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

[Voadam]

EDIT: @Voadam, I think the above also responds to your post. 4e Religion skill does include knowledge of gods and of ceremonies, and under "Improvising with Religion" (RC p 152) includes "Preside over a known religious ceremony (moderate DC)". Presumably in the world of D&D religious ceremonies produce discernible supernatural effects! And of course the whole point of those improvisation lists is that they are suggestive, not prescriptive.

I'd say it is a DM judgment call whether religious ceremonies, on their own and done by anyone, can produce discernible supernatural effects. The examples @Manbearcat cited above of religious ceremonies having supernatural effects are all discrete powers or applicable in specific contexts. Everybody can perform religious ceremonies. Whether everybody can perform religious ceremonies that produce supernatural effects seems like something that would be campaign specific.

I would be completely comfortable in a 4e context saying that arcana is different from religion in effecting magical outcomes.

It is also open enough for a DM to interpret it as religion works for divine magic manipulation.

 

[pemerton]

I'd say it is a DM judgment call whether religious ceremonies, on their own and done by anyone, can produce discernible supernatural effects.

Divine Power says a bit about "folk" religious practices on pp 39 and 143. I think that the default orientation of 4e is that the gods are active in the world, and that prayers to them matter.

Obviously in Dark Sun, or a Conan-esque game, it would be different; but then in such a game I don't think the action declaration in the OP would come up.

 

[Voadam]

1) Hit Points in 4e represent "resolve" among other things. They aren't meat points (nor have they ever been). We know that from dozens of sources. Further, the Religion Skill cites "soothing grief and panic" as but one example of an improvised use. That is "restoring resolve."

This seems quite a jump. You could use this as a justification, but that is quite a stretch.

2) Religion is the keying skill for Rituals to employ this magic. This is important because (a) you don't have to have Divine keywords to "have the gods hear your pleas and answer them (with all sorts of benedictions and ceremony from the relatively mundane like purification to the sublime like demanding immediate audience and having questions answered with a cosmological power)" and (b) Religion is clearly the skill this keys off of. A Fighter can take Ritualist, pay the cost, make the check and they get the benefit.

"for rituals" seems to be a specific subset of trained magic users, not anybody. This seems to be magic that uses a skill rather than a justification for skills doing magic.

3) A Fighter can also take any of the following Religion Skill Powers that do not have the Divine keyword yet clearly invoke divine intercession via mundane (none of these are magic) pleas to gods/belief/hope in some kind of metaphysical aid that are answered:

Faith Healing Religion Utility 2
Your prayers help an ally recover from injury.
Daily ✦ Healing
Standard Action Melee touch
Target: One creature
Effect: The target can spend a healing surge.

Deliverance of Faith Religion Utility 6​

You give of yourself in the belief that somewhere, something will give a little back.
Encounter
Minor Action Personal
Effect: You spend a healing surge but regain no hit points. You gain temporary hit points equal to your healing surge value.

Conviction Religion Utility 10​

You whisper a prayer for aid to overcome hardship.
Encounter
Minor Action Personal
Effect: You gain a +5 bonus to the next saving throw you make before the start of your next turn.

Recitation Religion Utility 10​

You echo your allies' prayers to give them strength.
Daily ✦ Zone
Minor Action Close burst 1
Effect: The burst creates a zone that lasts until the end of your next turn. When you move, the zone moves with you, remaining centered on you. While within the zone, your allies gain a +1 power bonus to attack rolls.
Sustain Minor: The zone persists.

Powers that specific characters have that others do not, do not seem to be strong justification for granting non-powered prayer that anybody can do the ability to effect supernatural benefits.

Warlords can do inspiring word to heal without the divine keyword. Fighters do not have that on their power list.

4) A Fighter can take a Character Theme, a Paragon Path, or an Epic Destiny that does the same as above (invokes religious themes with answered prayers and healing/bulwarking but without the Divine Keyword, so mundane prayer, therefore signifying that this character is not a de facto agent of divine sponsorship).

Again, powers that a character can take to effect these benefits. I would not say that abilities granted by a theme, a path, or a destiny are just mundane prayers. Anybody can do a mundane prayer.

5) The game, at every opportunity, tells the GM to be permissive and gives them an extreme amount of guidance on how to resolve both in-combat stunts using specific skills (like Religion) via DCs/Damage Expressions/Tier-based effects/Costs for failed checks as well as how to resolve Skill Challenge action declarations (like praying for intercession through the use of Religion). Dungeon Magazine has actual examples of this usage in their adventures.

