Wrestling of gods (hints for PCs)

[Balor01]

So ... In our campaign, good clerics often get dreams. These dreams nudge the party in a right direction, basically, it is an omnisentient god sharing a part of his vision with a good cleric.

But here is my predicament: There are also evil gods. Would these gods not prevent these visions or even send visions to those that worship them and do their bidding?

In the end it seems PCs can do little without divine intervention and it seems it is all about which god fills mortals' dreams with more pointers.

A strange predicament, I agree, but still. If good clerics get hints and bad clerics get hints does it not in the end not matter if any of the parties gets any hints?

[hymer]

If either side uses hints, the other side must do it too, to prevent the development of a hint gap. I'd dial down the gods to knowing a whole lot, but not to be actually all-knowing. If they were omniscient, they'd already know who wins the confrontation in the end, and it would all end up being too convoluted to be worth telling a story about it.

[prufock]

1. Gods should only send visions to their own worshippers. This excludes the "interference" problem you have.
2. Evil gods should send visions too, if good gods do. Any deity with a stake in the actions of mortals should meddle.
3. Visions from gods should be more like commands - "Find the holy grail"-type things - not solutions to how to do that.
4. Parties worshipping different deities seek to achieve mutually-exclusive commands, and creates your in-game conflict.
5. Gods shouldn't intervene in any other way, otherwise what's the point of PCs?

[awa]

You may be looking at it the wrong way. Hero hear the voice of god "seek out the mguffin of goodness in the dungeon of level appropriate monsters in order to stop setting bbeg from completing the evil ritual of evilness"

In this situation the bbeg is getting hints from his god how do you think he got into a position to have an evil ritual in the first place?

[Slipperychicken]

Visions might be extremely hazy and symbolic in nature, possibly requiring the subject to warp his perception (via shrooms, incense, fever-dreams, etc) to make them more clear. Even if the god sent the same dream to a hundred of his highest clergymen and theologians, its precise meaning would be controversial, although most of them would probably get the gist of it. Holy texts might be studied to try to shed light on the dreams' use of symbols (such as events, characters from legend, animals, etc).


If you ask me, I think such visions should be extremely rare, and only used when it's critical for the religion. Like if the god needs a relic recovered, he might forward that to some specially-appointed oracle or avatar, whose job it is to interpret/decode the dream and relay the information to whoever needs it. Also, I think that only very special or important people (such as a dedicated oracle, a head of state, a high-level hero, etc) would be eligible for such a vision in the first place, and even then couldn't interpret it without a decent Knowledge(Religion) check (such a check could be attempted by anyone hearing an account of the dream, though the DC would increase from getting it secondhand. Failing the check might result in an incorrect interpretation). Of course, it's hard to convince someone your dream was a vision, since they're so rare, and every nutjob who eats too many shrooms and has a funny dream can convince himself it was divine inspiration.

[ChaosArchon]

If either side uses hints, the other side must do it too, to prevent the development of a hint gap. I'd dial down the gods to knowing whole lot, but not to be actually all-knowing. If they were omniscient, they'd already know who wins the confrontation in the end, and it would all end up being too convoluted to be worth telling a story about it.

Yeah but if one all-knowing god tries to tell his servants what's going to happen and how to avert it, but the other all-knowing god tries to oppose the first and tells his servants what the first god is planning, who knows that and changes his plan, etc. So basically you the gods are playing Future Diary with the PCs :smallbiggrin:

[GungHo]

I could see evil gods delivering nightmares to dissuade the good as well.