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

[Emerikol]

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

We will just have to agree to disagree without more data.

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.

I'm not against setting group expections first. It's all super important. The thing is you can't really do "setting group expectations" until you understand the details of being a DM and making decisions about the game. But this is not a hill to die on.

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.

You are just assuming your entire view as a given. Yes if you combine spell casting with priestly ordination as a single event sure but I don't think most people would default to that thinking who are familiar with D&D.

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.

And yet not an apostate. I don't usually expect a paragon but I do expect NOT an apostate.

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.

That is the debate right? Is WOTC making good decisions here? I'm saying emphatically NO!

I think you way could be a campaign decision by the DM but I wouldn't see myself doing that every time. The default for me will be what it has been through the first 5 editions prior to 2024.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I would challenge those who want to strip abilities to broaden their viewpoint to the other classes, even if that means redefining the abilities of those classes. Rogues derive their abilities from their guild. Go against the guild, lose your abilities until you find a new guild. A samurai (fighter) defies his master, he is now a ronin and loses certain abilities - though maybe he gains something else for being a ronin. If you are committed to the fiction that PCs should lose abilities when they betray their ethos or Gods, then I submit that there are other areas where these same things can occur for other classes.

In other words, don't do it because D&D has always done it that way. If you want to embrace the fiction of characters losing abilities, realize that this is a game, and find a way to apply that same concept across all the classes.

I do it because because it makes sense to me from the perspectives of class fantasy and setting logic, as I've said many times. Those are the perspectives that matter most to me, and my players know this before the campaign begins.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If you look at real world polytheism, the god only cares that they get their sacrifice with the correct rituals. So long as you do that they dish out their power. They don't care what you do with it or how you act. the idea that gods care about morality and codes of behaviour is imposing a Christian idea on other religions where it does not belong. I think the baseline for D&D should be that the vast majority of religions are not pseudo-Christianity, and the gods (at least 99.9% of them) do not care how you act.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Then do that in your game. No one's stopping either of us particularly, because we know what we want. New players who only have the one option suggested in the 5.5 books do not.

Unless they play with a DM who will talk with them about the possibility of it being added.

Which is pretty much what we would want in this situation anyway, regardless of what the book did or did not say.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think the big point of contention is that it's a big mechanical consequence to a role-playing action. The character is now "not playable" until the DM decides penance is made.

I would say it would be better to either have a "fallen cleric" archetype or have the character be favored by a god covering their new disposition. Like the Mages in DL you switch your robe/moon, you don't lose all your powers.

This, a thousand times this. I have argued throughout in favour of changing subclasses. The fallen paladin changing to the Oath of Vengeance or Conquest or even just being disillusioned and heading into the Oath of Glory is a good consequence. It changes things and it doesn't cripple the character.

I really need to update my Ur-Priest Cleric subclass for the 2024 rules to be a cleric subclass with warlocky overtones for someone who has fallen out with their deity and is effectively stealing the power.

 

[Emerikol]

There's a huge difference here. A bounty gives you something to interact with. It leads to more interesting situations. Actively ripping away the class features prevents the character interacting with the world. It leads to a character that can't carry their weight.

I have advocated for consequences. In specific I've advocated throughout for changing subclasses - and I've advocated for orders of clerics policing their own. It's stripping away the abilities that's the problem.

So many of us have said over and over that there is a path to restoration. That in game the cleric will need to make some sort of atonement. We've also said that the "stripping away of powers" does not happen all at once in one fell swoop unless the offense is incredibly obviously against the God's core ethic and extreme in effect. When a cleric realizes he didn't receive one of his spells perhaps that alone will steer him back on course. The Deity wants the cleric back on course and not becoming a fighter.

And a tyrant DM will not limit themselves to clerics - but once you've got the idea that this is fine despite it being terrible religion and terrible storytelling and terrible DMing you may continue. Not all people who set off down the road of the tyrant DM get there. But the DMG should not point people down the tyrant path.

You just state these sorts of things to get people angry. It's your opinion and obviously you are getting buried in responses indicating your view is not the only one.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

With alignment I like to use the K.I.S.S(keep it simple stupid) philosophy. Adding in Meyers Briggs would overly complicate(at least for me) running the simple NPCs, and the important ones I've already detailed out things for.

 

[TwoSix]

So many of us have said over and over that there is a path to restoration. That in game the cleric will need to make some sort of atonement. We've also said that the "stripping away of powers" does not happen all at once in one fell swoop unless the offense is incredibly obviously against the God's core ethic and extreme in effect. When a cleric realizes he didn't receive one of his spells perhaps that alone will steer him back on course. The Deity wants the cleric back on course and not becoming a fighter.

But the goal isn't to make the character atone. The point you seem to be glossing over is that the player putting his character in this position is not making a mistake.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Tasha's is not a core rulebook. It is very explicitly a book of optional rules. It's the very first thing it says.

"Tasha's Cauldron of Everything offers a host of new options for DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, and our journey through those options is accompanied by the notes of the wizard Tasha."

Then after the introduction it's such an important thing to get across they give it a section of it's own called "It's All Optional"

"Everything in this book is optional. Each group, guided by the DM, decides which of these options, if any, to incorporate into a campaign. You can use some, all, or none of them. We encourage you to choose the ones that fit best with your campaign's story and with your group's style of play."

The core 5.5e books are not optional rules in the same sense as the Tasha rules. Can a DM decide which rules are going to be used from the 5e and 5.5e core books? Yes. Are they optional rules in the way Tasha's is? No. There's a difference between default core rules that you can decide to ignore or incorporate, and rules designed to be optional that are not used at all unless you opt in.

Particularly to the new players these books are written for, who don't know any other way.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If you inflict level loss, no player would willingly choose to take that action. To me, that's a failure.

Why not? The player in questions sounds like a serious role-player to me.