The examples and guidance I have seen for religion are all knowledge type things, but I have not read through a lot of 4e adventures.

6) Actual DDI Dungeon Magazine adventures show tons of improvised uses of ceremony and invocation of faith/belief-infused prowess like the below:

Could you cite issue numbers? I have the range of dungeons from when I had DDI, and I have the PDFs, but I do not have an easy way to zoom in on these examples throughout the range of 4e dungeons. I would be interested to see the context of these.

Religion (Medium DC 16):
By performing the rites that were never received by those who suffered here, the character allows the restless spirits to gain a semblance of peace and end the hatred and fear that powers this place.

For example, I can't tell from this whether it is intended to be specific to these spirits, or an example of a general religion use, though my gut would be spirit specific. Tons of D&D spirits have specific conditions to put them to rest from perform rites over their remains, to hunt down their killer, to return the item they stole, to bring their bones back to their home.

7) Terrain Powers and Traps/Hazards in the books explicitly call out the usage of Religion as Countermeasures/Triggering Skills (like so):

Lightning Pillar Strike At-Will Terrain​

At your command, lightning lashes out from an ancient stone monolith.
Standard Action
Requirement: You must be within 5 squares of a lightning pillar.
Check: Arcana, Nature, or Religion check (hard DC) to trigger the pillar's attack.

This seems fairly pillar specific.

 

[Voadam]

Divine Power says a bit about "folk" religious practices on pp 39 and 143. I think that the default orientation of 4e is that the gods are active in the world, and that prayers to them matter.

Obviously in Dark Sun, or a Conan-esque game, it would be different; but then in such a game I don't think the action declaration in the OP would come up.

Thanks for the specific page citations. I feel such references are useful.

I think of the Forgotten Realms as a fairly active and interventionist divine cosmology for D&D with a lot of god manifestations.

A number of Forgotten Realms sources discuss how people in that setting will commonly pray to different gods for blessings or warding off of evil all the time depending on the specific thing they are doing, so Chauntea the agriculture goddess when farming, but Auril when it is cold out or Umberlee when sailing. I don't remember a lot of discussion of deific answers though. The 2e god books would have deity specific lists of things they would do to express favor or disfavor, but these were still usually fairly limited manifestations and seem to come from capricious gods expressing favor or disfavor, not in response to prayers.

Faiths & Avatars for instance on page 21 explaining the god entries says for manifestations other than avatars:

Other Manifestations
This section discusses other manifestations of a power aside from its avatar. These manifestations are much more commonly encountered than the actual avatar of a deity. They often convey benefits to the faithful or indicate favor, direction, danger, agreement, or disagreement by the deity. Sometimes they are merely used to comfort and assure their worshipers that they are aware of a situation or appreciate their followers’ devotion.

The first god entry, Akadi, says this on page 24:
Akadi has sent manifestations to the Realms more frequently than she has sent an avatar, but even these appearances are extremely rare compared to the frequency with which other powers manifest. The Lady of Air has appeared in the form of almost any normal flying creature, and her voice has been heard as a gentle whisper upon the breeze. She frequently sends an aerial servant to deliver private messages (or demands) to those she deems worthy or useful.
A rising breeze or a change in the wind is usually seen as a sign of her favor.

Eldath, who I earlier was mistakenly remembering as a goddess of healing springs is a good goddess of peace, springs, pools, waterfalls, and druid groves but not specifically healing says on page 57:

Eldath appears most frequently as a whispering wind that brings a message and revives plants that it touches to the blooming height of health or a green glowing aura that has all the healing powers of the goddess, can speak aloud and in the minds of those within 120 feet, and can telekinese nonliving items within its confines. Eldath also acts or shows her favor through the appearance or actions of bears, raccoons, brownies, dryads, sylphs, nereids, feystags, sprites, stags, talking owls, unicorns, and other woodland creatures, common meadow and woodland flowers such as daisies, water plants such as water lilies and lotuses, and aquamarines, clear quartz, blue topazes, sapphires, and other stones in watery hues.

Her avatar neutralizes poison by touch and is a 30th level mystic which is a variant full spellcasting priest class, so that glowing aura manifestation can do some serious healing.

