|
A.o.D. posted:Wasn't the blood oath "kill Xykon or die trying" and didn't Roy successfully discharge his part of the oath by dying? Also, doesn't that mean strictly speaking the obligation of the oath rests upon his sister, Julia? Not quite; Roy got in because he had died trying and was planning on being resurrected to keep on fighting. He got to slip in on a loophole because Celestia cares a lot more about the spirit of the law than the letter of the law. Not sure what would happen if Roy were to die and never be raised, but Eugene got a stern lecture about him being forced to sit on his rear end and wait for someone else to finish the job as a punishment for... choosing to sit on his rear end and wait for someone else to finish the job. Zulily Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Mar 17, 2021 |
#
?
Mar 17, 2021 20:59
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 04:04 |
|
|
Another issue with Serini's acceptance of the idea of Xykon ruling the world for a while before getting toppled is even when (if) an adventuring team takes him out, the existential threat factor of the Snarl would then be global knowledge and that cannot possibly end well for the world even in a short time frame.
|
|
#
?
Mar 17, 2021 21:06
|
|
|
Or that whoever would hypothetically beat him would also have the best interests of the world at heart, and wouldn’t just have their own wicked plans for exploiting the Gate that are fundamentally mutually exclusive with his.
|
|
|
#
?
Mar 17, 2021 21:39
|
|
|
A.o.D. posted:Wasn't the blood oath "kill Xykon or die trying" and didn't Roy successfully discharge his part of the oath by dying? Also, doesn't that mean strictly speaking the obligation of the oath rests upon his sister, Julia? Since Celestia cared about spirit of the law, I'd guess they consider not trying anymore after you get resurrected a violation too 
|
|
#
?
Mar 17, 2021 21:44
|
|
|
Zulily Zoetrope posted:Not quite; Roy got in because he had died trying and was planning on being resurrected to keep on fighting. He got to slip in on a loophole because Celestia cares a lot more about the spirit of the law than the letter of the law. Not sure what would happen if Roy were to die and never be raised, but Eugene got a stern lecture about him being forced to sit on his rear end and wait for someone else to finish the job as a punishment for... choosing to sit on his rear end and wait for someone else to finish the job. I don't think the resurrection part factors in: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0491.html It was just the trying that mattered, not the failing. The Deva specifically points out that the abandonment of the oath by Eugene (and breaking of it thereby) was the kicker. I agree that getting ress'ed would put the oath back on the table and would necessitate further trying.
|
|
#
?
Mar 17, 2021 21:52
|
|
|
Yeah, if Roy died permanently because he was unable to be resurrected for whatever reason he still would have gotten into Celestia. The Devas mostly seem to take a hard line against the people who actually make the oaths and gently caress off without fulfilling them. See also; Eugene's girlfriend Violet who's family kept going to Celestia up until her Great-Granddaughter broke the sword she swore a blood oath to destroy and she was finally allowed to join them https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0486.html Zore fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Mar 17, 2021 |
|
#
?
Mar 17, 2021 22:04
|
|
|
SuperKlaus posted:Another issue with Serini's acceptance of the idea of Xykon ruling the world for a while before getting toppled is even when (if) an adventuring team takes him out, the existential threat factor of the Snarl would then be global knowledge and that cannot possibly end well for the world even in a short time frame. It's a plan that might have been justifiable early on, but there's a ton of holes in it now. What happens with the other holes in reality, and what happens when another one naturally forms? What about when the villain who takes over the world with the gates is a spiteful rear end in a top hat who rips the universe apart when he's in a bad mood since he can always just chill on the Astral plane? With one gate left, barely holding everything together, you can't gamble on being able to fix things later.
|
|
#
?
Mar 17, 2021 22:15
|
|
|
jng2058 posted:Serini's plan is doomed by all the people outside her reach. Even if she managed to scrub the minds of the Order and both paladins, she can't get to Hinjo and his crew, to Bandana and her crew, to Durkon's whole family, to Red Starshine and his guerilla band, to Hilgya, or to Julia. And even if she could manage all that, she sure as hell can't reach Thor! It seems like she's only trying to delay it until Xykon reaches and claims the Gate for himself, on the theory that he'll do a much better job of defending it from destruction than any of these hero groups that destroy it at the first opportunity. It's not a completely unreasonable assumption, either. Xykon thinks he needs the Gates to attain ultimate power, so he has no reason to destroy them - he needs an intact Gate, and a destroyed one is useless to him. Meanwhile, the heroes are just trying to deny the Gates to villains, and don't really care whether they do so by defending or destroying them. And so far, the heroes have repeatedly failed to defend the Gates, which just leaves "destroy". At Azure City, Xykon effortlessly bypassed the Order and slaughtered nearly the entire Sapphire Guard, so it's reasonable to think those two groups don't have great odds here. And even when the Order found Girard's Gate first, they destroyed it immediately because Roy didn't think they could take on the nearby squad of side villains. And hell, even when the Order did defeat Xykon way back at Dorukan's dungeon, they still blew up the Gate anyway for literally no reason. Given all that, I can kinda see Serini's point here. She's got no reason to think they can take Xykon again, and the only reason the world is in such a precarious position right now is because of the good guys deciding over and over again that "well, I don't think we can take these bad guys in a fight, let's smash the Gate". The fact that each and every one of those Gate-smashings turned out to be completely unnecessary is just icing on the cake.
