# Divine Intervention in D&D games



## Bullgrit (Jul 12, 2010)

The other discussion about "Gods, planes, afterlife, and the common man" got me thinking about this. It seems that most people 'round here have experienced far more direct divine interventions in their D&D games than I have.

In my years of playing D&D -- since 1980 -- as DM, I've had a god directly affect the PCs only twice:

1- About 20 years ago, a god actually struck down a PC (~7th level) in my campaign. It was a convoluted reason, and I regretted it shortly after it happened.

2- Just a couple of years ago, the PCs (~8th level) had a really good guide lead them through a very dangerous jungle to their quest destination. They were a bit suspicious at how fast they travelled the distance, and at how few wilderness encounters they had (only a couple very easy ones) along the way, and at how the guide simply wished them well and went on his way (still in a very dangerous jungle) all by himself afterward.

It wasn't until after the party TPKed in a dumb and unrelated (to their quest) encounter that I let them in on the secret that Fharlanghn, himself, had been their guide. Such was the importance of their quest.

Otherwise, the gods in my games have really never been active in the world. All that I've ever read about the gods of a "generic" D&D world has suggested that they don't get involved unless there is some extraordinary reason. But apparently I'm in the minority with that assumption. It seems that in many games, the gods do take part in temporal matters.

What has been your experience? 

As a DM, do you have the gods directly active in your setting(s)? Do they get involved with PCs?

As a Player/PC, have you had direct contact with gods in a game?

Are gods as involved with low-level PCs/NPCs, or does involvement only happen with high-level PCs/NPCs?

In my experience as a Player, the only times gods have taken any kind of direct intervention has been once that I recall where the DM allowed "god calls" (some low random chance of a god "fixing" a bad thing for you -- a DM gimme, really). And once when my cleric met his god after death (and before ressurection).

Bullgrit


----------



## Umbran (Jul 12, 2010)

Bullgrit said:


> As a DM, do you have the gods directly active in your setting(s)? Do they get involved with PCs?




Directly?  Typically no.  The gods (if they exist) have hands in the world - they're called "clerics".  I have often enough had clerics doing things that people (including PCs) would interpret as intervention of the god in question, sometimes at the bidding of the god in question.   




> As a Player/PC, have you had direct contact with gods in a game?




You mean, after the glory days where we used _Deities and Demigods_ as an ultra-high-powered _Monster Manual_?

Once - it was the culmination of a campaign in which there was a whole lot of question about who the gods were going to be.  And we weren't so much fighting the gods as fighting off things that wanted to be the gods.



> Are gods as involved with low-level PCs/NPCs, or does involvement only happen with high-level PCs/NPCs?




The way I run usually gods, the power of the mortals is not an issue - all mortals are as children before the gods.  But, by that same token, they don't tend to meddle directly with anyone, of any power level.


----------



## Thornir Alekeg (Jul 12, 2010)

I played in a long running campaign years ago where the party's patron turned out to be a god.  He was usually a bumbling drunk when we met up with him, so we really didn't suspect anything of the sort until he pulled our butts out of a really bad situation we had foolishly walked into.  Obviously the DM used him to save us, but his very direct intervention drew the attention of elder gods who forbade him from any more direct interaction with us.  After that we only had visions from him, except for a couple of times where he managed to slip away from the elder gods, get sloshed and pay us a visit.  

As a DM, with the exception of the god-slaying days Umbran mentioned above, I have never used direct interaction with the gods, but the PCs have occasionally dealt directly with a divine agent, usually in receiving dire warnings.


----------



## Umbran (Jul 12, 2010)

To elaborate a bit...

For D&D, and any other game where characters can be expected to climb to great power levels, I personally find direct deific intervention to be problematic, in terms of plausibility.  Direct intervention by deities that are in conflict with one another should lead to disaster.

If the gods are not too powerful (say, they can be threatened or killed by sufficiently powerful mortals), then you'd expect the deific turnover rate to be on par with mortal generation times, as mortals grow up, become powerful, and get involved in these conflicts.  And who is going to follow gods if the gods keep dying off in living memory?

If the gods are so powerful that they are largely untouchable by the highest-power mortals, then the gods represent... well, nigh unimaginable power.  High-level D&D mortals are nearly world-shapers themselves.  Interventions by the gods they cannot touch should tend to rip apart worlds with their conflicts.

End result - it seems that to have something semi-stable as your background, the gods cannot meddle to frequently or too directly.  

There are ways around this, of course, but every version I've seen tends to feel more contrived than the alternative, which is to not have them personally get their hands dirty with any frequency.


