The General D&D thread

Now, a disclaimer, this might be a bit "Dark humor" for some people.

Ok guys, I just thought of something. Imagine you are the DM, and your lateral thinking players is playing wizard. Would you allow him to use "Cause disease" to give an enemy epilepsy and then use "Dancing lights" to cause a seizure?

I have decided this trick would work exactly once.

From reading the spell description, it seems like dancing lights don't actually blink, they're just steady or flickering light sources, so I don't think they'd actually cause an epileptic fit.

Flickering is a synonym for blinking...

Is it? I mean, I know they mean basically the same thing (light source stops producing as much light momentarily), but like, and maybe this is just me, "blinking" has connotations of something like a strobe light, rapidly turning on and off, while "flickering" I think of more like fire or twinkling stars, fading irregularly.

But then I guess a lightbulb that rapidly turns off is referred to as "flickering" so...meh. What do I know?

Flickering does have connotations of irregularity I think, but I'm not sure if the people writing the spell descriptions were thinking about that.

(In any case, I want no part of this use of the spell.)

I think with my newfound love of virology and epidemiology I'd have a field day with cause disease.

"Oh you're a high INT wizard? Enjoy some TRANSMISSIBLE SPONGIFORM ENCEPHALOPATHY!" Note: ok so this one is technically caused by a prion. Or, "ok mr. heavily armored knight, enjoy some viral hemorrhagic fever!"

edited 20th Feb '15 8:35:26 PM by MarkVonLewis

So, would "Cause Disease" be able to inflict acute radiation poisoning to someone? Also, I have decided before hand that giving someone acute radiation poisoning would warrant a alignment check. No exceptions.

If I were a DM, I would rule that players cannot use magic to generate intentionally anachronistic effects.

I mean, can diseases be anachronistic? Most of them have existed for a while, we just didn't know they existed, or didn't know what they were or what caused them.

And with magical healing being readily available, who knows what kind of medical advancements the DND world has made?

You are welcome to run a game where your players "invent" machine guns and internal combustion engines, and mine strange glowy rocks that make people mysteriously ill by being too near them if you want. There are some D&D settings where technology is a big deal compared to the typical Medieval Stasis fare.

It's all a matter of being internally consistent with your rules. Is "radiation poisoning" a mundane disease that can be cured with simple magic? Is it some mysterious uncurable ailment that can bring low even the strongest dragon? My concern from my days as a DM is that players who do things like this are looking for cheap Game Breakers.

Also, one reason why medicine has little need to advance in most D&D realms is quite simply the availability of magic healing. Why bother studying in medical school for years and maintaining a fantastically expensive surgery center when a cleric can come along and cure hideous injuries with a few prayers and waves of his hand?

edited 21st Feb '15 7:18:55 AM by Fighteer

I'm not sure why radiation poisoning would be considered a disease anyway.

Radiation follows its own rules in the d20 system.

http://dmreference.com/MRD/Future/Environments/Radiation_Sickness.htm

That being said, d20 Modern and D&D aren't really the same game system, whatever the OGL has to say.

edited 21st Feb '15 11:00:31 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

Fighteer: that's why start an HMO(secretly a mafia) and strongarm clerics into joining you and thus having to charge people exorbitant prices, or you hit em with damage intelligence.

Or convince (frame the random clerics healing) the local kingdom ruler that healing needs to be regulated and become the head of the Dept. of Magical Healing Licenses and Registration.

What can I say? Lawful Evil makes the moneys, see?

edited 21st Feb '15 8:04:07 PM by MarkVonLewis

I was going to say that that stuff was more out-of-genre than really anachronistic; I mean, cancer's likely existed basically forever, but it would seem out of place in medieval fantasy fiction. That said, I avoided saying so because I wasn't sure if it's actually true.

Now, however, I remembered Mao Yuu, an anime that takes a typical medieval fantasy setting and focuses on social-economic-political factors. It's anachronistic for sure, but it never really feels out-of-genre. A good chunk of the story is about introducing potatoes into people's diet; the end of the show involves introducing vaccinations.

It's weird.

Also, the main hero party is stupidly overpowered.

Maybe "out of genre" is a better term, but it is also anachronistic in the sense that, while the fact of radiation has been around forever, it wasn't until the modern era that we understood it. To put nuclear radiation in a medieval fantasy world is to imply that Marie Curie was born a few hundred years early and that the world developed the technology (or magic) to isolate radioactive isotopes in mined ore. So it's both the wrong genre and the wrong era.

But I'm not so concerned about that as I am about what I said earlier: that a player attempting a "inflict radiation sickness" spell is almost certainly using out-of-character knowledge in an attempt to create a Game-Breaker, and, as a DM, I would quash it on those grounds no matter what justification was presented.

Any time a player tries those kinds of shenanigans, you have to ask them, "How does your character know about that?" If they can't answer in a way that doesn't drastically alter the setting, you say no. Of course, if you are running a Magitek game, then by all means have at it. Laser fireballs!

edited 21st Feb '15 10:54:07 PM by Fighteer

When someone tries to build a hydrogen bomb in my games I just ask them if they really think that this world functions under anything resembling our laws of physics.

I guess my point is more the idea that anachronism isn't really as good of an excuse to exclude something than out-of-genreness. I mean, if you compare it to actual history, there's plenty in basic D&D that could be considered anachronistic, but I don't really think it's bad or out-of-genre. I mean, the basic idea of gender equality would be out of place historically in a medieval setting, but it's something that's not out-of-place in a D&D game.

Also, I'm not an expert, but apparently the weapons and armours don't quite fit any particular time and is more representative of a larger time period but there's a distinct lack of guns if you take that into consideration or something.

The most glaring example of that is the rapier, which was invented in the real world because of guns.

A simpler explanation is that Cause Disease has very specific function. It says mechanically what it does. If radiation sickness' effects aren't identical to the list of diseases Cause Disease can cause, Cause Disease can't cause it.

There's also a fairly major anachronism present in all editions of D&D.

The existence of elves.

D&D doesn't (usually) actually take place in our world. Nothing can be anachronistic because the chronism is entirely made-up.

So yeah, "off-genre" is a fair complaint (though I have a lot of problems with the way people use that, too; "Guns aren't fantasy, so you can't play a Gunslinger!"), "anachronistic" isn't.

I'd say there are in fact far too many people who fantasize about guns.

Only if you take a very simplistic view of history. Rapiers refer to a whole family of weapons, not a single weapon, developed both from one another and independently for various purpose. Some because of guns, others as a civilian dueling weapons (Since Civilians don't tend to wear armor and all that). It's therefore entirely possible and logical for most D&D worlds to have Rapiers.

edited 22nd Feb '15 5:35:52 AM by CobraPrime

I'd like to point out radiation poisoning could happen earlier. Self-sustaining nuclear reactions have happened in nature. If a party was (un)lucky enough to come across such a deposit they could suffer the effects.

And that's where aberrations come from!

...Well, some of 'em could. Unless they're all aliens. I don't know the lore well enough. :/

Depends on the edition. In 4E, aberrants are far realm based so, yes, aliens. Transdimensional aliens.