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

[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.

Some decent flavor of practices and beliefs in the default Dawn War POL world. The feather thing is probably the closest to a manifested effect, if the rite works. While prayers might matter to the gods and to the one who prays, I am not sure this suggests the gods manifesting effects in response to prayers.

Divine Power page 39:

SMALL DEVOTIONS
Many practices common among the people of the world have their origin in various minor devotions to the gods.
For example, someone telling a lie might splay wide the fingers of the left hand under a table or behind his or her back. Whether that person knows it or not, the gesture is meant to represent the holy symbol of Lolth, god of lies, and to ask her help in making sure the untruth is not discovered.
Another such gesture is to place the weapon of a fallen warrior in the corpse’s hand. This act is believed to arm the warrior for the next world and to show Bane, the god of war, that he or she died fighting and therefore deserves honor.
Travelers setting out on journeys often scoop up a handful of dirt or dust from the road and let it fall from their hands. Most people regard this tradition as simply checking the strength and direction of the wind, but it is meant to honor Avandra. The god is said to show a sign of the fortune awaiting the journey by blowing the dust away (which favors departure) or back toward the traveler (indicating difficulty ahead).

Page 143:

RITES FOR THE DEITIES
The people of the world and planes worship the deities in different ways. Some common practices are almost universal from culture to culture.
✦ When you are proven wrong, write down two copies of the truth you discover, keeping one and taking the other to a shrine to Ioun.
✦ After you take fruit, herbs, or wood from a forest, trace a star in the soil so Corellon’s magic can replace what you’ve taken.
✦ Swear by Bahamut when you make an oath to bring someone to justice.
✦ When you agree to an alliance or a business arrangement, interlock your fingers like the teeth of two gears—forming the symbol of Erathis.
✦ Etch Avandra’s symbol on a path to indicate a safe course or on a building to show it is a safe house.
✦ Shout at the heavens during a storm to prove your bravery to Kord.
✦ Wear golden jewelry during the day and silver at night, to please both Pelor and Sehanine.
✦ Inter a raven’s feather with a corpse to keep undeath from claiming the body.

 

[Charlaquin]

Nevermind

 

[Voadam]

@Manbearcat & @pemerton (or anyone else who is familiar with 4e) in an effort to avoid mis-characterizing 4e I'll ask as opposed to drawing off my admittedly spotty recollection of 4e... but what was the default in 4e when it came to divine powers and their relationship to actual deities? I want to say that the precedent was set that one didn't really need the favor of their deity once divine power was granted (thought this may have only been in the paladin's case) in order to use said power... am I remembering this correctly ?

4e PH page 61-62:

All clerics choose a specific faith to which they devote themselves. Usually this faith is the worship of a specific patron deity—for example, Moradin, Pelor, or Erathis. Sometimes clerics are devoted to churches that venerate groups of deities or even philosophies.
As a cleric, your deity does not directly grant you powers. Instead, your ordination or investiture as a cleric grants you the ability to wield divine powers. Clerics are usually formally ordained by existing clerics who perform a special ritual to do so, but on rare occasions a deity moves to directly ordain a worthy worshiper with out any sort of priestly hierarchy involved. What you do with your powers once you are ordained is up to you, although if you flagrantly and openly defy your deity’s tenets, you quickly earn the enmity of the faithful.

 

[Imaro]

4e PH page 61-62:

All clerics choose a specific faith to which they devote themselves. Usually this faith is the worship of a specific patron deity—for example, Moradin, Pelor, or Erathis. Sometimes clerics are devoted to churches that venerate groups of deities or even philosophies.
As a cleric, your deity does not directly grant you powers. Instead, your ordination or investiture as a cleric grants you the ability to wield divine powers. Clerics are usually formally ordained by existing clerics who perform a special ritual to do so, but on rare occasions a deity moves to directly ordain a worthy worshiper with out any sort of priestly hierarchy involved. What you do with your powers once you are ordained is up to you, although if you flagrantly and openly defy your deity’s tenets, you quickly earn the enmity of the faithful.

Thanks I didn't want to mis-speak about this and I haven't read 4e in a long time. So it seems the default for the ability to use divine power in 4e is actually tied to being ordained as a cleric (whether by an existing cleric or a deity)... So in 4e a deity bestowing divine power on a fighter without ordaining said fighter as a cleric (or I would assume certain other divine classes) could certainly be ruled possible by a DM but certainly doesn't seem to be the norm (or possible) by the default fiction of 4e.

 

[Manbearcat]

Thanks I didn't want to mis-speak about this and I haven't read 4e in a long time. So it seems the default for the ability to use divine power in 4e is actually tied to being ordained as a cleric (whether by an existing cleric or a deity)... So in 4e a deity bestowing divine power on a fighter without ordaining said fighter as a cleric (or I would assume certain other divine classes) could certainly be ruled possible by a DM but certainly doesn't seem to be the norm (or possible) by the default fiction of 4e.

