D&D General If faith in yourself is enough to get power, do we need Wizards and Warlocks etc?

[Micah Sweet]

Conversely:

DMs getting to pull the plug whenever they want are wanting to have total control with no responsibility. Gods that can toy with mortals at their leisure.

Two can play at this game.

You can look at from either side, sure. I like it on my side, where DMs work hard at creating a world and deserve respect.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure, but 99.9% of the playerbase has never even heard a whisper of this site, or Level Up.

Holding back the ocean my man.

I learned to swim a while back.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You can look at from either side, sure. I like it on my side, where DMs work hard at creating a world and deserve respect.

Respect is not mandatory; it is earned. You earn that respect by actually doing the work required to justify your worldbuilding. Giving teeth to the charge of heresy, rather than inventing an instantaneous "I just win" button you can press whenever you feel like.

Choosing to sit behind the DM screen is not a a magic ticket to instant respect. You have to prove to your players why they should respect you first.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Respect is not mandatory; it is earned. You earn that respect by actually doing the work required to justify your worldbuilding. Giving teeth to the charge of heresy, rather than inventing an instantaneous "I just win" button you can press whenever you feel like.

Choosing to sit behind the DM screen is not a a magic ticket to instant respect. You have to prove to your players why they should respect you first.

I agree. I do a lot of work to justify my worldbuilding, and gods aren't locked in to a contract regardless of what their clerics do. You can still have a schism or heresy, its just doctrinal as opposed to divine. Who says there aren't multiple ways a god will accept worship? The mortals in question, however, may not agree.

 

[Scribe]

I learned to swim a while back.

Yes, great. However you are not in a pool. Not even a theme park.

You are in the middle of the Pacific. The ocean is unaware. The ocean doesn't care.

The playerbase as a majority doesn't think of any of this.

 

[Maxperson]

I assume that this is why, but to me it makes the class incoherent (and the others too, if you think it through, hence the thread title)

To me this is something for the table to figure out, if they do not want gods at all, not an out the book should build in

Yep. I play wizards even though I actively believe magic does not exist here in the real world. I play clerics(one of my favorite classes) who worship gods, even though I believe that there is only one God here in the real world. The game isn't reality. You aren't worshipping a god or believing god(s) exist just because the cleric class requires a deity and/or religion.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes, great. However you are not in a pool. Not even a theme park.

You are in the middle of the Pacific. The ocean is unaware. The ocean doesn't care.

The playerbase as a majority doesn't think of any of this.

Their loss. There's a lot of great stuff out there, and I don't see any reason to concern myself with the majority beyond trying to champion alternatives.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I agree. I do a lot of work to justify my worldbuilding, and gods aren't locked in to a contract regardless of what their clerics do. You can still have a schism or heresy, its just doctrinal as opposed to divine. Who says there aren't multiple ways a god will accept worship? The mortals in question, however, may not agree.

If someone betrays Athea, the goddess of nonbelief, she instantly robs them of any powers they might have--and she knows, instantaneously, of the betrayal, so there is zero time between "someone has broken faith with me" and "I have shut down all troublemakers." That is literally the text of the rules in 3e.

You cannot have, for example, a disagreement about whether Bahamut prefers law over good or good over law. He will instantly know what the disagreement is, and he will assuredly have a position, and declare at least one of the factions in error. Any such persons will instantly be stripped of any and all powers derived from him, for exactly as long as they remain in error. He can, of course, change his mind at any time, but presumably he would wait until the moment they have shown true contrition (which, again, he can instantly know because of how 3e divinity works), and then the power instantly comes back on again.

There can be no possibility of a genuine doctrinal disagreement, because anyone who actually strays is instantly depowered, and losing your powers is a pretty flippin obvious reason for people to decide you're dead wrong.

You can't have secret traitors pretending to be faithful. You can't have honest-mistake zealots believing that they're doing the right thing while actually committing horrible evils. You can't even really have heterodoxy, because the deity herself can simply pop in and clarify exactly what they want, and anyone who continues to disobey, well, they were told what was correct, time to cut them off from the divine credit card.

 

[Maxperson]

aha! That's another reason some players want to believe in a vague principle vs a deity - to deny the DM's capacity to have the Deity have some control/influence over the behavior of their PC.

Or perhaps don't pick a deity whose tenets you aren't willing to have your PC follow.

 

[Maxperson]

This is what I have a hard time understanding. There are an essentially infinite number of narratives that would justify an armored character who focuses on healing and support magic and can repel undead creatures. The PHB lore is a great source of inspiration, but saying that those mechanics can only ever be tied to a divine narrative seems like a massive and unnecessary limitation on what the game can be.

Right, but that's not what a cleric is. Rather than taking away the class identity of clerics, create a new class with a new identity that fulfills the role you envision there.