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

[pemerton]

Ignore -double post.

 

[FourthBear]

Expedition to the Demonweb Pits describes a fairly orderly city, designed to run like a human city with police and guards and all. I agree that it's very much a Hellish-style city (or at least a Prime Material-style one). It's not at all what I had in mind.

For some values of chaotic, this sounds fine. After the Blood War has been invoked as some kind of grand, cosmic conflict between diametrically opposed Law! and Chaos!, it's kind of a comedown to find that it seems to boil down to stylistic choices. They just don't seem different enough for me to believe that they're so utterly alien and opposed that they've been engaging in untold eons in the Blood War with no thought as to the vast waste of resources. On one hand, the fiends are supposed to be the exemplars of Law and Chaos, but on the other, people don't seem to want this to stereotype them in any particular way.

Of course, all of this is a bit moot, since alignment is indeed being changed and the aligned planes are being set loose in 4e. Given all that, are there any changes people would make in devils, demons, daemons and demodands to describe them *without* invoking alignment. If someone came to you and said that you had to write a description of all of the former fiends in D&D for 4e, but without the Great Wheel or explicit alignment, what would you do differently? Note my stuff below is pretty much the same as the 4e cosmology. Perhaps I'm too tired to be creative right now.

I would probably set up something like the current cosmology, with the devils as scheming, behind the scenes plotters. I like the idea of them being trapped in the Hells unless summoned by peoples of the world. I would actually play up their organized nature and greatly decrease their incidence of internal betrayals. I find an evil force that actually are loyal to each other much more frightening than the usual cartoon style evils. However, I would also allow more exceptions to their regimented nature in their cities and aristocracy. So less oppressive dictatorships all around, but also less constant betrayals. I'd like to open up the Hells and their variety of personalities in their ranks, while keeping them all quite malign. I would have the corruption of souls be quite important to devils, perhaps as a perverted way of bringing souls to the inverted god Asmodeus.

Demons as a vast mob of instinctively destructive and bestial creatures sounds about right. Demogorgon really would be my shining exemplar of a demon prince. Capable of fighting down the immediate impulses to destroy, but always having them (as Dausuul has described). I would probably reduce incidences of human-like demons and have some of them be shapechangers able to take on human form. Or having using cultists and such precisely because their true forms are so frightening. No particular interest in corruption or souls outside of simple evil pleasure. Definitely the sort of creatures that would ruin pretty much anything just because it was there. Spend most of their time fighting each other and anything within reach. Occasional exceptions sometimes highly dangerous in this regard., but should infrequent enough that they raise an eyebrow when they come up.

Daemons and demondands? Nothing too distinctive comes to mind right now. Nohting there looks too different than the 4e stuff, though.

 

[Hussar]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hussar
The problem is GR, if you paint demons and devils like that, why bother with two types?
...
Demons and devils, traditionally, are interchangeable. Like I said before, you could change the alignment of Malcanthet to LE and no one would notice. How many spider demons/devils/whatever do we really need? Glabrezu tempt with wealth - how is that not stepping directly on Mammon's schtick? On and on the list goes.

Sure, you can justify anything given enough free time. But, instead, why not start from a conceptual space where the two different critters are actually different and then you don't have to justify anything.

From the DM's point of view, nothing's changed. If I need a tempter/mastermind fiend, I use a devil. If I need to go Godzilla on something, I use a demon. I haven't lost anything. Now, each monster has an actual niche, rather than being carbon copies of each other.


Sorry Hussar, but from my perspective there IS no problem...seems my post didn't really bring that over the way I wanted. The point is, they aren't interchangeable, and I'm sure as hell not trying to "justify" anything ...I'm looking at the different creatures the way I think they should be looked at.

The problem, as I see it, is that orignally, way back in 1e, you had demons and devils. They really were pretty much indistinguishable in core. Other than the alignment bit, there was nothing which really screamed one type or another.

