Some (probably silly) questions about D&D (4th ed.)

The Game Room
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[QUOTE=meenie7]
How exactly would a “lawful evil” character (which, I assume, would be some sort of Machievellian guy who uses the rule of law to hurt people and get what he wants) fit into a game where you have to work in a group and get along with other people? Wouldn’t a person like that be completely untrustworthy?
[/QUOTE]

No more than any other alignment.

The Archetypal creature for LE is the Devil. You can ALWAYS be sure a Devil will keep its word.

You just have to be very careful you know what they’re actually promising to do/not do. They’re very good at loopholes.

A LE person could be take the Devil’s route, or they could be a tyrant who publicly flays anyone who defies him, or they could be a mafia type, who’ll stab you in the back if he can within his own particular code of honour, or a highly disciplined assassin.

A Lawful Good character, could very well lie through his teeth, kill in cold blood*, or betray a party member, if they thought there was good reason, too. (Unless they lived by a code of conduct that forbid one or another parts of this…I’ve currently got a secondary character that’s going slightly nuts, as he’s a LG bounty hunter who owes a debt of honour and gratitude to a group of pirates - with a very high bounty on their heads to boot.)

A Chaotic Evil character might be sneaky and Machiavellian, too - he’s just not as likely to be good at it. Or, he might take the route of the archetypal CE creatures, the Demons, and just stab you in the back - or, more likely, the front - when he feels like it.

One big problem with the old alignment system (not terribly well fixed in 4e, though the devaluing of alignment as a mechanic in general is a big fix) is that the Lawful/Chaotic axis as generally presented, is actually two separate axes - respect for Rule of Law and personal discipline, which aren’t always congruent concepts. The latter is why CE is less likely to be good at the Machiavellian type scheming - they generally lack the kind of discipline needed to pull it off properly.

  • ‘Paladins Killing Baby Goblins’ is a classic test for how a person interprets alignment - for some players/DMs, the Paladins in question have lost their powers because they’ve committed an evil act - killing infants in cold blood, just because of their race - for others, NOT doing so would be the evil act - allowing evil creatures to live. I’m in the first camp, personally.
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[QUOTE=Tengu]
‘Paladins Killing Baby Goblins’ is a classic test for how a person interprets alignment - for some players/DMs, the Paladins in question have lost their powers because they’ve committed an evil act - killing infants in cold blood, just because of their race - for others, NOT doing so would be the evil act - allowing evil creatures to live. I’m in the first camp, personally.
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I think I’d agree with you on that. They’re just babies…they didn’t ask to be born as goblins. :frowning: I’m a big softie, and don’t think I could ever play an evil character.

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That’s one of the things I liked about Legend of the Five Rings. Any good samurai would kill the baby goblins and there’d be universal agreement that it was a good thing to do.

Marc

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There are a few things to remember when playing D&D.

#1. D&D isn’t really designed to emulate the fantasy fiction you enjoy reading. In my experience it’s somewhat difficult to make characters that closely resemble the characters from my favorite fantasy books. D&D is its own little fantasy world.

#2. D&D is a group experience. In my opinion players should always be willing to bend their character concept in order to make for a better gaming experience for everybody. I rarely have a character concept that remains exactly the same from conception to creation.

#3. Don’t forget that there’s a game element to RPGs. That means they’re designed with certain rules and should be fair for all involved.
Personally I think the idea of a blind character is intriguing but --as others have mentioned-- I’m not sure how to pull it off in D&D according to the rules.

Let’s assume that the blind character has honed her senses well enough that she is effectively not blind within 10 squares of her location. While she can’t see color, facial expressions, etc., she otherwise has equal awareness of her surroundings as any other character. As a Wizard all of her lower level spells only operate with 10 squares and even at higher levels they only go up to 20 so she’d still be pretty good at spell slinging.

Here are the advantages that being blind would give her.

#1. She’s effectively able to detect all invisible beings.
#2. She’s immune to any spell or effect that would obscure vision.
#3. She’s immune to any spell or effect that requires the target to have vision.

The advantages just seem to outweigh the disadvantages.

Marc

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[QUOTE=MGibson]
There are a few things to remember when playing D&D.

#1. D&D isn’t really designed to emulate the fantasy fiction you enjoy reading. In my experience it’s somewhat difficult to make characters that closely resemble the characters from my favorite fantasy books. D&D is its own little fantasy world.

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Amusingly enough, I don’t really like fantasy fiction. I do like zapping things with magic in RPG games though. :slight_smile:

I can see that while interesting, Cecilia would probably not fly well in this world. I’m just having fun at the moment trying to make one character of each class based on the characters from my book (who, amusingly, are all very nice vampires in ‘real life.’) I think I will use my smarty-pants librarian Arkady as the wizard instead. :slight_smile:

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The Paladin thing got fixed in 3e: Races have tendencies towards alignments, but are not always the alignments. Except, say, other planar types like demons and devils which are still X by their nature. Mortals can change.

