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And I thought "gold pieces weighs 1/3 of an ounce a piece, you need 2.1 metric tonnes of gold to develop the simplest Epic Spell" was a good rag on D&D. Well, gently caress, the Box has me beat. Also, apparently between 3rd and 3.5 edition they added Epic Level poo poo to the d20SRD, so if want to look around the Epic Spell stuff I'm going to be glossing over (because big lists of D&D spells is boring as poo poo), you can just look it up on the net without having to anything and have a fair idea of what's going on - what I've got in the book in front of me and the stuff in the SRDs seem to be fairly closely matched.
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# ¿ Sep 10, 2019 04:29 |
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# ¿ May 21, 2024 07:03 |
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At least in Omelas it was a singular forsaken child. The Wizards Who Looked At Omelas And Thought "Not Enough Suffering" Boss Gets My Memory Of A Dime Doctor Orpheus screaming "IT'S POWERED BY A FORSAKEN CHILD" on loop.
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# ¿ Sep 10, 2019 04:52 |
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Five. Thousand. Nine Hundred. Dollars. "sun-based secret" Well, it's a nice grift if you have the nerd name recognition, I guess. Like Star Citizen, or Shroud of the Avatar. Actually, it's better value for money than those two! You actually get a finished product!
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# ¿ Sep 10, 2019 07:10 |
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Not that Invisible Sun deserves this level of investigation into its premises but does this mean that eventually you end up with a class of teens-to-adults with no pleasant memories, thoughts, or dreams from their childhoods, having had all of them orbed for the sake of orb? I doubt Monte Cook possesses the nuance and subtlety to make a deliberate reference to modern generational struggles in his Magical Realm. It's just Monte being Monte.
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# ¿ Sep 11, 2019 00:59 |
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Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition Epic Level Handbook: NUMBER GO UP Chapter 2: Epic Spells, Part 1 Epic Spells are what you get when you buy the Epic Spellcasting Feat. They are part Ars Magica/Mage assemble-a-spell from concept and part Dungeons And Dragons Wizard Numberslam. Rules So, when you take the Epic Spell feat, the rules say you get One (1) Epic Spell Slot every 10 ranks your character has in either Knowledge (arcana), Knowledge (divine) or Knowledge (nature), depending on your source of spells. To even qualify for the Epic Spellcasting feat, you need to have 24 ranks in one of those skills and have the ability to cast 9th level spells. Any Wizard/Cleric/Druid worth their levels is probably going to have all that by level 20, no problem. In theory, rules as written a Bard could stack the Improved Spell Capacity feat 3 times to get 9th level bard spells, or paladins and rangers could spend a huge pile of feats to eventually qualify, but this is unlikely because of the core flaws with 3rd edition's stats and skills system (Namely, nobody has the skillpoints or feat slots to do this and still be a viable character in their alloted niche). If a character has multiple classes that satisfy the Epic Spellcasting requirements, they get a pool of Epic Spell Slots for each class (So, if a 22 Cleric/22 Wizard had the skillpoints to qualify both classes for Epic Sellcasting, they could have 2 Divine Epic Spell Slots and 2 Arcane Spell slots). Epic Spell Slots are filled with spells (or per-day uses for sorcerers) the same way regular spells are, except for wizards they're not recorded in a spellbook, they're just part of the wizard. Epic Spells are "developed", and like making magic items, they cost Gold, XP and Time. Given that, once developed, they're part of the spellcaster in a fundamental way and can't be stolen, locking up an Epic Wizard is no longer a matter of taking away their spellbook after you wear them out (And, as we'll soon see, chaining them up in an Antimagic field won't help either). Casting an Epic Spell is actually a rare example of the Sorcerer actually having it flat out better than the Vancian Slot Casters, as there's no Metamagic Feats for Epic Spells (which cost the sorcerer extra time to apply to regular spells on the fly, while the Wizard/Cleric/Druid pre-bakes their metamagic when they memorize spells), so the Sorcerer can just pick from their Epic Spells on the fly and have no drawbacks. One Step Fowards, One Step Back In a rare moment of sanity, Epic Spells are not an automatic thing. Each Epic Spell has a Spellcraft DC, and to successfully cast that spell, the caster needs to make their skill roll - and if they fail, it