# Forum > Gaming > Roleplaying Games >  DnD Head Canons

## DrBloodbathMC

There's no active thread on this so lets get to talking, what are you DnD Head canons? 

For me, Nerul has a Jamaican accent, you can thank Grim for that one.

----------


## Particle_Man

The incarnate had the first magic and the binder will have the last one (3.5).

----------


## Millstone85

Ghaunadaur can restore the intellect of oozes as easily as it took that intellect away.
That Which Lurks, true to its name, is just lying low on the faith-o-meter until the time is right.

----------


## SleepyShadow

St. Cuthbert talks like Sam Elliot.

Grey Elves are the inefficient police of Wildspace.

Hobgoblins are awesome tacticians.

A multiclassed wizard's familiar will chastise them for losing caster levels.

Shifters love frybread.

----------


## Mark Hall

D&D is not medieval. D&D is a western in medieval drag.

----------


## RedMage125

> D&D is not medieval. D&D is a western in medieval drag.


This made me lol.

My headcanon:
Vecna's phylactery *is* the Sword Of Kas.  Think about it, Vecna was an epic-level lich by all accounts, and he made the sword for Kas because he trusted him.  A FIghter, even a Vampire one, being able to permanently maim a lich of Vecna's caliber is absurd.  So why then, did a sword that _Vecna crafted_ manage to cut through all of his magical defenses and cut off his hand and gouge out his eye?  Simple, because none of Vecna's magical defneses worked against the sword, because the sword contained Vecna's soul, and all those protection spells considered the soul a part of the caster who placed them.  The reason the Sword has intelligence and hates Vecna and all his servants?  Because Vecna's ego was so great.  The soul in the sword resents that it is not in possession of all of Vecna's power and all that he is, believing itself to be as powerful and deserving, if not more so.

----------


## Vizzerdrix

Rust monsters purr like big kittens/crickets  when you give them  belly rubs and chin scratches,  and are kept as pets by dwarves.

All elven gods are evil. They just pretend to not be.

Wizard have fairs to settle their arguments with games like Summoners chess,  cantrip obstacle course, and familiar shows.

----------


## Millstone85

Modrons speak like minions and slaadi speak like rabbids.

----------


## SirAshley

I have always been a fan of the "Pelor: the Burning Hate" theory, to the point of currently playing a Blackguard of Pelor in my current 3.5 campaign.

----------


## KillianHawkeye

I always like the idea that the vampire's weakness to a wooden stake was misinformation spread by the vampires themselves. 

Because in 3.5, vampires have damage reduction that is only overcome by silver weapons, so a small piece of wood shouldn't be a threat to them at all. But vampires are smart and have been around for centuries, so they took it upon themselves to shape the peoples' myths about them, thus getting many possible foes to waste their time with a sharp piece of wood.

Probably the same is true of other weaknesses, like the inability to cross running water or not being able to enter someone's home uninvited. Really, that's just what the vampires WANT you to think!  :Small Amused: 



Also, slightly disappointed that this thread wasn't about some creature or magical construct with a literal cannon on its head.  :Small Frown:

----------


## Bohandas

*Zargon is Grazzt's father (thus rectifying the backstory where ge's the son of Pale Night with the backstory where he's a defector from Baator)

*Medieval stagnation has something to do with either the Regulators and/or the Pact Primeval.

*The fact that you can't conjure precious metals also has something to do with either the Regulators and/or the Pact Primeval.

*Iuz looks and sounds like Lo Pan from _Big Trouble in Lottle China_

*The elemental planes actually dictate the forms that matter can take, rather than providing its building blocks

*The Lady of Pain, The High God, and Lord Ao are all the same type of creature and none of them are able to leave the areas where their absolute control holds

*The illithids (who, according to Lords of Madness come from the distant future) are actually descended from the Githyanki

*The beholders are some kind of opabinids

*Yeenoghou is actually female

*Olidammara used to be some kind of tribal trickster animal deity, that's why he has so many implicit associations with armadillos

*The power a deity gains through worshippers has a strongly diminishing return as number of followers increases beyond a certain point, hence why unpopular deities seem to be more active. The popular deities are over extended, as they reach a point where adding followers merely adds more duties

*Zagyg has done most of the things in the bad mayoral ideas thread.

*Most demons view the Blood War as a sport rather than a serious conflict

*Olidammara's rites are all based on rock and rap cliches

*Vecna's cults are usually more about blackmail than world domination

*Humans' racial traits of variability come from D&D's humans being only about 40% human, with the remaining 60% being "miscellaneous" (elf, orc, dragon, outsider

*In most languages other than common the word for "Good" as in the alignment is a different word than the word for "good" as in "desirable" or "preferable". The orcish word for somethig desirable is more closely translated by the idiom "smashing". The Yugoloth word is more closely translated as "wicked". and the abyssal word translates as "brutal".

*Elves and dwarves, with their long childhoods, have significantly greater precentages of their populations who are in more skilled NPC classes like Adept, Magewright, warrior, and Expert that require more training

*Gelatinous cubes shout the word "cube!" like in Bob the Angry Flower

----------


## Particle_Man

> *Iuz looks and sounds like Lo Pan from _Big Trouble in Lottle China_


I am stealing this.

----------


## Âmesang

Some _WORLD OF GREYHAWK®_ related ones:

Regarding the Spelljammers from _The Shackled City Adventure Path_, I like to imagine their experiments with extraplanar magic (which lead to the creation of the Demonskar) were eventually discovered and refined by the Suel Imperium, which the Mages of Power used to create the _Bringer of Doom_ and the _Invoked Devastation_.

Regarding the _Castle Greyhawk_ (joke) module, I like to think that Zol Darklock, the Shade Prince and "Power of Shadow" who was trapped by Zodast of Suel (forger of the _Bringer of Doom_) was originally from the _FORGOTTEN REALMS®_; a long lost son of High Prince Telemont Tanthul of Shade, who was sent out after Netheril's fall to search for "powerful magic" they could use to reestablish their empire finding his way to Oerth and the Suel Imperium, only to become trapped in the "Darkness That Holds All Shadows."

----------


## Cygnia

Loviatar (and other gods based in Earth myths) fled from "our" world to the Forgotten Realms when belief started to die out.

----------


## Matuka

The "god" the Couatl description speaks of is actually the DM.

----------


## Maelynn

> Rust monsters purr like big kittens/crickets  when you give them  belly rubs and chin scratches,  and are kept as pets by dwarves.


In my previous campaign we actually had a rust monster pet. We kept a stash of cheap daggers in our Bag of Holding to keep him happy - and away from our gear and weapons. We named him Rusty. The DM wouldn't allow him to join fights, but he accompanied us for quite a while.




> I always like the idea that the vampire's weakness to a wooden stake was misinformation spread by the vampires themselves. 
> 
> Because in 3.5, vampires have damage reduction that is only overcome by silver weapons, so a small piece of wood shouldn't be a threat to them at all. But vampires are smart and have been around for centuries, so they took it upon themselves to shape the peoples' myths about them, thus getting many possible foes to waste their time with a sharp piece of wood.


I really like this idea. I had been toying with the idea of 'sophisicated' vampires, who are utterly disgusted with the idea of having to place their lips on the unwashed neck of a peasant smelling of sweat and manure. Some of the younger and slightly hipster ones have taken on gastronomic experimentation, where they create various dishes such as blood soup and blood sausage and fries with blood curds. They do not spend their days in catacombs, because they are so draughty and cold and damp and do you have any idea how bad that is for your skin complexion? No, they rather lead the comfortable and luxurious life of a noble, satisfying their needs through the backdoor of a 'blood bank'. I'm thinking your idea will fit right in with this type of vampire.

----------


## Millstone85

> *The elemental planes actually dictate the forms that matter can take, rather than providing its building blocks


As in solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Yeah, I like that.




> *The beholders are some kind of opabinids


I googled opabinids, and I don't see the resemblance with beholders. Did you mean aboleths?

But speaking of beholders...

If one could follow the silver-cord-like tail of an astral dreadnought, they would find an eye of the deep.

----------


## Yora

Only planar creatures can have alignments.

Ghaunadaur is Jubilex.

And his name is Jubilex. A misspelling that has become so common because it just feels much better.

There is no revised edition of Dark Sun. None of this Rajat and butterfly god nonsense.

Abominations are the original yuan-ti. The human-like ones are the crossbreeds.

There is no Far Plane.

The current year in Faerun is 1357. Forever.

----------


## Mark Hall

> The current year in Faerun is 1357. Forever.


My personal version of Faerun usually starts in 1358, but with a few changes.

1) No Avatar Crisis. The Year of Shadows is the year the Shades return, because "Magical Netherese Shadow Wizards" is a cool aspect.
2) Kelemvor is the God of the Dead. Myrkul is the god of the Undead. Velsharoon is the god of Necromancy.

----------


## Bohandas

> I googled opabinids, and I don't see the resemblance with beholders. Did you mean aboleths?


No I did mean opabinia. IIRC opabinia regalis has four eyes on stalks and one eye that isn't, much like an eyeball beholderkin

----------


## Millstone85

> Ghaunadaur is Jubilex.
> 
> And his name is Jubilex. A misspelling that has become so common because it just feels much better.


For me, That Which Lurks, the Faceless Lord, and the Elder Elemental Eye, are physically distinct beings, and kept apart by their planar natures. However, each regards all oozes, including the other two, as extensions of itself, and any communication between them is akin to a hive mind.

I am talking about the real EEE, not Tharizdun disguised as the EEE.




> No I did mean opabinia.


I wasn't questioning the opabinia part. I thought perhaps you said beholder when you meant aboleth. Because I find opabinia to look more like an aboleth.




> IIRC opabinia regalis has four eyes on stalks and one eye that isn't, much like an eyeball beholderkin


Now I get it. Thank you.

----------


## Bohandas

The Rilmani talk like the people from the Neural Planet from Futurama

Additionally, the Rilmani are also associated with stereotypical Swiss things (multitools, alphorns, cheese with holes, etc.)




> Modrons speak like minions and slaadi speak like rabbids.


I like that

----------


## Black Jester

Coffee is a highly addictive drug for halflings, which creates severe pyschological dependency and trauma. As a result, inviting a halfling to a cup of coffee is a major breech of etiquette (and offering one would be even worse).

Like mules, half-elves and half-orcs are sterile and cannot reproduce (without the aid of fertility magic).

All major gnome cultures are the mutated remnants of a dwarf clan that experimented with arcane magic; in isolated and xenophobic dwarven communities (who never practice arcane magic) they are seen as abominations. In dwarf communities were arcane magic is practiced widely, it is quite possible that dwarf couples will reproduce gnome children. Vice versa, Gnomes who have very little contact to arcane magic might have dwarf children.

----------


## gkathellar

> There is no Far Plane.


Well, that's regular canon, since the Far Realm isn't a plane and doesn't exist.

----------


## PostMortemCP

Guns where always in D&D but the dwarfs never let anyone have them after the great war of the gazebo. Where many innocent lawn structures where destroyed by dwarves arquebus and thats why from a d&d 2e to 3.X the disappear from the equipment list

----------


## Beleriphon

> Loviatar (and other gods based in Earth myths) fled from "our" world to the Forgotten Realms when belief started to die out.


That's actually a thing. Tyr is one. Some of them were dragged there by faith when their followers were transported there in the distant past. I'm looking a Mulhorand and Unther.

----------


## Yora

Except that Loviatar is actually goddess of disease. And Ilmatar is a woman. At least Mielikki seems somewhat right.

----------


## AllHailthed4

> St. Cuthbert talks like Sam Elliot.


St. Cuthbert *is* Sam Elliot. Also, _St. Cuthbert and Common Sense_ has a pop-up book edition.

Cloakers are an endangered species.

----------


## martixy

> D&D is not medieval. D&D is a western in medieval drag.


Right.
Mine is: Not medieval. Classical.

As in ancient greek classical. You know, when people in the stories actually went on quests, heroes battled mighty monsters, all that shazz.

----------


## Millstone85

> Well, that's regular canon, since the Far Realm isn't a plane and doesn't exist.


5e Mordenkainen seems to share that view.


> The cultists who blaspheme reality by calling out to Elder Evils often speak of a Far Realm from which these entities hail. In truth, there is no one place or space from which they come. There is the multiverse of things that are, and there is the multiverse of things that shouldn't be.


Of course, what this really does is offer an interpretation of the Far Realm as the multiverse of things that shouldn't be.

Which gives me creature ideas.

*Exotic Elemental*
As previously suggested, the Elemental Planes dictate the forms that matter can take. The creatures called exotic elementals represent forms of matter that were rejected at the dawn of time. Some are said to appear as the witness' own blurry reflection in a dark iridescent substance. Their proximity warps the flesh in agonizing ways.

*Exemplar of the Indicible*
The Outer Planes are home to creatures of law, chaos, good, and evil. When they do not conceal it, they have a perceptible aura that brings to mind the ideals they embody. The beings called exemplars of the indicible have a similar aura, except that the ideal thus perceived is wholly unfamiliar. It leaves the witness confused, frightened, and often mad. Some exemplars of the indicible have been described as excessively slender angels with fins for wings.

----------


## Eldan

> Right.
> Mine is: Not medieval. Classical.
> 
> As in ancient greek classical. You know, when people in the stories actually went on quests, heroes battled mighty monsters, all that shazz.


Hey they did that in medieval literature too. And some were just as mighty. Roland hacked a mountain in two when angry. The hacked-apart mountain is still there at the French-Spanish border. Some of Arthur's knights did some downright ridiculous things in a lot of the stories, too.

----------


## Luccan

> Hey they did that in medieval literature too. And some were just as mighty. Roland hacked a mountain in two when angry. The hacked-apart mountain is still there at the French-Spanish border. Some of Arthur's knights did some downright ridiculous things in a lot of the stories, too.


If I recall, many of Arthur's knights originally had cool magic powers. It was only later we started depicting them as relatively regular humans.

I treat gnomes and dwarves as being related. Like, somewhere closer than many other species, they have a common ancestor. They acknowledge this by referring to each other as "cousin" and they get along famously. I know this is sort-of canon already, but my interpretation is specifically that neither came first and that they're equals. Which makes it all the more tragic to the more "surface-dwelling" groups that duergar treat the deep gnomes so terribly.

Elves can grow facial hair, but it isn't considered stylish or polite in most communities. Plus it takes them like a decade to grow a decent beard.

Halflings generally have the blood of multiple subraces in them, they just have certain traits more pronounced to establish their own subrace. They also have a loose collection of travelling lawmen expected to uphold justice in any halfling community and see to the people's well being. Caravans and permanent communities both exist in halfling culture; most communities are fine with their folk coming and going between the two.

----------


## PostMortemCP

Unpopular headcannon here.... the pathfinder world was made when a PC made it to god level and then looked upon the kingdoms of mortals and said.... I can make this fun again

----------


## PostMortemCP

> If I recall, many of Arthur's knights originally had cool magic powers. It was only later we started depicting them as relatively regular humans.
> 
> I treat gnomes and dwarves as being related. Like, somewhere closer than many other species, they have a common ancestor. They acknowledge this by referring to each other as "cousin" and they get along famously. I know this is sort-of canon already, but my interpretation is specifically that neither came first and that they're equals. Which makes it all the more tragic to the more "surface-dwelling" groups that duergar treat the deep gnomes so terribly.
> 
> Elves can grow facial hair, but it isn't considered stylish or polite in most communities. Plus it takes them like a decade to grow a decent beard.
> 
> Halflings generally have the blood of multiple subraces in them, they just have certain traits more pronounced to establish their own subrace. They also have a loose collection of travelling lawmen expected to uphold justice in any halfling community and see to the people's well being. Caravans and permanent communities both exist in halfling culture; most communities are fine with their folk coming and going between the two.


Actually even Tolkien had some elves with beards. One of them in fact was a sailor who had quite a long one

----------


## John Campbell

Halflings get racially profiled because everyone knows they're all thieves "expert treasure hunters" _"rogues"_.

Most shops have a "No shoes, no service" sign posted. Because see above.

If a halfling wears shoes, they can't make Stealth checks.

Kobolds are not in any way related to dragons.

Eating kobolds (it's surprising how many of the PCs this actually comes up with) will give you cobalt poisoning.

The goblin life cycle can be measured in rounds. That's why there are still goblins.

No one is really sure whether gnolls actually have a language, or if it's all just meaningless insane cackling.

Dwarves are _Norse_, dammit, not Scottish. 

All hill giants have names that end in "-Bob", "-Jo(e)", or "-Sue".

----------


## Hand_of_Vecna

Illithids evolved from humans and their subtle manipulations have made sure that humans are the dominant race.

The thing that was killing them in the far future evolved from Gith.

----------


## hymer

> Kobolds are not in any way related to dragons.


But their massive inferiority complex makes the thought extremely appealing to them. Dragons encourage this nonsense to make kobolds fanatically loyal, disposable minions.




> Illithids evolved from humans and their subtle manipulations have made sure that humans are the dominant race.


And Elans are the missing link. The creation of an elan kills the human, implanting a proto-tadpole. Elans are usually not aware of this themselves.

Gee, my inventions don't seem all that nice, do they?  :Small Amused:

----------


## Millstone85

Primus used to be a metal primordial who was also an epic artificer. The first great modron march successfully conquered the outer plane of pure law.

Carceri was the first lower plane. Devils are an offshoot of its original jailers, and demons of its original inmates.

Benevolent great old ones exist. But these entities rarely manifest in the planes, for they know their mere presence would warp matter and minds. Here are a few of them:
The Ophanim, with its many concentric flaming wheels sprouting wings with eyes for feathers.The Flumph Seer Magnum, who protectively enfolds the Great Wheel in its noodly appendages.The Purring Pit of Flerken, simply the most ad'awrable eldritch horror. Beware the claws, though.
Her Serenity the Lady of Pain is also a GOO. She would reabsorb the Great Wheel if she stepped out of the Cage.

Now that "planes" from _Magic: The Gathering_ are being adapted to 5e D&D, the Aether is totally another name for _Spelljammer_'s Phlogiston.

Each crystal sphere has its own echo in the Feywild and in the Shadowfell.

Shardminds self-assemble from the debris of crystal spheres.

The creator of the couatls was, of course, Quetzalcoatl. He was also the lone good-aligned god of the yuan-ti.

Gnomes are descended from dwarves who settled in the Feywild.

Illithids are the degenerate descendants of aboleths.

No wizard made the owlbear. It is in fact related to the duckbeaver, also known as the platypus. Nature is just weird like that.

----------


## Bohandas

*Kobolds are a mix of dragon, goblin, and chihuahua

*Mustard gas is used in place of mustard in the abyss

*Slavery is the abyss is exclusively of the locked-up-in-some-guy's-basement variety. Chattel slavery is dependent on there being someone around who will help you recapture escapees instead of just laughing at your sorry *** or impulsively killing them. (Do bear in mind however that Grazzt's basement encompasses two entire layers of the plane, so him having a lot of slaves isn't inconsistent with this.)

*The Nine Hells have an extreme form of intellectual property law in which all of the words in the Infernal language, and even the individual letters, have owners and you run up a tab by talking or writing. The Abyssal language uses infernal script mostly to deliberately flout this.

*Gwynharwyf talks and acts like the title character from "Unikitty!"

*Powerful outer planar beings, especially when they aren't being observed, spend much of their time in some sort of a teance or stupor. Most deities only have about enough interesting stories about to cover a human lifetime but are far older than that and by all rights should be more interesting.

