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Scalenex
2021-04-26, 03:07 AM
The recent Order of the Stick comics have dealt with the Commune spell. I remember earlier Durkon said "Oh, you never answer those!"

What's the best way to handle a power like that. On some level you don't want a player character to be able to use an answer from their god to solve every problem, but you also don't want to make the power useless if someone goes to great work to develop it.

What is the appropriate way to regulate answers straight from the gods from a gameplay perspective?



Then there is the world building aspect. Assuming your world has oracles that are capable of talking with the gods or a god or goddess on a regular basis, how would that affect the landscape (the latter question might be better for the world building thread if it's inapprops).

While it was funny for the Order of the Stick oracle to hide behind the test of body, test of mind, and test of heart, I'm not sure real oracles would do that, especially if they charged customers money.

I notice in literature and film it's often an unhappy life to be an oracle. In most accounts of Greek mythology, Tiresias was blind. Cassandra was cursed that no one would listen to her. In the Scorpion King, a prophetess was imprisoned, so he could monopolize the use of her Sight.

Other times, even villains choose to be nice to seers. In Kung Fu Panda 2, just about the only time the villain displayed an ounce of mercy was for the seer who annoyed him. It might not have been mercy. In many cultures it was considered bad luck to harm seers, especially if they are the mouthpieces of the gods.

If the gods create oracles and seers, the gods probably want knowledge to be spread. So sometimes I wonder if it's realistic that so many oracles and seers are hiding at the other end of dangerous obstacles and difficult puzzles.

On the other hand, maybe there is a metaphysical requirement for the puzzles and obstacles because true knowledge must be earned in some fashion.

Though must it? We give younger generations knowledge all the time without making them earn it first.

In my setting, my goddess of medicine is also the goddess of water (or at least the positive aspects of water). I think she would not hesitate to tell all mortals "if you boil water before drinking it, you will get less sick."

King of Nowhere
2021-04-26, 03:44 AM
On the other hand, maybe there is a metaphysical requirement for the puzzles and obstacles because true knowledge must be earned in some fashion.

Though must it? We give younger generations knowledge all the time without making them earn it first.



I don't have answers to your general questions, but i offer some musings on this one.
And first, by noting how the younger generations are generslly unappreciative of the learning they get, and part of it is because it's given easily. People tend to appreciate more what they must struggle to get. Perhaps those oracles must hide behind tests because otherwise they would not be taken seriously

Then again, one major reason we have a much higher standard of living compared to the past is that we have widespread knowledge, instead of hoarding it. So, giving away knowledge freely is generally benefical in the long run

Anonymouswizard
2021-04-26, 03:59 AM
As an idea based on RW ideas, most people don't speak directly to their god. Their god is busy, whether it's initiated by the god of the mortal most communication is actually from an angel (low ranking if you're just s normal person, potentially a Solar or better if you're casting Commune). Only exceptional circumstances or individuals get to talk directly to the god, because if you talk long enough to understand your God you begin to lose your mind.

Thor never answers his Communes, but we know he has angels to deal with the day to day running of Clerics.

But if you want to have every Commune be a line to the deity, another idea is that as the deity grants Clerics spells they just give the spell back. Sorry, I'm out barking Surtur at the moment, call again later.

As for seers, I have them be rare and lost in the throngs of those faking it. But it can be a very complex art, and anybody who can truly read the future from the way sticks land (or for the truly skilled, get glimpses from how trees shed their leaves) is respected and feared in equal measure. Nobody actually wants to happen a verified seer, because they are a useful asset and who can tell us they're reading the future or creating the future? But it's also really easy to fake if you can keep making up vague but believable prophecies you can later twist.

Prophets and Oracle's get a real mixed bag of respect, in my worlds, because they're closely tied to religion and I tend to have active religious conflicts coupled with distant and possibly nonexistent deities. Sure Commune gives you an experience of talking to Johnny Cash, Lord of Music, but is that just a narrative your mind came up with to justify the answers? While you're sure it's not nobody else actually shared in the experience.

OldCouch
2021-04-26, 12:14 PM
One thing you could try is by adding a downside to Commune.

1) The god will assign you a task. Are you really sure you want to ask Thor whether there is a secret door in this room if he is going to make you walk to the top of the nearest mountain? Key here is you only get to know the task if you ask a question, you have no idea of the task ahead of time. The oracle can tell you stories of the tasks assigned to previous supplicants. So people will tend to self select out of asking. The god stops giving you spells if you don't do your assigned tasks...

2) If the god gives a clear answer, you get disadvantage (or curse if old school) on anything that goes against the answer. So you ask what will kill the big bad, guess what? He will die by the hand of a child. You now have disadvantage on every attack on him that isn't from a child. Again, is the PC REALLY sure they want to be hamstrung like that by asking a specific question they could figure out some other way?

I am not recommending being a jerk to PCs. But rather have them reserve Commune/Oracles for when they are stuck rather than frivolous purposes. Also if you have an NPC oracle they can explain the right way to ask questions to a god to avoid being... well you know. The question "Will the big bag be killed by something we have right now?" will give a less restrictive answer than "Tell me the thing that will kill the big bad"

On a side note: In olden days the FIRST thing a party would do was play twenty questions with the DM about the adventure from the safety of town putting the DM in a bind to make sure the answers all line up. Yep. PCs could MAKE the DM railroad them.

icefractal
2021-04-26, 02:25 PM
For me, the problem with any ability that predicts the future is that when I'm GMing I don't actually know the future. And I think most GMs wouldn't, unless they run a strict railroad.

Sure, I might know some events that are going to happen in the future, at least absent the actions of the PCs (in two months, the Bone Baron's army will lay siege to Stormreach ... unless someone interferes), and for some details I can just arrange them to be true ("the first person to die in the siege will be an archer named Marta Evander" *makes note to self*), but overall I don't know what the PCs are going to do nor how successful it will be.

This came up not long ago, when one of the PCs cast Augury about their plan to attack a heavily armed ship and grab the weapons it was transporting. I honestly had no idea how that one would go - best case they succeed with no casualties (which ended up happening), but with different rolls they may have had casualties, been forced to retreat, or even ended up partially captured. So is that Weal or Woe? I'm glad PF added a "Weal and Woe" result, but IDK how informative that ended up being. Confirmed it wasn't a trap that could only have Woe results, I guess.

I'm thinking about just getting rid of any kind of major precognition abilities. Nobody knows the future - not the gods, not the sages, not the BBEG, and not the PCs either. If there are cryptic prophecies they're cryptic even to the gods, and come from somewhere other than the gods themselves (maybe the Far Realm, since it interacts oddly with time - that would also explain why they're so cryptic).

