D&D General What's the DC for a fighter to heal their ally with a prayer?

[AnotherGuy]

Because I was imagining an action declaration - fighter prays to the gods to heal their friend who is injured and/or dying - and I conjectured a possible way of resolving that declaration. Given that prayer is a type of religious practice, Religion seemed like it might be the salient skill.

It appears to me that you are in agreement that the resource cost for a fighter stabilising their ally with the use of a medi-kit should be similar to the fighter praying to stabilise the same ally.
Do you imagine the success failure ratio to also be equitable between these two actions?

 

[Manbearcat]

Let me be more succinct.
Why did you use the words prays and Religion (check) in your OP?

I'm not @pemerton , but, while succinct, its not clear to me what you're trying to resolve with your question?

Pemerton (I have to assume) used prays because (a) "that is what is happening in the fiction" and (b) that triggers going to the adjudication procedures and mechanics to resolve the declared action (in this case Religion check)?

Something I threw into Discord yesterday that is relevant here (which dovetails with my checklist I listed above):

I hope we can all agree that when it comes to situation framing and action resolution adjudication and consequences, these are the inputs that govern GM decision-making (changing to some degree depending upon the game):

* game logic (consideration for compelling gameplay or game engine sensitivities)

* drama logic (intersecting with a particular character’s dramatic needs or the game’s overriding premise)

* genre tropes (the logic that intersects with theme and motif)

* internal causality (naturalistic extrapolation of physical cause & effect within the imagined space)

* social contract (whatever extra-game features that entails).


So the situation has already been framed (some kind of D&D, 4e or 5e, combat) and has evolved to a point where a PC is at 0 HP and/or making Death Saving Throws.

The player makes the improvised action outlined in the lead post "I pray to the gods to heal my friend" and provides whatever embelishment/extra details is required/asked of them.

So now the GM has to go through the checklist (or matrix as some will converge and conflict) to govern their decision-making. Mine would be as follows:

* Game Logic - It doesn't cause the game engine to buckle (quite the contrary in fact given how suboptimal this is for an Extra Attack Fighter) and it leads to compelling gameplay.

* Drama Logic - This is something that this player is signaling they care about. They care about the possible course(s) that this could lead to with respect to faith/bonds/apotheosis with respect to the characters involved here (their PC, the PC they're trying to save, the god/patron/whatever, those beholding the event) because (a) they're declaring it in the first place and (b) they're sacrificing gamestate advantage (possibly significant gamestate advantage) to do so. Lets discover where this goes.

* Genre Tropes - As I outlined above (in the post you xped), if this doesn't play to the romantic themes and motifs of a world shot through with miracles and desperate heroes finding hope/belief (or faltering) as they sacrifice for love/companions and rising and falling (physically, emotionally, ethically, and with respect to cosmological consequences) in the crucible of those precarious moments....then I don't know what does.

* Internal Causality - Again...world filled with miracles and magic in breadth and in potency. The idea that there has never been a (mundane) mother who has begged for the life of her dying child and had that answered (either overtly or indirectly) and legacy/apotheosis born out of such myth strikes me as an absurd contradiction and a brutally artificial and sterile world governed by the silly conventions of a TTRPG user interface meant to resolve play. So...yeah, I find this move MUST be on the table for such a world to be even remotely plausible from an internal causality perspective.

* Social Contract - Now this is table-specific stuff so I can't speak for other tables. But every 4e/5e D&D game I've run (and off-brand D&D like Dungeon World, Stonetop, 13th Age, and the brutally unforgiving Torchbearer) could functionally interact with and resolve this action declaration and it wouldn't cause a "stink-eye" at those tables I've GMed.

 

[FrozenNorth]

If we're doing to create rules, then it might be wise not to imbalance existing rules. Praying to have something outside of the regular abilties IS an ability, that clerics get at level 10, and it only happens if they only get 10% (level on a percentile dice). So, any stats that makes it easier than devoting 10 level to cleric and having a significant chance "walks on the feet" of a regular cleric, who forewent other cool abilities and chances to shine to get this particular one.

But is it really? This is the equivalent of a Stabilize check, not the equivalent of Divine Intervention.

Also, clerics are one of the most powerful base chassis for a class. Is it really an issue if they have to share a limited DI with other classes?