*the outer planes aren't so much infinite as they are unlimited. They represent alignments and ideals and empty ininhabited spaces can't really do that, and since the multiverse began a finite amount of time in the past there aren't enough sould to saturate an infinite plane. If the outer planes were fully realized in addition to being infinite then most astral color pools would lead to nowhere. Mount Celestia doesn't need a sky that goes on forever and Bytopia and Arcadia don't need ground that is infinitely deep. They do however need to be able to expand however far that they need to. The majority of the outer planes merely exist _in potentia_ until explored or settled. If the outer planes were fully realized in addition to being infinite then most astral color pools would lead to nowhere

*Many structures and features on the planes were not built by either man or god, nor by conventional natural forces, but are rather manifestations of the plane itself. Crack houses have been known to spontaneously generate in the Abyss, and areas of Elysium have been noted to be beautifying themselves. This usually happens when nobody is looking.

*There is, in general, a very strong observer effect on the planes

*The Battle of Pesh was fought using magically enhanced weapons of mass destruction and other magics and technologies that have subsequently been lost.

*Pesh was not an area on Oreth, but a nearby planet that was pulverized into the nearby asteroid field (The Grinder) during the battle

*Olidammara's demesne in Ysgard is located between Big Rock Candy Mountain and Gangsta's Paradise

----------


## King of Nowhere

Vecna is not worshipped in dark basements by a handful of power-hungry cultists. Figuring out that more worshippers equal more power, he refluffed himself as a god of knowledge with a practical approach towards [evil] spells, and he is worshipped openly.
He may be having darker plans, though.

When alive, vecna was a kind of brilliant-but-lazy-and-easlily-distracted guy, quite like xykon.

In lands dominated by hextor, they wanted the peasant to be even poorer than usual, so they invented tin coins and lead coins, worth a fraction of a copper. If you own copper in hextor's lands, most people will consider you filthy rich.

In hextor's land, to make the people work more, they increased the lenght of the week. There is still only one sunday. Every once in a while, a leader will add another day to the week.
Currently they have 23 days, and counting. The extra days are all called monday, because everyone hates mondays.

The merchants of magic items are all members of a very powerful guild with a strong policy of mutual protection and retaliation.
How else would they avoid getting robbed by high level adventurers?
This also explains wht they all sell and buy for the same prices: monopolistic regime.

----------


## Particle_Man

Wait, I thought illithids being far future beings descended from aboleths was already canon.

----------


## Millstone85

Most of a god's power does not come from their worship. Rather, a god is the epic cleric of an ideal. This is why they are known as "god of [insert concept here]". The ideal itself needs believers. It manifests as a realm on an outer plane, where the gods of that ideal take residence. Having followers is still very important to a god, because that more personal faith anchors them to a humanoid sense of self. Without it, a god becomes stuck in the trance mentioned by Bohandas, their body eventually turning to astral stone.

Annam the All-Father and Moradin the All-Father are one and the same. After forsaking the giants, he made the dwarves. Of course, both races would call this a heresy.

Toril's current god of death is Charname, also known as Gorion's Ward and the Slayer of Sarevok. After the final showdown, he obviously chose godhood, dubious that the solars could truly lock away the great ocean of blood. And so Bhaal remains dead, because I didn't play through _Baldur's Gate_, _Siege of Dragonspear_, _Shadows of Amn_, and _Throne of Bhaal_, just for a 5e pantheon table to tell me "Lol, murder-daddy be back".




> the outer planes aren't so much infinite as they are unlimited. They represent alignments and ideals and empty ininhabited spaces can't really do that, and since the multiverse began a finite amount of time in the past there aren't enough sould to saturate an infinite plane. If the outer planes were fully realized in addition to being infinite then most astral color pools would lead to nowhere. Mount Celestia doesn't need a sky that goes on forever and Bytopia and Arcadia don't need ground that is infinitely deep. They do however need to be able to expand however far that they need to. The majority of the outer planes merely exist _in potentia_ until explored or settled.


Something similar is canon in 5e. The Outer Planes are essentially dreamscapes. Depending on your state of mind and the will of the powers that be, you could circle the base of Mount Celestia in a single day, or keep finding kingdom after kingdom. The Outer Planes are also said to have purely spiritual layers, beyond human senses and experiences, where distance is truly meaningless.




> Wait, I thought illithids being far future beings descended from aboleths was already canon.


That's possible. I think D&D has had several versions of the illithids' origins.

----------


## Bohandas

People from other planar metropolises are unimpressed by Sigil. Much like how people from LA are unimpressed by New York and vice versa.

----------


## Hugh Mann

At some point all the gods got together and fixed the prices of all goods and services. They also meet every few centuries to vote on price changes.

----------


## Constructman

> People from other planar metropolises are unimpressed by Sigil. Much like how people from LA are unimpressed by New York and vice versa.


What other metropolises are there? I know the City of Brass is one, but what others have been mentioned?

----------


## JMS

> What other metropolises are there? I know the City of Brass is one, but what others have been mentioned?


4e had the bright city of Hevestar, home of the deities of civilization, the sun, and knowledge. Multiple in the 9 Hells, Grazzit's layers in the abyss, and a few more (Probably one on Mt. Celestia, IIRC)

----------


## Bohandas

There's also the City of Union, and the Githyanki capital, and the ekolid city of Zionyn in the Abyss, and the demesnes of the greater deities,

EDIT:
And also the Great Dismal Delve, the City of Glass, the Heavenly City of Yetsira, the Formian Central Hive-City, The goblin fortress cube Clangor, Dis, Grenpoli, Jangling Hiter, the Crawling City, etc.

----------


## Spore

Vancian magic was introduced to the world in a pact between Mystra and Asmodeus' most stingy accountant.

----------


## KillianHawkeye

> Wait, I thought illithids being far future beings descended from aboleths was already canon.


I've never heard the "descended from aboleths" part.

----------


## noob

All forgotten realms gods are deeply evil (just look at what they do and you can not tell me they are not evil) but since it is the devils which invented the alignment detection spells to cause acts of hatred (which is why orcs pings evil: it is intended to make people hate orcs) they decided to make some gods ping good so that good people would still consider the possibility of following gods instead of becoming ur priests to weaken the gods. (it is also due to the devils that the mentality that makes ur priests pings evil since devils chose what pings evil and what pings good)

----------


## Jay R

The entire multiverse was created by a demented being as a place for his or her friends to amuse themselves.  Most creatures only exist for his friends to slay by proxy, using creatures of their own.

The "gods" are as much a plaything of this entity as any other creature.

----------


## Velaryon

My personal canon: The Spellplague never happened in the Forgotten Realms, and nothing that takes place after it exists.

Ravenloft exists as its own demiplane, and while some pieces of it may have been drawn from other settings, they are no longer part of those places.





> Vecna's phylactery *is* the Sword Of Kas.  Think about it, Vecna was an epic-level lich by all accounts, and he made the sword for Kas because he trusted him.  A FIghter, even a Vampire one, being able to permanently maim a lich of Vecna's caliber is absurd.  So why then, did a sword that _Vecna crafted_ manage to cut through all of his magical defenses and cut off his hand and gouge out his eye?  Simple, because none of Vecna's magical defneses worked against the sword, because the sword contained Vecna's soul, and all those protection spells considered the soul a part of the caster who placed them.  The reason the Sword has intelligence and hates Vecna and all his servants?  Because Vecna's ego was so great.  The soul in the sword resents that it is not in possession of all of Vecna's power and all that he is, believing itself to be as powerful and deserving, if not more so.





> *Slavery is the abyss is exclusively of the locked-up-in-some-guy's-basement variety. Chattel slavery is dependent on there being someone around who will help you recapture escapees instead of just laughing at your sorry *** or impulsively killing them. (Do bear in mind however that Grazzt's basement encompasses two entire layers of the plane, so him having a lot of slaves isn't inconsistent with this.)
> 
> *The Nine Hells have an extreme form of intellectual property law in which all of the words in the Infernal language, and even the individual letters, have owners and you run up a tab by talking or writing. The Abyssal language uses infernal script mostly to deliberately flout this.


I especially love these and may well add them to my own personal canon.

----------


## Hand_of_Vecna

> My personal canon: The Spellplague never happened in the Forgotten Realms, and nothing that takes place after it exists.


That isn't Canon? What else is "Demiplane of Dread" supposed to mean? In _I Strahd_ we see the process of Barovia becoming part of Ravenloft and in at least one high level adventure perma-killing a Domain Lord can return the realm to it's native Prime. Was Ravenloft defanged in a newer edition?

----------


## Vizzerdrix

Halflings refer to other races as twicelings in a negative way. They also consider hobbit to be a fight on sight level insult.

----------


## Bohandas

*Halflings don't actually exist. That's why they're so non-integral to the standard settings that yhey could be removed without affecting anything; they're merely a shared delusion. And the ones that aren't hallucinations are actually heavily medicated kender

----------


## John Campbell

> But their massive inferiority complex makes the thought extremely appealing to them. Dragons encourage this nonsense to make kobolds fanatically loyal, disposable minions.


I run kobolds as the old-school vaguely canine humanoids, not this new-fangled mini-draconian nonsense, so the notion that they're dragon-kin is absurd on the face of it.

----------


## Bohandas

*Sigil's relevance is entirely powered by the self-importance of its inhabitants. It is important only because they believe it is; only because of the power of belief.

*Xoriot is not a true plane, but rather a hole in Eberron's multiverse.

*The Ethereal plane still connects between the material and elemental planes just like it did in the old editions. It's still classed as a transitive plane, so it must go somewhere.

*"Saint" is Saint Cuthbert's given name. As a title it would make exactly zero sense in context.

*In the Nine Hells nearly everything is illegal, but if you fill out the right forms you can get a permit to do anything.

*The reason Geryon was deposed after the reckoning despite the fact that he was the only lord who did not rebel against Asmodeus is because he had already filled out and filed a notice of intent to rebel but did not follow througn on it.

*Most of the minions of most abyssal lords are more like groupies and hangers-on than actual underlings who follow orders. They follow the more powerful demon around and sometimes follow suggestions because entertainingly tragic things happen in the more powerful demon's vicinity and they want to see and to contribute to the awfulness and mayhem

----------


## Particle_Man

> The entire multiverse was created by a demented being as a place for his or her friends to amuse themselves.  Most creatures only exist for his friends to slay by proxy, using creatures of their own.
> 
> The "gods" are as much a plaything of this entity as any other creature.


I know that Gary Gygax wasn't perfect but calling him demented seems a little harsh.   :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Luccan

*Most often, (good) Paladins retire after an adventure or four. Being extremely hard to kill at low levels, coupled with most others' ability to die _really_ fast kind of destroys the romance of adventure and can quite often lead to crises of faith ("Why did all my friends die and I lived? Did I fail my deity or did they fail me?" sorta thing). Plus, by then they've usually defeated whatever minor evil they were tasked with destroying in the first place; Good deities rarely expect a lifetime of service in such a soul crushing and dangerous field as "ultimate Good guy".

----------


## Millstone85

> Ravenloft exists as its own demiplane, and while some pieces of it may have been drawn from other settings, they are no longer part of those places.





> That isn't Canon? What else is "Demiplane of Dread" supposed to mean? In _I Strahd_ we see the process of Barovia becoming part of Ravenloft and in at least one high level adventure perma-killing a Domain Lord can return the realm to it's native Prime. Was Ravenloft defanged in a newer edition?


In a sense, the Demiplane of Dread doesn't exist in 4e and 5e. Rather, places like the valley of Barovia are now referred to as the Domains of Dread, one of the features of a plane called the Shadowfell. They, however, still largely function as their own thing. 4e calls them isolated pockets. 5e calls them demiplanes. Really, it is more like the Shadowfell has misty portals to them.

Regarding regions being absorbed into _Ravenloft_, I am not sure what the problem is.




> The Ethereal plane still connects between the material and elemental planes just like it did in the old editions. It's still classed as a transitive plane, so it must go somewhere.


That's canon in 5e.

----------


## Jay R

> Originally Posted by Jay R
> 
> 
> The entire multiverse was created by a demented being as a place for his or her friends to amuse themselves.  Most creatures only exist for his friends to slay by proxy, using creatures of their own.
> 
> The "gods" are as much a plaything of this entity as any other creature.
> 
> 
> I know that Gary Gygax wasn't perfect but calling him demented seems a little harsh.


I actually meant the DM of each game  -- my game in particular.

[Besides, Arneson invented the hobby, not Gygax.]

----------


## Malphegor

Wee Jas became the Raven Queen during the vague timeline from 3e to 4e is a fairly popular theory that I've never been 100% happy with but have accepted. She slowly lost her Suloise-origins and became a more generic Morrigan-lite entity as more of her worship came from non-Suel originating peoples on planes other than Greyhawk. (I'm not sure if D&D gods are influenced by their followers much, it feels right but I may be mistaken)

We all know of Oerth and Earth, but there are many other <letters>-rth universes out there, from Derth, to Hearth, all the way up to Zerth. The spelling is often inconsistent. (I think this IS canon somewhere but I can't find where)


The inventor of Grease never considered its amazingly versatile use in battle, and mostly thought it was a fun prank spell.

----------


## NontheistCleric

Male hags exist, but because the Monster Manual entry (at least in 3.5) states that all hags look like old females, the males also look like old females.

Some suffer body dysphoria over this and cut or burn off their female features.

----------


## SunderedWorldDM

After some PC shenanigans, Orcus was ousted as a demon lord and instead became a Shadowfell entity, rival to the Raven Queen. A PC ascended to become a demon lord instead, and now Korren rules Thatanos.

----------


## Bohandas

> Male hags exist, but because the Monster Manual entry (at least in 3.5) states that all hags look like old females, the males also look like old females.
> 
> Some suffer body dysphoria over this and cut or burn off their female features.


And others marry gnoll women

----------


## Yora

Hags are female ogres.

Both are grotesque versions of humans that capture and eat people. Males display strength and physical violence, and females use lies and deception.

----------


## hymer

> Hags are female ogres.
> 
> Both are grotesque versions of humans that capture and eat people. Males display strength and physical violence, and females use lies and deception.


I love that! I'm definitely stealing it.

----------


## Eldan

> Hags are female ogres.
> 
> Both are grotesque versions of humans that capture and eat people. Males display strength and physical violence, and females use lies and deception.


How would you say the Ogre Magus fits into this?

----------


## Beleriphon

> How would you say the Ogre Magus fits into this?


Rename it the oni, and go with that. Its a similar, but distinct creature that uses its superficial similarities to ogres to rule over a clan.

OR

If a hag breeds with an ogre it produces an ogre mage, however hags being hags don't actually want something that can both outwit them and out-pummel them.

----------


## Pronounceable

Raven Queen is Kelemvor. He got sick of all that wall bull**** and changed his name and moved away.

Asmodeus is an empty showboat claiming everything always goes just as planned no matter what happens.

----------


## Bohandas

*Obryiths are slightly more chaotic than evil, loumaras are slightly more evil than chaotic, and tanari are relatibely evenly mixed

*Bel and the Dark Eight operate out of a star fort called "The Pentagram"




> *Slavery is the abyss is exclusively of the locked-up-in-some-guy's-basement variety. Chattel slavery is dependent on there being someone around who will help you recapture escapees instead of just laughing at your sorry *** or impulsively killing them. (Do bear in mind however that Grazzt's basement encompasses two entire layers of the plane, so him having a lot of slaves isn't inconsistent with this.)


*Demons, in fact, fall generally into the anti-slavery camp when it comes to chattel slavery since chattel slavery falls somewhat firmly in the lawful-evil quadrant along with the hated baatezu

*Demons are actually better than celestials at righting lawful-evil type institutional wrongs. For a certain value of "righting" for any way. Celestials worry about avoiding things like civilian casualties, or collateral damage, or collapsing the entire economy plunging the land into famine and chaos, or killing the people they're supposed to be helping. To demons however these are all bonuses, which greatly expands their options, and plunging the land into eternal famine and chaos greatly impedes the local government's ability to enforce tyrannical policies going forward.

----------


## Millstone85

Plane shifting is actually time travel.

The history of the universe goes like so:
Elemental Era
(Inner Planes)

Time of Faeries
(Feywild)

Draconic Reign
(Prime Material)

Time of Dust
(Shadowfell)

Astral Age
(Outer Planes)


Some periods see the coexistence of alternate timelines. The universe begins with a fireball, but also with a storm. It ends with everything going to Hell, but also to Heaven.

The Time of Dust and the Astral Age are the death and the afterlife of the universe itself.

The Ethereal is made of time. In the Astral Age, it is replaced by something even more abstract.

Travellers usually find themselves too far in the future or the past for paradoxes to occur. Otherwise, they become the target of the quaruts, the inevitables of causality, which come from the cosmic clock that is Mechanus. Vague omens are, however, fairly common.

Limbo is an attempt to bring about a new elemental era. Or would it be the very same Elemental Era, making time a circle?

Many theories exist on the nature of the Far Realm. Is it a previous iteration of the universe? Is it a set of timelines based on "impossible" outcomes? Is it outside of time? Is it a single name mistakenly given to all these things?

----------


## Bohandas

*Instead of acting hobbit-like, halflings all have the personality and mannerisms of crime boss Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.

Edit:
And they double down hard on any traits where hobbits and El Chapo overlap (ie. tunnels, questionable recreational plant crops, etc)

----------


## PostMortemCP

The berserk from the deities and demigods book in 3.5 is not only the originator of lycanthropy, the bear warrior and barbarians as a whole but they are the best prestige class for anyone wanting to become any form of lychanthrope or a frenzy berserker without the serious drawbacks  This is both a flavor, game balancing and head canon reason of why Berzerks normally restricted to Nordic style characters worship Nordic deities should be the highest regarded most feared and aimed for in any barbarians play book. Why become a werewolf or were bear when bird is now an option and is literally a rage frenzy powerhouse.

----------


## Malphegor

Tieflings and Tanarruks have multiple origins, but the oldest were likely Acolytes of the Skin, cocaine wizards who willingly took on the facets of infernal biology by letting themselves be inhabited by a devil of demon. Breeding with devils directly to create half fiends and proper subspecies that self reproduce came later.

Due to the existence of interdimensional travel including access to the afterlifes of various faiths, something exists to stop the dead staging prison breaks from the afterlife on the regular.

There are multiple versions of the named characters based on real writers characters. This is why the big
wizards never mention the satelite with portals to a technologically current day Earth.


There are still AD&D (I think) Apocalypse Stones, theyre just really boring looking and hard to activate nowadays.

Beholders are getting more ferocious across editions because they reproduce by dreaming of themselves being tougher versions of themselves. They used to be quite happy and friendly chaps, but each fight makes the next generation more evil, more powerful, more aggressive.

----------


## Âmesang

> We all know of Oerth and Earth, but there are many other <letters>-rth universes out there, from Derth, to Hearth, all the way up to Zerth. The spelling is often inconsistent. (I think this IS canon somewhere but I can't find where)


From Gygax himself (see his article in _POLYHEDRON #21 Nov 1984_, p.9, and later mentioned in _Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk_, p.91) the official worlds connected to Oerth were Earth, Aerth (detailed in the _Epic of Ærth_ sourcebook for Gygax's Dangerous Journeys roleplaying game), Yarth (the _Conan/Kull_-like setting for Gygax's _Sagard the Barbarian_ choose-your-own-adventure books), and Uerth (a mirror-version of Oerth detailed in _Expedition_).