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Thus, killing orc babies that could have been raised to be Good is as evil as killing Human babies.

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[QUOTE=MGibson]
Let’s assume that the blind character has honed her senses well enough that she is effectively not blind within 10 squares of her location. While she can’t see color, facial expressions, etc., she otherwise has equal awareness of her surroundings as any other character. As a Wizard all of her lower level spells only operate with 10 squares and even at higher levels they only go up to 20 so she’d still be pretty good at spell slinging.
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This is kind of a big assumption. There are already game mechanics for seeing and hearing, just assuming she can ‘see’ everything within 50’ doesn’t feel right. How can she ‘see’ walls? How well could she ‘see’ in the middle of a battle? Even people who have been blind all their lives still need dogs, canes, etc.

Um, no. She is no better able to detect invisible beings than visible ones. She still needs to hear them. While she might be better at hearing, it’s still not some absolute detection ability. The big difference is that she wouldn’t necessarily get some of the penalities incurred from being attacked by an invisible foe, because she already has them all the time. It’s kind of like everyone is invisible. She would lose her Dex bonus to AC most of the time, for example, instead of just when attacked by an invisible foe.

True, but she’s now very vulnerable to any spell or effect that obscures hearing. Harpy song, sonic spells, etc are all capable of ‘blinding’ her. If a bard is strumming away singing for the party, that would be very distracting in spite of the bonuses. She wouldn’t be able to fall back on sight as a secondary sense as a normal human is able to fall back on hearing when blinding, cuz it’s gone. One good Thunderclap and she’s in trouble.

So she’s immune to some gaze attacks (not all require the target to meet the gazer’s eyes), and some instances of Symbol, and maybe a few other things.

Seems to me like you’re missing a lot of things here. Targetting spells is going to be more difficult. Researching new spells will be all but impossible. She’s going to have a hard time simply travelling with the party.

Hey meenie7, what about a familiar? IIRC, at some level a wizard can see through their familiar’s eyes. I don’t remember the details. That might be a good way around it, familiar vulnerabilities aside.

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[QUOTE=hotflungwok]
This is kind of a big assumption.

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Of course it is. The very first post I made in this thread listed the reasons why the character concept would be difficult in D&D. The post you’re referring to is the one where I go ahead and make a big assumption. Guilty as charged.

Marc

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[QUOTE=hotflungwok]

Hey meenie7, what about a familiar? IIRC, at some level a wizard can see through their familiar’s eyes. I don’t remember the details. That might be a good way around it, familiar vulnerabilities aside.
[/QUOTE]

See post 2. :slight_smile:

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Are there even familiars in 4E? I didn’t see anything about them (or animal companions for Rangers).

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[QUOTE=hotflungwok]
This is kind of a big assumption. There are already game mechanics for seeing and hearing, just assuming she can ‘see’ everything within 50’ doesn’t feel right. How can she ‘see’ walls? How well could she ‘see’ in the middle of a battle? Even people who have been blind all their lives still need dogs, canes, etc.
[/QUOTE]

Not that big an assumption. There’s already a mechanic for it in 3rd Ed: Blindsight. It’s available as a feat (out to 10’, IIRC) in the Sword and Fist supplement.

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[QUOTE=Miller]
Not that big an assumption. There’s already a mechanic for it in 3rd Ed: Blindsight. It’s available as a feat (out to 10’, IIRC) in the Sword and Fist supplement.
[/QUOTE]

As well as the general feat blind fight, which allows you to reroll concealment everything being “invisible” doesn’t count anymore (so long as they’re in melee, it doesn’t affect ranged apparently).

You can do it, it just takes a couple extra feats here and there.

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[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]
The Paladin thing got fixed in 3e
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Well, no, it didn’t - they might have changed the way alignment is described in the books in an attempt to rectify that stuff, but I didn’t discuss things with people in groups other than mine until just before 3.5 came out, and I STILL encountered people - playing 3e, just like me, this wasn’t inter-edition bickering - who believed Goblinoid, Orcish, Gnoll, etc infants were Paladin fodder.

The early books (OD&D and 1e, more than 2e) are the source of the problem, but it’s been perpetuated by players despite attempts by TSR/Wizards to fix it.

On a similar note - while I still prefer the 9 sector alignment setup of 1-3.5e, I do like that the restrictions of 4e seem designed to specifically combat the Law=Good and Chaos=Evil issues that the 1-axis alignment system from the original system ingrained in so many players minds. (ie: Lawful Good is more good than CG, Chaotic Evil more evil than LE.)

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Perpetuated by players, we can’t help. I was just saying that the rules at least attempted to adapt for it in 3e.