Death in 4th Edition [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

EvilElitest

2008-02-17, 10:36 PM

Because they have players in the real world who have invested substantial time in their characters and generally would prefer to play a system where they don't lose them because of a few bad die rolls, so if WotC didn't give them a way to come back from the dead, they'll take their $$$ elsewhere. That is the only reason the ability to come back from the dead exists in D&D, the end, fullstop, and it doesn't apply to NPCs at all.

1. That isn't the only reason, you can have fantasy with resurrection
2. Um, how is this being a money making tool by WOTC a good thing?
3. personally i like the fact that i can die in D&D, it makes me more careful and my character won't don't stupid things because of a real risk of dying. But if i make a bad roll or do something stupid and die, well, I did make a bad roll and do something stupid, it is what happens

Conversely, allowing NPCs to come back from the dead easily can cripple storytelling. Most DMs, in my experience, do exactly what is suggested here -- they gloss over it, and rarely bring up even the possibility of NPCs coming back from the dead unless it is central to the plot. And no setting in D&D, nor any DM I've ever seen, has ever even started to consider what impact the widespread use of resurrection could have on society, culture, and religion -- remember, in the D&D world, dying too soon is a poor person's problem. Do you honestly think that a world that worked like that could look anything even remotely like our own?

1. Hinders Story telling only if you have a railroaded story line
2. Why not? IN my games i've made raising from the dead a big deal. FR does somewhat, and Dragon magazine offered theories on how to use it.
3. explain to me why half a dozen dudes come back from the dead on a regular basis and nobody else does

Now, yes, you also want to avoid having a world where the difference between the way NPCs and PCs are treated is too obvious, or that becomes unrealistic, too. But suggesting that typical NPCs (even wealthy ones) should be able to come back at anything even remotely approaching the rate PCs use is flatly absurd; there is no way a world like that could be modelled believably.
why not?

Either way you're just winking at the players and glossing over the point to keep the game running smoothly. It sounds like many of the changes here (as far as things have been changed) are intended to make the existing nod-and-wink system we have now easier to stomach by making coming back from the dead slightly harder overall (so it's easier to accept that more NPCs don't have access to it.)

except there is not in world reason for why these dudes can come back from teh dead and nobody else does. It is like WOW ironically enough, nobody mentions the fact that the PCs can come back from the dead and we move on.

Basically, I don't think that this paragraph heralds a huge change. Everyone plays this way already; they just don't officially acknowledge it.
That is a subjective statement, i don't play that way, other people i know don't play this way,

Aquillion is correct; Paragon and Epic Levels still act the exact same as they do in third ed, in practice if not theory. And they can theoretically work the exact same, since GMs are, of course, /still given the option to Raise dead NPCs.

except that isn't the aim of the game.

Of course, the whole purpose of the thread is for EE to find ideologues, so this post is basically a wast

Bitter aren't you Rutee, stop wasting time with personal attacks, this is borderline flaming already

from
EE

Emperor Tippy

2008-02-17, 10:37 PM

EvilElitest

2008-02-17, 10:40 PM

Hey Tippy, as a long time playing and one of the biggest 3E knowledge players, what do you think about 4E compared to 3E in this regard? Or 4E in general?
from
EE

Jack Zander

2008-02-17, 10:40 PM

You come back at level 11 in 3rd ed (Raise Dead is level 5, right?), and you can come back at level 11 in 4th ed (And theoretically not before then, which is, in fact, /not/ conducive to a little league mentality), and you can come back easily from 21+ (Which is after you get True Res in 3rd ed).

5th Level spells are available at 9th level.

tyckspoon

2008-02-17, 10:49 PM

Meh. More stupidity in 4th ed I suppose.

Death should either be a very big deal for everybody, involved divine intervention or epic cross planar quests to bring people back, or very easy for everybody. Third Edition, by RAW, went with the second approach. No one who wants to come back and can scrape together the funds stays dead.

If I'm extrapolating correctly from what the first post quoted, 4E is going with the first option this time. Resurrection involves 'more than just a spell and a financial transaction', which implies that you're getting a boost from some other force in order to get bought back to life. The reason only a small percentage of people can get rezzed would be because only a small percentage of people ever do great enough deeds and become powerful enough to command the attention of whatever powers are enabling the resurrection.

It also sounds like it will, in practice, work almost exactly the same way 3rd Ed deaths do. Low levels? Roll a new character, it's easier than putting together 5,000 gp worh of diamonds and hunting down a sufficiently high-level cleric to cast a Raise. Mid levels, money is starting to flow and you can probably cast the Raise yourself, but the level loss hurts. High levels, bind an Efreet to Wish up a handful of diamonds, cast True Res, move on.

Cuddly

2008-02-17, 10:51 PM

If I'm extrapolating correctly from what the first post quoted, 4E is going with the first option this time. Resurrection involves 'more than just a spell and a financial transaction', which implies that you're getting a boost from some other force in order to get bought back to life. The reason only a small percentage of people can get rezzed would be because only a small percentage of people ever do great enough deeds and become powerful enough to command the attention of whatever powers are enabling the resurrection.

It also sounds like it will, in practice, work almost exactly the same way 3rd Ed deaths do. Low levels? Roll a new character, it's easier than putting together 5,000 gp worh of diamonds and hunting down a sufficiently high-level cleric to cast a Raise. Mid levels, money is starting to flow and you can probably cast the Raise yourself, but the level loss hurts. High levels, bind an Efreet to Wish up a handful of diamonds, cast True Res, move on.

Exactly what I'm thinking.

Rutee

2008-02-17, 10:52 PM

1. That isn't the only reason, you can have fantasy with resurrection
2. Um, how is this being a money making tool by WOTC a good thing?
3. personally i like the fact that i can die in D&D, it makes me more careful and my character won't don't stupid things because of a real risk of dying. But if i make a bad roll or do something stupid and die, well, I did make a bad roll and do something stupid, it is what happens
1. That's the primary reason. Not the only one, but the primary one.
2. Are you not aware that a business' primary concern is "BOY HOWDY WE SURE DO LIKE MONEY"? IT's the status quo.
3. Okay. And you can't really expect to come back in 3e until level 11. This is the same level at which point you can expect to come back in 4e. Where's the change, /in this regard/.

1. Hinders Story telling only if you have a railroaded story line
2. Why not? IN my games i've made raising from the dead a big deal. FR does somewhat, and Dragon magazine offered theories on how to use it.
3. explain to me why half a dozen dudes come back from the dead on a regular basis and nobody else does
1. No, actually, it hinders story no matter how you slice it. The party now has to take /screen/ time for no other purpose but to ravage the corpse or use other guaranteed anti-res tactics (Such as Trap the Soul, or whatever it is that you use). It's got /nothing/ to do in rail roads.
2. Have you run Epic or Level 17+ games? Because the Core makes Death, once one has True Res, a matter of finding a 20k GP Diamond (Or was it 2k?) As is, they're keeping the cost to coming back at level 11 that exists now.
3. That's a good question; Why is the party dying on a regular basis?

except there is not in world reason for why these dudes can come back from teh dead and nobody else does. It is like WOW ironically enough, nobody mentions the fact that the PCs can come back from the dead and we move on.
Here's the meta reason that NPCs don't make a habit of coming back from the dead:
Because it's not an important plot point most of the time. All forcing a true kill does is waste the party's time. There's something of an implicit social contract going, OOCly; Your party doesn't mutilate every corpse/soul beyond resurrection, and the DM only resurrects people who should be for story reasons. Everyone wins this way, when their goals are to get on with the story, because it cuts out an uninteresting aspect (as far as the story's concerned). They also win when they're gamists, because it's not difficult to bind a soul/mutilate a corpse, just annoying and detracts from the hack n' slash.

Your goal isn't to tell a story, or hack n' slash. That's fine. For your party, it very well may work best to force players to kill in ways that forestall rezzing. Just understand that your way isn't everyone's.

That is a subjective statement, i don't play that way, other people i know don't play this way,
Your argument is steeped in subjective statements.

except that isn't the aim of the game.
What isn't the aim of the game? All I said was that it's working the same in 4th ed as it does in 3rd. Do you mean thread? Because I was referring, in that post, to the difficulty in resurrection.

Bitter aren't you Rutee, stop wasting time with personal attacks, this is borderline flaming already
In no dimension or semantic sense is "You're looking for people who agree with you" a personal attack.

5th Level spells are available at 9th level.
Oh, right. That would further damage that poster's claim of the game becoming 'easier' then, as resurrection si getting harder.

Cuddly

2008-02-17, 10:55 PM

3. That's a good question; Why is the party dying on a regular basis?

Uh, because of massive damage, save-or-dies, and rolling ones = failure?
High level play, people die more frequently, because it's less of a hassle, and just about every monster has a Su or SLA or Sp or Spells that = die die die!!.

Sstoopidtallkid

2008-02-17, 10:57 PM

@ Rutee
The objection is the same ones that it has been since I started following this. I want my play to feel like I am in a living world, not a game created for my amusement. This update reflects the attitude that the setting is a game created solely for my amusement, therefore, I don't like it. You want a story, we want a world, and that fundamental clash of goals is why this debate is useless.

Rutee

2008-02-17, 10:57 PM

I understood that they were trying to scale those back though. Not that they'll succeed, I'm sure. It's not like they couldn't tell between 2nd ed and 3rd. But let's assume, for a moment, that those are less common, because 4th ed is finally starting to figure out what a retributive counter is, and is hopefully going to find ways to make a straight up fight difficult without Save or TPK spells.

@ Rutee
The objection is the same ones that it has been since I started following this. I want my play to feel like I am in a living world, not a game created for my amusement. This update reflects the attitude that the setting is a game created solely for my amusement, therefore, I don't like it. You want a story, we want a world, and that fundamental clash of goals is why this debate is useless.
Too true. I'm trying (And probably failing) to explain a different viewpoint to EE, not really change anyone's minds. I figure people know their own tastes better then I do.

Emperor Tippy

2008-02-17, 10:58 PM

Hey Tippy, as a long time playing and one of the biggest 3E knowledge players, what do you think about 4E compared to 3E in this regard? Or 4E in general?
from
EE

I have taken a wait and see approach to 4e. If someone links me to a thread about it I'll take a look but I don't follow its development. When the books come out I'll take a look at them and see what its actually like.

Now based on what I have seen so far I don't really like it.

Granted I'm a person who had few problems with 3.5 and actually thought that a lot of the problems with it came from preconceptions and setting problems.

Take the complaints about death being meaningless in high level play in 3.5. I looked at the rules and said "Ok, so what does death being meaningless do to the base world." and if I liked what it did I kept it as is, if not I changed it.

A lot of the problems with save or die spells are based on the preconception that death is meaningful. It's not in RAW play. You should expect any given player to die at least once every 5 encounters at level 20. And they should be back in the fight within 48 hours. A TPK should be expected to occur once every 20 fights or so. And again, with proper player planning they should be back up within a week. If you play with death being meaningful then the save or die spells become unbalanced.

But my biggest complaint about 3.5 has to do with the magic system being tacked on to the settings. When coming up with the vanilla setting (Greyhawk) WotC should have chucked all preconceptions and looked at what a world with magic as it is in 3.5 would look like. Teleportation Circles change everything. And WotC hasn't even come up with a reasonable explanation for why magic has no real impact on the basic world structure.

Or take the XP system. When someone can become a demigod capable of taking out entire armies single handedly inside of 2 years by just killing things you have to wonder why these people are rare. Your average solider veteran should be level 15-20. At 1 training bout against an equally skilled fighter every day the veteran should level every 5 wins or so. With a bit of luck you should go from new recruit to level 20 inside a year.

-------
So I see 4e as a change that could fix a lot of the problems with D&D but I am not at all hopeful that it actually will fix those problems. And seeing as how I am currently writing 2 complete settings based on the 3.5 rules I am in no particular hurry to switch over.

Cuddly

2008-02-17, 10:59 PM

sikyon

2008-02-17, 11:03 PM

I don't mind it.

PC's are special, so they get rezzed. NPC's are "NOT player characters" so they don't. I don't see a problem with it. I enjoy keeping my characters, I don't enjoy them going splat thanks to a few bad rolls.

Honestly, no problem here for me. If I wanted something realistic, I'd go back to real life. You ever see a "chore simulator (in b4 Diablo)?"

Rutee

2008-02-17, 11:03 PM

Jayngfet

2008-02-17, 11:07 PM

the only drastic difference I see here is no npc ressurection normally anybody with the cash could see a high level cleric could get rezzed with about 6000g, you could even get discounts for doing good deeds for the church in question or being a cleric of said church.

now no rich npc or king can avoid assasination and no one can ressurect witnesses to a robbery.

Emperor Tippy

2008-02-17, 11:09 PM

Emperor Tippy: It doesn't appear you'll like 4e then. It doesn't seem to suit your tastes, based on that post, and the current trends we can observe. Then again, neither does 3e, seemingly, so I suppose you /would/ need to wait and see, wouldn't you?

Cuddly: Do you believe that means that, in the future, there will be even fewer Save or Die effects, or were you just throwing that out there?

Actually, 3.5's rules suite my tastes just fine. The published settings and most players preconceptions are what don't really suit my tastes.

Now in 4th ed, if the rules don't force any specific system on me then I will look at it and see how the RAW stands up, without looking at fluff. If the RAW is better for my purposes (simulating a world that the PC's happen to do things in) then I will switch. If the RAW is better for telling a story where the PC's are the center of attention and always win (like most video games) then I will avoid switching over for as long as possible.

Either way I will still get the books, harddrive space is cheap. But whether or not I use them is another story. And 4th edition would have to be amazing for me to consider it worth spending money on.

Catch

2008-02-17, 11:10 PM

Being raised from the dead available only to hero and it is more than just a spell and a financial transaction. NPCs, both good and evil, don't normally come back to life unless the DM has a good reason.

Here's what I think is important, and, contrary to the majority of discontented folk, pleasing. Firstly, I think death in D&D has always been this way, more or less, in that player characters are supposed to be far more durable than common folk because, oddly enough, they aren't common folk. What makes a hero is the ability to face challenges that would be insurmountable--and lethal--to an average person, hence why they can stave off the Reaper longer.

As far as the overall increase in survivability is concerned, it's been stated elsewhere--and forgive me for not having a quote handy--that the math in 4e has changed significantly to make levels 1-30 flow more smoothly in terms of combat, to mirror the general balance of levels 7-14 in 3.5. That is, at low levels, a player won't drop into the negatives from falling down the stairs and at high levels, players will be adequately challenged rather than failing rolls only 5% of the time.

So, this way, it's harder for characters to die when cheating death is far more difficult, yet from the brief quotation, I get the feeling that while player death will be less sporadic and related to capricious dice rolls, player death will also have more significance. As was said, reversing death should be more than just a spell and a financial transaction, which was a lousy dynamic in the first place. In 3.5, you're either too broke to afford a revival or you're slightly inconvenienced by taking one too many arrows, with very little middle ground in between. Epic levels are different, obviously, and death generally should be a speed bump for near-immortals, and that's not really a deviation from 3.5, either.

All in all, the only real difference I'm seeing is that low-level players don't have to worry nearly as much and mid-to-high level characters won't be re-donning the mortal coil as flippantly anymore. It's harder to die, true, but unless you're epic, it's harder to come back from. Maybe I'm just not seeing what all the fuss is about.

Rutee

2008-02-17, 11:11 PM

Now in 4th ed, if the rules don't force any specific system on me then I will look at it and see how the RAW stands up, without looking at fluff. If the RAW is better for my purposes (simulating a world that the PC's happen to do things in) then I will switch. If the RAW is better for telling a story where the PC's are the center of attention and always win (like most fiction) then I will avoid switching over for as long as possible.

Fixed for accuracy.

At any rate, no, it doesn't appear to be part of your tastes. Oh well.

Crow

2008-02-17, 11:14 PM

This doesn't seem all that different from what we have now anyways. The problem I have always had with D&D is that the Cleric can bring back just about any willing character, no questions asked. If the group doesn't have a cleric, you go to the nearest temple and hire one.

All it takes is money...which is crazy, but is exactly the way the system is designed.

Now if Heroic or Epic characters had to pay some cost other than money (Fiendish or Celestial Pacts!) in order to come back...that might be more interesting than "Just find a cleric".

Emperor Tippy

2008-02-17, 11:17 PM

Fixed for accuracy.

Actually not really. Most fictious heroes get into their situation because of events happening in the world that they have no control over. They usually capitalize on the opportunity and eventually reach a point where their actions can shape the world. And they even usually win. But the world is rarely built around the hero.

At any rate, no, it doesn't appear to be part of your tastes. Oh well.
As I said. I haven't been following 4e. I'll make my decision when it comes out.

Rutee

2008-02-17, 11:20 PM

Actually not really. Most fictious heroes get into their situation because of events happening in the world that they have no control over. They usually capitalize on the opportunity and eventually reach a point where their actions can shape the world. And they even usually win. But the world is rarely built around the hero.
*Blinks*
No, the heroes are always the center of attention. They get the most screen time. You apparently mean the center of the setting, in which case I agree with you, and that appears to be the way it's still working.

As I said. I haven't been following 4e. I'll make my decision when it comes out.

I did say "Appears" for a reason, dear.

Sstoopidtallkid

2008-02-17, 11:23 PM

*Blinks*
No, the heroes are always the center of attention. They get the most screen time. You apparently mean the center of the setting, in which case I agree with you, and that appears to be the way it's still working.
No, because WotC has repeatedly said if something doesn't affect the players, it doesn't exist. That puts them at the center of the setting, which is why we say it seems less like a world and more like a game.
No game can model a world perfectly, or even well, but it would be nice if they at least pretended to try. :smallannoyed:

Rutee

2008-02-17, 11:27 PM

No, because WotC has repeatedly said if something doesn't affect the players, it doesn't exist. That puts them at the center of the setting, which is why we say it seems less like a world and more like a game.
No game can model a world perfectly, or even well, but it would be nice if they at least pretended to try. :smallannoyed:

*Blinks again* If something isn't important to the story, it usually doesn't get mentioned either. Depends on the writer's intents, of course, and setting tone and world building are /still/ important for a story, but this isn't a video game only phenomenon. Sorry.

Mewtarthio

2008-02-17, 11:33 PM

This just doesn't make sense, it is silly. What makes this half dozen so special that only they can be raised from the dead. Anyways, discuss

I imagine it's the same thing they've got going on with negative HP. Most monsters or NPCs that fall to 0 HP are assumed to be mortally wounded and never get back up, but a PC or important NPC makes all the stabilization rolls. The article that discussed negative HP had an example of an evil warlock crawling away, grievously wounded, to become a recurring villain, but otherwise nobody really wants to walk around after the battle and slit everyone's throats to make sure they stay down.

They'll probably fall back on the same handwave they used in 3e: Resurrection only works if the soul is willing to return, and that only happens if the soul has something important to do (like, say, the overarching goal of the campaign) or is just that restless (like, say, a guy who leaves the safety of his home to run around killing monsters for treasure).

By the way, could you give the source for that quote?

EvilElitest

2008-02-18, 12:04 AM

1. That's the primary reason. Not the only one, but the primary one.
2. Are you not aware that a business' primary concern is "BOY HOWDY WE SURE DO LIKE MONEY"? IT's the status quo.
3. Okay. And you can't really expect to come back in 3e until level 11. This is the same level at which point you can expect to come back in 4e. Where's the change, /in this regard/.

1. No its not, it is perfectly reasonable to have a fantasy work function with raise dead
2. That is just a reason, not an excuse
3. no the annoyance is taht NPCs won't be doing the same thing. If PCs can come back a certain levels fine, but why are they the only ones

1. No, actually, it hinders story no matter how you slice it. The party now has to take /screen/ time for no other purpose but to ravage the corpse or use other guaranteed anti-res tactics (Such as Trap the Soul, or whatever it is that you use). It's got /nothing/ to do in rail roads.
2. Have you run Epic or Level 17+ games? Because the Core makes Death, once one has True Res, a matter of finding a 20k GP Diamond (Or was it 2k?) As is, they're keeping the cost to coming back at level 11 that exists now.
3. That's a good question; Why is the party dying on a regular basis?

1. Which would be expected if the world has raise dead, and thus forcing the PCs to interact with the world as if it followed a set of rules (gasp)
2. Yet again, that isn't the problem, my problem is that coming back from the dead is often for PCs, but not so for NPCs
3. because they are stupid/unlucky

Here's the meta reason that NPCs don't make a habit of coming back from the dead:
Because it's not an important plot point most of the time. All forcing a true kill does is waste the party's time. There's something of an implicit social contract going, OOCly; Your party doesn't mutilate every corpse/soul beyond resurrection, and the DM only resurrects people who should be for story reasons. Everyone wins this way, when their goals are to get on with the story, because it cuts out an uninteresting aspect (as far as the story's concerned). They also win when they're gamists, because it's not difficult to bind a soul/mutilate a corpse, just annoying and detracts from the hack n' slash.

There isn't a central plot to D&D. DMs can make one or just make a realistic world and let them run loose. Personally, i don't like the world being something where everything is reflected in terms of their relation to the plot, i like people's impotence to be reflected upon their effect on teh world. When half a dozen dudes keep coming back from the dead, and nobody else does, we have a problem.

Your goal isn't to tell a story, or hack n' slash. That's fine. For your party, it very well may work best to force players to kill in ways that forestall rezzing. Just understand that your way isn't everyone's.

Sure, each to their own. Except 4E doesn't understand that. If you do it one way in your game, and i do it one way in mine, cool fine, no dice. But 4E specifically says that they want NPC and PC to have different raising from the dead powers, and i don't like that. If they just gave us the raise dead powers and let us use them as we will, then each one of use could use it the way we wanted it to

Your argument is steeped in subjective statements.

and so are you counter arguments

What isn't the aim of the game? All I said was that it's working the same in 4th ed as it does in 3rd. Do you mean thread? Because I was referring, in that post, to the difficulty in resurrection.

No, i'm talking about the fact that 4E intents to have NPCs and PCs follow different raising from the dead standards. That is how 4E intents for us the play the game and i don't agree. That is the issue

In no dimension or semantic sense is "You're looking for people who agree with you" a personal attack.
No, i'm honestly interested in the issue, your just saying i'm digging for support for some reason, and that is not only incorrect, it rather offensive.

Here's what I think is important, and, contrary to the majority of discontented folk, pleasing. Firstly, I think death in D&D has always been this way, more or less, in that player characters are supposed to be far more durable than common folk because, oddly enough, they aren't common folk. What makes a hero is the ability to face challenges that would be insurmountable--and lethal--to an average person, hence why they can stave off the Reaper longer.

technically the PCs are just a bunch of talented mercenaries who wander around the world. Sure we can expect them to be better than people who are lower level or commoners, but why all NPCs/monsters?

*Blinks*
No, the heroes are always the center of attention. They get the most screen time. You apparently mean the center of the setting, in which case I agree with you, and that appears to be the way it's still working

No tippy is right, most fiction heros don't get their super special powers by having more screen time, they get their powers from within the story.

*Blinks again* If something isn't important to the story, it usually doesn't get mentioned either. Depends on the writer's intents, of course, and setting tone and world building are /still/ important for a story, but this isn't a video game only phenomenon. Sorry.
But books aren't games, as books

In a video game if something isn't important to the story it gets forgotten (such as why phoenix downs aren't used commonly in Final Fantasy) but in a Roleplaying game things would be effecting the world

I imagine it's the same thing they've got going on with negative HP. Most monsters or NPCs that fall to 0 HP are assumed to be mortally wounded and never get back up, but a PC or important NPC makes all the stabilization rolls. The article that discussed negative HP had an example of an evil warlock crawling away, grievously wounded, to become a recurring villain, but otherwise nobody really wants to walk around after the battle and slit everyone's throats to make sure they stay down.

They'll probably fall back on the same handwave they used in 3e: Resurrection only works if the soul is willing to return, and that only happens if the soul has something important to do (like, say, the overarching goal of the campaign) or is just that restless (like, say, a guy who leaves the safety of his home to run around killing monsters for treasure).
1. Wait really? I didn't know about the hit point thing, that makes even less sense
2. But the point is, at least there was a handwave.

By the way, could you give the source for that quote?
Worlds and Monsters p. 14
from
EE

horseboy

2008-02-18, 12:09 AM

But suggesting that typical NPCs (even wealthy ones) should be able to come back at anything even remotely approaching the rate PCs use is flatly absurd; there is no way a world like that could be modelled believably.
It would be kinda like Paranoia. :smallamused:

Rutee

2008-02-18, 12:18 AM

1. No its not, it is perfectly reasonable to have a fantasy work function with raise dead
2. That is just a reason, not an excuse
3. no the annoyance is taht NPCs won't be doing the same thing. If PCs can come back a certain levels fine, but why are they the only ones
1. It is reasonable. That's why it wasn't killed. Why it's there is so that the progressively higher number of Save or Dies don't actually affect gameplay.
2. It's a non-issue; The same thing motivated to make 3e, and 3.5e.
3. NPCs can do the same thing if that's what the GM wants. If the GM doesn't want that, they won't do it now, and they won't do it in 4e.

1. Which would be expected if the world has raise dead, and thus forcing the PCs to interact with the world as if it followed a set of rules (gasp)
2. Yet again, that isn't the problem, my problem is that coming back from the dead is often for PCs, but not so for NPCs
3. because they are stupid/unlucky
1. That's not a story issue, that's a verisimilitude issue. They are not the same thing.
2. And that problem is just as fixable for the GM now as it will be in 4e, I'm sure.
3. Stupid is a good reason. Unlucky, not so interesting.

There isn't a central plot to D&D. DMs can make one or just make a realistic world and let them run loose. Personally, i don't like the world being something where everything is reflected in terms of their relation to the plot, i like people's impotence to be reflected upon their effect on teh world. When half a dozen dudes keep coming back from the dead, and nobody else does, we have a problem.
Okay. Then don't play that way. Nobody's making you. All you've provided is proof that the GM is encouraged not to rez enemies like they rez you, not a rule against it (As if such a thing can stop the GM).

Sure, each to their own. Except 4E doesn't understand that. If you do it one way in your game, and i do it one way in mine, cool fine, no dice. But 4E specifically says that they want NPC and PC to have different raising from the dead powers, and i don't like that. If they just gave us the raise dead powers and let us use them as we will, then each one of use could use it the way we wanted it to
3e doesn't understand it either, but it goes more your way then mine. It's just that 4e seems to be going my way, not yours. Stuff happens, get over it.

and so are you counter arguments
Yeah, but I accept that, and act like it. That's the difference.

quote]No, i'm talking about the fact that 4E intents to have NPCs and PCs follow different raising from the dead standards. That is how 4E intents for us the play the game and i don't agree. That is the issue [/quote]
Oh golly darn, the system isn't 'meant' to be used to match your intentions. I'm willing to bet there's nothing actually mechanically stopping from using the system in a way that matches your intentions. Quit angsting. Stick to 3.5 or find a new system if that matches your fancy.

No, i'm honestly interested in the issue, your just saying i'm digging for support for some reason, and that is not only incorrect, it rather offensive.
It's also accurate. If the truth hurts, get a helmet.

technically the PCs are just a bunch of talented mercenaries who wander around the world. Sure we can expect them to be better than people who are lower level or commoners, but why all NPCs/monsters?
The PCs are just talented mercenaries? I guess that's realistic, but it's not interesting, on its own.. Anyway, no. I expect them to be better then the lion's share, but not EVERYTHING.

And really, look at the MM, EE. It's rather explicit that monsters in the MM are all built as /commoners/; Check ability score adjustments. "Subtract 10/11 from the monster's scores". The commoner array. The monster may have superior stats, but it's an inferior specimen compared to the PCs. Always has been that way in 3.0 too.

Heck, they don't even get stat points for hit dice. Sucks to be a monster!

No tippy is right, most fiction heros don't get their super special powers by having more screen time, they get their powers from within the story.
TIppy is technically correct, but functionally wrong. No matter how you slice it, no matter how well you justify it, the heroes in fiction are special because they get the screen time. Not the other way around (usually).

But books aren't games, as books

In a video game if something isn't important to the story it gets forgotten (such as why phoenix downs aren't used commonly in Final Fantasy) but in a Roleplaying game things would be effecting the world
"Because they have one difference, there are no similarities". That's totally logical. Christ, do you read your own writing? Compare similarities for one half second, over looking at /one freaking difference/ and saying it invalidates them. God, you're going to fail your history, literature, Science, and social studies classes as you get older if you can't do that.