Gygax also detailed a sixth world, "Learth" (or "Lejendary Earth") from his Lejendary Adventure roleplaying game. However, since it wasn't grouped together with Aerth, Earth, Oerth, Uerth, and Yarth, I treated the "Learth" side of a "Gygaxian cubic gate" as being scarred/cracked/broken/otherwise inoperable.

with all of that said, your idea regarding the spread of Wee Jas' influence reminded me of her inclusion as an Earthen religion in d20 Modern.  :Small Smile: 

(Also, are details mentioned in a _DUNGEON MASTER'S Guide_ considered canon? 'Cause I like how the 5e _DMG_ [p.41] makes mention of the module "City Beyond the Gate," where adventurers travel to London to recover the _Mace of St. Cuthbert_, as well as Ed Greenwood's series of short stories, "The Wizards Three," where Mordenkainen, Elminster of Shadowdale, and Dalamar the Dark [usually] would travel to Earth to talk shop at Ed's house.)

----------


## Bohandas

*The courts in Woeful Escrand in the Abyss operate more like gameshows than proper courtrooms

*The unseen "Dark Powers" who control the Demiplane of Dread look and sound like Rod Sterling

*Vecna got out of the Demiplane of Dread, and into Sigil, by cutting through the Far Realm instead of going via the Astral ot Ethereal planes

----------


## noob

In earth weapons are deadlier than those written in the dmg and chtulu is a recurrent problem.

----------


## Millstone85

> The unseen "Dark Powers" who control the Demiplane of Dread look and sound like Rod Serling


Submitted for your approval, a portrait of Strahd von Zarovich, once a conqueror of lands and hearts, now scarred and resenting younger men. The woman he covets is putting on her bridal garments, but for his brother. In a moment, we will offer Strahd the deal of a lifetime, a new dawn in place of dusk. Of course, those can be difficult to tell apart, here in the Twilight Zone.

----------


## Mark Hall

> *The unseen "Dark Powers" who control the Demiplane of Dread look and sound like Rod Sterling





> Submitted for your approval, a portrait of Strahd von Zarovich, once a conqueror of lands and hearts, now scarred and resenting younger men. The woman he covets is putting on her bridal garments, but for his brother. In a moment, we will offer Strahd the deal of a lifetime, a new dawn in place of dusk. Of course, those can be difficult to tell apart, here in the Twilight Zone.


Well, this is too cool NOT to be true.

But, juxtaposition is now making me think of being Mazed by the Lady of Pain as being "sent to the cornfield."

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

Personal head canon:

The "multiverse" is a lie. More specifically, a partial truth.

The _real_ truth (the one the gods don't want people to know) is that the regular D&D multiverse with the Great Wheel and all that, is merely one of an uncountable infinity of such universes, all with different cosmologies, laws, etc. All these are embedded in the Far Realms, which is the _real_ background, and is sentient. The creators of each of these realms (as well as all the assorted Far Realms denizens) are fragments of the Dreaming Dark (the sleeping mind of the Far Realms itself), created a timeless eternity ago when the Dark dreamed of Self and Other. Some of these Dreamers settled down to create worlds (singly or in concert); others still wander and meddle. Some malevolent (from the perspective of the Dream-bound), some not. All alien. Transit between these realms may be possible, but it's a matter of thought and will, not "magic" or "science". 

Distance in this meta-realm is philosophical and conceptual. Worlds that are "similar" cluster together (in a sense), while others spread throughout infinite "space".

*All* worlds that can be conceived of exist. Some are broken fragments, incapable of coherent existence. Others are infinitely large (like the D&D multiverse). Our "real world" as well is among these Dreams.

----------


## noob

> Personal head canon:
> 
> The "multiverse" is a lie. More specifically, a partial truth.
> 
> The _real_ truth (the one the gods don't want people to know) is that the regular D&D multiverse with the Great Wheel and all that, is merely one of an uncountable infinity of such universes, all with different cosmologies, laws, etc. All these are embedded in the Far Realms, which is the _real_ background, and is sentient. The creators of each of these realms (as well as all the assorted Far Realms denizens) are fragments of the Dreaming Dark (the sleeping mind of the Far Realms itself), created a timeless eternity ago when the Dark dreamed of Self and Other. Some of these Dreamers settled down to create worlds (singly or in concert); others still wander and meddle. Some malevolent (from the perspective of the Dream-bound), some not. All alien. Transit between these realms may be possible, but it's a matter of thought and will, not "magic" or "science". 
> 
> Distance in this meta-realm is philosophical and conceptual. Worlds that are "similar" cluster together (in a sense), while others spread throughout infinite "space".
> 
> *All* worlds that can be conceived of exist. Some are broken fragments, incapable of coherent existence. Others are infinitely large (like the D&D multiverse). Our "real world" as well is among these Dreams.





> *All* worlds that can be conceived of exist


not exactly true: or else everyone could imagine "a functional world where there is a super cool thing that is able to come in my world and help me and which is going to do so in 5 seconds from my time" and due to them being able to conceive it then it would exist and come in five seconds to help this person.

Or people in normal worlds are unable to imagine such kind of things.

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

> not exactly true: or else everyone could imagine "a functional world where there is a super cool thing that is able to come in my world and help me and which is going to do so in 5 seconds from my time" and due to them being able to conceive it then it would exist and come in five seconds to help this person.
> 
> Or people in normal worlds are unable to imagine such kind of things.


Such a world may exist. But the only ones capable of bringing new worlds into existence are the Dreamers, whose dreams we are. The individuals within a dream may (or may not) have power to shape their own dream (depending on the will of the Dreamer), but they can't affect other Dreams without going there and acting on that other Dream's terms. Most Dreams have exclusion rules that limit or forbid transit between Dreams, and force anything that _does_ transit to take on particular metaphysical characteristics. Forces and beings from without tend to be corrosive to the things within, as their laws of being conflict with the local laws of being.

My point was that all the worlds both fictional and real slot into this meta-landscape. Not _literally_ everything that can be conceived of, but more figuratively.

----------


## Millstone85

> snip





> "a functional world where there is a super cool thing that is able to come in my world and help me and which is going to do so in 5 seconds from my time"


This reminds me of _The Chronicles of Amber_.

----------


## noob

> This reminds me of _The Chronicles of Amber_.


I mentioned that because it is a common idea and so not having it happen when everything exists at once is weird.

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

> This reminds me of _The Chronicles of Amber_.


Amber is an example of a world where that works just fine, because the dreamer there allowed it. In others, the dreamer decided that they didn't want that to work. From the perspective of someone in one of these worlds, only their world exists. Cross dream activity isn't easy.*

* Except as thoughts from outside. Possibly as imagination or dreams. Since everything is part of the Dreaming Dark, everything exists conceptually and can interact that way. Conceptual space is weird, man.

----------


## Millstone85

> I mentioned that because it is a common idea and so not having it happen when everything exists at once is weird.


I think it is a form of omnipotence paradox:
All imaginable worlds exist, no exceptions.Imagine a wish-granting world, able to send cool stuff to all other worlds, no exceptions.Imagine a world that is impermeable to anything sent from other worlds, no exceptions.

----------


## Velaryon

> That isn't Canon? What else is "Demiplane of Dread" supposed to mean? In _I Strahd_ we see the process of Barovia becoming part of Ravenloft and in at least one high level adventure perma-killing a Domain Lord can return the realm to it's native Prime. Was Ravenloft defanged in a newer edition?


So you quoted the Forgotten Realms part of my post but then replied to the Ravenloft part.  Millstone85 touched on this issue but I thought I would expand on it since I'm the one who put forth my headcanon on this topic.

My headcanon is that the Demiplane of Dread is a full setting, not a series of isolated lands that can be plugged in to other worlds all willy-nilly. I know that's how they began with the original Ravenloft adventure, but I preferred the full expanded setting, complete with all those other lands. Unfortunately, to my knowledge that hasn't existed since 3.5 edition, when the setting was licensed out to a third party.  Since recovering the license, all WotC has done with it to my knowledge is remake the original Strahd adventure in Barovia a couple of times.  

To me, Barovia is one nation among many, alongside Darkon, Mordent, Sithicus, and a bunch of others. None of those might as well exist, for all Wizards has done with them.

----------


## Bohandas

> Plane shifting is actually time travel.
> 
> The history of the universe goes like so:
> Elemental Era
> (Inner Planes)
> 
> Time of Faeries
> (Feywild)
> 
> ...


This is clever, I really like this

----------


## Cliff Sedge

A minor point: Malakuth Tabruiir and Amryyr (of Skullport) are homosexual lovers. 

If this isn't actual Realms canon, it is implied pretty strongly in the books.

----------


## Bohandas

*The Warforged cultists of the Lord of Blades are forbidden from having any sort of gender identity or gender expression. Such things are unbecoming in robot supremacists

*The Lord of Blades sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger in _The Terminator_

*Trolls eat a lot because their regenerative abilities are metabolically taxing. This, combined with their poor mental abilities and lack of discipline leand to them attacking livestock, which leads to altervations with ranchers, which leads to their regeneration being needed, which turns into a vicious cycle

----------


## Yora

> *The Warforged cultists of the Lord of Blades are forbidden from having any sort of gender identity or gender expression. Such things are unbecoming in robot supremacists


"And they will march eternal, shiny and chrome."

----------


## Eldan

I personally dislike any indication that Graz'zt is not a full-blooded demon. Especially when it is indicated that he is part Baatezu. Because I dislike the overtone of him being too smart, charming, devious, etc. to be a demon. Demons can just as much be charming, intelligent or planning long term as devils.

----------


## Mark Hall

> A minor point: Malakuth Tabruiir and Amryyr (of Skullport) are homosexual lovers. 
> 
> If this isn't actual Realms canon, it is implied pretty strongly in the books.


If Ed Greenwood had anything to say about them, they probably are. He's been queering up the Realms since he started it.

----------


## Grey Guard

Headcanon stuff is always fun. I have a few.

- Mask is a real wild card in faerunian pantheon politics. In the clashes of good vs. evil, Mask is the evil guy most likely to saddle up with Team Evil, and betray them to Team Good. Or side with Team Good from the get-go. Why? Because the thieving business is always much better when the naive good guys are in charge. Can you imagine Bane in charge? Mask's followers would be losing hands and eyes left and right with that guy running law and punishment.

- There is truth in both Kurtulmak's and Garl Glittergold's telling of events of what befell Kurtulmak's cavern's collapse when he was mortal. This, however, does not change how Kurtulmak feels, and he slays any emissaries the God of the Gnomes sends to try and explain things.

- Militant, Lawful Evil deities like Hextor and Bane oftentimes have positive reputations in many places they have influence. They're often keeping their communities safe (even if the security is heavy-handed). This one's fairly common though, as I understand it.

- The Lawful Good gods don't just leave the Blood War to the Devils. Particularly valorous and orderly gods such as Heironeous from Oerth and Tyr from Toril send mortal and immortal troops to aid the Devils in Avernus as auxiliaries as resources and time allows. They feel the forces of order together have the responsibility to support the war against chaos. Asmodeus may be secretly considering sparing their lives when his plans come to fruition and he overthrows the Good gods. Asmodeus has also allowed marriage between particularly competent mortals and erinyes, as well as offering permanent lodging to them. Publicly it's a reward for service. The public secret is he just hopes to corrupt them.

- Loviatar is extremely tsundere for Ilmater, given their overlap in portfolios, yet completely different approach and dogma.




> If Ed Greenwood had anything to say about them, they probably are. He's been queering up the Realms since he started it.


To be fair, Greenwood's always been pretty randy. Lewd stuff is sprinkled pretty liberally throughout Forgotten Realms. Just read up on the ruler of Silverymoon.

----------


## Bohandas

*Societies that have been influenced by baatezu soul collectors tend to have unnecessarily baroque and byzantine legal systems; this is to maximize the number of people who have either contributed or been complicit whenever a person is sentenced to death for somehing trivial

*Similarly, baatezu influenced societies often use public stoning as a means of execution. This allows an entire crowd to gain significant lawful evil karma at once

*Devil-influenced societies also tend to have a focus on fertility. People are encouraged to have as many children as possible and forbidden from using birth control. This maximizes the number of potential souls available to corrupt.

*Devil influenced societies also generate LE karma, shorten lifespans, and stabilize their hold on areas by engineerig periodic revolutions that don't change anything. The people mistrustful of the old regime are pacified and are now complicit in the new regime

*That's why they call it 'revolution'. Because it takes you back to where you startes

*The non-lawful alignment requirement for bards represents a tendency toward celebrity style erratic behavior

*generally divine magic manipulates the world in a top-down fashion and arcane magic manipulates it in a bottom-up fashion

*Zagyg could mop the floor with Elminster

----------


## Dragonexx

The Lady of Pain actually isn't all that powerful. She only retains her position because the nature of Sigil prevents anyone strong enough to challenge her from entering.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

That the Mystaran cosmology and the Great Wheel cosmology are alternate-timeline versions of each other, that the conflict between Law and Chaos is metacommentary on the split between BECMI and AD&D, and that the 4e cosmology is another timeline offshoot and metacommentary as the multiverse fractures further.

This is going to be long, and a little bit crazy, so buckle up, kids.  Spoilered for wall o' text.

*Spoiler*
Show

*Canon*
So, as Planescape fans know, the War of Law and Chaos happened roughly a bajillion years ago, between the forces of Chaos who wanted the multiverse to continue to exist in a mutable, formless state and the forces of Law who wanted reality to function according to natural laws, and the Law side eventually won.  Also roughly a bajillion years ago, some indeterminate amount of time before the War, the cosmology preceding the Great Wheel was destroyed somehow, with only a few survivors managing to make it to the Great Wheel (notably the leShay and draedens).

That seems a bit fishy to me--old cosmology dies, everything trundles along for a few thousand years, _then_ a multiverse-shaking conflict breaks out?  Why wouldn't the war over reality start as soon as the old order died off?  Plus, the official timeline talks about fundamental forces of Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, and Neutrality arising before the War, yet we know from the lore about the War itself that it was purely a Law/Chaos conflict with Neutrality in the middle; Good and Evil as forces hadn't arisen yet.  Seems contradictory--probably Yugoloth propaganda.

Now, shifting over to Mystara, you have a beginning-of-the-multiverse conflict that's eerily similar: where Planescape had deities/planar lords of the Inner Planes of elements and the Outer Planes of order and Law fighting their opposites on the side of formless Chaos, Mystara has Immortals of the material spheres of Energy and Matter and immaterial spheres of Thought and Time fighting their opposites in the form of the Entities of the Void between the Stars and Immortals of the sphere of Entropy.  For a supposedly entirely different previous cosmology, the parallels are striking.

And shifting out of character for a moment, the similarity there is due to the cosmologies of Mystara (in BECMI) and Planescape (in AD&D) both deriving from ideas in earlier D&D, though taken in quite different directions based on the demands on the game that made them split in the first place.  The more complex system has a more complex and codified cosmology with a strong focus on the subsystems AD&D has and the other lacks (like two-axis alignment), while the less complex setting has a deep but flexible and largely un-filled-in cosmology focusing on the Immortals rules unique to BECMI.

*Headcanon: BECMI vs. AD&D*
Suppose that the Planescape timeline (which is already mostly extrapolation from possibly-mistaken dates from in-character blurbs in Planescape setting books) gets the timing wrong, and in fact the old cosmology "dies" at the same time the War of Law and Chaos starts.  There wasn't a Great Wheel hanging around for a few millennia before the War, nor did existence implode into nothingness with the last cosmology.  Rather, suppose that originally there was a proto-cosmology (that of OD&D, of course) in which alignments, elements, planes etc. existed but not in any state that modern beings would recognize. Originally, no concepts or substances were dominant over any others, though the alignments of Law, Neutrality, and Chaos were the strongest after a fashion, and the "supreme beings" (those beings that would later become known as Old Ones or Overpowers) were doing whatever it is that they do for fun, including creating the "powers" (those beings that would later become known as Immortals or deities/planar lords). Any creatures existing "before the multiverse" or "from the last multiverse" from the Great Wheel perspective, like draedens and leShay, would have come into being during this time along with various really-bleeping-old Great Wheel creatures like the Vaati, obyriths, and so forth.

Eventually Law, Neutrality, and Chaos started to come into conflict, and when the War of Law and Chaos broke out there was a three-way branching into different realities where Law, Neutrality, or Chaos was dominant (possibly intentional on the part of the supreme beings), each becoming a separate cosmology in a separate dimension and timeline.

AD&D is the timeline where Law was dominant, the War proceeded with the well-known organized forces, defined battles, and so forth of Planescape history, and Law won in the end, eventually shaping the multiverse into the highly-ordered alignment-based Great Wheel cosmology.  The proto-cosmology didn't "die" in one cataclysmic event (though beings like the leShay may have been able to perceive the split in reality and interpret it as such, and an inability for chronomancers and such to go back past the point might give them that impression as well), but rather everything distinctly Mystaran either never arose during this version of the War or was destroyed or wiped out at some point on this timeline, and the integral nature of belief and faith in the Great Wheel caused the supreme beings and powers to end up as overpowers and deities/planar lords, respectively, and reinforce the Great Wheel's nature in a positive feedback loop.

BECMI is the timeline where Neutrality was dominant, the War never saw decisive victories or defeats and Law and Chaos fought until both sides were either worn down into a draw or forced into a truce by nascent powers of Neutrality, so the cosmology evolved in a much more balanced form and eventually became the Mystaran cosmology. In a reverse of the AD&D scenario, everything distinctly Planescape never arose or was destroyed in this timeline, and the greatly diminished prominence of faith and alignment caused the supreme beings and powers to end up as Old Ones and Immortals. Most of the original powers died off during the War because it dragged on so long with so many casualties, meaning that all current Mystaran Immortals are ascended mortals unaware of the proto-cosmology and so the current set think that Immortals have to come from mortals, with the obscure mentions of non-ascended Immortals being dismissed as myth.

What of the timeline where Chaos was dominant, and quickly won the War (assuming that a "war" as such even happened in the first place)?  Well, the inhabitants of the Law timeline know it as the Far Realm and the inhabitants of the Neutrality timeline know it as the Dimension of Nightmares.  :Small Amused:  The Far Realm seems utterly alien and alignment-less rather than Chaotic to Great Wheel inhabitants because the "Chaos" the Great Wheel knows and loves is really lowercase-c chaos, constrained by the rules of (and seen through the lens of) Law, while the Far Realm is Chaos on its own terms, a reality that is but cannot be, always will be and has never been.  Meanwhile, the Dimension of Nightmares is somewhat less hostile to Mystara and its inhabitants because Mystara's cosmology isn't quite so fundamentally opposed to it, so that while the Dimension of Nightmares is still intensely alien to Mystara it isn't mind-breakingly incomprehensible to it the way the Far Realm is to the Great Wheel.

And of course, to continue the metacommentary, if Law is rules-heavy stats-for-everything AD&D and Neutrality is rules-medium lots-of-DM-rulings-required BECMI, Chaos being a no-rules stuff-just-happens blob of freeform RP, random tables, and DM fiat fits in nicely.  :Small Cool: 

*Headcanon: 4e*
But there is a second timeline in which neither Law nor Chaos won the war, for there are two kinds of Neutrality.  The Mystaran timeline embodies the kind of Neutrality that avoids extremes of either Law or Chaos because it views itself as a valid third ethical and cosmological option alongside the other two, but this fourth timeline (or fourth edition, one might say) embodies the kind of Neutrality that maximizes Law _and_ Chaos because it views both ends of any extreme as equally valid and necessary.  Rather than Law and Chaos coming to an eventual compromise brokered by Neutrality, in this multiverse Law and Chaos fought until Neutrality was eliminated, and Law and Chaos existed alongside each other in pockets such that the multiverse was generally ordered according to Law's design and contains more and stronger Law than even the Great Wheel, but Chaos is strong and widespread as well and its influence left it a cruel and broken mockery of the Great Wheel.  (This multiverse actually arose long after the others, its War continuing long after the others' ended, but retrocontinuity allows for it to branch off the proto-cosmology at the same point in time.)

