Yes and no. Let players have their fun.

“Larloch, is like, a bazillion level wizard”

Ed is a literal old retard who doesn’t even know his own rules anymore.

>>93937007
I don't think author self-inserts are a good thing to have in a setting, no.

Why?

>>93937007
No.

>>93937190
Because a lot of cringe shit nerds today want to punch out literal gods ?

>>93937007
This is literally why FR is fucking trash.

>>93937007
How is Elden Ring related to this topic?

>>93937007
Small is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. What's a small island? A spray-blasted reef? A few hundred square meters? Epstien island? El hierro? Crete? How much of it is disintegrated? Just below the waterline? All the way to the seafloor? How did the party cope with being pulled under by all the water rushing to fill the space left by the atomized island?

>>93937213
Why? Because your 20th lvl character can’t kill a 50th level god?

>>93937244
The Greatjar is one of those “no you can’t fight it—it just ignores you” type enemies.
Transcendent to the player.

In a game where you can kill gods, that’s some statement. It’s the same with those two petrified crystal archmages.

>>93937007
Yeah. There should be forces beyond your PC's understanding and dangers they can't kill. Fuck lame ass superhero games.
>>93937244
Cause the image was cool?

>>93937290
Because your level 20 character can easily kill a level 50 god so ed has to shit his pants and draw three dozen more zeroes onto it's stats, and then when that doesn't make a difference he just pouts and says rocks fall and you die

I mean if you picture things as beyond mortal scale like eldritch cosmic horror, yeah sure.
If it's some authors special snowflake that super duper powerful then no.
I'm my wod chronicles I've let them eat Helena and other "important" npc

This >>93937213

Fuck Ed and his magical realm.

>>93937383
This. Killing Azathoth, no. Killing Elminster or other author avatars like him? Sure, assuming I didn't just write them as already dead and soul annihilated in whatever the system is, or never existent to begin with.

>>93937332
>There should be forces beyond your PC's understanding and dangers they can't kill
These forces don't have stats nor take human from just to act cool in front of the PC. If they act lame and gay should be able to get a lame and gay dead instead of just do any *teleports behind you* variant.

>>93937414
Elminster died from auto-erotica asphyxiation in my setting. Nobody knows because nobody asked because nobody cares about author self-insert NPCs.

>>93937522
Fix your fucking syntax, Jesus Christ.

>>93937283
What is Greenwood's tax policy?

>>93937383
Yeah I agree with this. Entities that go beyond the mortal scale like Cthulu should be, to some degree, off limits, that's part of their mystique.
But stupid designer self-inserts ColdSteel tier "you cannot defeat my epic villain" like Strahd Von Zarovich should absolutely be fine to get curbstomped under the right circumstances.

>>93937529
But then who's going to save the day? Not the PCs, they're just the fluffers after all.

>>93937549
>Entities that go beyond the mortal scale like Cthulu
Cthulu would be CR6 at best.
>But stupid designer self-inserts ColdSteel tier "you cannot defeat my epic villain" like Strahd Von Zarovich should absolutely be fine to get curbstomped under the right circumstances.
Strahd is literally a fully statted, appropriately leveled antag in modules that you are supposed to be able to kill.

>>93937314
>Transcendent to the player.
I hate this. I. We can’t even fight Greyoll. Who is BIGGER than the dragon lord.

>>93937007
>> A heavy-handed lesson, but...well, Larloch's in the same league, and more
>Larloch possessed incredible power and was a superintelligent genius. Over two thousand years, he'd composed perfect plans to deal with nearly every possible situation, and even for things he was not prepared for, he could come up with an almost-perfect response in moments.
>But he was also insane, his mind affected by his extreme age. Sometimes he could be calm and even whimsical. Other times he was crazed, snarling and launching spells at random.
Uh oh, stinky

>>93937007
You may as well assume this giant jam jar is more powerful than fucking Radahn.

>>93937572
You cant kill Strahd. Ever.
You can "kill" him but he just comes back every like 4 monthes no matter what you do "because reasons." (No literally thats the explanation.)
At that point youre not making an antag, youre making a self-insert narrative device.
Its garbage writing on the designers and/or DMs part

>>93937585
You may as well assume Gransax is the more powerful dragon than Placidusax.

Fucking Miyazaki and his retarded scale, it’s almost like he was TRYING to be like Grrm.

>>93937627
Strand is still beatable. He just comes back. That’s how that setting works. He is meant to suffer, over and over.

>>93937627
He comes back because the gods of that setting resurrect him. He's in hell. He's facing his eternal punishment.
>"because reasons." (No literally thats the explanation.)
It's literally the foundation of the setting. It's what being a darklord is, you don't get the easy way out by just dying.
>At that point youre not making an antag, youre making a self-insert narrative device.
He's a narrative device but it's not really a self insert lol.
You should direct your seething at the many, many actually retarded parts of ravenloft instead, ESL-kun.

>>93937637
Yeah but him coming back means that that guy's super special OC fantasy of himself doesn't get to be all super cool for beating up the vampire lord for good. Can't you imagine how it feels to not be the strongest make-believe there is?

>>93937007
I disagree that all games should have undefeatable challenges.
However, depending on the kind of game and the tone you're trying to set, an insurmountable challenge can be very effective. In fact, this device is best featured in works that aren't even games at all, like tragedies, horror stories, narrative systems, and theater improv systems.
I prefer heroic fantasy games focused on exploration and combat, so in a game like that, every challenge can be overcome by something the players can invest in or attain through the game's mechanics, not by the whims of some arbiter who feels like it does or doesn't fit his story.

Sorry for the long answer, but the question is one that definitely needs context and doesn't have a singular, universal answer.

>>93937637
>>93937664
You Ravenloft apologists are the most despicable fucking vermin on this board.
Every time someone points out how dogshit the writing of Ravenloft and Strahd are you crawl out from whatever shithole you spawned from to simp for that awful setting.
>Inb4 "you just dont get it anon"
>Inb4 you just wanna be a super OP special snowflake
If you have to create some analogous stupid "Dark Power" to protect your edgy vampire OC maybe youre a shit game designer and maybe you midwits should consume some actual decent literature.

>>93937743
You just don’t get it, anon.

>>93937690
A good game designer and GM understands giving their world or setting, even hopeless ones, a sense of scale.

Can you and your band of knuckleheads stop Cthulu? Probably not. But they *can* stop the local cult leader shitting up their small town or city. Even if in the grand scheme that only contributes 0.00001% in stopping Cthulu, a good game designer and GM can still make that feel rewarding and fulfilling.

Who the fuck wants to play through a campaign till the end only for the DM to smugly go "Ummmm ackshyually you didnt accomplish anything. From the start your actions are inconsequential and pointless because this evil is too big. Lol get owned."
It just comes off as shitty sleezeball game-mastering and its the exact same as a Player who makes a super special snowflake OC that you cant defeat.

>>93937743
Ravenloft do sucks but the whole point of the setting is that you're inside another guy personal hell.

What's next, complaining about too much sand in Dark Sun?

>>93937743
Beating Stradh is easy anon. You just have to do it within the rules of the setting.
Which means finding a fate worse than what the Dark Forces have in mind for him.
As such I propose the following;
Cum jar Strahd

>>93937314
>>93937579
>>93937585
>>93937632
What’s dumb is that this implies things like Azur/Lusat/Greatjar/etc are more powerful than the Elden Beast because you can’t do anything to them in a game about beating up “the strongest” shit.

Yeah, just let your players kill gods, and stop being autistic about it.

>>93937778
I guess I just have extremely low tolerance for MCUtier slop on the level of "Somehow Palpatine has returned" no matter how much "Um acksyuallys" Ravenloft simps throw at me.

>>93937743
you just wanna be a super OP special snowflake

>>93937821
I'm not the one playing Ravenloft, Anon. I guess you just have extremely high tolerance for MCUtier slop on the level of "Somehow Palpatine has returned".

>>93937129
>any powerful NPCs are self-inserts
I hate this attitude and I hate you.

>>93937809
>Azur/Lusat/Greatjar/etc are more powerful than the Elden Beast
Take it up with Miyazaki. This is what he believes.

>>93937839
>Youre played it that means you like it!
And if I said I hadnt you wouldve replied with
>Well how do you know its shit
I played it. I hated it. And its community of simps are somehow even more smoothbrained than your average DnDslop enjoyer.

>>93937850
He's talking about Ed Greenwood NPCs tho. Mind the context or you'll look like a clueless retard.

>>93937821
>"Somehow Palpatine has returned"
Midwit-kun, the problem with 'Somehow Palpatine returned' is that it never gave a justifiable explanation for how and the fact it was a shameless attempt to bring in a higher villain and up the stakes in the last 3rd of a trilogy that hadn't mentioned him once.
Strahd returning is more like 'Jedi Force Ghosts' - a part of the setting as established fairly early on.

>B-but it doesn't make sense, people should be able to escape this hell of their own making by just dying, it's not like that'd create a plot hole where everyone asks 'So why don't these people being tormented by unknowable gods just kill themselves anyway?'
No amount of kvetching about how it's slop is going to make you right about this.

>>93937850
Anon ALOT of powerful NPCs in tabletop history are selfinserts of the game designers and gamemasters.

>>93937863
>And if I said I hadnt you wouldve replied with
>>Well how do you know its shit
Not really, I checked the setting like 30 years ago, thought "woah, this shit is beyond stupid and also edgy for no reason" and never bothered with it. Guess if some RL friend insisted I could've payed it once.

Maybe you're just retarded, Anon.