You can still get advance warning with present knowledge in some cases. "Is anyone planning to assassinate me today?" doesn't require knowing the future.

King of Nowhere
2021-04-26, 03:42 PM
One thing you could try is by adding a downside to Commune.

1) The god will assign you a task. Are you really sure you want to ask Thor whether there is a secret door in this room if he is going to make you walk to the top of the nearest mountain? Key here is you only get to know the task if you ask a question, you have no idea of the task ahead of time. The oracle can tell you stories of the tasks assigned to previous supplicants. So people will tend to self select out of asking. The god stops giving you spells if you don't do your assigned tasks...

2) If the god gives a clear answer, you get disadvantage (or curse if old school) on anything that goes against the answer. So you ask what will kill the big bad, guess what? He will die by the hand of a child. You now have disadvantage on every attack on him that isn't from a child. Again, is the PC REALLY sure they want to be hamstrung like that by asking a specific question they could figure out some other way?

I am not recommending being a jerk to PCs. But rather have them reserve Commune/Oracles for when they are stuck rather than frivolous purposes.

dunno. seems like this goes directly against grod's law.


For me, the problem with any ability that predicts the future is that when I'm GMing I don't actually know the future. And I think most GMs wouldn't, unless they run a strict railroad.


This came up not long ago, when one of the PCs cast Augury about their plan to attack a heavily armed ship and grab the weapons it was transporting. I honestly had no idea how that one would go - best case they succeed with no casualties (which ended up happening), but with different rolls they may have had casualties, been forced to retreat, or even ended up partially captured. So is that Weal or Woe? I'm glad PF added a "Weal and Woe" result, but IDK how informative that ended up being. Confirmed it wasn't a trap that could only have Woe results, I guess.

that was the right answer. the best answer, probably, would be to ask the players themselves "i personally have no idea, because while the encounter is feasible at your level, it will depend heavily on how well you roll and your tactics. So, what do you expect me to answer?"


I'm thinking about just getting rid of any kind of major precognition abilities. Nobody knows the future - not the gods, not the sages, not the BBEG, and not the PCs either.

i'm in that camp. and the point of future knowledge is specifically to affect the outcome. all the "you can't fight fate" archetypes come from a darker times when men didn't have our modern resources and knowing really was no good (mostly because what they thought they knew was wrong). So the moral of the story was "don't worry and leave the big stuff to your betters; you can't do anything anyway". and that's not the kind of story i want to tell.

you can still get a lot of present knowledge, though.
a few rules of thumb i use regarding the information that can be garnered by commune
- the gods can see everywhere, but they cannot see everything simultanously. they can focus their attention in a few spots. so they are likely to have kept track of important people and events, especially related to their portfolios, but they are unlikely to know the wereabouts of unimportant people. they won't know the answer to mysteries involving something specific that happened somewhere they had no reason to pay attention.
- a god can block an other god from seeing stuff about his followers. the god X knows where is high priest is and what he's doing, but he's unlikely to tell. every other god does not know where the high priest of X is, because X is shielding from interference. similarly, the gods cannot know the secret entrance to their rival's temple or that kind of stuff.

Batcathat
2021-04-26, 04:06 PM
dunno. Seems like this goes directly against grod's law.

Possibly, but in a way that could lead to some rather entertaining results if done well. I'm no fan of prophecies in fiction (particularly Chosen Ones. God, how I loathe Chosen Ones) and especially in interactive fiction like a game but I do kinda like the idea of getting a hint about the future but in return sort of "locking in" that particular future by making others less probable and it could be kinda fun having the party try to figure out how to fulfill the prophecy (especially if they manage to set up some sort of "no man of woman born" type twist).

Darth Credence
2021-04-26, 04:51 PM
I give vague hints about where the game is going, and make sure that the caveat of "always in motion is the future" so that they know that it is just a possible future.

For something like augury, I lean pretty heavily into the fact that it has to be something in the next half an hour, and it has to be about a specific course of action. "How are we going to fare in the attack?" would not be specific enough, so there would be no result. "Is our plan to attack at dawn tomorrow a good idea?" would be too far out, so no result. "Is going down the corridor on the left a good idea?" will get a result, and it will be based on whether there are any traps, monsters, or the like that way.

Moving up to divination, it is up to 7 days out, and gets more of an answer, so I have to put more thought in. Still, seven days is generally not that long - certainly longer than it takes to get from the main city my players are based out of to anywhere that they will be having a major adventure. So if they are going to do that one, they have to cast it themselves. If they ever do, I'm going to attempt to be as cryptic as possible, so that they don't get much information, and lean into the idea that by doing the divination, they learn about the future, so they automatically change it. I think I'd probably lean into the worst case scenario, since if it happens, I was right, and if they avoid it, it's because they knew it was coming.

Commune I'd run the same as divination, although no real time limit on it. This would be purely winging it, based on what the characters were asking about.

MoiMagnus
2021-04-27, 09:34 AM
Some ideas I had:

(1) "Weak" gods. It's somewhat of a cop-out, but the gods don't need to be omniscient. They don't need to have perfect memory (you don't remember in details what happened 20 years ago, why should they be able to?). They might have a "divine administration" of servant that store and organise information, and recover them when needed, but that might take some times.
=> With this approach, communing with god is no different from asking advice to the Archmage or any other powerful NPC. They have more chance to be correct than the average mortal, but can still be quite wrong.

(2) Fundamentally inhuman gods. There is a lot of advices here and there on how to handle interactions between dragons and PCs. Like the fact that time is fundamentally different, and that a dragon might say "I need some time to answer" and disappear, to come back 100 years latter to give his answer to the hear, not understanding the urgency of the situations in which humans are usually dealing with. Those same advices can be applied to gods too. Their mindset can be so different that communication with them is extremely difficult. Their values and goal being on a timescale so different from humans that they might feel disconnected from reality and uncaring to the humans that contact them.
=> Why don't they answer clearly the question? They tried before, and are not convinced by the results, so now they're trying to be cryptic, or maybe they gave up on explaining the reason for their orders, and just give orders like "Do that. Why? You would not understand." (They might still be wrong if they don't actually have the power of prescience). Etc

(3) Why so many obstacle against to go to see the seer? The answer is simple: the more peoples use the seer, the less effective they are, as as soon as you know your fate or someone else's fate, you can change it (willingly or not). It's like playing rock/paper/scissor, if one person can see what the other will play, they can change their choice to win. If both persons can see what the other was planing to play, no information is gained by anybody.