fizzles. Casters can take-10 on the skill roll (But remember, you can't take-10 in any kind of stress situation), and you can't take-20. There's a Varient Rule sidebar that points out that Wizards, being nerd INT casters, get a bonus on Epic Spellcasting because Spellcraft is an Int skill, and that you might want to let clerics, druids and sorcerers use their caster stats instead of Int on the Spellcraft roll for Epic Spellcasting. This doesn't exactly fix the other half-dozen problems with the D20 skill system, but it's nice they noticed. The Antimagic, it does nothing! There's also a sidebar that explicitly states that Epic Spells only partially affected by Antimagic Field, only supressing them if it succeeds on a dispelling check as a 20th level spellcaster - so a sufficiently Epic Spellcaster can just completly ignore Antimagic field by virtue of having 40 levels. I could have sworn level 10 spells was a thing in one of the AD&D campaign option books For situation where Spell Level matters, Epic Spells count as Level 10 spells - and their saving throw DC is 20+caster ability score modifier. You can't apply metamagic or other spell manipulation feats to Epic Spells, so the various +DC boosting tricks for normal spells don't work (No Spell Focus, or Spell Penetration, or other such shennanigans). To boost the +DC of an epic spell, you have to actually use the Epic Spell Development System (there's prices to be paid). This is shockingly reasonable given the bullshit spellcasters get away with under the regular system. Finally, Epic Spells can't be shoved into regular magic items - and, despite everything in this book, there's no Major Artifact construction rules (just Epic Magic Item rules that render Artifacts pointless, because Epic Magic Items generally don't have "game balancing" curses attached to them). Then we're onto the list of pre-baked Epic Spells, which are examples built from the rules that come after them. And here's some we prepared earlier The book has a table of example Epic Spells by DC, followed by their descriptions - if you've read a D20 spell ever, you've seen this sort of format before. Here's the lowest DC example Epic Spell, Ruin quote:Ruin I'd say it's "a slightly worse disintigrate", but this is 3rd edition, where Disintigrate is an instakill. So, it's almost but not quite like 3.5ed disintigrate (3.5ed's does 40d6 at 20th level, but a save only does 5d6), but it costs you 2000 XP to cast, and you need 2.1 metric tonnes (2.4 imperial tons) of gold to actually develop it. Also, you can hit a target out to two miles away. It can be cast in an antimagic field into an antimagic field, and DC27 is really low for an Epic Spell (if you look at the To Develop line, you can see the outline of the development system). Let's try something more quote:Dragon Knight Wave hands, recieve a red dragon to crush your enemies (and remember, Dragons in 3rd edition break the Challenge Rating mould a bit). The "ritual spell" thing is class agnoistic - so clerics can contribute to wizard ritual Epic Spells. There's no XP cost to fire this thing off, just a couple of extra spell slots. DC38 is pretty easy to hit even at low Epic Levels, with a booster item and/or feat. The rest of the sample spells go all the way up to the DC 419 Vengeful Gaze of God, which is like Ruin (and built from the same Seed), but deals 305d6 damage (Save for half!), and deals 200d6 points of damage to the caster as backlash. It also includes other examples such as "Origin of the Species: Archerai" (DC38, costs 3500XP a cast), for permanently creating a demon out of nothing, and "Rain of Fire" (DC50, no additional cost), which rains down 1 point of fire damage a round over a 2 mile radius for 20 hours. Just from these few examples, you can get see how a clever player could exploit the hell out of the Epic Spell Development System. Rain of Fire will level a city if run strictly by rules, because elemental fire damage bypasses object hardness. Kiss your stone walls goodbye. Next time: What the hell is a Spell Seed, and why do I need a moon made of gold? Seatox fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Sep 16, 2019 |
# ¿ Sep 16, 2019 06:27 |
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Freaking Crumbum posted:since being a full progression caster was already a blank check to break the system over your knee, i always felt underwhelmed with the epic spell stuff. it's just the same spells you can already cast, but now you have to roll several hundred d6s because that's a totally plausible thing to have to do in the middle of a real-time game session. And you've completely scooped my end of chapter 2 commentary, because yeah, the spell seed thing would be far better if it was from level 1, with sane numbers. I'll spoil part 2 by just saying, "epic spell seeds are literally core non-epic spells with the numbers filed off that you mix and match bit of".
