The worst designed ability in DnD

Self-reliance is an important trait.

It's not the Wizard class though (or DnD's design philosophies for casters in general), so it's not the worst-designed thing.

Also, have you tried playing better games?

>Divine Intervention
But this is not the "Bloody Path".

a 1-in-10 chance to get out of an impossible situation isn't terrible. What would you propose, being able to make a miracle happen every single day?

Not making this ability in the first place, at all. If the designers wanted a Wish, but with a divine flavor, they could have made a 9th level spell. Previous editions had it, it was called Miracle.

The worst designed ability in DnD was Touch of Golden Ice, NewEd-fag.

At level 20 is kind of a plot ability.
The DM can use an impossible obstacle, just for the cleric to deus ex deus it away.

Noah did it, why can't this Moses into boat carpentry?
Where have all good prophets gone?

Bad game design 101.

>more proof that modern DnD/d20 is complete garbage
Shocking

>implying there was a time when D&D wasn't a complete mess

How would you even maximize usefulness of this ability? Use it at the start of the first encounter once per long rest and still only get it once every couple weeks?

It especially sucks that you are more likely to get divine intervention for something mundane than the specific crisis instance you would want it for when uses this way.

Can you cheese this with rerolls somehow or fixing numbers like the diviner wizard does?

The touch attack that does Dex damage to evil things? Exalted Deeds was just overall broken.

>This incompetently designed ability isn't a problem because the DM should be competent
That's a cop-out.

Clerics travel in packs of 10?

I don't know about you OP but my party tends to attempt Divine Intervention when it would be nice but not critical.
Like we just got through a few fights and we're all at half HP and burned some daily resources, the cleric just threw up his hands and asked heaven for some rejuvenation. He got lucky that time and everyone was treated as if they just had a full rest.
Another time he just asked while overlooking an enemy force to debilitate or destroy them. That one failed, it would've saved us a lot of time if it worked but it wasn't necessary for our continued progress.
Asking for Divine Intervention doesn't require lives to be on the line at that very instant.

That at level 20, your cleric character being good personal friends with their god is an actual possibility, and if they are going to give you quests to go wreck Asmodeus's shit in the lower planes, then the god may as well show up to help move your couch.

Why is the leveling system in d&d so rubbish?

What's wrong with this ability? It makes sense

1d4chan.org/wiki/Bloody_Path
There used to be the joke that 4th edition level 15 rogue is able to kill Lady of Pain by using this ability.

>How would you even maximize usefulness of this ability?
I mean, as intended, you don't. It's more of a last resort. Rather than saying "you die" the DM says "90% chance you die" which is significantly better. At 20th it's "you get a near miss every day."

>"Sorry, we can't accept your call right now",
That's pretty much my life long record with intercessory prayer.

>It's for situations where you have no other options.
The actual rules don't reflect that though. You could be the last one standing, without a weapon, with HPs in single digits and no more spell slots to use against a whole rather angry army of demons and the chances for your god to intervene are the same as when you just woke up from a nice long sleep and got fed the best breakfast of your life by a busty, scantily-clad maid.

So?

So the D&D gods are idiots and don't actually care for their clerics - that's what the chances being identical in all situations mean.

Gods have stuff to do as well

>The devs of 5e make questionable and outright stupid choices
Wow wake me up when something happens..

After a few sessions I'm gonna say the spell "Shield" is the worst. An automatic preemptive reaction, cast at the users discretion that can completely negate damage. Very few other things put that much power in your hand, if I want to massively buff my attack roll I have to call it BEFORE I know if I'm going to hit, but Shield allows you to look, say "yes. This will hit me" and THEN activate it

>A clerics god needs to worry about him constantly and treat him as a special little snowflake

Oh boy...

A hurricane is approaching town. A 10th level Cleric is in his temple and hears of this, but does nothing. One of his congregation stops by with a horse-drawn cart and says, "Cleric, you have to leave town! There's a hurricane coming!"

