Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aaron L" data-source="post: 8269895" data-attributes="member: 926">PCs in D&D were meant to represent Heroes in the Classical Greek sense of the term, which meant something more like Übermensch than does the modern meaning of the term "hero." (Go read the entry for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_hero_cult" target="_blank">Greek Hero Cult</a> on Wikipedia for some fascinating possibilities to include in your games, and to get a better understanding of where the idea of Hero Deity Cults, such as that of Kelanen, Prince of Swords, came from in Greyhawk.  Hero Cults could easily start rising up around mid- to high-level PCs as people follow their exploits and start considering them heroes of legend, and this was how the path to Divinity worked in 1st Edition, starting with a Hero Cult forming around a character.)A Classical Greek was someone who was able to rise above the common rabble of humanity by dint of their superior physical abilities, wits, cleverness, and/or ingenuity, and divinely-bestowed supernatural luck and endurance (such as Heracles, Jason, and Perseus.) Even a mere 1st level Fighter was far above common humanity, and high-level Fighters could take on entire armies by themselves with the Sweep ability, allowing them to take one attack per level per round against creatures with less than one full Hit Die, such as Goblins, Kobolds, and 0-Level Humans... including common men-at-arms. That meant a 10th level Fighter could wade into an army, which would be almost totally composed of 0-Level men-at-arms, and take out 10 each round (Captains, Lieutenants, and Serjeants were made of sterner stuff and could not be Swept, having actual Fighter levels of 5th-8th 2nd-3rd, or 1st level respectively, and were each able to command a certain number of men-at-arms, being 12 per level, 10,per level, or just 10, respectively. A 10th level Fighter could wipe out a Serjeant's entire squad in a single round, but then require a full round to deal with just the Serjeant himself.) That was why there was a spot for Patron Deity on 1E character sheets, because it was assumed that all PCs had a divine Patron (or a tutelary spirit in Ancient Greek terms) that bestowed upon them the majority of their Hit Points and the like.  The 1st Edition Dungeon Master's Guide explained that this was a how even a mid-level Fighter could have more Hit Points than a warhorse even though the Fighter would obviously not have more mass than a horse.  As the DMG explained, this was because all but a few HP representing the PCs actual physical mass health were divinely-bestowed stamima.  It didn't matter if the PC actually worshiped the deity (being a member of the deity's Cult in ancient Greek terms); so long as a character had a corresponding Alignment then he would be furthering the deity's agenda, and the deity would empower him to further its aims and goals.  Because in 1st Edition the deity's were creatures of Alignment and served the Alignments, which were actually recognized in-universe as divine politico-religious philosophical institutions, rather than just being abstract game-mechanics, and every Paladin knew that he followed the Lawful Good Alignment and spoke the Lawful Good Alignment Tongue, which was a quasi-divine, semi-magical philosophical cant that he was taught as part of his Paladin training (think how Latin was used in the Medieval Catholic Church, except also being under actual direct divine control such that knowledge of the tongue could actually be divinely stripped from the mind of a character that changed Alignment.) Alignments in 1E weren't just behavioral descriptors, they were actual religio-philosophical concepts and supra-divine forces that characters swore allegiance to.)(Sorry for the extra long essay, but I absolutely love the old concepts behind Alignment and Alignment Languages.)</blockquote>

Verification