In the Mystara setting, it is an inherent part of the BECMI setting that super-high-level characters end up getting to do the quest for Immortality and become one of the quasi-deities of the setting.

Whether in Mystara, or in any other D&D campaign, have you ever actually had a PC end up becoming deified?  How did that come to pass?

Never run a campaign that long, unfortunately, even though this is one of my favorite aspects of Mystara and old-school D&D.

We tried this in BECMI back in the day, but didn't really enjoy it, so we didn't continue with that path (we were only around 14 at the time, so we probably just reset the game back to before being Immortals).

The only campaign where this happened for us was actually using Rolemaster. We started around 10th level and played solidly for 18 months, getting up to around 50th level. The GM built up a fantastic, world spaning campaign based very loosely on some Fred Saberhagen books (the Swords series). The world was split in two by a magic force field, which had become weakened in the last decade and strange things were attacking the PCs' half of the world. At the same time, the gods had seemingly disappeared from the world. This morphed from a fairly typical fantasy world into a genuine epic, with one of the PCs being a 'Son of the Emperor' and potential heir to the world spanning empire. The group campaigned to recover a set of artefacts which would result in the one PC being able to take the throne. Along the way we found other artefacts and all the players reached extremely high levels of power.

At the culmination of the campaign, the PCs became so famous fighting the Northern threat that the population started to worship them as new gods, and they went through a process of apotheosis. The climactic final sequence involved fighting an army of technomagic from the North, including 'iron land dragons' - giant mechanical behemoths the size of battleships and larger.

(Side note - the campaign also featured a prominent anti-magic being known as The Entity, which was also ravaging the land and was a running theme)

At the final moment, the old gods spoke to the Son of the Emperor, explaining that the only way to stop the Entity was for a sacrifice of equal power. The new gods had to attack it and channel their divine power to destroy it, but they would be destroyed in return. Yes - the whole Northern campaign had been orchestrated by the old gods to build a new power which could destroy their mortal enemy, The Entity.

This was a fantastic campaign, even though all bar one PC died at the end. We've never managed anything like it since. We were all in our mid-20s at the time, and the GM was doing his PhD so had plenty of time on his hands (he shouldn't have had, but that is a whole different story!).

Quote from: RPGPundit;815522In the Mystara setting, it is an inherent part of the BECMI setting that super-high-level characters end up getting to do the quest for Immortality and become one of the quasi-deities of the setting.

Whether in Mystara, or in any other D&D campaign, have you ever actually had a PC end up becoming deified?  How did that come to pass?

Yes.

Not in BECMI.

We gained limited godhood using the Small Gods rules in FFG splatbooks for 3.x. It was wonderful fun, the Players were just normal adventurers until a besieged goddess decided to let her divine spark grace the world instead of allowing it to be taken by her conquerers. Now we had the premise set up for each PC to become a small god by granting them clerical spells by gathering worshippers and becoming more powerful.

Yep. Had one character accidentally make it to godhood in BECMI. Was a pretty goofball campaign with all sorts of wacky events going on.

In AD&D had one character ascend through a convoluted series of events. That was the closer of the campaign as the character effectively died.

2e D&D played up the idea that anyone could ascend to godhood by various means. Usually by levelling up and beating a god. Thus gaining their "portfolio". Never saw it happen. Though two characters I DMed for are probably gods now in the Illithid pantheon as hated foes. heh-heh.

In my own book it was not possible. The gods were cosmic forces and concepts. You could though on very rare occasion bring into existence a new concept. But not ascend yourself.

One story I liked in Champions was a villain from DEMON who is trying to become a god. He gets right up to the pinnacle moment and then realizes... "Wait! This is the stupidest idea in the history of stupid ideas!" and changes his goals.

I think it's beyond awesome that BECMI/RC had rules for actual frickin' apotheosis, but I never really used them.

Never happened in any game I've run or participated in.

Nope.

You bet, at least in games I run.

Huge Zelazny/Brust/Moorcock fan, and while I don't care for Malazan from a writing standpoint, I like its ideas and epic scale. Therefore, I prefer to run games on the high end of the spectrum.

In my current 5e game, the characters begin as Amber-style demigods: not at 20th level, but with DMG epic boons handed out early and with the ability cap of 20 thrown out the window. Good times wrecking the multiverse.

Nope.  In fact, 99% of our PCs that made it above level 10 retired around that point.

Quote from: The Butcher;815559I think it's beyond awesome that BECMI/RC had rules for actual frickin' apotheosis, but I never really used them.

Calculating the EXP equivalent for offing other gods was the nuisance.

Only in high school. We had a rule, if you killed a god, you could take their place as a god of the lower level and a couple PCs became demigods and several others became immortals.

In 4e, my Dwarf Wizard was aiming to become a god, as that was one of the Epic Paths in the core book. Sadly, never got to play him all the way through 30th level.

Never happened in any campaign I ran, played in or observed, and just as well.

Several PCs in my old AD&D campaign became gods, using the guidelines in Legends & Lore plus a Worship Points system we devised, and we kept on playing. I think there were two or three demigods and one lesser god, Thrin - http://www.immortalshandbook.com/shrine.htm

This might not count per se.

In a 1E AD&D game for a joke, we decided to start off as "gods" at level 30+.  (ie.  No more spell resistance, etc ...).

Essentially it got boring very quickly.  In practice, it wasn't much different than "always fighting orcs".