Divine Intervention in D&D games

[Bullgrit]

The other discussion about "Gods, planes, afterlife, and the common man" got me thinking about this. It seems that most people 'round here have experienced far more direct divine interventions in their D&D games than I have.

In my years of playing D&D -- since 1980 -- as DM, I've had a god directly affect the PCs only twice:

1- About 20 years ago, a god actually struck down a PC (~7th level) in my campaign. It was a convoluted reason, and I regretted it shortly after it happened.

2- Just a couple of years ago, the PCs (~8th level) had a really good guide lead them through a very dangerous jungle to their quest destination. They were a bit suspicious at how fast they travelled the distance, and at how few wilderness encounters they had (only a couple very easy ones) along the way, and at how the guide simply wished them well and went on his way (still in a very dangerous jungle) all by himself afterward.

It wasn't until after the party TPKed in a dumb and unrelated (to their quest) encounter that I let them in on the secret that Fharlanghn, himself, had been their guide. Such was the importance of their quest.

Otherwise, the gods in my games have really never been active in the world. All that I've ever read about the gods of a "generic" D&D world has suggested that they don't get involved unless there is some extraordinary reason. But apparently I'm in the minority with that assumption. It seems that in many games, the gods do take part in temporal matters.

What has been your experience?

As a DM, do you have the gods directly active in your setting(s)? Do they get involved with PCs?

As a Player/PC, have you had direct contact with gods in a game?

Are gods as involved with low-level PCs/NPCs, or does involvement only happen with high-level PCs/NPCs?

In my experience as a Player, the only times gods have taken any kind of direct intervention has been once that I recall where the DM allowed "god calls" (some low random chance of a god "fixing" a bad thing for you -- a DM gimme, really). And once when my cleric met his god after death (and before ressurection).

Bullgrit

 

[Umbran]

As a DM, do you have the gods directly active in your setting(s)? Do they get involved with PCs?

Directly? Typically no. The gods (if they exist) have hands in the world - they're called "clerics". I have often enough had clerics doing things that people (including PCs) would interpret as intervention of the god in question, sometimes at the bidding of the god in question.

As a Player/PC, have you had direct contact with gods in a game?

You mean, after the glory days where we used Deities and Demigods as an ultra-high-powered Monster Manual?

Once - it was the culmination of a campaign in which there was a whole lot of question about who the gods were going to be. And we weren't so much fighting the gods as fighting off things that wanted to be the gods.

Are gods as involved with low-level PCs/NPCs, or does involvement only happen with high-level PCs/NPCs?

The way I run usually gods, the power of the mortals is not an issue - all mortals are as children before the gods. But, by that same token, they don't tend to meddle directly with anyone, of any power level.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I played in a long running campaign years ago where the party's patron turned out to be a god. He was usually a bumbling drunk when we met up with him, so we really didn't suspect anything of the sort until he pulled our butts out of a really bad situation we had foolishly walked into. Obviously the DM used him to save us, but his very direct intervention drew the attention of elder gods who forbade him from any more direct interaction with us. After that we only had visions from him, except for a couple of times where he managed to slip away from the elder gods, get sloshed and pay us a visit.

As a DM, with the exception of the god-slaying days Umbran mentioned above, I have never used direct interaction with the gods, but the PCs have occasionally dealt directly with a divine agent, usually in receiving dire warnings.

 

[Umbran]

To elaborate a bit...

For D&D, and any other game where characters can be expected to climb to great power levels, I personally find direct deific intervention to be problematic, in terms of plausibility. Direct intervention by deities that are in conflict with one another should lead to disaster.

If the gods are not too powerful (say, they can be threatened or killed by sufficiently powerful mortals), then you'd expect the deific turnover rate to be on par with mortal generation times, as mortals grow up, become powerful, and get involved in these conflicts. And who is going to follow gods if the gods keep dying off in living memory?

If the gods are so powerful that they are largely untouchable by the highest-power mortals, then the gods represent... well, nigh unimaginable power. High-level D&D mortals are nearly world-shapers themselves. Interventions by the gods they cannot touch should tend to rip apart worlds with their conflicts.

End result - it seems that to have something semi-stable as your background, the gods cannot meddle to frequently or too directly.

There are ways around this, of course, but every version I've seen tends to feel more contrived than the alternative, which is to not have them personally get their hands dirty with any frequency.

 

[Storminator]

I've seen gods directly in almost all of my campaigns. My brother had a rule that a cleric could call for direct divine intervention once, with chance of success equal to the cleric's level.

I was in an epic 3e game where we used to go hang with the gods all the time. Once we killed an avatar of Lolth things got pretty hectic, but it was still gods here, gods there, can't swing a dead cat without hitting a god.

In the game I run for my son (age 10), they've met a pair of gods so far - probably more on the way.

Why have gods if there's no interaction?

PS

 

[Umbran]

Why have gods if there's no interaction?

There's no need for statistics for gods if there's no interaction, I'd agree.

But religions are formed around gods (existent or imaginary), and religions drive people. Characters are people. And the game is about characters.

 

[Treebore]

I was never able to buy into the "gods are "hands off" in fantasy games" idea. They interfere every time they grant spells to their clerics.

So this idea is, IMO, just a reinforcement of real world expectations on a fantasy reality.

