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Just strange that all other shock moments, being attacked by undead you previously know, seeing a abbaration, a group member being killed, etc. don't do psychic damage but this one does even when you made the knowledge check and know whats going on.
Too bad that WotC felt it neccessary to add damage where it doesn't make sense just to add a combat effect.
If you really need to, go ahead and say, "It's magic!"
Seeing horrifying things usually doesn't do anything to people in D&D.
If you really need to, go ahead and say, "It's magic!"
Seeing horrifying things usually doesn't do anything to people in D&D.
-O
Except when it is a slain Sivak. Thats more horrible than any far realm creature.
__________________ Everything about RPGs is subjective, so everything I say about them is I my opinion and not hard facts
Having a backstory is good. Using this backstory in game is better. And for that you need background skills.
4E, the game where you play HSMFOS
Heroic
Only good, or at least unaligned adventurers are supported and no monster you can fight is good aligned.
Super-
The PCs become masters in any skill automatically and it is impossible for them to be bad at a mundane task
Mutants
Compared to NPCs of the same strength, PCs poses a ungodly amount of HP and can withstand huge mountains of punishment. That or they can spontaneously regenerate wounds.
From Outer Space
Yet despite no matter how powerful the PCs become, they can never do anything special what the "natives" (=NPCs) can do like animating a skeleton.
__________________ Veronica: Where's your brother?
Dick: I think he took Ghost World up to his room. They're probably up there making love. Or playing Dungeons and Dragons. Or both, at the same time. They're both, like, 12th-level dorks. I'm just sayin'
Sivak damage dealing on death fits the 4e philosophies perfectly. I think your like or dislike of it depends more on your feelings towards 4e.
__________________ Psionics are too sci-fi, not like the traditional method of spell casting that has existed only in D&D, involves research, laboratory work, and formulas, and was cribbed directly from a series of science fiction novels. I mean, come on, calling forth the power to alter the world from your own center of will? That's not magical in the slightest! Not at all like my wizard's spell "Telepathy!"
I still don't see why it is so hard to understand that the sivak's death throes is magically inspired horror which causes mental trauma. Death throes were a magical attack imbued in draconians by their creators. They were always displayed as twisted creatures created by foul magic. So what is wrong with doing an attack against the mind any more than doing acid damage?
Like I also said, it has been a long standing problem that sivak draconians didn't do damage upon their deaths like other draconians did, because it made what should have been the second most powerful draconian less threatening than lesser ones. What does attitudes towards 4e have to do with anything?
Last edited by ferratus; 7th November 2009 at 01:14 AM..
I still don't see why it is so hard to understand that the sivak's death throes is magically inspired horror which causes mental trauma is controversial.
I don't think the problem is that it's hard to understand.
just wading in: folks, let's keep this civil before the mods step in.
Derren: Watch the second Planet of the Apes movie. There are mutants with psychic powers. Heck, watch that Star Trek episode where Captain Pike gets zapped by those mind-control aliens. Psychic damage, right?
Now 4e is different in a lot of ways: Tieflings are a true-breeding race (rather than 2e planar mutts). Aasimar are now Deva. We don't have the same number of repetitive metallic dragons. The Abyss is in the Inner Planes (now the Primordial Chaos).
That said, is it too much of a stretch for one type of draconian to give off psychic energy that harms a slayer? Whether it's fear-based or just causes mind-pain of an unspecific sort, it's just a monster ability.
Also: the body's fear response does damage it, if you don't react properly or deal with the stress. If you live in constant fear you skip from your alarm-phase response to a more long-term "resistance" phase stress response: like being on a yellow alert in star trek tng. It's not at its peak, but if it goes on for too long everyone's body will start ot break down in some way (just about everyone has a "weak link" in their system, like a bad back or stomach, or heart disease).
So, quite literally, your fear (or fight-or-flight response from your sympathetic nervous system) can cause damage to you. It's not glowy pink energy like Xmen, but rather your body will kick into overdrive.
Maybe they give off fear-inducing hormones when they die. Or maybe "it's magic!"
I'm kind of curious to see if folks will be using draconians in their games or not since they've been tied so closely with Dragonlance. I know people have used them before in other settings, but does their inclusion in Draconomicon 2 make you more likely to use them?
