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Thread: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
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2009-04-24, 06:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
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2009-04-24, 06:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
The demon thing brings up a question though: will a demon commit an act of evil if it means assured destruction and permanent death? Would a demon commit an act of good to save itself from permanent death?
The "always evil" thing just doesn't work, especially for creatures that aren't "the incarnation of pure evil". Are all red dragons jerks? Are all white dragons wild beasts that attack anything that can't obviously kill it? There have to be variations in behavior.
Also, if Eberron is steampunk/dungeonpunk, where's my mecha? Final Fantasy VI has mecha, and it has both less advanced airships and no trains.
Also, any race that gets two penalties to one bonus, like half-orcs or kobolds. They really restrict what you can play, as well as how you play them. All half-orcs are inherently stupid, it seems. Even a smart one is outclassed by a human or better.
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2009-04-24, 06:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
Well, they are biologically differnet. Anyway, D&D's morality isn't consequentialist. If a demon does a good act out of selfishness to survive so that they can go on to hurt mroe people, they're not good.
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2009-04-24, 06:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
A demon won't commit an evil act if it will destroy it (maybe a devil will, if it furthers the goals of other devils), and it is possible that it will risk destruction rather than commit an act of good.
According to MM, yes.
That doesn't mean that all red dragons have to be evil in your campaign. The monster manual gives you a list of monsters ready to add to your campaign so that you don't have to make them yourself. If evil red dragons don't fit your setting then make them good or neutral, it's your setting after all.
You have to remember that dragons are also highly intelligent beings, they won't just go out on a rampage cause they know such acts will attract the attention of powerful beings that could destroy them.Last edited by Fostire; 2009-04-24 at 06:33 PM.
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2009-04-24, 06:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
Avatar by Assassin89
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2009-04-24, 06:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
Last edited by KazilDarkeye; 2009-04-24 at 06:39 PM.
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2009-04-24, 06:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
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2009-04-24, 07:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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2009-04-24, 07:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
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2009-04-24, 07:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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2009-04-24, 09:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
That comes with the prerequisite of being good, I thought. Either way, how would a Demon have a 'good' spell on his spell list?
@Amesoeurs
Um, bringing virtue into this just muddies the water. Either its a synonym for 'good' or its a list of things that evil-doers can do.(Demons can be patient, for instance. A clean demon rarely leaves clues behind. A courageous demon isn't unimaginable)
Let me rephrase the challenge. Name one 'good' act that a demon can be compelled to do on threat of death.
Deity worship wouldn't work, since no 'good' deity would accept compelled worship, and any contrivance brought up to make that happen would be less believable than the demon's nature to begin with.
(And summoning doesn't work either. See Constantine(the movie) for an explanation)Avatar by Assassin89
I started my first campaign around a campfire, having pancakes. They were blueberry.
My homebrew(updated 6/17):
SpoilerIn progress:
Prolonged Spell(Fix for Persistent spell)
Weapon Training(replaces Weapon Focus chain)
Shelved:
Ascendant Feats.[New content!]
Finished:
Belts of potionade
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2009-04-24, 09:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
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2009-04-24, 09:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
No, I don't think there's a 'must' there. Could be, depending on the campaign, but no compuslion.
Sure it does.
Could be.
Unless they're unusually intelligent.
No, actually there don't.
As I mentioned in the dwarf/elf alignment thread, the above posters are thinking in terms of science fiction, not fantasy. Fantasy is about dream, archetype, overarching meta-reality. You don't need to think about personality deviation among orcs and dragons, they are what they are. Pure evil and pure good don't exist in real life, and they don't either in fiction that emulates real life - even in non-existent settings - but they do in fantasy. That's kind of the point.
Now that can easily lend itself to BAD fantasy and boring, cookie-cutter creatures and settings - you need to have reasons behind things, definitely. Tolkien's monsters were evil because they were created by the Satanic deity Morgoth - either corrupted from other creatures like the orcs, or lesser evil spirits given form like the first dragon. They are motivated by his will, and naturally act out of hate, spite, malice, and greed.
Now you can have a world where all the races are just different species trying to get by in their various ways, and the endless copying of Tolkien and the boredom thereby generated certainly can encourage folks in that direction, but there's no must about it.