Telonius

2008-02-18, 12:18 AM

just read this note and this bothers me greatly

"It is generally harder to die than in previous editions, particualarly at low level. When a heroic-tier player character dies, the player creates a new character. A paragon PC can come abck from the dead a a significant cost. For epic-tier characters, death is a speed bump. Being raised from the dead available only to hero and it is more than just a spell and a financial transaction. NPCs, both good and evil, don't normally come back to life unless the DM has a good reason.
Monsters and NPCs shouldn't use the same rules for death as PCs. When they're down, they're out-Pcs don't have to slit every monster's throat after the battle and burn the corpses (except maybe for trolls)."

This just doesn't make sense, it is silly. What makes this half dozen so special that only they can be raised from the dead. Anyways, discuss

from
EE

So basically, same thing that's happening in 3rd edition, except they're explicitly saying so, and adding something other than just a "spell and a financial interaction." Sounds good to me.

Farmer42

2008-02-18, 01:04 AM

Another thing a lot of people are forgetting is ye olde Reincarnate. It's Raise's little, cheaper brother, and a druid can hit you with it for a mere 1000 GP starting at 7th level. Bringing back dead PC's isn't hard at all, even at lower levels, in 3.5.

As for the PCs vs NPCs thing, PCs tend to have people who want to see them come back. I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume BBEG #281, member of the Union Generihawk Evil-doer's Local 121, really doesn't have that many minions who are loyal enough to spend the time to bring his dead behind back.

shadowdemon_lord

2008-02-18, 01:56 AM

So basically they're saying "hey guys, lets not have a mechanic to resurrect mook #52, instead lets have the mechanic only apply to y'know, characters in the story that you the people playing the game (the players and the DM) care about. A bit unrealistic, maybe, but I challenge you to tell me the number of times you've stopped the game to raise mook #52. So basically raise dead is going from a mechanic to a plot device that matches the way it's used in 3.x.

Also, I think that a misconception about NPC rules may exist in regards to 4th Ed on these boards. After all, when talking about 3rd ed you could say that the fighter who goes out adventuring is more powerful then the NPC who stays home and guards his city (true if the first one has fighter levels and maybe a PrC, and the second one is a warrior). I have yet to see mechanics written for any game ever that force you to have a 1-d world completely focused on the heroes. Having epic plot lines, giant kingdoms, and things happen off screen has always been a staple of D&D, and I doubt that will change, no matter what the previews might say.

Not to mention it would be very difficult to put together a living campaign under a rules set that forced one to have a 1-d world, and Wizards already has the first 4th ed living campaign planned.

Starsinger

2008-02-18, 04:02 AM

So basically they're saying "hey guys, lets not have a mechanic to resurrect mook #52, instead lets have the mechanic only apply to y'know, characters in the story that you the people playing the game (the players and the DM) care about. A bit unrealistic, maybe, but I challenge you to tell me the number of times you've stopped the game to raise mook #52. So basically raise dead is going from a mechanic to a plot device that matches the way it's used in 3.x.

Yep, that's what it looks like to me, and I think it's a good change. Nothing is stopping me as the DM from resurrecting Important Bad Guy #4 if I so choose, but then again nothing is stopping me as the DM period. Which I believe is something that is being forgotten by some people. If you want NPCs to follow PC rules, then do it. You're a big boy (or girl) you don't need WotC to hold your hand and give you permission to let NPCs follow PC rules if that's what you want. Just like you don't need WotC to hold your hand and tell you that you can make your own homebrew campaign setting or replace a Paladin's Mount with Rage. You're the DM, and ultimately, you're the one in charge.

Rutee

2008-02-18, 04:25 AM

The deal is walking the line between Oberonni Fallacy and common sense, I think. Hm... I suppose a rule that limits a GM's actions outright would be pretty silly though, wouldn't it?

ShadowSiege

2008-02-18, 04:52 AM

blah blah blah blah

from
EE

It's the same thing as 3e. Rutee pointed out that it follows a similar curve as 3e, with Raise available at 9th (very late 4e heroic), Res at 13 (early paragon), True Res at 17 (late paragon).

Do you want to know why most NPCs and monsters don't get rezzed? Because they suffered a TPK or were too poor to afford it, the exact same reasons why PCs stay dead. You don't get randomly raised from the dead, it happens because someone you knew wanted you back alive badly enough to pay very good money to do so.

Maybe you should stop to think about what you're reading so you would actually realize that your complaints are entirely lacking in substance.

Pronounceable

2008-02-18, 05:00 AM

Things have always been exactly like this, and now it's being said officially (not that I like it, but nothing short of an entire change in design outlook would make me like DnD anyway). This is one of the better ideas from 4e for DnDers.

I think if WotC was just smart enough to add a "resurrection and the like are overseen by the gods of death/afterlife/whatever, and a soul may only come back if they're willing to allow it" fluffy bit to spell description, many complaints would be gone now that rez depends entirely on DM fiat.

Morty

2008-02-18, 06:16 AM

Well, looks like the "death as a speed bump" thing doesn't really change in 4ed. Oh, well. It's been always a dilemma even in grim & gritty systems, because realism is great and all, but it's not much fun to have your character you're attached to be removed from the game.
The "NPCs don't get ressurected" thing is bogus, but it's just an advice. Noone will, hopefully, require you to follow it. Bad advices are supposed to be ignored.

Aquillion

2008-02-18, 07:21 AM

1. That isn't the only reason, you can have fantasy with resurrectionDon't be silly. In fantasy, resurrection is reserved for a few very specific situations, and generally a few specific people. There is virtually no precedent in fantasy, pre-D&D, for a world where anyone with money could dependably rely on being brought back to life by their friends if they died. In D&D (at least in third edition), if your cleric has the spell and the money, you will pop back to life, 100% of the time. That is done solely for gameplay reasons; it has absolutely no other value or purpose, and adds nothing to the setting (indeed, one thing I think we all agree on is that it badly detracts from the setting.)

2. Um, how is this being a money making tool by WOTC a good thing?I was describing the resurrection mechanic in third edition. In fourth edition, by all accounts, they are trying to reconcile this by making it, as they say, more than just a monetary transaction and a spell.

1. Hinders Story telling only if you have a railroaded story lineNonsense. In D&D, if you follow the logic of 3rd edition murder is a barely a crime. It is akin to vandalism. It is impossible to silence anyone by killing them, and political assassination is nonexistent--indeed, the existence of an 'assassin' class is inherently stupid. Nobody is ever going to pay just to kill anyone important, since it's so easy to bring them back--it would be like paying a professional a ton of money to egg someone's house.

These things flatly eliminate what constitutes a large base of storytelling in our world. Romeo and Juliet in the D&D universe ends with both houses shrugging and pooling their money to pay for resurrections. Macbeth realizes the error of his ways and brings the king back (technically, he would never have killed the king in the first place, since it is virtually impossible for anyone to reliably secure succession through murder in the D&D universe.) Hamlet ends with an all-you-can-resurrect special as everyone is brought back to life for a group hug (ok, so maybe they're not going to pay for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.)

Julius Caesar, Martin Luther King Jr., JFK and Archduke Ferdinand would just get zapped back to life a few hours after the die. Every tinpot madman in the world would be resurrecting Hitler and Napoleon every few months for as long as they're in the window for resurrection -- indeed, any major political figure who dies of anything other than old age would be constantly getting brought back to stir up trouble.

You're seriously saying that this doesn't have the potential to get in the way of storytelling? Death and murder are two of the great absolutes in our world; in the D&D world, they aren't. In D&D, you can't say that the evil king got his position by murdering his father, because it makes no sense. You can't have a quest to kill anyone with any power or money, not unless your goal is to minorly annoy them. If there are any major historical figures in your world's recent background, you'd better make sure they died of old age unless you want them getting zapped back to life. And so on.

Yes, there are ways around this--it can get in the way of storytelling, obviously it doesn't always. But you can see how it is a problem, can't you?

2. Why not? IN my games i've made raising from the dead a big deal. FR does somewhat, and Dragon magazine offered theories on how to use it.
3. explain to me why half a dozen dudes come back from the dead on a regular basis and nobody else doesIf you've made "raising from the dead a big deal", you've been playing by the 4th edition rules they describe already. They say, basically, that you shouldn't focus on resurrection for every two-bit NPC, and that it should be skipped "unless the DM has a good reason." That's making a big deal out of it. Easy resurrections = bad, big-deal resurrections = good, right?

why not?Why can't we model that world? Well, I'll grant you this -- certainly, we could come up with a hazy, hand-waving speculative-fiction style version of it. The real question is whether it would look like what we want it to -- can we get the standard D&D settings out of this? Can we get traditional heroic fantasy, with the associated tropes of, say, rooftop assassins, regicidal princes, and heroic deaths?

Well, I've already shown how those three mostly don't work in D&D (heroic deaths, maybe, but the asterisk of resurrection sort of takes the meaning out of it... rooftop assassins have to go after commoners, which doesn't really work.) Let's sit down and think about the rest for a moment.

(I'll use "resurrections" in place of the various spell names, but, in general, most people would probably use raise dead. This limits things based on xp / con loss, but not by enough to change the impact that much... and really important people still get true resurrections. Also, don't forget, if you're really determined to have PCs = NPCs, everyone else earns levels pretty fast, too, so they can afford the level loss.)

In the D&D universe, as I said earlier, untimely death is a "poor person's problem." If you are rich, you don't die of anything but old age. In fact, since time spent dead doesn't count against your lifespan, it could even make sense to commit suicide rather than risk dying of old age, so that you can be brought back later when needed.

In the D&D universe, every death, except those of old age, has an implicit asterisk at the end that leaves room for resurrection. Most people in the real world, you know, do not live up to the 'natural maximum lifespan' of our race... this is going to be a big deal.

Try to imagine yourself in the position of a commoner whose relative has just died -- heck, imagine a close friend or relative is suddenly killed, and you could bring her back if you only had 50,000 dollars. If you can, you will, obviously. If you can take out a loan and do it, you will. (This is going to be important, isn't it?)

But let's say you can't afford it. Even if you are too poor to afford it now, when your daughter dies in an accident, your first thought is not grief but "I must earn the money to bring her back!" This is universal. Virtually nobody in the D&D universe just accepts an untimely death. In fact, just about everyone out there is going to know someone who died of some untimely cause, and is going to be trying to raise money to bring them back. This will dominate the economy, dominate all the lower rungs of society, and dominate much of the thinking of the world. Beggars on every street-corner will be yelling the name of the person they are trying to bring back, weeping that the deadline for 'raise dead' is tomorrow. There will be thieves and bandit gangs whose sole purpose is to steal money for resurrections. Not one or two, not once or twice; not your occasional "oh, let's laugh about the implications of resurrection!" side-plot before your DM goes back to (logically absurd) rooftop assassins.

This will be as important in the D&D universe as food is in ours. It will touch everyone, everywhere. You will not be able to avoid it as a topic in conversations. Workers and shopkeepers will regularly bring up who they're trying to resurrect. Paying for resurrections becomes a basic human need, like water or air itself.

In our world, when people can't afford food, there are violent, bloody revolutions. Guess what happens when people can't afford resurrections for their loved ones? What will governments do? In our world, they make sure there's enough food, at a bare minimum, because if they don't they collapse. Will D&D governments provide free resurrections for everyone? Will they be able to? If not, how will they deal with the basic paradox -- how can they display wealth when there are people who need resurrections? It would be like displaying wealth before starving hordes, like the decadent court of Louis XVI. If governments can't afford resurrections for all, they certainly cannot afford ostentatious displays of wealth.

Except in the most secluded, cloistered courts, safe from the eyes of the lower classes, jewelry is unheard of. Using diamonds in particular for jewelry -- or anything but resurrections, in fact -- is an abomination, something reprehensible; it would, in most countries, probably be a serious crime. Diamonds themselves are a resource of unimaginable value--which, yes, makes calculating the amount of diamonds necessary for the resurrection-line spells somewhat difficult, but that's an side issue. More importantly, control over diamonds can determine the rise and fall of nations. A country that cannot supply its population's endless, ravenous demand for diamonds to bring back its loved ones is doomed. Wars will be started over diamond supplies; in fact, foreign policy will at times be little more than maneuvering over diamond supplies. (Look at oil in our world. Now imagine that oil instead had the power to bring back the dead.) He who controls diamonds, so to speak, controls the galaxy.

oexcept there is not in world reason for why these dudes can come back from teh dead and nobody else does. It is like WOW ironically enough, nobody mentions the fact that the PCs can come back from the dead and we move on.Sure there are reasons. It's easy to come up with reasons for anything you want. When you buy the book, I assure you, it will be filled with fluff explaining why PCs come back from the dead and most other people don't, just like we have fluff explaining why PCs use their own stat arrays and advance at absurd speeds relative to almost everyone else. Maybe PCs have stronger 'adventurer' souls. Maybe they're tougher than everyone else. Maybe they have special destinies, who knows.

But you're just reading quotes by the game designers, explaining the basic underlying choices they made and why they made those choices. You can't get angry at them for not providing fluff when you haven't even had a chance to read that fluff yet.

That is a subjective statement, i don't play that way, other people i know don't play this way,Sure you do. Have you ever had an assassin in any of your games--do they exist, at all? Anyone ever get the throne through murder? Have there been beggars on the street corners asking for resurrections? Have the players found 'diamond rings' and other jewelry, and somehow glossed over the fact that that ring literally comes at the cost of a human life? Have you had wealthy, ornate palaces, gaudily showing off their wealth in a country where (presumably) they don't provide resurrections for free -- and nobody complained about this? There was nobody angry over the fact that their daughter or wife is dead and the king is marching around in a robe and set of jewelry that could pay to bring them back fifty times over?

Everyone glosses over things. You couldn't play the game in a remotely recognizable world if you followed any of these things through to their conclusions. You would have to stop gameplay every ten minutes to spend a month or so trying to figure out the most fundamental basics of how things in your world should realistically be, only to turn them all over again every time something new comes up.

It is too big. There is too much weight involved in death to change its basic parameters that much, and expect to get a world from it that you would recognize at all.

Kurald Galain

2008-02-18, 07:22 AM

I think that this thread is missing the point of the matter... the reason that raise/resurrection is so easy (at moderate to high levels) is because player characters, or indeed anyone, can day like mayflies (again, at moderate to high levels). They get into combat three to five times per day, any of which can involve a high number of save-or-die spells, culminating in the mighty beholder that can force several such saves per round.

Since you will, by the laws of statistics, roll a 1 on your save eventually (and reasonably soon, too), any PC that has not stacked up on immunities can be expected to die by pure coincidence at almost any time in a campaign, and that's not even counting death by damage, drowning, or falling into lava pits.

However, 4E is known to severely tone down and/or remove save-or-die effects (and SOLs in general). So it can afford to make rezzing harder as well. I'd say this is a good thing.

Leon

2008-02-18, 07:47 AM

Meh. More stupidity in 4th ed I suppose.

Death should either be a very big deal for everybody, involved divine intervention or epic cross planar quests to bring people back,

One of the big draw cards to Iron Kingdoms Setting for me is the Healing and Death side of the rules - healing too much and often (also of differing Gods) will cost you and coming back from the dead is a hard thing to do - as such Rasie Dead is a Ninth level spell and thus the highest of those avalible (cept Reincarnation - which has its own issues and is higher than normal)

You can be epic level hero and the church of morrow will deny your raise since the cost is not worth it and unless its really really important Morrow has greater need of that PCs soul in Urcaen

It stops the rather silly revolving door approach, "oh Bobs dead again. off to the temple and he'll be back on his feet in a jiffy" - it urges use of more caution in doing things or a number of PCs

Those rare ones that do get raised wont always be the same after they crossed back over

Focus on PCs? - Im going to be running the Witch Fire trillogy soon and ive noticed that some of the posts here on part of the topic relate to the Focus shifting soley onto the "hero's". Not to spoiler it but there an amount of sections in the Books that involves the Hero's being spectators to happenings of NPCs - Very Important NPCs - they may get to interact with those but Wotc banal thoughts push out the Aperrently insignificant NPCs to focus solely on a bunch of Buffoons who were in the right place at the wrong time

just read this note and this bothers me greatly

"It is generally harder to die than in previous editions, particualarly at low level. When a heroic-tier player character dies, the player creates a new character. A paragon PC can come abck from the dead a a significant cost. For epic-tier characters, death is a speed bump. Being raised from the dead available only to hero and it is more than just a spell and a financial transaction. NPCs, both good and evil, don't normally come back to life unless the DM has a good reason.
Monsters and NPCs shouldn't use the same rules for death as PCs. When they're down, they're out-Pcs don't have to slit every monster's throat after the battle and burn the corpses (except maybe for trolls)."

Its another sign that the game is being "dumbed down"
I 99% sure that i wont be swapping editions but if i did that i'd not be having the PCs as the only ones with access to such powers
- it reeks TO much of letting the focus rest soley on the players - sure they are there to be hero's - but they are only one lot of hero's, the world has the potential for anyone to stand up and be counted.
for things in relation see the top part of this post.

PC's are special, so they get rezzed. NPC's are "NOT player characters" so they don't. I don't see a problem with it. I enjoy keeping my characters, I don't enjoy them going splat thanks to a few bad rolls."

NPCs may not be Player controlled but that doesn't make them any less important

Dan_Hemmens

2008-02-18, 08:04 AM

Its another sign that the game is being "dumbed down"

Sorry, how is any of that "dumbing down"?

It seems that what they're saying is that at low levels, PCs are less fragile. At mid levels, things are about the same, except that death is *more* of an issue, not less. At Epic level, resurrection becomes trivial.

So what they're doing is moving the point at which Resurrection becomes trivial from 9th level to 21st, and that's somehow "dumbing down"?

Leon

2008-02-18, 08:06 AM

If you dont like dumbing down - read it as Simplyfying it, its fast tracking to a MMORPG style from what ive seen

*Blinks*
No, the heroes are always the center of attention. They get the most screen time.

Not always - there is a world outside of their liltle one - they might have a name here but not there etc
Sometimes they just have to suck it up that everything doesn't revolve around them

DeathQuaker

2008-02-18, 08:07 AM

"It is generally harder to die than in previous editions, particualarly at low level. When a heroic-tier player character dies, the player creates a new character. A paragon PC can come abck from the dead a a significant cost. For epic-tier characters, death is a speed bump. Being raised from the dead available only to hero and it is more than just a spell and a financial transaction. NPCs, both good and evil, don't normally come back to life unless the DM has a good reason.
Monsters and NPCs shouldn't use the same rules for death as PCs. When they're down, they're out-Pcs don't have to slit every monster's throat after the battle and burn the corpses (except maybe for trolls)."

Once again, I see something from 4E where I like the overall concept, but not the execution.

In my experience, I don't like to play D&D games where Raise Dead can be cast at the drop of a hat. It makes death, which should be a big deal, just another condition to cure with a spell, like blindness or disease or being panicked or ability drained. I remember a long time ago playing a 2nd Ed AD&D game where the DM loved throwing us up against ridiculously high powered creatures (e.g., the Tarrasque...) ... it was common to end combat with at least one of us dead (and often really most sincerely dead). But his mega-DMPC would just cast Resurrection on us. It ultimately just became lame... oops, I'm dead again. Whatever.

A lot of people play D&D like this, though. They run hard fast games where there's a high rate of PC death. They feel they can do this because, in fact, these spells are available.

Personally, I prefer challenges that won't necessarily kill us all the time (as a GM, I don't seek out to kill players, though I will be pretty hardcore in major, important battles because the stakes are supposed to be unusually high), but at the same time I also like to make it clear that "Raise Dead" isn't just around the corner... it costs money, it needs a special jewel, it needs to be cast by someone of sufficient level which depending where you are, you may not have immediate access to these things. I'll also note though, I avoid the use of a lot of save-or-suck spells, and never use save-or-die. I never saw the point of them. Maybe it's just that I already incorporated this into my game that I balk at how it's applied in 4E, 'cause I just did it differently. I don't know.

Anyway, the idea of, "You aren't going to get killed as often, but death is usually permanent unless you're godlike," is generally in keeping with how I like, personally, an RPG to be played.

But I don't like the specifics... "Oh, Bob's only 6th level so he's toast" just sounds silly to me. "Oh, we have to go on a major quest to find the diamond spell component we need to raise Bob," to me is fine... which 3.5 allows for.

Generally, the way 4E emphasizes the awesomeness of Paragon or Epic or whatever characters... I fear we're just going to have people start games that begin characters at high levels rather than low ones anyway. But that remains to be seen...

Dan_Hemmens

2008-02-18, 08:13 AM

But I don't like the specifics... "Oh, Bob's only 6th level so he's toast" just sounds silly to me. "Oh, we have to go on a major quest to find the diamond spell component we need to raise Bob," to me is fine... which 3.5 allows for.

I'm sure 4.0 will as well, it's just that instead of "a major quest to find the diamond spell component" (which is fine, but when you hit sixteenth level and start finding the damned things in every jeweller's shop you're going to have to ask some questions) you have "a major quest to find a Paragon or Epic level character".

People seem to take every single snippet they hear about 4th ed as evidence that 4E will be this enormous inflexible juggernaut designed with the sole purpose of crushing individual creativity. It won't.

KIDS

2008-02-18, 08:15 AM

I already process things this way, and this change is good for me. Occasions where I needed raise dead for NPCs were truly one in a million, and I always had to ignore the major inconsistencies those spells would cause in most campaign settings. Fine job.

Maerok

2008-02-18, 08:16 AM

I've been drawing an analogy that:

3.X edition : 4th edition :: Morrowind : Oblivion

It seems like it'll end up a lot more dumbed down and arcade-like, without as much of the free-range qualities that made it cool to begin with. With an emphasize on making it look polished and accessible to new people.

Dan_Hemmens

2008-02-18, 08:22 AM

If you dont like dumbing down - read it as Simplyfying it, its fast tracking to a MMORPG style from what ive seen

Because of course MMORPGs are *renowned* for their lack of easy resurrection effects.

Not always - there is a world outside of their liltle one - they might have a name here but not there etc
Sometimes they just have to suck it up that everything doesn't revolve around them

Newsflash. Everything *does* revolve around them. The "world" your game is set in it isn't real you, or somebody else made it up to put a game in.

Without players, and their fictional avatars, the PCs, your game does not exist. You can run a perfectly good game without a DM (theres whole threads on the official boards about it) but a game without players is just you, sitting alone in a room, talking to yourself in a variety of silly voices.

Dan_Hemmens

2008-02-18, 08:25 AM

It seems like it'll end up a lot more dumbed down and arcade-like, without as much of the free-range qualities that made it cool to begin with. With an emphasize on making it look polished and accessible to new people.

Seriously, will somebody *please* tell me what the *hell* they mean by all this "dumbing down" and "like a computer game" nonsense.

If I were to list the defining features of CRPGs then the top three would be "Levels, Classes, and XP awards for defeating enemies". All of these D&D already has, and has had since its inception. D&D is *already* basically a huge set of rules for wandering around killing monsters in ever more complicated ways. How does 4E *remotely* change that?

Reinboom

2008-02-18, 08:46 AM

Morty

2008-02-18, 08:57 AM

3.5 doesn't give you (decent*) rules for how the world spins. This is no different.

Maybe, but in 3.5 noone was saying over and over again that they're designing the gameworld to be background to the PCs and that anything that's not directly related to them is going out of the game.

Dan_Hemmens

2008-02-18, 08:58 AM

Leon

2008-02-18, 09:09 AM

Because of course MMORPGs are *renowned* for their lack of easy resurrection effects.

Im not just taking resurrection, the Whole System is what im refering to

Newsflash. Everything *does* revolve around them. The "world" your game is set in it isn't real you, or somebody else made it up to put a game in.

Without players, and their fictional avatars, the PCs, your game does not exist. You can run a perfectly good game without a DM (theres whole threads on the official boards about it) but a game without players is just you, sitting alone in a room, talking to yourself in a variety of silly voices.
I never said it didn't, what im saying is that the Crazed Loons that get tangled up in the affairs of the world are important but they are NOT the only people of Import in a world

Mr. Friendly

2008-02-18, 09:17 AM

Hey look, a 4e thread - Let me see if I can guess what people will say:

anti-4e people: baseless logical fallacies and cognative dissonance to "prove" they are right that 4e sucks and WotC is dumb and evil. Bonus points for "OMG 4e = World of Warcraft".

pro-4e: Well I really don't know but I want to wait and see...

*clicks link*

Hey look, pretty much exactly what I knew it would be. I must be psychic. Either that or I have learned to know what mindless screed the anti-4e crowd will bleat out.

Dan_Hemmens

2008-02-18, 09:22 AM

Im not just taking resurrection, the Whole System is what im refering to

Okay, but what about the system makes you think that it will be *remotely* like an MMO?

I never said it didn't, what im saying is that the Crazed Loons that get tangled up in the affairs of the world are important but they are NOT the only people of Import in a world

Maybe not, but they're the only people who are important in the *game*.

All that the 4e designers are saying is that they're toning down the focus on Big Important Events that PCs aren't remotely involved in. Maybe it's my inner White Wolf survivor speaking, but I can't see this being *anything* but a good thing.

In a game of fantasy adventure, the *last* thing you want is a set of rules which focus on how the world is getting along fine without your interference thank you very much.

The whole design philosophy of 4E has been to take the focus away from people like Elminster and Drizzt and put it back on the PCs. This is a *good thing*.

Reinboom

2008-02-18, 09:32 AM

Maybe, but in 3.5 noone was saying over and over again that they're designing the gameworld to be background to the PCs and that anything that's not directly related to them is going out of the game.

Maybe. I didn't pay attention to 3.0 or 3.5 when it was coming out. I was an AD&D grognard.

I do know that I can tell a hungry person "I'm going to give you something to eat today, it might not be much."
And then hand them either:

Feces

A McDonalds sack of food.

Home prepared Pasta

Fine cut and fresh prepared fatty tuna sashimi, buttermilk basked coconut dipped shrimp, cooked with the most precise attention to detail, and a side of perfectly cut cubed fruit, mixed between cooked and lightly cooled.

If I said
"I'm giving you a system where the idea of it is to focus on the PCs"
I could give you:
Basic D&D

Advanced 2E D&D

3.5E D&D

New World of Darkness

4E Shadowrun

3E BESM

...So, I don't see your point.

Jack Zander

2008-02-18, 09:35 AM

The whole design philosophy of 4E has been to take the focus away from people like Elminster and Drizzt and put it back on the PCs. This is a *good thing*.

The problem with Elminster and Drizzt doesn't come from the design of the game. That's a setting flaw (or not, some people like them, it's a more realistic world). There is nothing in the 3.5 handbooks that states anywhere that PCs actions don't matter in the world. Only one time does it suggest that there are more powerful NPCs than them (and that's regarding what to do when players get out of control and start burning down villages). I can easily have a world of high level NPCs who are too busy with their own personal agendas to "save the world" so the PCs still have significant impacts everywhere.

AKA_Bait

2008-02-18, 09:54 AM

Yep, that's what it looks like to me, and I think it's a good change. Nothing is stopping me as the DM from resurrecting Important Bad Guy #4 if I so choose, but then again nothing is stopping me as the DM period. Which I believe is something that is being forgotten by some people. If you want NPCs to follow PC rules, then do it. You're a big boy (or girl) you don't need WotC to hold your hand and give you permission to let NPCs follow PC rules if that's what you want. Just like you don't need WotC to hold your hand and tell you that you can make your own homebrew campaign setting or replace a Paladin's Mount with Rage. You're the DM, and ultimately, you're the one in charge.

And then ultimatley, I'm dropping $30 a pop for a book that I'm going to have to heavily houserule. Not ideal. The fact that as a DM, I can fix it, doesn't mean I'm out of order for disliking a change because since I'm spending the money I'd prefer not to have to fix it. I'd rather it just work.

The "NPCs don't get ressurected" thing is bogus, but it's just an advice. Noone will, hopefully, require you to follow it. Bad advices are supposed to be ignored.

Agreed. However, if they don't have good advice, I'd prefer they refrain from giving any at all, lest they confuse my players.

So what they're doing is moving the point at which Resurrection becomes trivial from 9th level to 21st, and that's somehow "dumbing down"?

I've never gotten how Resurrection is 'trivial' before 17th level and up. It results in level loss and usually costs enough money that if WBL is followed it's pretty expensive, especially if the material components are enforced. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0286.html)

Newsflash. Everything *does* revolve around them. The "world" your game is set in it isn't real you, or somebody else made it up to put a game in.