Where the Wheel has Inner Planes which are a regular geometric arrangement of elemental and energy planes at the poles with an ordered progression of para- and quasi-elemental planes in equal measures between them, the World Axis has a single undifferentiated Inner Plane; where the Wheel's Inner Planes were the domain of the original lords of Law, the Vaati, the heart of the World Axis's elemental plane is a seed of pure Chaos; where the Wheel posits gods and planar lords on both sides of the Law and Chaos war, the World Axis has primordials as essentially the incarnation of Chaotic elementals to further twist the knife in the heart of the Vaati's legacy.

Where the Wheel's Outer Planes are arranged in a symmetrical circle rotating around the "axle" of the Spire and Sigil, the World Axis has destroyed the axle (ironic, for something named after an Axis), shattered the wheel, and sent the planes floating off at random.  Where in the Wheel breaches to the Far Realm are rare and contained and warlocks who draw upon fundamental chaos are rare and weak, in the World Axis warlocks drawing upon the Far Realm are plentiful and totally accepted.

Where the Wheel has Good and Evil to "anchor" and broaden Law and Chaos, the World Axis collapses Good and Evil into Law and Chaos, leaving them so polarized that there is no room for Neutrality, only a lack of alignment with Law or Chaos; where the Wheel has the Ethereal Plane and Plane of Shadow to actualize possibilities (new demiplanes, alternate Primes, and so forth) and allow travel between them, the World Axis has taken the former "chaotic" planes and smashed the Good ones into the Ethereal to create the Feywild and the Evil one into Shadow to create the Shadowfell.

Names of creatures, places, and concepts in the World Axis echo those in the Great Wheel--archons, eladrin, devils, demons, tieflings, warlocks, dragonborn...the list goes on--yet they are nothing alike.  The Prime did not go unaffected, either, its worlds twisted and reflected into near-unrecognizability.  Toril was brought low (its unique history and magic rendered down into chaos by Shar, the embodiment of darkness and entropy whose war with her sister Selûne at Toril's creation mirrors the wider Law/Chaos conflict, and the planet physically and temporally split into two worlds, one of Law and gods and one of Chaos and primortials) while Athas was raised up (magic and life flourishing, harshness dissipating, the desert retreating, and so forth); the Age of Mortals on Krynn marks the abandonment of the world by the gods and on Eberron the Draconic Prophecy is defied at every turn, the natural order of those worlds giving way to chaos.

In short, the World Axis is what happens if you actively try to invert the Great Wheel wherever possible.  It is a mirror universe of sorts, the Great Wheel with a goatee, much like the Terran Empire is to the Federation in Star Trek, born of conflict and sustained in defiance of reason and natural law.  Here, the metacommentary is left to the reader to avoid edition warring.  :Small Amused:  But 4e is sufficiently different from what came before that viewing the entire thing as an alternate timeline makes a Hells of a lot more sense to me than, for instance, trying to pretend that the Spellplague had even the slightest shred of logic to it.


Oh, and what does the 3e MotP have to say about this theory?


Nothing to the far left, representing formless Chaos; then Mystara, with its Elemental Planes below and Outer Planes above, all connected via wormholes through the Ethereal; then the Great Wheel, in all its glory; then the World Axis, with Astral Sea above, Elemental Chaos below, and the Far Realm encircling it?  Sounds about right to me.  :Small Cool:

----------


## Millstone85

> Spoilered for wall o' text.


This was a *very* interesting read.

However, I feel that you forgot an important plot point of the World Axis. As the war between the gods and the primordials went on, the primal spirits came into existence, incorporating both astral and elemental essences. They are the ones who won the Mortal World, mainly by virtue of *being* the Mortal World, and they sent both the gods and the primordials back to their corners. So I wouldn't say that "Law and Chaos fought until Neutrality was eliminated", far from it.

Of course, this is _Nentir Vale_ lore, a setting where none remembered any other cosmology than the World Axis. _Forgotten Realms_ was a whole nother matter, with an attempt to include a shift in cosmology into the history of Toril.

Now, rather than ignore the Spellplague, I would imagine that it actually shifted Realmspace from one of your timelines to another. Among various unpleasantries, it caused a superposition with the native Realmspace of the World Axis, including an alternate Abeir-Toril commonly shortened to Abeir instead of Toril. Then, in 5e, the Second Sundering brought Realmspace back to the Great Wheel. Or did it? This Great Wheel is different. It has both four well-separated Elemental Planes and an Elemental Chaos. The Energy Planes are not among the Inner Planes, instead being outer-er than the Outer Planes. The Feywild and the Shadowfell border the Material Plane. Could it be yet another timeline?

----------


## Bohandas

> The Lady of Pain actually isn't all that powerful. She only retains her position because the nature of Sigil prevents anyone strong enough to challenge her from entering.


That sounds about right to me. She doesn't really seem to do anything to justify her reputation other than making the occasional person disappear. Even Fidel Castro could do that. 

Also, it goes a way towards explaining why she never leaves sigil (although my personal headcanon is that she's a local spirit of the city, the city's actual soul as it were, and can't leave it; or that if she did leave it she'd become weak and powerless, her power level flipping from being equal to the importance of Sigil to people who live in Sigil to instead being equal to the importance of Sigil to people who DON'T live in Sigil - even those who have heard of it probably don't care unless either it's the only (non-hellish) planar metropolis they know of or they're transporting something across planes that actually meets the parameters to be convenient to transport via Sigil (there need to be known portals near their start and destination. The things being transported need to be small enough to fit. They need to have the correct portal keys. The Infinite Staircase and River Oceanus must not provide a shorter route. There can't be a direct portal. They can't be or be friends with a high-level spellcaster or powerful outsider who will planeshift everything instantly for free)


EDIT:
On a similar note, Lord Ao from Realmspace may be in a similar situation regarding being the spirit of a location

----------


## Yora

I think the Lady is part of Sigil. She couldn't even exist outside of this little demiplane. At least not in a form in any way comparable to her current one.

----------


## EccentricCircle

> Wall of Text


I love this. Very well thought out and presented. 

I've always thought that the idea that the planes changed from one edition to another made no sense, and that the different cosmologies are just different models for describing relationships between the planes. 

Since the planes are metaphysical it is impossible to actually plot their positions in "space", and there are so many different ways that they relate to one another that they will appear in different places depending on what axes you use to plot their positions. Thus no model is correct, and mortals don't really understand the forces they are trying to describe anyway. 

I think that the Great Wheel makes most sense as a model created by Planar beings. It plots the moral and ethical relationships between the Outer Planes, the Elemental natures of the inner planes and the transitive planes are grouped by which regions of the multiverse they link. I see this as essentially a Political Map of the planes. 

The World Axis has a different function, and I think it was more likely created by Primes. It groups the planes by what they are like to explore, and how they "fit together" for someone trying to traverse them in the same way they would the material world. 

Thus the Outer Planes can be thought of as floating in an Astral Sea. It is a legitimate way to get from one to another, and if you are a hapless prime that's probably how you will initially try to do it. Its only once you get used to Planescape that you learn where the portals are, and which outerplanes are morally and ethically opposed. 
Likewise the Elemental Chaos is probably closer to the actual state of the inner planes, its a jumble of matter and energy all mixed together, and centered on the abyss. However regions of each element are so vast that its only in a few isolated places (the very edges of the Paraelemental regions) that the underlying turbulence is visible. The different regions are also interconnected, so that if you know the trick you can get from one pocket of fire to another without having to pass thorough any of that nasty water. Its only inexperienced planar travellers who get dumped into regions where its all mixed up and chaotic.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> This was a *very* interesting read.
> 
> However, I feel that you forgot an important plot point of the World Axis. As the war between the gods and the primordials went on, the primal spirits came into existence, incorporating both astral and elemental essences. They are the ones who won the Mortal World, mainly by virtue of *being* the Mortal World, and they sent both the gods and the primordials back to their corners. So I wouldn't say that "Law and Chaos fought until Neutrality was eliminated", far from it.
> 
> Of course, this is _Nentir Vale_ lore, a setting where none remembered any other cosmology than the World Axis. _Forgotten Realms_ was a whole nother matter, with an attempt to include a shift in cosmology into the history of Toril.


Firstly, yeah, as far as I'm aware (and granted I haven't delved too deep into 4e lore, because bleh  :Small Wink: ), the existence and nature of primal spirits differs by Prime world; the ones on Nentir Vale's Prime are active and distinct from the gods, but the ones on Athas are either dead or largely insane while the "primal spirits" on Toril are in fact nature deities that that sphere's druids label differently.

Secondly, it's not that powerful beings that are allied with neither Law nor Chaos were eliminated in that timeline, but that Neutrality _as a cosmic force_ is gone.  There are no Outlands or Planes of Conflict, no exemplar races of Neutrality, no spheres aligned with Neutrality over Law or Chaos, no organizations dedicated to upholding the balance between Law and Chaos, and no magic of Neutrality, and the "Neutral" alignment itself is gone, NG/LN and NE/CN having been collapsed into LG and CE respectively and True Neutral (the more "active" neutrality, which in theory would make more sense for this world if its alignment framework supported it) is gone, leaving only a lack of alignment in its place.  The primal spirits of Valespace may have kicked the gods and primordials out of that particular realm, but they did so as a "get off my lawn" sort of thing rather than as a philosophical statement on balance between the gods and primordials.




> Now, rather than ignore the Spellplague, I would imagine that it actually shifted Realmspace from one of your timelines to another. Among various unpleasantries, it caused a superposition with the native Realmspace of the World Axis, including an alternate Abeir-Toril commonly shortened to Abeir instead of Toril. Then, in 5e, the Second Sundering brought Realmspace back to the Great Wheel. Or did it? This Great Wheel is different. It has both four well-separated Elemental Planes and an Elemental Chaos. The Energy Planes are not among the Inner Planes, instead being outer-er than the Outer Planes. The Feywild and the Shadowfell border the Material Plane. Could it be yet another timeline?


I don't ignore the Spellplague, I just don't try to reconcile it with Great Wheel FR as if it makes any logical sense.  :Small Amused:  In this headcanon, the Spellplague does indeed happen on the World Axis timeline, but the Great Wheel timeline is unaffected; different Realms-Shaking Events most likely continue to happen, but as short-duration localized events along the lines of the Avatar Crisis or very subtle ones along the lines of the Lady's alterations at the end of Die Vecna Die (which didn't actually have a Realms-specific manifestation), because anything as blatant, illogical, overwhelming, and destructive as the Spellplague is clearly impossible in a Law-dominated cosmology like the Wheel.

The 5e cosmology, meanwhile, I view as being one Prime's interpretation of the actual Great Wheel cosmology.  It's entirely possible for sealed spheres like Darkspace (Athas) and Shardspace (Eberron) to have different links to the overarching Wheel cosmology due to local conditions or for normally-linked spheres like Krynn to have infrequent enough interactions with the planes that they have different names or diagrams for the normal planes, after all.  The 5e map of the planes looks like what a sage would create if he comes from a Prime with slightly abnormal planar relations: this Prime world probably has a coexistent Plane of Faerie-like demiplane that cuts off Ethereal links in the same way Athas has the Grey, has few enough links to the Energy Planes that the locals think they're "farther" than the Outer Planes, and has enough common enough interactions with both Ravenloft and the Plane of Shadow that it conflates them into a single plane.

That setup would also, incidentally, explain the utterly stupid "every world uses the Weave" 5e retcon.  If the core 5e world has a Weave, and a spellcaster from the main 5e Prime travels to Toril and sees that it has a Weave too, he might extrapolate that everywhere has one, because what are the chances that he just _happens_ to run into the _one_ other Prime with a Weave?  (Quite high, actually, as Toril is definitely the Prime world most reachable by and welcoming to travelers from other Primes, but he has no way of knowing that.)




> On a similar note, Lord Ao from Realmspace may be in a similar situation regarding being the spirit of a location


Another headcanon of mine is that "overgods" aren't a distinct category of being at all, they're just normal deities pulling a fast one on the rest of the gods.

So, gods gain power based on the prominence of their portfolio, amount and strength of prayer, number of lay worshipers and clergy, and similar factors, modulo a given Prime's mechanics of godhood, right?  Well, if you can have Lathander as the god of the sun, Bane as the god of tyranny, and so forth, there's no reason you couldn't have Ao the god of divinity.  And just like Bane can see and hear around subjects of tyranny and acts of tyranny, know the future of tyrannical acts and organizations, use tyranny-related magic and grant or deny power to those who draw on the concept of Tyranny, manipulate the bodies and minds of mortals within his sphere of influence, and so forth, Ao would be able to see and hear around the gods, know what the gods are up to, grant or deny deific powers, control the gods' bodies and minds, and so forth, and just as Lathander could control the sun itself and alter its properties, Ao could grant or strip divinity to and from the gods and change the way worship and goodhood work.  This would make him appear to be effectively omnipotent and omniscient to the gods in the same way that Mystra appears effectively omniscient and omnipotent to a mortal wizard.

Evidence for this:

1) New gods can come into existence (and existing gods can be changed) when mortal belief in a given concept is strong enough.  No one knew about Ao until the Time of Troubles (and the gods didn't appear to know about him for much longer before that), and crediting him as the creator of Realmspace contradicts what sages know of the Selûne/Shar creation myth, so sure, he might have been a hands-off overgod for years until he felt forced to step in in a way he never did before or since..._or_ perhaps growing mortal dissatisfaction with the gods caused Ao to coalesce around the portfolio of regulating divinity (with "worship, godhood, gods, and divine magic" as his portfolio and Cynosure as his divine realm), use his power over the gods to make them believe he'd always been around, use his power over godhood and worship to cause himself to draw power from gods instead of mortals, use his suddenly-massive reserves of divine power to retroactively block the greater gods' future sight of his ascension and actions, and use the Time of Troubles to show off and solidify his control over his portfolio in the same way a new god might appear to his worshipers and do some miracle-working and/or smiting to show them he's in charge.

2) During the Avatar Crisis, Cyric appeared to gain enough power to be able to challenge Ao when no other god was, and Ao appeared to be concerned or even afraid of this.  Completely unreasonable if Ao is actually an overgod who's all-powerful within Toril...but much more reasonable if he's just a god trying to pull one over on the gods _exactly like Cyric was doing_ with his Cyric-is-the-one-true-god maneuver with the Cyrinishad, and Ao's portfolio of "the gods" ran head-first into Cyric's new portfolio of "monotheism" and he couldn't exert nearly as much power over Cyric for that reason.

The scene where Cyric challenges Ao in Cynosure, Ao is surprised, and he has to actually try to shut Cyric down certainly reads to me like Ao trying and failing to overpower Cyric's divine powers, then realizing that, hey, Cynosure is his divine realm, he has home ground advantage, and cheats to squeak out a win that way, and then as soon as Cyric really believes that Ao actually does have power over him, well, belief begets reality and Ao is in control again.

3) The High God of Krynn pulls basically the same stunt Ao does.  The gods are squabbling and ignoring the mortals, the High God steps in and lays down the law in a way that implies that he can't just wave his hand and change things while _claiming_ to be "as high above the gods as the gods are above mortals," and then once he's made his big debut he steps back and pretends to run things from behind the scenes.

----------


## noob

Ao is actually a random housecat.
The gods just pretends ao makes them take unpopular measures such as keeping the wall of the faithless(while it was only the mediocre gods which stopped getting worship which decided to put it back after the really nice gods destroyed it and not an overgod which imposed that to the gods).

----------


## Malphegor

Dragonborn are really just big kobolds and appreciate non-dragonborn loudly recognising them as thus.

Humans tend to win races. Because of their bonus feet.

Asmodeus is actually weakened by mottal Disciples of Asmodeus, and is slightly fearful of what happens if someone loves him so much it actually destroys him if they tap into his power. His overcompensating on the evil is a bid to prevent this.

Ambrosia (from book of exalted deeds, magical happy juice angels cant stop drinking down) has the consistency and taste of custard.

----------


## Bohandas

> Ambrosia (from book of exalted deeds, magical happy juice angels cant stop drinking down) has the consistency and taste of custard.


Conversely, Liquid Pain (its Book of Gile Darkness counterpart) looks like creamed corn

----------


## a_flemish_guy

- primus is actually just an avatar of mechanus itself which is why he reforms from a modron if he's killed

- kobolds turn into troglodytes when they're older, also all kobolds are male and trogs are female

- illithyds will come about as a direct result of githyanki actions

- halflings are actually dwarf-elf hybrids

- 6 orks vs 2 hobgoblins is more fair of a fight then 2 orks vs 1 hobgoblin

----------


## Millstone85

*Spoiler: At one point, the Dark Seldarine was also known as a rock band.*
Show


3e _Faiths and Pantheons_ page 112: illustration by Ben Templesmith.

*Spoiler: Beholders regurgitate their preys as gibbering mouthers. Those later develop levitation and eye rays. Eventually, one voice silences the others, all but ten of the eyes merge together, and the oozing flesh begins to solidify. The creature spends a long time altering the details of its form, until it convinces itself that it achieved perfection. Unimpaired, this process results in a new beholder. However, mature beholders typically maim and poison developing ones so they become lesser beholder-kin.*
Show


4e _Monster Manual_ page 126: gibbering mouther, gibbering abomination and gibbering orb.
5e _Monster Manual_ page 28: beholder.

----------


## hymer

Troglodytes are corrupted lizardfolk. They come from eggs stolen by sahuagin, and the most dangerous and organized troglodytes are the sharkfolk's main weapon in hilly terrain.

----------


## noob

> *Spoiler: At one point, the Dark Seldarine was also known as a rock band.*
> Show
> 
> 
> 3e _Faiths and Pantheons_ page 112: illustration by Ben Templesmith.
> 
> *Spoiler: Beholders regurgitate their preys as gibbering mouthers. Those later develop levitation and eye rays. Eventually, one voice silences the others, all but ten of the eyes merge together, and the oozing flesh begins to solidify. The creature spends a long time altering the details of its form, until it convinces itself that it achieved perfection. Unimpaired, this process results in a new beholder. However, mature beholders typically maim and poison developing ones so they become lesser beholder-kin.*
> Show
> 
> ...


so by achieving perceived "perfection" it becomes weaker than in its previous state?
(gibbering orbs are super powerful)

----------


## Millstone85

> so by achieving perceived "perfection" it becomes weaker than in its previous state?
> (gibbering orbs are super powerful)


The creature may be more powerful with the voices of all its victims, but the one that silences the others only cares about escaping this hell of cacophony and melting flesh. It does so through unyielding willpower, all-devouring ego, and furious desire for a form of its own, leading to the typical beholder mindset.

When a gibbering orb does not transform, keeps on collecting voices, grows much larger than a beholder, and starts showing signs of cunning under the apparent madness, that is indeed really bad news. Some scholars consider beholders to be failed gibbering orbs. Oddly, they tend to disappear in mysterious circumstances, especially around Waterdeep.

----------


## Luccan

Thanks to a thread in 5e subforum: There are several elf-like creatures referred to as Eladrin (the most notable being a type of celestial, a more fey creature, and the ones that claim to be closest to the first elves). Their actual level of relation to elves varies.

----------


## pwning doodes

Draconic kind of sounds like Hebrew.

----------


## Bohandas

Elvish sounds like a mashup of French, Mandarin Chinese, and Ancient Egyptian.