What I think that you are doing is going back and spackling a difference on after the fact. Again, I ask, if demons and devils use the same tactics and have the same goals, why bother with two types? Call them fiends and be done with it.

This is why I've loved the idea of Obyriths. THAT'S what the paragon's of CE should look like. They're not interested in ruling the universe. They don't want to be worshipped. They could care less about mortals. They're just as likely to eat their own cultists as the sacrifice.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

The problem, as I see it, is that orignally, way back in 1e, you had demons and devils. They really were pretty much indistinguishable in core. Other than the alignment bit, there was nothing which really screamed one type or another.

Right...the only thing that differentiated them was the fact that one was LAWFUL Evil and the other CHAOTIC Evil. Which basically means that 50% of their main motivations, behavioral patterns and beliefs were diametrally opposed to each other. Which in turn means...

What I think that you are doing is going back and spackling a difference on after the fact. Again, I ask, if demons and devils use the same tactics and have the same goals, why bother with two types? Call them fiends and be done with it.

...that their goals were similar in that they were about self-empowerment without regard for anybody else, and totally different in the ways and methods they would apply to get there, and the outlook they had on how to get that power, and what to do with it. They CAN use the same tactics, which doesn't mean they always do, but they are clever enough to realize that there is a multitude of angles to work their plans on mortals, and sometimes they overlap for demons and devils. Which is why I don't have to tack on a difference "after the fact". I can simply TAKE the fact of the alignment difference, and work with it. Nifty, those two little words, I tell you.

This is why I've loved the idea of Obyriths. THAT'S what the paragon's of CE should look like. They're not interested in ruling the universe. They don't want to be worshipped. They could care less about mortals. They're just as likely to eat their own cultists as the sacrifice.

And what exactly makes them "Evil", in that case? Sounds more like Chaotic Neutral (Evil Tendencies) to me. Apart from the fact that their disinterest in mortals makes them a lot less useful as tools for the DM to integrate into the adventures that deal fairly often with mortals.

And by the way, even back in the 1E MM, those two groups differed by look as well...demons were depicted a lot more monstrous, and devils a lot more humanoid, with the exception of the succubus on the one side and the ice devil on the other.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

The problem is, Hannibal Lecter is not CE by D&D alignment IMO. He's NE. He isn't interested in overturning the existing social structure, he's only interested in his own goals. Chaotics don't just ignore the social structures around them, they actively act against them. Hannibal Lecter couldn't care less if the existing society around him is a democracy, theocracy or Stalinist Russia.

Chaotics, particularly beings which embody chaos, should not be seeking to build social structures IMO.

I agree with you, because that's one of my points: demons don't have, IMO, to be always chaotic in 4e, nor devils lawful; I think it's actually been said outright by the WotC.

Thus, decoupling the fiends' motivations from law and chaos, and giving them actual motivations ("Escape from Hell / corrupt mortals / rule the Universe!" vs. "Vent your rage on anything at hand / eat the juicy souls / destroy the universe!"), is going to be a good thing.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

And that simply opens up the next (hypothetical) question...do demons and devils always have to be Evil? Or, for that matter, do Angels have to be Good all the time? Why not simply create a broad "Outsider" monster with a few tables that let you add abilities, immunities and vulnerabilities based on what flavour you'd like it to have?

 

[FourthBear]

And that simply opens up the next (hypothetical) question...do demons and devils always have to be Evil? Or, for that matter, do Angels have to be Good all the time? Why not simply create a broad "Outsider" monster with a few tables that let you add abilities, immunities and vulnerabilities based on what flavour you'd like it to have?

