Cthulhu vs PCs: Anyone tried this?

[pickin_grinnin]

This was not unique to Lovecraft's writing. A posse of federal agents put a decisive end to the lair of the Deep Ones in Shadow Over Innsmouth. A handful of old professers with access to a banishment ritual of some kind put a decisive end to the monstrous "half-brother" of Wilbur Whateley in The Dunwich Horror. Randolph Carter flouted the designs of no less a villainous team-up than Nyarlathotep and Azathoth simply by waking up in The DreamQuest of Unknown Kadath (although, sure, I'll concede that he didn't kill them in mortal combat, exactly.)

None of which was Cthulhu. Nor were any of the ones at the deity level killed.

You can always run a game where Cthulhu can be killed. That just wouldn't be very Lovecraftian.

 

[pemerton]

In any system, if PCs fight Cthulhu, the PCs should die.

Any system that gives another outcome if inherently flawed, unless the PCs are deities or something.

None of which was Cthulhu. Nor were any of the ones at the deity level killed.

But if an ordinary person can deal with Cthuhlu by running it over with a boat, then presumably PCs can at least aspire to the same degree of success. In other words, this:

as I recall, what would have been the equivalent of a low-level Expert class NPC bumped Cthulhu on the head with a boat, and sent him packing. High level D&D characters shouldn't have found that any kind of challenge whatsoever.

 

[Desdichado]

None of which was Cthulhu.

Uh... no kidding. You started quoting my post right after I finished talking about Cthulhu in Lovecraft's writing. You helpfully included the part where I transitioned into talking about the notion of defeating the monsters in Lovecraft was not a singular occurance in "The Call of Cthulhu." Although Cthulhu's actual appearance in the flesh is.

Talk about selective quoting to completely miss the point.

Nor were any of the ones at the deity level killed.

Cthulhu wasn't "deity level." He was the High Priest of R'lyeh. The deities of the Lovecraftian Mythos, if they can even be called such, are Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath and Nyarlathotep.

But even then, you can really only call them deities if you move out of Lovecraft's actual writings and start incorporating a lot more of Derleth's ideas.

You can always run a game where Cthulhu can be killed. That just wouldn't be very Lovecraftian.

You are completely wrong, as I've demonstrated. Since Cthulhu only appeared in one story that Lovecraft wrote, and he was in fact killed in that story, this is the exact opposite of true.

Yeah, yeah... he's not "permanently" dead. "That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die." "[...] but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die." And all that.

Can he be defeated by a party of high level D&D characters and still be Lovecraftian? Considering that in the only actual appearance he ever made in a Lovecraftian story he was defeated by what I'd translate into d20 as a single, low-level Expert level NPC with a boat, then I'd say absolutely.

 

[Celebrim]

The point of Lovecraft's work is not that Cthulhu is the king of the universe, it's that nobody is. I don't see why it would be tonally inappropriate for the PCs to beat him(/her/it?), as long as their victory is meaningless in the grand scheme of things (i.e. cosmicism).

It is a nice picture. Never done it, but I'd like to.

I think that is the key to the proper tone. Lovecraft's heroes can never win; they can only delay and postpone the inevitable. Humanity will go extinct. That is unalterable cosmic and physical destiny.

Fundamentally, Lovecraftian Horror is the horror of modern physics, relativity, quantum mechanics, and the vast spaces of the atom. Humanity can make bargains with physics to prosper by its own limited standards for a time, but it can't change the rules. Heat death and the cold uncaring universe creeps steadily on, quite as oblivious to humanities struggles as it is to any other random heated vapor.

I will say that technically, Cthulhu isn't king of the universe, but the Lovecraftian universe does have a king and creator - mindless faceless mad Azathoth, the star sized 'god' who is incarnate the primordial nuclear inferno, and who is served by Nyarthahotep that ensures in a perverse version of the anthropomorphic principle that the reoccurring universes Azathoth births are eternally bleak, violent, unjust, and callous. Cthulhu is merely a parasite of Azathoth, like a tick or a flea, and potent as he may seem he can no more change the fundamental rules of the universe than humanity can. And yet, the horror of the Lovecraftian universe is that cosmicly speaking, the fact that Cthulhu dwells on the Earth is the only thing important about this otherwise unremarkable speck of dust. Humanity is no more important in the grand scheme of things than the scum on a stagnant pond, and will never arise any higher than that.

