Daily Art Preview

[Surgoshan]

Come on, now, that picture's got skads of flaws. The first is that the Balrog's whip should have multiple thongs.

 

[NaturalZero]

Come on, now, that picture's got skads of flaws. The first is that the Balrog's whip should have multiple thongs.

...and arms should have actual deltoids, biceps, triceps, brachialises, etc, instead of being giant red socks full of bowling balls.

 

[frankthedm]

THat's a balor? Huh.

Despite the worries of many, the Balor still has his whip and sword, and is roughly humanoid.

The facial features though are quite bestial though, fitting in with the 4e feel.

It looks o.k., the muscles do seem kinda bloated. But considering nothing will ever come close to the LotR movie Balrog, it's hard to judge Balor illos

Funny how geared up he looks. Makes it look even more like it's cousin from Warhammer, the Bloodthirster.

 

[hong]

I still don't see any barrier to acceptance. I see it in the FR case, with regards to setting history. I don't see it in the monster case, because there's really no history, just kind of the same stuff over and over again -- nothing to 'catch up on,' like there is in FR.

The barrier is not the history ingame, but the lack of history out of game.

Perhaps you could help and show me where a lone 25 year old D&D anachronism is preventing someone from playing D&D?

Nobody said anything about lone 25 year-old D&D anachronisms.

No, you can. It happens a lot. All the time, in fact. Sometimes you break old content, too, especially when you can make the end product better for it.

Like in this case.

I just don't see a game where rakshasas are, say, nature demons, as any inherently better than a game where rakshasas are backwards-handed tiger-people.

Perhaps you can show me why this is important?

Because it results in one idiosyncratic D&Dism with no reason to exist, and hence less barrier to entry.

4e makes fanbois cry a lot. I'm sure the Great Wheel and FR history and half-orcs and druids were bigger blows than rakshasas.

Exactly. And hence if they could go, so can this.

So they'd probably only keep the rakshasas if there was a reason to keep them beyond "appeasing the fanbois." There'd be significantly less reaction with these things than there would be with most of the stuff they've been tormenting the trufans with.

This really doesn't look like its about 25 years of fanbois or "barriers to acceptance."

While it is indeed true that I love Mearls with all of my body including my pee-pee, I do not ascribe to him traits of omniscience, knowledge of revealed truths, or authorship of a divinely inspired 5-year-plan whose subtle workings we can never fully comprehend. Nor Rich Baker, nice guy though he is.

I'm pretty confident when the 4e rules are released that I'll be able to pick out at least a handful of things that really aren't, and that would fail the "general zeitgeist" litmus test at least as badly as the rakshasas do.

Precisely. Rakshasas as tigers with backwards hands fail the general zeitgeist litmus test.

So this is looking more just like you personally think the rakshasas are/have been stupid. Which is cool, but, you know, there might be other opinions which WotC would be perhaps slightly interested in supporting. Such as those Eberron fans who like the idea of evil big cat people as a distinct evil demonic race.

This ignores the potential Eberron fans who do not care one whit about rakshasas as tigers with backwards hands.

So "Only fanbois <3 the dumb rakshasas!" would be misleading at best.

Only fanbois <3 the dumb rakshasas by definition, because only fanbois can be aware of, and care about, the dumb rakshasas.

"What hong thinks is stupid" doesn't enter into it. "What would offend the fanbois" probably doesn't either (here, at least). "What helps us maintain Eberron extraplanar bad dudes as distinct from Default D&D extraplanar bad dudes" might.

So... are we saying that Eberron is D&D?

D&D has rid itself of many stupid monsters, and it has invented stupid monsters to replace them (flumph vs. phantom fungus! triapheg vs. ythrak! myconids vs. desmondu!), and it will continue the process ad nauseum.

Correct. It is a continuing process of self-renewal, and one that is not helped by clinging on to stupid monsters out of sentimentality.

It really doesn't prevent reasonable monsters from being designed to replace them.

It prevents reasonable monsters from being designed to replace them in the zeitgeist.

Eight years of 3e saw over 5,000 monsters, and monster manuals are one of the best selling product lines the game has, probably including 3rd party stuff. There's a LOT of room for new hotness in that category.

Most of which will remain obscure, because the existing monsters are the ones who get all the love.

A lot of room for new stupidity, too, but fortunately with monsters there is a built-in failsafe: if the DM thinks its dumb, it dosn't get used, and so it gains none of that "traction," and all it did was waste a little bit of time and money being developed. It definitely doesn't stop anyone from using the game for the hotness in spite of the stupidity.

I fully agree that if you think it's stupid, you don't have to use it. Insert comment about paying for stuff which you don't use.

Also, the idea that rakshasas as evil tiger-critters are stupid is not as universal as you seem to think it is.

