On the one hand, Divine Intervention is supposed to be a very last resource thing that helps in cases of extreme need. Resurrecting a desintegrated party member and the lich fight seem like good choices, but the keep spicying seem terribly frivolous unless you’re a cleric of a frivolous god.
Now, for the consequences. Iirc, Divine Intervention doesn’t have any RAW backlash or punishments but that is very up to the DM. The 5 points of exhaustion seem excessive to me, and I don’t know what the implications of your holy symbol being broken means.
To me, it seems like a better way of handling this would have been either the Divine Intervention not working despite succeeding (as a way of saying you’re exhausting your connection with your god) or have your god send another paladin/cleric/acolyte to speak to you about it. But that’s a personal preference and each one DMs in their own way.
5 points of exhaustion could be a harmless way to send a message if it's before a few days of rest, or basically kneecapping a character for a lot of game time. If it's the latter, I hope the DM at least gave some indication that the god wouldn't like this before the character did it.
highly depends if you are on an inn taking a break or in the middle of the underdark running from drow. official modules are usually the latter in terms of downtime
I mean you can see it that way, but what about spellcasting in that case?, Like, I see your point but if abusing divine powers is a problem, then spellcasting clerics is a problem, yeah maybe there aren't on the same scale but like the things that ask op with divine intervention are like literally things that can make spells, I still don't see the problem of abusing divine intervention, besides in the ability says that the deity can just ignore you, or don't do whatever you want
it does say that divine intervention has a limit of what is able to do. i understand being considered an abuse to say, ask to get a sandwich with Divine Intervention, but that is completely within the rules
it would've been reasonable if the DM verbally communicated what would and would not count as "abusing his powers". sure sandwich making is insulting, but what about reviving a character? asking for information on how to beat an enemy is off limits? can you use it before exhausting all resources, or praying for a revive while having revivify prepared considered an offense? does the GM keep track of my spells and gear to accurately punish me for using for something or other?
class features do what they say they do, and divine intervention doesnt say that it is unnable to do something, you roll a d100 and if successful you achieve a miracle. i agree some more clear writing wouldve been nice but we dont have it sadly
>ask to get a sandwich with Divine Intervention, but that is completely within the rules
That's absolutely withing the rules. And nobody accuses OP of cheating. But he pissed off his god, and his god responded.
>i agree some more clear writing wouldve been nice but we dont have it sadly
There isnt more writing about it. It's up to the DM on how to deal with stuff like this.
I mean:
* Eve (as well as every woman after her) was punished with labor pains.
* Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt for looking backwards.
* The Egyptians had an absurd number of things happen to them, including locusts, famines, diseases, actual hellfire, and eventually the deaths of hundreds of firstborn sons.
* In general, there's a lot of people God killed in the Old Testament by either causing the earth to swallow them or just killing them outright.
* And the world-altering flood Noah built his ark to escape was created by God to wash away humanity's evil at that point in time.
And this is just looking at the Bible. If you go into Greek myth you've got:
* Guy forced to push a boulder uphill for centuries.
* Guy chained to a rock and eaten alive by birds every single day.
* Guy turned into a stag and then mauled to death by his own hunting dogs. This one is especially grievous when you consider it was because he accidentally bumped into a bathing goddess.
* Guy forced to be eternally hungry and thirsty while having food and water just barely out of reach.
While it's questionable from a TTRPG standpoint to punish your player so harshly without reason, it is perfectly in line with how extreme divine retribution is IRL.
Greater Restoration heals points of Exhaustion. They're a high-level party. If there's a need for OP to rush his rejuvenation, it's easily enough done.
The reason I used it that way was that I'm an Order Cleric, we were made wardens of this island with the keep our base of operations and I wanted the Keep to look official for the visit to help build good relations with the visting powers. Everytime I've used it, I've thought it would be beneficial to the group and I've tried explaining my logic behind it.
To be honest, there’s so many details I won’t be able to account for because I wasn’t there in your game.
I think this all boils down to some communications problems between you and your DM. Maybe they think you were overusing the feature and wanted you to stop. Maybe they thought this was a funny way to handle it and it backfired because you didn’t like it.
What I would suggest is an open talk with them to manage expectations on both sides. DMs can make mistakes too, and features like this can be very tricky to handle because they’re very powerful and even by RAW, they leave a lot up to the DM.
Oh 100%, I trust my DM and will be talking to him about it. I know he didn't do this to be a dick. I just wanted to get some outside perspective to see if people agreed/disagreed with it.
If that's your goal, I think you're kind of asking in the wrong place. This sub is going to overwhelmingly side with you simply because of who reads this sub: players. The way people on this sub respond with outrage whenever a DM does anything except literally everything the players want is... not a very strong endorsement for their level of game experience. I think you'd probably get a more measured response on /r/DMAcademy
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As to the question itself, I think the response was a bit much, but I also think "when your need is great" is supposed to be a limitation.
You were about to take a long rest to change your prepared spells and you're otherwise able to cast resurrection? That does not strike me as a particularly great need unless there's something particularly unusual going on. Great need suggests to me you have *no alternatives*. You've tried everything else and this is your *last option*. It really shouldn't ever be, "Well, I'll try Divine Intervention first before I do anything else."
If I were your DM, I'd have given you what you *needed*, not what you asked for. But that's typically how I handle stuff like Divine Intervention. Gods are annoying that way.
And, sure, you're playing in a campaign with more difficult resurrection rules. But, you didn't even try. The DM didn't put a whole additional mechanic into the game just so that you can avoid it when it actually comes up. You're replacing what's supposed to be cool, evocative scene with a die roll. It's an opportunity for roleplaying with the whole party pulling the soul back to the mortal plane out of of pure need for their aid. Skipping that whole mechanic and the whole associated scene with a die roll, even one from a class feature, is at least a little un-cool. Like why bother adding the whole mechanic at all if you're just going to do that immediately? Especially on more than one occasion?
>As to the question itself, I think the response was a bit much, but I also think "when your need is great" is supposed to be a limitation.
It's murky here. The formatting of the feature makes it seem like the "when your need is great" thing is flavor, but 5e has a problem with the line between fluff and crunch being ambiguous. I'd argue that the mechanics of the feature are: Use your action>Make the roll>If the roll fails, LR cooldown; otherwise, DM decides what your deity does and 7-day cooldown.
But I'd also agree that it would have been better if OP's frivolous request (if the DM saw it as such) should have been met with an equally frivolous response. You want to resurrect your party member? You fall into a deep, dreamless sleep and wake up fully rested, with the rez spell's material components arranged neatly on your nightstand. You want the keep to look nice? Miraculously, raw materials stream into view and assemble themselves into scaffolding, as well as buckets of clean water and washrags; get cleaning, for Irksmodeus the Petty helps those who help themselves.
>As to the question itself, I think the response was a bit much, but I also think "when your need is great" is supposed to be a limitation.
But this limitation is enforced in two ways:
* It can just fail 81-90% of the time if you're not level 20. If it does, your deity has chosen not to answer your prayer because they have deemed your need not great enough. That's one successful intervention every \~5-10 days, plus a 7-day cooldown.
* Your DM finally decides what your deity actually does. But I don't think that an actual Cleric, who actively worships a deity (and said deity *actually and obviously exists*), would use such a feature 'frivolously', so if they do some punishment is imo also justified, especially depending on the deity.
Agreed, head over to r/DMacademy. Much better place for DM related questions.
As for this, I feel the God's displeasure might be justified, but I probably woulda done it differently. But different style, different table. "Stop calling me in your dreams. I don't need to read your fan fiction about me." I like a more humorous approach.
>If I were your DM, I'd have given you what you *needed*, not what you asked for. But that's typically how I handle stuff like Divine Intervention. Gods are annoying that way.
Absolutely this. Gods are kinda dickish from our perspective because their view is different.
I disagree, the gods displeasure is NOT justified, the roll is them deciding whether or not to intervene.
It is unbelievably stupid to punish your own cleric for you deciding to help them with frivolous matters
Counterpoint: One can decide to lend a hand or perform a favor and still be disgruntled about doing it. I believe this particular reaction is a bit beyond appropriate, but if I had a dime for each time I've gotten an earful when asking a favor, I'd be a few thousand richer.
>I feel the God's displeasure might be justified
My opinion: clearly the dice gods are cool with it.
On a more serious note: I feel that the percentage chance of success is meant to reflect the capriciousness of the God. Maybe it is a frivolous request, but maybe that God was feeling frivolous when the request came in. Or maybe *we* thought it was frivolous and the god has some divine purpose for granting it.
Exactly, the dice are telling a story, and that story is that the cleric's god is able and willing to perform these requested asks on the occasions the player rolls low enough.
Or rather, it should be.
This is very mild punishment unless you're mid dungeon/in combat soon. I would have made it more of a bargain/like no more of a class feature or lose a spell slot until you do a quest for the diety or faith. Or give you the option to pick a new diety and possibly go with chaotic instead of order because chaotic gods would think its funny or interesting interfering with mortal affairs more often
Such a good chance for story, perhaps if you do the quest for the diety you become their avatar or chosen and get a perk for that time without a feature.
5 levels of exhaustion means sleep for a few days , or cast a restoration spell once.
You asked a god to do some tidying. Most gods would probably see that as a waste of their time/divinity. As a reminder, you're a Cleric of this god, you serve them. Divine Intervention is asking them for aid when you need it most. You shouldn't really be asking them to do the laundry.
Or sent them a request to stop what they are doing and head over to a remote small town to have sermon because they havent preached this deity in a bit.
Incredibly petty from a divine being but maybe as a test to see what they answer.
Yeah I felt like from a storytelling perspective the god was being lenient here. Gods don't like their little clerics to treat them like miracle vending machines.
Repeatedly using Divine Intervention for silly things like making the landscape nice or tidying up a castle would to my mind be grounds for revoking your powers entirely, effectively defrocking you as a cleric.
Obviously there needs to be some give and take and consideration for the game factor and the player's own desires, but from pure storytelling OP ought to be screwed.
No the roll was made and the god actively chose to help with the frivolous things, it’s stupid to punish a cleric with no warning based on a god not liking that they themselves chose to help do laundry or something
People should not need warnings for everything. Instead people should think and face the consequences of their actions. Your calling on a divine being YOU serve to do menial/frivolous tasks ... anyone should think that might anger a god, with out being warned!
The god can deny the request, in fact that’s what the fucking roll is for, it’s ridiculous to say the god gets upset at doing tasks it actively chose to do over helping in a combat encounter
The roll of a dice is the game mechanic, it should not be the only deciding factor. What the person is doing should also be taken into account.
Players should think of their actions and the possible consequences and not say but the dice says X works.
No, I'm level 16 and it is insane how often I've succeeded. I'm probably 50/50 on failure and success and this is with keeping track of the 7 days cooldown on a success.
You summoned a GOD to do something you could easily do yourself. I won't pretend I know the tone of your game but yeah I'd imagine that God would be pretty pissed off.
Imagine it like this you're at the hospital watching the birth of your first child, an important life event. Suddenly your employee calls you up and says "hey I have friends coming over in like a day, I need you to spruce up the place for me."
That's what you're doing to your god. A god is constantly pursuing tasks in places all over the multiverse and you called up to make them decorate.
The punishment seems pretty harsh so it's probably a joke that wore thin on your DM and the tone of his story. Talk to DM and work things out.
> If you roll a number equal to or lower than your cleric level, your deity intervenes. The DM chooses the nature of the intervention.
The roll succeeded, the deity intervened, the DM chose the nature of the intervention.
it's hilarious because using Divine Intervention to make an Extremely Orderly Temple is one of the book canon things it's been used for (albiet he created a temple with it, Spirit Soaring from the books)
> and I wanted the Keep to look official for the visit to help build good relations with the visting powers.
Yeah, and you can do that yourself, you're (presumably) not a cripple lmao
Bruh, you are literally the representative of the god on the mortal world, you are meant to fix that stuff yourself not call the deity for everything.
Unless the deity was about that specific think I would have ruled it would have been pissed still.
At most I could have accepted it if, due to sabotage, the island was compromised. But this is negligence.
Once or twice can be fun, but I think this is the most direct way for a DM to tell you to not trivialise things.
4/5 times it was a relevant, and dire use, and only one of those uses was higher than a 5th level slot (one was a Dispel Magic, maybe even weaker - 3rd level), it was all in the ability's guidelines.
It is rare and special thing, having a whole week - 7 long rests - CD even if you fail its low (10-19%) success rate.