 

[Umbran]

Cthulhu wasn't "deity level." He was the High Priest of R'lyeh. The deities of the Lovecraftian Mythos, if they can even be called such, are Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath and Nyarlathotep.

I think you'll find that Lovecraft himself did not organize a set hierarchy for the mythos - all such arrangements were done by others, and they aren't all consistent with each other.

You are completely wrong, as I've demonstrated. Since Cthulhu only appeared in one story that Lovecraft wrote, and he was in fact killed in that story, this is the exact opposite of true.

I think you'll find that's not correct:

"But Johansen had not given out yet. Knowing that the Thing could surely overtake the Alert until steam was fully up, he resolved on a desperate chance; and, setting the engine for full speed, ran lightning-like on deck and reversed the wheel. There was a mighty eddying and foaming in the noisome brine, and as the steam mounted higher and higher the brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly which rose above the unclean froth like the stern of a daemon galleon. The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly. There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler would not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where—God in heaven!—the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form, whilst its distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam."

Emphasis mine. Not dead, or even sent packing. He just rams it and outruns it.

 

[Desdichado]

I think you'll find that Lovecraft himself did not organize a set hierarchy for the mythos - all such arrangements were done by others, and they aren't all consistent with each other.

Actually, I think I'll find that I already know that, and in fact inferred that very fact myself in the part of my post that immediately follows what you quoted, but which you snipped.

I think you'll find that's not correct:

"But Johansen had not given out yet. Knowing that the Thing could surely overtake the Alert until steam was fully up, he resolved on a desperate chance; and, setting the engine for full speed, ran lightning-like on deck and reversed the wheel. There was a mighty eddying and foaming in the noisome brine, and as the steam mounted higher and higher the brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly which rose above the unclean froth like the stern of a daemon galleon. The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly. There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler would not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where—God in heaven!—the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form, whilst its distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam."

Emphasis mine. Not dead, or even sent packing. He just rams it and outruns it.

No, he was sent packing, quite clearly. Otherwise, the narrator of the story wouldn't be around to narrate it, as is also abundantly made clear if you read the entire story instead of just cherry-picking quotes out of it. If I wanted to do that, I could find all kinds of quotes about Cthulhu actually being dead, or this quote from the very last paragraph of the story: "He must have been trapped by the sinking whilst within his black abyss, or else the world would by now be screaming with fright and frenzy. Who knows the end? "

Or the ones I already quoted in my previous post, which I won't repeat again. And this one, too. "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn: 'In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming'."

And all that's beside the point anyway. Your initial flawed claim was that any system that didn't have the PCs simply die from facing Cthulhu was flawed, or at least non-Lovecraftian. That's obviously false, since if you happen to have read the only story in which Cthulhu appears, you'll know that Johansson was murdered by a cultist long after he sent Cthulhu packing (emphasis mine.) All this talk about whether or not Cthulhu is "dead" or not--which is obviously a meaningless term to being like him (or to plenty of critters in the Monster Manual, for that matter) is superfluous. You (and pickin_grinnin) made an obviously false and falsifiable claim. I proved it wrong by referring to the actual primary source, the story "Call of Cthulhu." You have, curiously, now quoted exactly the portion of the story that disproves your original point, but since you've totally moved the goalposts to the more nebulous concept of whether or not Cthulhu is "dead", I'm not even sure what your point is anymore. Which normally I wouldn't get too bent about, but holy cow: a guys asks for some advice on how to run something, and you guys pounce on him and discourage him from even doing it at all because it's "not Lovecraftian?" Well, assuming for a moment that that's even something he cares about, you're completely wrong. It's totally Lovecraftian. Defeating the horrors of the Mythos happens very frequently in Lovecraft's writings, and in fact, it happens specifically to Cthulhu in the only story in which he actually makes an appearance.
[MENTION=51930]fireinthedust[/MENTION]; I haven't ever had my PCs fight Cthulhu, no. I don't really play high level D&D very often. There's no reason not to do it, though. Despite what the naysayers here in this very thread have proposed, there's no reason to think that even in Lovecraft's own writing that the notion of defeating Cthulhu is impossible. I can't fathom why anyone would discourage you from attempting it based on what appears to be nothing more than misplaced loyalty to an obviously flawed secondary and later interpretation of Cthulhu's supposed invicincibility. In the stats themselves as presented, Cthulhu (and the rest of the Great Old Ones) are more or less comparable to the Demonicon of Iggwilv stats for demon-lords. IIRC, Cthulhu had a CR in the low to mid-thirties in the d20 book, exactly the same range as the demon lords.

