It looks almost exactly like 3e's version, and is one of those cases where the original writers were obviously trying to precisely recreate something from a book or film within the constraints of D&D.
Ahh ok. Sorta kinda but not really then. I think I'd go more with dominate person. They were still awake and able to take over one or more... they had a big dumb troll as their main henchy, and they would constantly be trying to "cpature" the main character by trying to control them too.
I saw an interesting interaction today about the Leonin Daunting Roar ability. There was a blinded Leonin adjacent to allies and enemies. He wanted to use the Daunting Roar ability. The relevant text of the ability is "Creatures of your choice within 10 feet of you".
The DM ruled that the Leonin ...
Novice DM trying to make my bad guys intimidating.
My party is fighting a Hag Coven and I want to make this fight pretty hard without killing anyone hopefully. So three Green Hags (Coven Variant) are CR 5, but with only 102hp I feel like the fight will be over in an instant.
The hags lose their p...
@Ben It's one of those spells that goes back to AD&D 1e (and I think OD&D + Greyhawk) that was modeled from some story where a wizard possesses someone else using a magic jar. Unless the hero finds that item the wizard can't be killed. A lich phylactery is something quite similar in that regard. I'll do some more digging, but I guess that dominate person covers what you want well enough, right?
Anyone in the mood for a chat about worldbuilding? I am working on a backdrop for a DnD game and I want there to be a clear heavan and hell vibe but want to twist it that hell is really the better of the two options, because who wouldn't want to spend eternity in a rock'n'roll party?
Quick question about how to do the following in Anydice. I’m trying to figure out what the statistics are for a game called Household currently on Kickstarter that utilizes the Favored by Fortune system by 2LM.
The game uses d6 with custom sides. There are 4 special unique suits, then a blank, ...
"Listen," said Crowley desperately, "how many musicians do you think your side have got, eh? First grade, I mean."
Aziraphale looked taken aback.
"Well, I should think -" he began.
"Two," said Crowley. "Elgar and Liszt. That's all. We've got the rest. Beethoven, Brahms, all the Bachs, Mozart, the lot. Can you imagine eternity with Elgar?"
Aziraphale shut his eyes. "All too easily," he groaned.
"That's it, then," said Crowley with a gleam of triumph. He knew Aziraphale's weak spot all right. "N…
@Mithical if heaven is so dull, why would anyone want to go there? Avoiding being pitchforked for eternity? And anyhow, why do demons even want to poke damned souls forever?
I feel like it is no fun if the choice is really a no brainer. But I also like the idea that the suffering in hell is not chronic high intensity, but more like mild discomfort, the sort that an enlightened mind is able to take with equanimity. So really the over coddled soul longs for the stiffling totalitarian boredom, and the free spirits wind up "suffering" in liberty...but i feel that also feels kinda trite
@BESW im not, im building a fantasy world. As far as i can tell my table are all atheists and have no education in any faith...so I kinda have free reign, but also cant relly on them just getting any tropes
D&D doesn't really do the kind of hamartiology that lends itself to Christian-style heaven and hell cosmologies, but its creators are so rooted in Christian epistemology that it takes on those trappings anyway. You're working in a kind of wild space.
Since by introducing a heaven and a hell, you're introducing both the idea of a sin/salvation dynamic and the notion that they are defined in a way that's meaningful to the mortals subject to them.
It sounds like you're introducing a real-world cosmology that you're familiar with through pop culture osmosis, and then trying to subvert expectations in a thoughtful way. I'm not saying you shouldn't, but it is a slippery task you've set yourself.
I use that term in it's english meaning, not whatever wizards of the cost defien it as
@BESW Not quite, I was raised as a catholic, so have a little more than a pop appreciation of the god of the pope, I'm just concious I can't expect that from my players
Yeah, for my world I have the idea that the "gods" arent gods in the way a christian might consider, they are just very powerfull magical beings that are suffiecntly powerfull for a medieval mind to want to worship them,
they are not immortal, or omnipotent, or omni anything
they are more like the greek or roman pantheon,
yeah
but the "mortals" have chosen to worship some and not others, hence the heavan and hell split
It's just the ones the humans, or whatever, see as "good" are just kinda not "good" by modern humanist standards, and the "bad" ones are probably better, all things considered, but still have drawbacks
Yeah I guess, though I want to use the imagry as short hand to make the players get a sense of demons and angels and make assumptions based on aesthics
aesthetics
if it looks like a demon, and burns like one, it must be bad, right?
