D&D 4E The Blood War in 4E?

[pemerton]

Demons and Devils may have had their Lawful and Chaotic tags dropped (and I don't think we even know that for sure), but their Evil tag is still in place.

If that is true, then my whole defence of 4e in this thread falls over, because it is not doing what I am praising it for.

But the strong impression I have received is that alignment no longer plays a mechanical role in the game, and therefore that demons and devils no longer have an Evil tag. Of course, the game designers can still describe them as evil in the flavour text, but with the mechanical tag stripped away (plus the removal of moral metaphors like the Blood War), a group of players can now interrogate or even dispute the designers' description without having the game (or the gameworld) try to stop them from doing so.

The D&D system has never dictated how characters respond to creatures and situations. Alignment is descriptive, not prescriptive.

The first sentence of this paragraph is is actually not true. It is not true of how the rules for alignment are written in 1st ed AD&D, in which alignment is described as a code to which a character is committed, and in which there are strong mechanical penalties for changing alignment.

More broadly, it is not true of the way the game is actually played at the table (regardless of how the rule book is written). I have personally encountered, and have read about, endless numbers of GMs who "only GM non-evil PCs" or campaigns in which "evil PCs are forbidden". Even the 3E PHB, which as far as I know is the first time that D&D has embraced alignment as descriptive, not prescriptive, is written with an assumption that Evil characters are NPC enemies, not PCs. That generates an implied prescription.

And there is an obvious reason for all this. If I am playing my PC in what I think is the proper way for someone in his/her situation to act (and that is how most, though not all, players play) I do not want someone - be it the game designer or the GM - telling me that I am Evil, and thus on a par with Satan, Stalin, Jack the Ripper or other paradigmatic villain of choice.

Hence the endless number of threads trying to explain why all sorts of morally questionable behaviour is still Good (or at least Neutral): there is a tremendous imperative, if harmony is to be preserved in actual play, for no player to be labelled Evil unless s/he chooses the label him or herself. Anything else is just insulting to the player.

As a result, whole dimensions of play are excluded, villains become pantomime (a complaint frequently levelled against both FR and BoVD by D&D players, and against the whole of D&D by players of other RPGs that don't have alignment rules of the D&D sort) and so on, all to avoid wandering into this territory which, if the rules as written are applied, might lead to the undoing of the gaming group.

If a Lawful Good creature wants to ally himself with a demon, that is fine and dandy. As a consequence of this action, though, the character's alignment will shift more toward chaos and evil as a consequence of this demonic alliance.

And watch the game fall apart when you tell the player of the Paladin (i) that s/he has an Evil moral sensibility and (ii) that s/he can't play the character s/he wants to play.

This is a particularly unpleasant example of what I mean when I say that the game system and game world predetermines answers to questions that I would rather explore in actual play.

It sounds like, though, you're running a game where a paladin could not be played (EDIT: I should say, played with any level of confidence about *staying* a paladin) without house rules coming into it - which is fine, but I think pemerton is talking about the game's default attributes

Yep, that's what I'm talking about.

Now maybe the player of the paladin doesn't really want to explore the meaning of good and evil, but only someone else's idea (be that the GM's, or the game designers's) about the meaning of good and evil. Fair enough - but that's certainly not the sort of play that I'm interested in. As I said ealrier, if I'm going to do that I'll read a good book.

Better than my group, we want to play paladins and just can't manage it without falling. Out of seven of us only me and one other have managed to avoid falling in the length of a campaign. And that was with a paladin based on a 40K space marine on my part.

I don't know how your falling plays out, but I'm certainly not opposed to PC Paladin's falling. There are at least two ways I can think of to handle it off the top of my head, which are consistent with the approach to play that I favour. One is to allow the player to choose to lead their Paladin into a fall (I have enjoyed games where players, for various reasons, explore the moral collapse - and sometimes, but not always, redemption - of their PCs). This fits with my motto that "Adversity for the PC is fine as long as it is not adversity for the player of the game".