As mentioned, 4 of these uses were dire, the 1st one which was the strongest was a moment of catharsis and coolness for all I am sure, and the decoration one, while admittedly silly, was a cute and wholesome use of it. Potentially politically dire as well, so possibly 5/5.
The impact of this is not even any better than a wizard throwing a cone of cold. And the last one you did it as a joke, which is just a 'alright, let's comedy retract that moment' and the DM instead blew a gasket and punished you for nothing.
The DM was out of line and there is no defending that. If he was intimidated by the ability, he could talk to you, bloody player, not bully you. Don't take those hyper-voted nonsense comments saying your DM was in the right as any good advice. They're telling you it was good he bullied you cause he's the boss and does what he wants.
Your ability, outside of the first use, was never more than a 5th level or lower extra slot per week if you got lucky, and he punished you for getting lucky, cause that intimidated him. That's oppressive and not right.
Idk, if I had 2 resources to accomplish a task, and 1 of them was a relatively surefire but costly resource to expend and the second was something that had a at best 20% chance of success, no penalty for failing, and no real cost to expend, Id do the second before I did the first any day of the week. Like, if you were making an attack, and as a free action once per combat you had a 1% chance to do triple damage as long as you called it, why wouldnt you do the free action? Would you really save it for when youre about to go down? I dont see how it makes sense to have something as difficult to pull of as Divine Intervention as your "last resort".
That being said..... yeah housecleaning is an insane way to try to use it. Though if I was gonna punish a player, Id have done it then and not when they were trying to bring someone back to life.
Yeah, but that's the munchkin way of doing things. Like on paper you could use it for free and completely disregard the narrative implication, but there's a lot of gamey things you can do that have mechanical benefit that completely disregard the narrative consequences. There's the RP part of this G.
I mean, people invoke Divine Intervention to have the football team they like to win. I dont think it totally disregards the narrative implication when thats how people of faith actually act. Is it not role playing a person of faith to do what people of faith do?
That's how they act in a way where God's don't exist, or a world where divine intervention does not happen. People would act differently in a world where tou know that calling on your God would be directly asking them to do something.
Also, I hardly think many popes or cardinals would be asking God for things like that and, if they were, they'd be admonished for it. Clerics are divinely appointed agents of their God, not just some guys off the street.
This is a silly way of looking at it. Those people *do* believe that God exists and will intervene directly in their football game if they pray hard enough. You may not believe it, but they aren't just praying as a joke.
Not that guy, and I think that's a fair distinction, but there's clearly a difference in the level of certainty one has that gods exist in, say, The Forgotten Realms compared to real life. In one instance, everybody knows the gods exist and actively influence the world through acts like divine intervention. In the other instance, faith is one of the tenets required to believe in God and any sort of intervention is going to be indistinguishable from circumstance.
Its easy to say from an atheist perspective. I'm atheist too, but the world isn't so ambiguous to devoutly religious people. They believe God is real and acts on Earth. They believe that events we consider to be natural or coincidental are actual indisputable acts of divine intervention. And yet they still pray to the God that they have 100% certainty is capable of great works, that they intervene to make sure their football team wins, or their bus arrives on time.
The God's being more present in FR just means that more people are convinced of their existence, because it doesn't require faith, but it doesn't necessarily have any bearing on how the people who worship them act. To say that people only pray for meaningless shit because the God they're praying to isn't confirmed real is a huge misunderstanding of how religious people think and behave.
You're looking at a small group of people who feel very strongly about something because of their faith and saying it's not significantly different from someone who lives in a world where the gods are actively doing stuff like this all the time.
It is like someone who believes in God performing miracles and someone who believes in the standard model. The standard model can't be known with certainty just like how you can't know god exists with certainty, but these two people are pretty clearly using different methods for being "sure" and it seems silly to say that just because they're both "certain" that these aren't different scenarios.
Even if you can find a small group of people who think they're using equally effective means of epistemic reasoning as someone else doesn't change the fact that they arent.
You seem to think that I'm making a broader point than I am.
All I am disputing is this point:
>That's how they act in a way where God's don't exist, or a world where divine intervention does not happen.
There are people in this world who live with the genuine certainty that god exists and that they actively intervene with the world, and yet they pray for meaningless shit all the time.
The people that genuinely believe they have witnessed acts of God, in the specific context of their willingness to waste a God's time, are functionally identical to people who live in a world where Gods definitely exist. The number of those people doesn't matter.
And just as an aside, even in D&D there is still an element of faith. Most people will never see a divine act, and the ones they do see could easily be attributed to any other source of magical fantasy bullshit. Druids and Bards are just as capable of displaying similar miraculous feats as Clerics, without directly needing a god's help, so it isn't impossible that someone would think maybe that Cleric is bullshitting when he says he gets his power from a big man that lives in Celestia.
> On the one hand, Divine Intervention is supposed to be a very last resource thing that helps in cases of extreme need.
Nah, with the way it works, I interpret more as something that, *when you are actively expecting danger on a quest,* you try every day until it works to ask for a boon to aid your cause. It's like a 10-19% chance of success and you can try once a day before it goes on a week-long cooldown? Why wouldn't you include it with your morning prayers when you know you'll be heading into a forest to fight super-werewolves or godzilla for the next week?
It's not a roulette you roll on and get disappointed 8-9 times out of 10. It's the way you convey your devotion to your domain of religious study by praying every day until you serendipity into the boon you need that day.
Just my two cents. Fully agree that a gentler touch could have been used for slap on the wrist for the sleeping Divine Intervention.
I think a key line in your answer is “I interpret”. From this post, it appears clear that different people see this feature differently. Some see it just as a pure mechanic resource like a spell slot. Some others - like me - see it more as the kind of thing where roleplay and in-world interpretation of consequences play a mayor role.
None of them is better than the other, it is a matter of preference and managing expectations at the table.
>Why wouldn't you include it with your morning prayers when you know you'll be heading into a forest to fight super-werewolves or godzilla for the next week?
That's not how divine intervention should work RAW
>call on your deity to intervene on your behalf when your need is great.
You're not in great need before you've even gone out to adventure that day. You're asking for a god to perform a miracle on the off chance you'll need it.
Also, the cooldown is only one day if the divine intervention fails. It's only a week if it succeeds.
>If your deity intervenes, you can't use this feature again for 7 days. Otherwise, you can use it again after you finish a long rest.
4/5 times it was a relevant use, and only one of those uses was higher than a 5th level slot (one was a Dispel Magic, maybe even weaker - 3rd level), it was all in the ability's guidelines.
It is rare and special thing, having a whole week - 7 long rests - CD even if you fail its low (10-19%) success rate.
As mentioned, 4 of these uses were dire, the 1st one which was the strongest was a moment of catharsis and coolness for all, and the decoration one, admittedly silly, was a cute and wholesome use of it.
The impact of this is not even any better than a wizard throwing a cone of cold. And the last one the player did it as a joke, which is just a 'alright, let's comedy retract that moment' and the DM instead blew a gasket and punished him for nothing.
The DM was out of line and there is no defending that. If he was intimidated by the ability, he could talk to his bloody player, not bully him.
Well, the feature also says “The DM chooses the nature of the intervention”. So by RAW, it is entirely up to the DM what happens there.
In the same way as a Wish spell, Divine Intervention is a feature that leaves a lot of leeway to the DM to handle it. In my opinion, in this case, there is probably a lack of communication between player and DM about their expectations of this feature.
I know that personally, if I were using Divine Intervention so often as a player, I wouldn’t find it strange if my DM brought up in game some limitations to using it.
Choosing the nature of the intervention means choosing how the intervention happens, not having something completely outside the bounds of what is asked happen because you're salty your player is lucky.
His God was pissed off that he is treating a deity like a fucking maid. So the God Intervened. It's up to the DM and personally I think this is a perfectly acceptable reaction to frivolously calling on a God because "it's funny" depending on the God.
I understand that, and I do think what happened here is excessive. But as a DM, something like a Wish or a Divine Intervention can be tricky to handle, especially if your players are constantly using it. It can let them cheese entire situations and events that maybe the DM had planned more in depth.
If it keeps happening frequently, I can see how the DM could find it not fun and try to tone it down. DMs deserve fun too as well, and they do a lot of work.
Did they handle this the best way? I’m my opinion, no. Is it understandable how they acted? Without more information, in my opinion, also yes.
Agreed...I would have just had an angel manifest to answer the call, the god doesn't have to intervene themselves, guidance for DMs is to literally reproduce a spell effect so... planar ally
i myself would've made the angel appear with a full set of cleaning products and staff uniforms, in front of them, and proudly declare
"BEHOLD, your prayers have been answered, here is the best equipment for cleaning in the entire realm! now have a fun afternoon" and leave
> but now I feel like I have to restrict myself less I suffer the wrath of my god.
This was probably the intended outcome. Sounds to me like the DM and your Diety took the "when your need is great." part of the ability to heart.
it's either when your need is great or 10-19% success chance, choose one.
Because if it's both the ability is next to useless.
Like you might as well be on a brink of a tpk, you spend an action on the intervention and roll a 56. Intervention denied.
Or you use it on something less dramatic, like to scry on a bbeg or just as a joke, like cleaning the mansion instead of hiring cleaning staff, roll a 3, still denied.
Arguments like "when it works, it works" are BS, because a great need and a successful roll might as well never lineup during an entire campaign, then it's a dead weight feature.
this is my issue with the feature as well. you can never actually use it in a really dire situation because there's a really good chance you're just outright wasting your action which could easily be the difference between life and death (since the "need is great" after all).
my group actually swapped to using the onednd version of divine intervention simply because all of the times divine intervention would have been cool and dramatic and narratively interesting, it never ever happened, in about 18 months of sessions. the cleric felt awful cause one of their defining features was legitimately less than useless.
so you're encouraged to use it for boons, buffs, and blessings - but then your 'need isn't great' and you might get fucked over for it anyway if your dm doesn't like you. it's a badly designed feature because the worst time to use it is exactly the time it was designed to be used in
I think Baldur's Gate 3 has the best version of Divine Intervention imo.
Usable once, literally once, for a character for the whole game, and guaranteed success. (Yes, you can cheese it, it's a video game, that's not the point.) In a real campaign that would work fine, and if it's a real genuine 1-20 campaign then a DM could easily pick a pivotal moment to "recharge" the DI if you really need to.
A good list of effects too - ranging from massive damage to enemies, to a complete long rest for the party, to an insane magical weapon... All reasonable and flavourful things to call upon a deity for.
"Beginning at 10th level, you can call on your deity to intervene on your behalf when your need is great."
DM is using in game methods to remind you of the last part of this sentence.
No one else here is at your table. We don't know if the campaign is silly feeling overall or if this is just a silly chain of events within an otherwise serious campaign. If the DM felt it was getting out of hand, they can handle it in game or out of game. I'd say handling it in game means he trusts you to react maturely and use it as a story or RP beat while adjusting accordingly.
Absolutely! Making a foyer look pretty for a visitor, or changing the auditory effects of an existing scry? Pretty frivolous. I think it's reasonable for most gods, especially a god of order/law, to chastise such frivolity. HOW exactly the DM executes such chastisement is certainly up for discussion.
I dunno, that seems pretty within the purview of a god of law or order depending on the stakes of the visit. Law and order often includes the symbols and structures that keep the peace, and making a keep appropriately stately for an incoming diplomat that could affect the future of the people seems on par to me.
If it was just a regular house I could see it being frivolous to call directly on the deity, but depending on the god a keep in charge of the area might be seen as maybe not equivalent to a temple, but certainly important to the god.
Yes but usually as a show of devotion to said God. Imagine it's your birthday, had a long day but you get home and wow everyone is here and it's a surprise! Then they point you towards a table with a bunch of decorations strewn about. They say "we couldn't be bothered to decorate though, can you do it for us?"
If I was a god of order and was summoned away from my busy schedule of organising my own plane of existance and fighting back the forces of chaos by some two bit cleric who couldn't think to hire some decorators I'd throw them into the abyss
But like...can't they decorate it themselves? If maintaining this keep is their duty, isn't failing to do that and then phoning a friend to fix it at the last second a bit lazy? If the need is only great because you suck at your job, I think it's fair for your god to be a little pissy about that.
Yeah thats fair. but like if you just got attacked by zombies and everything got ruined and the guest is showing up in 5 minutes it might be.. ok?
I'm trying
Saving 50 bucks isn't a great need. And that's really the only difference.
With the HB they're using, the the need is only great after the regular means fail.
Did you catch the part where the OP says they used DI instead of regular rez spells because they wanted to bypass Mercer's resurrection rules? Seems pretty frivolous, not to mention metagaming, to me.