EDIT:
(4) Additional ideas, for Oracle and lower-level divination. If you have a Divination Tarot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot_card_reading), you can literally answer the divination by giving some of the cards and let the player be puzzled by them while still giving some kind of information (with cards like "Justice" or "Wheel of Fortune" or "Death"). Just avoid doing so for high level divination spells, as it might feel a little too easy to misinterpret.

Slipjig
2021-04-27, 09:36 AM
The old 2E Complete Priest's Handbook had a long section on this. Since you don't actually know the future and can't control the actions of PCs, it's really tough to create the kind of causality pretzels that oracles traditionally end up in.

For dealing with the current state of the world or things that have already happened, you can play it relatively straight, and you have options for keeping it from being game-breaking: 1) Limit them to yes/no questions (and think hard before answering about whether a there is a way to misinterpret the question); 2) be cryptic; 3) be ambiguous; 4) give conditional answers.

And maybe rule that deities are only omniscient about things that relate to their portfolio: maybe they can only see everything that happens within 500' of one of their worshippers or their sacred animal. Maybe sufficiently powerful magic (or a trickster god) can fool even divine sight. Of course the gods definitely don't want mortals to know these limitations, and the "cryptic answer" might just be the god covering for the fact that they don't actually know.

When it comes to the future, I'd have an OOC discussion with their players and tell them up front that prophecy will almost always result in IF/THEN statements, and sometimes not even that. Something along the lines of, "I see many possible futures, here are a few of them..." Don't let the PCs ask open-ended questions about the future, that is both game-breaking and ties your hands, since you as the DM mow have to find a way to make good on it.

Leonard Robel
2021-06-08, 04:27 AM
This is a really interesting question. I've never gotten to the point where I had to deal with players talking to gods. I would be inclined to show them visions. This is a common thing in religious texts. This leaves a little room for misinterpretation, which I think is good, because I think the gods want us to have free will, and if you have the definitely right answer, there's no room for free will unless you're just determined to do exactly the wrong thing.

A real world example is a bible story where this guy is hungry and is presented with a vision of all the animals that aren't kosher to eat laid out on a pristine white blanket, and told, that which God has purified is clean. He can't understand what God is trying to tell him. Then some people come to town wanting to convert to his religion - normally forbidden. At that point he realizes the vision meant that if these people join the religion, they will become clean, and he allows it. Modern day Christians interpret it differently - they think it means you can eat all those animals because God has cleaned them all. Who is right?

The other thing you can do is give guidance that's really hard to accept. This will test the player's faith. And maybe if he follows it to the T, it works out, but there is a price to it, so it's not just handed to him on a silver platter.

Satinavian
2021-06-08, 05:40 AM
I know a certain other game that does the following thing :

- the future is uncertain. Any prophecy only describes a possible future
- the prophecy is explicitely true for a timeline where the prphecy does not exist, but knowing and acting on the preophecy will make it less correct
- as a result from above, the more vague the prophecy is the truer it is likely to get. The same with the fewer people know it and care about it.
- all of that is also true for the gods. The only god that really knows the future has separated himself from the rest of the universe, never acts on his knowledge and never tells anyone.

So, no predestination paradoxa as stories, but otherwise peophecies don't get in the way, regardless what players do.

Vahnavoi
2021-06-08, 07:14 AM
Commune is a minigame of Twenty Questions, so if you want to get anything out of it, you need to understand Twenty Questions and how to make it compelling.

Shortly: the challenge is for the players to use their own logical thinking to deduce what questions to ask and what the situation is. Don't screw that up by doing all the thinking for them. Don't screw it up by making the situation too simple and clean.

More specifically:

1) Only answer the question that was actually asked, not the one you think they should have asked.
2) Get comfortable with binary logic. Always answer with "yes" or "no" when possible.
3) Where "yes" and "no" do not suffice, strive to use only one word.
4) In a probabilistic game where the answer to a question might vary randomly based on a die roll or such, the most common one-word reply is "maybe". Get comfortable saying "maybe" to such uncertain questions.
5) If one word does not suffice, "be more specific", "you ask the wrong question" etc. replies which give tips on how to formulate a better question to your players are better gaming than answers that reveal as much as possible.
6) Answering a question with another question is also valid.
7) "What question we should ask?" is the expected return of 5) and most frequent prompt for 6).
8) Only give facts of the present game situation. Do not answer questions you as a real human cannot know or predict.
9) Remember that gods are characters in a game. They aren't just truth-dispensing machines, they have personalities and agendas. If a question has multiple correct answers, always pick the one that'd suit the god being asked.

Remember that the purpose of the minigame is to give information to your players so they can make deductions. The point isn't to create a thread of destiny with which to hang them! If the continued truth value of your answers depends on you railroading or otherwise altering the normal rules of the game, you have given the wrong answers.

A few examples of how to apply these principles:

Scenario A: The players ask "is the enemy a wizard or a fighter?".

Best answer: "Yes" if the enemy is either wizard or fighter, "No" if the enemy is neither. This follows principles 1) and 2). If the players are dissatisfied by the answer, it's on them for not asking the question they thought they were asking.

Second best answer: "Wizard", "Fighter", "Both", "Neither". These are one word answers that satisfy the question according to principles 1), 2) and 3).

Bad answers: "A druid", "demon", "Fighter X / Wizard Y" etc.. These all violate principle 1) by giving information that wasn't asked about. For example, by answering "druid" you are substituting the question asked with "what character class the enemy is?". This is likely what the players want to know, but you are watering down the challenge by doing their work for them.

Scenario B: The players ask "will we succeed?" in any scenario where success varies based on a die roll.

Best answer: "Maybe." Directly follows from principles 1), 3), 4) and 8).

Second best answer: "One time out of five", etc. exact chance if you can pin down exactly what die roll would be decisive. You are basically telling players what the normal rules of the game would tell them if they had access to them.

Third best answer: "Unlikely", "Shouldn't risk it" "Worth a try" etc. These add principle 9) to the mix by giving a probabilistic answer a shade of personal evaluation by the god being asked, while not violating principle 1) too badly.

Bad answer: "Yes", "No", etc. These violate principles 4) and 8) by giving a simple determintic answer when a probabilistic is required. Now you either have to bypass normal rules to make the answer true or risk it being proven false by actual gameplay.

icefractal
2021-06-08, 02:22 PM
While that works for the goal of "make it a minigame", it makes the gods feel like tricky literal genies or quiz show hosts more than, well, gods.

It'd be suitable for the case where a god is bound by agreement to answer the questions, but doesn't really want to.