I think that draconians, and also dragonspawn (the humanoid ones) are a bit redundant with dragonborn. Then again, I've always loved Dragonlance's draconians!
If I were running a Dragonlance game, PC draconians would simply be the dragonborn. Maybe with some sort of heritage feet to represent the different types. Perhaps the NPC draconians could represent the "first generation" which were magically created, and dragonborn could represent the race after they started breeding true.
If I wanted to import draconians into a homebrew game, I'd make then simply special builds of NPC dragonborn. I already do that with humanoid dragonspawn.
__________________ Brian Zuber
Proud Member of ENWorld since 2000 (under several lost screen names). Gaming since the mid-80s!
Favorite Settings: Love all of the official settings, Mystara is my nostalgia fave! Trying to create a homebrew that blends the best elements of the various settings. Favorite Edition: Can't decide between 3rd Edition and 4th Edition, like them both!
I would like to use Draconians, although I don't like the 'corrupted metallic dragon eggs'. For multiple reasons I just don't fancy that.
Next time I run a game (which may be a while ), I'm tempted to use draconians as a race of "dragonborn boogeymen." Just as goblins, bugbears, trolls, ogres, and many kinds of fey are, physically, warped/nightmarish humans--or at least, fairy tales paint them as such, and it was partly those tales that inspired the monsters in D&D--I think draconians could serve the same purpose in dragonborn culture. You could ditch the corrupted egg aspect, and just make them evil, Feywild reflections of the dragonborn--or else, if you don't want to go the fey route, just a naturally occurring evil race with some innate magic that happens to resemble dragonborn, as goblins resemble twisted humans.
Or they could be the result of tiefling experimentation on captives during the war between Bael Turath and Arkhosia.
__________________ Ari Marmell
aka
Mouseferatu
--Rodent of the Dark
I would like to use Draconians, although I don't like the 'corrupted metallic dragon eggs'. For multiple reasons I just don't fancy that.
What one could do is use them instead of the Dragonspawn.
I was just about to say that the corrupted eggs is a classic and quite cool actually. I still remember the look on my players' face when they found out for the first time, during play.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mouseferatu
Or they could be the result of tiefling experimentation on captives during the war between Bael Turath and Arkhosia.
But this is even better - definitely yoinked.
__________________
360 hours played
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I still don't see why it is so hard to understand that the sivak's death throes is magically inspired horror which causes mental trauma. Death throes were a magical attack imbued in draconians by their creators. They were always displayed as twisted creatures created by foul magic. So what is wrong with doing an attack against the mind any more than doing acid damage?
Actually, they weren't (Doom Brigade).
Also Sivaks don't display any other kind of psychic power as do Silver Dragons which they were created from.
Quote:
Like I also said, it has been a long standing problem that sivak draconians didn't do damage upon their deaths like other draconians did, because it made what should have been the second most powerful draconian less threatening than lesser ones. What does attitudes towards 4e have to do with anything?
Thats only a problem if you see D&D only as combat game.
The original Sivaks death thores are very dangerous as they can easily sow confusion and disrupt the chain of command in larger armies. Adding damage which simply does not fit and makes no sense was only done because "it needs a in combat effect", not because flavour demanded it.
For a pure combat game this change makes sense. For an RPG it does not.
So my real problem is not that the death thores were changed, but the reason why it was done.
__________________ Everything about RPGs is subjective, so everything I say about them is I my opinion and not hard facts
Having a backstory is good. Using this backstory in game is better. And for that you need background skills.
4E, the game where you play HSMFOS
Heroic
Only good, or at least unaligned adventurers are supported and no monster you can fight is good aligned.
Super-
The PCs become masters in any skill automatically and it is impossible for them to be bad at a mundane task
Mutants
Compared to NPCs of the same strength, PCs poses a ungodly amount of HP and can withstand huge mountains of punishment. That or they can spontaneously regenerate wounds.
From Outer Space
Yet despite no matter how powerful the PCs become, they can never do anything special what the "natives" (=NPCs) can do like animating a skeleton.
Last edited by Derren; 7th November 2009 at 10:48 AM..
