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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 9369301" data-attributes="member: 6801228">SO the game, written by Gygax, is what they need to reference to decide if what they did was good or evil. Because if the game says it is evil... hmm, if it is the player's decision the entire time, why does it matter what the rules say? Why would they even need to reference or compare their actions to those rules?Sure, it isn't the only way, but 99.9999% of the time, the DM decides what NPCs do, not the Players. There is even a song about, quite good, called "Literally everyone else in the world" because that is what the DM traditionally is.... literally everyone that isn't the PC.Because meta-control of the narrative doesn't prevent random chance. Random suitors showing up because I have an ability that says random suitors might show up is perfectly fine. Declaring that the omnicsicient plan for the universe from the beginnning of time stated that those exact suitors would show up at that exact time, as planned in the perfect Divine Plan.... doesn't work. You seem to think I have an issue with changes or declaring fiction in general. I don't. It is specifically Providence. It is specifically the idea of an unchanging, unalterable Divine Plan. As was what many of the writers of those mediveal chivalric tales wrote. They did not write that the stone tomb in Dolorous Gard shifted to bear the name of Lancelot, when the fort was built, a man chiseled Lancelot's name into stone, because he was the only one who would ever conquer it and Lancelot could never have been buried anywhere else in all the world, because he was fated to be buried in that tomb. That level of immutablilty CANNOT happen when the actions, lives, and deaths of the characters rely on dice rolls. Sure, you can look at history and declare it Fate, and plenty of people have done so. I'm sure Cortes said that he was destined to conquer the Aztec, and Alexander the Great said he was destined to conquer all of Greece, and ect ect ect. But looking at what has already happened, and saying "those events were part of an immutable Divine Plan that has been in place since the birth of time" while rolling dice to see what happens next makes no sense to me.And since I can read the ability, and it doesn't have a special clause for the most powerful adherent of the Raven Queen... I'm confident he is not. Just like I am confident that the Raven Queen didn't determine the radius of the Fireball spell, or the DC of Night Tears. The Raven Queen did not lay out the laws of the Multiverse, nor determine exactly how all spells would work, and certainly didn't do so to create this specific set of magic to protect this specific paladin. If it was a saving throw the paladin had to make, and they wanted to declare that that was because of the Raven Queen, I'd be less frustrated with the example, because maybe she did give him a little nudge. But it isn't even a roll, it is just a brute fact of spell duration. And, just to get this point out of the way, if the Raven Queen is helping on all of the Paladin's saves, why does he fail some? The answer is not, because the Raven Queen determined his faith was insufficient and decided not to aid him, at least, not to my mind. The answer is because an opposing force was more powerful than her aid this time. Because the Raven Queen is not omniscient, nor omnipotent. She is opposed, her champion is opposed, and those who oppose her are largely her equals. Which, again, does not fit the mold of the Providence. Providence does not leave room for the uncertainty that evil might win, because Good is equally matched. Providence states that victory for Good is inevitable, because Evil stands no chance against the power of Good. So even "all of my saves are because my god is backing me" is not Providence to my mind, because Providence is that you are part of a perfect, immutable Divine Plan, not just that you have god juice in the tank.I disagree. The cause of the fear from the Fear spell is the caster of the Fear spell. It cannot be the funny shaped rock behind the caster who cast the Fear spell. Effects have origins, you cannot just alter those origins without altering the effect. The duration of the Fear spell is also spelled out. You may as well say that gravity only works when the players agree to the fiction, and they can just declare gravity doesn't work for no reason just to bypass hazards and traps. Yes, agreement is needed, because you may have strange effects and bizarre origins for things, but the rules text lays out the rules of the reality of the game world, as best it can. Getting bit by a snake, saving against the poison, then declaring it is because your goddess made you immune to all poisons this day because of your divine destiny would instantly fall apart if the next time you got bit by that same snake, you failed the save.It is the same action. It is looking at an event, which we can source the origin of, and making up a claim of Divine Fate to cover it. You say you are authoring fiction, but you didn't author the ability that would end after a single round. The game did. Just like that man didn't create the cloud, the weather did.Yes, there is. There is the fact that you cannot have an immutable Divine Plan set forth then randomly determine the events of the story. I don't know exactly how Chosen by Destiny works, but if you are Chosen by Destiny to be the one who slays the evil wizard, and you die before you can do that... then there was no Providence. There was no Divine Destiny that cannot be escaped. Because you died and did not slay the Evil Wizard. Now, if you want to say "I am destined to do... something!" and then play off every event as being destiny, okay fine, but you have created such a vague sense of what "destiny" is in that case, that it is no longer Providence. Because it could be literally anything or nothing.  Yes, I could. Because the mechanics of the event are the exact same. The duration of the spell expired, and the Paladin declared something unrelated as the reason. The fact that your Paladin had faith it was the Raven Queen because he is a servant of the Raven queen is no more salient than it would be if an archer rolled a critical hit and the Paladin declared it was because the Raven Queen wished to punish him. All you are doing is a post-hoc explanation that fits into the mold your paladin wants it to fit into. There is no change in the actions, the source, the origin, and the NPCs don't even need to act. The explanation only appears to hold meaning, because your character is religious. You could declare that "because I have faith" is why a shield gives +2 AC. It has nothing to do with faith, it is mechanics.</blockquote>

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