D&D 5E 5e: Stat the Lady of Pain...so we can overthrow her

[ersatzphil]

Stop. Saying. This. If. You. Aren't. Going. To. Elaborate.

And you have a fundamental misunderstanding of my objection to the LoP. Being a lynchpin is fine. Being a special creator's pet who is powerful because we say so is not.

Dude - if you want to do a game where the players kill Mordenkainen and Gandalf and use their power to steal Conan's girl, no one is stopping you.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

I made stats for the Lady of Pain for you, can see them here (6th entry): Lady of Pain

FYI, don't be fooled by the CR.

Well done, comrade!

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Literally falling at the first hurdle and smacking his face into the asphalt. Pretty sad.

Well, I'm glad for the empathy at least. Thank you friend!

But it does take me back to the internet in 1990s when so many weird dudes had incredible one-sided rage-beefs with the entire concept of the Lady of Pain (not at all connected to her gender of course, mmmm definitely not lol) and just wrote elaborate and definitely not at all troubling fantasies about how they were going to kill her.
This isn't as bad at that but it's definitely taking me back.

Aw, I'm glad it isn't as bad.

I'm really baffled/amazed about how and why this thread got resurrected! 10 years later! Was someone googling "slay the Lady of Pain" or what? Or was someone tracking down all my ancient posts for some arcane reason unknown to humankind-at-large? Oh well, in any case, I don't mind discussing this ancient topic.

My OP, and my subsequent posts, were written in the gonzo over-the-top tone of a handle-bar-moustachioed Dungeon-Crawl Classics hero. I feel sorrow that at least one person experienced this jesting tonality as poisonous / toxic. I don't want any dear person to feel ill.

And I admit and apologize: it was one-sided of me to not include "unlady-like" alongside "unmanly." Or better yet, "unheroic" or "ungamely" (is that a word?) -- I mean in regard to the meek mindset which 2E's "unbeatable gods" inculcated into players.

My point wasn't about gender. In a following post, I called the same wrath down upon the High God of Krynn, Lord Ao of Toril, and the Dungeon Master of the Cartoon Show. All of whom have been portrayed as male-ish figures, so far. I singled out the Lady of Pain because she was (in the 2E cosmology), literally the Center of the Multiverse.

I was also making some other points, such as how gray snarky nihilism was placed at the center of the 2E Multiverse. When I posted that in 2012, I didn't want to see that "unquestionable gray nihilism" to be central in 4E and 5E. I'm vindicated by the turn toward "hope punk" in the Radiant Citadel.

I remember when 2E Legends & Lore came out, and it now said that you couldn't fight or slay gods anymore. It was part of 2E's "niceness." (No demons, no devils, no assassins, no slaying deities.)

I mean, up until then, there were entire products devoted to that! Namely, AD&D Deities & Demigod stats and BECMI Immortal-level boxed set. It was part of the game.

Then came Zeb Cook's cold, heavy, "nice" boot in 2E which tamped down the D&D players, with a tonality like: "Puny punks...now you're not allowed to fight the gods. How dare you!"

And that cowed mindset has continued in some segments of D&D fandom. It'd be like having a Marvel RPG that said that you simply couldn't play at the Cosmic level anymore, and no longer allowed to fight and defeat Cosmic opponents. That's what I mean by lame and meek.

Yeah, 3E statted out the gods, thankfully. But 3E didn't get around to statting out the Lady of Pain.

I agree with most of the points Vaalingrade made.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And that cowed mindset has continued in some segments of D&D fandom. It'd be like having a Marvel RPG that said that you simply couldn't play at the Cosmic level anymore, and no longer allowed to fight and defeat Cosmic opponents. That's what I mean by lame and meek.

I mean, that's been a consistent issue with all versions of D&D outside of BECMI/RC, hasn't it? No AD&D game lets you actually fight gods. Trying to blame Zeb Cook is simply re-writing history with petty* nonsense. At best you can fight avatars. Whether it's a problem or merely an "issue" is in the court of the players. Personally outside of the traditional JRPG ending of "LETS KILL GOD!" (which I first really experienced in the amazing Guardian Heroes, where one of the paths takes you directly to that), I don't find the idea of fighting the gods to be particularly interesting, especially as it means that, essentially, they were never gods to start with in any meaningful sense, just exceptionally powerful supernatural beings.

And that's exactly the case in Marvel.

Thor is a "god" but he's clearly not a god in any true sense. He doesn't answer prayers or offerings. He's nowhere omniscient or omnipotent. He can't really even grant blessings to a mass of followers. So it makes sense for him to get in actual physical scuffles with people. The same is true even up to Celestials, which are the most god-like beings seemingly left in the Marvel universe (the creator-god having departed).