>>93937867
There are at least a dozen different ways to make Strahd suffer the eternal cycle of rebirth aside from just "Uhhhh these spooky powers I made up want him back."

Oh and lets not forget all this spooky bullshit edge-wank dimension spawned for no other reason outside of fratricide and regicide. Because thats the height of evil in fantasy, amirite?
I cant believe that setting has duped people into thinking its well -written and thematically dense.
One of my PCs killed their sister. Wheres my immortality and spooky torture dimension?
Fuck off.

>>93937743
>ravenloft apologist
>post literally calls ravenloft retarded and says you should complain about the actually stupid parts of it
You might be as retarded as the people who wrote ravenloft. Actually, some of the short stories were pretty good, so I guess you're more retarded since you actually played a campaign in it.
Actual D&D players just flip through ravenloft sourcebooks for amusement and never use them.

>>93937900
You're the one choosing to play in ravenloft.

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>>93937866
>>93937872
Nah, I'm doubling down. Anyone that whines about powerful NPCs being self inserts is a pussy that's assmad that their GM wouldn't let them kill gods or some other dumb shit. Fuck you.

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>>93937900
>Ha-bloo-bloo-bloo, the setting doesn't live up to my exacting standards as a cum oenophile, so I'm going to grasp and claw for any excuse I can to claim its worse than papercuts to the bellend rather than just being so-so
Man, I'm not even a fan of Ravenloft, I just think you're being a faggot about things.
Oh as for:
>Spooky bullshit edge-wank dimension spawned for no other reason outside of fratricide and regicide that's the height of evil in fantasy
Betrayal of those closest to you, your liege and kin, is considered the most wretched and personal kind of evil, yes. There's a reason Lucifer gets his own level all to himself, retard.
And like hell (and Silent Hill), the dimension existed before the actions.
>One of my PCs killed their sister, where's my immortality and spooky torture dimension
Talk to your DM about it retard.
A dominion-level game set in Ravenloft sounds fucking awesome.

>>93937937
>"anon please, stop being retarded"
>Nah, I'm doubling down
OK.

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So, a question for the thread since its established that 2 things make people shit blood. How do you do the following well:
>NPCs who the PCs can't take on directly/are out of their league (Not necessarily DM fiat, just 'beyond the power of where most characters get up to in setting')
>Reincarnation or cycles of guilt settings

>>93937937
>>93937850
Ooh, touched a nerve, didn't I? lol

>>93937007
entirely depends on what the setting is going for.
for example, is it wrong for a setting which is meant to demonstrate human willpower and perseverance ultimately allow players to defeat the eldritch beings raining darkness on the world?
I wouldn't say so... but you can't make it easy.

>>93937963
>>NPCs who the PCs can't take on directly/are out of their league
These are fine if they're part of the plot, not if the they just appear to mock the players or to show how cool they are.

>>Reincarnation or cycles of guilt settings
That's only some retards that hate it yet somehow keep playing Ravenloft.

>>93937007
If you stat it, they will kill it.

If you don't want Players to try to defeat something make it clear from the start that it is undefeatable.

>>93937007
I agree completely, the world needs to have actual threats.

>>93937963
>NPCs who the PCs can't take on directly/are out of their league (Not necessarily DM fiat, just 'beyond the power of where most characters get up to in setting')
You just do it? Plenty of level 20+ monsters in D&D.
>Reincarnation or cycles of guilt settings
Write a book.

>>93938019
>Write a book.
The last position of those with zero imagination.

>>93937290
No. Because it's a wankfest where only the big names actually matter and the status quo of the setting doesn't flow from its content.

>>93937007
He was right. I do not cultivate a table where players are encouraged to solve all their problems by punching them, and consequently punching them so hard that even gods may die. Players like that are fucking insufferable.

>>93938133
>setting with DMPCs killing and replacing gods left and right
>but the PCs can't because reasons
DM like that are fucking insufferable.

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>>93937007

Why? I don't get it
the only reason I've ever injected a supreme sorcerer or giant monster into my games was so that the players could challenge their evil and find a clever way to pull the rug out from under them. Why else would you feature some great power?

>>93937007
>make plot about super powerful foe
Alright, people often do that

>you can overcome this super powerful foe after all
Can be a sick power fantasy if done right, good campaign

>you cant kill this entity, but you can ruin the destructive plan in motion, thus saving the day. The ancient evil still schemes in the background for another day
A well and tested method, makes for a good campaign

>lmao, introduced this foe and there is nothing you can do, get ready for misery porn as i show you how dumb you are for engaging, he just handwaves you away, game over, make new characters
How is this a fun experience. Why would i ever want to make a campaign around Larloch if this is the climactic moment of 1+ year of play? Will i or my players leave the table with satisfaction?

I'm sorry your Mary Sue can't kill God Anon. I know it's very traumatic.

>>93938187
Some GMs feel the incessant need to "humble" their players and remind them that the GM has the infinite power to win whenever they want.

>>93938248
>anon to dense to grasp what this is about
Yeah, thats about right

Games like Elden Ring are the root cause of this sort of cancer

“Bawww it’s like mythology we’re meant to triumph and warriors can cleave mountains”

Shut the FUCK up

>>93937007
Yes and no.

Depends entirely on the theme of the game and setting your running. Sometimes you can punch out Cthulu. Sometimes the night is full of terrors beyond comprehension let alone defeat.

Either way Greenwood is a fucking hack.

>>93938248
>>93938284
So whats the satisfying conclusion of your campaigns that will leave your players with a feeling of "yeah, this was sick."? The revelation that they never should have messed with big evil thing, everything is pointless and hide in a basement?

>>93938284
>Elden Ring is the problem
>He said while directly referencing mythology
DMs like you deserve to be circumcised at the table.

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>>93937007
That's stupid, don't put a thing in front of your players if you don't plan on them ever kicking it down. People are faced with insurmountable foes in real life enough already.

>>93937850
They are. If you're going to have totally unbeatable stuff don't have them give the players shit, or do obviously evil stuff in front of them.

>>93937867
>>93937549
>>93937627
>>93937637
Strahd is, and was always intended to be killed. You people are silly. Even the nu-d&d "Somehow Palatine returned" setup allows for the party beating him up as a bi-annual holiday.
>>93937807
Yeah, most adventuring parties can afford to hire a team to torture strahd forever after the module as well. These aren't even Castlevanyia rules where you can't just spawncamp him.

>>93938309
NOT CANON
Go fuck yourself silly

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>>93938316
No shit sherlock, if he was already dead that'd be a shit adventure. The players show up, and kill him, that's the whole point of a adventure.

>>93938355
> of a adventure
Do you know what an n is

>>93938309
>Yeah, most adventuring parties can afford to hire a team to torture strahd forever after the module as well.
Honestly, do it yourselves. Move into his castle, keep him in the basement and pimp out that booty hole to passing peasants or some shit.

>>93938163
>Assumption of dnd
>Assumption of setting
Proving my point. Your mind only works in one direction, it is not open to alternatives, and as such you are as much fun to play with as a drinking bird.

>>93938373
>ed greenwood talking about his D&D game
I'm not assuming anything, mongoloid.

>>93938373
>enter thread about Ed Greenwood, talking about Larloch, a forgotten realm lich
>assumption of dnd
>assumption dnd
Are you retarded?

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>>93938361
Certainly a fine epilogue to retire some characters to if you insist on having respawning bad guys with no off switch. It only gets easier to beat him when you get prep time, and he has no resources.

>>93938357
Sorry for the typo, I was just shocked that someone thought the ends of adventure modules are supposed to be setting cannon.

>>93937580
>he's a perfect genius who will always outplay you
>also he's insane and retarded

>>93938442
>How it feels being Shia LeBouf playing international capture the flag circa 2016

Hammer go honk
*god dies*
Haha

>>93937007
I don't really get the point of the story without context. Why were they there in the island? Was this Serpent person doing anything nefarious? What level were they? It just seems like complete nonsense to me.

>>93939202
Is an old article, RPG players used to be above average IQ back then, so it isn't for you.

>>93937019
Player fun should not come at the detriment of the game master's fun.

>>93939437
Lol
Lmao even.

>>93939463
I don't really enjoy wanking off gods, dragons, liches and wizards. I hate all these things and will happily allow my players to kill them, even moreso if it's some authors OC.

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>>93937007
>Ed Greenwood once said…

>>93937414
Serpent Queen is dead, the Simbul is dead and Elminster is depowered as far as I know. But Larloch is still kicking, maybe he was Greenwood's real avatar all along.

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>>93937821
Are you upset that somehow Gandalf returned?

>>93939641
>777
Jackpot.

>>93937007
What's the difference between this and Tucker's infinite, instantaneous teleporting, all-seeing, all-knowing kobolds?

>>93939817
That you can pretend they're beatable rather than declaring "NO"

>>93939639
I'd allow my players to kill the Lady of Pain

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>>93937627
>using 5e Ravenslop "lore"
You can kill Strahd, it'll just end up poorly for most parties because he's a level 16 necromancer ancient vampire who is as powerful as Lord Soth

>>93939830
Based

>>93937007
The more I hear about his home campaign, the more it sounds like an extreme railroad where armies of gigasuperwizards (also all dom-mothers for some fetish reason, except for the self-inserts who look suspiciously like Greenwood himself) show off while the players either do what the gigasuperwizard wants or just eat shit until the wizard makes them do it.

>>93939847
Actually that shit was around since the old 2e Red Book
>who is as powerful as Lord Soth
Literally never been true. He almost gets his ass beat in the novels even.

>>93939723
Elminster in 5e is stronger than he has ever been.

