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

[pemerton]

My concern is more for the new players who will see 5.5's dictates as the only way to play due to a lack of exposure to broader ideas.

So, you know how all those people back in the second half of the 1970s came up with different ways to play D&D, even though Gygax and Arneson only presented them with one way (hardcore dungeon crawling) - I'm sure that today's new players will be capable of doing the same thing!

In order to do that you have to be aware of other ways, and 5.5 isn't suggesting any.

But this obviously can't be true. It's refuted by what actually happened in the history of RPGing, where people invented stuff of their own.

 

[overgeeked]

Wow. Still going on this pointless tangent? Damn.

Back to the topic.

How does alignment changing work in the new DMG?

 

[pemerton]

I don't believe in changing the fiction to accommodate the mechanics.

Then play a game whose mechanics give the fiction you want. But WotC is not obliged to publish that game for you, any more than they are obliged to publish it for me or anyone else!

 

[pemerton]

If you're saying a spellcaster with no spells isn't a fundamental change, I don't know how to proceed.

They still have the same class label at the top of their PC sheet!

 

[pemerton]

I had a DM start a campaign on a different world (Mystara, but more of a janky Known World homebrew variant) before deciding to move his game back to his own personal homebrew world. At the time, he had two clerics in the game (myself and another player) and upon entering his world, we could no longer cast magic until we converted to one of HIS deities. (He was a fan of Dragonlance, so he copied the heathen priests rule). Neither of us wanted to change deities, so we were basically screwed. I'm pretty sure we both ended up rolling up new characters because of it.

The experience so soured our group to playing divine PC it was several years and a new player before we ever saw a cleric again.

I have to say, what I find striking about this anecdote is that you kept playing with that GM.

It's never gotten all the way to the point where a cleric has lost everything. Usually when the DM says "Your Deity would view this as an evil act or a chaotic act or whatever," the player turns back. They want to play a certain type of cleric which is why they chose cleric and often they just weren't thinking and where about to make a mistake in the eyes of their Deity.

See, I view this is a huge violation of the player's agency on par with 'your character wouldn't do that'.

The DM doesn't say "Your character doesn't do that." He is warning the player about knowledge the character has that the player may have forgotten but their character most certainly would not have. You might even say the God is in some kind of spiritual communication with the player. I don't stop anything. I warn from the Deities perspective. If you don't want a Deity involved don't play a DIVINE character.

But the deity has not independent perspective. They're just a bit of fiction being invented by the GM. So this is just the GM imposing their vision of the story onto the player. This is why I 100% agree with @Vaalingrade.

Clerics channel the powers of the God's. That power can be withheld if the Cleric works against the goals and desires of their God.

It's not about the DM at all. If the Player wants to spit at the feet of their God, they have the ability to do so. Player choice.

The players act, and the world reacts, as it should. Consequences come from the setting, not the DM.

[Ditto. There is no deity that has an independent nature and existence. They're a work of fiction!

Its narrative consequences from their deity, not a DM punishing their player. The mechanics follow the narrative. 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.

But how do we know they're an apostate? Again, this is just the GM making that up, over the top of the player's differing opinion.

QUOTE="mamba, post: 9498312, member: 7034611"]
I see it as giving them a reminder because players miss at least half of the hints, even if their characters wouldn’t
[/QUOTE]And we're back to the point about agency. If the game turns on players taking "hints" from the GM, because that's "what their characters would know/think", then what is the point of the players again? What's their contribution to play?

 

[Maxperson]

Whatever dude. I don't have time for semantic word games. Go play Riddles in the Dark with someone else.

Sure. Water is air, earth is wood, and up is down. The difference between the default rules and explicitly optional rules is meaningful, not riddles or word games.

 

[pemerton]

One thing I've done before when I've played a conflicted cleric is narrate the fails on their spell attack rolls, or when enemies made their save, as being the result of their wavering faith and the loss of connection to their god.

Well, last time I posted about this sort of thing in a thread, it caused a bit of a firestorm:

What had happened was that a cultists had hit the paladin of the Raven Queen with a Baleful Polymorph, turning the paladin into a frog until the end of the cultist's next turn. The players at the table didn't know how long this would last, although one (not the player of the paladin) was pretty confident that it wouldn't be that long, because the game doesn't have save-or-die.

Anyway, the end of the cultist's next turn duly came around, and I told the player of the paladin that he turned back to his normal form. He then took his turn, and made some threat or admonition against the cultist. The cultist responded with something to the effect of "You can't beat me - I turned you into a frog, after all!" The paladin's player had his PC retort "Ah, but the Raven Queen turned me back."

There we have an example of a player taking narrative control on the back of an NPC's mechanic that the player knew nothing of until encountering it in the course of actual play. And at least for me, as a GM, that is the player of the paladin playing his role. And driving the story forward. On the back of a so-called "dissociated" mechanic.

And you were there for it:

I would lay good money on the fact that several posters will have a visceral reaction against that anecdote.

 

[pemerton]

if they are worshipping a god of healing but start causing disease in local villages then I will be unhappy.

<snip>

This new rule seems meant to curb bad DMs but since it is only aimed at DMs, then it will be exploited by toxic players, in my opinion and experience.

Does that example you give come up often in your play?

Personally, it's not something I've ever seen.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yes, performing rituals, correctly, are often important as is sometimes flattery, cajoling. Yet, there are examples in some polytheistic cultures of deities punishing their priest/priestess by transforming him or her into monsters and/or not answering their prayers. Sometimes, the punishment has been for disrespecting the deity (even slightly) and sometimes for transgressions that were not the fault of the priest/priestess, but still offended the deity.

Gods punishing their followers because they are capricious bastards is probably not something you want to empower DMs to emulate!

The D&D alignment system pretty much kills this kind of religious dynamic if you apply it in the traditional fashion.

Maybe Moana should be taken as a model for D&D clerics, rather than some Christian crusader.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mod Note:

Y’all, this thread is currently #1 on the Report board, with more reported posts than anything we’ve seen in a while. It’s not even close. All kinds of bad behavior: name-calling, bad-faith arguments, etc., by a variety of posters.

I’m not in the mood to sort all of this mess out. Thread closed.