I feel like if you want to fight gods, you need a scenario more like that of Supernatural than "statting up". Again, AD&D has never statted up actual gods for the kill (well, certainly not in 2/3/4/5E, 1E was at most arguable), it statted up avatars. Anyway in Supernatural, where, spoiler alert on a 15+ year old show (admittedly this bit is more recent), they end up in conflict with God (the Biblical God!), the conflict has to be much more about working out ways to mess with that being and somehow bring it down to their level, rather than just BIG NUMBERS!!!!!! which is what you seem to want. Rather than dragging a god down to situations where mortals could fight it, you just seem to want to make it so no god could have stats which a party of competent 20th-level adventurers couldn't take down. At which point I say - that's not a god in any meaningful sense of the word, it's merely a powerful supernatural being. Certainly if 4-5 competent level 20s can drop you in a straight fight (or even an ambush, but one where you're not restrained/powerless), you're just a fairly powerful supernatural being. With the LoP specifically, if four level 20s could drop her, then four to eight Balors or the like could drop her. That would make her incredibly vulnerable and mean Sigil's rulership would likely get overthrown on a virtually daily basis. The Blood War and Upper-Lower planar wars would rage through Sigil 24-7.

* = It's particularly petty in the LoP's case because she hasn't done anything to mess with you, unlike many gods.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Stop. Saying. This. If. You. Aren't. Going. To. Elaborate.

And you have a fundamental misunderstanding of my objection to the LoP. Being a lynchpin is fine. Being a special creator's pet who is powerful because we say so is not.

You seem to not understand the difference between a god and a "creator's pet".

It's bizarre.

It's like, you hate the LoP because she exists, and she's not powerful "because we say so", she's powerful because she's a god, just one that's inside Sigil rather than locked outside it. She's a lynchpin and you're raging at this bollard, this lock as if it had done something to you personally.

A creator's pet is someone like Elminister. Characters who tread on the toes of the PCs, interact with them and cause them problems or given them orders. Who occupy the same sort of space as the PCs, but better. The LoP is nothing of the sort. She's not there to show off. She's not there to talk down to the PCs (indeed, she won't talk to the PCs). She's not there to "impart wisdom". She's not there to bully the PCs because they didn't do exactly what the DM wanted. She's there solely to stop Sigil being blown up.

The only legit reason to be mad with her is because you want to blow up Sigil. In which case just run a campaign where she's vanished.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I mean, that's been a consistent issue with all versions of D&D outside of BECMI/RC, hasn't it? No AD&D game lets you actually fight gods. Trying to blame Zeb Cook is simply re-writing history with petty* nonsense. At best you can fight avatars. Whether it's a problem or merely an "issue" is in the court of the players. Personally outside of the traditional JRPG ending of "LETS KILL GOD!" (which I first really experienced in the amazing Guardian Heroes, where one of the paths takes you directly to that), I don't find the idea of fighting the gods to be particularly interesting, especially as it means that, essentially, they were never gods to start with in any meaningful sense, just exceptionally powerful supernatural beings.

And that's exactly the case in Marvel.

Thor is a "god" but he's clearly not a god in any true sense. He doesn't answer prayers or offerings. He's nowhere omniscient or omnipotent. He can't really even grant blessings to a mass of followers. So it makes sense for him to get in actual physical scuffles with people. The same is true even up to Celestials, which are the most god-like beings seemingly left in the Marvel universe (the creator-god having departed).

I feel like if you want to fight gods, you need a scenario more like that of Supernatural than "statting up". Again, AD&D has never statted up actual gods for the kill (well, certainly not in 2/3/4/5E, 1E was at most arguable), it statted up avatars. Anyway in Supernatural, where, spoiler alert on a 15+ year old show (admittedly this bit is more recent), they end up in conflict with God (the Biblical God!), the conflict has to be much more about working out ways to mess with that being and somehow bring it down to their level, rather than just BIG NUMBERS!!!!!! which is what you seem to want. Rather than dragging a god down to situations where mortals could fight it, you just seem to want to make it so no god could have stats which a party of competent 20th-level adventurers couldn't take down. At which point I say - that's not a god in any meaningful sense of the word, it's merely a powerful supernatural being. Certainly if 4-5 competent level 20s can drop you in a straight fight (or even an ambush, but one where you're not restrained/powerless), you're just a fairly powerful supernatural being. With the LoP specifically, if four level 20s could drop her, then four to eight Balors or the like could drop her. That would make her incredibly vulnerable and mean Sigil's rulership would likely get overthrown on a virtually daily basis. The Blood War and Upper-Lower planar wars would rage through Sigil 24-7.

* = It's particularly petty in the LoP's case because she hasn't done anything to mess with you, unlike many gods.

That is incorrect, 1e, 3e (I think), 4e, and 5e all provided stats of gods (that could be killed). 5e has done a bit of a back track and seems to now imply the stat block for Tiamat was just an avatar, but that is not how it was initial implemented.