|
|
#
?
Mar 17, 2021 22:21
|
|
|
Regalingualius posted:I would imagine that Eugene would throw a massive wrench in that plan, since he’s obviously got a vested interest in seeing Xykon finally dead, though that hinges on a post-mind wipe Roy actually believing him.
|
|
#
?
Mar 17, 2021 22:25
|
|
|
At this point, pretty much everyone knows about the Snarl. However, only the Order knows about the yellow quiddity and the millions of worlds that came before. (except for Redcloak, who either doesn't believe them, or doesn't want to believe.)
|
|
#
?
Mar 17, 2021 22:25
|
|
|
Shugojin posted:Since Celestia cared about spirit of the law, I'd guess they consider not trying anymore after you get resurrected a violation too Well, in this case Roy is still trying to defeat Xykon. Caring about the spirit of the law more would look on focusing on the end of the world first and hopefully dealing with Xykon along the way, but if not doing so afterwards as still trying to fulfill the blood oath. It's like putting out the house that's on fire, then finding the person you saw start the fire. One takes priority right now, but you're not going to skip the second part.
|
|
#
?
Mar 17, 2021 22:40
|
|
|
Tarquin and Serini reading the same books I think. Both going at it with the whole "Yeah the brutal dictator will rule over everything but eventually they'll get toppled so why worry."
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 02:00
|
|
|
Brainamp posted:Tarquin and Serini reading the same books I think. Both going at it with the whole "Yeah the brutal dictator will rule over everything but eventually they'll get toppled so why worry." I think it's more of a common element of older more long lived characters who've had a lot of experiences. If you've been adventuring for 100 years toppling petty tyrants starts to feel pointless, so why care? Just cut a deal with them to leave your friends and family alone and you agree to not interfere and your life just becomes vastly easier.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 02:02
|
|
|
Nobody's commenting on how she's going off to fight the main party? That's gonna be a hell of a thing. Even ignoring the fact that Xykon's plan can't actually help him rule the world and so far as we know it will just end up killing all the gods so that there won't be a next world, there's also the fact that evil is...bad. Like I know so often the morality of DnD is abstracted to the point that they're just factions to declare allegiance to and subversively there's people making the world worse on the good side and people trying to make the world better on the 'evil' side, but Xykon's not complicated like that. If he gets what he wants, all of existence will be like O-Chul getting dunked into acid over and over again in endless suffering until it finally winks out when he gets a little too careless. It's also a weird assessment to just think the heroes are the only ones who are going to destroy the gate, because she should know that Xykon destroyed one himself.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 06:07
|
|
|
She's old and neutral and thinks she has it all figured out, of course shes letting evil triumph.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 06:49
|
|
|
Caidin posted:She's old and neutral and thinks she has it all figured out, of course shes letting evil triumph.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 06:54
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted:Nobody's commenting on how she's going off to fight the main party? That's gonna be a hell of a thing. Start of Darkness spoilers: Nah, Redcloak did by mistake. Redcloak burned the Treants guarding Lirian's Gate while Xykon killed Lirian herself. But broadly, the Order's blown up two and Miko one while Team Evil only destroyed one, so she has a point vis a vis who blows up gates more often Good or Evil. But her plan's still fundamentally flawed. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 06:58
|
|
|
Caidin posted:She's old and neutral and thinks she has it all figured out, of course shes letting evil triumph. True Neutral in D&D typically means you're either completely apathetic to worldly matters beyond your own personal business, or a walking Golden Mean Fallacy. It's one of the reasons why druids prior to 3e managed to be even more insufferable than paladins.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 07:23
|
|
|
Strawberry Pyramid posted:True Neutral in D&D typically means you're either completely apathetic to worldly matters beyond your own personal business, or a walking Golden Mean Fallacy. It's one of the reasons why druids prior to 3e managed to be even more insufferable than paladins. True Neutral doesn't feel like it should be a thing for cognizant beings. If you can't take a stand on anything, anything at all, then you're either a mindless beast or not interested in playing the game. Same if it's used as a carte blanche for doing whatever the hell you want, like Chaotic Neutral.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 09:36
|
|
|
alignment (ugh) only really works as virtue ethics
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 11:28
