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

[Neonchameleon]

What if the DM is new too. No one will know about any other to play, because the new books only give one choice as an example. It allows options but shows you none.

Do you actually have a 2024 DMG? Because it does show multiple options. For example it shows you how to create your own setting - and shows you Greyhawk as an example setting.

It doesn't show all possible options but to say it only gives one choice is simply false.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Its narrative consequences from their deity, not a DM punishing their player. If a character knowingly, continually, goes against their deity’s tenets, then they’re knowingly making a choice that will put them in disfavor. It makes zero sense that a god would keep granting an apostate their power.

That's only a problem in a cosmology where gods actively gives their powers each days to their clerics.

There are plenty of other cosmological setup where gods cannot remove the spells like they would turn off the tap and it's seems 5e24 is using one of those as a default, which you are more than welcome to change, mind you.

 

[tetrasodium]

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.

It's been brought up before by others... They are both relevant but (people in favor of the new wording?) keep dragging discussion back to claims of "punishing" clerics and taking away powers. I made a post earlier in the thread how it's important to have weight behind whomever is speaking up when a gm or player questions a cleric/paladin/warlock about to do something wildly out of step.

I see mechanically punishing a player for trying to make their character more interesting as inherently problematic.

If my cleric becomes an apostate, gets hunted down by inquisitors, and dies trying to fight them, no problem. That's awesome. There's nothing I love more in RP than my character going down in a blaze of glory for something meaningful.

Without the weight of risk there is nothing "interesting" being fleshed out, it's about as dramatic as describing a PC with new hair/scale /feather colors.

But they can still kick! And headbutt!

Also rising from the last war page 281. "Aboard a lightning train, a heroic monk, aided by her magical arm, strikes a member of the villainous emerald claw". There's a picture of a one armed gnome casting minor illusion or something similar elsewhere in the book too. Loss of limbs is not the biggest hurdle to overcome in a game with magical prosthetic limbs and spells like regeneration.

 

[TwoSix]

Of course you say that and you don't even caveat it with "for my style of game".

Because it isn't a question of "style of game". It's about choosing to embrace a particular detail of setting cosmology.

You can play a hard trad, setting first, no plot coupon game in a world where divine magic does not emanate completely and under the total control of the deities. You're choosing to make that one detail a pillar of your entire play.

And really, you're just using deity control over a cleric as a synecdoche for a play style where DMs can choose to invoke mechanical consequences for failing to meet a particular narrative conceit.

 

[Emerikol]

I think ultimately this is a debate between different styles of game. I will avoid Forge terminology but it applies.

I think it goes to the debate about whether in game PCs know about spell slots. It never occurred to me they didn't until someone here said their players did not.

 

[Neonchameleon]

If the cleric is standing in an anti-magic zone is the class fundamentally changed? At this moment in time, the cleric is unable to cast spells because in game their Deity won't give them the spells. Naturally, an all or nothing approach is a strawman most of the time. Typically the chastisement of their Deity is gradual as the class slips further into apostasy. The intent is restoration not destruction.

Is the cleric in an anti-magic zone or is the party? And is the anti-magic zone location based or does it move with them. Because these are very different situations.

When the party is in an anti-magic zone that's a challenge that everyone is facing together and that adds a twist on things where they have to work together and can't use their normal ties for a limited duration. And the generally less flexible characters get boosted - but two thirds of classes in 5e are spellcasters.

Meanwhile a persistent single character targeted anti-magic zone turns one character into The Load that the rest of the party has to escort. These are not equivalents.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Also, plain removal of character ability is pretty boring. Why not have the cleric hunted as heretic, not trusted by the small folk, having visitation from their God's agents, being tempted by another Power...you know something that would advance the character development instead of stopping it.

Yeah, this is the way. Which is more interesting, a Cleric who can't do anything until they atone or a Cleric who receives a visit from followers of their god to put the pressure on them?

It also opens up the possibility of having good PCs who are heretical followers of evil gods. For example, a follower of a god of imprisonment who uses that aspect of the god's portfolio to keep sealed evils stay bound and locked away.

 

[DEFCON 1]

What if the DM is new too. No one will know about any other to play, because the new books only give one choice as an example. It allows options but shows you none.

Then that comes down to just differing philosophical preferences.

I myself do not feel the need to help players who "just don't know any better". If the DM doesn't know of alternative ways of playing and the players do not know of alternative ways of playing, then they most likely will just play as the game is written. And I do not have an issue with that or find that to be a problem. The game works fine for new players. They can make do.

And I feel this way mainly because if this DM and table players decide at some point that they want something different than what is in the DMG... they can just go looking for alternatives themselves out there in Google Search Gameland and find many different possibilities, rather than rely on a singular variant rule they might get from the DMG had WotC printed any.

That's really my thing-- alternative rules in a DMG are going to be just as useless to a predominant number of tables as the new rule is going to be. So with the exception of that small handful of tables who might like that one alternative variant rule WotC could have included... most tables are going to end up going to Google Search Gameland anyway. So why get upset that we aren't helping that small handful when we couldn't care less about the other mass of the player base who isn't going to be helped by any variant rules? And on top of that... I think it is beneficial that these new DMs and players learn about what actually is out there in Google Search Gameland by having to so! There's so much awesome stuff out there to find that I think expecting them to go in that direction is in fact the better way to approach things.

If anyone needs a variant rule... they will find infinitely more and better rules via a Google Search than they would from a chapter devoted to it in the DMG.

(And before anyone asks "How will these players know to do a Google Search to find new rules?" Come on. Let's be serious. Let's have a little faith in the most obvious of choices we as humanity currently have to acquire new information.)

 

[mamba]

The only way I can make any sense of Dragonlance morality is with the assumption that Paladine is the Lawful Neutral God of Balance.

or there are multiple factions of gods that keep each other in balance

Even then how the heck did people not realise that the priests could no longer cast spells?

it was only a few days before the Cataclysm and many priests are not clerics to begin with, the rest found excuses to not cast any I assume

 

[TwoSix]

What if the DM is new too. No one will know about any other to play, because the new books only give one choice as an example. It allows options but shows you none.

If the "DM as divine magic spigot" fiction is as inherently obvious as you seem to feel, players and DMs won't need an option in the DMG to know to implement it.