House Rule: Praying for a re-roll

[TerraDave]

Divine Intervention: Up to once per day, you may reroll any d20 result if your character makes an appropriate prayer to a god or incarnate (and hasn’t hurt their karma too much by flouting the Eight Laws). You receive a +1 on the second roll, but must keep that result. If you roll a 20, something bigger may happen.

Rational: This has emerged from a few house rules I have used. It lets someone reroll when they miss that key (death) save or miss with that enounter or daily that they really didn't want to miss with, but as a daily it still doesn't crowd out other reroll abilities or powers. And it also gets the players a little more into my homebrew and gets them calling on the shining scales of Bahumet and that sort of thing. Oh, and it also opens the door to something resembling more authentic interventions.

Let me know what you think.

 

[Stalker0]

Seems a fine way to give the players just a little boost when they really need it, and easy to implement into any game.

 

[Mengu]

I might do this some days. It devalues other rerolls a bit, so I'm not sure I'd use it as a regular rule. There are utility powers that do almost exactly this except the +1 (like Dark One's Own Luck). It's pretty powerful.

I can see maybe 1 party reroll a day as a better compromise.

In different days/encounters I tend to have different benefits. Some days you wake up with an extra healing surge (usually a sign of difficulties to come). For one of the next encounters coming up, everyone gets to tell a monster to reroll the first hit against them (they will be fighting around some sentient terrain that helps them). I like such divine or environmental benefits, but I feel some infrequency makes them more special.

 

[TerraDave]

I agree, 1 per day is a bit often, and it does step on the toes of the other powers a bit.

Maybe 1 per level with a +2 bonus?

 

[Cute-Hydra]

Not sure, I know entirely the moment which warrants this. And no DM wan'ts the awkwardness of dead players on his hands. But I feel that a re-roll against death gives the wrong impression as it tells your players I won't let you die. While, a good DM should not kill players whenever possible, I feel that a die roll doesn't solve that problem, of 'at the end of the day, a player death is an inconvenience to the progression of the story/campaign'

To this end, at least with damage you can fudge the number's not to kill players if they are on low life. I am sure all DM's have said the monster did less damage than it should have if the recipient was on really low life. But save vs. death or attacks that auto-kill, should be avoided in the main, because while they are a true part of the D&D experience, are they really fun.

As for missing with dailies, it happens to everyone doesn't it and most dailies have a miss effect anyway. Sure, if the solo boss is rampaging through the group and the party needs to take it down fast but one attack is unlikely to make or break an encounter.

Cute-Hydra

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

As mentioned above, there are other powers that do pretty much the same thing... so my feeling falls along the lines of Divine Intervention should be a bit more than, say, Dark One's Own Luck...


The house rule I have had for this sort of thing since 1e is very simple.. any character can pray for divine intervention from thier chosen diety as a daily power. They roll percentile and if they get under thier Divine class level, the god will answer. If they roll a '01' and are a pure divine class, an Avatar shows up to answer....

Out of combat this has resulted in resurrections, remove diseases, and very detailed augeries.
It has also regularly resulted in no answer, and once resulted in a temporary stripping of the Clerics power for wasting the Diety's time..


It also resulted in a very memorable end to a fight between a Paladin and a Lich, the only in-combat use the HR has seen.

 

[ourchair]

I like it.

What examples of "something bigger happens" do you have?

 

[TerraDave]

The sort of stuff screwhead was mentioning, an angel shows up on behalf of the party...a divine darkness falls allowing the players to escape, a down pc gets up again, locust swarm,...though I would have to be carefull, as a daily for all players, this would maybe happen a little to often.

Screwhead also points to something else, the divine fumble.

 

[TerraDave]

Not sure, I know entirely the moment which warrants this. And no DM wan'ts the awkwardness of dead players on his hands..... To this end, at least with damage you can fudge the number's not to kill players if they are on low life.

Obviously we don't quite agree. I prefer to have "fudge" mechanics that don't require me to fudge. As for dailies (or encounters or recharges for that matter) I would like them to connect a little more often. This is a simple way to do that.