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

[Warpiglet-7]

What would be fun?

Maybe just maybe the fighter realizes there is a temple he can get to.

If he does and it helps, they then find they are both compelled to do a quest to make the temporary fix permanent.

Maybe getting to that temple was not a sure thing.

Maybe the character just croaks.

Maybe the next person to join the party has some characteristic just like the deceased friend. You never let on like it’s him reincarnated. But you hint and never spill the beans to either player.

Or he just croaks.

Yeah, he is dead.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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?

Dude, this is what skill challenges are for

Oh, obligatory game design reference: In HoML an 'affliction' is simply an SC, though possibly long and drawn out. You can actually voluntarily acquire one in trade for some (usually a healing value worth) of damage avoidance. Those are called 'wounds', generally, though really the form of the affliction is rather open-ended.

 

[Stormonu]

Back in 1E and 2E, I used to allow for "divine intervention" - ranging from a 1% to 5% chance for someone to get some deity-level aid.

But now, no.

There's a host of character options that can heal even beyond the ones I mentioned the first time - Story points/Inspiration, second wind, Faith scores, yadda, yadda, yadda. The reason I don't though is what would then be the DC for a character to suddenly cast Magic Missile. Or Fireball. Or Wish? I'd rather just not go down that trail.

Sure, Divine Intervention sounds appealing, especially if you want the players invested in your fantasy games and the gods thereof. But I think "Religion or Skill Y DC X" is the poorest way to handle that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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?

People, @pemerton is not asking (well, I will just boldly put words in his mouth) about mechanics, not really. This is about CONCEPTUALLY how does the game work? Is it based on fiction which the players can shape, or is it procedural, or perhaps built on just the GM says what happens (or picks some dice to say it for him, whatever). Its a philosophical question, really.

 

[Charlaquin]

People, @pemerton is not asking (well, I will just boldly put words in his mouth) about mechanics, not really. This is about CONCEPTUALLY how does the game work? Is it based on fiction which the players can shape, or is it procedural, or perhaps built on just the GM says what happens (or picks some dice to say it for him, whatever). Its a philosophical question, really.

Right, and some people’s philosophy is “fighters don’t have any mechanics that would allow for this so it just wouldn’t work.”

 

[Charlaquin]

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?

If all the fighter does is pray? Probably nothing, in the vast majority of cases. I could imagine a case where this might have an effect, but I don’t think it’s be likely to come up in actual play.

On the other hand, if the fighter is trying to stabilize their friend and prays to the god of healing or whatever while administering first aid, I could see letting them roll Wis (Religion) instead of Wis (Medicine). Additionally, if the prayer ties in with one of the character’s personality traits, ideal, bond, or flaw, they could gain inspiration from doing so, which they could spend for advantage on the check to stabilize (be it Medicine or Religion.)

 

[DEFCON 1]

What in the fiction is the Fighter going to do to warrant gaining this boon from a god? Because they are a Fighter, they do not have any regular connection to a deity's power or voice, so it won't be enough to "just pray"... the Fighter character has to be willing to go further than that in the narrative to gain this boon.

As an example... in Season 1 of Critical Role, Liam O'Brien's Assassin character prayed to the Raven Queen to save one of the other characters. In order to receive the boon, his character swore an allegiance to the Raven Queen (and mechanically, O'Brien had Vax'ildan multiclass to Paladin to symbolize this.) The character gave of himself to the God of Death to gain the boon, and the character's direction was forever changed.

That's the kind of thing I myself would need to see for something like this to work in my games. We have this situation in my Theros game right now, where the gods are incredibly present in the lives of all the people. The Oracle character has a direct connection to her god and communicates with him quite often. The Nyxborn character (basically the "demigod" type in Theros) is a child of another god and thus can access divine authority pretty easily. A third is a Hexblade warlock in service to another pseudo-deity and thus gain instruction for his duties from the entity. But the other characters, while they all worship the gods and can see them in Nyx in the night sky and act in accordance to the gods' desires... none of them can get direct aid or voice to them in almost all standard situations because their character choices did not go in those directions. In only the most extreme circumstances could one of these others pray to one or more of the gods for aid and actually be heard... and for that to happen the character would need to pay for that boon by performing some sort of service. And it's something I'd require the player to come up with and offer, so I could see just how willing their character was to give of themself for this boon.

Only when this offer was made would I then determine whether or not a check would also be necessary... probably based upon just how much or how little the character offered.

 

[TwoSix]

To my mind, this is no different than any other stunt-driven mechanic like disarming a weapon or throwing sand in an enemy's face. If I allow a stunt to happen once, and set up a mechanical test to determine if it's a success, then I need to accept that the player will have every right to try that same stunt again and expect the resolution method to be the same.

If you want the stunt to be a one-time allowance and not something that gets repeated in subsequent encounters, then you need to either give the occurrence very low odds of success OR make it so that stunt's success cause a change in the fiction, such that the character having access to such a stunt is built into the character concept. (Maybe the god's acceptance of such a prayer shows that the fighter, or the fighter's friend, has a grander destiny than they knew. That gives a new fiction to pursue in game.)

The other option is simply that the gods do occasionally smile upon mortals when invoked, but their reasons are never clear. So maybe no check, but there may be fictional repercussions. And it's not something the player, or other players, can rely on a granted resource.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

To my mind, this is no different than any other stunt-driven mechanic like disarming a weapon or throwing sand in an enemy's face. If I allow a stunt to happen once, and set up a mechanical test to determine if it's a success, then I need to accept that the player will have every right to try that same stunt again and expect the resolution method to be the same.

If you want the stunt to be a one-time allowance and not something that gets repeated in subsequent encounters, then you need to either give the occurrence very low odds of success OR make it so that stunt's success cause a change in the fiction, such that the character having access to such a stunt is built into the character concept. (Maybe the god's acceptance of such a prayer shows that the fighter, or the fighter's friend, has a grander destiny than they knew. That gives a new fiction to pursue in game.)

The other option is simply that the gods do occasionally smile upon mortals when invoked, but their reasons are never clear. So maybe no check, but there may be fictional repercussions. And it's not something the player, or other players, can rely on a granted resource.

The simple response is that this is unanswerable as given (and as, IIRC, the OP does not play 5e, it's not a request for information but a statement about the game).

Since this specific issue doesn't come up as a rule, and because this is not within the enumerated class abilities, then it can only be answered be referring to the fiction. The premise in the OP does not provide any information about the fiction- what is the setting? Who is the fighter? What god is the fighter praying to? What is the prayer? What is the fighter's history? Who is the fighter's friend? And so on.

Without any further information about the fiction, there can be no further information about the resolution.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right, and some people’s philosophy is “fighters don’t have any mechanics that would allow for this so it just wouldn’t work.”

Well, that fails to answer the question in multiple ways. If the fiction is not 'dissociated from the mechanics' then what stops this from working? Its a world filled with gods who answer prayers and do magic. So what are you saying, that your rules cannot produce that result? How do you justify that, and how does it differ from the supposed dissociation that is represented by A/E/D/U power slots? I mean, there are other dimensions to this as well, but we can start with that, I gotta head to work, lol.