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# ¿ Sep 16, 2019 07:17 |
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The Lone Badger posted:Wasn't one of the martial classes able to do this at like 6th level? This is D20. A poorly worded feat can permit all kinds of insane stuff that strictly RAW is possible. There's a metamagic feat that combined with a simple divination spell to find a city will deal damage to everything in the area of the city because the city divination spell has "area of effect: 1 city" and the metamagic applies damage to "all targets in the area of effect". It all boils down to the DM wielding a riding crop on the dedicated rules-lawyer-munchkin-charop people, lest the game devolve into utter stupidity.
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# ¿ Sep 16, 2019 07:30 |
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Zereth posted:No, it's got a range of like, several miles, and will find cities in that range. Ah, right. Slams DMG closed Ok, it's time for us to have a sensible, adult discussion about our game. If you'll just pass me your character sheet while I dig up some matches...
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# ¿ Sep 16, 2019 07:40 |
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The Lone Badger posted:Also Changing Breeds, but let's pretend that didn't happen. Everyone else is. Changing Breeds is notable only for that cat-woman in that one Beast short story (By Dave Brookshaw, no less!), where it turns out Changing Breeds can totally no-sell Beast Nightmare Powers because CBs are spiritually animals and thus the Primodial Dream nonsense doesn't apply to them. I can't fully hate anything that fucks over a Beast, even if both splatlines would have been better off not existing.
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# ¿ Sep 24, 2019 05:30 |
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A 3rd level wizard in any edition is rubbish - if he wasn't munchkin-ed out with his artifact, Raistlin gets, what, two first level spells and a one second level one per day? That's two sleeps and a ... melf's acid arrow or something, then he's completely tapped out. While the encounter rate is insanely high. It's less dire in 3rd edition, where wizards get bonus spells from Int, but that's the edition where wizards broke the game forever.
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# ¿ Dec 2, 2019 01:59 |
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EthanSteele posted:Is AD&D the one where you aren't supposed to fight every encounter? I know in one of the old D&Ds you only care about the spoils and if you could sneak past a bunch of orcs or convince some goblins to hang out with you or whatever then that's pretty much an encounter gone perfectly. A wizard with two sleeps and an acid arrow makes more sense when those two sleeps are get out of jail free cards for when you gently caress up your sneaking or talking because 8 encounters isn't 8 combat encounters unless something went wrong every single time. Well, the AD&D Revised DMG I've got goes on about experience for slain monsters and experience for treasure, with an "eh, eyeball it" for any other experience point gaining action (like overcoming a trap to get at said loot). Technically 3rd edition and up, beating an encounter would get you experience based on the CR of the encounter, killed beasties or not, as long as you resolved the encounter - but the initial AD&D paradigm was firmly "kill monster, collect loot, get XP."
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# ¿ Dec 2, 2019 03:48 |
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Spire needs a book of expanding on the stuff that is going on outside the spire that still influences it - more stuff about human arcology archeology, and lots more stuff about gnolls and their kingdom - from everything in the various books, the spire version of gnolls are an incredibly sophisticated civilization putting up a hell of a fight against the invading elves, but the aelfir universally treat them as wild animals, so all the ones you see in the spire are either deep undercover, or broken slave-pets on leashes. There's totally room for a spire-spinoff game about the forever war against Far Nujab and the drow who suffer their durance there.
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# ¿ Dec 2, 2019 22:52 |
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These early Dragonlance modules kind of explain why certain SSI Gold Box games had so much horrible endless cannonfodder encounter bullshit - they were being completly faithful to their source material. At least with a computer game, you don't have to run the packs of thirty goblins on paper...
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# ¿ Dec 4, 2019 22:32 |
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Robindaybird posted:I remember trying to play the gold box Dragonlance games, and just dragonmens everywhere, and being utterly encumbered by the sheer amount of platinum from all those fights while I was trying to figure out where the hell I was suppose to go next. Back on the plot railroad, of course. Goodness, this fancy game engine supports a vast over-world roaming map? Better paint it all with one encounter type cell.
