Divine Intervention

This is the story of the first time I used the classic Cleric feature, Divine Intervention.

My first campaign as a GM was running the Dragon of Icespire Peak module, which is set in the Sword Coast area of the Forgotten Realms. It begins in the town of Phandalin; by now a fairly notorious name in the D&D community, being the starting town of other modules like the Lost Mine of Phandelver and the Shattered Obelisk. It's where a lot of new players are introduced to D&D these days.

The Dragon of Icespire Peak takes characters from level one to level six, culminating in a showdown with the eponymous dragon. If your party managed to slay the dragon and save the town of Phandalin, and you want to keep the story going, you now have a choice to make: Do we dive into homebrewing the next adventures, or look at the follow-up modules?

D&D Beyond has published three digital-only follow-up adventures to the Dragon of Icespire Peak: Storm Lord's Wrath, Sleeping Dragon's Wake, and Divine Contention. Combined, these take your party from level 7 to level 12.

This can be a fairly momentous occasion in a relatively new GM's career. If, like me, this was your first time running D&D, it can be both intimidating and also really exciting to consider ditching the prewritten modules and going out on your own.

It's intimidating for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's just more work for you to do. As someone who's, shall we say, creatively challenged, I end up spending a lot more time prepping homebrew content compared to prewritten modules.

I watched a video by Power Word: Spill the other day, where he described two different types of prep: macro and micro. Macro is the high-level stuff; all the big plot arcs, factions, world geography. Micro is the low-level, detailed stuff, like what specifically could happen in the next session; preparing detailed combat encounters, making NPCs that you're likely to run into, that sort of thing.

And, for me personally, it's the macro type of prep that requires much more mental overhead when I'm homebrewing a campaign, compared to running a module. With prewritten modules, you don't really need to worry about the big plot arcs and political maneuverings and what not—you just make sure everything runs smoothly on the day. But when you're running your own world, you have to spend more time carefully thinking about how all of that fits together. And don't get me wrong—that is super fun, and really rewarding—but it's also really hard.

Or at least, it's hard for me. Maybe worldbuilding comes more easily to you, but I don't have a creative bone in my body, so it's a real struggle for me to come up with interesting and engaging plot arcs for my players. It's for sure a whole lot of fun, and so epic when it works well; but it's just tiring, you know?

I guess that's the second reason why it can be intimidating to ditch the modules and go out on your own. The people that write these things are professional game developers; they literally do this for a living. It's intimidating in the same way that watching Critical Role or Dimension 20 is intimidating—it's literally their job. It's okay if our campaigns don't live up to the epic narratives that the professionals can weave together, in the same way that it's okay that I'm not literally Lionel Messi when I play football with my mates at the park on a Sunday afternoon. This is a hobby; we do it for fun. If it's more fun and less cognitive overload for you to run modules all the time, then that's absolutely valid.

Of course, it's also really exciting to run your own content. I think the biggest downside to prewritten modules is that it's just a bit harder to make your player characters feel like they're truly part of the world. It's harder to modify the world to fit your characters's backstories if those changes could potentially lead to inconsistencies in the story. For homemade stuff, though, you know everything about the world; if you need to modify something to fit a character's backstory, you know exactly what else you need to change to make everything consistent.

I'm rambling a bit here, but hopefully you get the point: For most people, I think that there are pros and cons to running homebrew vs prewritten modules, and either method is fine.

During my time running Dragon of Icespire Peak, I came up against this exact issue, and it's probably my biggest gripe with the module: There's no real provision for character backstory or development. It's assumed that the characters will instantly identify with the goal of killing this dragon and saving this town. Which, if they're good players, they'll get on board with (since we're all just trying to have some fun here). But it's not the most narratively or emotionally compelling plot arc. To be clear, I think overall the Dragon of Icespire Peak is an excellent module—and incidentally, if you are running it, I strongly recommend checking out Bob World Builder, who has a bunch of videos about it—but there's basically no guidance for new GMs on how to get your player characters really invested in the story.