Now that's a question I was asking myself last night. We already know that in 4e, Angels will not have to be Good, since they're making Angels the servants of deities of all moralities. I think the definition of Angel won't be based on morality, but rather on origin and function: Angels are the servants of the Gods, just as devils are fallen angels and demons are corrupted elementals. Each has assumed roles in the game: Angels execute the wishes of the gods, devils scheme to corrupt mortals and escape the Hells, demons lash out destructively against each other and all they reach. The question then becomes, how many exceptions are allowed? We already know that Angels aren't perfectly loyal: the devils prove that. I could imagine a demon of Good alignement: a demon that focuses its destructive impulses against what he sees as the worst of his kind and away from innocents. It would be potentially keeping with the concept of demon (a highly destructive outsider). Would it be appropriate for a campaign? I guess that's for the DM to decide. I could see that some DMs would prefer to keep all demons evil so as to keep an overall theme constant or to allow for some opponents that the PCs can feel free to oppose at all times.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think of Saruman as the potential counter-example here - a game in which players have the choice of how their PC's respond to adversity, and whether they make trade-offs that involve taking power from dark sources (like Sauron) is to me a potentially interesting one. Saruman's motives were self-serving, but not entirely so.

Alignment rules are the main obstacle to this sort of game in D&D, because once the character becomes Evil the game leaves no room for the belief by the individidual ingame that s/he is nevertheless acting in the right (or at least a reasonable way), and it also tells the player that his/her PC has crossed the line into wrong and unreasonable.

Alignment does remove the player's (and, to a lesser extent, the character's) doubts. But I don't think that inhibits the ability of PC's to make power with dark sources and still have moral questions about it.

The question isn't "Is what I'm doing evil," though. The question is "Am I evil?"

The alignment system is an agent of heroic adventure gameplay, so it wants people to choose sides in the cosmic war of ideas, and it tries to make sure those sides are clearly defined. But as a consequence of that, it allows for "evil heroes," and it allows for your goodness to be a cost of doing the right (or necessary) thing. Evil isn't any worse than Good, from a gameplay standpoint. They both have their interesting options. They are both tools to achieve a given end.

With alignment, it should be fairly clear when an action is evil. But it is far less clear when a given *character* shifts alignment. It is left up to the DM to determine, with the advice that alignment is a general description of the character, so it should be broadly applicable, and that exceptions are certainly allowed without an alignment shift. This is alignment's grey area, where the question is "How badly do I want to be Good?"

This meshes better with a heroic game because the world is fairly black-and-white. The moral question should be between those options, rather than about what those options entail. Alignment allows the choice between those options to be a challenging one, because it doesn't penalize you for being anything. The shades of grey happen when characters debate about which one they should choose in a given situation.

This is directly relevant to the gameplay, because it influences their immediate tactics. A character who questions the nature of what she's doing (Is this action Evil?) won't truly be affected outside of interesting character dialogue (doing evil is left a wide-open question). A character who is able to choose the nature of what she's doing (Am I willing to do Evil to accomplish this?) has a direct and immediate clarity of action. Yes, I want to make this pact, no I do not want to make this pact. You know it's evil, but you also know the world rewards evil, too, and that by making this one choice, you won't be evil (though you are aware you may have started on a slippery slope and that the pact will come back to haunt you). It's just a little Evil. What's it going to hurt?

So, yes, Alignment does remove from the table the question of the nature of your action. But no, Alignment does not inhbit a moral grey area. It just shifts it into a heroic framework, rather than one resembling real-world questions of "What is Good?" This is entirely suitable to D&D, which is a heroic adventure game, after all.

That's pretty verbose, and it might be a bit hard to grok, but defining Evil and Good (and Law and Chaos) does not mean that the choice between them is at all clear. Toying with Evil for the purposes of Good is entirely acceptable, and your price is basically your Good alignment (which is a sort of "price of innoence;" you can never be pure, but you will make it so others can be). It does mean that it directly influences your immediate character behavior based on your characters' (and your) choice of what to be. A system without alignment doesn't have such a potent, binding effect on the game. And having Alignment in the game doesn't impede various morally grey characters, it just places them in a heroic context where their choices have certainly made them choose sides in the battle (even if it's 'somewhere between Good and Evil').

