The General D&D thread

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Though, to be fair to Ayn Rand, she believed in property rights. Drow culture, as I recall, has a lot of "property rights exist only insofar as you're able to defend your own property" elements. Families can wipe out other families as long as they're able to get away with it.

A friend of mine mentioned this

edited 8th Sep '12 4:32:40 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

I'll been hanging around the blog sphere of late.

Dice Of Doom do a very good dissection of the pros and cons of 4e[1].

Notably they address 'combat is too long' complaint and even consider (but ultimately reject:( ) the use of 3d6 over the 1d20.

edited 9th Sep '12 3:34:24 AM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

I do- and prefer- settings like those Jacobs describes. "The world fucking sucks. There are things out there that might as well be the love-children of Cthulhu and Satan. And the things that rule the world are the things they are afraid of."

"Is there an upside?"

"Yes. You're a lightning-blasting Jedi Sherlock Holmes. Your buddies are an eight-foot-tall werewolf berserker, an assassin with eyes straight out of a Shonen manga, and a barbarian bitch raised by werecats in Power Armour. The four of you can take on a small army in a fair fight, let alone what happens if you actually sit down and think. Fix. This. Shit."

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-

The feat taxes are a math fix. They're not mandatory, but the basic concept of 4E is monster attack/defenses scale at 1 per level, whereas P Cs attacks/defenses scale at 1/2 per level, and equipment + improvements in ability scores make up the difference. However, by 30th level, you're about 5 behind assuming you up your ability score bonuses whenever possible and have a +6 bonus from equipment.

• 1 of that is usually covered by an epic destiny.

So basically, you're down 1/tier, and then another 1 that you can often get through a paragon path or whatever.

So, no, they're not mandatory-but they are indeed a math fix.

That's still based on the assumption that the party which can "Fix. This. Shit." has a greater agency than the evil they're trying to fight. Again, that's a good-centered universe. If it's possible to fix the world, then good (at least on some level) is "right" and evil is "wrong".

The worlds that I particularly hate are the ones when good and evil have the exact same agency—because then, there's no more motivation to fix things than there is to keep them going. At that point, the only morality is whatever gives the greatest agency, and if neutrality is as such, then neutrality is "right".

Any setting that defines neutrality as a "thing" is ridiculous.

No, Evil still has more agency than Good. It does control things, after all. It's just that there are ways for Good to become stronger.

Yes, good is always right. Because good IS always right. That doesn't mean the world isn't going to repeatedly kick you in the balls for being good- you know, just like this one.

What makes a hero is the willingness to do the right thing even when there's no immediate reward.

Neutrality in the moral sense, or neutrality as in a force of active balance?

edited 9th Sep '12 11:32:16 AM by Exelixi

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-

The latter, I suppose.

No, Evil has more agency centered into one pool (a serial killer who preys on the innocent, a tyrant, a mad god) while Good has more agency spread throughout the entirety. (A nation of free people, a good of wisdom and enlightenment, a confederation of planets). However, the reason a wide-spread agency is considered Good is because Evil does not allow agency to increase outside of its control.

But in order to "Fix. This. Shit", Good MUST have more agency than Evil. Otherwise, Good won't be able to do a damn thing to fight against it.

No it isn't. That's Stupid Good. Good always acts the way it does with the belief that what it does will provide the most agency for the most amount of people. Sacrificing yourself for anything less is either a Stupid Sacrifice or a Senseless Sacrifice. For example, is it a good thing to torture a fairy so that her tears create an elixir that cures all disease, or is it good to defend the fairy and allow everyone in a town (including babies and children) to die slow painful deaths?

Both.

edited 9th Sep '12 11:52:06 AM by KingZeal

I think you're making some rather strong values judgments about utilitarianism being the ultimate good.

Well, I am a Utilitarian, so that would make sense.

Other way around. Good's agency is concentrated into one place- namely, four heroes and whatever (for these purposes "neutral") people they can convince to lend aid. Without the heroes, Good has jack shit. Hence them being the heroes.

As far as the "doing atrocious things for the benefit of many" thing- these guys won't be torturing fairies any time soon, but they are all hardened killers. If cutting down a squad of ultimately non-Evil people will benefit hundreds of non-Evil people, they'll do it. Other than that, they tend to find a smarter solution than "torture the fairy." Like, "show the fairy how people are suffering, give a speech, and cry with her over the fate of these people." The tears still get collected, but no-one does anything awful.

