what is it about angels?

[Mary K. Kuhner]

[This is a rant--feel free to ignore it.]

What is it about D&D angels, anyway?

We just got done discussing the v3.0 problem with Planetars, and then....

The PCs were confronted by a leonal who demanded that they leave the
Evil members of the group behind. This elicited the best
statement of Fritz' philosophy I've ever heard--I was really excited to
finally understand how he sees himself as a ruler. It ended up with
Fritz challenging the leonal to single combat by the rules of Celestia
(non-lethal combat only). Charis, the paladin, naturally intervened,
since Fritz' chance in a fight would be next to nil.

"Do you think Charis has a chance?" said the GM, suddenly looking worried.

"Not a good chance, but it's a CR12, she's 11th, and if neither side
uses its spells that probably hurts the leonal more."

The GM then looked the creature up, blanched, and said, "No. No chance."

We fought it out, and this was quite correct: it did 120 points of damage
to her in 6 rounds and she did none to it, not one point. Fairly average
rolls on both sides. It was apparent that even a string of 20's would not
have been enough.

The GM didn't care for the probable result of this, and I suggested that
Fritz could argue, "My strength is in my ability to unite these disparate
people. I don't agree to single combat, because that gives up everything
that makes us powerful" and the PCs could fight it as a group.

The GM blanched further and said, "I'm not sure you win that, either."

This is a party of, at that point, size *thirteen*, levels 13 to 6 but mostly
11, and all but two of them experienced at working together. They'd just
killed a greater demon of significantly higher CR with no difficulty at all.

What is going on with these CRs?

In the end we stood by the outcome: Charis fought it and lost, and the party
abandoned the person in contention and went on, embittered. (The module
has had a continual theme that Good People are Bad, and this was just another
nail in that coffin.) It was distressing to find out that CR was
so completely useless as a guide: the GM felt bad, because if he'd known
he would have told the more knowledgable PCs "You can't fight this." But
he had no idea that a CR12 would be out of reach.

Fritz' statement was, essentially, "The ideology you call Good is not the
only thing in my realm that I value." I had thought the "neutrality as
an active desire for a balance between good and evil" position suggested
in some of the D&D material was philosophically bankrupt, but Fritz sees
Good and Evil not as good and evil simpliciter, but as ideological positions
which have been *claimed* to contain all good and all evil, but don't really.
And to my surprise and delight, this makes sense to me, and makes a lot
of sense in the gameworld.

But now he really wants to kick some angel butt, and I fear will be deeply
frustrated.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[gleichman]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
The PCs were confronted by a leonal who demanded that they leave the
Evil members of the group behind.

1. I can't believe that a Paladin would ever oppose an Angel's ruling.
Should have been lost of the Paladin's status then and there.

2. Mixed Good and Evil groups, with a Paladin present none the less. I don't
know about 3.x, but that also would have been a Paladin loss of status
offense in the old days. Silly idea besides, "Hi everyone, we're Good Guys
sworn to uphold truth, justice and the american way. Oh, and we've picked an
Evil selfish and murderous bastard as our Leader. We be smart."

3. CR issues? Don't care, will leave that to the D&D fans to debate.

For this to work, Paladins would have be altered from the rules (unless 3.x
has already altered them), and Good and Evil would have to be toned down to
"somewhat nice" and "somewhat naughty". Which from the description, seems to
have been the case.

But it makes mush of your wish to run the game by the rules.

[gleichman]

Oh, and we've picked an Evil selfish and murderous bastard as our Leader.
We be smart."

That's a typo, I meant fellow adventure.

There is however a case to be made that the group leader has also taken the
Evil alignment due to his action.

[Will in New Haven]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
[This is a rant--feel free to ignore it.]
What is it about D&D angels, anyway?
We just got done discussing the v3.0 problem with Planetars, and then....
The PCs were confronted by a leonal who demanded that they leave the
Evil members of the group behind.

Why would non-evil hang out with evil? Even early in my gaming career,
I found it hard to fathom what exactly these alignments were supposed
to mean. If they mean anything really important, the angel wouldn't
have to demand this. Since they cleaerly don't mean anything
important, why use a strong word like "evil?" I remember when the only
alignments were lawful and chaotic, before AD&D. L and C hanging out
together was easier to visualize.

<technical complaints about a D&D creature I don't know left out. I am
sure it was way over-powered but I don't know enough about the system
today to guess at why>

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
In the end we stood by the outcome: Charis fought it and lost, and the party
abandoned the person in contention and went on, embittered. (The module
has had a continual theme that Good People are Bad, and this was just another
nail in that coffin.)

If evil means evil behavior and/or evil intentions, they are not bad
to abandon the guy, although taking him along and then abandoning him
seems odd. If it is just a label, why is it just a label?

It was distressing to find out that CR was

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
so completely useless as a guide: the GM felt bad, because if he'd known
he would have told the more knowledgable PCs "You can't fight this." But
he had no idea that a CR12 would be out of reach.
Fritz' statement was, essentially, "The ideology you call Good is not the
only thing in my realm that I value." I had thought the "neutrality as
an active desire for a balance between good and evil" position suggested
in some of the D&D material was philosophically bankrupt, but Fritz sees
Good and Evil not as good and evil simpliciter, but as ideological positions
which have been *claimed* to contain all good and all evil, but don't really.
And to my surprise and delight, this makes sense to me, and makes a lot
of sense in the gameworld.
But now he really wants to kick some angel butt, and I fear will be deeply
frustrated.

This is bizzare and I blame the alignment system. If there were no
alignments and someone, say, burned an orphanage and killed everyone
who came out, you'd judge him by his behavior. But there are
alignments and someone who evidently hasn't done anything that you
know about has to be dumped so this character is treating rather
simple words as complex ideologies.

Will in New Haven

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Will in New Haven

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
The PCs were confronted by a leonal who demanded that they leave the
Evil members of the group behind.

Why would non-evil hang out with evil? Even early in my gaming career,
I found it hard to fathom what exactly these alignments were supposed
to mean. If they mean anything really important, the angel wouldn't
have to demand this. Since they cleaerly don't mean anything
important, why use a strong word like "evil?" I remember when the only
alignments were lawful and chaotic, before AD&D. L and C hanging out
together was easier to visualize.

Why Grehalia was there (she is not a party member) is complex.
She and the PCs have a mutual enemy; the PC leader feels (perhaps
wrongly) that she is not wholly committed to wrongdoing; and he also
feels that even if she is, she has virtues which make him reluctant
to kill her out of hand. And he felt his only choices were to kill
her in cold blood or ally with her.

Lots of things going on inside his head there. He's been juggling
plates trying to save Grehalia's life (from the other PCs, mainly!)
for over a week now. It's intense.

Alliances among people who are not ideologically compatible happen
all the time in the real world, and seem like fertile ground for
gaming conflict too. I'm quite liking this one, actually. I don't
feel hampered by the alignment system even though it turns out that
the PCs mostly disagree vehemently with it.

I think Grehalia is also serving as a symbol of two of the PCs'
internal demons, as it were; if they condemn her, they are in some
sense condemning themselves. (I'll be surprised if the paladin
continues to be a paladin for more than another session or two;
she is going to be driven up on the rocks of this issue soon.)

Post by Will in New Haven

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
But now he really wants to kick some angel butt, and I fear will be deeply
frustrated.

This is bizzare and I blame the alignment system. If there were no
alignments and someone, say, burned an orphanage and killed everyone
who came out, you'd judge him by his behavior. But there are
alignments and someone who evidently hasn't done anything that you
know about has to be dumped so this character is treating rather
simple words as complex ideologies.

I don't think it's that simple. It may be that simple for the angel,
and that is why the PCs and the angel end up in conflict; it's not that
simple for the PCs.

They do judge Grahalia by her behavior. She is not a burner-down of
orphanages herself but she was certainly complicit in the theft and
sale of orphanage children. She knew what she was doing, too; there's
no argument that she was misguided or duped.

On the other hand, she is a potential ally in a conflict of paramount
importance to the PCs: they may decide that her potential to do them
good outweighs the known harm she's caused. And they may also feel
that her willingness to help suggests a willingness to change her
ethics. It's pretty clear that she's a bad person from an environment
calculated to produce bad people; would she change if placed in a
different one? (I don't know. Probably Fritz is kidding himself. But
this is what he's thinking.)

There's also the honor question: they accepted the alliance, is it okay
to repudiate it when it becomes inconvenient? Fritz had enslaved
Grahalia and was keeping her prisoner, but one of the demons they
fought broke the spell. Grahalia and the PCs each had about
five seconds to deal with that. Grahalia offered her parole, and the
PCs took it. Maybe they were in the wrong, but having done that, one could
argue they were bound by their word. Grahalia kept hers; they wouldn't
want to see themselves as morally inferior to her!

And the PCs are themselves assassins and murderers in cold blood;
it was in fact mainly by accident that they captured Grahalia.
They were trying to kill her, having (rather questionably) turned
a chance to talk with her into an ambush.