----------


## Theoboldi

- Asmodeus is not nearly as powerful nor influental as most people think he is. There is no Pact Primeval, he never was a god, and he does not even have any sort of meaningful control over hell and the rest of the archdevils.

What he does have, however, is a vast propaganda machine across the planes that has managed to convince most of the material plane and many mortals elsewhere of these lies.

- The upper planes and many angles are actually very actively involved in the blood war, though they act mostly only to mitigate collateral damage and to protect innocents that would otherwise get involved in the conflict.

- The Wall of the Faithless wasn't created by anyone, it is just the natural endpoint for any souls without divine protection in the Realms. Most gods are extremely frustrated that some souls still end up in it, given that they offer free access to afterlives that are in their opinion obvious paradises. 

- Most demons enjoy playing into the mortal stereotype that they are not as subtle or intelligent as devils, as it makes it easier to trick them.

- The Oard are totally canon and in their original timeline eventually turn into the Illithid. And I don't care how little sense that makes.

----------


## noob

> - The Wall of the Faithless wasn't created by anyone, it is just the natural endpoint for any souls without divine protection in the Realms. Most gods are extremely frustrated that some souls still end up in it, given that they offer free access to afterlives that are in their opinion obvious paradises.


even if it was not created.
1: It can be destroyed(maybe it reforms later but it can).
2: You can grab souls from it(demons do so constantly)
So the gods are still leaving souls naturally come in the wall and rot instead of for example just grabbing the souls in it.
And no it is not free access if I have to say "I respect that god which is intensely evil and did tons of bad things" even if it was for eternal life it would be quite a consequent cost since all the gods did awful things ranging from killing people to eating other gods(yes including a good god eating another good god and somehow it did not instantly become chaotic evil while any player doing so would no matter the situation be turned chaotic evil by the majority of the gms)
While if it was "ok I do not respect you but can I still go in your afterlife" there would be way less people in the wall of the faithless.

----------


## Theoboldi

> even if it was not created.
> 1: It can be destroyed(maybe it reforms later but it can).
> 2: You can grab souls from it(demons do so constantly)
> So the gods are still leaving souls naturally come in the wall and rot instead of for example just grabbing the souls in it.
> And no it is not free access if I have to say "I respect that god which is intensely evil and did tons of bad things" even if it was for eternal life it would be quite a consequent cost since all the gods did awful things ranging from killing people to eating other gods(yes including a good god eating another good god and somehow it did not instantly become chaotic evil while any player doing so would no matter the situation be turned chaotic evil by the majority of the gms)
> While if it was "ok I do not respect you but can I still go in your afterlife" there would be way less people in the wall of the faithless.


Uh, not to be rude, but could you write that up with a couple of paragraph breaks and better punctuation? I have a very hard time reading what you are posting.

----------


## Bad Wolf

I always liked the idea of Sigil being a cage for the Lady. Have you noticed how the spire doesn't have any effect on those in the city? That's because its all focused on one person in particular. But despite all that, she can still kill gods. Uh-oh. 


Asmodeus-canon: Yes, he is actually a giant bleeding serpent that sends out avatars to pretend to be him. The FC already says that his exile from heaven wasnt cheery, so that origin story doesn't exclude it from being true. 

He also doesn't move against Mephistopheles, despite his blatant rebellion, because he's afraid of his consort, who's one of the baatorians. This one I adopted from afroakuma. 

Demon-canon that I just made: Demon princes/rulers can't be good. As soon as one falls towards neutral on the alignment scale, the Abyss lashes against it and someone new takes its throne. 



Totally silly: If Ragnorra crashed into Atropus, the surge of positive and negative energy would cancel each other out and everything would be fine.

----------


## Yora

> - The Oard are totally canon and in their original timeline eventually turn into the Illithid. And I don't care how little sense that makes.


Oard are the biggest knockoff nobody ever talks about.

----------


## Khedrac

> Oard are the biggest knockoff nobody ever talks about.


Knock off from what?  If you mean Star Trek's The Borg then the module was published in 1985 but Star Trek: The Next Generation aired in 1987 and the first Borg episoed was (I think) "Q Who?" in season 2 - so broadcast in 1989.  The Borg would be the knock-off here.
I doubt if any 2nd season episodes had been written before season 1 did well enough to get the seocnd season confirmed.

Personal head canons:

Wrath of the Immortals never happens.
The big pearl on the Isle of Dread is actually an artifact with the side effect of causing the prehistoric plant growth and dinosaurs in the surrpoinding area.
The Rakasta and Phanaton on the Ilse of dread get there as part of a trial of manhood from enighbouring islands (trying to retrieve the eye of a statue of their god[immortal]) - the rakasta use big oar-powered outrigger canoes and the phanaton use small kite-powered coracles.

----------


## Millstone85

> The upper planes and many angles are actually very actively involved in the blood war, though they act mostly only to mitigate collateral damage and to protect innocents that would otherwise get involved in the conflict.


I think that one is canon. It is just not usually counted as being actively involved in the Blood War.

On a related note, celestial angles totally are a thing. They live in Arcadia and look like this:




> The Wall of the Faithless wasn't created by anyone, it is just the natural endpoint for any souls without divine protection in the Realms. Most gods are extremely frustrated that some souls still end up in it, given that they offer free access to afterlives that are in their opinion obvious paradises.


Like noob said, it would take much extra work to make the existence of the Wall any palatable.




> The Oard are totally canon and in their original timeline eventually turn into the Illithid. And I don't care how little sense that makes.


For a less obvious Borg-like creature, I really love the kaortis. They were originally humanoids, most likely elves or humans, who went to explore the Far Realm in some kind of diving gear. Now they are mostly known for wearing armor assembled from bandages made of a resin-like material they secrete. They also make nests out of the stuff, called kaorti cysts. Their bodies are full of little symbiotes they can inject in other humanoids to transform them into kaortis, and they plan mass assimilation. They are also the creators and masters of various aberrations such as skybleeders, rukanyrs and kaortic hulks.

I can imagine them being lead by a female daelkyr who totally looks like the Borg Queen.




> Oard are the biggest knockoff nobody ever talks about.





> Knock off from what?  If you mean Star Trek's The Borg then the module was published in 1985 but Star Trek: The Next Generation aired in 1987 and the first Borg episoed was (I think) "Q Who?" in season 2 - so broadcast in 1989.  The Borg would be the knock-off here.
> I doubt if any 2nd season episodes had been written before season 1 did well enough to get the seocnd season confirmed.


Interesting. After seeing the Ood in _Doctor Who_, who are an obvious plagiary of the illithids, complete with ceremorphosis and elder brain, I am ready to believe this.

----------


## Theoboldi

> I think that one is canon. It is just not usually counted as being actively involved in the Blood War.


*shrugs*

I've seen it claimed often enough that the angels keep out of the war completely. For my own games, I prefer it this way since it both makes them look less spineless and also because it can provide more adventure hooks.




> On a related note, celestial angles totally are a thing. They live in Arcadia and look like this:


Ah dangit. Stupid common spelling mistakes....




> Like noob said, it would take much extra work to make the existence of the Wall any palatable.


Eh, taking away the gods being responsible for it is mostly enough for me. Do mind, that is not the full extent of how it differs in my games. Nobody, especially not demons can take any souls from it, there is nobody trying to protect it, and destroying it is akin to trying to destroy gravity. It's less of a divine construct and more of a force of nature. Beyond that, it remains as a vague bit of cosmic horror that only divine beings can provide an imperfect protection from. Which I quite enjoy.

Not that it matters, I guess. It's been quite some time since I've last played D&D and anything in the realms. And I never was fully up to stuff on all the lore in the first place.



> For a less obvious Borg-like creature, I really love the kaortis. They were originally humanoids, most likely elves or humans, who went to explore the Far Realm in some kind of diving gear. Now they are mostly known for wearing armor assembled from bandages made of a resin-like material they secrete. They also make nests out of the stuff, called kaorti cysts. Their bodies are full of little symbiotes they can inject in other humanoids to transform them into kaortis, and they plan mass assimilation. They are also the creators and masters of various aberrations such as skybleeders, rukanyrs and kaortic hulks.
> 
> I can imagine them being lead by a female daelkyr who totally looks like the Borg Queen.


Honestly I am just happy that people remember that module and the Oard at all. I've had a fun time running a modified version of it in Godbound. Mostly cause I'm a huge sucker for the trope of humans turning themselves into some kind of horrible cyber species. These Kaortis sound interesting though, will have to read up on them. They sound very Xenomorph-esque.

----------


## Eldan

The angels are not a unified force. THey do whatever their god commands them to do. I'm sure there are some good gods around who would meddle in the war, but I don't think I've ever seen it written up.

Celestials, though... it's established canon that Celestia thinks that Hell is of course a terrible place, but also the best bet anyone has to stop the Abyss from destroying the multiverse eventually, so they support hell with resources, at least, but probably not troops. At least not openly. The Eladrin, meanwhile, hate the Abyss too much to help them, what with capturing and torturing all their children, but they are _extremely_ goood at helping mortals topple the lawful evil social structures that hell needs for soul support.

----------


## noob

> The angels are not a unified force. THey do whatever their god commands them to do. I'm sure there are some good gods around who would meddle in the war, but I don't think I've ever seen it written up.
> 
> Celestials, though... it's established canon that Celestia thinks that Hell is of course a terrible place, but also the best bet anyone has to stop the Abyss from destroying the multiverse eventually, so they support hell with resources, at least, but probably not troops. At least not openly. The Eladrin, meanwhile, hate the Abyss too much to help them, what with capturing and torturing all their children, but they are _extremely_ goood at helping mortals topple the lawful evil social structures that hell needs for soul support.


For each LE governor with great skills at organization killed hell becomes better organized.
Support the devils by killing the skilled lawful evil people!

----------


## Millstone85

> Celestials, though... it's established canon that Celestia thinks that Hell is of course a terrible place, but also the best bet anyone has to stop the Abyss from destroying the multiverse eventually, so they support hell with resources, at least, but probably not troops. At least not openly.


Conversely, the Abyss might be the best bet to stop Hell from ruling the multiverse. So I imagine celestials, including angels, would mostly deal with yugoloths, as these fiends thrive on the Blood War itself.

And yes, I know that neutral evil can be interpreted as pure evil, and thus the worst of the three. But what is the yugoloths' plan for the multiverse? Nobody knows, and that's what makes it so scary? Meh.




> For each LE governor with great skills at organization killed hell becomes better organized.
> Support the devils by killing the skilled lawful evil people!


Except they would die anyway, and pretty fast by devil standards.

----------


## Yora

> Knock off from what?  If you mean Star Trek's The Borg then the module was published in 1985 but Star Trek: The Next Generation aired in 1987 and the first Borg episoed was (I think) "Q Who?" in season 2 - so broadcast in 1989.  The Borg would be the knock-off here.


Indeed.

And they took it even further in First Contact. There's a quote in the movie that could be the back cover text for Where Chaos Reigns: "A group of cybernetic creatures, from the future, have traveled back in time to enslave the human race. And you're here to stop them?"

And nobody can claim coincidence when the 1985 ilustration looks like this: *Spoiler*
Show




If someone puts a Star Trek creature into D&D, that's not news. D&D shamelessly absorbs everything. But an obscure D&D monster being adapted that straight to Star Trek is something you really wouldn't expect.
Though in all fairness, they do fit much better in Star Trek than D&D.

----------


## Bohandas

I thought the Borg were a ripoff of the Cybermen (first appearance 1966)

----------


## Theoboldi

> And nobody can claim coincidence when the 1985 ilustration looks like this: *Spoiler*
> Show


Okay, that is actually kind of jaw dropping. They even have those same weird bumps as the Oard.

----------


## Millstone85

> the module was published in 1985 but Star Trek: The Next Generation aired in 1987





> the 1985 ilustration looks like this





> Okay, that is actually kind of jaw dropping. They even have those same weird bumps as the Oard.


If I am following correctly, this is a picture of the Oard.

----------


## Theoboldi

> If I am following correctly, this is a picture of the Oard.


Is it? Currently away from my books, but I have the module and I don't recall any illustrations that look like this one. The art style isn't even remotely similar. Did they appear outside of the module, in one of the Monster Manuals?  :Small Confused:

----------


## Khedrac

> Is it? Currently away from my books, but I have the module and I don't recall any illustrations that look like this one. The art style isn't even remotely similar. Did they appear outside of the module, in one of the Monster Manuals?


It is.  I thought it was the picture form CM6 but it might be the picture from the original Creature Catalog (AC9 - 1986) as I definitely recognise it.

----------


## Theoboldi

> It is.  I thought it was the picture form CM6 but it might be the picture from the original Creature Catalog (AC9 - 1986) as I definitely recognise it.


Interesting! I was unaware they were mentioned anywhere beyond the module. That had me thinking I was looking at some early Borg concept art for a while.

----------


## Luccan

FWIW, the Borg were originally going to be bugs, not cyborgs. They might have been "inspired" by the oard and/or cybermen later, but their original concept was as an insectoid species. It was dropped due to budget concerns.

----------


## Malphegor

Feather tokens probably werent invented by the Mazticans of the Forgotten Realms, but it does bear a strong similarity to the talismans they make with Pluma magic in 2e, and as such feather tokens are always going to be common in aztec-themed dungeons in any game I run.

----------


## Bohandas

> FWIW, the Borg were originally going to be bugs, not cyborgs. They might have been "inspired" by the oard and/or cybermen later, but their original concept was as an insectoid species. It was dropped due to budget concerns.


Also, ultimately what they really are is zombies, moreso than they're like anything else. In fact, I think _Star Trek_ is actually one to the best implementations out there of the whole "zombie apocalypse" trope

----------


## Yora

Owlbears are natural animals. They are a type of dinosaur.

----------


## Bohandas

> From Gygax himself (see his article in _POLYHEDRON #21 Nov 1984_, p.9, and later mentioned in _Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk_, p.91) the official worlds connected to Oerth were Earth, Aerth (detailed in the _Epic of Ærth_ sourcebook for Gygax's Dangerous Journeys roleplaying game), Yarth (the _Conan/Kull_-like setting for Gygax's _Sagard the Barbarian_ choose-your-own-adventure books), and Uerth (a mirror-version of Oerth detailed in _Expedition_).


I imagine the Uerth characters having goatees even if they're children or women, just like the South Park episode with the evil parallel universe

----------


## Bohandas

*Sigil's national anthem sounds exactly like the old Doors Unlimited jingle

*Halflings are colloqually known collectively as "the shorty" and are known for their tunnels and pipeweed

*Older dragons' hoards are mostly in copper because their size rapidly outpaces their wealth and so to sleep on a pile of coins they need to have it changed for smaller denominations. It also makes it harder to steal.

*A Mirror of Opposition that is left turned on and uncovered will accumulate a pile of dead rats and flies in a semicircle around the front

*Erandis d'Vol is known as "Randi" to her friends

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

Prices for magic items and other very expensive goods being the same in almost every setting isn't (just) a simplification to avoid putting local price fluctuation mechanics in the DMG.  Rather, all of the major metropolises on the various Primes are connected by enough spelljammer routes, portals, teleportation circles, and similar, and the major trading groups (mercanes, the Factions, Prime guilds, etc.) have access to sufficient divinations, to ensure that the multiversal magic item trade has essentially optimal prices.

For instance, if every magic item merchant in Waterdeep decided to collude to raise prices on, say, _cloaks of resistance +4_, any high-level adventurer who wanted one could pop on over to Sigil, Union, Dis, the City of Brass, Greyhawk, the Rock of Bral, Sharn.... and pick one up at the standard price; if a new vein of adamantine is found on a particular Prime, planar traders can find out about it and add it to their list of thousands of adamantine sources throughout the multiverse; and so forth.

In more humorous campaigns, there may be an explicit mercantile council overseeing pricing policies, the Wizardry, Artifice, Logistics, Magic, And Retail Teleportation Company, or WALMART Co.  :Small Amused:

----------


## Bohandas

Xagig is not Zagyg's only active evil twin

*Iuz's good Uerth twin is named Luz and his symbol is a smiley face

----------


## Bohandas

All of the other alignments are equally close to true neutral

----------


## Mark Hall

> All of the other alignments are equally close to true neutral


So, more of a circle surrounding True Neutral, rather than the traditional grid (which put the non-neutral alignments a bit further from true neutral than the part-neutral alignments)?

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

> So, more of a circle surrounding True Neutral, rather than the traditional grid (which put the non-neutral alignments a bit further from true neutral than the part-neutral alignments)?


I'd almost go the other way, personally.

I see the N[G/E] alignments as being focused more on G/E than on L/C, so they're "more Good/Evil" than their mixed counterparts, while the same holds true for the [L/C]N in the other axis. A LG person has to balance L and G when they interact, while a NG person or a LN person only has to care about one axis.

So topologically I'd go more of a 4-pointed star, if I used alignment as anything fundamental at all.

----------


## Bohandas

> So, more of a circle surrounding True Neutral, rather than the traditional grid (which put the non-neutral alignments a bit further from true neutral than the part-neutral alignments)?


Yeah. After all, the whole "great wheel" idea od the outer planes kind of implies it

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> I'd almost go the other way, personally.
> 
> I see the N[G/E] alignments as being focused more on G/E than on L/C, so they're "more Good/Evil" than their mixed counterparts, while the same holds true for the [L/C]N in the other axis. A LG person has to balance L and G when they interact, while a NG person or a LN person only has to care about one axis.
> 
> So topologically I'd go more of a 4-pointed star, if I used alignment as anything fundamental at all.


Early D&D had more of a four-pointed star view as well, but the other way around: the "extreme" alignments of LG/CG/LE/CE were viewed as being more devoted to their alignment than the neutrals, because it was viewed less as NG and LN being pure and LG balancing two competing interests and more as LG having taken a stand on both the cosmic struggles of Law vs. Chaos and Good vs. Evil while NG and LN were being wishy-washy on one of the two.

The vast majority of intelligent monsters fell into the four extreme alignments, to the point that there's not a single NG/NE/LN/CN creature in the AD&D MM, just a few "Neutral with X tendencies" or "Any Chaotic" monsters; the Great Wheel counts the "Lawful/Chaotic with Good/Evil tendencies" planes among the Upper or Lower Planes and only really views Elysium/Hades/Mechanus/Limbo as "neutral" planes, as opposed to having wider bands of neutrality with the "extreme" alignment planes being on their own; and the Holmes B/X and 1e AD&D alignment chart wasn't a grid, but instead looked like this:

----------


## Particle_Man

In fact, didn't OD&D only have 5 alignments?  LG, CE, CG, LE and N?

It explains why even now we still have pages and pages for Devils and Demons, not as much for Yugoloths (or other NE extraplanars).  LN has modrons and formians and . . . I don't even know.  CN has slaads and . . . I don't even know.  NG has animal people, because why the heck not.  Dragons also tend to the 4 diagonal alignments (especially the Top Ten in the MM).

Similarly, it took a long time before NG paladins became options in core.  Even the optional paladin rules in 3rd ed went for the diagonals (Paladin of Freedom, Slaughter, Tyranny).  Although Blackguards could be NE so there is that.  That said, druids broke out of N and branched out into the orthogonals in third (NE, NG, LN and CN) so there is that.  Plus the Incarnates, I suppose.  What?  *I* like them, ok?   :Small Smile: 

Here's a head canon I haven't tried yet:  All 1st generation Gods are alternate reality versions of each other.  This does not mean they get along and they were all surprised to see each other as it took the initial creation of the prime material universe for them to appear to each other.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> In fact, didn't OD&D only have 5 alignments?  LG, CE, CG, LE and N?