Although given the age of the Cthulhu stats, whether or not they truly are comparable is debatable. For what it's worth, in Paizo's Bestiary 4 Cthulhu is CR 30; exactly the same as Pazuzu.

 

[RangerWickett]

The illo was actually done to commemorate a playtest at WotC wherein the iconics did indeed go up against Cthulhu. I believe thirteen 20th level PCs perished before Mialee managed to beat Cthulhu's spell resistance with imprisonment, trapping the eldritch horror beneath the earth until such time that it might rise again.

Citation: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20020329x

 

[Umbran]

Actually, I think I'll find that I already know that, and in fact inferred that very fact myself in the part of my post that immediately follows what you quoted, but which you snipped.

You clearly asserted that Cthulhu was "not deity level". You then question they can be called deities, per se.

You don't retract the idea that there was a hierarchy, though. And that's what I dispute.

No, he was sent packing, quite clearly. Otherwise, the narrator of the story wouldn't be around to narrate it, as is also abundantly made clear if you read the entire story instead of just cherry-picking quotes out of it.

The Narrator is clear: The issue is one of speed. "...the Thing could surely overtake the Alert until steam was fully up". This implies that once his engines are up to full pressure, he can outrun the beast. Now, I'll grant you that his intent might have been to kill, but the fact that it is visibly reforming nigh instantaneously is at odds with it being a notable issue for the beast. From there, all the speaker knows is that the boat doesn't get caught - repeated reference to Cthulhu's imprisonment leaves us with the simple interpretation that it was still bound to the area of R'lyeh, and couldn't catch the boat before it was out of reach.

Repeated reference to Cthulhu being dead and dreaming (generally incompatible states for mortals), I think, has less to do with it being killed in the conventional sense, and rather more to do with how life and death are not exactly the most meaningful concepts when considering these entities. When describing the creatures of the Mythos, humans must resort to poetry, because mortal concepts don't hold true in a literal sense.

Your initial flawed claim was that any system that didn't have the PCs simply die from facing Cthulhu was flawed, or at least non-Lovecraftian.

It was not my initial claim. I offered a modification to someone else's claim, to make it a little less harsh, and point the issue where I think the culprit lies - less a question of whether a game was flawed in construction, and more a question of genre and/or style.

How much of an argument do you really want to get into over a difference of opinion over what counts as "Lovecraftian style"?

 

[fireinthedust]

a guys asks for some advice on how to run something, and you guys pounce on him and discourage him from even doing it at all because it's "not Lovecraftian?" Well, assuming for a moment that that's even something he cares about (snip).

Nah, I'm good, it's cool. Actually, I was hoping some folks had some anecdotes about using the statblocks in the book.

(but thanks for the consideration)

@fireinthedust; I haven't ever had my PCs fight Cthulhu, no. I don't really play high level D&D very often. There's no reason not to do it, though. Despite what the naysayers here in this very thread have proposed, there's no reason to think that even in Lovecraft's own writing that the notion of defeating Cthulhu is impossible. I can't fathom why anyone would discourage you from attempting it based on what appears to be nothing more than misplaced loyalty to an obviously flawed secondary and later interpretation of Cthulhu's supposed invicincibility. In the stats themselves as presented, Cthulhu (and the rest of the Great Old Ones) are more or less comparable to the Demonicon of Iggwilv stats for demon-lords. IIRC, Cthulhu had a CR in the low to mid-thirties in the d20 book, exactly the same range as the demon lords.

Although given the age of the Cthulhu stats, whether or not they truly are comparable is debatable. For what it's worth, in Paizo's Bestiary 4 Cthulhu is CR 30; exactly the same as Pazuzu.

More than Demonomicon, there's Deities and Demigods. One could fight Thor or Odin. So it is certainly a D&D thing to fight Cthulhu.