He literally has the power to produce any spell effect he wants at any time with no components at all because he just "pulls it out of the Weave" at will, since Greenwood saw they were limiting spell slots and decided he didn't like that. He's also EVEN MORE immortal now because if he dies his soul can just body hop into a new body and laugh at you Matrix Agent style.

>>93939919
The original stuff, adventures in water deep and in under mountain, sound super badass, but yeah, everything else sounds pretty bad.

>>93939847
>who is as powerful as Lord Soth
Remind me again who is the only prisoner to ever 'win' Ravenloft and get sent back home?

>>93937007
Ed Greenwood is a pervert. He designed the Reams solely as an avenue to write about his degenerate sexual perversions. The setting needs to be scrapped as such and Greyhawk should be promptly restored as the setting for AD&D.

>>93940052
Hey man, be consistent. Gygax was obviously a pervert as well, we can't support """"degeneracy"""""

>>93940013
Vecna?

>>93939641
I'm thinking based

>>93937007
Yes, there should be things you can't ever hope to defeat. But, when you find yourself standing between them and those who are counting on you, you should choose to hope anyway.

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>evil
Punished
>gypsies
Evil and immoral
>domains
Homogeneous
>people
Racist and sexist
>Ravenloft
It's gaming time

>>93937007
If the Realms weren't a living setting with constant and substantial publication of modules and books and games in it, I would think that to be shitty writing. Since it *is* a living setting like that, however, I can't really fault it.

>>93937129
Ed Greenwood is literally in the setting. He drinks beer with Elminster and that's how he knows about Faerun to tell us it's lore.

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>>93937007
>Do you agree?
Absolutely. Best fantasy game ever made (pic) had dozens of creatures players had zero chance of affecting, much less winning against, even at their most powerful.

>>93937007
Gods in my setting are entities that could, literally and figuratively, punt a tarasque across the horizon.
Things that you couldn't annoy enough to swat at you. Things you can affect less than a mosquito can affect a human being.
>The One That Walks
>The One That Rains
>The One That Gathers On The Plains
>The One That Mournes
>The One That Shakes
>The One With Horns
>The One That Breaks

>>93937572
Cthulu has had official stats since DND was primarily a wargame and I promise you he is much more than that

>>93937007
This reads like an atheist thinking he’s a genius for trying to invent God without actually understanding why that divinity is unapproachable for mortals

>>93937743
Cry more baby girl
Maybe what you were saying is just retarded

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>>93939928
>Literally never been true. He almost gets his ass beat in the novels even.
Read the novel, they're evenly matched at close combat and Soth chooses to disengage after Strahd threatens him with magic. Soth's inner thoughts even reveals he considers Strahd "equally matched" him. If you compare their 3e stats, Soth is a fighter 7/rogue knight 10 in the War of the Lance splat while Strahd is a fighter 4/necromancer 16 in Ravenloft Gazetteer I, so Strahd is overall higher level.

>>93937007
Yes: There should be obstacles that players cannot overcome.

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>>93937572
>Cthulhu would be CR 6 at best.
I know that's sarcasm but still....
<--- This is the least powerful write up for Cthulhu I've found.

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>>93945608
>>93937572
This is the 1e Deities and Demigods version of Big C.

>>93937007
Here's another brilliant quote by Ed Greenwood showing why he's a genius worth paying attention to
>Drow breastmilk, thanks to those who produce it having centuries of exposure to cave fungi and molds and the faezress, tastes a little more mushroomy than minty elven breastmilk. To any humans who sample it, the result is a little more chalky, and ever so slightly tart/hot (the same way those tiny cinammon heart Valentine's Day hard candies have heat), but to elves who sample drow breast milk, it tastes sweeter than it seems to humans (and far less minty than their own breast milk). Interestingly, to dwarves, both elven and drow breast milk taste a lot like (original, unsweetened) licorice.

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Archive:Greenwood%27s_Grotto/2024-02/Drow_breast_milk

Kek. I believe people pay money to his patreon or something to get access to these insights over discord too.

>>93947180
>>93939641

>>93947180
So he’s just a gross (based) old man. Got it.

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>>93948529
He's a horny old bastard, but he knows what he's about.

>>93945608
It's not sarcasm. Book-cthulu loses to a Kyton. He's like a shitty kyton with worse armor class and HP and no Ex/Su abilities but given a form of madness.
I know nerds like to jerk off random shit from pop culture so of course people have wanked cthulu as being a major deity but the fact is everything in the mythos besides the big three would get absolutely assfucked on a cosmic level by ECL11+ D&D content.
I can write my rabbit as a 120HD supercaster with 20 divine ranks because I love it so much, but that doesn't mean my actual real rabbit would survive a fireball.

Ugh

>>93942587
Ed's not in the setting; El gates to Earth and eats stuff in Ed's kitchen while telling stories

>>93950722
And sometimes argues with Mordenkainen about junk food.

>>93937809
While you can't do anything about them, They don't really do anything either. There's not a reason to fight them in the first place. The great jar literally just sits there. I don't think it's that much of a lore statement or anything, Just a gameplay quirk since mechanically they're lifeless npcs that have no dialogue and just give an item under the right conditions.

>>93940332
Kino, Hopechads RISE UP

>>93951751
What about the Chariots? They're not indestructible but they can only be destroyed via special methods. Everything else, they'd be able to run over.

>>93939830
>>93939897
Based. The Lady of Pain is a retarded, insufferable Mary Sue. The new 5e 2024 rulebook even has parts that talk about if you do anything the Lady of Pain doesn't like you see an image of her in your head, she scolds you, and whatever you're doing automatically fails. No joke. So fucking stupid.

>>93951864
>if you do anything the Lady of Pain doesn't like
Like what? Far as I know the only things she doesn't like are worshiping her and things that threaten Sigil. Doesn't care about pick pockets or murderers.

Would make more sense if she mazed you, though. A diety-like being talking to you is dumb, especially since she's meant to be enigmatic.

>>93951864
why would she even be in the phb lol

>>93951864
>The new 5e 2024 rulebook even has parts that talk about if you do anything the Lady of Pain doesn't like you see an image of her in your head, she scolds you, and whatever you're doing automatically fails. No joke. So fucking stupid.
God that is fucking stupid, talk about missing the point of the Lady.

Her entire purpose is being an aloof, unknowable force of nature, not a person. Why would anything you do bother her. It's like trying to piss off K2.
If you make a mistake climbing K2 it doesn't wag its finger, it just kills you.

>>93951751
>I don't think it's that much of a lore statement or anything
Crystalians are nearly indestructible. You have to break through them to kill them. Azur and Lusat are one step above.

>>93951751
>>93953059
The primeval sorcerers are a mixed nod to Provost Willem from Bloodborne (old man in wheelchair paralyzed by occult insights) and the Sokushinbutsu from Sekiro (undying/unkillable Buddhists who retreat to caves to “die”/ascend).

>>93951921
>>93952099
The current crop of devs (assuming they still have devs and haven't swapped over fully to AI-generated text) have comically missed the point regarding a number of setting staples, the Lady just being one of the more egregious examples. They've tried to make her into an in-universe method for the DM to smack a player's hand and tell them not to be naughty, despite her complete disinterest in anything beyond Sigil and much of what goes on within it being one of the most established facets of her character.

>>93953478
Huh. Interesting.

>>93953059
>Crystalians are nearly indestructible.
[laughs in Night Maiden's Mist]

>>93959234
did you mean "literally any blunt damage weapon, with or without upgrades"

>>93938187
In the Forgotten Realms case the setting came first and Ed just set his players in it to go on adventurers.
Also Ed is known for running RP Heavy low level campaigns that generally don't go outside of reginal level issues.
In that context it makes prefect sense that their are things the players cannot contest with.

>>93944638
Kirkbride once said…

>>93960297
What?

>>93952034
She's written into the new Wish spell text, which is especially egregious

>>93960327
“The dwarves are atheists in a world where gods exist”

>>93937007
No. In fact, what's even worse than stupidly OP gods who humiliate PCs to show how strong they are, is the Blood War from the Forgotten Realms: a gigantic, titanic conflict of literally infinite scope that you can't interact with in any meaningful way.

>>93962038
What's wrong with it?

>>93962067
I just said. You can't interact with it in any meaningful way. Here's some quotes from WotC about it: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/233-the-blood-war-too-big-too-small-or-just-right
>No group of PCs can affect meaningful change in such a conflict; all they can do is fight to survive.

> [...]

> High-Level Heroic: The Harrowing of the Nine Hells

> The Nine Hells have gained an unacceptable advantage in the Blood War. The archmage Mordenkainen personally approaches the characters and offers them a magnificent reward if they undertake a quest that he claims will save the Multiverse from utter annihilation at the hands of Asmodeus. They must venture into the Nine Hells, starting with the first circle of Avernus, and slay Mephistopheles, the greatest wizard of the Hells. Mephistopheles’s realm of Cania is the last line of defense before Asmodeus’s realm of Nessus, and destroying the great wizard will strike fear into Asmodeus’s heart. He will surely withdraw his armies to protect himself from harm, giving the beleaguered forces of the Abyss time to regroup and mount a renewed offense.

You're a level 20 hero, literally the strongest that your character can be, ever. Your mission? Listen to this OP NPC give you a mission to make sure the status quo continues because you can't do anything else. Trash.

I mean, if you assume level 20 characters are supposed to still be kicking down doors (DC 15, our heroes have a real risk of failing!), then sure, but level 20 characters has been able to bring back the dead, read minds, and teleport to Hell with his friends and a couple hundred bucks in his pocket for quite a while. Treating them like they're still MMO characters going through the motions on the quest is retarded.