But if a devoted priest of Pelor asks about how to find and perma-slay a lich that Pelor would really like to stay dead, and they get a simon-says wording puzzle back? That makes it seem like Pelor is a capricious jerk who'd rather troll the mortals than get things done.

Same issue with Planar Ally/Binding/Gate, for that matter. If you call an angel and point them at a rift that's allowing demons to enter the material plane en-mass, a response of "If you pay me, I'll help you fight a few of them, and that's it." doesn't fit at all. Just making them aware of the situation really should lead to squadron of Solars showing up to shut that **** down.

Maybe the real takeaway is: Don't make a plot where beings vastly more powerful than the PCs have the same goal as the PCs and no good reason not to help. If the PCs are up against a threat to the entire world, they'd better actually be the most suitable ones to deal with it. Or just don't give things multiversal stakes!

Vahnavoi
2021-06-08, 04:32 PM
While that works for the goal of "make it a minigame", it makes the gods feel like tricky literal genies or quiz show hosts more than, well, gods.

Gods and oracles acting like "literal genies" is one of the most popular archetypes for this type of situation, so if that doesn't feel "godly" enough to you, your feelings have little to do with how they've been portrayed in myth and fiction.
.

But if a devoted priest of Pelor asks about how to find and perma-slay a lich that Pelor would really like to stay dead, and they get a simon-says wording puzzle back? That makes it seem like Pelor is a capricious jerk who'd rather troll the mortals than get things done.

First, "Simon says" is a completely different type of game than Twenty Questions. Don't mix up what kind of minigame we're talking about.

Second, these kind of example scenarios are easily solvable adhering to rules of Twenty Questions. You are blaming the god, functionally blaming your GM, for requiring token effort of actually thinking your qiestions through.

Go actually play basic Twenty Questions for a while and you'll realize it's completely wrong to characterize someone following the rules for "not really wanting to answer the questions" or inefficiency.

icefractal
2021-06-08, 05:46 PM
Go actually play basic Twenty Questions for a while and you'll realize it's completely wrong to characterize someone following the rules for "not really wanting to answer the questions" or inefficiency.But Commune says nothing about Twenty Questions. The only reason to "follow the rules of Twenty Questions" is because the deity in question decided to. In fact it even mentions:
In cases where a one-word answer would be misleading or contrary to the deity’s interests, a short phrase (five words or less) may be given as an answer instead.

And yes, choosing to interpret questions in an unhelpful way ("Is the hospital to the north or south?!", "Yes") is inefficient, at the very least. If I started answering questions that way at work, and refused to answer helpfully, I'd be fired. If you try to pull that in a courtroom, you may end up in jail on contempt charges.

Now some gods, that might be fitting for. Vecna or Asmodeus, for example, I could see taking the stance "Someone who doesn't know how to properly phrase things doesn't deserve my help." But like, Kord? Seriously?

Here's the thing:

Second, these kind of example scenarios are easily solvable adhering to rules of Twenty Questions. You are blaming the god, functionally blaming your GM, for requiring token effort of actually thinking your qiestions through.Yes, I do in fact play twenty questions for fun, as a game. Not as a useful method of communicating information. The GM wants to make Commune a little test of wits. The god probably shouldn't - not for most of the D&D gods as they're described anyway. Not all of them even particularly value wits, and even for those who do, most don't value it to the extent of screwing over their loyal followers for failing a quiz.

See the very poorly received quiz that Iomedae puts the characters through in Wrath of the Righteous, for example. Challenge at the expense of fictional coherency isn't worth it.

Vahnavoi
2021-06-09, 03:10 AM
But Commune says nothing about Twenty Questions.

Anyone who knows the rules of Twenty Questions and reads the spell description of Commune can immediately tell the spell is minigame of Twenty Questions.


The only reason to "follow the rules of Twenty Questions" is because the deity in question decided to. In fact it even mentions:

I know what it mentions, I covered that part in the principles above. You, like many before you, are overemphasizing that part at the expense of actual gameplay.

Following principles 5), 6), 7) and 9) above: if players are asking a grosly unhelpful question from an entity with a heplful agenda, the entity can return "Incorrect question", the players can ask "what's the correct question?". A hint system is built into "system" should the players need it.


And yes, choosing to interpret questions in an unhelpful way ("Is the hospital to the north or south?!", "Yes") is inefficient, at the very least. If I started answering questions that way at work, and refused to answer helpfully, I'd be fired. If you try to pull that in a courtroom, you may end up in jail on contempt charges.

I covered this kind of sample scenario already. The inefficiency is in the questioner's mind, not the answer. Meta-analysis of Twenty Questions and its variants tells us that yes/no questions are fairly effective and twenty is enough to identify almost any arbitrary object. Formulating unambiguous questions where a yes/no answer will yield useful information isn't hard. We use binary communication schemas like this at my work all the time, because it's actually fairly efficient communication method.


Here's the thing:
Yes, I do in fact play twenty questions for fun, as a game. Not as a useful method of communicating information. The GM wants to make Commune a little test of wits. The god probably shouldn't - not for most of the D&D gods as they're described anyway. Not all of them even particularly value wits, and even for those who do, most don't value it to the extent of screwing over their loyal followers for failing a quiz.

Wrong. The game designers made Commune into a test of wits by transparently basing it on Twenty Questions. It's a minigame the players can prompt at their will if they want to test their wits for reward of extra information. If the players think it isn't useful, they shouldn't prompt it. If you as a GM think some god wouldn't value Commune, they shouldn't grant Commune in the first place.

As for "screwing over their loyal followers", myth and fiction is full of characters screwing over themselves because they fail to heed an unambiguous divine message. Whatever power and knowledge the questioned divine entity has, it's pretty much always been the case that picking the right question and deciphering the answer correctly is responsibility on the less powerful and less knowledgeable mortal party. Eliminating risk of failure is not the point of Commune and expecting no chance of failure is misunderstanding of both how the minigame works and what the mythological trope being invoked is.


See the very poorly received quiz that Iomedae puts the characters through in Wrath of the Righteous, for example. Challenge at the expense of fictional coherency isn't worth it.

Was that a minigame of Commune as Twenty Questions? Did it follow the principles I outlines above? If the answer to either is no, it's worthless as an example.

King of Nowhere
2021-06-09, 05:23 AM
Gods and oracles acting like "literal genies" is one of the most popular archetypes for this type of situation, so if that doesn't feel "godly" enough to you, your feelings have little to do with how they've been portrayed in myth and fiction.



