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The Ten Stupidest Things In...
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http://www.toplessrobot.com/2008/08/the ... ragons.php]Dungeons and Dragons.
Agree or disagree? -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. 
disagree on Dice Bags, agree on most everything else.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger." From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies
Same here. Especially disagreeing about the dice bags because a now ex-girlfriend of mine and I used to make the damn things out of chainmail. I probably still could with the right materials and enough practice. (hint-hint)
Isn't what it says about Bags of Holding the reason why they're good? Since figuring out encumberance is the least fun thing in the entire game...
How about folding or collapsible 10' poles? As for the girdle of whatever... I seem to remember that being a cursed item. So yeah, it sucks. Something like that really should be made for people who want to use it for kinky reasons... -Morgan. '
The arguments make sense for a few of the items, which is why things like the girdle of masculinity/femininity and the talisman of ultimate evil were dropped
from the previous version of D&D (they might've been added in later supplements but neither are in the DMG 3.0 or 3.5; I don't think they made it into Second Edition either). They were items created by Old School DMs that had a very Us vs. Them attitude (the same with things like the Cloak of Poison or the Libram of Eternal Darkness; basically save or die traps disguised as magical items). Some of the other items have some actual usefulness. Potion of Jumping? Sounds kind of lame, but seriously, when you need to get out of a 50 foot pit and don't have a rope, that's the kind of thing you need. It's like Water Breathing; very specialized, but when you need it, you really need it. And the Apparatus of Kwalish is just wacky. I always found it to be amusing, if not something I'd throw into a game unless it was, as they said, on the water. I could see a whole underwater salvage group with them, if the magical levels of the game setting were high enough. Ebony the Black Dragon http://ebony14.livejournal.com "Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."
I used an Apparatus in the very first Narth adventure I ran for the New Brunswick group. A mage had gotten his hands on one and was using it to extort money
from shipping companies going in and out of the campaign base city. The party ended up owning the thing after they took the bad guy out, but rarely used it; they kept it docked in his old base, which they bought, cleared out, and spiffed up a little. Now, as far as I'm concerned, one of the stupidest things in D&D is the rust monster. I can't even imagine an ecology where the thing would survive, let alone evolve. -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
OKay as bitch-lists go, it isn't bad. I will comment on one. I will be availing myself of harsh language, reader discretion is advised.
Glaive-Guisarme: One of the odd things about pole weapons (historically, not in D&D land) is that they tend to be very situation specific. Some are only useful in a particular formation or defensive/offensive situation. If you think the ones in the D&D books are odd, there are historical ones that are even more funky. My personal fave is the big spiked lever designed specifically for knocking knights off of horses and then popping their helmets off (With or without the heads remaining in them.) So on the my list of top few D&D bitches. One: Magic readily available in shops: Magic as technology makes it considerably less fantastic as a game element. "fuck it, I need a wand, some bracers and a potion of raging munchkin twat control, best nip down to the shops before they close" "Oooh ducks, while your out could you get me a dozen healing potions and a fire branded dagger of Edward the Seconding." Two: Class power creep: More rule mechanic than world mechanic, an endles stream of new books and expansion kits that are to game balancing what greased tightropes and a floor covered in dung smeared spikes are to the Flying Wallendas. "See" The arse-faced supplicant whines, it is a Wizards of the Coast Book "This prestige class has the triple critical threat dual wield feat at first level. Why can't I take it?" You'll take it all right my son. Out back, with no witnesses. Three: Gnomes: I have hated the gormless little fucks since they first waddled their arses onto the scene. Unfortunately the new races in third edition almost have me feeling nostalgic for the useless buggers. No... No. Still hate them. You want to play one, you can stand outside in my garden; and I will throw oranges at you for the entire session. Four: Uber-Angst-Races: "Oh, the demon portion of the soul makes it such a conflict; for me to remain good is against my nature and every day I must struggle against it." I would answer this, as it should be answered, with "I hope you die painfully you demonic Emo fuck." But that would likely just produced acidic demon tears and comments about life being