There are two aspects to this. One is interesting. The other is insulting. (There's also some stuff that is just laughable.)
It's funny how I ask what should be a simple yes or no question... but can't get a yes or no reply. Let me try this again... Did you get the player of the invoker's consent to activate his familiar, and have it redirect souls towards Vecna?
May I add a rider: "Consent" means explicitly asking the player to activate the familiar, not implied consent such as:
- not arguing his familiar was not activated;
- arguing or negotiating over the loss of his familiar (in game or out of game);
- sitting at the game table to begin with;
It means he explicitly said "I expect my familiar to be removed from my control for an unknown and indefinite period of time" or "I agree with you removing my familiar from my control for an unknown and indefinite period of time". If some other phrasing was used, spell it out and Imaro and I will see if we agree that's consent
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The Invoker did not, as I understand it, even activate his familiar, much less offer it as part of the stakes.
This is the insulting bit, and outrageously arrogant also on N'raac's part.
You are both supposing that you can know
better than me whether or not a man you've never met, in a city that I imagine neither of you has ever been to, who has been a close friend of mine for 20-odd year, consented to his character suffering a certain consequence in an RPG.
The most ridiculous thing is that
the only evidence you have that this event even occurred is my own testimony typed onto this message board, yet you won't accept my testimony that the player consented to what happened. In fact, not only did he consent, he SET IT UP. By implanting the Eye of Vecna into his familiar. I can't even imagine a more reckless and aggressive way of staking your familiar's welfare on your PC's relationship with Vecna.
N'raac said:
I conclude that your objection to similar mechanics for Paladins, or for the alignment system, are not a hard and fast philosophy
My conclusion is an opinion, not a fact.
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It is no more “wrong” than your opinion that alignment, reasonably and properly applied, would be detrimental to your games.
Except that in my case I'm talking about my experiences - which you can have no knowledge of other than my testimony, given we've never met or interacted in any other way - and in the other case you're calling me a hypocrite or a liar or something in that general neighbourhood.
my contention that removal of a character resource, whether temporary or permanent, without the player’s consent or direction, due to the character’s moral choices is inconsistent
Does this contention even make sense? Do you ask your players for permission every time you roll a damage die?
You are imputing to me views that I have never expressed, and that strike me as not even coherent in respect of a mainstream RPG.
Furthermore, there was no removal
due to a moral choice. So can you please stop saying that.
You have told us the alignment rules are not good rules because they reduce a player’s ability to impact the fiction by removal of character resources.
No I haven't. Can you please stop imputing to me things that I have not said. I have asked you multiple times to not do that.
You did judge that an Evil deity disapproved.
I don't get this at all. I don't use mechanical alignment in my game. I judged that
Vecna disapproved. Vecna does not have a mechanically mandated moral status. That's the point of not using mechanical alignment!
He sees a significant difference between unilateral removal of the familiar because the player made a choice that a higher power relevant to the character disagreed with and removal of abilities for alignment issues. I don’t. That’s the disagreement.
No it's not. I don't disagree with you about your judgements, nor deny that they are what they are. But you are not willing to accept that a difference you don't care about matters to me.
Now, to take a quick tour via some stuff that strikes me as simply ludicrous:
Apparently, they say the owner does die instantly and crumble to dust
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Consider reading it this time.
I did read it. All of it. Including the bit that says the Eye of Venca might fall out of the PC's eye socket during a crucial battle. Do you think that's irrelevant? Meaningless?
Why does he get no reward (other than the xp everyone gets) for his service and success in the challenge?
Because the Raven Queen rewards her champions rather than her backsliding sometime-devotee? Who flirts with Vecna and has come very close more than once to animating undead? Have we now moved to the point where I have to justify my whole campaign to you?
Here's a thought - why don't you tell us
one thing that has happened recently in your game. Give us one example of alignment improving your play experience.
I think a sunrise and talking with your deity while dead are quite different in scope. I am also saying there are no rules for communing with the character’s deity while the character is dead, so any such interaction is not a “by the rules” scene, but a “GM Fiat” scene.
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Can you show me any rule that governs how such an interaction is requested by the character, how it should be determined whether his request is granted or how the scene should be adjudicated? There are no such rules, I believe, and with no such rules, the entire scene is complete GM fiat.
This is also ridiculous. There's no rule in any version of D&D, other than perhaps Moldvay Basic, for framing the first scene. So that's all GM fiat now! And even 1st ed AD&D - the most simulationist version of D&D with respect to the tracking of ingame time - doesn't use strictly continuous play. All RPGing involves someone making choices about scene-framing, and in all mainstream RPGs it is the GM who does that. (Arguably, you could say that GM authority over scene framing is a key marker of an RPG being mainstream.)
I also have no idea why you think a sunrise and a meeting with the divinity are any different from a mechanical point of view. In fact, the meeting with the Raven Queen is quite well-defined in 4e - as per the passages I have quoted. It's certainly much better than any astronomical features of the gameworld like the movement of the sun.
