[BoVD] Vile Damage...

[Pyrex]

Kesh has it right. Evil creatures don't have to be capable of casting Consecrate or Hallow they just have to go somewhere it's already been cast.

 

[Celtavian]

Monte answered this on his own boards here. Essentially, yes, it was designed this way. Vile damage affects evil creatures, and they have to seek out a hallowed place to heal it. Makes the Blood War (demons vs. devils) a lot nastier, eh?

Makes it downright suicidal, especially considering that alot of places wouldn't allow evil beings into a hallowed or consecrated place.

When running an evil party, it makes that parties caster just a bit overpowered. Being able to dish out a good amount of vile damage with Violate Spell is too much IMO. Especially considering it can't be healed on the fly except by a good cleric.

Its things like this in Monte Cook's books that make me not want to pick them up. He is also the one who created the Madness domain, a way overpowered domain that gave evil such an advantage it was hard to understand why they didn't defeat everyone they faced. I wish Monte Cook would have designed the Book of Exalted deeds, then it might be balanced when compared to the Book of Vile Darkness.

 

[Celtavian]

Is there no cleric of an evil deity in the party? Could he not simply prepare a Desecration, and then use a few Inflicts (followed AND preceded by curative spells), to remove the Vile damage as I have outlined above?

The idea is, for EVIL clerics, the healing of vile damage would involve some PAIN, and a small degree of risk as well.

We must play the game in a completely different manner for you not to understand why this wouldn't work for a campaign that wanted to exist for the long term. The encounters faced usually require combat healing, meaning the cleric must heal during the combat. The type of healing you suggest would require an expenditure of spells by the evil cleric far beyond what they are capable of while still being combat ready, especially an evil cleric who can't spontaneously heal.

They certainly couldn't inflict there own guys in the middle of battle either. That would lead to an even quicker TPK.

I'm looking at this both as a DM and a player. As a DM, this is a nightmare because someone can take Violate Spell, then stack it with Archmage, and then start launching all kinds of Sonic spells with the violate ability. This will render fast healing, regeneration, and evil cleric healing (already hard pressed due to no spontaneous healing) nearly useless. It will only get worse as the evil caster gets higher level.

On the PC"s side, if they face an evil caster or a fiend with the Violate Spell-like ability. They will be receiving damage that cannot be healed by the cleric while being physically damaged on top of that.

All in all, a TPK waiting to happen because Monte Cook wanted to create vile damage. I for one am not going to use vile damage as is in my own campaign. Forget about it.

 

[Celtavian]

re

Do people who suggest this not play in groups where the cleric is needed to heal during combat to survive an encounter? I'm guessing that no one has run an evil party that has been hammered by vile damage.

I wish I could get some feedback from somone who has actually run an evil party that faces other evil beings who were using vile damage. Vile damage isn't much of an issue for Neutral and Good parties because they can heal the damage during combat, but is vile damage a campaign destroyer when running an evil party is the gist of my question.

It gives an advantage to evil casters that is unbelievable with the Violate Spell. For melees, its not so bad because they can at best inflict 1 vile point or so per hit. Evil casters can inflict fairly massive amounts of vile damage, especially Thralls of Graz'zt.

So anyone play an evil party that fought evil enemies using vile damage? How did it go?

 

[Thomas Hobbes]

I think part of the problem is that in 3rd edition, neither Consecrate and Desecrate had alignment descriptors, allowing evil characters to heal vile damage relatively easily. No longer, obviously. I think that with evil outsiders and undead, Desecrate would let them heal Vile damage (undead because Desecrate floods the area with negative energy, which powers them, and fiends because the evil bolsters them). With humans, though, it's tougher.

Hmm. Perhaps one spell (such as Dispel Magic, a wizard's protection from evil [since the cleric can't cast good spells], or maybe even desecrate) could either weaken the evil taint or bolster the evil cleric in such a way that Cure spells could have full effect, or a reduced one? Pax's solution is also workable, methinks.

I think your idea of Vile damage not affecting evil creatures works (is in line with the Unholy Word type spells), but for some reason it displeases me stylistically speaking. It strikes me that vile damage is not evil like Unholy Damage (with anethema to good creatures) but evil as in hostile to all life equally, so wrong and outside the natural order that it does not heal easily.

