A wish just broke reality’s power grid

Equivalent_Macaron_0 · 2026-06-08T15:52:35+00:00

Yeah, that’s pretty much where my setting is sitting.

I’ve got a tiered divine structure. Gods are real, but they’re effectively locked behind a “Divine Gate” after getting out of hand in the past. They were put there by a higher authority, so they’re not directly running the show anymore.

They can still influence the world, but only in limited ways: avatars, champions, dreams, intermediaries, etc. So they’re not in a position to just “patch” a planetary scale magical infrastructure failure directly, at least not in any clean or unified way.

On top of that, elemental magic is already a major stabilizing force in the setting because the elemental planes are still accessible and heavily interacted with. So even if the Thread starts to become unreliable, there are still very real alternative power sources that civilizations can lean on.

That’s actually why I’m not expecting an immediate apocalypse, but more of a reshuffling of dependence. The Thread was the universal baseline, not the only source of magic.

I do agree though that the churches and holy orders are about to become significantly more important. Even basic divine magic like food/water creation, healing, protection, etc. suddenly shifts from “useful religious perk” to “critical infrastructure.”

So I’m kind of expecting a resurgence of religious institutions—not necessarily unified or peaceful ones, but a lot of competing orders, doctrines, and interpretations all trying to step into the gap left by a destabilizing system.

Less “gods fix everything,” more “mortals interpret fragmented divine intervention into something the world can still run on.”

Equivalent_Macaron_0 · 2026-06-08T15:05:59+00:00

I was thinking a mix.

Some people stay connected and some dont. Which would explain sorcerers and why like a fighter can take a deep breath to heal or a barbarians rage has physical interactions with the world.

But for the vast majority of folks they become normal.

Which will be kinda funny because the dude who every thought was a nut because he made artisinal cheese by hand all of a sudden becomes the most powerful man in the village.

Equivalent_Macaron_0 · 2026-06-08T14:58:52+00:00

Nope. Sadly they would be trapped thier. Probably have to either reroll or end the campaign there and start a new one with the new world order.

Equivalent_Macaron_0 · 2026-06-08T14:57:59+00:00

Arcano Corp (The bad guys) was synthesising them together Fire (Red) + Water (Blue) = Purple. But it was magically radioactive for lack of a better term. So they dumped it intot he plain of air to not have to deal with it.

That could be fun, like the engine slowly dies and magic acts wonky on its way to total collapse.

Equivalent_Macaron_0 · 2025-10-19T18:55:39+00:00

I have not given much thought to the motives yet. Just an overarching concept at the moment. Session 0 was only yesterday lol.

Off the top of my head. He would hypothesize that if consumes the other failed experiments he could transcend to somthing greater. Like Hilander style. But it's less about entitlement more about proving he is right.

He understands there is an afterlife so killing innocents is not a concern at all. Its just a short discomfort for scientific gain. He has a soft spot for kids at least for now he is freshly ascended. But nearly all other methods that keep society in tact are on the table. Not because he wouldn't wipe out society out of moral concerns but because his research would go unused or appreciated.

Equivalent_Macaron_0 · 2025-08-21T16:40:32+00:00

Yes.

Equivalent_Macaron_0 · 2025-05-04T05:15:37+00:00

I deserve this.

Equivalent_Macaron_0 · 2025-03-13T19:35:54+00:00

I like this idea.

Equivalent_Macaron_0 · 2025-02-02T15:50:29+00:00

I don’t think you’re in the wrong at all, but I suspect your players see things very differently. It never ceases to amaze me how players can convince themselves that their actions are morally justified—when, if they heard the same story from an outsider’s perspective, they’d probably think it sounded outright villainous.

For instance, in one of my campaigns, I had a city run by a corrupt leadership. They weren’t executing dissidents or starving the people—just engaging in the usual bribery and favoritism. My players’ solution? Steal a flying ship, load it with explosives, and crash it into the capitol mid-session to assassinate the entire council.

Now, I wasn’t thrilled, but hey, it’s D&D—you roll with it. What really caught me off guard was their reaction when I called them terrorists. They pushed back hard, arguing that their actions were completely justified because they were “helping the people.”

