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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spatula" data-source="post: 4178975" data-attributes="member: 2198">Sounds rather unimaginative to me.  It would seem he didn't have to kill any 60 HD Balors in a straight-up fight in order to get to the top, at least.If you can only conceive of power structures based on who can beat who up in a duel, well I'm not sure what to say.  You can make Demogorgon any CR and I can always produce some advanced demon that's tougher.  His rule, or that of any other demon prince-like creature, is ultimately going to be based on setting details (divine mandate, political mastermind, valuable alliances, etc.) unrelated to combat stats.And, a president is just one example of someone who doesn't rule by being the ultimate badass.  There's plenty of other real-world examples that acquire & hold power through non-elected, non-badass means.  Human civilization realized a long time ago that being the biggest & toughest doesn't make one a good leader.  I would think that hyper-intelligent immortals would have figured it out even quicker.You did?  I must have missed that.The idea that Eberron is designed to implement the 3e ruleset-as-setting is false; all the features that make Eberron unique are all Eberron-specific plot devices that do not exist in core 3e at all, in any form.  Aside from that, the cosmology is completely different (which invalidates the text for most of the outsiders), it changes expectations for various monsters, it throws out the alignment guidelines for monsters, it adds in new classes to make magic item creation easier, etc. etc.  In short, it deviates noticably from the mechanics of core 3e, so it rather fails at what you say it was designed to do.  It doesn't even use 3e's class demographics that you cited previously, as the setting is generally lower-level than the core 3e assumes.But getting back on topic, Eberron is a fine example of how the rules do not (and never will) constrain you, as the setting changes and adds all sorts of stuff to the core to give it a unique flavor.  Airships powered by enslaved elementals?  Cool idea, and we can create some feats to support it.  A race of free-willed golems created to fight a war that's now over?  Awesome, let's make up some stats for them.  Extraplanar mind flayers?  Great, and let's give them some material-based DR while we're at it.  Whatever crazy ideas you have, the D&D mechanics can handle it without any "twisting" involved.Monster levels?  You mean HD?  Or is that some bit of old-school D&D that I've forgotten.</blockquote>

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