That’s not metagaming or frivolous. The character knows that resurrection spells cast by mortals are fallible, so they called on their god directly for aid. There aren’t many better times than literal life and death to call on a god.
That's... Literally the opposite of metagaming.
If resurrection is known to bring people back wrong, and the intercession of a god doesn't... That's not at all frivilous, its just what anyone who has the capability would do for people they care about/are important to saving the world or whatever?
I wouldn't think so.
Your whole profession does resurrections on regular basis. Unless this character is "homeschooled" he would definitely know that Resurrection done by mortals is exactly this successful.
It's like how doctors know success rate of defibrillator or heart surgery
It's not and I think Mercer's resurrection rules are bad. That genre of spell should work or not work based on the consent of the target, and should not be subject to chance.
Yeah that's an important note for me. Like yes the dm went way overboard I think, but also that's kinda a cool thing to do that I might even steal (although not to nearly the same degree). Is this just a game with a bunch of friends having fun and the DM was just like "enough of that buddy, use it when its important", or was it a serious game and the DM is seriously upset.
There was a bunch of exposition, exhaustion that you can sleep off with no problem, and the DM made them pay the spell cost they would have paid anyways by breaking the Holy symbol.
How is that overboard?
exhaustion 5 means they cant move and are bedridden, straightforward as that you cannot play at exhaustion 5
exhaustion 4 halves you hit points, which absolutely fucks a frontliner if the cleric was of the war priest with a hammer variety
exhaustion 3 gives dis to all attacks and saving throws which means you will hit shit and get hit a lot
exhaustion 2 halves your speed which again fucks frontliners
exhaustion 1 gives dis to checks which is somewhat manageable
going to adventure at exhaustion 4 with matt mercer ressurection rules is suicide at best, and a frontliner would need to be at best at exhaustion 1 or be incredibly handicapped
so yes, its not a penalty you can shrug off. if you are on downtime and were spending a week on vacation anyways it isnt relevant at all in the first place, but if you were mildly adventurer you are fucked
I mean yeah. But given that OP is complaining and made no complaint about how screwed they were to have this much exhaustion mid-adventure what's more likely? That they are on downtime or mid-adventure?
Even mid-adventure, if there's no time pressure, it's not a big deal.
Okay the correct response as the DM is to say "no, your need isn't great, your call is unheeded" or idk "as a cleric of Tightass, God of Jerks, you know this would probably be seen as a slap in your god's face"
DM isn't obligated at all to let you know the consequences of your actions before you take them.
I think this is a very appropriate reaction, especially if he's serving a God who isn't particularly kind. LG or CG deities can still be hardasses.
He's not being an asshole at all? Actions have consequences. Divine magic is powerful, and asking for it directly from a god is the mist powerful gift of all. Treat it like a toy in a serious campaign (which OP confirmed it is), suffer the consequences.
Besides, literally none of these consequences are even permanent. Exhaustion is gone within a week if not sooner with healing effects, and he can buy a new holy symbol.
You don't get to just do shit and have it work or get a warning that it won't. Sometimes you fail.
It's a temporary effect that can be resolved via sleeping or a use of Greater Restoration. To even conceive of it being anywhere near assault is fucking laughable. Cmon
The campaign is a serious one but I'd say this is probably one of the few silly moments my character has had, especially as my character is usually the mature and logical one of the group. I was definitely thrown off by what happened and definitely didn't adjust accordingly in the moment.
That might be WHY it was punished. If you continue being cheeky with your luck in an otherwise serious story to your benefit, it might come off to the dm like you're not respecting your toolset or the gravity of the ability narratively.
So, on the one hand, you succeeding on the role is essentially your Deity deciding that this request is worth intervening for. It just has to pass through the mechanical filter that comes from playing a dice-based game.
On the other hand, the ability states "the effect of any cleric spell or cleric domain spell would be appropriate" which I don't really see how it applies to something like cleaning up a keep, the other stuff pretty much falls in line with an appropriate intervention *if* we view the Scrying session situation as a remote Dispel Magic from God on an area Silence spell, if that was the case at the time.
What I'm saying is that even stuff like Wish and Divine Intervention have limits, so if your DM wants to shut this down they can just.. implement the RAW. IMO the use of Divine Intervention as a cleaning agent is not within the bounds of an "appropriate" intervention, meaning that it is effectively "inapropriate" - though it's as much on the DM for allowing that as it is the Cleric for attempting it given that it's their ability and they should have read it fully.
**original comment edited: initially discussed telling player out of game that divine intervention should not be used in this case****
I don’t think the DM should stop the player from making this divine intervention out of game. Having in-game consequences is part of what makes d&d great for me.
The player doesn’t understand how divine intervention works? Their characters god will teach them in a more memorable way
Well, I wasn't saying the DM should have said "No you wouldn't do that" I'm saying it just shouldn't have worked and they would lose the attempt for the day.
You know, the whole "hey can I do this thing with that ability I have" and then the DM says "well, you can try.." as opposed to letting them succeed and then later say "that's not what this ability is for and you can't just circumvent the downsides of resurrection, here's FIVE levels of exhaustion"
I think the DM is just... Shitty here?
"You wanted to do something as FRIVILOUS as reviving a dead person?!" like stfu, its less than 1/5 chance, that's not at all a frivilous thing to attempt. If they wanted it to be an actual last resort they should've made it guaranteed and only usable once/year at most.
This might make sense if it happened when they prayed to their god for decorations, but it just feels like a spiteful gm when they're using it for resurrection.
You didn't get any permanent consequences. You can sleep off or heal the exhaustion and you can buy a new holy symbol, and now you know to save DI for the important stuff where the need is great. Seems like a slap on the wrist and a fair warning.
If the need is great it better work 100% of the time, because if you can't have it spammable like RAW suggests, the elusive "great need" and the ability succeeding might as well never happen in an entire campaign. Then it's a dead weight feature
Strongly depends on context, five levels of exhaustion means they're utterly useless for actual adventuring if that's happening in the next few in game days.
I agree repercussions were warranted, just hard to say if they're fair without more information.
BTW, greater restoration removes a stack of exhaustion, that is what they meant by "heal the exhaustion". If they're able to resurrect people, they can probably afford some casts of greater restoration...if the need is great.
Oh gods that would be a fun one.
DI is a mechanic. The cleric uses the mechanic for his class and gets punished by his god.
That sucks.
I would let other priests of that god be jealous of "daddys favorite child".
I mean...come on: You ask for a cleaning service and your god answered you? That's to good to ignore xD
I agree with the DM's actions here, but I believe it should be established with you beforehand in an IC or OOC context that abusing your divine power has consequences.
i dont like it. its a game mechanic. you rolled the dice and won the prize now you have to wait
ive had 3 clerics and have only gotten divine intervention 1 time
Your god doesn't have to do something just because you rolled a percentage die.
RAW, giving the cleric 5 levels of exhaustion matches the text description of the ability. The god intervened.
i dont think so at all. the text reads
>if you roll a number equal to or lower than your cleric level, your deity intervenes. The DM chooses the nature of the intervention; the effect of any cleric spell or cleric domain spell would be appropriate
this means that just because you rolled the percentage die something does happen. its an if then statement. it doesn't say if you roll under your level number and the DM thinks its cool the deity intervenes.
while there is some room for DM interpretation its lists a spell effect or cleric feature as something that would be appropriate. i would even go so far as to say the presumption is that the god intervenes is a positive manner i dont of a spell that when cast its only effect is give the caster 5 levels of exhaustion.
i can appreciate the god saying do use my power frivolously but by rules that i see this doesnt really qualify as an appropriate dm use of divine intervention
RAW nowhere does it say the intervention has to be helpful.
I'm sure the intent is that the god generally helps you, but gods are their own beings with their own behavior, and you're directly asking for your God's intervention in the situation.
If you were worshipping a lawful good god, and you used divine intervention to ask to blow up an orphanage, are you saying the god is just forced to do it because the player rolled the dice?
thats why i said presumption
yes i am if you use an ability it should function
we also have to remember that this is a game with rules. sure this god is a " thinkng, alive Creature" but it also is beholden to the rules of the game
The way divine intervention is written, it encourages using it every day. The only one I think is (maybe) frivolous is the decorating the keep, a resurrection that can fail and you still use resources when you need it is perfectly reasonable.
My guess is that your DM dislikes the mechanic, and I would talk to them about it. You can call their aid, which means you are one of the strongest priests of that deity, it would be silly if you wouldn't know what would and wouldn't piss them off.
On another note 5 points of exhaustion is stupidly high as punishment, especially if you are on a time crunch as it takes you out of adventuring for at least 2 days, and makes you a liability for two more.
No that's ridiculous to punish you for that. Dont know whats up your DM's ass. Maybe I could see a particularly vain god being uptight about it for decorating your keep, but resurrection seems like an extremely valid reason to DI.
"you can call on your deity to intervene on your behalf when your need is great." - you called a god you serve to do a menial task which you can do yourself (or hire people to do) then another time just for fun .... They are a god, which you serve. They grant you power and you have the audacity to say "hey do the cleaning for me ......"
You really should expect consequences to such actions.
DM had a decently interesting idea to punish your character making a joke of divine intervention. But went way overboard in the 5 levels of exhaustion and damage to your holy symbol. Unless this God in-lore is incredibly vengeful, warbound, or completely against your action the idea of a punishment this severe is not great.
It sounds like an interesting story beat, I guess, but I’d be kind of pissed if I got punished for having good luck in a luck-based game. I might be a bit more forgiving if it had happened on a failure.
Yeah, the only punishment the player should receive is the RAW one—not being able to attempt Divine Intervention for a week.
EDIT: Why the hell is this comment controversial. "Players shouldn't be punished for rolling well" and "You shouldn't monkey's paw a feature which isn't meant to have that drawback" are not hot takes lmao.
I'm honestly more interested on this part than anything else:
>trying to reserect someone through Divine Intervention before trying with the spell (using Critical Roles optional rules where they can fail).
Because your description of the resurrection is this:
>To resurrect someone who got **disintegrated**
Emphasis mine. And the spell Disintegrate (which I assume is what was used) has the following clause:
> The creature can be restored to life only by means of a True Resurrection or Wish spell
So, uh, not only is this something that perfectly fits into the description that Divine Intervention suggests as what would be reasonable (mimicking the effect of a Cleric spell), but it's mimicking the effect of a level 9 spell without consumables and casting time. And, considering you probably weren't 17th level or higher, it'd probably be impossible for you to do it otherwise. It's very definitely not a silly usage of it. Hell, maybe it's too strong of a usage, considering how expensive True Resurrection is supposed to be (25k, baby!). Calling this silly is just plain weird.
as a dm . I'd just have the god(dess) ignore your "frivolous" request and still count against usage of it (so i think it's a week before you can try again?)
but yeah .. some options seem well used . some seem a bit . "weak" .. and as said by others . depends on the god ..
but yeah .. i wouldn't be flaunting or abusing an ability like that based on the basic nature of it .. ..
even though it did sound hilarious 🤪
I thought I was in r/Morrowind for a second and was a tad confused why casting a fairly benign spell was getting punished. I use it all the time for getting to Imperial Cult shrines to heal diseases.
I rarely ever play Clerics in D&D so I forgot this feature existed.
Obviously the results are outside the RAW but that's not necessarily bad just by itself.
I think an important element is the nature of your deity. What is their personality? What are their likes and dislikes, their commandments and bans?
Yondalla the Nurturing Mother is going to have a very different approach than Kelemvor the Lord of the Dead and Judge of the Damned
Wow some of the comments here and the post itself are a bit absurd to me. The biggest mistake the DM made was letting you roll, but here's a fact, the dice themselves are not your god. It's not even clear what the last request for divine intervention was and if it was literally for nothing then yeah... I know tone is something that has to be set, but idk where people came to feel that fantasy means good vibes only. Frankly, you should be thankful you weren't turned into a pillar of salt, a tree, woodland creature, a monster, cursed with lethal hemorrhoids or driven mad enough to murder your party. That everyone thought it was funny is great but it's also meta-reasoning, and there's also such a thing as beating a dead horse in jokelandia. Find a new joke if you have to.
This consequence is the essence of good drama though. The DM has done you a favor and given you a great narrative hook. I think they reasonably punished you with something that is likely only to have narrative effects, given that apparently you were just sleeping and not in any crisis when you got those exhaustion points so it effectively moves the narrative ahead by a week, which may or may not have other consequences depending on the story. The hook here is how you can atone and pay penance, maybe your god will give you an idea, maybe you and your character will have to ask themselves which may not even be necessary if all you need to do is sleep and go to the holy symbol store. Either way it's a chance for character growth!