Not exactly.  Originally there was just Law, Neutrality, and Chaos, inherited from Chainmail.  Gygax, in articles in Strategic Review and Dragon Magazine, added Good and Evil, so you had Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, and Neutrality; he didn't have the combined alignments, but he did lay out planes for those slots in the grid (and interestingly Elysium was originally the CG plane, with "Paradise" taking the NG slot).  Holmes Basic D&D switched it up to LG, CG, LE, CE, and N with no neutrals, and BECMI went back to just L/N/C as AD&D codified all nine alignments.




> It explains why even now we still have pages and pages for Devils and Demons, not as much for Yugoloths (or other NE extraplanars).  LN has modrons and formians and . . . I don't even know.  CN has slaads and . . . I don't even know.  NG has animal people, because why the heck not.


I think the reason yugoloths are less detailed is that (A) demons and devils came in with the AD&D MM but "daemons" (as they were called then) were introduced in adventure modules and the Fiend Folio and (B) devils and demons got plenty of flavor attention in the main books but yugoloths were really only fleshed out in Planescape, so there's less material to draw on and less of a legacy to work with.

LN has inevitables as of 3e (technically 1e, since the marut showed up then, but it was a one-off monster rather than part of a larger category), CN has nothing else by design, and NG most likely goes with the animal-headed creature theme because the Good exemplar races draw from the good gods in mythology, and Egyptian-/Greek-/Celtic-style "people with animal heads" gods fit in nicely with the archons' Judeo-Christian "wings and glowy lights" aesthetic and the eladrins' "super-elf nature gods" look.

----------


## Millstone85

> LN has inevitables as of 3e (technically 1e, since the marut showed up then, but it was a one-off monster rather than part of a larger category)


I do not know which version of the marut I like the most.

*3e marut*

_I represent the inevitability of death. No, I am not the terminator-looking one with a sword. I am the bulky one with the bird helmet, and I punch liches._

*5e marut*

_The monodrones said that you are mocking the steampunk big-eyeball little-wings look. Want to repeat that in front of me?_

*Edit:* Changed the relative sizes of the monodrone and the marut.

----------


## John Campbell

Oh, one that just came up in my game tonight:

"Halfling pipe-weed" is marijuana. The reason halflings eat so much despite being Small and typically sedentary is that they all have the munchies all the time.

(Also halflings are hobbits, not kender.)

----------


## Millstone85

_Note: The following headcanon is derived from the 5e version of the Great Wheel, which has neither quasi-elemental planes nor Hinterlands._

The Outlands has elemental gate-towns, eight in number, organized in a circle midway between the Spire and the outer gate-towns. Even closer to the Spire is a triangle of gate-towns leading to the Material, the Feywild and the Shadowfell.

The "gates" the towns are built around are no mere portals. They are actually bigger on the inside, each containing an entire plane.

Two suns orbit the Outlands, one made of positive energy and the other of negative energy, bringing day and night. Should you fall from the edge of the Outlands, you would plummet either toward one of the suns, or past them and into the Far Realm.

In short, the Outlands is the Great Wheel.

----------


## Beleriphon

> I do not know which version of the marut I like the most.
> 
> *3e marut*
> 
> _I represent the inevitability of death. No, I am not the terminator-looking one with a sword. I am the bulky one with the bird helmet, and I punch liches._
> 
> *5e marut*
> 
> _The monodrones said that you are mocking the steampunk big-eyeball little-wings look. Want to repeat that in front of me?_


The 3E Marut looks like a bird, but its actually the crest on a Greek style hoplite helmet. If you look to the "mouth" area its actually got a face plate and nose protector.

----------


## Millstone85

> The 3E Marut looks like a bird, but its actually the crest on a Greek style hoplite helmet. If you look to the "mouth" area its actually got a face plate and nose protector.


That didn't escape me. Still a bird helmet. Which is fine, as birds are sometimes associated with death.

Also, I would have described it as the "neck" area. It depends on whether you see an open or closed beak.

----------


## Yora

*Spoiler: Marut in AD&D*
Show


AD&D 2nd Ed. (1991)


Planescape (19994)


The original design looked bad, but the Planescape image is the best. (As it usually is with any planar creatures.) Sadly not seen in the image is that the cube modrons barely get past its knees.

----------


## Millstone85

> The original design looked bad, but the Planescape image is the best. (As it usually is with any planar creatures.) Sadly not seen in the image is that the cube modrons barely get past its knees.


For the 5e design, I am the one who put the monodrone and the marut next to each other. I might have got their relative sizes completely wrong.

In fact, there is a concept art that suggests a much bigger difference, knowing that monodrones are size Medium like humans.


But I believe this marut would have been size Huge, while the published stat block only gives a size Large.

*Edit:* On second thought, three-times taller is probably still in the Large category. Modifying the picture now.

----------


## Bohandas

> The 3E Marut looks like a bird, but its actually the crest on a Greek style hoplite helmet. If you look to the "mouth" area its actually got a face plate and nose protector.


Now I can't stop imagining it as being in a big mascot costume with the eye holes in the neck

----------


## Excession

Drow cities do not look like human cities built on the floor of a giant cavern. They are carved and shaped directly into stone, only sometimes around a natural cave system. Open spaces actually tend to frighten Drow, as beyond their dark-vision range could be full of Beholders or worse. Their cities are mazes that make no sense to outsiders, a natural defence against invasion. Dwarf cities, mines, and forts on the other hand are all built off the same "perfect" plans.

Dark-vision is useless underwater, meaning few underdark Drow ever learn to swim. If a body of water is large enough to swim in, it's large enough for _other things_ to swim in.

Water sources, ventilation, and sewage are frequently targets for inter-house conflict in Drow societies, not to mention the never-ending creature infestations. Drow Warrior-Plumbers are the very best there is.

----------


## Bohandas

*There are two forms of the Infernal language. A highly exact, restricted, and deficient Newspeak like form for day to day use, and a flowery, highly metaphorical, easily misinterpreted version for contracts etc.

*Souls sent to Baator are literally assigned genders. And it's deliberately chosen to be the one that will cause them the most trouble

----------


## Yora

> *There are two forms of the Infernal language. A highly exact, restricted, and deficient Newspeak like form for day to day use, and a flowery, highly metaphorical, easily misinterpreted version for contracts etc.


Sounds like German.  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Archpaladin Zousha

> Drow Warrior-Plumbers are the very best there is.


Have they got a 27B-6?

Darnit, now I wanna play a character like this!  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Quarian Rex

> All major gnome cultures are the mutated remnants of a dwarf clan that experimented with arcane magic; in isolated and xenophobic dwarven communities (who never practice arcane magic) they are seen as abominations. In dwarf communities were arcane magic is practiced widely, it is quite possible that dwarf couples will reproduce gnome children. Vice versa, Gnomes who have very little contact to arcane magic might have dwarf children.


Thanks for this.  I normally hate gnomes but this actually makes them palatable.  That is an impressive feat.  




> *Spoiler: Beholders regurgitate their preys as gibbering mouthers. Those later develop levitation and eye rays. Eventually, one voice silences the others, all but ten of the eyes merge together, and the oozing flesh begins to solidify. The creature spends a long time altering the details of its form, until it convinces itself that it achieved perfection. Unimpaired, this process results in a new beholder. However, mature beholders typically maim and poison developing ones so they become lesser beholder-kin.*
> Show
> 
> 
> 4e _Monster Manual_ page 126: gibbering mouther, gibbering abomination and gibbering orb.
> 5e _Monster Manual_ page 28: beholder.


This is surprisingly good as well.  Thanks.

----------


## Bohandas

XP and HD represents spiritual fortitude, specifically in the context of overcoming whatever force makes it impossible for normal people to have more than four ranks of skill in any field or to learn spells above first level.

----------


## Excession

> Have they got a 27B-6?
> 
> Darnit, now I wanna play a character like this!


They don't. One of the perks of a chaotic evil society is never needing to fill out paperwork. But for a Drow that somehow ended up working in another city, that's spot on  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## a_flemish_guy

- all bullete encounters in the history of d&d have been based on the movies tremors or jaws or some combination of both

- gnome society values entertainment more then riches, that's why gnomes mostly go for eccentric and new plans rather then the old and true, would you ever go with a plan that involves blowing up all the loot?

- owlbears can turn their head 180°

- dwarves consider the phrase "good luck" as an insult because it implies that they need random chance to succeed rather then hard work and skill

- elves have no domesticated animals

- colourblind people make terrible dragonslayers

- fire resistant gear is made out of asbestos

- orks have an actuall well developed bard culture based on drums and story-yelling

----------


## Mark Hall

> - dwarves consider the phrase "good luck" as an insult because it implies that they need random chance to succeed rather then hard work and skill


I had dwarves use "We do what we must because we can" as a maxim. Immediately post-portal, it was considered unnerving.

----------


## Luccan

> - orks have an actuall well developed bard culture based on drums and *story-yelling*


Thurg the Scourge: Your bards are terrible. How do they expect to honor those the songs are about if they speak of them so quietly?

----------


## Bohandas

I agree, in this case the typo (if it was a typo and not intentional) "story yelling" actually fits better than the presumably intended "story telling"

----------


## a_flemish_guy

> I agree, in this case the typo (if it was a typo and not intentional) "story yelling" actually fits better than the presumably intended "story telling"


it wasn't a typo but I also didn't intend for it to be a pun

----------


## Excession

> - owlbears can turn their head 180°


My head-canon is that owlbears are closely related to triceratops. Feathers, quadrupedal, beak, large, and probably ill-tempered? Sounds like a ceratopsian just without the horns.

New head-canon: some owlbears have horns.

----------


## Kane0

> - dwarves consider the phrase "good luck" as an insult because it implies that they need random chance to succeed rather then hard work and skill


Conversely, blaming something on bad luck is considered a sign of disrespect or poor character to Halflings.

----------


## Mark Hall

> My head-canon is that owlbears are closely related to triceratops. Feathers, quadrupedal, beak, large, and probably ill-tempered? Sounds like a ceratopsian just without the horns.
> 
> New head-canon: some owlbears have horns.




Oh, you mean the Great Horned Owlbeast of Tellene?

----------


## RedMage125

> My head-canon is that owlbears are closely related to triceratops. Feathers, quadrupedal, beak, large, and probably ill-tempered? Sounds like a ceratopsian just without the horns.
> 
> New head-canon: some owlbears have horns.


Why would a ceratopsian have feathers?

It was exclusively therapods that are theorized to have evolved into birds.

----------


## hamishspence

> Why would a ceratopsian have feathers?
> 
> It was exclusively therapods that are theorized to have evolved into birds.


True - but protofeathers may have existed in the earliest dinosaurs, later being _lost_ in some lines. 

It's quite plausible that they go right back to the dinosaur/pterosaur split - with pterosaur fuzz being basically the same stuff that dinosaurs ended up turning into feathers.

And some ceratopsians have been shown to have _quills_, at least.

----------


## Excession

> Oh, you mean the Great Horned Owlbeast of Tellene?


That's about right, yes. The horns are a bit too cow-like in the picture, but I would blame that on second-hand stories. After all, people saw a giraffe (or something) and came up with stories of the Catoblepas and Qilin.




> Why would a ceratopsian have feathers?
> 
> It was exclusively therapods that are theorized to have evolved into birds.


If you want to survive the ice age, you evolve feathers. Or things that look a bit like feathers to someone that is running for their life, anyway.

----------


## a_flemish_guy

> Conversely, blaming something on bad luck is considered a sign of disrespect or poor character to Halflings.


ooh, that's a good one, it's because halflings are either created or patroned by the godess of luck isn't it?

now I imagine a halfling child being lectured because he complained about his dice throws during a game like if he'd just cursed

----------


## Millstone85

When a deity becomes two deities or more, as it happened to Io (Bahamut/Tiamat), Tyche (Beshaba/Tymora), and Realmspace's original goddess of the night (Selûne/Shar), these deities remain connected through a type of vestige, called a schismatic vestige.

Those who call upon the power of a schismatic vestige often seek to remerge the corresponding deities. Some faiths instead regard the original deity as being alive and well, but known through aspects, as is the case with the elven worship of Angharradh (Aerdrie/Hanali/Sehanine).

On some worlds, drow religion revolves around the broken goddess Araushnee (Eilistraee/Lolth/Vandria). In this view, the lawful Vandria is most similar to Araushnee when the goddess first called the elves to adopt permanent forms and build empires, except that she now grieves over the losses this project brought and focuses on keeping the drow safe in their exile. Meanwhile, Lolth embodies the wrath the goddess felt when Corellon condemned her efforts, and which eventually caused her to attack him and shatter. Finally, the gentle Eilistraee represents the hope of rekindling the friendship between Corellon and the drow.

----------


## Archpaladin Zousha

> When a deity becomes two deities or more, as it happened to Io (Bahamut/Tiamat), Tyche (Beshaba/Tymora), and Realmspace's original goddess of the night (Selûne/Shar), these deities remain connected through a type of vestige, called a schismatic vestige.
> 
> Those who call upon the power of a schismatic vestige often seek to remerge the corresponding deities. Some faiths instead regard the original deity as being alive and well, but known through aspects, as is the case with the elven worship of Angharradh (Aerdrie/Hanali/Sehanine).
> 
> On some worlds, drow religion revolves around the broken goddess Araushnee (Eilistraee/Lolth/Vandria). In this view, the lawful Vandria is most similar to Araushnee when the goddess first called the elves to adopt permanent forms and build empires, except that she now grieves over the losses this project brought and focuses on keeping the drow safe in their exile. Meanwhile, Lolth embodies the wrath the goddess felt when Corellon condemned her efforts, and which eventually caused her to attack him and shatter. Finally, the gentle Eilistraee represents the hope of rekindling the friendship between Corellon and the drow.


I like this idea immensely, especially since gives some depth to Angharradh, as well as weaving Vandria into FR very nicely.  May I steal it, please?  :Small Red Face: 

Headcanon of my own: Elves (of all varieties) can get buff or fat like other folks, and aren't universally willow-thin as a rule.  They aren't really common, though, to the point where if you meet a beefy elf, odds are they've put effort into building that body shape.

----------


## Bohandas

> Water sources, ventilation, and sewage are frequently targets for inter-house conflict in Drow societies, not to mention the never-ending creature infestations. Drow Warrior-Plumbers are the very best there is.


Related headcanon: The cult of Zuggtmoy (demon princess of fungi) also employs warrior plumbers




> When a deity becomes two deities or more, as it happened to Io (Bahamut/Tiamat), Tyche (Beshaba/Tymora), and Realmspace's original goddess of the night (Selûne/Shar)....


And possibly also Heironeous and Hextor

----------


## Dexam

> On a related note, celestial angles totally are a thing. They live in Arcadia and look like this:


Naturally, all their attacks deal radian damage...

----------


## Kane0

> Naturally, all their attacks deal radian damage...


I actually did a spit-take at that

----------


## Dexam

> I actually did a spit-take at that


Their function in the heavenly courts is to act as messengers for the good-aligned deities to the mortal realms, evidenced by the fact that many people pray for and have received a sine from the gods...

----------


## Millstone85

> I like this idea immensely, especially since gives some depth to Angharradh, as well as weaving Vandria into FR very nicely.  May I steal it, please?


Thank you. And yes, of course, you may.




> Naturally, all their attacks deal radian damage...





> a sine from the gods...


Nice.  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Mark Hall

> Their function in the heavenly courts is to act as messengers for the good-aligned deities to the mortal realms, evidenced by the fact that many people pray for and have received a sine from the gods...


I would like to cosine these jokes, and log my objection to have not having thought of them first.

----------


## Bohandas

Summoning and the manifestation of divine aspects are closely related phenomena

----------


## Velaryon

> I would like to cosine these jokes, and log my objection to have not having thought of them first.


Please don't send this thread off on a tangent with these math puns. I know it's the usual formula around these parts, but I really hope this time is differential.

 :Small Smile:

----------


## a_flemish_guy

can I post some WH40K head canons as well?

if not just give a sign and I'll delete it

- the minotaur chapter are made out of a mixture of geneseed of all chapters in an effort for the imperium to get a grip on the astartes


- the dark angels would have gotten away with their original transgression with merely a slap on the wrist (the fallen didn't even join chaos), it's all the stuff they did to cover it up that pushes them into traitor territory


- gork and mork were originally khorne and tzeentch, the old ones noticed that their creations gave power to these warp spirits and thus gave them 2 new gods, one who's brutal but cunning and one who's cunning but brutal, since they didn't reveal which one was which and by giving both atributes to both gods this ended up making 2 new gods rather then them continueing giving power to khorne (who's only brutal) and tzeentch (who's only cunning)

- perturabo and the majority of the iron warior legion have been besieging the same fortress in the warp for the last 10K years, khorne liked the iron cage so much that he's tasked the worldbearers to bring rogal dorn in alive and have a revanche with dorn on the defence and perturabo on the offence
so far perturabo has failed to get into the fortress and khorne has failed to bring dorn to chaos since there's nothing that man wants for himself

----------


## Bohandas

Spells that heal diseases work by supercharging the immune system, not by attacking the disease dirextly

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

Along those lines, I generally rule that viruses are very very very very very very tiny undead creatures that sap infinitesimal fractions of hit points and ability points with their attacks in a much reduced version of normal undead creatures' Ability Drain and Energy Drain attacks.  That explains why disease-related effects like _contagion_ and similar are Necromancy rather than, say, Transmutations that blind you or cover you with boils, and why a Necrotic Cyst is necromantic in nature as opposed to a generic "magical cancer" effect.

These nano-undead are normally impossible to affect directly due to targeting and line of effect rules, but much like how there are specialized spells that can affect possessing creatures who normally can't be targeted separately from their hosts, _cure disease_ and similar spells can indeed target viruses directly...and on that scale, a _cure disease_ is the positive energy equivalent of a _twinned repeated widened intensified energy-admixed meteor swarm_.

Bacteria are similar, but they're either living creatures or deathless rather than undead, so a _cure disease_ basically hits them with Death By Awesome much like shoving a human right into the heart of the Positive Energy Plane would.  :Small Cool:

----------


## a_flemish_guy

instead of abruptly stopping at some point the positive and negative energy plains kind of overlap, the resulting energy storms are so violent that no being can survive in these zones


the gods are tapping into the negative and positive energy planes to give power to their clerics depending on which is closer


this is why divine spells can be converted directly into positive or negative energy and why good gods get only positive, evil gods get only negative and neutrals can choose between both

----------


## noob

most wizards are disguised goblins and most sorcerers are kobolds and their ancient rivalry comes from that.

----------


## RedMage125

> most wizards are disguised goblins and most sorcerers are kobolds and their ancient rivalry comes from that.


And Sorcerer Kings are poorly-disguised trolls?  :Small Wink:

----------


## Kane0

> And Sorcerer Kings are poorly-disguised trolls?


Made me laugh harder than it should have.

----------


## Telok

Cocaine wizards ae totally a thing in my games.

----------


## Misereor

Tharizdun is the unnamed deity that created Humanity, and he is simply trying to fix things.
Since the Obyrith infestation of reality cannot be cured or reversed, and will eventually turn it into another Voidharrow, reality will have to be destroyed and returned to the Far Realm, from where a new reality will arise. This must be done before the Obyriths can gather enough power to infest the next reality as well, as they have done cycle after cycle. Tharizdun is not actually crazy, just extremely driven in pursuit of his goal, like many Humans tend to be.