Another way is for the Paladin to come into conflict with the code of his or her God/order (a la Sturm Brightblade) in which case the "fall" is really a moral realisation, on the part of the Paladin, that what s/he thought was good really is not. The Paladin in my current game is undergoing such a realisation at the moment.

In either case I think it is would be an unreasonable nerf to take away the Paladin's powers unless either the player wants this (for whatever reason) or the player gets to substitute new powers in place of the old which let him/her keep playing the (mechanical) character s/he wants to play.

 

[pemerton]

IMO the majority of problems most people have with paladins falling that I've encountered on these boards is due to a very strange view of paladins where they're all kind and fuzzy. Or bound by modern views of law and morality.

I think that the problems are due to the fact that the PHB defines "Good" as precluding needless killing, and indeed the killing of any innocent, and then sets up a premise for play in which killing all sorts of things (some of which are, arguably, innocent or at least not immediate threats to anyone) is the order of the day.

The paladin problems would arise if we were all medieval Thomist moral theorists, or ancient Platonist moral theorists, just as much as they do for us as contemporary moral theorists. The only contexts in which serious moral codes that I am familiar with permit killing on anything like the scale that D&D characters engage it are political or religious violence, whether warfare, or some other social imperative seen as equally pressing (eg of the mixed social and religious imperative that drove killings by Aztecs).

Hence the traditional role of alignment in casting D&D adventuring in the light of a war of Good agasint Evil (which makes it very different from Conan, for example, who is in many adventurers obviously just a murderous thief, and leads to some of the consequences I'm objecting to.) But once the war metaphor falls over, as it frequently does (eg are the Orc children, or the Evil 1st-level merchant, really soldiers of darkness?), then the Paladin problems arise.

This is not a critique of the prominence of killing in D&D. Like superher comic books, D&D is a genre in which conflict is modelled via combat. It's just that it's a serious design mistake to take such a game, then try to use moral metaphysics as a way of keeping the killing focused in the right direction to facilitate play, because someone is inevitably going to notice that by the light of that morality (which has to be tenable for the game's players, and therefore have some connection to the real world) killing is mostly wrong.

In the "Metagame function of PoL thread" I have tried to explain what superior techniques I think 4e is going to use to keep the killing focused in the right direction to facilitate play.

 

[Hussar]

Still, though, the Great Wheel doesn't dictate that everything that lives on a Plane have the same alignment as the Plane, so if you wanted to, you could still have your new Outsiders come from the Abyss. The only thing you couldn't do and be still be consistent with the Great Wheel would be to give them the Tanari subtype.

Actually, yes it does. Many planes have an alignment element in them. The Abyss certainly does. Being LG in the Abyss poses some serious problems. And, if any plane can have any alignment beings inhabiting them, why bother with aligned planes at all?

What's the point of an CE plane if the denizens are not CE?

If the inhabitants of a particular plane are overwhelmingly a given alignment, then, that does present a plane where particular behaviors are going to be prevalent. A LN plane is going to be ordered and structured - Mechanus makes a pretty good presentation of such. But, you can't have beings who are spawned from a CE plane suddenly acting LE just because. That defeats the whole purpose of having aligned planes.

So, if we're going to have demons that are deep planners, and devils that are bent on destruction, then chuck the alignment planes and go from there.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I don't know how your falling plays out, but I'm certainly not opposed to PC Paladin's falling. There are at least two ways I can think of to handle it off the top of my head, which are consistent with the approach to play that I favour. One is to allow the player to choose to lead their Paladin into a fall (I have enjoyed games where players, for various reasons, explore the moral collapse - and sometimes, but not always, redemption - of their PCs). This fits with my motto that "Adversity for the PC is fine as long as it is not adversity for the player of the game".

Another way is for the Paladin to come into conflict with the code of his or her God/order (a la Sturm Brightblade) in which case the "fall" is really a moral realisation, on the part of the Paladin, that what s/he thought was good really is not. The Paladin in my current game is undergoing such a realisation at the moment.