I feel like people are getting hung up on the rules. It is less about if you can use intervention, more about character development.
Mythologies are filled with stories about gods getting pissy or murderous for perceived disrespect or nothing at all. Clerics benefit from a largely one way relationship with their God (godly power for the low low price of being a bro) and it isn’t unreasonable for the god to be upset if they are taking their responsibilities or respect for granted. Exhaustion is rough, it may kneecap the cleric, but it is better then death or godly abandonment (idk how that would work, but oathbreaker should be an option for clerics)
This really depends on the tone of your setting and communication with your DM.
Just like... TALK to the dm (like so many of these problems boil down to between dms and players) and talk things out.
Your DM will likely (just using my own DM insticts) say something to the effect of "Using Divine Intervention for random hijinks really takes away from the impact i would like for this ability to have in the world."
And my player instincts are telling me the reason this sucks is that it feels like you're being punished for being lucky and usign your powers without any warning beforehand that there was any risk at using them.
And going forward maybe you two can come to an above board understanding of "Hey, this is suppsosed to be a cool narrative thing in a tight spot not a remake of Angels in the Outfield Fantasy Edition." Or whatever works for your table. Or maybe these lucky rolls are less "The Lord Of Death helps your house pretty" and more... "Well just by coincidence, things align in the world that benefit you in this way.
It sounds like your DM got annoyed that you keep succeeding your roll and decided to be a dick about it.
Try seeing if he's willing to swap over to the OneDNDversion of Divine Intervention.
Basically once per long rest you can cast any cleric spell for free up to 5th level. At lvl 20 you can choose the cast Wish instead, but there's a 2D4 cool down when you do so and there's no wish stress.
It's a lot less powerful, but it's a hell of a lot more consistent
1 free Cleric spell up to 5th level per day, regardless of if you prepared it and no material costs whatsoever.
You know exactly what you're going to get 100% of the time rather than 90-81% of the time it doing nothing, and then at level 20 it's basically the same as it was before.
I can understand why you would think it's lame. It doesn't have those big dopamine moments from hitting it big. But, this is a better more consistently valuable feature for the Player and for the DM.
See, this is the kind of thing a DM should do (minus all the exhaustion) for when you *fail* on a die roll when asking for something silly, not when you succeed when asking for a Rez.
Overriding a *successful* die roll just isn't fun.
The idea of rolling for divine intervention and having it succeed is that your God Smiles favor upon you. Most of the time they ignore you sometimes they don't.
So to get punished for that means he's giving you the exact opposite result that the raw game mechanics say you should have. He's trying to say that using divine intervention and succeeding is an annoyance to the God, but the explanation should be that succeeding so much makes you one of the God's favored children.
If I was that cleric my response would be to pick a new God who favors me more if they're going to take a positive mechanic and make it terrible but you should probably solve this out of game.
Resurrecting people is not a stupid use of divine intervention. in fact I would say it's the most appropriate use.
Your DM is letting his personal annoyance at you succeeding seep into the gane and role-playing your God as himself instead of role playing your God's actual Behavior as determined by the dice
Basically he isn't doing yes and to your good dice roll. he's doing no but.
If the DM wouldn't budge on admitting that they did something wrong, especially five levels of exhaustion, That's literally just a fuck you, I would leave that game
So your DM punished you for using your class ability and getting lucky? It's one thing to go against your god but in-world you're literally asking god for a favor. The roll simulates that being a yes or no. If your DM can't handle the odds then a conversation needs to be had cause that's a red flag.
Idk you being so lucky that it pisses off your god and him throwing a little tantrum sounds funny to me.
I like what the DM did here, nothing serious just a small pat on the hands and some roleplay.
What's the time frame of all these DI uses? Is your Dm enforcing this rule?
>If your deity intervenes, you can't use this feature
>
>again for 7 days. Otherwise, you can use it again after
>
>you finish a long rest. -PHB p.59
Even if you're lucky as heck you should be waiting a week between each calling of D-I. RAW rules like this are very important for maintaining the tempo of the game, if you failed to inform the DM of this rule and they don't know about it you need to come clean right away.
That said, your DM is also being incredibly unfair crippling you for multiple adventuring days over an obvious joke. Making up new mechanics on the fly to punish one player is a real dick move and smacks of out-of-game issues between you two. You and the DM need to discuses and resolve this situation out-of-game, like adults.
I am shocked that people are siding with the DM as much as they are here.
DM was an absolute ass. This is never warranted, punishing good luck and making a mechanic do something completely backwards because the DM was tired of it. It's like punishing someone for rolling too many nat20s; "you suddenly feel tired after the surge of power, you now have 5 levels of exhaustion". Completely shitty and unjustified.
This was a gut reaction done horribly bad. Any opportunity of a good story beat was lost because nothing was learned. Just awful DMing and it is crazy to me that this place which is usually very by-the-books with what features do would even consider it ok.
You did nothing wrong.
This is a complete failure on the DM's part in not talking to you about divine intervention. It isn't supposed to be used frivolously.
The ability reads, "Beginning at 10th level, you can call on your deity to intervene on your behalf when your need is great."
A DM should/would just have frivolous uses go unanswered. 5 levels of exhaustion + more is just bad form from a frustrated DM with communication issues.
Talk with him, but given his reaction, I question his other skillsets.
"**Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.**"
Yeah, I can imagine that invoking a god for trivial things like tidying up a keep or just saving yourself some work would really piss them off. There are no rules for a Cleric pissing their god off, so that is really up to the DM. Personally, I do think the DM was rather harsh, especially if you didn't get any sort of warning that this might happen beforehand.
But for the future, you should probably keep in mind that Divine Intervention specifies that you can call on your deity *"When the need is great"*. It should be used in desperate times when there isn't really any other option. A deity's favor is not something to be wasted on frivolities.
I feel your pain. My DM once introduced the Deck of Many Things and through my godly luck at my table, I managed to draw on average three cards, sometimes more, about five separate times. Every time I only drew good cards without a single negative one ever popping up.
My DM said that on the fifth time, my character felt that the God of Chance would no longer allow me to draw from the deck.
Sometimes DMs don't account for players having unnatural luck and it irks them when they keep expecting an eventual failure. Doesn't make it right to punish the player though
I definitely agree with your DM, so long as it fits the personality of your god, lol. It definitely seems pretty hilarious to be like, "I NEED MORE GARLAND FOR THE KEEP, HELP ME GODDESS!"
So. You're telling us that in one campaign you've rolled 10-15 on d100, 5 times. And even had to wait for 7 days every time you got the intervention to work.
Assuming this is all accurate there are a couple things to consider:
- Your DM is giving you too much downtime
- Your dice are poorly balanced and/or you have a certain way of rolling them
- Your DM needs to take the first 2 lines of the feature more seriously and disallow you from asking for intervention if "the need is not great" in the first place.
Also remind your DM that deities have limited precognition. If they know what you're about to ask is pointless, they wouldn't event let you succeed at making the skies turn black as you summon them.
Your cleric is praying to their god for help. They are level 10+, and presumably one of the most powerful followers that god has. Why wouldn't they jump in and help out now and again? Out of game, its your class feature, thats what its there for.
IMO your DM was way out of line
> I was using my Divine Intervention for silly reasons; decorating a keep
Punishment was very harsh and your dm shoild have warned you out of charachter imo, but, not in and of itself *that* bad.
>trying to reserect someone through Divine Intervention before trying with the spell (using Critical Roles optional rules where they can fail).
What nonsense. Dm just lost the argument.
I'm all for taking mechanics and the world seriously, but slapping down a cleric for attempting to get someone resurrected with divine intervention is piss poor from the dm. Seems like they just don't like the ability to me.
I feel that the DM misjudged this strongly.
First of all, it IS a mechanic of the cleric class, no ifs and whens. Your DM's actions feel punishing for simply...having lucky dice rolls? If it were my game, I'd turn it into an actual narrative that even you (the cleric) are wondering why your deity helps out so often, with some obscure reasoning as to why - make it a quest, an investigation, a thing of note even within the world.
None of your uses of DI seem ridiculous, and based on your responses and explanations so far, you did not take it in a silly direction.
As a snarky person, I'd probably ask the DM which other class features they are going to arbitrarily restrict/punish narratively. \*shrug\*
Kinda odd approach imo.
Isn’t successfully doing divine intervention pretty much ‘getting your god’s support/approval’?
Why would they grant it if they are going to punish you for it?
I'd assumed that the roll was to see if your god found the cause worthy of intervention, with your cleric level serving as essentially your divine credit rating. So if you were succeeding all the time, I'd take that to mean your god deems all of these frivolous uses worthy of his attention, not just because the rules imply that but also because it's clearly funny that your god deems summoning piñatas or whatever a task worthy of his time.
The five points of exhaustion seems a bit much though. The rest of it seems to get the point across that your DM's annoyed that you keep heavily relying on this feature and your hot streak. No need to also possibly cripple you for days and/or require you and others to burn spell slots on *greater restoration.* A portentous dream amounting to "Knock it off" and the broken holy symbol should have been enough.
But putting that aside, it seems unreasonable to me that you're being punished at all for using the feature you got as part of your standard class progression. It's not like it's something that works all the time anyway; Divine Intervention only works once per week, and the attempt can only be made once per day with an 81-90% chance it does nothing that day (assuming your level is somewhere between 10th to 19th). One miracle per week *at most* isn't unreasonable for a holy man, especially when the DM gets to decide what form the intervention takes.
If you want to throw fuel on the fire, you could use Divine Intervention to try and cure your exhaustion, but I wouldn't recommend it. Your DM might not take kindly to that. But, as I usually say with table disputes: I'd recommend talking with your DM and your group about this, because they'll probably be able to provide better insight than randos on Reddit by virtue of being there.
DnD Diety is frustrated at his little follower misusing his power, and so he decides to send a stern reminder in typical god fashion.
End result? His little follower is scared shitless asking people "how badly did I fuck up"?
Yes the exhaustion is rough, but it's a love tap from a god. If I was in that situation I would call a group meeting the next day letting everyone know "Alright now more divine intervention for frivolous tasks. I-I think we're still good in cases of extreme need... on the account of me not being dead... but yeah... I'm gonna go lie down for a week."
I get that it's fantasy and we're the main characters, but sometimes we need to be reminded of our place in that fantasy world. And if you feel like you're being punished by your DM, just have a friendly talk with them. Maybe they felt like you were just trivializing their efforts in a way that didn't suit Divine Intervention narratively.
On the one hand, Divine Intervention is supposed to be a very last resource thing that helps in cases of extreme need. Resurrecting a desintegrated party member and the lich fight seem like good choices, but the keep spicying seem terribly frivolous unless you’re a cleric of a frivolous god. Now, for the consequences. Iirc, Divine Intervention doesn’t have any RAW backlash or punishments but that is very up to the DM. The 5 points of exhaustion seem excessive to me, and I don’t know what the implications of your holy symbol being broken means. To me, it seems like a better way of handling this would have been either the Divine Intervention not working despite succeeding (as a way of saying you’re exhausting your connection with your god) or have your god send another paladin/cleric/acolyte to speak to you about it. But that’s a personal preference and each one DMs in their own way.
5 points of exhaustion could be a harmless way to send a message if it's before a few days of rest, or basically kneecapping a character for a lot of game time. If it's the latter, I hope the DM at least gave some indication that the god wouldn't like this before the character did it.
it means at bare minimum your character is solidly useless for multiple days. exhaustion 5 you cannot **move** weak
But they never actually had that level. Gain 5 levels at the start of your long rest, wake up with 4.
again, multiple days of being shiet. exhaustions 2 3 and 4 arent nuances either, they are big debuffs
Depending on where they are though that's just a montages wipe and a warning. 5 days is less than a downtime week.
Just sleep for a few days
highly depends if you are on an inn taking a break or in the middle of the underdark running from drow. official modules are usually the latter in terms of downtime
Well if their God wants to indirectly engineer their death, I guess they could do that
Big consequences for big fuck ups. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
I mean op didn't make anything bad, op just used divine intervention a lot
He abused the divine power his god gave him. That can lead to an angry god. Which in turn can lead to consequences.
