Phantom-D wrote:
That ... shady raise by the god's will sounds like a way to metagame people. I always find it ironic that to avoid metagamers, most factions metagame. It is a catch 22 I'd wager.
Actually, its part of the lore for Ghaunadaur's Church. This god, unlike many of the others, actually plays a very close hand in his followers affairs, to the same extent Lloth does in hers with her "Punishments of Lloth". Its hardly metagaming but if we had to have a DM around every time we wanted to do a new initiation for what is essentially the same procedure every time, we'd be waiting forever. Since, nearly everyone but a few naysayers in the forums is for it, I see no problem with it. If DMs prefer to be there everytime, then so be it, but that's how we'd like to play it and by making it explicit up front, we say to players, this is what you should expect, if anything different is going to occur, contact a DM before we start to ritual...its really NOT that hard and saves everyone's time up front.
I'd imagine its the same with the Sharran's permadeath rules.