The DMs chair rotates around the group even though I spend more time DMing than anyone else. But I make it a practice never to bait and switch or try to trick anyone into falling. When someone falls, me included it's always because of the intentional actions of the player. Thing is most of us heavily lean toward the harsher end of what D&D would call a LN alignment. To be truthful to myself under the D&D alignment scheme I'd be solidly LE none of us are exactly shining lights of virtue, and this is even with an interpretation that Evil takes some serious bad karma being accrued. So even if we WANT to play a paladin over time our own natures reflect on the PC causing a fall.

In either case I think it is would be an unreasonable nerf to take away the Paladin's powers unless either the player wants this (for whatever reason) or the player gets to substitute new powers in place of the old which let him/her keep playing the (mechanical) character s/he wants to play.

No disagreement here, little temporary lapses that can be atoned for don't cause a loss of power. Generally the PC just gets it made clear by some means involving servants of their god that they need to step back on the straight and narrow. It's only when they take a giant flying leap away from from LG that you see mechanical changes. In which case they "Fall" and trade in their paladin levels for Blackquard levels automatically.

 

[D_E]

Actually, yes it does. Many planes have an alignment element in them. The Abyss certainly does. Being LG in the Abyss poses some serious problems. And, if any plane can have any alignment beings inhabiting them, why bother with aligned planes at all?

What's the point of an CE plane if the denizens are not CE?

If the inhabitants of a particular plane are overwhelmingly a given alignment, then, that does present a plane where particular behaviors are going to be prevalent. A LN plane is going to be ordered and structured - Mechanus makes a pretty good presentation of such. But, you can't have beings who are spawned from a CE plane suddenly acting LE just because. That defeats the whole purpose of having aligned planes.

So, if we're going to have demons that are deep planners, and devils that are bent on destruction, then chuck the alignment planes and go from there.

I agree with a lot of what you say, but I have some key differences, too. For that reason, I'm just going to run along side you and diverge where we have differences.


All Great Wheel Outer Planes have an alignment element in them. The Abyss does, and being LG in the Abyss poses some serious problems. Being LE or CG in the Abyss poses many of the same problems. Being NE or CN in the Abyss can be done. Being C(N)E or CE(N) can be done easilly.

The majority of the denizens of a CE plane are chaotic evil. All Demons are CE, unless they are paritally risen or some such. Demons may rise or become orderly. Not all denizens of the Abyss are Demons.

Most of these other denizens are mortals that have settled in the Abyss for one reason or another (mortals includes Aberitions and such), but may also include displaced outsider races. Many outsiders can replicate themselves through means other than spontaneous generation from their home plane. Such infestations represent a departure from the natural order, but that is different than saying it can't happen. Such pockets of other alignments give you grist for more types of adventures than you'd have if each plane was all one alignment. Specifically, what you've got is the opportunity to look at how different groups interact with your dominant algnment in microcosm.

An Elven setlement in the Abyss may therefore be a normal Elven setlment, a haven for chaotic good at war with its surroundings; or it may follow the dominant CE alignment in a way that may not be immediatly aparent. The PCs will not know which it is when they first come across the setlement.

If the inhabitants of a particular plane are overwhelmingly a given alignment, then, that does present a plane where particular behaviors are going to be prevalent. A LN plane is going to be ordered and structured - Mechanus makes a pretty good presentation of such. But, you can't have beings who are spawned from a CE plane suddenly acting LE just because. That defeats the whole purpose of having aligned planes. You can, however, have beings spawned from a CE plane organize and become LE or NE due to events in the world, possibly the efforts of the PCs. Such events are part of the war between alignments that is central to the Great Wheel.

So, if we're going to have demons that are deep planners, and devils that are bent on destruction, then chuck the alignment planes and go from there. But one should be careful that the Planes don't turn into another version of the Material Plane, just with a higher special effects buget.

So, if we're going to have demons that are deep planners, and devils that are bent on destruction, then chuck the alignment planes and go from there.