----------



## Storminator (Jul 12, 2010)

I've seen gods directly in almost all of my campaigns. My brother had a rule that a cleric could call for direct divine intervention once, with chance of success equal to the cleric's level.

I was in an epic 3e game where we used to go hang with the gods all the time. Once we killed an avatar of Lolth things got pretty hectic, but it was still gods here, gods there, can't swing a dead cat without hitting a god.

In the game I run for my son (age 10), they've met a pair of gods so far - probably more on the way.

Why have gods if there's no interaction?

PS


----------



## Umbran (Jul 12, 2010)

Storminator said:


> Why have gods if there's no interaction?




There's no need for _statistics_ for gods if there's no interaction, I'd agree.

But religions are formed around gods (existent or imaginary), and religions drive people.  Characters are people.  And the game is about characters.


----------



## Treebore (Jul 12, 2010)

I was never able to buy into the "gods are "hands off" in fantasy games" idea. They interfere every time they grant spells to their clerics.

So this idea is, IMO, just a reinforcement of real world expectations on a fantasy reality.

Then, if you use Avatars, then this idea of "hands off" is truly out the window.

So I have always allowed "God Calls". Which are to only be tried when a TPK is imminent. I even had guidelines made up as to how truly devout players could increase their chance of rolling a successful god call (it was a percentile roll, base 5%), which turned into a great way to eat up extra gold as well as a role play incentive.

Also, once a Cleric achieves 9th level in my games they become a direct conduit of their god, so will receive divine inspirations in their dreams however and whenever I see fit for the story.

Like in my last game session I had Thor send his high priestess to commune with two recently deceased PC's, whose players wanted back alive so they could keep playing them. So she communed with them, asking them if they were willing to commit to serving Thor if resurrected. Resurrection was also important to the players because the thieves guild that had killed them also removed certain key body parts and then crucified the bodies to walls of two different buildings. So they also wanted "intact" characters brought back to life, and having a whole body is also important to Thor, so it kind of worked.

Naturally the players had their PC's accept the conditions, and they were resurrected, intact. Something the gods they were serving would not do, because they were against such things, or only believed in Reincarnation.

Since the PC's were low level, and neither were clerics or devout to their previous gods in any real and meaningful way, plus their old gods are nominally "friendly" to Thor, their ex deities took no umbrage, and now they are devout, to Thor. Which will likely have real implications down the road.

So yes, I use the gods, in a pretty active way, but no god wars. 

No, I do not use Gods as "Epic" level monsters. I could, but gods are gods, they are immune to mortal magics and mortal weapons. So unless the mortals come across god level magics and weapons in some manner, they cannot even hurt the gods.

Combine that with mortals always being fully effected by the magic of gods (no saves or SR/MR), and always taking full damage from god weapons and magic spells, only suicidal mortals attack the gods.


----------



## Stormonu (Jul 12, 2010)

In one of the 2E games I ran, the characters faced off against Lolth in the Demonweb Pits.  

They followed her through the mirror in her chamber to a demiplane trap she had prepared to destroy the heros.  However, it turned out that the gods of my campaign world had been hiding Avatars within the PCs - it was one of the reasons they were so exceptional.  It was worth seeing the player's reactions as avatars of the various gods "stepped out" of the PCs to confront the demon queen.

A huge gods vs. Lolth fight breaks out, with the PCs tasked to defeat the minions of Lolth (several powerful demons) that are holding the demiplane shut against escape, and on Lolth's orders are attempting to permanently seal it magically as well, forever cutting the gods avatars off from their power (of course, without their power, the gods avatars will be easy pickings for Lolth, and after mopping up, she could simply reopen the demiplane and easily escape).  It was an epic battle - I had the players running their own PCs as well as the avatars of the gods against Lolth's full godly form.  How the PC were doing in their own fight caused the power of the avatars to fluctuate as well.  I don't think I've had a more dramatic battle at my table.

Other than this incident, I've always had the gods in the background, though there are all kinds of tales of them interacting in mortal affairs throughout past history.  However, because of consequences of their meddling (including the fallout from the fight above), barriers had eventually been set up so they could not take direct action on the mortal world any more.  Mostly because I didn't want the sort of adventure I did above to be "par for the course" in my game.


----------



## Rekka360 (Jul 12, 2010)

As a DM, do you have the gods directly active in your setting(s)? Do  they get involved with PCs?

Hmm, more likely the god would act through a divine agent. I can see how it would be possible for a god to act directly, but most likely only if one of the PC's had managed to become that god's champion or something like that.

