After hearing about Cassandra from the Trojan war, I’ve wanted to play an oracle that nobody believes. And I was so excited to see that there’s a supernatural gift for that! But my question is, how do you role play that? Do the other players have their players ignore what they know? Am I supposed to speak in half truths? Does the DM tell me half truths? Any ideas on how to actually play this would be great.
I played in a group where one of our party members was afflicted with this curse - every word of prophecy he said was true, but the party never believed him. We roleplayed it by the DM giving the player perfect prophecy which the character relayed to us, and we, as both players and characters, just assumed their information was wrong.
This only worked because we were all really good at avoiding metagaming and capable of divorcing what we heard from what we would base actions on. Many - and possibly most - parties cannot do that very well.
A better system for the majority of groups would be for the DM to give you the perfect prophecy, so your character can base actions on their correct knowledge, but then you relay not what you say, but false information the players hear. So, if you have a prophecy that there will be a war between Florin and Guilder, you would know that, but you might tell the party “I auger that Spain and Florin shall ally.” You’ll want to try avoiding just speaking in opposites, or then your party can easily reverse engineer the meta knowledge.
There might be other solutions which work well for your group - think about what they would do with meta knowledge and try to tailor something that will work for your group in particular.
It’s a good concept, but will be tough to pull off in a group. Since, yes, it seems like it will require the other players to have their characters ignore your warnings. So you end up telling other people how to play their characters, kind of, which is an obvious no-no. And it forces any conversation you have with another character to, on some level, be about you and them having to support your personal story. Now, some tables might be really into that, you know your group better than we do. If you think they’ll like it, go for it.
Maybe instead, your party is on on it. The wider world doesn’t believe you, but your friends have learned to trust you. You still kind of put the DM in a box, but that might be something they can manage.
Seconding what Xalthu said. The concept entails taking agency from other players. I wouldn't enjoy playing that way.
There is another way around... I think the idea could work if you arrange it like this: when the character casts divination, augury, or a similar spell, the DM passes you written true prophecy. However, you then start a game of taboo where you can't say anything which is written on the card. That setup would create a good give-and-take relationship where the DM can add more forbidden words to the card to make some things more difficult to try to communicate, but also they haven't prevented you from making the attempt.
I've had some semi-related thoughts since the Fate domain from the recent UA piqued my interest. Those thoughts have been mostly around a somewhat crazy sounding character who declares himself to be a seer, prophet, oracle, etc but presents himself in such a manner that doesn't inspire others to place much confidence in his sanity, let alone his divinatory prowess. If you specifically want to be always right, that's going to obviously require the DM to be in on it, possibly by passing you secret notes, but if you're obviously correct several times any disbelief on the party's part is going to start fading regardless of how you act in character. So if others not believing you is important, you should at the very least present any truths you know in a confusing manner or otherwise in a way that lends itself to misinterpretation. Or you could ask the DM to just give you misleading or confusing information that is technically true for your prophecies. Either way this approach could be described as "being right about the wrong thing" by somehow missing the important points. After a while, depending on how you and your party play it, the other PCs might realize what's happening and regard you as naturally gifted but practically incompetent resulting in them trying to sift through your mad ramblings to find the seed of truth obfuscated within.
Or you could just play a character focused on prophesy and try to be right and play it by ear. While many folks would immediately think of a Diviner wizard, the interesting thing about codified prophetic magic in 5e is that most of it is not available to wizards. The closest thing they do get is contact other plane which really doesn't give you anything that's actually knowledge of the future; you get to very briefly interview an otherworldly being that gives one word answers (your DM might allow you to contact a creature that actually can see the future, but nothing in the spell description requires it). The actually prophetic spells are all for clerics and there really aren't many of them; you're looking at augury (level 2 spell), divination (4th level), and maybe commune (5th level). The UA Fate domain I mentioned has some thematic stuff for that but really only gives you a bonus casting of augury that also grants a penalty negation for accuracy on casting those spells multiple times per day. So it's useful within the limited scope of prophecy spells but doesn't really expand the scope.