Fritz *likes* her. (His girlfriend would suggest the wording "is
infatuated with".) He has a history of making friends with bad people,
of which this is the most spectacularly troublesome example.
When he is King of the World, he thinks, he needs to find some way for
people with Grahalia's evident appeals to continue to exist, without having
them buying and selling little children on the black market.

A real-world example of this: even if someone were strongly convinced
that sale and use of illegal drugs was evil, he might also feel that
draconic measures to get rid of sellers and users would be even more
evil, and that individual drug users or even drug pushers could be
potentially okay (maybe "on condition they stop pushing", maybe not).
I'm not defending (or attacking) this view on the real-world issue, but
it seems realistic and not too bizarre to me.

Anyway. This is not a bug for me, though I can see it would be for
you; it's actually one of the more interesting parts of the game. I had
never seen that "desires a balance between Good and Evil" rhetoric as
defensible, and I'm surprised and pleased to see it actually playing out
in a way that makes sense to me.

It was a pain in the ass to have to break up that neat roleplaying scene
for another collision with the system mechanics, though. *That's*
what really bugged me. What is it with these challenge ratings? They
aren't just wrong, they're systematically wrong. Any given angel will
beat the crap out of its supposedly equivalent demon or devil, as far as
I can tell.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Will in New Haven]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner

Post by Will in New Haven

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
The PCs were confronted by a leonal who demanded that they leave the
Evil members of the group behind.

Why would non-evil hang out with evil? Even early in my gaming career,
I found it hard to fathom what exactly these alignments were supposed
to mean. If they mean anything really important, the angel wouldn't
have to demand this. Since they cleaerly don't mean anything
important, why use a strong word like "evil?" I remember when the only
alignments were lawful and chaotic, before AD&D. L and C hanging out
together was easier to visualize.

Why Grehalia was there (she is not a party member) is complex.
She and the PCs have a mutual enemy; the PC leader feels (perhaps
wrongly) that she is not wholly committed to wrongdoing; and he also
feels that even if she is, she has virtues which make him reluctant
to kill her out of hand. And he felt his only choices were to kill
her in cold blood or ally with her.

Having a mutual enemy is a powerful incentive. If, instead of using
the label "Evil," we say that she is "a survivor, possibly the only
one, of a bandit gang that the PCs defeated and dispersed in a
previous episode." She and they are both opposed to someone with a
much darker purpose than simple banditry. She COULD be Evil, she has
certainly done evil but she knows the territory, is a valiant fighter,

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
Lots of things going on inside his head there. He's been juggling
plates trying to save Grehalia's life (from the other PCs, mainly!)
for over a week now. It's intense.

This is easy also without alignments. She constantly reminds her
companions of their former enmity AND she just won't back down, won't
act apologetic. The leader sees further than their old enmity and
maybe he admires her spunk and defiance. Easy to visualize and play.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
Alliances among people who are not ideologically compatible happen
all the time in the real world, and seem like fertile ground for
gaming conflict too. I'm quite liking this one, actually. I don't
feel hampered by the alignment system even though it turns out that
the PCs mostly disagree vehemently with it.

One of the PCs appears to have transcended the alignment system.
Without the alignment system, it would seem a fascinating matter of
human dynamics.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
I think Grehalia is also serving as a symbol of two of the PCs'
internal demons, as it were; if they condemn her, they are in some
sense condemning themselves. (I'll be surprised if the paladin
continues to be a paladin for more than another session or two;
she is going to be driven up on the rocks of this issue soon.)

This is, to me, a fascinating situation but it seems that the
alingment system simply gets in the way. Not that the Paladin
shouldn't have standards but labeling Grehalia Evil, as opposed to
just knowing some of her history, seems to me to me to make the "dump
Grehalia' crowd correct in their assessment.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner

Post by Will in New Haven

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
But now he really wants to kick some angel butt, and I fear will be deeply
frustrated.

This is bizzare and I blame the alignment system. If there were no
alignments and someone, say, burned an orphanage and killed everyone
who came out, you'd judge him by his behavior. But there are
alignments and someone who evidently hasn't done anything that you
know about has to be dumped so this character is treating rather
simple words as complex ideologies.

I don't think it's that simple. It may be that simple for the angel,
and that is why the PCs and the angel end up in conflict; it's not that
simple for the PCs.
They do judge Grahalia by her behavior. She is not a burner-down of
orphanages herself but she was certainly complicit in the theft and
sale of orphanage children. She knew what she was doing, too; there's
no argument that she was misguided or duped.
On the other hand, she is a potential ally in a conflict of paramount
importance to the PCs: they may decide that her potential to do them
good outweighs the known harm she's caused. And they may also feel
that her willingness to help suggests a willingness to change her
ethics. It's pretty clear that she's a bad person from an environment
calculated to produce bad people; would she change if placed in a
different one? (I don't know. Probably Fritz is kidding himself. But
this is what he's thinking.)

I didn't know about the orphanage when I mentioned burning one down in
an earlier post. If she was involved in slave-taking, very few
characters I have ever played would have tolerated her presence for
very long. However, the reasons the PCs have for putting up with her
AND the reasons that they have for condemning her seem in very neat
balance.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
There's also the honor question: they accepted the alliance, is it okay
to repudiate it when it becomes inconvenient? Fritz had enslaved
Grahalia and was keeping her prisoner, but one of the demons they
fought broke the spell. Grahalia and the PCs each had about
five seconds to deal with that. Grahalia offered her parole, and the
PCs took it. Maybe they were in the wrong, but having done that, one could
argue they were bound by their word. Grahalia kept hers; they wouldn't
want to see themselves as morally inferior to her!

Very neat. I like this situation and I can see why the whole business
with the angel is frustrating and upsetting. I have had characters
keep much worse bargains because honor required it.

Fritz' defiance of the angel reminds me more than a little of Huck
Finn when he was sure he would go to Hell if he helped Nigger Jim, but
he helped nonetheless. If an angel out of a cloud had told him not to,
Huck would still had done the right thing. The most heroic moment in
American literature, in my opinion.

Will in New Haven

--

SunSpear, who walked the length of Shadows Dance

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
And the PCs are themselves assassins and murderers in cold blood;
it was in fact mainly by accident that they captured Grahalia.
They were trying to kill her, having (rather questionably) turned
a chance to talk with her into an ambush.
Fritz *likes* her. (His girlfriend would suggest the wording "is
infatuated with".) He has a history of making friends with bad people,
of which this is the most spectacularly troublesome example.
When he is King of the World, he thinks, he needs to find some way for
people with Grahalia's evident appeals to continue to exist, without having
them buying and selling little children on the black market.
A real-world example of this: even if someone were strongly convinced
that sale and use of illegal drugs was evil, he might also feel that
draconic measures to get rid of sellers and users would be even more
evil, and that individual drug users or even drug pushers could be
potentially okay (maybe "on condition they stop pushing", maybe not).
I'm not defending (or attacking) this view on the real-world issue, but
it seems realistic and not too bizarre to me.
Anyway. This is not a bug for me, though I can see it would be for
you; it's actually one of the more interesting parts of the game. I had
never seen that "desires a balance between Good and Evil" rhetoric as
defensible, and I'm surprised and pleased to see it actually playing out
in a way that makes sense to me.
It was a pain in the ass to have to break up that neat roleplaying scene
for another collision with the system mechanics, though. *That's*
what really bugged me. What is it with these challenge ratings? They
aren't just wrong, they're systematically wrong. Any given angel will
beat the crap out of its supposedly equivalent demon or devil, as far as
I can tell.

[psychohist]

"Will in New Haven" posts, in part:

Fritz' defiance of the angel reminds me more than
a little of Huck Finn when he was sure he would
go to Hell if he helped Nigger Jim, but he helped
nonetheless. If an angel out of a cloud had told
him not to, Huck would still had done the right
thing. The most heroic moment in American
literature, in my opinion.

I don't remember Jim selling orphans into slavery.

I agree with you that part of what Mary is seeing here is a clash
between a style which allows the characters to figure out their own
ethics and morals and a system with predefined alignments. That said,
given that the system has predefined alignments, I think the angel is
fulfilling itself perfectly: it is forcefully reminding the player
characters of what those alignments are, in a way the player
characters can't ignore.

Warren J. Dew

[Erol K. Bayburt]

Post by Will in New Haven
Fritz' defiance of the angel reminds me more than
a little of Huck Finn when he was sure he would
go to Hell if he helped Nigger Jim, but he helped
nonetheless. If an angel out of a cloud had told
him not to, Huck would still had done the right
thing. The most heroic moment in American
literature, in my opinion.
I don't remember Jim selling orphans into slavery.

No, he was just stealing valuable property...

Alignment flame bait: If an orphanage takes in foundlings and orphans,
and finances itself by selling the older ones into slavery, then is
rescuing those slaves a Good act of foiling a slaver ring, or an Evil
act of stealing money from an orphanage? (OK, not much of a flame;
there's a strong consensus now that slavery is much more evil than
even ordinary theft, much less the "theft" of slaves from their (not
so) rightful owners.)