This is because your opinion is informed by D&D players who are already familiar with rakshasas as tigers with backwards hands.

Also also, the idea that stupid monsters in profusion is a barrier to acceptance is something I'd like to see a bit more concrete information on than your say-so. I kind of doubt that is anything resembling a truism.

Stupid monsters are just one part of D&D that keep it from being current to the mainstream. As long as such monsters and associated accidents of history remain, players will look at D&D and see 25 years of cultural detritus accumulated into an unsightly mass not worth climbing.

All we know about them right now in 4e is that they have assassins who look like panthers with reversed hands. Is this not suitable to you?

If there are rakshasas who do not have tiger's heads and backwards hands, this will be a suitable first step.

Based on that picture, you say that? Really, you know what they're like in Eberron, right? They've been more than a D&D anachronism for at least as long as that idea. It just didn't require turning their hands around. Are you not okay with this? Do you feel that WotC should not be okay with this?

One should realise? That the use of rising inflections? Is not particularly illuminative?

Eberron is important as one of WotC's flagship settings, one where they can develop IP that they can milk, like FR. Rakshasas figure into that IP, by being one of the major villains in the setting, as backwards-handed tiger/big cat critters.

And they can continue to be the major villains in that setting, without having their signature feature be tiger heads and backwards hands.

It makes a lot more sense to preserve that potential cash cow than it does to adhere to getting rid of "what hong thinks is stupid" as some sort of bible for what should be in the monster manual.

Nobody said they couldn't preserve cash cows.

A similar case is probably made with regards to the illithids, githzerai, and githyanki. To a lesser degree, Shadar Kai fall into this, too, I'd imagine.

Shadar-kai are a new addition to the game, and one that is moreover being given a revamp to make it more relevant to pop cultural trends. They have nothing in common with tigers with backwards hands, who were quite irrelevant even 25 years ago.

They're all things with some sort of traction that helps WotC give D&D (and Eberron) its own image, one that can sell.

But some are more relevant than others.

Since there's no real reason to get rid of them

Nobody said anything about getting rid of them.

(because barriers to entry don't exist

Of course barriers to entry exist. As long as there are people out there playing WoW and not D&D, that is ipso facto evidence of barriers to entry.

and what hong thinks is stupid isn't a consideration), since there's plenty of reason to keep them (Eberron must be milked,

The suitability of Eberron to continued milking is entirely unaffected by whether rakhasas are tigers with backwards hands.

, they work as backwards-handed tiger/big-cat villains in a William Blake kind of way), they've been kept.

Tell me where Blake said anything about backwards hands.

I do think that the design team probably has a more nuanced view of what backwards-handed rakshasas can accomplish for D&D and Eberron than you do.

The design team has already killed enough sacred cows that one more shouldn't be too much work.

It's not about retaining pointless anachronisms as much as it is about developing D&D as distinct from "General Fantasy Milieu."

D&D can easily be developed as distinct from the general fantasy milieu without perpetuating pointless idiosyncrasies which fail to resonate with people outside the game.

Get a new catchprase for the month, dude. "Everyone who doesn't hate these rakshasas is just a fanboi" isn't one of your better ones. Maybe go back to the wang jokes, those worked for you.

So. Why do you care about rakshasas so much?

Eberron wants to be part of the fantasy melieu as distinct from other genre tropes.

If D&D needs Eberron to sell its core monsters, then D&D has failed.

WotC wants the next FR out of it, and they're not going to treat it like a secondary D&D brand so much as a brand in and of itself.

The game remains "Dungeons and Dragons", not "Eberron fantasy gaming". And thank god, or we'd all be riding lightning trains.

Things that aren't shared by other settings, that require people to buy things with that particular brand name on it, are a Good Thing for that goal.

This has what to do with rakshasas as tigers with backwards hands...?

 

[Sonny]

The Balor is nice. He actually looks pretty close to the 3.5 depiction, though I was hoping they'd try something new. Can't have everything though.
Still, it's a nice piece of art.

 

[hong]

Nice balor!

 

[HeinorNY]

More hellish love.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

I like both the new angels and the new balor.

The former are quite good; I like the facelessness and their lack of legs both, as it makes them appear more like extensions of a divine will than beings in their own right. (I'm going to ignore the "astral mercenaries" idea; IMO, the whole point of angels is that they serve some deity, good, evil or indifferent.)

As for the balor, it looks pretty damn bestial, and at last definitely different enough from the pit fiend. (Balors and pit fiends having been one of the prime examples of pointless symmetry between demons and devils.) Also, the almost translucent sword and the whip coiling around the balor are good touches, I think, showing the weapons as parts of the balor as a whole.

 

[hong]

Anyone have a link to an illo of the new pit fiend? Wanna compare.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

[sblock]

[/sblock]

Here you Hong.