unfair because even roses have thorns. The sort of problem that really should be dealt with by holding the players head in the toilet bowl and flushing repeatedly until the bubbles stop. Not that there haven't been angsty emo characters before, but prior rule sets didn't actively encourage the trend. Five: Shield defence: They are far more effective than the rules make them out to be. I know picking at the scabs for any combat system is probably not worth the bitching, but I need to pad this list, so I'm throwing it in. Six: Various Parts of Vecna. "Oooh I found Vecna's rectum, left testicle, and taint; I am uber-powerful now." No, I don't want to hear the Head of Vecna story again. I hereby present you with the upraised middle finger of the critic. It is not all powerful, but supreme in its disdain for assorted necromantic chunkies. Seven: Holy Sword. Holy sword? Isn't that like a wiffle bat? And isn't Holy Avenger John Steed after being perforated with enough bullets to fill the Albert Hall. Weapons favored by your particular god - no problem - but they should come in all shapes and sizes from the golden Sickle of Getafix to the Crushing baby-maker of Osiris (provided you use the version of the myth that does not have his severed wedding tackle eaten by a fish.) Eight: Player tech twattery: Any time a player (or GM) uses a combination of magic and items to replicate a modern convenience that is resoundingly at odds with the setting. (The magic mouth I-pod, flashlight, etc.) That's all I've got right now. Shayne 
The girdle, I'd say, is more something I'd pull out to hit a player with who was 'not playing nice', so to speak, doing stuff that wasn't
in keeping with the nature of the game. This doesn't count appropriate 'in character' actions that, while despicable, are expected and even welcomed. Or, for more interesting situations, if the player wanted something life changing to happen to her character. In other words, a not so subtle cue that the player has gone too far, and the character will now suffer for it. That said, my personal preference is to actually take the player aside and explain to them they're not working out. -- "You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor Quote: Now, as far as I'm concerned, one of the stupidest things in D&D is the rust monster. I can't even imagine an ecology where the thing wouldActually, Bob, I can think of at least one place. Given that D&D has the Elemental Planes, I honestly wonder if the critters might be native to the Elemental Plane of Earth...and given that we've also seen subplanes in the books, a Metal subplane wouldn't be impossible. Either one would allow a creature to evolve that ate metals. Add in curious wizards with planar travel spells (who don't use THAT much metal themselves), and who might think that they'd make useful pets, and they're on the Prime Material Plane before you can say 'Bob's your uncle.'
Even so, you wouldn't just find them wandering about. They just couldn't survive without someone to feed them the occasional shovel.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. Quote: JFerio wrote: Which is good, because solving out-of-character problems with in-character punishment is perhaps the worst form of GMing that exists. As for the complaint that magic = technology. Well, duh. Magic, in the D&D universe, is a science. That means that people will treat it like a science. They will explore and understand its rules, and then ruthlessly exploit them to make their lives more convenient. They will develop magic the same we we developed physics, chemistry and biology and toiwards much the same ends. And a lot of it is going to end up looking like stuff we have because that stuff is damn convenient. Flashlights were developed because flashlights are a useful and obvious application of portable power source + lightbulbs, especially when dealing with places that are dark by nature. I fully expect once "continual light" is developed that anybody who wants to explore someplace dark and nasty will be able to go down to the store and pick up a half-dozen continual light wands for their convenience. My only beef with the magic as technology thing is that it doesn't go far enough. Typically magic in D&D-land has been around for thousands of years and yet everyone is still living in medival mudhuts, building (utterly useless) giant stone castles and engaging in war with fucking arrows and knights on horseback. Just like the existence of the cannon utterly changed the face of warfare the existence of people able to cast Fireball would utterly change the face of warfare in D&D-land. The existence of the D&D universe breaks my suspension of disbeleif so hard I can't really force myself to play in it, except as a deliberate parody. If you want to make magic not a technology in your setting, I suggest you create a magic system that does not respond well to science. That is, you'll need a system that can not be studied or predicted. In other words, one that is totally unplayable. -------------------- Epsilon
There is a breakdown in your analogy Epsilon, one that really isn't addressed in the D&D canon.