Post by Will in New Haven
I agree with you that part of what Mary is seeing here is a clash
between a style which allows the characters to figure out their own
ethics and morals and a system with predefined alignments. That said,
given that the system has predefined alignments, I think the angel is
fulfilling itself perfectly: it is forcefully reminding the player
characters of what those alignments are, in a way the player
characters can't ignore.

I suspect that what Mary wants is for alignment to be real but not the
complete and overwhelming answer. A powerful but still
potentially-defeatable angel would fulfill this role well. It would
forcefully remind the PCs about alignment, and the PCs couldn't ignore
it. But the PCs *could*, possibly, rebutt it.

The actual angel encountered - so powerful that the PCs didn't have a
chance against it - didn't properly fulfill this role. Instead it
fulfilled the undesired role of making alignment overwhelm any other
moral and ethical considerations.

[psychohist]

Erol K. Bayburt posts, in part:

Alignment flame bait: If an orphanage takes in
foundlings and orphans, and finances itself by
selling the older ones into slavery, then is
rescuing those slaves a Good act of foiling a
slaver ring, or an Evil act of stealing money
from an orphanage?

I'd be interested in discussing that question, but not in a thread
where we're discussing the simplistic D&D alignment system.

In the present context, Grehalia appears to have been both stealing
from the orphanage and selling the orphans into slavery, and it
doesn't seem like either of these were considered societally
acceptable behavior. I don't know the complete background for the
campaign, but I don't see any argument to be made that she was 'good',
or even neutral.

I suspect that what Mary wants is for alignment to
be real but not the complete and overwhelming
answer. A powerful but still potentially-defeatable
angel would fulfill this role well. It would forcefully
remind the PCs about alignment, and the PCs
couldn't ignore it. But the PCs *could*, possibly,
rebutt it.

Nitpicky note: it seems the angel has stats and was at least
potentially defeatable. It just wasn't likely, and was even less
likely in an agreed duel rather than a sneak attack by the whole
party, but it wasn't impossible by fiat. Of course, I haven't seen
the stats.

I don't really agree with your reasoning, though. I think that player
characters will, in general, only be reminded about alignment by
encounters such as this if they lose. If they win, they'll generally
just feel that they did the right thing, irrespective of what they
defeated. The strength of the encounter is not the reminder; the
result is.

Warren J. Dew

[gleichman]

Post by psychohist
I don't really agree with your reasoning, though. I think that player
characters will, in general, only be reminded about alignment by
encounters such as this if they lose. If they win, they'll generally
just feel that they did the right thing, irrespective of what they
defeated. The strength of the encounter is not the reminder; the
result is.

Very much the case.

In addition it moves the concepts of Good/Evil out of the moral and
religious realm into one of Might makes Right- i.e the power-gamer is
not only powerful, he's now morally correct.

Good grief Charlie Brown, it doesn't get more twisted than that.

[Erol K. Bayburt]

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
Alignment flame bait: If an orphanage takes in
foundlings and orphans, and finances itself by
selling the older ones into slavery, then is
rescuing those slaves a Good act of foiling a
slaver ring, or an Evil act of stealing money
from an orphanage?
I'd be interested in discussing that question, but not in a thread
where we're discussing the simplistic D&D alignment system.

Actually I was just being snarky: That's why I tagged it as "alignment
flame bait."

My larger point is that characters in a game can get into alignment
arguments too. That unless the GM fiats the One Right Answer, it's
possible for two Lawful Good characters to each claim that the other
is advocating an alignment-busting course of action - and both be
wrong in their claims against the other.

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
I suspect that what Mary wants is for alignment to
be real but not the complete and overwhelming
answer. A powerful but still potentially-defeatable
angel would fulfill this role well. It would forcefully
remind the PCs about alignment, and the PCs
couldn't ignore it. But the PCs *could*, possibly,
rebutt it.
I don't really agree with your reasoning, though. I think that player
characters will, in general, only be reminded about alignment by
encounters such as this if they lose. If they win, they'll generally
just feel that they did the right thing, irrespective of what they
defeated. The strength of the encounter is not the reminder; the
result is.

Well, we disagree then. Or rather I agree that if they win they'll
feel that the did the right thing, but I don't consider that the only
important point. It's also important, IMO that they did have to fight,
that they they were thus beseeched to consider that they might
possibly have been mistaken.

[Will in New Haven]

<snipped the good parts>

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
Well, we disagree then. Or rather I agree that if they win they'll
feel that the did the right thing, but I don't consider that the only
important point. It's also important, IMO that they did have to fight,
that they they were thus beseeched to consider that they might
possibly have been mistaken.

Can you IMAGINE who might have been so smug and self-righteous that
_Oliver Cromwell_ had to say that to them? For that matter, was
Cromwell lawful good?

The whole quote as I remember it, addressed to people on HIS side, "I
beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be
mistaken." I think I was kinda surpised that he said "you" instead of
"thee."

Will in New Haven

--

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
--
Erol K. Bayburt

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Will in New Haven
The whole quote as I remember it, addressed to people on HIS side, "I
beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be
mistaken." I think I was kinda surpised that he said "you" instead of
"thee."

Off topic grammar nit: he had to say "you" because "thee" may never
be plural.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[psychohist]

Was Cromwell lawful good? Are we talking about the same Cromwell
whose head was put on a pike for 24 years as a warning against would
be usurpers of the lawful government, and whose name is still used as
a curse by some Irish four centuries later?

I guess it's just another illustration of how far from real world
applicability D&D alignments are.

Warren J. Dew

[Mary K. Kuhner]

I don't really agree with your [Erol's] reasoning, though. I think that player
characters will, in general, only be reminded about alignment by
encounters such as this if they lose. If they win, they'll generally
just feel that they did the right thing, irrespective of what they
defeated. The strength of the encounter is not the reminder; the
result is.

I think I'm with Erol here. If the ideological Good can always win by
sheer power, that doesn't so much impress me that it's Good as that
it's fiat--something I as a player am "not supposed to" disagree with.

I don't know how the PCs would have felt if Charis had won. (I know
how they would have felt if they'd jumped it en masse and won--
that would have seemed like cheating to them.) I don't think they
would be any more convinced that they'd "done the right thing" than
they are now. Charis' ability to win or not so clearly depended
more on her equipment purchases than on her moral stature.... The
moral outcome that was really important was not that she won or lost,
but that she agreed to fight and to abide by the result. But that
works better for me, emotionally speaking, if the result is in some
doubt.

(Certainly it was technically possible that she could win, but I'd put
the chance at less than 1/100.)

They would, however, have gone away feeling much less bitter: they
are inclined to think at the moment that the forces of ideological
Good have gone bad en masse, which is too big of a problem for them to
solve, and rather demoralizing. It doesn't help that the definitely
bad-guy critter who was with them (and whose presence they did not
try to defend) then simply teleported past the angel, underscoring the
"honor is stupid" theme.

I'm not as annoyed by this encounter as I was when it happened; at the
time I think I shared a lot of the PCs' annoyance. But in retrospect
it worked on a lot of levels. I still think there is no good excuse
for the lame CRs, though.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
I suspect that what Mary wants is for alignment to be real but not the
complete and overwhelming answer. A powerful but still
potentially-defeatable angel would fulfill this role well. It would
forcefully remind the PCs about alignment, and the PCs couldn't ignore
it. But the PCs *could*, possibly, rebutt it.
The actual angel encountered - so powerful that the PCs didn't have a
chance against it - didn't properly fulfill this role. Instead it
fulfilled the undesired role of making alignment overwhelm any other
moral and ethical considerations.

I also think that this kind of honor-duel is more interesting if the
outcome isn't a foregone conclusion. Unfortunately every time a PC
has done this, he or she has lost, and lost badly. The conclusion can
easily be "Honor is for losers." The idea that the PCs might retain
their honor even in the face of such experiences is a noble one, but
difficult for me to manage as a player; there are, after all,
more virtues than just honor, and I doubt the orphanage kids will care
that they remain in slavery in order that a PC could "do the right
thing."

At the limit case, you get the campaign where being honorable rapidly
means being dead. It's going to be populated with non-honorable PCs,
whether because the players stop generating the other kind, or by
simple Darwinian selection.

The angel encounter also underscores a theme which is painfully prevelant
in the module--and endemic in high-powered RPGs of all kinds--namely, that
the powerful good guys in the setting for some reason don't do
good works but leave them to the PCs. If the angel had been the CR12
it was labeled as, there's no big question as to why it was not
taking on the PCs' quest for them; it's not that much better than
they are. The more powerful it is, the harder it becomes to
understand why it wasn't willing to help.

There are situational arguments that could be made here, as in most
such situations. But if you have to make those arguments too many times
in one campaign, the underlying theme begins to be "Good is ineffectual"
or even "Good is malignant."

We made a list, midway through SCAP, of everyone who had done or tried
to do something effective against the problems besetting the city; and
except for the PCs, everyone we listed either was evil, or had died trying.
It is rather easy for the PCs to conclude that they'd better be evil,
since good is clearly ineffectual.

