Monsters are more than their stats

[DandD]

Nah, depends, killing evil stepmothers is actually quite normal in fairy-tales. Everybody does it, and gets away with it.
Just denounce her as an evil stepmother.

 

[Victim]

So, the question is, what prevented the 3e succubus from doing this?

The question isn't rhetorical and actually has a pretty important answer. But said answer is going to vary from person to person. My hope is that WotC supported as many different answers to the question as solidly as they could. My selfish hope is they supported my answer to the question as throughly as possible.

Probably the main thing preventing it is that it's sort of a waste of her time. She doesn't need to bother manipulating people via any sort of a relationship. In fact, if her level draining kiss can't be turned off, that sorts of limits those options. A 3.x succubus can Charm hundreds of people per day; most people can't really resist her power. Even a strong willed person will eventually crack (unless immune) if she can keep at them. Her power lasts almost 2 weeks. She can just take the souls of her victims via level drain. It's hard to keep her away from places with teleport and etherealness.

Her mindbending powers are so great that being beautiful and seductive is basically irrelevant. She doesn't need to manipulate and cajole; she can just take.

 

[D'karr]

So, the question is, what prevented the 3e succubus from doing this?

The question isn't rhetorical and actually has a pretty important answer. But said answer is going to vary from person to person. My hope is that WotC supported as many different answers to the question as solidly as they could. My selfish hope is they supported my answer to the question as throughly as possible.

Nothing prevented that in 3e IMO, but the discussion here seems to be that a succubus needs a bunch of rules to attempt to do so on an NPC, and that 4e does not support that. This is where some are calling shenanigans.

We have not seen the full rules so saying, as some have, that nothing but what we have seen exists is "bull." As has been pointed out by some you don't need a bunch of rules for doing what has already been discussed, as the seduction, etc. has occurred off camera so to speak.

We have not seen rituals or anything that describes long-term magical effects. The designers and developers have told us they exist, but some choose to ignore that and continue to say that without these rules the game sucks. Well d'oh. We have not seen the full rules. If after the rules are released we find that indeed the rules are lacking then we can complain. Doing so before then is pretty silly.

It would be like giving a movie a bad review when all you have seen is the preview. The people that are defending 4e are not saying that 4e is the end-all, be-all in gaming. What they are saying is that they are going to give the rules a chance before they make up their mind about them. So they are going to go see the movie before giving it a review. But what they have seen from the preview is good enough to go see the movie to begin with.

 

[Hussar]

The question of whether this approach is superior is a more difficult one, in no small part because there probably isn't an objective answer.

I tend to think that the 4e approach runs into big difficulty whenever the play departs from the core gameplay of 'killing the monster and taking thier stuff'

I like agreeing with Celebrim. Makes me feel all balanced.

Where I disagree is with Kamikaze Midget's idea that it will all be based on "make stuff up". This will be no more or less true than it ever was. Every adventure contained elements of "make stuff up". Just about every campaign specific element contains elements of "make stuff up".

This has been core to D&D since day 1. I don't think it will change. What has changed is the obsessive need to hand all control to the rules. People constantly complained that 3e took power from the DM and handed it to the players. It didn't (IMO). It took the power and kept it wrapped up in the rules.

Now, the power is being shifted back to the DM's but, only at certain times, which will generally be during adventure design. At the table, the rules will cover most parts of play. The really corner cases, like the players entice the Succubus to become some sort of mind control machine for them, can be ignored by the rules because the chances of it coming up are pretty bloody small.

I had another thread talking about the size of the toolbox a week or two ago and it related to this one. The idea that your toolbox MUST cover situations to five nines is, IMNSHO, a waste of page count. Instead, cover most of the situations that come up most of the time and don't sweat the small stuff. Give the DM's lots and lots of advice on how to handle the corner cases beyond a simple Rules 0 declaration instead of trying to create mechanics that will cover all possible situations.

 

[robertliguori]

I like agreeing with Celebrim. Makes me feel all balanced.

Where I disagree is with Kamikaze Midget's idea that it will all be based on "make stuff up". This will be no more or less true than it ever was. Every adventure contained elements of "make stuff up". Just about every campaign specific element contains elements of "make stuff up".

This has been core to D&D since day 1. I don't think it will change. What has changed is the obsessive need to hand all control to the rules. People constantly complained that 3e took power from the DM and handed it to the players. It didn't (IMO). It took the power and kept it wrapped up in the rules.

Now, the power is being shifted back to the DM's but, only at certain times, which will generally be during adventure design. At the table, the rules will cover most parts of play. The really corner cases, like the players entice the Succubus to become some sort of mind control machine for them, can be ignored by the rules because the chances of it coming up are pretty bloody small.

I had another thread talking about the size of the toolbox a week or two ago and it related to this one. The idea that your toolbox MUST cover situations to five nines is, IMNSHO, a waste of page count. Instead, cover most of the situations that come up most of the time and don't sweat the small stuff. Give the DM's lots and lots of advice on how to handle the corner cases beyond a simple Rules 0 declaration instead of trying to create mechanics that will cover all possible situations.

"Make up an element of the universe" is very distinct from "Make up a plot point". 'The king has been mind-controlled' is a plot point. 'Succubus', 'Charm Person', and 'authority figure with a poor will save' are universe-elements. You can't address a plot point without authorial authority. You can address a universe-element with any other universe element that has built-in interaction capacity with the given element. This tends to produce richer worlds and more interesting player action.

If we're given crunch, such that the succubus has a ritual Ensnare the Mortal's Heart, that clearly lays out what the ability can do within the parameters of what the GM desires (it only works on mortal at a time, requires the ritualist to maintain friendly contact with the mortal as well as use a charm effect X times in a row successfully to start and once per X time period to maintain and produces a list of specific effects), and that it is a plot point that this succubus knows this ritual, then goodness is acheived. Simply deciding that your plot requires the king to be magically ensnared by a succubus without detailing how the magic ensnaring him works in the general case invites trouble when the player start assuming that this is a capacity, not a plot point, and try to have the succubus do it to other people.

In a universe in which you can always predict player action and outcome in certain scenarios, you can get away with leaving large sections of the game-universe blank. There exists no built-in way to get a skeleton to tell you what he's feeling at a particular time, so the GM does not need to worry overmuch about whether or not his skeletons have acute tactile senses. Not only are there built-in ways to subdue a succubus, there is also built-in incentive to do so; she can do magical tricks that the party most likely can't. The idea of players interrogating a succubus to find out how her tricks work and how they can take advantage of them isn't even an edge case, let alone a corner case; expecting an enemy archetype based on negotiation and treachery to only interact with the PCs via direct combat and not favor-trading or similar smacks of ignoring player action in the general case.

 

[Rex Blunder]

The idea of players interrogating a succubus to find out how her tricks work and how they can take advantage of them isn't even an edge case, let alone a corner case; expecting an enemy archetype based on negotiation and treachery to only interact with the PCs via direct combat and not favor-trading or similar smacks of ignoring player action in the general case.

I think this is a great point.

I'm still not convinced that succubi need any more charm magic than they already have, though. In fact, I think the succubus would be better served by some sort of information-gathering ritual (for blackmail, manipulation, finding out what the king's "type" is) than by a dominate ability which devalues her seductive archetype.

Tangent: You know what charm needs that it has NEVER had in any version of the game, and has always made it (in my mind) a half-baked spell? A description of what happens to the subject when the spell wears off. Does the subject realize he was magically manipulated and now HATES the caster? or does he have fond memories of good times with the caster, in which case he probably still feels some residual affection for the caster? or are his feelings somehow reset to the point before the casting took place? This makes a huge difference in how charm works in non-combat situations, and merits at least a sentence in one of the 6 or so previous editions.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

In a universe in which you can always predict player action and outcome in certain scenarios, you can get away with leaving large sections of the game-universe blank. There exists no built-in way to get a skeleton to tell you what he's feeling at a particular time, so the GM does not need to worry overmuch about whether or not his skeletons have acute tactile senses. Not only are there built-in ways to subdue a succubus, there is also built-in incentive to do so; she can do magical tricks that the party most likely can't. The idea of players interrogating a succubus to find out how her tricks work and how they can take advantage of them isn't even an edge case, let alone a corner case; expecting an enemy archetype based on negotiation and treachery to only interact with the PCs via direct combat and not favor-trading or similar smacks of ignoring player action in the general case.

