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  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by AndrewTall View Post
    ... A champion of Avani: Gain speed, intelligence, wisdom, charisma, light based powers, but lose strength when not in sunlight, be vulnerable to necromancy, or cold... Etc, etc.
    This is really excellent stuff! Powers this thematically appropriate might even defeat my ancient opposition to paladins!


    Ryan

  2. #22
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    The comments by AndrewTall are very interesting, and I'll offer my thoughts in the same format.


    Druids and Undead
    Andrew observes that "druids have power over natural things, clerics over supernatural." I agree with that approach and will add that D&D is built with a strong Manichean component. There is a manifest struggle between Good and Evil, Light and Dark, assumed in D&D. Historically, the forces of evil and darkness were assumed to summon demons and dark spirits. Undead is another thing altogether, but undead are cool, and they fit into this model of a dark source of power very nicely. Of course Manicheanism is normally monotheist, so D&D postulates a uniform force of good and evil, positive and negative energy, and overlays polytheism on top of that by asking dieties and their priesthoods to pick sides, light or dark. I don't object to a certain amount of Manicheanism because the setting supports it (war against the shadow, taint of Azrai, and the rest). I think that the druids's power is, as Andrew describes it, a natural force, and that has been typically described as elemental, even to the point that the most powerful druids can shape change into elementals. Setting the life unlife dichotomy up makes plenty of sense, as a natural unnatural source of power, but we already have the Shadow World as the source/home/power of undead. If as the ancient Spirit World, it was always the home to the spirits of the dead, it might support the idea of natural spirits, even of the dead, and unnatural death spirits as summoned, constrained, or bound, unlike the free-willed undead who haunt with a purpose. Both make sense and could be used, and my own preference is probably some combination of both theories.

    Game Balance
    I am not a fan of game balance where the mechanics try to make everyone differently good at the same stuff. Such as Fighters bash down doors, Rogues pick locks, and wizards knock. Rather my preference is for each class to have its own sphere of dominance, and for the DM to include opportunities for each sphere to play a role in the game. Fighters should dominate combat, and clerics, wizards, and rogues (and derived PrC's) should support the combat classes, not simply combat differently. Rogues should have skills, techniques, and abilities to do other kinds of stuff that fighters can't muscle through and spellcasters can't replicate. There should be one or two magical realms that spellcasters dominate and other classes take a notable secondary role.

    In such a model, balance is irrelevant. All that matters is that the guy from any sphere gets his time to do what he does and the others can only support. The fighter doesn't have to be as good in combat as the cleric is at identifying a profane altar and neutralizing its dread curse. In a good setup, you might have many small challenges of one kind and a few great challenges of another kind, to achieve a mutual satisfaction of the several players.

    <snip by AndrewTall - text in alignment thread>
    Last edited by AndrewTall; 06-16-2007 at 09:07 AM.

  3. #23
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MatanThunder View Post

    The abomination against nature of the undead should be the key here. Deities of the nature portfolios would be heck bent on destroying this abomination to the life and nature forces...I also see your supernatural viewpoint on it to be inherently flawed...as all deity affecting the real world could well be classified as supernatural, and not just the cleric skill set/alignments that you are trying to represent them as. ...The druid should have power over undead to DESTROY them......it is only logical from a forces of life/nature vs the forces of undeath/afterlife.
    Oppose yes, of course a druid will oppose undead, demons, etc. Whether they have any power over such unnatural monstrosities is an entirely different position. If you gain power from the natural world around you, can control natural forces, talk to or even become plants, animals, etc then to say that the outright unnatural becomes completely beyond your sphere of influence is at least as natural a progression as to say that your powers are more effective against it.

    The 'turning power' of a druid would therefore either be a complete rejection of the unnatural as you describe, or the canon AD&D view of impotence against it, either possibility being equally valid. The question of which view should be utilised in a game then moves to which method more accurately reflects the setting and needs of the DM, and of course, to the game balance point you seem to deride.