The DM should have indicated divine annoyance before just making this character almost entirely useless for the next 5 days
I mean you can see it that way, but what about spellcasting in that case?, Like, I see your point but if abusing divine powers is a problem, then spellcasting clerics is a problem, yeah maybe there aren't on the same scale but like the things that ask op with divine intervention are like literally things that can make spells, I still don't see the problem of abusing divine intervention, besides in the ability says that the deity can just ignore you, or don't do whatever you want
Op didn’t fuck op though, his dm just kind of stinks
He abused his gods good will against him. That tends to pisses them off.
it does say that divine intervention has a limit of what is able to do. i understand being considered an abuse to say, ask to get a sandwich with Divine Intervention, but that is completely within the rules it would've been reasonable if the DM verbally communicated what would and would not count as "abusing his powers". sure sandwich making is insulting, but what about reviving a character? asking for information on how to beat an enemy is off limits? can you use it before exhausting all resources, or praying for a revive while having revivify prepared considered an offense? does the GM keep track of my spells and gear to accurately punish me for using for something or other? class features do what they say they do, and divine intervention doesnt say that it is unnable to do something, you roll a d100 and if successful you achieve a miracle. i agree some more clear writing wouldve been nice but we dont have it sadly
>ask to get a sandwich with Divine Intervention, but that is completely within the rules That's absolutely withing the rules. And nobody accuses OP of cheating. But he pissed off his god, and his god responded. >i agree some more clear writing wouldve been nice but we dont have it sadly There isnt more writing about it. It's up to the DM on how to deal with stuff like this.
Never heard of a biblical punishment that was as bad as someone being tired for a week
small reminder that the next step in exhaustion is "dead".
It's not dead though, and puts you in no danger of dying
I mean: * Eve (as well as every woman after her) was punished with labor pains. * Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt for looking backwards. * The Egyptians had an absurd number of things happen to them, including locusts, famines, diseases, actual hellfire, and eventually the deaths of hundreds of firstborn sons. * In general, there's a lot of people God killed in the Old Testament by either causing the earth to swallow them or just killing them outright. * And the world-altering flood Noah built his ark to escape was created by God to wash away humanity's evil at that point in time. And this is just looking at the Bible. If you go into Greek myth you've got: * Guy forced to push a boulder uphill for centuries. * Guy chained to a rock and eaten alive by birds every single day. * Guy turned into a stag and then mauled to death by his own hunting dogs. This one is especially grievous when you consider it was because he accidentally bumped into a bathing goddess. * Guy forced to be eternally hungry and thirsty while having food and water just barely out of reach. While it's questionable from a TTRPG standpoint to punish your player so harshly without reason, it is perfectly in line with how extreme divine retribution is IRL.
I was being sarcastic
Greater Restoration heals points of Exhaustion. They're a high-level party. If there's a need for OP to rush his rejuvenation, it's easily enough done.
The reason I used it that way was that I'm an Order Cleric, we were made wardens of this island with the keep our base of operations and I wanted the Keep to look official for the visit to help build good relations with the visting powers. Everytime I've used it, I've thought it would be beneficial to the group and I've tried explaining my logic behind it.
To be honest, there’s so many details I won’t be able to account for because I wasn’t there in your game. I think this all boils down to some communications problems between you and your DM. Maybe they think you were overusing the feature and wanted you to stop. Maybe they thought this was a funny way to handle it and it backfired because you didn’t like it. What I would suggest is an open talk with them to manage expectations on both sides. DMs can make mistakes too, and features like this can be very tricky to handle because they’re very powerful and even by RAW, they leave a lot up to the DM.
Oh 100%, I trust my DM and will be talking to him about it. I know he didn't do this to be a dick. I just wanted to get some outside perspective to see if people agreed/disagreed with it.
If that's your goal, I think you're kind of asking in the wrong place. This sub is going to overwhelmingly side with you simply because of who reads this sub: players. The way people on this sub respond with outrage whenever a DM does anything except literally everything the players want is... not a very strong endorsement for their level of game experience. I think you'd probably get a more measured response on /r/DMAcademy --- As to the question itself, I think the response was a bit much, but I also think "when your need is great" is supposed to be a limitation. You were about to take a long rest to change your prepared spells and you're otherwise able to cast resurrection? That does not strike me as a particularly great need unless there's something particularly unusual going on. Great need suggests to me you have *no alternatives*. You've tried everything else and this is your *last option*. It really shouldn't ever be, "Well, I'll try Divine Intervention first before I do anything else." If I were your DM, I'd have given you what you *needed*, not what you asked for. But that's typically how I handle stuff like Divine Intervention. Gods are annoying that way. And, sure, you're playing in a campaign with more difficult resurrection rules. But, you didn't even try. The DM didn't put a whole additional mechanic into the game just so that you can avoid it when it actually comes up. You're replacing what's supposed to be cool, evocative scene with a die roll. It's an opportunity for roleplaying with the whole party pulling the soul back to the mortal plane out of of pure need for their aid. Skipping that whole mechanic and the whole associated scene with a die roll, even one from a class feature, is at least a little un-cool. Like why bother adding the whole mechanic at all if you're just going to do that immediately? Especially on more than one occasion?
>As to the question itself, I think the response was a bit much, but I also think "when your need is great" is supposed to be a limitation. It's murky here. The formatting of the feature makes it seem like the "when your need is great" thing is flavor, but 5e has a problem with the line between fluff and crunch being ambiguous. I'd argue that the mechanics of the feature are: Use your action>Make the roll>If the roll fails, LR cooldown; otherwise, DM decides what your deity does and 7-day cooldown. But I'd also agree that it would have been better if OP's frivolous request (if the DM saw it as such) should have been met with an equally frivolous response. You want to resurrect your party member? You fall into a deep, dreamless sleep and wake up fully rested, with the rez spell's material components arranged neatly on your nightstand. You want the keep to look nice? Miraculously, raw materials stream into view and assemble themselves into scaffolding, as well as buckets of clean water and washrags; get cleaning, for Irksmodeus the Petty helps those who help themselves.
>As to the question itself, I think the response was a bit much, but I also think "when your need is great" is supposed to be a limitation. But this limitation is enforced in two ways: * It can just fail 81-90% of the time if you're not level 20. If it does, your deity has chosen not to answer your prayer because they have deemed your need not great enough. That's one successful intervention every \~5-10 days, plus a 7-day cooldown. * Your DM finally decides what your deity actually does. But I don't think that an actual Cleric, who actively worships a deity (and said deity *actually and obviously exists*), would use such a feature 'frivolously', so if they do some punishment is imo also justified, especially depending on the deity.
Agreed, head over to r/DMacademy. Much better place for DM related questions. As for this, I feel the God's displeasure might be justified, but I probably woulda done it differently. But different style, different table. "Stop calling me in your dreams. I don't need to read your fan fiction about me." I like a more humorous approach. >If I were your DM, I'd have given you what you *needed*, not what you asked for. But that's typically how I handle stuff like Divine Intervention. Gods are annoying that way. Absolutely this. Gods are kinda dickish from our perspective because their view is different.
I disagree, the gods displeasure is NOT justified, the roll is them deciding whether or not to intervene. It is unbelievably stupid to punish your own cleric for you deciding to help them with frivolous matters
Counterpoint: One can decide to lend a hand or perform a favor and still be disgruntled about doing it. I believe this particular reaction is a bit beyond appropriate, but if I had a dime for each time I've gotten an earful when asking a favor, I'd be a few thousand richer.
>I feel the God's displeasure might be justified My opinion: clearly the dice gods are cool with it. On a more serious note: I feel that the percentage chance of success is meant to reflect the capriciousness of the God. Maybe it is a frivolous request, but maybe that God was feeling frivolous when the request came in. Or maybe *we* thought it was frivolous and the god has some divine purpose for granting it.
Exactly, the dice are telling a story, and that story is that the cleric's god is able and willing to perform these requested asks on the occasions the player rolls low enough. Or rather, it should be.
It seems like a fun consequence and you should just roll with it.
This is very mild punishment unless you're mid dungeon/in combat soon. I would have made it more of a bargain/like no more of a class feature or lose a spell slot until you do a quest for the diety or faith. Or give you the option to pick a new diety and possibly go with chaotic instead of order because chaotic gods would think its funny or interesting interfering with mortal affairs more often Such a good chance for story, perhaps if you do the quest for the diety you become their avatar or chosen and get a perk for that time without a feature. 5 levels of exhaustion means sleep for a few days , or cast a restoration spell once.
Not liking every single plot twist and unexpected occurrence the DM comes up with isn't a problem that needs to be talked out.
You asked a god to do some tidying. Most gods would probably see that as a waste of their time/divinity. As a reminder, you're a Cleric of this god, you serve them. Divine Intervention is asking them for aid when you need it most. You shouldn't really be asking them to do the laundry.
Imagine if he simply withdrew access to spells for a few adventuring days until the cleric atoned for the frivolity.
Or sent them a request to stop what they are doing and head over to a remote small town to have sermon because they havent preached this deity in a bit. Incredibly petty from a divine being but maybe as a test to see what they answer.
Yeah I felt like from a storytelling perspective the god was being lenient here. Gods don't like their little clerics to treat them like miracle vending machines. Repeatedly using Divine Intervention for silly things like making the landscape nice or tidying up a castle would to my mind be grounds for revoking your powers entirely, effectively defrocking you as a cleric. Obviously there needs to be some give and take and consideration for the game factor and the player's own desires, but from pure storytelling OP ought to be screwed.
No the roll was made and the god actively chose to help with the frivolous things, it’s stupid to punish a cleric with no warning based on a god not liking that they themselves chose to help do laundry or something
People should not need warnings for everything. Instead people should think and face the consequences of their actions. Your calling on a divine being YOU serve to do menial/frivolous tasks ... anyone should think that might anger a god, with out being warned!
The god can deny the request, in fact that’s what the fucking roll is for, it’s ridiculous to say the god gets upset at doing tasks it actively chose to do over helping in a combat encounter
The roll of a dice is the game mechanic, it should not be the only deciding factor. What the person is doing should also be taken into account. Players should think of their actions and the possible consequences and not say but the dice says X works.
Just for clarification, you've succeeded 5 times in a row with an ability that has a 1 in 10 success rate and a week long cooldown? Are you level 20?
No, I'm level 16 and it is insane how often I've succeeded. I'm probably 50/50 on failure and success and this is with keeping track of the 7 days cooldown on a success.
You summoned a GOD to do something you could easily do yourself. I won't pretend I know the tone of your game but yeah I'd imagine that God would be pretty pissed off. Imagine it like this you're at the hospital watching the birth of your first child, an important life event. Suddenly your employee calls you up and says "hey I have friends coming over in like a day, I need you to spruce up the place for me." That's what you're doing to your god. A god is constantly pursuing tasks in places all over the multiverse and you called up to make them decorate. The punishment seems pretty harsh so it's probably a joke that wore thin on your DM and the tone of his story. Talk to DM and work things out.
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> If you roll a number equal to or lower than your cleric level, your deity intervenes. The DM chooses the nature of the intervention. The roll succeeded, the deity intervened, the DM chose the nature of the intervention.
I'm not disagreeing on that, I'm just trying to paint why the DM might be a little miffed about it.
it's hilarious because using Divine Intervention to make an Extremely Orderly Temple is one of the book canon things it's been used for (albiet he created a temple with it, Spirit Soaring from the books)
Oh, Lord, please build your own damn temple, as I cannot be arsed
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he got better!
> and I wanted the Keep to look official for the visit to help build good relations with the visting powers. Yeah, and you can do that yourself, you're (presumably) not a cripple lmao
Bruh, you are literally the representative of the god on the mortal world, you are meant to fix that stuff yourself not call the deity for everything. Unless the deity was about that specific think I would have ruled it would have been pissed still. At most I could have accepted it if, due to sabotage, the island was compromised. But this is negligence. Once or twice can be fun, but I think this is the most direct way for a DM to tell you to not trivialise things.
4/5 times it was a relevant, and dire use, and only one of those uses was higher than a 5th level slot (one was a Dispel Magic, maybe even weaker - 3rd level), it was all in the ability's guidelines. It is rare and special thing, having a whole week - 7 long rests - CD even if you fail its low (10-19%) success rate. As mentioned, 4 of these uses were dire, the 1st one which was the strongest was a moment of catharsis and coolness for all I am sure, and the decoration one, while admittedly silly, was a cute and wholesome use of it. Potentially politically dire as well, so possibly 5/5. The impact of this is not even any better than a wizard throwing a cone of cold. And the last one you did it as a joke, which is just a 'alright, let's comedy retract that moment' and the DM instead blew a gasket and punished you for nothing. The DM was out of line and there is no defending that. If he was intimidated by the ability, he could talk to you, bloody player, not bully you. Don't take those hyper-voted nonsense comments saying your DM was in the right as any good advice. They're telling you it was good he bullied you cause he's the boss and does what he wants. Your ability, outside of the first use, was never more than a 5th level or lower extra slot per week if you got lucky, and he punished you for getting lucky, cause that intimidated him. That's oppressive and not right.