The Hermit background's feature is along those lines. I think you just have to roleplay your character as slightly deranged and spew out prophesies that are obviously false / unhinged occasionally.
After hearing about Cassandra from the Trojan war, I’ve wanted to play an oracle that nobody believes. And I was so excited to see that there’s a supernatural gift for that! But my question is, how do you role play that? Do the other players have their players ignore what they know? Am I supposed to speak in half truths? Does the DM tell me half truths? Any ideas on how to actually play this would be great.
Others have already pointed out some of the pitfalls of this concept, but I do think it could be fun
If you don't want to go the full party RP route of simply having every character dismiss your warnings, even when the players know there's something to them, the easiest way to pull it off might be to create a chaotically-inclined character that gives the rest of the party little reason to trust that their "prophesies" are anything more than a gag or a scam. Trickster domain cleric is the obvious direction, but you could also play around with the "con artist who suddenly really has the powers they only pretended to have before" trope with a Charlatan background and a magically inclined class that can be given an oracular flavor -- Divination wizard, College of Spirits bard, any of a handful of warlock patrons, etc
Another route, presuming you get the DM to buy in on it, is to leave you as in the dark as everyone else. Have the DM give you your prophesies in the form of cryptic puzzles and riddles that the party all need to figure out together, and in time to get any use out of them. Of course, that's more work for the DM, and it's an idea better suited if the 'oracle' side of your character makes only infrequent appearances
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
After hearing about Cassandra from the Trojan war, I’ve wanted to play an oracle that nobody believes. And I was so excited to see that there’s a supernatural gift for that! But my question is, how do you role play that? Do the other players have their players ignore what they know? Am I supposed to speak in half truths? Does the DM tell me half truths? Any ideas on how to actually play this would be great.
Others have already pointed out some of the pitfalls of this concept, but I do think it could be fun
If you don't want to go the full party RP route of simply having every character dismiss your warnings, even when the players know there's something to them, the easiest way to pull it off might be to create a chaotically-inclined character that gives the rest of the party little reason to trust that their "prophesies" are anything more than a gag or a scam. Trickster domain cleric is the obvious direction, but you could also play around with the "con artist who suddenly really has the powers they only pretended to have before" trope with a Charlatan background and a magically inclined class that can be given an oracular flavor -- Divination wizard, College of Spirits bard, any of a handful of warlock patrons, etc
Yup. That's it. Dirk Gently. Not the one with Elijah Wood. Stephen Magnum or earlier.
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After hearing about Cassandra from the Trojan war, I’ve wanted to play an oracle that nobody believes. And I was so excited to see that there’s a supernatural gift for that! But my question is, how do you role play that? Do the other players have their players ignore what they know? Am I supposed to speak in half truths? Does the DM tell me half truths? Any ideas on how to actually play this would be great.
I played in a group where one of our party members was afflicted with this curse - every word of prophecy he said was true, but the party never believed him. We roleplayed it by the DM giving the player perfect prophecy which the character relayed to us, and we, as both players and characters, just assumed their information was wrong.
This only worked because we were all really good at avoiding metagaming and capable of divorcing what we heard from what we would base actions on. Many - and possibly most - parties cannot do that very well.
A better system for the majority of groups would be for the DM to give you the perfect prophecy, so your character can base actions on their correct knowledge, but then you relay not what you say, but false information the players hear. So, if you have a prophecy that there will be a war between Florin and Guilder, you would know that, but you might tell the party “I auger that Spain and Florin shall ally.” You’ll want to try avoiding just speaking in opposites, or then your party can easily reverse engineer the meta knowledge.
There might be other solutions which work well for your group - think about what they would do with meta knowledge and try to tailor something that will work for your group in particular.
