Recently, I've started running a campaign. For each of my players I've planned to do a little personal plot and it's one those plots I need advice on and/or a sounding board for.
One of the players is playing a Witch with the Healing patron and in "Seven Days to the Grave" I'm planning to reveal the identity of her patron to her: Urgathoa. I know she doesn't have Healing in her portfolio, but she does have Disease and whatnot and my reasoning is that 'it takes one to know one'.
In the AP, Urgathoa makes very direct contact with the party. I'll tweak/tell it in a way that she takes special interest in the Witch, have some dialogue and threaten the Witch because the party struck down one of her champions. The Witch, according to Urgathoa, will need to make amends or else...
Urgathoa('s vision) gets cut short by Sarenrae - such direct interaction is rare and Sarenrae senses a chance to hinder her adversary Urgathoa and also offers to take the Witch in.
Fellow GM's (and players who are not my players ;-): does this sound like an awesome idea or a load of poppycock? Would you like it if this was to be a twist for your character? Any unforeseen consequences you're thinking of?
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In general I like the idea. Since Urgathoa is already so directly involved, having another divinity intercede is fair game at this point. Of course, this would also depend on the Witch's individual opinion of both Urgathoa and Sarenrae, as I can't predict whether or not she'd be happy for the save, mad that Urgathoa was chased away, or just not care very much either way.
Also, this is more of a personal thing, but I always interpreted Witches patrons to be more vague and abstract, say natural forces or concepts, perhaps fey or other odd outsiders. It's perfectly fine for you to have the patrons be gods, though, especially if your players would find it cool!
Thanks for the reply; I'll see that as a vote of confidence :-) Got a fair bit of experience as a player, but the GM'ing gig is new for me ;-) Although I think I know the Witch's player well, I still can't predict his response, but I'm sure we'll roll with whatever I can think of.
And fair point on Witch Patrons...Rereading their description, I might reconsider naming anything or anyone all too specific. Having her Healing coming from a source of Disease still seems like a nice twist to me.
I don't know if it's worthwhile, but I would also have the powers and spells be erratic for a few days around the swap of patrons. Sometimes they would be weaker, sometimes stronger. Then, obviously the big question to ask, what kind of revenge will Urgathoa be seeking?
Oh, I like that idea! Consider it taken ;-)
As for that revenge...IMHO, that could be a whole campaign of it's own. Deities plan for the ages and this happening may elicit a response in a decade or so - I'd have this piece of plot as an extra, not as a main focus :-)
Though that's rather valid way to look at it, I wonder how to dress that narrative up. Where does the Witch get her powers from when it's in limbo whether she accepts or rejects Urgathoa?
Giving full disclosure; mentioning Sarenrae at all is because I don't want to force the player to have an Evil Patron for his Witch, but giving him an option. Having the option to be either Urgathoa or nothing at all might work as a narrative, but seems iffy to me rules-wise.
Adding that to the mix would certainly work. As I was thinking about it, I figured that Urgathoa would keep giving power to the Witch to maintain the temptation.
I've been thinking and I think I'll go with keeping it vague instead of tying 'my' Witch to Urgathoa (or Sarenrae, for that matter).
Here's the idea. After the first stage of the battle in which Urgathoa's champion'll go down, there will be a brief respite. The Witch'll hopefully touch the body or have some other meaningful interaction, setting off a vision.
In this vision, she'll see a manifestation of the Disease Domain and some of the gods that reside there or use it - if pressed on information about what happened, I'll hand-wave it as a extra strong Communion of sorts, made possible by Urgathoa's special interest in her champion. Urgathoa uses this connection to start the second stage of the battle.
Hopefully the Witch'll take this as a implication that her Patron is Urgathoa or a other 'Disease Deity'. But I'll put a hint in the vision that it's not the case and that the Witch her special condition, e.g. the whole communion/patron thing, set this up.
The premise of Urgathoa being the patron of a healing witch is a bit iffy imo, unless the backstory of the character has something you can use to justify it or you already had some foreshadowing. That said, a deity being pissed that you offed one of its mortal champions is certainly fair game, and Urgathoa might try to take over/punish the patron of the witch even if she is not related to him/her.
The player more or less challenged me to mess with him, based on his Patron and chose the Healing patron because he figures that this Patron is the one I can do the least with. This is all in good fun; we both know we like this kind of thing. As I had a 'challenge accepted' moment, I went with the 'it takes one to know one' route. But bouncing this off of various Pathfinder has proven quite valuable :-)