>>93960297
>Master Kirkbride said: Never write lore when you're off your tits on skooma

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>>93962118
Honestly that's more of a fundamental problem with modern D&D, it's afraid to give players any agency.
You're here to be a group of wandering, plucky adventurers who get told what to do by the important people rather than actually being the important people.

I hate to bring politics into it, but I blame it firmly on Ed being the son of a couple of Glowies. The idea that individuals from outside the status quo can come in and shake things up, gain their own power, change the course of history, kick bubblegum and chew ass, ect, ect, rather than just being the pawns of those who already have power (usually secret societies for obvious reasons) to engage in their gay ops is anathema to his world view.

>>93962118
>You're a level 20 hero, literally the strongest that your character can be, ever. Your mission? Listen to this OP NPC give you a mission to make sure the status quo continues because you can't do anything else. Trash.
Serioisly. Why doesn't that lazy fuck do it himself if he's so great.

>>93962168
>I hate to bring politics into it, but I blame it firmly on Ed being the son of a couple of Glowies. The idea that individuals from outside the status quo can come in and shake things up, gain their own power, change the course of history, kick bubblegum and chew ass, ect, ect, rather than just being the pawns of those who already have power (usually secret societies for obvious reasons) to engage in their gay ops is anathema to his world view.
I get it but you make it sound like it is actually possible. It's really not. If it was, it would've happened by now. Modern society is irreversibly cucked. Every indignity is visited on us and we basically do nothing.

>>93937019
Nerds have no idea what fun is. The two decades have repeatedly taught us that.

>>93962168
Nah, it's because FR is supposed to be a "living world," which actually means it must be stuck in permanent stasis. If players could affect FR in any meaningful way, it would be unrecognizable after a decade of actual play, if it even took that long. Imagine your last five gaming groups, and they all play their PCs up to level 20 in a world where such characters really can affect the setting - how long until every border on the Sword Coast is reshuffled, some lolbertarian, 40kiddie, tankie, or SJW retard rules over the biggest empire, and every cool iconic villain is dead? Not long at all.

I intend my games to be cooperative story telling and explicitly not a power fantasy for my players and so naturally I agree. There are people who play exclusively for a power fantasy and I imagine in those games having a completely unkillable being is bad form? Idk id never play in or dm a game like that

>>93962211
I'm not talking about actual IRL politics, I'm talking about the logical extensions of his beliefs here. It's like how a hardcore 'I cannot separate my beliefs from my works' Christian would never write a setting where Big J isn't the salvation and the light, even if he's in there under a different name.
I sincerely believe Greenwood is incapable of writing a setting which doesn't align with his world view when it comes to 'The way the world should be run', which is 'The plebs can't be trusted with any amount of freedom or power, anyone who is after power who isn't already part of the power structures is an existential threat, we have to work from the shadows because you fucking sheep-people are too stupid to understand that we're guiding you to a glorious future by the ring through your nose. Fuckheads, god I hate to all so much for questioning why I'm on Epsteins flight list.'

>>93937007
I do think it's good to have a sense of scale of where you are vs the rest of the world
Defeating a Cultlist leader that took some power from his god? Plausible
Going into super hell to kill that same god? More difficult, probably not going to happen. Especially in settings where the gods could blink and suddenly you cease to exist.

There is something so limiting yet so intriguing about beings that are incomprehensibly powerful that you have no real hope of ever facing.

I often think about Subnautica when this comes up. Yes, you can defeat every single creature in the game, from the smallest fish to the biggest Leviathans. But often it's better to avoid the bigger fish altogether because you are not equipped to deal with something that old and that powerful. Even with your best gear, you are still outmatched.

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There are just some fights you’re not supposed to win.
But at the end of the day this is a roleplaying board right? Right?
If you’re that heated just roll up a Forgotten Realms campaign, tell your players to start at Level 18 or something retarded and let them fuck Mystra while Ed’s OC cries and watches from the closrt. Its your game to run how you please

>>93962168
I'd say it's more to do with changing expectations. Before and during Greenwood's day, PCs who actually survived long enough to become rich and powerful were expected to build strongholds and attract followers - become people of importance - and the mechanics for doing so were codified in the basic rules right next to class information. Then in 3rd Edition, it got shunted off to the side, and subsequent editions have left it there.

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>>93962118
>>93962168
I think the missing ingredient here is scope and scale.
Most adventures don't leave the material pane and in earlier editions where most of this was solidified the power a player gains at high levels pivoted heavily to domain play which in general is bound again to the material plane. Barring supplemental materials that is.

Magically Inclined PCs can expand the scope of their interactions but are still bound in general to the material plane barring massive time skips of in which said magically inclined PCs can utilize all their obtained mystical knowledge to develop the counters to such greater threats. Even with the power PCs gain over the handful of in-game years max it takes to level, the cap is still generally set below the real high tiers which takes time outside the general scope of a modern game to reach.

TLDR
In D&D you can rival a King and his Kingdom easy within the context of the leveling system but challenging anything greater takes time outside outside of standard play because you need to reach beyond the standard mechanical suite presented which if the rules are there takes massive amounts of downtime.

As for the forgotten realms itself Ed does not personally run games that go beyond the regional level and the types of high powered adventures are made by others.
And for why the super powered NPCs don't do anything it was stated that all of the real top dog players exist in a cold war against each other where if one overextends themselves it allows the others to take advantage. This leads to them using proxies such as simulacrums, clones, or the ample supply of adventurers to deal with things.

>>93962168
I feel like you're probably conflating the state of the realms as published entity being written by probably hundreds of people, vs. Ed's games that he ran and his own personal world view. The setting really stopped being Ed's person viewpoint from the publication of the first boxes set. From the bits and pieces I've heard from the original Myth Drannor game, his players had a lot of agency in the world.

Speaking of, are their any articles out there that actually describe gaming with Ed? I've found some stuff he wrote about world building, but not play specifically.

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>People talking about how Ed Greenwood is a glowie
Pic related.

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>>93962427
>Before and during Greenwood's day, PCs who actually survived long enough to become rich and powerful were expected to build strongholds and attract followers - become people of importance - and the mechanics for doing so were codified in the basic rules right next to class information.
Never understood this about D&D. The gulf in power is just too wide. How does having an army, even a vast army of like level 1s ever mean anything against max level parties? Much less the metaplot villains who go far beyond max player level. Main character syndrome just breaks everything when it comes to having a logical world or any measure of relevance for the common person. No matter how many of them you stack together.

>>93962708
One, those armies are typically led and supported by their own high-level all-stars. Two, even heroes only have so much health - and with hundreds or even thousands of soldiers in play, they will lose it quicker than they expect if they don't watch their ass. A one-in-twenty chance of dealing damage becomes a deadly treat with a large enough sample size.

>>93962693
Makes sense. Apply it to Pathfinder's quirks where being excessively, unsubtly anarchistic and fanatical is the only way to effect positive change, with the most powerful and morally right gods all being non-lawful oversexed lesbians in an open relationship polycule and the lawful good male god of traditional families being retconned into oblivion due to being misogynistic combined with the athletic gigachad male god of war deciding to kill himself out of grief after soulsearching and denouncing his own toxic masculinity. You really can tell a lot about authors and their magical realms from what they vomit out onto a page.

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>>93962708
The gap between level 1 & max level used to be smaller. The whole 'become marvel superheroes, punch god in the dick' angle came about because they started moving away from things like building strongholds, attracting followers, ect.

It used to be that a high level character was comparable to someone like, I don't know, Leonidas in 300.
Sure, when you kill him he's going to leave a pile of 1st level corpses around him. But you can kill him. And you'd kill him pretty easily if he didn't have 300 other dudes backing him up.

Or another good comparison for high level PCs would be Conan in 'Hour of the Dragon', 10-20 revolutionaries catching him buck ass naked without his guards is enough that he's seriously in trouble.

>>93962755
Being realistic though, could an army like that deal with Szass Tam? Manshoon? Vecna? Any number of named meta NPCs that are supposedly more important than player agency.

>>93962790
That sounds better, honestly. Going back to that would be an improvement. Probably not happening though.

>>93937007
Ed Greenwood is a fucking retard

>>93962807
Think of that scene at the start of Lord of the Rings where Sauron gets taken down and it works kind of like that.
The humans brought their soldiers to keep the orcs off Islidur, while Sauron brought the orcs to keep the humans off Sauron, if either side hadn't brought their army it would've been a matter of 'Now I have to fight the other dangerous guy and his 10,000 strong army of dudes with polearms who are stabbing me in the dick every time I get near him' instead of just 'Fight the strong guy'

>>93962815
May I recommend ACKS to you? It's literally built with that in mind. The 3 stages of PC levelling are literally:
>Adventurer
>Conqueror
>King

>>93962807
In the cases of Szass Tam and Manshoon, certainly - otherwise, they'd just waltz into Neverwinter or wherever, declare themselves king, and that'd be the end of it. Instead, they keep themselves out of reach of their enemies, and send their armies of loyal and not-so-loyal followers to enact their will - not because it's just too comfy on their thrones to get up, but because they don't want to get murdered trying to 1v20,000. Vecna, however, is categorically bullshit.

>>93962831
>May I recommend ACKS to you? It's literally built with that in mind. The 3 stages of PC levelling are literally:
>>Adventurer
>>Conqueror
>>King
Sure, thanks. I don't know how I'd play it though. I don't care about who wrote it and getting hung up on that is dumb but most people I know and play with are too sensitive to wrongthink.