But the Cleric responds, "Not to worry. Divine Intervention will save me."

Hours later the hurricane has reached town and the bottom floor of the temple floods. The cleric is now on the second story. One of his congregation floats by in a boat and shouts "Cleric! Hop in, I can take you to safety!"

But the Cleric says, "No. Divine Intervention will save me."

Hours later, the entire temple has flooded but for the roof. The Cleric's Wizard friend flies on by. "Cleric!" he shouts. "I'm just strong enough to carry you! We can get out of here!"

"No," the Cleric responds, "Divine Intervention will save me."

The wizard flies off. The Temple is submerged completely. The Cleric uses Divine Intervention, but it fails, and the Cleric drowns.

When the Cleric gets to the Upper Plains, he goes to his god and says, "What the Heck? This is a shittily-designed class ability. Why didn't you help me?"

To which the Cleric's god replies, "I sent you a cart, a boat, a wizard, and Water Walk is a 4th level spell. What more do you want me to do?!"

>at 10th level, give an ability that only works 10% of the time
>it works automatically at 20th level
>few games last until 10th level, and no games last until 20th level, so nobody ever actually gets to use the ability in a meaningful or reliable way

I'm not really seeing a problem.

Wow, you really go out of your way to spam your retarded image at every opportunity, don't you?

>Oh boy...
Stop pretending to be retarded, please.

SEE

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It's not a strawman, it's a parable.

Your specific concern is that the deity doesn't seem to care about his follower, but that isn't the case. The deity has provided the Cleric with spells, special abilities, allies, equipment, and so on. It is the cleric's job to use these and the full breadth of his knowledge and experience to survive. The cleric has had "divine intervention" all his life.

The deity has many things to do and can't personally attend to every one of his clerics every time things go wrong. Alternatively, it is possible that a failed divine intervention is exactly part of the deity's plan. A 10th level cleric is respectably powerful; perhaps the deity needs the cleric in the Afterlife more than he is needed on Earth. The gods have a much broader view than the needs of any one particular person at any one particular time.

That's the in-univese explanation. Out-of-universe, the reason why Divine Intervention has a low chance of success is to make sure that players don't just Divine Intervention away Acererak or Demogorgon.

Except that requires the DM to outright ignore what the ability does. He might as well just give divine intervention whenever he feels like it then.

What the user likely meant was that a failed Divine Intervention roll will mean more than just that your deity was in the shower at the moment. The DM will work it into the story somehow.

Costs a spell slot. And doesn't save you for sure.
Unless they're a level 20 wizard, in which case it becomes "gain 5 AC lmao".

>your god will almost always try to help you if you are suffering from a "major trouble" such as: being at very low health, being permanently blinded, losing the loss of both hands, choking, suffering from food poisoning, or other very serious ailments.
>suffering from food poisoning
In what world is food poisoning on the same level as being permanently blinded? The hell is this shit?

Yep, he does.

It's a lightning rod for autism, basically. You can usually tell who will be a shitty addition to your group by simply presenting with that and seeing whether or not they start frothing at the mouth and screeching.

Moses was level 20 you doof.

>In what world is food poisoning on the same level as being permanently blinded?
Medieval times?

The GM decides what the intervention does, so you can't use it to cheese anything.

You could if it could be used at-will. The DM might decide the specifics of what happens, but that SOMETHING happens is required.

No, you can just massively boost damage after knowing you were going to hit.

Which could just be a cure wounds.

Go play World of Warcraft if you can't deal with a simple level 1 spell.

Christians in real life.

Someone needs to watch that episode of Futurama again. Unreliable miracles aren't out of flavor - they're exactly the sort that inspire people.

Puking your guts out is just as likely to get you killed as being blind. Except being blind requires something external coming to fuck you up like a monster or a set of stairs, while food poisoning will just kill you of anemia and thirst no help required.