Or to put several games in, with different PC's and different players. To keep it real, you have a bunch of NPC's acting in the background frequently against eachother with no care for what the PC's do unless it interferes with their own plans. You might even, *gasp* write novels involving the major NPC's in that world *cough*FR*cough*

anti-4e people: baseless logical fallacies and cognative dissonance to "prove" they are right that 4e sucks and WotC is dumb and evil. Bonus points for "OMG 4e = World of Warcraft".

You missed the rampant assertions of the pro 4e crowd that all of the new system will *surely* not make the mistakes that some people are afraid of.

Also, you missed those hatin on 4e who also a planning to wait and see but with a less optimistic viewpoint.

In a game of fantasy adventure, the *last* thing you want is a set of rules which focus on how the world is getting along fine without your interference thank you very much.

The whole design philosophy of 4E has been to take the focus away from people like Elminster and Drizzt and put it back on the PCs. This is a *good thing*.

This is, of course, a personal preference. I agree with you that important NPCs in the world should not be the focus of the game. However, having mechanics that describe the way the world functions without the PC's direct intervention does not require this to be the case. I'd rather have the mechanic, and the choice to ignore it if I don't want it, then not have the mechanic and be forced to homebrew if I do. It's the skinflint in me.

I do know that I can tell a hungry person "I'm going to give you something to eat today, it might not be much."

I think a better analogy would be telling a potential customer in your store that you are going to charge them $30 and then you are going to give them one of the above. In which case, they will buy the sashimi and the pasta (maybe), the Mickey D's if they are hungry enough, and tell you to shove it about the feces. The issue really is, which food product is 4e starting to look more like it will be.

Bring on the McNuggets!

hewhosaysfish

2008-02-18, 09:55 AM

I would like to say that I agree with those who've been saying that this doesn't change much from 3e:
Low level character's don't get rezzed; mid level characters can get rezzed with some hassle; high levels introduce the revolving door afterlife.

However, in 3e, this wasn't a direct result of your levels. Rather you're WBL meant that mid and high level characters could scrounge together the walrus-weight of gold needed to pay for the rez.
If you could strain your suspension of disbelief far enough to accept the PCs carrying a thousand times the year wage of a common worker, then it was a natural progression from this that the PCs would generally be returning from death and other people generally wouldn't.

It's not clear what a PC will have to do in 4e to get rezzed, or why an NPC will require DM fiat to do likewise. I have a hard time imagining a single reason that will cover all groups of PCs in all campaign settings so it's either one of:
1) Some incredibly ingenious explanation that I didn't think of, which fits all parties and settings. This would be awesome.
2) Like my high school physics teacher used to say: "It just does!" This would suck, IM-supposedly-HO.
3) Here's a list of possible reasons why the PCs may have an easier time of it coming back from "the other other other side" - pick one that suits your campaign. This could work, but may be a bit contrived in some situations.

Emperor Tippy

2008-02-18, 09:59 AM

@all

While the PC's are the focus of the story (and should be) that story does not necessarily have any real impact on the world. That the players are off defending a Hamlet from an orc attack at level 5 is nice and all but their success or failure will have no impact on the world as a whole and will prolly never become known outside of the Hamlet and maybe a bit of the area around said hamlet.

Now at level 15 the person the PC endorses in a succession fight will get a huge boost. And at level 20 it's close to an accidental word by the PC starting wars.

---
Now if 4e is making resurrection only available to the PC's then you have a problem. When they come back to life it will be big news that will spread like wildfire and as soon as anyone important heres about it they will be off to capture the PC's to learn how and why those people get to come back but your average guy doesn't. If 4e is only limiting ress's in practice but not by RAW then this problem doesn't exist. Maybe to be resurrected you have to go through some long torturous quest in the afterlife where if you fail your soul is destroyed and if you succeed you come back. So maybe any NPC can come back but very few are willing to take the risk and of those that do, few make it. Now at the higher levels the PC's don't see the quest as that difficult and don't see a destroyed soul as any new threat.

Dan_Hemmens

2008-02-18, 10:11 AM

I've never gotten how Resurrection is 'trivial' before 17th level and up. It results in level loss and usually costs enough money that if WBL is followed it's pretty expensive, especially if the material components are enforced. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0286.html)

I see this as one of those "we've already established what sort of girl you are" situations. Sure, 5000GP worth of diamonds is expensive, and sure, that negative level is a bit of a bummer but we're talking about death here. Anything that allows you to recover from it by paying a lump sum of cash and taking a minor game mechanical penalty (it's not like Experience Points are a finite resource) is trivial in my book.

Or to put several games in, with different PC's and different players. To keep it real, you have a bunch of NPC's acting in the background frequently against eachother with no care for what the PC's do unless it interferes with their own plans. You might even, *gasp* write novels involving the major NPC's in that world *cough*FR*cough*

I'd notice that the FR Novels are also a much, much less important part of 4E, because they get in the way of the PCs doing stuff.

This is, of course, a personal preference. I agree with you that important NPCs in the world should not be the focus of the game. However, having mechanics that describe the way the world functions without the PC's direct intervention does not require this to be the case. I'd rather have the mechanic, and the choice to ignore it if I don't want it, then not have the mechanic and be forced to homebrew if I do. It's the skinflint in me.

Ah, you see the skinflint in me would rather have the book £5 cheaper, or just 40 pages lighter (my bookshelves are getting fairly full) than have it padded out with a bunch of rules for stuff that I'm never going to need, and which wouldn't work even if I *did* need it.

Then again, I usually just homebrew my own systems for free nowadays anyway.

Dan_Hemmens

2008-02-18, 10:16 AM

@all

While the PC's are the focus of the story (and should be) that story does not necessarily have any real impact on the world. That the players are off defending a Hamlet from an orc attack at level 5 is nice and all but their success or failure will have no impact on the world as a whole and will prolly never become known outside of the Hamlet and maybe a bit of the area around said hamlet.

Now at level 15 the person the PC endorses in a succession fight will get a huge boost. And at level 20 it's close to an accidental word by the PC starting wars.

Which is exactly as it should be. But the point is that the succession fight isn't important to the game when the players are just fighting Orcs.

---
Now if 4e is making resurrection only available to the PC's then you have a problem. When they come back to life it will be big news that will spread like wildfire and as soon as anyone important heres about it they will be off to capture the PC's to learn how and why those people get to come back but your average guy doesn't. If 4e is only limiting ress's in practice but not by RAW then this problem doesn't exist. Maybe to be resurrected you have to go through some long torturous quest in the afterlife where if you fail your soul is destroyed and if you succeed you come back. So maybe any NPC can come back but very few are willing to take the risk and of those that do, few make it. Now at the higher levels the PC's don't see the quest as that difficult and don't see a destroyed soul as any new threat.

It seems a lot like the latter is going to be the case. It seems like they're making resurrection something rare and special rather than something that is just available for purchase in the setting. On the whole I'd much rather deal with the consequences of the PCs being the only people ever to come back from the dead, than the consequences of a setting where bringing people back from the dead was really really easy.

AKA_Bait

2008-02-18, 10:23 AM

I see this as one of those "we've already established what sort of girl you are" situations. Sure, 5000GP worth of diamonds is expensive, and sure, that negative level is a bit of a bummer but we're talking about death here. Anything that allows you to recover from it by paying a lump sum of cash and taking a minor game mechanical penalty (it's not like Experience Points are a finite resource) is trivial in my book.

Ok then. I just know very few players that view level loss and being kept out of the game until the party can scrounge up a sack of diamond dust as trivial. Another case of different definitions.

I'd notice that the FR Novels are also a much, much less important part of 4E, because they get in the way of the PCs doing stuff.

It doesn't just apply to FR. It applies to any ongoing campagin setting and any campagin where you want to have a sandbox style of play.

Ah, you see the skinflint in me would rather have the book £5 cheaper,

Pardon me I just snorted water out my nose. It's not going to get any cheaper.

or just 40 pages lighter (my bookshelves are getting fairly full) than have it padded out with a bunch of rules for stuff that I'm never going to need, and which wouldn't work even if I *did* need it.

If you don't want the pages, tear them out but don't get on the rest of us who are willing to make room on our shelves for a more robust system. Oh, ahte the fact that it 'would work even if' is pure speculation, especially since they aren't even giving it to us. :-)

It seems a lot like the latter is going to be the case. It seems like they're making resurrection something rare and special rather than something that is just available for purchase in the setting. On the whole I'd much rather deal with the consequences of the PCs being the only people ever to come back from the dead, than the consequences of a setting where bringing people back from the dead was really really easy.

Rare at low levels, trivial at high levels. Yawn.

Then again, I usually just homebrew my own systems for free nowadays anyway.

So what's with the hopping on all the 4e threads then?

Morty

2008-02-18, 10:25 AM

pro-4e: I don't know any more about 4ed than anyone, but I'll dismiss everyone who criticizes it as deluded hater!

Fixed it for you. Then again, it's unfair to those 4ed supporters who say something constructive.

Hey look, pretty much exactly what I knew it would be. I must be psychic. Either that or I have learned to know what mindless screed the anti-4e crowd will bleat out.

Nope, you're just trying to make everyone who disagrees with you look stupid but failing at it. So you're just someone with arrogant and fanboyish approach towards something that haven't appeared yet, not a physic, I'm afraid. I'd ask you do cease calling everyone who disagrees with you "bleating crowd" but I don't really care enough. Spurt out insulting generalizations if you want.

Agreed. However, if they don't have good advice, I'd prefer they refrain from giving any at all, lest they confuse my players.

Sure. But if they give bad advice, I simply ignore it.

You mean, in 3.5 the designers didn't have a consistent design philosophy?

Yes, you're probably right.

What exactly do you mean by "consistent philosophy" here? Also, even if they didn't have any consisten philosophy, it's better than a bad philosophy.

...So, I don't see your point.

My point is, while 3.5 is focused on PCs -but not more so than any RPG- 4ed looks like it's going to take it one step futher. We already know that there'll be different rules for NPCs, and we constantly see advises to treat players differently. We're also seeing statements that WoTC is dropping things because players won't encounter them often enough or are unlikely to use them.
Also, I don't see what food has to do with anything here either.

Reinboom

2008-02-18, 10:46 AM

My point is, while 3.5 is focused on PCs -but not more so than any RPG- 4ed looks like it's going to take it one step futher. We already know that there'll be different rules for NPCs, and we constantly see advises to treat players differently. We're also seeing statements that WoTC is dropping things because players won't encounter them often enough or are unlikely to use them.
Also, I don't see what food has to do with anything here either.

The point was that I believe you are hanging too much on these statements, that can mean extremely different things.

Mr. Friendly

2008-02-18, 10:48 AM

I have nothing substantial to add to this conversation. I like to pretend that I am adding something of value, but I don't, maybe I should find a picture of a bunny with a pancake on it's head to post instead.

Isn't this fun?

Yes, I am just a crazy fanboy. Oh yeah. I mean it was, what, three whole posts into this thread before the usual crowd of 4e haters was going on their usual ditribe about 4e = WoW.

No, sorry M0rt, it is the same posters, everyday, the same "4e = WoW" "4e is ruining D&D" arguements.

Do I like what I see from 4e so far? Yes. Am I buying it? Most likely. Will I still change my mind if something really stupid is found out about it? (i.e. all PCs are REQUIRED to be flumphs) Yes.

However, I really get sick of the broken record arguements.

Back on topic though, while "death is a speedbumb" and "4e is easier" I would like to point out that in practice I am expecting a lot more players on the ground either unconcious or dead given that encounters now have an almost equal number of opponents, monsters usually get more attacks and that critical hits only take a 20 - no confirmation.

Dan_Hemmens

2008-02-18, 10:52 AM

What exactly do you mean by "consistent philosophy" here? Also, even if they didn't have any consisten philosophy, it's better than a bad philosophy.

Making the game focus on the PCs is a consistent philosophy, and a good one.

My point is, while 3.5 is focused on PCs -but not more so than any RPG- 4ed looks like it's going to take it one step futher. We already know that there'll be different rules for NPCs, and we constantly see advises to treat players differently. We're also seeing statements that WoTC is dropping things because players won't encounter them often enough or are unlikely to use them.
Also, I don't see what food has to do with anything here either.

Okay, let me see.

Games that have different rules for PCs and NPCs.

- All World of Darkness games.
- Every edition of D&D *apart* from 3.X
- Feng Shui
- Greg Stolze's One Roll Engine
- Dogs in the Vineyard
- WFRP and Dark Heresy

And pretty much any other game I can think of.

Similarly, most games *do* advise people to treat the players differently. I genuinely can't think of a single one which advises you otherwise.

Morty

2008-02-18, 10:56 AM

The point was that I believe you are hanging too much on these statements, that can mean extremely different things.

I'll be very happy if they do. However, I have no reason to belive they don't. So far I see statements like "We don't want there to be many thing PCs won't use".

Yes, I am just a crazy fanboy. Oh yeah. I mean it was, what, three whole posts into this thread before the usual crowd of 4e haters was going on their usual ditribe about 4e = WoW.

No, sorry M0rt, it is the same posters, everyday, the same "4e = WoW" "4e is ruining D&D" arguements.

Yes, of course. Every 4ed criticizer is babbling about 4ed being WoW. It's not like some of them might actually have some valid compliants about what they see in WoTC materials, because there's no single bad thing about 4ed. Sure. Nothing more to say here.:smallsigh:

Making the game focus on the PCs is a consistent philosophy, and a good one.

I'd argue against that. Obviously, game revolves about PCs, but the world shouldn't. They'rer already unique by virtue of being players. Why do we need to favor them even more?

- WFRP and Dark Heresy

I'm not familiar with other systems, but I sure know WFRPG doesn't treat PCs any differently than NPCs apart from Destiny Points.

Similarly, most games *do* advise people to treat the players differently. I genuinely can't think of a single one which advises you otherwise.

Again, to a certain degree. However, it looks like 4ed might be pushing that too far. Of course, only might. But I'd rather be pessimistic and then maybe have a pleasant surprise.

Reinboom

2008-02-18, 11:03 AM

No, sorry M0rt, it is the same posters, everyday, the same "4e = WoW" "4e is ruining D&D" arguements.

Ffffft. I don't post in the gaming d20 every day! This place is too repetitive and boring for that.
Just randomly once in awhile when I see something that particularly annoys me catches my attention.

Or when I think a thread needs a bit of catgirl. Er..catbo..gir.. *curses gender bent week for a moment*
Catperson.

Treating everything as PCs slows things down. Bah to that.
I just want to move on with the story, not hassle everything with the same convoluted rules* the PCs use.
(* convoluted rules = when applying the same lengthy rules to hundreds of NPCs.)

Prophaniti

2008-02-18, 11:09 AM

I don't want to get involved in another 'Focus should/should not be more on the PCs' discussion, I'm too tired right now. Instead I will focus on the specific topic of the thread: Character Death.

I hear and understand the argument that these are characters you feel invested in and are obviously bummed out when they die. You want a way to bring them back without the DM just saying 'They're actually still alive! Yay!' Thus spells like resurection. Whether such things should be easy, expensive, or non-existant is entirely up to the players and how they feel about character death. Personally I feel that easy or frivilous resurrection cheapens death and ultimately the character itself, but I know some people like it that way (because they're shallow :smalltongue:)

Speaking only from my group's and my personal experience, I enjoy roleplaying games a lot more if I know that dying is a real and significant risk. When my character dies, even in a disappointing or ignominious way, I don't generally like to have them resurrected unless they had some extremely significant reason to be. Otherwise, I just add another tally to the vengeance I owe the DM and roll a new character. The same is true of the group I play with. I can count on one hand the number of characters we've actually bothered to raise. It goes beyond that as well, to the lethality of the game in general. My group has taken many steps to increase this, because we enjoy the game more if all this fighting and daring adventure entails some risk. It also adds an element of realism to the world, answering the oft-asked 'why hasn't anyone done this before?' Because it's bloody dangerous, that's why. I and those I play with find it more enjoyable to have these elements of risk and danger, enhancing suspension of disbelief and increasing the immersion into the game world.

Again, I recognise that there will be people who don't agree, who don't want (as much) risk, who prefer playing as though they have god-mode on. I do to, occasionally, it's fun to be unstoppable. But for me, at least, it gets old, and I'm compelled to take the risks. And yes, sometimes die a messy (and permanent) death.

Serenity

2008-02-18, 11:16 AM

OK, I fail to see how this is any different from 3.x, except that they've put some more survivability into the lower levels, which seems only sensible when 3.x has highly lethal housecats. Do you honestly play such that your party has to coup de grace and mutilate/trap the soul of every orc and wandering monster they encounter? Or is it just major NPCs like recurring villains who get brought back? There's nothing to complain about here.

Dan_Hemmens

2008-02-18, 11:25 AM

I'd argue against that. Obviously, game revolves about PCs, but the world shouldn't. They'rer already unique by virtue of being players. Why do we need to favor them even more?

Who said anything about "favouring" them?

The current rules are restrictive.

Suppose I want a particular NPC to be the greatest poet in living memory. Great, I just need to give them a high Perform: Poetry skill.

But I can't do that without giving them a class that has Perform as a class skill, and giving them a bunch of levels in it. Levels that will come with weapon proficiencies, hit points, and a bunch of other crap I don't need. Why should I be forced to stat up a seventeenth level character, in full, just to justify a world class poet?

Why does a monster's BAB have to be related to its Hit Dice? Why can't a monster be able to absorb a lot of damage but not able to dish it out, or vice versa? Because everything is bound to the "class" model.

I'm not familiar with other systems, but I sure know WFRPG doesn't treat PCs any differently than NPCs apart from Destiny Points.

Fate points are a biggie, but the NPC creation rules also explicitly say "You can make an NPC with as many careers and advances as are appropriate to their role in the adventure." The sample NPCs in the book have obviously had their stats *chosen* to fit, rather than being created according to NPC creation rules. Its not like you keep track of their XP totals and which Advances they've had.

Again, to a certain degree. However, it looks like 4ed might be pushing that too far. Of course, only might. But I'd rather be pessimistic and then maybe have a pleasant surprise.

What actually makes you think that? All they've done so far is acknowledge the fact that the game is about the PCs.

Charity

2008-02-18, 11:31 AM

Mr Friendly, just so you know there is an ignore function on this message board. If it is the same old same old from the same old posters, just add them to your ignore list in the user cp... it can make conversations a bit disjointed but spares you a lot of wading through drivel.

M0rt, I am in no way indicating that you should be included on his list, and clearly you are not on mine as I am responding to your post, but I have recently discovered how very handy the feature is... It also saves me from accumulating any of those nasty infractions that I am reasonably sure some of these posters are pushing folk toward rather deliberately.

Reinboom

2008-02-18, 11:32 AM

Morty

2008-02-18, 11:36 AM

Who said anything about "favouring" them?

The current rules are restrictive.

Suppose I want a particular NPC to be the greatest poet in living memory. Great, I just need to give them a high Perform: Poetry skill.

But I can't do that without giving them a class that has Perform as a class skill, and giving them a bunch of levels in it. Levels that will come with weapon proficiencies, hit points, and a bunch of other crap I don't need. Why should I be forced to stat up a seventeenth level character, in full, just to justify a world class poet?

That's the fault of class-based advancement that supports combat-oriented classes.

Why does a monster's BAB have to be related to its Hit Dice? Why can't a monster be able to absorb a lot of damage but not able to dish it out, or vice versa? Because everything is bound to the "class" model.

Note that I was talking about NPCs. I'm fine with monsters using different advancement rules.

Fate points are a biggie, but the NPC creation rules also explicitly say "You can make an NPC with as many careers and advances as are appropriate to their role in the adventure." The sample NPCs in the book have obviously had their stats *chosen* to fit, rather than being created according to NPC creation rules. Its not like you keep track of their XP totals and which Advances they've had.

You don't technically have to keep track of PC careers either. But while you can choose to ignore rules, they're the same for NPCs and PCs.

What actually makes you think that? All they've done so far is acknowledge the fact that the game is about the PCs.

Several things. They stated they "don't want to waste space on what PCs can use" and that NPC enemies should just die when they reach 0 hp and shouldn't be ressurected. They also mentioned in Races & Classes excerpt that they removed gods whose clerics are unlikely to go around adventuring and that they're making gods more down-to-earth so that players can interact with them. There's also mentions that PCs and NPCs will use different "rules and powers". Granted, it's not set in stone or certain. But it's enough for me to be suspicious.

Just trying to think in WotC's head in case they might have realized as well that not everybody enjoys the same D&D...
And they might be trying to make a product that appeals as broadly as they can.

The problem is, I have a feeling WoTC might focusing a bit too much on second two tiers. The article about HPs and dying was an example.

Dan_Hemmens

2008-02-18, 11:47 AM

That's the fault of class-based advancement that supports combat-oriented classes.

*Exactly*

Which is precisely what you want for modeling *adventurers* and precisely what you *don't* want for modeling poets.

It strikes me as silly to say that it is somehow "favouring" PCs to say that the class and level rules are designed for adventurers, not for everybody else.

Emperor Tippy

2008-02-18, 12:09 PM

Group A:
Likes playing gritty fantasy. When you risk your neck you could end up paying dearly for it. This group doesn't like characters being that magnificent.
Hero to them means someone who does something brave/for another/etc. in spite of the risks.
These characters aren't the center of anything but their own stories. They, ultimately, might not impact anything. Or they might have a significant impact, but, it wasn't because they are powerful, they where just heroic.
(Gygax)

They play levels 1-10.

Group B:
Likes playing standard fantasy. There have been people who have come back from the dead, it's rare, but it occurs. This group likes characters who are also special, they have power in some way. More than usual.
Hero to them can mean someone who applies their abilities to do something brave for another despite their risks, someone who shines out more than just someone who normally stands up to protects another.
These characters can be the center of something great, or even be in a gritty situation. It's the mid point.
(Tolkien)

They play levels 11-20.

Group C:
Mary-sue. Bad things? What that. I sleep with that tavern wench, I slay that dragon, I rescue the princess ... and death? bah. They play fantasy to get away from "real world issues". Seriously, who wants to die? Lets just have fun.
When they think about heroes, they think about superman, spiderman, and the green lantern. The greats. The game is about the heroes.
(Blizzard)

They play levels 21-30.

Just trying to think in WotC's head in case they might have realized as well that not everybody enjoys the same D&D...
And they might be trying to make a product that appeals as broadly as they can.

Group D:
Wants a setting where the rules (whatever they are) are applied to the world and society as a whole.

They play levels 1-100.

-----
Seriously. I have no real problem with the D&D RAW and I play Shadowrun or WoD when I want more gritty games. D&D's problem is that it tries to be far to many things and doesn't have a rule set conducive to its primary archtype.

A midevil world with magic and dragons, or a regular old fantasy world are impossible in RAW D&D. It just can't be done while maintaining any suspension of disbelief. If you took the D&D rule set and made a setting based on it that can/could be a very fun and interesting system. But as D&D stands now the published settings make no sense at all.

Massed armies of low level warriors should not exist at all. There are a lot of better, cheaper, and more effective ways to either defend a location or attack a location.

Teleportation Circles should make navies non existent. They should also make trade caravans non existent.

Telepathic Bond should make news spread easily and solve all communication problems.

Wall of X should make resource gathering unnecessary.

SpikeFightwicky

2008-02-18, 12:57 PM

Yes, of course. Every 4ed criticizer is babbling about 4ed being WoW. It's not like some of them might actually have some valid compliants about what they see in WoTC materials, because there's no single bad thing about 4ed. Sure. Nothing more to say here.:smallsigh:

1) I have no problem with 4ed criticizing in of itself, but it's been taken to ridiculous levels. Take the whole 'There will be less emphasis on Evil VS Evil in 4ed' thread. About 90% of the '4ed criticizers' claim that this means that there will no longer be a possibility for evil to fight itself. It seems like the majority of criticizers take every snippet in the worst light, despite the fact that they said LESS emphasis and not NO emphasis. Criticism for the sake of criticism.

2) About the 'D&D is now WoW/MMORPG/Diablo/etc...', I have no qualms about that. What I find annoying, is that the posters who claims this almost never state why. It's like they're so sure of their comparison that they assume everyone else will know. If you're going to make a sweeping statement (and a lot of them filled with a bit of anger about how 4ed will kill D&D forever) like that, at least back it up with something. Some of the posters (earlier on) posted stuff like 'D&D will use talent in level progression, WoW uses a talent point system. Hence D&D == WoW'. They say this despite the fact that d20 Modern (pre-WoW) created the first template for the d20 talent system that Saga Edition adopted. Nobody ever claims 'D&D == D20 Modern' due to the similar talent system, and no one claimed that 'Saga Edition == WoW'. I don't want to seem like an angry piss or anything, but IMO forum discussions should rely on some kind of proof or at least an anecdote (or dirty limeric) to provide the basis of a statement.

Another argument I see is that the PCs shouldn't be the spotlight/shouldn't have the world revolve around them. A lot of people take this to the extreme (and use it to formulate more 'D&D == Videogame' arguments). Here's my take on it: The PCs are indeed the focus. That's why players are playing in your campaign/adventure. However, this doesn't mean that NOTHING happens off-camera. It means that it shouldn't make much difference in the PC's day to day life (and if it does, the DM can keep track of that). If grain prices in kingdom X increase by a gold per ton, my game shouldn't grind to a halt as I ponder the ramifications of this event, especially if the PCs will never buy grain in kingdom X. If Vlad Drakov attacks Darkon and is pushed back again, it won't affect the PCs if they're in Har'Akir for the entire campaign. If it's going to be story-relevant, then it'll be part of my adventure and it'll come into play when I want it to. Emphasizing the PCs doesn't mean the rest of the world is dead. It just means that the players shouldn't be made to worry about the myriad trivial things that their characters will never need to know/do.

Rutee

2008-02-18, 01:00 PM

A midevil world with magic and dragons, or a regular old fantasy world are impossible in RAW D&D. It just can't be done while maintaining any suspension of disbelief. If you took the D&D rule set and made a setting based on it that can/could be a very fun and interesting system. But as D&D stands now the published settings make no sense at all.
You're wrong. Sorry. Yes. Yes you /can/ do this, in the generic sense. People do it all the damn time, and it strikes me as really arrogant to proclaim that because /you/, Emperor Tippy, can not, nobody else can.

Honestly, why do you bitch about the lack of simulationism in a thoroughly war-game-tilted system? Do you complain about a dog or an iron buying Park Place in Monopoly?

ShadowSiege

2008-02-18, 01:13 PM

Emperor Tippy

2008-02-18, 01:34 PM

You're wrong. Sorry. Yes. Yes you /can/ do this, in the generic sense. People do it all the damn time, and it strikes me as really arrogant to proclaim that because /you/, Emperor Tippy, can not, nobody else can.
Actually no you can't. At least not by RAW. The rules do not support it.

What people do all the time doesn't matter. What matters in any discussion on the viability of a system is the rules as written. I have personally run games that are a midevil world+ magic or "traditional D&D" but I did it with a lot of house rules and telling the players that the reason that they can't do X or that X hasn't been done is because it won't fit in the setting.

No nation or group in D&D should ever use a mass army of mooks. Your army shouldn't even include level 1 warriors. The use of said mooks in armies is not supported by the RAW. Any time said armies are used you break suspension of disbelief.

Every time a ship is used to move goods from 1 city to another you break suspension of disbelief. A permanent teleportation circle is cheaper, faster and safer. The very fact that ships exist in D&D breaks suspension of disbelief.

Honestly, why do you bitch about the lack of simulationism in a thoroughly war-game-tilted system?
Because I expect more accuracy and better simulationism in a war game than I do in anything else. War depends very heavily on such things and the existence of spells such as Teleportation Circle drastically alter how wars are fought. The demonstrated superiority of a single adult dragon to an entire army of mooks means that said mooks won't be used.

Do you complain about a dog or an iron buying Park Place in Monopoly?
No. And if a player wanted to play an animated tea kettle I wouldn't care either.

--------
There are 2 ways to create RPG's.

1: Come up with a rules set and then extrapolate a setting based on said rules set.

2: Come up with a setting/idea and then make a rule set that works in said setting/idea.

D&D 3.5 has done neither of those things. It tries to be too many things at the same time and in the process does none of those things well.

Emperor Tippy

2008-02-18, 01:41 PM

Prophaniti

2008-02-18, 01:42 PM

Massed armies of low level warriors should not exist at all. There are a lot of better, cheaper, and more effective ways to either defend a location or attack a location.

Teleportation Circles should make navies non existent. They should also make trade caravans non existent.

Telepathic Bond should make news spread easily and solve all communication problems.

Wall of X should make resource gathering unnecessary.
The problem with this logic is simple. In order to be a fun a playable game, the D&D system does not accurately or 'realistically' (ie, within the context of the game world) reflect the investment of time, energy, money, resources, etc. involved with magic. This is why you still have merchant caravans and navies and poor communication in a world where it is possible to do all of these things instantaneously.