So to do that, I ended up homebrewing some content along the way. Simple stuff—and it doesn't have to be complex, particularly if you're all new to this. For example, the player character Torinn the Barbarian was the sole surviving member of his Dragonborn clan, so I created an evil faction of, well, basically Nazis—sorry, I told you I'm not very creative. These evil guys, The Order of the Silver Dagger, were sent to assassinate Torinn, so we had that subplot going on while we tackled the main module content.

There were other things going on as well. Fred the Cleric was having issues with his god; issues that were fundamentally linked to the actions of another of our PCs, Fenula the Druid. I won't pretend that any of this stuff was riveting creative genius, but it just added a bit of personal investment in the story that would otherwise be missing if you're just running the module as-written.

Anyway. All of this is just to say that, when we finished the Dragon of Icespire Peak, I decided to do a combination of running some of the follow-up module Storm Lord's Wrath; but also diving more fully into homebrew content, trying to bring the players into a more central role in the story.

One of the NPCs in Storm Lord's Wrath is a nefarious figure named Uluran Mortis. I'll try to avoid any spoilers here, but suffice it to say that he had some rather questionable motivations. I was wondering how I could bring him into the story more effectively, when I found a Reddit post where someone said that they actually made him a long-lost heir to the throne of Neverwinter (the biggest city in the area). I thought that was pretty funny, and so I stole the idea for my campaign.

Of course, when you make a change like that to an existing NPC, it has a bunch of downstream ramifications for anything relating to that character. And this is one of the downsides of mixing prewritten modules with extensive homebrew storylines: you can find yourself in situations where the future state of the world, as defined in the module, doesn't really make any sense. Now, that's just the nature of tabletop roleplaying games, and a good GM will be comfortable exposing their world to the whims of their players and the consequences of those unpredictable actions... As many have said before, you have to be okay with letting your creations go. But it can be particularly tricky if a bunch of prewritten storyline depends on a particular NPC, you know... being alive.

A long-lost heir to the throne is particularly interesting in the standard lore of Neverwinter in the Forgotten Realms—at the particular point in time that the Dragon of Icespire Peak module takes place, anyway—because the current leader of Neverwinter, one Dagult Neverember, is generally regarded as not being part of the traditional royal line. He rose to power in a tumultuous period after the city was all but destroyed by a volcanic eruption and the subsequent opening of a rift within the city, from which (basically) hellspawn emerged. The upshot of all this is that a contender for the throne could have a real impact on the city's future, and indeed the future of the entire campaign, since it takes place in and around that city.

Incidentally, one of the party members, a Tiefling by the name of Malil Emberblight, was in some trouble with the local constabulary, after a, shall we say, misunderstanding with an important figure in a nearby town. He was hauled before Dagult Neverember to answer for his crimes. Things were going rather badly for the Tiefling, until one of the party members mentioned a little piece of information that she'd gleaned from one of her sources: that Darius Alagondar was still alive.

The royal line of Neverwinter ended in the aforementioned volcanic eruption, when the ruling family, the Alagondars, were all killed. It has been said—quietly, no doubt, and only in dark corners of disreputable taverns across the city—that Dagult Neverember was not above a bit of political maneuvering in his rise to power. For example, people with potential claims to the throne, however tenuous, had a habit of disappearing without a trace.

Darius Alagondar, the son of the king at the time, was one of those who apparently perished in the aftermath of the cataclysm that struck the city. If he were still alive, then Dagult Neverember's claim to the throne would be legitimately threatened. And so the party struck a deal with Neverember: Find and kill this Darius Alagondar, and they would secure a pardon for the recalcitrant Tiefling, Malil Emberblight.

So it was that the party tracked down Darius Alagondar to a decrepit manor in an abandoned part of the city. And in a dark cellar, filled with crates of corpses—did I mention that he was a necromancer? He's a necromancer—the party met with Darius Alagondar, aka Uluran Mortis.