|
|
|
Lt. Danger posted:alignment (ugh) only really works as virtue ethics It's there to enable spells like Protection from X and Smite Y.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 11:35
|
|
|
Alignment is a piss poor way to frame character motivations. "Pragmatically willing to sacrifice the few for the many" is a moral outlook that doesn't fall into good vs evil.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 13:24
|
|
|
True Neutral really only fits for characters that have a completely nonsensical spiritual philosophy about cosmic forces needing to be in balance. Or, I guess, characters that have no particular ethics and are devoted entirely to their own comfort and survival, but then that raises questions about "isn't that actually an evil alignment?" and "well, no, because that describes most wild animals" and then "why is it True Neutral when a squirrel hoards resources but Neutral Evil when a monopolist in Waterdeep does it?". Serini's position doesn't really strike me as hugely informed by D&D alignment so much as it's just pragmatic. Destroying the gates means the world blows up, and Xykon won't destroy the final gate. Xykon winning is a problem that can be solved later, whereas the final gate being destroyed to prevent Xykon winning is a problem that can never be solved.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 13:48
|
|
|
I think most people are True Neutral, really, because I think that an alignment requires action and not just a preference. People who just want to live their lives and will shy away from hurting people for their own convenience but aren't going out of their way to help people either are probably some form of neutral.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 17:39
|
|
|
Alignment is garbage. It's worse than useless because it pushes people to think in its terms.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 17:51
|
|
|
Colonel Cool posted:I think most people are True Neutral, really, because I think that an alignment requires action and not just a preference. I dunno, that creates weird questions about ability vs. intent. If a peasant farmer who lives in poverty is kind to the people around them and shares their limited resources when they can, but usually can't because they live hand to mouth and often have to feed themselves first, they're probably Good-aligned even if the sum of good they've done in the world is very slight. Similarly if you have a demon who's under a magical compulsion not to hurt anyone, and so has never harmed a soul in their life, but would like to wreck up the place if they had the chance, that demon is probably Evil-aligned despite their inability to act on it. Alignment is a silly system though, it isn't useful for talking about actual ethical outlooks most of the time. But sometimes it's kind of fun to, I guess?
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 17:58
|
|
|
I mean, you guys are basically describing Enlightened Centrism and saying that there exist no people like that.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 18:07
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:Alignment is garbage. It's worse than useless because it pushes people to think in its terms. Do you think the characters in oots are mostly consistent and believable in their motivations?
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 19:09
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:Do you think the characters in oots are mostly consistent and believable in their motivations? What does that have to do with alignment?
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 19:12
|
|
|
Android Blues posted:I dunno, that creates weird questions about ability vs. intent. If a peasant farmer who lives in poverty is kind to the people around them and shares their limited resources when they can, but usually can't because they live hand to mouth and often have to feed themselves first, they're probably Good-aligned even if the sum of good they've done in the world is very slight. With the farmer I think there's probably a strong case to be made that it's not total net good done but rather good done relative to your ability to do good. I think there was some Bible verse related to this where a rich guy came into the temple and dropped a bunch of excess wealth there and that was all well and good, but then a poor man gave his last coin and Jesus praised him much harder for it. "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" The point about the demon is well made, but I think it's probably reasonable to take a different standard when you have extraplanar entities and say that they're inherently Good or Evil just by virtue of the fact that they're literally made of good or evil. And yeah obviously alignment is a silly system that shouldn't be taken seriously. I just sometimes enjoy a setting where you take a serious look at what the metaphysical implications of alignment being actually true would be.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 19:31
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:What does that have to do with alignment? Isn't that obvious?