A real-world example would be space travel. We certainly have the technology now to have permanent bases on the moon and mars, as well as many and much larger space stations. Why don't we? Because no one wants to foot the bill. Why do D&D nations still use traditional armies instead of using Gate to summon minions or making hordes of golems or (as some of you seem to think) the does-whatever-I-want Wish spell? Because magical solutions are difficult, dangerous, expensive and unreliable. This is not indicated in RAW because it would make playing spellcasters more difficult and less 'I Win', which is not what WotC thinks most people want, and they're probably right.

Actually, I would love a game that had magic as dangerous, expensive and unreliable as it should be. Anyone know of one?

JadedDM

2008-02-18, 01:51 PM

Man, why don't they just reinstate the penalties for death for 2E that they removed from 3E?

Every time you die, you lose a point of CON. If you run out of CON points, you stay dead.

Every time you are brought back to life, you make a Resurrection Survival Check. This is based on your CON score. If you fail, you cannot ever be brought back to life again, short of divine intervention.

Casting Resurrection ages the caster three years.

It works pretty well for us grognards, eh?

Sleet

2008-02-18, 02:21 PM

From what EE as shown here WOTC is going with the new little league mentality of every one gets to hit the ball and run the bases. No one gets to lose. We wouldnt want to hurt the players fealings by killing off their characters.

Meh. Personally I find character death to be a dull consequence. Just roll up a new PC - you're not around to deal with the consequences of losing.

In D&D (any RPG, for that matter) there are a lot more interesting ways to lose than to die. :smallsmile:

Shhalahr Windrider

2008-02-18, 02:28 PM

A real-world example would be space travel. We certainly have the technology now to have permanent bases on the moon and mars, as well as many and much larger space stations. Why don't we? Because no one wants to foot the bill. Why do D&D nations still use traditional armies instead of using Gate to summon minions or making hordes of golems or (as some of you seem to think) the does-whatever-I-want Wish spell? Because magical solutions are difficult, dangerous, expensive and unreliable.
My take on it is that according to the community building guidelines in the DMG there would be roughly only 3 or 4 wizards high enough level to cast the requisite spells in any given metropolis, and that metropolises represent only 1% of "civilization" while the numbers only get worse from there on in. Such wizards are not guaranteed to know the spell nor are they guaranteed to be willing to cast it on behalf of anyone other than themselves.

Of course, there are issues with the general level distribution model, too. But let's address those before we decide that just because a spell exists that it is common enough to really change the world in any drastic fashion.

Chronicled

2008-02-18, 02:33 PM

Jack Zander

2008-02-18, 02:38 PM

Why does WotC even have to tell us that NPCs die at 0 hp? Most of mine do anyway. They may not be for sure dead, but if they are noly mooks, my players don't have to worry about them getting back up from some die rolls I make after the session and exacting revenge on the party. Even if random mook #47 did revive, he'd probably stay as far away from the PCs as possible (and the BBEG that hired him).

All that this does is causes players to cry foul when your BBEG keeps coming back, and will only encourage them to slit throats more if people do come back.

Mr. Friendly

2008-02-18, 02:40 PM

Here's a thought: What if the new save or die effects dropped the target to 0 hp? That would, under the new death system, kill any non-plot vital NPC in one shot, while merely removing a PC from the fight until they received healing. It'd be a lot easier to recover from than "you die," while still making a big enough impact to matter.

Except that:

A: They have more or less removed save or dies effects from 4e. (or so they say)

B: There isn't "a new death system". The designers merely suggest that you just not worry about non-vital NPCs and let them dies undignified deaths.

AKA_Bait

2008-02-18, 02:41 PM

All that this does is causes players to cry foul when your BBEG keeps coming back, and will only encourage them to slit throats more if people do come back.

This was my point about it only being 'advice'. Advice is frequently confused with 'the rules'.

Rutee

2008-02-18, 03:18 PM

Actually no you can't. At least not by RAW. The rules do not support it.
If you're going to play that way, the RAW doesn't forbid it either, so I clearly can invoke the Air Bud Clause.

This is a patently ludicrous argument; If RAW were allowed to dictate player attitudes then it'd the most powerful tool on the face of the planet, as it can dictate to us any amount of OOC beliefs it wants and we would have to listen.

What people do all the time doesn't matter. What matters in any discussion on the viability of a system is the rules as written. I have personally run games that are a midevil world+ magic or "traditional D&D" but I did it with a lot of house rules and telling the players that the reason that they can't do X or that X hasn't been done is because it won't fit in the setting.
Rules aren't meant to be the rules of the world. They're meant to be gameplay rules. The two are divorced because it's a gamist system. If we were talkin' GURPS or something like that, you'd be right, but DnD is a gamist system; We only need to discuss the rules as they affect gameplay.

Because in the RAW as presented, housecats would decimate villages if riled into angry packs.

No nation or group in D&D should ever use a mass army of mooks. Your army shouldn't even include level 1 warriors. The use of said mooks in armies is not supported by the RAW. Any time said armies are used you break suspension of disbelief.
Hardly. The RAW for exp that you use to justify an army of non-mooks is applied at your leisure, and is generally intended (Which is not RAW, I recognize) for life or death situations. Five first level warriors are better then one second level warrior.

Every time a ship is used to move goods from 1 city to another you break suspension of disbelief. A permanent teleportation circle is cheaper, faster and safer. The very fact that ships exist in D&D breaks suspension of disbelief.
No, I break your suspension of disbelief. Suspension of disbelief is utterly subjective. That's my point; your limits are not mine, and I'll thank you very much not to act as though they are.

Because I expect more accuracy and better simulationism in a war game than I do in anything else. War depends very heavily on such things and the existence of spells such as Teleportation Circle drastically alter how wars are fought. The demonstrated superiority of a single adult dragon to an entire army of mooks means that said mooks won't be used.
You are to be sadly disappointed by anything WotC makes then. *They are not making a simulationist game*.

There are 2 ways to create RPG's.

1: Come up with a rules set and then extrapolate a setting based on said rules set.

2: Come up with a setting/idea and then make a rule set that works in said setting/idea.

D&D 3.5 has done neither of those things. It tries to be too many things at the same time and in the process does none of those things well.
2. is correct. 1 however? No, you can just make a rules set. It's not going to be ideal for any setting, but this isn't an ideal world.

Artanis

2008-02-18, 04:00 PM

Actually no you can't. At least not by RAW. The rules do not support it.

What people do all the time doesn't matter. What matters in any discussion on the viability of a system is the rules as written. I have personally run games that are a midevil world+ magic or "traditional D&D" but I did it with a lot of house rules and telling the players that the reason that they can't do X or that X hasn't been done is because it won't fit in the setting.

No nation or group in D&D should ever use a mass army of mooks. Your army shouldn't even include level 1 warriors. The use of said mooks in armies is not supported by the RAW. Any time said armies are used you break suspension of disbelief.

Every time a ship is used to move goods from 1 city to another you break suspension of disbelief. A permanent teleportation circle is cheaper, faster and safer. The very fact that ships exist in D&D breaks suspension of disbelief.

Because I expect more accuracy and better simulationism in a war game than I do in anything else. War depends very heavily on such things and the existence of spells such as Teleportation Circle drastically alter how wars are fought. The demonstrated superiority of a single adult dragon to an entire army of mooks means that said mooks won't be used.
It really all depends. I can easily think of a way to make said army of mooks fully logical, and keep Teleportation Circles from totally supplanting caravans...namely by not having high-level Wizards and whatnot running around willy-nilly.

Teleportation circle:

A Permanencied Teleportation Circle requires a 17th-level caster (18th-level if it's something like a Sorcerer) and costs over 25,000 gold. You can get eight (almost nine) Keelboats for that amount of money, letting you transport 400 tons of cargo at once. Granted, Keelboats are slow as molasses, but they have the advantage of being able to go anywhere and it's not like pushing 400 tons of goods through a circle with a 5' radius (and moving it out of the way on the other end, too) is a simple task.

Alternatively, you can get almost 60 wagons with horses for the cost of a single permanent TC.

And a non-permanent TC is hardly an option because it doesn't last very long. Even with a level 20 Wizard, you're looking at less than 3.5 hours, at which point it has to be cast again. And then again. And then again. Good luck feeding an entire city when its food supply comes in a small trickle that only works when the Wizard isn't sleeping.

So to keep TC from supplanting caravans...just make level 17+ Arcane Casters relatively rare.

Mooks:

Yes, a mook is no match for a half-decent Dragon. Yes, an ARMY of mooks doesn't fare much better. But another army of mooks? If I say "I'm not going to bother with an army of mooks", I damn well better have a Plan B when my next door neighbor or the local Orc/Hobgoblin/Kobold/Zombie/Demon/whatever swarm decides that it wants to come into my country and kill all the women and defile all the livestock. Now, if I have a few high-level adventurers on the payroll, it's all good, of course. But if (as mentioned in the previous section) high-level badasses are not coming out my ears...that army of mooks is better than nothing.

Now, will things be different, even drastically different? Of course it will. Good luck besieging a castle that has some Eternal Wands of Conjure Food and Water. Good luck cutting off the supply lines of an army whose Glorious Leader has splurged on a permanent Teleportation Circle. Good luck stopping a Dragon. But that doesn't mean there's no place for the more mundane stuff. If most of the threats are relatively mundane and you can walk down the street without being mugged by a level 20 Rogue, beaten up by a level 20 Fighter, and turned into an ever-deadly house cat by a level 20 Wizard...then mundane means of countering that stuff will often work reasonably well.

AKA_Bait

2008-02-18, 05:12 PM

your limits are not mine, and I'll thank you very much not to act as though they are.

If I had room in my Sig, I would ask to put this quote there. Sometimes it seems like 90% of the disagreements I have on these boards stem from someone making an absolute statement about something that is subjective or situational.

ShadowSiege

2008-02-18, 05:57 PM

Teleportation circle:

A Permanencied Teleportation Circle requires a 17th-level caster (18th-level if it's something like a Sorcerer) and costs over 25,000 gold. You can get eight (almost nine) Keelboats for that amount of money, letting you transport 400 tons of cargo at once. Granted, Keelboats are slow as molasses, but they have the advantage of being able to go anywhere and it's not like pushing 400 tons of goods through a circle with a 5' radius (and moving it out of the way on the other end, too) is a simple task.

Funnily enough, it is impossible to randomly generate a 17+ wizard or sorcerer, or 19+ cleric or druid according to the DMG. Max level wiz/sorc is 1d4+12 (metro community mod), cl/drd is 1d6+12. The reason why everyone uses ships and convoys in an as-generated d&d world is because no one exists that can make permanent teleportation circles. Strangely, it's possible to have a level 28 commoner in a metropolis, or even 4 of them.

Trog

2008-02-18, 06:00 PM

Because players don't like it when their characters that they have had for a long time die. Simple.

Collin152

2008-02-18, 06:10 PM

I thought this is why people play Liches. Cause they don't like to die.

Dervag

2008-02-18, 07:30 PM

It really all depends. I can easily think of a way to make said army of mooks fully logical, and keep Teleportation Circles from totally supplanting caravans...namely by not having high-level Wizards and whatnot running around willy-nilly.

Teleportation circle:

A Permanencied Teleportation Circle requires a 17th-level caster (18th-level if it's something like a Sorcerer) and costs over 25,000 gold. You can get eight (almost nine) Keelboats for that amount of money, letting you transport 400 tons of cargo at once. Granted, Keelboats are slow as molasses, but they have the advantage of being able to go anywhere and it's not like pushing 400 tons of goods through a circle with a 5' radius (and moving it out of the way on the other end, too) is a simple task.

Alternatively, you can get almost 60 wagons with horses for the cost of a single permanent TC.It's actually more extreme than this. My argument borrows heavily from the Economicon section of the Dungeonomicon, but I think it's worth bringing up here.

You shouldn't be able to plunk down a ton, or two tons, or even five tons of gold and get a wizard to whip you up a permanent Circle of Teleportation. Why? Because the time of a wizard that powerful cannot be bought for money. People take money because they can use it to buy things they need, and because they're willing to work to get the money. If they don't want or need your money, they won't work for you.

A 17th-level wizard is basically a demigod, or would be if "demigod" weren't a technical term in D&D. He can get as much gold as he wants with trivial ease. He can make gold by wishing for it. If he doesn't want to make his own gold, then he can teleport into your treasure and steal all your gold, and squirrel it away in an unassailable extraplanar stronghold. If he isn't mean enough to do that, he can conjure an earth elemental and send it off to scour out an underground vein of gold and come up with as much gold or as he likes. Or he can summon a powerful genie, slap it around, and force it to grant him wishes (for gold). He has so many ways of obtaining gold using his own powers and abilities that it isn't even funny.

So why would this powerful being waste time doing something in exchange for your gold? If they need gold, they don't have to bargain with you to get it, and they have ways to do it without the XP cost of a Permanency spell. Moreover, what can they buy with gold that they can't create or summon for themself? He can grant himself wishes, remember? If they want a mansion, they can get a better one than anything you could ever buy with gold. If they need exotic plants and minerals, they have spells that can transmute most materials from rocks and sticks. If they want beautiful consorts, they can summon extraplanar beings of spectacular beauty.

Gold is worthless to a being this powerful. It's not even valuable for being unusually pretty. A wizard this powerful can use illusions to create the image of whatever appeals to their sensibilities, even if that image is impossible to achieve using real materials.

That doesn't mean wizards will never be willing to make Permanent Circles of Teleportation for you. They may do it because they like you, or because it amuses them to do so, or because it's part of an elaborate plan on their part. But don't expect to be able to roll up to a wizard's ivory tower with a train of pack mules carrying the Treasure of the Sierra Madre in their saddlebags and custom order one. You'd better be able to pay them in things they can't make for themselves easily, like extremely powerful magic items and unique materials that cannot be created using a wish spell. They won't take gold and gems, because they can get those whenever they want without having to leave the comfort of their climate-controlled, heavily warded home.

Whereas you can get a wagon or a boat (or even a huge train of wagons or a fleet of boats) with gold and gems. Because you can buy those from people who aren't powerful wizards capable of fulfilling their every desire using magical powers.

So if you have lots of gold (say, because you own a gold mine or can tax someone who does), but don't have lots of powerful magic items and exotic substances that can't be obtained even with a Wish spell, you're not going to be getting any permanent Circles of Teleportation put up on your soil any time soon. Whereas you can have shipwrights and cartwrights lining up at your door to make ships and wagons for that gold.

Which is why you see D&D kingdoms that rely on carts and ships for transport. Even if they have a 17th-level wizard in the sense that there's a 17th level wizard somewhere in the kingdom who isn't actively hostile to the kingdom, it doesn't matter. The wizard is far too smart to waste his time and XP making items for the kingdom in exchange for such a trivial commodity as mere gold. Even if he'd cheerfully pitch in to defend the realm from an invasion of demons, he has no reason to do so in exchange for a pile of gold. He can get gold risk-free whenever he cares to take the time, so gold isn't worth any more to him than tap water is to you. He won't do anything for gold that he wouldn't do for free.

Perhaps this will make the wizard unwelcome in time. But if a 17th level wizard feels unwelcome, that's not good news for your kingdom. Either he's going to start shooting, or he's going to leave. If he leaves, that weakens the defenses of the kingdom, and makes it an inviting target for other powerful wizards (whose idea of the easy way to gain gold is to teleport into your treasury and steal it).

And before you think this is unrealistic, consider that the same thing applies on every level of society. If something is so cheap that I can get it for free whenever I want, why would I exert myself and spend my time, let alone put myself in danger, to get it? Would the king do you a favor if you offered him a turnip? How about a silver piece?

Not likely. In fact, he'll probably be insulted. Even if the favor doesn't actually cost him more than the worth of one turnip in some abstract sense, he can get a turnip from the kitchen whenever he wants. By offering him a turnip, you imply that he can be 'bought' for a turnip, or that he is so poor that he does not have plenty of turnips of his own.

And this is exactly how a high level wizard is likely to react to the offer of a pile of gold.

Prophaniti

2008-02-18, 07:58 PM

Dervag

2008-02-18, 11:18 PM

It's good to see there are some people out there who realise that the existence of powerful magic such as Teleportation Circle does not in any way destroy the believability of a medieval society, complete with serfs and merchants and starvation and injustice. Simply because a thing can be done, it does not immediately follow that it must be done, or will be. I hear this argument constantly, mostly from people who don't like FR, and it simply doesn't hold up. Many things maintain the status quo in a fantasy world, the primary two being Magic is Hard and There's Always Someone More Powerful.It's not so much those- I mean, the wizard really could cast a Permanent Circle of Teleportation and regain the XP cost of casting Permanency in a fairly short period of time, without working very hard or being in much danger.

It's that the wizard is so powerful that normal human society has very little to offer them that they cannot obtain for themselves. They've leveled straight up out of the medieval economy, and they don't really stand to profit in any significant way from investing in it. No matter how many of these Circles they construct, it won't give them the things they really need and cannot easily get for themselves, like more 9th level spells or more very powerful magic items.

So you won't see those things going up as part of the "gold economy." They aren't analogous to real-world infrastructure because they can only be constructed by demigods who don't need anything that normal people have to offer them. Therefore, trade goods normal people use (like gold) are worthless to said demigods.

Now, some magical items (like Continual Flame street lamps) are cheap and easy enough to make that they exist on the boundary between the "gold economy" and the "magic economy." A 7th or 8th level NPC wizard still needs things from ordinary civilization if they want to be comfortable, and they can easily earn the gold to buy those things by making items like that and by renting their services.

But a 17th level wizard won't sell you a Continual Flame street lamp, because the top price you're willing to pay for one is less than the lowest price he'll even consider as being worth a moment of his time.

Note that the same problem applies in reverse at the bottom of the economy- the downtrodden peasants. Those peasants have to work for food every day, and food is the 'currency' of their economy. Gold and silver are so rare in the "food economy" that they lose their practical value as media of exchange. So if you offer a peasant a handful of silver for the sack of turnips in his pantry, he may very well refuse. He freely admits that your silver is worth way more than a sack of turnips, but he needs those turnips to feed his family. Likewise, the village blacksmith will only take your silver and gold to do work if:

a)He knows he will get enough food from the villagers even if he takes time out to do your work, or
b)He's afraid that you will kill him if he doesn't.

Because he can starve just like the other peasants if he doesn't do enough work for the villagers to earn the food he needs to keep going.

And don't even think about paying the blacksmith with a sack full of rubies or a minor magic item. For a peasant, finding hundreds of gp worth of treasure is actually bad news. Because the peasant can't possibly stop stronger people from taking the treasure away, and there's a good chance that they'll decide to kill his family or his entire village while they're getting it. The only safe things a peasant can do with a sack full of rubies are:

a)Bury it somewhere and hope no one ever finds out he has it, and spill the secret immediately if anyone ever threatens him, and pray to all the gods that they don't decide to torture him on the off chance he's hiding a second sack...
or
b)Trade it for a tiny, tiny fraction of its real value to some wandering merchant or bard, who actually has a chance of going to a city where they can sell the rubies.

If the peasant decides that he's going to take the rubies, go to the city, and make (or rather expand) his fortune, he's making a mistake, because life is not a fairy tale. The odds are pretty good that a peasant with a sack of rubies will get mugged or robbed before he finds anyone who will give him anything like the rubies' fair market value in exchange for them.

So there are actually forms of payment too valuable for peasants to accept, and not just because they can't make change.

On the other hand, villagers will cheerfully accept food, chores, or herd animals as payment. And they will accept non-food-related services such as killing the ogre that kept trying to eat them alive, because "not being eaten by an ogre" is an extremely valuable service to sell anyone. So while they are reluctant to take your gold, they will cheerfully feed you all winter long as long as you slay monsters and maybe hunt down the odd fierce and edible animal.

Rutee

2008-02-19, 01:37 AM

What's interesting is that I hadn't even considerred this... What if a country can offer the following deal, theoretically:
"We'll give you money /and/ we won't kill you for service X"

Hear me out, I'm going to try to defend Tippy's odd (to me) stance of applying RAW to everything as game world rules, instead of game play rules. Pretend for a moment that packs of angry housecats haven't descended on humanity and at the least killed all the peasants. That might be a stretch of the imagination, but allow me that much. I will probably fail as I haven't botherred thinking it all through like he has..

Theoretically, one can apply XP rules to NPCs. And one can give XP for sparring matches. NPC armies, therefore, would train troops nonlethally, and actually have an army of non-red shirts. They might even have state trained and loyal wizards.

...Wait I got that far and started wonderring why a Wizard who /could/ get to the point where they can challenge this theoretical rogue level 17 wizard would take **** from the army. Hm. I guess I /can't/ defend his viewpoint. Oh well.

horseboy

2008-02-19, 01:47 AM

...Wait I got that far and started wonderring why a Wizard who /could/ get to the point where they can challenge this theoretical rogue level 17 wizard would take **** from the army. Hm. I guess I /can't/ defend his viewpoint. Oh well.
Tippy usually keeps his in line though programed amnesia to be faithfully loyal to his Empire.

Rutee

2008-02-19, 01:48 AM

If your first emperor isn't a Wizard, that strategy kinda falls apart. It isn't worth the King's life or time to pull that ****; The Wizard he had mind rape his wizards mind rapes him (Because his level sucks, because he's doing his King-work, because this is a realistic world) and takes over. From a King's perspective, it's in his best interests to keep his Wizards at around 6-7th level, where a gold economy helps them, and are still capable of challenging most enemies that could 'realistically' show up.

horseboy

2008-02-19, 01:52 AM

Right, which is why it's usually a magitocracy. Cause all it takes is a decent Int stat, and that's pretty easy to boost.

Rutee

2008-02-19, 01:56 AM

He's going to have to go over that from beginning to regime establishment then; What you come back to is the fact that without Programmed Amnesia, you can't really establish a proper magocracy, and you need a Jackass Wizard to get that high up first.

Actually no. Humanity dies in the stone age, because they're 2 hit point commoners facing off against even nastier predators then we have now. Or angry housecats killed off all would-be adventurers.

horseboy

2008-02-19, 02:06 AM

Rutee

2008-02-19, 02:10 AM

Pretty much. This is why RAW isn't rules for a world.

In fact, there's nothing in the rules that says children don't have Natural Attacks or Natural Armor, except Dragons. So yes, a race like Ogres or Lizardfolk or something with natural attacks and natural armor, at birth, as a one day old, might stand a chance of ruling the world.

It sure ain't going to be something without racial hit dice.

Khanderas

2008-02-19, 03:06 AM

Rutee

2008-02-19, 03:13 AM

Lord Iames Osari

2008-02-19, 03:31 AM

<snip>

...Wait I got that far and started wonderring why a Wizard who /could/ get to the point where they can challenge this theoretical rogue level 17 wizard would take **** from the army. Hm. I guess I /can't/ defend his viewpoint. Oh well.

Gee, I wonder, could it maybe have something to do with the fact that these NPCs might have some loyalty to some force beyond themselves? Like a nation, or a monarch, or any of the reasons that the people who IRL have high levels of training in the areas of mayhem and destruction generally don't run around killing important political figures and overthrowing the legitimate authorities just because they can?

Oh, wait, I forgot, nobody in D&D ever has realistic motivations or attachments. They're all just in it for the power, or the money, or the money and the power, or the money and the power and the harem of hot [insert preferred sex here]. :smallyuk: If that's the way you play in your games, then you're welcome to do so, but don't try to pretend it makes sense.

Artemician

2008-02-19, 03:39 AM

Gee, I wonder, could it maybe have something to do with the fact that these NPCs might have some loyalty to some force beyond themselves? Like a nation, or a monarch, or any of the reasons that the people who IRL have high levels of training in the areas of mayhem and destruction generally don't run around killing important political figures and overthrowing the legitimate authorities just because they can?

<Random Flamebait snipped>

If you'd think hard enough, I think you would find that what you've said makes no sense in this context.

Rutee was talking about how the Wizard Minion of a King who mindrapes his fellow wizards will, in fact, turn on the King. This makes perfect sense; if you're the kind of person who would be sick and twisted enough to Mindrape and use Programmed Amnesia, you would have no compunctions towards removing the weak, mortal buffoon who runs the country when it should obviously be run by someone who is better at it.

You.. bring it up as a general example and try to slam her for portraying all characters as selfish, when all evidence is pointing otherwise.

In the words of 4chan, Lurk Moar, my friend. Lurk Moar.

Lord Iames Osari

2008-02-19, 03:55 AM

Theoretically, one can apply XP rules to NPCs. And one can give XP for sparring matches. NPC armies, therefore, would train troops nonlethally, and actually have an army of non-red shirts. They might even have state trained and loyal wizards.

...Wait I got that far and started wonderring why a Wizard who /could/ get to the point where they can challenge this theoretical rogue level 17 wizard would take **** from the army. Hm. I guess I /can't/ defend his viewpoint. Oh well.

I'm pretty sure that this is a general example. She wondered in what appear to me to be general terms, "Why would a wizard who can challenge a Wiz17 take orders from the army?"

Her failure to come up with any sort of justification suggests that she does in fact believe that wizards, at least, are motivated predominantly by selfishness; indeed, it suggests that she believes this so strongly that even on serious consideration of the issue (giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming that she did in fact give the matter serious consideration), the possibility apparently did not even present itself.

Artemician

2008-02-19, 04:28 AM

I'm pretty sure that this is a general example. She wondered in what appear to me to be general terms, "Why would a wizard who can challenge a Wiz17 take orders from the army?"

Her failure to come up with any sort of justification suggests that she does in fact believe that wizards, at least, are motivated predominantly by selfishness; indeed, it suggests that she believes this so strongly that even on serious consideration of the issue (giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming that she did in fact give the matter serious consideration), the possibility apparently did not even present itself.

She was responding to Emperor_Tippy's point, that the D&D world does not make sense if people behave realistically, which in his view, involves selfish motives. I am not going to comment on whether this is a valid viewpoint to take, but suffice to say that from the posts Rutee has made here, and in other threads, she has made it abundantly clear that her view towards TTRPGs is a Gamist one, namely, that the top priority is making the game enjoyable to the players.

While I cannot pretend to know Rutee's personal thoughts, it would be exceedingly strange for her to say that all Wizards should be selfish. This would run contrary to the Gamist viewpoint, as this would not be enjoyable for the players. Rather, I think that it is more reasonable to assume that she is rebutting Emperor_Tippy's view on the matter, by trying to use his own logic against him.

If anything, it's Tippy you want to address your grievances too, not Rutee.

ShadowSiege

2008-02-19, 06:19 AM

Oh, wait, I forgot, nobody in D&D ever has realistic motivations or attachments. They're all just in it for the power, or the money, or the money and the power, or the money and the power and the harem of hot [insert preferred sex here]. :smallyuk: If that's the way you play in your games, then you're welcome to do so, but don't try to pretend it makes sense.

Last I checked, those are realistic motivations. First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women. Those motivations have driven the world for a long time (especially sex, the primary drive of all creatures that are sexual is to reproduce with others). We are base, selfish animals, but because we've got brains, if we try really hard, we can accomplish something that is less than pure evil. Even a godly intelligent human wizard is still a human.

Rutee

2008-02-19, 06:29 AM

She was responding to Emperor_Tippy's point, that the D&D world does not make sense if people behave realistically, which in his view, involves selfish motives. I am not going to comment on whether this is a valid viewpoint to take, but suffice to say that from the posts Rutee has made here, and in other threads, she has made it abundantly clear that her view towards TTRPGs is a Gamist one, namely, that the top priority is making the game enjoyable to the players.
Hm. I'm not sure what to say about that. I'd say my primary motive is to make sure that we tell good stories, but I wouldn't impose it over everyone's fun. Anyway, I was trying to defend Tippy's viewpoint, as Dervag was rather effectively demolishing the idea that a medieval-style world is impossible with RAW. Tippy's first point to bring up in this thread were logistics, involving Permanent Circles of Teleportation, Dervag pointed out why those /wouldn't/ be around even if there /were/ level 17 wizards running around. It seemed unfair to me that the viewpoint went undefended, so I tried, but I disagree with it too heavily in the first place to do it justice. Plus, I doubt Tippy cares anyway now, so!