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2009-04-24, 10:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
The "break a staff for a retributive strike" thing is straight from Tolkien. Remember the scene in The Hobbit, where they're stuck in the trees with the goblins surrounding them, and Gandalf is planning on jumping down on them to destroy them (and himself)? He was planning on breaking his staff. Until, of course, they got rescued by aquillae ex machina.
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2009-04-24, 10:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
I was speaking from a Kantian point of view, but in a very poor manner apparently. Kant actually said that, talking about how seemingly admirable traits can be put to bad use in bad people. Being good to him had a lot to do with intention and duty, so it's a real mix of things. I haven't read Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals in a few months and I find his stuff hard to remember, so I can't really elaborate.
Anyway, D&D morals are really deontological, so the idea is there's a set of rules ("do not kill", "do not steal", etc.) that are good and you have to follow those rules in a selfless and honest manner (i.e., you have to tell the truth because telling the truth is good, not because it will get you something, etc.) to constitute being a good person and performing a good act.
You're thinking in a very consequentialist way here, with the idea of the outcome mattering. That's not the way the alignments work, so it's a bad comparison. Saving a puppy is only good if you're doing it without self-interest in mind; saving a puppy out of self-interest is neutral or evil, really.Wonder Woman (DC Girls in Sweaters Style) Avatar by Astrella.
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2009-04-24, 10:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
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2009-04-24, 10:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
Yeah, what with all the Ents... er... Treants.
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2009-04-24, 10:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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2009-04-24, 10:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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Remember how I was wishing for the peace of oblivion a minute ago?
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2009-04-24, 10:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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2009-04-24, 10:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
The Shat is an alumni from my school. We have a building unofficially named after him.
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2009-04-24, 10:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
When you dual wield weapons you don't make two attacks at the same time either, but instead you make an attack with your main hand weapon and add a quick second attack with your off hand weapon. So I would say that dual wielding fists makes some sense (although calling it dual wielding sounds weird), you just make a right followed by a quick left*
*I have no fistfighting knowledge whatsoever so I have no idea if this would be an effective way to fight in the first place (not that dual wielding weapons is very effective either)
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2009-04-24, 10:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
Originally Posted by Dragonsdoom
Originally Posted by Races Of Faerūn
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2009-04-24, 10:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
Remember how I was wishing for the peace of oblivion a minute ago?
Yeah. That hasn't exactly changed with more knowledge of the situation. -Security Chief Victor Jones, formerly of the UESC Marathon.
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2009-04-24, 10:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
Wow, original D&D must have been about 90% tolkien, 10% original stuff.Time travels in divers paces with divers persons.
As You Like It, III:ii:328
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2009-04-24, 10:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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2009-04-25, 03:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
Originally Posted by JonestheSpy
Just because it is fantasy doesn't mean that a stupiud, overtly simplified system of morals is obligatory, or even desirable. Fantasy entails no licence to insult other people's - or your own- intelligence, fantasy is no excuse to insult anybody's intelligence, and certainly fantasy doesn't need to insult anybody's intelligence. Contrived, overtly simple black and white morals are a problem as soon as the involved party refuse to stop thinking about these mind-numbing stupid concepts. The fact that most D&D modules are not targeted on such an averagely intelligent audience throws a bad light on the expectations of the authors towards the players.
It is bad enough that enough people accept that crap but that is no justification to call it a virtue.
Good fantasy is potentially more complex, diiferentiated and unpredicatable as the real world, as there is no reason why anything happened in history could not happen in a fantasy world, in addition to the supernatural events and influences typical for the setting.
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2009-04-25, 03:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
You can say they are the incarnation of these concepts. A demon naturally "borns" tainted by evil, because of it's own nature, and the place it was created.
And a smart demon would commit a good act to save himself (would still be a selfish reason), like when Lobo and Etrigan (DC Comics) had to destroy some huge demon to save themselves (and that's because they killed the creature meant to destroy the demon, for fun). In the same way, a demon won't do something that may destroy him (unless he really, REALLY want to commit the evil act).
Finally, "always evil" means that the majority of societies of said creatures is evil, but that doesn't exclude a single character from being different sometimes. There's even an official D&D computer game with a puritan succubus (Torment, I think).
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2009-04-25, 05:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances
Here you go:
http://dragonwing.net/Doom_Striders.htm
and while we're at it:
http://dragonwing.net/Airships.htm"It's not like chess, where choosing to play black or white dictates your entire strategy. Also, chess doesn't have steam cannons."
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Re: Ridiculous D&D contrivances