----------


## Archpaladin Zousha

> Tharizdun is the unnamed deity that created Humanity, and he is simply trying to fix things.
> Since the Obyrith infestation of reality cannot be cured or reversed, and will eventually turn it into another Voidharrow, reality will have to be destroyed and returned to the Far Realm, from where a new reality will arise. This must be done before the Obyriths can gather enough power to infest the next reality as well, as they have done cycle after cycle. Tharizdun is not actually crazy, just extremely driven in pursuit of his goal, like many Humans tend to be.


What's a Voidharrow?

----------


## Millstone85

> What's a Voidharrow?


Google tells me it is from a novel series called _Abyssal Plague_, which was released during 4e. Voidharrow is an entity from a dead universe that is unleashed across multiple worlds, including Nerath, Toril and Athas.

Which means there was a crossover between _Nentir Vale_, _Forgotten Realms_ and _Dark Sun_. No need for eldritch horrors, this is absolute madness already.

----------


## Razgriez

> And Sorcerer Kings are poorly-disguised trolls?





> Made me laugh harder than it should have.


I now have this mental image of an teenage troll, desperately trying to prove how cool and edgy they are...and it amounts to shouting a bunch of 4th wall breaking meta-gaming details about how they can totally destroy your party, because by "clever" (munchkining) reading (twisting) of the rules, they can do, like, 300d100 damage per action. While wearing a very cheesy costume and what amounts to a cheap rubber mask. 

The party defeats said "Sorcerer King" by flinging hardbound books, metal tablets, dice, etc, at said munchkin troll...

----------


## Mark Hall

> Google tells me it is from a novel series called _Abyssal Plague_, which was released during 4e. Voidharrow is an entity from a dead universe that is unleashed across multiple worlds, including Nerath, Toril and Athas.
> 
> Which means there was a crossover between _Nentir Vale_, _Forgotten Realms_ and _Dark Sun_. No need for eldritch horrors, *this is absolute madness already.*


Bolding mine, for amusing effect.

_THIS. IS. SPARTA!_

Ad res, the Voidharrow sounds like the Snarl.

----------


## Malphegor

Basee on item creation feats in 3.5, I feel that gems and precious stones were the first spell storage device in prehistory when dragons ruled, then druids and clerics established methods of storing spells in wooden wands and sticks, which culminated in the biggest ancient cities building sceptres, culminating in the iconic wizards staff as the masterwork of a wizards training, balancing multiple spells elegantly with a single pool of charges.

Sceptres fell out of fashion beyond some niche collectors because wands take less effort and are portable, and staffs are like the Porsche of magic sticks, and are more desireable.

Oh, also Changelings and doppelgangers work like Pokemons ditto for breeding with other races.

----------


## Misereor

> What's a Voidharrow?


I'm pretty certain it was a tiny Obyrith Shard (modified by Tharizdun to get him out of prison), but I could be wrong.

Anyway, the original Obyrith Shard was created by the Obyriths so they could migrate to and attune to a new reality, hence permitting them to continue to live on after their old reality was destroyed. The attunement is a procedure that slowly and inevitably changes reality into something resembling the Obyrith's original one. That is what created the Abyss and it's various demonic species, why entire planes will occasionally fall into it, and how the Blood war got started. 

That of course raises the question of what will happen once everything is infected/attuned/assimilated/Abyssalized. I'm thinking that the death of reality will be used to create a new Shard to attune to the next reality that comes along, granting the Obyriths a kind of immortality that gods can only dream of. And if that's the case, then who knows how many times it might already have happened. 

The only way to stop such a cycle would be to destroy reality before the prerequisites for creating a new shard could be met. Who knows what that kind of realization might do to an otherwise kind and benevolent god?

----------


## Malphegor

With the deity Nobarion in Faerun being Aslan but with the numbers filed off for legal purposes, there may be other immigrants from Narnia before that plane ended. Talking animals, certain magics, Father Christmas, might have made their way to the various Realms and planes at some point. Absolutely stories of the humans from the world of Earth and their adventures on the animal-infested world of Narnia are well known.

Which means Reepicheep is probably the textbook Paladin that all Paladins aspire to be.

----------


## Millstone85

> Anyway, the original Obyrith Shard was created by the Obyriths so they could migrate to and attune to a new reality, hence permitting them to continue to live on after their old reality was destroyed.


To be clear, I believe this is strictly _Nentir Vale_ lore.

In that setting, there never was a Great Wheel, only the World Axis. When Tharizdun found the obyrith shard, he planted it into the Elemental Chaos, creating the Abyss. Later on, Asmodeus journeyed to the heart of the Abyss and took a sliver of the shard, which he used to create the Nine Hells in the Astral Sea.

Compare and contrast with _Forgotten Realms_ lore. In that setting, the 3e-4e transition included a reorganization of the planes. Notably, Asmodeus decided and found a way to relocate the Abyss into the Elemental Chaos.

That's why I said a crossover between these settings was crazy. It would essentially involve alternate-reality versions of Asmodeus and other characters.

----------


## Misereor

> To be clear, I believe this is strictly _Nentir Vale_ lore.
> 
> In that setting, there never was a Great Wheel, only the World Axis. When Tharizdun found the obyrith shard, he planted it into the Elemental Chaos, creating the Abyss. Later on, Asmodeus journeyed to the heart of the Abyss and took a sliver of the shard, which he used to create the Nine Hells in the Astral Sea.
> 
> Compare and contrast with _Forgotten Realms_ lore. In that setting, the 3e-4e transition included a reorganization of the planes. Notably, Asmodeus decided and found a way to relocate the Abyss into the Elemental Chaos.
> 
> That's why I said a crossover between these settings was crazy. It would essentially involve alternate-reality versions of Asmodeus and other characters.


Like the various Tiamat versions, the color of Drow eyes, or the location of Helms Hold? :)
D&D has a lot of crapload of inconsistencies, and especially FR. I actually believe that Candlekeep had a rather lengthy thread that was still active a few months back, about the cosmology changes and how little sense they made. Anyway, it's not a biggie for me, as it has minimal impact on the players.

----------


## Beleriphon

> With the deity Nobarion in Faerun being Aslan but with the numbers filed off for legal purposes, there may be other immigrants from Narnia before that plane ended. Talking animals, certain magics, Father Christmas, might have made their way to the various Realms and planes at some point. Absolutely stories of the humans from the world of Earth and their adventures on the animal-infested world of Narnia are well known.
> 
> Which means Reepicheep is probably the textbook Paladin that all Paladins aspire to be.


Given what Aslan says about himself in the final books, that's making quite a claim. Suffice to say Narnia is representative of a particular belief system, and Aslan, like the central figure in a very popular European belief system, is at the centre of Narnia for a reason.

----------


## Velaryon

> Basee on item creation feats in 3.5, I feel that gems and precious stones were the first spell storage device in prehistory when dragons ruled, then druids and clerics established methods of storing spells in wooden wands and sticks, which culminated in the biggest ancient cities building sceptres, culminating in the iconic wizards staff as the masterwork of a wizards training, balancing multiple spells elegantly with a single pool of charges.
> 
> Sceptres fell out of fashion beyond some niche collectors because wands take less effort and are portable, and staffs are like the Porsche of magic sticks, and are more desireable.


Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to you newsletter.

Seriously, I think I may adopt this headcanon as my own.

----------


## Archpaladin Zousha

> Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to you newsletter.
> 
> Seriously, I think I may adopt this headcanon as my own.


Seconded.

But what about wizards who go BEYOND the staff and tote around magical polearms, like Pathfinder's Runelords?  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Squire Doodad

Bahamut is in fact a giant self-conscious fish that is good at illusions.

----------


## Bohandas

Drow and duergar have the skin tones they do due to cyanosis from the low oxygen levels deep underground

----------


## Bohandas

Elves behave like over the top stereotypes of west coast americans who flit between different melodramatic causes, questionable fad diets, and bizarre art trends on a bi-weekly basis

----------


## Archpaladin Zousha

> Elves behave like over the top stereotypes of west coast americans who flit between different melodramatic causes, questionable fad diets, and bizarre art trends on a bi-weekly basis


*Spoiler: So, something like this?*
Show

----------


## Bohandas

> *Spoiler: So, something like this?*
> Show


Except less bro and more hipster

----------


## Millstone85

> Except less bro and more hipster


*Spoiler: Like in the movie Bright?*
Show

----------


## Bohandas

That's definitely closer. But those are both snapshots and don't reflect that in a month the fashion will be completely different.

----------


## Toofey

This is a great thread. I have so many replies...

Quote Originally Posted by Clistenes  View Post
Year 1401, Seville, Kingdom of Castile, in today's Spain. The city council declared they would "build a temple so big and beautiful future generations will see it and judge us madmen..."

And they built the largest (by surface) gothic cathedral ever made...
Isn't that Barcelona (and it really is a fantastic cathedral)
____________________________________

It seems like a lot of people here think one way or the Other that the Lady of Pan is trapped in Sidgil... which is cool that so many people came to the same headcannon.

-------------------------------------------------
Quote Originally Posted by noob  View Post
not exactly true: or else everyone could imagine "a functional world where there is a super cool thing that is able to come in my world and help me and which is going to do so in 5 seconds from my time" and due to them being able to conceive it then it would exist and come in five seconds to help this person.
might even be the case, there's just a lot more worlds with people wishing for help than worlds where that person exists so odds are you will never see them.
__________________________________
Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas  View Post
Conversely, Liquid Pain (its Book of Gile Darkness counterpart) looks like creamed corn
actually true
______________________________________

Quote Originally Posted by Luccan  View Post
FWIW, the Borg were originally going to be bugs, not cyborgs. They might have been "inspired" by the oard and/or cybermen later, but their original concept was as an insectoid species. It was dropped due to budget concerns.
I heard this as well, that's why species whatever number from Voyager were insect-like

__________________

Quote Originally Posted by Millstone85  View Post
When a deity becomes two deities or more, as it happened to Io (Bahamut/Tiamat), Tyche (Beshaba/Tymora), and Realmspace's original goddess of the night (Selûne/Shar), these deities remain connected through a type of vestige, called a schismatic vestige.

Those who call upon the power of a schismatic vestige often seek to remerge the corresponding deities. Some faiths instead regard the original deity as being alive and well, but known through aspects, as is the case with the elven worship of Angharradh (Aerdrie/Hanali/Sehanine).

On some worlds, drow religion revolves around the broken goddess Araushnee (Eilistraee/Lolth/Vandria). In this view, the lawful Vandria is most similar to Araushnee when the goddess first called the elves to adopt permanent forms and build empires, except that she now grieves over the losses this project brought and focuses on keeping the drow safe in their exile. Meanwhile, Lolth embodies the wrath the goddess felt when Corellon condemned her efforts, and which eventually caused her to attack him and shatter. Finally, the gentle Eilistraee represents the hope of rekindling the friendship between Corellon and the drow.
I could get down with this except in my game world Lolth is just another form taken by Shar, although I have left it intentionally vague as to whether Lolth ever was a thing.

__________________________________

And now my own.... The Spellplague killed all of the chosen (which included Manshoon and Szas Tam etc...), and the changed nature of magic makes it impossible for new ones to be created. And none of that Albier stuff happened... that anyone remembers.

----------


## Spore

Humans are actually a bastardized version of ANY race they are genetically compatible to (read as in: can create half-races with). That is why they are so different, and are so middle of the road of anything.

Half-dwarves don't exist since dwarves did not take part in this disgusting interracial breeding program.

----------


## Luccan

> Humans are actually a bastardized version of ANY race they are genetically compatible to (read as in: can create half-races with). That is why they are so different, and are so middle of the road of anything.
> 
> Half-dwarves don't exist since dwarves did not take part in this disgusting interracial breeding program.


So what are mongrelfolk?

----------


## Bohandas

During peacetime goblins, orcs, and most other evil humanoids live a pastoral life as shepherds and ranchers because they find slaughtering the animals to be emotionally rewarding

----------


## SunderedWorldDM

Gnomes and Halflings view each other as distant yet estranged cousin races, their origins and cultures unified. Only the clergy among them can wear the tall comic hats that some elves depict in statues that they decorate their gardens with.

----------


## NoxMiasma

Oh boy, giving me an excuse to ramble about headcanons? You may regret that decision.

So, the Draconic language is, for my settings, reliant on pitch - some well beyond human hearing in either direction - as a method of relaying information. Because true dragons vary in size to such an extent over their lives, the range of sounds they can produce also changes as they grow. For this reason, the Draconic pronouns used to indicate great wisdom/strength/learning/age are literally not able to be properly pronounced by a dragon smaller than adult, reinforcing the hierarchy between dragons. Draconic races, like kobolds and dragonborn have a greater hearing range than most other humanoids, and so can perceive but not reproduce the most self-aggrandising forms of address in Draconic.

Kobold dialect Draconic in particular sounds very high-pitched and fast compared to the depth of a true dragons voice, and kobolds tend to speak quickly, perhaps due to their dragon masters lack of patience, or their generally short average lifespan. These tendencies are responsible for their yappy accents, which persist in common.

----------


## Luccan

Volothamp Geddarm's persona has been adopted by a devil that killed him in secret and hired out its services as a sort of evil PR expert. This is why Volo's Guide to Monsters gives excuses for every classic evil mook race, even though one would think if it was all a god's fault (Orcs, Goblins) or if they never did anything wrong unless they were forced into it (Kobolds) they wouldn't be evil in the first place.

----------


## Telok

I use DwarfFortress elves for my games.

To wit: elves are tree hugging eco terrorists with a high level of anilam empathy. Therefore killing animals for food, skins, etc., is taboo. Yet elves are omnivorous and enjoy a good pork chop like anyone else. So consuming the flesh of sapients is not taboo in elven society.

Halfling burgers are a thing.

----------


## Bohandas

> Volothamp Geddarm's persona has been adopted by a devil that killed him in secret and hired out its services as a sort of evil PR expert. This is why Volo's Guide to Monsters gives excuses for every classic evil mook race, even though one would think if it was all a god's fault (Orcs, Goblins) or if they never did anything wrong unless they were forced into it (Kobolds) they wouldn't be evil in the first place.


Wouldn't devils be more likely to do the reverse and spread false accusations about non-evil races, thereby provoking people to attack them and gain evil karma

----------


## Particle_Man

> I use DwarfFortress elves for my games.
> 
> To wit: elves are tree hugging eco terrorists with a high level of anilam empathy. Therefore killing animals for food, skins, etc., is taboo. Yet elves are omnivorous and enjoy a good pork chop like anyone else. So consuming the flesh of sapients is not taboo in elven society.
> 
> Halfling burgers are a thing.


An interesting reversal of Dark Sun, where the halflings are the people eaters.

----------


## Mark Hall

> Wouldn't devils be more likely to do the reverse and spread false accusations about non-evil races, thereby provoking people to attack them and gain evil karma


Sure, you can spread Evil by increasing evil... but you can also spread it by reducing the amount of evil that dies.

----------


## Bohandas

> Sure, you can spread Evil by increasing evil... but you can also spread it by reducing the amount of evil that dies.


Wouldn;t they want to cash in as soon as a creature turns evil (or at least as soon as it turns evil enough to go to Baator rather than Ribcage or Acheron)?

----------


## Vknight

Halflings are a sub-species of Humans that are half the size in average

Gnomes are the same too Elves and old elvish Gnome just means little-elf

Kobolds are the same too Lizardfolk with no connection to dragons but spending time around them causes the kobolds to develop 'dragon' traits as they adapt to there home environment

Goblins are the same to Orc's and Hobgoblins are just what happens when a goblin and orc have a child

----------


## Bohandas

Gods that seem to be regional gods of a small area despite being intermediate or greater deities are the rank they are because they're also worshipped on other worlds where their following is larger and their control of theor portfolio elements is less ambiguous

----------


## Bohandas

> So what are mongrelfolk?


Mongrelfolk are mix of 100% miscellaneous humanoids

Humans are a mix of 50% human, 50% miscellaneous everything (ie. also dragon, demon, celestial, yeti, etc. in addition to just humanoids)

----------


## No brains

Counter to the assertion that kobold's evil 'isn't their fault', I propose that gnomes are actually the evil race. Lore throughout editions has been pretty clear that kobolds were chill and fine before Garl Glittergold imprisoned Kurtulmak for... reasons. Supplanting the imprisonment of a benevolent god and forcing its subjects into barbarism, the new greatest joke gnomes have pulled is convincing everyone else they are good.

Gnuke the gnomes.

----------


## Vknight

> Counter to the assertion that kobold's evil 'isn't their fault', I propose that gnomes are actually the evil race. Lore throughout editions has been pretty clear that kobolds were chill and fine before Garl Glittergold imprisoned Kurtulmak for... reasons. Supplanting the imprisonment of a benevolent god and forcing its subjects into barbarism, the new greatest joke gnomes have pulled is convincing everyone else they are good.
> 
> Gnuke the gnomes.


This is just kobold propoganda the truth is actually the kobolds were evil after all Garl was just trying too help and Kurtulmak got upset as we all know kobolds are short sighted wrastrels and vagabonds

----------


## No brains

> This is just kobold propoganda the truth is actually the kobolds were evil after all Garl was just trying too help and Kurtulmak got upset as we all know kobolds are short sighted wrastrels and vagabonds


Tch! Another gnome apologist! How can you defend a people who hide from the world studying secrets only emerging with plans to sow chaos! They are thematically _identical_ every doomsday cult! :Small Tongue: 

Truth be told, I don't care for kobolds either. They both kind of annoy me. Maybe it's because of the time I spent playing horde in WoW.

It is kind of compelling to me that the lore leaves this kind of vague. To me the evidence solidifies when you look at the racial powers of the gnomes and kobolds, the things that could be considered the 'blessings of their gods'. The kobold's pack tactics and grovel, cower, and beg (aka Mass Help Action) really paint them as a cooperative people, while gnomes get powers meant to deceive. If I had to choose between a gnome or kobold to help me, the kobold's nature makes it a collaborator, while a gnome is suited to ditch me and hide.

----------


## Luccan

They're pretty clear about both groups having their own clear cut version of events, actually, at least in 5e. Kobolds claim Garl was jealous of Kurtulmak's wealth and trapped him. Gnome lore holds that Kurtulmak and his kobolds enslaved them, so Garl lead him away and trapped him in a cave in. Of course, it's only in 5e that this entrapment became permanent, as far as I know. I'm pretty sure in previous editions he got out and then declared an eternal war on Glittergold and his people.

I actually like both kobolds and gnomes and think their feud is interesting, but the writers are clearly trying to avoid certain moral implications. It's unfortunately in a way that tends to paint the "good guys" as outright villains rather than generating moral complexity. And they still somehow prevented monster PCs from making sense. So, clearly, Volo is a plant.

Edit: To be fair, looking at the non-deity related lore, gnomes are described as friendly and inventive, whereas kobold ingenuity is entirely built around traps because, at the best of times, they're fiercely isolationist. Also kobolds don't care about the individual unless the individual is important, i.e. any given kobold(s) can die in a cave in and none of them will really be concerned (barring serious damage to tribe numbers), but a hero will be remembered until the tribe dies out.

----------


## Bohandas

I had this funny idea pop into my head of beholders' eyes being single use and constantly regrowing. When an eye ray is fired the eye ejects like a spent cartridge and a new one pops in from a feed inside the eyestalk.

----------


## Luccan

> I had this funny idea pop into my head of beholders' eyes being single use and constantly regrowing. When an eye ray is fired the eye ejects like a spent cartridge and a new one pops in from a feed inside the eyestalk.


Gross. But totally believable for an aberration. Also, horrifying to spring on a party if they put one of its eyes out.

