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What is the best version of El? This poll is closed. |
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|---|---|---|---|
| Elminster |
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20 | 6.45% |
| Elmara |
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20 | 6.45% |
| Entwine |
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13 | 4.19% |
| GURPS |
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99 | 31.94% |
| El Kabong |
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153 | 49.35% |
| Elves |
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5 | 1.61% |
| Total: | 310 votes | ||
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One of the things that's going somewhat ignored is that bigger, newer weapons are not what people want right now. Not the kings, not the Houses, not anyone. Nobody wants a war, because everyone is terrified of the Mourning. One of the things Baker talks about often whenever asked about the Mourning is that it genuinely does not matter how it happened. What matters is that everyone thinks it can happen again. Imagine if WWI ended with a spontaneous nuclear explosion that nobody could track back or understand how it went off. That's why the Last War is, so far, the Last War; everyone thinks The Other Guy has something that can cause Mournings. It's mutually assured destruction, except nobody actually knows who has the nukes, but they're sure as hell not going to risk pissing off whoever that may be. The other thing to point out is that each House is a monopoly ensured by, well, genetics. This is what's holding back that industrial revolution; you cannot have a great forge without an actual blood relative of House Cannith running it. You cannot run airships without someone with the Mark of Storm. This is what essentially stops "and then everyone has a gun;" any such invention wouldn't just be kept a secret, they'd be unusable outside the House that invented it. Also consider that most the grand technologies require multiple Houses and at times governments to work together - something they're not going to do if war breaks out and it's time to make weapons. That train uses House Cannith-made conductor stones, an element bound by Zilargo, and then controlled by House Orien. Airships are the same - House Lyrander controls them, Zilargo does the elemental binding, and likely Cannith does most of the actual airship creation. With shards bought for ALL of these things from House Tharashk. Others have mentioned Shadowrun, which actually is probably what you should look the Houses. The Houses absolutely cannot openly war against each other, nor can they officially ally themselves with any nation. Sure, this is only by a single law, and sure, any House could theoretically break it, but the second those Edicts are broken, all hell breaks loose. So everyone plays nice, nobody tips the boat, and they stick to cutthroat negotiations away from the limelight. And that's not even touching what kind of horrible politics exist inside each House. Imagine Shadowrun style office politics, except now everyone's related at some point.
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Aug 5, 2014 15:36
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Reene posted:Efficient gun technology wasn't and isn't purely about firepower though. For a long time after the initial advent of firearms people were still using crossbows, longbows, and polearms. Which you wanted to use depended a great deal on the situation and level of training of the people using them. EDIT: In hindsight I'm also surprised Forgotten Realms 4E got gunpowder bombs and weaponry. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Aug 5, 2014 |
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Aug 5, 2014 16:35
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FR has always had gunpowder, it just has to literally be blessed by the god Gond in order to work and thus only works for his priests.
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Aug 5, 2014 16:53
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"That's why we call it the great unequalizer."
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Aug 5, 2014 17:05
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ProfessorCirno posted:FR has always had gunpowder, it just has to literally be blessed by the god Gond in order to work and thus only works for his priests. That's not true. The Lantan Gondish have a monopoly on designing and building small arms, but smokepowder is not actually magical and has been in use for a long time. Mulhorand and Thay have used siege bombards for a few centuries. Shou Lung has made rockets, both weapons and fireworks, for a few centuries.
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Aug 5, 2014 17:38
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MadScientistWorking posted:The lightning rails is proof enough that you have enough technology to make a devastating weapon. You have the ability to harness a force of nature that is pretty much on the level of bomb let alone gun and yet you have crossbows. Aside from what everybody else has said there is literally nothing supported by any of the text in any Eberron book that supposes that bound elementals can be harnessed in a handheld, easily usable device for propelling tiny chunks of metal super-fast. The two prominent examples of bound elementals being employed in the setting are: A). Giant train engines, and B). Even bigger airships. Both of which work by taking an extremely angry elemental, shoving it into a kind of containment matrix, and then using it as a racehorse. Nothing about that immediately suggests "oh, right, modern firearms are right around the corner, it was so obvious all along." If there's something on the level of a devastating weapon going on there it's because a pissed off elemental is an extremely dangerous thing to be messing around with, not because of anything inherent in the design of the vehicles themselves.