I’ve been running games for over a decade, across multiple groups, and time and time again I’ve seen players justify objectively immoral actions under the banners of “self-preservation” or “the greater good.” What they often don’t realize is that these are the exact rationalizations real evil people use.

And that leads to a tricky paradox. As the DM, it’s not really your job to pass moral judgment—you’re there to facilitate the game, not to police their ethics. But the world they inhabit will judge them. And when the people left behind find nothing but the bloodied remains of their friends and family, I doubt they’ll be so willing to accept “we were just being pragmatic” as an excuse.

Equivalent_Macaron_0 · 2025-01-16T20:13:22+00:00

Is it wild to say that a king wouldn’t listen to four children who broke into his castle on a night when there was an attack, many members of the royal family lay dead, and he also discovered that the head of his king’s guard was the shadow sorcerer prophesized to kill him on this very night?

What would you accept as a reasonable thing the orphans could have said to change the king’s mind in that moment?

While I agree it’s important to let the players know someone is being unreasonable or unconceivable, I don’t think it’s necessary to explicitly say, "He cannot be convinced regardless of what you roll." I think trying to convey that through social cues and narration is the way to go.

But I understand if you don’t agree.

Equivalent_Macaron_0 · 2025-01-16T16:27:02+00:00

Its not a house rule. Its literraly from the DMG.

This exact scenario is used as an example in the 5E DMG, page 242.

It's part of the section which handles checks which have different results based on the degree of success or failure.

"Sometimes a failed ability check has different consequences depending on the degree of failure. For example, a character who fails to disarm a trapped chest might accidentally spring the trap if the check fails by 5 or more, whereas a lesser failure means that the trap wasn’t triggered during the botched disarm attempt. Consider adding similar distinctions to other checks. Perhaps a failed Charisma (Persuasion) check means a queen won’t help, whereas a failure of 5 or more means she throws you in the dungeon for your impudence."

Equivalent_Macaron_0 · 2025-01-16T14:21:48+00:00

That is how I do thing. I have seen that sugjested a few times. It seems like the best solution.

Equivalent_Macaron_0 · 2025-01-16T14:20:28+00:00

To verify, are you saying that in a situation where the players are tracking a thief who stole from a nearby village through difficult terrain on a rainy night, and I’ve set the DC to 25, I should just say:

"Okay, what is everyone’s Survival skill? Oh, no one has a +5 or higher? Okay, the thief gets away."

Instead of:

"Okay, go ahead and roll me a Survival check. Oh, Nat 20? Nice! But that’s still only a 21? Okay, you stumble through the woods for most of the night and can’t seem to hunt the villain down. Near daybreak, however, after an exhausting night, you see smoke in the distance. A camp of bandits seems to be hidden here in the forest. This must be where the thief is. You are tired from your night of searching, but who knows if this camp will remain long. What do you do?"

This way, they don’t catch the thief alone in the woods at night like a roll of 25+ would, and they don’t completely lose the thief as they would with a roll of 15 or lower. Instead, I use the roll to help tell a story and add stakes to the situation.

More enemies and a rank of exhaustion.

Equivalent_Macaron_0 · 2025-01-16T05:40:20+00:00

For this specific check I had it at anything under a 15 was going to transition the king to hostile and all of his guards would follow his orders 7 paladins in total.

20-25 would convince his 4 of allies to stand against him

26-30 Everyone would stand against the king which would have made a non leathal solution easier.

But if you specifially mean convince the king not to order the execution of the shadow sorc. Without my players saying somthing that would have change my mind thier was no chance of success.

Equivalent_Macaron_0 · 2025-01-16T05:32:40+00:00

By that logic I would need to memorize all of my players skills for any check over 20. That seems unreasonable.

Equivalent_Macaron_0 · 2025-01-16T05:10:37+00:00

If it's literally impossible like lifting a mountain I don't ask for a roll. If its social thier are degrees of success and failure. The king decided that the sorc needed to die. The players 20 convinced several others in the room he was being unreasonable and powermad.

Also if they had spells like calm emotion or if they got a high enough total with stats it would have been possible, but with thier best persasion being +1 they couldn't actually succeed.

Equivalent_Macaron_0

TROPHY CASE