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

[pemerton]

There it is! One of the classics.!

'Shouting arms back on'.

No. Full stop. No. What is happening here is rousing the other person to continue the fight, not inserting new meat points into their corpse. It is not magical. It is not closing wounds. And the assertions that they are need to be buried in a shallow grave next to a septic tank unknown and unmourned.

I think you've made a mistake in your reading of @AbdulAlhazred's relationship to 4e D&D.

 

[pnewman]

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?

Zero. The chance must be zero because otherwise they are are stepping on the"Divine Intervention" class ability of level 10+ Clerics. If even Clerics don't get this until L10, and even they have to roll percentile dice less than or equal to their level and may succeed only once a week, then why would anyone else ever be able to do this ever?

 

[Voadam]

Zero. The chance must be zero because otherwise they are are stepping on the"Divine Intervention" class ability of level 10+ Clerics. If even Clerics don't get this until L10, and even they have to roll percentile dice less than or equal to their level and may succeed only once a week, then why would anyone else ever be able to do this ever?

There can be overlapping mechanics to do the same thing.

A thief can have a specific listen check mechanic and still have a different mechanic for listening that everybody else gets.

What the differences are between how those mechanics work out is a different design question. Presumably in design you'd want the thief special ability to be better than the general non-thief ability or to eventually become better. In 5e battlemaster fighters can do disarm maneuvers using superiority dice. In the 5e DMG there are suggestions for anybody being able to maneuver to disarm. The battlemaster however can spend superiority dice class resources to do it while attacking for damage and use a slightly different resolution mechanic.

 

[Hriston]

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?

I think this is something that can happen in D&D.

In 5E, I'd ask for a DC 20 Intelligence (Religion) check. On a success, an intermediary of the gods delivers the requested aid. On a failure, something else happens.

I wanted to expand on some of my thoughts that led to this response.

As I said, I think it can happen, by which I mean I think the action declaration fits within the genre of D&D as I would imagine it's played usually. Though I wondered at first if the fighter might not have the requisite fictional positioning to have a chance of having his prayer answered. After all, I thought, wouldn't it depend on whether the gods were present? This was because in my mind I was treating the gods as NPCs whose presence would have to be established before any attempt to persuade them could be made, and, at this point, I was imagining that the attempt might be resolved with a Charisma (Persuasion) check. I mean, the fighter certainly has the fictional positioning to say a prayer, but is anyone listening?

Now, it occurred to me the player, by making this action declaration, is raising a proposition about the nature of the gods, that they are present and responsive to prayer, but all that really needs to be resolved is whether the fighter's friend is healed or not, so this question about the role of gods in the setting can be folded into the check. It doesn’t require a separate resolution. Again, the fighter certainly has the fictional positioning to voice a prayer in the hope it is answered.

So I would want to bring this to a check, rather than just saying yes, because there seems to be a lot at stake in this situation. At first, I was thinking of calling for a Charisma (Persuasion) check because it looked like a social interaction, but praying to the gods might not depend on what you say or how you say it. It really depends more on the nature of the gods themselves, which brings me back to the player's proposition. The player is proposing a fiction where the gods are such in this setting that they will grant the fighter his prayer. Now, because I try to play with little or no "myth", I will generally call for an Intelligence check when an action declaration puts something at stake regarding some detail of the setting that has not been established. This favors characters with high Intelligence and/or proficiency with knowledge skills to be the "lore-masters" from whom the table learns new things about the setting giving the player some authority over that aspect of the setting. I think lore about the gods falls under the broad category of the Religion skill, so I'd call for an Intelligence (Religion) check from the fighter to resolve whether or not the healing is received.

To set the DC for the check, I often look to the 1E DMG when I'm called on as DM to provide adversity to the PCs because it contains a wealth of rulings regarding genre appropriate content introduction, and page 112 has a fairly straightforward system for determining what difficulty an appeal to the gods might have. When converting a percent chance like this into a DC for a 5E d20 roll, I assume an average PC ability score modifier of +1, so the straight 10% chance of intervention in a case where the PC has received no previous intervention from the gods, has exhibited exemplary alignment behavior (whatever that means), the intervention will not bring the gods into direct confrontation with other gods, and it hasn't already been established that the PC is closely serving the gods in some way, would be converted into a DC 20 check. If it has been established that the PC is serving the gods closely (operating either under direct instruction or through an intermediary), the base DC would drop to 15. Each previous intervention received would raise the DC by 1 point. Deviations from exemplary alignment behavior would raise the DC by 1 or 2 points, depending on the severity. If direct confrontation with another god or gods would result, the DC would go up 2 points. In any case, if the player rolls a natural 20 on the check, I would give a 20% chance of an additional percent chance equal to the PC's level that the specific deity or deities called upon intervene directly.