Lathander is similarly over the top.

page 91:

Lathander manifests his power as an intense rosy radiance surrounding the bodies of those he favors. Lathander’s radiance also appears around objects to indicate special qualities about them and at confusing or dangerous junctures to indicate a safe or preferred path. This radiance causes those people it surrounds to be healed of all wounds, purged of any diseases, poisons, foreign objects, afflictions (including lycanthropy, feeblemindedness, insanity, and blindness), magical or psionic compulsions, fear, and curses. The radiance also telekineses people for short distances to get them out of harm’s way. (They may be lifted out of a trap or out of the reach of enemies.)
The faithful of Lathander who are surrounded by the radiance also receive a brief message of some type from Lathander to guide them. Others may receive similar impressions if Lathander desires. If the radiance appears around a corpse of one of the faith, resurrection survival is automatically successful while the radiance is present.
Finally, Lathander sometimes uses robins, sunpeacocks (animals he favors for their plumage), sunpeacock feathers, butterflies, and aster blossoms as signs of his presence or favor.

 

[Voadam]

Except the other interpretation is inherently toxic. It becomes trying to "cheat" the system, and thus gets ruled harshly against.

Or it is seen as a reasonable, non-toxic approach and is just ruled on.

Plenty of people think it is fine to choose your approach based on your build, so an eldritch knight fighter and low wisdom might think a religion skill approach is more effective and so choose that as their characterization approach if they can and run with it.

Some will see it as ugly instrumentalism, others will be completely fine with it by focusing on whether the characterization is reasonable and how well done it is.

It is far more neutral to actually assume the fighter is making a genuine attempt, because then the question is entirely on the mechanics and the story, not "is this player trying to cheat me".

I don't feel the options are that binary.

Sure, they do different things. But so do Athletics and Intimidation, yet it is perfectly coherent to roll athletics to intimidate someone.

Coherent, but not obligatory to allow it. A DM can reasonably say that charisma checks or intimidate is the skill to influence a person and while athletics lets you bend a bar in front of the person you are trying to intimidate, the actual thing you are going for is not the bent bar but the persuasive impact on the target person.

But you seem to be missing my point. Why would there be a high cost to begin with? You seem to be taking a stance of "The DM will decide and I will make no statement beyond that." Which.. really makes it difficult to discuss with you, because obviously the DM is making a decision, but the discussion is about why they make the decision they make. What drives that decision?

A ton of varying considerations. Fiction is a big one. Tone of play. Are the rules hard or flexible. Does the DM want solid boundaries on supernatural effects or to regularly make judgment calls about what is reasonable supernatural effects to be done. It is a lot easier to make ad hoc judgments about things that would reasonably happen for things we have everyday familiarity with (social interactions, physical things) than for spontaneous magical effects.

These are going to vary person to person, and even game to game with the same DM. They might want things to go one way in Conan world but another in Forgotten Realms.

I said early on how I run things in my game, I go with the Conan/Eberron no direct evidence of the gods, clerics are essentially spellcasters of specific magical traditions. Anyone can pray, it is not going to have a supernatural effect unless there is more going on.

I do this for the themes and tone I want in my game. The PC cleric's cult is dedicated to a specific, non-omnipotent, not-omniscient dragon who exists in the world. I like character's using gods names as curses "Crom!" "Tyr's severed hand!" "Blood and souls for Arioch!" and not asking for divine favor.

I have specific DM decisions for my game that supports the game and story and theme and tone I want.

Would that make a difference? We don't upgrade the DC of medicine checks outside of combat. Why would the ruling on this prayer be made more difficult outside of combat?

Again, this is about the WHY of the decision, not which decision is correct.



Better question "What does the player want to happen?"

I think this is primarily a DM call during the game. The player has stated their action, the DM adjudicates what happens. I think the DM should be primarily thinking about the game as a whole instead of the one player's desires.

I'm the DM, I didn't tell the fighter to start praying. They made that decision and they felt it was a good call. Maybe this is a joke campaign and they are being silly. Maybe this is a grim-dark campaign and they expect the character to die in their arms. Maybe this is a game world where the gods constantly interfere in the lives of heroes, and they expect an answer to their prayers.

What I want is the same thing I always want, to make the best story possible. And sometimes that means stepping beyond "that is the wrong action declaration" and instead looking at the story being built here.

I agree that stories can be built in many ways. I personally think Conan stories are great.

I am not arguing "that is the wrong action declaration" I am just judging how to adjudicate the declared action.

And how many DnD campaigns is that the case?

Who knows. I played in one for years where the Melnibonean pantheon was the main one, everybody used euphemisms for the gods in character so that the AD&D demon lord name rules did not come into play. Meerclaw the Neutral goddess of cats was a big PC cleric favorite, and even she can be capricious and cruel and play with her prey, we did not want her showing up unexpectedly.

