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

[Xenolith234]

A deity sanctions their clerics’ actions with the gift of power, and knowledge that the cleric is spreading their message throughout the populace. If the cleric then begins to act counter to that message (particularly strongly and repeatedly), and counter to their deity’s desires, it makes zero sense that the deity would continue to sanction those actions and gift them power. It’s not something that would happen lightly for random events, but if your deity is the god of life and healing, and you torture a person for days before killing them in the slowest method possible? Yeah, I’m thinking the deity would revoke powers and have a stern conversation with their cleric. I’m not saying the DM is having the stern conversation or going on a power trip, but within the setting, yeah. It only makes sense. They wouldn’t continue to grant their power and have people misattribute the cleric’s actions to that deity’s message.

 

[TwoSix]

That is the point though. Those classes belong to the Deities faction. They are ambassadors and representatives of the Deity. Of course they are "chastized" by the Deity when they do wrong. I don't see anything but the most extreme bad actions leading to a permanent loss of ability. But there are a lot of intervening actions that can happen. First the cleric is likely warned when on the brink of committing the act. As DM, I tell them they are having qualms per their faith doing X or Y.

So, real talk. If you had a player playing a cleric who decided to start violating their tenets, and the player explained that their character was having a crisis of faith and no longer believed in their deity, what would you do?

Let's take good and evil out of it. Let's say they were a cleric of LN god of justice, but the character decided his god's punishments were too harsh and instead chose to show criminals mercy. How would you handle that character arc in-game?

 

[mamba]

Have to agree with this. Changing NPCs' personalities to support a narrative is blatant cheating in my book.

changing the personality after it has been established at the table would be, but delaying a firm / more fleshed out personality until the NPC has interacted with the characters and adjusting the original rough sketch of the NPC based on those interactions imo is not

It’s about being consistent during the game, not about having been written in stone before the game started

 

[Micah Sweet]

Ultimately, the point is the concept exists in fantasy where the servant/follower of a god or powerful being continues to have his power after he has turned his back on his god / master.

More to the point, I have yet to hear anyone state that if their Paladin player or Cleric player stopped following their god or ethos, they'd allow them to take another god instead, and continue getting their powers from THAT god. Instead, the punishment appears to be the point. The removal of class abilities. The DM's story must override the fact that the players are playing a game and are having their abilities removed versus other players who have no similar restriction.

I would absolutely allow such a PC to begin following another god. Same thing with warlocks (something like this happened in season 2 of Critical Role I believe). It's not really about the punishment. It's about setting logic. Why would a god or patron continue to provide power to someone if they're not doing what they want?

To me it seems clear that these ideas were changed not for any change in fiction, but simply because players don't want their PCs to lose their superpowers, whether they follow the tenets of their faith or not. In other words,, player entitlement. The rules trump the fiction.

That's not how I play.

 

[Emerikol]

But I don't want there to be consequences to turning.

If you introduce a mechanic that punishes characters from changing due to campaign events, then you have characters that are much more likely to end up static, and I don't want that.

I want clerics who have crises of faith.

I want paladins who are tempted to break their Oath (and sometimes follow through!)

I want warlocks who challenge and rebel against their patrons.

That breeds conflict, and I want my games to have tons of player-introduced conflict. That's where the game shines.

But the conflict is heightened when they do it and lose some powers. They then have to atone or follow another God. All of that requires some character suffering which is the stuff of great stories. Nothing happening is boring.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But I don't want there to be consequences to turning.

If you introduce a mechanic that punishes characters from changing due to campaign events, then you have characters that are much more likely to end up static, and I don't want that.

I want clerics who have crises of faith.

I want paladins who are tempted to break their Oath (and sometimes follow through!)

I want warlocks who challenge and rebel against their patrons.

That breeds conflict, and I want my games to have tons of player-introduced conflict. That's where the game shines.

That is cool stuff, nothing against it. But it is a big deal for the character, and I want the mechanics to reflect that. If you have a crisis of faith and forsake your god, then I think that can and should be reflected on the mechanics of the character too.
I wan the mechanics to represent the fiction, not to be a disconnected afterthought.

 

[Remathilis]

Right, there used to be an entire ecosystem around these ideas, but now people are picking and choosing what to bring forward into the new editions of the game. Stripping class abilities is a holdover from 1e/2e days, and it's time to put that to rest.

It's important to remember that every class other than fighter had a "**** you" built into the class especially for the DM Mrs with them. It was typically either failing to play your alignment, an ethos or oath, limitations on gear, ritual combat/taking out a higher level NPC, or often multiple ones. The only class you could not have your power either removed or your ability to advance in was fighter, and that was because fighter was the weakest classes when it came to features. Yet I'm not hearing clamour for the return of druids or monks having to fight ritual combat to level or paladins and rangers having to give up excess treasure or barbarians and bard no longer being able to level if they become lawful.

 

[Emerikol]

So, real talk. If you had a player playing a cleric who decided to start violating their tenets, and the player explained that their character was having a crisis of faith and no longer believed in their deity, what would you do?

Let's take good and evil out of it. Let's say they were a cleric of LN god of justice, but the character decided his god's punishments were too harsh and instead chose to show criminals mercy. How would you handle that character arc in-game?

Well if he were truly going against his God's tenants, then this is how it would go...
1. When he is about to give mercy, the DM reminds him this is not the will of his God.
2. When he does it anyway, for one such infraction, then perhaps some minor penalty occurs like the loss of a spell.
3. If he continues to drift away from his God, he will eventually be powerless.
4. If at some point along the way, even in fact at the point he is powerless, the player can atone but in the case of this Deity that may not be an option.
5. The character then chooses to switch to another Deity. He suffers some more severe penalty like a level loss. But then with some in game roleplay he becomes a priest of the new Deity. Hopefully the new Deity is a better fit for the character. The player I assume has chosen to put his character into a crisis of faith.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Thanks to the ill-thought out rules of clerics and alignment, it's impossible for the pope to actually be the anti-pope unless his god and literally every other cleric is also secretly evil.

Dragonlance argues against this. By the time of the Cataclysm, all clerics who actually held faith (and thus kept their powers; they made the connection), were gone. Those who remained were members of the clergy but no longer had cleric powers. In the case of the Kingpriest himself the gods went with the series of divine warnings method in an attempt to turn him from his path.

 

[Vaalingrade]

But the conflict is heightened when they do it and lose some powers. They then have to atone or follow another God. All of that requires some character suffering which is the stuff of great stories. Nothing happening is boring.

The issue with power outages from a story perspective is you can never be wrong and not know it.

Take Claude Frolo from Hunchback. He thinks he's a worldy man of God, but he's not and that's where the character richness comes from. It'd be a whole different story if he started shooting blanks and knows god's upset with his actions.