Ok, I’m mega-time limited, so I can’t answer all of your stuff right now @Voadam @Baron Opal II (I’ll try to get to it tonight). But why do you think I threw together that Nomogical Network above? It wasn't an accident. I was addressing specific claims by drawing upon various concepts in 4e, how they manifest in the imagined space, and what is at the intersection of all of that.

Two important claims I was addressing were:

Gods don't answer mundane prayer/recitation/ceremony.

and

Mundane prayer/recitation/ceremony doesn't restore hit points (and its proxy or component part in 4e; flagging spirits, resolve, steadfastness).

So, with that said:

1) With respect to the above claims, what work do you think (1) in my post above is doing?

2) With respect to the above claims, what work do you think (3) is doing?


We don't need to get into the rest of the enumerated points yet. Lets just talk about those two points and their intersection. If you are someone that holds the above two italicized claims...and you understand the implications of the directly above...and you are still unmoved/incredulous/holding onto either of those claims..then, I'm just going to put this out there: You cannot be moved off your position and you cannot have your incredulity disarmed. Its impossible. Because just (1) + (3) in the above utterly nuke those claims from orbit. Donezo. Game set match. Mundane (sans Divine keyword) prayer/recitiation/ceremony restores hit points (flagging spirits, resolve, steadfastness) and provides other protections because those mundane prayers are answers.

 

[pemerton]

4e does not present, as its default, the essentially atheistic world of REH's Conan stories, nor the cynical account of Lords of Law and Chaos found in the Elric stories. 4e presents a world of active gods who care deeply about mortal affairs.

PHB pp 20, 60-2:

Deities are the most powerful immortal creatures, residents of the countless dominions that swirl through the Astral Sea. They appear in dreams and visions to their followers and wear countless different faces, and artwork depicting them shows them in a variety of forms. . . .

Most people revere more than one deity, praying to different gods at different times. . . .

Clerics are battle leaders who are invested with divine power. They blast foes with magical prayers, bolster and heal companions, and lead the way to victory with a mace in one hand and a holy symbol in the other. Clerics run the gamut from humble servants of the common folk to ruthless enforcers of evil gods. . . .

Clerics are usually formally ordained by existing clerics who perform a special ritual to do so, but on rare occasions a deity moves to directly ordain a worthy worshiper without any sort of priestly hierarchy involved.​

DMG p 162:

The deities of the D&D world are powerful but not omnipotent, knowledgeable but not omniscient, widely traveled but not omnipresent. They alone of all creatures in the universe consist only of astral essence. The gods are creatures of thought and ideal, not bound by the same limitations as beings of flesh.

Because of their astral nature, the gods can perform deeds that physical creatures can’t. They can appear in the minds of other creatures, speaking to them in dreams or visions, without being present in physical form. They can appear in multiple places at once. They can listen to the prayers of their followers (but they don’t always).​

This is reinforced by the mythic history presented in the PHB and MM, and developed further in books like Divine Power and The Plane Above.

I think it was in the third or fourth session of my 4e game that a player declared an improvised action for his PC, based on religious devotion and resolved by application of p 42 (a prayer to the Raven Queen to gain advantage in a fight against an undead creature). The action made complete sense given the fictional position of the character, and was not at all difficult to adjudicate.

 

[Umbran]

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.

Well, it implies that the gods do not directly and clearly respond to the prayers of ordinary people on short timescales with a frequency that can be simulated with a roll of one d20.

This is a pretty relevant setting concern. If the rules for PCs are also relevant to NPCs, and a PC can generate an obvious miracle on the order of one try out of every twenty, then towns with large congregations should be able to generate miracles every week when they come into worship! If they all pray, someone is going to make that check. Families at home should be able to produce these interventions every month or two if they pray every night before going to sleep.

If that's happening, that really needs to be a clear setting conceit.

So maybe the gods blatantly answer one in a hundred thousand, or one in a million prayers - odds so small that they aren't visible on a d20, but can be parts of stories told because it does happen on rare occasions.

Or maybe the gods only work subtly - your prayer for a good harvest might work out if you start praying before you plant, and the gods can work in small things like a bit of rain here, and a bit of sun there, so by the time harvest comes around, maybe it was the gods, or maybe it was going to happen anyway. But if you pray for good harvest before walking out into the field to reap in the autumn, that's just not going to work.

Which is to say, we are not limited to the simple yes/no dichotomy. There are options.

 

[Imaro]

4e does not present, as its default, the essentially atheistic world of REH's Conan stories, nor the cynical account of Lords of Law and Chaos found in the Elric stories. 4e presents a world of active gods who care deeply about mortal affairs.

