Woohoo! My copies of On The Origin Of PCs and Start Of Darkness just showed up in the mail. Consider my work calendar for the day cleared.
Yeah, doubt I’d ever want to ask you to.
My gaming group can distinguish between an online comic poking fun at how D&D can be played, and how we actually play D&D… and the difference between those and real world ethics/morality.
It’d be like having the guy back who was arguing that my paladin would’ve lost his class benefits because I was a registered Republican.
Bwuh?!
Because I’d committed an Evil Act, you see.
Even me, the dirty freaking gay liberal, wouldn’t take it that far. Did this guy blow up Republican Party local headquarters in his spare time?
Edited to add: That’s totally beside the whole game vs. real life thing, of course…
Wouldn’t a paladin lose his powers by having a Chaotic Democrat as his player?
I kid, I kid…
Oh, I envy you the next hours of your life! When you finish Start of Darkness, please let us know your reactions – I found the ending to be by far the most devastating pages involving stick figures I’ve read to date.
I don’t play D&D so can’t argue whether Haley’s behavior was kosher according to the game standards. But I was surprised and rather disappointed in her. I know Crystal has been relentless and vicious to Haley, and I wouldn’t have been taken aback if…
- They didn’t have a truce, and
- Crystal hadn’t been naked (nearly) and vulnerable
If those two conditions had been in place, Haley’s getting the drop on Crystal would’ve made sense and indeed be fully appropriate. But taking five minutes to decide to murder someone, do so with a lighthearted quip, and kill her using the victim’s own knife, seemed especially coldblooded to me. I know Crystal will probably be resurrected, and death doesn’t mean the same thing in this strip than in others. Still… Yowsa. I almost wondered if Haerta stopped by Haley’s place after leaving Vaarsuvius’s. Put it this way: if Belkar approves, as he obviously does judging by his expression, that’s pretty scary.
I mean, at least V had something of an excuse of having been utterly exhausted, on his/her own, recently attacked, terrified for his/her family, enraged by seeing Kyrie nailed to a tree and the kids’ legs broken, and goaded by the soul splice. Haley’s act comes right after she’s been reunited with her boyfriend and surrounded by companions.
I don’t think this’ll be a Huge Deal – though I kinda wish it would be – but I’m not sure Rich intends this to be a minor blip on the canvas. I’m really curious to see how Elan reacts, if it ever comes up. Of course he tends to think the very best of his friends, so I doubt he’d judge.
Speaking of Elan, good for him for standing up to V! He really has grown up a bit, hasn’t he? I’m dying to know if V really intends to give up the splice so quickly. I sure hope so, but it wouldn’t be as good a story if it were that easy. I don’t quite know the mechanics of how this works: do the spliced souls have the ability to stick around even if V doesn’t want them to?
Second question: How does resurrection work? Do the ex-corpses suffer from any after-effects, or do they just go on as if nothing ever happened? I’m just curious to know if Roy will just wake up and go on with his life as if he woke from a nap, or is there some kind of “a Price Must Be Paid” sorta thing? (I also wonder how he’ll react to the changed dynamics of the group; Belkar acting relatively responsibly, Elan more confident / competent, V being psycho…)
Ooh! Fun! I ordered those books on Thursday. When did you order yours? Apegames didn’t send me any way to track the shipment.
Brilliant! But 20 years too late! :mad:
At the time, we simply laughed at him and told him it just wasn’t going to work out, don’t let the door hit him on his way out.
We’ve seen a raise dead in action.
As the Oracle alludes to, he lost a level in the process, so needs to get some XP. That would be the price to be paid. It might otherwise be just like waking up from a nap… but it’s currently unclear if Roy will retain memories of what he has observed while deceased.
I suspect he will, since there’s more potential for jokes that way. And there’s some payoff waiting from his dead grandpa teaching him that figher feat, which he’ll need to remember for a payoff on that.
Good God, man. Stop your fucking crying already. It’s nauseating.
This is simply not true. According to the rules, XP is awarded for overcoming challenges. First of all, overcoming the challenge posed by a monster does not necessarily mean killing it: The example given in the books is that a stealthy character who successfully sneaks past the guards has overcome the challenge posed by the guards, and therefore earns XP for them. Second, not all things that pose challenges are monsters: Even just going by the books, traps and various natural disasters are also assigned challenge ratings. So disarming a trap and saving your friends from a forest fire would also gain you XP, without any killing required.
That’s some trap!
… my players are probably going to hate you.
Attacking a naked person in the shower – evil.
Attacking an evil person, who has shown potential to hunt you down as well as continuing to commit evil acts, who also just happens to be naked in the shower and without a bunch of powerful magic, is certainly not lawful, but it is not EVIL.
Creating an undead skeleton from her corpse would be evil, as would using her (completely made up for this example) infant son as bait for a trap to kill her. But being opportunistic is NOT evil.
This is getting close to the line for this forum, so I would suggest that everybody involved in this side argument to avoid personal insults.
Assiduously.
Well, in Redcloak’s case, the paladins don’t rush out and slaughter a peaceful town of goblins simply because they’re goblins, but because the Sapphire Guard believes that the bearer of Crimson Mantle is a threat to creation, and because the Dark God of the goblins plans to usehis champion to release the Snarl and destroy the universe.
Of course, it backfires horribly on them, because it means that Redcloak becomes the new bearer of the Crimson Mantle, communicates with the Dark God and decides to do just that, motivated by the slaughter of his village and his renewed devotion to the Dark God.
You might want to re-read the post I made, because I think you missed the analogy.
It was stated that pre-mediated murder was always evil. Well, a pretty standard D&D adventure is something along the lines of, “Go to the Temple of Really Nasty Evil and kill the high priest.” That’s pre-meditated murder, and it’s also the sort of quest a paladin would have no qualms about accepting. A paladin would balk at waiting until the priest was at his most vulnerable before attacking, but a Chaotic Good character would not. And he still would not be committing an evil act, because taking an unfair advantage over an enemy is not automatically an evil act - it is a chaotic act.
This seems a bit contradictory to me. If it’s so easy to concoct a scenario in which an ambush is good and/or lawful then you can hardly say that such an act can never be good or lawful. If such scenarios are so easy to construct, (and I agree that they are) they would also be pretty common.
In Knorf’s defense, to a non-player such as myself, D&D morality does seem pretty shady and relativistic. Detached from reality. Downright disturbing at times. What really doesn’t help matters is that many people on the Giant forums seem to have trouble distinguishing between what is good and what is practical. The optimum course of action in a war game is not necessarily a morally righteous one. What you try to factor in the ostensibly rigid 9-square Alignment matrix, things can get ugly.
Sigh…for the second time in this thread alone, I find myself compelled to apologize for getting angry over someone else’s interpretation of D&D alignment rules.
Knorf, please accept my apology. While I do think that the whole “I’m very, very glad I have never played D&D with any of you” thing was a bit over the top, I shouldn’t have snarled at you. You’re free to play the game however you want.
And holy crap. I don’t even PLAY D&D anymore. :smack:
Not in any game I’ve ever played. The ones I’ve played have been along the lines of “the priests from the evil temple have kidnapped the Duke’s daughter, and plan to sacrifice her in a ritual that will release the dark god from his imprisonment. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to rescue the girl and prevent the ritual” Killing the high priest is a probable, but not certain consequence of the mission. He may escape. He may be captured alive. You may turn invisible, sneak in, pick the locks, rescue the girl and sneak out again without bloodshed. Any mission to kill a priest, who is not *right now *threatening anyone would count as an assassination. No paladin would accept such a task.