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# ¿ Dec 4, 2019 23:00 |
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Halloween Jack posted:I mainly played the NES version of Pool of Radiance, and I don't think that had scaling. (That version has an overall smoother presentation, at the cost of a few sidequests.) Even then, leveling up is well worth it to get more spells that will let you just take a whole pack of weak monsters out of the fight. D&D crossbreeding is an ethical and moral cesspit. Half-orcs and rape implications, Dark Sun's Mul (at least Dark Sun is supposed to be a horrible bleak wasteland, so they're not as jarringly out of place as the gully dwarves). Then gully dwarves exist, blowing even the kender out of the water for cringe-worthy awfulness, since they're treated as comic relief of a particularly offensive, regressive "ha ha look at the r-word" vein.
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# ¿ Dec 5, 2019 05:17 |
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Terrible Opinions posted:Honestly if an RPG is going to go in on half races it really should just go full Galaxy Quest. Yes he is aware that his girlfriend is a squid, not a woman with squid costume items, and everyone is just okay with that. That's pretty much the life story of generic good-aligned half-metallic dragons at least. "Mom's a shape-shifted silver dragon, so what?"
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# ¿ Dec 5, 2019 07:33 |
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Wait, Ember is a red dragon. Red dragons are immune to fire, why did she scream in agony when Flamestrike used her red dragon fire breath attack on her? Who wrote this drat cutscene?!
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# ¿ Dec 7, 2019 00:11 |
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For a setting with Dragon in the title, Dragonlance really doesn't use dragons very well as characters, does it? They're treated as giant, scaly flying horses, despite the average adult red dragon being a supergenius super-powered supervillain by the Monster Manual. "Let's just shove a pair of red dragons into a dungeon for fresh characters, I'm sure they can handle the TPK breath weapon dice."
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# ¿ Dec 7, 2019 00:22 |
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Prism posted:Oh, that's easy: like everything else in 1E, red dragons are not immune to fire. They don't even resist it. You can light fire elementals on fire in 1E; the rules don't care. ha. That explains it. They're "born immune to fire" by the time 2E rolls around.
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# ¿ Dec 7, 2019 00:22 |
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Ultiville posted:"Super smart" is really hard to turn into an interesting character trait, so I agree. And "super smart" as an incidental to your entire species of giant min-maxed combat monsters makes it even harder. That's D&D ability scores for you. 3rd edition dragons don't even need it for their spellcasting (it's keyed off charisma, because sorcerers), they just get "you're a giant nerd AND a super-lizard" because reasons. Also, here's a fun thing out of the OD&D Rules Cyclopedia about dragons and their immunities: quote:Dragons are immune to the effects of their: So, you could fireball basic D&D red dragons, but they no-sold their own breath attacks (meaning Red vs Red would be a badass contest of claws and teeth, not some sad standoff zappy fight) Seatox fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Dec 7, 2019 |
# ¿ Dec 7, 2019 01:15 |
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Wait, so Paladine is actively killing off his own worshipers through negligence and monkeycheese antics?
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# ¿ Dec 8, 2019 02:42 |
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Night10194 posted:You know my general theory that D&D gods are idiotic, murderous parasites was founded by Forgotten Realms and all, but it just keeps happening! The worst bit is that Paladine is a lovely knockoff of Bahamut the Platinum dragon, who in every other setting is a subtle god of protection, mostly against evil dragons, yet here's Fizban just letting a Red Dragon strafe the refugee caravan. No subtle "inexplicably, none of the refugees were injured, despite all the dragonfire", "you wake up in the morning to find a whole bunch of dead draconinan soldiers something killed in the night" or other hints that the Old rear end in a top hat Magician is actually The Patinum Dargun (legally distinct from the Platinum Dragon). No, he's just a loving millstone around the already hosed over party's neck. Crucifying him as a distraction for the dragonarmies is being merciful.
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# ¿ Dec 8, 2019 03:07 |
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I'm sure they're going to lean on some kind of "oh putting up with all of Fizban's idiot murderous antics were a TEST! OF YOUR WORTH AS HEROES!" crap at some point. That's loving abuser logic, Hickman, you hack.