Really? I've read a lot of published mods and you almost always fight a Succubus when you encounter it.

The average plot goes something like this:
The shopkeeper in town has been arranging murders of people at the behest of his new consort. He thinks it's all his idea as she is very subtle about implanting the ideas.

All the PCs know is that people are dying mysteriously. The wife of one of the murdered people asks them to figure out who did it and get revenge. The PCs track down a number of clues that eventually lead them to the shopkeeper's house, after surviving a couple of assassination attempts. The succubus is there, disguised as a human. When she hears the PCs talking about the murders, she attacks the PCs(because regardless of whether or not it is true, all evil people think they are capable of easily defeating the PCs and that its the best solution). They kill her and likely arrest or kill the shopkeeper as well.

Notice how the plot doesn't require knowing HOW exactly the Succubus charmed the shopkeeper? It just requires knowing she CAN influence people. No PCs I've ever ran a game with would have stopped at that time while she was attacking her in order to subdue her and force her to use her powers to help them. She wouldn't help them anyways. She'd rather die(which sends her back to her own plane) rather than help them.

Never underestimate the ability for the average D&D game to be about killing things and taking their stuff.

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

If we're given crunch, such that the succubus has a ritual Ensnare the Mortal's Heart, that clearly lays out what the ability can do within the parameters of what the GM desires (it only works on mortal at a time, requires the ritualist to maintain friendly contact with the mortal as well as use a charm effect X times in a row successfully to start and once per X time period to maintain and produces a list of specific effects), and that it is a plot point that this succubus knows this ritual, then goodness is acheived.

Hey look! A bunch of extraneous stat block information that I can give a hearty eye roll and never care about again!

Succubi also rely on stealth above negotiation and treachery. I've never seen any instance of anything in which, after being revealed as a succubus, one tries to use any negotiation at all. Typically, as soon as she's revealed, it's time to throw down and get out of Dodge.

Either way, I don't see how having the MM hold our hands and give us The Succubus According to The Rouse will help us in this case. In terms of monster breakdowns, this isn't a blank sheet of paper -- we've got a Mad Lib, and all you need to do is fill in one blank to make the story work for you. Given that it's abundantly clear at this point that I don't like your story and you don't like mine, why are we trying to make either one "official?"

 

[Lizard]

Am I the only one who doesn't see why a succubus in human form couldn't just seduce a king the old-fashioned way?

Sure.

But the magic means the players can't just point out that the beloved courtesan is causing trouble, strife, and the destruction of the kingdom. Nor does Twue Wuv (or eeven ramapnt lust) excuse radical and *rapid* changes in personality.

"Hey, King Benevolus The Just has ordered the mass slaughter of orphans."
"Oh, it's just cause he's in love with some wench. He'll get over it."

Or even:
"Hey, isn't the king's impending marriage to Mariana of Koldersburg the only thing stopping the kingdom from plunging into war? Why is he cancelling it just because he met some strumpet? He's never been that stupid and irresponsible."

Magic foils the PCs attempts to use simple reason (or just a wench with a higher charisma) to solve the problem.

 

[WyzardWhately]

Better yet. The King is an ancient graybeard, but his wife is young, beautiful, and has her hooks deep into him. She's corrupting him and getting him to implement villainous policies. But she's not the bad guy! It's her personal fashion consultant, the fabio-esque Incubus who is pulling her strings, and through her the King's strings. By using her as a cats-paw, any righteous bureaucrats or filthy adventurers who try to get involved will go stab the all-too-mortal queen, when they pick up whiffs of infernal influence and suspect some evil booty is afoot.