As for "screwing over their loyal followers", myth and fiction is full of characters screwing over themselves because they fail to heed an unambiguous divine message. Whatever power and knowledge the questioned divine entity has, it's pretty much always been the case that picking the right question and deciphering the answer correctly is responsibility on the less powerful and less knowledgeable mortal party.

archetypes don't always age well. in fact, most of them don't. most of those classic "story" archetypes are now seen as grossly stupid or morally repugnant.
I mean, take the classic "jack and the beanstalk": First this guy barters a cow for a magic bean. depending on the value of magic items in the story setting, we now see that as a momumentally stupid decision, whether for the protagonist or the magic seller. then the magic bean is thrown in the trash, again, monumentally stupid. then this giant beanstalk grows, and the protagonists goes explore. there he trespasses into someone else's property, commit theft, and kills the other guy, and he's not called down in any way. And this story was read to children.
it's been satyrized many times, even by rich burlew.
that's a more egregious example than most, but the point stands. Many classical archetypes are dumb. they are bad. an experienced audience will recognize them as funny cliches at best, blatant excuses to justify nonsensical plots at worst.

also, in those archetypes there was the general aesop "the powerful do what they want and you can't ever call them on it". because in the past they were big on authority. the gods do as they please, and they are right, because they are gods and you must not question them. or else. now we don't recognize authority and might as a source of moral high ground, and out values reflect it. and our stories reflect it. Nowadays if the gods are being stupid or jerks, we call them down for it. and the story may revolve on overthrowing them. or at least surviving despite them. they may still be able to do as they please because they are powerful, but they are portraied as villains and idiots. see for example the discworld portraial. Or perhaps they are limited and powerless, like in the cosmere.

fantasy roleplaying has its roots in ancient fantasy, but the audience has mostly moved away from that. i prefer modern fantasy, my campaign world reflects it, and it has no place for intentionally obtuse and needlessly obstructive gods. jackass literal genies may have a part, but only as villains. and if things go wrong because an oracle knew the answer but couldn't be bothered to give it straight, then he's the only one to blame

Vahnavoi
2021-06-09, 06:34 AM
archetypes don't always age well. in fact, most of them don't.

On the contrary, they became recognizable archetypes because they aged well.


most of those classic "story" archetypes are now seen as grossly stupid or morally repugnant.

Do you even understand how broad of a claim you're making? What are you using as evidence for your stance?


I mean, take the classic "jack and the beanstalk":

Your argument doesn't identify any of the archetypes in the story. It is solely based on moralistic take on Jack's superficial actions - actions which players have no trouble repeating in games and which are mainstays of roleplaying games.


also, in those archetypes there was the general aesop "the powerful do what they want and you can't ever call them on it".

Archetypes don't have aesops; stories do. You can tell many different stories, with many different aesops, using the same archetype. If you think that is the only aesop you can get out of a game using oracular archetypes in the way I described, you are wrong.


because in the past they were big on authority. the gods do as they please, and they are right, because they are gods and you must not question them. or else. now we don't recognize authority and might as a source of moral high ground, and out values reflect it. and our stories reflect it. Nowadays if the gods are being stupid or jerks, we call them down for it. and the story may revolve on overthrowing them. or at least surviving despite them. they may still be able to do as they please because they are powerful, but they are portraied as villains and idiots. see for example the discworld portraial. Or perhaps they are limited and powerless, like in the cosmere.

fantasy roleplaying has its roots in ancient fantasy, but the audience has mostly moved away from that. i prefer modern fantasy, my campaign world reflects it, and it has no place for intentionally obtuse and needlessly obstructive gods. jackass literal genies may have a part, but only as villains. and if things go wrong because an oracle knew the answer but couldn't be bothered to give it straight, then he's the only one to blame

This continues to be a bad take. The questioned entity following the rules and principles of Commune as Twenty Questions is giving straight answers. It's the responsibility of the questioner to choose the right questions. Blaming the entity is functionally blaming your GM for requiring token effort on your part.

King of Nowhere
2021-06-09, 08:54 AM
Do you even understand how broad of a claim you're making? What are you using as evidence for your stance?


errr...
the fact that storytelling evolved with time? that we're not even telling the same stories? the process of deconstruction and reconstruction is well known. so are different sensibilities in the audience. How many people actually go and read/watch the "old classics"? not many. those stories became great classics by being the best of their time, but the people's tastes changed.

seriously, are you arguing, on the other side, that storytelling never changes, that the stories that we tell never change, that we keep using the same archetypes and we should keep using them forever? are you denying the continuous process of deconstruction and reconstruction?
because if you are attempting that, then the burden of proof is on you.


The questioned entity following the rules and principles of Commune as Twenty Questions is giving straight answers. It's the responsibility of the questioner to choose the right questions. Blaming the entity is functionally blaming your GM for requiring token effort on your part.
you are failing to differentiate story and game. And in a good rpg, those two elements must go together.
so you think a challenge to the player is mandatory, so you give cryptic answers. works for the gaming part.
does not work for the story part. why would pelor even want to play 20 questions with you? If pelor wants you to stop the undead horde, he will not wait on you to make the right questions. He will tell you all he knows, without prompting. Speaking of which

We use binary communication schemas like this at my work all the time
I have no idea what you do for a job, but I can't think of any case in which that would be a good idea.
[emergency call] "there's been an accident, there are wounded people, they need medical help"
"ok, where shall we send the ambulance?"
"you can ask me 20 questions to which i will answer yes, no, maybe. Use that to figure it out"
:smallconfused::smallconfused::smallconfused:
[information desk]"I must renew my driving licence, which office do I need?"+
"not so easy! You have 20 questions to which i will answer yes, no, maybe. Use that to figure it out"
:smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown:
[at the doctor]"hello doctor, i am feeling an ache in-"
"no, no, no, don't tell me. Instead I will make you 20 questions, you only answer yes, no, maybe as much as possible; "wrong question", at most, but don't elaborate. If I can't diagnose you afterwards, then I am a bad doctor"
:smallsigh::smallsigh::smallsigh:
[teacher at school]"kids, today we'll study the periodic table. You can ask me 20 questions to which i will answer yes, no, maybe. afterwardss we'll have the examination, I expect you'll do great!"
:smallannoyed::smallannoyed::smallannoyed:
[advertising]" buy productbrandTM!
productbrandTM is not a horse!
productbrandTM is not a household appliance!
productbrandTM may be yellow-colored!
whether productbrandTM is customizable is a wrong question! [followed by 16 more answers]"
:smallmad::smallmad::smallmad:

nope, I really can't figure out any realistic instance where this would be a good way to deliver information. So, i don't care that you, as dm, want to play 20 questions with me. I don't care that it makes sense for there to be a challenge of some sort. I don't care that riddles are traditional, archetypical.
If you make pelor answer in this way, then either pelor is unable to answer, pelor is not really trying to help, or you have a huge plot hole.
And no, I'm not trying to sweet talk the dm into giving more answers. I'd much rather have no answers at all. I'd much rather we ban commune and avoid problems

there was actually one time where I used something akin to that guessing game, and it was justified: the party was interrogating a man who was hit in the spine and was unable to move or talk - but could only communicate by blinking. and they were too low level to heal him.

