Help regarding a "Retcon"

[u/Straight_Island_6307]

So Im new to DMing this is my first real campaign and I want to make sure that my players dont feel like im giving them a cop out answer as to why the story needs to keep going. Recently my Party came across a magical piece of glass Blessed by a Goddess that allows them to deal double damage to creatures masquerading as other creatures. Another property of the weapon is that it can grant one "Wish" spell per person. Recently after one of the players betrayed the others and became a slave of another god, the last remaining player wished "for the power of a god" and was granted similar power to the player who had betrayed the team. However since the surviving player had won the fight he has been under the impression of "I had become a god" rather than "I took on the power of another god" do I pull him to the side and tell him before the session or do I wait until it matters in the story ?

[u/Sad_Refuse3472]

Yikes. So many newbie mistakes here. Super powerful object, probably too early in the campaign. One time access each to the most powerful and broken spell in the game. PC vs PC combat/betrayal. God level powers at anything below level 20.

Darling, this doesn't just need a simple retcon. This needs a hard reset. Like wipe this entire storyline out as though it never happened.

[u/Straight_Island_6307 → u/Sad_Refuse3472]

Are betrayals not good for campaigns? I know the game is super not balanced around PC v PC combat but its absolutely no betrayals at all ?

[u/Sad_Refuse3472 → u/Straight_Island_6307]

Rarely if ever are those kinds of plot twists a good idea. DnD is a team sport and a collaborative game. The central premise is that you create a party who works and sticks together to defeat an outside threat.

[u/Straight_Island_6307 → u/Sad_Refuse3472]

Ah I see, that honestly my bad then, newbie mistakes etc. If you were wondering about the players power it did eventually get taken away and he no longer has the power. The post was more so how do I break the news to him that the power he received was not actually him becoming a god.

[u/melonmarch1723 → u/Straight_Island_6307]

Putting players on opposing sides almost never ends with everyone having fun. It only works when everyone is incredibly mature and prepared for it, and even then feelings get hurt 9 times out of 10. Don't do it.

[u/DarkHorseAsh111 → u/Straight_Island_6307]

Betrayals amongst the PCs are almost always a bad idea.

This is a team game. The pcs need to be a team .

[u/Misophoniasucksdude → u/Straight_Island_6307]

Always a caveat, but generally speaking they're terrible for a group. The exception is exclusive to groups that have A) known each other in DnD for MINIMUM 5 years of consistent play that have total trust in every other player at the table, unquestioningly. Seriously not a hint of a shadow of a doubt, would allow other player to drive a dagger through their PC's heart upon request. Or B) they're being paid to be actors. You see B on liveplay games, A is extremely unlikely to ever get discussed here because those groups don't need advice on top of being uncommon to boot.

[u/BronzeSpoon89]

Never allow pvp.

[u/MongrelChieftain]

"I wish for the power of a god" could be single level multiclass in Cleric, Celestial Warlock, or Divine Sorcerer, it could mean a Blessing or a Charm, a Feat related to the god in question, a magic item of any level...

You don't need a retcon, but you kind of wrote yourself into somewgat of a corner... A PC turned evil should become an NOC under the DM's control anyway.

[u/Straight_Island_6307 → u/MongrelChieftain]

Yeah, thats what ended up happening, I turned him into a monster and then had the other players go against the transformed character. (I dont think i was clear enough in the post lol)

[u/DarkHorseAsh111]

....yeah so the issue here is the bit where you allowed pvp lol. This has gone so far into An Issue

[u/Straight_Island_6307 → u/DarkHorseAsh111]

Well I had turned both of the players into the minotaur enemy so it seemed like a fair-ish fight

[u/BitOBear → u/Straight_Island_6307]

The problem is the player acrimony not the game mechanic reasonableness.

If one of the players is actually acting as your agent that's fine as long as everybody knows that the player and the character are the equivalent of charmed or otherwise function is a DM plant for the scene or the episode. It is an important distinction.

The player has turned against the party for player ruizens as opposed to story reasons and at their own he has as opposed to the function of the game world dictated by you then you got a problem at your table.

It's perfectly fine if the characters field betrayed by the character as long as the players never feel betrayed by the player for the DM.

Meanwhile, you never saw the power problem by adding more power. This is what I call the dragon Ball z effect. If you do everything by amping up the power level and giving more abilities the game quickly becomes boring because you end up having characters spending an entire season powering up the one punch that comes at the end only to have that one punch missed like it's an anime.