 

[AnotherGuy]

I'm not @pemerton , but, while succinct, its not clear to me what you're trying to resolve with your question?

The OP puts forth a course of action that typically doesn't have much measure of success in your traditional D&D play and then seems to agree that such a course of action should equate to nothing more than the cost of a healer's kit in resource cost. That goes against game logic in that there is a certain level of class protection otherwise why bother with classes right?

Players are always going to be advocating for their characters and their actions in constantly high-drama situations so the drama logic is a low bar, but I accept its inclusion.

Your internal causality features the example of a mundane mother begging for the life of her child, sure but she is not wilfully injecting her child into combat daily, having it knocked unconscious and knocking at death's door repeatedly while she continues to beg with an average chance of success. At a certain point a line must surely be drawn, right?

What am I trying to resolve you asked...
The resource cost, for a character of the "wrong-class" performing an action such as this should (and this is always my opinion) not generally be a "nothingburger", because if it is then you're opening up a possibility of exploitation (by the players) and secondly you're really edging the consequence of perma-death off the table which may hurt the social contract and possibly some of the other already mentioned inputs too.

I hope we can all agree that when it comes to situation framing and action resolution adjudication and consequences, these are the inputs that govern GM decision-making (changing to some degree depending upon the game):

* game logic (consideration for compelling gameplay or game engine sensitivities)

* drama logic (intersecting with a particular character’s dramatic needs or the game’s overriding premise)

* genre tropes (the logic that intersects with theme and motif)

* internal causality (naturalistic extrapolation of physical cause & effect within the imagined space)

* social contract (whatever extra-game features that entails).

Love this list by the way!

 

[FrozenNorth]

* Genre Tropes - As I outlined above (in the post you xped), if this doesn't play to the romantic themes and motifs of a world shot through with miracles and desperate heroes finding hope/belief (or faltering) as they sacrifice for love/companions and rising and falling (physically, emotionally, ethically, and with respect to cosmological consequences) in the crucible of those precarious moments....then I don't know what does.

Very small nitpick in an otherwise excellent post, but the question of genre tropes depends on the genre you are emulating. If you were playing Dragonlance during the War of the Lance, part of the genre is that the gods have abandoned Krynn, making invoking Religion less appropriate from a genre perspective, though still leaving others potential ways for a PC to intervene.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

But is it really? This is the equivalent of a Stabilize check, not the equivalent of Divine Intervention.

Depending on the duration of the prayer, it could be Raise Dead. A few rounds is short to pray, depending on religion. If the friend is just doing Death check, then it's easy. If he rolls over 10 three times before failing three time (DC 10), the god granted him life. Praised be the god.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I don't follow your post. Both @Manbearcat and @hawkeyefan have pointed out that, in 5e D&D, stabilising a dying character is not an outcome that is understood as player-side resource-intensive. (Contrast, say, raising the dead or building a palace.)

I made a post which set out the framework for thinking about the resource cost, in 4e D&D, of allowing a character to recover a healing surge's worth of hit points.

To me, it seems that an important part of adjudicating actions, in resource-heavy RPGs, is understanding the way that the action sits within the broader framework that relates resources to outcomes.

This is the original post-

The fighter's friend is hurt, even dying. The fighter prays to the gods to heal their friend. How is this action resolved? If it's a Religion or similar sort of check, what's the DC?

Note that you posted this without any explanation or listing of edition (but put it in D&D general), and 146 posts in, after most people have spend time explaining this from a 5e perspective, explained that this is actually about 4e. (There is a D&D 4e tag).

The reason you have received such disparate responses is because (a) this is essentially a question that doesn't need answering in 5e, and (b) any response regarding divine intervention necessarily requires more context given the nature of 5e.

Breaking those two things done-

A. As mentioned before, there is a difference between a passing familiarity with the rules of a game, and actually playing it. In 5e, for various reasons, and in almost all contexts,* there would never be a reason for a fighter to pray to stabilize. Because characters self-stabilize so easily (and a failure to do so takes so long), because actions are so precious (and it's almost always better to end the thread than to pray), and because there are so many different ways characters can stabilize without divine intervention, the actual hypothetical makes almost no sense in terms of 5e. There is no particular reason for this action to happen, there is no reason that a religion check (in RAW) would be used for divine intervention.