>but that SOMETHING happens is required

Which still means it can't be cheesed. You can't use it to one-hit-kill Demogorgon, because your deity might just teleport you to safety instead.

3aboos can't into non-magical abilities worth a shit, so when the martials are doing cool, funny, or interesting bullshit, they shit themselves and spasm on the ground until WotC nerfs them again.

>So the D&D gods are idiots and don't actually care for their clerics
You're wrong, but that would actually be way better lore.
>the gods are uber powerful supernatural beings who float through the cosmos in forms incomprehensible to humans
>the earth and humanity barely even register on their senses because we're so irrelevant in the grand scheme of things
>one of them finds out he has a fuckhueg following on earth
>piques his interest for about 2 seconds, then he goes back to fucking his godwaifu
>a god accidentally bumps into earth while passing by, doesn't even notice
>cataclysmic event that devastates humanity

The DM just needs to roll the percentile dice behind the DM screen and fudge the roll for the story's sake.

Protip, if you're not monkey pawing this shit, you're doing it wrong- in some cases Deities may send down agents, rarer, avatars, or minor boons.

But the real kicker is that the deity may intervene to shift things in it's native favour.

Another tip- there was a 3.5 supplement for Advancded Clerical Domains, which was a set of feats that improved one's native domain powers to do more interesting things- that would be better than this, really.

Also, there's the notion of the classic finicky god syndrome, where resing PC's costs depedning on subject alignment, piety with church, and whether the God agrees to let a person be rezzed- and even then there's the stuff on fucking up the resurrection somehow and post resurrection sickness.

But yeah, You don't fucking ask for the help of Kossuth and not expect an immidiate flood of fire to come down in some manner- possibly killing you or causing some CHA and CON loss because of the significant holy burns warping you're features- you get what you want out of it, but you sure as shit get the full force of your god working it's will.

Also, this entire premise is retarded, because of Tharizdun, Elder Evils and others-
But that plays into the fact that 5e's doaway of alignment constraints technically means the D&Dverse is now subject to the deprivations of the old ones because the seal is technically broken and they can get in.

>Like, could you imagine if Moses was trying to part the Red Sea, but he rolled 68, so him and the jews were all killed by the Pharaoh's army?
But Moses was a Level 20 Thaumaturge.

wewe

>d&d is created and get famous
>its the first rpg so (since its famous) you have all those extreme amount of rpg players with different point of view of how a rpg should be, playing the exact same rpg
>after some amount of time playing some players discover some stuff they think are flaws, while discover some rules they think are really awesome
>because they have very different views on what a rpg should be (despise playing the exact same rpg), what some guy think is a good idea wont be considered a good idea by the other player, what some consider a shitty idea will be considered a good idea by other rpg player
>new system is made based at this enviroment, and create a mess of a rpg system.
>many of those players quickly jump into the new system, expecting fixed to what they think are flaws
>because the players have very different opinions on what rpg should be (despise playing the same exact system), what is a flaw to some is a fix to another, and what is a fix to another is a flaw to someone. So the system CAN'T be fixed.
>all those extreme amount of players quickly jumping to this new system, bring new (to rpg) players to the new d&d system
>this make the game have an extreme amount of rpg players with different point of view of how a rpg should be, playing the exact same rpg
>because they have very different views on what a rpg should be (despise playing the exact same rpg), what some guy think is a good idea wont be considered a good idea by the other player, what some consider a shitty idea will be considered a good idea by other rpg
>new system is made based at this enviroment, and create a mess of a rpg system. No one knows what the system/d&d is suposed to be, because it was created based on a mess.
>the story continue ad infinitum

Attack roll..different to damage. One of my paladin abilities is infact a +10 to my roll to hit, called before I know if it lands or not

>my party tends to attempt Divine Intervention when it would be nice but not critical.