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# ¿ Dec 8, 2019 03:40 |
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Fundamentally evil, yet more of a badass hero than Fizban. And that's why the 9-slot alignment matrix is a bad system, and whoever put Good/Evil onto basic's less awful Law/Chaos axis is doubly bad.
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# ¿ Dec 8, 2019 11:40 |
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Just Dan Again posted:Fizban probably inspired one of the things I really wish I'd gotten to bust out when I was running 4e: The Old Man with the Canaries. It was a setup where the PCs meet Bahamut disguised as an old man (accompanied by seven canaries), and he helps them fight an encounter ten levels too high for them through buffs, heals, and debuffs to the enemies. The PCs still have to do the work of making the attacks and using their powers effectively, but having a god on their side gives them the boost they need. Nah, the Old Man with the Canaries guise of Bahamut predates Dragonlance IIRC. It's why Fizban's a cheap plastic knockoff. Edit: In fact, a quick google shows that Bahamut showed up with his 7 canaries in Dragon Magazine #38, predating Dragonlance by 4 years. Seatox fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Dec 8, 2019 |
# ¿ Dec 8, 2019 21:52 |
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The Empire Strikes Back was out four years before DL4 was published... and it shows, doesn't it? "Join me, and we can rule Krynn as Highlord and Player Characters!" says the black armored figure. "No! That can't be, that's impossible!" scream the player characters, before they plunge into the railroad beneath Dwarf City. "Oh my!" goes C-FIZBAN0, while R2-TASSELHOF beeps and boops.
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# ¿ Dec 10, 2019 03:28 |
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Just look at the history of the D&D kobolds through the various editions. They went from "little annoying dog people" to "little annoying lizard-dog people, also lots of traps" to "little dragon minions who can turn into deeply scary sorcerers with the right splatbook" That's massively different from their mythological namesake's root as some kind of invisible spirit critter.
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# ¿ Dec 11, 2019 00:57 |
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Could a Spelljammer outfly a rocketship? The high-end spelljamming helms had some pretty decent maneuverability... the XXVc ships would have the weapon advantage, though, Spelljammer craft (apart from the *actual* Spelljammer which had a Sphere-of-annhilation projector weapon) only have ballistae and catapults.
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# ¿ Dec 11, 2019 07:19 |
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1994 Toyota Celica posted:Yeah, this is more what I'm interested in: if your high level AD&D second edition plane-hopping campaign somehow got their Spelljammer to 25th century Sol, how would they stack up Even if magic works in 25th century Sol-space, if you're using Spelljammer rules your Cleric is going to have a miserable time getting their spells back, because there's no local allied god to petition for a recharge - unless they're high enough level to cast Gate, which lets their god reach them. But then you're letting an AD&D Faerunian god get their tentacles into an alien cosmology, and, well, see the general thread opinion of those assholes. ...also, digging out my Spelljammer PDF, a spelljammer ship moves at 100 million miles a day in a straight line outside of a gravity well, and Spelljammer helms break all kinds of physical laws about inertia. It would be a serious Out Of Context Problem for RAM to try and catch a Spelljammer vessel, but there's a fun adventure seed right there - everyone in sol space would want to get their hands on a Spelljammer vessel.
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# ¿ Dec 11, 2019 13:21 |
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Nessus posted:The intervention of Mentor of Arisia Exactly! AD&D psionics are totally not magic, honest (they unified it a bit in 3rd edition).
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# ¿ Dec 12, 2019 12:01 |
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Everyone posted:Magical beasts, probably not unless they hold some specific position within the D-Armies. As for evil dragons, I tend to think that they're a bit like Darth Vader in the Empire. He doesn't really have a military rank, but the Emperor backs him up so even Admirals do what he says or they get the Neck-crush demotion. Figure the Dragons will obey the most ancient powerful one of their number - who serves as the Highlord's mount/partner. The Dragon will serve the army Highlord as Takhasis commands - as long as the Dragon deems the Highlord worthy of respect. That's probably why Ariakus took over the Red Dragonarmy. At that point Ariakus was the only one who could command the respect of the Red dragons after the Toede debacle. At least Red Dragons, as the designated Chaotic Evil ones. Blue Dragons probably insist on a complicated hierarchy, want their orders signed in triplicate, and will immediately but subtly undermine any Highlord who fails to submit his TPS reports with the correct coversheet, as is the Lawful Evil way.