It’s a good concept, but will be tough to pull off in a group. Since, yes, it seems like it will require the other players to have their characters ignore your warnings. So you end up telling other people how to play their characters, kind of, which is an obvious no-no. And it forces any conversation you have with another character to, on some level, be about you and them having to support your personal story. Now, some tables might be really into that, you know your group better than we do. If you think they’ll like it, go for it.
Maybe instead, your party is on on it. The wider world doesn’t believe you, but your friends have learned to trust you. You still kind of put the DM in a box, but that might be something they can manage.
Seconding what Xalthu said. The concept entails taking agency from other players. I wouldn't enjoy playing that way.
There is another way around... I think the idea could work if you arrange it like this: when the character casts divination, augury, or a similar spell, the DM passes you written true prophecy. However, you then start a game of taboo where you can't say anything which is written on the card. That setup would create a good give-and-take relationship where the DM can add more forbidden words to the card to make some things more difficult to try to communicate, but also they haven't prevented you from making the attempt.
I've had some semi-related thoughts since the Fate domain from the recent UA piqued my interest. Those thoughts have been mostly around a somewhat crazy sounding character who declares himself to be a seer, prophet, oracle, etc but presents himself in such a manner that doesn't inspire others to place much confidence in his sanity, let alone his divinatory prowess. If you specifically want to be always right, that's going to obviously require the DM to be in on it, possibly by passing you secret notes, but if you're obviously correct several times any disbelief on the party's part is going to start fading regardless of how you act in character. So if others not believing you is important, you should at the very least present any truths you know in a confusing manner or otherwise in a way that lends itself to misinterpretation. Or you could ask the DM to just give you misleading or confusing information that is technically true for your prophecies. Either way this approach could be described as "being right about the wrong thing" by somehow missing the important points. After a while, depending on how you and your party play it, the other PCs might realize what's happening and regard you as naturally gifted but practically incompetent resulting in them trying to sift through your mad ramblings to find the seed of truth obfuscated within.
Or you could just play a character focused on prophesy and try to be right and play it by ear. While many folks would immediately think of a Diviner wizard, the interesting thing about codified prophetic magic in 5e is that most of it is not available to wizards. The closest thing they do get is contact other plane which really doesn't give you anything that's actually knowledge of the future; you get to very briefly interview an otherworldly being that gives one word answers (your DM might allow you to contact a creature that actually can see the future, but nothing in the spell description requires it). The actually prophetic spells are all for clerics and there really aren't many of them; you're looking at augury (level 2 spell), divination (4th level), and maybe commune (5th level). The UA Fate domain I mentioned has some thematic stuff for that but really only gives you a bonus casting of augury that also grants a penalty negation for accuracy on casting those spells multiple times per day. So it's useful within the limited scope of prophecy spells but doesn't really expand the scope.
The Hermit background's feature is along those lines. I think you just have to roleplay your character as slightly deranged and spew out prophesies that are obviously false / unhinged occasionally.
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Others have already pointed out some of the pitfalls of this concept, but I do think it could be fun
If you don't want to go the full party RP route of simply having every character dismiss your warnings, even when the players know there's something to them, the easiest way to pull it off might be to create a chaotically-inclined character that gives the rest of the party little reason to trust that their "prophesies" are anything more than a gag or a scam. Trickster domain cleric is the obvious direction, but you could also play around with the "con artist who suddenly really has the powers they only pretended to have before" trope with a Charlatan background and a magically inclined class that can be given an oracular flavor -- Divination wizard, College of Spirits bard, any of a handful of warlock patrons, etc
Another route, presuming you get the DM to buy in on it, is to leave you as in the dark as everyone else. Have the DM give you your prophesies in the form of cryptic puzzles and riddles that the party all need to figure out together, and in time to get any use out of them. Of course, that's more work for the DM, and it's an idea better suited if the 'oracle' side of your character makes only infrequent appearances
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Yup. That's it. Dirk Gently. Not the one with Elijah Wood. Stephen Magnum or earlier.