Technology works. It doesn't matter who you are. Anyone with access to the appropriate materials and information can make gunpowder. Or light a fire. Magic, in the fantasy genre, does not tend to follow this rule. Those that can actually 'do' magic are a very small percentage of the population; those that are actually trained in the use of magic are an even smaller percentage of the population. If you are using a game world in which all that is required to accomplish magic is to read a few books and practice like you would any other skill (Blacksmithing, coopering, etc.) ; then the technology analogy is well placed and well argued. It just isn't usually part of the genre (one or two examples from literature spring to mind, but they feature worlds not actually running amok, but sprinting amok.) Shayne Quote: Rev Dark wrote: Accept there is no evidence or support for your position at all. Perhaps if you were playing Lord of the Rings, where magicians actually are like one in a million (and very likely to be extraplanar beings on top of that) this would hold. The requirements for being a Magic-User are Intelligence 10. In previous editions it was Intelligence 12 or 13 or whatever. Not nearly rare enough to justify "magic user live in abandoned towers and don't interact with human beings just because" as a setting trope. Any person in the game can multi-class into Magic User (ie Wizard) class at any time they want to, provided they have enough Intelligence. Entire races (such as Elves) are pointed out to be magical or have innate magical potential. The only requirements to weidl a +1 Sword is opposable thumbs. In the real world, the number of people that can "get" quantum physics is small, and the number of people that are trained in it are vanishingly small. This hasn't kept us from developing loads of new technologies based on the work of these small select group of people. I mean, think about it. With D&D magic you can create a fountain of water that never runs out. That changes the entire nature of the world. Even if there were a half-dozen mages who could make like one a year they coudl revolutionize society over night. Limitless, clean, safe drinking water for everyone. Not to mention all the possibilities for water engineering (everything from irrigation, to watermills to hydroelectric power). No other magic required and with just one simple magic item I can revolutionize the world! Your problem is that you are veiwing D&D as a "fantasy genre". It's not, its genre is "D&D". If you want to complain that D&D doesn't emulate Lord of the Rings, go nuts. They made a LotR roleplaying game, go play that instead. Complaining that, in a setting where magic is common (look at the DMs guide for a breakdown of communities by profession) that it is common strikes me as disingenuous. Go play Ars Magica, or LotR or Mage: The Sorcerer's Crusade or any of the other settings out there where magic is "special" (an probably spelled with a k for extra special pretentiousness). -------------------- Epsilon
Epsilon, I already agreed with you wholeheartedly.
We are talking at odds. You are quite correct. The raw mechanics of D&D set no limit on magic use save for an arbitrary stat restriction. Any player who meets that stat requirement can choose to use magic. It is a system designed to accomodate what the players would like to do. Anyone can become a cleric too, if their wisdom meets the minimum; you could wake up and decide that a particular god has taken a like (or dislike to you) make a note on the sheet and it is time to unleash your inner Benny Hinn. So faith, like magic can be picked up as easily as technology, or musical talent, or martial arts skills making you capable of knocking down trees with a single powerful thrust of your pelvis. D&D is a game, not a genre. Again I agree; provided that you are just taking the book off the shelf, opening it up and playing it. Any time you modify the rules, which is every single game of D&D I have ever run or played in, the rules are changed. You as the god-behind-the-screen create the world and any arbitrary rules govening magic, ecology, economy, breast size, and heft and allotment of wedding tackle (especially important if your RPG features Japanese schoolgirls on subways). Played off the shelf, D&D cannot work as a world, for the reasons you state, and the reasons I was poking fun at earlier in this thread. If you want to complain that D&D doesn't emulate Lord of the Rings, go nuts. They made a LotR roleplaying game, go play that instead. Complaining that, in a setting where magic is common (look at the DMs guide for a breakdown of communities by profession) that it is common strikes me as disingenuous. Go play Ars Magica, or LotR or Mage: The Sorcerer's Crusade or any of the other settings out there where magic is "special" (an probably spelled with a k for extra special pretentiousness). I am not sure where this particular bit of rant materialized. I tend to use D&D for fantasy gaming as the system works well for it, but I hand out a campaign sheet right at the beginning that details up front changes to rules and setting. The same way that any game is modified out-of-box to fit the setting and campaign the GM is trying to run. Cheers, Shayne Quote: Rev Dark wrote: Sorry about that. I'm used to being on another board where such debates as this inevitably fall into a kind of system bashing I find personally annoying. Reflex action. My main point there is that D&D is designed to play the D&D genre and it does it well. Houseruling is okay, but you're playing a very delicate