As a Player/PC, have you had direct contact with gods in a game?

No, again I've come to expect if a certain gods wants me to do something, he'll have a messanger boy or something tell me what he wants.

Are gods as involved with low-level PCs/NPCs, or does involvement only  happen with high-level PCs/NPCs?

I would expect it more for high level PC's, a god might care for his low level followers, but I think even for really benevolent gods he's only really going to interfere for a mortal that can achieve something for his divine plan, otherwise he's be interfering all the time.


----------



## Evilhalfling (Jul 12, 2010)

Since 4ed yes. 

I set up a world where each god takes turns as the "Ascended One" The turn of each god is called an age, and they currently last 200 years.  Only the "Ascended One"  or their lesser gods, have the direct power to use Avatars, give prophecies, and in other ways directly manipulate the physical world.  Everybody else acts only through clerics, or immortal servants. 
The Ascended God still prefers indirect meddling, but it gives me the opportunity to play with more unexplainable effects.  Mostly these are just signs that the god is interested in the outcome of a situation, rather than bothering to fix things directly. 


After messing up a seasonal ceremony to the fire god, PCs found themselves in a forest fire. 
In a particularly important fight with a (teamster-like) dwarven roofing guild, the air got hotter and hotter, reaching 98.6 
After traveling back into time -
In a battle that would decide the fate of Coffee as a trade good, the god of trade and winds, would slide a random combatant 1d6 squares in a random direction.  The wind was also defending a random PC each round (+1 to defenses, +2 to speed)  
In the age of the god Water and Healing - several fights were showered in a brief but healing rain.  Monsters and PCs alike would run to take advantage of it.

The only god that been actually encountered dispatched an Avatar because he had only ascended recently, and wondered why there was a mid-level paladin calling on him.  He posed as a (confused) magic item peddler, and was tickled pink to be asked for his own holy symbol.  It would have developed as an artifact, if the campaign had run longer than 1 more session.  The God did not otherwise reveal himself.


----------



## Lanefan (Jul 13, 2010)

To some extent I've always had the gods (or at least a few of them) paying attention to the mortal world and what the party is up to.  

In my first big campaign the party unknowingly and unintentionally became agents for one goddess acting against another two; the players (and characters) only found this out after 10+ years of play in the very last session when the god they'd been working for showed up and told them what they were doing - and why.  But even before then, divine intervention happened albeit on a very rare basis.

In my second campaign, one of the more significant embedded adventure paths involved the rescue of a captured goddess (the 2e module "For Duty and Deity" was the climax) and thus right there the PCs ended up with a friend in high places.  Long before that, I ran the "I-3 Pharoah's Tomb" adventure; the person who dropped by to give them their rewards afterwards as per the module was not Amon Ra but instead a minor god travelling in form of an old man.  And not all the "rewards" were beneficial! 

My current campaign has thus far been mostly based on a version of ancient Greece, whose deities constantly meddled with mortals; so having deities and immortals get involved even with low-level types hasn't been out of place at all.  The immortal Discord has already taken significant interest in the PCs, they've managed to catch the Fates doing things they shouldn't, and have bent Ares' nose out of joint more than once.  The only other culture they've had any real dealings with has been vaguely Celtic, another culture where the deities tend to manifest all over the place.

In any event, in an extreme situation a Cleric can try for divine intervention (I roll for this, sometimes already knowing there's no chance) and see what happens.  I'll also occasionally do this in reverse: if the PCs are defeating an enemy Cleric, that person might also get divine help...in other words, it works both ways.

As a player, one example of divine intervention stands out.  My namesake character Lanefan was lying half-dead in a pool of blood after losing a fight in "Tomb of the Lizard King".  Barely conscious, he prayed to his god Loki for help.  Loki showed up, stole a magic item - a ring, I think - from him, then took off and *left him lying there*!  (someone independently found him before he bled to death and patched him up)

Lan-"I never did find out what that ring did"-efan


----------



## Ed_Laprade (Jul 13, 2010)

Back in the 1e days when gamers in the area tended to form and break up groups pretty frequently there was a time when divine intervention was fairly common. The first time I saw it in action the houserule was a call for it at death, with a 1% per level chance of it working. (This quickly morphed into a slightly higher chance for Clerics, then it could be used in dire straights, but got reset to 1% if it worked.) In a large group with characters dropping like flies it was almost guaranteed that a diety would be contacted, and possibly show up.