I don't think this is the message the authors meant to send, nor is it one
I like very much. It just falls out of the desire to make the PCs do
everything themselves, coupled with an unwillingness to let them do what
they want. The angel encounter is saying, "I won't help you, you have to
do it yourselves; but I *will* use my superior power to second-guess
the way you choose to do it." It's unattractive behavior in a purported
messenger of Good.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[gleichman]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
The more powerful it is, the harder it becomes to
understand why it wasn't willing to help.

The answer to that question is Fantasy (and Christian theology) 101.

Again, if one is not willing to address such things concepts like Paladins
and Angels are beyond the scope of the campaign.

[gleichman]

Post by psychohist

Post by psychohist
I agree with you that part of what Mary is seeing here is a clash

between a style which allows the characters to figure out their own
ethics and morals and a system with predefined alignments. That said,
given that the system has predefined alignments, I think the angel is
fulfilling itself perfectly: it is forcefully reminding the player
characters of what those alignments are, in a way the player
characters can't ignore.

I think Mary's example points out the reason Paladins as a whole are rather
worthless in D&D in their traditional role. The designers decided (rightly
it seems in many cases) that even the clearest ethical and moral
restrictions on the class would be ignored. That being the case, they at
best could only be as powerful as other classes. At worst, weaker so that
problems like this wouldn't show up in the game.

I wish they had dropped them completely.

[Will in New Haven]

Post by Will in New Haven
Fritz' defiance of the angel reminds me more than
a little of Huck Finn when he was sure he would
go to Hell if he helped Nigger Jim, but he helped
nonetheless. If an angel out of a cloud had told
him not to, Huck would still had done the right
thing. The most heroic moment in American
literature, in my opinion.
I don't remember Jim selling orphans into slavery.

No and Jim's "alignment" wasn't the problem. The problem was that
Huck's belief system told him that helping a slave escape was morally
wrong. It is difficult for a modern to put himself into Huck's
posiiton. If I had been playing a character who thought of himself or
herself as moral or ethical, have had a very hard time putting up with
a slaver, but under the right circumstances it might happen.

Post by Will in New Haven
I agree with you that part of what Mary is seeing here is a clash
between a style which allows the characters to figure out their own
ethics and morals and a system with predefined alignments. That said,
given that the system has predefined alignments, I think the angel is
fulfilling itself perfectly: it is forcefully reminding the player
characters of what those alignments are, in a way the player
characters can't ignore.
Warren J. Dew

Because the angel is so powerful, I think it forced the characters to
a decision that might be correct but could have been left to the
player(s) and been more interesting. If, in defying the angel, they
condemned themselves, well then they condemned themselves. If they
fell into dissension, well then they fell into dissension. Some stuff
just happens. Of course, why they should KNOW that they can't take on
the angel succesfully, if that is what they want to do, is another
story. Encounters that are so transparent that the outcome is known to
the players are not my cuppa tea.

Will in New Haven

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Will in New Haven
Of course, why they should KNOW that they can't take on
the angel succesfully, if that is what they want to do, is another
story. Encounters that are so transparent that the outcome is known to
the players are not my cuppa tea.

Because they're professionals.

If you are a professional dragon-hunter, you may know that old black
dragons have skin so tough it will turn any arrow. If all you have
are bows, and it is on the wing, you can see that you will lose. I
don't have a problem with this; and I can't play someone as a professional
dragon-hunter who is consistently ignorant about this sort of thing.
I just can't believe in such a character.

Here, the GM assumed he could trust the game-system's ranking, so
was led into making statements about world history and PC understanding
which turned out to be obviously false--not because he had some good
in-game reason for making them false, but because the system ranking
was spectacularly (IMO) broken.

If the PCs had known they couldn't win, they might have done the exact
same things, but player and GM would have been a lot less distracted
and put off by the sudden discovery that things weren't what they were
supposed to be.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Will in New Haven]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner

Post by Will in New Haven
Of course, why they should KNOW that they can't take on
the angel succesfully, if that is what they want to do, is another
story. Encounters that are so transparent that the outcome is known to
the players are not my cuppa tea.

Because they're professionals.
If you are a professional dragon-hunter, you may know that old black
dragons have skin so tough it will turn any arrow. If all you have
are bows, and it is on the wing, you can see that you will lose. I
don't have a problem with this; and I can't play someone as a professional
dragon-hunter who is consistently ignorant about this sort of thing.
I just can't believe in such a character.

I couldn't either. If there are professional dragon-hunters, then
dragons are common enough and well-known enought that the information,
while probably not available to the general public, is available to
the pros. There are no campaigns that I know of with professional
ANGEL-hunters. Angel encounters are singular events.

The closest things in my gaming experience to an angel encounter are
some encounters with avatars (one avatar per encounter) of a powerful
god. Even the priest (of the same god) in the party would not know if
this were a seeming called up by a priest, in which case the group
might kick its butt, or a sending by the god himself, in which case
they had almost no chance.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
Here, the GM assumed he could trust the game-system's ranking, so
was led into making statements about world history and PC understanding
which turned out to be obviously false--not because he had some good
in-game reason for making them false, but because the system ranking
was spectacularly (IMO) broken.

Sounds broken but, elsethread, Mr. Boff seems to have come up with a
very good explanation. Which doesn't mean that it isn't broken but
it's broken the way the designers wanted to break it.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
If the PCs had known they couldn't win, they might have done the exact
same things, but player and GM would have been a lot less distracted
and put off by the sudden discovery that things weren't what they were
supposed to be.

Armed with the "Angels are always bigger than they appear in the
mirror" warning, I should imagine things will go smoother from now
on.

Will in New Haven

--

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Will in New Haven
If there are professional dragon-hunters, then
dragons are common enough and well-known enought that the information,
while probably not available to the general public, is available to
the pros. There are no campaigns that I know of with professional
ANGEL-hunters. Angel encounters are singular events.

That's not a reasonable expectation for this campaign, or for the
Adventure Paths in general. The campaign is dripping in demons,
devils and demodands, and has lesser but still fairly high numbers
of the corresponding angels. By campaign end the PCs *ought* to be
fairly knowledgable. Even if they do not fight angels themselves, they
can summon them; and if you summon an angel to fight for you,
it behooves you to know as much as you can about what it can do.

In any case the GM was certainly free to say "You don't know anything
about this creature." Having said, "Check your Knowledge: Religion, you
need a 25" and gotten a 42, however, he wanted to give accurate
information and was distressed that the rules misled him.

If the GM wanted to present something that was truly a greater divine
servitor before whom the PCs would naturally feel awe and terror, he
does know how to do this--I've seen him do it. It wasn't what he was
aiming for in this situation.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Will in New Haven
Having a mutual enemy is a powerful incentive. If, instead of using
the label "Evil," we say that she is "a survivor, possibly the only
one, of a bandit gang that the PCs defeated and dispersed in a
previous episode."

Interestingly enough, that person exists in the campaign too. She's
now heading Fritz' spy network in Cauldron. But the issues raised were
quite different--it was easy enough to think she was just going along
with her bad crowd, whereas Grehalia clearly wasn't.

All past actions aside (and Grehalia's past is pretty dark) she's a
ranking priestess of something notoriously awful. A lot of real-world
Christians would, I think, have a lot of trouble working with a
real-world Satanist.

Post by Will in New Haven

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
Lots of things going on inside his head there. He's been juggling
plates trying to save Grehalia's life (from the other PCs, mainly!)
for over a week now. It's intense.

This is easy also without alignments.

I am not trying to argue that alignments are necessary or
even desirable. I'm just delighted in how this worked out for us.

I do think the PCs would have had a big problem with their captive
High Priestess of Vecna, alignment or no alignment. And the conflict
with the angel follows from that.

Post by Will in New Haven
Fritz' defiance of the angel reminds me more than a little of Huck
Finn when he was sure he would go to Hell if he helped Nigger Jim, but
he helped nonetheless. If an angel out of a cloud had told him not to,
Huck would still had done the right thing. The most heroic moment in
American literature, in my opinion.

Thanks! I like that image a lot.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Irina Rempt]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
A lot of real-world
Christians would, I think, have a lot of trouble working with a
real-world Satanist.

Oh yes. I can work with Wiccans all right (well, the ones I know; three in
all) and, er, neutral and/or good adherents of other cross-aligned
religions, but I'd have trouble with someone diametrically opposed to
everything I believed in.

Irina

[Del Rio]

Post by Will in New Haven

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
[This is a rant--feel free to ignore it.]
What is it about D&D angels, anyway?
We just got done discussing the v3.0 problem with Planetars, and then....
The PCs were confronted by a leonal who demanded that they leave the
Evil members of the group behind.

Why would non-evil hang out with evil?

This is why lately I have been moving toward using "alignments"
that basically mean "annointed in the faith", or "not annointed
in the faith". You can be a right bastard who pays lip service
to the tenets of the religion and merely goes through the
motions of the rites, but you still detect as "one of ours",
while that guy from the distant mountain tribe might be saintly
in thought and deed, but he still detects as "one of theirs".