>>93962851
Worst comes to worst there's always solo play.
They can't ruin your game for you if you don't let them.

>>93962851
It's basically BECMI with more detailed macro-level gameplay. Nothing provocative.

>>93962866
>Nothing provocative.
You'd think so, but go check the archive for any time ACKS is mentioned.
There's a certain group of people who shit themselves any time its mentioned because 'The creator is literally Hitler'

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>>93937743
The most despicable? Oh, ho, no. No, no, no

>>93962873
In that case, just pirate the books so you don't give him money. That's what people do with Wizards of the Coast.

>>93962885
Doesn't even come close

>>93962866
>>93962873
>>93962889
Where do you play it? Capcha's shitting out so my posts don't always go through btw.

>>93938027
Ouch

>>93938388
Yes

>>93938309
>That's stupid, don't put a thing in front of your players if you don't plan on them ever kicking it down. People are faced with insurmountable foes in real life enough already
At the same time players are retarded and do not understand somehow the concept of 'come do this water's. I don't know what it is about tabletop specifically that makes every player lose their shit over a locked door with an obvious space for a magic key or a monster deliberately described as being too powerful for the party

>>93962930
Check the discord, there's always people jonesing for a game on discord.

>>93963142
How would one go about finding these players?

>>93963142
I'll check it out thanks

For anyone interested in ACKS, I actually told a story of one of my games in another thread:
>>93960406
>>93960441
>>93960448
>>93960474
To show how ACKS can play out.
And, you'll notice, if you scroll down, you get to see the average Anti-ACKS discordite shitting and seething about how no one ever plays ACKS, people only shill it and blah-blah-blah.

>>93963392
this isnt /osrg/ zoomzoom

>>93962693
Oh shit someone decided to save my core argument from when I was defending the harpers being Good Aligned in the Context of the Forgotten Realms.
Thanks Anon

If anyone is wondering my argument was mainly pulled from the last 6 moths or so of QnA recordings Ed does for his patreon members.
In them by responding to his fans question he lays out his primary influences and ideas pretty well. I forget which one it was in but his answer to why all the dirt farmer peasants don't use magic in their labors I can summarize as "Their primary experiences with magic is it coming from somewhere else to fuck them over, so they are content to deal with the known struggles of bad winters and such over outsider bullshit" is pretty telling.
The clergy part in particular comes from him reading old pulp fantasy novels as a child and importing the decadent priests from those into his own work. So he was working more off a more Conan style understanding of religion than a Catholic one for instance.

>>93963471
>Storytime on my /tg/? Well I never, ah do declare sir!
K

>>93963392
There isn't anything in this story that is specific to ACKS. This is all GM facing stuff and player expectations stuff. There is nothing keeping anyone from running a game of 3.5, Pathfinder or fucking 5e this way.

>>93963760
>You can run anything using D&D, sci-fi, post-apoc, Canadian moose-based murder mystery
>Sure the system doesn't support it for shit and you have to hack-job the entire thing until its unrecognizable as the same system, but that's all GM facing stuff
>There's nothing stopping you from running a game set in the 1960s about IRA propagandists engaging in games of high intrigue in the US to get funding for their buddies back home.
>D&D, you don't even need other systems
That's a stupid argument and you know it anon, there's a difference between having to Frankenstein a system to make it do what you want and having a system designed to do certain things from the off.

>>93963851
What's the story about, fuck nugget? It's about the fact the players talked some monsters instead of fighting them. This isn't trying to run a realistic 1920s gangster game in 5e, it's about how the gm runs the world and about the players not murdering every single they come across (which is a knock on effect of how the gm runs the world).

It says a lot that you immediately jumped to fucking genre non arguments that have absolutely nothing to do with the story the anon posted.

>>93963896
Thanks to this post, I read the story.

5e is absolutely not any good at handling "and now you have ten HD 6 allies every combat that takes place underground." I don't know if ACKS actually is, but if that were 5e, the DM would be pulling his hair out trying to contrive a way to hide their new troglodyte wives so that every combat isn't a slog (more than every 5e combat already is) while still respecting the players' success.

>>93963896
>Non-arguments
Well if you had a reading level above that of Forrest Gump you'd probably pick up on the fact the story is about:
>The biggest one being how combat focused D&D is, because you get XP from combat every encounter has to be combat, otherwise you're getting 'XP without any risk', and because combat is the only game in town DMs focus on making 'combat set pieces' rather than having things be fluid. Which in turn means if you don't then get into a slugging match, you've wasted the DMs careful planning time.
How D&D is mechanically designed to disincentive things like that story happening, funnily enough in this very thread people've been talking about how the shift from 'D&D is about gathering power so you can build a stronghold, gather followers, fuck bitches and do blow' to 'Do jobs for the important NPCs'
I'll be as charitable as humanly possible and use 3.5e as the example because it has the Strongholds book.
Strongholds in 3.5e are so expensive that it might as well be a 'Mother may I' situation with the DM.
Imagine a 5e game where you have 10 allies who are part of every combat. The DM would be looking for any excuse to get rid of them or have them off screen eevery chance he got.

And the genre argument holds up because the genre of most post-2e D&D games isn't:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZY2mRG5mzg
Its fucking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT3cl4GJIDs
Conan in the movie (and stories) becomes a King by his own hand, gaining experience and power over the years, Conan in the cartoon is out to kill the bad and save the world while wandering around doing job-of-the-episodes.
Does the latter have its place? Sure.
Does every game need to be that? Fuck no.

Oh, and of course then we have 5e which is more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J33Cxr3z6Ug

>>93963941
Unless your allies are all high level spell casters I seriously doubt that ACKS statblocks are so much more simple than 5e stat blocks that it matters so much, but even so, your missing the forest for the trees. The story isn't "this thing was so cool because they were in a huge fight that was super easy to run." He said
>We were actively rewarded for engaging with our enemies in ways that didn't involve stabbing and given treasure in a form that wasn't just gold or magic items. Which has led to further options going forward.

That shit is all how the GM ran the world, and how the players interacted with the world that the GM ran. If the story was all about how he loves games with mass combat and d&d sucks because it doesn't have good mass combat, you would have a point, but that isn't what the story is about.
Play ACKS, don't play it, play 5e, play what fucking ever, I'm not championing or shitting on any system, but you have to actually look at things critically and actually figure what it is that you like and you dont like. We're into the realm of things that aren't system dependant, so making recommendations of systems based on them is fucking stupid.

>>93963966
Buddy, >>93963851 doesn't say anything about what you're talking about, which was what I was replying to.

Now, I will admit, experience for combat is a solid point that I wasn't taking to account. I forget that that is the default so that is going to funnel newbie GMs into a certain play style. That is fair. I never run xp for combat, so I wasn't thinking that way.

I still stand by the fact that a lot of what that poster was talking about has more to do with how the GM is running the game, than any particular game system.

>>93963999
>That shit is all how the GM ran the world, and how the players interacted with the world that the GM ran. If the story was all about how he loves games with mass combat and d&d sucks because it doesn't have good mass combat, you would have a point, but that isn't what the story is about.
Have you ever GMed? It's really hard for me to explain this from first principles, but the things a GM allows to happen in their game are going to be very distorted by the system they use. I could easily imagine myself offering players a small army as a "quest reward" in Exalted 3e, but I would have to create some type of houserule system to even contemplate doing so in D&D 5e. This isn't because of the power level of the setting (E1 Exalts probably aren't stronger than, say, 10th level D&D PCs), but because in Exalted 3e an army is just a Battle Group and in D&D 5e it's an unmanageable mother-may-I mess, like most things that aren't squad combats.

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>>93963999
>We're into the realm of things that aren't system dependant, so making recommendations of systems based on them is fucking stupid.
I disagree, it is system dependant, if you have a system that starts to chug as soon as you get more than 1 character per person on each side then you can't do big, sweeping combat scenes, which means you can't have loadsahenchmen.

Shit, let's use the most obvious example.
Necromancers.
Everyone and their undead dog has wanted to play a necromancer at some point, who wouldn't want to sit down at the table, wait for the first combat, wordlessly pick up a boombox, crank it to 11, then just hold it over their head and blast spooky scary skeletons the entire duration of the fight so everyone knows what their character is up to.

Anyone that has ever actually played a necromancer knows that it goes one of two ways. Either you end up obscenely overpowered because you've effectively disintegrated the action economy and outnumber your enemies somewhere between 2-1 to 10-1, or your DM puts his foot down and goes 'You get one big undead and if you raise anything more than that, I'm going to make a fucking zombie of my own right here at the table, you understand me?' at which point you're left playing every wizard you've ever played, just with a black robe.

The system itself can't handle what you're trying to do with it, its like a poorly optimized video game that starts to chug because you've got too much on screen at the same time.

Know what, that's exactly how I'd describe it.
D&D is poorly optimized. It's a sequel of a sequel of a sequel, written by people who never played the first game in the series, let alone read the code or talked to the coders. It chugs like tar whenever you do anything that isn't part of what the person coding it planned for you to do and that's if it'll even let you do it.

I'm not trying to be an asshole here, I promise, I'm just saying that system mechanics shape what you do in a game.

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>>93964093
Hell, best example I can give of this? PbtA. Say what you like about PbtA but it has genre emulation down to a science. Your moves are exactly what you can do mechanically and describe perfectly the kind of game you can run with the system.
Want a game of hardcore violence and sex? Apocalypse world has rules for fuckin' with people and fuckin' in general.
Want a game of dark fantasy intrigue? The Sword, The Crown, and The Unspeakable Power has you covered.
Want a game of mixed up monster teens being little shits to each other? Monsterhearts.