B. That said, some people attempted to answer anyway, thinking more in terms of "What does divine intervention mean within the rules?" Some editions of D&D have this codified - for example, in AD&D, 1e, there is a percentile chance for divine intervention within the DMG, because, um, Gygax. Generally, however, this isn't codified within the rules. For that reason, when thinking about "divine intervention" in terms of 5e, most people don't consider it in terms of resource management, but instead have to think about it in terms of the game itself (the particular fiction of the particular game, not 5e in general). It's like asking, "The moon looks like it is getting closer to the campaign world. The rogue tries to build a laser cannon to shoot down the moon. If it's an arcana (or similar) check, what's the DC?" There are a lot of ... campaign-specific things you kind of have to think about before answering that question, or even getting to issues or resource management.

As a general rule, while I understand that my own posts are very wordy, I have found it helpful to actually say what I am talking about, as opposed to posting some type of leading question in the hope of eliciting responses that let me post what I was really thinking later...

Put another way, what are you asking about in the OP-

1. How 4e does resource management? If so, maybe make that explicit. And make it a 4e thread.

2. How 4e does resource management ... in comparison to 5e? If so, then you might want to consider that this doesn't have a great history. I would suggest a Wisdom check prior to starting that type of thread.

3. The General Universal Theory of how, in resource-heavy RPGs, the resources relate to outcomes? If so, I suggest posting your theory instead of attempting the Socratic method.



*I am sure that there are campaigns with the "grimdark" settings turned up to 11, using optional slow natural healing, optional gritty realism, and other optional rules ... but then it's hard to have a general hypo.

 

[Imaro]

Depending on the duration of the prayer, it could be Raise Dead. A few rounds is short to pray, depending on religion. If the friend is just doing Death check, then it's easy. If he rolls over 10 three times before failing three time (DC 10), the god granted him life. Praised be the god.

Let's not forget... it's also the equivalent of casting healing word or cure light wound as well since the OP also specified the fighter also healing a hurt ally.

 

[Imaro]

Because you can't. The gods will not be used as tools. They are persons. How is that a difficult thing?

Yet we have a fighter doing just that...

Why would it be the case that this ever COULD be used constantly? Why would you LET it become an infinitely-repeatable "I win" button? Like...genuinely for real, you have more than enough power to ensure that it doesn't make sense for this to work beyond this first instance. You keep asserting that ti ABSOLUTELY HAS to establish an eternal, always-functional, zero-effort "I Win" button. That assertion is false, and without it, your entire argument collapses.

Why are we allowing it to be used right now? What makes this instance more viable/palatable/anything than when another character tries it? Why are we allowing one player to perform an improvised action and then deciding no one else can do it?

Don't permit exploitative play. If we are supposed to have such absolute trust and faith and reverence and awe and worship of the almighty, absolute-power, "my word is law" DM, why can't we ask for a little trust in the other direction? Why is it totally unacceptable to be even the tiniest bit distrustful of DM motivations, and yet not merely acceptable but REQUIRED that we must instantly assume the absolute dirt worst possibilities about player motivations?

IME players tend to advocate for themselves... you're giving them a tool (that could possibly save their lives and help in life or death situations) and then expecting them to choose not to use it. That's not a player who is untrustworthy... it's a player leveraging a tool the DM introduced.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Let's not forget... it's also the equivalent of casting healing word or cure light wound as well since the OP also specified the fighter also healing a hurt ally.

I think that the way to view it as a more general proposition would be this-

Class A want to use Enumerated Ability B from Class C.

A does not have B.

As a general proposition, how do you adjudicate that use case?


Now, you can scale it up or down (is it a level 1 ability, is it a level 20 ability, etc.). It's somewhat difficult in 5e because there are so many ways for A to get B (multiclass, feats, etc.) that when it comes to enumerated abilities, you can run into the "table fairness" chargen problem; if character can simply use B at any time without devoting chargen resources to it, then those people who are really into chargen begin to believe that there choices are rendered meaningless. It's one thing to "reskin" enumerated abilities; it's another to have people invoke them without having selected them.

At least for some people; it's the tension between enumerated rules and playing to the fiction.