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

[mamba]

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

if the players attack the town guards and now there is a bounty on them, is that punishment for misbehaving or a natural consequence of their actions?

You can claim all you want that this is a DM being a tyrant, but it could just as well be a natural consequence of that player’s actions.

A tyrant DM will not limit themselves to clerics, so you ‘protecting’ clerics will not make any difference either way

 

[Maxperson]

I explicitly said that they could. And I have not heard anyone say they couldn't. It is not about punishment at all, it is about having the fiction to matter.

Yep. I have very, very rarely rarely had that happen in my games. It's only rare, though, because the players don't typically have their PCs abandon their god. The intense faith required to be granted spells by the PC's god doesn't often lend itself to doubt or at least enough doubt to abandon one and then acquire that level of faith in a different god. Occasionally, though, a player has that sort of arc planned out for their character.

 

[TwoSix]

I think players want the DMG to reflect how they want to play the game so that they do not have to houserule... as opposed to being the one who has to houserule to get the game to be the way they want it.

People still have this reflexive discomfort for houseruling. And it is this discomfort that WotC has been trying to break people of for years. But it's never worked-- if people can't get the book to be written in the manner they want... then it's WotC that has failed.

Needless to say... I do not share in this discomfort with houseruling. Printed rules and house rules are all the same to me.

Well, that and I think there's just some comfort from feeling like the conventional wisdom supports you.

Like, you can love a movie that nobody else does, but it's always nice when everyone agrees with you it was a great movie.

I'm not even buying the 2024 DMG, and I'm still pleased that my personal view of clerics is becoming the more mainstream one.

 

[Emerikol]

Same here. I keep alignment for 3 reasons. 1) It's still a decent aid to roleplaying for people new to the game. It gives them a something to grab onto and use for character motivations. 2) I still use it heavily when roleplaying monsters and unimportant NPCs. I don't have the time or energy to give every creature a detailed personality and background. 3) Tradition. My players like to write it down on their character sheets, but half the time I think they forget about it as well and just roleplay their characters.

Your original post was great and no arguments. I just wanted to comment here a bit off topic. I've often wondered if the alignment letters could be expanded just a bit to enhance NPC knowledge. LG-INTJ. make sense. (That is Meyers Briggs). Or something else like it. I'm not prescribing the answer just if the idea would be worth it.

 

[mamba]

So a god removing spellcasting from a cleric would not be a natural consequence in that narrative premise

yes, but in a different setting it could very well be a natural consequence, not sure why some people say the only way this can ever happen is by a DM run amok

 

[Micah Sweet]

Stop framing things as "punishment and reward" and start seeing things for what they are: Natural consequences that follows from players actions and choices within the narrative.

Here is an interesting article on this subject

Professor Angry’s Office Hours: You Ain’t a Behavioral Engineer

It’s time I have a little bit of an intervention because, frankly, some of y’all are starting to scare me with your approach to this whole True Campaign Managery thing.

theangrygm.com

Big fan of the Angry GM!

 

[Neonchameleon]

Good for you. And I mean it. But that doesn't mean I accept that bad DMs are as prevalent as bad players. I don't.

In my experience they are as prevalent in absolute numbers. Which makes them more prevalent overall. Way more prevalent.

Really, in my area I didn't see any difference. I ran one 4e campaign but everyone including me as DM hated it.

In mine I was at multiple tables with multiple active DMs. I mean we're talking tables of six with three active DMs and one not running a campaign. With me being the only overlap.

I think for my style and the traditional style of D&D that worldbuilding is an essential skill for a DM. A poor world almost guarantees failure in my style of gaming.

But that doesn't mean that it's the first thing DMs need to know about or where the DMG needs to start. Not ahead of e.g. setting group expectations. Which is in the first chapter of the new DMG. And the second chapter being creating a multiverse? That's just ridiculous.

Yes but you made up the idea that receiving spellcasting power was a sacrament. The fact is in most of D&Ds history you got your spells by praying day to day.

Becoming a cleric is the sacrament. You don't need to be in good standing to carry out clerical rites. And the god doesn't intervene in daily offices.

There is no such thing as a "fake" religious class in the way you are using it. My use was to point out that GIVEN there are active Deities in the world who give out spell power to their faithful. The normal result would be that power being withheld from those who are rebelling.

No it wouldn't unless the god is a micromanager. The clerics are clerics and have been invested through the sacraments that made them a cleric. The correct daily offices need to be carried out. But it is 100% established that it is no part of religion that the intermediary needs to be any sort of paragon.

This is all interesting in isolation and maybe a good option for a campaign but we aren't just sharing ideas on world building and cosmology building. We are talking about the default for a game as I described above.

And the default for a game is 100% clear. That Gods do not behave as you indicate. This is clear and explicit in 5e, even if this is a change from the 2007 situation. It makes for better storytelling and makes for better religion with the sacraments being sacramental and permanent and the daily offices only requiring someone qualified to carry them out - and not as if you're working in a corporate bureaucracy with the God as a micromanager looking over your shoulder.

 

[Belen]

I have a question for you - did 4e mysteriously ditch all the toxic players because they were on the anti-4e side of the edition war or were there simply more DMs for 4e because it was a better game to run? Because 4e was not short of DMs. (And neither IME was 1e)

I do not want to edition war. 4e was designed in such a way as to make it easy to run a standard D&D game. It made bad GMs medicore although harder, but not impossible, for good DMs to shine. It basically said "this is the way you play and run D&D. This is the default experience."

I had a friend who ran 4e because the rules were so rigid in his opinion that it allowed him to DM because he could just follow the path.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I don't believe in changing the fiction to accommodate the mechanics.

 

[Emerikol]

I'm not even buying the 2024 DMG, and I'm still pleased that my personal view of clerics is becoming the more mainstream one.

I think this is 99% of it if not 100%. I have zero qualms houseruling. I'm at the write the whole darn game myself stage. I just don't care. I do though think the play experience is being ruined in later iterations of D&D but it started in 3e and has only gotten worse. Nothing bad ever happens to the PC mechanically. We've lost level drain, aging from magic, etc.. and I don't agree that WOTC is changing to meet player demand. I think WOTC is making a game and establishing what most of the drones will accept. and 65% of the gamer base is that way.

So yeah I'm sad that the D&D I experienced and loved is all but lost to the modern crowd. The current game is a lot less fun even if far more streamlined.