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DoctorTristan posted:Vecna did nothing wrong. The guy removed his own head and sold it on the black market! which can be yours for a moderate fee.
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Nov 17, 2018 10:28
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nimby posted:It's a universe where you can measure Good and Evil. They measured it. Necromancy was Evil.
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Nov 17, 2018 11:54
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Like some guy posted, you’re using negative energy to mess with people’s souls. Durkon has one of the strongest souls in the setting, and he’s still a bit messed up from having been undead for a week. Plus the undead are leaky buggers, so you’re polluting wherever you’re keeping them with negative energy over time. You can do a lot of evil poo poo with enchantment spells, but they have no inherent lasting effects. If you charm a tribe of orcs so they’ll chat with you, or find some creative non-invasive use of the dominate spell, the target will be right as rain once the effect expires. Necromancy is inherently evil because it damages things by its nature, while enchantment is only as evil as the caster makes it.
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Nov 17, 2018 13:53
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Is creating flesh golems evil?
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Nov 17, 2018 14:40
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Roy’s soul wasn’t affected by his body turning into a bone golem, and they’re fueled by elemental spirits rather than planar energy. I’d say it’s a neutral but rude act, one step below disintegrating a corpse.
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Nov 17, 2018 16:02
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Remember when healing spells counted as necromancy, because it was the spell school of life energy manipulation in all it's functions, and not the bad school for bad people? Yeah, good times. Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Nov 17, 2018 |
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Nov 17, 2018 17:49
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Schwarzwald posted:Remember when healing spells counted as necromancy, but it was the spell school of life energy manipulation in all it's functions, and not the bad school for bad people? This was a stupid change, because if healing is just Conjuration focused on summoning positive energy then Necromancy should be a subschool of Conjuration as well. Or Healing should likewise be it's own school.
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Nov 17, 2018 18:54
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Sufficiently Systematized magic is indistinguishable from Science you say. I think D&D largely skewed in practicality towards Utilitarianism. On paper there is no ethical reason why summoning undead servants can be used to increase the amount of good or be argued that it is a tool of convenience. If you're dead for a sufficiently long enough time science doesn't give a poo poo about the sanctity of your burial and will exhume your remains for research purposes. At some point a corpse just becomes dust, minerals, and fertilizer and a wizard/necromancer is just merely delaying the corpse from rejoining the cycle of life in its 'natural' state in the cycle. A skeleton that gets destroyed rejoins the cycle like it was never created just later down the road. It's because of cultural, societal, folklore, and historical reasons necromancy is frowned on and tolerated at best and loathed and hunted at its worse. Dedicated necromancers turn to evil gradually, the path of well intentioned acts eventually due to coincidence or convenience or desperation leading to evil acts. Can't find a corpse to raise as a servant? Well surely no one will miss a missing corpse from the graveyard... -Breaking the law, eventually leads to being used to breaking the law; getting caught and punished for it leads to bitterness and victim blaming, how dare they! The Necromancer will say, it isn't his or her fault; it's the fault of them and their stupid little monkey brains who don't understand the bigger picture! And so on and so forth until that person is now a lich or something and is routinely doing evil acts because of edgelord logic and being well past caring. Everything becomes about gratification. That is probably what happens most of the time in settings where objectively so necromancy isn't inherently evil; but there's a stigma and it takes effort to allow yourself to be restrained by morals or ethics. It's why you have the three orders in Dragonlance. The Black robes like Slytherine from Harry Potter in a better fleshed out universe merely don't give a poo poo. But they're not necessarily evil; just very very prone to doing them. (The white robes can also be pricks even though they're typically supposed to be aiming to use magic for the good of others)
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Nov 17, 2018 19:16
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Raenir Salazar posted:It's why you have the three orders in Dragonlance. The Black robes like Slytherine from Harry Potter in a better fleshed out universe merely don't give a poo poo. But they're not necessarily evil; just very very prone to doing them. Par-Salian was a dumbass. You have a very ambitious young mage who lacks compassion due to being mistrusted and mistreated his whole life by pretty much everyone? Clearly, the best way to teach him compassion isn't to actually show him any, but to instead inflict what amounts to psychological torture on him by forcing him to spend the rest of his life watching everyone he meets wither and die before his eyes! 
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Nov 17, 2018 19:36
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W.T. Fits posted:Par-Salian was a dumbass. You have a very ambitious young mage who lacks compassion due to being mistrusted and mistreated his whole life by pretty much everyone? Clearly, the best way to teach him compassion isn't to actually show him any, but to instead inflict what amounts to psychological torture on him by forcing him to spend the rest of his life watching everyone he meets wither and die before his eyes! That was definitely a bit of a question mark moment in context of the larger canon. I think initially Mages were supposed to be a lot more hardcore and mysterious as part of their low magic setting, and I think they've gradually retconned it to have been an error in judgement but at least gave Raistlin maybe subtle side powers. I think thinking on it, what was supposed to have been the case might have been more of a plotline wherein Raistlin was given those eyes on the request of the Gods of Magic because he was supposed to be acting as an extension of their will and the eyes were supposed to keep him on that path but Tarkhisis got in the way in the end. Another interesting thing about Dragonlance in general is apparently access to higher level spells (like I think above 5th or 6th level) all require a divine benefactor vouching for you.