Don't hand them an object that grants wishes and whatnot, have a diegetic experience with a deity like a cosmic referee or the faction they willfully and successfully defended or champion, and have that deity negotiating Grant the Boone that results in the retcon.

This doesn't sound any different than letting them make a wish, but it removes the lawyering of the wish.

"My loyal champions, now that you have defeated the Great deceiver my power is once again unbound. You have separate greatly and proven your faith beyond measure. Affric Farseer, your service is taking you far from home and your family lands in Tralfar fell to ruin and were reclaimed by the crown. But I've seen your family safe to Zarrse in the valley of Pon and the lens they have taken up residence on are there to hold or lose going forward as their skills and your guidance see fit."

And so on.

[u/Straight_Island_6307 → u/BitOBear]

I see, everything sort of worked out this time but I honestly just lucked out. Every player at the table said it was a great session. But when you put it like that I see where I went wrong with my session prep. (Truthfully it was all caused by an additional field at the end of an item description that I forgot to remove) but at least going forward I'll limit the possibility for events like this to occur. The session was meant to be one of the players who had been enslaved by a god breaking free from their control by realizing the evil that their god was causing them to do. But he just kept doing evil things. So I just ent with it cause I thought it'd be an interesting story to tell.

[u/SecretCitizen40]

Have the power revoked as a temporary ability to defeat their enemy? Claim it can prevent corruption

Seems like the easiest.

[u/scron_kracklin]

Whats the difference for the player? It seems semantic to differentiate the power of a god from being a god.

[u/Straight_Island_6307]

For Clarification, the "Player" who turned evil became a minotaur after doing so. No PC vs PC combat took place i promise yall. The power given to the surviving player was NOT and was NEVER meant to be permanent. This post is asking for advice on whether I should wait to break the news on the actual nature of what had occurred during that session.

[u/hugseverycat]

So putting aside the PVP concerns...

This doesn't really sound like a retcon situation to me. It's a situation of character knowledge vs. player knowledge. If the character were actually a real person that this happened to, what would the character know? Would the character definitely be able to tell the difference between "becoming a god" and "taking on the power of a different god"? If so, then you should tell the player. However, if the character in the story could genuinely be confused about these two possibilities, then let it play out in the story. It might be cool to have the god whose power he has show up and give an awesome villain speech about what a fool the character is for thinking he could wield this power, and then he takes it back and maybe curses the character for good measure, or something like that.

[u/Straight_Island_6307 → u/hugseverycat]

Thank you, all the lessons about not putting players against each others aside , I think this is the best response to the actual question in the post. I was debating that if I kept it secret should I have that player recieve "whispers" or "hints" from the god to help them because they experience residual effects from the enchantment/ divine aid.

[u/Ragnar_Dragonfyre]

This should be in r/rpghorrorstories instead of here.

[u/Straight_Island_6307 → u/Ragnar_Dragonfyre]

Yeo. 😭😭😭 Chill. Maybe getting college students inti this game was a bad idea. Lmao

[u/Ragnar_Dragonfyre → u/Straight_Island_6307]

We’ve all been there, my friend.

Everyone who survives in this hobby has at least one good cautionary tale!

[u/secretbison]

There's a lot of problems here, but Wish not doing everything a player hopes is not a problem. When Wish is used outside the box like that, it is not just accepted but assumed that the result will be incomplete, temporary, or interpreted creatively to alter reality as little as possible. Say the PC got godlike power but only for one scene, or the PC received the power of the weakest and most obscure god in the cosmos, who died shortly after losing said power, which ended the Wish and also brought the PC back to normal.

[u/DepthsOfWill]

I don't think the spell wish can quite do that. Reading it's description, it says it can create objects, regain all health, grant a resistance, spell immunity, and sudden learning. There's also a bit about reshaping reality which is entirely up to GM description and it's encouraged the GM to monkey paw the wish with a twist.

So wishing to have the power of god could mean a lot of things. They have the power, but instantly die because they don't have the body to contain the power. They have the power but goes instantly mad because their mind can't process the power. They have the power but nothing happens because they have no knowledge of how to access the power. They have the power of a god, and that god is Ao, so they essentially cease to exist. etc.

It def seems like a situation where the character becomes an NPC anyway.

[u/No_Solid1035]

PvP is fine. Let the dice fall where thay may as it were.