So "mental anguish" is enough to kill pretty much any normal human (minion) when he manages to kill a Sivak?
Our party bard seems to get more than his share of killing blows using Vicious Mockery. We've had to decide that the victim isn't really dead, just too embarrassed to continue fighting.
There are real life cases of people suffering heart attacks and strokes from excessive fright or excitement. If a person can die from a heart attack in real life because of fright, I have little trouble believing a magical creature can induce the same effect in a fantasy game.
__________________ If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him... and take his stuff.
We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are.
Next time I run a game (which may be a while ), I'm tempted to use draconians as a race of "dragonborn boogeymen."
Hmm. I could definitely play with this. In one campaign where Shifters were natives, I had Bugbears being what happened when a Shifter gave into their predatory animal nature - they basically became a Hunter of Men (the fantasy equivalent of the movie "Predator").
So the Draconians could be Dragonborn that allowed themselves to be changed. Or, they could be Tiamat worshipers, given favor and endowed with these new powers.
Also, Goodman Games put out their "Dragonborn" racial book. In that, they presented Chromatic-themed dragonborn that are basically genetic throwbacks - evil Dragonborn that pop up every x thousand births, taking after chromatic dragons. The Draconians could be used that way.
Quote:
Or they could be the result of tiefling experimentation on captives during the war between Bael Turath and Arkhosia.
That does have potential. Would be inappropriate for my current campaign, but putting that in the backburner works.
I dig the whole "corrupted metallic dragon eggs" story, but I like this idea, too.
Glad people seem to like this.
After I went to bed, I had another, related idea--yes, I think about D&D everywhere--which is that you could, instead, cast draconians as experiments that the dragonborn attempted. Fiction is full of "attempted supersoldiers gone wrong and turned evil" storylines. This could be Arkhosia's version.
And now I don't know which version I want to use, but I'm quite certain that draconians will be in my next campaign in some form.
__________________ Ari Marmell
aka
Mouseferatu
--Rodent of the Dark
After I went to bed, I had another, related idea--yes, I think about D&D everywhere--which is that you could, instead, cast draconians as experiments that the dragonborn attempted. Fiction is full of "attempted supersoldiers gone wrong and turned evil" storylines. This could be Arkhosia's version.
And now I don't know which version I want to use, but I'm quite certain that draconians will be in my next campaign in some form.
Have you considered pitching an "Ecology of the Draconians" article? You could split it between DL elements and PoL elements, like what they did for the "Ecology of the Sharn" article.
__________________ Veronica: Where's your brother?
Dick: I think he took Ghost World up to his room. They're probably up there making love. Or playing Dungeons and Dragons. Or both, at the same time. They're both, like, 12th-level dorks. I'm just sayin'
After I went to bed, I had another, related idea--yes, I think about D&D everywhere--which is that you could, instead, cast draconians as experiments that the dragonborn attempted. Fiction is full of "attempted supersoldiers gone wrong and turned evil" storylines. This could be Arkhosia's version.
And now I don't know which version I want to use, but I'm quite certain that draconians will be in my next campaign in some form.
Better yet, the dragonborn of Arkhosia experimented with metallic dragon eggs to create their supersoldiers gone wrong! Perhaps without the knowledge of the dragon allies . . . or perhaps with . . .
__________________ Brian Zuber
Proud Member of ENWorld since 2000 (under several lost screen names). Gaming since the mid-80s!
Favorite Settings: Love all of the official settings, Mystara is my nostalgia fave! Trying to create a homebrew that blends the best elements of the various settings. Favorite Edition: Can't decide between 3rd Edition and 4th Edition, like them both!
), I'm tempted to use draconians as a race of "dragonborn boogeymen." Just as goblins, bugbears, trolls, ogres, and many kinds of fey are, physically, warped/nightmarish humans--or at least, fairy tales paint them as such, and it was partly those tales that inspired the monsters in D&D--I think draconians could serve the same purpose in dragonborn culture. You could ditch the corrupted egg aspect, and just make them evil, Feywild reflections of the dragonborn--or else, if you don't want to go the fey route, just a naturally occurring evil race with some innate magic that happens to resemble dragonborn, as goblins resemble twisted humans.
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