Her failure to come up with any sort of justification suggests that she does in fact believe that wizards, at least, are motivated predominantly by selfishness; indeed, it suggests that she believes this so strongly that even on serious consideration of the issue (giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming that she did in fact give the matter serious consideration), the possibility apparently did not even present itself.
No, seriously, dood. I was trying to figure out where Tippy was coming from. I eventually concluded that whether you can set up a Magocracy like this or not is irrelevant; If you apply the game rules towards world building, and take them literally while you do so, Humanity wouldn't have made it past the stone age; Indeed, Racial Hit Dice monsters would dominate the Prime Material plane just as the other planes, because there's no rule (And Tippy is arguing strict RAW, so don't go hounding me. I found strict application of RAW to be ludicrous on a world building level. Am I to believe that a Housecat can in fact kill commoners like, 70% of the time?) that states that children don't need to mature to get Racial Hit Dice, Nat. Armor, Stat mods, etc. Since they pop out fully formed (And often faster then humans), there's no reason to believe they wouldn't rule over most of the planet.

I'm pretty sure that this is a general example. She wondered in what appear to me to be general terms, "Why would a wizard who can challenge a Wiz17 take orders from the army?"

Context was also important to this. He wasn't smacking down a Wiz17 for committing any crime. He was doing so because the Wiz17 decided he wasn't going to take time (and exp) out of his life to make Permanent Teleportation Circles that connected literally every single city within the Kingdom. I was basically assuming that the State employed wizard in question did still feel a sense of ethics.

horseboy

2008-02-19, 02:41 PM

Last I checked, those are realistic motivations. First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women. Those motivations have driven the world for a long time (especially sex, the primary drive of all creatures that are sexual is to reproduce with others). We are base, selfish animals, but because we've got brains, if we try really hard, we can accomplish something that is less than pure evil. Even a godly intelligent human wizard is still a human.
Alright everyone, say it with me:

If there's any hot girls there, I wanna do them!

Dervag

2008-02-19, 06:14 PM

Yes, how does anything without a Natural armour bonus live long enough to create armour? Certainly Lizardmen as egg layers and with good natural armour should have taken over as they have the numbers and the innate mathematical superiority and just wiped out any other threats, right? :smallamused:I have a few theories:

(1)The first intelligent races in the 'standard' D&D setting (the one where all the monster and humanoid races, or at least most of them, exist) were abominations. They were much more powerful than the 'naturally armored' races like Lizardmen, and were quite capable of reducing other races to slavery. So the Lizardmen were merely a tougher breed of slaves from the point of view of the illithids and aboleths. They found primitive, caveman-like ancestors of the modern intelligent species and selectively bred them for superior intelligence to make them more useful slaves.

Eventually, the slaves revolted, forcing the abominations into the hidden depths of the multiverse. But by that time, they had already mastered at least some of the arts of technology and magic. This made clever and socially adept races that could use technology and magic efficiently a match for stronger and tougher races that had trouble organizing themselves to use those tools.

(2)The first intelligent races were created by the gods more or less simultaneously, and took many centuries of spreading out across the world before populations grew large enough that competition was common. By that time, these early cultures had mastered metal working and/or magic. Which, again, gave species that were better at using magic and battle tactics an edge to counteract the greater strength and size of their enemies.

(3)Species like lizardmen and ogres did use to rule the earth, with bands of humans and demihumans only existing in isolated and inhospitable corners of the world. They survived through a combination of cunning, camouflage, instant willingness to submit to threats, and the fact that nobody really wanted the territories they occupied. Eventually, though, the humans and demihumans figured out how to make metal weapons and cast powerful magic. They expanded out of their enclaves, conquering species after species of humanoid, and drove the humanoids into the less desirable parts of the world in turn.

This one might explain why demihumans seem to dislike the big tough species so much, and vice versa.

Or:
(4)The intelligent species with natural armor and attacks are recent creations, that postdate the discovery of metal and magic by humans and demihumans. Some of them are the result of genetic engineering attempts by wizards who were trying to create shock troops. Some are the product of powerful deities who wanted worshippers but failed to attract the notice of existing species, and so decided to make their own species. Some are simply evolutionary dead ends that never had much luck with 'taking over the world' because they are too savage to cooperate or have very specialized needs.

Pretty much. This is why RAW isn't rules for a world.

In fact, there's nothing in the rules that says children don't have Natural Attacks or Natural Armor, except Dragons. So yes, a race like Ogres or Lizardfolk or something with natural attacks and natural armor, at birth, as a one day old, might stand a chance of ruling the world.

It sure ain't going to be something without racial hit dice.Well, we know that baby ogres don't have Large size. Since their size doesn't match that of the ogres listed in the Monster Manual, why should any of their other stats?

Gee, I wonder, could it maybe have something to do with the fact that these NPCs might have some loyalty to some force beyond themselves? Like a nation, or a monarch, or any of the reasons that the people who IRL have high levels of training in the areas of mayhem and destruction generally don't run around killing important political figures and overthrowing the legitimate authorities just because they can?

Oh, wait, I forgot, nobody in D&D ever has realistic motivations or attachments. They're all just in it for the power, or the money, or the money and the power, or the money and the power and the harem of hot [insert preferred sex here]. :smallyuk: If that's the way you play in your games, then you're welcome to do so, but don't try to pretend it makes sense.C'mon, chill out a little.

I see where you're coming from, but maybe I can recast the argument you're replying to in terms that make a bit more sense.

Think about it like this. In real life, no one person, no matter how powerful or well trained, can take over a country by sheer personal awesomeness. Even back in the age of swords and shields, the mightiest hero couldn't beat an army all by himself. And he had to sleep sooner or later.

In D&D, a powerful enough hero really can beat an army all by himself. If he's a spell caster, he might be able to beat a dozen armies, one after the other, without repeating a single trick ("follow the bouncing ball!") That kind of power presents an awful temptation, especially when you know in your bones that no one who has any real incentive to do so can possibly stop you if you're willing to take the trouble. That doesn't mean that all powerful D&D characters (and by 'character' I mean to include NPCs) will betray rulers and conquer nations. Some of them will be loyal, just as you say.

I don't think that matters one way or the other. Because while extremely powerful NPCs may be loyal to the country, they are also largely independent of the country. They don't have to live there. If they want to leave, no one can stop them. There are much more pleasant places for them to live if they want to. They can, for instance, live in this world's equivalent of the French Riviera and teleport to their adventures. There are much more interesting places for them to adventure, such as the Outer Planes.

They don't count on your security forces to protect them, because anything that can threaten them would go through your army for a light snack. They don't really need your economy to provide them with supplies, because they can obtain more or less anything they want by means other than buying it from your subjects (well, noncasters might need your economy, but on the other hand noncasters can't make that Circle of Teleportation you want).

So even though they are loyal, they don't have very many ties to your kingdom, and they are extremely powerful. Which makes them dangerous, even though they aren't hostile to you in any way. Because if they suddenly decide that you've turned to the dark side, you're dead. If one of their very powerful enemies decides to rip up your capital en route to their villa, you're dead. Even though they're loyal to you, you can't control them or prevent their presence from causing you harm.

So from the point of view of a low or mid-level aristocrat king, having a friendly high level adventurer in the kingdom is like having a friendly lion make its den in your living room. Granted, the lion will most likely protect you from intruders, and it hasn't tried to eat you yet. But you couldn't really stop it if it changed its mind, and having a lion in your house may get you in trouble with people who don't like lions or want to control lions (Animal Control). And it's not very likely that you will place demands on the lion or try to teach it tricks that are useful to you. Because if it takes it into its head that you're insulting it or threatening it, you're dead meat.

Hence the problem with strategies that rely on a D&D society that makes heavy use of mind controlled high level casters and such. First of all, someone has to do all the brainwashing, and that someone is a weakness in your plans. If you do the brainwashing yourself, great- but that means that if anyone ever shakes off the brainwashing (which can generally be done), you, personally will be their target. Secondly, having all these powerful magicians around will attract the interest of powerful beings who regard you as a threat or a potential ally. Which may get you sucked into a war so big that even your high level casters cannot protect your kingdom.

Artanis

2008-02-19, 06:44 PM

Another problem with having Wizards be loyal to a nation "just because" is that you aren't going to have every nation with its own pet Wizard. Sure, nations A, B, C, D, and E may have their own high-level spellcaster, but what about nation F that doesn't? What do they do? Do they beg their neighbors to convince their own Wizards to come set up a teleportation circle network, or do they just use boats and wagons? Do they as the neighboring Ruthless Opportunistic Overlord to lend them a Wizard to fight off a zombie horde, or do they grit their teeth and fight them off with good ol' fashion steel?

Let's go one step further. Let's say every country really does have a high-level Wizard or two to do this stuff for them. Well, there's lots of big baddies out there. That dragon who can annihilate an army with impunity? Somebody has to deal with it. What's more important, making things a little more convenient for your army's quartermasters, or making sure Scorchy the Fire-Breathing Lizard doesn't eat your capital city?

Now say the Wizard is off handling a big matter like this, slaying a dragon or banishing an arch-demon or beating the stuffing out of a lich or something...and the local Orcish horde attacks. What are you going to do, are you going to recall the Wizard from getting rid of the monster that can level your entire damned nation to deal with a few greenskins? Are you going to sit tight and let them rape and burn and pillage until the Wizard gets back, takes his nap, and goes to deal with them? Or are you going to make sure you have a "Plan B" in the form of a bunch of well-trained soldiers (or an ungodly huge number of poorly- or un-trained shmucks) wielding sharp pointy objects to deal with the Orcs?

Long story short: just because it's possible doesn't mean you have it, and just because you have it doesn't mean you can actually use it, and just because you can actually use it doesn't mean it's a good idea to do so.

Azerian Kelimon

2008-02-19, 06:57 PM

To sum the wizard argument, I present Megadeth:

You take a mortal man,
And put him in control
Watch him become a god,
Watch peoples heads aroll
Aroll...

/chorus/
Just like the pied piper
Led rats through the streets
We dance like marionettes,
Swaying to the symphony...
Of destruction

Acting like a robot,
Its metal brain corrodes.
You try to take its pulse,
Before the head explodes.
Explodes...

/chorus/

The earth starts to rumble
World powers fall
Awarring for the heavens,
A peaceful man stands tall
Tall...

/chorus/

Of course, what happens In D&D life? The really badass wizard who mastered magic like Raistlin but squared kicks the crap out of the other wizards, then plays Mother Teresa and makes teleportation circles and at will items of food and water.

Yahzi

2008-02-19, 08:24 PM

Of course, the whole purpose of the thread is for EE to find ideologues, so this post is basically a waste.
The whole point of this thread is for EE to post quotes from WotC supporting his position.

Admit it, Rutee: when you were defending the hand-waving of NPC statistics, you never envisioned WotC would actually make NPCs little bags of XP. They sold you out. :smalleek:

In the old D&D, elves couldn't be raised because they didn't have a soul. Now WotC has announced that NPCs don't have a soul. How are characters supposed to care about the NPCs rights and emotions if they don't even have souls? How more dehumanized can you get?

I was always offended by D&D's elitism. Now I'm actually sickened.

You couldn't play the game in a remotely recognizable world
It is true that D&D simply cannot emulate a classical Medieval world. It is also true that, for whatever reason, people want to play in that world.

However, it never would have occurred to me to fix that problem by saying, "The world works by medieval rules, and the players don't." I'm surprised it occurred to WotC, because basically it looks like an admission of failure. "It's too hard for us to make a game that makes sense and is fun, so we're just gonna give up and make a video game."

BTW, there is in fact a perfectly simple answer to D&D's problem. There is a single, simple mechanical change to the rules that solves all of these discussions about commoners and wizards, magic items and gold, classic feudal societies and wandering adventurers. It's a strange concept at first, but the more you look at it, the more you realize it fundamentally underpins D&D anyway. It's always been there, hiding in the background of the rules, like the elephant in the room no one wants to mention. It allows PCs and NPCs to live by the same rules, death to be meaningful even while resurrection is possible, magic items to exist without unbalancing the world, and kings and castles to rule the countryside while dragons and demons rule the night skies. It imposes balance, explains side quests, creates the classical aristocratic elitism without cheating on behalf of the PCs, and makes the economy make sense.

the Dungeonomicon
A work of brilliance; I suggest everyone read it. The Three Economies are an insightful analysis of what D&D society would be like.

Talya

2008-02-19, 08:52 PM

I don't believe death should ever be treated as commonplace or casual at any level of D&D play. To that end, keep the players broke, experience slow (so that losing a level is painful), and the encounters winnable without deaths, if challenging.

It bothers me that 4e feels the need to spell out what PCs can do and what NPCs can do, separately. DMs in 3e already do what they are describing here. It doesn't change anything...but spelling it out is kinda "dumbing things down," which seems the general direction that D&D is heading.

Frankly, I don't even use "NPCs" for the most part. My NPCs are built like PCs. I tend to give class levels to my dragons and such as well. I don't like generic monsters except for the most generic of encounters.

Rutee

2008-02-19, 09:06 PM

I don't believe death should ever be treated as commonplace or casual at any level of D&D play. To that end, keep the players broke, experience slow (so that losing a level is painful), and the encounters winnable without deaths, if challenging.
I dunno about broke, but I tend to just make Resurrection a pain to do. No, it doesn't require some cheap off the shelf component, go dig through some scrolls (With an NPC coming under the dead guy's control so they can stay in the action). The level is trivial, to me. I don't even penalize it.

It bothers me that 4e feels the need to spell out what PCs can do and what NPCs can do, separately. DMs in 3e already do what they are describing here. It doesn't change anything...but spelling it out is kinda "dumbing things down," which seems the general direction that D&D is heading.
"Should" is not "Can". It's Wizards saying "Hey, you guys have a really good setup! Let's offer this advice for newbies too!"

Lord and tailor, you'd think there wouldn't be resentment at "You're doin' alright"...

Dervag

2008-02-19, 10:07 PM

The whole point of this thread is for EE to post quotes from WotC supporting his position.

Admit it, Rutee: when you were defending the hand-waving of NPC statistics, you never envisioned WotC would actually make NPCs little bags of XP. They sold you out. :smalleek:

In the old D&D, elves couldn't be raised because they didn't have a soul. Now WotC has announced that NPCs don't have a soul. How are characters supposed to care about the NPCs rights and emotions if they don't even have souls? How more dehumanized can you get?

I was always offended by D&D's elitism. Now I'm actually sickened.I honestly don't think they did recommend that NPCs can't be raised from the dead. I think that they recommend that from a DMing standpoint, enemies who get killed stay dead, so that PCs don't have to worry about disintegrating the bodies of their foes. At high and epic levels, this is a serious concern. The PCs may well be fighting enemies who are quite capable of resurrecting their defeated henchmen on a regular basis.

At no point did the statement EE quoted say "NPCs cannot be raised or resurrected," nor would such a rule be binding on DMs even if it existed.

BTW, there is in fact a perfectly simple answer to D&D's problem. There is a single, simple mechanical change to the rules that solves all of these discussions about commoners and wizards, magic items and gold, classic feudal societies and wandering adventurers. It's a strange concept at first, but the more you look at it, the more you realize it fundamentally underpins D&D anyway. It's always been there, hiding in the background of the rules, like the elephant in the room no one wants to mention. It allows PCs and NPCs to live by the same rules, death to be meaningful even while resurrection is possible, magic items to exist without unbalancing the world, and kings and castles to rule the countryside while dragons and demons rule the night skies. It imposes balance, explains side quests, creates the classical aristocratic elitism without cheating on behalf of the PCs, and makes the economy make sense.Eh? Care to expand on this?

A work of brilliance; I suggest everyone read it. The Three Economies are an insightful analysis of what D&D society would be like.The Dungeonomicon is indeed awesome; I was essentially trying to present a choice selection of its contents for this audience, with a few spins of my own on the stuff.

horseboy

2008-02-19, 11:38 PM

The Dungeonomicon is indeed awesome; I was essentially trying to present a choice selection of its contents for this audience, with a few spins of my own on the stuff.
Of course it also says something that one person out of hundreds (or probably even thousands) was able to actually explain SOME of the problems inherent to the system.

Dervag

2008-02-20, 12:00 AM

Of course it also says something that one person out of hundreds (or probably even thousands) was able to actually explain SOME of the problems inherent to the system.Actually, I suspect much of it could have been done by anyone with the requisite background in medieval and classical history and economics. If they had thought about it hard, which very few people would do, because there are very few people for whom hard systematic thought about deep questions is a form of entertainment.

I, for one, am a bit too shallow to come up with all those ideas over such a short time span. And I am not an unusually shallow person (I think).

The real problem is that the D&D world's magic makes it inherently un-Earthlike. To explain how a society in D&D can work, one first has to fully accept the starting premise that magic is real, and powerful, and that wizards really can do darn near anything they want. And that there are extraplanar beings even more powerful. One must have read several source books and have the temperament to make a good social theorist or philosopher.

Those are rare credentials.

Dan_Hemmens

2008-02-20, 05:08 AM

The whole point of this thread is for EE to post quotes from WotC supporting his position.

Admit it, Rutee: when you were defending the hand-waving of NPC statistics, you never envisioned WotC would actually make NPCs little bags of XP. They sold you out. :smalleek:

Yes. I for one am feeling totally betrayed. The fact that a murdered NPC can no longer spring back to life trivially makes me *so* much more inclined to treat them like little juicy bags of XP.

In fact, thinking about it this is just like an MMO. You know how, in an MMO, once you've killed a monster, that's it, they're dead and gone and never come back again? Oh *man*.

In the old D&D, elves couldn't be raised because they didn't have a soul. Now WotC has announced that NPCs don't have a soul. How are characters supposed to care about the NPCs rights and emotions if they don't even have souls? How more dehumanized can you get?

How much more dehumanizing can you get? Well let's see.

You could have a system, a hypothetical system, of course, in which virtually all the game mechanics were devoted to allowing the players to slaughter NPCs, in which if the players *did* slaughter NPCs, they would be rewarded with extra powers which would allow them to slaughter *more* NPCs. You could have a game system where your ability to slaughter NPCs was the single most important factor in determining whether your character was viable or important. You could have a roleplaying system where creating a character who *could not* slaughter NPCs was game mechanically impossible.

You could have a game in which the players were expected to kill four different groups of NPCs a day, pausing only to refresh spells and abilities. You could have a game in which the vast, vast majority of NPCs encountered were nameless enemies (with class levels, of course, anything else would be *dehumanizing*) who existed only for the players to kill. Where the primary mode of gameplay was for the PCs to go around killing ever more dangerous NPCs, just to see if they could.

You could have a game where the default assumption is that the players are all some variety of professional killer, and the focus of the game is which NPCs they butcher next. You could run a game in which you are never invited to consider non-violent solution to your problems, where "character development" means "getting better at killing", where four times a day, supposedly sentient beings (who supposedly have rights and emotions) throw themselves under the players' swords in the name of creating a level-appropriate challenge.

How's that for dehumanizing?

What you would call such a game I am not sure, although I suspect that "Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition" strikes me as a good name. If only it wasn't already taken.

I was always offended by D&D's elitism. Now I'm actually sickened.

Because it's okay to slaughter people, so long as they respawn.

Azerian Kelimon

2008-02-20, 05:17 AM

The upshot of this, of course, is that it gives you a good reaosn to break out the Terminator music and create implacable men.

Skjaldbakka

2008-02-20, 06:35 AM

Or, you could take a look at settings in which resurrection is common, and how it is dealt with there. Like most boffer larps.

Take Nero's system, for example. When you die, you can be resurrected at an Earth Circle (nearby temple). The first two times you die, you come back, no problem. The next time you die, there is a 10% chance you don't come back. This chance increases by 10% each time, until you permanently die. There are high level magic rituals that cause you to take 3 deaths at once, and there is a high level spell that brings back the dead within 5 minutes of their death w/o going to the earth circle (or 'taking a death').

Bloodlines, a local larp, has extraplanar creatures called Reapers that hunt down and kill those who have come back from the dead. Only their target can see them (and a minority of people 'gifted' with the ability to see Reapers). The result being that only powerful people can risk being rezzed (being killed by a Reaper being worse than death, as your soul is devoured).

Dan_Hemmens

2008-02-20, 07:22 AM

Or, you could take a look at settings in which resurrection is common, and how it is dealt with there. Like most boffer larps.

When I was designing our local boffer LARP system I did exactly that.

Guess what.

All the options I saw looked like cheap, obvious game mechanics.

So when you die you get resurrected at the nearest temple? And this applies to everybody in the world does it? And this hasn't had any long-term effects on your society why?

Our system went for the far simpler expedient of *not* having trivial resurrection.

EvilElitest

2008-02-21, 10:12 PM

Don't be silly. In fantasy, resurrection is reserved for a few very specific situations, and generally a few specific people. There is virtually no precedent in fantasy, pre-D&D, for a world where anyone with money could dependably rely on being brought back to life by their friends if they died. In D&D (at least in third edition), if your cleric has the spell and the money, you will pop back to life, 100% of the time. That is done solely for gameplay reasons; it has absolutely no other value or purpose, and adds nothing to the setting (indeed, one thing I think we all agree on is that it badly detracts from the setting.)

seems like a generalization of fantasy but i see your point
2. Nitpick, not 100% of the time, only if you want to
3. thats doesn't answer the fact that PC will be coming back NP, but NPC coming back is a rare occurrence
4. Oh yes it does badly detract from the setting, but WOTC should ether drop it, or make a logical system. For example, maybe only people of a certain level could come back (represented in game by "the power of the spirit" or you'd need to make a high save to come back. Or maybe the PCs are a separate race (children of gods or something) and get special benefits

I was describing the resurrection mechanic in third edition. In fourth edition, by all accounts, they are trying to reconcile this by making it, as they say, more than just a monetary transaction and a spell.
Oh ok. However in 3E anyone could do it, in 4E it seem half a dozen dudes and a rare NPc

Nonsense. In D&D, if you follow the logic of 3rd edition murder is a barely a crime. It is akin to vandalism. It is impossible to silence anyone by killing them, and political assassination is nonexistent--indeed, the existence of an 'assassin' class is inherently stupid. Nobody is ever going to pay just to kill anyone important, since it's so easy to bring them back--it would be like paying a professional a ton of money to egg someone's house.

Pretty much. That is a lack of verisimilitude by WOTC part. Did they fix it? Not really, only half a dozen people can come back but not body else can (no in game reason given). It is a massive mistake on WOTC's part

These things flatly eliminate what constitutes a large base of storytelling in our world. Romeo and Juliet in the D&D universe ends with both houses shrugging and pooling their money to pay for resurrections. Macbeth realizes the error of his ways and brings the king back (technically, he would never have killed the king in the first place, since it is virtually impossible for anyone to reliably secure succession through murder in the D&D universe.) Hamlet ends with an all-you-can-resurrect special as everyone is brought back to life for a group hug (ok, so maybe they're not going to pay for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.)
Yeah, so WOTC should make a logical in game consistent Ressurection rule to stop this (though Tippy's idea seem really cool), they didn't do this however. I"m cool with logical resurrection

Julius Caesar, Martin Luther King Jr., JFK and Archduke Ferdinand would just get zapped back to life a few hours after the die. Every tinpot madman in the world would be resurrecting Hitler and Napoleon every few months for as long as they're in the window for resurrection -- indeed, any major political figure who dies of anything other than old age would be constantly getting brought back to stir up trouble.

Ok Napoleon wasn't that bad, I, i mean he was a selfish bastard, but he wasn't nearly as bad as Hitler, other than bringing about the public school system

You're seriously saying that this doesn't have the potential to get in the way of storytelling? Death and murder are two of the great absolutes in our world; in the D&D world, they aren't. In D&D, you can't say that the evil king got his position by murdering his father, because it makes no sense. You can't have a quest to kill anyone with any power or money, not unless your goal is to minorly annoy them. If there are any major historical figures in your world's recent background, you'd better make sure they died of old age unless you want them getting zapped back to life. And so on.
I see the problem in story telling, but the solution isn't a good one. I'm not saying the 3E system was perfect (oh gods no) just that the 4E isn't any better. personally, the 2E suddenly seems cooler

Yes, there are ways around this--it can get in the way of storytelling, obviously it doesn't always. But you can see how it is a problem, can't you?

If you've made "raising from the dead a big deal", you've been playing by the 4th edition rules they describe already. They say, basically, that you shouldn't focus on resurrection for every two-bit NPC, and that it should be skipped "unless the DM has a good reason." That's making a big deal out of it. Easy resurrections = bad, big-deal resurrections = good, right?

Except for half a dozen guys, death still isn't *that* big of a deal, but for everybody else it is. Sure if you want a world where death is a big deal cool but then make it for everyone one. In my world raise dead is VERY hard to do, for PCs and NPCs

Why can't we model that world? Well, I'll grant you this -- certainly, we could come up with a hazy, hand-waving speculative-fiction style version of it. The real question is whether it would look like what we want it to -- can we get the standard D&D settings out of this? Can we get traditional heroic fantasy, with the associated tropes of, say, rooftop assassins, regicidal princes, and heroic deaths?

Well, I've already shown how those three mostly don't work in D&D (heroic deaths, maybe, but the asterisk of resurrection sort of takes the meaning out of it... rooftop assassins have to go after commoners, which doesn't really work.) Let's sit down and think about the rest for a moment.

Wow, you really thought this through, good show

(I'll use "resurrections" in place of the various spell names, but, in general, most people would probably use raise dead. This limits things based on xp / con loss, but not by enough to change the impact that much... and really important people still get true resurrections. Also, don't forget, if you're really determined to have PCs = NPCs, everyone else earns levels pretty fast, too, so they can afford the level loss.)

In the D&D universe, as I said earlier, untimely death is a "poor person's problem." If you are rich, you don't die of anything but old age. In fact, since time spent dead doesn't count against your lifespan, it could even make sense to commit suicide rather than risk dying of old age, so that you can be brought back later when needed.
sounds like capitalism

In the D&D universe, every death, except those of old age, has an implicit asterisk at the end that leaves room for resurrection. Most people in the real world, you know, do not live up to the 'natural maximum lifespan' of our race... this is going to be a big deal.

Try to imagine yourself in the position of a commoner whose relative has just died -- heck, imagine a close friend or relative is suddenly killed, and you could bring her back if you only had 50,000 dollars. If you can, you will, obviously. If you can take out a loan and do it, you will. (This is going to be important, isn't it?)

But let's say you can't afford it. Even if you are too poor to afford it now, when your daughter dies in an accident, your first thought is not grief but "I must earn the money to bring her back!" This is universal. Virtually nobody in the D&D universe just accepts an untimely death. In fact, just about everyone out there is going to know someone who died of some untimely cause, and is going to be trying to raise money to bring them back. This will dominate the economy, dominate all the lower rungs of society, and dominate much of the thinking of the world. Beggars on every street-corner will be yelling the name of the person they are trying to bring back, weeping that the deadline for 'raise dead' is tomorrow. There will be thieves and bandit gangs whose sole purpose is to steal money for resurrections. Not one or two, not once or twice; not your occasional "oh, let's laugh about the implications of resurrection!" side-plot before your DM goes back to (logically absurd) rooftop assassins.

This will be as important in the D&D universe as food is in ours. It will touch everyone, everywhere. You will not be able to avoid it as a topic in conversations. Workers and shopkeepers will regularly bring up who they're trying to resurrect. Paying for resurrections becomes a basic human need, like water or air itself.

In our world, when people can't afford food, there are violent, bloody revolutions. Guess what happens when people can't afford resurrections for their loved ones? What will governments do? In our world, they make sure there's enough food, at a bare minimum, because if they don't they collapse. Will D&D governments provide free resurrections for everyone? Will they be able to? If not, how will they deal with the basic paradox -- how can they display wealth when there are people who need resurrections? It would be like displaying wealth before starving hordes, like the decadent court of Louis XVI. If governments can't afford resurrections for all, they certainly cannot afford ostentatious displays of wealth.

Except in the most secluded, cloistered courts, safe from the eyes of the lower classes, jewelry is unheard of. Using diamonds in particular for jewelry -- or anything but resurrections, in fact -- is an abomination, something reprehensible; it would, in most countries, probably be a serious crime. Diamonds themselves are a resource of unimaginable value--which, yes, makes calculating the amount of diamonds necessary for the resurrection-line spells somewhat difficult, but that's an side issue. More importantly, control over diamonds can determine the rise and fall of nations. A country that cannot supply its population's endless, ravenous demand for diamonds to bring back its loved ones is doomed. Wars will be started over diamond supplies; in fact, foreign policy will at times be little more than maneuvering over diamond supplies. (Look at oil in our world. Now imagine that oil instead had the power to bring back the dead.) He who controls diamonds, so to speak, controls the galaxy.