Mechanics matter and the sad reality is? Modern D&D is shit at what it claims its intended goal is because of its mechanics.
It is a poorly designed system, only good for running games about orcish baristas getting into polycute drama and saving the world from the latest existential threat of the week, that's usually a metaphor for either their dad or the patriarchy.
And it's not even the best system for that.

>>93964069
But is 5e any more of a mother-may-I mess than OSR?
>>93964093
I'm not disagreeing with you that system mechanics shape the kind of game your going to play. I agree with you, 100%. But

>We were actively rewarded for engaging with our enemies in ways that didn't involve stabbing and given treasure in a form that wasn't just gold or magic items. Which has led to further options going forward

isn't game mechanics. That is the point I am trying to make. If you want a world that is reactive to the PC's, where every single encounter isn't a fight, and where interesting interactions are possible, that is something that quite nearly system neutral. >>93963966 has a point that, with the xp system being what it is, GMs are probably taught the view things in terms of fights, which sucks, but that's more of a bad GM teaching thing (and id argue most games on the market right now are shit at teaching new gms) and less about mechanically locking you out of choices.

>>93964160
I think D&D does heroic fantasy just fine, but I'm open to your opinion. Can you explain why you think it fails at what it sets out to do?

>>93964192
Well, let's take the three big classics of the heroic fantasy genre and use them as a measuring stick.
Conan; Elric; Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser.
Could you do Conan in D&D by raw, with its wicked sorcerers, degenerate ape men and conquering a kingdom for your own?
No, because wizards are expected to be PCs and the game is way out of fuck if they aren't because the CR system expects you to have one, magic is Vancian and wizards are a very specific class with a very strong archetype.
You're never going to be, I don't know, Tuzun Thune, in D&D (He's from Kull, I know, but same setting, different era), because you'd be bullshit overpowered compared to everyone else, plus building a giant hall of mirrors requires you remain in one place and invest money in it, which is anaethma to the modern D&D 'Follow the plot, end up punching a big monster in the dick while final fantasy boss music plays' type module play.
No to the ape men as well because monsters are pretty strongly set in D&D, a D&D orc is a D&D orc regardless of how you repaint it. Plus the CR system means there's a very narrow level range for any monsters, you don't really have iconic monsters anymore, you have iconic monster types.
You couldn't toe up something like Khosatral Khel in most D&D groups since there's an unspoken expectation that it's got stats so they can kill it (which kind of feeds into the OP of this entire thread)
As for conquering a Kingdom? Good luck with that in 5e, what with it requiring mass combat, intrigue and actual mechanics for doing that kind of thing, which sure as hell aren't in 5e basic.
Keep in mind, there's 3rd party rules for that, but that's putting lipstick on the dead pig at the end of the day, why not just use a fleshlight instead like a normal person?

>>93964334
But I don't think the game is trying to do Sword and Sorcery stories anon. It's hard to nail down exactly what kind of heroic fantasy d&d is (I'd argue it's something along the lines of the LotR movies mixed with every kind of fantasy novel post 1985), but it does "heroes going on a quest to accomplish a thing" pretty well.

Getting mad that it doesn't do Conan, Lankhmar and Elric is letting get mad at an apple for not being an orange. There are a ton of other systems that do what you're talking about.

>>93964334
Elric? Wrong kind of magic for D&D and of course imagine trying to stat him out, that'd be a ball ache.
5e lacks the flexibility to make your settings truly unique or your own without an obscene amount of work, it's always going to have that D&D flavour to it (see the point about orcs above)
That's even without getting into the whole 'starting the game as the ruler of a kingdom' thing.

And finally Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser (which is honestly my personal favourite heroic fantasy duo), this is probably closest to D&D, episodic adventures, saving the city, getting boozed up and pretending to believe in a god that lives in a jug, ect, ect.
The wizards point comes up again, the only way to make wizards weird in 5e is 'He's just like that, fuck off and stop asking if you can play one or you'll taste my shoe sooner than you think', you'd have a better time running Fafhrd & Mouser with something like Warhammer Fantasy honestly.

Which brings us what I'd say is the foundational problem with doing a F&GM style heroic fantasy game in D&D, the thing that'll always undermine your every attempt to run one in this style.
Why the fuck would the players spend their money on the shit that heroic fantasy characters do?
F&GM start almost every adventure broke because they do insane things like buy houses, or boats, or get blazingly drunk and swear off alcohol forever. There is zero incentive for D&D characters to act like normal human beings unless the DM insists they do.

>>93937007
Ed Greenwood was a retarded cooner and a feddie simp. Everything he's ever said should be disregarded because he believed the CIA was the greatest moral good in existence.

>>93964334
>You're never going to be, I don't know, Tuzun Thune, in D&D (He's from Kull, I know, but same setting, different era), because you'd be bullshit overpowered compared to everyone else, plus building a giant hall of mirrors requires you remain in one place and invest money in it, which is anaethma to the modern D&D 'Follow the plot, end up punching a big monster in the dick while final fantasy boss music plays' type module play.

And this isn't something that is really mechanically backed up. You could argue (and you should, it's true) that bad GM advice/no GM advice and shit modules lead novice GM's into running games badly, it's a solid critique. But that's a GM facing problem and not a mechanics problem.

>>93964334
>gay high fantasy slop isn't like manly sword & sorcery
No shit Sherlock.

>>93964431
There's literally nothing wrong with the CIA, fellow citizen, we work for your best interests.

>>93964334
>>93964417
This is all setting and tone stuff. Very little about your complaints are mechanical in nature, and the fact that d&d isn't good for sword and sorcery doesn't mean that it's
>only good for running games about orcish baristas getting into polycute drama and saving the world from the latest existential threat of the week, that's usually a metaphor for either their dad or the patriarchy.

"I don't like [game] because it doesn't support [genre I like]," is informative critique." That's fair. It doesn't make it broken and unplayable.

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>>93964417
Have you ever played a game where the DM made you pay expenses? Or where your characters did something like buy an entire herd of bulls and sacrificed them to their god because that's the kind of crazy shit heroic fantasy characters do?
There's no incentive for D&D characters to act like actual human beings for one very specific reason.
Wealth by level penalizes you for doing so. Want to spend money on something that isn't directly making your character better; want to, I don't know, buy a giant statue of your goddess made of gold riding naked on a horse?
Good job, unless the DM is feeling generous, you are now behind the curve and the red queen doesn't slow down for chumps.

>>93964402
Yeah but it does the LotR movies even worse, those contain mass combat.
Pic related. It's hard to nail down what genre D&D is for one simple reason.
D&D isn't good for playing any genre except D&D at the end of the day, it's its own little genre by this point and has, over the years, become a parody of itself sadly.

>>93964436
>It's something that isn't really mechanically backed up
Yeah and that's the problem. Why would GMs play it that way when there's no reward for playing it that way?
Because hell, ACKS manages to mechanically back it up and reward you for playing it that way, you can actually become a powerful warlock by playing it that way and the expectation is that your party is going to be deeply invested in the region you're in since it'll be where you eventually build your Kingdom (most likely, you can always fuck off elsewhere if you like)
There's so many things that come out of every game not being a constant road trip that you don't really appreciate until you see what you miss out on.
Faction play, long term interactions with NPCs, recurring nemesis characters, building a base, ect, ect.
It is possible to do these things.
D&D just chooses not to

>>93964497
I used heroic fantasy as an example because the person I'm replying to mentioned heroic fantasy, not because it's personally a genre I like.

>>93964499
I do not like the vagaries tables ACKS has for domain play. They feel arbitrary and especially the liege favours seem like they could be really unfun.
Please fix them now or I will never again pirate an ACKS book to steal rules from.

>>93964512
That's my bad, I didn't realize heroic fantasy was a synonym for sword and sorcery (and I find it to be an ill fitting one).

>>93964436
>And this isn't something that is really mechanically backed up. You could argue (and you should, it's true) that bad GM advice/no GM advice and shit modules lead novice GM's into running games badly, it's a solid critique. But that's a GM facing problem and not a mechanics problem.
The function of a system is the things it incentivises. D&D incentivises every game being a game of 'randos ascend from the slums of rusty dagger shank town and go off into the big wide world to punch god in the dick to save the world so that it's still around when the next group of randos ascent from the slums of rusty dagger shank town go off into it to punch god in the dick next week'
Sincere question; what was the last module put out by 1st party D&D where players were proactive rather than reactive?
I'm going to put my hat into the ring on this one as well; as far as I know it was Kingmaker.
2010.
And that's not even D&D, that's Pathfinder.

>>93964499
>Have you ever played a game where the DM made you pay expenses?
Frequently yeah. Shit it's even still a rule in 5e.

>>93964499
The one mechanical thing you've hit on is that d&d doesn't do mass battles.

If I was running a 5e game and the players wanted to spend money to sacrifice 100 bulls to their god, they'd do that, and the world was respond accordingly, however that makes sense in the world we're playing in. How would ACKS mechanically back up this example? Because it still seems to me that we're arguing about tone/setting/game mastering stuff, and not about game play.

>>93964627
>How would ACKS mechanically back up this example?
First of all; no WBL, money is expected to come and go, hell you even have income on a monthly basis after a certain level.
Second of all: Fate points get rewarded for doing shit like that if fate points are in use and if not then there's a rule called 'heroes tomb' which lets you start with XP equal to the amount of money spent on things like monuments to the time you fucked the queen of the amazons and didn't send a carrier pigeon the next day when your character is inevitably murdered by the queen of the amazons for doing so.