My issue here isn't absolutism vs relativism, it's simulationism vs gamism & narrativism - ie it's a game design issue, not a meta-ethics issue.

Right, my intent was to say that removing alignment makes for a "relativistic game," where what is good and what is evil depends on the individual group/campaign/etc. rather than on a coded set of universal rules for the game (Good is petting puppies, Evil is drowning them). So the moral quandries would be relative to the group, not absolute to the game.

Perhaps that wasn't the best choice of words, though.

Mechanical alignment gets in the way of gamist play (because it unexpectedly, and from the point of view of the player's own priorities it pointlessly, leaps up and nerfs the Paladin or Cleric or whomever from time to time) and it gets in the way of narrativist play, in which the players (including the GM as one of the players) want to answer the questions - including, perhaps, ones about the truth or falsity of relativism - in the course of their own play.

Indeed, it does get in the way of both of those: gamism because it forces the hand of "Role Playing" in where it might not be welcome, and narrativism because it alraedy defines a narrative.

Alignment as a core rule in D&D doesn't allow for differing interpretations because it's there to enforce D&D's own narrative: Good Vs. Evil. That's the model of heroic gameplay. That doesn't remove muddy questions as much as it frames them in a heroic setting.

That might not be desirable for everybody, and, indeed, Alignment is one of those rules that should be able to be dropped without much consequence (as I believe 4e will support). But to loose Alignment is, partially, to dilute the power of D&D as it's own game, and to support it more as a toolkit. Alignment is Heroic Fantasy, and D&D wants to be Heroic Fantasy. Without alignment, D&D won't be as Heroic, which is great if all you want to do is kill goblins or if you have your own ideas about exploring the nature of heroism, but it sucks if you want to play D&D as D&D -- as the game where you save the town from the rampaging dragon for loot and power and fame and then do it again next week. That isn't what everyone wants from their game, but it absolutely should be what is supported in the core rules, IMO.

An example - some social theorists and political philosophers believe in the notion of "democratic peace" - that democracies don't wage aggressive war. Players interested in this idea could well play a game in which nation A invades nation B. Part of what would be on the table, then, is whether nation A is really a democracy or not (was its invasion defensive, for example, rather than aggressive?). This could make for an interesting modern-day or super-hero game, with espionage, commando, political/social roleplay, etc. Having rules in-game (perhaps a bit like the old Traveller law levels) which gave a mechanical answer to the question of whether or not nation A was a democracy wouldn't help that game, they'd hinder it.

If you transpose this idea to alignment, you get "If Nation A acted like a democracy before this, then they are still a democracy, but if they contine to wage these agressive wars, we don't know how long they will still be a democracy."

Which instantly informs your actions. Want to protect Democracy? DOVE! Think that perhaps Democracy is overrated if it can't be aggressive? HAWK! Perhaps the Hawk learns that what is replacing his Democracy is something he doesn't want, either. Perhaps the Dove realizes that the line between aggressive and defensive is hazy at best. Perhaps they both learn to sit somewhere in the middle, perhaps they go at each other like mad.

Without that sort of 'political alignment' mechanic, what do we have? Nobody really knows what a democracy is, and the question is moot because OMG BOMBS!

Which is realistic, but rather unsastisfying, just like real life.

Now, that's appropriate for certain games, but if the designers want the game to be about, say, the War on War, that kind of certitude is advantageous. And the designers, I believe, want D&D to be a game about Good Vs. Evil, so describing them and defining them and having roles for them is advantageous.

Dropping alignment has the effects on the distribution of narrative control we have just been talking about.

D&D will still have Good and Evil (at least) and will still define it. I'm all for the broadening of the unaligned category, making alignment effectively something you can switch on, but it will still be part of the core game, because the game isn't trying to make a vessel for all your narratives, it's trying to be Heroic Adventure, and that means, in part, Good Vs. Evil.

I don't think it's silly as a literary, metaphorical device (again, it's not Graham Greene, but what RPG writing is?). It is a gameplay one.