Then, if you use Avatars, then this idea of "hands off" is truly out the window.

So I have always allowed "God Calls". Which are to only be tried when a TPK is imminent. I even had guidelines made up as to how truly devout players could increase their chance of rolling a successful god call (it was a percentile roll, base 5%), which turned into a great way to eat up extra gold as well as a role play incentive.

Also, once a Cleric achieves 9th level in my games they become a direct conduit of their god, so will receive divine inspirations in their dreams however and whenever I see fit for the story.

Like in my last game session I had Thor send his high priestess to commune with two recently deceased PC's, whose players wanted back alive so they could keep playing them. So she communed with them, asking them if they were willing to commit to serving Thor if resurrected. Resurrection was also important to the players because the thieves guild that had killed them also removed certain key body parts and then crucified the bodies to walls of two different buildings. So they also wanted "intact" characters brought back to life, and having a whole body is also important to Thor, so it kind of worked.

Naturally the players had their PC's accept the conditions, and they were resurrected, intact. Something the gods they were serving would not do, because they were against such things, or only believed in Reincarnation.

Since the PC's were low level, and neither were clerics or devout to their previous gods in any real and meaningful way, plus their old gods are nominally "friendly" to Thor, their ex deities took no umbrage, and now they are devout, to Thor. Which will likely have real implications down the road.

So yes, I use the gods, in a pretty active way, but no god wars.

No, I do not use Gods as "Epic" level monsters. I could, but gods are gods, they are immune to mortal magics and mortal weapons. So unless the mortals come across god level magics and weapons in some manner, they cannot even hurt the gods.

Combine that with mortals always being fully effected by the magic of gods (no saves or SR/MR), and always taking full damage from god weapons and magic spells, only suicidal mortals attack the gods.

 

[Stormonu]

In one of the 2E games I ran, the characters faced off against Lolth in the Demonweb Pits.

They followed her through the mirror in her chamber to a demiplane trap she had prepared to destroy the heros. However, it turned out that the gods of my campaign world had been hiding Avatars within the PCs - it was one of the reasons they were so exceptional. It was worth seeing the player's reactions as avatars of the various gods "stepped out" of the PCs to confront the demon queen.

A huge gods vs. Lolth fight breaks out, with the PCs tasked to defeat the minions of Lolth (several powerful demons) that are holding the demiplane shut against escape, and on Lolth's orders are attempting to permanently seal it magically as well, forever cutting the gods avatars off from their power (of course, without their power, the gods avatars will be easy pickings for Lolth, and after mopping up, she could simply reopen the demiplane and easily escape). It was an epic battle - I had the players running their own PCs as well as the avatars of the gods against Lolth's full godly form. How the PC were doing in their own fight caused the power of the avatars to fluctuate as well. I don't think I've had a more dramatic battle at my table.

Other than this incident, I've always had the gods in the background, though there are all kinds of tales of them interacting in mortal affairs throughout past history. However, because of consequences of their meddling (including the fallout from the fight above), barriers had eventually been set up so they could not take direct action on the mortal world any more. Mostly because I didn't want the sort of adventure I did above to be "par for the course" in my game.

 

[Rekka360]

As a DM, do you have the gods directly active in your setting(s)? Do they get involved with PCs?

Hmm, more likely the god would act through a divine agent. I can see how it would be possible for a god to act directly, but most likely only if one of the PC's had managed to become that god's champion or something like that.

As a Player/PC, have you had direct contact with gods in a game?

No, again I've come to expect if a certain gods wants me to do something, he'll have a messanger boy or something tell me what he wants.

Are gods as involved with low-level PCs/NPCs, or does involvement only happen with high-level PCs/NPCs?

I would expect it more for high level PC's, a god might care for his low level followers, but I think even for really benevolent gods he's only really going to interfere for a mortal that can achieve something for his divine plan, otherwise he's be interfering all the time.

 

[Evilhalfling]

Since 4ed yes.

I set up a world where each god takes turns as the "Ascended One" The turn of each god is called an age, and they currently last 200 years. Only the "Ascended One" or their lesser gods, have the direct power to use Avatars, give prophecies, and in other ways directly manipulate the physical world. Everybody else acts only through clerics, or immortal servants.
The Ascended God still prefers indirect meddling, but it gives me the opportunity to play with more unexplainable effects. Mostly these are just signs that the god is interested in the outcome of a situation, rather than bothering to fix things directly.

• After messing up a seasonal ceremony to the fire god, PCs found themselves in a forest fire.
• In a particularly important fight with a (teamster-like) dwarven roofing guild, the air got hotter and hotter, reaching 98.6
  After traveling back into time -
• In a battle that would decide the fate of Coffee as a trade good, the god of trade and winds, would slide a random combatant 1d6 squares in a random direction. The wind was also defending a random PC each round (+1 to defenses, +2 to speed)
• In the age of the god Water and Healing - several fights were showered in a brief but healing rain. Monsters and PCs alike would run to take advantage of it.

The only god that been actually encountered dispatched an Avatar because he had only ascended recently, and wondered why there was a mid-level paladin calling on him. He posed as a (confused) magic item peddler, and was tickled pink to be asked for his own holy symbol. It would have developed as an artifact, if the campaign had run longer than 1 more session. The God did not otherwise reveal himself.