If I recall correctly, the first character I had who was played under this rule converted to whatever god showed up and saved the rest of the party when his Cleric went down and made his intervention roll. The average level of the party was high single digits, or low double digits, and he was like 2nd or 3rd. So we are obviously all about to die and God X shows up in person to save our bacon! You bet he converted, on the spot! 

I used the idea once or twice myself, but the idea petered out fairly quickly and there haven't been a lot of gods around since.


----------



## Hussar (Jul 13, 2010)

And, even if it hasn't shown up in your games Bullgrit, it's certainly seen in loads of published products.

Dragonlance has Fizban.
Queen of the Demonweb Pits.
Temple of Elemental Evil.
Isle of the Ape.
Greyhawk has Zagyg, Iuz, and a bunch of others show up in canon.
Forgotten Realms - too many to list, but, Time of Troubles is the poster boy.
Planescape setting.
Lost Temple of Tharizdun.
Immortals rule set for Basic/Expert D&D.

Even if it hasn't featured in your (or honestly mine either) campaign, it's not hard to see that gods having a pretty direct hand in the setting is hardly a rare idea.


----------



## Gilladian (Jul 13, 2010)

IMC the gods are all mortal beings who have found ways to move to "higher" planes of existence (very difficult as far as I'm concerned) and have taken on godly personas. They know they're not really gods, and they're using magic that they "found" or "won" in battle with other beings, and don't really quite understand. 

These beings mostly dislike and fear other mortals, so even "good" gods are as interested in keeping their followers in line and away from their home territories as anything else. They tend to view being hands-off as fairly advisable. However, since their power is pulled from their worshippers, they do need to grant spells and remain just "visible" enough to keep their worship at a peak. Woe betide a god who falls from his or her worshippers graces when another god challenges him/her.

If there ARE "real" gods somewhere, there's no evidence of it! My underlying assumption is that it's really just all "magic". Where does magic come from? The big bang, I guess!


----------



## Sammael (Jul 13, 2010)

Religion is a huge factor in my games, particularly FR ones. 

The trigger for my long-term Rebirth campaign was the decision of Lathander (god of morning, youth, and renewal) to initiate a "purge" that would cleanse the world of all evil. Needless to say, things did not go according to his plans. Over the course of the campaign PCs interacted with a number of divine manifestations and avatars, and when they eventually reached the Outer Planes, they met with several deities "in person" and even participated in a divine meeting in Cynosure, where (in my version of the place) the deities shed their "shells" and appear as the concepts they represent. 

An important point is never to let the divine intervention overshadow the actions of PCs. For instance, when the party got TPK'd, an avatar of Shaundakul, patron god of wind and travelers, removed their bodies (so that they wouldn't be defiled) and stashed their equipment away (so that it would wait for their return). Valkur, demipower of sailors, transported them along rivers Oceanus and Styx when they were roaming the Outer Planes on their quest to restore Faerun to normality. Helm was there to conveniently bite the bullet when they needed to dispose of an artifact (the only way to destroy it was to use it to strike down a god; of course, since Helm acted in accordance with his portfolio, he was then restored to his position by Ao).


----------



## Lord Xtheth (Jul 13, 2010)

Gods are an iffy subject. I have used gods alot in my games, but then again, I usually run game in the Forgotten Realms setting where it seems like the gods stroll the streets and interact with people all the time, just because they have nothing better to do.
I try to use gods sparingly, to advance plot, introduce artifacts, or as BBEGs at the end of the game. When players hit the higher (epic) levels, having them travel WITH gods on their big epic quests of universe saving proportions isn't out of the question either.
However, in games I've played, gods have been uses slightly less sparingly.
In a 3.5 game I played last week, one of the characters prayed for help against a group of guys who seemed to be +2 levels to us, and he thought we were out matched. So then the god SHOWS UP... and WINS for us. I sit there feeling like someone who got his kill stolen by a god, and the game goes on. Bad DMing? maybe. Bad storytelling, yes.

One of my earlier characters had a god fall in love with him. It was kept on the down low for years, and not even refferenced to for the longest time. The character would come up against impossible odds (Set up by jealous gods) and still manage to succeed on his own. Every time there was a "cheap kill" for instance a vorpal sword cutting my head off, or being suffocated in a vaccume between time and space, my character would find himself alive and well some days later.
Then the reveal happened and the god chose my character as her champion, and the game pretty much ended (the DM moved to New Zealand, and we have opposing schedules) but the game was fun, and I believe the god was used properly (well... except for falling in love with my guy).