Consequences for failing the check would depend on previously established fiction and would range from the simple opportunity cost of using a turn and risk of a failed death save if attempted in combat to other more interesting consequences if attempted outside of combat including the possibility of the prayer being answered by an unintended deity/powerful being.

 

[Baron Opal II]

In fact HISTORICALLY in older times people simply attributed all of what we call natural processes to what we would now call 'magic'.

True, often predictive or transmutative processes.

I mean, you're obviously free to imagine things as you wish and make these sorts of distinctions, but I don't see any difference.

Thank you. Obviously, I do.

There are two people, they each say the same prayers, carry out the same ritualized actions with the same intent, why should they get different results?

Because one actually knows how to cast a spell, or has a consecrated binding to a supernatural source, or is able to enter the proper fugue state to channel vril, or, or, or, and the other doesn't. lots of reasons. It's why the game has classes.

I mean, sure we can certainly devise explanations for that. However, those are all really post-hoc. They are also thoroughly gamist!

Yes. It's a game.

Go ahead and make it a serious dramatic point that perhaps reflects a real turning point, or a great cost, for the fighter, but it seems downright WEIRD to say that he cannot possibly ever achieve something similar to 'cure light wounds'.

As I stated earlier, they can.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Zero. The chance must be zero because otherwise they are are stepping on the"Divine Intervention" class ability of level 10+ Clerics. If even Clerics don't get this until L10, and even they have to roll percentile dice less than or equal to their level and may succeed only once a week, then why would anyone else ever be able to do this ever?

I disagree, although I would say that the cleric is obviously the best at it with a more direct line to the numinous. A non-cleric could have a relationship developed through regular attendance to services, devout commitment and service, initiation into a Mystery, &c. Everyone could have a, say 1% chance with a bonus to the check depending on spiritual investment and a reduction on the randomness of which power answers the call. The cleric would always have the best chance of answer, with the least chance of another or enemy power answering the call.

 

[Grogg of the North]

I have to agree with @Leatherhead this is a plot hook more than anything else. As a GM I would ask probably ask for a roll and have the player add whatever they thought was appropriate: charisma, religion, whatever. Roll and roleplay are really good? Something good decides to intervene. Otherwise, what answers may not be what it seems. And regardless of how the fighter pulls this off, the answering creature(s) are going to want something in return. (Hey Fighter, I know we just leveled up but you gain a level in warlock. No, that's not negotiable.)

 

[Vaalingrade]

I think you've made a mistake in your reading of @AbdulAlhazred's relationship to 4e D&D.

I don't care what their relationship is to it, I am going to call out this kind of thing no matter who it comes from.

 

[pemerton]

I don't care what their relationship is to it, I am going to call out this kind of thing no matter who it comes from.

@AbdulAlhazred didn't say or intend what you've imputed to him.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In a more rules-light game solving this sort of thing via a skill roll (or similar) would be perfectly appropriate. However, D&D has classes and other ways for the characters to gain codified capabilities. If one wants to play a devout fighter whose prayers are occasionally answered they probably should take a feat that allows them to cast some divine spells. That being said, improvised action are of course allowed and should even be encouraged, they just shouldn't step on the toes of capabilities the players used character building resources for.

Also, I feel best improvised actions are such that use the specific environment/situation cleverly and thus are not just routinely repeatable. I would a bit careful about allowing "pray to a god for help" to work particularly reliably, because if it does, it can easily become a potential solution for everything. You can always pray and a god in theory could solve almost any problem. And of course there is a relatively high level cleric class feature for that.

All that being said, if we are talking about just stabilising dying person, as noted, in 5e that is not particularly hard. So allowing subbing religion for medicine or allowing rolling medicine with advantage like some have suggested wouldn't be particularly huge deal. Though I still wouldn't want either of those become just automatically repeatable routines.

Now if we are talking about something more, like actually saving a character that has already failed their last death save, then that's a bigger question. I think pretty reasonable default answer would be that it just can't be done. However, the setting metaphysics and the fictional position permitting, this certainly could be a setup for some sort of a dramatic deal with a god like Vax did in Critical Role. But it definitely should come with a significant cost, nor should it be easily repeatable.

Now I actually did think a while ago about what effect, if any, prayers and religious rituals of laypeople would have in my setting, and I decided that the usual way for the god to bless people would be via divine guidance/inspiration for specific endeavours. So for example if you made sacrifices/supplications to Vajurnu, the God of Travel before embarking on a journey, you might gain their favour. Mechanically this would be represented by "divine inspiration points" that could be used for rerolls for rolls that you're required to do in order to get safely to your destination. It is very subtle and non flashy magic. A sceptic might even suspect whether the gods did anything. But the faithful will know that it was due the favour of the gods that their mission was successful and they would be right about that.

@pemerton I know that you have a habit of starting threads by asking these sort of context-free questions because you're actually wanting to make some sort of a point. I think it would be helpful if you would just explain what the your actual intent is in the first post.