This means that in extremely polytheistic campaigns, spells
like Detect Evil (Detect Infidel) lose most of their utility.
On the other hand, if most nations at least tend towards having
official state religions, and the religions are polytheistic
within just one pantheon, then it still works. There's plenty
of historical precedent, whereas the "anything goes" kind of
freedom of religion that you see in many D&D campaigns and a lot
of 20th century fantasy writing is historically... rare.

[Arthur Boff]

Putting the rights and wrongs of the specific situation aside for a sec,
I thought I'd comment on the system aspects.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
This is a party of, at that point, size *thirteen*, levels 13 to 6 but mostly
11, and all but two of them experienced at working together. They'd just
killed a greater demon of significantly higher CR with no difficulty at all.
What is going on with these CRs?

They're horribly broken, as you noticed.

I think the specific problem is that the game designers *don't want PCs
to be able to kill angles*. D&D, in its current form, assumes that
characters will be mainly Good and Neutral, with a bias towards Good.
This assumes that characters will generally want to kill demons when
they show up, and follow the lead of any angel the GM happens to throw
at them.

As such, this leads to a second assumption: that GMs will by and large
use the angels as a "control mechanism", a pressure valve for the PCs.
The angels are there to show up when the party is being naughty, and to
convince or coerce them to go onto the right path. This requires making
the angels ludicrously powerful, much more so than the PCs.

By breaking the CRs for the angels, the D&D rules make it technically
legitimate to throw ridiculously powerful angels at the party in order
to punish them and make them toe the line, *and* reduces unfairly the XP
the party would get should they get lucky and defeat the angel.

It's a nasty, inconsistent, brutish feature of the rules which seems to
be there to encourage the use of angels as cattle prods.

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Arthur Boff
By breaking the CRs for the angels, the D&D rules make it technically
legitimate to throw ridiculously powerful angels at the party in order
to punish them and make them toe the line, *and* reduces unfairly the XP
the party would get should they get lucky and defeat the angel.

Oh! <bonks head>

When you put it like that, it's...obvious. Thanks. Our gaming
groups have tended not to do this, so I'm out of the habit of thinking
that way.

It's useful to know that this is a systematic effect and any creature
likely to be playing that role should be vetted carefully before use.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Arthur Boff]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner

Post by Arthur Boff
By breaking the CRs for the angels, the D&D rules make it technically
legitimate to throw ridiculously powerful angels at the party in order
to punish them and make them toe the line, *and* reduces unfairly the XP
the party would get should they get lucky and defeat the angel.

Oh! <bonks head>
When you put it like that, it's...obvious. Thanks. Our gaming
groups have tended not to do this, so I'm out of the habit of thinking
that way.

It helps if you remember that D&D 3.X is designed by folk who know full
well that along with all the perfectly sensible people who'll be playing
the game, there'll be a hell of a lot of maladjusted 13 year olds. ;)

[David Alex Lamb]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner

Post by Arthur Boff
By breaking the CRs for the angels, the D&D rules make it technically
legitimate to throw ridiculously powerful angels at the party in order
to punish them and make them toe the line, *and* reduces unfairly the XP
the party would get should they get lucky and defeat the angel.

It's useful to know that this is a systematic effect and any creature
likely to be playing that role should be vetted carefully before use.

Still, you have a valid complaint that they misused CR by not telling you why
they were doing things that way. I liked the characterization "Angels in the
mirror are larger than they appear" but nobody told us that in advance.

[psychohist]

Arthur Boff posts, in part:

By breaking the CRs for the angels, the D&D rules
make it technically legitimate to throw ridiculously
powerful angels at the party in order to punish them
and make them toe the line, *and* reduces unfairly
the XP the party would get should they get lucky
and defeat the angel.

I agree with your analysis of the purpose of angels within the context
of the D&D rules.

I'm not so certain about the CR and fairness arguments.

It is true that the party is less likely to defeat the angel and get
experience points out of it. However, it also seems to be true that
party members are less likely to die from the encounter. In the
present case, had the paladin fought a demon, she might have been more
likely to win - but if she had lost, she would likely have died,
right?

I don't know what the letter of the CR rules are, but in principle, I
think a risk and reward rating could legitimately rate at the same
level a creature which is more powerful but more constrained not to
hurt the party and a creature which is less powerful but less so
constrained.

Warren J. Dew

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by psychohist
I don't know what the letter of the CR rules are, but in principle, I
think a risk and reward rating could legitimately rate at the same
level a creature which is more powerful but more constrained not to
hurt the party and a creature which is less powerful but less so
constrained.

I don't think the angel was constrained, except that when the
PCs offered non-lethal combat and it accepted, it felt obliged to
play by the rules. They aren't in general limited to non-lethal
combat; indeed this one has Fireball at will, a spell whose non-lethal
applications are somewhat limited.

In any case CR, if it's to be of any use at all, should measure
power, not situational limitations on power which will obviously
vary a lot from situation to situation. One could equally argue
that the angel has an advantage in that the PCs felt obliged not
to cheat, whereas they might have cheated against a demon.

The idea for the non-lethal combat came from the Dungeon Master's
Guide description of the angelic realm of Celestia. It has a
city devoted to the art of healing, but if you go there and ask
for something really awful to be healed, you first have to fight an
angel in single, non-lethal combat. This is a lovely example of
why I'm happier with considering "Good" and "Evil" as ideologies
and not as moral absolutes, because morally I can't make a lot of
sense out of this.

"I'm dying of Imperial Mummy Rot, and you're the only one who
can save me!"

"Okay, let's fight."

<cough wheeze lose die>

The PCs were in a sense trying to use the angel's unreasonableness
against it. They would not actually have considered a win to be
moral justification, because they didn't see a strong enough connection
between winning/losing and being right/being wrong in this situation.
(Which may be overly modern of them, but they are what they are.)

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Arthur Boff]

Post by psychohist
I agree with your analysis of the purpose of angels within the context
of the D&D rules.
I'm not so certain about the CR and fairness arguments.
It is true that the party is less likely to defeat the angel and get
experience points out of it. However, it also seems to be true that
party members are less likely to die from the encounter. In the
present case, had the paladin fought a demon, she might have been more
likely to win - but if she had lost, she would likely have died,
right?
I don't know what the letter of the CR rules are, but in principle, I
think a risk and reward rating could legitimately rate at the same
level a creature which is more powerful but more constrained not to
hurt the party and a creature which is less powerful but less so
constrained.

There is no such game mechanical constraint on the creature, however.
Sure, it's good-aligned, but I can think of a dozen reasons why it might
serve the Greater Good for a good angel to attack a nominally
good-aligned party - and if you've got a party with non-good members,
then it's much easier.

And let's not forget how Lawful Good in D&D has often been portrayed as
the "self-righteous asshole" alignment...

[Blackheart]

Post by Arthur Boff
It's a nasty, inconsistent, brutish feature of the rules which seems to
be there to encourage the use of angels as cattle prods.

no.

Alignment is the board the GM beats the players with. An angel is the
nail in it.

[Arthur Boff]

Post by Blackheart

Post by Arthur Boff
It's a nasty, inconsistent, brutish feature of the rules which seems to
be there to encourage the use of angels as cattle prods.

no.
Alignment is the board the GM beats the players with. An angel is the
nail in it.

I think the angels are an example of alignment-as-blunt-weapon: they're
basically Good given physical form and ridiculous stats. And I'd agree
with you it's a symptom of a wider problem with the alignment system,
but it's also something which goes above and beyond what
alignment-as-written does.

With the alignment system as written, the GM can say "Don't do that
outrageous thing, it's obviously contrary to your alignment and if you
go through with it I will force an alignment change on you". If you add
angels to the mix, the GM is then able to have them turn up and say
"Hey, it's cool that you've not done any outrageous stuff that breaches
your alignment, but now I want you to avoid *this* apparently-reasonable
action because, erm, the Greater Good demands that you don't." You go
from a situation where the GM can threaten you with sanctions if you
commit actions which you can't reasonably claim are in accordance with
your alignment to a situation where the GM can threaten you with being
*killed by an angel* if you commit particular actions, and you have no
inherent right to question the angel because it's a messenger from the gods.

[psychohist]

Arthur Boff suggests that D&D angels extend the problems with the D&D
alignment system by allowing the gamesmaster to use angels to enforce
player character behavior beyond what would be enforced by gamesmaster
imposed alignment changes.

I don't see any difference. In either case, it's the arbitrary D&D
alignment system, and the gamesmaster's arbitrary interpretation of
that alignment system, that is enforced. Anythin the gamesmaster can
enfoce with an angel, the gamesmaster can also enforce by fiat. The
player can object in either case, but in both cases, it's the
gamesmaster's ruling that's final.

As a player, I think I'd actually prefer the angel mechanism. At
least that way, the D&D "good" alignment is recognized as simply an
arbitrary alignment. It may impose the gamesmaster's interpretation
of good and evil on the characters, but at least it doesn't pretend to
impose the same idea of good and evil on the players themselves.