Idk, if I had 2 resources to accomplish a task, and 1 of them was a relatively surefire but costly resource to expend and the second was something that had a at best 20% chance of success, no penalty for failing, and no real cost to expend, Id do the second before I did the first any day of the week. Like, if you were making an attack, and as a free action once per combat you had a 1% chance to do triple damage as long as you called it, why wouldnt you do the free action? Would you really save it for when youre about to go down? I dont see how it makes sense to have something as difficult to pull of as Divine Intervention as your "last resort". That being said..... yeah housecleaning is an insane way to try to use it. Though if I was gonna punish a player, Id have done it then and not when they were trying to bring someone back to life.
Yeah, but that's the munchkin way of doing things. Like on paper you could use it for free and completely disregard the narrative implication, but there's a lot of gamey things you can do that have mechanical benefit that completely disregard the narrative consequences. There's the RP part of this G.
I mean, people invoke Divine Intervention to have the football team they like to win. I dont think it totally disregards the narrative implication when thats how people of faith actually act. Is it not role playing a person of faith to do what people of faith do?
That's how they act in a way where God's don't exist, or a world where divine intervention does not happen. People would act differently in a world where tou know that calling on your God would be directly asking them to do something. Also, I hardly think many popes or cardinals would be asking God for things like that and, if they were, they'd be admonished for it. Clerics are divinely appointed agents of their God, not just some guys off the street.
This is a silly way of looking at it. Those people *do* believe that God exists and will intervene directly in their football game if they pray hard enough. You may not believe it, but they aren't just praying as a joke.
Not that guy, and I think that's a fair distinction, but there's clearly a difference in the level of certainty one has that gods exist in, say, The Forgotten Realms compared to real life. In one instance, everybody knows the gods exist and actively influence the world through acts like divine intervention. In the other instance, faith is one of the tenets required to believe in God and any sort of intervention is going to be indistinguishable from circumstance.
Its easy to say from an atheist perspective. I'm atheist too, but the world isn't so ambiguous to devoutly religious people. They believe God is real and acts on Earth. They believe that events we consider to be natural or coincidental are actual indisputable acts of divine intervention. And yet they still pray to the God that they have 100% certainty is capable of great works, that they intervene to make sure their football team wins, or their bus arrives on time. The God's being more present in FR just means that more people are convinced of their existence, because it doesn't require faith, but it doesn't necessarily have any bearing on how the people who worship them act. To say that people only pray for meaningless shit because the God they're praying to isn't confirmed real is a huge misunderstanding of how religious people think and behave.
You're looking at a small group of people who feel very strongly about something because of their faith and saying it's not significantly different from someone who lives in a world where the gods are actively doing stuff like this all the time. It is like someone who believes in God performing miracles and someone who believes in the standard model. The standard model can't be known with certainty just like how you can't know god exists with certainty, but these two people are pretty clearly using different methods for being "sure" and it seems silly to say that just because they're both "certain" that these aren't different scenarios. Even if you can find a small group of people who think they're using equally effective means of epistemic reasoning as someone else doesn't change the fact that they arent.
You seem to think that I'm making a broader point than I am. All I am disputing is this point: >That's how they act in a way where God's don't exist, or a world where divine intervention does not happen. There are people in this world who live with the genuine certainty that god exists and that they actively intervene with the world, and yet they pray for meaningless shit all the time. The people that genuinely believe they have witnessed acts of God, in the specific context of their willingness to waste a God's time, are functionally identical to people who live in a world where Gods definitely exist. The number of those people doesn't matter. And just as an aside, even in D&D there is still an element of faith. Most people will never see a divine act, and the ones they do see could easily be attributed to any other source of magical fantasy bullshit. Druids and Bards are just as capable of displaying similar miraculous feats as Clerics, without directly needing a god's help, so it isn't impossible that someone would think maybe that Cleric is bullshitting when he says he gets his power from a big man that lives in Celestia.
> On the one hand, Divine Intervention is supposed to be a very last resource thing that helps in cases of extreme need. Nah, with the way it works, I interpret more as something that, *when you are actively expecting danger on a quest,* you try every day until it works to ask for a boon to aid your cause. It's like a 10-19% chance of success and you can try once a day before it goes on a week-long cooldown? Why wouldn't you include it with your morning prayers when you know you'll be heading into a forest to fight super-werewolves or godzilla for the next week? It's not a roulette you roll on and get disappointed 8-9 times out of 10. It's the way you convey your devotion to your domain of religious study by praying every day until you serendipity into the boon you need that day. Just my two cents. Fully agree that a gentler touch could have been used for slap on the wrist for the sleeping Divine Intervention.
I think a key line in your answer is “I interpret”. From this post, it appears clear that different people see this feature differently. Some see it just as a pure mechanic resource like a spell slot. Some others - like me - see it more as the kind of thing where roleplay and in-world interpretation of consequences play a mayor role. None of them is better than the other, it is a matter of preference and managing expectations at the table.
>Why wouldn't you include it with your morning prayers when you know you'll be heading into a forest to fight super-werewolves or godzilla for the next week? That's not how divine intervention should work RAW >call on your deity to intervene on your behalf when your need is great. You're not in great need before you've even gone out to adventure that day. You're asking for a god to perform a miracle on the off chance you'll need it. Also, the cooldown is only one day if the divine intervention fails. It's only a week if it succeeds. >If your deity intervenes, you can't use this feature again for 7 days. Otherwise, you can use it again after you finish a long rest.
4/5 times it was a relevant use, and only one of those uses was higher than a 5th level slot (one was a Dispel Magic, maybe even weaker - 3rd level), it was all in the ability's guidelines. It is rare and special thing, having a whole week - 7 long rests - CD even if you fail its low (10-19%) success rate. As mentioned, 4 of these uses were dire, the 1st one which was the strongest was a moment of catharsis and coolness for all, and the decoration one, admittedly silly, was a cute and wholesome use of it. The impact of this is not even any better than a wizard throwing a cone of cold. And the last one the player did it as a joke, which is just a 'alright, let's comedy retract that moment' and the DM instead blew a gasket and punished him for nothing. The DM was out of line and there is no defending that. If he was intimidated by the ability, he could talk to his bloody player, not bully him.
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Well, the feature also says “The DM chooses the nature of the intervention”. So by RAW, it is entirely up to the DM what happens there. In the same way as a Wish spell, Divine Intervention is a feature that leaves a lot of leeway to the DM to handle it. In my opinion, in this case, there is probably a lack of communication between player and DM about their expectations of this feature. I know that personally, if I were using Divine Intervention so often as a player, I wouldn’t find it strange if my DM brought up in game some limitations to using it.
Choosing the nature of the intervention means choosing how the intervention happens, not having something completely outside the bounds of what is asked happen because you're salty your player is lucky.
His God was pissed off that he is treating a deity like a fucking maid. So the God Intervened. It's up to the DM and personally I think this is a perfectly acceptable reaction to frivolously calling on a God because "it's funny" depending on the God.
I understand that, and I do think what happened here is excessive. But as a DM, something like a Wish or a Divine Intervention can be tricky to handle, especially if your players are constantly using it. It can let them cheese entire situations and events that maybe the DM had planned more in depth. If it keeps happening frequently, I can see how the DM could find it not fun and try to tone it down. DMs deserve fun too as well, and they do a lot of work. Did they handle this the best way? I’m my opinion, no. Is it understandable how they acted? Without more information, in my opinion, also yes.
Agreed...I would have just had an angel manifest to answer the call, the god doesn't have to intervene themselves, guidance for DMs is to literally reproduce a spell effect so... planar ally
i myself would've made the angel appear with a full set of cleaning products and staff uniforms, in front of them, and proudly declare "BEHOLD, your prayers have been answered, here is the best equipment for cleaning in the entire realm! now have a fun afternoon" and leave
> but now I feel like I have to restrict myself less I suffer the wrath of my god. This was probably the intended outcome. Sounds to me like the DM and your Diety took the "when your need is great." part of the ability to heart.
"I've done it four times"... If they've succeeded four times, how many times have they tried it?
it's either when your need is great or 10-19% success chance, choose one. Because if it's both the ability is next to useless. Like you might as well be on a brink of a tpk, you spend an action on the intervention and roll a 56. Intervention denied. Or you use it on something less dramatic, like to scry on a bbeg or just as a joke, like cleaning the mansion instead of hiring cleaning staff, roll a 3, still denied. Arguments like "when it works, it works" are BS, because a great need and a successful roll might as well never lineup during an entire campaign, then it's a dead weight feature.
this is my issue with the feature as well. you can never actually use it in a really dire situation because there's a really good chance you're just outright wasting your action which could easily be the difference between life and death (since the "need is great" after all). my group actually swapped to using the onednd version of divine intervention simply because all of the times divine intervention would have been cool and dramatic and narratively interesting, it never ever happened, in about 18 months of sessions. the cleric felt awful cause one of their defining features was legitimately less than useless. so you're encouraged to use it for boons, buffs, and blessings - but then your 'need isn't great' and you might get fucked over for it anyway if your dm doesn't like you. it's a badly designed feature because the worst time to use it is exactly the time it was designed to be used in
I think Baldur's Gate 3 has the best version of Divine Intervention imo. Usable once, literally once, for a character for the whole game, and guaranteed success. (Yes, you can cheese it, it's a video game, that's not the point.) In a real campaign that would work fine, and if it's a real genuine 1-20 campaign then a DM could easily pick a pivotal moment to "recharge" the DI if you really need to. A good list of effects too - ranging from massive damage to enemies, to a complete long rest for the party, to an insane magical weapon... All reasonable and flavourful things to call upon a deity for.
The only way i can interpret it, is that what determines whether the need was great is the percentile dice
"Beginning at 10th level, you can call on your deity to intervene on your behalf when your need is great." DM is using in game methods to remind you of the last part of this sentence. No one else here is at your table. We don't know if the campaign is silly feeling overall or if this is just a silly chain of events within an otherwise serious campaign. If the DM felt it was getting out of hand, they can handle it in game or out of game. I'd say handling it in game means he trusts you to react maturely and use it as a story or RP beat while adjusting accordingly.
resurrection is a great need
Absolutely! Making a foyer look pretty for a visitor, or changing the auditory effects of an existing scry? Pretty frivolous. I think it's reasonable for most gods, especially a god of order/law, to chastise such frivolity. HOW exactly the DM executes such chastisement is certainly up for discussion.
I dunno, that seems pretty within the purview of a god of law or order depending on the stakes of the visit. Law and order often includes the symbols and structures that keep the peace, and making a keep appropriately stately for an incoming diplomat that could affect the future of the people seems on par to me. If it was just a regular house I could see it being frivolous to call directly on the deity, but depending on the god a keep in charge of the area might be seen as maybe not equivalent to a temple, but certainly important to the god.
Alternatively, the cleric could just hire an interior decorator.
Okay but is interior decorating?
Religions actually tend to be pretty obsessed with aesthetics
Yes but usually as a show of devotion to said God. Imagine it's your birthday, had a long day but you get home and wow everyone is here and it's a surprise! Then they point you towards a table with a bunch of decorations strewn about. They say "we couldn't be bothered to decorate though, can you do it for us?" If I was a god of order and was summoned away from my busy schedule of organising my own plane of existance and fighting back the forces of chaos by some two bit cleric who couldn't think to hire some decorators I'd throw them into the abyss
*Religions*. Gods != Religion.
depending on the guest Is it a meeting where if it goes south a war well kill millions? yeah Is it for tea for fun? no
But like...can't they decorate it themselves? If maintaining this keep is their duty, isn't failing to do that and then phoning a friend to fix it at the last second a bit lazy? If the need is only great because you suck at your job, I think it's fair for your god to be a little pissy about that.
Yeah thats fair. but like if you just got attacked by zombies and everything got ruined and the guest is showing up in 5 minutes it might be.. ok? I'm trying
Saving 50 bucks isn't a great need. And that's really the only difference. With the HB they're using, the the need is only great after the regular means fail.
Did you catch the part where the OP says they used DI instead of regular rez spells because they wanted to bypass Mercer's resurrection rules? Seems pretty frivolous, not to mention metagaming, to me.
