Source
r/DnD•
hyewonluda

Miffed at decision making during session

5th Edition

Short(ish) rant/ aita: I, cleric, had previously rolled a 1 on the divine intervention feature and had to prepare what it would exactly be for next session, so i did. Session rolls around and the divine intervention happens (it basically revived (rebirth?) our previous enemies with no evil intent in their beings and healing our party back to full / as we had long rested) so the dm allows it to happen. The main bad guy gets reborn around his teens (so a child). Fast forward a bit we teleport back after agreeing we would leave him alive because of it was literally stated they were revived without their evil but then another player decides to subtle spell and kill the now a teen bad guy who was good.

After that i just went silent and interacted only when interacted with because it felt very much like…why even use divine intervention in the first place if its going to be for nothing? Anyways aita for reacting the way i did?

Posted Nov 26, 2023, 7:14 PM UTC

19
Yojo0oDM•

Subtle Spell as a way to avoid your fellow PC's knowing what your character is doing, forcing their player to just sit there and let it happen, is shitty DnD. You guys need to have a real conversation about what the goals of this campaign and party are, rather than having one player just trump another's actions. Divine Intervention is a big deal, and for the other player to just ignore your big character moment like that is shitty. If they didn't want you to revive/redeem the bad guy, they damn well should have spoken up when it was happening.

5
hyewonludaOP•

That’s kind of my issue with the whole thing. Rather have the player or DM say no to reviving the bad guy instead of basically wasting my divine intervention.

2
Yojo0oDM•

Or at least they could have protested in-character and made this an RP moment. Admitting to your cleric in-character that they feel robbed of their vengeance could make for an interesting interpersonal dilemma. Just nuking the kid without warning just sucks.

1
DocQuang•

Well, your character can always become morose and despondent over this, and next time someone asks you to do something you can say why bother, it didn't do anything for X. You should only do this if you can pull it off with good rolrplay, though.

2
Squidmaster616DM•

Something worth thinking about is that your choice of action doesn't preclude other players choosing their own actions.

IN this case, another player character may not have wanted that enemy to come back to life, whether there were evil in him or not. That evil could have returned, or the NPC could have become an entirely new form of evil. Having "no evil" doesn't mean "good".

Also, the other player may have felt is necessary as an act of revenge against the former evil boss. There are many things at play here. So it's important to ask WHY the other player killed the former enemy. Without knowing, its hard to take a side.

1
hyewonludaOP•

Understandable, it was definitely more on the revenge side of things why the player killed him. But again knowing that they were revived without being evil (specified in the divine intervention). It made the whole divine intervention feel incredibly useless, might as well been the dm saying “no you can’t do that” which never happened

1
Squidmaster616DM•

Three things.

  1. Again, your choice of action doesn't dictate how others can choose to act. You saving someone doesn't mean that others won't want them to be dead.
  2. Revived without being evil doesn't mean they can't become evil, or that they don't still bear responsibility. If there was a vengeance quest for another character, they won't want their vengeance undone.
  3. Finally - it's not like a DM saying no at all. It's not the DM who said no, it was another player making a choice for their character in the same way that you made one for yours. And end of the day the Divine Invention did also restore other previous enemies and heal the party. Which is no small thing.
2
hyewonludaOP•

Response to your points.

  1. Agreed i’m not trying to control how my teammates play the game, they can do what they want but in a team game/ group experience it feels pretty sh*tty if there isn’t a consensus of how we’ll act in certain situations.

  2. Specifically on the vengeance portion, player and/or DM could’ve just been like “no this goes against my/or the player’s character arc do something else” then i wouldn’t have been miffed at all.

3.i would have rather have the dm give me direct instructions of what my divine intervention could’ve done instead it becoming completely irrelevant because a player decided to do something else.

1
Squidmaster616DM•

Your Divine Intervention WASN'T pointless though! You said in your post that is resurrected former enemies plural, and that it healed your party members! That effect still happened and helped!

Also - here's a point to consider. You think the killing made your resurrecting the NPC pointless. But didn't your resurrecting make the party killing them pointless?

And have you asked the player why they killed the resurrected NPC? If that's the main problem here, then you need to ask and discuss it with them so that you as a party of players can be on the same page.

2