I dunno, maybe it won't land they same way if you havent grown up in that meme space
and maybe trying to subvert expectations will be ttoo transparent if handled badly
I could put the "hell" in the clouds and the heaven in the pit of a volcano
sorry, I type too fast to spell correct
@BESW I was hoping so, I mean and at least one player is a stickler for sticking to the lore, so I kinda already committed myself to the two cultures using 'celestial' and 'infernal' languages because I would have had a mutany on my hands if I tried to invent whole new languages
lets stick with lord of light for the minute. The idea I had would be that their society is commited to eradicating physical suffering, and so have built up a very intricate set of rules, for basically doing no difficult work. They don't recognise some of the other 'deity' beings as having some moral value, and so are kinda commited to exploiting the 'infernals'
But I'm not sold to that.... In my mind I have this idea of mental and physical suffering being counterbalancing forces, that optimising for the absence of one just perpetuates the other
(An attitude that has as much to do with my life experience of much mental suffering doing knowledge work, and zero mental suffering doing physical labor)
And I kinda like the idea of somehow having these two 'god' societies representing extremes on this contium...obviously the infernals rebel ... and there is a big old war...and now as far as anyone can tell the gods are all dead
but plot twist, some dumbass cleric finds a way to bring back the gods, and now we need to raise the armies of hell to stop them enslaving everyone
I liked how 4e handled it: Angels are servants of the gods, manifestations of the Astral Sea itself in which the gods live. They are neither good nor bad, and serve all gods equally well. Demons were manifestations of the Elemental Chaos which serve the Primordial beings which originally fashioned all creation and fight the gods to unmake it, but they became corrupted by a Shard of Evil which fell from the Astral Sea. And Devils are angels cursed by the gods for following an angel who plotted to kill a god.
(4e leaned into the "order vs chaos" affiliations of the texts that D&D originally drew its "alignment" concept from, more than 3e or 5e which tend to treat it as more of an ethical structure)
yeah, 4e's worldbuilding couldn't purge itself of all the franchise's baggage, but I think of the Points of Light cosmology as the best version of itself.
So the "gods" have tried to bring order to a world that is unstructured and are fighting entropy...they appear beautiful, and good, because we like things with high entropy
what does it mean to be corrupted here, is it no longer sharing the values of the gods?
Kinda. The Primordials were beings that took pure elemental chaos and fashioned it into worlds, then destroyed the worlds to begin again, like children playing with clay. Then one of their worlds manifested beings powerful enough to resist the Primordials--the gods. They fought the Primordials and imprisoned them, then began fighting amongst themselves about how to rule the world.
hmm, layers of gods...I digg...I kinda like the idea that at every level there is a larger more powerfull, more general entity (or collection of) sitting behind.
(I mean, I think it is fundamentally stupid, but for a fantasy setting I like it because it gives me options)
Corruption is all a matter of perspective; the only universally agreed upon corruption is the influence of the Far Realm, the fathomless spaces outside the Elemental Chaos whose inhabitants' agendas are unknowable but seem bent on fashioning the world into a form antithetical to rational thought.
(It's from the Far Realm that beings like Aboleths and Fell Taints come, and it's the influence of the Far Realm which creates mortal aberrations like Mind Flayers.)
I mean, the real answer is "the creators were copying Christian-influenced media despite not understanding its source material, and then got bit on the butt because of backlash from Christian activists who believed the aesthetics of the theming was sufficient to cause harm so now it's all a fantastic mess because they had to walk back all the explicit references."
haha, yeah. But outside of such constraints...maybe they collect souls out of vanity,... it's like a competitive thing to brag about who has the most followers :P
@AndrewMicallef The two most influential texts on hell in Western popular consciousness are John Milton's Paradise Lost and Dante Alighieri's Inferno. Neither are theological texts, of course.
@AndrewMicallef If you've served the interests of one side on the mortal planes, they'll take in your soul. Otherwise, who knows what will happen to your soul - drifting through the planes, powerless and floating, sucked into the Far Realm or Beyond, dissipated? Bound to a sword, forced into slavery? Offering the humans an opportunity to prevent that means you gain the allegiance of countless pawns in the mortal realm.
@AncientSwordRage It's the argument put forward by a not-so-much-fallen-as-sauntered-vaguely-downward angel trying to convince his non-fallen angel boyfriend to prevent the apocalypse.
@AncientSwordRage It's an argument by a character, who is really trying to convince himself more than his audience--and not really succeeding, ultimately. Not that he's convinced of the merits of heaven either; being a Pratchett-influenced story it has a strong humanist theme.
@Mithical Ahhh, thats a better way to think about it. Souls will go somewhere, and if you where a good little minion you may get a home...
@Mithical although I will need to think about how corruption fits into this. I guess 'corruption' is just the changing of alliegnce as one side views towards the other...And suddenly a post modernist view makes perfect sense. Although I guess that aint necessarily so. There are still better and worse outcomes for souls, but the whole thing is complicated by what is known by the followers...
Fizban's Treasury of Dragons puts the lair of Raulothim, an ancient Emerald Dragon, in the Pits of Stars:
Raulothim is an ancient emerald dragon who dwells in an extinct volcano known as the Pit of Stars, on the northernmost isle of Ruathym off the Sword Coast of Faerûn.
After a quick research,...
Quick question about how to do the following in Anydice. I’m trying to figure out what the statistics are for a game called Household currently on Kickstarter that utilizes the Favored by Fortune system by 2LM.
The game uses d6 with custom sides. There are 4 special unique suits, then a blank, ...
Fizban's Treasury of Dragons puts the lair of Raulothim, an ancient Emerald Dragon, in the Pits of Stars:
Raulothim is an ancient emerald dragon who dwells in an extinct volcano known as the Pit of Stars, on the northernmost isle of Ruathym off the Sword Coast of Faerûn.
After a quick research,...
