Dungeons & Dragons lore!

Yeah, someone (the Angry DM I think their blog is called) talked about something similar. This blog gives good advice in general, though the "angry" style is kind of grating.

They were talking about metagaming with enemies, such as the famous 'trolls need to be killed with fire' shtick.

"You should ask yourself 'does my player knowing this piece of information make combat more interesting or less interesting?'

For example, let's say your party is fighting trolls. If they don't know the troll needs to be killed with fire, then it's a matter of spamming attacks at random until they eventually choose to use fire. If they do know to use fire, then fire is still a limited resource and they have to think strategically about it"

Though with Dragons specifically, the thing with their coloration is that a big part of what's...mechanically fair, I'll say, is that it's intuitive. It really isn't meant to be a surprise that the red dragon breathes fire and is immune to fire.

Isn't there some type of roll for a knowledge-check? Something to show whether the characters are justified in knowing things the players do, like trolls being vulnerable to fire. Or are things like that just assumed to be common knowledge to every child?

I have a player that argues it should be common knowledge.

Well, they can certainly try and make the case. Like, if they grew up in a tribe / city beset by trolls, or are part of a family that has made their name as troll hunters, sure.

But you as DM can also make the case that anything above, I don't know, a DC 5 History / Nature Check isn't common knowledge because you have to roll for it. I kind of see it as the equivalent of "everyone took Geography in high school, but not everyone remembers the capital of Australia isn't Sydney, but Canberra", so while access to it may be universal or common, it's not universally known or remembered.

At least in my own games the "trolls are vulnerable to fire" would be common wisdom akin to "play dead when you see a bear" in ours. It makes sense within the world, and also sidesteps the issue of players having to faff around in combat until they come up with an excuse to attack the troll with a fire spell or a torch in favour of a more 'logical', heavier-hitting attack.

And if that makes the troll too easy, introduce them to the river troll that will stay submerged and drag its victims beneath the waves like a bipedal alligator.

Knowledge checks seem like a good way for a DM/GM to keep the players on their toes, because poor rolls can deliver incomplete knowledge that can be more harmful than knowing nothing. My old storyteller in Vampire wasn't an active killer GM, but he felt that you have to earn your survival in his game. That's why he delivered very vague and cryptic answers whenever people didn't roll better than average. With the example with the trolls' weakness he would have demanded a successful roll already about knowing what a troll even is, unless the player had already put points in a skill that would justify the knowledge of trolls existing. The more you wanted your character to know, the higher the result of the dice had to be. He was merciless and wouldn't have allowed for any meta-gaming. Although there was always the opportunity for you to stumble upon such a realization, such that the trolls actively avoid your campfire more than other enemies would. But if you rolled poor dice for surveying your surroundings, you would be too distracted to notice it.

Part of the Angry GM's bit on trolls is that trying to prevent meta-gaming for experienced players who know what hurts trolls means you're basically telling the player "you can't use anything that you the player knows will be effective until you can make a die roll, or until I arbitrarily decide that you've tried enough other things that you can now 'discover' that fire works." It's replacing one form of meta-gaming (don't act on what you know) with another (try to figure out how many other things I have to try until the DM is satisfied and I can start using fire).

Edited by Bense on Oct 8th 2020 at 12:34:01 PM

Some places from my homebrew with some stock virtues for use by anyone who likes them:

In the Iron Empire, and those places under the Pax Ferrous, honesty is the best policy. Education is freely given here, if not mandatory and often exhaustive, as it *is* mandatory that educators break down every thorny issue down to its every thorough nuance. Ignorance is a lie by omission, bias is outright deceit. Government is mostly transparent and those officials with undesirable policies are outed and dealt with.

On the other hand, audacity is its own refuge. If one is openly vile, while someone is free to openly put you in the ground for it, there's a chance you may rather be applauded for your candor. A terrible tyrant might be allowed to operate unhindered for a time if his horror is exposed for all to see. It is said that an Iron Imperial will never stab you in the back, but if one plans to betray you they will tap you on the shoulder, explain their reasoning, pull their sword out in front of you and stab you in the face, all while believing themselves virtuous for it. Better the rampaging demon than the cloak devil, is a saying beneath the Pax Ferrous.

In the places once a part of the Former Black Empire, justice and equity for all is the greatest ideal to strive for. Every citizens is raised on stories of how ordinary people can be saints and heroes, if even for a little while. Activism and charity is encouraged, and an oppressor would be hard pressed not to find rebels rising in their ranks.

On the flipside, the "Black Lands" can be an anarchic place. Institutions rise to protect the weak but when someone feels like that protection has stepped at all into oppression than swords are raised and institutions fall. Every noirite citizen is a potential vigilante, eyes and ears open for misdeeds that can be punished.

Among the Oceanic Federation, freedom is what matters most of all. Each island is an independent state, where people from all over are free to come together and make whatever laws they are comfortable abiding by. And the ocean is wide, if you don't like it, it's easy to grab a boat and find another island.

That's if you can afford a boat and someone hasn't used their unlimited freedom to buy them all up. Or some burly men haven't freely gotten together to freely put you into chains and bondage. In an ocean of unlimited freedom, anyone who can is free to take away yours.

The kingdoms under the Golden Protectorate holds peace and harmony as the greatest virtues a society could attain. There, heroes are raised up to stand ready against the darkness and even against the malignant shadows the creep in hidden places. The common people are taken care of, as those in power that would use their position to abuse and exploit those beneath are removed, one way or another.

The only price this paradise asks for is that you obey. That you understand your place in the harmony and perform your given role, as long as the system works. You act as your parents acted, you teach your children to act in the same way. Your place is set and you will be taken care of as long as you remain there.