----------



## karlindel (Jul 27, 2010)

It depends on the setting and the campaign.  Here are the most direct examples of divine intervention I recall:

In a previous homebrew campaign, a mid-level paladin called on his deity and begged for a miracle to save his friends, as he and they were badly losing a fight.  I gave him a small percentile chance, and rolled 01.  His deity sent an emissary to aid in the fight and tasked him with a quest to take on as soon as the party finished their current mission (which was almost over at the time).

In my current campaign, the party has interacted with exarchs of the Raven Queen, who used the party as part of a ritual to break the elemental gates/shields that protected a false raven queen who was using an artifact to wall off a portion of the Shadowfell and using the souls there for her own purposes.


----------



## the Jester (Jul 27, 2010)

Bullgrit said:


> As a DM, do you have the gods directly active in your setting(s)? Do they get involved with PCs?




Absolutely- but by manipulating things from behind the scenes. If you're talking about actual direct intervention- like, the god itself shows up- that is pretty darn rare imc. Most of the traditional gods are abstract creations of faith; it would take tremendous energy to physically manifest on the material plane.

On the other hand, there is a group of more physical deities that has "crossed over" into my world, and in doing so have shaken things up- they are considerably more likely to take a direct active hand in things.

That said, since my new campaign world started in about, oh, '93 or thereabouts, I've had the following incidents that might be termed "direct deity involvement" (not counting archfiends, dragons, elemental princes or other entities that style themselves as gods but aren't the traditional deity): 

1. A pc became the Jesus-figure of his religion (2e; psionicist later dual-classed to cleric). He didn't have any super god powers or anything, just a normal pc. (This whole thing started when he was 2nd-3rd level.)

2. A group of pcs "crossed over" into the world that the more physical deities I mentioned above were in and met a couple of them before being tricked into bringing them back. (High level 2e pcs.)

3. Those pcs met some imprisoned gods and persuaded their captor to release them. (Same pcs as 2; same plot line; convoluted tale!)

4. A later group of epic pcs met with the interloper gods to get their help in tearing down the forces of Law. (A dozen sessions or so before the finale of my 3e epic game.)

5. At the finale, the biggest god on the block went ahead and spent all that energy to physically manifest and try a last desperate attempt to triumph over the forces of Chaos (and our heroes), and one of the interloper gods appeared to fight him. The pcs (level 35-38) fled a couple of rounds later; there was just too much energy being thrown around.

This is over the course of just under 900 sessions.

5.


----------



## DragonLancer (Jul 27, 2010)

In my games gods do take a role but very rarely ever take a physical form and interact with the characters. Gods have to take a hand in world events in my mind for a variety of reasons, whether it be they (probably an evil god) want to dominate the world or part of their portfolio is agriculture and farming.

In the past I have had players who have sought to get the gods in on their quests, usually while praying and asking for guidence. I find this odd as if you want their guidence you get the cleric to learn some divinations.


----------



## ProfessorCirno (Jul 27, 2010)

Nope.

I'm really tired and bored of the greek/hellanistic style pantheon, where all the gods are reguarly coming down to high-five their followers, and there's no questions ever about anything.  Yawn.

While my setting has _divine magic_, wether that comes from a greater power is up for grabs.  Certainly the various religions feel so, though each thinks of the _other_ religions as being false.  Some utilize divine magic just fine without being a part of any of the major religions.  Religion then is a matter of faith - which incidentally leads to much more exciting intrigue and drama.  While most religions have a vague real world application, the two that stand out are gnomish agnosticism and dragon worship - the first is somewhat self-explanatory, with the transhumanist (transgnomist?) gnomes not even _caring_ about the existence of other "gods" while some laboratories run experiments on how to _make their own_, and the second leads to some excellent fun with divine characters.  If a staunch religious cleric ends up meeting a figure who claims to be a god, and certainly has plenty of power to back it up, how do they react?


----------



## Lord Zardoz (Jul 27, 2010)

*Gods and Artifacts:  Use them or why have them?*

In some of my more recent game, I have been making a direct effort to involve gods and artifacts in my game much more often.  The reasoning is simple enough.

 - Why have a pantheon of gods that never actually do anything directly ever?
Self explanatory.  The gods either do something in your campaign, or they do not.

 - It focuses the players attention.
If you have multiple plot hooks going on in your game, it might not be obvious which ones are important to the long term plot arcs, especially if you have to choose from "the fetch quest from the mysterious wizard", the "mission from a powerful noble lord", "the mystery surrounding recent goblin attacks in several towns", and "the recent falling star impact that lit up the sky".  But if one of those hooks came about by way of direct communication with a god, then that one is probably going to stick out.