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 19:34
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:Alignment is garbage. It's worse than useless because it pushes people to think in its terms. Android Blues posted:Alignment is a silly system though, it isn't useful for talking about actual ethical outlooks most of the time. But sometimes it's kind of fun to, I guess? Yeah, alignment makes a lot more sense when it's about stuff like the cosmic forces you're actually, well, aligned with in the big battle of Law versus Chaos or whatever and/or a clearly stated and intentionally-adopted position of yours, like in the sources which Gygax cribbed it from, or Shin Megami Tensei. In the latter, for example, while there are some ethical/ideological components to alignment as well, they're rather clear and fit with the overall principles of their respective side. Neither are inherently good or evil necessarily and have both positive and negative examples in them, though the main representatives of both Law and Chaos tend to be inhuman extremes that aren't exactly friendly to humanity. (Which is also why SMT is one of the few series where instead of being lame and noncommittal, the neutral options tend to be both the hardest and most badass ones as they involve taking on the forces of both Heaven and Hell and rejecting their power in favor of humanity forging its own future.) When it tries to describe one's overall morality in a supposedly-objective manner, on the other hand, it's pretty much doomed to being nonsensical or at least rather contentious. And when you have a bunch of authors with different opinions and understandings of things, built upon decades of material that's similarly inconsistent, upon the base set by a man who said that killing children based on their race was Lawful Good, well... It's easy to see why alignment chat sparks so many arguments, basically.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 19:55
|
|
|
I always figured alignment was closer to the right here than it is on the left:  A lot of the unceasing debate about alignment comes from the assumption that most people fit in one of the extremes which doesn't leave any wiggle room for their actions so they'd continually bounce around alignment -- but if you assume that Neutrality encompasses the majority of people, leaving the very-driven people to be Aligned, then a lot of these sticking points and problems are much easier to gloss over. e: beaten to the sentiment while making this post
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 19:59
|
|
|
It's easy to rework alignment to be more flexible or to say just about everyone doesn't go to the edges, but that's not textual in D&D. Of course, textually alignment is philosophically stupid and was a terrible idea right from the start. The real question I have about alignment is how did it become one of the sacred cows of D&D that must be inviolate across any edition, a truism that must always be an integral part of it, when people have been going, "This is loving stupid," since the 70s.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 20:07
|
|
|
Random Stranger posted:It's easy to rework alignment to be more flexible or to say just about everyone doesn't go to the edges, but that's not textual in D&D. Of course, textually alignment is philosophically stupid and was a terrible idea right from the start. Remember the rage when they changed it in 4e?
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 20:21
|
|
|
Roland Jones posted:Yeah, alignment makes a lot more sense when it's about stuff like the cosmic forces you're actually, well, aligned with in the big battle of Law versus Chaos or whatever and/or a clearly stated and intentionally-adopted position of yours, like in the sources which Gygax cribbed it from, or Shin Megami Tensei. In the latter, for example, while there are some ethical/ideological components to alignment as well, they're rather clear and fit with the overall principles of their respective side. Neither are inherently good or evil necessarily and have both positive and negative examples in them, though the main representatives of both Law and Chaos tend to be inhuman extremes that aren't exactly friendly to humanity. (Which is also why SMT is one of the few series where instead of being lame and noncommittal, the neutral options tend to be both the hardest and most badass ones as they involve taking on the forces of both Heaven and Hell and rejecting their power in favor of humanity forging its own future.) I agree with this. Only gods and outsiders are actually Aligned, because they are bound to act a certain way. They don't have free will per se. Mortals have merely picked sides in Good vs Evil, Law vs Chaos (or sat on the fence), as defined by the gods, which informs their moral compass, and places certain expectations on them. Roy has done plenty of un-Lawful things (and gotten called out for it). He's still Lawful Good because that's the alignment that informs his worldview and motivations. And his Lawful Good is a notably different Lawful Good from an Azure City paladin's.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 20:25
|
|
|
THE BAR posted:Remember the rage when they changed FTFY. It's really hard to sift through the general 4e rage to pick out specific "things people got mad about."
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 20:29
|
|
|
Cup Runneth Over posted:I agree with this. Only gods and outsiders are actually Aligned, because they are bound to act a certain way. They don't have free will per se. Mortals have merely picked sides in Good vs Evil, Law vs Chaos (or sat on the fence), as defined by the gods, which informs their moral compass, and places certain expectations on them.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 20:33
|
|
|
SKULL.GIF posted:I always figured alignment was closer to the right here than it is on the left: The real problem is that the two dimensions are fake, not how people are distributed in them. It's a bad model for characterization, and people move away from them as soon as they actually play characters and make decisions.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 20:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 04:04 |
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:The real problem is that the two dimensions are fake, not how people are distributed in them. It's a bad model for characterization, and people move away from them as soon as they actually play characters and make decisions. Do you think oots has good characterisation? E: it's not a trick question btw, I think oots does have very good characterisation and every character has a very clear alignment. Thor also flies past a good snapshot of the alignment grid for non nerds. I think it's adequate, and even good if you lean into it as hard as burlew does and I'd be interested in your thoughts on that. sebmojo fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Mar 18, 2021 |
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2021 20:50
|
|