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

[D_E]

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.

I would say that when it comes to angels and devils the name of the game is steriotypes. You have your exceptions, sometimes many exceptions, but those exceptions are set against the backdrop of the steriotypical angel/devil.

Mortals (can be) all about moral complexity, both in games with alignment and games without alignment, since mortals can change alignments with fair rapidity. So a mortal can be Evil, but only kinda Evil, capable of redemption, and your Paladin wouldn't really be justified in cutting him down.

4th Ed has, of course, gone even farther down this road and near-compleatly abolished mortal alignments.

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).

Evil isn't losing. They may be fighting each other, but the law/chaos faultline is present in good as well, and undermines any attempt by the forces of good to take decisive aciton as well.

It's more like everyone's loosing 'cause they're dumb.

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.

Who said that? There's a lot of demons, I guess, but there's probably a lot of Eladrin, too. Home field advantage makes any invasion an uphill battle anyways. So we wouldn't be talking a brief alyance here, it would have to be a very long one, with no garuntee of victory. Meanwhile, both the demons and the devils are convinced that the other is fighting in a horibly inefficient manner; and the two sides probably can't coordinate that well, either.

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.

I can think of lots of examples where evil's lack of unity was it's undoing. Lord of the Rings, for one (Saraman & Sauron). I've only read the first few Wheel of Time books, but the villains in those seem to be hostile twards each other (Whitecloaks are witchunters, those Sea guys fight everybody, probably other's too). Star Wars (if Vader hadn't been trying to double-cross the Emperor in the second there wouldn't have been a third).

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.

Same goes for the Abyss in 4th ed. And everything from the Shadowfell will be shadowy, and everything from the Feywild will be Fey'y.

 

[Khuxan]

Same goes for the Abyss in 4th ed. And everything from the Shadowfell will be shadowy, and everything from the Feywild will be Fey'y.

But within the Feywild there will be an abundance of creatures with different motivations, agendas, ethical codes, alliances, histories and so on. "I'm from the Feywild" isn't prescriptive in the same way "I'm from Gehenna" is.

Having said that, I thought Shemmy's breakdown of neutral evil was very interesting.

 

[D_E]

But within the Feywild there will be an abundance of creatures with different motivations, agendas, ethical codes, alliances, histories and so on. "I'm from the Feywild" isn't prescriptive in the same way "I'm from Gehenna" is.

Good point.

I suspect that we will see a certain level of similarity between all Fey creatures, but only time will tell.

 

[resistor]

To some degree, I think this might be influenced by your gaming history.

When I got into D&D at the beginning of 3e, I thought the Blood War was an awesome idea because it was completely original. I've read Paradise Lost and plenty of Good vs. Evil story. The Blood War is a unique take on the inter-relationship of good and evil.

I wonder if the people who find it boring have been playing for a long time? Because, to me, it is one of the most unique D&D-isms.

 

[resistor]

Having said that, I thought Shemmy's breakdown of neutral evil was very interesting.

You should read his storyhours, or his fiction on Planewalker. His Baernaloth short stories are amazing (in an evil way).

 

[FourthBear]

To some degree, I think this might be influenced by your gaming history.

It's possible. I've been playing since the red box D&D days and I come at it from a different perspective. I never liked the Blood War when it was introduced. As far as I'm concerned it's a poorly conceived intrusion on D&D cosmology, not some kind of beloved campaign element. I never used anything like the Blood War in my 1e days and I roundly disliked and ignored it throughout my 2e days. As far as I'm concerned, it's had far more than a fair share of time. Good riddance.

 

[Inchoate]

It's possible. I've been playing since the red box D&D days and I come at it from a different perspective. I never liked the Blood War when it was introduced. As far as I'm concerned it's a poorly conceived intrusion on D&D cosmology, not some kind of beloved campaign element. I never used anything like the Blood War in my 1e days and I roundly disliked and ignored it throughout my 2e days. As far as I'm concerned, it's had its far more than its fair share of time. Good riddance.

I feel the same way about it. A lot of the 2E material seemed to take the mystery out of the planes.

I've always preferred the notion that even a basic devil/demon was a unique, powerful, scary entity, with motives and goals of its own, and not just a mook with bigger numbers. The Blood War, IMO, turned these creatures into just fodder for two big opposing forces in a stalemate. Bleh.

 

[Dragonblade]

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.

EXACTLY. Well said.

 

[Stoat]

I don't care for the Blood War for two reasons:

1) It's never seemed to me like a good hook for a D&D adventure. What motivates a rational PC to get in the middle of a cosmic war between the primal forces of ultimate evil?

I guess there are players out there who would try to play one side against the other while profiting from the misfortunes of both, but I've never had 'em at my table. Every player I've ever DM'd for has always assumed that both Devils and Demons were too treacherous, backstabbing and untrustworthy to treat with. They'd just as soon sit back and watch while the Fiends tear each other aprat.

Frankly, I'd like to know how folks who dig the Blood War use it.

2) The Blood War makes Demons too lawful. I sometimes see references to Demonic "generals" and "enforcers" in various splatbooks. Or I read that such and such a demon is tasked with "rounding up stragglers trying to avoid duty in the Blood War." I read about Abyssal layers that serve as foundries, shipyards or mustering grounds. It just seems to organized and methodical to me.

 

[Intrope]

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.

This is cogently expressed, but I'd have to day that I dislike the idea of Evil for Evil's sake: I want them to have a purpose that's evil or a reason to hate everything. The Evil of their nature should spring from their nature, not be defined by some existential evil.

Which is what I'm seeing in 4e: Devils are a cosmic evil--because they intend to conquer the entire universe; Demons are a cosmic evil--because they intend to destroy it all.

In the long term, these obviously conflict with each other as well as any number of other, non-evil goals. But over shorter time periods, there could be any number of alliances between factions of the two, or attempts to manipulate the other (a Devil might arrange for demons to be unleashed on Kingdom B to allow Kingdom A to take over--because the Devil will gain a big hold on Kingdom A and hence control over a large region). And this is the kind of thing the Blood War largely impeded--both because it said that both Team D/Abyss and Team D/Hell had the same goal and because it basically said that they intrinsically opposed each other.