The General D&D thread

Eberron doesn't ignore alignments - Protection from Evil works just as well in that setting as it does in the regular 3.5 D&D - it just tries to loosen them up a little. Like by letting chromatic dragons be of any alignment.

It does make the existence of the gods an open question though.

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” -Philip K. Dick

He still regularly feeds on his people - he just doesn't want his nation to be victims of a different evil, and world peace would let him continue ruling his own nation without outside interference. There is every reason to think that there will be another world war in the setting. The Last War ended when everyone got scared of what happened in the magical apocalypse that turned Cyr into the Mournland. The principal issue of the war - who should rule Galifar - remained unresolved. Preparing for the next war is wise, regardless of your alignment. And when your competition includes a vampire (nobody knows he's a vampire, but still...) and a theocracy that has genocide in its past you probably should try to come out on top.

edited 5th Sep '17 2:34:53 PM by Bense

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” -Philip K. Dick

And while alignments are a little weird, they do make sense. The Lawful Evil vampire king wants peace because he knows his country can't survive another war. The Chaotic Good queen thinks that the world would be much better off under her enlightened rule. That sort of thing. Evil is still evil and all that, but just because you share an alignment doesn't mean you're on the same side.

'ed

edited 5th Sep '17 2:26:47 PM by Discar

Yes, because I dislike a particular rule in D&D, I'm a troll.

I'd never fought this vestige of an old system would get defended so vehemently. Or that putting it into question would garner me so much hostility. To the point were I'm told what I do isn't "real" D&D and that I have my head up my butt about particular social or political issues. O_o

Yeah, fuck this thread. If differing opinions are seen as trolling, then goodbye.

edited 5th Sep '17 5:06:56 PM by Antiteilchen

For what it's worth, I think you can play without the alignment system or including gods in your setting. You'll have to patch the holes that result in the system (like giving clerics some other source for their power) but I wouldn't say it's no longer "real" D&D.

If you were to take things like the class systems, the magic system, and armor class out entirely, then I might say it's not really D&D anymore.

edited 5th Sep '17 3:30:20 PM by Bense

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” -Philip K. Dick

I was very drunk at dragoncon and made the mistake of walking by the chessex booth

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

I have a question: What are some great setting books I can get? I want to use some Dn D setting or just read about them.

You gotta start somewhere.

The Planescape books are hella fun.

I love the Eberron books, Sharn City of Towers is my fav RPG city book ever of any RPG coz of the insane amount of details.

Of course, Spelljammer, you can't ever go wrong with that set.

edited 5th Sep '17 7:17:14 PM by Ghilz

The only one out for fifth edition right now is the Sword Coast Adveturer's Guide, but the older editions have plenty of stuff for settings, some of which, like Dark Sun and Eberron, stand apart from the "standard" D&D formula by miles.

Pathfinder also has a great pile of setting books, most of which are very easily converted to 3.5 and 5th edition.

edited 6th Sep '17 1:22:07 AM by Xeroop

The best Eberron book is probably the Player's Guide to Eberron. It's written kind of like an encyclopedia, with entries on just about everything in the setting. You might need the core book to make sense of it all, but it's pretty nifty.

Sword Coasts Adventurer's Guide is pretty good for the Forgotten Realms, though it only covers that particular coast.

Greyhawk's best set was the boxed set from the early '80s with the hex poster maps, but the 3rd edition Gazetteer is not bad.

The D&D basic world had a whole line of Gazetteers each describing a country in the setting that are all available for pretty cheap on DriveThruRPG. In fact I bought them all a short while ago while they were on sale. Some of them are a little on the silly side (I'm looking at you, Orcs of Thar) but others are quite nice.

Planescape is not to my taste. It feels too much like "D&D: World of Darkness" to me, but you can get those books online as well.

Ravenloft, Spelljammer, and Darksun are not really standard D&D settings, but they all have their interesting bits.

Dragonlance is more of a novel series with a few campaign supplements. Aside from the original 1st edition hardcover I have no recommendations there.

edited 6th Sep '17 9:09:03 AM by Bense

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” -Philip K. Dick

Putting in another rec for Planescape. Not sure how accessible these are to the uninitiated, but I'm a big fan of Uncaged: Faces of Sigil, the Hellbound campaign boxed set, and The Factol's Manifesto. Also Die, Vecna, Die!, but I don't expect to have a lot of company there.

I never got into Eberron the way I wanted to. The setting was just too meta and kitchen sink (he said, having just given the nod to Planescape). I suppose I mainly wanted Eberron's many good ideas felt like they meshed better. Sharn is awesome, though.

The mechanics aren't going to be of much use, but 4e's Dark Sun supplements actually did a pretty good job of compressing the tone and feel of the game into a relatively small number of splats. As for Ravenloft, the Van Richten's Guides were a great, evocative, in-universe resource— always a bonus when you can read directly from a book while remaining in character— and I remember Sword & Sorcery's edition of Ravenloft being pretty good on the whole, fixing a lot of the (literal, physical) holes in the Core while preserving the tone, even improving on it in places, and they'd probably be the easiest to adapt from 3.x to Pathfinder or 5e if that was your endgame. Both settings also had some decent support in 4e's Dragon magazine, and moreso Dungeon, if you can track down the .pdfs.

edited 7th Sep '17 9:50:13 PM by Unsung

I like Die! Vecna! Die! It's not flawless, but there's nothing really like it.