Warren J. Dew

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by psychohist
As a player, I think I'd actually prefer the angel mechanism. At
least that way, the D&D "good" alignment is recognized as simply an
arbitrary alignment. It may impose the gamesmaster's interpretation
of good and evil on the characters, but at least it doesn't pretend to
impose the same idea of good and evil on the players themselves.

Indeed, it only imposes on the characters in the sense that they may
be beaten to a pulp if they demur. It doesn't require (with the
possible exception of paladins and some priests) that the PCs acknowlege
the angel's right to beat on them, any more than they'd acknowledge
a demon's right to beat on them. The angel is just more likely to
succeed.

The PC cleric in this case is a priest of Wee Jas, whose tutelary
"angel" is the ice devil. He is not inclined to regard the archons
and guardinals and so forth as anything other than powerful supernatural
monsters, and the rules really don't require that he does.

If gameworld "Good" and "Evil" are ideologies rather than absolute
moral good and evil, the whole thing works pretty well for what
I'm doing; I don't feel it's getting in the way at all. I have a lot
more trouble with the fact that the module presents the "Good" ideology
as deeply ineffectual with occasional outbreaks of flat-out self-sabotage.
This is not limited to supernaturals, either.

My SCAP PCs as a whole are on the very dark edge of neutral, and
it's in large part because they have seen significantly more admirable
qualities from Evil than Good: things like ability to work together,
courage, persistance, breadth of vision, intelligence, even loyalty.
If Good people had those qualities, the PCs could get some help!

That comes around to the basic question: if you want to run a
scenario (and Warren, I know you don't do this) that involves the PCs
tackling great threats by themselves, you somehow have to avoid
NPC intervention. People are uncomfortable with doing this in the
natural way, which would be having PCs whose natural role this is
(top people in their fields, with official standing). So various
workarounds are tried, but most of them are more or less difficult
to make work sensibly at campaign length.

(The 8th level wizard whose errand back to town to "get help"
is so urgent he can't take 30 seconds to cast fireballs is a really
egregious example; I hope that module series doesn't hand me too
many more!)

I am having quite an interesting time with the collision between
the modules' assumption that no one will help, and two PCs who have
run their social skills up to system max and argue that with a
Diplomacy check of 45 they can darned well *make* them help. I am
letting this work, which leads to a big party, slow combats,
not enough EXP for the PCs, but interesting play in other respects.
Not letting it work would seem very unfair.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Erol K. Bayburt]

On Sun, 4 Feb 2007 23:57:53 +0000 (UTC),

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
That comes around to the basic question: if you want to run a
scenario (and Warren, I know you don't do this) that involves the PCs
tackling great threats by themselves, you somehow have to avoid
NPC intervention. People are uncomfortable with doing this in the
natural way, which would be having PCs whose natural role this is
(top people in their fields, with official standing).

Or even unofficial standing. Or just the best of the people who happen
to be on the spot[1]. But even then PCs need to be at least good
enough to act as understudies for the "top people."

[1]Another reason to nerf fast transport magic. With casual
teleportation, etc. the entire game-world becomes "the spot."

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
So various
workarounds are tried, but most of them are more or less difficult
to make work sensibly at campaign length.

The problem shows up often enough in read-only fiction that it
deserves, IMO, its own entry in the Tough Guide.

Although I have to admit that I do sometime reify "PC glow" - giving
the PCs the equivalent of the GURPS "Weirdness Magnet" disad, with the
NPCs knowing that the PCs are so jinxed. But even then, the PCs really
do need to be competent enough to deal with the weirdness that comes
their way. (IIRC, Mary, you've said that you do a little of this in
your space-opera-with-demons setting.)

The business of in-over-their-heads protagonists, scrambling to stay
alive, and only succeeding because of GM/author-fiated "luck" makes my
teeth grind, both in games and in read-only fiction. GM,
module-author, and story-author advice for such a setup ought to be
"You can make it work if you're Tolkien - and you're not Tolkien."

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
On Sun, 4 Feb 2007 23:57:53 +0000 (UTC),

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
That comes around to the basic question: if you want to run a
scenario (and Warren, I know you don't do this) that involves the PCs
tackling great threats by themselves, you somehow have to avoid
NPC intervention. People are uncomfortable with doing this in the
natural way, which would be having PCs whose natural role this is
(top people in their fields, with official standing).

Or even unofficial standing. Or just the best of the people who happen
to be on the spot[1]. But even then PCs need to be at least good
enough to act as understudies for the "top people."

The other way around this is not to run such earth-shaking scenarios.
I did a campaign in grad school which ran for a year, following
the adventures of a gypsy caravan. It ended triumphantly with the
marriage of the ne'er-do-well younger son and the defeat of a
rival caravan. There was no "why don't the authorities deal with
this?" because the gypsies' problems were not of that kind.

My experience, however, is that campaign problems tend to escalate.
Even when GM and players are not deliberately angling for "the big
stuff" it is hard to prevent the PCs from becoming engaged with it.
The gypsy campaign is probably my only success at this, and Jon
has also only had one, out of many games over 20+ years.

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
[1]Another reason to nerf fast transport magic. With casual
teleportation, etc. the entire game-world becomes "the spot."

Yes!

I actually had a nightmare about Elminster the other night, despite
not having played anything but video games in the Forgotten Realms
for years, and never having actually met Elminster in a regular RPG.

When there are no remote locations, no unreachable areas, and no
*secrets*--and v3.5 is very much like that, though Arcana is even
worse due to the akashics--it is hard to find a niche for PC problem-
solving, other than problems only the PCs care about.

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
Although I have to admit that I do sometime reify "PC glow" - giving
the PCs the equivalent of the GURPS "Weirdness Magnet" disad, with the
NPCs knowing that the PCs are so jinxed. But even then, the PCs really
do need to be competent enough to deal with the weirdness that comes
their way. (IIRC, Mary, you've said that you do a little of this in
your space-opera-with-demons setting.)

Chernoi is one of the people who *are* supposed to deal with weird
shit, now; but the game didn't start there, and yes, we allowed some
"weirdness magnet" effect. But the PCs weren't asked to deal long-term
with things that should have been done by the authorities. Even when
Chernoi was made a Magistrate, one of the other Magistrates said firmly
to her, "You've got to realize when something is a Fleet problem, and
*call in the Fleet.* No heroics."

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
The business of in-over-their-heads protagonists, scrambling to stay
alive, and only succeeding because of GM/author-fiated "luck" makes my
teeth grind, both in games and in read-only fiction.

I don't mind scrambling so much, but I mind horribly if the PCs are
asked to *deliberately* tackle things they are the wrong people to tackle,
and I mind even more if the world abdicates all other responsibilities.

I am comforted to read on-line that mine weren't the only PCs to say
"Why are we *doing* this? Why are *we* doing this?" more and more loudly
to the GM during the current SCAP arc.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Will in New Haven]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
On Sun, 4 Feb 2007 23:57:53 +0000 (UTC),

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
That comes around to the basic question: if you want to run a
scenario (and Warren, I know you don't do this) that involves the PCs
tackling great threats by themselves, you somehow have to avoid
NPC intervention. People are uncomfortable with doing this in the
natural way, which would be having PCs whose natural role this is
(top people in their fields, with official standing).

Or even unofficial standing. Or just the best of the people who happen
to be on the spot[1]. But even then PCs need to be at least good
enough to act as understudies for the "top people."

The other way around this is not to run such earth-shaking scenarios.
I did a campaign in grad school which ran for a year, following
the adventures of a gypsy caravan. It ended triumphantly with the
marriage of the ne'er-do-well younger son and the defeat of a
rival caravan. There was no "why don't the authorities deal with
this?" because the gypsies' problems were not of that kind.

We had a campaign that lasted quite awhile where the PCs were the
roadies and security for a wildly succesful touring band. "Why don't
the authorities deal with that?" was not asked because the band was
out of favor with authority figures almost everywhere it toured. Since
the lead singer and one of the lead instrumentalists and the mage in
their security force were all Elves and they were touring some very
human-centered areas, their problems sometime came FROM the
authorities.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
My experience, however, is that campaign problems tend to escalate.
Even when GM and players are not deliberately angling for "the big
stuff" it is hard to prevent the PCs from becoming engaged with it.
The gypsy campaign is probably my only success at this, and Jon
has also only had one, out of many games over 20+ years.

The above campaign lasted about a year as what I described and then,
when the PCs were high-level by our standards, all Hell broke loose
and what has been sometimes called the Second Demon War or DW2 became
partly their problem. It wasn't nearly as much fun and we all
regretted leaving the lower-challenge campaign behind after DW2 was
over. However, the players had been pressing for ways to use their new
powers and stuff. The general reaction in our after-campaign
evaluation was that DW2 was a pretty good adventure but Touring with
the Wild Hunt was much better.

Will in New Haven

--

Post by Mary K. Kuhner

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
[1]Another reason to nerf fast transport magic. With casual
teleportation, etc. the entire game-world becomes "the spot."