    Whether another god is natural or supernatural depends imho on portfolio and perspective, traditionally most deities were based in the outerplanes and inherently supernatural, supporting my view that a cleric has more supernatural powers than a druid - not undermining it as you suggest. I am unclear why you argue that a clerics powers should be less effective over supernatural beings, because being outerplanar in source the clerics power is supernatural itself. Sympathy and contagion are classic magical methods of effect that permeate a number of game systems including AD&D, sympathy more than justifies the clerics greater ability to turn undead, demons etc.

    My view is that the druid is a priest that is very deliberately rooted in the 'real' world and standard four primary elemental planes, with few of the powers over the outerplanes, positive and negative quasi elemental planes that are the core of the powers of the more classic clerics. As the druid has far less power over the supernatural than a normal cleric, in this case specifically less power over the positive elemental plane, then their ability to channel that power against undead should be weaker than a clerics.

    This argument is of course inverted if you say use a shamanic system of spirits to empower undead such as the one Ken has described, instead of the classic negative plane empowerment system, but I do not see that such a change was part of your argument.

    Quote Originally Posted by MatanThunder View Post
    and to handcuff them with some arbitrary balance issue put their viewpoint out on an undefensible limb in LOGIC!!!

    Game balance has no place in the argument.
    Handcuff is a bizarre term - unless undead predominate then the issue is hardly crippling to the class and they have advantages over the cleric elsewhere.

    The balance issue is a secondary argument yes, but hardly arbitrary. The purpose of any RPG system is to allow a group to adventure together - as such each player needs a chance to shine, and needs to have at least a chance to measure up to the others. If one character class is clearly superior to others, then those other classes become scorned and ultimately ignored impoverishing the system. As such balance is the core of both the dungeon masters art and the game designers skill - failure is the easiest way to break the system barring flawed mechanics.

    Would you be happy playing in a game where your characters power is substantially different to the rest of the parties? If the answer is no, then game balance is clearly a core feature of the system, since it is necessary for player enjoyment. In that case if a druid is a cleric+ extra's then the druid needs to be toned down or the cleric toned up. 2e admittedly has the varying xp mechanic to balance out classes of different power, but that simply means you have to increase the druids xp requirements, which reduces level-up opportunities and therefore is a negative change from a power-gamer perspective (as they like rapid level ups and new powers).

    If you would be happy playing, say, a L2 fighter in a party of L4 characters then your DM is a lucky guy, clearly the imbalance doesn't bother you or damage your enjoyment of the game, in which case having the classes unbalanced becomes a side issue, by contrast most of my players have complained bitterly when another player got an 'unfair' advantage. When designing/running a game however I find that those players able to play and enjoy an unbalanced game have no difficulty with a balanced game, however the reverse is not true - therefore game balance is a key design element for any competent game designer as it acts to widen the potential audience of the game and increase the enjoyment of those playing.


    Quote Originally Posted by MatanThunder View Post
    BTW...If your rebuttal could find a way to be a little more concise I would appreciate it. I hate having to hike through a lot of material to find what your point is, but of course I will if you feel it is necessary to validate your point of view.....which I am not sure you can with the points I listed above.
    I was not rebutting your point, but rather commenting on a number of topics in the thread, only one of which was yours, indicating alternate views that could be taken. I used titles to make navigation between topics simple, apologies if the titles alone were insufficient for you to identify the topics in question, I thought them preferable to half a dozen posts...

  4. #24
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kgauck View Post

    Game Balance
    ...Rather my preference is for each class to have its own sphere of dominance, and for the DM to include opportunities for each sphere to play a role in the game... In such a model, balance is irrelevant. All that matters is that the guy from any spehere gets his time to do what he does and the others can only support.
    To me the system you describe is one of balance - but it depends heavily on the DM weighting the game to suit the party mix.

    Mechanics should be used, imho, within an area of the game to balance PC's in the same area, so two priests have similar magical influence overall, whether one shifts to granted powers and the other does not. Similarly if one wanted to be better in a second area of the game than the other, they would have to be poorer in the first as otherwise the other class would be redundant - why play a regular cleric if the 'war cleric' has just as good magic as you, but is better in combat and gets the chicks to boot?