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Nov 17, 2018 19:45
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Raenir Salazar posted:
If I remember my dragonlance guide book correctly, level 18 was the absolute max a character could reach as well. (Raistlin being the sole exception)
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Nov 17, 2018 20:38
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a kitten posted:If I remember my dragonlance guide book correctly, level 18 was the absolute max a character could reach as well. (Raistlin being the sole exception) Well the actual source books for the campaign setting put no such limit (from reading them); I'd say 18 was a "soft" limit in that getting to there is insanely difficult as the appropriate CR encounters basically don't exist past a certain point and really the setting is meant to exhibit the feeling of being low magic with a larger focus on artifacts and magic items as being rare and special. vvvv Yeah the 3.5e and 5e edition source books had no such limit and were just like any other D&D settings source books. A Dragonlance campaign mechanically can have epic characters because you still use the 5e spells and stuff but its not really in the spirit of things. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Nov 17, 2018 |
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Nov 17, 2018 21:05
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Googling a bit it looks like that was a Dragonlance Adventures thing which was 1st edition ad&d. Which, not coincidentally, is the only version I ever played and that was what seems like 200 years ago. http://www.dragonlanceforums.com/archive/index.php/t-10599.html a kitten fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Nov 17, 2018 |
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Nov 17, 2018 21:27
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D&D isn't necessarily a setting though, and 'magic' can mean different things for different fantasy settings. Part of the fun of fantasy is that the rules can be malleable setting to setting, even though sometimes the 'rules' can be written lamely - IE the rules might decide the Paladin falls for lying about hiding the orphans from now uncontrolled evil Steve, in a hyperbolic example. The concept of the helpful Necromancer is more of a concept of someone who is willing to do what society views as reprehensible for the greater good, and not necessarily in a Machiavellian sense. To make it work, you sort of need to approach the 'problems' of necromancy in a certain way, and if you had a DM who at every turn treated your use of necromancy as a cosmic sin, you're pretty much not going to be able to do it because someone in your collaborative story telling session is being a dick. Instead, you have people bring up those problems "IT CORRUPTS THE ENVIRONMENT!" they say, the friendly necromancer tries to argue that wielded recklessly those forces can cause damage, and tries to argue that a wild fireball can be as destructive. He claims to be able to contain the corrupting energies of the magic, coming off a bit like someone in reality arguing for clean coal or whatever. Enslaving the soul? He tries to argue that again, that's the easy way out. A fresh corpse has all the materials needed to be a useful worker or warrior, just needs the whole life thing, which is why it might be more efficient than just building a golem or whatever. His method may be projecting his own soul, or maybe he tries to enslave the soul of those who have done wrong. I think it's important in both of these examples is that the character doesn't have to be *right*, it's interesting because they believe it. Someone argued above it's a gradual struggle with justifications and all that - a character before the fall or someone with enough willpower to resist the fall is fun to me, whether they are actually befouling the land or enslaving the souls of murderers is any different from dominating the murderer to save orphans. Think I just approach these games weird. In a 3.5 game I DMed, I had a 4,000 year old Lich who undertook the the ritual because his soul's continued existence was needed to keep a great evil sealed away. There were paladins in the group, hardliner traditionalist players who viewed the lich as an abomination even though I implied he hadn't really done anything nefarious since then. "Here is thing you hate but thing is not being like you're used to it what do you do now" is something I like throwing at people I guess.  To my defense I wasn't going to make them fall* for not accepting the most boring Lich ever or even just outright trying to destroy him. To their faiths, the lich's destruction would be just, it would also just hasten the release of the same great evil they were trying to prevent in the first place. *I'm generally of the philosophy that you don't fall the Paladin unless they do something wildly out of character, in which you probably ask the player 'what the gently caress are you doing' then before anything else. Anyway, so Rich, he's probably okay and whatever I guess? NameHurtBrain fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Nov 17, 2018 |
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Nov 17, 2018 21:35
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Thinking out loud, I like the idea that a fall has to come from within, like a paladin needs to (consciously or subconsciously) choose to fall - matches up the player agency thing. Then the question from the DM is less 'did you tick the evilness boxes' and more 'how do you reconcile what you've done with your own motivating ideas'?
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Nov 17, 2018 22:07
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dreadmojo posted:Thinking out loud, I like the idea that a fall has to come from within, like a paladin needs to (consciously or subconsciously) choose to fall - matches up the player agency thing. Then the question from the DM is less 'did you tick the evilness boxes' and more 'how do you reconcile what you've done with your own motivating ideas'? Makes me think about the Powder Keg of Justice take on the concept.
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Nov 17, 2018 22:14
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Yes. Yes, indeed.