As well, considering the presence of the Mythos in other stories than Lovecraft, let's not forget Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. The entire supernatural in the Hyborean Age is effectively Mythos, being things the "man was not meant to know". Some come from outer space, others dwell deep in the earth. Mages both "good" and vile both have truck with these alien creatures from beyond our reality who intrude on us and take material form. Off-hand I can think of: the tower of the elephant, Xuthal of the Dusk, The Servants of Bit-Yakin, and the Hour of the Dragon... Even what we would consider "typical fantasy" was treated by Howard as part of the Mythos: Vampires living in the black pyramid beneath Stygia, what we would call a Naga in Rogues in the House... loads of others. Wizards were as bad as it could get, including liches. The "dark gods" like Set were basically just Mythos creatures of immense power.

Heck, in Xuthal, and again in "The valley of lost women", Conan goes one-on-one against a horror that is worshipped as a god by wizards or by weird alien women. Are they any less within the mould simply because those stories have received less acclaim?

Robert E. Howard was a pen pal of HP Lovecraft, who gave the eulogy at Howard's funeral. Conan was officially Lovecraftian, and they had an ongoing debate about what was more evil: civilization or savagery.

Appendix N is an amazing reading list that I feel I'm way behind on completeing. D&D has this habit of "classifying" what things are, and players act like it's law. The greats didn't do that sort of thing. The point of the Mythos is that we can't classify it: our pathetic human minds can't comprehend them.

So, in light of that, I'd say that I think high level D&D characters loaded with powerful magical items could go toe-to-toe with Cthulhu. Conan didn't even have those resources (just a sword and some hit points), and he did it numerous times.

[MENTION=11944]oth[/MENTION]ers: I do see what you mean in terms of scale. My early years in D&D needed Cthulhu to be unbeatable, or other plot devices like that. For some games, it can be fine. Really you and Hobo are both right: really it would be more like "we fight back this manifestation of Cthulhu until the eclipse is done, and it goes back to the slumber of eons".

 

[Desdichado]

You clearly asserted that Cthulhu was "not deity level". You then question they can be called deities, per se.

You don't retract the idea that there was a hierarchy, though. And that's what I dispute.

Fine. Close enough. To be perfectly clear, I'm not sure that you can claim that anything is "deity level" in Lovecraft's prose, although if you're going to try and use that heirarchy, then Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath, Nyarlathotep and Yog-Sothoth are the best candidates for it. Cthulhu isn't.

And if specifically trying to translate Cthulhu into D&D terms, you'll likely get a result (and the various stats I know of for him from d20 and beyond) have him equivalent more or less to a D&D demon lord like Demogorgon, Orcus or Dagon. If I remember correctly from his brief cameo in AD&D, he was a lesser diety or demigod, but that doesn't really translate well into what's been done with him since.

But that's specifically translating him into D&D terms, which is arguably a dubious prospect to begin with if you want to be "true to Lovecraft."

Good enough? My middle-school algebra teacher always did tell me that I'd go to hell if I skipped steps. That may be hyperbole, but I certainly do get into enough silly arguments by glossing them over.

Repeated reference to Cthulhu being dead and dreaming (generally incompatible states for mortals), I think, has less to do with it being killed in the conventional sense, and rather more to do with how life and death are not exactly the most meaningful concepts when considering these entities. When describing the creatures of the Mythos, humans must resort to poetry, because mortal concepts don't hold true in a literal sense.

Indeed. Again; we're on the same page after all. But despite my sloppy claim that Johanssen "killed" Cthulhu, certainly he defeated him and sent him back into whatever "pseudo-alive" state he was in prior to his ressurection. So, again--Cthulhu can be defeated by a D&D party and that can still be consistent with Cthulhu as written by Lovecraft.

It was not my initial claim. I offered a modification to someone else's claim, to make it a little less harsh, and point the issue where I think the culprit lies - less a question of whether a game was flawed in construction, and more a question of genre and/or style.

How is that not your claim? I quoted you almost exactly word for word! I'm not thinking that you claimed that Cthulhu is to monsters as katanas are to weapons, and therefore you can't ever even fight against him or you automatically LOSE, YOU LOSER McLOSERTON!

Well, actually I guess I kinda am. You did say, caveating someone else's statement, that if you go up against Cthulhu and don't automatically die, then that's not Lovecraftian. Minus the exaggerating wording, that's conceptually the same claim.

How much of an argument do you really want to get into over a difference of opinion over what counts as "Lovecraftian style"?

I'd love to! Sounds like a fascinating discussion, and one on which I have strong opinion, actually. (Not surprisingly)

Probably not in this thread, though. It's been sufficiently hijacked already.