Ranked at peak, forms listedrealms · greyhawk · planescape · ravenloft
Gods,UnstattedThe Dungeons & Dragons power ranking
D&D used to print stat blocks for its gods. Deities & Demigods did it, Faiths & Pantheons did it, and a sufficiently equipped party could work out how to kill one. Fifth edition all but stopped: it stats a god only as a body it can grow back, which is not the same offer. What is left is Challenge Rating, which the rules peg to whether four adventurers of the monster's own level walk away — and the highest one in the game is shared with a large lizard. Every entry here is ranked on what a book says it did.
The short answer
Ao wins, and the answer is unsatisfying, which is the point. The Realms' overgod sits above every deity in the setting, has no stat block in any edition, and does essentially nothing — during the Time of Troubles he threw the entire pantheon out of the heavens to make a point about worship, and then went back to not intervening. Everything else on this page is somebody who can be fought.
Continuity
Medium
Rank 24 and below carry a name, its tags and its sources, and no paragraph. Not a lower standard of evidence — every one of them still cites — but a different amount of prose, kept where the disagreement is.
EvidenceCrowdΔ
Tier 00 · not on the scale
No stat block, by design
Each of these is defined by the rules declining to define them. That is not an oversight; it is the edition saying the encounter was never on the table.
He fired the entire pantheon but one. During the Time of Troubles, Ao stripped the Realms' gods of their divinity and dropped them into mortal bodies on Toril over the theft of the Tablets of Fate, and several died down there. Helm he left whole, on the stair, to keep the rest out — which is how Helm comes to kill Mystra. That is the whole record, and it is enough: the beings ranked below this line were removed from office by something that has never been given a number in any edition.
shownForgotten Realms: Avatar Series · 1989
Casts the pantheon down to Toril in mortal form during the Time of Troubles.
statedForgotten Realms Campaign Setting
Described as the overgod, above the pantheon and beyond mortal or divine reach.
She keeps gods out of Sigil, which no other entity on this page can claim, and the setting's rule about her is a warning rather than a stat line: worship her and she flays you, oppose her and you are mazed. Planescape was explicit that she is not an encounter. She is the reason the city works, and the reason it has no divine landlord.
statedPlanescape Campaign Setting
Bars deities from Sigil; those who worship or oppose her are flayed or mazed.
The pantheon's answer to him was not a fight. Tharizdun made the Abyss, and the other gods — who agree on nothing else anywhere in this setting — stopped disagreeing long enough to imprison him for it. He has been chained ever since, and every book since has described the imprisonment rather than the encounter. That is the claim: the material will tell you what he did and will not tell you what it would take to face him.
statedDungeon Master's Guide 4th edition · p. 163
Named the Chained God; created the Abyss and was imprisoned by the gods for the act. — 2008
statedMordenkainen's Tome of Foes · 2018
Still named the Chained God, and still imprisoned, a decade of editions later.
Tier 01 · apex
They hold portfolios
Gods with worshippers, planes and jurisdiction. Fifth edition will not stat them; earlier editions would, and the numbers it produced are part of why it stopped.
Archdevil of Nessusruler of the Nine Hells, before the portfolio
Asmodeus, goda full deity by fifth edition
Forgotten RealmsPlanescapegamenovel
KillsNo confirmed kills.
He negotiated his way up. Asmodeus began as an archdevil, ran the Blood War from the top of Baator, and by fifth edition holds a full divine portfolio — the only entity here whose ascent was accomplished with a contract rather than a war. Godhood he took the other way, swallowing Azuth's divine essence when the Spellplague dropped him into Hell — so the record is a signature and then a swallowed god.
statedFiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells · 2006
The Pact Primeval establishes his authority over the Nine Hells by agreement.
statedPlayer's Handbook
Listed as a deity available to clerics rather than a fiend.
Vecna the lichthe archmage, before the hand and the eye were all that was left
Vecna ascendantinside Sigil, rewriting creation
GreyhawkForgotten Realmsgame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
A mortal who became a lich, then a god, then tried to become the only one. In Die Vecna Die! he forces his way into Sigil — the one place this page has already said gods cannot go — and tries to rewrite creation from inside it — an edition-ending event whose in-fiction consequence was the ruleset itself changing. Nobody else on this list has a feat that leaked out of the setting.
statedDie Vecna Die! · 2000
Seals himself inside Sigil against the Lady of Pain and attempts to remake creation.
statedVecna: Eve of Ruin · 2024
Returns as the campaign's central threat, working across multiple settings at once.