>>93964592
>The function of a system is the things it incentivises.
sports have much less mechanics and they were still developing techniques 40 years into their creation, with trainers and sponsors and gyms. Without guidance most GMs are stuck repeating the same mistakes everyone else made and not learning better ways. Most GMs will play with like 4 other GMs, not counting people who learned from them. There needs to be some way to teach outside of the implied rules.

>>93964592
Now we're talking about modules, and I've already agreed with you: d&d (and Pathfinder, to an even worse degree) modules are hot garbage, they are bad at showing a novice gm what the game can be, as is the DMG advice.

But, mechanically, there is nothing is 5e that keeps a game master from running a proactive player game. And not in a "role zero, you have to change a bunch of shit around" kind of way, out of the box you can run that kind of game.

>>93964653
What is WBL?

>>93964661
I think this is a big problem with the hobby in general. Good GMs who end up designing games have internalized a lot of the things that make them good GMs, and don't really do a great job passing them on because they assume them to be obvious.

>>93964673
Wealth by level.
Which is one of those fundamental reasons you'll rarely run into monsters above your level either in D&D.
After all, what if you steal its shit and run off? You've just snookered the entire careful balance that the game is based around, at least for a few levels to come.
CR (Challenge rating) & WBL are kind of intrinsically linked and are the reason every D&D encounter in every D&D game has to be just Goldilocks, which makes every setting feel like you're just fucking around in a setting-themed amusement park most the time, because everything has to be at about your level give or take otherwise you might end up off the beaten track.

And I say this from personal experience because I once played (in a 3.5 game) a bounty hunter character who, early on in the game, went completely off the reservation in terms of wealth and became so obscenely overarmed with specialist equipment for every situation that the DM simply couldn't stop me when they tried to.
Rax the Hound was a blast to play, but they're a perfect example of what happens when you step outside the careful confines of what the game expects of a character which is 'Good job, you were so brave slaying that dragon, let's go get a snow cone as a reward for being such a mighty hero!'

>>93964653
You're fundamentally misunderstanding WBL
It's not the amount of total assets you're expected to have at a certain level
It's a tool for measuring the amount of actively useful wealth of magical items you are carrying when you go into an encounter. To quote the book
>The baseline campaign for the D&D game uses this “wealth by level” guideline as a basis for balance in adventures. No adventure meant for 7th-level characters, for example, will require or assume that the party possesses a magic item that costs 20,000 gp.
Table 5-1 says nothing about non-fungible assets.

The fundamental disconnect is something completely different. 3e greyhawk is a high magic setting, with a literally infinite supply of arbitrarily powerful NPCs to sell to and a bevy of supermassive extraplanar metropoli. Sigil exists, you can get there within three rounds from anywhere in the world at level 9 if you have a cleric and a wizard, and per definition in the book someone of any possible class combination (up to and including arbitrarily high levels) exists there - it is itself what may as well be another infinite part of the many infinite planes of 3e. It's assumed in the general case that finding someone to buy static assets isn't impossible (and anything that isn't impossible a party that's made it to high society can arrange to have done within the day), so things like valuable land aren't really listed as treasures because they'd just get traded in. This is in no way a product of the system, it's a product of the campaign - that is, the DM.
You can just as easily play in a campaign setting where this isn't true. You may be shocked to learn that the most 3.5 setting that was ever put in a first party book - eberron - is one where this isn't possible. There exists no such supply of high level theoretical land buyers. Players can receive land, and they can develop it, and there are rules for doing so.

>>93964733
I feel like you're kind of misunderstanding why cr exists.

>>93964733
>And I say this from personal experience because I once played (in a 3.5 game) a bounty hunter character who, early on in the game, went completely off the reservation in terms of wealth and became so obscenely overarmed with specialist equipment for every situation that the DM simply couldn't stop me when they tried to.

How is this not an issue with how the GM is running the world? If all of this specialist, game break equipment is just easily purchased, that's a setting issue.

Also table 5-1 is just averages based on fighting same-level encounters and the book specifically talks about how it varies depending on whether you give more/less gold/xp anyway lol.

>>93964733
lmao
This is simply just not true. The only time treasure rewards for fighting things higher CR than you because abnormal with XP in such a way is, well literally never. If you squint it happens at the ECL20 vs. ECL21 arbitrary 10x wealth multiplier, but that isn't even reflected in treasure tables. You have successfully demonstrated that you have never played 3e by the rules because if you fight someone higher level than you then you get more XP than treasure, proportionally. The theoretical issue with CR is farming low level enemies for more gold and reduced XP, putting you ahead of the treasure curve.
>hurr but I didn't get xp!
That means your DM didn't give you XP for winning an encounter. 3e is what canonized experience for this sort of combat-alternative resolution. If you have an encounter where you want to loot someone, and you loot them, you won the encounter. That's pretty clear in the DMG. Hell, it's the fucking basis of the good alignment options in the BoED.

>became so obscenely overarmed with specialist equipment for every situation that the DM simply couldn't stop me when they tried to.
This is the most absolute nogames statement possible, huh.

>>93964402
> It's hard to nail down exactly what kind of heroic fantasy d&d is (I'd argue it's something along the lines of the LotR movies mixed with every kind of fantasy novel post 1985)
Its Dragonlance, its been trying to do Dragonlance again and again since 1984 when TSR made a big push complete with books and merch to reorient D&D around its cool new setting. And it worked, because Dragonlance was the CR of the 80s with its endless series of books, and all D&D content shifted to follow its example.

>>93937778
I hate sand, anon.

>>93964872
>This is the most absolute nogames statement possible, huh.
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/search/text/Rax%20The%20Hound/
While I appreciate that I'm so smart compared to you that I must seem magic anon; I don't think even I could start talking about Rax the Hound 11 years before this thread just to set things up to clown on you.
Feel free to admit you're not just wrong, but retarded as well. I'm sure you'll be a big enough man to do it now you've been proven wrong.

>>93964888
I'll agree with that, with the caveat that just because the actual dragonlance is a horrible railroad, that doesn't mean that style of game has to be a railroad.

Epic fantasy? Is that what it is? I hate that.

>>93937777
On the other hand . . . there's something to be said for players understanding where they sit on the scale.

Take a bunch of D&D characters from any edition you please. They're all level 3. Now go find the same edition's most powerful dragon and dump that in front of them. Now if all of the players decide to Leeroy Jenkins and flex their dick at the dragon, is it bad GMing when they get owned?

>>93964909
Having made up shit in the past doesn't make it any truer than making it up right now, retard

>>93964939
>N-no, this can't be, I was wrong about something, impossible!
Cope harder.

>>93964957
I wasn't wrong
You're the one in denial

>>93964919
Epic Fantasy is when you take a group of schmucks and send them off on a high fantasy quest of great importance complete with danger and death only being real when its dramatically resonant
By the nature of the fiction being aped it becomes a variety of set piece locals and dungeons with sometimes a choice of which objective to take on first in game format.

>>93940217
>Vecna
I have a pet theory that the Dark Powers allowed him back into the realms, but continue to fuck with him.
What he wants is always out of reach, and he continues to be stuck in a cycle of failure and battle with Kas.
Soth only got out because he actually overcame his flaw and self reflected for a bit.

>>93962873
Is he actually Hitler or are do people just not like him?

I mean, does it have different stats for different races like in MYFAROG? Or even like some of the Conan adaptations?

>>93965507
The guy himself is a dickhead I wouldn't give money to. From what little Ive seen of the game it isn't overtly political like Varg's garbage, it's just more OSR churn.

>>93962708
In old editions, enough archers and sings can kill most things easily. Even high level spells and magic items only counter action economy so much

>>93965564
>sings
Fucking bards m8.

>>93965507
Apparently he runs with the alt-right grifter crowd. The game uses race-as-class, but again, it's just BECMI with more detailed rules on the managing strongholds and followers bit. So yeah, pirate it if you find the guy noisome, but the game itself is fine.

>>93965507
>different stats for different races of humans, generally derived from the qualities that are endemic to their homeland or culture (e.g. desert nomads generally having high constitution, primitive savages with no interest in education generally being less intelligent, etc) is equivalent to being Hitler
calm yourself down already
the answer is no. the guy's not particularly swell but all the allegations are just that, allegations (which is all you need to whip up a hurricane of retards on the internet), or straight up false. most are connected to him having a job working with someone else. which... isn't something most people have control over

the game itself is mostly just a 1e repackage with a subsystem for literally any ingame activity you could possibly imagine, including owning slaves, but the game assumes swords-and-sorcery antiquity era, where that was fairly commonplace

>>93965532
>>93965632
Thanks for the answers, anons.

>>93965650
>the answer is no

That's all you had to say anon.

>>93937007
>there should be things you can’t ever hope to defeat
why would you want to entertain such cuck mentality in your fantasy world

>>93965896
If you're interested in an osr-ish game, get worlds without number. Kevin Crawford seems like a real one, and a complete version of the rules is absolutely free.

>>93965938
To invoke a sense of verisimilitude between the player and their character in the setting by presenting things beyond the scope of the PC?
Its the same core concept as describing a meal at the tavern, its not directly related to the game part but helps immerse your players and therefore help them give more of a shit.

For anyone interested, I did find some stuff Ed has written about how he runs games that I found kinda interesting:

https://www.enworld.org/threads/getting-a-realms-campaign-up-and-running.667087/

Why should a three dimensional squishy lifeform have any right to defeat a four dimensional godlike lifeform? It makes no sense really. You can actually attempt to punch a black hole in comparisons—which is impossible too.