 - Using a god will give you better suspension of disbelief if you need to suddenly hand wave something.
Gods and artifacts by definition exist just outside the rules that everything else in game need to follow.  Your players might ask why the powerful necromancer was able to do something the players are not allowed to do.  They wont ask why a god can do things their characters cannot.

END COMMUNICATION


----------



## brainstorm (Jul 28, 2010)

Every time I fudge a die roll to prevent a character from dying in a meaningless way, it's divine intervention.


----------



## Lanefan (Jul 28, 2010)

*Divine intervention can work the other way, too.*

Have you ever had a PC Cleric p--- off his god to the point where the god goes !*ZOT*! and strikes him down to a pile of ash?

In 26 years of DMing I've seen an awful lot of Clerics give an awful lot of backtalk to their gods...and finally, last weekend, one of my game's less tolerant deities - already very annoyed with the Cleric in question - just happened to be listening at the time.

!*ZOT*!

Lan-"surprised it took 26 years"-efan


----------



## Hussar (Jul 28, 2010)

Heh, my group had the "Great Flaming Booger of God" that served that purpose.


----------



## hopeless (Jul 29, 2010)

*Divine Intervention*



Bullgrit said:


> The other discussion about "Gods, planes, afterlife, and the common man" got me thinking about this. It seems that most people 'round here have experienced far more direct divine interventions in their D&D games than I have.
> 
> What has been your experience?
> 
> ...




The only time I've seen a divine intervention it was behalf of a fellow player who had a visitation fron his patron deity thereby enchanting his weapon.
Everybody had to save vs paralysis and my character was the only one who passed and simply watched rather amused at the time.

I figure divine intervention should be used sparingly about as much as having important figures from the game setting turning up but its up to the dm to make it work and the above did even if the reason for it wasn't as apt as noted in this thread.


----------



## hopeless (Jul 29, 2010)

*Divine Intervention*



Bullgrit said:


> The other discussion about "Gods, planes, afterlife, and the common man" got me thinking about this. It seems that most people 'round here have experienced far more direct divine interventions in their D&D games than I have.
> 
> What has been your experience?
> 
> ...




The only time I've seen a divine intervention it was behalf of a fellow player who had a visitation fron his patron deity thereby enchanting his weapon.
Everybody had to save vs paralysis and my character was the only one who passed and simply watched rather amused at the time.

I figure divine intervention should be used sparingly about as much as having important figures from the game setting turning up but its up to the dm to make it work and the above did even if the reason for it wasn't as apt as noted in this thread.


----------



## JoeGKushner (Jul 30, 2010)

My earlier gaming years were heavily inspired by Michael Moorcock's Elric series so yes, the gods were in high play often.

I also used to use a lot of campaign supplements and cross the prime material planes a lot, so the clerics would often have problems relying on their gods all the time and became fighting men of no small waters and started finding/inventing magical items to continue to use their abilities or in some cases, start up churches of their own.

I've also had gods act as mentors for characters. For example, the Prince of Swords from Greyhawk. When one of the players told me he wanted to be the best with swords, the old god took him under his wing in disguise and was like Rocky's mentor in that he offered harsh advice but wasn't stepping into the ring with him.

As a player, yes. Missions direct from the divine, missions with the divine bringing forth their most powerful servants, etc...


----------



## Aegeri (Jul 30, 2010)

My players in my 4E FR game defended Celestia and were aided in that inevitably by Bahamut and some other metallic dragons. I have Bahamuts stats so why not? It was pretty cool for them and I got to run a creature I would be very unlikely to ever use otherwise.


----------



## That1Merc (Jan 23, 2019)

For me, I have the god(s) walking around the world, interacting with it, and every day or week, roll a d-100 to see if the god happens to be in their general vicinity. To counter-balance a world-ending powered NPC walking around, I give them a glaring Flaw, normally that contradicts them. For example, I have a god that is pictured by their followers as the most religious of the gods. This god, is in fact,
extremely cynical, wondering who created the gods, and if such a being exists. Or, a god of war, and ambition, that CONSTANTLY kills things, essentially being in berserk mode 24/7. A god of knowledge and life and magic that, rather stereotypically, stays in the middle of a forest with bunnies. Then we have a god of Death, Trickery, and the likes that tends to be a massive drunk. On top of that, I gave the God of Death to my Co-DM, so he can make that NPC change their face and become anyone they want. The man of many faces from game of thrones. So the PC would interact with gods every once in a while and have no clue its a god. Thats me though.