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# ¿ Dec 14, 2019 07:04 |
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"Please, pay no attention to the obvious silver dragon. We trained him in spycraft wrong as a joke."
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# ¿ Dec 15, 2019 00:54 |
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PurpleXVI posted:So far the game is 2/2 on dragons transforming into humanoid form being annoying. Dargent isn't as bad as Evenstar, since she actually tries to help the party rather than hinder them, but considering that she could just have figured out the party weren't dickheads in five minutes, popped into dragon form and given them a lift to Foghaven Vale or whereever they were going in five minutes rather than being coy and mysterious about it, I'm still putting it in the "dickhead dragon"-bin. To be just a tiny bit fair to the metallics, they don't know that Takhisis has done her thing with their eggs to make the draconians at this point, so you can at least excuse Dargent for wanting to lay low lest it endanger the hostage-eggs (that don't exist anymore, because the products of said eggs are currently lurking around the Racist Elf Forest posing as adventurers). Evenstar has pretty much zero excuse, though.
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# ¿ Dec 15, 2019 01:28 |
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Ronwayne posted:Is this actual intelligence or more "I'm stupid, faster!" It's D&D Int, which has a troubled history when it comes time to define "Well, what does it really mean outside of dice bonuses?" - for pretty much the same reasons that IQ is a discredited measure of smartness, etc. In 3rd edition, high Int gives bonus skill points, which means that a dragon can spare enough to pick up some Knowledge (Revolutionary Marxist Ideology) or Profession (Bad Poster) on top of the usual gamut of combat related skills that they get as species skills (from having monster hitdice). Most 3rd ed dragons have pretty good Wisdom and Charisma scores too - so they're kinda sorta not supposed to be total idiots. But that's mental stat scores in pretty much every D&D derived game, ever... examine it closely and you start to see some problematic stuff.
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# ¿ Dec 15, 2019 22:16 |
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Carados posted:Problematic just for existing, especially when it comes to humanoid races and modifiers. The half-orc 'race' - not only do they get the -2 int -2 charisma, they also have all the other awful poo poo going on with the whole "half-breed child of probably rape" thing. Oh, and the whole 'race' as opposed to 'species' thing. You use the r-word to describe your character's what-I-am-born-as stat spread, then thirty seconds later you're up to your neck in shoddy nazi bullshit and, well, racism. I wish I could just excise all the D&D crap wedged into my brain from a misspent youth. Seatox fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Dec 15, 2019 |
# ¿ Dec 15, 2019 23:15 |
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How bad was Dave Arneson compared to Gygax? You don't hear as much about him (for "sidelined out of TSR" values of not much about him)
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# ¿ Dec 16, 2019 23:37 |
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Ultiville posted:If Orcs existed and you slaughtered their babies, you'd be a war criminal. Like, if someone advocated war crimes against a fictional nation of humans, I'd have some really pointed questions. The people in question being a different fictional species doesn't really make a huge difference here. "But they're listed in Mein Kamph as Always Chaotic Evil!" protested the stormtrooper, as he reloaded his sub-machinegun.
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# ¿ Dec 16, 2019 23:53 |
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Paladine, turn in your God Card. You're fired. You'd think idiot-mc-godface would have noticed the whole draconian thing going on and put two-and-two together. "Geee, all these dragon-men are kinda like twisted, corrupted mini-metallic dragons, wherever did they come from?"
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# ¿ Dec 17, 2019 00:47 |
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Libertad! posted:Like Istar, Paladine is kind of Lawful Stupid rather than Lawful Good. Honestly, it's just all so badly written - like, TVTropes levels of "well let's just throw in three pages of Capitalized References To Stupid Memes, that's what makes a story, right?"
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# ¿ Dec 17, 2019 01:21 |
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# ¿ May 21, 2024 07:03 |
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Midjack posted:what the gently caress You perhaps missed the discussion about orc children, Garry Gygax's love of genocide and D&D alignments?
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# ¿ Dec 17, 2019 03:14 |