PHB pp 20, 60-2:

Deities are the most powerful immortal creatures, residents of the countless dominions that swirl through the Astral Sea. They appear in dreams and visions to their followers and wear countless different faces, and artwork depicting them shows them in a variety of forms. . . .​

​

Most people revere more than one deity, praying to different gods at different times. . . .​

​

Clerics are battle leaders who are invested with divine power. They blast foes with magical prayers, bolster and heal companions, and lead the way to victory with a mace in one hand and a holy symbol in the other. Clerics run the gamut from humble servants of the common folk to ruthless enforcers of evil gods. . . .​

​

Clerics are usually formally ordained by existing clerics who perform a special ritual to do so, but on rare occasions a deity moves to directly ordain a worthy worshiper without any sort of priestly hierarchy involved.​

DMG p 162:

The deities of the D&D world are powerful but not omnipotent, knowledgeable but not omniscient, widely traveled but not omnipresent. They alone of all creatures in the universe consist only of astral essence. The gods are creatures of thought and ideal, not bound by the same limitations as beings of flesh.​

​

Because of their astral nature, the gods can perform deeds that physical creatures can’t. They can appear in the minds of other creatures, speaking to them in dreams or visions, without being present in physical form. They can appear in multiple places at once. They can listen to the prayers of their followers (but they don’t always).​

This is reinforced by the mythic history presented in the PHB and MM, and developed further in books like Divine Power and The Plane Above.

I think it was in the third or fourth session of my 4e game that a player declared an improvised action for his PC, based on religious devotion and resolved by application of p 42 (a prayer to the Raven Queen to gain advantage in a fight against an undead creature). The action made complete sense given the fictional position of the character, and was not at all difficult to adjudicate.

IMO this implies that the deities of 4e are interested in and care about the affairs of mortals, but for whatever reason only directly interfere through those officially ordained... instead relying on more subtle means... dreams, appearing as visions of the mind, and sometimes listening (note nothing about acting on) to the prayers of their followers.

 

[Imaro]

Ok, I’m mega-time limited, so I can’t answer all of your stuff right now @Voadam @Baron Opal II (I’ll try to get to it tonight). But why do you think I threw together that Nomogical Network above? It wasn't an accident. I was addressing specific claims by drawing upon various concepts in 4e, how they manifest in the imagined space, and what is at the intersection of all of that.

Two important claims I was addressing were:

Gods don't answer mundane prayer/recitation/ceremony.

and

Mundane prayer/recitation/ceremony doesn't restore hit points (and its proxy or component part in 4e; flagging spirits, resolve, steadfastness).

So, with that said:

1) With respect to the above claims, what work do you think (1) in my post above is doing?

I think it shows that hit points aren't purely physical...

Now I would ask how does this intersect with the OP's example as it specifically calls out that the fighter's ally is wounded and/or dying... the fictional positioning isn't one of grief or panic it's actual wouds and/or being near death.

2) With respect to the above claims, what work do you think (3) is doing?

I don't think it is doing any work in respect to the above claims... What it is doing is showing there are non-divine techniques one can learn (especially being trained in the ways of the clergy) in order to create bonuses, inspire, etc... through the use of religious rhetoric... No different than what a Warlord does in 4e. What it doesn't show is that it is heard, answered or the work of a divine being. There is no mention of one in any of the descriptions you posted and since they are all lacking the divine keyword as you stated earlier... I don't think it actually sets any type of precedent that prayers are answered in 4e by divine beings.

We don't need to get into the rest of the enumerated points yet. Lets just talk about those two points and their intersection. If you are someone that holds the above two italicized claims...and you understand the implications of the directly above...and you are still unmoved/incredulous/holding onto either of those claims..then, I'm just going to put this out there: You cannot be moved off your position and you cannot have your incredulity disarmed. Its impossible. Because just (1) + (3) in the above utterly nuke those claims from orbit. Donezo. Game set match. Mundane (sans Divine keyword) prayer/recitiation/ceremony restores hit points (flagging spirits, resolve, steadfastness) and provides other protections because those mundane prayers are answers.

Yeah you seem really sure of your viewpoint here... that feels like a red flag that you in fact cannot be moved off your position and you cannot have your incredulity disarmed.

 

[Voadam]

4e presents a world of active gods who care deeply about mortal affairs.

I am not sure that your examples demonstrate that. The gods appear in dreams to their followers seems the most active thing said about them. They can do many things, it does not say they do them in the mortal world or that they care deeply about mortal affairs.

Most of the Mythic history that I remember is Dawn War stuff and not gods acting on and caring about the mortal world and individual mortal affairs. Torag physically thrashing about in the Underdark is an exception as he is physically present and warps things around him. Big picture the gods wanted the world to continue while the primordials wanted to recycle and reuse it, and that was a big Dawn War cause, but that is different from gods sponsoring kingdoms and such to influence mortal affairs. Later on in 4e you get the Primal stuff with the world's Primal Spirits enacting a ban on the gods and primordials messing with the world. The biggest influence thing I can think of would be Asmodeus and Tieflings and Bael Turath and I am not certain how much was him versus the tieflings who made pacts and ran with them.

I think the Dawn War stuff is fantastic, but I think of it as mostly gods versus primordials on the planes and later the Shard of evil stuff. Great god on supernatural being stories, but different from god and mortal interaction stories.

I have not really read Divine Power or Plane Above so maybe there is more there or in dragon articles or dungeon adventures.