How to defend against the Chosen of the Gods?

[Ares]

In one of our last sessions we were unpleasantly surprised by the fact, that you can't defend against divine spellcasting. No matter how high your spelldefense, normal defense, cover or dished out penalties to the caster, those bastards always hit you.

Disintegrate is a real killer to deal with, if you are hit by a Paladin of Destruction with his Stand in Judgement ability, but also a Cause Wounds III with shortened duration and Devotion feat for easy repetition can ruin your day.

So, how would you defend against these without resorting to: hide and shoot on sight?

[Psion]

Actually, spell defense is very effective against divine magic; the auto- hit rule applies to hitting and casting dc, not spell defense. Which means low level divine spells suck against spell defense.

There are feats in Adventure Companion specifically to let divine casters grapple with this.

[Ares]

Interesting, but high enough spell defense is hard to come by (especially in this campaign where we are subject to the "difficult magic" quality) and totally negated by the aforementioned devotion feat.

The problem might also be, that feats are dirt cheap for npcs.

[ludomastro]

Run from the wrath of a god?  Silly mortal.   

Psion has the right of it but your group has some qualities that make it a little harder to escape divine retribution (or divine ass-kickery if the deity is into that).

IMO, this is going to fall back to rule 0: talk to the group and make sure everyone is on board with how divine damage works.

[Ares]

Well, talking is all fine and good, but I still would prefer a useful strategy to counter divine magic in general. 

[Mister Andersen]

(click to show/hide)

Abide In Darkness is a good means of picking up spell resistance

[Elvith Gent]

Actually, spell defense is very effective against divine magic; the auto- hit rule applies to hitting and casting dc, not spell defense. Which means low level divine spells suck against spell defense.

There are feats in Adventure Companion specifically to let divine casters grapple with this.

Since divine casters (at least, the Priest) don't have Spellcasting as a class skill, does this mean that any Spell Defense higher than 15 is an "you shall never touch me with your silly miracle" kind of defense ?

[spinningdice]

Divine magic is always assumed to hit the target number required to cast the spell, so the result will be considered to be equal to the Spellcasting DC or the targets Defence, whichever is lower.