noodle fish mice
First Post
Yes - but they never wear safety goggles!
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[4th ed] Clockwork Horrors now DEMONS? And Neogi...
- Thread starter Silverblade The Ench
- Start date
Yes - but they never wear safety goggles!
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Yeah, I have no particular patience or respect for D&D "canon". If you end up with something cool and usable in the game then its cool.
I can easily see a demon lord that created a horde of self-replicating destroyers. Demons may be totally destructive, but they certainly don't need to be mindless. Most of the demon lords are super-genius immortal intelligences that have existed since almost the beginning of time (and in some cases maybe even longer than time in this cosmos).
Also, really this replication feature isn't all that big a deal. Most parties are going to wipe the minions right off. If a few survive they're going to have to manage to last until the PCs are bloodied, and do so while adjacent to them. Good luck with that! Once in a great while you'll get one replicating, big deal, its a minion, it ain't going to amount to a hill of beans. Now, I could imagine creating a scenario where the replication was an interesting factor, but it would be more in a story sense than a tactical mechanical sense. I really seriously doubt anyone is going to design higher level non-minion replicating clockwork horrors.
I can easily see a demon lord that created a horde of self-replicating destroyers. Demons may be totally destructive, but they certainly don't need to be mindless. Most of the demon lords are super-genius immortal intelligences that have existed since almost the beginning of time (and in some cases maybe even longer than time in this cosmos).
Also, really this replication feature isn't all that big a deal. Most parties are going to wipe the minions right off. If a few survive they're going to have to manage to last until the PCs are bloodied, and do so while adjacent to them. Good luck with that! Once in a great while you'll get one replicating, big deal, its a minion, it ain't going to amount to a hill of beans. Now, I could imagine creating a scenario where the replication was an interesting factor, but it would be more in a story sense than a tactical mechanical sense. I really seriously doubt anyone is going to design higher level non-minion replicating clockwork horrors.
Scribble
First Post
I don't find myself carring too much about cannon over other cool ideas.
If something is cool, go for it.
I have a feeling they might have severed the link between the CH and the Neogi (not that I remembered it in the first place) because they changed the back ground origin of the Neogi.
In any case.. I can also see the link between a demon and the clockwork horrors.
Imagine taking something so elegant and beautiful as a clockwork machine.. and turning it into a simple mindless destruction machine.
It's like the idea of nuclear energy being turned into a bomb.
It's the ultimate in demonic ideals... Take something beautiful, and wonderful the epitome of human creativity and knowledge... and then make it horrifying and wrong.
If something is cool, go for it.
I have a feeling they might have severed the link between the CH and the Neogi (not that I remembered it in the first place) because they changed the back ground origin of the Neogi.
In any case.. I can also see the link between a demon and the clockwork horrors.
Imagine taking something so elegant and beautiful as a clockwork machine.. and turning it into a simple mindless destruction machine.
It's like the idea of nuclear energy being turned into a bomb.
It's the ultimate in demonic ideals... Take something beautiful, and wonderful the epitome of human creativity and knowledge... and then make it horrifying and wrong.
For me, the canon changes in 4e are both a positive and a negative. Some changes were obviously required - forex, the change to alignment forced some creatures to be rewritten storywise. Some changes were made to update the current flavor of the game. Some I like, some I dislike. Either way, as others have pointed out, if there is a cool idea, you are bound to focus your campaigns on that and tend to ignore the stuff you don't like. This is no different than any other version of D&D so the issues are the same with 4e as 3e or 2e, its just more glaring because its more in your face than in previous editions.
Now having said that, one thought I had, and maybe it really isn't feasible, but what if they released a setting book in the future that re-established old canon. Instead of a Dark Sun/Forgotten Realms Setting booksit was Greyhawk (or whatever other name you would use to descirbe the old canon). It seems to me this would be one of the best ways to interest players who have not made the jump to the new edition purely for story reasons. While 4e makes some fundamental changes to the game, you could still get pretty close, storywise to the older editions. I wonder how a product like this would do?
Now having said that, one thought I had, and maybe it really isn't feasible, but what if they released a setting book in the future that re-established old canon. Instead of a Dark Sun/Forgotten Realms Setting booksit was Greyhawk (or whatever other name you would use to descirbe the old canon). It seems to me this would be one of the best ways to interest players who have not made the jump to the new edition purely for story reasons. While 4e makes some fundamental changes to the game, you could still get pretty close, storywise to the older editions. I wonder how a product like this would do?
Evilhalfling
Adventurer
A slight tangent -
I applaud 4e actually making clockwork horrors useable.
I mean come on they were supposed to be little buggers that showed up in the thousands and ravaged worlds and yet thay all had less than 5HD
So you could either throw just a few at low level parties, or throw many at highlevel characters who they would never hit. They were designed to run as minions before the concept was presented for D&D. Since it never occured to me, my Spelljammer games just did without these cool and evocative monsters.
Plus - how much were all those valuable metal clockwork bodies worth? an imporant constraint in earlier editions.
Since I have not yet run a campaign to paragon, ill prolly de-level them and use the concept as lower level threats. In my world they are liable to come out of the same mad-scientist workshops that would produce a warforged.
ill take a demon lord of artifice. Speaking of which wasn't Baophet a master of sciences as well, or did they give in and allow his primative/beastial apperance to govern his mind?
I applaud 4e actually making clockwork horrors useable.
I mean come on they were supposed to be little buggers that showed up in the thousands and ravaged worlds and yet thay all had less than 5HD
So you could either throw just a few at low level parties, or throw many at highlevel characters who they would never hit. They were designed to run as minions before the concept was presented for D&D. Since it never occured to me, my Spelljammer games just did without these cool and evocative monsters.
Plus - how much were all those valuable metal clockwork bodies worth? an imporant constraint in earlier editions.
Since I have not yet run a campaign to paragon, ill prolly de-level them and use the concept as lower level threats. In my world they are liable to come out of the same mad-scientist workshops that would produce a warforged.
ill take a demon lord of artifice. Speaking of which wasn't Baophet a master of sciences as well, or did they give in and allow his primative/beastial apperance to govern his mind?
davethegame
Explorer
About a demon of alchemy and artifice- someone has to build the demonic war engines, right?
IIRC, in Demonomicon, it's a pretty throw-away line in the book. Not a fully explained demon lord of any kind.
IIRC, in Demonomicon, it's a pretty throw-away line in the book. Not a fully explained demon lord of any kind.
Mapache
Explorer
Well, the answer is "Don't put that ability on a non-minion, because then it would be completely broken with their much higher durability." As-is, they may spawn a few extras, all conveniently bunched up in one spot already. Since they're minions, they all die to all sorts of auto-damage zones that any half-optimal party should be able to spit out.
Philosopher
First Post
I don't have much of a problem with changing canon if you change it into something cool. I don't see that here.
Perhaps... but a demon lord of alchemy and artifice? It's the like the difference between evil people using healing on themselves (nothing unusual about that) and having an evil god of healing (something very unusual about that).
Nifft
Penguin Herder
How many layers are there in the Abyss?
"Yeah, there's an AP (Abyssal Patron) for that...", -- N
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