D&D (2024) I have the DMG. AMA!

[Nefermandias]

I surely am not "pretending" anything. Please, keep your emotions in check and mind your tone. We don't want any red text in this nice thread.

 

[Nefermandias]

Sure. Those consequences are natural because they fit the narrative created by the DM.

Say in my game the powers are given to the cleric through secret prayers and rite. Once they know and understand the "rites of casting 2nd level spells", you can't remove it (unless you destroy their memory, let's say). So a god removing spellcasting from a cleric would not be a natural consequence in that narrative premise.

It's only natural if you make it natural; we're are talking about the inner working of fictional magic.

This makes perfect sense and is also in line with the new DMG.
My only gripe is that it fails to put a clear line between clerics and warlocks.

 

[Morrus]

And petulant players who want to ignore the setting entirely and just do whatever they want without consequence are toxic crybabies and the ruination of many games. Just go.

It's funny, hardline DMs want players beholden and answering to those almighty figures able to punish both in-narrative and the mechanics and those power figures are all played by...said DM! No ways the player has any say in this, that would be toxic bullying!

Surprise, surprise.

Both of you, dial it down, please. You're both flinging around hyperbolic terms like 'toxic bullying' and 'toxic crybabies' and winding each other up. Perhaps it's best you not respond to each other.

 

[TiQuinn]

Even IF that was a good idea(it's not and you've given no credible reason to assume it good) that's not what Crawford and wotc have been doing with classes that get their power from a divine/infernal/etc source. What they have been doing is wording marketing and rules themselves in a way that actively shields the kind of toxic petulant players noted in 907 so those players can claim the DM is overstepping for saying no saying that the line was crossed.

You seem to believe that's enabling toxic players. I believe the alternative enables toxic DMing, which I believe you think is a toxic POV if I remember correctly. So toxic, toxic, toxic. Everything's toxic.

Even in settings like eberron where divine powers don't necessarily come from a god and the existence of God's can't be proven, clerics and paladins still need to hold their beliefs closely enough... Disregarding them and acting in violation of them with severe enough contradiction is certain to cause some problems... That says nothing about the Native fiends and similar who might be the source of a warlock or unusual cleric/paladin's power and very much could just say no while quoting scorpion's famous line or similar to the powers of a freshly disempowered warlock.

I think stripping class features from a PC for notions of story is a bad idea and setting or story logic does not change that. The setting and story logic can shift to not strip those abilities.

 

[TwoSix]

It certainly used to be. The idea was that these actions were teaching the player to play their character correctly with the assumption that these punishments were a balance on more powerful class abilities that... were never all that powerful.

And there was punishment for non religi-bois. That's why there were so many anti-magic fields and things that destroyed the magic items that were the fighter's powers, and the wizard's spellbook could be stolen and the rogue had entire creature types they might as well stay home for.

I mean, AD&D was really into punishing characters for changing and growing. These were the editions where you'd lose XP if your character had a redemption arc and changed from LE to LG. Or decided they no longer completely trusted the authorities, and would change from LG to NG.

 

[TiQuinn]

That would be a world that lacked any sort of verisimilitude for me. It's not that it cannot be done but there needs to be some costs in the transition. I think the stripping out of everything bad that could possibly happen has lessened our game greatly.

Obviously, I disagree. And as I've stated, this stripping of abilities is selective to a few classes, when it could easily be applied to all of them if that give and take is that important to verisimilitude.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Stop pretending that "taking away your powers" is anything other than a punishment inflicted by the DM through literal divine intervention.

Natural consequences are things like picking up a reputation. Anything that takes divine intervention to change the current situation isn't natural. Now if someone were to have a hit squad from their church trying to arrest them that would be a natural consequence.

Ah yes "The Angry GM" who appears in that to never ever consider that the DM might not be right.

It is natural in a world where gods are real.

 

[tetrasodium]

You seem to believe that's enabling toxic players. I believe the alternative enables toxic DMing, which I believe you think is a toxic POV if I remember correctly. So toxic, toxic, toxic. Everything's toxic.



I think stripping class features from a PC for notions of story is a bad idea and setting or story logic does not change that. The setting and story logic can shift to not strip those abilities.

There is a gigantic difference between what you wrote "Obviously the simplest is just do away with the concept altogether" and what has been said by Crawford as well as printed in the new dmg where it explicitly says that the PC can't lose their powers, the post of mine that you quoted is talking about how that difference actively shields poor player behavior and undercuts the gm if they ever feel the need to speak up with warning or do something about said behavior

 

[TwoSix]

If it's one or the other, they aren't both 5e.

Tasha's had several class features that explicitly said you can use this feature OR the original feature; very few people consider Tasha's to not be 5e.

 

[Micah Sweet]

@TwoSix didn't say anything about choosing "to the PC's benefit". He talked about making the player happy or sad.

So long as the consequences of turning against their power source are known to the player prior to their choosing the class, there shouldn't be any problem regarding player happiness.

To date in my gaming history, there hasn't been.