Divine magic is now subject to divine spell failure

Divine magic is now subject to divine spell failure.
Whenever you cast a divine spell, you must make a straight Charisma check vs. 7 + the spell's level.
Failure means your spell "wasn't in God's plan" and does nothing.
Yes, this applies to your "cleric of a concept", you powergaming douche.
When your spells are actually begging a higher power to do things for you, it's only common sense that you wouldn't have full control of them.

I dislike the fact that divine power is expressed as spells in the same way wizards cast them. If anything a cleric representing their god should have more subtle affects and they should be more in line with the god/belief they follow rather then being a jack of all trade master of everything wizard with a miter.

That's not how divine magic work. That's not how any of it works.

People choose to practice divine magic because it is reliable so long as you follow the tenets of the religion and have its deity's favor. Unless your deity has the Domains of Douchebaggery & Backstabbings, then you deserve it for when your divine magic fails.

That's shit though. And that's why OP wants to change it.

Thats exactly how it works in Deadlands. Its generally more subtle stuff like protection, laying on hands, taking on wounds from friends, with occasional smitings. You can earn Miracles which are all generally biblical, the most visible of which is a pillar of fire like out of Exodus. Because you're calling on god and not cutting deals with deamons like the Hexslingers or Hucksters you can't get burned from it but they are more reactive and supportive

I like the system in DC:SS where you build up "piety" for performing actions in accordance with your deity, which you can spend on divine magic. And likewise you lose piety for actions that your deity disapproves of. There's no chance of failure though (unlike regular magic) but you need to watch how you behave.

How is it shit? If divine magic is as unreliable as arcane magic, why the hell would people even choose to worship generic light fantasy god #55643? Because unlike reality, these gods are very much present and can demonstrate their divinity. Not giving their clerics reliable spells, is pretty much a death knell for their religion.

...you wot?

If arcane magic is so unreliable and shitty, why wouldn't all Wizards be Clerics instead?

Checkmate, kid.

Because not everyone wants to circumcise their dicks, or eat vegetables every day, or fuck a goat as their initiation ritual. Arcane magic may be shitty and unpredictable in the beginning, but once mastered, they become powerhouses in their own right and answer to no one but their own conscious. Besides, arcane magic is flashy as fk compared to divine magic.

Except that wizards will often avoid armour so Arcane spell failure is almost a non-issue, but clerics don't have that luxury. And yes, I know there are exceptions.

The Cleric gets his spells every morning when he prays to his deity. As the DM you can always rule that he cant have access to some spells because no matter how hard he prays his deity deems him unfit Hell you could even take away spells he already has known for doing bad stuff. Leaving the entire chance of his spell to even work to a dice roll seems really arbitrary, especially for no added benefit.

The benefit is that OP gets his plebian high frm masturbating on how clerics are now healsluts in armor and not good ones at that.

user is right, you'd pretty much be fucking Clerics in the ass for no reason with this. I dont get the point, what does this achieve? A Cleric who has devoted his life to his deity, smites evil (or good) in his name and basically follows all his tenets and the God is just like "eh, nah you cant use cure light wounds to save the life of that child. I'm just not feeeeeeling like it"

Why do the Gods even deserve worship in that world.

I'm thinking that OP is a fedora ass faggot who doesn't understand the difference between real life religion and fantasy deities who can be proven real and has to compete with other deities for followers and prayers to sustain their divinity.

>prayers work in real life religion

Seems workable so long as I don't have to prepare a spell list.

In fact, I would prefer Divine magic to be general effects that could be expressed differently depending on the situation.

That's not what I said.

>In fact, I would prefer Divine magic to be general effects that could be expressed differently depending on the situation.

What if you had a few slots.

Like
Aid, Strengthen, Bless
Then you have a selection of maybe 10 Aid spells, and you can put 3 of those in Aid.
Then you ask your god to aid you, and you randomly get one of those 3 spells.

The random chance is an abstraction, much like the random chance of convincing any NPC to help you through the Diplomacy skill.
Since deities are by and large beyond your comprehension, it makes even more sense for their actions to be disconnected from human actions whenever possible.
The typical fantasy cleric does not order his god around on a leash. When he casts a spell, he's saying "could you please smite that guy over there?" and the god can refuse and doesn't have to explain why.

That's fucking retarded. Using smite isn't "begging a deity to hurl lightning at a mortal's command". It's using an extremely small portion of the deity's power that was invested into you when you pledge your soul to carry out said deity's will.

I get thats the idea, but the OP had pretty much nothing else besides that. It kind of felt just like scorn to Clerics, a way of nerfing them. Like it or not D&D is not an abstract game, its very grounded in resource management and just arbitrarily giving spells a decent chance to fail every time you cast them ON TOP of regular things like save DCs just seems really dumb.

Also at least the way I've always interpreted it is that the Cleric prays to their deity and draws the spells from them. I just dont see why a Deity would deny spells from their follower for no reason except to add a little "mystery" to their intentions. There are better ways of doing that, ones more grounded in roleplay and signs of God rather than just making the Cleric's job harder with nothing to compensate.

Also just a note, why is it Charisma and not Wisdom? Wisdom is the inner strength of the Cleric and presumably the connection with their Deity. I doubt a powerful God will give extra consideration to their follower if he can really "put the moves on him"

I honestly dislike the idea of divine classes in general. Gods should be like little bonus packages or something. Do X, Y, and Z and get this bonus specific to that deity. Makes stuff feel more personal.

Currying favor with the deity.

Some people don't like playing Russian Roulette: The Class.

It's all fine and dandy when that's a swift-action minor class feature and the bonuses are small and cute, but that random shit being the main and only class feature of a character is practically begging for the class to be ignored, if not outright rejected by all groups.

Idk Charisma just seems like so much more of a mundane kind of persuasion. It implies a sense of sneakiness, skullduggery. A God that you pledged yourself to would probably have access to your whole mind and soul and wouldn't be convinced by Charisma, more your Wisdom and Will. Your raw, true faith and devotion.

Im now in the firm dont play dnd mindset.

Dont like the game , fuck off.

You're trying to apply logic to an ancient problem. Charisma is always recommended as a way to deal with gods because you use it to fuel turn/rebuke undead, and usually luck depends on charisma too. It's a dumb concept, used to balance the game as charisma is a pretty useless stat. If you don't cast with it, you'll most probably dump it and that's bad because it's useless for 90% of characters. So charisma is also associated with chance, luck and divine bond as a way to round things up.

>It's a dumb concept
it's a nice concept, the halo effect in action.

I mean it's a game about rolls to begin wtih

Rick might.

>h hey morty wake up listen to this plebiscite beg me to save his friends life. But Naaah dog he's the worse beggers even he can suck a dick.

Why are you playing a game that fucks you out of arcane magic if you can wear the armor, and requires a second feat for no raison.