Sure there are reasons. It's easy to come up with reasons for anything you want. When you buy the book, I assure you, it will be filled with fluff explaining why PCs come back from the dead and most other people don't, just like we have fluff explaining why PCs use their own stat arrays and advance at absurd speeds relative to almost everyone else. Maybe PCs have stronger 'adventurer' souls. Maybe they're tougher than everyone else. Maybe they have special destinies, who knows.

But you're just reading quotes by the game designers, explaining the basic underlying choices they made and why they made those choices. You can't get angry at them for not providing fluff when you haven't even had a chance to read that fluff yet.

Sure you do. Have you ever had an assassin in any of your games--do they exist, at all? Anyone ever get the throne through murder? Have there been beggars on the street corners asking for resurrections? Have the players found 'diamond rings' and other jewelry, and somehow glossed over the fact that that ring literally comes at the cost of a human life? Have you had wealthy, ornate palaces, gaudily showing off their wealth in a country where (presumably) they don't provide resurrections for free -- and nobody complained about this? There was nobody angry over the fact that their daughter or wife is dead and the king is marching around in a robe and set of jewelry that could pay to bring them back fifty times over?
In my one game i played that was totally 3.5 this was the case.

Hey look, a 4e thread - Let me see if I can guess what people will say:

anti-4e people: baseless logical fallacies and cognative dissonance to "prove" they are right that 4e sucks and WotC is dumb and evil. Bonus points for "OMG 4e = World of Warcraft".

pro-4e: Well I really don't know but I want to wait and see...

*clicks link*

Hey look, pretty much exactly what I knew it would be. I must be psychic. Either that or I have learned to know what mindless screed the anti-4e crowd will bleat out.
hey look, it is Mr. Friendly, i wonder what he will say. Oh let me predict

he will launch insulting and untrue accusations based on ill-concived stereotypes and make untrue assumptions, and then ignore the points while trying to paint himself as a self suffering matyr. Oh would he ever do that
or as otherwise said

pro-4e: I don't know any more about 4ed than anyone, but I'll dismiss everyone who criticizes it as deluded hater!

All that the 4e designers are saying is that they're toning down the focus on Big Important Events that PCs aren't remotely involved in. Maybe it's my inner White Wolf survivor speaking, but I can't see this being *anything* but a good thing.
Read history, everything is interconnected, even if it isn't obvious. That idea also kills Verisimilitude

In a game of fantasy adventure, the *last* thing you want is a set of rules which focus on how the world is getting along fine without your interference thank you very much.

The whole design philosophy of 4E has been to take the focus away from people like Elminster and Drizzt and put it back on the PCs. This is a *good thing*.
1. No they just establish consistency and made it clear taht you aren't the only dudes in the world who can take care of themselves
2. Contrary to pouplar option, Elminster and certainly Drizzt don't' really take away from the PCs, they really just sorta do their own thing

It's not clear what a PC will have to do in 4e to get rezzed, or why an NPC will require DM fiat to do likewise. I have a hard time imagining a single reason that will cover all groups of PCs in all campaign settings so it's either one of:
1) Some incredibly ingenious explanation that I didn't think of, which fits all parties and settings. This would be awesome.
that is teh thing, they don't have a reason. If they had a reason i'd love it

Personally, i think the PC should all be children of dead gods (like Bhaal spawn)

Which is exactly as it should be. But the point is that the succession fight isn't important to the game when the players are just fighting Orcs.

why? What makes these half dozen so special?

Yes, I am just a crazy fanboy. Oh yeah. I mean it was, what, three whole posts into this thread before the usual crowd of 4e haters was going on their usual ditribe about 4e = WoW.
And your just clearing up bad eggs with your flaming aren't you Mr. Friendly? Fighting for a just cause?

No, sorry M0rt, it is the same posters, everyday, the same "4e = WoW" "4e is ruining D&D" arguements.
And the same poster everyday who go "you are all wrong and immature and stupid" without backing that up who ruin arguments as well, as well as misinterpreting others and proving to be hypocritical while not addressing the points

He didn't say every 4e criticizer was saying 4e = WoW. He was saying bonus points if they did. EvilElitist is one of the people who keep spouting this same tired line, and Mr. Friendly is asserting that it is absurd and moronic to keep saying it.
how is under that bridge? mind backing up your points I already did say the 4E is becoming like a video game, not WOW specifically. If you want to justify you flaming, back you points up

Mr. Friendly

2008-02-22, 07:42 AM

EvilElitest

2008-02-22, 01:24 PM

Hey look - EE is trolling and flaming me again.

I'm pretty much done with you. It has been pointed out a sufficient number of times that you are a LIAR. You simply repeat the same spam over and over. So, I am just putting you on ignore.

Goodbye.

Considering you first post on this thread was a brilliant mix of hypocrisy, trolling, and flaming mixed into one perfect little mixture

You have offered not proof of your claims of me being a liar other than your bloated and absurd ego spawned claims. You have offered no evidence to support your claims and in fact have entered the realm of hypocrisy in your own lies. So if you want ignore me, go ahead, you certainly don't contribute to the debate anyways.

Also your sarcasm is pitiful, you need to prove to understand the subject matter to hope to be amusing, which you have demonstrated you do not

from
EE

Mr. Friendly

2008-02-22, 01:54 PM

Serenity

2008-02-22, 03:46 PM

Hey, here's a reason there wouldn't necessarily be the whole business over diamonds and raise dead: ressurections don't always work. Why in the world would John Q Good/Neutral commoner want to come back to life? Sure, his loved ones miss him, but on the other hand, he's got the choice between staying in a very pleasant place where he doesn't want for anything, or going back to toiling day in and day out for a handful of coppers, breaking his back just to get by.

Dervag

2008-02-22, 05:05 PM

seems like a generalization of fantasy but i see your point
2. Nitpick, not 100% of the time, only if you want to
3. thats doesn't answer the fact that PC will be coming back NP, but NPC coming back is a rare occurrence
4. Oh yes it does badly detract from the setting, but WOTC should ether drop it, or make a logical system. For example, maybe only people of a certain level could come back (represented in game by "the power of the spirit" or you'd need to make a high save to come back. Or maybe the PCs are a separate race (children of gods or something) and get special benefits EE, seriously, there is no rule here against raising NPCs from the dead. None. All there is is a recommendation that it might be good DMing not to constantly raise minor enemies from the dead. Which is the way most DMs do it anyway. There really is no problem here worth making a big deal about.

Some of the people arguing with you are jerks, but that's no reason to descend to their level.

sounds like capitalismNah.

The actual difference between "capitalism" and other systems isn't so much that people try to get rich (they always try to get rich). It's that people trying to get rich are, in theory, likely to build something that actually does somebody some good, in the hopes that they will get rich off of it. Most other systems of organizing resources don't do that very well.

But this isn't really capitalism. In capitalism, you can't take it with you and everyone knows it. In this system, it can actually bring you back.

hey look, it is Mr. Friendly, i wonder what he will say. Oh let me predict

he will launch insulting and untrue accusations based on ill-concived stereotypes and make untrue assumptions, and then ignore the points while trying to paint himself as a self suffering matyr. Oh would he ever do that
or as otherwise saidPlease try to be moderate.

Once any person in a thread starts making immoderate accusations, telling people that they are stupid, or that they need to "read history" or "read the Player's Handbook" or anything like that, trouble starts. people get ticked off. People who would normally argue like nice, civilized people stop doing that and start being fools or jerks. Because once you've implied that someone is stupid, they see no reason not to insult you back.

And the same poster everyday who go "you are all wrong and immature and stupid" without backing that up who ruin arguments as well, as well as misinterpreting others and proving to be hypocritical while not addressing the pointsThere are many people who would accuse you of the same thing. Or, if not of the same thing, of other similarly frustrating habits of the debating style.

He who lives in a glass house should not start a rock-throwing war.

Hey look - EE is trolling and flaming me again.

I'm pretty much done with you. It has been pointed out a sufficient number of times that you are a LIAR. You simply repeat the same spam over and over. So, I am just putting you on ignore.

Goodbye.Likewise. He who lives in a glass house should not start a rock-throwing war.

Hrrm - I had thought putting you on ignore was enough to make you go away; but apparently not.

Hey look; it's a lie by EE: "Evil cannot fight evil in 4th edition" actual quote: "We are using less evil vs. evil"

QED: You are a liar.It may be an exaggeration, but it is less of a lie than calling EE a liar for saying it is. Exaggeration and lying are not the same thing in most cultures.

On a side note, if you seriously intend to ignore EE, it is poor form to reply to him immediately thereafter with the intent of calling him a liar. If you do not seriously intend to ignore EE, then your reply makes more sense, but in that case your claim to be ignoring him makes less sense.

I'm not telling either of you to stop debating here, but I really think we could do with less "neener neener I'm not listening" going back and forth.

Hey, here's a reason there wouldn't necessarily be the whole business over diamonds and raise dead: ressurections don't always work. Why in the world would John Q Good/Neutral commoner want to come back to life? Sure, his loved ones miss him, but on the other hand, he's got the choice between staying in a very pleasant place where he doesn't want for anything, or going back to toiling day in and day out for a handful of coppers, breaking his back just to get by.Perhaps people would first spring for a Speak With Dead spell, and then decide whether or not to spring for the much more expensive Raise Dead spell.

Muyten

2008-02-22, 05:22 PM

Thank you Dervag.
I agree, please bring this debate back to a more civil level.

I still don't think much will actually change from 3rd edition with regards to who gets rezzed. Moderate to high level PCs will have the possibility of rezzing just like in 3E and NPCs will have the possibility of rezzing at the DMs discretion just like 3E.

How often does the issue even arise? NPCs are hardly ever rezzed in my games as is (I can only remember two instances in my 20 years of playing some variant of D&D).

Indon

2008-02-22, 05:33 PM

I don't really mind what's been done with death. Death can be a bit trickier since, with luck, combat will be less flukishly fatal. This way, you'll only be dead if you actually _lost_ a fight. I'm much more interested in the prospect of longer, more interesting combat.

As for the prospect of 4'th edition treating plot devices as devices in a plot, rather than trying to run every plot device ever written through some absolutely ridiculous attempt at simulationism with what are clearly narrative tools? I don't run campaigns like that, I think they're silly, I am thus unaffected.

However, this doesn't make much sense in light of removal of the Wish spell. Wish was an amazingly potent narrative tool, much like ressurection - rather than scrap it, why not just give it whatever treatment that's being given to ressurection magic?

Dan_Hemmens

2008-02-22, 07:06 PM

However, this doesn't make much sense in light of removal of the Wish spell. Wish was an amazingly potent narrative tool, much like ressurection - rather than scrap it, why not just give it whatever treatment that's being given to ressurection magic?

I sincerely doubt that they'll ditch the wish-granting abilities of supernatural creatures, and all the game-mechanical Wish really did was undermine the spell's use as a Narrative tool (because you could always just Wish for something on the set list).

Wish always had two functions, the narrative "get screwed over with what you asked for" function and the mechanical "top level spell" function. The two interfered with each other.

Scintillatus

2008-02-22, 07:37 PM

Choose your own adventure: Why Some People Get Rezzed

Joe is a Warlock/Druid/Cleric/Favoured Soul/Etc, he has Infernal/Natural/Divine powers looking out for him.

Amanda is wise/intelligent/charismatic, she has the strength of will/clarity of mind/force of personality to deny death.

Tim is a fighter/barbarian/rogue/bard. He's far too mighty/furious/sneaky/legendary to fall down now.

Sally is one of the protagonists facing off against the BBEG. Fate has an interest in her continued breathing.

Bob is the BBEG. He has Mysterious Dark Powers® looking out for him.

The Heroes are, well... Heroes. Heroes have more than just skill and cunning on their side, certainly from an IC perspective.

From an OOC perspective? In an economic sense, putting a finite financial definition on a living thing's life is... Well, sketchy at best. When you'd rather die than rip your expensive magic robes, or break that fancy flaming sword, or let your house burn down, cause some diamonds cost way less than all that...

Well. It gets goofy and illogical.

In a narratively-minded sense, having any old mook capable of coming back from the dead ruins tension, feelings of success, et cetera. "Dun dun DUNNN" moments, like the villain dissappearing in a puff of smoke - frustrate people, and should be used sparingly. An entire squad of baddies getting hauled off for ressurection undermines your pitched and dramatic battle.

Look at OOTS; Shojo didn't want to come back, so ressurection failed. But Celia views Roy's death as a temporary long-distance thing. It's mocking the problem with ressurection that makes it so silly, which is fixed pretty neatly by the suggestions of Wizards.

I mean, you can just houserule it all away in a flash - but it's still pretty logical and good on all DM/PC fronts.

EvilElitest

2008-02-23, 12:41 AM

Hrrm - I had thought putting you on ignore was enough to make you go away; but apparently not.

Hey look; it's a lie by EE: "Evil cannot fight evil in 4th edition" actual quote: "We are using less evil vs. evil"

QED: You are a liar.

1. Why would I stop posting just because your not counting post
2. See that thread, your in for a surprise
3. Hey, i already defended my self
4. Didn't you claim you don't make personal attacks? Double standard?

EE, seriously, there is no rule here against raising NPCs from the dead. None. All there is is a recommendation that it might be good DMing not to constantly raise minor enemies from the dead. Which is the way most DMs do it anyway. There really is no problem here worth making a big deal about.
WOTC's intention is that PCs will be raised pretty easily at mid-high levels, but NPCs will be raised very rarely. My question is, in game why are these half dozen guys so powerful?

Some of the people arguing with you are jerks, but that's no reason to descend to their level.
Fair enough, but in my defense i do back up my points

There are many people who would accuse you of the same thing. Or, if not of the same thing, of other similarly frustrating habits of the debating style.

He who lives in a glass house should not start a rock-throwing war
This doesn't change the person's immature and incorrect attack

I'm not telling either of you to stop debating here, but I really think we could do with less "neener neener I'm not listening" going back and forth.

fair enough

As for the prospect of 4'th edition treating plot devices as devices in a plot, rather than trying to run every plot device ever written through some absolutely ridiculous attempt at simulationism with what are clearly narrative tools? I don't run campaigns like that, I think they're silly, I am thus unaffected
How is trying to make a world with the D&D rules believable ridiculous? In game wise, the PCs are just a bunch of dudes who are adventures, there is no logical explanation for why these dudes get to defy death but nobody else can

And scintillatus, you have a point, but that is valid with both 3E and 4E resurrection in general
from
EE

Scintillatus

2008-02-23, 01:08 AM

Rutee

2008-02-23, 01:13 AM

I contest that easy resurrections can strengthen drama.

It's not a change to the status quo (As in 4e you resurrect easily at 21, and in 3e you resurrect easily at 17), but I will contest it.

Dervag

2008-02-23, 01:39 AM

As quoted from your source:

"NPCs, both good and evil, don't normally come back to life unless the DM has a good reason."

Truly, isn't this the rule we've all been using all along? And who's to define our "good reason"? If you wish that good reason to simply be money, then fair play to you. If you don't, the same.

Acknowledge this, however; these rules are no different from what we've all been doing, and merely help a newer DM along, AND give flavour to a default setting which is being built entirely around the idea of heroes fighting back an overwhelming dark.

The proposed ressurection "change" is logical economically, dramatically, and in character. It makes sense, it strengthens drama, and it is far easier to do away with than the alignment system, which I do for all my homebrewed stuff.

I challenge you to refute me.What I'm trying to say is that this is all much ado about nothing, because it isn't even a rule. It's a suggestion, similar to any number of suggestions found in the 3.5e DM's guide. If you want a world where everyone above, say, 5th level can count on being raised from the dead unless something unusual and horrible happens to them, fine. If you don't, fine. Either way, it's "The DM having a good reason" (namely that this is the kind of world they want to make).

There is nothing here to attack or defend.

Scintillatus

2008-02-23, 02:32 AM

@Rutee: Uh, do you mean it promotes drama, or detracts? Cause I'd be going with detracts, personally. Heroic deaths are great.

@Dervag: Yes, well. I know that. :smalltongue: I'm trying to get through to EE about it.

Rutee

2008-02-23, 02:38 AM

I do indeed mean that it detracts drama. But at least the option is still there from a player standpoint to die when appropriate.

EvilElitest

2008-02-23, 12:31 PM

Well, sir, let me press my point further.

"This just doesn't make sense, it is silly. What makes this half dozen so special that only they can be raised from the dead."

I have answered your question, in great detail and, with your own admission, truly and logically. That is what makes this "half dozen" so special, that only they can be raised from the dead. Forces beyond our reckoning, or their sheer personal power, bring them back from the brink, magic dragging the life back into them.

But why? From an in game perspective, what is the reason that these half dozen have more personal power than everybody else, or special powers. WOTC has failed to give a logical in game reasons. I mean if they went "The PCs are all the decedents of gods, blessed with divine power that alters their nature, making them resistant to death's grip, and giving them abilities beyond the mortal scope

The given reason is "well they are the PCs". Well from an in game perspective, what makes them so great?

As quoted from your source:

"NPCs, both good and evil, don't normally come back to life unless the DM has a good reason."

Truly, isn't this the rule we've all been using all along? And who's to define our "good reason"? If you wish that good reason to simply be money, then fair play to you. If you don't, the same.

Acknowledge this, however; these rules are no different from what we've all been doing, and merely help a newer DM along, AND give flavour to a default setting which is being built entirely around the idea of heroes fighting back an overwhelming dark.
Except Resurrection worked the same for everybody. I"m not saying ether raise dead system is good, just that they at least applied to everybody.

The proposed ressurection "change" is logical economically, dramatically, and in character. It makes sense, it strengthens drama, and it is far easier to do away with than the alignment system, which I do for all my homebrewed stuff.
Then shouldn't they change raise dead itself, not who it applies too?

And Dervag, the point is that D&D is going to work under the assumption that only these half dozen get raise dead powers, and so any game they make or setting ect will have half a dozen dudes who can come back from the dead and nobody else who can. I could do it differently yes, but WOTC won't
from
EE

Artanis

2008-02-23, 12:54 PM

Except Resurrection worked the same for everybody. I"m not saying ether raise dead system is good, just that they at least applied to everybody.
And it still does.

The only thing that's changed is that Wizards has suggested that the DM might want to avoid bringing every kobold, goblin, and orc back from the dead unless he wants to.

Then shouldn't they change raise dead itself, not who it applies too?
They did change the mechanics. Raising the dead is now a big ritual, rather than just handing a Cleric some diamonds and saying, "ok, go for it."

They did not change who it applied to. It still applies to whatever NPCs the DM thinks they should apply to, just like in 3e.

And Dervag, the point is that D&D is going to work under the assumption that only these half dozen get raise dead powers
No, it won't.

It will work under the assumption that DMs might decide of their own free will and totally optionally to forgo raising every last mook from the dead...just like in 3e.

, and so any game they make or setting ect will have half a dozen dudes who can come back from the dead and nobody else who can.
Wrong. There is no more difference than there was in 3e. Resurrection applies to the players, just like in 3e. Resurrection applies to whatever NPCs the DM wants to apply it to, just like in 3e. Resurrection does not apply to whatever NPCs the DM does not want it to apply to, just like in 3e.

I could do it differently yes, but WOTC won't
Prove it. Prove that WotC won't do it differently than what you describe them as doing.

It's gonna be kinda hard to prove it though, considering that literally every piece of information released by WotC says that who resurrection applies to is absolutely no different than in 3e.

Dervag

2008-02-23, 01:30 PM

Fair enough, but in my defense i do back up my points...
This doesn't change the person's immature and incorrect attack
I'm just saying you should think twice before you accuse other people of bad debating habits. It isn't likely to advance the discussion, and you can't actually "fight back" by calling other people trolls or immature. And you certainly can't "fight back" by telling them they're ignorant or they need to "read" (which is something you do quite a bit).

This is the Internet; people who are enough of a jerk to do the things you're angry about are enough of a jerk to ignore you when you call them out on it.

How is trying to make a world with the D&D rules believable ridiculous? In game wise, the PCs are just a bunch of dudes who are adventures, there is no logical explanation for why these dudes get to defy death but nobody else canAnd, similarly, there is no rule saying that the PCs get to defy death and no one else can. All there is is a suggestion in the DM guide that, as a rule, NPCs who get killed are not resurrected so that the PCs have to face them again or get to face them again.

Which is a suggestion that most competent DMs would make themselves, so there's no reason to get all indignant about it.

Then shouldn't they change raise dead itself, not who it applies too?Dude, they didn't change who it applies to. All they did was suggest to the DM that he not have people throwing Raise Dead spells around like party favors on every mid to high level NPC the party sees.

The DM Guide is not a law on matters like this. They did not say that only PCs can ever be resurrected. Even if they did say that, no one would have to listen. There is no reason for you to be so upset about this.

And Dervag, the point is that D&D is going to work under the assumption that only these half dozen get raise dead powers, and so any game they make or setting ect will have half a dozen dudes who can come back from the dead and nobody else who can. I could do it differently yes, but WOTC won'tActually, WOTC will: "unless the DM has a good reason," remember?

I mean, color me stupid, but I don't think any DM should ever do something major to an NPC without a good reason.

They shouldn't kill off NPCs without a good reason (the PCs stabbing them in the chest or setting them on fire is usually a good reason).

They shouldn't create NPCs without a good reason. If you don't know why this person is in your world, and they aren't just a random "Hi, I'm Bob" encounter, something is wrong.

They shouldn't give NPCs lots of extra power (let them take over the kingdom) or take away an NPC's power (have them lose the kingdom) without a good reason.

And they shouldn't raise NPCs from the dead without a good reason.

The NPCs exist as tools the DM uses to tell a story in cooperation with the players. Therefore, the DM should always use his tools wisely, and should not apply major magic that could frustrate the players' storytelling unless he has a reason. In which case all bets are off.

strayth

2008-02-23, 04:51 PM

This might seem coy but I'm not trying to do anything but make progress: have both sides come to agreement that death in 4th edition will still fall under the domain of the DM and resurrection?

Rune Katashima

2008-02-23, 08:54 PM

I read the first page, don't feel like going through 5 more D:
Anyway, I solved this problem myself quite easily. I eliminated all the "raise" spells from spellbooks in my game(s). In the unfortunate event a PC dies (I don't make it that easy to happen in return), that's what we have sidequests for! PCs can make pacts with Celestial/Infernal/Abyssal/etc beings, or go on some mystic sidequest to find an artifact that can do the raising. This is win-win because then we don't have annoying mechanics, the PCs get some chance at extra XP, explains why NPCs aren't all "rezzing" all over the place, and the PCs don't have to spend money on it. The PC who died doesn;t get the XP the party gains during death, but it usually isn't enough for a whole level anyway for a sidequest, since all my artifacts performing said function work like "True Ressurection" anyway.
Am I wrong in doing this? Why don't others do this? (Aside from near-immediate possibility of a "rez".)

Artanis

2008-02-23, 09:48 PM

Am I wrong in doing this? Why don't others do this? (Aside from near-immediate possibility of a "rez".)
I'd say that if it works out well for you and your group, then it's not wrong :smallwink:

DementedFellow

2008-02-24, 07:14 AM

I usually try to stay away from these debates as I'm usually told to go re-read the previews and sit down and shut up.

It's kinda weird how WotC had to come out and say (paraphrased), "You don't have to worry about the NPCs springing back to life." In 3.x, it was a flaw that someone could stabilize after being gored and walk away hunky dory after a brief coma on the battlefield.

A question I am wondering is why bother having the -10 rule at all? Why are we allowed to go to negative hit points? And why only 10? It comes across as arbitrary.

For example, let's say your character has a total of 30 hit points and some goblin barbarian comes by and swings his axe and hits for 10 damage. That's a third of your hit points, but you can just shrug off that damage like it "Tis but a flesh wound."

And no, I don't know about the previous editions and their rules of negative hit points, as I haven't played them, -yet-.

That's more of an aside and totally off-topic though.

Now to the topic itself: Just because the rules don't say the NPCs cannot come back, that doesn't mean that it says it is perfectly acceptable if they do. I mean, it doesn't -say- that the NPCs can't sprout wings and accrue laser vision when they reach the age of 25, but how many are going to include that in a campaign?

Yeah, that was a hyperbolic statement, but if they take the time to write the statement about "Don't worry about those dead guys" in the core books, a large number of people will see that as RAW. This is a part where the "wait and see"rs will say, "let's wait and see". And in this case they will be right. A large part of the stuff I've read about 4e is stuff I disagree with and stuff that I would have to heavily houserule to fit my group. But be that as it may, unless that line makes it into the core rulebooks, then it's a non-issue. If it does make it into that book, it will be just another supposed RAW that DM/GMs will have to either ignore or bend.

Frankly, I think having an NPC that comes back after being repeatedly being killed is a funny thing to do to the players.

DM: "You see a man coming towards you."
Player 1: "Does he look familiar?"
DM: "Yes, in fact he bears a striking resemblance to Commoner Bob."
Player 1 (as PC1): "Is that you Bob?"
DM (as Bob): "'Ello there! It's good to see you are alright."
PC1: "We thought you got slaughtered by the drow last week."
Bob: "Yeah, that was unfortunate."
PC2: "And a week before that we thought you died in that cave-in."
Bob: "That was so messy."
PC3: "I seem to recall you being eaten by a dragon last month."
Bob: "...I got better."

hewhosaysfish

2008-02-24, 08:38 AM

This is the Internet; people who are enough of a jerk to do the things you're angry about are enough of a jerk to ignore you when you call them out on it.

[url=www.xkcd.com/386/]But someone's wrong on the Internet![\url]

I'd say that if it works out well for you and your group, then it's not wrong.

What's that you say? "No such thing as bad fun?"
Lefty, liberal nonsense!
Anyone who plays the game at all differently from the way I do it is doing it wrong! And that's the truth!

Yahzi

2008-02-24, 04:01 PM

Eh? Care to expand on this?
Note at this time. :smallredface: I am working my own version of the Dungeonomicon, but it's not quite ready to be revealed. After all, that's a hard act to follow.

But I expect in a few months I will be presenting this idea. It should be a lively debate; I hope you're still around by then. :smallsmile:

As for whether or not WotC actually said they were removing everything that was non-combat, I can't remember where I read that. It might be true, or it might be spam. Since I'm unable to recreate my sources, I'll have to settle for a hypothetical: if they do that, I think it would be bad. :smallbiggrin:

What you would call such a game I am not sure, although I suspect that "Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition" strikes me as a good name. If only it wasn't already taken.
Wait - your argument against the proposition that 4e will be like a video game is that 3.5e already is?

Look, if you're throwing in the towel and admitting that 4e's express goal is to become a series of connected combats with no social/role-playing mechanics whatsoever, you can just say that. It's no harm to change your mind. It doesn't make you look bad or anything.

D&D was always elitest; it was always about the PCs being somebody and everyone else being scenery. When 3.5 moved towards monsters and PCs sharing the same mechanics, it moved away from that. Now 4e is charging head-long back into that territory.

I, personally, have a problem with playing a game where you kill orcs because they're in a room you want to go through. In exactly the same way I have a problem with movies like Saw, or pornography. There's a time and a place for it, but when the largest RPG in the world endorses violence porn as the official way to play, it makes me sad. And a little bit angry.

For combats to be dramatic (and hence fun) they have to be about more than "I want to get to the next room."

Rutee

2008-02-24, 05:51 PM

Wait - your argument against the proposition that 4e will be like a video game is that 3.5e already is?

Look, if you're throwing in the towel and admitting that 4e's express goal is to become a series of connected combats with no social/role-playing mechanics whatsoever, you can just say that. It's no harm to change your mind. It doesn't make you look bad or anything.
Your diction seems to imply that DnD hasn't always been that. To my knowledge, they're /adding/ mechanics for social encounters, btw.

D&D was always elitest; it was always about the PCs being somebody and everyone else being scenery. When 3.5 moved towards monsters and PCs sharing the same mechanics, it moved away from that. Now 4e is charging head-long back into that territory.
...No, it didn't. Monsters were still scenery, they were just scenery with the same mechanics. And this isn't Elitist in any sense of the word, at all, but I have that as a particular nitpick.

I, personally, have a problem with playing a game where you kill orcs because they're in a room you want to go through. In exactly the same way I have a problem with movies like Saw, or pornography. There's a time and a place for it, but when the largest RPG in the world endorses violence porn as the official way to play, it makes me sad. And a little bit angry.
It's been doing that since its inception, though. It seems strange to be angry at them for maintaining the status quo.

For combats to be dramatic (and hence fun) they have to be about more than "I want to get to the next room."
Yeah, I'll agree with that.. it'd be hard not to, since that's how I run things anyway.

Neon Knight

2008-02-24, 11:00 PM

D&D was always elitest; it was always about the PCs being somebody and everyone else being scenery. When 3.5 moved towards monsters and PCs sharing the same mechanics, it moved away from that. Now 4e is charging head-long back into that territory.