Finally, I also quoted the rule from the PHB which states that it is the GM's job to present the various challenges that the players must overcome. And frankly, only a terrible GM would think that it's somehow contrary to the rules or at odds with the spirit of the game to frame a scene that a player wants for his/her PC. And this is where we get to the interesting bit - because I find some of what you and Imaro are saying is a good way to play frankly bizarre. I hate to think what boring games you must run, if you really adhere to your own strictures.
What check did the player make using his familiar to expose it to loss?
He doesn't have to make a check. That's the point of framing the PCs into adversity, as per the instructions to the GM in the PHB that I already referred to.
He didn't make a check - he turned up to play the game! I don't know how it works in whatever game you might play, but in 4e a consequence of playing the game is that PCs will be put under pressure in the fiction, and at least some of that pressure corresponds to mechanical pressure on player resources. Playing 4e is all about modulating that pressure, keeping it up without actually ending the game via TPK or some similar accidental error. That's why it's so important to 4e that it have robust tools for determining encounter difficulty. Given that, last I knew, [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] was trying to run 13th Age but having some questions about the best way to do it, I'm surprised he's not more interested in these issues. Because 13th Age certainly puts the onus on the GM to modulate pressure and recovery via its "daily recovery" rules.
Who decided that his familiar would send soul energy to Vecna (Still not sure how/why it would do this, maybe secret back story around the familiar or artifact, but whatever)?
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Who decided the familiar would also go into an active state so it could be damaged
Me! That's my job as GM - it's called introducing complications and presenting challenges for the players. But I have no idea what you mean by "secret backstory" here. It wasn't a
secret that the imp had the Eye in it - the player chose to have his PC put it there! It wasn't a
secret that Vecna craves the energy of souls and the Shadowfell - he's the god of necromancy who is a major recurring figure in the campaign!
pemerton said:
The term I use for taking steps with a player's familiar that he has deliberately loaded with the Eye of Vecna for this very purpose is "Establishing a complication".
So then why not leave the decision up to the player?
Because that's not the player's job. For good reasons - players have an obvious conflict of interest if they have to both advocate for their PCs and frame complications that get in the way of their PCs.
pemerton said:
the player made at least three salient decisions. First, he decided to have his PC implant the Eye of Vecna in his imp. Second, knowing that Vecna was, via his PC's imp, sucking up the soul power, the player decided to have his PC thwart Vecna. Third, having suffered Vecna's wrath, he made no attempt to bargain, or return the soul energy, or anything of that sort. Instead, he let the dwarf fighter lead him out of the collapsing cavern.
Really these are salient decisions??
Yes. Deciding to play off Vecna against Levistus by sticking the Eye in your Imp, then choosing to thwart Vecna when he takes advantage of that situation, then not pushing back when he inflicts retribution, are hugely salient.
Frankly, you and N'raac seem to be arguing for a boring game - where players make bold moves, and the GM just ignores them and putzes around with - well. what? - I'm not sure. Sunrises, maybe, rather than meetings with their immortal overlords! You seem to be suggesting that, as a GM, it's bad practice to follow your players lead and frame the conflicts around the signals sent by the player. Maybe I should have just ignored all the imp and Vecna stuff, and just run some pre-packaged railroad involving some irrelevant fetch quest chasingsome who-could-care-less MacGuffin?
It would be like having a character in 13th Age choose as their One Unique Thing "I am the last of the dwarven guardians", and then never framing them into a scene where they have to choose between saving the dwarfholmes or realising something else they value.
In one of the Burning Wheel rulebooks, Luke Crane explains the role of player-purchased relationships: they're always the focus. So if a vampire is in town, and one of the PCs has a relationship with an NPC in that town, then of course it is that NPC that the vampire is stalking, or wooing! Who pays for a relationship just so it can be ignored? Who sticks the Eye of Vecna into their imp just so that nothing will happen?
As I said, your prescriptions strike me as prescriptions for boring, colour-by-numbers RPGing.
It's destroyed until you allow the player (since you also disregarded the official rules for familiars) to get it back... at this point and time we have no clue as to how long or short that will be. Do the rules for healing diseases or removing curses boil down to... catch or be subjected to one whenever the DM feels like it and heal or have it removed whenever the DM feels like it? If not then they are not the same as what you chose to do.
You say these things so confidently, almost like you were in the room playing the game rather than thousands of kilometres away! You don't know how the familiar is going to come back. You don't even seem to have thought about the ways the familiar might be recovered.
Just off the top of my head I can think of the following possibilities: supplication to Vecna; or a skill challenge to defeat Vecna's current hold on the imp; or a Remove Affliction ritual; or perhaps, given that the PC is very close to gaining a level, he tears the Eye from the imp and implants it in his own empty socket, vowing to use the Eye to take control of Vecna and all his works! (And then at 26th level retrains the familiar feat.)
Luckily I play with players who will think of these sorts of thing, or other things I haven't, and won't just sit around passively waiting for me to dole out prepackaged bits of plot like feeding the pigeons in the park.
