D&D 5E feeling dissatisfied - need some advice

[pukunui]

I think part of my problem is that I, as the DM, know the "truth" about the gods, and I think I'd rather that divine magic simply didn't exist ... and the easiest way to do that would be to ban clerics and paladins ... and the easiest way to do *that* would be to end this campaign and start a new one.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think part of my problem is that I, as the DM, know the "truth" about the gods, and I think I'd rather that divine magic simply didn't exist ... and the easiest way to do that would be to ban clerics and paladins ... and the easiest way to do *that* would be to end this campaign and start a new one.

Why are you committed to a "truth" that you dislike? Has the reality of that truth impacted play in any way yet that is visible to the players? If not, what's wrong with rewriting it?

 

[Shiroiken]

Issue 1 can be resolved in several fashions.
1) The patron is kidnapped or killed, and the PCs are seeking out the villain responsible
2) The patron suffers a reversal of fortunes and can longer support the PCs
3) The patron dies of natural causes, cutting the PCs loose (especially if the Patron's heirs are less interested)
4) The patron sends them off to various parts of the world for his interests. This is especially useful with Teleportation Circle.
5) The patron suddenly becomes the convert of the gods, claiming to have visions and dreams of the gods' will, which involve the PCs going out to spread the faith (useful for part 2). The actual level of conversion is up to you.
6) The patron reveals that he/she is actually the celestial servant of one of the distant gods, with goals/motivations that direct your story (especially nice if the patron is actually a devil/demon who is tricking the PCs).

As for your second concern, it's more of an interpretation than anything. The Clerics and Paladins (and possibly Druids and Rangers, if needed) consider themselves to be granted the power of their god. Everyone else, however, considers them to be just another type of magic-user, similar to Wizards, Bards, Sorcerers, etc. The "god" nonsense is just shrugged off or laughed at (this is something I did in a 4E Darksun game to our paladin).

I would limit the number of divine caster NPCs people run across as well. You might want to consider limiting future PC choices, but I wouldn't take away an existing character.

 

[pukunui]

[MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION]: It's hard for me to articulate. I was aiming for more of a Game of Thrones / Dragon Age feel for this campaign world, and having clerics and paladins running around using divine powers and holy magic kinda ruins that feel for me.

And yes, the truth of the gods' existence has come up in the game. For one thing, I mistakenly allowed the guy playing the cleric to make use of the Piety rule from the DMG. So he occasionally calls out to his god and gets a divine favor above and beyond the spells and class features.

He also also used revivify to bring someone back to life, and has in turn been brought back to life via raise dead by someone else - and despite my having said that true clerics were extremely rare, I allowed them to find one with a natural 20 on a roll and the expenditure of 1250 gp (the price of raise dead in an AL game, which this is not). This has also negatively impacted the feel I was going for, at least in my mind. It's made cheating death feel too easy. That being said, several PCs have also been reincarnated by some druid friends. I don't have any issues with that.

Of course, I've just had a look and bards can cast raise dead and resurrection and druids can cast true resurrection, so in terms of spells that can raise people from the dead, all I'd be getting rid of by banning clerics is revivify. Although, to be honest, bards being able to raise people from the dead seems kinda weird to me, now that I think about it ...

 

[Oofta]

For the setting, as others have said nuke the city. Or give them a reason to leave. That's easy.

Paladins get their power from their belief in their oath, in the conviction of their faith. The "divine" part of a paladin is just a label, so ignore it.

As far as the cleric goes, who says they're getting their power from a god? Or that gods are anything more than once-normal-mortals who long ago learned how to manipulate magic and channel it through fools who mistakenly worship them?

If you wanted a specific feel to the campaign, you needed to discuss it with the group ahead of time before the campaign started. It's your campaign and you can do what you want but changing the rules now would be kind of a dick move.

The question to ask, is what are you trying to achieve? Campaigns rarely develop the way I expect them to. The players are not characters in a novel you're writing. Even if you reboot the campaign there's a good chance it won't go the way you expect. I don't have HBO and I've never read the GOT books, but Dragon Age did have powerful supernatural beings. Whether you consider the supernatural beings gods even if your character's do is up to you.