Plus Faction War and the lead ups to it are good.

Yeah, I like Faction War a lot, but that's definitely one where I think you'd enjoy it more if you'd read as much of the rest of Planescape as you could before getting around to it. They really pulled together a lot of separate threads with that one.

See also: The Great Modron March, and For Duty & Deity off in the quote-unquote 'Forgotten' Realms. The whole Time of Troubles was great from a planar perspective.

edited 7th Sep '17 4:37:49 PM by Unsung

I enjoy all 4e setting books that aren't Forgotten Realms. Though I haven't done more than skim the Eberron one. But I can vouch for all the others.

"Canada Day is over, and now begins the endless dark of the Canada Night."

Die! Vecna! Die! were Vecna is ironically incapable of dying.

To be fair, that's most Vecna-related things. What with being both a lich and a god.

It's also sort of the point of the name of the adventure.

Eh. The title's not really ironic. Or is intentionally ironic, I suppose.

edited 6th Sep '17 10:01:47 PM by Unsung

Pfft, "gods". The beings beyond space and time, in the Far Realm, are so, so much MORE.

Also less. So much less.

And don't forget VERY much the same. So much the same you wouldn't even believe!

Clap Your Hands If You Believe?

I don't ditch alignments, although that used to be a thing I did in my own homebrew.

I vehemently ditch assigning "Usually [Alignment]" to any creature of the Prime Material Plane*. I tossed out the Chromatic/Metallic split and cobbled together a quartet of giant elemental kaijuu for dragons that have free-will and decision making abilities like anyone else.

Not for the asterisk*, Undead. They're "Always Evil" and I supplanted that in favor of Usually. By inception and/or feeding habits, such creatures are highly encouraged to be Evil, but still possess rational, mortal minds. It highly significant when one Lich remains non-evil, but not good, by twisting the process of lichdom so.

Actually, speaking of dragons, I had some ideas I like, thought I'd run 'em by y'all. You know those elemental kaijuu quartet I mentioned? Ya. So we got Red Dragons for fire, and these guys are basically Red Dragons because there is no need to change a winning formula. I only nerf their flying to garbage maneuverability. For earth, you have Green Dragons, but their scales can be so dark as to be called Black Dragons and they're shaped like Godzilla. They breathe acid, have a dig speed and don't fly. Opposite of them are the lung dragon looking Yellow Dragons, with scales so pale as to be called White Dragons or even Gold Dragons. Blue Dragons are re-colored Bronze Dragons or actual Blue Dragons but aquatic, because there was very nearly a winning formula there. Like Reds, flying is nerfed, only Yellows get to zip around like goddamn flies.

Well, I damn near walked out my current group the last game. The DM pulled some bullshit and was gonna curse me with a -d8 to EVERY attribute. Due to the murky and questionable circumstance of me allegedly grabbing the cursed book (all I did was say "sweet" and do a fist pump when he told us we found what we were looking for, he claimed the gesture mean I was TAKING THE BOOK) I straight up refused to write the curse on my sheet.

It got resolved with a roll off on d10's (I rolled a 10) so all is well. But next level I'm taking Remove Curse.

edited 13th Sep '17 9:47:58 PM by MarkVonLewis

Sounds pretty awesome, actually. Tweaking alignment tendencies and upending stereotypes is one of the more interesting things you can do in a setting. Cannibal halflings and evil unicorns, dragons in all shades of the colour and alignment spectrums.

I also like Birthright's idea that there's only one of every given monster, and that each is entirely unique. That's pretty much the only thing I know about Birthright and it might be wrong, but I still like that concept quite a bit.

Your DM probably had some story hook they wanted to key to that curse and jumped the gun. -1d8 to each attribute is super harsh, though. Curses that are more story-driven than mechanical are usually more palatable to players, i've found. And more interesting to run, too, frankly.

Plus if you really, really want your players to run into a cursed object, don't tie it to the lone book in the middle of some ominous room, or whatever. You've got to presume a level of genre savvy in a D&D party.

Can't decide on a character for my roomie's adventure in my campaign. Options I'm considering are:

• Dwarf fighter specializing in ranged combat, namely the 7.62mm rifles infesting the region. Not sure on personith yet, thinking rogueish mercenary.
• Human cleric of light, specifically one of those time-lost shugenja who worships phoenix!Pelor. Nice girl who's trying to get people to understand that they're worshipping the sun wrong. Without offending them, because she's nice even if they're wrong.
• Goliath paladin, duel-wielding Solomon Kane. Dour and vengeful.

edited 14th Sep '17 2:57:11 AM by Rotpar

"But don't give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you." - O'Brien, 1984

i made my players run away from screaming from this bro last night: https://imgur.com/a/Sf1zF

it was good times.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter