Metallic Dragons: Unaligned!?

[KarinsDad]

None? I'd probably put a good number of them as a response to in-game issues, or even non-existant changes, and some have even been rendered null and void by later books.

So um..yeah, my mileage varied quite a lot. I'm not even sure if I'm even using the same form of transport.

But since I don't want to argue minutiae, I'll just leave it at that rather than try to refute anything.

Uh huh. A good number??? I disagree, but won't say how I disagree because that's minutiae. Whatever dude.

Yup, changing Eladrins to Elves fixed a big hole. As did forcing Wizards to use implements. Adding brand new races and classes to the core books filled many holes (especially because all players WILL play with all of the new splat books). Adding Spellscar and combining two worlds into FR and killing off the gods. Changing the entire Cosmos. And darn those Wizards for flying for hours at a time. Fighters cannot do that. Unfair! We don't want the entire party flying up to the Dragon's lair at the top of the volcano anymore and avoiding the plethora of encounters in the tunneled maze below. That was a real problem for DMs!

Sorry, but when you purposely won't support your POV, it sounds like you are talking out of your hat. Disagreeing just to disagree.

 

[Obryn]

If on the other hand you believe as Obryn does that within "Unaligned" you can run the entire gamut from con artists to Mother Teresa and still be "Unaligned" and reserve "Good" for the truly good beings and "Evil" for only the most despicable acts then you can wonder why Dragons weren't "Unaligned" from the very beginning. This however still leaves me wondering why the chromatic dragons got to stay "Evil".

That's part of it. Frankly, it wouldn't bother me if metallic dragons were still Good-aligned because I don't care very much. Insofar as I do care about alignment - which, as I've said, isn't much - I think Unaligned is a very good catch-all category which leaves a creature's motivations wide open for DM use.

Mostly, though, I am disagreeing with the position that Unaligned = Exists to be Killed and Looted. That seems to me like a peculiarly argumentative stance, which displays the prejudices of the speaker more than anything else, because I've never before seen an argument that slaughtering Neutral monsters is a good and productive endeavor for adventurers.

And, for what it's worth, I have absolutely no issues with folks who are unhappy with the change for other reasons.

At any rate, this'll probably be my last post on the topic - I had an epiphany about what I'm arguing about, and with whom I'm arguing, so I think I'm going to wash my hands of it and try and pretend it never happened.

-O

 

[Dire Bare]

Uh huh. A good number??? I disagree, but won't say how I disagree because that's minutiae. Whatever dude.

Yup, changing Eladrins to Elves fixed a big hole. As did forcing Wizards to use implements. Adding brand new races and classes to the core books filled many holes (especially because all players WILL play with all of the new splat books). Adding Spellscar and combining two worlds into FR and killing off the gods. Changing the entire Cosmos. And darn those Wizards for flying for hours at a time. Fighters cannot do that. Unfair! We don't want the entire party flying up to the Dragon's lair at the top of the volcano anymore and avoiding the plethora of encounters in the tunneled maze below. That was a real problem for DMs!

Sorry, but when you purposely won't support your POV, it sounds like you are talking out of your hat. Disagreeing just to disagree.

I think what Bumbles is trying to say, is that you are bringing up minutiae in your arguments as if these minor, unimportant changes somehow are quite major and game-changing. Or at least, that's what I'm seeing in many of your arguments.

There's no doubt that 4e changed a lot of mechanics and a lot of fluff, but you are going overboard in your crusade.

I'd imagine that Bumbles, Obryn, and others have realized the futility of continuing the discussion. I'm getting pretty close myself. Doesn't mean anyone is simply being disagreeable for the sake of contention.

 

[Mistwell]

I would be curious to know if you felt my analysis was biased towards one side or the other or if I managed to keep my position out of my comments. Note: I do agree with one side on this, but have not voiced it yet.

I didn't see any bias.

 

[Umbran]

The fanboys ...

... post has just earned someone a threadban. I would strongly suggest nobody else engage in such rhetoric.

We are getting beyond edition-wars, folks. If you don't like an edition that badly that all you can do is trash people, don't go into threads that discuss that edition.

 

[77IM]

Some of the reasoning on this thread sounds suspiciously like the Oberoni fallacy ("It's not broken, because you can fix it with house rules;" the fact that it needs to be fixed implies that it is, in fact, broken).

Obviously, in my campaign I can say that gold dragons are lawful good, telepathic, breathe corrosive gas, and are purple. I can even say that there are no gold dragons, or I could say that all dragons are gold, and that they run a passenger service and are happy to ferry PCs from town to town. In my game, I can say that eating the heart of a gold dragon earns you tremendous XP, enough to gain 5 levels. Or I can say that all gold dragons have a gaze attack: Death Glare (minor action; at-will) Close blast 5; +Level+3 vs. Fortitude; target dies instantly.

So, saying I can just change the gold dragon's alignment in my campaign is kind of moot. The questing is whether it is better for the game for the MM entry to say "Unaligned" or "Lawful Good" or some other thing (like, if a monster stat block can list multiple languages, multiple skills, etc., why not multiple alignments?). It should be valid to (intelligently) criticize WotC's design decisions even if they are easy to change with house rules.

-- 77IM

 

[Mistwell]

So, saying I can just change the gold dragon's alignment in my campaign is kind of moot. The questing is whether it is better for the game for the MM entry to say "Unaligned" or "Lawful Good" or some other thing (like, if a monster stat block can list multiple languages, multiple skills, etc., why not multiple alignments?). It should be valid to (intelligently) criticize WotC's design decisions even if they are easy to change with house rules.

-- 77IM

If unaligned can meant that the alignment of that species varies wildly from individual to individual and group to group, then is it really a house rule if the gold dragon your party meets behaves as a lawful good creature?

 

[77IM]

No. But if gold dragons are typically lawful good or if most gold dragons are lawful good, that would be a house rule.

Since the Alignment entry == the alignment of a typical creature or of most of that type of creature, I think that's what's under debate here, not the alignment of any specific individual gold dragon. (In fact, the alignment entry has no bearing at all on the alignment of of any specific individual creature since both the DMG and the MM mention that exceptions can exist.)

-- 77IM

 

[Mistwell]

No. But if gold dragons are typically lawful good or if most gold dragons are lawful good, that would be a house rule.

Since the Alignment entry == the alignment of a typical creature or of most of that type of creature, I think that's what's under debate here, not the alignment of any specific individual gold dragon. (In fact, the alignment entry has no bearing at all on the alignment of of any specific individual creature since both the DMG and the MM mention that exceptions can exist.)

-- 77IM

Why would it matter what "most" gold dragons are? Wouldn't it only matter for the ones the party interacts with or at least hears about?

 

[IanB]

Some of the reasoning on this thread sounds suspiciously like the Oberoni fallacy ("It's not broken, because you can fix it with house rules;" the fact that it needs to be fixed implies that it is, in fact, broken).

Except you can't really apply that fallacy to the discussion, because the alignment issue is not a mechanical issue. Whether or not it is broken is entirely subjective; there are no rules issues raised by this change, only flavor ones.

In fact I would question why this thread even appears in this particular forum, given that, but it would appear that in my fairly long absence from reading EN World there have been some changes to the 'what goes where' rules and/or practices.