They'd run into Uluran Mortis a couple of times in the past, in his capacity as a rather evil necromancer associated with the god of death Myrkul. The dramatic reveal that Uluran Mortis was actually Darius Alagondar, heir to the royal throne, turned out to be rather anticlimactic as I'm pretty sure everyone in the party had already put two and two together by that point. But I play with excellent people and they graciously acted out their surprise at this shocking revelation. Darius/Uluran told them his abridged backstory; that as a young boy he was assassinated by Neverember, and was only here to tell the tale because, as he lay dying, he offered a hail mary prayer to Myrkul, who, miraculously, answered his prayer and spared his life in an act of divine intervention.

At this point, the party had a decision to make. They could side with Darius Alagondar and help him retake the throne of Neverwinter. This may be the "right" thing to do, as he was clearly wronged in the past. However, Darius Alagondar was now Uluran Mortis the evil necromancer, who was demonstrably not above a little collateral damage in his quest for revenge, as evidenced by the horde of corpses packed into the surrounding crates.

Furthermore, helping Uluran Mortis retake the throne would mean that Malil Emberblight's plea bargain would be null and void, potentially putting his life in danger. And then of course, the classic "greater good" conundrum: A violent revolution could lead to a protracted civil war; is that really the right thing to do?

Ultimately they decided against helping Uluran Mortis—a decision that, as the GM, I was incredibly grateful for, as I was in no way prepared to deal with a literal coup of the biggest city in the region. And so began a torrid combat encounter with the necromancer, who predictably animated the nearby corpses and did various generally nasty things to do with disease and contagion and what have you.

To cut a long story somewhat short, it was a messy encounter, but the party eventually reduced him to a handful of hit points. Uluran Mortis was, mechanically, a level 12 Cleric of Myrkul. In 5th edition D&D, Clerics get a feature at level 10 called Divine Intervention, allowing them to "call on their deity to intervene on their behalf when their need is great".

(This is in the 2014 rules by the way; the 2024 version of Divine Intervention is completely different.)

If you're successful in calling upon your deity, the GM chooses the nature of the intervention; the feature suggests that any Cleric spell would be an appropriate act. The thing is, intervention is unlikely: you have to roll a d100, and get a number that's equal to or lower than your Cleric level. This means that, at level 10, you'd need to roll a d100 and get 10 or lower; that is, you have a 10% chance that your god hears your prayer, and a 90% chance of failure. Since Uluran Mortis was a level 12 Cleric, I needed to roll a 12 or lower on the d100; a 12% chance of success.

I roleplayed his desperate plea; I think I said something like, "You saved me once; surely you aren't done with me yet?"

And rolled the dice. Incidentally, for these big rolls, I highly recommend you do them in front of the GM screen where everyone can see. The two dice clattered on the table, and came to rest with the numbers showing 00 and 0.

If you aren't familiar with the standard d100, you roll a d10, and also a percentile dice. The percentile dice's value of 00 meant just that—zero. And the d10's value of 0 meant 10. A bit confusing, but it meant that the total for the roll was 10: and so the Divine Intervention worked.

Mechanically, this manifested as his god Myrkul casting the spell Heal on the necromancer, giving him an extra 70 hit points. Enough to turn the tide of the fight with the party, and enough to get them eventually to surrender—for the first time in the two-and-a-half years that this campaign had been running.

The party made a deal with the necromancer: They would assist him in his attempt to overthrow Dagult Neverember, and install the necromancer to his rightful place on the throne. They would present Neverember with a signet ring bearing the Alagondar family crest, as proof that they had killed the necromancer, and in so doing, secure Malil Emberblight's official pardon. And then they'd help the necromancer in his righteous crusade to rule the city.

And thus—with a simple roll of the dice—the fate of the city of Neverwinter was changed forever.

And that's the story of the first time that I used Divine Intervention.