dance. For example cutting down on the number of magic items in the game will drastically increase the power of classes such as Wizard, Cleric and Monk in relation to the other classes (who are balanced on the assumption of having X GP worth of magical equipment at each level). Which means to properly balance the classes again you have to either nerf the magic-users or buff the non-magic users and so on. If you're going to do that much houseruling, its best to just select a system that is already balanced with that in mind. Iron Heroes, Blue Rose, the LotR game, and others are already much more easy to adapt to a "low magic" setting than D&D is (and are better systems to boot ;p). Me, my preference for magic runs in exactly the opposite direction. I like my fantasy setting fantastical. The more over-the-top magic, the better. --------------- Epsilon
I'm not sure, but it seems like the magic-as-technology issue isn't so much a product of the "scienceness" of magic as it is the ease of
enchantment. As I recall, making magic items was supposed to be *really* difficult and time-consuming in second edition, and thus the products more scarce. Third edition (at least as I read the rules) made it much easier, and regular access to magic items more expected. (When 3E came out, I still went to gaming conventions periodically and played in a few RPGA games. It appeared to me from the way the rules were set up that an effective way for a person with a frequently-played wizard to keep their character at the level for regular RPGA adventures would be to keep making things like rings of wishes and other high xp cost magic items... Which struck me as awfully bizarre.) -Morgan. Thinking about this influenced some of Alexis's thoughts about enchantment in my CoH writing.  Quote: Epsilon wrote: Only if you want to be limited to level 0 spells. Just as you need an Intelligence of 11 to cast 1st level Wizard spells and an Intelligence of 12 to cast 2nd level Wizard spells. There is also an additional requirement for becoming a Wizard (or a Psion, or a Soulborn, etc.). You must have some sort of inherent potential for that sort of power. This potential is only present in a miniscule portion of the population; it is simply a matter of freak chance that every single PC who takes a level in one of those classes after character creation happens to have that potential. ![[Image: wink.gif]](http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/wink.gif) ---------------------------------------------------- "Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM of the Rings XXXV 
I thought the inborn magic rule was only for Sorcerers, not Wizards.
-- If you become a monster to put down a monster you've still got a monster running around at the end of the day and have as such not really solved the whole monster problem at all. 
As far as I remember the difference Wizards spend years, even decades in study to learn even simple cantrips. It takes a lifetime in order to be an even
somewhat skilled Wizard. But the thing is, Wizards can learn from each other and collaborate. Sorcerers have the inborn magic yes, and they can use the magic to their whim; but given an average skill in either, a group of Wizards is probably more likely to learn more faster (after a slow pickup that may stagnate) than a group of average Sorverers. Think of it as a sort of snowball effect. --- The Master said: "It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who can perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself." >Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI Quote: Florin wrote: I believe that it technically applies to every class that involves something more than stabbing people with things. Grab a reasonably intelligent farmer out of his field and it doesn't matter how much you train him, he won't gain levels as a Wizard, Psion, or similar class unless he already has some inate potential. The Forgotten Realms setting states plainly that Mystra spends so much time promoting magic because so few have the potential to use it. ---------------------------------------------------- "Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM of the Rings XXXV
The Eberron setting does a lot for making magic more universal. The setting is a lot more Industrial Age, with magic affecting the everyday manufacture of
items. Magic is such a part of everyday life that the trade guilds are build around its use, war machines are developed with it, and the Great War that ended three years prior to game setting start ended because of the equivalent of a nuclear weapon accident destroying most of one of the nations involved (and the fallout destroying the rest of it). Some of the nations in the setting use magic in ways that the other countries disagree with, such as undead armies made of fallen veterans or sentient constructs called Warforged. There are anti-arcane magic (as opposed to divine magic, the magic of priests) terrorists that plague several of the nations, as well as a trade guild that specializes in the breeding (and cross-breeding) of magical animals, and several others that employ magical sentients (i.e., ogres, trolls, etc.) in both combat and noncombat roles. That and the halflings ride dinosaurs, which is two great tastes that taste great together as far as I'm concerned. ![[Image: smile.gif]](http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/smile.gif) Ebony the Black Dragon http://ebony14.livejournal.com "Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you." |
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