    <snip, text moved to alignment post>

    Detect evil
    And as a response to an earlier post I would always remove the paladins ability to detect evil - it makes it too easy for them. Give them a bonus on sense motive by all means but not a 100% lie detector. If they don't discover that sweet little daisy who has asked them to help her mother is actually a shapeshifting assassin by the series of unfortunate traps they trip over then they deserve to suffer. Alternatively making the power an absolute rather than relative test and then undermining their belief in it is a way of working. 'yes the merchant is good, but he's not stupid, you flashed your cash and said whatever it takes, so he decided it would cost everything... it's his job to make money by charging what the market, i.e. you, will bear' Justifying the removal of the power is relatively easy - a gods champion should be able to prove their insight after all, and there are so many other powers they can have instead...
    Last edited by AndrewTall; 06-16-2007 at 09:08 AM.

  5. #25
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by AndrewTall View Post
    Mechanics should be used, imho, within an area of the game to balance PC's in the same area, so two priests have similar magical influence overall.
    I agree in the same area. What vexes me is differently equal in all areas. Magic should be used to identify magic, counter magic, and do magical things. Magic should not replicate the abilities of other classes. Likewise, fighters should fight well, not use their physicality to solve problems that should require other classes just as easily as those other classes.

    <snip - text moved to alignment thread>
    Last edited by AndrewTall; 06-16-2007 at 09:09 AM.

  6. #26
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    Originally Posted by MatanThunder
    and to handcuff them with some arbitrary balance issue put their viewpoint out on an undefensible limb in LOGIC!!!

    Game balance has no place in the argument.
    Handcuff is a bizarre term - unless undead predominate then the issue is hardly crippling to the class and they have advantages over the cleric elsewhere.
    It's not bizarre in the least....others clerics have the power to turn undead (even the neutral ones) but to Handcuff the Druid is simply a leap in NON Logic.....like only using blunt weapons was in 1st & 2nd ed. I always ruled that bow related deities clerics could use bows... There is even a cleric artilcle in the Dragon that detailed some of the early clerics who evolved past the blunt!!

    The point is that druids are singled out........and I see no reason to allow it in my game.

    <snip - text moved to alignment thread by AndrewTall>

    Later

    Last edited by AndrewTall; 06-16-2007 at 09:12 AM.

  7. #27
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    Hmm correct me if I'm wrong but in the original 2nd Ed Birthright Paladins of Cuiracean were Chaotic Good. - roaming champions of justice.

    Personally I always saw Paks as a CG paladin.

    The chaotic part being more relevant when church politics conflicted with what the Paladin see's as the "pure god inspired rightness" of the situation.

    Having a paladin with no code to have moral conflicts about would sound like a waste of time to me - Yes I'm a CN Paladin - I must randomly roll to see if I kill help or just look after myself or I'm in violation of my personal and completely variable non code of ethics. pfffft.

    I actually quite liked the descriptions of Alignment in the Baldurs gate game - but nearly every D&D game had new descriptions of alignment.

  8. #28
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
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    Gman - I see the evil alignment paladins as foes more than actual player characters, following one particularly disastrous campaign I wouldn't allow evil characters - it just doesn't suit my GM style, so allowing 'any alignment' paladins to me is about creating a rule set for paladins (i.e. HDie, spell/granted power advancement, size of honour code) and then using that to create a champion of whichever god happens to be appropriate.

  9. #29
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Creating evil classes and powers generally means creating a rule set for gaining the power from evil. Eat the brains of your victims, gain 1d4 INT for 3d6+6 hours, and stuff like that. Then after a while you become scary and unnatural, and children flee from your presence. Its not just play without moral constraint, but a different ball of wax.

  10. #30
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kgauck View Post
    Creating evil classes and powers generally means creating a rule set for gaining the power from evil. Eat the brains of your victims, gain 1d4 INT for 3d6+6 hours, and stuff like that.
    I was thinking more along the lines of '+1 priest spellcasting level every three levels, 1 major, 2 medium or 3 minor granted powers' that sort of thing... I'll leave the brain-eating to others - prion disorders are a pain to GM...

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