DnD is escapist, not elitist. As High Fantasy with a noted escapist bent, DnD has a vested interest in assuring that the PCs are more powerful than NPCs. Here is why.

The primary goal of escapist works is to be somebody you are not- to escap from the daily drudgery of being forced to accept events and achieving little real change and satisfaction in real life. Thus, in escapist activities, the avatars of the participants are agents of change, justice, and improvement.

In order to fufill their purpose, a problem must arise that the PCs have to solve, and the PCs alone. This means that any other characters (NPCs) cannot solve the problem, otherwise the PCs would not be necessary.

Think about it. In The Seven Samurai (The Magnificent Seven for western fans) a group of hapless peasants hire 7 warriors to defend them from merciless bandits.

In order for the PCs to solve the problem, they must be more powerful than the bandits. If the peasants were as powerful as the PCs, they would be able to defeat the bandits, and there would be no problem for the PCs to solve. By necessity of the bandits being a threat to the peasants, and thus a problem, the peasants have to be weaker than the bandits. And the bandits must be weaker than the PCs in order to be bested.

Thus: Problem Victims (NPCs) < Problem (Monsters/Opponents) < Solution (PCs/PC Allies such as DMNPCs)

DnD's weak NPCs are 100% justified by the type of narrative structure DnD employs, one that places the mantle of Agent of Change upon the PC's shoulders. This ignores the fact, of course, that NPCs and opponents can use class levels in 4th ed. This ignores that since we don't know the NPC creation rules for 4thed, we do not know if they are weak at all.

This also ignores the fact that your statement is ridiculous hyperbole.

I, personally, have a problem with playing a game where you kill orcs because they're in a room you want to go through. In exactly the same way I have a problem with movies like Saw, or pornography. There's a time and a place for it, but when the largest RPG in the world endorses violence porn as the official way to play, it makes me sad. And a little bit angry.

For combats to be dramatic (and hence fun) they have to be about more than "I want to get to the next room."

Since "I want to get to the next room," can be classified as curiosity, that most intrepid and noble of human inclinations, which can be said to be directly responsible for the majority of mankind's civilization, I take it that if human development had been left to you, we would still be wiping with leaves.

Seriously, ever heard of "to boldly go where no man has gone before?" Exploration and discovery are two of the most thrilling and profound things ever to occur to use lucky primates. Eureka is the intellectual equivalent of an... well, you know.

Men have climbed mountains. Just because they are there! And you pretend that curiosity is an illegitimate motive. Man's ending to desire to see, go to, and conquer all is a fundamental part of what makes him the dominant species on this planet. Without it, he is no higher than the pig or the dog.

And you insist that this all important facet of mankind is a poor reason.

On a side off topic note, violence is a profound as any art. More on that later after sleep.

horseboy

2008-02-25, 12:07 AM

As for whether or not WotC actually said they were removing everything that was non-combat, I can't remember where I read that. It might be true, or it might be spam. Since I'm unable to recreate my sources, I'll have to settle for a hypothetical: if they do that, I think it would be bad. :smallbiggrin: Well, given that D&D has always been about "Here's all the rules for combat. Oh you want to do something other than that...well...you can do that too...somehow."

Wait - your argument against the proposition that 4e will be like a video game is that 3.5e already is?*Blows dust off of copy of Pool of Radiance* Yeah, D&D, being dedicated to combat mechanics has always made excellent video games. Why is it people are only now realizing this?

Look, if you're throwing in the towel and admitting that 4e's express goal is to become a series of connected combats with no social/role-playing mechanics whatsoever, you can just say that. It's no harm to change your mind. It doesn't make you look bad or anything.:smalleek: :smallconfused: *uncontrolled fits of laughter* The closest thing to a "role-playing mechanic" in D&D is alignment, and it's better for simulating aggravation than role-playing. Social mechanics? Sorry, that's too funny.

I, personally, have a problem with playing a game where you kill orcs because they're in a room you want to go through. In exactly the same way I have a problem with movies like Saw, or pornography. There's a time and a place for it, but when the largest RPG in the world endorses violence porn as the official way to play, it makes me sad. And a little bit angry.

For combats to be dramatic (and hence fun) they have to be about more than "I want to get to the next room."??!? Wait, wait, wait! How did you get to this alternate dimension where D&D wasn't designed for hack and slash?

Dervag

2008-02-25, 12:13 AM

Note at this time. :smallredface: I am working my own version of the Dungeonomicon, but it's not quite ready to be revealed. After all, that's a hard act to follow.

But I expect in a few months I will be presenting this idea. It should be a lively debate; I hope you're still around by then. :smallsmile:Well, actually, I was hoping you'd expand on what you think the problem is. That way, I have time to marshal my arguments on the subject. I do not ask you to reveal any of your own work, only to identify the two points you claim contradict each other that I may see the contradiction with my own eyes.

D&D was always elitest; it was always about the PCs being somebody and everyone else being scenery. When 3.5 moved towards monsters and PCs sharing the same mechanics, it moved away from that. Now 4e is charging head-long back into that territory.

I, personally, have a problem with playing a game where you kill orcs because they're in a room you want to go through. In exactly the same way I have a problem with movies like Saw, or pornography. There's a time and a place for it, but when the largest RPG in the world endorses violence porn as the official way to play, it makes me sad. And a little bit angry.

For combats to be dramatic (and hence fun) they have to be about more than "I want to get to the next room."Thing is, any game with a combat mechanic can be bastardized into a game of slaughtering the monsters in this room because you happen to be passing through. Unless you explicitly include mechanics intended to punish players for that kind of aggression, it can happen. Even if you do, some people will consider those mechanics stupid and ignore them. And they may even be right to do so, because such a mechanic will backfire in some situations. Such as when you're fighting your way into a fortress full of enemy soldiers for a perfectly good and legitimate reason.

Making the social mechanics better won't eliminate the "violence porn" problem. Making them much worse might make the problem worse, but I have a hard time believing that Wizards is going to reduce the social mechanics to that level. Remember, the level in question would have to be below that of 1/2 edition D&D, which did not degenerate into violence porn worse than 3rd edition.

The game manufacturers can give you the violent side of the game because that side doesn't have to be customized- you and I can both use the same statistics for an orc or a giant or a dragon in different settings. But the social side does have to be customized, which makes it impossible to design a game that effectively forces gamers to be social in their games if the DM isn't trying to make it happen.

Yahzi

2008-02-26, 12:22 AM

To my knowledge, they're /adding/ mechanics for social encounters, btw.
Ya, I could be wrong on that.

It's been doing that since its inception, though.
3.5 was a step away from that. 4e is a reversal of direction. :smallfrown:

Yeah, I'll agree with that.. it'd be hard not to, since that's how I run things anyway.
Of course you do. Because, as a DM, you build a world.

My complaint is that 4e seems to be a rule-book for building encounters. Instead of talking about building rich worlds full of exotic experiences, they're talking about foes to kill and monsters with special powers to make encounters more interesting.

Thing is, any game with a combat mechanic can be bastardized into a game of slaughtering the monsters
Sure. And heck, if that's how people want to play, that's ok. It's just disenheartening to see the rules reduce the wonderful experience of role-playing to that.

Wait, wait, wait! How did you get to this alternate dimension where D&D wasn't designed for hack and slash?
Um... Gate?

:smallbiggrin:

I suppose it is entirely possible that I am flogging the wrong horse. If the vast majority of people play D&D as hack-n-slash, then WotC knows its target audience, and is doing the right thing.

But I'm still annoyed by the attitude. Example: Watch any Arnie movie, where bad guys are things to make jokes about while you drop them off of buildings. Then watch "Hang 'em high," where the bad guys are people with families who feel remorse but are still bad guys. So it's not just WotC I'm annoyed at, but the entire Hollywood culture.

Yes, folks, I have enough annoyance for everybody. :smallbiggrin:

DnD is escapist, not elitist.
A good try. But I think your argument fails.

Using your specific example of the Seven Samurai, remember that they cannot defeat the bandits without the villager's help. And the samurai are not that much better than the bandits; only the kensai is presented as capable of typical D&D heroic feats, and he gets pwoned by one bandit with a gun.

Heroic stories are not necessarily about heroes with destinies. They can also be about ordinary people who rise to the occasion - think of virtually any WWII movie. There are two schools of drama here: the Greek son-of-the-gods, and the Roman centurion-who-rises-from-the-ranks. I suppose it's a matter of taste which kind of story you prefer, but I don't think it's unfair to label one of them elitist.

Basically, I'm still pissed off that old fraud Nietzsche went and poisoned a hundred years of popular culture.

Dervag

2008-02-26, 12:30 AM

Basically, I'm still pissed off that old fraud Nietzsche went and poisoned a hundred years of popular culture.Could you expand on that a bit? I'm curious.

Rutee

2008-02-26, 02:08 AM

3.5 was a step away from that. 4e is a reversal of direction. :smallfrown:
No, no it wasn't. That's why very nearly every monster isn't good for much of anything but door guarding.

Of course you do. Because, as a DM, you build a world.
Swing and a miss. I don't build a world. I write a story, with my players.

My complaint is that 4e seems to be a rule-book for building encounters. Instead of talking about building rich worlds full of exotic experiences, they're talking about foes to kill and monsters with special powers to make encounters more interesting.
...First off, you're acting like that isn't the case as it stands, with 3.X. Second, what little world building advice is in the 3.X DMG *isn't something you'd put in a preview*. You put new things in the previews, not "Same crap, different day" things.

Sure. And heck, if that's how people want to play, that's ok. It's just disenheartening to see the rules reduce the wonderful experience of role-playing to that.
I just don't get why this complaint doesn't exist for 3.X.

I suppose it is entirely possible that I am flogging the wrong horse. If the vast majority of people play D&D as hack-n-slash, then WotC knows its target audience, and is doing the right thing.
I'm not sure if that's how most people play it, but it's been their design philosophy the whole time, seems like.

Using your specific example of the Seven Samurai, remember that they cannot defeat the bandits without the villager's help. And the samurai are not that much better than the bandits; only the kensai is presented as capable of typical D&D heroic feats, and he gets pwoned by one bandit with a gun.[/qipte]
His argument is actually still correct; The titular seven samurai were still instrumental to the villagers repulsing the bandits. While they needed each other, the villagers needed the Samurai more, and they still had the narrative spotlight. He didn't say they were Gods unto men, he said they were the instruments of change.

[quote]Heroic stories are not necessarily about heroes with destinies. They can also be about ordinary people who rise to the occasion - think of virtually any WWII movie. There are two schools of drama here: the Greek son-of-the-gods, and the Roman centurion-who-rises-from-the-ranks. I suppose it's a matter of taste which kind of story you prefer, but I don't think it's unfair to label one of them elitist.
It's not 'unfair', it's inaccurate to only call one of them elitist. Either way, the most important people are the most able.

Could you expand on that a bit? I'm curious.
If I were a betting woman, I'd guess he's pinning the glorification of superpowerful beings on Nietzsche. Strikes me as weird, since the greeks were doing it millenia before he was around, but whatever.

Sstoopidtallkid

2008-02-26, 04:58 AM

Of course you do. Because, as a DM, you build a world.Swing and a miss. I don't build a world. I write a story, with my players.Which is why we disagree. I want to be living in a believable world, you want to experience a great story. Ideally, 4.0 will allow and encourage both of those, because they are not mutually exclusive and are indeed better when combined.(insert chocolate/peanut butter joke) From what has been presented, 4.0 is designed to encourage the story at the expense of the world. While that may be fixable via house-rules, I don't want to do that. It's annoying and leads to balance issues, plus many groups hold RAW as immutable. If WotC supports your style of play and not mine, well, I will go elsewhere, as I try to do with 3.x.

The Mormegil

2008-02-26, 05:29 AM

I like the idea that the PCs are special. This is not because they are the PCs, but it is actually why they are the PCs. If you want to play people who ain't special, go ahead and banish resurrection for them. Magic/Gods/any power greater than their own yo may want will never move for commoners. That is why PCs live adventures and commoners don't.

Muyten

2008-02-26, 07:05 AM

Which is why we disagree. I want to be living in a believable world, you want to experience a great story. Ideally, 4.0 will allow and encourage both of those, because they are not mutually exclusive and are indeed better when combined.(insert chocolate/peanut butter joke) From what has been presented, 4.0 is designed to encourage the story at the expense of the world. While that may be fixable via house-rules, I don't want to do that. It's annoying and leads to balance issues, plus many groups hold RAW as immutable. If WotC supports your style of play and not mine, well, I will go elsewhere, as I try to do with 3.x.

Yes this is indeed a major part of the argument in a lot of these threads.
I belong to the group that prefers story (not that I have anything against world and indeed the two are great together). It is pretty clear from a lot of the statements coming from WotC that they are trying to make it easier to tell stories but I don't think it has to be at the expense of world.
Sure WotC SUGGESTS things that some people feel are detrimental to the world but you don't have to follow those suggestions. Take this thread for example. PCs can be resurected pretty much like in 3E(but seemingly with a bit more flavor), NPC come back at the DMs discretion so if the DMs discretion is that they come back like PCs I can't see the problem.

Rutee

2008-02-26, 08:12 AM

Which is why we disagree. I want to be living in a believable world, you want to experience a great story. Ideally, 4.0 will allow and encourage both of those, because they are not mutually exclusive and are indeed better when combined.(insert chocolate/peanut butter joke) From what has been presented, 4.0 is designed to encourage the story at the expense of the world. While that may be fixable via house-rules, I don't want to do that. It's annoying and leads to balance issues, plus many groups hold RAW as immutable. If WotC supports your style of play and not mine, well, I will go elsewhere, as I try to do with 3.x.

WEll, story needs a world. A world doesn't really need a focus on story though. They're not mutuaully exclusive at all, but there are times when a clear choice must be made between the two, or when it's just more convenient to work the PCs off different rules then the NPCs.. like rolling at negatives; Why should I roll for Red Shirts? I can in fact think of a few rare reasons to do so, but they relate back to those red shirts somehow being relevant to the PCs' stories in some more involved fashion then "They're the BBEG's mooks".

And really, what balance issues crop up from mechanics that focus on story? Everything I've seen so far is as simple as "PCs operate on the same rules as NPCs", with NPCs mostly operating differently for convenience reasons.

Starbuck_II

2008-02-26, 08:53 AM

Heroic stories are not necessarily about heroes with destinies. They can also be about ordinary people who rise to the occasion - think of virtually any WWII movie. There are two schools of drama here: the Greek son-of-the-gods, and the Roman centurion-who-rises-from-the-ranks. I suppose it's a matter of taste which kind of story you prefer, but I don't think it's unfair to label one of them elitist.

Basically, I'm still pissed off that old fraud Nietzsche went and poisoned a hundred years of popular culture.

Neitz had like syphilious and was slowly going insane (till he did soon before he died). You can't blame him, the disease made him do it (In fact Nietz believed that you can't blame anyone because he said they was no free will. His little way of escaping blame lol).

Azerian Kelimon

2008-02-26, 08:56 AM

Technically, we HAVE no free will. We just act according to combinations of chemicals.

But that's the loser way of weaseling out.

Artanis

2008-02-26, 12:15 PM

From what has been presented, 4.0 is designed to encourage the story at the expense of the world.
I disagree. From what we've seen, it appears that 4.0 is trying to encourage story, yes. But I don't think it's doing so at the expense of the world...it's doing so at the expense of things that the players never see anyways and thus that do nothing to immerse them in anything.

For example, why does it matter that the Kobolds are fighting the Troglodytes if the players are too busy fighting Demons to ever hear about Kobolds, ever hear about Troglodytes, ever hear about a war between them, and ever come within three planes of the two? To me, it would be pretty d*** lame to hear the DM say, "The massive Demon-lord rears up before you, flames shooting out of its eyes and its ear-shattering roar shaking you to your very soul as it charges in to attack. Also, just so you know, yesterday, the Troglodytes attacked a small Kobold settlement four planes over. Ok, back to the Demon about to eat you guys..."

RukiTanuki

2008-02-26, 04:23 PM

I disagree. From what we've seen, it appears that 4.0 is trying to encourage story, yes. But I don't think it's doing so at the expense of the world...it's doing so at the expense of things that the players never see anyways and thus that do nothing to immerse them in anything.

This is a big one for me. I don't really need rules, statistics, and dice rolls to figure out what goes on behind the scenes when the PCs are not around. It's not that the world revolves around the PCs, or that they're superhuman, or that no one exists as anything other than hack-and-slash fodder (not that it's stopped a few people from insinuating that I must run games that way).

It's that I trust my worldbuilding skills. I figure that if I know enough that I'd be able to identify when a rule, statistic, or dice roll would result in a completely unrealistic and immersion-breaking action on the part of some NPC, then I've probably got a pretty good head for what would be a realistic action. If I can ponder several realistic actions to take, I can select one that fits their motivation, goals, and capabilities. That choice can be at my fancy, at a random whim, or (more likely) one that makes the story and game interesting.

But in the absence of the PCs, it doesn't need to be fair, just convincing.

I prefer running worlds where bringing someone back from the dead is a tremendous effort, not just a large expenditure. As such, low-level mooks (NPC and PC alike) may not have affected the world in their passing enough for someone to pursue that effort; heroic beings will probably find others taking a grand quest to bring them back; and epic characters consider it a big deal when one of their own is Dead For Real. And, as others have stated, that's kinda how 3.x works, that's kinda what we're being told about 4.x, and therefore, means not a whole lot is changing.

Unless a DM regularly rolls bleeding checks for mooks after the PCs drop them to negatives, loot them, and walk away, I think they'll have an easy time continuing what they've been doing.

Dan_Hemmens

2008-02-26, 05:00 PM

Wait - your argument against the proposition that 4e will be like a video game is that 3.5e already is?

My argument against the proposition that 4e will be more like a video game than 3.5 is that 3.5 already displays every single one of the traits which people claim will make 4.0 "like a video game".

Look, if you're throwing in the towel and admitting that 4e's express goal is to become a series of connected combats with no social/role-playing mechanics whatsoever, you can just say that. It's no harm to change your mind. It doesn't make you look bad or anything.

Actually, 4th ed will have social mechanics. By comparison, third ed devoted exactly as much rules-space to the fine arts of diplomacy as it devoted to tying knots.

The point here is that a large number of the changes people claim are making 4E "like a video game" are actually making it "like every RPG in the world that isn't D&D".

D&D was always elitest; it was always about the PCs being somebody and everyone else being scenery. When 3.5 moved towards monsters and PCs sharing the same mechanics, it moved away from that. Now 4e is charging head-long back into that territory.

Mechanically speaking, your average computer game will model player characters with the same code they use to model the hordes of mobs that the players mow down.

Conversely, a great many games that *aren't* D&D (and therefore *aren't* hardwired to be All About The Combat) use different rules for PCs and NPCs without turning into dungeon bashes. I'm working on a system at the moment where NPCs cannot ever have any stats at all. (www.nre.wikidot.com if you're interested).

Using the same mechanics for PCs and NPCs was a bad idea. It was time consuming and pointless. Are you really telling me that allowing pigs to be described in terms of levels and classes stopped them being pigs?

I, personally, have a problem with playing a game where you kill orcs because they're in a room you want to go through. In exactly the same way I have a problem with movies like Saw, or pornography. There's a time and a place for it, but when the largest RPG in the world endorses violence porn as the official way to play, it makes me sad. And a little bit angry.

So you're objecting to the fact that a game which evolved from wargaming, contains strong wargaming elements, and devotes forty percent of its published page count to a combat system which is essentially a strategic warfare minigame, endorses "violence porn"?

Seriously, you realize that every RPG published in the last thirty years would serve your purposes far, far, far better than any edition of D&D, and that 3.5 is probably the most "violence porn" oriented edition of the game on the market?

For combats to be dramatic (and hence fun) they have to be about more than "I want to get to the next room."

Then don't make your players do dungeon crawls?

Neon Knight

2008-02-26, 08:36 PM

But I'm still annoyed by the attitude. Example: Watch any Arnie movie, where bad guys are things to make jokes about while you drop them off of buildings. Then watch "Hang 'em high," where the bad guys are people with families who feel remorse but are still bad guys. So it's not just WotC I'm annoyed at, but the entire Hollywood culture.

Yes, folks, I have enough annoyance for everybody. :smallbiggrin:

Firstly, the Arnold slam is not appreciated. Nor is the hyperbole. I am hardly acquainted with the Govenator's entire filmography, but I am more than willing to bet that at some point he was involved with a film with complex bad guys. This might turn into a game of Six Degrees.

If what you're saying here is "Stories with well fleshed out/defined antagonists are superior to those without" or "Well fleshed out/defined antagonists are a requirement for a good story/good roleplaying," then I reject the statement completely on thee counts.

The 1rst count is that it excludes conflicts with inhuman or undefinable antagonists. Man vs. Nature, (and its close cousin Man vs. Technology) is a prolific conflict which features an antagonist that is Mother Nature. Being a non-sentient fictional personification of certain ideas mankind has about nature, she can hardly be called well motivated. She merely is.

The 2nd count is that a well fleshed out antagonist is not always desirable, particularly if the creator of the work is trying to say something with his villain. In the above example, the fact that the bad guys have families and have human emotions invites sympathy for them. If the creator does not want sympathy to be felt for these characters, it is bust to demonize them rather than humanize them.

The 3rd count is the fact that even in a plain old white hat vs. black hat conflict, the villain can have all the complexity of Snidely Whiplash and the story still be interesting. If the story chooses to focus more on the hero and his reactions to what occurs, the villain is more of an event for him to react to than a character. I maintain that this can still be fascinating, engaging, and entertaining for the audience if the hero and his reactions are good enough.

An example of the 3rd, drawn from the film of the man you slammed: The Predator.

Imagine, if you will, a small group of people, ours PCs, stalked by a seemingly invincible and invisible killer in a hostile environment. The way they respond to fear, stress, pain; the bonds of trust (and distrust) they form amongst themselves, the way they either revile, fear, hate, hold in awe, or disregard their hunter can pull all of the drama and roleplay weight while leaving the alien stalker no more complex than a panther or tiger.

You could drone on and on about his Proud Warrior Guys culture and the way he takes trophies to display his manliness to his society and how the hunt is a sacred ritual, but all that detracts from the above in my humble opinion.

A good try. But I think your argument fails.

Using your specific example of the Seven Samurai, remember that they cannot defeat the bandits without the villager's help. And the samurai are not that much better than the bandits; only the kensai is presented as capable of typical D&D heroic feats, and he gets pwoned by one bandit with a gun.

Heroic stories are not necessarily about heroes with destinies. They can also be about ordinary people who rise to the occasion - think of virtually any WWII movie. There are two schools of drama here: the Greek son-of-the-gods, and the Roman centurion-who-rises-from-the-ranks. I suppose it's a matter of taste which kind of story you prefer, but I don't think it's unfair to label one of them elitist.

I think my argument holds, and here is why:

I am more familiar with The Magnificent Seven, the western where the protagonists are more along the lines of gunslinging name taking butt kicking big dang heroes who perform some extraordinary feats, but I feel that doesn't matter.

As Madame Rutee noted, the protagonists in the model are the force of change. The 7 in both films may not be able to wipe out entire armies, but they are still more powerful than the peasants or the bandits. Because they have guts. Courage. Moxi. Daring.

This is more true of the Magnificent Seven, were the gunslingers are betrayed by the peasants, and the bandits allow the gunslingers to leave unharmed. With no more work, the gunslingers have no reason to stay. Aside from 1, they each chose to head back in and save the villagers, and that one returns later.

It was that audacity, that willingness to stand up for what was right, and to strike down the wicked that separated hero from peasant. Without the bravery of the gunmen, the peasants would have never resisted successfully.

You see, the model I proposed earlier doesn't only measure combat prowess. Whatever quality is required to solve the problem, the PCs, who are designated to solve the problem will have sufficient reserves or amounts of it to solve the problem while any NPCs will have a deficit.

None of this even requires PCs to be truly extraordinary, come to think of it. The orderly on the night shift at a hospital trying to protect the triple amputee patients from some psycho who believes that crippled people for one reason or another don't deserve to take up resources can be a pretty average guy so long as his opponent isn't a Navy SEAL or a Green Beret. The relation between the quantities of effectiveness must be maintained, but the actual quantities themselves, so long as the equation is satisfied, don't matter. So long as the NPCs are truly sub-par, then normal might as well be super human in comparison. One-eyed man is king in the land of the blind and all that jazz.

Not that none of this involves any talk of destinies. No one ever questions why Delta Force are so awesome, and nobody ascribes divine intervention to their abilities. They train hard, sure, and that's part of it, but you still have to be exceptional to get in. A common person who trained really hard probably wouldn't have much of a shot at gaining entry. And in my mind, the PCs are the equivalent of an organization like Delta Force.

And quite frankly, I think this whole "Common man rising to the occasion" thing is bunk. Those men who rose above were already above the rest; they and the world just didn't know it yet. The truly common man almost never does anything worthy of note. Those men who stood out for loyalty, bravery, and valor were better than the average man, even if they appeared as average men before it.

As to why you can't call one elitist; because elitist is a word with many negative connotations. Like homophobe and liberal, it has become a snarl world, a flat out insult with little to no actual meaning behind it.

Basically, I'm still pissed off that old fraud Nietzsche went and poisoned a hundred years of popular culture.

Explain yourself. Now.

Starbuck_II

2008-02-26, 09:05 PM

Explain yourself. Now.
Well, he certainly was a cause of Holocaust (namely Hitler)
One of Hitler's influences for befliefs in how power should be run/used came from Nietzche's philosophy.
He wrote that those in power make own morals. Thus there is no good/evil (that is masses belief only), only good/bad. The good is whatever you (rulers) deem it, likewise the bad.

Thus, whatever Hitler did he was upheld to be correct in doing so. The Right of the Noble class(or Right of Might) so to speak.

There were other influences, but his post-modern views probably caused most effect on Hitler.
But this is most likely offtopic.

Rutee

2008-02-26, 09:11 PM

It is, since the question is on Nietzsche's effect on pop culture.

Neon Knight

2008-02-26, 09:12 PM

Well, he certainly was a cause of Holocaust (namely Hitler)
One of Hitler's influences for befliefs in how power should be run/used came from Nietzche's philosophy.
He wrote that those in power make own morals. Thus there is no good/evil (that is masses belief only), only good/bad. The good is whatever you (rulers) deem it, likewise the bad.

Thus, whatever Hitler did he was upheld to be correct in doing so. The Right of the Noble class(or Right of Might) so to speak.

There were other influences, but his post-modern views probably caused most effect on Hitler.
But this is most likely offtopic.

I was asking Mr. Yahzi, but, thank you.

People have used Christianity to justify slavery. Mr. Nietzche cannot be held accountable for the actions of others. I've actually heard some talk that Nietzsche was very angry that the Nazi's were using his philosophy.

And although nobody can say for sure what Neitzsche's message was, I always felt it was more along the lines of "You have to find your own morality," rather than might makes right. Fits in with his staunch individualism. But that's just my interpretation. The guy was hardly 100% clear about what he meant. His Philosopher of the Hammer shtick doesn't help matters either.

Dervag

2008-02-26, 09:17 PM

So you're objecting to the fact that a game which evolved from wargaming, contains strong wargaming elements, and devotes forty percent of its published page count to a combat system which is essentially a strategic warfare minigame, endorses "violence porn"?Tactical, my dear Hemmens, tactical.

Aside from that one thing, I agree with almost everything you said, except maybe not quite as vehemently as you do.

Firstly, the Arnold slam is not appreciated. Nor is the hyperbole. I am hardly acquainted with the Govenator's entire filmography, but I am more than willing to bet that at some point he was involved with a film with complex bad guys. This might turn into a game of Six Degrees.It's not really an Arnold slam as such, in my opinion; it's a slam against the modern action genre. You could use Sylvester Stallone or Clint Eastwood or Chuck Norris or any other action hero almost as well. And the latest generation of action heroes (people like vin Diesel) make the slam even more relevant. It's just that Arnold Schwarzenegger is perhaps the iconic action hero of the 1980s and 1990s.

Sure, there are modern action movies with complex bad guys, but the trend towards cartoonish bad guys who meet cartoonishly lethal fates (being kicked off buildings by a violent loner with a ready one-liner, for instance) is real.

Imagine, if you will, a small group of people, ours PCs, stalked by a seemingly invincible and invisible killer in a hostile environment. The way they respond to fear, stress, pain; the bonds of trust (and distrust) they form amongst themselves, the way they either revile, fear, hate, hold in awe, or disregard their hunter can pull all of the drama and roleplay weight while leaving the alien stalker no more complex than a panther or tiger.