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Aug 5, 2014 17:50
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I thought it was a split between forcing elementals into stuff and bargaining with them so that they'd do it of their own volition, just to tone down the creepy slavery aspect some? edit: Also aren't there wagons powered by elementals, too? It doesn't seem too outlandish to me that someone would tinker with a way to bind lesser elementals into smaller stuff, since it takes pretty drat huge, powerful ones to power airships and lightning rail.
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Aug 5, 2014 18:04
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I'm not 100% on the exact metaphysics of it but elementals aren't really like full-fledged sentient beings, they're more just primal forces of nature with with intellects on the animal side of things. I'm pretty sure elemental binding isn't meant to be a kind of unspoken monstrous act because it's not like the setting's shy about pointing out, for example, that "monstrous races" visiting Sharn need to apply for special "I'm actually people" badges or else they have no implicit right to not be murdered, so I think if airships and trains were run on cruel slavery it would be kind of a bigger deal. As far as getting elementals to do what you want, that's where Dragonmarks come in. If you want to pilot an airship or conduct a Lightning Rail engine you have two options...either grab hold of the wheel or reins and have an ongoing battle of wills with a seething vortex of raw elemental power or have a Mark of Storm or Passage respectively.
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Aug 5, 2014 18:20
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EDIT: i r dum
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Aug 5, 2014 18:54
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Kai Tave posted:I'm not 100% on the exact metaphysics of it but elementals aren't really like full-fledged sentient beings, they're more just primal forces of nature with with intellects on the animal side of things. If so, it feels like a cop-out by the setting writers. What early 20th century metaphor is complete without heinous exploitation of labor?
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Aug 5, 2014 18:55
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There's still tons of that without making coal sentient.
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Aug 5, 2014 18:56
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Reene posted:Efficient gun technology wasn't and isn't purely about firepower though. For a long time after the initial advent of firearms people were still using crossbows, longbows, and polearms. Which you wanted to use depended a great deal on the situation and level of training of the people using them. Yeah it wasn't firepower or deadliness that prompted the switch to firearms, it was training time. Until the introduction of the minie ball in the 1840s longbows were more accurate at longer ranges and just as deadly to lightly armored opponents, but it took two years to train a malnourished peasant to be an efficient longbowman, whereas it took a day to train them to fire a musket as part of a firing line. Cannons on the other hand, were devastating almost immediately and changed everything about warfare. Once a setting has cannons, proper castles (a staple of most fantasy settings) suddenly start becoming obsolete.
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Aug 5, 2014 18:59
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zeal posted:If so, it feels like a cop-out by the setting writers. What early 20th century metaphor is complete without heinous exploitation of labor? We'll have to make do with the Warforged, an entire species created simply to serve on the front lines and now being told there's no place for them in this world so they should just gently caress off.
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Aug 5, 2014 19:01
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Kai Tave posted:Aside from what everybody else has said there is literally nothing supported by any of the text in any Eberron book that supposes that bound elementals can be harnessed in a handheld, easily usable device for propelling tiny chunks of metal super-fast. The two prominent examples of bound elementals being employed in the setting are: There are plenty of small-scale examples of elemental binding. You can bind an elemental to a sword, bow, whatever. But that said, like you mention none of the effects of elemental binding indicate that they'd be in any way suitable for creating firearms. And given the expense of elemental binding, it's hardly that efficient or cheap. Equipping any significantly sized force with elemental weapons would be very, very cost prohibitive (for example, a burning weapon is the equivalent of a +3 weapon)
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Aug 5, 2014 19:43
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Elemental binding seems incredibly expensive, even for the most minor item. Engineering a device to propel a bit of metal is probably doable with some kind of air elemental or whatever, but it wouldn't be any cheaper or more lethal than a +2 longbow (or something). Endless wands and magewrights are probably the closest in-universe Eberron thing to the historical introduction of firearms.
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Aug 5, 2014 20:54
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A wand of magic missile is pretty much a gun but actually better because even though it deals dinky damage you can't possibly miss.
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Aug 5, 2014 20:57
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Also considering most normal people in 3e have something like 4-6 hp (if anything that's high), a device that allows you to unerringly deal 1d4+1 points of damage is a fairly effective murder machine.
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Aug 5, 2014 21:02
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Goddamn. I never really thought about just how fragile all of civilization is in Elfgamia.
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Aug 5, 2014 21:04
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I remember when I played a game 6 years ago and I made a gatling wand by taping a shitload of wands together and rotating them by magic.
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Aug 5, 2014 21:04
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Pro strat right there.
