User blog comment:VedranTheII/Pretentious Diaries 2: What tricks would you teach your Aura?/@comment-4010415-20150720024504/@comment-24198837-20150721033707

I'm not actually sure if Cthulhu is considered a god or not in Pathfinder, but he's still Cthulhu - and, quite frankly, Cthulhu has B.S. levels of power.

Everything in Pathfinder is unfairly hard for underleveled characters. You're not supposed to fight a Pit Fiend at level ten; if you did, you'd get understandably wrecked.

The same applies to max levels and Cthulhu. It's just really hard to be leveled to a point where you're considered level 30 or above. At that level, you can (likely) easily make the DC 40 will save to not die, and dish out enough danage with your group to stand a chance. It's not as B.S. as it sounds.

Basically, Cthulhu isn't as crazy as he seems if you're on his level. You'll likely just never be, unless that's the goal of the game.

Oh, and if you think Pathfinder Cthulhu is bad, you should check out how they statted him in the game based around the Lovecraft mythos: Call Of Cthulhu. I'll sum it up like this - He is literally to the point where even a slight victory would likely take several dozens - probably hundreds - of players. Outside of his attacks, magic, and crippling insanity effects, every round he just kills a certian number of players, no save.

Because he's literally Cthulhu. And normal people can't beat Cthulhu.

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By "In Lore" I mean this: The company and authors who made Pathfinder determined how they wanted to make the world work. They defined the Gods and Planes, Races and Planets, and even specific things like kingdoms and areas on specific planets or planes.

In the universe they envision, level 20 is the absolute strongest a mortal can ever get - it's where you become like Batman, the absolute pinnicle of humanity. Hardly anyone ever reaches this level - even if they study and train their whole lives. A human commoner, If I remember correctly, is CR 1/2.

DM's are, of course, free to tweak all of this however they want. And while many do change setting elements - most (that I've played with) creating their own worlds entirely - the basic ideas of how common monsters are and how strong the average person is remain unchanged.

What I mean is - DMs can do literally whatever they want. It's easy to create a planet and the basic rules for a few kindoms, to scrap together a few Gods or forge some plains; It's hard, however, to explain why people who are almost godly in power stride around at any rate other than extremely rare. And if you do decide that you want your world to be that way, it takes out all the wonder and fun players have reaching those later levels and getting their huge power gains, as it makes it mundane. If everyone's a questing hero, and there's a lot of them that are DAMN good at it, then what makes you so special? And, to compound on that, why are there still so many damn monsters?

Pathfinder is literally a Fantasy Role Playing Game. You want players to feel everything but mundane.

So, in the end, almost all DMs keep the average person very weak, and the average high level very uncommon. Mythic Power doesn't even exist in many worlds, or is reserved for those of Prophecy and Legend, because if it was anything but impossibly rare, it may very well ruin the world unless used as a direct plot element.