Requiem For A Dead God

Type: Event Book

Company: Malhavoc Press

URL: http://www.montecook.com

Designer: Monte Cook

Release: 2002

Outline: Requiem for a Dead God is a d20 book for covering what happens if a god dies.

Contents: This book is written by Monte Cook, the guy who brought to us the planescape module Dead Gods. It has 62 pages worth of material, with the following chapter outlines.

1. Preparing for the Event: This chapter covers the post mortem, such as the demiurge (lingering reflection/imprint of a dead god), godflesh, godsblood, loosed divinity (which then coalesces into divinity sparks).

2. Integrating the Event: This chapter covers the impact of divine demise - changes to religion, reactions of the faithful, effects on clerics, changes to society, changes to universe, reaction of other gods, etc. Four new organizations related to the death of gods are given. Game mechanics for loosed divinity, divinity sparks, energy wells, godsblood and godflesh.

3. Prestige Classes: The disaffected is a cleric whose god died. Harvester of divinity is an explorer who learns to tap into the power of the dead gods. Necrotheologist studies the dead gods and gains divine spells with a strange mix of necromancy. Threnody is a bard who sings dirges for the dead gods.

4. Godsblood Feats: This chapter covers 12 feats which can be taken only after being infused with godsblood.

5. Spells: This chapter presents about 34 new spells.

6. Magic Items: This chapter presents godsblood infused armor/weapon property, godflesh axe, knife of sacramental flesh, samsara sword, necrotheologist staff, staff of the blood, crystal diadem, divinity collector, energy loupe and glove of the well. There are also 2 lesser artifacts (arrows of delirium and pall of siemath) and 3 major artifacts (fist of yallisor, lance of endless night and wellspring of life).

7. Monsters: This chapters presents new monsters like divinity parasite (CR6), godsflesh golem (CR16), spectre of the divine (CR8) and divinely infused creature template (CR +1 or +2).

8. Adventures: This chapter presents an adventure path related to dead gods, starting from level 2 and scaling up to level 15+ with a succession struggle.

Merits: The book can be tied with divine rank rules from Deities & Demigods. The post mortem is detailed nicely - now there is more to the dead gods than just a floating husk in the Astral.

Flaws: This book is v3.0, not v3.5, so the monsters would have to be updated. The spellcasting PrCs are rather weak compared to new spellcasting classes presented in the newer books like Complete Arcane, etc.