BoVD vs. BoED

[Gez]

Well... I can understand that someone truely good will accept to sacrifice himself for the greater good of everyone.

However, I don't think self-sacrifice is necessary to make the world a better place. I mean, unless Malthus is right and we are far too numerous, there are way to help people that don't involve stabbing yourself in the foot.

I'll say that the moral fortitude to commit self-sacrifice if needed is what can makes someone truely good. But the eagerness to commit self-sacrifice just "to be holier than you" is what can makes someone truely stupid -- and even evil, as they are the kind of people who will want others to behave the same way. Mortification for mortification's sake is self-destructive and pointless, thus evil.

That's my two eurocents.

 

[reiella]

Some stuff in BoED that I just fundamentally disagree with.

To a large extent, it ended up reading just as a "Power Up The Good Guys" splatbook.

Even so far as to frustrate balance intentionally (read the lines on the Saint template, they intentionally 'artifically' lowered's it's Level Adjustment to make it more powerful than it should be.

Most of the vows read rather oddly and seem more like flavor (Vow of Chastity. Vow of Abstinence, Vow of Purity, and to some extent Vow of Obedience), however their bonuses seem reasonable (Although this is coming from a game where Greater Spell Focus still gives +4).

There are also some 'Exalted' feats that don't pair up well against their 'Vile' counterparts (Evil Brand v Nimbus of Light). And just what looks like a really broken feat (Nymph's Kiss, +2 to all Charisma-related checks, +1 to all saving throws against spells + spell-likes, +1 Skill Point per level including the level you take this feat, no reason for a telepath-psion not to take it, but that may depend heavily on the wording in the PsiHB-Revised).

I like Vow of Poverty. I'm a bit edgey about it's different benefit at different times (it just feels like it violates some desing intent), however, given the nature of the Vow, and just the means of how it hinders you, it may be justified (although I still really don't like a character being more powerful overall just because he took a feat earlier).

The alignment restrictions were pretty interesting, and alot less 'ambigous' than the other thread implied. It does actually say that the Paladin would lose his powers (in the D&D universe) for the 'torture one to save thousands' and all but a 'special subset' of poisons.

Oh yea, I'm also kinda miffed at the idea of Living Saints, but eh oh well .

And to the comments of abundant Martyrdom, it's really only present in a handful of situations (the obvious Martyrdom situation, and the Vow of Poverty).

Deathless, I just plan flat out grumble! They're undead, but not inherently evil! So they're not undead! Oh yea! They use positive energy instead! Ugh, annoying (to me at least).

I also find it odd that a spell that's effectively Trap the Soul + Geas is labeled [Good].

Then a few other oddities with spell school placement, like a spell being labeled necromancy, simply because it deals with a corpse ("Store a corpse in your holy symbol', sounds more like trans or conjuration to me, but eh okie ).

 

[Limper]

Liked BoVD but haven't liked BoED near as much.


Issues that have stuck in my craw? The 'good' poisons... the 'good' diseases.... for petes sake! They have a special 'good' undead!

Why not just have plain old undead and make them good in alignment? Did we need another category?

Other than the silly mirror image junk its ok BoVD was much more useful and flavorful (to mean I could drop it in my game on the fly).

 

[hong]

Deathless, I just plan flat out grumble! They're undead, but not inherently evil! So they're not undead! Oh yea! They use positive energy instead! Ugh, annoying (to me at least).

I think they were going for the Ben Kenobi "strike me down and I will become more powerful than you can ever imagine" thing. Although if it had been me, I'd have made it an outsider template, instead of confusing the issue with a new "deathless" type.

 

[pogre]

As a guy who used to love the old two-volume Games Workshop Chaos books, I picked up the BoVD. I like it - I generally agree with some of the negative assessments about it, but I see a purpose for it in my campaign. I picked up the BoED and already sold it. Not all that helpful to my game in any way.

 

[Aaron L]

Mummies used to be undead that were positive material based instead of negative, in 1E and 2E. I think they just should have made it a descriptor for undead instead of a new type. But oh well.

 

[Vocenoctum]

It's like they scratched out the word "evil" and put in the word "good" on what would otherwise be exactly the same book.

The BoVD made too many things Evil. That was annoying (as written, in 3rd edition, the forces of Good could no longer remove Unhallow if you used the optional [evil] spell tags from that book). The BoED holds Good to a standard that I think is kind of stupid.

I mean, Good is about making things better for everyone. That includes you. That's the whole point. That the BoED seems to undermine that in favor of the whole Christian self-sacrifice thing is - to put it mildly - dissappointing.

Stamping "Evil" on a bunch of normal stuff is way easier to ignore than defining Good as a self-destructive tailspin.

-Frank

I think what you're missing is that they don't really say "to be good, you have to blah blah blah"
to be Exalted you do.
You can have a LG Fighter that's not as LG as a paladin, the book is not applying all the stuff universally IMO.

 

[hunter1828]

As I read it through I begin to get the impression it is trying to apply the acts of good described early on to ALL good characters. They keep referencing not doing those things as being neutral or even evil, rather than just not as good as exalted, at least IMO.

While I don't have a specific problem with trying to apply more specific descriptors to the good alignment, I would have preferred less stringency to them. Thus, I probably won't use all of them.

hunter1828

 

[Vocenoctum]

As I read it through I begin to get the impression it is trying to apply the acts of good described early on to ALL good characters. They keep referencing not doing those things as being neutral or even evil, rather than just not as good as exalted, at least IMO.

Yeah, I just got the impression that it didn't really matter (doing neutral stuff) for normal goodie's. If all you ever do is neutral stuff, perhaps you're actually neutral, but if you mix good and neutral, you're still good. If not Exalted.

But that's just my impression (and how I'd hope they meant.)
I'm just happy to see flavorful prestige classes

 

[Darrin Drader]

I'm just happy to see flavorful prestige classes

Oh yeah? Any specific ones that you liked?