Doesn't that kind of cheapen the whole "your god is interceding on your behalf" thing? Your just boiling it down to a one in 10+ chance of getting a short cut as opposed to something that would warrant the cleric's god actually taking a personal interest in some mortal affair he might not otherwise be interested in.

"At three o’clock, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”
(Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46)

>hehe i'll trick the player by making his own abilities work against him!
good dm'ing.

Food poisoning in Nethack will instantly kill you in at most 19 turns. No save, and poison resistance doesn't apply. It's a very serious ailment in that world, though also a very avoidable one.

Yeah God has always helped his chosen people, every time. Definitely didn't drop the ball later, nope.

Almost like every group should get together and houserule the hell out of any rpg

God generally let his chosen people fall when they started getting a "hurr durr we're good enough to do things without God" mindset.

They can and so what? Finally rogues were a threat.

Arguably they couldn't, considering Lady of Pain shouldn't even have stats in the first place.

You don't need stats for that ability to work. It has no save and offers no defense.

running a campaign in the zakara setting (arabian adventures AD&D just slimmed a little for 5th edition and because the extended culture stuff is fucking nuts), but one of the functions in the desert is called fate. some quasi diety watches the entirety of the desert who the party can call upon whenever. When they invoke fate, i roll a d20, and there is a roughly ~5% chance that fate intervenes in some subtle way (the rolling boulder suddenly cracks from ages of water damage and sitting poorly in the untrigged trap, now it slows and wobbles resulting in less damage). But there is also a ~5% chance that she does something awful in the same manner (the locking mechanism on the door to get away from the boulder has been covered in mildew making it harder to figure out how to open it so its now a higher DC). I love this because when players annoy me, i make the bad-stuff roll higher, and when they are staying in character and participating well, i can make good stuff better for them. Also if they constantly invoke fate, i make the good stuff down to 1% and bad stuff keep growing bigger and bigger. Its actually alot of fun.

err, d100 not s20

Moreso it probably wouldn't do anything significant to her, considering the Lady of Pain is more of a force of nature than an entity.

Pluis if it did work, it would probably piss her off, and the Rogue probably wouldn't even have time to regret what he did before he got destroyed.

Nice Damage Control. She gets owned mate deal with it.

>lol my rogue is so le epic he can kill lady of Pain xDDD
And yet another reason why 4rries are so hated here.

Not as much as Planescum

>tfw you don't even play D&D, but D&D-autists are still trying to project on you

I wrapped up a campaign last year that ended at level 10. During the climactic final battle the cleric tried this as a last resort when all seemed lost... he fucking pulled it off and it was enough to earn them a victory and save the world. It was pretty thematically awesome.

Time and place for everything, man.

This, you don't need to dislike martials to dislike BS abilities.

What's the problem with the ability?

Which are stats. You might as well try to kill alignment or the rules of magic.

...

I mean, there are lots of bad abilities in 5e. Theres the berserker frenzy ability that gives you fatigue...which can only be removed 1 level at a time by either a long rest or restoration, a high level spell. Or the berserker intimidate ability that relies on an ability score thats 4th best if you are lucky and takes an action for a minor boost.

>They can
What's the Lady's AoO? It's not the flaying alive shit, that's a passive effect, not an Attack of Opportunity.

I see more hate for 3aboos than any other D&D edition mate.

...

I feel like a game that designs mechanics the GM has to break to make a class ability be fun is a shitty game.

Nah, Veeky Forums is pretty anti-4e. Always has been.

I'm not sure but the best I can tell is...because it's a simple ability. A similar effect in 3.5 would have had several steps along the way where it could fail. Likely involving the combat manuvers system, may god have mercy on us all. 4e instead goes 'It's a daily, it does it's job. End of line'.

>Nah, Veeky Forums is pretty anti-4e. Always has been.
Since when? I barely see 4e being mentioned in most threads. On the other hand, mention 3.PF and the thread is almost guaranteed to get derailed into caster supremacy or anti-3.PF shit.