----------



## Mercule (Jan 25, 2019)

I was in middle school when I started playing 1E AD&D. After hitting a high enough level, the group encountered Demogorgon and beat him (middle school, remember). One of the books (L&L or DMG, probably) had a line about gods having a 1% chance of hearing their name, if you called it out. The same was true for demon lords, but we interpreted that as a "blind hearing" on their part that might compel them to show up. Anyway, whenever the game got slow, the barbarian would start chanting "Demogorgon, Demogorgon, Demogorgon...", prompting me to roll dice until he showed up. As stupid as it was, it was actually kind of funny to narrate a demon prince shrieking like a little girl upon seeing the PCs, which is why I let that character get away with it even after I realized it shouldn't work that way -- I just never gave him more XP for it.

I think we also had one random roll (d%, again) that raised a PC, on the spot.

Otherwise, the only time the gods intervene in my games is when they *zot* someone whose gnome starts acting like a Krynn tinker gnome or halfling starts acting like a kender.


----------



## Immortal Sun (Jan 25, 2019)

Bullgrit said:


> What has been your experience?
> 
> As a DM, do you have the gods directly active in your setting(s)? Do they get involved with PCs?
> 
> ...




1: Generally speaking, the activity of gods in games has been low.  

2: _Rarely_ leaning on _exceedingly_ rarely.

3: Yes.  It's silly.

4: Generally speaking involvement becomes more common the higher level a party becomes.  Sometimes low-level players receive quests or visions from gods, but it's not typically "life or death" stuff, it's the god sort of testing this person out to see if they can handle the life-or-death stuff.

When 3.5 was the game of the day, gods had stats, and this was quite arguably one of the dumbest things ever.  Even if they were high stats, a long-running game with clever and powerful heroes could indeed defeat gods.  Granting them stupid amounts of XP and making them even more capable of defeating even more gods, rinse repeat.

I thought 4E was clever in the Epic Destinies where some of the options were _literally_ to become lesser gods.  But it still presented much the same problem as 3.5.

Generally speaking I don't involve gods with the players, because it gets silly, either the players are a bunch of disrespectful snots and think they wont get punished (think again!) or the players are a bunch of disrespectful snots who _do_ get punished and then whine about how it's unfair that they couldn't make a DC Bajillion will save.

And I don't enjoy interacting with gods as a player because it's either played off as "I'm a god, you'll do this thing, or I'll mind-control you and MAKE you do this thing!" or "I'm a god, I make everything easy for you 'cause reasons."  And neither of those are fun.


----------



## Celebrim (Jan 26, 2019)

1) The gods are exceedingly active in my homebrew setting, both in an active role as persons and through the machinations of their respective cults, which collectively have a larger day to day role in the every day affairs of society than say the Catholic Church in medieval society.  My inspirations here are decidedly Etruscan or Hindu in origin.  This is polytheism to the max, because it's logical that in a society with deities known to be actively intervening regularly, the society would be more religious than almost every historical real world society.  The entire world is as religious as a real world fanatical cult.

2) My general statement to the PC's is that divine intervention is so common, that pretty much everyone can expect some sort of miraculous event to occur in their lives even if they are but a humble peasant farmer.  Thus, pretty much everyone attributes all coincidences to the supernatural, whether this is reasonable or not.  Further, as 'heroes' they are very much heroes in the Greek idea of the word, in that their heroic nature is defined by the fact that the gods have taken a special interest in their lives.  Therefore, they should expect divine intervention to happen pretty frequently.  In fact, there is a roll they are allowed to make when they get into trouble, which involves rolling an 18 or higher on 3d6.  I saw, "Or higher", because pious characters have a positive modifier on the roll as can other circumstances.  Likewise, there are a variety of ways of improving your chances.  For example, if the characters spend a destiny point, then they need only roll 18 or higher on 4d6.   So far, we've had 4 appeals for divine aid receive direct intervention by a deity over the course of a 7 year campaign where the characters hit 10th level.  There are rules likewise for determining just how strongly a deity intervenes - three of the four interventions involved the deity casting a 1st level spell (at 30th level of ability, but still a 1st level spell) on the players behalf, and one involved a 5th level spell (Monster Summoning V).  Three of the four interventions were successful at saving the person from mortal peril, with the fourth (a cloud of obscuring mists intend to provide cover for the player's escape from overwhelming odds) narrowly failing owing to a combination of not taking full advantage of that and bad luck.