>>93966608
Look, I charge the four dimensional godlike black hole lifeform, I hit its measly AC of 15 easily, and I deal 1d12+345 slashing damage with my axe.
Now let's get over to the next encounter.

>>93966608
Because you're a retard using a retarded system that add stats to your fag dimensional godlike lifeform.

>>93937989
>That's only some retards that hate it yet somehow keep playing Ravenloft.
Quite fitting, really

>>93951864
Isn't the LoP supposed to be aloof and inscrutable?

>>93967039
>the current writers don't understand and/or give a fuck about the setting they're writing about
I'm shocked.

>>93965507
The long and short of it can be summed up as 'Reddit Janny backed some baseless accusations of brigading against him, because he was part of a brigade talking shit about him an d the guys fans kept going 'but that's not true''
I'm not even kidding, that's the heart of the controversy. Said janny is also a business competitor.

>>93968181
Ignorant bystander here. Observing previous arguments about ACKs on 4chan has lead me to think that you' might be right, except for how I've also been lead to think that 4chan rightoids are utterly shameless in their lies and distortions, which is an unfortunate state of affairs.
Either way, I've heard enough about the actual mechanics to convince me that this should be my next system after I wrap up my 5e games. Sometimes the ACKs-fags seem shilly or fanboyish in the way they frame their arguments, but they sound like they're playing the game, which makes them look a lot better than their detractors.

>>93968441
>except for how I've also been lead to think that 4chan rightoids are utterly shameless in their lies and distortion
That's fair, but I'm confident enough that I'm going to say go off and look into it yourself. It's all public information.
As for being shilly or fanboyish, every community has that aspect to it. I mean shit, have you seen any Lancer thread?
At the end of the day the way I see it is; the ACKS likers can actually point to things they enjoy about the system while any time someone starts throwing the term ACKS-shill around you can read through their entire argument and basically replace it with 'Urgh, chuds >:(' without changing the substance of it.

The only time I've ever gotten someone to actually point at something they specifically don't like about the system was 'It's bloated with too many sub-systems'
Which is an actual argument at least, even if I personally don't agree since the idea is you can take or leave them as you choose.

>>93966729
>>93966808
Jesus. You guys need to relaz

>>93939641
What a fucking god.

>>93971522
What gets me is that he isn't just talking about different flavors of milk from different species, he's talking about how different species perceive the different flavors of milk from different species, his comment implies a whole matrix of interracial milk-drinking.

>>93937743
You're mad because you sympathize with Strahd as a fellow incel.
You can't stand that he got cucked by his chad brother who took all the testosterone AND Tatiyana, and for violating the natural order (virgins should not kill chad) now Strahd is cursed to a sexless eternity simping for Tatiyana. Death is too good for him.
But you recognize yourself in him and seethe and mald because how dare the Gods punish incels like you?

>>93939641
What discord is this? I want in.

>>93968441
>I've also been lead to think that 4chan rightoids are utterly shameless in their lies and distortions

Do you genuinely think 4chan leftoids are any different, anon?

>>93971522
>>93973499
Ed is the intersection of the free love hippie movement and greybeard grognard all wrapped up in a mommy issues and glowie groomed package.
>>93975528
Its probably his patrion discord if you want more I would suggest checking the candlekeep forums.

>>93937007
If they reached that level, then with sufficient time and effort players should be able to as well.

>>93939943
Source?

>>93978465
A quick Google says that big e doesn't have official 5e stats.

>>93944440
Not a bad rhyme. Gives a sort of Lovecraftian vibe. Got any more lore about them?

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>>93939723
>>93939943
Larloch is the real "You Lose" Caine-style character. One of the official Adventure League modules outright states the party instantly dies if they meet Larloch, no stats and no rolls, you just lose and die horribly.

>>93978486
I mean did Ed say something about how Elminster is that overpowered in his discord or on a forum somewhere?

>>93978745
Oh right, it's DDAL00-03, Those That Came Before, a "tier 3 or 4" adventure so the player characters are meant to be level 11-20, so he can instantly kill a level 20 party.

>>93978745
>elminster can't defeat him so, obviously, it's impossible for your players

>>93978745
Larloch really sounds like an anime boy name, he should be prettier.

>>93978745
That's fucking retarded and gay

>>93978823
Look up Weavemasters, and the Death Masks and Spellstorm novels.

>>93978745
>would sacrifice all of Faerun for just one more minute in the company of his beloved goddess
Larloch is the purest and most loyal waifufag.

>>93980871
If you wanna play 3 hours and still die, go for it. Wasted time. I'd rather rocks fall, you die so I can get to the next thing in my life just 3 hours faster than rolling dice for 3 hours just to die anyway. Try fighting him

>>93978548
Nta but bump this q

>>93976718
That's like comparing kids to babysitters. The worst leftoids aren't on 4chan and they still aren't as bad as 4chan rightoids (who still aren't the worst rightoids).

>>93982511
>>>/pol/

>>93982475
>consoomer reads that le invincible overpowered gary stu villain is retarded and gay
>thinks the retarded and gay part refers to not being able to fight him for 3 hours before failing instead of the whole concept of automatically failing against the invincible overpowered gary stu villain
Is this brainrot?

>>93982540
Idc

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>>93982511
>I'm a leftoid say we are not bad
Sure think leftoid.

>>93982593
>>93982536
Don't ask questions if you don't want the answer.

>>93982640
I didn't but whatever. Take it to pol

>>93982540
>>93982475
You make it sound as though dying in combat is somehow less fun than the rest of the game. I'd be pissed, especially if it were an old character because if it were an old character then I'd have a bunch of single-use items and hail-marry tactics in anticipation of the day that I end up in an unwinnable fight.

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>>93982692
We'll I hope you best him with all your gemgaws and gadgets.

>>93982717
lol, I understand that I won't, but you're spoiling my fun if you don't let me try (I at least want to deny him my bag of holding and send him to the astral plane).
Also, ideally, there should be a point where the characters understand that they aren't going to win, and they either change their strategy to escape or they resign themselves to some kind of last stand, the former is a pivotal moment in terms of gameplay (because the game is supposed to be about survival, so many payers don't get that, they've only ever seen fairly-balanced setpiece encounters) while the latter is one of the most important moments in the story of a dead character.

>>93982773
I'll concede the point, sir. I have put my players against insurmountable odds and it did produce epic moments. I had a 27th lvl pally that got swallowed by a red dragon. It was pretty epic, yes. Ppl still bring that character up years later

>>93982836
Yea you get it.
In turn I'll concede that failing an impossible save and dying instantly can POTENTIALLY be a good end if it was adequately foreshadowed, it has to at least make for a funny story when you talk about your dead character later, ideally it also makes a certain kind of game-ist sense (like "I made bad decisions and I deserved it").

>>93962790

The Henry of Skalitz powerscaling system basically.

>be well-trained for a foot soldier, able to even best a nobleman in a duel
>in the best gear you can afford (which was usually plate armor and full under-armor clothing by end-game)
>can still get beaten to death by 3 bandits and a dog

It should be there--epic beast under the waves, a wizard uncaring but neutral towards the party, warring beings, fighting overhead in the distance.
Unfortunately, most people use them as the following:
>here's my epic gmpc you cant hurt and whose every order you have to follow or I butcher you instantly

>>93937007
How powerful is that thing really? Would it be unstoppable had it stood up and did a big spin?

>>93964431
Don't to harsh, he was indoctrinated from birth

>>93983999
Yeah but that wouldn't stop him WACO'ing you if he had the means, motive and opportunity to do so would it?

>>93984072
>WACO'ing
You mean Harping?

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>>93984096
Good point.

>>93984133
good thing they've been retconned into being an underdog freedom fighter faction

>>93984187
The Harpers go through as consistent cycle.
>They get reestablished by Elminster and Friends.
>The Orginzation grows
>Elminster and Friends fuck off once it becomes to large and overbearing not not yet malicous for their tastes
>The various sects start acting independently and fucking up on the regional level
>Someone Explicitly Evil gets into a leadership position and twists the entire organization to their whims.
>Elminster is dragged back in to dismantle the Organization
>They get reestablished by Elminster and Friends

Right now in 5e The Harpers are in the early stages of their growth phase.

>>93985016
But that wasn't real Harperism anon!
>yfw 'Late Stage Harperism' is unironically a thing and they've got their own fucking boom-bust cycle like a god damn stock market
You really couldn't make this shit up.

>>93985882
Unironically I think Baneism is superior to Harperism.

>>93987708
The god, the Sith Lord, or the big guy? Though, really, they all are.

>>93985016
Elminster won't establish them again. He left them entirely and now runs Waterdeep's secret police instead.

>>93983314
More powerful than Radahn

>>93990476
Why are there so many secret police groups? Faerun is an abomination, I swear.

>>93991531
Magic means that the tools required for a surveillance state can come about much easier. From there it then becomes the prerogative of any prosperous nation or city state to build their own secret police for the sake of internal stability in the face of foreign threats.

>>93991531
Because Ed Greenwood's father was in Intelligence (NATO signal communications officer) and was always away from home doing secret shit. Meanwhile, one of his players ended up working in Canadian Intelligence for the Five Eyes. He was effectively raised to glow.

>>93937007
No. If it breathes, it is defeatable.

>>93997136
What if it doesn't breath? Or bleed? Maybe not even eat.

Might be more encompassing to say that if it lives it can die. Though some might say that excludes undead and constructs.

>>93937778
I don't like sand. It's rough and coarse. And it gets everywhere.