Vahnavoi
2021-06-09, 10:01 AM
errr...
the fact that storytelling evolved with time?

This is a truism. It isn't remotely evidence that storytelling is evolving in the direction you claim.


that we're not even telling the same stories?

From re-enactments of old plays to Hollywood remakes, "we" observably and demonstrably are telling the same stories. The "rage against the Heavens" story you claim as example of "modern storytelling" existed in dialogues of Greek philosophers and old Norse sagas. It itself is a story structure that's hundreds, possibly thousands of years old and has been repeated thousands of times.


the process of deconstruction and reconstruction is well known. so are different sensibilities in the audience. How many people actually go and read/watch the "old classics"? not many. those stories became great classics by being the best of their time, but the people's tastes changed.

Your rhetoric is self contradicting. The cycle of decostruction and reconstruction is well known... to the people who actually paid attention in their literature and philosophy classes, for which many of those classics are mandatory reading. It is not well known to people who didn't pay attention and didn't read the classics, which mostly just means they don't recognize that many tropes and archetypes they enjoy were already present in them.


seriously, are you arguing, on the other side, that storytelling never changes, that the stories that we tell never change, that we keep using the same archetypes and we should keep using them forever? are you denying the continuous process of deconstruction and reconstruction?
because if you are attempting that, then the burden of proof is on you.

I was not, and in fact are not, making that argument. I don't have to, this entire line of discussion barely touches on the principles I outlined and whether they are functional for adjucating Commune.


you are failing to differentiate story and game. And in a good rpg, those two elements must go together.

Self-contradictory rhetoric once again. If in a good RPG, story and game must go together, why would I differentiate them? The argument you'd want to make, and are actually making elsewhere in your post, is primacy of story over gameplay.


so you think a challenge to the player is mandatory, so you give cryptic answers. works for the gaming part.
does not work for the story part. why would pelor even want to play 20 questions with you? If pelor wants you to stop the undead horde, he will not wait on you to make the right questions. He will tell you all he knows, without prompting. Speaking of which

Once again your argument is based on mischaracterization of the entire process. The answers given according to above guidelines are only cryptic when the questioner is formulating their question poorly in a way they themselves don't understand. For a properly formulated question the answers are always straightforward. The challenge is in the player figuring out the questions that will give the players the information they want. Again: Commune is a prompt for the players to play the minigame if they want it. Approaching this from the angle of the entity just itching to tell them something they want is backwards. It's a corner case where you don't have to consider Commune on the first place, because Commune itself is not mandatory, and that has never been the argument. The story Commune creates, and is meant to create, is not one where a supreme force drops all the knowledge in the world on you and strongarms you to do its bidding - you have other tools for that. So stop mixing that up with how to adjucate Commune.


I have no idea what you do for a job, but I can't think of any case in which that would be a good idea.

Construction. But joke's on you, since the practice is widely is medical services and other services too. For example, the local prompt for figuring out if you need a Covid-19 test is 90% automated yes-no questions. Your strawman examples are built on the failure to observe that in most services, the service provider is the questioner, while the customer is the questioned entity. For example, if you call an emergency number, it isn't at all uncommon for the operator to mostly ask you yes-no-questions, because they know what kind of questions are helpful for figuring out your problem. (One of the chief sources of inefficiency for such services is people babbling and surrendering too much information and irrelevant information at once, so one of the first things they'll usually tell you is calm down and answer their questions.)

SpoonR
2021-06-09, 11:53 AM
Heres a couple ways that might work.

Gunnerkrigg Court: What you say isnt what they hear, because magic, symbolism, etc. (one person uses magic to send a message, looks like something complicated. recipient receives a few words, “i love you” or something like that, or a less meaningful phrase, which turns out to have a coded message inside)
This could explain yes/no answers: the spell has limited bandwidth, lots of cross-planar static to blur complicated answers, the god is paying attention to all worshippers on all worlds so cant guve fancy answers, or actually senior angels are the ones answering and they dont have the knowledge to reliably answer/predict complicated questions.

Weather Report: consider a weather report “90% chance of rain”. if the prediction is correct, you could get rain all over the city except in your neighborhood. Or, there is a small chance they missed something, so no rain anywhere. The god response is like that, except they dont say rhe percent part, just it will rain

Theres having the players tell you what they expect to happen and deciding how much will probably come true

you could always answer “off-camera“, just have a vague idea of the result, then give hints or dice bonuses when something relevant comes up. So the commune makes one outcome more likely without pinpoint fixing anything.

icefractal
2021-06-09, 06:33 PM
I'll note, and I hope this is obvious, but Twenty Questions, played as a game, is about deliberately making the answer challenging to figure out. Because it's generally something which can be communicated in a single sentence if you want to.

The fact that it's possible to convey a fair amount of information through yes/no questions doesn't mean it's a method anyone would choose for efficient communication unless they're actually limited to those (as in the 'asking a paralyzed person questions' example).

But the example given, that I feel is out of character for most gods, is this:
Scenario A: The players ask "is the enemy a wizard or a fighter?".

Best answer: "Yes" if the enemy is either wizard or fighter, "No" if the enemy is neither. This follows principles 1) and 2). If the players are dissatisfied by the answer, it's on them for not asking the question they thought they were asking.You know that's an unhelpful answer, and so would the gods - they aren't semi-sapient robots, they have higher mental stats than most mortals, when they have stats at all.

If the god was actually restricted to answering yes/no, that would make sense. But they aren't. And "asking questions in the correct format" is not a thing that the majority of the gods, as depicted in any D&D setting I've seen, especially care about.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-06-09, 08:00 PM
For my setting:

1. Even the "true gods" are not omniscient, even in their domains. They have sources of information that mortals do not, and can, generally, if need be, find out about almost anything in their domains, but that is costly to them.
2. Other ascendants, demigods, and fiends are even less-so. Their sources of information are smaller and costlier, and less reliable.
3. Even for things that they do know, none of the ascendants are willing to come clean and be all that helpful. Unless it suits their own personal agendas, of course. And even then you'll get a slanted view.
4. None of the ascendants (except one[1]) can reliably predict the future very far in advance, and all they're doing is making predictions based on large but incomplete and fallible data sets. They're vulnerable to cognitive biases and deception just like anyone else.
5. Even when they are willing and trying to help, fundamental universal law demands that the clarity and precision of their answers must be in inverse proportion to their knowledge. So asking a true god something will get you a more oracular pronouncement than asking a minor ascendant. But the latter is much less likely to know anything useful about the topic in the first place.