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Aug 5, 2014 21:07
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I liked to play a warforged, take the wand-gauntlets from whatever 3.5 splat and load them with magic missile and fireball wands and pretend I was Iron Man.
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Aug 5, 2014 21:08
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Alien Rope Burn posted:"That's why we call it the great unequalizer." "Some other god made men, but Gond made his priests equal" or something.
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Aug 5, 2014 21:18
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I want an earth elemental powered railgun now
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Aug 5, 2014 21:20
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Get some Boots of Strafing and Swooping and you'd be all set, Antonius Starke.
Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Aug 5, 2014 |
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Aug 5, 2014 21:26
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Evil Sagan posted:Goddamn. I never really thought about just how fragile all of civilization is in Elfgamia.
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Aug 5, 2014 21:28
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Swagger Dagger posted:I liked to play a warforged, take the wand-gauntlets from whatever 3.5 splat and load them with magic missile and fireball wands and pretend I was Iron Man. Although era-and-tone-wise Eberron would be closer to having early JSA style "mystery men", superheroes would slot into the setting pretty easily. Especially in an Avengers "putting aside everything for the common good" way. Man, I wish I still had that old 4vengers poster that had everyone's classes on it now...
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Aug 5, 2014 21:36
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Darwinism posted:I want an earth elemental powered railgun now Snake, try to remember the basics of BAB.
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Aug 5, 2014 21:39
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Darwinism posted:I want an earth elemental powered railgun now Peasant elementals
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Aug 5, 2014 21:42
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Swagger Dagger posted:I liked to play a warforged, take the wand-gauntlets from whatever 3.5 splat and load them with magic missile and fireball wands and pretend I was Iron Man.
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Aug 5, 2014 21:59
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How hard is it to say that your warforged's grappling hook and fifty feet of rope are hidden in his arm?
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Aug 5, 2014 22:54
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PeterWeller posted:How hard is it to say that your warforged's grappling hook and fifty feet of rope are hidden in his arm? How hard it is is up to your DM.
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Aug 5, 2014 23:10
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zachol posted:How hard it is is up to your DM. if your GM would say no I think you need a better GM
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Aug 5, 2014 23:27
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everythingWasBees posted:if your GM would say no I think you need a better GM As much as I love the original Bionic Commando, I say screw the Commando arm, gimmie a Fantasy version of the Instinct Leash from Bulletstorm. 
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Aug 5, 2014 23:31
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everythingWasBees posted:if your GM would say no I think you need a better GM This is why I love my group, if we ever said something like 'yea my Warforged has a grappling hook but it's not in his bag it's loaded in his arm' I'm 100% sure everyone else'd say 'yea man Bionic Commando fuckin rules, good choice' and have no fear of someone being all 'uh but that can only be done with this feat listed in a five year old splatbook and requires 20 CON for some reason' or whatever.
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Aug 5, 2014 23:34
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Much as I appreciate that that is how a lot of people want to play, that sort of thing is like way too goofy for me to ever want to encounter in a game I was playing.
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Aug 5, 2014 23:41
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The best character idea I've never ran was a halfling pretending to be a warforged (mechanically a warforged) with a bunch of gadgets attached, Iron Man style.
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Aug 5, 2014 23:58
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PeterWeller posted:How hard is it to say that your warforged's grappling hook and fifty feet of rope are hidden in his arm?
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Aug 6, 2014 00:09
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neongrey posted:Much as I appreciate that that is how a lot of people want to play, that sort of thing is like way too goofy for me to ever want to encounter in a game I was playing. I think it depends upon the group, I can see myself going both ways really. But I think a lot of people here play D&D a bit looser and sillier than you and I.
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Aug 6, 2014 00:13
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neongrey posted:Much as I appreciate that that is how a lot of people want to play, that sort of thing is like way too goofy for me to ever want to encounter in a game I was playing. But that's the entire point, knowing what goes and what doesn't in a game you're playing. If you're playing high tales of true love and high adventure in Eberron, having a grapplinghookhand would probably fit with the tone. If you're doing the noir detective Eberron (more people should play this, it's awesome), your gritty hardened warforged detective is more likely to have a bottle of brandy hidden in his arm.
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Aug 6, 2014 00:14
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| # ? Jun 6, 2024 18:32 |
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Arivia posted:I think it depends upon the group, I can see myself going both ways really. But I think a lot of people here play D&D a bit looser and sillier than you and I.  EDIT: In case this doesn't get through that was sarcasm.
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Aug 6, 2014 00:15
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