We've also had one bonafide god show up (and hurl a hurricane at the players), one literal demigod (though not a demigod by the rules, the offspring of a god), and several divine rank 0 power characters with reoccurring roles in the game - namely "Jasper the Talking Cat", whom they've gradually come to realize is more than an 'ordinary talking cat' as the full range of what he can do becomes obvious.  We've also had the players receive a variety of dreams and omens from their patron deities warning them of upcoming troubles or steering them toward certain paths (for example, informing the champion where to find the steed his deity intended for his use).  Normally, the players are appropriately careful when around beings of unknown power, though the one time a player seriously annoyed Jasper by being disrepectful, he reached over and 'scratched' him for 18 points of damage.  The player who got scratched briefly saw Jasper turn from a house cat into a snarling black sabertooth tiger the size of a draft horse.  The player shut up, and let the more diplomatic players do the talking.

Further, that's just the big time 'born from the fruit of the tree of life' deities that made humanity and the other moral races.  There isn't a completely clear dividing line between gods and not gods.  Divinity goes from the big family of deities that demand and expect worship (but can't compel it), all the way down to the ordinary tree and pond spirits.  The fey are often referred to as 'the small gods', and are propitiated to a certain extent accordingly.   And three of the allowed PC races are fey, so technically the party has a 'god' in it, albeit a very minor one, but the PC fey's prowess is justified in game by the fact that they are a small god, of domestic affairs and in this case domestic vengeance.  (Actually, the current party has not less than 3 semi-divine beings, but the party isn't actually aware of that, and further one of the other characters in the party is a legitimate Saint, having had a conversation with his patron deity.  And actually, the party has 3 saints in it, but they aren't actually aware of that either.)

3) As a player, I haven't had direct contact with a deity.   

4) No, quite the contrary.  I try to bring to my player's attention this aspect of my homebrew world as soon as possible, with some plan for bringing the PC's into contact with a god in the first or first few adventures.  In the case of the current campaign, that didn't actually happen because the players leapt one way instead of another, and no even divine plan survives contact with heroes.  But while deities have more reason to maneuver 'back rank' pieces about, they also have a lot of reason to maneuver the 'pawns'.  

As for the complaint that the gods force mortals to do this or that, one of the major themes of the game is that they aren't allowed to.  The gods are observing a truce in the aftermath of a war, and they aren't allowed to force mortals to do things against their will.  Likewise, they are careful not to intervene because every 'move' that they make in the game that they play allows an opposing deity to make an equally powerful counter move.   So, for example, this is why the deities when directly intervening the affairs of the party mostly only cast 1st level spells.  Every time a good deity does that, some evil deity somewhere cast a 1st level spell on behalf of someone appealing to them!  (Although, in fairness, one of the PC's was appealing to an evil deity - they'd made an acceptable blood sacrifice to him on his sacred ground and straight up rolled an 18 on 3d6, what else do you think should happen...)

Campaigns or stories with equivalent levels of divine intervention to my homebrew would include 'Chronicles of the Dragon Lance', 'The Lord of the Rings', 'The Iliad and The Odyssey', or 'The Order of the Stick'.


----------



## GnomeWorks (Jan 27, 2019)

For the first twenty years (IRL) of my setting's existence, the gods were effectively dead.

The first direct interactions a PC had with a deity "on-screen" were about eight years ago, when a PC-turned-villain (still being played by his player) went to go talk to the god of chaos before he was killed off (yes, time travel was involved), to attempt to turn him to his side. That conversation had mixed results. I'm honestly not sure what the player was thinking, trying to get the god of chaos to agree to a deal and stick to his word, but that's players for you, I suppose.

A year or so later, the group that that player was indirectly opposing met up with the god of time, who gave them some direction on how to go about fighting said PC-turned-villain, and gave them a free pass out of the time travel shenanigans going on at the time.

The results of that game then resulted in my setting's current metaplot, in which each game focuses on one of the gods' domains and (thus far) results in them being brought back. The first game in the metaplot revolved around the goddess of magic, and wound up with a "dragonborn" (not really, but close enough) becoming her herald on the prime, in addition to bringing her back.

While the gods don't (typically) directly intervene in my setting, even if they're actually alive, their presence has repercussions. Because the goddess of magic is the only one around at the moment, magic is basically ridiculously stronger than other power sources. Whether or not the gods will get more involved in the future is hard to say, and is rather dependent upon players' actions over the course of the metaplot, which - at our current pace - will probably wrap up sometime in the late 20's.


----------



## LordEntrails (Jan 27, 2019)

What's with all the thread necromancy today?


----------



## Eis (Jan 31, 2019)

I wonder if my players would get mad at me if I introduced them to Divinyl interventions?  

When you think about me you bless yourself
you bless yourself
you honestly do


----------