Killing her breaks the world, and the Realms have run that experiment twice. She is the goddess of magic in a setting where magic is a physical system she personally maintains, so her death during the Time of Troubles and again before the Spellplague did not merely remove a deity — it corrupted spellcasting for everyone alive. Ranked on consequence, which is the only entry here where the consequence is a rules change.
statedForgotten Realms Campaign Setting
Maintains the Weave, the structure through which all arcane magic in the Realms functions.
shownForgotten Realms: Avatar Series · 1989
Killed during the Time of Troubles, with catastrophic effects on magic.
The highest Challenge Rating the game publishes, shared with a large lizard, and the designers have been clear that beating her at that number does not kill her — it banishes her for a while. She is the cleanest demonstration on this page that CR answers "can a party survive this encounter" and not "what is this thing".
statedThe Rise of Tiamat · 2014
Statted at CR 30, the joint-highest challenge rating published for fifth edition.
statedMonster Manual
An appropriately equipped and well-rested party of four adventurers should be able to defeat a monster that has a challenge rating equal to its level without suffering any deaths.
He is the reason the entry two places above him sits where it does. Mystra is third here for what her dying costs the Realms, and Cyric is who killed her the second time: the Weave came apart, the Spellplague followed, and both the setting and the edition were rebuilt around the wreckage. It is the largest consequence any single act on this page has produced, and it was a murder rather than a war.
statedForgotten Realms Campaign Guide · 2008
Mystra's death wrecked the bonds that held the Weave together, and brought about the Spellplague.
statedDragon #378 · 2009
It was the Prince of Lies who murdered Mystra and caused the Spellplague.
He carries Tiamat's number and it does not mean Tiamat's thing. Fizban's Treasury of Dragons puts Bahamut at Challenge Rating 30 — the ceiling, level with his sister and with the Tarrasque — but labels the stat block an Aspect, which is the book's word for an avatar rather than the god. Tiamat's 30 is her true form. So the two halves of one myth print the same figure while meaning a god and a projection of one, and the rulebooks say nothing about the difference: the clarification exists as a designer's remark and nowhere in the text a reader owns.
statedFizban's Treasury of Dragons · p. 165
Bahamut is statted at Challenge Rating 30, and the stat block given is the Aspect of Bahamut — his avatar. — 2021
statedThe Rise of Tiamat · pp. 92–93
Tiamat is statted at Challenge Rating 30 in her own true form. — 2014
A goddess whose worship is a control system. Lolth's Underdark is organised entirely around her favour being withdrawn at any moment, which makes her the rare deity whose power is measurable in how her own followers behave rather than in anything she has personally done on the page.
statedForgotten Realms Campaign Setting
Drow society is structured around her worship and the arbitrary withdrawal of her favour.
He died in the Time of Troubles and came back, which in the Realms is a career step rather than an ending. Bane's portfolio is tyranny and his record is institutional: the Zhentarim's priesthood is his, folded into somebody else's organisation, which is a hand in Faerûn that never requires him to be present.
shownForgotten Realms: Avatar Series · 1989
Destroyed during the Time of Troubles and later restored to divinity.
One of the two primordial deities of the Realms and the one that never stopped working. Shar's contribution to the setting's largest catastrophe is direct — the Spellplague follows from her long campaign against Mystra — and she is ranked below the goddess she destroyed because destroying the Weave's keeper is a smaller claim than being it.
statedForgotten Realms Campaign Setting
One of the two primordial deities of the Realms, in permanent opposition to Selûne.
Tier 02 · the greats
Fiend lords and the ones who ascended
Archdevils, demon princes and mortals who did the paperwork to stop being mortal. Ranked below the gods on jurisdiction rather than menace.
Lord Karsusarchwizard of the enclave, inventor of heavy magic
The Momentary Godholding the portfolio of magic, for as long as it took to fail
Forgotten Realmsgamenovelcontested
KillsNo confirmed kills.
The largest thing a mortal has ever done in this setting, and it lasted seconds. Karsus built a spell to take a deity's power for himself and cast it at Mystryl, goddess of magic, choosing her because she was the most powerful target available. It worked. He got control of all magic and no idea how to regulate it, the flow surged, and Mystryl spent the last of herself severing him from the Weave. Magic failed everywhere at once, the flying cities of Netheril dropped out of the sky, and Karsus turned to stone watching it happen. He sits in this tier rather than above it for a precise reason: he did not kill a goddess. She died to stop him, which is a different claim and a smaller one.
statedNetheril: Empire of Magic · p. 12
Karsus's avatar was built to steal the power of a deity and transfer it to the archwizard casting it. — 1996
statedThe Grand History of the Realms · p. 47
Cast in −339 DR against Mystryl, goddess of magic, chosen as the most powerful deity; Karsus gained power over all magic. — 2007
shownDangerous Games · 1996
Mystryl sacrifices herself to sever Karsus from the Weave; magic fails and the enclaves fall.