 

[Mirtek]

Are there limits, or not?

This is one of the places where I think having a limit is more helpful, more interesting, and more productive than not having a limit. Other areas, I find limits unhelpful, uninteresting, or unproductive.


Though if you search for the exact phrase in quotes, you get literally nothing whatsoever.

Which means this thread will become the only result you get as soon as Google gets around to indexing it.

Maybe because I am searching with DuckDuckGo as default rather than Google

 

[dave2008]

I feel like if you want to fight gods, you need a scenario more like that of Supernatural than "statting up". Again, AD&D has never statted up actual gods for the kill (well, certainly not in 2/3/4/5E, 1E was at most arguable)

1e had Deities & Demigods which gave gods stats. Peopel did fight and kill those gods. Now if you just went by their statblock they were not always that amazing, but the front of the book gave some basic powers to all deities that made them more powerful, but it was easy to miss.

3e also had a Deities & Demigods that provided stats for gods that could be fought and killed. However, I never played that edition and I may be missing something. As far as I can tell this are the actual god stats not avatars.

4e provided stats for several gods. The even gave descriptions on what was need to actually kill a god (more than just a statblock). There was even an adventure path that ended with killing Tiamat in her lair (with options to make a permanent death or not). All the gods stats also had lesser avatar versions called "Aspects."

5e initially provide stat for Tiamat and said these where he full lesser god stats. This seems to have been reconned by Fizban's which includes an avatar of Tiamat that is more powerful than the original Tiamat stats. Also, the 5e DMG says this about gods:

Greater deities are beyond mortal understanding. They can’t be summoned, and they are almost always removed from direct involvement in mortal affairs. On very rare occasions they manifest avatars similar to lesser deities, but slaying a greater god’s avatar has no effect on the god itself.

Lesser deities are embodied somewhere in the planes. Some lesser deities live in the Material Plane, as does the unicorn-goddess Lurue of the Forgotten Realms and the titanic shark-god Sekolah revered by the sahuagin. Others live on the Outer Planes, as Lolth does in the Abyss. Such deities can be encountered by mortals.

Lesser gods are "embodied" and there is no mention of slaying a lesser god's avatar like there is for greater gods. It seems clear that lesser gods can attacked and possibly killed by mortals.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I mean, up until then, there were entire products devoted to that! Namely, AD&D Deities & Demigod stats and BECMI Immortal-level boxed set. It was part of the game.

Then came Zeb Cook's cold, heavy, "nice" boot in 2E which tamped down the D&D players, with a tonality like: "Puny punks...now you're not allowed to fight the gods. How dare you!"

"This volume is something else, also: our last attempt to reach the "Monty Hall" DM's. Perhaps now some of the 'giveaway' campaigns will look as foolish as they truly are. This is our last attempt to delineate the absurdity of 40+ level characters. When Odin, the All-Father has only(?) 300 hit points, who can take a 44th level Lord seriously?" -Timothy Kask, Gods, Demigods and Heroes, original D&D supplement IV, forward (1976)

This did not start with Cook. D&D started with stats for gods to set an upward bound to character power. An attempt to say, in effect, 'if you have PCs who look like this, you might be in a giveaway campaign.' People immediately ignored that intent and used the book as an extension of the Monster Manual. Since then, the game has been wildly inconsistent on the matter. In AD&D you were explicitly supposed to battle Lolth in Queen of the Demonweb pits, and it doesn't specifically say that it is just an avatar (but still a boss fight for a level 10-14 adventure), but at other times there still was an aesthetic of thinking you could face a god as being laughable. Dragonlance came along and (in the novelizations) explicitly had the 'turned to the dark side' character attempting to take on the gods (and, if a brief glimpse of an alternate future is to be believed, would have succeeded but for want of a single moment of moral clarity). I believe the game setting had some cannonical rules about how to defeat gods temporarily or permanently, which I think made it into the 2e rules. The BECMI set had the final (rule-encoded) tier of play being playing as sorta-gods ('Immortals' which sometimes seem weaker than AD&D gods, but also sometimes can do things even greater AD&D gods can't easily do).

What I'm saying is that D&D hasn't had a consistent voice on the matter into which Cook threw a spanner in 2E AD&D, as there was no consistency to disrupt.

 

[ersatzphil]

"This volume is something else, also: our last attempt to reach the "Monty Hall" DM's. Perhaps now some of the 'giveaway' campaigns will look as foolish as they truly are. This is our last attempt to delineate the absurdity of 40+ level characters. When Odin, the All-Father has only(?) 300 hit points, who can take a 44th level Lord seriously?" -Timothy Kask, Gods, Demigods and Heroes, original D&D supplement IV, forward (1976)