smoggyfogbottom said:                                            
                                               
                               It could be something simpler than that
though since this isn’t just a narrative, but also a D&D game – I
know that when I DM if a player has their character act out a certain
way I try to have things in the world react in a way that validates
their role playing. example, scanlan is depressed/feeling useless, matt
makes him one of the most important figures in finally banishing vecna. I
suppose this is meta reasoning for what happened, but that’s my initial
thought.                             

…Because Scanlan was so useless in the last fight against Vecna, is always completely irrelevant to any and all combat encounters, and his depression was totes tied to how people didn’t appreciate his songs and battle skills before. Never has he ever influenced the outcome of a battle, and it was barely even noticed when his skill pool wasn’t available.

If you want to see validating the players, look at the “never forget how important you are to them” line, which could have come from any and all gods ever. Scanlan explicitly complained about only being valued for his skills and combat abilities before, what he needs is social validation. Which he could have gotten from any god.

Also Matt is absolutely not the kind of DM to sacrifice the narrative to validate his players… In ways they don’t even need validation in.