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

[Valiantheart]

Well, when "your fluff" was about a pointless war between the cosmic evil forces of law and chaos (who somehow never seem to make any progress on any front)... well... anything is better than that.



Got any quotes to back this up?

Otherwise, you're just assigning motivations and insulting the maturity of people who aren't here to defend themselves, while presenting zero proof of your point, and further reinforcing this merely being an attempt at insult.

Or I can have my own interpretations and opinions without given a damn about your own or proving them to you. Welcome to the internet.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Because the whole "evil fights evil because law hates chaos!" explanation felt silly, when it would make more sense for them to fight good (especially chaotic evil against lawful good). It makes more sense for evil to ally with evil to annihilate good before turning on itself.

IMO, you're missing the point.

The Blood War was the ultimate example in D&D of the mythological maxim that evil destroys itself.

It is Gollum grabbing for the ring and plunging into Mount Doom when Frodo could not.

Law doesn't hate chaos, per se. EVIL hates EVERYTHING, including EVERYTHING ELSE THAT IS EVIL. Evil isn't a side on a hockey team where they all get along and go out for drinks when they've won the cosmic game, they are ouroboros, self-consuming and self-hating, self-destructive and selfish. The idea is that evil is recursive, that Satan is his own worst enemy, that that which you put forth will come back to you.

That's a POWERFUL idea, and it's worth expressing.

Now, it doesn't really need the Blood War to do it, necessarily. But the Blood War, as I read it, was never about Law vs. Chaos.

It was about Evil vs. Evil.

To show that Evil opposed EVERYTHING. Including itself.

 

[The Little Raven]

Or I can have my own interpretations and opinions without given a damn about your own or proving them to you. Welcome to the internet.

Except you decry the designers as "Half of their explanations for the changes sounds like a 12 yeard old throwing a tantrum and calling you stupid for not immediately agreeing with their view points and eschewing the old."

So, let's see some examples of them throwing tantrums or calling people stupid for not agreeing with their view, otherwise, you just sound like some jilted little forumite who thinks he's cool for calling people 12-year-olds on the internet.

 

[D_E]

In my opinion, the Blood War is just as much about the nature of good and evil as it is about law and chaos. Good's about forgiveness, understanding, and unity, so the good outsiders can live with each other and even work together. Evil's about hatred, selfishness, and trechery, so the evil outsiders try to kill each other.

The Blood War continues because neither evil faction is strong enough to take on all the good factions at once, so they're stuck in the lower planes. Likewise, the good factions can't attack the lower planes because 1) both evil factions are smart enough not to let the other fall into the hands of the forces of good, and 2) because although the good factions tolerate each other and work together in the short term, they can't get along in the long term because each reguards the other as being on the wrong track and halfway fallen. So it's a stalemate.

However, nothing says this stalemate has to last forever. There's plenty of evidence that the balance of the War shifts, and that said balance depends ultimatly on mortals. So an especially powerful party could become involved with the War in a very meaningful way, or even end it.

That's my two cents on why the Blood War's not as bad as some seem to think.

 

[Shemeska]

In core D&D, don't expect much about the Blood War.

In FR, we wouldn't retcon it away, but if it's strongly deemphasized in 4e core, it won't play much of a role in 4e Realms. So think of the Blood War as something that was going on intensely in the Realms' cosmos before the Spellplague, but now has diminished greatly.

Let me ask a question, though: If we said that the Blood War had never happened in FR (and I'm not saying we would), what canon would be violated? There are a couple of plane descriptions in the FRCS and FR Player's Guide that would be inaccurate, but is there something major besides those? (What I'm really asking is, How important was the Blood War to the Realms, really?)

With respect to Mr Baker, who as the top guy for FR probably shouldn't have to ask the question in the first place, the Blood War and its ramifications played a significant role in the history of Hellgate Keep, the Nar demonbinders and their legacy in eastern Faerun, the Imaskari might have had some yugoloth influence in their magic (from a novel that Mr Baker wrote no less) and I'm sure if I spent an evening casually browsing some FR sourcebooks I could find some more references.

Don't consider this a rant to high heaven. I'm just disappointed in them. They've really made some IMO unimaginative changes that really put a kick to the junk into a more complex and dynamic take on the planes. We're going back to extraplanar dungeons for heros of the appropriate level to adventure in, which I find really unfortunate.

Plus with making the 'loths "soldier demons" now, I'm twice disappointed. I remember Andy Collins asking about the yugoloths a year or so ago on his own forums, and I remember the rather massive amount of material and opinions that he got on the topic. All that, all the sources they could have spun ideas off of to make a really cool re-envisioning of the 'loths and the best they can come up with is "soldier demons" working for an unnammed abyssal lord. Very inspirational. Bravo.

Ok, maybe that turned into a rant. Bah. It was coming I suppose.

 

[The Little Raven]

In my opinion, the Blood War is just as much about the nature of good and evil as it is about law and chaos. Good's about forgiveness, understanding, and unity, so the good outsiders can live with each other and even work together. Evil's about hatred, selfishness, and trechery, so the evil outsiders try to kill each other.