Honestly, I get that this isn't a universal "this must be one way" but in a Mythos world no player is going to pray to Cthulhu to save their friend, except as a dark villain "this is how we fall" moment. But you keep taking the context out of traditional DnD, and I'm not sure why we need to go far afield to every possible game world to discuss this. Exceptions exist. In the land where the gods are dead and their corpses litter the ground, praying to them doesn't work. Agreed. Normal DnD games aren't like that.

Eberron, has been pretty mainstream and a popular D&D setting for three editions now. It is in the 5e PH. The actual existence of the gods in Eberron is a mystery. Divine magic goes with the mechanical effects, and there are tons of believers in world, but there is no direct evidence of the gods.

I think god cosmology varies widely in different D&D games.

Okay, but here is the question.

Why?

Divine Powers heal. Praying over the wounded to heal them is a common fantasy scene in games, literature and art. So what makes this so out there?

What literature are you thinking of? Most of the fantasy I read healing is either D&D inspired or is not prayer based. Wheel of Time magical healing is just magic, no prayers involved, for example.

I know you later said you could reskin the mechanics, but your first instinct is "it's impossible, those are the wrong mechanics" and that reaction is where I think the interesting discussion lies. Because that was my first knee-jerk reaction too. But why? What makes this so divisive?

A couple things going on here. D&D is big and sprawling with a lot of mechanics and considerations. It is easier to judge on the fly a natural reaction to a social interaction or a physical capability that has familiar real life reference than to judge a reasonable magical effect that is balanced in an open ended magic system. It is easier to use magical mechanics as specific discrete defined effects. In the middle of combat where quick resolution for pacing is important it can slow you down if you have to make an open ended power adjudication. Even if you use say action movie logic for resolving physical things instead of real world physics, that is easier to judge than magical reality defying effects. Magic and powers have implications and it is harder to think through open ended ones than discrete powers. There are story considerations, world logic implications, game power implications.

From the player side, discrete effects can be used and relied upon. Open ended stuff is open to DM vagaries, possible favoritism, and things turning out significantly differently than a player expects or wants.

There are also matters of individual taste as to how fantastic their games are. Is it real world with some discrete magic? High magic? Fairy tale bendable world rules? Is magic a sharp defined tool or an art.

Also this is touching on prayer, so there are some emotions for some in dealing with it as a topic.

 

[pemerton]

Powers that specific characters have that others do not, do not seem to be strong justification for granting non-powered prayer that anybody can do the ability to effect supernatural benefits.

Warlords can do inspiring word to heal without the divine keyword. Fighters do not have that on their power list.

Warlord healing is not supernatural.

My own view is that a cleric's healing word is not really supernatural either (unlike their Cure Wounds spells), but that's perhaps more contentious.

Cairn of the Winter King uses hit points to measure the undermining of resolve by way of speaking (p 28, under the heading "Words Against the Winter King") - "Successes in this skill challenge result in the wearing down of the Winter King's resolve." Each success inflicts 50 hp of damage.

So I don't think what @Manbearcat is saying is very controversial, in the context of 4e D&D.

 

[delericho]

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?

DC 0, but the character must meet the prerequisites for multiclassing and the player must commit to taking their next level as Cleric.

 

[pemerton]

None. Gods do not act in the world except through agents wielding divine magic, and the fighter is not one of those.

DC 0, but the character must meet the prerequisites for multiclassing and the player must commit to taking their next level as Cleric.

Both these answers seem to imply that, in the world in which they are applied, gods do not respond to the prayers of ordinary people.

 

[delericho]

Both these answers seem to imply that, in the world in which they are applied, gods do not respond to the prayers of ordinary people.

Quite possibly. Or maybe they do, but live by the adage, "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."?

 

[Staffan]

Both these answers seem to imply that, in the world in which they are applied, gods do not respond to the prayers of ordinary people.

Correct, or at least not in a way that's measurable.

If farmers are praying for a good harvest, and the harvest turns out to be good, that might be the result of the god of agriculture hearing their prayer. Or maybe the weather was just right that year. Who's to say?

And if a friend is bleeding out, and you try to staunch their bleeding while praying to the god of healers, and you succeed... was that the result of your own medical skill or the god of healers guiding your hand? Is there even a difference? Hard to say. But you definitely won't have the wounds miraculously close as the result of your prayer.