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Nov 18, 2018 01:12
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dreadmojo posted:Thinking out loud, I like the idea that a fall has to come from within, like a paladin needs to (consciously or subconsciously) choose to fall - matches up the player agency thing. Then the question from the DM is less 'did you tick the evilness boxes' and more 'how do you reconcile what you've done with your own motivating ideas'? So literally Goblins, then, which has an incredibly evil Paladin who hasn't fallen because he's self-deluded enough to think he's just.
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Nov 18, 2018 01:18
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Taciturn Tactician posted:So literally Goblins, then, which has an incredibly evil Paladin who hasn't fallen because he's self-deluded enough to think he's just. No, not this at all friend
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Nov 18, 2018 02:51
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That Paladin's world of cardboard speech was just yum. I kinda wanna see that extrapolated to a whole order of paladins now.
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Nov 18, 2018 03:32
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W.T. Fits posted:Makes me think about the Powder Keg of Justice take on the concept. That's the lamest Jack Bauer poo poo.
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Nov 18, 2018 05:48
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I can see the resemblance to 24 but doesn't Jack Bauer just do that all the time? While the Paladin is more of a cross between Batman/Superman; you have the moral principles and power of the latter but the willingness to use intimidation on the other.
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Nov 18, 2018 06:00
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Point taken. That's the lamest Batman poo poo.
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Nov 18, 2018 06:34
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Schwarzwald posted:Point taken. Sure, I guess. It's a good bit of role-playing though.
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Nov 18, 2018 07:09
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The concept of a paladin who's willing to cross the line for the sake of justice is interesting, but IMO that story puts too much emphasis on the violence part, especially from the repeated "paladins are looking forward to the moment we fall" bit. Which honestly comes across as kind of yeah, lame; the focus is less on discussing what a paladin's code of honor could mean and more of a wanky wish-fulfillment fantasy where the meek and underestimated character actually hides some hidden power all along, just waiting to be unleashed. And what that's an analogue of should be pretty clear.
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Nov 18, 2018 09:40
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Tbf that's a story the paladin is telling to the prisoner, not a statement of truth about all of them. I like it because it frames being a pallie as a dynamic tension, not a dull perfect paragon.
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Nov 18, 2018 09:47
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That's fair, like I said I do like the concept of it. Just that the way it's written is rubbing me the wrong way.
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Nov 18, 2018 09:52
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And now there's the Vengance Paladin who is all about crossing lines for Justice
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Nov 18, 2018 11:12
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That story would've been better if the afterwards a teammate and the Paladin had had a conversation. "So... that speech..." "Oh, yeah, no, definitely bullshit. Lying's fine, though." MikeJF fucked around with this message at 11:28 on Nov 18, 2018 |
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Nov 18, 2018 11:23
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:Durkon has one of the strongest souls in the setting, and he’s still a bit messed up from having been undead for a week. wait, wait. Durkon was only vamped for a week in-story? You sure that's right?
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Nov 19, 2018 03:00
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Parahexavoctal posted:wait, wait. Durkon was only vamped for a week in-story? You sure that's right? as long as it took to fly to the dwarven lands, plus maybe a day?
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Nov 19, 2018 03:15
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Parahexavoctal posted:wait, wait. Durkon was only vamped for a week in-story? You sure that's right? That's what Durkon says, and he'd know.
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Nov 19, 2018 03:18
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Yeah in #937 the mechane was gonna take 8 days to get past the dwarven lands.
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Nov 19, 2018 03:29
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Parahexavoctal posted:wait, wait. Durkon was only vamped for a week in-story? You sure that's right? There's a thread title in here somewhere.
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Nov 19, 2018 04:58
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Is that really that hard to believe? The comic's been going for a decade but only like, a year has passed in-story.
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Nov 19, 2018 05:06
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Malpais Legate posted:Is that really that hard to believe? The comic's been going for a decade but only like, a year has passed in-story. Belkar has been less than two months away from his death for around ten years now.
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Nov 19, 2018 17:50
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Ten days ago Roy was fighting for his life in the arena. The day after that, Xykon's phylactery was found, the attempt by the paladins to cause trouble in goblin town was put down, Redcloak killed Tsukiko, and team evil set out for Gerald's gate. The day after that, the gang was fully back together, cleared the windy canyon, found Gerald's gate, Durkon was killed and turned into a vampire, the OotS, temporarily fought Xykon, Nale killed Malack, Tarkon killed Nale, the OotS defeated Tarkon, and they sailed away on their loaner airship. Things happen fast.
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Nov 19, 2018 18:53
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Schwarzwald posted:Ten days ago Roy was fighting for his life in the arena. I require a round by round chronological analysis of these 10 days before I'm satisfied.
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Nov 19, 2018 19:02
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Schwarzwald posted:Ten days ago Roy was fighting for his life in the arena. How many days has it been since the MitD was painting red Xs on random doors?
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Nov 19, 2018 21:37
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Yukari posted:How many days has it been since the MitD was painting red Xs on random doors? That all happened the day before OotS got to the town of Firmament. So, yesterday.
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Nov 19, 2018 21:57
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