You could drone on and on about his Proud Warrior Guys culture and the way he takes trophies to display his manliness to his society and how the hunt is a sacred ritual, but all that detracts from the above in my humble opinion.I agree 100%. The antagonist doesn't have to be a fleshed out character in order for there to be fleshed out characters.

That said, if nobody but the PCs is fleshed out in a complex roleplaying world, you're going to have a problem.

As to why you can't call one elitist; because elitist is a word with many negative connotations. Like homophobe and liberal, it has become a snarl world, a flat out insult with little to no actual meaning behind it.It has become a word with so many negative connotations in large part because it has come by them honestly. The belief that there are a small "elite" of people who are intrinsically better than everyone else becuase they possess some superior quality (such as being descended from Good People, or having big muscles, or hearing voices from the gods) has caused a lot of trouble over the years.

Neon Knight

2008-02-26, 09:46 PM

It's not really an Arnold slam as such, in my opinion; it's a slam against the modern action genre. You could use Sylvester Stallone or Clint Eastwood or Chuck Norris or any other action hero almost as well. And the latest generation of action heroes (people like vin Diesel) make the slam even more relevant. It's just that Arnold Schwarzenegger is perhaps the iconic action hero of the 1980s and 1990s.

Sure, there are modern action movies with complex bad guys, but the trend towards cartoonish bad guys who meet cartoonishly lethal fates (being kicked off buildings by a violent loner with a ready one-liner, for instance) is real.

You're probably right, and I've most likely badly overreacted. Although, James Bond has been quipping since the 60s, and many Westerns include examples of similar phrases. I've never thought of it as being a specifically modern action hero trait, more of a generic comes with the territory of action movies type thing. The quipping thing, I mean.

If he really just meant generic action hero, then I can agree with him for the most part that modern action films do involve pithy phrase throw downs with in some instances weak characterizations.

It has become a word with so many negative connotations in large part because it has come by them honestly. The belief that there are a small "elite" of people who are intrinsically better than everyone else becuase they possess some superior quality (such as being descended from Good People, or having big muscles, or hearing voices from the gods) has caused a lot of trouble over the years.

Also very true. Of course, it can be said to be actually true in DnD's fictional world what with Mindflayers and Dragons and other racial hit die high stat bonus packing races. If those count as people.

High level NPCs with PC classes exist in DnD though. I think Greyhawk has an 11th level rogue, and Forgotten Realms is famously full of Epic NPCs (this has perhaps been over exaggerated. I hope. Epic Bartenders sound scary.)

horseboy

2008-02-26, 11:14 PM

High level NPCs with PC classes exist in DnD though. I think Greyhawk has an 11th level rogue, and Forgotten Realms is famously full of Epic NPCs (this has perhaps been over exaggerated. I hope. Epic Bartenders sound scary.)
Well, there was a bar in Waterdeep who's bartender was Selune in disguise. :smallamused:

Yahzi

2008-02-26, 11:56 PM

Could you expand on that a bit? I'm curious.
Actually, Nietzsche completely underlies the entire premise of RPGs. Namely, the old saw, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." In virtually every RPG, people fight, and don't die, and get stronger.

Of course, the real world is entirely different. Professional boxers don't get better by fighting boxing matches against their equals. They get better by practicing on people who are paid to lose. Trying to become a professional fighter by getting in bar fights will make you tough, fast; but it will also likely leave you crippled in ways that rule out an Olympic career.

In addition, there's the whole Uberman nonsense. Every time you see a movie about a good cop who takes the law into his own hands to make justice, you're watching warmed-over Nietzsche. In real life, the real heroes play by the rules, because it is playing by the rules that defines justice in the first place.

David Hume did something to advance the cause of reason and understanding; all Nietzsche did was empower a century of self-centered egoistic escapism. IMHO. :smalltongue:

It's not 'unfair', it's inaccurate to only call one of them elitist. Either way, the most important people are the most able.
I don't think it's inaccurate. The Roman story (for lack of a better name) asserts that any of us can become heroes. The Greek story asserts that you're born to it. That's the elitism I dislike: that heroism is a gift of accidental birth, not a prize won by personal effort.

I realize 2e explicitly stated that only some people were born to be adventurers. Which is why I used to hate D&D so much. But with 3e giving monsters stats and stuff, it looked like they were heading away from that. So I started thinking about maybe not hating D&D. And now I'm guessing I'll be going back to hating. Pure, vile loathing, even. :smalleek:

The titular seven samurai were still instrumental to the villagers repulsing the bandits.
But in a wholly non-D&D (and non-Greek) way. The Roman story is the hero who organizes and leads the commoners to victory; in the Greek story, the erstwhile victims are merely spectators while the heroes save them.

If I were a betting woman, I'd guess he's pinning the glorification of superpowerful beings on Nietzsche.
Close. As for the Greeks, the epitome of their story-telling - the Odyssey - actually undercuts that. They (like 4e) were moving towards a more (dare I be perjorative :smalltongue: ) mature form of story-telling.

I don't build a world. I write a story, with my players.
But for your story to be anchored, it has to be set in a world. I think you do a lot more world-building than you think.

t's doing so at the expense of things that the players never see anyways and thus that do nothing to immerse them in anything.
If that were true, I'd be a lot less critical. After all, nobody's asking for outhouse construction rules. :smallbiggrin: But my worry is that the new NPC/monster rules are a lot more about "Look at what's in this room" than "how the heck did that thing get in that room, and why is it there, and what happens if we let it out instead of killing it?"

Mechanically speaking, your average computer game will model player characters with the same code they use to model the hordes of mobs that the players mow down.
I'm quite certain that is not the case at all.

Using the same mechanics for PCs and NPCs was a bad idea
We've moved on to discussing whether innate specialness helps or hinders the heroic story.

Seriously, you realize that every RPG published in the last thirty years would serve your purposes far, far, far better
Now you're just engaging in hyperbole. FATAL and Synibarr, just to start. :smallyuk:

The 3rd count is the fact that even in a plain old white hat vs. black hat conflict, the villain can have all the complexity of Snidely Whiplash and the story still be interesting
Here we must agree to disagree.

Note, that I did not personally blame Arnold for the content of his movies: I simply referred to a popular scene from one of them.

And quite frankly, I think this whole "Common man rising to the occasion" thing is bunk. Those men who rose above were already above the rest; they and the world just didn't know it yet. The truly common man almost never does anything worthy of note. Those men who stood out for loyalty, bravery, and valor were better than the average man, even if they appeared as average men before it.

As to why you can't call one elitist; because elitist is a word with many negative connotations. Like homophobe and liberal, it has become a snarl world, a flat out insult with little to no actual meaning behind it.
For those of you wondering why I am annoyed at Nietzsche, you need look no further than the above quote. :smallannoyed:

And although nobody can say for sure what Neitzsche's message was, I always felt it was more along the lines of "You have to find your own morality,"
Oh, right. That nonsense too. Thanks for reminding me - I had almost forgotten about the relativism. There's just so much of his philosophy to despise. :smallbiggrin:

Rutee

2008-02-27, 12:12 AM

I don't think it's inaccurate. The Roman story (for lack of a better name) asserts that any of us can become heroes. The Greek story asserts that you're born to it. That's the elitism I dislike: that heroism is a gift of accidental birth, not a prize won by personal effort.
You actually point out its inaccuracy as you elaborate which elitism you prefer.

I realize 2e explicitly stated that only some people were born to be adventurers. Which is why I used to hate D&D so much. But with 3e giving monsters stats and stuff, it looked like they were heading away from that. So I started thinking about maybe not hating D&D. And now I'm guessing I'll be going back to hating. Pure, vile loathing, even. :smalleek:
This is honestly a ridiculous reason to hate DnD, seeing as you choose the focus of your story or world. Would it have made you feel at all better if only a few people became heroes?

But in a wholly non-D&D (and non-Greek) way. The Roman story is the hero who organizes and leads the commoners to victory; in the Greek story, the erstwhile victims are merely spectators while the heroes save them.
Okay. You're still wrong to say he's incorrect; He wasn't focussing on the Greek/Roman divide you're overfocussing on. He wasn't discussing the PCs as supermen, just the agents of change.

But for your story to be anchored, it has to be set in a world. I think you do a lot more world-building than you think.
Only on the internet do people have the temerity to dictate what someone else's opinions and actions are. No, I do exactly as much worldbuilding as I think. It's secondary to what's truly important to me.

If that were true, I'd be a lot less critical. After all, nobody's asking for outhouse construction rules. :smallbiggrin: But my worry is that the new NPC/monster rules are a lot more about "Look at what's in this room" than "how the heck did that thing get in that room, and why is it there, and what happens if we let it out instead of killing it?"
Where, pray tell, did you get the latter from in 3.x?

Now you're just engaging in hyperbole. FATAL and Synibarr, just to start. :smallyuk:
There's no such thing as FATAL.

horseboy

2008-02-27, 12:21 AM

Now you're just engaging in hyperbole. FATAL and Synibarr, just to start. :smallyuk:
Synibar wasn't that bad, except for that armour system.

Dervag

2008-02-27, 12:45 AM

Also very true. Of course, it can be said to be actually true in DnD's fictional world what with Mindflayers and Dragons and other racial hit die high stat bonus packing races. If those count as people.The kind of thing that gives "elitism" such a bad name doens't come from saying that some people are stronger or smarter or braver than others. The problem shows up when you try to draw moral conclusions from that fact. When you say that, by virtue of having more strength or brains or courage or a 'better' bloodline, this person is better than that other person in a moral sense. Or when you do it the other way around- some people are intrinisically morally superior to others and are therefore more powerful. Because either of those two implies that the powerful have every right to boss around the weak, and that the concerns of the weak simply do not matter compared to those of the strong. Which leads to horrors.

And which is the viewpoint implied by a world in which there are a few Chosen Ones that have powers that nobody else could acquire, even in theory, by doing things like practicing and studying. That Joe Fighter is fundamentally more important than Joe Peasant, even though Joe Peasant is just as strong and smart and such, not because JF has training JP doesn't, but because JF is somehow chosen to be more important than JP.

Only on the internet do people have the temerity to dictate what someone else's opinions and actions are. No, I do exactly as much worldbuilding as I think. It's secondary to what's truly important to me.I think the problem is that you're not using the same idea of "world building."

I think he's right that to tell a story you must build a world, or at least the framework of one. To figure out how the story is going to go, you have to have a sense of how things and people work in the setting. You have to know how your characters will react to events, which is shaped by the culture they grew up in. You have to know how the world will react to your characters, which requires you to figure out roughly how the world works.

Moreover, to make a story entertaining, you have to transmit that framework to the audience. They need to know what is and is not dangerous and how the world works, too. They need to know that if Bob gets eaten by a soul-sucking gaoogabeast, he's dead for real and you won't be seeing him ever again. They need to know that Samurai John views death as preferable to dishonor, and that other people understand and respect that viewpoint. And so on.

None of this requires you to do the kind of massive worldbuilding that someone like J.R.R. Tolkien did. But even if you never actually sit down and do a "worldbuilding" session in which you draw up a map of the planet or a history of the universe, by the time you're done telling the story you've created a world. There are few stories that can be told in their details without world building, which is why you usually have to change details if you want to transfer a story from one setting to another.

Vazzaroth

2008-02-27, 12:56 AM

I don't understand how this is really any diffrent than it is now. In practice, of course.

Right now, sure a low level could come back... but he's be behind in level and, presumably, money. Might as well roll a new one.:smallconfused:

Edit: Wow, I thought this thread was only one page. And still on topic. Too bad.

BTW, Don't call it an überman, choose one. übermensch or, idk, Overlord. :smallannoyed:

Rutee

2008-02-27, 02:24 AM

I think the problem is that you're not using the same idea of "world building."
No, the problem is that I'm being told me things I already know. He was acting as though I /don't/ do any world building (Well, strictly speaking, I generally don't, because I'm often not writing a setting from the ground up, but that's more literal), or as if I don't acknowledge what I do. I know what I do. I've studied this crap more then any sane nerd should. I also know what I focus on, and what's secondary to me.

Dervag

2008-02-27, 02:43 AM

No, the problem is that I'm being told me things I already know.If that's a response directly to what I said, I should point out that I'm not speaking to you exclusively here; I'm trying to state a general position on the role of world building in story-oriented fiction.

He was acting as though I /don't/ do any world building (Well, strictly speaking, I generally don't, because I'm often not writing a setting from the ground up, but that's more literal), or as if I don't acknowledge what I do.I'm really not sure that's what he's saying. You said "I don't build a world. I tell a story..."

His response, with reason, was "but for your story to be anchored, it has to be set in a world."

I'm not sure how you go from that to concluding that he thinks you don't do world building. I mean, if you're telling a story, and if stories have to be set in world, then it would be completely impossible for you to do no world building. If nothing else, you still have to create the microcosm used by your own characters even when you're telling a story in someone else's setting.

I suppose I can see how his response might mean that he thinks you don't acknowledge your own world building as world building, but even there, you've already said you do world building. He thinks you do world building, so I don't see where the disagreement is.

I know what I do. I've studied this crap more then any sane nerd should. I also know what I focus on, and what's secondary to me.For some reason, this strikes me as being like saying "I don't care about the arithmetic, arithmetic is just a tool to me, but I do care that the account books balance."

It's true, and it's a very reasonable way to prioritize. But since you can't balance the books without doing a lot of arithmetic, it seems a little misleading to me. You're still doing a lot of arithmetic to make sure the books balance anyway.

The fact that you consider world building secondary to story is fine. Most storytellers do. Telling good stories is harder than building worlds, so it's arguably a higher aspect of the art. But that doesn't mean you aren't doing it or it isn't important, or that letting the believability of the world lapse in favor of the story of the moment is always a good idea. At a certain point, enough rulebending for story's sake can create awkward questions (if Rule X doesn't apply when we're trying to do Y, why does it apply when we're trying to do Z?). Or it can force you into a retcon tap dance.

I think that ties back to the original complaint- that when we set things up so that there are rules (such as resurrection) that apply to group X but not to group Y, we have to do something awkward to explain why the rules aren't consistent across the board.

Rutee

2008-02-27, 03:14 AM

If that's a response directly to what I said, I should point out that I'm not speaking to you exclusively here; I'm trying to state a general position on the role of world building in story-oriented fiction.
Ah hah, then.

I'm really not sure that's what he's saying. You said "I don't build a world. I tell a story..."

His response, with reason, was "but for your story to be anchored, it has to be set in a world."

I'm not sure how you go from that to concluding that he thinks you don't do world building. I mean, if you're telling a story, and if stories have to be set in world, then it would be completely impossible for you to do no world building. If nothing else, you still have to create the microcosm used by your own characters even when you're telling a story in someone else's setting.

I suppose I can see how his response might mean that he thinks you don't acknowledge your own world building as world building, but even there, you've already said you do world building. He thinks you do world building, so I don't see where the disagreement is.
Because his diction is such that it heavily implies it? "You do more world building then you think you do"?

For some reason, this strikes me as being like saying "I don't care about the arithmetic, arithmetic is just a tool to me, but I do care that the account books balance."

It's true, and it's a very reasonable way to prioritize. But since you can't balance the books without doing a lot of arithmetic, it seems a little misleading to me. You're still doing a lot of arithmetic to make sure the books balance anyway.

The fact that you consider world building secondary to story is fine. Most storytellers do. Telling good stories is harder than building worlds, so it's arguably a higher aspect of the art. But that doesn't mean you aren't doing it or it isn't important, or that letting the believability of the world lapse in favor of the story of the moment is always a good idea. At a certain point, enough rulebending for story's sake can create awkward questions (if Rule X doesn't apply when we're trying to do Y, why does it apply when we're trying to do Z?). Or it can force you into a retcon tap dance.

I think that ties back to the original complaint- that when we set things up so that there are rules (such as resurrection) that apply to group X but not to group Y, we have to do something awkward to explain why the rules aren't consistent across the board.

WEll, look at the context of the quote. He was dictating to me my goals. Consider if he had said "Engineering is important to bridge building" "Yes, yes it is" "And bridge building is something you do to build bridges" "No, I build bridges to get to the other side." An aspect of the work, yes. The point of the exercise, not so much.

Yami

2008-02-27, 06:56 AM

One thing I will say about this 'new' ruling is that it allows for the old character concept I used to love. The classic necromancer who studies life and death in order to revive a lost love or fallen comerade. Of course one could use work arounds, such as a disintigrate comrade, but that goes a bit far for me.

Of course, I don't really like this method, I'm just saying it allows for more of my character to rail at the gods for thier unfairness. Allows gotta love unreachable goals like deiticide.

Dan_Hemmens

2008-02-27, 09:24 AM

I'm quite certain that is not the case at all.

No? So monsters in MMORPGs don't have a level? They don't have attacks that do damage, die when they run out of health? They obviously have a different *interface*, because they're not player controlled, but that isn't the same thing.

We've moved on to discussing whether innate specialness helps or hinders the heroic story.

You may have, I haven't. I'm still arguing over whether they're actually "innately special" at all.

Now you're just engaging in hyperbole. FATAL and Synibarr, just to start. :smallyuk:

That's exactly my point, though. Even FATAL serves your purposes better than D&D. It has more social rules (three kinds of charisma, rather than one), it has a detailed world in which the emphasis is on realism and scholarly research, instead of MMO-esque monster bashing. It treats PCs and NPCs the same, mechanically, and all its monster races are playble as PCs.

By the standards *you* seem to be setting, FATAL is far more for you than D&D is.

AKA_Bait

2008-02-27, 10:22 AM

David Hume did something to advance the cause of reason and understanding; all Nietzsche did was empower a century of self-centered egoistic escapism. IMHO. :smalltongue:

I very nearly broke out in applause when I read that. Which would have probably surprised my coworkers.

Oh, right. That nonsense too. Thanks for reminding me - I had almost forgotten about the relativism. There's just so much of his philosophy to despise. :smallbiggrin:

Well, to be fair, although Neitzche is wrong, his brand of relativism is a distant cousin of Hume's Sentimentalism and Aristotle's Virtue Ethics.

And which is the viewpoint implied by a world in which there are a few Chosen Ones that have powers that nobody else could acquire, even in theory, by doing things like practicing and studying. That Joe Fighter is fundamentally more important than Joe Peasant, even though Joe Peasant is just as strong and smart and such, not because JF has training JP doesn't, but because JF is somehow chosen to be more important than JP.

This, obviously, is a taste thing. Personally, I prefer not to have 'chosen ones' at all in games I build. The PCs are more important simply because they are more powerful. Some NPC aristocrat may be more important than the PC's, not because he can slay dragons, but because he can command people who slay dragons.

None of this requires you to do the kind of massive worldbuilding that someone like J.R.R. Tolkien did. But even if you never actually sit down and do a "worldbuilding" session in which you draw up a map of the planet or a history of the universe, by the time you're done telling the story you've created a world. There are few stories that can be told in their details without world building, which is why you usually have to change details if you want to transfer a story from one setting to another.

I agree. Also, a really rich story has more than one story going on at a time. Fleshing out the world, and those who inhabit it, allows the PCs to briefly touch another story they may have nothing to do with the result of. a PC cameo in some other tale makes the world seem deeper and helps with suspension of disbelief.

Ozymandias

2008-02-27, 10:25 AM

In my opinion, much of the debate between whether heroes are made or born really just focuses on the divide between some traits being classed as inherent or genetic - intelligence, strength, often charisma - while others - tenacity, perseverance, et al - are not, with the line between them vague and, usually, arbitrary. Usually focusing on conscious choice, it is further evidence of the pervasive nature of the Fundamental Attribution Error - i.e. while factually, human behavior is usually shaped more by environment, people attribute it to personality. Some people are born smarter and stronger and faster, and some people are born more tenacious and virtuous, the products of a strange gestalt of environment and genetics. Lionization of those whose combination is best should be taken with a grain of salt, as should maligning them.

In effect, I think that the people who don't adventure consciously choose not to; in this regard they are not born with the drive to adventure. Whether a commoner with straight 18s could have become a famous cleric were he so inclined is solely the territory of speculation, and on the DM's part.

Also, death should be adjusted based on tastes and gaming style, and I think the bar should be set high (it can be lowered quite easily) for newbies.

Yahzi

2008-02-27, 10:46 AM

The kind of thing that gives "elitism" such a bad name doens't come from saying that some people are stronger or smarter or braver than others. The problem shows up when you try to draw moral conclusions from that fact. When you say that, by virtue of having more strength or brains or courage or a 'better' bloodline, this person is better than that other person in a moral sense. Or when you do it the other way around- some people are intrinisically morally superior to others and are therefore more powerful. Because either of those two implies that the powerful have every right to boss around the weak, and that the concerns of the weak simply do not matter compared to those of the strong. Which leads to horrors.

And which is the viewpoint implied by a world in which there are a few Chosen Ones that have powers that nobody else could acquire, even in theory, by doing things like practicing and studying. That Joe Fighter is fundamentally more important than Joe Peasant, even though Joe Peasant is just as strong and smart and such, not because JF has training JP doesn't, but because JF is somehow chosen to be more important than JP.
An eloquent summation!

"You do more world building then you think you do"?
I did mean what Dervag said. You do build a world, even if you don't call it that. The fact that you can build a world sufficient for your story in a few broad strokes is great; but not all DMs are that adept at painting backdrops. Some of us would like a little more help from the rules in creating a consistent, believable, at least partially predictable, and exciting background.

The 4e rules seem to be going the other way.

The PCs are more important simply because they are more powerful.
Exactly - that's what I am calling the "Roman" story.

And the Greek story would be: "The PCs are more powerful simply because they are more important."

I think that expresses the D&D sentiment of "the PCs can do this because they are PCs." Which I loathe. I felt 3.5e was moving away from that, and I think we all agree 4e is moving towards it.

(Kudos to AKA_Bait for summing up the entire thread in one sentence. :smallcool: )

I'm still arguing over whether they're actually "innately special" at all.
There's an interesting discussion going on here about Nietzsche and world-building. I'm going to join that discussion, and let this one drop.

Neon Knight

2008-02-27, 11:34 PM

Actually, Nietzsche completely underlies the entire premise of RPGs. Namely, the old saw, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." In virtually every RPG, people fight, and don't die, and get stronger.

Of course, the real world is entirely different. Professional boxers don't get better by fighting boxing matches against their equals. They get better by practicing on people who are paid to lose. Trying to become a professional fighter by getting in bar fights will make you tough, fast; but it will also likely leave you crippled in ways that rule out an Olympic career.

I disagree. Firstly, I can find no support in Nietzsche's works that he ever supported this. If you could point me to the material where he does I will happily read it if I have not already.

Secondly, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger," isn't quite meant to be taken that literally. Most uses of it really means "Suffering builds character," or "You can get used to anything." I mean, it works the way you take it, its just that in most other contexts it has a different meaning.

Experience really does make you better at stuff, and you don't have to win to gain experience. Learn from your mistakes and all that rot. The example you use is bad, since fighting, especially in melee leads to injuries which have repercussions, like ending up punch-drunk from being KO'ed one too many times. Most RPGs don't bother with that level of detail in their injuries as a simplification.

To become a professional fighter, you would train in a manner that does not injure you (because injuries decrease ability), and even then accidents can happen. Practice makes perfect, after all. Go out to the range and cycle a thousand rounds (aiming, of course) and keep doing it daily, and you'll get better at shooting. Combat experienced troops are better at fighting than green troops, although that's more morale and self control than it is actual fighting experience in most cases.

In addition, there's the whole Uberman nonsense. Every time you see a movie about a good cop who takes the law into his own hands to make justice, you're watching warmed-over Nietzsche. In real life, the real heroes play by the rules, because it is playing by the rules that defines justice in the first place.

I feel you have misunderstood Nietzsche. The Übermensch, commonly translated as superman, but more accurately translated in my opinion as overman, (although even that has problems) is not a concept whose meaning is agreed upon. The German prefix über can mean a lot of different things depending on what it is attached to. No one can really precisely say what he meant by it.

In my mind, the overman is an extension of trans-valuation, self determination, and his staunch individualism. The overman is the individual who has trans-valuated the insufficient morals society would force upon him with a superior morality beyond conventional good and evil.

I feel this belief in a need for trans-valuation stemmed from the idea that the perfect society springs from the perfect morals, and thus our imperfect society must have imperfect morals. This is not directly supported in the works of Nietzsche himself, but I feel it makes sense.

The example you gave is more of an avatar of vengeance, insuring that the wicked are punished. Will you might make the claim that the loose cannon trans-valuates the law in place of morality, (or alongside morality if you few the law as moral) but I feel like that is overdressing the concept. The loose cannon wouldn't be loose if the law worked. In order to administer justice, he must break out of the system which protects the criminals it was supposed to prosecute. There are similarities, but I wouldn't call it a direct correlation. Not warmed over Nietzsche, but perhaps a distant cousin to Nietzsche on the family tree of people who rebel from an inept, corrupt system. Nietzsche's branch does this to fulfill man's potential. It is an expansion beyond being merely human, an enlightenment. The loose cannon is more about administering justice and simply ending evil, not moving beyond conventional definitions of good and evil.

Justice, is, by the way, nothing more than a simple action-reaction. Individual does act undesirable to society, society responds. This is a simple system of sorts, but its ultimate goal is the punishment of criminals and discouragement of future transgressions. Certain codes of justice require strict adherence to the system, but others do not. Mob justice has probably hanged innocent men and guilty men who would have walked free, just as the actual criminal justice system has. Ignoring the times when mobs were merely a vehicle for racism. But of course the formal courts have also served the same purpose.

David Hume did something to advance the cause of reason and understanding; all Nietzsche did was empower a century of self-centered egoistic escapism. IMHO. :smalltongue:

I feel Nietzsche was more about self-direction, self-determination, and self-realization, which don't require escapism of any sort. You could argue that the extreme individualism is selfish and egoistic, but that's purely a matter of opinion.

I don't think it's inaccurate. The Roman story (for lack of a better name) asserts that any of us can become heroes. The Greek story asserts that you're born to it. That's the elitism I dislike: that heroism is a gift of accidental birth, not a prize won by personal effort.

And now it's nature vs. nurture. I believe that "heroism" which is an undefined subjective category if ever there was one, is largely nature based, not nurture. I believe that nurture merely uses what nature gave it; they both have an influence, but I feel nature is the stronger of the two, and that man's most endearing qualities are nature based. Theodore Roosevelt and his family are an example of this concept.

But in a wholly non-D&D (and non-Greek) way. The Roman story is the hero who organizes and leads the commoners to victory; in the Greek story, the erstwhile victims are merely spectators while the heroes save them.

DnD doesn't necessarily enforce this entirely. As stated, certain setting including the default Greyhawk setting do contain mid to high level NPCs. Of course, these NPCs are often conspicuously absent on mysterious and poorly defined business when they could have been useful in assisting the PCs.

Close. As for the Greeks, the epitome of their story-telling - the Odyssey - actually undercuts that. They (like 4e) were moving towards a more (dare I be perjorative :smalltongue: ) mature form of story-telling.

Actually, its just as mature or immature as the standard "Greek" shtick. If kids don't want to be superman, then they want to be king. That is to say, they want to be popular, well liked, and have people do what they want. Isn't the hero "Rallying" his fellow man really just enforcing his will upon them and indulging in the above?

To be pejorative myself, couldn't this desire to command others be constructed as a repressed S&M fantasy?

Yay! Now we have Sigmund Freud involved!

Here we must agree to disagree.

Note, that I did not personally blame Arnold for the content of his movies: I simply referred to a popular scene from one of them.

Alrighty. Personally, I always felt that when Arnold got a role in a really goofy film like that, he realized it and had fun with it. Just my personal perception.

For those of you wondering why I am annoyed at Nietzsche, you need look no further than the above quote. :smallannoyed:

Nietzsche indirectly supported this. Maybe, sort of. He was pretty annoyed at the common man for slavishly adhering to conventional morality and not thinking for himself. I suppose you could interpret that as saying the average man is lacking in heroic qualities.

Say, can anyone find an online version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? I'd like to quote Colonel Sherburn as he disperses the lynch mob.

Oh, right. That nonsense too. Thanks for reminding me - I had almost forgotten about the relativism. There's just so much of his philosophy to despise. :smallbiggrin:

Some think of relativism as the one stance that truly has an open, unbiased mind about things, and that objectivism is judgmental, close minded, and stagnant.

Others think that relativism is massively permissive, nonsensical, lacking any solid grounding or universality, and without merit.

I couldn't say objectively. I'm a relativist. :smalltongue: