10 Absolute Truths about the World of D&D

[kanithardm]

#6 is pushing the no religion policy guys.

 

[Nightfall]

Yeah well no one's pushing my #11.

 

[kirinke]

I say eh on magic in general. Just handwave it and have fun ya know? If ya'll want your wizard's to be X-men clones, yay. Me, I prefer my wizards either well toasted or casting the fire-ball at the enemy.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Before I begin let me say I am in no way picking on the Man in the Funny hat. The quoted part of his reply just reminded me of a couple things.

The Man in the Funny Hat understands.

Glad I didn't co-author and co-develop Raise the Dead. Wait, I did.

I came up with that perspective on resurrection/death by seeing and reading a CONSTANT succession of threads complaining about how broken things were if you followed the logic of having resurrection magic available. Misguided DM that I was I had my own succession of house rules intended to threaten, annoy and cajole players who were so gauche as to think that they would just get their newly dead PC raised, eat the penalty and forget about it. How DARE they? Why it makes it all seem so cartoonish or videogameish and so clearly lacking in any roleplaying effort to treat such situations so cavalierly. I'd show them... I'll make it so difficult to deal with death, so tedious to get the spells, so expensive, so burdened with DM-inflicted roleplaying demands they may not love me for it, but they'll at least respect me. They'll immerse themselves in the roleplaying possibilities, they'll cheer at my intriguing new takes on the afterlife, and at the same time it will solve those pesky problems like never being able to truly kill anyone; never being able to have those dramatic moments of some unfortunate NPC providing only half a clue with his dying breath [<raise> Okay, now Mr. NPC, what was it you were saying about the Lost Widget of Doom?].

I had thought that was the sensible... logical approach. But after thinking on it some more, and realizing I hated the very restrictions I was threatening to apply things finally began to dawn on me. Things like resurrection magic weren't intended for use by NPC's on every farmer - they came to be in the rules because PLAYERS invented it/wanted it just to use on their PC's. There was just this fog of literalness that was making everybody crazy. The idea that if it's a spell in the PH then whether it was intended or not it has all these logical game implications. A spell like Resurrection must have ALWAYS existed in all campaign histories, it MUST exist now, and its usage must be determined only by following all logical possibilities to their ultimate conclusion. It was that kind of thinking that was the real problem. The solution for me was to simply alter those assumptions.

Thus I disagree with that position forwarded by the OP that "Death is not the End". People only assume that it is then something that Joe Commoner can and should take for granted because it something they as players have always taken for granted.

Part of the reason I got into developing that book was exactly because we had a GM who had his own insistence that if your character died it's soul was filled with joy and would never want to return. Then consistantly allowed other gm's under him to raise their NPC minions if the PCs killed them off too quickly. Evidently their insistence was that their pet NPCs get second chances but characters do not. Depending on the groups you play with and your years at the gaming tables you could see all sorta wild stuff go on and probably have.

Oh my yes. Sadly some of it has been my own doing. My approach at least places no restriction on PC attitudes and access, merely on NPC attitudes and access. I don't deny any PC cleric from using Raise Dead, I don't even deny PC's from getting it from NPC's. I simply have NPC's treat it as a religious... oddity of sorts that the VAST majority of people in the world will not return from the afterlife despite it being clearly, even easily possible. Rich, poor, young, old, king, peasant, any race, any religion, 99% of them will not return from death. But those adventurer types and the people they're always fighting are such fascinating exceptions. They will die and return time and time again and never bat an eye. Why is that?

My point is you say "my own insistence". Isn't that what is great about D&D?

It most certainly is. In fact, it is something that so few people actually DO appreciate about D&D; something that so many people just fail to grasp. Yes, you CAN insist on your own interpretation being better rather than accepting the conclusions that everyone else never questions. You just can't insist that your interpretation MUST be followed by everyone else. I've come to the point where I'd rather read a dozen long threads containing everyone listing their OWN insistence than a single post that is insistent about, oh, say, CORRECT interpretation of RAW?

Bottom line... I felt that Remathilis post was awesome! He was savvy enough to know people would go through and argue every single point he was attempting to make. I knew when I read it before scrolling down to any of the replies that there would be at least a half dozen people jump off and tell him he was flat wrong too! It's brave to put yourself out like that, knowing that you are going to create controversy. Luckily controversy typically leads to fresh dialogue which is what I like.

Seconded.

I think if we look at Remathalis's post "by the book" and no I don't mean "by the core rules" I mean by the generally encountered experiences with D&D you would find most of his list to be pretty accurate.

True. But all the more reason to provide disagreement and demonstrate alternatives since much that he lists when it comes up in play can be... problematic.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Nope. You got this exactly backwards. Alignment matters for the players only insofar as it affects class choices. Depending on the party/campaign alignment can have concrete day to day effects on the lives of the characters. Alignment is routinely (if not 100% reliably) detectable. Furthermore is has physical effects in the world of the characters.

Apologies. I failed to adequately elaborate on my perspective regarding alignment. My own insistence [I like that phrase. MOI. From the French for, "What? Me worry?" ] is that alignment, too, exists in the game for quite purely meta-game reasons even though it has so many in-game manifestations of rules. It exists as a tool to assist players in deciding upon (not dictating) the actions of their characters such that the characters behavior will be reasonable and consistent. It can't dictate your characters actions, only suggest what is appropriate. For the DM as well it serves as a tool to quickly and easily categorize a wide array of related elements into a shorthand reference for behavior. That these meta-game purposes are supplemented with in-game effects should not be allowed to fool you. Alignment is a PLAYER tool. Take as support of this assertion the fact that it is easily demonstrated that alignment can (and often is, by those who misunderstand its purpose and thus reflexively dislike it) be removed entirely with only a few residual in-game effects like spells and detection abilities needing to be also eliminated or altered.

While it more rarely impact the lives of characters directly, XP is a concrete, measurable and expendable resource for every character with an item creation feat. It even has a fixed ratio to 'magical components' when it comes to making those items.

A fairly simple indication might be to have your character ask another, "Say Gandalf, do you have enough gold pieces to afford to create that ring?" and then have him ask, "Say Gandalf, do you have enough experience points to make it too?" XP, while it has concrete, measureable rules for its use in item creation by characters, is not any less intended to be a purely meta-game mechanic, not an in-game, measureable resource that characters deal with as a manifest part of their reality.

Now this one is (no offense intended) just nonsense. Unless you're claiming that the PC cleric is the first one in the history of his world to become powerful enough to cast raise dead or ressurection or reincarnation, then it is SURELY well known that it can be done. I'm not claiming it's common, but it doesn't have to be. [...] The fact that is can routinely be done in D&D, not to mention the much more common speak with dead spell, and the existence of undead, surely means that most people have a pretty clear idea of what happens after death. It's possible that they are wrong, but they have good evidence to support what they do know, and anyone sufficiently interested in investigating death can (with significant resources) die and be brought back to record direct observations.

It's not nonsense and your quote above provides the very language that can be used to argue for it. "I'm not claiming it's common, but it doesn't HAVE to be." [Emphasis mine] "The fact that it CAN be routinely done..." doesn't imply in the least that it MUST be routinely done. "It's possible that they are wrong..." and if they are... "Anyone sufficiently interested in investigating death CAN [...] die and be brought back." But that doesn't mean that anyone ever HAS, or that if they have that they DID come back.

By letting go of the assumption that because Raise Dead is listed in the PH with all attendant rules that it MUST have ALWAYS been available, is NOW available, and always will be, you open yourself up to intriguing possiblities that you may not have even considered. Why NOT have a PC be the first individual EVER to conceive of, research, and use a spell to raise the dead? Doesn't affect the existence of UNdead in the game world at all except that you now have a means of bringing someone back from the horrible fate of undeath rather than only sending them on to a peaceful death. The fact that it is listed in PH tables of spells doesn't mean that any spell ever has to have its history established to justify that listing.

As has been mentioned however, this thread is about the generic world of the RAW, what you do in your own campaign does not matter.

? What? How can it NOT matter? The generic world of the RAW being discussed is ALWAYS subject to my own interpretation and the interpretation of every individual DM and player out there. The RAW is the STARTING point for a game of D&D. It is not the ending point. Check me if I'm wrong but this thread wasn't started to explain to everyone what the generic world of the RAW dictates/what it IS. I think its purpose is to elicit commentary on what it could be, what it has been, what it should be if you want effect X, what it shouldn't if you want effect Y.

Assume the RAW are correct, also assume that the inhabitants of that world are not morons, and proceed from there. What do they know? And how does it effect how they think?

Okay.

Death IS the end for the vast majority. Although spells like Raise Dead and Resurrection exist, may be easy to obtain, perhaps even freely given whenever possible, because the DM gets to decide ALL the choices of NPC's, I as the DM choose to have my NPC's prefer the afterlife EVERY time. They may live their entire lives convinced of their own will to live, but when they actually die they choose NOT to return to life when the choice is afforded them. The spell may be cast on every dead man, woman and child but the exceptions to the permanency of death are rare even though everyone knows that they CAN choose life over death/the afterlife. In those exceptional cases the individual will often die and willingly return time after time, and whether it is genuinely related or not it is curious to note that those exceptions often live a lifestyle that puts them in a position to repeatedly face brutal, agonizing deaths. Yet professional soldiers, generals, assassins, life-lusting barbarians, as well as the man who has died mere moments away from achieving the salvation of his family, his nation; all will remain dead when a Raise Dead is cast. Many of the exceptions are adventurers. Strangely, many are exactly the sort of people that adventurers die trying to oppose like brutal tyrants and wicked criminals.

That is correct by the RAW because the RAW has nothing to say on who must return, who should return, how often, and why - only that it is possible. The inhabitants of the world are not morons. They know all about Resurrection and what happens afterward but because it is demonstrated that so very few return from death it does not significantly affect their thinking.

It's a trite phrase, but I encourage you to think outside the box.

 

[Nightfall]

I'm still #11. And it's a GOOD number to be at!

 

[mkb152]

Atheists in D&D could also believe that "Gods" exist, but aren't really Gods per se, just Really Powerful Beings. In many ways, it's besically semantics. But Demon Princes can grant powers to followers, and yet aren't Gods. But yeah, the difference between believing that and believing in Gods is slim at best. I believe there was a faction in Planescape that actually believed that, though. Perhaps a Planescape expert can expound on this?
QUOTE]

The faction was the Athar. And your conversation is pretty much what they believe of the gods. They think the powers are REALLY powerful mortals undeserving of worship. They aren't atheists per se. They just think the planar powers aren't gods.

 

[Nightfall]

*thinks he's just a Sage of the Scarred Lands*

And I'm rule #11 of all time!

 

[Tonguez]

Why, in fantasy cliches, are wizards distrusted when clerics generally aren't? Clerics are the one serving mysterious beings. Clerics are the ones in charge of death cults, creating undead and sacrificing people to destroy the world.

Because gods are generally predictable - they have portfolios that pretty much define what they do. Everyone knows that the Grand Heirophant of the god of Evil and Destruction is going to do evil destructive stuff. They are also very confident that the Paladin-Avatar of the Righteous god of Pleasantness will likely oppose the evil destruction and so it all works out.

With Wizards there is no such certainty and thus no limitation on what a Wizard might be capable of. Plus Wizards are mortals and well, mortals can't be trusted

plus Wizards become Liches even though Raise Dead would eliminate the smell

 

[Stormrunner]

A) For 1 round/level? Pretty impractical.

B) Not really. More weeds also.

C) I thought we already knew this stuff?

And also, shouldn't this hypothetical druid be saving his spells for fighting monsters, as stated above?

A) Agreed, summon spells are generally impractical for anything other than combat. However, there are some other spells (such as beget bogun) which are intended to create long-term helpers.

B) I don't follow your logic here. If the field was profitable before the spell, it will be more profitable after, weeds or no weeds. Say my fields have the potential to produce 1,000 pounds of grain if there were zero weeds. In practice, some percentage of that productivity is "wasted" on growing weeds instead of grain - let's say 10% to keep the calculation simple. So my field, without magic, produces 900 pounds of grain and 100 pounds of weeds. Along comes the Venerable Druid and casts plant growth. Now my field produces 1,170 pounds of grain and 130 pounds of weeds. Yes, the weeds grow too, but I'm still getting significantly more grain. Whether the spell is profitable has nothing to do with whether it affects weeds, but rather with the price of grain - is the extra grain profitable enough to pay for the expense of casting the spell? However, given that the spell covers a circle one mile in diameter this shouldn't be too difficult unless grain is very cheap - and it would still be profitable for things like grapevines, orchards, etc.

C) In a general sense, yes - but The Old Farmers Almanac arose for a reason. Knowing that you should plant in May and harvest in August is not the same as knowing that, for maximum yield this year, you should plant on May 2 and harvest before August 15th* - and don't put barley in the southwest field like you usually do, 'cause a bumper barley crop this year will flood the market and you'll end up selling the barley for less than it cost to produce...

*- last year, and next year, the "ideal" times will be slightly different...