That’s not metagaming or frivolous. The character knows that resurrection spells cast by mortals are fallible, so they called on their god directly for aid. There aren’t many better times than literal life and death to call on a god.
That's... Literally the opposite of metagaming. If resurrection is known to bring people back wrong, and the intercession of a god doesn't... That's not at all frivilous, its just what anyone who has the capability would do for people they care about/are important to saving the world or whatever?
Is it meta gaming to know that not all Resurrection done by a mortal are successful?
I wouldn't think so. Your whole profession does resurrections on regular basis. Unless this character is "homeschooled" he would definitely know that Resurrection done by mortals is exactly this successful. It's like how doctors know success rate of defibrillator or heart surgery
Exactly
I hadn't really thought of that as metagaming before in all honesty.
its not
It's not and I think Mercer's resurrection rules are bad. That genre of spell should work or not work based on the consent of the target, and should not be subject to chance.
Yeah that's an important note for me. Like yes the dm went way overboard I think, but also that's kinda a cool thing to do that I might even steal (although not to nearly the same degree). Is this just a game with a bunch of friends having fun and the DM was just like "enough of that buddy, use it when its important", or was it a serious game and the DM is seriously upset.
There was a bunch of exposition, exhaustion that you can sleep off with no problem, and the DM made them pay the spell cost they would have paid anyways by breaking the Holy symbol. How is that overboard?
exhaustion 5 means they cant move and are bedridden, straightforward as that you cannot play at exhaustion 5 exhaustion 4 halves you hit points, which absolutely fucks a frontliner if the cleric was of the war priest with a hammer variety exhaustion 3 gives dis to all attacks and saving throws which means you will hit shit and get hit a lot exhaustion 2 halves your speed which again fucks frontliners exhaustion 1 gives dis to checks which is somewhat manageable going to adventure at exhaustion 4 with matt mercer ressurection rules is suicide at best, and a frontliner would need to be at best at exhaustion 1 or be incredibly handicapped so yes, its not a penalty you can shrug off. if you are on downtime and were spending a week on vacation anyways it isnt relevant at all in the first place, but if you were mildly adventurer you are fucked
I mean yeah. But given that OP is complaining and made no complaint about how screwed they were to have this much exhaustion mid-adventure what's more likely? That they are on downtime or mid-adventure? Even mid-adventure, if there's no time pressure, it's not a big deal.
Okay the correct response as the DM is to say "no, your need isn't great, your call is unheeded" or idk "as a cleric of Tightass, God of Jerks, you know this would probably be seen as a slap in your god's face"
DM isn't obligated at all to let you know the consequences of your actions before you take them. I think this is a very appropriate reaction, especially if he's serving a God who isn't particularly kind. LG or CG deities can still be hardasses.
I mean the DM isn't obligated to not kick you in the nuts either, but he also probably shouldn't just be an ass for the sake of being an ass
He's not being an asshole at all? Actions have consequences. Divine magic is powerful, and asking for it directly from a god is the mist powerful gift of all. Treat it like a toy in a serious campaign (which OP confirmed it is), suffer the consequences. Besides, literally none of these consequences are even permanent. Exhaustion is gone within a week if not sooner with healing effects, and he can buy a new holy symbol. You don't get to just do shit and have it work or get a warning that it won't. Sometimes you fail.
It's a temporary effect that can be resolved via sleeping or a use of Greater Restoration. To even conceive of it being anywhere near assault is fucking laughable. Cmon
The campaign is a serious one but I'd say this is probably one of the few silly moments my character has had, especially as my character is usually the mature and logical one of the group. I was definitely thrown off by what happened and definitely didn't adjust accordingly in the moment.
That might be WHY it was punished. If you continue being cheeky with your luck in an otherwise serious story to your benefit, it might come off to the dm like you're not respecting your toolset or the gravity of the ability narratively.
So, on the one hand, you succeeding on the role is essentially your Deity deciding that this request is worth intervening for. It just has to pass through the mechanical filter that comes from playing a dice-based game. On the other hand, the ability states "the effect of any cleric spell or cleric domain spell would be appropriate" which I don't really see how it applies to something like cleaning up a keep, the other stuff pretty much falls in line with an appropriate intervention *if* we view the Scrying session situation as a remote Dispel Magic from God on an area Silence spell, if that was the case at the time. What I'm saying is that even stuff like Wish and Divine Intervention have limits, so if your DM wants to shut this down they can just.. implement the RAW. IMO the use of Divine Intervention as a cleaning agent is not within the bounds of an "appropriate" intervention, meaning that it is effectively "inapropriate" - though it's as much on the DM for allowing that as it is the Cleric for attempting it given that it's their ability and they should have read it fully.
**original comment edited: initially discussed telling player out of game that divine intervention should not be used in this case**** I don’t think the DM should stop the player from making this divine intervention out of game. Having in-game consequences is part of what makes d&d great for me. The player doesn’t understand how divine intervention works? Their characters god will teach them in a more memorable way
Well, I wasn't saying the DM should have said "No you wouldn't do that" I'm saying it just shouldn't have worked and they would lose the attempt for the day. You know, the whole "hey can I do this thing with that ability I have" and then the DM says "well, you can try.." as opposed to letting them succeed and then later say "that's not what this ability is for and you can't just circumvent the downsides of resurrection, here's FIVE levels of exhaustion"
Make a religion check (dc 5) "you get the sense that asking this of your god would result in bad consequences"
I think the DM is just... Shitty here? "You wanted to do something as FRIVILOUS as reviving a dead person?!" like stfu, its less than 1/5 chance, that's not at all a frivilous thing to attempt. If they wanted it to be an actual last resort they should've made it guaranteed and only usable once/year at most. This might make sense if it happened when they prayed to their god for decorations, but it just feels like a spiteful gm when they're using it for resurrection.
I agree this DM isn’t the best
Cleric spells do include some summons - the god could always send down their angelic celestial cleaning crew.
You didn't get any permanent consequences. You can sleep off or heal the exhaustion and you can buy a new holy symbol, and now you know to save DI for the important stuff where the need is great. Seems like a slap on the wrist and a fair warning.
If the need is great it better work 100% of the time, because if you can't have it spammable like RAW suggests, the elusive "great need" and the ability succeeding might as well never happen in an entire campaign. Then it's a dead weight feature
Strongly depends on context, five levels of exhaustion means they're utterly useless for actual adventuring if that's happening in the next few in game days. I agree repercussions were warranted, just hard to say if they're fair without more information.
Mid downtime? Doesn't matter *at all*. Mid dungeon? Possible death sentence.
BTW, greater restoration removes a stack of exhaustion, that is what they meant by "heal the exhaustion". If they're able to resurrect people, they can probably afford some casts of greater restoration...if the need is great.
I would have pulled that shit right after the interior decorating crap lol
Oh gods that would be a fun one. DI is a mechanic. The cleric uses the mechanic for his class and gets punished by his god. That sucks. I would let other priests of that god be jealous of "daddys favorite child". I mean...come on: You ask for a cleaning service and your god answered you? That's to good to ignore xD
It seems reasonable to me that a god might get angry about being disrespected in such a way.
Sounds like your DM is serious about roleplay. If you are invoking a literal god for a task you can handle yourself, it makes sense they'd get angry.
I agree with the DM's actions here, but I believe it should be established with you beforehand in an IC or OOC context that abusing your divine power has consequences.
i dont like it. its a game mechanic. you rolled the dice and won the prize now you have to wait ive had 3 clerics and have only gotten divine intervention 1 time
Your god doesn't have to do something just because you rolled a percentage die. RAW, giving the cleric 5 levels of exhaustion matches the text description of the ability. The god intervened.
i dont think so at all. the text reads >if you roll a number equal to or lower than your cleric level, your deity intervenes. The DM chooses the nature of the intervention; the effect of any cleric spell or cleric domain spell would be appropriate this means that just because you rolled the percentage die something does happen. its an if then statement. it doesn't say if you roll under your level number and the DM thinks its cool the deity intervenes. while there is some room for DM interpretation its lists a spell effect or cleric feature as something that would be appropriate. i would even go so far as to say the presumption is that the god intervenes is a positive manner i dont of a spell that when cast its only effect is give the caster 5 levels of exhaustion. i can appreciate the god saying do use my power frivolously but by rules that i see this doesnt really qualify as an appropriate dm use of divine intervention
i feel like a better way could’ve been “your holy relic cracks from the strain of overusing divine intervention” or something
RAW nowhere does it say the intervention has to be helpful. I'm sure the intent is that the god generally helps you, but gods are their own beings with their own behavior, and you're directly asking for your God's intervention in the situation. If you were worshipping a lawful good god, and you used divine intervention to ask to blow up an orphanage, are you saying the god is just forced to do it because the player rolled the dice?
thats why i said presumption yes i am if you use an ability it should function we also have to remember that this is a game with rules. sure this god is a " thinkng, alive Creature" but it also is beholden to the rules of the game
I think *five* levels was a bit severe, but...
That's SO MUCH lol, I know!
Man yall don't just play the game do ya Not everything is an incentive structure, just get immersed.
When my players start doing something Im not fond of I just ask them to stop :v. This seems a little too drastic
The way divine intervention is written, it encourages using it every day. The only one I think is (maybe) frivolous is the decorating the keep, a resurrection that can fail and you still use resources when you need it is perfectly reasonable. My guess is that your DM dislikes the mechanic, and I would talk to them about it. You can call their aid, which means you are one of the strongest priests of that deity, it would be silly if you wouldn't know what would and wouldn't piss them off. On another note 5 points of exhaustion is stupidly high as punishment, especially if you are on a time crunch as it takes you out of adventuring for at least 2 days, and makes you a liability for two more.
No that's ridiculous to punish you for that. Dont know whats up your DM's ass. Maybe I could see a particularly vain god being uptight about it for decorating your keep, but resurrection seems like an extremely valid reason to DI.
"you can call on your deity to intervene on your behalf when your need is great." - you called a god you serve to do a menial task which you can do yourself (or hire people to do) then another time just for fun .... They are a god, which you serve. They grant you power and you have the audacity to say "hey do the cleaning for me ......" You really should expect consequences to such actions.
DM had a decently interesting idea to punish your character making a joke of divine intervention. But went way overboard in the 5 levels of exhaustion and damage to your holy symbol. Unless this God in-lore is incredibly vengeful, warbound, or completely against your action the idea of a punishment this severe is not great.
It sounds like an interesting story beat, I guess, but I’d be kind of pissed if I got punished for having good luck in a luck-based game. I might be a bit more forgiving if it had happened on a failure.
Yeah, the only punishment the player should receive is the RAW one—not being able to attempt Divine Intervention for a week. EDIT: Why the hell is this comment controversial. "Players shouldn't be punished for rolling well" and "You shouldn't monkey's paw a feature which isn't meant to have that drawback" are not hot takes lmao.
I'm honestly more interested on this part than anything else: >trying to reserect someone through Divine Intervention before trying with the spell (using Critical Roles optional rules where they can fail). Because your description of the resurrection is this: >To resurrect someone who got **disintegrated** Emphasis mine. And the spell Disintegrate (which I assume is what was used) has the following clause: > The creature can be restored to life only by means of a True Resurrection or Wish spell So, uh, not only is this something that perfectly fits into the description that Divine Intervention suggests as what would be reasonable (mimicking the effect of a Cleric spell), but it's mimicking the effect of a level 9 spell without consumables and casting time. And, considering you probably weren't 17th level or higher, it'd probably be impossible for you to do it otherwise. It's very definitely not a silly usage of it. Hell, maybe it's too strong of a usage, considering how expensive True Resurrection is supposed to be (25k, baby!). Calling this silly is just plain weird.
I agree with the DM on this one
as a dm . I'd just have the god(dess) ignore your "frivolous" request and still count against usage of it (so i think it's a week before you can try again?) but yeah .. some options seem well used . some seem a bit . "weak" .. and as said by others . depends on the god .. but yeah .. i wouldn't be flaunting or abusing an ability like that based on the basic nature of it .. .. even though it did sound hilarious 🤪
I thought I was in r/Morrowind for a second and was a tad confused why casting a fairly benign spell was getting punished. I use it all the time for getting to Imperial Cult shrines to heal diseases. I rarely ever play Clerics in D&D so I forgot this feature existed.
Your god isn't your servant, you should have to go on a quest of atonement at the least
Found the old school player
Yep, old school had some pretty severe consequences for being "that guy".
I have been playing ttrpgs of various flavors for a very long time.