[1] The Archon of Time isn't really a god, and accepts no worshippers. Her role is to clean up the mess left by temporal-meddling "concept bombs". She does influence certain "seers", but their visions are generally limited only to their immediate vicinity and are seriously vague and hard (if not impossible) to control.

Time Troll
2021-06-09, 08:41 PM
Well, in general:


*They don't know everything. As beings they only know somethings....they are not all seeing and all knowing. So, there is a very good chance they might not know anything helpful.

*They simply have a rule not to tell too much. If they give an answer, it is at best vague.

*They want to keep the information hidden.

And a prediction of the future is just a guess.

Vahnavoi
2021-06-10, 03:36 AM
I'll be sounding like a broken clock by now


I'll note, and I hope this is obvious, but Twenty Questions, played as a game, is about deliberately making the answer challenging to figure out. Because it's generally something which can be communicated in a single sentence if you want to.

This is an irrelevant point because roleplaying games are themselves games for which the presence of appropriate level of challenge (as compared to player skill) is desired to keep the game interesting. The minigame of Commune exist in the context of that larger challenge. Again: it is something the players can prompt if they want to play the minigame for reward of extra information. It does not exist to bypass the larger challenge. It does not exist to eliminate chance of failure.


The fact that it's possible to convey a fair amount of information through yes/no questions doesn't mean it's a method anyone would choose for efficient communication unless they're actually limited to those (as in the 'asking a paralyzed person questions' example).

Again: Commune is something the players can prompt if they want to play the minigame for reward of extra information. From in-character viewpoint, the process is that of an imperfect mortals reaching out to a supernatural entity through their limited means and from their limited perspective, using an oracle (a spell, a person, an artifact etc.). Approaching the process from the viewpoint of a being of unlimited power and choice itching to tell you everything is completely backward. Commune does not exist to tell that story, you have other tools for that.


But the example given, that I feel is out of character for most gods, is this:You know that's an unhelpful answer, and so would the gods - they aren't semi-sapient robots, they have higher mental stats than most mortals, when they have stats at all.

Again: it's only unhelpful answer if the players do not understand the logic operator they themselves are choosing to use. For anyone who does understand, answers of "yes" and "no" do provide useful information that can be used to deduce other useful facts, and a reasonable person could ask this type of question deliberately. So I do not "know" it's an unhelpful answer. I know what information the answer provides, I don't necessarily know if the players can make use of it because I cannot predict their logical ability with perfect accuracy.

The mental stats of the gods are completely irrelevant. They are just numbers on a paper, they do not actually empower a human GM to guess what their players want to know any better than they otherwise could. "The gods" do not actually know anything the GM doesn't.

The other reason why your criticism rings hollow is that my principle 9) specifically addresses it, and I called out giving a straight-forward one-word reply the second best option.


If the god was actually restricted to answering yes/no, that would make sense. But they aren't. And "asking questions in the correct format" is not a thing that the majority of the gods, as depicted in any D&D setting I've seen, especially care about.

Again: Commune is something the players can prompt if they want to play the minigame for reward of extra information. The format and its limitations come from the imperfect mortal participant choosing to use it. Overemphasizing the rule that it's sometimes possible to get more than "yes" or "no", by interpreting it as "a deity would always give longer answers because they can!" and then blaming the deity, functionally your GM, for attempting to stick to the normal intented procedure of the minigame, is wrong.

Again: if you don't think an entity would value Commune, don't have them grant Commune. Commune itself is not mandatory.

Again: Commune does not and is not meant to tell the story where a being of unlimited power drops all knowledge in the world on your head and strongarms you to do its bidding. You have other tools for that. Stop mixing that corner case up with how to adjucate Commune.

Glorthindel
2021-06-10, 06:13 AM
Again: Commune does not and is not meant to tell the story where a being of unlimited power drops all knowledge in the world on your head and strongarms you to do its bidding. You have other tools for that. Stop mixing that corner case up with how to adjucate Commune.

I think that's an important distinction - if you are on a mission directly from a god to directly perform some duty vital to its aims or oppose another dieties followers with conflicting portfolio/agenda, then of course the god would want to furnish the character with as much information it can (like Thor does with Durkon), assuming that the mission is not in itself a test of the receiving followers initiative/devotion/morality.

But Commune 9/10 times isn't really used for that, its for getting insight on some topic the god is likely completely ambivalent about, and vastly beneath their notice, and in that case, its entirely legitimate to say the god might not really understand the followers motivation for asking the question, so putting the onus on asking the right question is entirely legitimate. In the Wizard/Fighter question, the diety likely doesn't know why that matters to the follower, or particularly cares why it matters (as far as a God is concerned, whether a particular insignificant mortal is a fighter or a wizard is like asking them if they are blue or purple, or what they ate last thursday, it matters so little), so answering the question straight with an 'unhelpful' answer just reflects the dieties level of investment (ie: none) in the answer.

Scalenex
2021-06-10, 06:15 AM
Thank you for all the good replies.

I've been pondering ways to make communing with the gods being useful but not game or story breaking.

I came up some limitations.

My gods and goddesses are not omniscient. They cannot see into the future very well and can only make educated guesses.

My gods and goddesses can choose to not answer questions or even lie.


I have created a metaphysical rule that if one of my deities (or one of their most powerful and informed servants) speaks to mortals directly the other deities (or their spies) will overhear the message verbatim. Thus they can retaliate.

So if an Oracle of the god Hallisan spills the beans on the Achilles Heel of a champion of Maylar, Maylar can retaliate by spreading secretes about Hallisan's champions.

Assuming Mera is the only goddess who knows where the lost treasure of the Fakhari sank into the sea, then a follower of Mera (who is a Neutral Good goddess of the sea) asks an Oracle of Mera where he can find a literal ton of gold so he can donate it to a bunch of orphanages and hospitals, Mera could share where the lost treasure of Fakhari is, but then all the gods and goddesses hear of it and the Neutral and Evil gods can now send agents to try to claim the treasure.

