in any position to be truly worshipped. The book defines sincere worshippers as those who are "convinced of his or her divinity due to their witnessing of and/or belief in the mighty deeds and miracles which he or she has performed...".

How many characters manage to have normal people witnessing the "miracles" the character pulls off (killing the lich, defeating the dragon or demon, etc)? Again, this isn't very likely.

Fourth, that character must have been true and faithful to his alignment and his god. Not many characters manage to avoid straying from alignment now and then.

Finally, after all that is done, and the character has fulfilled many quests, his diety will fill him with divine energy and ascend him to servant status. Note that at this point the character is not even a demigod! It says in the book:

"After several centuries of superior service and gradual advancement, exceptional servants may be awarded with the status of demigod, which includes having an earthly priesthood and the ability to grant spells (of up to 5th level) to the demigod's clerics."

Emphasis mine. Several centuries! So when a character in a campaign ascends to divine status, in essence he doesn't become anything that affects the campaign world for centuries, meaning the player and the other players/characters never see him again. It goes on to explain that the gods use these new divine servants for more important jobs than answering calls for help from the Prime Material Plane.

So when a character in a campaign attains divine ascension, that character basically can no longer be used unless the DM starts a new campaign set hundreds of years in the future!

I've never liked divine ascension and the idea of mortals becoming gods, and these rules just make me chuckle when I hear a player saying he wants his character to become a god.

"Ok, no problem. Let me just tell you what you need to attain that..."

[Mira]

I don't know which module it was, but there was one (I think part of that old Expert/Master series) where PCs could be 'rewarded' with that, but all the changes that occured to the character actually ended up making them a lot weaker than they were before I did take it it with one of my PCs that I was planning to retire, but that was to fill a void that had been left elsewhere. That character did have to have some adjustments to become eligible by the rules, but the 'reward' involved all that. I think the demigods created from that were quite weak (I think I remember that your hit points were set to 50, which is pretty low when the characters are level 15-20.)

I had played that character for almost 20 years of real time, it was time she retired. But all the other characters declined, the players wanted to keep them as strong as they were I guess, and they were not ready to retire them.

Mira (If a tree fell on a mime in the forest, would he make a sound and would anyone care?)

[Varl]

Now this certainly rarely if ever happens. How many people have legitimately gotten a character to 25th or 30th level?

Not I, nor anyone I know. 15th is as high a character has attained in my games, and that was an NPC rogue with the group.

I've never liked divine ascension and the idea of mortals becoming gods, and these rules just make me chuckle when I hear a player saying he wants his character to become a god.

I don't mind it as a goal for a character to want to achieve, but realistically, game play would never support it. The sheer time investment required to achieve all the things you mentioned Halaster would be more than most people would be willing to stomach, I'd wager. The best a player with those goals for his character to achieve might be would be to "retire" the character to NPC status, and have the DM determine the outcome. Sounds cruel I know.

From time to time, I have contemplated what it would be like to try and achieve immortality as a mortal, and I think in its most simplistic form, the tasks required of you would be similar to those methods used to describe how you go about destroying an artifact in the Book of Artifacts. You know the ones; have X crushed under the foot of the largest mountain in the world, immolating X in the Elemental Plane of Fire for 50 years consecutively and then exposing it to the extreme cold of the Elemental Plane of Ice, you know, things like this. Of course, this would be a character we're talking about, not an item, but tasks on a similar level would be good tests given by the pantheon to the applicant.

What would be interesting is if people could create achievable objectives for immortality that could be contained within the time frame of a typical game campaign.

[Mira]

Now this certainly rarely if ever happens. How many people have legitimately gotten a character to 25th or 30th level?

We got close to that, I had my thief up to 21st after 20 years of play
And one guy had a 19th level mage. But it's pretty rare to have a campaign even run that long, and even after all that time we didn't hit 25th!

Mira (Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool)

[Beowulf]

I think it's a story element. If you have the type of campaign that supports it I think you can have fun with divine ascension. But for the most part it would have to be extraordinarily rare, I should think. If I was going to do it I'd probably do so to wrap up a campaign, allowing the PCs to attain divinity, then hanging it up and starting over with a new world.

[Halaster Blackcloak]

We never made it to a level where divine ascension happened. I ran some very high level campaigns, but it never came to that. In my decade-long campaign, we topped out in the upper teens, but again no hint of divine ascension.

It would make sense that it'd be pretty rare though, otherwise we'd have another Forgotten Realms on our hands!

[Unther]

It would make sense that it'd be pretty rare though, otherwise we'd have another Forgotten Realms on our hands!

Not really, afterall, if characters start ascending around 20th level, you avoid the hell that is the number of ultra-high-level characters called the Forgetable realms...

Never had a game last long enough, though my longest lasting character would have been a suitable candidate if the game had gone on for another 5-10 years...