Who is mantle of faith for?

[hong]

Point is, it is easy for the people to get past it who it is supposed to be used against.

A mantle of faith is "supposed" to be used against villains. Villains in D&D span the gamut from your lowly 1HD orc warrior, to demiliches. Of these, I say again, the vast majority will not be able to penetrate its DR. Even if you limit yourself to "enemies of the faith", the vast majority of those still won't be able to do it. You have this strange impression that you're only supposed to use a mantle of faith against demons, when there are tons of other worthwhile foes around.

The same holds for aligned outsiders in general. Unless your campaign centres on a huge, all-encompassing planar war, there's no reason to suppose that angels spend all their time beating on demons, and vice-versa; there are plenty of other horrible evil beasties to get their attention.

If you had a device that went around and whenever you placed it over a persons head, asked them if they commited murder last night, and it killed them if they did not commit the crime you could keep going until you found the murderer.

Of course in the process you have killed lots of innocent people, or at least innocent of that crime.

Same thing, different name.

Arguing by analogy is the second-lowest form of wit.

 

[Anabstercorian]

And it would flatten your own head.

I think the biggest problem is one of the name. Just call 'Holy' power 'Exalted' power and 'Unholy' power 'Vile' power.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Arguing by analogy is the second-lowest form of wit.

I can't follow his analogy at all

What does an animated ducking stool have to do with alignment-based DR?

-Hyp.

 

[AuraSeer]

Same thing, different name.

Your argument doesn't seem to make any sense. How in the world is a murderous Sorting Hat the same thing as a Mantle of Faith?

 

[Hypersmurf]

Your argument doesn't seem to make any sense. How in the world is a murderous Sorting Hat the same thing as a Mantle of Faith?

Wait! I figured it out!

If they're the murderer, they're more likely to be evil and have some way of beating the Mantle's DR, so you should run away.

If the murderous Sorting Hat kills them, though, then you're probably safe.

... although I'm still not sure what "same thing, different name" means.

-Hyp.

 

[dcollins]

"Of Faith", "Holy", "Blessed", and "Sanctified" are all just terms meaning something is dedicated to a god... [an evil champion] doesn't think that his Unholy Bastard Sword of Infant Bane is Unholy...

I disagree. My Webster's New World Dictionary includes the following:
holy: 2 spiritually perfect or pure; untainted by evil or sin; sinless; saintly
unholy: 2 wicked; profane; impious 3 outrageous; dreadful

So it looks like the 1st Ed. terminology of Holy/Unholy is quite appropriate, unless you go and overlook the "holy = untainted by evil" language, or proceed to argue that Good and Evil gods both have their own saints and sins, which is again a relativism directly contradicted by existing D&D materials.

 

[El Ravager]

I gotta say I agree fully with Hong and the 3.5 developers. The DR/Evil thing makes perfect sense to me. Beings of Pure Good are more resilient to damage except against the currupting touch of Pure Evil. See, Pure Good and Pure Evil don't mix thus Pure Evil hurts Pure Good. And it works the same for the beings of Pure Evil being vulnerable to Pure Good. I don't think that the DR represents training and 'suffering the torment' and what not. Gaining HPs and BAB and so forth is what training to fight gets you. The DR comes from being a being of Pure Good (or Evil) and the magic item allows you to take on that ability to be more like said being. Taking on the 'mantle of faith' makes you more like a pure good being.

So its not a piece of equipment for Demon(or Devil) fighting. I think that as Hong has pointed out, it is still usefull. Does it have weakness? Yes, but no more than any other DR/something.

===========
El Rav

 

[Philip]

No, reread the comment, 'subjected yourself to the torments of the damned'. That is useing your powers to make yourself resistant/immune to their attacks. Much like the survivor prestige class.

If you subjected yourself to such torment, no wonder you have become evil and gained DR X/Good.

Really, celestials do no 'train' in beating fiends or vice versa.

It is basic: Pit Fiend XY is unbeatable, no normal sword can touch him, however, there are legends of a holy sword forged by celestials so infused with goodness that its very touch will hurt XY.

Evil guys have the same legends, only the evil/good aspect is reversed.

 

[jgsugden]

That's a blanket generalisation, of course...

Not everyone who has an evil alignment would cross the street just to kick a puppy. Not all of them have Purple Pieman moustaches. Or Dick Dastardly moustaches. Or even Dishonest John moustaches (Nya-ha-ha!).

Evil for the sake of doing evil falls under "evil" in the alignment system... but it's not exclusively so.

-Hyp.

Hey, last time I checked the book, the alignment system was still more melodrama more than reality. Read each line of the evil alignment description and think of someone, real or ficitional, that seems to be best described by that line.

If you think of more fictional characters than real characters, you'll see what I mean about the alignment system being more melodrama than reality.

If you think of more real people than fictional characters ... run. You're friends are creepy.

 

[hands_miranda]

I think you guys are missing the main point here. This item is waaaaaay better for a guy who is expecting to fight celestials and such than somebody expecting to fight deamons and devils, since good guys don't really have a way to get through the damage reduction. In short, the item makes very little sense as a "holyish" item, since a devil would get much more milage out of it then an angel. The D&D I tend to play tends to hedge out alignments in general, so I can't really tell if this item is jus messed up somehow or what. But I do know if I were a mad overlord I'd think about making a couple of these for my minions so that the next paladin or cleric of an annoying LG order comes a knockin', they've got a hedge against their holy smites.

Ray