Yes!
I actually had a nightmare about Elminster the other night, despite
not having played anything but video games in the Forgotten Realms
for years, and never having actually met Elminster in a regular RPG.
When there are no remote locations, no unreachable areas, and no
*secrets*--and v3.5 is very much like that, though Arcana is even
worse due to the akashics--it is hard to find a niche for PC problem-
solving, other than problems only the PCs care about.

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
Although I have to admit that I do sometime reify "PC glow" - giving
the PCs the equivalent of the GURPS "Weirdness Magnet" disad, with the
NPCs knowing that the PCs are so jinxed. But even then, the PCs really
do need to be competent enough to deal with the weirdness that comes
their way. (IIRC, Mary, you've said that you do a little of this in
your space-opera-with-demons setting.)

Chernoi is one of the people who *are* supposed to deal with weird
shit, now; but the game didn't start there, and yes, we allowed some
"weirdness magnet" effect. But the PCs weren't asked to deal long-term
with things that should have been done by the authorities. Even when
Chernoi was made a Magistrate, one of the other Magistrates said firmly
to her, "You've got to realize when something is a Fleet problem, and
*call in the Fleet.* No heroics."

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
The business of in-over-their-heads protagonists, scrambling to stay
alive, and only succeeding because of GM/author-fiated "luck" makes my
teeth grind, both in games and in read-only fiction.

I don't mind scrambling so much, but I mind horribly if the PCs are
asked to *deliberately* tackle things they are the wrong people to tackle,
and I mind even more if the world abdicates all other responsibilities.
I am comforted to read on-line that mine weren't the only PCs to say
"Why are we *doing* this? Why are *we* doing this?" more and more loudly
to the GM during the current SCAP arc.

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Will in New Haven
The above campaign lasted about a year as what I described and then,
when the PCs were high-level by our standards, all Hell broke loose
and what has been sometimes called the Second Demon War or DW2 became
partly their problem. It wasn't nearly as much fun and we all
regretted leaving the lower-challenge campaign behind after DW2 was
over. However, the players had been pressing for ways to use their new
powers and stuff. The general reaction in our after-campaign
evaluation was that DW2 was a pretty good adventure but Touring with
the Wild Hunt was much better.

Yes, I've been in that situation too. It's even worse when you can
see during the campaign that things are heading into less-fun territory,
but you can't put the genie back into the bottle.

About a year (of play time) after Chernoi became a Magistrate and thus
a really important person in her setting, she had occasion to impersonate
a tramp merchant starship for a couple of weeks--her previous profession.
I ended up feeling (and so did the PCs) that this was in many ways more
fun than the normal action of the campaign. It was liberating to have
such small resources and so few big responsibilities, and to be able to
cheat port officials without it meaning anything major.

One of my frustrations with v3.5 is that the pressure to escalate is
built into the rules in such a variety of ways--starting with the XP
tables, of course, but also the diversity of prestige classes that
cannot be entered until 6th-8th level, and the feats and feat chains with
similar restrictions, and the fundamental class abilities that don't
appear until fairly late, like druidic shapeshifting. Also the default
DC for many tasks, such as picking locks, works best for rather high-level
PCs. You can run stable low-level games if you throw out the XP
system, but when I do it I feel the rules fighting me all the way.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Gary Johnson]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
[This is a rant--feel free to ignore it.]
What is it about D&D angels, anyway?

<snip>

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
What is going on with these CRs?

1. Any creature of CR X should defeat a character of level X - the rule of
thumb for CR is that it's a 4-on-1 fight in favour of the PCs, so you add
4 to the EL if it's a 1-on-1 fight. In other words, the leonal may be an
appropriate 1-on-1 fight for a single 16th level character, because the EL
for the leonal is then 12 (for CR) + 4 = 16.

2. The CRs for good outsiders is skewed, in much the same way as the CR
for dragons is skewed. IIRC, the designers assume the PCs should take
greater care, do more research, and prepare specifically to take on a good
outsider. For what it's worth, 3.5 significantly bolstered the evil
outsiders as well.

3. Is your party designed to fight good creatures? For example, one of
your higher-level characters is a paladin: almost all their class
abilities make them better at fighting evil creatures, depending on past
choices their spells and magic items may be most effective against evil
creatures, and so on. Take a paladin to a fight with a good creature, and
what you've got is a fighter without the bonus feats - in effect, a
sub-optimal character for their level.

4. Is your party designed to fight extra-planar creatures? For example,
can/do any of your spellcasters prepare dismissal? I see the leonal has a
lot of Spell Resistance - but if you're using the Spell Compendium, assay
spell resistance would help deal with that.

5. Is your party designed to fight opponents with big attack bonuses and
multiple attacks? for example, can/do any of your spellcasters prepare
displacement (a flat 50% miss chance is usually better than an increase
in AC when dealing with a big attack bonus opponent), or freedom of
movement (looking at the leonal, I see it's a grappler)?

6. Finally, the "did you get lucky" questions. Do you have characters
whose attacks match the leonal's weaknesses, or whose abilities negate the
leonal's strengths? For example, the leonal has a big AC but a small touch
AC - do you have characters whose attacks go against touch AC, like
trippers, ray-users, and the like? The leonal has a relatively low
initiative modifier, and a really effective charge manoeuvre - do you have
characters who can go before the leonal in the first round and stop it
getting to charge? The leonal is relatively weak at ranged combat - can
most of the PCs fly? And so on.

Just some thoughts,

Gary Johnson

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Gary Johnson
1. Any creature of CR X should defeat a character of level X - the rule of
thumb for CR is that it's a 4-on-1 fight in favour of the PCs, so you add
4 to the EL if it's a 1-on-1 fight. In other words, the leonal may be an
appropriate 1-on-1 fight for a single 16th level character, because the EL
for the leonal is then 12 (for CR) + 4 = 16.

I think you are mistaken. The rules are very clear that a PC-class character
of level X is a creature with CRX. A 6th level human fighter or cleric is CR6
(this is completely consistent throughout _SCAP_ and _Worms_, for example).
Your argument would make a single 6th level PC-class character a CR2, and I
have never seen one labelled that way.

The DMG says that a fight against a single creature of CR=party level, for
a party of 4, should use up about 1/4 of their daily resources--in other
words a challenge, but not a serious threat. This is my experience with
many of the lower-level book creatures, but a few stand out as anomalies.
I am inclined to consider the anomalies as mistakes. In some cases they
are simply creatures which are hard to rate--wizards, for example, or anything
which has the crunch power and crappy HP and AC of a wizard--but that does
not seem to explain the angels.

My experience is that a PC party which is not driven onto its weaknesses in
some way can readily beat CR=party level, and is desperately threatened
by CR=party level + 4.

The rest of your post--I'm not basing my statement that the creature is
mis-CR'ed on the outcome of the fight. Obviously it could have gone
differently; high level combat is chancy and circumstantial. But you can
look at the AC, hp, spell-like abilities and so forth and see that the good
outsiders are not built on the same scale as other creatures of their CR.

I'm fairly content with the explanation for that which was proposed a few
posts back. Saddened--I think it's an unnecessary flaw in the system--but
at least it makes sense.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Gary Johnson]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner

Post by Gary Johnson
1. Any creature of CR X should defeat a character of level X - the rule
of thumb for CR is that it's a 4-on-1 fight in favour of the PCs, so
you add 4 to the EL if it's a 1-on-1 fight. In other words, the leonal
may be an appropriate 1-on-1 fight for a single 16th level character,
because the EL for the leonal is then 12 (for CR) + 4 = 16.

I think you are mistaken.

I'll try to clarify my logic, then. A creature of CR X is supposed to be
an "appropriate combat" (using up approximately 25% of resources) for 4
PCs of level X, because 4 PCs of level X have an EL of X+4, just as 4
creatures of CR X have an EL of X+4.

As such, your side's EL should be 4 greater than the EL of the other side
to have an "appropriate combat" that uses roughly the right amount of your
side's resources. When you have fewer (or more) PCs than the "magic
number" of 4, your side's EL changes, and as a result the EL of a single
opponent stops being the same as the creature's CR. For example, if you
have 3 10th level PCs in your party, a CR 10 opponent is effectively EL
11; if you have 2 PCs, a CR 10 opponent is effectively EL 12; if you have
1 PC, a CR 10 opponent is effectively EL 14. In part, the increase in
effective EL represents factors like the party's reduced capacity to
absorb individual bad luck - losing one PC has a much bigger impact on
team resources when there's only two PCs than when there's four PCs, for
example. It also represents the increased likelihood that the party won't
have access to a useful ability, spell, or skill, and will thus have to
do things "the hard way".

Conversely, when you have more than 4 PCs, the EL notionally goes below
the CR, because a larger group is more likely to have someone with the
right tool for the job, is more able to absorb the impact of having one or
two PCs taken out of the equation for the combat, and so on. However, this
is generally a much riskier approach for a DM to take when preparing
encounters because of the way character power in D&D goes up in large
increments. For example, having access to spells of a particular level can
make a huge difference to how easy or hard an encounter is, so it can
mattter a lot whether the wizard or cleric PC is 6th or 7th character
level.