The Blood War continues because neither evil faction is strong enough to take on all the good factions at once, so they're stuck in the lower planes. Likewise, the good factions can't attack the lower planes because 1) both evil factions are smart enough not to let the other fall into the hands of the forces of good, and 2) because although the good factions tolerate each other and work together in the short term, they can't get along in the long term because each reguards the other as being on the wrong track and halfway fallen. So it's a stalemate.

However, nothing says this stalemate has to last forever. There's plenty of evidence that the balance of the War shifts, and that said balance depends ultimatly on mortals. So an especially powerful party could become involved with the War in a very meaningful way, or even end it.

This strikes me as saying "Law and Chaos only matter if you're evil, because only evil is so stupidly self-destructive, yet somehow, they could overcome their cosmicly-huge hatred for eachother if the other was attacked... but could never ally for any other reason."

 

[The Little Raven]

Don't consider this a rant to high heaven. I'm just disappointed in them. They've really made some IMO unimaginative changes that really put a kick to the junk into a more complex and dynamic take on the planes.

Mileage varies, it seems, since those "complex and dynamic" planes were boring and two-dimensional to me. An entire plane of neutral-evil beings? How... bland. Planes pigeon-holed into the alignment system is probably the most unimaginative method of developing planes, to me. It's that same "need" for symmetry that gave us tons of elves and dwarves. The 3e cosmology change was the first good step away from that (and I liked the PG's plane setup even better... the Tree, the Mountain and the River).

 

[D_E]

This strikes me as saying "Law and Chaos only matter if you're evil, because only evil is so stupidly self-destructive, yet somehow, they could overcome their cosmicly-huge hatred for eachother if the other was attacked... but could never ally for any other reason."

Well, I would say that evil is fairly self-destructive, in that evil folks constantly have to wory about being backstabed by their peers.

But Law and Chaos also matter to Good beings, in the more...spiritual?...realm of falls from grace etc., and also in the phlisophical realm of an anarchic society vs. a regimented one.

yet somehow, they could overcome their cosmicly-huge hatred for eachother if the other was attacked... but could never ally for any other reason."

Enlightend self-intrest. If one side gets taken over by the forces of good, the other side will tank it soon after.

Plus, not "never ally for any other reason." I'm sure the two sides could cooperate in some fassion in other matters, again for reasons of enlightend self-intrest.

EDIT:

An entire plane of neutral-evil beings? How... bland

Indeed. Which is probably why the Grey Waste had neutral-evil beings, several multi-alignment afterlives, law-evil beings, chaotic-evil beings (Blood War outposts), communities of mortals of all alignments (although biased twards neutral-evil in many places), and hunting bands of Good outsiders.

 

[The Little Raven]

Well, I would say that evil is fairly self-destructive, in that evil folks constantly have to wory about being backstabed by their peers.

That's why I've always disliked the alignment system, because it makes assumptions that don't hold up if you intend to have any sort of realistic moral complexity in your games.

But Law and Chaos also matter to Good beings, in the more...spiritual?...realm of falls from grace etc., and also in the phlisophical realm of an anarchic society vs. a regimented one.

But it's not important enough for them to fight over it, yet it's important enough for evil to be fighting the longest running war ever? See, that strikes me as... well... unbelievable, because it depicts good as incredibly wise and evil as incredibly oblivious (thus, contributing to evil losing because it's dumb).

Enlightend self-intrest. If one side gets taken over by the forces of good, the other side will tank it soon after.

Plus, not "never ally for any other reason." I'm sure the two sides could cooperate in some fassion in other matters, again for reasons of enlightend self-intrest.

Except the overwhelming reason to do so: to wipe out all good in the universe, since evil outnumbers it so incredibly. If devils are willing to side with demons to prevent demons from being wiped out, then it makes more sense for them to side together to wipe out their enemies, before turning on eachother.

In almost every single example I can think of where evil turns on itself, it's after it has become monolithic and victorious, not in the middle of the epic struggle of good and evil.

Indeed. Which is probably why the Grey Waste had neutral-evil beings, several multi-alignment afterlives, law-evil beings, chaotic-evil beings (Blood War outposts), communities of mortals of all alignments (although biased twards neutral-evil in many places), and hunting bands of Good outsiders.

But the original native inhabitants (the yugoloths) were universally neutral-evil. So, instead of being determined by your actions, it was primarily determined by your parent's address. It's dull.

 

[Shemeska]

But the original native inhabitants (the yugoloths) were universally neutral-evil. So, instead of being determined by your actions, it was primarily determined by your parent's address. It's dull.

[planar nerd]

Ah, but there's more than one way to define neutral evil, and the Waste isn't beholden to a single monolithic interpretation of the alignment. The "modern" loths are devoid of law or chaos, representing a cold, merciless, perhaps sterile interpretation of evil. They weren't always so, and early in their history they had some notable schisms regarding the proper place of law and chaos within their own conception. A subset of the original creator fiends, a group of baernaloths known as the Demented, espouse a vision of neutral evil that seeks to fuse the most antithetical extremes of LE and CE together as a single perfect, paradoxical whole.

You've got the exiled demodands who have their own chaos-tainted vision of "pure" evil, and the more humanized evil of the Night Hags and the self-tormented notion of NE captured by the hordelings, plus some others lurking in the wings.

[/planar nerd]