Welcome to Mystara: Immortals vs Gods | Dungeons and Dragons

[@SeanVeira]

Mystara's immortals remind me of Stargate's ascended beings. When I was watching the series, I often when I have seen that somewhere before.

[@ryderma1]

I always liked the idea immortals could create planets. A nice way to have a homebrew workd in the same universe as Mystara.

[@JamesAdams-nd1td]

I got to admit I would love to play in an Immortals campaign in Mystara. World building is a ton of fun, and here’s an excuse to make worldbuilding a core part of the game: building a planet and populating it with whatever races the players want, creating customs for them, designing the rules for their respective churches, etc. Kind of like a Civilization game but cooperative. Also, the logical sequel to this would be having the players play as characters on their created world.

[@leorblumenthal5239]

Mystara's Immortals are yet another reason to join the Athar in a Planescape campaign.

[@richmcgee434]

The "Overgod" concept (eg Ao in FR) is another fine argument against worshiping the things calling themselves deities instead of just seizing control of your own fate. "Wait, you want mortal worship, but you acknowledge that you're feeble compared to that thing over there? Who does it worship in turn? How many layers are there to this lousy cake?"

[@TheLordUrban]

I thought the immortals were all trying to chop each other’s heads off because there could be only one.

[@KimKhan]

Being Swedish, and searching for "immortals mystara" on youtube and seeing the top hit in Swedish was very, very, very confusing.

[@PolyhedralParadice]

Odin in the Northern Reaches was an Immortal in disguise.

[@shibumi8]

Very informative as always. Though now I'm wondering what kind of shanigans a god/immortal team up would lead to. Sort of like how the villains from DC's old multiverse used to get together for the occasional caper.

[@JamesAdams-nd1td]

That is exactly the sort of shenanigans Planescape was invented to accommodate.

[@patrickbuckley7259]

You referenced Dave the Barbarian? This I like!

[@havock89]

The more I think about it, the more the gods of D&D are more like the Drayden, extremely powerful exauted beings. When an immortal has to expend power to do something, they are in control, when a god has an ability which is automatic, they are not in control. AO would be like an elemaster immortal who has set up their home planes for them, to reform their bodies when they die (because they are incapable of controlling the process themselves) setting up the domain system to curtail their use of power, and alter the natural laws of the crystal spheres to function as continual lore spells to provide information to these exaulted beings. This would also be why a god is powerless in the flogeston and immortals are not. Overal I would say immortals are the true gods, and the D&D patheons of the "so-called" gods are actually the puppets of AO.

[@HeruUrAusar]

One thing left out, that supports your claim, is that immortals can ascend to become Old Ones. Old Ones are as powerful compared to immortals as immortals are to mortals. While gods can't ascend to over-gods.

[@havock89]

@@HeruUrAusar Well said sir, well said.

[@misomiso8228]

what is 6:28 from?!

[@Mr_Welch]

Good Omens

[@djinndevyl7077]

Is weird that I utilize a pantheon of 3 major gods & have Immortals with their own cults in my setting?

[@CrashWeezerman]

That's cool

[@patrickbuckley7259]

No, that's cool. So what's this trinity based on? Alignments, the Hindi Triumvirate, something else?

[@BrimstoneVomit]

I greatly appreciate these videos. My history as a gamer is mostly of the computer variety, but some of my fonder memories lie in playing Fantasy Empires as a kid. The one chance I got to role play in Mystara was using a fan conversion of Fantasy AGE, and that fizzled out quickly. I really hope your project to make it a WOTC-supported setting for 5E works out so we can pump interest back into it.

[@markbenand]

Hello again Mr. Welch, a thought occurred to me when watching this video. While both gods and immortals function in similar ways, have similar powers, and fulfill similar roles, I have a question. Are Immortals allowed in Sigil? What's the Lady of Pain's regard or view towards the immortals?

[@patrickholt2270]

Which god is behind whatever it is that Crash Worship were playing?

[@Mr_Welch]

Probably whichever one had the pantheons of chaos, anarchy, freedom and fire code violations.

[@patrickholt2270]

@@Mr_Welch XD

[@montyhedstrom1356]

Since 5e doesn't address going up to immortals it seems like the distnction between gods and immortals becomes kinda meaningless in 5e as we only see things from the bottom up so to speak.

[@patrickbuckley7259]

It does matter to some degree if your getting up there in levels and want to end the game as a deity, the process is different, at least narratively. Furthermore understanding the nuanced differences does help narritively further when deciding how such entities would behave in universe. That being said 5e isn't exactly going to do DM's any favors, at it heavily focuses on selling power and novelty to players, at the expense of good DM tools.

[@agentchaos9332]

The distinction would only really be relevant in an Epic Level campaign, using homebrew. The Epic Boons are dope, and you might think you've found gamebreaking combos with Wish + Simulacrum, Kiting everything with a higher movement speed, or dealing 980 damage with Prismatic Doom & Reverse gravity..but none of those things will actually put you in their weight class. Doesn't really matter if a Deity hits you for 500 damage, or an immortal hits you for 15,000, when you've only got 200 hit points

[@lexington476]

1:58 I want to know who is the god of Nordic Death Metal 🙂.

[@lexington476]

​@@davidtauriainen9116Van Halen would be a god regardless 🙂.

[@patrickholt2270]

Founding a new universe seems like a perfect Immortal retirement plan. You get to buzz off out of the Immortal politics and plotting, and the tedium of listening to prayers and adjudicating such claims, and have your own reality where you are the only deity, and you can create new species to worship you to your hearts content. Unless the other Immortals can follow you and start interfering of course. Proabably more the kind of thing Immortals who are Neutral aligned and/or narcissistic would do. Good aligned ones would have too much of a sense of responsibility for the world they came from, and Evil ones too much fun pissing everyone else off and torturing folks.

[@nicolaezenoaga9756]

Thank you.

[@johnstorm9314]

So basically Mystara had an OP system, and it was replaced. Got it.

[@CrashWeezerman]

I don't know if this was answered in another video, but are the Nine Hells and the Abyss part of Mystara's cosmology?

[@Mr_Welch]

It is a part of it, but with Immortals not liking outer planar interference, they are typically held at bay. Immortals don't like creatures like angels, devils or gods offering mortals a new option. And demons are just there to destroy so that's not a hard choice. Mystara had multiple mentions in Planescape, so it was very much part of the wheel cosmology.

[@rocko9451]

Boom! Very nice.

[@BX-advocate]

Okay so I have a different question for you but related to this video. Assuming a weekly game with roughly 4hr sessions how long would it take to reach immortality roughly? I'm just curious. By the way thanks for all your videos introducing me to objectively the best D&D setting.

[@Mr_Welch]

Years. Figure 2-3 adventures per level. 36 levels takes almost 100 weeks. Then you have to quest for immortality. You could have the campaign go 2 years easily and they are still master level

[@BX-advocate]

@@Mr_Welch Thanks for the quick response. Yeah I just wanted an idea because I have only had short low level campaigns and I want to know what an epic one would be in terms of time. This also would assume a fairly efficient group so I would say depending on the group it's more like 3-5 years.

[@thekaxmax]

So, a different universe, different setting rules, different names. Otherwise, immortals are gods and the distinctions only matter when using Spelljammer. :P

[@markbenand]

The gods are parasitic and the immortals are symbiotic.