Now, CR and EL are all rubbery numbers anyway, because EL is an
approximate measure of likely challenge/risk/resource consumption,
assuming average die rolls, similar tactical skill, and so on. As I think
the 3.5 DMG says somewhere, it's recommended that the DM always eyeball
what the opponent does compared to what the PCs do to work out if the EL
accurately represents the desired level of challenge (which the leonal
clearly didn't for your party). CR and EL are supposed to be reliable
proxies for most groups in most situations, but there's lots of potential
for corner cases and other exceptions.

To give an example from the MM of an exception, the hezrou is a CR 11
demon. In theory, that makes it a good "boss" encounter for a party of 4
8th level characters, because the EL is 3 above the average party level
(APL+3) - challenging, but not overwhelming. However, one of the hezrou's
spell-like abilities is blasphemy (no save, SR only) at caster level 13,
so if it gets to use the ability the hezrou paralyses the 8th level
characters for 1 to 10 minutes - more than enough time to coup de grace
everyone. :-(

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
The rules are very clear that a PC-class character of level X is a
creature with CRX. A 6th level human fighter or cleric is CR6 (this is
completely consistent throughout _SCAP_ and _Worms_, for example). Your
argument would make a single 6th level PC-class character a CR2, and I
have never seen one labelled that way.

That's because the scenarios are written for a group of 4 PCs, not a solo
PC - scenarios written for a solo PC should/would lower the CR of the
creatures encountered so that the EL is still appropriate. To put that
another way, my argument is that a scenario written for a 6th level solo
PC would include a CR 2 opponent and call the EL something around 6.

The caveat ("something around") is because IME CRs and ELs seem to be less
reliable when the CR is (a) significantly lower than the EL and (b) a
low-level character. For example, 4 2nd level fighters are an EL 6
encounter, but I'm confident they wouldn't use 25% of the resources of
most 4 person 6th level party, and depending on the PC may not use 25% of
the resources of a single 6th level character. A 6th level wizard could
drop them all with one fireball, while a 6th level fighter could drop them
all with power attack and great cleave. My experience of playing solo
scenarios is that the big risk to the solo PC is the "save or go down"
effects - which means a 3rd level cleric with hold person is much more
dangerous to most 7th level character than a 3rd level rogue.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
My experience is that a PC party which is not driven onto its weaknesses
in some way can readily beat CR=party level, and is desperately
threatened by CR=party level + 4.

<nods> That's similar to my experience, and probably to most D&D players'
experience. EL+4 is the "fifty-fifty" point of the EL spectrum, where the
odds that your side will win are just as good as the odds your side will
lose.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
The rest of your post--I'm not basing my statement that the creature is
mis-CR'ed on the outcome of the fight. Obviously it could have gone
differently; high level combat is chancy and circumstantial. But you
can look at the AC, hp, spell-like abilities and so forth and see that
the good outsiders are not built on the same scale as other creatures of
their CR.

Sorry, Mary, but I'm honestly not convinced that's always the case when
comparing the good outsiders with the evil outsiders. For example, the
glabrezu and the ice devil are both CR 13 and seem roughly similar to the
CR 12 leonal and the CR 14 astral deva in terms of attack, AC, and
versatility. My impression is the major "cheese" for the good outsiders is
the "cast spells like a cleric" abilities of the top-enders (planetars,
solars, trumpet archons, titans), which gives them tremendous versatility
when compared to the top-end evil outsiders (mariliths, balors, pit
fiends). The low and mid range good outsiders don't seem to me
particularly out of balance with comparable evil outsiders - but YMMV.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
I'm fairly content with the explanation for that which was proposed a
few posts back. Saddened--I think it's an unnecessary flaw in the
system--but at least it makes sense.

<nods> It makes sense to me as well.

Cheers,

Gary Johnson

[Arthur Boff]

Post by Gary Johnson

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
I think you are mistaken.

I'll try to clarify my logic, then. A creature of CR X is supposed to be
an "appropriate combat" (using up approximately 25% of resources) for 4
PCs of level X, because 4 PCs of level X have an EL of X+4, just as 4
creatures of CR X have an EL of X+4.

Which would surely mean that in a one-on-one combat both characters
should be roughly equivalent - the CR X PC and the CR X monster will
both probably end up using all their resources, and it'll effectively be
a coin toss as to who wins, da?

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Arthur Boff

Post by Gary Johnson

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
I think you are mistaken.

I'll try to clarify my logic, then. A creature of CR X is supposed to be
an "appropriate combat" (using up approximately 25% of resources) for 4
PCs of level X, because 4 PCs of level X have an EL of X+4, just as 4
creatures of CR X have an EL of X+4.

Which would surely mean that in a one-on-one combat both characters
should be roughly equivalent - the CR X PC and the CR X monster will
both probably end up using all their resources, and it'll effectively be
a coin toss as to who wins, da?

Yes. It is not an "appropriate combat" because a series of 50/50 shots
will kill any campaign, but it is an even one. (Though the higher
the level, and the more peculiar the creatures, the more likely that
it ends up lopsided in each individual instance even if the average
is 50/50.)

I am not at all sure about the statement that 4 CRX is ELX+4. I think
it's closer to X+3. But the scaling gets more and more difficult the
further you get from single monsters.

SPOILERS for _Age of Worms_:

Episode 3 of _Worms_ has 30 lizardfolk (and two leaders) which they
discourage the 5th level PCs from tackling directly on the argument that
it's EL11. Scuttlebutt on the net is that most PC parties just shrug and
fight this, and they win. I think my player is about to do this; I'll
report back. I expect he'll win.

Conversely, my GM picked up a module to insert into SCAP which had
harpies in it, CR3, not a big monster against a 9th level party. There
were 8 of them. Fortunately my PCs figured this out in time, because
if the harpies get to use their main attack, it's lethal. (I rolled
out the saves: yup, out of 8 PCs, no successes. Not even close. But
luckily the situation didn't arise.)

I don't expect a CR11 paladin to be a match for a CR12 angel, because
there is a CR difference, and paladin is a very weak class, and not
well suited to the task. But I didn't expect things to be quite so
hopelessly one-sided as they were, nor the statement that the creature
would have a good chance against 13 CR11's. (Admittedly this is
partly because they are offworld, and not all good, so the angel can
reduce the problem by about 50% with one Holy Word. And really, really
annoy the player, who now has two parties that can't rejoin. This
is a large part of why we didn't allow that fight.)

I should really study the angel myself, though, and not go on what the
GM said--I'll report back when I get a chance.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[DougL]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
I am not at all sure about the statement that 4 CRX is ELX+4. I think
it's closer to X+3. But the scaling gets more and more difficult the
further you get from single monsters.

IMAO four grunts is probably X+3, you stand off and fireball them all.
Four creatures that are individually designed, somewhat diverse, and
work togather can easily be more like X+5.

DougL

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
Episode 3 of _Worms_ has 30 lizardfolk (and two leaders) which they
discourage the 5th level PCs from tackling directly on the argument that
it's EL11. Scuttlebutt on the net is that most PC parties just shrug and
fight this, and they win. I think my player is about to do this; I'll
report back. I expect he'll win.

He nuked them. The PCs brought some NPC allies, admittedly, but they
could have done without. The supposed EL11 is basically a patrol
encounter: if the lizardfolk clump up they are all killed by fireball,
and if they don't, they are killed by the PC fighters; they have
a lot of trouble hitting anyone. The PCs could do another 30
immediately (and are planning to do so).

It's very hard to rate encounters, to be sure, but I don't think the
current Monster Manual does a good job. Too much grandfathering,
perhaps.

Probably there is no way to rate a group larger than about 8,
except by specifically considering how that particular creature scales.
I was wrong about harpies (they are CR4) but certainly masses of
harpies are a lot more trouble than masses of grunts. There's a big
difference just between grunts with swords and grunts with bows.

But a single creature should be ratable by reference to the PC classes,
unless it is really bizarre. At a bare minimum, if it casts as well
as a PC cleric or sorceror, it is almost surely not lower CR than they are.
Even a reasonable assortment of spells with some at the PC caster's
highest level probably suggests at least equal CR.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Erol K. Bayburt]

On Sat, 3 Feb 2007 02:23:27 +0000 (UTC),

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
Probably there is no way to rate a group larger than about 8,
except by specifically considering how that particular creature scales.
I was wrong about harpies (they are CR4) but certainly masses of
harpies are a lot more trouble than masses of grunts. There's a big
difference just between grunts with swords and grunts with bows.

The DMG explicitly begs off rating groups of more than 12: "Encounters
with more than a dozen creatures are difficult to judge. If you need
thirteen or more creatures to provide enough XP for a standard
encounter, then those individual monsters are probably so weak that
they don't make a for a good encounter. That's why Table 3-1 doesn't
have an entry larger than twelve for 'Number of Creatures'" (DMG p 49)