this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
43 points (95.7% liked)
rpg
3412 readers
2 users here now
This community is for meaningful discussions of tabletop/pen & paper RPGs
Rules (wip):
- Do not distribute pirate content
- Do not incite arguments/flamewars/gatekeeping.
- Do not submit video game content unless the game is based on a tabletop RPG property and is newsworthy.
- Image and video links MUST be TTRPG related and should be shared as self posts/text with context or discussion unless they fall under our specific case rules.
- Do not submit posts looking for players, groups or games.
- Do not advertise for livestreams
- Limit Self-promotions. Active members may promote their own content once per week. Crowdfunding posts are limited to one announcement and one reminder across all users.
- Comment respectfully. Refrain from personal attacks and discriminatory (racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc.) comments. Comments deemed abusive may be removed by moderators.
- No Zak S content.
- Off-Topic: Book trade, Boardgames, wargames, video games are generally off-topic.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Oracle / Seer / Diviner
Great flavour, lots of precedence in stories. But in practice if abilities didn't give us info/tantalising hints it was a waste of resources, and if it did then we'd skipped over fun adventure story beats.
On the one hand they are a great way for the GM to give you info and hints. On the other hand, they can feel like they short cut'd fun story-rich adventures to libraries and sages and NPCs with secrets we needed to know etc.
Another thing that makes Oracle / Seer / Diviner characters difficult to GM for is that you need to know things in advance, where the adventure leads to etc. As one whose GMing style leans heavily into Play To Find Out that sort of characters is kind of counter to it.
That said it is highly dependent of what the player want out of such an archetype. If it is a flavour for how the character solves problems I'm all for that. Touching an item to get a vision/impression for something (adventure) related to it go ahead. That is not too different to other ways of investigating. But the player who wants those powers to get "quest markers" or to completely negate obstacles ("hurr durr I have foresight so I've seen the ambush") gets hard noes from me.
Also agreeing with @dumples@kbin.social, D&D 5e Divination wizards are very well made and the divination spells work well in those kind of worlds.