(I also have a fifth place called the Empires Of Jade which is warring states and family and tradition and ancestors and I didn't really have two paragraphs for it.)

Random thought,if a loxodon were to learn magic they'd be formidable because well..an elephant never forgets!No really,they would'nt even to keep a spellbook because they can literally commit it to memory

I incidentally have a Loxodon Cleric antagonist in my table.

Good to know.

I'd imagine the phrase "elephants never forget" is hyperbole, so they might still need a spellbook (and most wizards are pretty intelligent to begin with). Having said that, I do concur that Loxodons would tend to make great wizards for that reason.

Its not really hyperbole as such,elephants really do have an excellent memory,sadly this means a lot elephants that survive poaching attacks as calves grow up to experience serious trauma,also hold grudges

On the other hand,spell magic might not be stored in the same way as other things so it magically gets forgotten,like they can remember the spell but they can't cast it

Edited by Ultimatum on Oct 12th 2020 at 9:16:45 AM

So, joking around with my players, the wizard explained picking Otiluke's Resilient Sphere over Stoneskin was because "If I'm blowing 100 GP per spell instead of investing in real estate or stocks, my (high Int) character is doing something wrong." Then I joked back that he might just open a bank.

So it got me wondering, how exactly would banks work in DnD? I did a bit of digging and some settings have "letters of writ" issued by important noble houses or factions, and there's talk of the demon Mammon offering banking services (soul currency woo!) So, what are canon banks like? What services do they offer, and security measures do they keep in place?

Not sure what banking systems exist in Canon. In the IRL European Middle Ages, banks were a relatively new invention, and capitalism didn't exist yet.

Having fiendish cults and what have you running banks and the like is...thematic, given that Lawful Evil devils are basically a corrupt corporation of sorts.

You could actually go the opposite route and have there be banks run by orders of Paladins (or Paladins and conventional knights) who promise to safeguard people's treasure. This is basically what The Knight Templars were. Plus, depending on how divine magic works in your setting, Paladins are essentially demonstrably benevolent people who you can trust to have your best financial interests at heart...well, unless your financial interests are evil, but that's your fault if they are.

You should take your cues from the (in)famous Medici Bank during the Renaissance Era.

I have in my setting Dwarves that are vaguely based on Renaissance Italy so the Italian Renaissance sources come up fairly often. They also have a fleet based on the Venetian Navy.

House Kundarak in Eberron is heavily invested in banking, since dwarves got the Mark of Warding. It uses a lot of low-level magic for its business (but then it's Eberron, everyone does): letters of writ use House Sivis arcane marks to make them really hard to forge, for example.

Ehh, metagaming like that is harmless and can actually be explained in-universe by Bards who were former adventurers.

Unless that kind of world is not what you are going for.

Given that dragons hoard gold it would not surprise if there was not already a setting where at least one bank was owned by a dragon

From Pathfinder, Abadar bank guarded by Paladins and Antipaladins.

Thanks, the Medici bank is probably more evil than I want to go with, but the operating basics will likely hold up.

That's something I'd been considering. Dragons might not want to share their horde, but having staff to pamper them (and chow down on if they mess up) and a ROI instead of just literally sitting on their gold, plus something to occupy their immense intellects, would at least on paper make starting a bank be something at least a few would try out.

Somehow, the thought of paladin's and anti-paladins sharing a staff room or cafeteria inside of a bank (or any peaceful-ish non-militant organization) just strikes me as comedy gold.

This probably more trivial than substantive, but I just want to introduce something like a "coin of the realm" that's counterfeit resistant (not necessarily foolproof) and you can tell it's backed by the guild/kingdom because when held up to sunlight or magical light, a hologram of the group's crest shows up. (And maybe the coins are also enchanted to turn into chocolate so it's also a barter good )

Paladins and (LE) Antipaladins of the same god.

A city with a blue dragon lumbering beneath it. Using her cultists as intermediaries, she has started a bank, lending out her horde for interest, taking other people's gold for safe keeping, all that jazz. She also began buying up property, renting it out, taking in income that way. Her long term goal is too accumulate everyone's wealth until they are destitute and she owns the whole city. And then she can evict all the humanoids save her cult. Because she doesn't like people and this sounds safer than emerging and torching the place

Edited by God_of_Awesome on Oct 14th 2020 at 9:12:14 AM

An idea I had that I kind of like is a Dragon starting the concept of paper money, so that they can sit on the gold backing said currency all day.

..

Edited by Ultimatum on Oct 26th 2020 at 5:24:52 PM

Halflings are descendants of kender, minoi (Dragonlance gnomes) and derro. This is the origin of their name, as they are "half & half" (& half, but they don't like to mention the derro). Those races are extinct (mostly) and the halflings are all that is left of them. Notably, each of those small-folk were plagued by some form of madness, kleptomania and insatiable wanderlust, uncontrollable and often delusional tinkering and unhinged, unfettered cruelty. None of these traits seems to persist in halflings, as if all those madnesses cancelled out in their offspring.

Humanoids came before humans, it was the common descriptor for elves, dwarves, orcs, gnomes and the like. Then they all banged and various physical traits and phenotypes floated to the surface of these hybrids and the results were at first called 'human' as a slang until it evolved into a proper term.

So here's something I never got about D&D lore. I'm pretty sure that in the Book of Exalted Deeds sourcebook (at least for third edition) there's a part about encouraging and facilitating Heel Face Turns, and it says something like "certainly demons and devils are best slain, or at least banished, and only a niave fool would try to convert them." But in other books they say that Balzebub, archduke of Hell's seventh lair, was once a celestial who then did a Face–Heel Turn and then became a devil.

So is Balzebub a special case, or does this mean celestials can turn evil but their evil counterparts can't turn good? And whichever of these is the case, why is it the case?