If a deity's power is proportional to how many worshippers they have...

>if a deity's power is proportional to how many worshippers they have, why doesn't the Lady of Pain want anyone to worship her?
>if the Lady of Pain has no worshippers, how is she greater or equal in power to the gods?

The Lady Pain is flatout stated to not be like the other gods.

She may be some kind of elder thing

The Lady is not a God.

She isn't a Deity.

If you're the only one who can push the button that allows gods into Sigil, it doesn't matter how powerful you are compared to the gods.

>Lady of Pain rules Sigil
>Gods have no power in Sigil
>If Lady had enough worshippers, she'd be a god.
>Gods have no power in Sigil.
>Lady of Pain rules Sigil?
This has been explained.

You know how in videogames, the programmers sometimes make a mistake?

I like to imagine that the Lady of Pain is mistakenly written to have NaN followers , which basically gives her infinite power.

Even having a single worshipper means she'll go back to having an actual countable number of followers, so she doesn't want that.

Because she's not a goddess, just the same invincibility shield times infinity that any kid in a sandbox might invent?

>programmer bro
high five, bro.

Also... you're joking, but that's actually kinda how it's explained in the fluff, see . If she becomes a god, even a little one, she vanishes in a puff of logic.

Do you have any idea how much power she would have to give up to be a deity?

Gods are bound to rules. Her Serenity is not. Gods have stats, she doesnt.

The Lady and Sigil are one. She may be able to prevent their entry to her domain, but it's not certain she could defeat one within it (see Vecna) and she almost certainly has less significant power outside of it if she even can leave.

There's more than one way to gain power. I guess one of those ways is to plonk a big city on top of an infinitely tall spire.

Because the Lady is the Lady, you clueless berk. Not a Power.

Because monte cuck is an autogynephile pile of shit

>If she becomes a god, even a little one, she vanishes in a puff of logic.
Does that mean that starting a cult based around the Lady of Pain is a legitimate way of attempting an assassination plot?

It was mentioned that she could have beaten Vecna, but to bring that much power to bear while the multiverse was already collapsing in the process would have done a fuckload more damage than their fight could have otherwise done.

If you're trying to hit a tiny bent nail, a chainsaw-sledge-axe-hammer that fucks the nail and planks you're trying to put back together is not the appropriate tool.

No, you'll just get flayed as soon as you start. Or possibly mazed, but likely flayed.

Except that the gods don't need to be on the same plane as their worshippers to draw power from them, and the Lady has not been shown to have power beyond Sigil itself.

If a bunch of Faerûnians in, I dunno, Waterdeep, start worshipping the Lady of Pain, what happens?

Personally I've always liked to imagine that Sigil is a Darkhold and the Lady is a Darklord, perhaps the first one, the original entity that the Dark Powers were tormenting.

It would certainly explain why the Land of Mists has the ability to reach out to other worlds and snatch up people and even entire landscapes.

And why the Lady can't ever leave...

>If a bunch of Faerûnians in, I dunno, Waterdeep, start worshiping the Lady of Pain, what happens?

Nothing, I'd assume, aside from them looking incredibly silly.

>Does that mean that starting a cult based around the Lady of Pain is a legitimate way of attempting an assassination plot?
It would probably be easier to just kill yourself right off the bat instead of waiting around for Her to do it.

Less painful on your end as well.

You're welcome to try. Happy trails.

For reference, I'd point you to the scene in PS:Torment when you find the Lady doll and have the option to say a prayer to Her. She rolls in and chops you up prettymuch immediately.

>And why the Lady can't ever leave...
I think there was actually speculation in the original setting book that Sigil might be the Lady's prison. Who knows?

>a deity's power is proportional to how many worshippers they have

I've always thought that was stupid. It really cheapens the idea of a god. Gods should be omnipotent or nonexistant.

As long as she isn't worshipped she is fundamentally a different type of being than the gods, and if she is worshipped and through that becomes a god, then it fucks over Sigil.

I've never even played Planescape (not even Torment) and I know that.

Omnipotent gods are a rather new development in the history of religion and mythology, and really only show up in Abrahamic faiths and shit derived from it. Even the other big monotheistic religion, Zoroastrianism, doesn't have an omnipotent God.

Why is she called the Lady of Pain again? It doesn't look like she does many things painful. She doesn't torture you, she doesn't torment you. Why isn't she called the Lady of Mazes or something?

Because the Lady of Pain is not a deity. How obvious do they have to make it before you get it?

>when you find the Lady doll and have the option to say a prayer to Her. She rolls in and chops you up prettymuch immediately
So maybe it is actually a threat to her.
Funilly enough I can imagine that becoming players' go-to response for unbeatable enemies if you allowed it.
>oh they can't be killed? we'll just aggressively spread a religion worshiping them to make them into a god, then use normal god-killing tactics

t. yahweh/allah cuck

Anyway, a lot of settings do have greater/primal gods or similar entities that don't necessarily play by the same rules.

Lady of Hamburgerizing

>Masochism son
>We harden in response to physical trauma

She isn't a deity.

Omnipotent God is a seperate sort of entity to the gods which function more like a personification of a particular of Omni-god's rules. OGs are gamemasters or a universe's administrator, while lowercase gs might not even be privy that they're part of a game.

>If a bunch of Faerûnians in, I dunno, Waterdeep, start worshipping the Lady of Pain, what happens?
Either:

1) Absolutely nothing at all changes regarding them or the Lady.
2) They get flayed.

She can extend influence "outside" of Sigil proper, technically, by dumping people into her Mazes (which are individualised extradimensional prisons tailored to the occupant on creation, and they're located on the Ethereal). She doesn't leave it.

By all accounts of onlookers, getting flayed looks pretty painful.

It's a body and soul thing, too. No resurrections. It's one of the only ways to stop the Nameless One from reviving in Planescape: Torment.
Once the thing people call the Lady of Pain flays you, nothing can put you back together again.

Let's rephrase the question more generally:
>If a deity's power is proportional to how many worshipers they have and a particular deity has no worshipers, how would they be greater or equal in power to the gods?
In my setting, there are both living gods and spirit gods.
A spirit god, simply wouldn't be that powerful without worshipers.
They might be an extremely powerful spirit, but little more.
A living god is exactly as powerful as they are in addition to any and all power received through worship.
So a millennia old golden dragon that rose to rue godhood and faded into anonymity might still be able to be on the level of gods, particularly if they stockpiled or tapped into another power source.

Ask Aoskar.

One second he was chilling in his temple in Sigil while a dabus put on the robes of his priesthood.

The next second he was a deader than dead corpse in the Astral pincushioned by blades, his temple and everything in a six block radius was leveled, his priests were all booted from Sigil and his worship illegal, and the dabus who started it all was forever unable to act as a dabus again, cut off from the rest of them (he now lives as a tattoo artist).

Doesn't the Lady reorder the entire multiverse at the end of Die Vecna Die?

>implying that awful fanfic-level module ever happened

>Gods should be omnipotent or nonexistant.
You know we're talking about a D&D setting, right? Pantheons of gods are kinda part of the whole deal.