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2012-08-21, 05:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
I agree with slii
If You need me to post somewhere, drop me a message, please
Awesome avatar by the wondrous Kurien.
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2012-08-21, 06:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2012
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- Earth
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Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
I was always warned that sanity was overrated...
78% of all DM's start their first campaign in a tavern. If you're among the 22% who didn't, copy and paste this into your signature and tell us where you DID begin.The players were attacked individually on the road on the way to town by werewolves. To survive, they had to team up then and there without knowing anything about eachother (literally -- all character sheets were completed without other players' knowledge).
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2012-08-21, 08:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
Interested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
Deep in the corners of your mind
Where reality is an intruder
And myth and legend thrive
Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est
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2012-09-03, 07:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
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Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
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2012-09-09, 10:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2011
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2012-09-10, 08:22 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2011
Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
Maybe the Eighth Doctor should be the Mascot of the Forum boards. I personaly wasn't expecting Hilgya because it was the wrong place in the narrative to bring her back especially with Durkon seperated from the party, Personally, as a non-RPGer, I was amused by the person who said they were thinking like a dungeonmaster. Apparently thinking in a RPG rules, skews some people's views of narrative causality. I am reminded of those trying to build the Monster-in-the-Dark from scratch with about 30 templates without explaining how something that is more than 3 halves-anything makes story sense.
Then again, until Tarquin removed his helmet, I was reasonably sure that Julio Scoundrel was Elan's Biological Father. And this theory still makes more sense than Hilgya being the Empress
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2012-09-10, 08:50 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2012
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- Hey, look! Squirrels!
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Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
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2012-09-10, 08:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
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Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
The Giant has lampooned this one too, both with Enor the Half-Dragon Half-Ogre and with the titular snail from SSDT, who is something like half-troll, half-dragon, and I think half-fiend (or maybe it was just Phiendish - that was a typo but I'm leaving it in for teh phunnay). It's not as silly as it sounds, of course; "half-X" is used because it's a punchy-sounding name, but it may not be accurate, "half-fiend" really just means "fiend-blooded with a more dominant strain than tieflings or creatures with Fiendish Heritage". Still, the joke works.
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2012-09-10, 10:33 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2004
Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Er. Which came first, the player who wanted to play a half-celestial half-fiend who somehow also had human (and possibly dragon) in there despite 100% being accounted for, or the idea that "half-fiend" doesn't mean what it says on the can?Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II
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2012-09-10, 12:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
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Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
I figure it's an obvious consequence of the fact that the various half-templates don't forbid you from taking others, or that any races are described as "half-X" despite there also being templates like that. In other words, if the writers had wanted these names to be geneologically precise, they would have written specific exemptions. Imprecise nomenclature is nothing new; they're just being poetic by describing someone as a "half-celestial half-dragon half-ogre" then that person is really a "half-celestial, 3/8 dragon, 1/16th ogre, with a tiny bit of elf blood twelve generations back which means he's more ogre than human."
Last edited by willpell; 2012-09-10 at 12:18 PM.
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2012-09-10, 03:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2012
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2012-09-10, 05:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2010
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Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
Ext. Sig (Handbooks/Creations)
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2012-09-10, 08:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2012
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2012-09-10, 10:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
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Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
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2012-09-10, 10:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2004
Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
*blinks* Citation needed for your claim about the child of two half-fiends.
Claiming that using the word "half-ogre" to denote actually, biologically being half ogre and half human is an "inaccuracy" is just...I have no words. Even if I thought the things you were saying about "half" being blurred into just meaning "some significant part of" were accurate, I'd still have no words for then proceeding to claim that meaning "half" to actually mean "half" was inaccurate.
As for the "half-ogre" thing, the whole point of that reference was that it was ambiguous whether Enor saying he was a "half-dragon half-ogre" meant he was half-dragon and half-ogre--or half-dragon, quarter-ogre, and quarter-human. This does not, most definitely not, mean that he was being inaccurate if it meant the former.Last edited by Kish; 2012-09-10 at 10:50 PM.
Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II
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2012-09-11, 10:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
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Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
To me, "half-ogre" connotes "one ogre parent" (with an implied "and one ogre parent". The child of two half-ogres has zero ogre parents (and zero human parents). He's a member of a new race which ought to have a distinct name; saying he's still "half-ogre" because he's 50% ogre blood, while perhaps technically accurate (perhaps I misspoke before from your perspective, though I still think what I said was valid), is certainly misleading.
As to the half-fiends, well, the child does not automatically receive the template according to any game mechanism I know of...do you know of any ECL 4 babies which can fly, use spell-like abilities, and have +4 Strength, +4 Intelligence, etc? I suppose there's no official answer, but this is what seems most reasonable to me....the effects of an extraplanar bloodline probably dilute quickly, even if reinforced with another bloodline from the same plane (and breeding true is probably even less likely in the case of a half-devil and a half-demon, even though the template doesn't distinguish).Last edited by willpell; 2012-09-11 at 10:24 PM.
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2012-09-12, 11:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2004
Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II
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2012-09-13, 01:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
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Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
Sigh...I don't even know, I guess it's just a subjective impression, but I don't buy that an individual without exactly one full-blooded X parent ought to come out as a Half-X. After that it's either the blood being diluted or a new species being founded from what were previously hybrids, but perhaps that's only the way it seems to me.
(All of this, of course, is entirely aside from the "Half-Illithid" and "Half-Golem" templates, which ought to serve as sufficient proof that tossing the word "half" into a template is not something Wotco did with any sort of scientific rigor.)
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2012-09-13, 08:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2004
Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
At which point, your argument is entirely, "Half-X is used because it's a punchy-sounding name, but may not be accurate, because I, willpell, don't like it if it means exactly what it says." You kind of need support from D&D books, not personal feelings, if you wish to make claims about D&D.
Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II
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2012-09-13, 09:09 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
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2012-09-13, 09:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2004
Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
Yeah, I know, right? Most of the forum would grind to a halt if people didn't feel comfortable blithely asserting whatever they wanted with no interest in such bizarre concepts as evidence.
Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II
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2012-09-13, 09:28 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2005
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Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
Gonna show off my geekitude here (yes we're all geeks! but in a different manner) by invoking Tolkien (who, as with most modern fantasy tropes, did the half- thing first). There was only one known case in all of his works where "half-elven" literally meant half-elven - Earendil. All the others had Maia (minor angel) blood in them somewhere and were actually half-human quarter-elf quarter-Maia, quarter-human-five-eighths-elf-quarter-Maia, three-eighths-human-nine-sixteenths-elf-one-sixteenth-Maia, and so on. But they were all known as the Half-elven.
So yeah. It seems that D&D followed his trend (like with everything else, not that that's bad at all!) and as long as you have some [species] blood somewhere, you get to be "half-[species]" regardless of whether that's strictly accurate or not.The above post probably made more sense in my head.
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2012-09-13, 09:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2004
Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
The problem with that idea, is that:
1) Tieflings are described as Primes (natives of the Prime Material Plane) with some (less than half) fiendish blood. They're quite separate from half-fiends.
2) Aasimar are described as Primes with some (less than half) celestial blood. They're quite separate from half-celestials.
3) One theory about the origin of sorcery is that all sorcerers have at least a bit of dragon ancestry somewhere. Part of the support for this theory is that every half-dragon has the favored class "sorcerer," and dragons cast as sorcerers. No one has ever disproven the theory by saying, "Samantha obviously isn't a half-dragon, look at her."Last edited by Kish; 2012-09-13 at 09:38 AM.
Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II
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2012-09-13, 12:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2008
Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
Sometimes half actually means half and sometimes it doesn't. Is DnD inconsistent in its usage of the term? Sure. Does that bother me? Not really, no, knowing the numerous and disparate sources from which DnD has cribbed ideas in the past.
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2012-09-13, 02:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2010
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Re: [Retrospective] OOTS #602 missed opportunity
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
Ext. Sig (Handbooks/Creations)