Constant Deity Switching

[Domigorgon]

I have a player who has been a druid follower of Ehlonna, only to switch to Procan once the campaign became an aquatic one. I was okay with that.

But now he's considering switching to Mielikki for no particular reason that I can understand. Whatever his reasoning, I don't think a divine spellcaster can change gods like socks.

If he does decide to switch to Mielikki (or whatever), what should I do? Strip him of his spellcasting until he atones somehow (to Procan or to the new deity, promising to be a good little follower)?

I don't much care what the rules say on this... I'd prefer the consequences to make sense in-world. How would the gods react to this?

[Darth Ultron]

Kinda depends....

If you think people (aka players) are the supreme beings in the universe then they can decide whatever tat want to be whatever they want to be whenever they want to be in an way they want to be.


If you think Players are ''up on some high pedestal '' and have absolute control over their special unique character then they can tell you the ''lowly'' DM what is what about their character.


Most gods in a Polytheism type setting are fine with mortals switching faiths, and would actively try to do that.

But it does depend on how ''divine'' your game is....if the gods are just names, then the player can switch at will. If they are active forces of divine will....they might want more from a worshiper then just having a character say ''I choose you'' at random. So you could add in a test of faith.

I'd mercilessly torture such a character with faith and divine problems....but then my game is very heavily faithbased where ''the characters are just pawns of the gods'' and this is made very clear at the start of the game.

[MrNobody]

As a DM i wouldn't have any problem to allow this behaviour. First, generally speaking polytheism means that you believe in more than one god, not that you admit that more than one exist but still serve only one.
Plus, druids don't really need a patron deity, so i would see nothing wrong with a druid that serves every nature's god, that usually prays Elhonna, but sometimes he likes to "switch" and pay homage to other deities too.

Maybe, if he is too much careless in this switching, i could see a deity becoming upset and asking for some kind of atonement... but no more than this!

[Thrudd]

How does divine spell casting work in the setting you are using? It's really up to you. I would never have allowed any change of deity. If you let them change once, as a retcon, because they didn't realize the game would be only aquatic, for example, and they built a guy with desert powers, that's one thing. But just switching out the character's power set on a whim, there's no excuse. At best, if they are really determined to change, make them go on a long quest ,without any divine powers, to gain the favor of the new deity. Once the character expresses a desire to disconnect from their deity, the deity should withdraw their powers, only to return if the character has atoned in some way, such as completing a task to prove their faith again.

In other words, just say "no", unless you want to develop a whole set of rules about how and when deities withdraw their spells.

In polytheism, there aren't multiple religions. Just one religion with multiple gods. In D&D, that means a cleric of that religion already gets spells possibly granted by multiple deities. That's why you might have healing and holy fire and plague of insects and sticks to snakes and spirit hammer, etc.

If you did receive special favor from one god in a pantheon over the others, I would think that god would not take kindly to you rejecting their special gift in favor of another. I'm thinking Greek here...wars were fought and people die or get lost for decades because one god in the pantheon was upset with someone, even while you have support of one or more of the others. Slighting a god is never taken lightly, and treating them like a buffet of plug and play powers I don't think would ever be an appropriate attitude.

[Dragonexx]

In my settings, druid's don't get their powers from gods, and so can just worship whatever deity they feel like.

[Berenger]

If those gods belong to the same belief system and pantheon, why do druids (or clerics) have to commit to a single one in the first place? In RL, as far as I know it's kind of expected that believers and priests of pantheistic faiths venerate most or all of the gods in their respective pantheon and take special care to placate the one that is most appropriate for their current endeavour, e.g. the war god when going into battle, the sea god when going to sea, the love goddess when trying to woo a girl etc. And the war god has no reason to be angry when you "switch" to the love goddess for good luck during your first date, because that's her job and not his and he acknowledges this...

If this is about reaping a maximum of mechanical boons, just make a "generalist" priest of a certain pantheon that receives smaller blessings from each deity instead of greater blessings from a single deity or something like that.

[NichG]

Druids don't receive any mechanical effects from choice of deity as far as I can tell. So I'd say, the gods can't be bothered to care about this character. This isn't one of their representatives on the mortal plane betraying them, it's just a mortal who is spreading his prayers around. No effect, no interventions, the character can claim whatever beliefs they like and change as often as they like. But no real effects should come from their choice - the deities aren't fooled.

If there were particular blessings or mechanical effects, I'd simply say that a god won't offer them until someone has been a faithful follower for a few years. The old deity won't abandon them until this period is up, and there's no time at which class features are lost, but it's not 'pick your holy symbol for the day to swap around your domains'.

[Millstone85]

It looks like you regard a druid as being just like a cleric, only with a nature deity, but your player might have a more, well, druidic approach to the matter. Could it be that his character goes through cycles of worship, much like the living world goes through seasons and such, or something like that?

Alternatively... This might be a dumb question, but are you sure he knows that Ehlonna and Mielikki aren't the same goddess? They are quite similar, aside from belonging to two different campaign settings.

[Temperjoke]

1. In character, it depends why the actual source of his powers. Most current settings, druids aren't dependent on the gods for their powers. However, if he keeps switching fealty between nature gods, it wouldn't be hard to argue that they might have nature turn against him, or at least act against him. Such as a storm that rains on him wherever he goes, or his food spoils faster, or he's plagued by insects and nuisances, until he starts making amends to all the deities he's switched between.

2. Out of character, I'd talk with him about why he's switching like that. I mean, he's got to have some sort of reason for it. If it is just for mechanical advantage, maybe you can work out something with him, such as "honoring all the gods, without specifically worshiping one". If it's really causing an issue for you, then explain your position on it, he might not be thinking anything about it.

[Max_Killjoy]

Unless "druid" is just a word that is borrowed to slap a label on a class... a druid should probably be polytheistic and not just a "nature cleric" to begin with.

[Knaight]

If this was a cleric, or an actual member of a particular gods priesthood in some fashion I could see this being an issue. As is though, this seems like a non issue - D&D isn't polytheistic per se, inasmuch as dedication to one god while acknowledging that others exist isn't how polytheism proper tended to operate (for the masses anyways, for the actual priest class it often got a bit closer), but it's close enough to make the jump between deities dramatically smaller than in something like a real world case where people switch between religions that claim that the deity/deities of the other religion don't even exist, and there are plenty of people who do that. It's the sort of thing that would be somewhat expected, and the gods probably wouldn't pay that close attention outside of the actual priesthood and anyone that could be reasonably described as one of their agents.

[wumpus]

You mention a "divine caster changing deities like socks", could a fighter do the same (especially in the same pantheon)? I would expect them to say prayers to which ever god had the portfolio (especially of a single pantheon) of the situation the fighter was praying about (although a fighter might mainly worship a god like Thor and make most prayers and sacrifices to him).

Don't modern Roman Catholics make prayers to the appropriate saint as an intermediary to God? Wouldn't a [D&D] druid have a similar attitude to natural gods as being an intermediary to their ultimate source of holiness, nature? In such a system the Druid wouldn't have "a deity" so much as make prayers to the appropriate god in question. I could see the "diety" bit changing whenever they cross the boundery into a another nature god's domain.

I tend to think that fantasy clerics (especially in medieval based games and similar societies) should have a vassal-based relationship to their deity. Thus switching gods is a big thing (and has at least as much in the god accepting the cleric as a vassal and granting magical powers). But druids aren't the same as clerics, and are much more likely to be the "vassals of nature" than specific gods.

[Max_Killjoy]

Part of the problem here is the way most D&D settings have a pantheon of deities by randomly mash in monotheistic assumptions.

However, the concept of druids as "nature priests" is more Victorian make-it-up-as-you-please "scholarship" and 20th-century froo-froo, than anything based on reality.

Let us not fall into some false premise where druids must be priests of A deity, or priests of NO deity.

(And really, the term "druid" was probably a far broader term, perhaps for the "educated class" in general.)

[Millstone85]

Don't modern Roman Catholics make prayers to the appropriate saint as an intermediary to God?

Some of the really religious ones, yes. For the rest, it just goes "By the way, today is St. First Name day, so hooray for person-who-happens-to-have-that-first-name".

Wouldn't a [D&D] druid have a similar attitude to natural gods as being an intermediary to their ultimate source of holiness, nature?

I think that's the most interesting way to play Deities & Druids, yes. Don't forget lesser nature spirits, tribal ancestors and the fey.

[Max_Killjoy]

Kinda depends....
If you think people (aka players) are the supreme beings in the universe then they can decide whatever tat want to be whatever they want to be whenever they want to be in an way they want to be.

If you think Players are ''up on some high pedestal '' and have absolute control over their special unique character then they can tell you the ''lowly'' DM what is what about their character.

Yeap, keep on riding that hobby horse, even if it's totally non-sequitur and you have to completely distort what's being discussed at the time.

[Thrudd]

The relevant thing on knowing how to address this is what game effects are connected to the deity for the druid? Presumably there are some, or the player probably wouldn't be doing this.

If the choice of deity is giving the druid in-game abilities, then it implies the deity does care about whether or not the druid worships them. It's no small thing to receive magic powers from a deity. If he keeps seeing new spells he wants that aren't on his deity's list, he really should just look through the spells and make a final choice. A part of the game is choosing your power set and living with the fact that you can't have every power in the book.

If it's a question of whether the druidic religion works like catholicism or polytheism and the deities/saints are prayed to opportunistically, that's for the DM to answer. But if that is the case, then the druid should not be getting different powers depending on who they pray to. Each spell on the druid list would be potentially a prayer to a different deity.

If the druid has a special relationship with one deity and receives powers other druids don't, then you can't just swap deities- the game clearly intends that to be a permanent choice (otherwise it would be in the rules that you can swap deities and domains whenever you want, or there would be rules about how and when you can do that).

[Telok]

I solved this by implementing an actual piety mechanic. Essentially a measure of how much a particular god liked a worshipper.

There was a list of likes/dislikes for each god, a couple gods you could switch between but most were jealous buggers. The nice healing god was not down with animating dead, etc.
There was a limit of 1 piety gained per session/dungeon but no limit on piety lost.
Negative piety had a per session chance of repercussions ("2d4 devas teleport in and beat the crap out of you" was one of them).
If a player character died then the next round there was a level check against the damage that killed them, if they passed they paid their level in piety and were unconscious and stable. If they failed then they paid their level plus the amount that they failed the roll by and were unconscious and stable. If they didn't have enough piety then they just stayed dead.

It worked well for me.

[LibraryOgre]

I have a player who has been a druid follower of Ehlonna, only to switch to Procan once the campaign became an aquatic one. I was okay with that.

But now he's considering switching to Mielikki for no particular reason that I can understand. Whatever his reasoning, I don't think a divine spellcaster can change gods like socks.

If he does decide to switch to Mielikki (or whatever), what should I do? Strip him of his spellcasting until he atones somehow (to Procan or to the new deity, promising to be a good little follower)?

I don't much care what the rules say on this... I'd prefer the consequences to make sense in-world. How would the gods react to this?

Generally, I wouldn't have too much of a problem with this in D&D, though it would influence how I see the character's devotion.

I would assume, from his actions, that his character is not devoted to a single deity, but rather a pantheon... he worships the deity most appropriate to the moment, rather than the usual D&D henotheism. So, there may be no real consequences.