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-

I hate alignment as a "Thing" >:/

No, because the point of the heroes is to spread this agency. If they're liberating the town, saving the country, and protecting the kingdom, their actions are actively spreading the agency, not keeping it contained.

Which was exactly what I said. "Good" simply means increasing agency by as much as possible. If cutting down a few will help hundreds, that's spreading agency. And figuring out a way to protect just one more person (the fairy) on top of a solution that was already benevolent (saving the sick people) is spreading agency.

As I said, that's what Good does. It spreads agency as much as it possibly can, and creates solutions which generate agency where there was none.

On the flip side, if you're unwilling to torture a fairy even if it'll save hundreds, I don't think that's Stupid Good. You can set some really bad precedents with things like that.

True. Which was why I used that example without an answer. Unless you can Take a Third Option, it's just bad times all around.

I'm currently in a game as the only legitimately good aligned character. We're a buncha mercs, and our current job involves assassinating this sixteen year old guy so that his dad can become king (it's complicated and I won't go into details). So I've been throwin a bit of a bitchfit and have managed to convince peeps to try some kind of alternative route.

But even just kidnapping the guy to keep him in a prison or something isn't really any better. So we'll see where things go.

Yeah. The campaign I described earlier ended with my DM just calling the whole thing off and storming off when I essentially held the world hostage.

I told him that my Paladin was going to, in no way, willingly turn gods into demons even if it saved the world. He would seriously rather cause Hell on Earth than force deities to become evil against their will.

edited 9th Sep '12 12:52:10 PM by KingZeal

Right. So what's the issue?

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-

What? Who said there was an issue?

I'm not sure whether he was talking about your scenario or mine.

In mine, the party has said "fine we won't kill him" but we haven't come up with a solution. One person suggested giving the kid the setting's equivalence to an STD that can only be mitigated via copulation with a female who has the STD (the STD is divine power-it's a weird setting), and since said individuals are by and large on the other side of a semi-impenetrable border, the idea was that he'd leave and never be able to come back. I said no because then if he's unable to get the necessary treatment, the "gift" would eat him alive, and they got on my case for being overly picky.

I think it works as what it was intended to be — a concrete mechanical basis for abstract concepts. Where it falls short is when people apply it the wrong way around. Alignment is supposed to be a tool of description, not a path to characterization. When a character does a thing, that thing can be described as Good or Evil, Lawful or Chaotic. When a character does more things of one alignment than they do another, they can be described, in general, as being Lawful Good (or Chaotic Neutral, or whatever).

Where you run into problems is when alignment becomes characterization. A character should not be driven, entirely or primarily, by their alignment. "Because my character is Good" is not a reason for doing something. The character does something for reasons of their own, and that can be described as Good, but doing it the other way around is putting the cart before the horse.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I don't really agree with ascribing metaphysical significance to actions one way or another. I don't think that killing puppies should make a person resistant to the spell Blasphemy.

Oh, I agree that alignment alone shouldn't have mechanical effects for the most part. People are, generally speaking, still people, even if you're comparing Mother Teresa and Joseph Stalin. Where that sort of thing makes sense is for alignment-subtyped outsiders; it doesn't make sense for an archon to be adversely affected by a blast of elemental Good, but it does for a demon.

Of course, if you're not interested in dealing with moral absolutes at all, then I could see where the entire alignment system would annoy you. Which is a valid criticism, I just see it as part and parcel of D&D.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

So, had a really badass session tonight. We were being pursued by this invincible jackass with this fire aura that dealt fire damage equal to your bloodied value if you started your turn in it. Not to mention his insane attack/damage. So, it was a "Run awaaaaaay!" battle. Now, the guy only had a move speed of 4 (and couldn't run), but he had three AP. Three! So I spent most of the fight throwing difficult terrain in his path, whereas the ranger used Jarring Salvo to push the bastard away (which was nice, because otherwise I woulda dropped right there and then at the start of my turn). Of course, we had to avoid an onslaught of ordinary enemies, and the entire city was up in fire that, like the jackass' aura, would deal fire damage equal to your bloodied value if you entered it, and at the start of your turn! I had Fire Shield on, so my resistance to fire damage meant I was a LITTLE harder to drop, but fortunately it never came to be.

Ultimately, we managed to get through the encounter all alive. Used up a few consumables though.