D&D General Why do people like Alignment?

[James Gasik]

Meanwhile, while the ability to predict the future and ask higher powers proves incapable of cheating at card games, the Wild Mage has a flat 50% chance of choosing the card of his choice....

 

[Micah Sweet]

Meanwhile, while the ability to predict the future and ask higher powers proves incapable of cheating at card games, the Wild Mage has a flat 50% chance of choosing the card of his choice....

Affecting probability isn't the same thing as telling the future.

 

[Maxperson]

Maybe this was brought up before and I missed it...
This was talking about the Commune spell, right?
The spell whose description starts with, "You contact a deity or a divine proxy and ask up to three questions ..."
So, I guess, never mind that the spell description has a solution for this - that gods have proxies to handle the small stuff.

You are presenting what seems to me to be a contradiction - a deity whose attention is stretched to its limits, but still has attention to spare for minutiae. The deity has to, and is capable of, handling millions of processes, but is then so stretched that it cannot tolerate waste, so it puts even more attention on that one guy, and how his requests are getting frivolous.

If the Commune spell is such a burden for a deity to handle... why do they make that spell available at all?

It's available for important things.

How the deity handled a cleric in Faerun isn't going to be obvious to another cleric in Greyhawk. So, how does this word get around for there to be a deterrent effect to keep the shlubs from doing it? Is there like, a multi-planar deific social media account for clerics where the gods post, "Smote Jacob the Pedantic for playing 20 Questions with Commune," or something?

Teachings. The religion itself would teach that miracles such as that aren't for things like asking if you left your cheese sandwich at home.

It could also be the god himself, though I think it would happen with religious teachings, but the god could indicate through dreams that it's not for frivolous use. It doesn't have to go straight to "Hey Mystra, did you see me Smite Jacob? Ha ha!"

And then of course there's the traditional high wisdom of the cleric class. Do you really think it's wise to use your god to help find your misplaced keys?

 

[Maxperson]

Your argument is, "If we allow X, then that will mean people ask about Y, and then Z, and then W, and then P, and then Q, and then R (etc.), so we cannot allow X."

Nope. Those were some examples of frivolous use, not progressively worse things happening because the first thing was allowed. You are misstating my argument. There is no Slippery Slope unless you deliberately warp my argument and then attribute your alteration to me, in which case you are engaging a Strawman.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Affecting probability isn't the same thing as telling the future.

It seems to me the distinction is, at the very least, much finer than you're implying.

Being able to induce the world to magically be what you want it to be is, in a sense, predicting what it will be.

 

[Maxperson]

Actually, it sounds to me more like using an in-fiction justification to handle an out-of-fiction issue: The in-fiction gods police use of Commune, because the GM has a problem with how the spell is being used in play. It winds up having issues with scrutiny, because the point is not actually consistent fiction, but passive-aggressively telling the players what they ought not do.

No. At least not over here. Others may be doing that.

 

[Maxperson]

Meanwhile, while the ability to predict the future and ask higher powers proves incapable of cheating at card games, the Wild Mage has a flat 50% chance of choosing the card of his choice....

Where did anyone say incapable?

 

[Micah Sweet]

It seems to me the distinction is, at the very least, much finer than you're implying.

Being able to induce the world to magically be what you want it to be is, in a sense, predicting what it will be.

I can see that having some truth to it. Still, gods in most settings don't directly exert significant reality-altering influence on the mortal world much, usually due to ancient agreements between themselves, or commandments from a overgod or similar being. And fortune-telling, while commonly included as a religious practice, is almost never without fault or misinterpretation, and thus can be considered right at the edge of a god's powers. Either that or mortal minds are not given to understand the meaning or motivation behind their god's actions. In any case, I see plenty of in-setting reason why using divine magic to get around the chaotic nature of an artifact is unlikely to be particularly effective.

 

[nevin]

Deities embody specific aspects of the world. They are not human and shouldn't be ascribed human behaviors. The god of agriculture isn't just focused on farming. He IS farming.

He will be watching over every farm in the world for potentially tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or potentially millions of settings. He will be simultaneously watching over every cleric in those settings, as well as watching non-cleric worshippers(many more than the clerics), and listening/watching those who don't worship, but mention or entreat him. Those last will involve almost everyone who needs food and is from a farming culture. They will periodically call upon him or talk about him.

What he doesn't give a fig about is any card that isn't going to affect farming. He's not going to care if a cleric pulls good cards or bad ones, because even if the cleric pulls a very bad one and dies, that clerics soul goes to dwell with the god and permanently increase the god's power. He's probably answer once, because the cleric of 9th level or higher does have some favor, but being used over and over and over as a fortune teller for the cleric's greed isn't going to sit well.

There could always be exceptions. A cleric of a god of greed might just be able to get away with something like that. A trickster god? If I were the cleric of a trickster god, the last thing I'd do is ask him for advice on cards that could be both really good and really bad. The gods nature is trickery. At least for myself. If I were going to trick someone else drawing cards, the god would probably be very on board with that.

THats one interpretation. It could also be they are just Greek style really powerful beings who aside from their power aren't much different than the humans who worship them. No one size fits all answers on this one.

 

[Micah Sweet]

THats one interpretation. It could also be they are just Greek style really powerful beings who aside from their power aren't much different than the humans who worship them. No one size fits all answers on this one.

Greek-style "human" gods are even less likely to be in a position to alter fate IMO.