Tenebrousthe state he returned in, after being killed
GreyhawkPlanescapegame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
Killed, and it did not take. Orcus's death and return is the defining demon-prince arc of the older editions, and he came back without the Wand — the whole of Dead Gods is him hunting for it, wearing other authorities to get the search done. Ranked first among the fiend lords because his portfolio is the one thing the genre cannot make permanent.
statedDead Gods · 1997
Returns from destruction as Tenebrous, hunting the means to restore himself fully.
Two heads that hate each other, and the title of Prince of Demons held through an unbroken record of nobody successfully taking it. The Abyss has no hereditary system: he holds the position because every attempt to remove him has failed, which is a harder claim to make than most divine ones here.
statedMonster Manual
Named Prince of Demons, contested constantly and never successfully deposed.
The demon lord who negotiates, which in the Abyss is a competitive advantage rather than a weakness. His long entanglement with Iggwilv is the setting's clearest case of a demon prince being outmanoeuvred by a mortal wizard, and it is on his record both ways: she bound him, and he survived it.
statedDungeon Master's Guide
Ruler of Azzagrat; his binding by Iggwilv and subsequent escape are established history.
A lich who took a country. Szass Tam won Thay's civil war and rebuilt the nation as an undead state with himself at the top, which makes him the highest-ranked entry here whose achievement is entirely administrative and entirely successful.
statedForgotten Realms Campaign Setting
Zulkir of Necromancy who seizes Thay and reorganises it as an undead regime.
Tashathe apprentice, and the name that outlasted the other one
Iggwilvthe Witch Queen, author of the Demonomicon
GreyhawkForgotten Realmsgame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
She bound Graz'zt, wrote the book everyone else uses to bind demons, and then spent several editions quietly becoming a different person with a different name. The Demonomicon is the feat: not that she is powerful, but that most of the setting's demonology is her working notes.
statedTasha's Cauldron of Everything · 2020
Identified as Iggwilv, author of the Demonomicon, and one and the same as Tasha.
A Chosen of Mystra, which is a specific job rather than a compliment: he carries a portion of the goddess's own power and has done for centuries. The reason he is here rather than higher is that the novels spend most of their length explaining why he is not allowed to solve anything.
statedForgotten Realms Campaign Setting
A Chosen of Mystra, invested with part of the goddess's power and effectively unaging.
Half the spell list has his name on it, which is the most durable form of power available in this setting: every wizard in every world is using his work. His stated project is the balance between law and chaos, pursued by making sure neither side ever wins, and he has been at it long enough to have outlived the edition he was written for.
statedMordenkainen's Tome of Foes · 2018
Presented as the authority on planar conflict, pursuing a balance between the outer planes.
He does not fight. Acererak's method is architecture — a dungeon designed to kill parties that have already beaten everything else, and in Tomb of Annihilation a soul-eating engine draining the entire setting's dead. The only demilich here who has never needed to be in the room.
statedTomb of Horrors · 1978
The tomb is built specifically to destroy high-level adventurers rather than to be fought.
statedTomb of Annihilation · 2017
Operates the Soulmonger, consuming souls across the Realms.
Undermountain is his, and he has gone comprehensively insane somewhere inside it. Contested because the madness is load-bearing: Halaster is enormously capable and entirely unpredictable, and a power ranking handles the first well and the second badly.
statedWaterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage · 2018
Controls Undermountain, reshaping it at will, and is explicitly deranged.
Not the strongest thing on this page, and the only one who owns a country that will not let him leave. Strahd's power inside Barovia is close to total — the land answers to him, the mists obey him — and the Dark Powers keep him there precisely so he can never test it anywhere else.
statedCurse of Strahd · 2016
Rules Barovia absolutely, with the land itself responsive to him, and cannot leave it.
A lich with a staff of other liches. Larloch is described as possibly the most powerful undead in the Realms and has done almost nothing with it, which is exactly the kind of claim this page is built to be sceptical of — the ranking is on the lichdom he demonstrably runs, not on the superlative.
statedForgotten Realms Campaign Setting
Master of Warlock's Crypt, commanding numerous lesser liches, and largely inactive.
Founder of the Zhentarim, and the one man on this page whose defining problem is himself: the clone contingency he built to survive assassination worked too well, and several Manshoons woke up at once and went to war. Ranked for the infrastructure rather than the duel.
statedForgotten Realms Campaign Setting
Founded the Zhentarim; his stasis clones woke simultaneously on his death and fought each other.
Here is the argument for this whole page in one entry. The Tarrasque carries CR 30 — level with Tiamat, above every archdevil, above every archmage — and it is an animal. It has no plan, no worshippers, no jurisdiction and no interest in anything beyond the next building. Ranked last among the argued entries and marked contested, because by the game's own printed number it should be first, and by everything the books actually say about it, it should not be on the page at all.
statedMonster Manual · 2014
Statted at CR 30, level with Tiamat and above every other published creature.