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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jsaving" data-source="post: 6320054" data-attributes="member: 16726">Whenever people design characters, they have a backstory in mind with ongoing attachments that provide a mix of costs and benefits to the character.  If my character served in Cormyr's army, for example, he may have contacts within it that can provide useful information or equipment from time to time but with the offsetting cost that enemy nations may view him more negatively because of his service.  Or if my character pledges allegiance to a king, the king provides many in-game benefits including resources and access but those resources can be turned the other way, and my character hunted, if he breaks his allegiance.But what we're talking about here is something different.  Rather than providing something above and beyond the power listed on a character sheet, the benefit being provided by a deity in D&D is his basic class features, and the threat is that some or all of those class features will be taken away if he doesn't do what the DM claims his deity would want.  Losing "extras" like access to free healing at temples is one thing, and is comparable to what other characters face when they form and then break allegiances or affiliations.  Losing your class features is something else.I think part of this comes from a belief that if RL deities hear all and see all, the same must be true in a campaign, so that a deity would automatically know what each follower is doing/thinking and would "obviously" take away the class features of somebody who's falling down on the job.  But this isn't at all obvious in most campaigns.  And even if it were, do you really want to get in a situation where the DM is constantly telling the player what his deity would want him to do, with the implied threat that he'll fall if he goes a different way?  Which is not to say that completely "eliminating" the possibility of a conflict with one's deity or earthly hierarchy is a good idea -- there's plenty of opportunity for good role-playing there.  But I agree with those who are saying it isn't reasonable to have a special class-feature-removing hammer floating above the heads of divinely powered characters alone.</blockquote>

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