Because it's depiction of evil as self-destructive is something you feel should be left open for each DM?

But D&D has NEVER left that question open to DMs. I'm pretty sure 4e's Evil will still be defined and will still include a self-destructive angle, I just think that 4e's Evil will be more extreme than 3e's...it'll be something you have to choose to be, rather than something the DM tells you you have become. Which is fine for me.

D&D has chosen to be a heroic game where Good and Evil fight with each other. It's good that they're opening it up, but if D&D abandoned it all together, it would be going in quite a different direction than any edition has, more of a narrative toolkit and less of an 'implied setting.' And you'd think they'd be dedicated to that goal, and abandoning other things that tie you narratively to the rules (tieflings come from a lost empire! shaping a spell is taught by the Golden Wyverns!, etc.), not just alignment.

 

[Shemeska]

Daemons and demondands? Nothing too distinctive comes to mind right now. Nohting there looks too different than the 4e stuff, though.

You don't have to invoke alignment to describe them. I could just as easily wax on about their thematic underpinnings for a 4e description that matched them spot on with their previous incarnations, and 4e already raised the notion of Tharizdun getting his hands on a fragment of "pure evil" which would be a lovely origin for the 'loths.

The 'loths aren't destruction, nor are they tyranny. They're a personification of despair, misery, malign apathy, etc. Their perspective depending on what angle you approach it from is that you don't matter in the slightest, but you will suffer all the same. The disease theme fits them well (and you could probably play around with the Orthodox Christian notion of what sin is here). Or alternately, that they're seeking a perfect multiverse: one devoid of mercy.

Demodands/gehreleths are similar, but their identity is heavily tied into their shared history with the 'loths, and their creator's falling out with the other baernaloths. They're more heavily associated with betrayal, xenophobic evil, and imprisonment (self-imposed or self-perpetuated). It would take some work fitting them smoothly into a 4e cosmology context without losing too much, but it would be possible.

 

[Hussar]

Right...the only thing that differentiated them was the fact that one was LAWFUL Evil and the other CHAOTIC Evil. Which basically means that 50% of their main motivations, behavioral patterns and beliefs were diametrally opposed to each other. Which in turn means...



...that their goals were similar in that they were about self-empowerment without regard for anybody else, and totally different in the ways and methods they would apply to get there, and the outlook they had on how to get that power, and what to do with it. They CAN use the same tactics, which doesn't mean they always do, but they are clever enough to realize that there is a multitude of angles to work their plans on mortals, and sometimes they overlap for demons and devils. Which is why I don't have to tack on a difference "after the fact". I can simply TAKE the fact of the alignment difference, and work with it. Nifty, those two little words, I tell you.

Therein lies the rub. "They can use each other's tactics, but they don't always do so". The problem is, so often in the published material, the two sides are carbon copies. What makes Malcanthet a demon and not a devil?

To me, their goals are not similar. Devils want to corrupt humanity. Devils just want to destroy it. One's a lawfully aligned goal, the other is chaotic. Demons gain power by destroying everything around them. If everything else is dead, then they are the most powerful. The most stable unit of demons is one. Anything more than one is a fight.

You're not working with the alignment difference, IMO, if you're simply allowing a given exemplar of an alignment to ignore his alignment and act in any matter that seems to fit.

And what exactly makes them "Evil", in that case? Sounds more like Chaotic Neutral (Evil Tendencies) to me. Apart from the fact that their disinterest in mortals makes them a lot less useful as tools for the DM to integrate into the adventures that deal fairly often with mortals.

And by the way, even back in the 1E MM, those two groups differed by look as well...demons were depicted a lot more monstrous, and devils a lot more humanoid, with the exception of the succubus on the one side and the ice devil on the other.

They're evil because htey are incredibly destructive and hateful. Good enough for me.

And, go back to your 1e MM. Those demons looked an awful lot like devils. Basically humanoid (frog human, bird human). Not a whole lot of difference.