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Hi everyone,
I have just picked Divine Interference on my 11th level Life Oracle in an attempt to avoid the occasional crit from the enemies.
However, my GM has decided that negating a crit using a 1st level spell is too much, and since nowhere in the feat description it says I need to know the roll's result (but just whether the attack hits or not), he is going to roll in secret and just tell me if it's a hit or not.
Apart from using my IRL Sense Motive skills to read from his face when he has rolled a 20, are there any ways to know that in game too? I'm talking about divination spells, magical items or similar things.
Thank you all for your help.
I don't believe there is anyway to know from a character perspective if a successful attack threatens a critical or not.
It would be reasonable for the GM to allow you choose a different feat if the way you understood it to work and the GMs understanding of how it works differ.
I pity the player distrusts his GM. I pity the GM who abuses his power to the point of instilling distrust in his players.
That's no longer a collaborative gaming environment. Now it's an "us vs. him" game where the GM has all the unfair advantage and the players are just fools bowing before the GM's whim.
Or so it probably seems, at least in the worst of those situations.
I don't think divine Intervention is 100% useless in a game where the GM rolls fairly behind a screen. I trust my GMs (at least until they abuse that trust, at which time, I look for a more mature GM). As a GM, I never abuse that trust and my players know it. They've foiled any number of my great schemes with a lucky roll, or a save I missed, or a battle where a timely crit could have kept my master villain alive but, alas, I didn't roll that timely crit.
Let's all cooperate to have a fun gaming experience, rather than compete against each other. Unless, of course, that competition is how your gaming group likes to play - in which case, you probably SHOULD have a rule about all dice, including the GM's, being rolled in the open, in the spirit of fair competition.
Having said all that, I don't see a problem with an 11th level character finding a practical use for his level ONE spells that he probably never uses, probably goes to bed each night with all of them still un-cast. If that usage is to force me to re-roll a handful of attack rolls each session, no big deal. If he saves them for my critical threats, then good for him, he found a good way to use this ability.
Note: my reading of this ability doesn't say that the critical confirmation roll needs to be rolled before deciding to use this ability. All the player will know is that the attack roll was a hit, or was a miss, or was a critical threat. Then he decides to use the divine intervention or not. If he doesn't, then I will roll the critical confirmation roll and it's now too late to use divine intervention after that roll.
If I did determine (through play, not through initial assumption) that this ability seems overpowered, then I would house-rule it to the following: If I roll a critical threat, the PC has to use divine intervention before I try to confirm. If he does, and my re-roll is any kind of hit, the previous threat is still applied and I can now attempt to confirm it as a critical hit.
This would motivate him to use higher level spells to give me a bigger penalty on the re-roll or suffer a higher likelihood of critical hits because any successful hit on the re-roll will still be a threat.
As always, when I house-rule a character's ability, I discuss the house-rule and the reason with the player and always give him or her the option to immediately exchange that ability for another one.
I don't agree that the feat description assumes that.
It talks about reacting to hits, not critical hits.
Personally, I agree with the OPs GM that the feat is a bit overpowered if you know if the attack you are forcing a reroll on would threaten a critical or not, but at the same time it is probably underpowered if it doesn't.
Personally, I think a better balance would be not to know if it is a critcal, but remove the one per target per day clause, since spell slot are already a limited resource.
Honestly, I'm with your GM on not letting you know if the attack was a critical hit or not. You get to know whether or not it's a hit, and choose to negate it.
It doesn't negate its usefulness completely, though I will agree that it's most useful when you can use meta knowledge to negate crits.
My advice: Show DM_Blake's post.
If that doesn't work you could re-write the feat a little. One of the problems with the Divine Interference is that there's not really a reason to ever use higher level spells. My solution to this is to make the range of the feat dependant on the level of spell sacrificed.
Enemy within 10 feet - 1st level spell sacrificed.
Enemy within 20 feet - 2nd level spell sacrificed.
Enemy within 30 feet - 3rd level spell sacrificed.
...
Enemy within 90 feet - 9th level spell sacrificed.
This would still be a great feat to pick up, but you'd have less 1st level spells negating lance charges. It also makes the feat potentially more powerful, but at the cost of much more powerful spells.
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The problem with not knowing if the hit is a critical threat is that, by this level, enemies are already supposed to reliably hit the PCs, due to the well known hit-AC scaling issue (Fighter having 25 AC vs +24 to hit).