But that's me. You seem to view it differently, and you should go with whatever works with you and your players. On a "how the world works" level, though, I think that as long as you allow evil characters some not too inconvienient manner of healing vile damage, it doesn't suddenly break your game world (make the Blood War entirely suicidal, and so on) or your campaign (by making vile damage the mutually assured destruction weapon).

 

[Gizzard]

Tangent: I was discussing with someone the other day whether adding new damage types like Vile is unbalanced in and of itself:

In a world where there are few damage types, it's a good idea to cast Resist X or Protection from X on yourself; playing the odds that it will be useful. This is as the game-designers intended, since they made the durations for these spells 10 min/lvl instead of 1 rd/lvl.

But if there are 50 damage types, then it's kinda pointless to use these sorts of protective spells in that way; you'll never have the correct one up when you need it.

So what is the effect of going from 3 major types & 2 minor types (fire/ cold/ electricity v. sonic / acid) to 5 major types (via Energy Substitution) and from there adding another type (Vile)? I thought it was interesting to look at it that way; I'd have to think on whether I'd allow Vile damage into my campaign for PCs.

In defense of Monte: The BovD is really designed for NPCs, not PCs. So the fact that some of these spells are just crazy in an Evil campaign doesn't surprise me.

 

[hong]

Tangent: I was discussing with someone the other day whether adding new damage types like Vile is unbalanced in and of itself:

In a world where there are few damage types, it's a good idea to cast Resist X or Protection from X on yourself; playing the odds that it will be useful. This is as the game-designers intended, since they made the durations for these spells 10 min/lvl instead of 1 rd/lvl.

But if there are 50 damage types, then it's kinda pointless to use these sorts of protective spells in that way; you'll never have the correct one up when you need it.

So what is the effect of going from 3 major types & 2 minor types (fire/ cold/ electricity v. sonic / acid) to 5 major types (via Energy Substitution) and from there adding another type (Vile)? I thought it was interesting to look at it that way; I'd have to think on whether I'd allow Vile damage into my campaign for PCs.

That's not exactly the same thing. Different energy types still deal the same generic type of damage: you can heal damage from a fireball as easily as damage from a lightning bolt as easily as damage from an axe. It's all hit points.

In core D&D, there are two basic _damage_ types: normal and nonlethal. Vile just adds another type to the list. This is not particularly new; witness White Wolf's bashing/lethal/aggravated damage types, for example. If that was the extent of it, "vile" damage would be fine; it puts a bit of spice into the game, and opens up the possibility of using it as a mechanic for all sorts of things that DR is currently used for. What's not so fine is the flavour text and rules that tie it to being inflicted only by eeeevil bad guys who do eeeevil things to their victims.

 

[Gizzard]

If that was the extent of it, "vile" damage would be fine....

What I was shooting for in my post was to question whether this is true.

The Core damage pie has five slices; Fire, Cold, Acid, Electric and Sonic. What effect does slicing the pie again to add a sixth type have (leaving aside the special properties of Vile)? Then, reductio ad absurdum, what effect does slicing the pie into an infinite number of slices have?

This question probably has some corrollary in DR; would DR suck as a mechanic if there were whole bunches of different types of DR? ("I am a sausage demon. I have DR 15/sausage.") At some point, adding new types has overloaded the system and badness results.

My thought is tangential to the discussion about the un-healing properties of Vile damage.

 

[glass]

The Core damage pie has five slices; Fire, Cold, Acid, Electric and Sonic. What effect does slicing the pie again to add a sixth type have (leaving aside the special properties of Vile)? Then, reductio ad absurdum, what effect does slicing the pie into an infinite number of slices have?

But the vile damage isn't another slice, is it? I don't have my books with me, but I was under the impression that vile damage was also fire damage, or whatever.


glass.

 

[Celtavian]

re

Talking with the guy running the campaign, we've decided that we are going to allow even evil clerics to heal within the confines of a desecrate or unhallow. The power of the evil god in question supercedes the power of vile damage. If vile damage is evil, it shouldn't even affect already evil people IMO, but Monte felt he needed to create another type of damage because he was unsatisfied with unholy. We're going to assume that vile damage is some kind of damage that is destructive to life along the lines of negative energy damage.

Still would love to hear from someone who ran an evil campaign or in a evil campaign using the Book of Vile Darkness, specifically vile damage.