The Apple of Discord

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by Andrew Hackard

I'm with Bill on this. I'm also not a fan of saying "everything must have stats"; that way lies AD&D and gods who could be killed by parties nowhere near the peak of their potential. Eris' golden apple was a plot device, not a collection of numbers.

Surely the fault for that would be them having inappropriate stats rather than them having stats at all. D&D gods aren't supposed to be omnipotent, so having clearly defined abilities for them can be very useful if something comes up which might pose a challenge for them. If you don't want such a party to defeat them, just give them the stats needed to reliably overcome such challanges.

Poorly assigned stats causing mortal creatures to be way weaker or stronger than they are supposed to be can easily be a far larger problem for your game than when gods have poor stats, but that does not at all mean that it is a bad thing to have stats for an as large number of people and creatures in your setting as feasible, just that stats should not be assigned in a careless manner.