As a result, let's say the enemy hits and I choose to use this feat:
- if the hit was actually a critical threat, good for me. After re-rolling, it will still probably hit, but at least it's not a crit.
- most of the times, however, the hit is just a normal hit. After re-rolling, not only the enemy will still probably hit anyway, but I am giving them the opportunity to actually threaten a crit when they would have not done so if I had not used the feat in the first place.
In other words, this feat is generally useless if not detrimental, with only a minor chance of being actually useful.
And spending a feat + a spell + a swift action to do something, on average, useless, is not the way I like to play my games. True, the aleatory nature of the game still allows failure, but spending resources (feats, actions, spells, gp, ...) should on average lead to an advantageous outcome.
GW, look at it from the GM perspective, the way you you are reading it makes Rather a lot of the danger of combat go away, so the whole risk versus reward balance gets skewed. Your viewpoints are both valid, but limited.
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GW, look at it from the GM perspective, the way you you are reading it makes Rather a lot of the danger of combat go away, so the whole risk versus reward balance gets skewed. Your viewpoints are both valid, but limited.
Oh but I'm not complaining or criticizing my GM's viewpoint. I understand it, I'm just explaining why it makes the feat useless as a player.
I will, in fact, most probably swap it for something else (since we leveled up, but we have not played the new level yet). It's just sad that I had to be pretty much forced to take such decision.
Yeah, I get it, perhaps it a failure of vision on my part, I don't see a balanced approach to this one, condolences.
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There are many rerol powers in pathfinder.
Gnome racial trait, misfortune (oracle), luck domain, greater iron will. Many effect your own rolls (which you obviously get to know if it's a 1 or a 20). Furthermore, the roll twice abilities fall in to two broad categories: You must make this decision before you roll roll twice and reroll often with the clause before the result is revealed. Some gms say that the moment at nat 20 is rolled the result is revealed but there is miss chance, fortification special items etc. that mean that a crit is not a for gone conclusion so the ability should be able to work on crits in an open rolling situation.
Remember that these are powers that works on a dice rolls . There effect happens in a meta sense. Your characters are not aware of dice. You have the ability to alter probability and fate. This type of magic only makes sense if a character has a supernatural ability to sense of danger, a spidy sense if you will.
The problem with not knowing if the hit is a critical threat is that, by this level, enemies are already supposed to reliably hit the PCs, due to the well known hit-AC scaling issue (Fighter having 25 AC vs +24 to hit).
As a result, let's say the enemy hits and I choose to use this feat:
- if the hit was actually a critical threat, good for me. After re-rolling, it will still probably hit, but at least it's not a crit.
- most of the times, however, the hit is just a normal hit. After re-rolling, not only the enemy will still probably hit anyway, but I am giving them the opportunity to actually threaten a crit when they would have not done so if I had not used the feat in the first place.In other words, this feat is generally useless if not detrimental, with only a minor chance of being actually useful.
And spending a feat + a spell + a swift action to do something, on average, useless, is not the way I like to play my games. True, the aleatory nature of the game still allows failure, but spending resources (feats, actions, spells, gp, ...) should on average lead to an advantageous outcome.
Have you considered not using it on the first attack (against creatures that use iterative attacks)? Because then it's a lot less likely that the reroll would result in still having a successful attack.
Comparing to something like skill focus I feel this feat is still plenty useful, even if it's not useful in every situation. Forcing a reroll with a spell slot you basically never use can be handy.
I am unaware of any ability that would provide you, the player, knowledge of the GM's roll of a hidden dice.
However, there is room to create such a spell. I would discuss with your GM about doing so research and creating a custom spell that would provide your character fore-knowledge of when an ally is in mortal danger in order to allow you to use Divine Interference appropriately.
This solves several issues, the first of which is that it does not change or challenge the wording of the feat. Second, while it allows you to negate the occasional crit you are required to have cast an additional spell with the downside of that spell having little value beyond being a combination piece. Finally, it creates an interesting design space where you can try to learn other immediate action usable abilities to try and interfere with combat.
Something along the lines of...
"Foretell Danger"
Oracle 4
Standard Action
Divination
DF, V, S
Range: Personal/
Target: You
Duration: 1/round per level
You are provided with brief glimpses of oncoming danger coming from any target of which you are aware. For the duration of this spell, you are informed whenever an ally within 30ft would be threatened with a critical hit.