But Mera, as goddess of water and medicine, could use an oracle mouthpiece to tell people mortals "Boiling water before you drink it means you are less likely to get sick."

Maylar the Chaotic Evil god of disease might get mad at this because he likes spreading disease or Greymoria can oppose this because she hates Mera. These two could spread the message that "boiling water makes water less safe to drink." but eventually a mortal will hear both divine proclamations and someone will apply the scientific method to determine that boiling water makes water safer to drink.

That is information Mera could share without suffering severe retaliation though I suppose Greymoria and Maylar could create some new disease spewing monster to plague mortal kind in retaliation but they were probably working on such a monster anyway, so Mera didn't really make anything worse.

Corvino
2021-06-11, 05:07 AM
I have run into this issue as a player recently. I am playing a Half-orc Paladin from a fairly backwater tribe. This mostly started as a joke. If you're a tribal Half-orc you communicate with the gods by dancing naked in the moonlight, in a sacred grove, and taking hallucinogenic mushrooms, right?

The DM ran with this, and put the character in direct contact with his Nature gods, no high level spells required. However the gods now expect fairly regular status reports, and as the de facto moral compass of a group at risk of sliding into Murderhobo territory this often involves me apologizing a lot. I borrowed heavily from OoTS Roy's defense of his use of/tolerance of Belkar. All while stoned, naked and painted with ochre (the character, not the player).

There's very little "getting useful intelligence from the gods" here. Why would gods care about most of the affairs of mortals? Unless it's a threat to the balance of the world or to their sacred groves, these Nature gods are fairly uninvolved. They are also willing to acknowledge that they either don't know answers or do not have the power to help in other matters.

Saintheart
2021-06-11, 05:28 AM
My shorthand way for dealing with it:

1. Y/N answers only. You are communicating with a being that operates on such levels it cannot directly communicate coherently with small-brained mortals other than in the most basic terms.

2. Consider doing CON damage for each question. Even if you are the god's faithful follower, the sheer power of direct communion with a something akin to a living singulariyy is not something any mortal can bear for long.

jjordan
2021-06-11, 07:39 AM
Gods are reality-warping powers. Their presence, their voice can change, even destroy, reality. Their thought processes are entirely alien and their agendas reflect an understanding of reality that may be beyond the physical ability of mortals to comprehend. Personally I'd re-write some aspects of commune (and a few other spells/abilities) to reflect this. But changing the mechanics is always troublesome.

Without changing the mechanics I simply assume that gods take care not to destroy their servants: communicating through intermediaries, limiting their contact, filtering their overwhelming knowledge into small chunks that mortals can process. In game play I represent this by limiting the ability of the gods to communicate directly with mortals. They give extremely simple answers and keep them short. Questions about the future can be answered but will represent probabilities and the desires of the deity. Conversations will be felt as much as they are heard. With NPCs I feel more free to monkey with mechanics and I tend to represent continued contact with divinity as a descent into various forms of madness; mortal minds and bodies aren't built to handle divinity and too much contact with it is destructive to them. NPCs can burn out, go insane, suffer long-term physical injuries/disabilities, be otherwise altered by their contact, and generally suffer long-term consequences. Consequences don't have to be immediately negative. Someone who was in contact with a healing god might have a residual contact that allows them to heal the sick. They might also slowly be transitioning to an ethereal state as their body is absorbed by the divine power, a progression that will end with the NPC being fully absorbed by the divine power, their intellect and personality being overwhelmed and truly dying.

SquidFighter
2021-06-11, 12:28 PM
So, to an extent, I agree with Vahnavoi that Commune can be used in such a way to abstract in-setting phenomena by a game mechanism. By that I mean that it seems reasonable to me that Gods are bound by cosmic laws or forces in the way they interact with mortals, or even the physical realm, all of which depends on the setting. It also seems reasonable to me that the exact interaction provided by Commune could be abstracted by a game of Twenty Questions (or any other minigame related to the idea of asking questions to get answers in a mystical way). You know, like the way weapon combat (or academic knowledge) is abstracted by dice ?

Furthermore, aren't deities beings that operate on a scale unfathomable for a mortal ? I mean, aren't they responsible for entire wordly concepts ? What question could a cleric ask that would be sufficiently important to take the time to sit down and have a friendly chat with ?

I feel most instances would be like phoning the President asking whether or not you should repaint the living room. Sure, Pelor wants that necromancer beaten, but it's also unlikely to threated Light as a concept seriously enough for Him to take much more time that "Yes/No/Figure it out, bud".

Composer99
2021-06-15, 02:58 PM
I'll be sounding like a broken clock by now.

You most certainly do not, because at least a broken clock, as the saying goes, is right twice a day.


So, to an extent, I agree with Vahnavoi that Commune can be used in such a way to abstract in-setting phenomena by a game mechanism. By that I mean that it seems reasonable to me that Gods are bound by cosmic laws or forces in the way they interact with mortals, or even the physical realm, all of which depends on the setting. It also seems reasonable to me that the exact interaction provided by Commune could be abstracted by a game of Twenty Questions (or any other minigame related to the idea of asking questions to get answers in a mystical way). You know, like the way weapon combat (or academic knowledge) is abstracted by dice ?

Furthermore, aren't deities beings that operate on a scale unfathomable for a mortal ? I mean, aren't they responsible for entire wordly concepts ? What question could a cleric ask that would be sufficiently important to take the time to sit down and have a friendly chat with ?

I feel most instances would be like phoning the President asking whether or not you should repaint the living room. Sure, Pelor wants that necromancer beaten, but it's also unlikely to threated Light as a concept seriously enough for Him to take much more time that "Yes/No/Figure it out, bud".

Deities operate on a scale unfathomable for a mortal, but it does not follow that they are incapable of ordinary, straightforward communication with mortals, unless the game rules or the setting lore specifies such incapability. By my reckoning, their unfathomable capabilities make them more, not less, capable of such straightforward communication and more, not less, willing to be straightforward (when it suits them. And at any rate much divination magic allows for the contacting of divine proxies, so if you feel answering 9th-level cleric Cleric McClericson on Random Prime Material World is beneath Pelor, Pelor has servants who can handle that stuff.

A spell like 5e commune restricts the kinds of questions players can ask for game design reasons, and it's up to us players/GMs to decide how to make sense of that restriction in an in-fiction sense. But you'll notice that it also specifies the entity contacted gives correct answers, subject to the spell's restrictions, and the entity even elaborates (albeit as little as possible) to avoid being misleading.

Vahnavoi
2021-06-15, 04:25 PM
I have no idea what you mean. I also have no idea how I managed to write "clock" when I obviously meant "record".