 

[pukunui]

If you wanted a specific feel to the campaign, you needed to discuss it with the group ahead of time before the campaign started. It's your campaign and you can do what you want but changing the rules now would be kind of a dick move.

I did. It's through no one's fault but my own that I've let things drift away from that feel. I suppose you could call this quandary I'm having an attempt at a course correction.

The question to ask, is what are you trying to achieve? Campaigns rarely develop the way I expect them to. The players are not characters in a novel you're writing. Even if you reboot the campaign there's a good chance it won't go the way you expect.

I'm aware of that. I'm not trying to control every little thing as if I was writing a novel. I know that's not possible. It's just certain aspects of the campaign that I would like to change.

I don't have HBO and I've never read the GOT books, but Dragon Age did have powerful supernatural beings. Whether you consider the supernatural beings gods even if your character's do is up to you.

Yes, it does have powerful supernatural beings, but none of them grant divine powers. While there are plenty of priests, there are no clerics. Instead, you have mages who can heal. And templars aren't really like paladins. They get their powers from magic drugs and mostly use them to hunt mages and dampen magic and the like.

 

[Anakzar]

I was DM for a group after the old DM moved... and took over a group that had started with the starter set. It started out great and I had 3 months of fun. Then a few other people had to drop out and new folks joined. After a few weeks it was no longer fun. And when 2 of the new folks and one person that had been there from the start came to me and told me they were not happy with the Moon Druid's power level(I had a homebrew campaign, Spelljammer and had introduced some more powerful beasts). And wanted me to nerf the player's character... this after they had barely survived a fight against 5 Illithids where the moondruid spent most of the fight standing about doing nothing due to being mindblasted (beast int was very low).

My solution was to just cancel the whole campaign... I am not playing anything now. At least you have another game.

 

[ccs]

So you want to get rid of Divine magic....

Send your party on some dungeon adventure.
Have them get trapped in statis for a few hundred years. Or accidently time travel. Or shifted to an alternate version of the world. Etc.
Whatever the cause, when they get out, they'll discover that the world isn't quite the same as when they went into the dungeon.....
For starters, those channeling the divine are cut off. They can believe & pray & preach all they like, but there's no power being granted.
Why? What happened to the gods?
? Maybe your pantheons version of Ragnarok happened?
? Maybe the gods just finally lost interest in this world & moved on?
? Maybe some other faction took over/drove them out? You say your OK with druids. So what if the druidic patrons, fey, etc finally "won", forcing the other divine pantheon(s) out once and for all.

 

[MechaPilot]

So you want to get rid of Divine magic....

Send your party on some dungeon adventure.
Have them get trapped in statis for a few hundred years. Or accidently time travel. Or shifted to an alternate version of the world. Etc.
Whatever the cause, when they get out, they'll discover that the world isn't quite the same as when they went into the dungeon.....
For starters, those channeling the divine are cut off. They can believe & pray & preach all they like, but there's no power being granted.
Why? What happened to the gods?
? Maybe your pantheons version of Ragnarok happened?
? Maybe the gods just finally lost interest in this world & moved on?
? Maybe some other faction took over/drove them out? You say your OK with druids. So what if the druidic patrons, fey, etc finally "won", forcing the other divine pantheon(s) out once and for all.

Those are all fine story options, but what do you do with the characters who now have possibly several levels that are stripped of some or nearly all of their granted benefits? I think that's the crux of the difficulty of handling the god issue.

 

[Satyrn]

I was feeling similar to you, [MENTION=54629]pukunui[/MENTION], in my previous campaign. The details were different, of course, but I felt like my campaign had drifted too far away from what I wanted. I had let the thing become a meandering, incoherent mess. So I did indeed stop it.

I stopped it dead, too, 2 sessions after sweeping the party off to Ravenloft (using the original Strahd adventure. . . or was it 3e's. Huh. I don't remember), before they even got to the fortune teller. No closure to the campaign.

I didn't even give my players notice. I just told them at the start of the session I was stopping it, and starting a new one. They were cool with it and rolled up new characters.

Those new characters are now level 10 and we've all had fun, so I think I made a fine decision.