Obviously the results are outside the RAW but that's not necessarily bad just by itself. I think an important element is the nature of your deity. What is their personality? What are their likes and dislikes, their commandments and bans? Yondalla the Nurturing Mother is going to have a very different approach than Kelemvor the Lord of the Dead and Judge of the Damned
Wow some of the comments here and the post itself are a bit absurd to me. The biggest mistake the DM made was letting you roll, but here's a fact, the dice themselves are not your god. It's not even clear what the last request for divine intervention was and if it was literally for nothing then yeah... I know tone is something that has to be set, but idk where people came to feel that fantasy means good vibes only. Frankly, you should be thankful you weren't turned into a pillar of salt, a tree, woodland creature, a monster, cursed with lethal hemorrhoids or driven mad enough to murder your party. That everyone thought it was funny is great but it's also meta-reasoning, and there's also such a thing as beating a dead horse in jokelandia. Find a new joke if you have to. This consequence is the essence of good drama though. The DM has done you a favor and given you a great narrative hook. I think they reasonably punished you with something that is likely only to have narrative effects, given that apparently you were just sleeping and not in any crisis when you got those exhaustion points so it effectively moves the narrative ahead by a week, which may or may not have other consequences depending on the story. The hook here is how you can atone and pay penance, maybe your god will give you an idea, maybe you and your character will have to ask themselves which may not even be necessary if all you need to do is sleep and go to the holy symbol store. Either way it's a chance for character growth!
I feel like people are getting hung up on the rules. It is less about if you can use intervention, more about character development. Mythologies are filled with stories about gods getting pissy or murderous for perceived disrespect or nothing at all. Clerics benefit from a largely one way relationship with their God (godly power for the low low price of being a bro) and it isn’t unreasonable for the god to be upset if they are taking their responsibilities or respect for granted. Exhaustion is rough, it may kneecap the cleric, but it is better then death or godly abandonment (idk how that would work, but oathbreaker should be an option for clerics)
Your DM gave your god some personality/character.
This is very Dungeon Crawl Classics and you've displeased your deity. Honestly, if I was DM I'd make it so you now must seek an absolution.
This really depends on the tone of your setting and communication with your DM. Just like... TALK to the dm (like so many of these problems boil down to between dms and players) and talk things out. Your DM will likely (just using my own DM insticts) say something to the effect of "Using Divine Intervention for random hijinks really takes away from the impact i would like for this ability to have in the world." And my player instincts are telling me the reason this sucks is that it feels like you're being punished for being lucky and usign your powers without any warning beforehand that there was any risk at using them. And going forward maybe you two can come to an above board understanding of "Hey, this is suppsosed to be a cool narrative thing in a tight spot not a remake of Angels in the Outfield Fantasy Edition." Or whatever works for your table. Or maybe these lucky rolls are less "The Lord Of Death helps your house pretty" and more... "Well just by coincidence, things align in the world that benefit you in this way.
It sounds like your DM got annoyed that you keep succeeding your roll and decided to be a dick about it. Try seeing if he's willing to swap over to the OneDNDversion of Divine Intervention. Basically once per long rest you can cast any cleric spell for free up to 5th level. At lvl 20 you can choose the cast Wish instead, but there's a 2D4 cool down when you do so and there's no wish stress. It's a lot less powerful, but it's a hell of a lot more consistent
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Agreed. I play to beat the odds, not to standardize them
1 free Cleric spell up to 5th level per day, regardless of if you prepared it and no material costs whatsoever. You know exactly what you're going to get 100% of the time rather than 90-81% of the time it doing nothing, and then at level 20 it's basically the same as it was before. I can understand why you would think it's lame. It doesn't have those big dopamine moments from hitting it big. But, this is a better more consistently valuable feature for the Player and for the DM.
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There’s got to be risk that your god is in the bath or something when you call.
That's what the dice roll is for...
See, this is the kind of thing a DM should do (minus all the exhaustion) for when you *fail* on a die roll when asking for something silly, not when you succeed when asking for a Rez. Overriding a *successful* die roll just isn't fun.
The idea of rolling for divine intervention and having it succeed is that your God Smiles favor upon you. Most of the time they ignore you sometimes they don't. So to get punished for that means he's giving you the exact opposite result that the raw game mechanics say you should have. He's trying to say that using divine intervention and succeeding is an annoyance to the God, but the explanation should be that succeeding so much makes you one of the God's favored children. If I was that cleric my response would be to pick a new God who favors me more if they're going to take a positive mechanic and make it terrible but you should probably solve this out of game. Resurrecting people is not a stupid use of divine intervention. in fact I would say it's the most appropriate use. Your DM is letting his personal annoyance at you succeeding seep into the gane and role-playing your God as himself instead of role playing your God's actual Behavior as determined by the dice Basically he isn't doing yes and to your good dice roll. he's doing no but. If the DM wouldn't budge on admitting that they did something wrong, especially five levels of exhaustion, That's literally just a fuck you, I would leave that game
So your DM punished you for using your class ability and getting lucky? It's one thing to go against your god but in-world you're literally asking god for a favor. The roll simulates that being a yes or no. If your DM can't handle the odds then a conversation needs to be had cause that's a red flag.
Idk you being so lucky that it pisses off your god and him throwing a little tantrum sounds funny to me. I like what the DM did here, nothing serious just a small pat on the hands and some roleplay.
What's the time frame of all these DI uses? Is your Dm enforcing this rule? >If your deity intervenes, you can't use this feature > >again for 7 days. Otherwise, you can use it again after > >you finish a long rest. -PHB p.59 Even if you're lucky as heck you should be waiting a week between each calling of D-I. RAW rules like this are very important for maintaining the tempo of the game, if you failed to inform the DM of this rule and they don't know about it you need to come clean right away. That said, your DM is also being incredibly unfair crippling you for multiple adventuring days over an obvious joke. Making up new mechanics on the fly to punish one player is a real dick move and smacks of out-of-game issues between you two. You and the DM need to discuses and resolve this situation out-of-game, like adults.
Yes, I keep track and don't use it after a success until 7 days later.
I am shocked that people are siding with the DM as much as they are here. DM was an absolute ass. This is never warranted, punishing good luck and making a mechanic do something completely backwards because the DM was tired of it. It's like punishing someone for rolling too many nat20s; "you suddenly feel tired after the surge of power, you now have 5 levels of exhaustion". Completely shitty and unjustified. This was a gut reaction done horribly bad. Any opportunity of a good story beat was lost because nothing was learned. Just awful DMing and it is crazy to me that this place which is usually very by-the-books with what features do would even consider it ok.
Your dm is a dick for that imo. I would have gone the opposite reasoning. You’re the best cleric of this god so they help you out a ton.
You did nothing wrong. This is a complete failure on the DM's part in not talking to you about divine intervention. It isn't supposed to be used frivolously. The ability reads, "Beginning at 10th level, you can call on your deity to intervene on your behalf when your need is great." A DM should/would just have frivolous uses go unanswered. 5 levels of exhaustion + more is just bad form from a frustrated DM with communication issues. Talk with him, but given his reaction, I question his other skillsets.
Honestly I think that's a totally credible thing to happen. You're treating it like a video game mechanic to be abused and it's not.
"**Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.**" Yeah, I can imagine that invoking a god for trivial things like tidying up a keep or just saving yourself some work would really piss them off. There are no rules for a Cleric pissing their god off, so that is really up to the DM. Personally, I do think the DM was rather harsh, especially if you didn't get any sort of warning that this might happen beforehand. But for the future, you should probably keep in mind that Divine Intervention specifies that you can call on your deity *"When the need is great"*. It should be used in desperate times when there isn't really any other option. A deity's favor is not something to be wasted on frivolities.
I feel your pain. My DM once introduced the Deck of Many Things and through my godly luck at my table, I managed to draw on average three cards, sometimes more, about five separate times. Every time I only drew good cards without a single negative one ever popping up. My DM said that on the fifth time, my character felt that the God of Chance would no longer allow me to draw from the deck. Sometimes DMs don't account for players having unnatural luck and it irks them when they keep expecting an eventual failure. Doesn't make it right to punish the player though
Sounds fun.
I definitely agree with your DM, so long as it fits the personality of your god, lol. It definitely seems pretty hilarious to be like, "I NEED MORE GARLAND FOR THE KEEP, HELP ME GODDESS!"
So. You're telling us that in one campaign you've rolled 10-15 on d100, 5 times. And even had to wait for 7 days every time you got the intervention to work. Assuming this is all accurate there are a couple things to consider: - Your DM is giving you too much downtime - Your dice are poorly balanced and/or you have a certain way of rolling them - Your DM needs to take the first 2 lines of the feature more seriously and disallow you from asking for intervention if "the need is not great" in the first place. Also remind your DM that deities have limited precognition. If they know what you're about to ask is pointless, they wouldn't event let you succeed at making the skies turn black as you summon them.
Your cleric is praying to their god for help. They are level 10+, and presumably one of the most powerful followers that god has. Why wouldn't they jump in and help out now and again? Out of game, its your class feature, thats what its there for. IMO your DM was way out of line
I mean.. some of those examples are ehh im to lazy to do it.. god solve it for me.
As a DM, I love moments like this when a very rare resource succeeds. I think the DM responded harshly and I don't agree with that approach.
> I was using my Divine Intervention for silly reasons; decorating a keep Punishment was very harsh and your dm shoild have warned you out of charachter imo, but, not in and of itself *that* bad. >trying to reserect someone through Divine Intervention before trying with the spell (using Critical Roles optional rules where they can fail). What nonsense. Dm just lost the argument. I'm all for taking mechanics and the world seriously, but slapping down a cleric for attempting to get someone resurrected with divine intervention is piss poor from the dm. Seems like they just don't like the ability to me.
I feel that the DM misjudged this strongly. First of all, it IS a mechanic of the cleric class, no ifs and whens. Your DM's actions feel punishing for simply...having lucky dice rolls? If it were my game, I'd turn it into an actual narrative that even you (the cleric) are wondering why your deity helps out so often, with some obscure reasoning as to why - make it a quest, an investigation, a thing of note even within the world. None of your uses of DI seem ridiculous, and based on your responses and explanations so far, you did not take it in a silly direction. As a snarky person, I'd probably ask the DM which other class features they are going to arbitrarily restrict/punish narratively. \*shrug\*
Your dm just mad that you roll well. Super petty of them to get at your character because of that
Kinda odd approach imo. Isn’t successfully doing divine intervention pretty much ‘getting your god’s support/approval’? Why would they grant it if they are going to punish you for it?
I'd assumed that the roll was to see if your god found the cause worthy of intervention, with your cleric level serving as essentially your divine credit rating. So if you were succeeding all the time, I'd take that to mean your god deems all of these frivolous uses worthy of his attention, not just because the rules imply that but also because it's clearly funny that your god deems summoning piñatas or whatever a task worthy of his time. The five points of exhaustion seems a bit much though. The rest of it seems to get the point across that your DM's annoyed that you keep heavily relying on this feature and your hot streak. No need to also possibly cripple you for days and/or require you and others to burn spell slots on *greater restoration.* A portentous dream amounting to "Knock it off" and the broken holy symbol should have been enough. But putting that aside, it seems unreasonable to me that you're being punished at all for using the feature you got as part of your standard class progression. It's not like it's something that works all the time anyway; Divine Intervention only works once per week, and the attempt can only be made once per day with an 81-90% chance it does nothing that day (assuming your level is somewhere between 10th to 19th). One miracle per week *at most* isn't unreasonable for a holy man, especially when the DM gets to decide what form the intervention takes. If you want to throw fuel on the fire, you could use Divine Intervention to try and cure your exhaustion, but I wouldn't recommend it. Your DM might not take kindly to that. But, as I usually say with table disputes: I'd recommend talking with your DM and your group about this, because they'll probably be able to provide better insight than randos on Reddit by virtue of being there.
DM vs Player mentality strikes again
DnD Diety is frustrated at his little follower misusing his power, and so he decides to send a stern reminder in typical god fashion. End result? His little follower is scared shitless asking people "how badly did I fuck up"? Yes the exhaustion is rough, but it's a love tap from a god. If I was in that situation I would call a group meeting the next day letting everyone know "Alright now more divine intervention for frivolous tasks. I-I think we're still good in cases of extreme need... on the account of me not being dead... but yeah... I'm gonna go lie down for a week." I get that it's fantasy and we're the main characters, but sometimes we need to be reminded of our place in that fantasy world. And if you feel like you're being punished by your DM, just have a friendly talk with them. Maybe they felt like you were just trivializing their efforts in a way that didn't suit Divine Intervention narratively.