As far as I can tell, we aren't. So far, the closest we've got are the 'loths, which are said to be somewhat more organized than normal for demons. It actually looks to me like they've set their new cosmology up with a Chaotic place "below" the material plane, in the Elemental Chaos, and a Law place "above" with the Astral Sea. I'm curious to see if this is true or not.

That being said, I'm not arguing that the Great Wheel is supperior to the 4th ed settup. I'm just arguing that it isn't worse.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

It really doesn't seem tough to jury-rig the Blood War back into the new cosmology, even with minimal alterations.

Devils are bound to the Nine Hells, except when they're summoned to another plane, right? Well, how about a powerful demon prince made a pact and attempted to summon an army of devils to help mow down some of his Abyssal competition, but he didn't read the fine print, so now he's dead and there's a semi-permanent Gate open between the Nine Hells and the deepest levels of the Abyss?

There could be a Tower of Strife, the one bulkhead in the Abyss where the devils can pour through when they so choose, but the demons can never fully seal. Every once in a while, an army of devils will charge through the gate and try to take over a significant portion of the Abyss, from whence they think they could finally break the curse binding them to the Nine Hells; the local demons, of course, don't take kindly to this, and (so far) eventually push them back. Sometimes there's a near-total war on the plains of the Abyss, sometimes the Tower lies empty, depending on what your campaign needs.

That way demons and devils would still hate each other, and there'd be a good tactical reason for devils to plot against demons. (Demons, for their part, fear the devil armies, and therefore loathe them even more than they loathe everything else in the multiverse.)

 

[pemerton]

In which case they "Fall" and trade in their paladin levels for Blackquard levels automatically.

One of the features of 3E that I like, but unfortunately (despite the use you are obviously making of it) seems intended primarily for NPC consumption.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

Yes, you can say that demons can have some organization of a sort. It's the organization of "Do this or I eat you". Beyond that, you're stepping on the Devil's toes.

Long term, complex plans should be a Devil thing. Short term is better for demons.

For the most of time, yes. But I think there's certainly room for calculating, methodical demons that hide their hatred and destructive impulses beneath a mask of calm. Hannibal Lecter might be a good model for this kind of a demon, actually: intelligent, persuasive, even refined... but in the end, he still has no grand aim beyond escaping and going back to his routine of art appreciation and homicidal cannibalism.

 

[Dunamin]

Hmm, what happens to Grazz in the new edition?

With his urban tripple-realm and sinister Greyhawk plots, he seems one of the more organized and "devil-like" demon lords.

 

[FourthBear]

Hmm, what happens to Grazz in the new edition?

With his urban tripple-realm and sinister Greyhawk plots, he seems one of the more organized and "devil-like" demon lords.

That is certainly a concern for many, since he is one of the most popular of the demon lords. As noted before, in most of his portrayals there is very little to distinguish him and his plots from those of Mephistopheles or most of the other arch-devils. I think that in the latest Demonweb adventure book last year there was some stuff about despite the fact that he runs a city, has many long-range, highly organized manipulative schemes and even has full time enforcers that keep troublemakers in line, he's somehow still the epitome of Chaotic Evil, because the city is not perfectly ordered. Which, as far as I'm concerned, shows perfectly why demons and devils were poorly distinguished.

There are a several options to my mind:

1) Forget the 4e fluff and just use demons and devils as you've always done.
2) Demons are no longer "Always CE" Yes, they have some stuff in their background that notes that they are, as a group, destructive and fractious. That doesn't mean that Graz'zt can't be the strong exception, just as a scholarly orc might be. This does tend to weaken the line between devils and demons, but if it didn't bother you in previous editions, why now?
3) Graz'zt is a devil who escaped to the Elemental Chaos and has built up a force of allied demons. Pretty impressive leadership, no?
4) Graz'zt is a devil who is in the Hells. He's part of the Hellish aristocracy and a fallen angel. He wars with the demon lords because he believes they are the key to breaking down the walls to Hell.

I'd imagine people here can probably think of a half-dozen other ways to keep Graz'zt around in the 4e cosmology. Or just don't use it, as noted.