_DM: Your arrow embeds itself in the center eye, ruining the Anti-Magic Cone that was keeping the wizard's magic at bay.

PC: Great! Ok, you can cast this turn so-

DM: The eye shifts in its socket, before falling from the beholder. In its place, you see a new eye, glassy and mucusy but beginning to clear, take its place. You suddenly recall the mutilated troll corpses and vials of green ichor from before. With horror, you realize what the beholder's experiments were for.
_

And then presumably your players put _your_ eyes out, but what are you gonna do?

----------


## Vknight

> Tch! Another gnome apologist! How can you defend a people who hide from the world studying secrets only emerging with plans to sow chaos! They are thematically _identical_ every doomsday cult!
> 
> Truth be told, I don't care for kobolds either. They both kind of annoy me. Maybe it's because of the time I spent playing horde in WoW.
> 
> It is kind of compelling to me that the lore leaves this kind of vague. To me the evidence solidifies when you look at the racial powers of the gnomes and kobolds, the things that could be considered the 'blessings of their gods'. The kobold's pack tactics and grovel, cower, and beg (aka Mass Help Action) really paint them as a cooperative people, while gnomes get powers meant to deceive. If I had to choose between a gnome or kobold to help me, the kobold's nature makes it a collaborator, while a gnome is suited to ditch me and hide.


Honestly i both like and dislike them as a concept i think they can be interesting as instead of being dragons a breed of lizardfolk where they develop traits to fit the environment and there view as being close to dragons means they develop too live near a dragon they serve.
Thus the traits that are draconic are from generations living around them.

Ehhh if we go by the grovel, cower, and beg stuff of the kobold it also points too a cultural need to supplement a superiors ego which means i wouldn't trust the kobold if given too much power or a leadership position

----------


## Millstone85

> The creator of the couatls was, of course, Quetzalcoatl. He was also the lone good-aligned god of the yuan-ti.


So it turns out that 5e's mysterious couatl god had a name in previous editions. It is Jazirian. And to my surprise, some legends portray him as the creator of the Great Wheel, no less, together with his evil twin Ahriman (who may or may not be Asmodeus' true identity). Those two are said to be recovering from the fight they had after the Wheel was completed, now biting their own tails instead of each other's, one on Mount Celestia and the other deep in the ninth hell.

Also, couatl yuan-ti are totally a thing. They are called shulassakar on Eberron.

That's all really cool!

Now, I guess that a common headcanon must be that there was a third great serpent working with them. Trinity, rule of three, and all that. My own take is that the third serpent is... Sigil, also biting her own tail, with the Lady of Pain as a servant or avatar.

----------


## Anachronity

> Wizard have fairs to settle their arguments with games like Summoners chess,  cantrip obstacle course, and familiar shows.


Complete Arcane of 3.5 (or maybe Complete Mage?) goes over this sort of concept. But I have to say I particularly love the idea of a familiar pageant. I can practically feel the sheer loathing of all the imps and quasits and small elementals as they're made to compete alongside assorted cats, bats, toads, and birds.

And better yet, the occasional pseudodragon who simply _delights_ in the opportunity.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

Magefairs are canonical in the Forgotten Realms, and the short story _Elminster at the Magefair_ gives a good look at one.  One of the highlights is a fireball-flinging contest where the wizards alter the spell components to make it more flashy and/or destructive.

If you've ever wanted to explain in-character where your wizard learned his metamagic feats (and condescend to uncultured sorcerers at the same time), now you know.  :Small Cool:

----------


## Malphegor

> Tch! Another gnome apologist! How can you defend a people who hide from the world studying secrets only emerging with plans to sow chaos! They are thematically _identical_ every doomsday cult!
> 
> Truth be told, I don't care for kobolds either. They both kind of annoy me. Maybe it's because of the time I spent playing horde in WoW.
> 
> It is kind of compelling to me that the lore leaves this kind of vague. To me the evidence solidifies when you look at the racial powers of the gnomes and kobolds, the things that could be considered the 'blessings of their gods'. The kobold's pack tactics and grovel, cower, and beg (aka Mass Help Action) really paint them as a cooperative people, while gnomes get powers meant to deceive. If I had to choose between a gnome or kobold to help me, the kobold's nature makes it a collaborator, while a gnome is suited to ditch me and hide.


There was a great fan theory once that gnomes, in fact, do not actually exist, and their continued existence is a trick played on other races by the non existent gnomes- by convincing them that they exist... They exist!

Only by observing a gnome can you tell if it is existing.

----------


## Mark Hall

> Magefairs are canonical in the Forgotten Realms, and the short story _Elminster at the Magefair_ gives a good look at one.  One of the highlights is a fireball-flinging contest where the wizards alter the spell components to make it more flashy and/or destructive.
> 
> If you've ever wanted to explain in-character where your wizard learned his metamagic feats (and condescend to uncultured sorcerers at the same time), now you know.


Brothers in Arms actually has a sequence where Raistlin learns the No Components feat, IIRC. From a priest, no less.

----------


## Bohandas

When Asmodeus fell he likely took a layer of Celestia with him. It seems the kimd of thing likely to happen upon a whole bunch of archons turning evil. Akin to when one of the layers of Arcadia fell into mechanus when its inhabiyants ceased being good

----------


## Eldan

> When Asmodeus fell he likely took a layer of Celestia with him. It seems the kimd of thing likely to happen upon a whole bunch of archons turning evil. Akin to when one of the layers of Arcadia fell into mechanus when its inhabiyants ceased being good


Nice numerical coincidence: That means originally, there were eight heavens and eight hells, eight being the number of perfection.

----------


## Bohandas

When someone without the requisite training tries to speak a word of the Dark Speech it comes out as a beep like they were swearing on network television

----------


## No brains

I am convinced that Githyanki and Githzerai are supposed to be Kingons and Vulcans. They were 'the same' in the sense that illithids captured them from the Star Trek universe. One one set is brutal warriors _in space_ and the other are logical bozos _in space_.

----------


## Mark Hall

> I am convinced that Githyanki and Githzerai are supposed to be Kingons and Vulcans. They were 'the same' in the sense that illithids captured them from the Star Trek universe. One one set is brutal warriors _in space_ and the other are logical bozos _in space_.


Romulans and Vulcans, perhaps?

Of course, Fading Suns revisited the idea with the Ur-Obun and Ur-Ukar

----------


## Bohandas

> I am convinced that Githyanki and Githzerai are supposed to be Kingons and Vulcans. They were 'the same' in the sense that illithids captured them from the Star Trek universe. One one set is brutal warriors _in space_ and the other are logical bozos _in space_.


The githyanki remind me more of the Alternian trolls from "Homestuck". Given the whole thing where they live their adult lives on the astral plane but grow up on material planets, they have psychic powers, they lay eggs, and they are rules by a sadistic queen with formidable supernatural powers

EDIT:

On an unrelated note, stuff owned by gnomish nobility has a tendency to be worn out and ratty but not look it. It starts out as nice luxurious stuff that is backed up and enhanced by illusion magic to make it nicer. Eventually the actually item wears out but the illusion remains so you wind up with stuff that's worn out and broken but still looks and feels luxurious

EDIT:
Also, at least some of the monsters that seem to be mashups of other kinds of creatures - such as the owlbear, the sphinx, etc. - are likely not related to the species they resemble (In much the same way that the Platypus isn't closely related to either the duck or to the beaver)

EDIT:

Also, the Slaad language sounds like the vocalizations from the "Crazy Frog" remix of Axel F

----------


## No brains

Wee Jas is the stage name for that deity's rap career, like Lil Jon.

----------


## weckar

> The githyanki remind me more of the Alternian trolls from "Homestuck". Given the whole thing where they live their adult lives on the astral plane but grow up on material planets, they have psychic powers, they lay eggs, and they are rules by a sadistic queen with formidable supernatural powers


The Gith well predate that, though.

As for my personal headcanon: Once the Dark Powers grow bored and complacent, one day Ravenloft will end.

----------


## ezekielraiden

In the 4e cosmology, Bahamut and Tiamat were created when the brooding loner Io tried to take on a Primordial all by himself. For his trouble, Io got _literally cleft down the middle_ into two halves...which almost instantly re-formed into the siblings. They then kicked the Primordial's s#!t (one of the few Primordials actually _slain_ IIRC). So...all the evil, mean, and wicked parts of the God of Balance got split off into Tiamat, and the nice and noble parts got sent to Bahamut. Headcanon: Bahamut is the ultimate god of Good.

Also, separately: Bahamut and Kord are lovers. Their relationship can be tempestuous (figuratively and literally...) but they always patch it back up. That's why Kord hangs out in Celestia, despite it not being his own divine domain (since he seems to lack one).

----------


## Luccan

Many deities have a different alignment now than they did during their mythic background. This is mostly how I justify Corellon Larethian both being Chaotic _Good_ and being, well, Corellon Larethian. They used to fluctuate from LN to CN. Now they've realized they were a jerk but can't undo the damage they did to the elves, they encourage personal freedom and expression as much as any racial deity can, and they try not to curse entire populations any more.

----------


## SunderedWorldDM

The astral plane is an explosion of color and light, everything being in sharp clarity and vibrant, while the ethereal plane is muted and dry, all objects warped and indistinct. This is because the astral plane connects to the planes that exemplify and expand on material plane phenomena and ideas, and the ethereal plane connects to planes that are syntheses of material ideas, like the core elements.

----------


## Grey Watcher

> I have always been a fan of the "Pelor: the Burning Hate" theory, to the point of currently playing a Blackguard of Pelor in my current 3.5 campaign.


Oh man, I have an idea for a 5E character I've wanted to play for a while now.  A fallen Cleric of Pelor who buys into the Burning Hate Heresy and is now a Celestial Warlock.  His patron _claims_ to be an angel who has also discovered the truth and needs a mortal agent to help expose Pelor and eventually take him down.

Whether or not any of it is true (the Heresy, his patron's identity, or any of the rest) I'd leave up to the DM.

Bonus points if it takes place in Matt Mercer's campaign setting.  _Haven't you ever wondered why there are two sun gods?_ *WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!* (Yes, I know, I know.  It's because they switched from the Pathfinder pantheon to the Standard Issue D&D pantheon when they changed from a private home game to a streaming show, but they didn't want to change Ashley's character's god because that would just be a weird and awkward retcon.  But just leaving it at that is not how crackpot headcanon theories work, you see.)

The other major headcanon I hold unwavering loyalty to is the Great Modron Marketing Survey.

----------


## Archpaladin Zousha

I'll be honest, The Burning Hate headcanon has always bothered me.  It's kind of a pizza-cutter (all edge and no point) of an idea, trying too hard to be cynical and I don't get why it's caught on so strongly with D&D players...

----------


## a_flemish_guy

> *There are two forms of the Infernal language. A highly exact, restricted, and deficient Newspeak like form for day to day use, and a flowery, highly metaphorical, easily misinterpreted version for contracts etc.
> 
> *Souls sent to Baator are literally assigned genders. And it's deliberately chosen to be the one that will cause them the most trouble


adding to this: in exact infernal names are more like descriptions of a person rather then a constant referal to an entity, also those descriptions are very precise: [had 2 eyes but lost the right one] sounds nothing like [naturally one-eyed]
also in exact infernal a word has exactly one specific meaning

----------


## Mark Hall

> I'll be honest, The Burning Hate headcanon has always bothered me.  It's kind of a pizza-cutter (all edge and no point) of an idea, trying too hard to be cynical and I don't get why it's caught on so strongly with D&D players...


Partially, I think, because it stems from the rules-based nitpicking that drives discussion of D&D. In AD&D, it wouldn't make sense, because "evil" spells were "you better have a damned good reason", not "are completely unavailable".

----------


## Grey Watcher

> I'll be honest, The Burning Hate headcanon has always bothered me.  It's kind of a pizza-cutter (all edge and no point) of an idea, trying too hard to be cynical and I don't get why it's caught on so strongly with D&D players...


I can see the appeal from a DM perspective:  if you think your campaign is going to get near or all the way to level 20 (or whatever the equivalent in your system of choice is), it's a decent hook.  Unless your whole table are completely new to the game and its attendant lore, you don't have to waste time explaining who Pelor _is_.  And having a what TV Tropes so succinctly calls a Villain With Good Publicity gives a good reason why you can't call in the proverbial cavalry of more powerful entities:  everyone's either been suckered by the ruse or is in on it.

Alternatively, it being so wildly incorrect and absurd can be a great world building detail.  Your setting's answer to flat earthers.  I guess that's what I would want to play with with the character I described.  In character, he's thoroughly convinced, but until at best the very end of the campaign, you'd never really _know_.  The end of his arc would be either triumphant validation or a bitter disillusionment.

I guess I'm not 100% on board with buying into it as true per se, but I certainly like it as an idea that's out there in the setting's culture.  The fact that it _does_ rely on such flimsy evidence, involves heaping load of Begging the Question, and runs entirely on confirmation bias isn't a bug, it's a feature.

Though I do think plenty of people readily do accept, even IRL, that that's what the character is meant to be.  I think that tendency speaks to something well beyond the game.  Maybe because we're so used to mortal authorities using a righteous facade to hide unscrupulous behavior that we're inclined to assume the same of gods.  Maybe it's just a tendency in the modern world towards iconoclasm:  look around the internet and you can find plenty of blogs, articles, and whathaveyous detailing how this or that figure who's widely regarded as heroic or a role model has done awful things.  So, again, maybe there's an inclination to assume that a god must be the same way.  Therefore, as soon as someone posts a silly joke about deliberately parsing everything in the worst way and leaping on editing errors as evidence, everyone loves it and it goes all viral and stuff.

Like I said, I think it's best used as an in-universe plot element or setting detail, with the truth of the matter only established if the campaign is specifically geared towards that (whether by the DM's original intent or whether driven there by the player).  And honestly, maybe not even then.

EDIT:  Oh, and speaking of the in-universe world-building, plot hook uses, it's also a decent way to do the "dangerous underground cult" thing without having to have everyone worshipping the Dark God of Wedgies and Obvious Ironic Comeuppance.  I mean, you can only have so many people buy into the Original Position fallacy before it starts to just get a bit stale.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> I think that tendency speaks to something well beyond the game.  Maybe because we're so used to mortal authorities using a righteous facade to hide unscrupulous behavior that we're inclined to assume the same of gods.  Maybe it's just a tendency in the modern world towards iconoclasm:  look around the internet and you can find plenty of blogs, articles, and whathaveyous detailing how this or that figure who's widely regarded as heroic or a role model has done awful things.  So, again, maybe there's an inclination to assume that a god must be the same way.  Therefore, as soon as someone posts a silly joke about deliberately parsing everything in the worst way and leaping on editing errors as evidence, everyone loves it and it goes all viral and stuff.


I'd say it's probably three factors working together.  First is the one you mention here; in any alignment debate or "How good is Good?" discussion you'll see people conflating D&D morality with real-life morality because it's a common reference point, even though there's a big difference between the two both socially and cosmically.

Second, there's tons of Good-aligned stuff in the game (monsters, classed NPCs, items...) that rarely gets used in an antagonistic capacity because comparatively few games involve evil PCs.  A group that's already seen a lot of (and gotten used to the standard flavor and tactics of) demons, devils, evil cults, and so forth can find a squadron of Pelorite paladins mounted on pegasi with some Radiant Servants of Lathander support to be a refreshing change of pace against which a lot of standard tactics and gear prove ineffective.  That's probably why the Burning Hate more frequently shows up in the context of DMs wanting to throw something different into their next campaign rather than PCs wanting to play clerics of evil!Pelor.

Third, a lot of settings have Evil (or sketchy-leaning Neutral) gods among the most common pantheon(s), and authors and DMs tend to have to go to some trouble to explain why people would put up with churches of evil gods in polite society at all--Umberlee the Sea B*tch is worshiped to keep her _away_ from shipping, Bane is all about civic order (or else!), gods of death can be worshiped as gods of "please let my dead grandpa stay dead and not spontaneously animate as an undead creature" if you squint, and so on--which also happens to make the gods feel more three-dimensional and make the setting feel more immersive since real-life gods are rarely God Of This One Particular Thing and tend to be more multifaceted.  Fleshing out some Good gods and giving them closet skeletons like Zeus's dalliances, Thor's anger problems, and the like can give you more verisimilitude in the same way.

(And, as a side effect, it can help turn Neutral gods from "Why the heck would you ever fence-sit between obvious Good and obvious Evil!?" to more of "Well, the Evil gods aren't all puppy-kicking jerks and the Good gods aren't all sweetness and light, so at least the Neutral gods aren't putting a big PR spin on things," which adds yet more believability and also opens up more Neutral antagonist options.)

----------


## Grey Watcher

> adding to this: in exact infernal names are more like descriptions of a person rather then a constant referal to an entity, also those descriptions are very precise: [had 2 eyes but lost the right one] sounds nothing like [naturally one-eyed]
> also in exact infernal a word has exactly one specific meaning


I actually have a more elaborate (and therefore more useless in actual play) one for Infernal.

Infernal isn't actually the language of Devils.  At least, not the one they use when talking to each other.  It's a highly simplified version specifically for use with mortals, possibly literally a constructed language.  When Devils talk to each other, there are _hugely_ complicated and very, very precise rules dictating what speech patterns, grammar, vocabulary, and sometimes even entire dialects, you're supposed to use with a given other Devil, depending on your relative ranks in the hierarchy and some other factors (eg there's a subset of rules for what happens when a Devil assigned to tempting mortals is talking with another one who's working in Hell's military legions).  If you don't want to handicap a player that took Infernal too hard, you might say that for-mortals Infernal can at least get the gist of a conversation you might be eavesdropping on.  But there's probably a lot of information passing between them about rank, role, station, ambitions, etc. that a mortal who just speaks "Infernal" is going to completely miss.

It's not _impossible_ for a mortal to learn to speak Infernal like a native, but it'd take decades of research, lessons, and probably first hand experience living in Hell to get even passable at it.  And most Devils know that mortals using Simplified Infernal is fine (only so much can be expected of such limited creatures after all).  But if you don't know _exactly_ what you're doing, trying to speak fully-fledged Infernal is arguably more dangerous.  You do _not_ address a Lord of one of the Circles of Hell the same way you would address just any Pit Fiend, and accidentally using rules for "speaking to Asmodeus himself" when speaking to _anyone_ else would be literally seen as open treason or rebellion.  And if you're speaking non-simplified Infernal, you're expected to know better, so if you want to claim it was a mistake, you better have a sky high Persuasion check on top of a natural 20 too back out of _that_ gaffe.

----------


## Sniccups

> Dwarves are _Norse_, dammit, not Scottish.


I've been playing recently in a world where the dwarves are _Swiss_. As in, they work as bankers and mercenaries, and live in a land surrounded by mountains.

----------


## Azuresun

Choosing a patron deity in the Forgotten Realms is approached much like investing in the stock market. Deities like Chauntea or Grumbar are stable, low-risk investments, whereas gods like Bane or Torm who tend to get into fights and tangled up in divine soap opera are higher risk.

Mystra is in a risk category of her own.

----------


## Scots Dragon

St. Cuthbert speaks with a Scottish or Northern English accent.

Wee Jas has the voice of Grey DeLisle.

Most of the worst stuff of the Spellplague in the Forgotten Realms actually didn't happen at all, and the 'restored to normal' of 5th Edition was literally just people realising that rather than listening to tall tales. I _personally_ blame Volothamp Geddarm.

Literally all of the cosmological models from the Great Wheel to the World Axis are have varying degrees of truth and falsehood, and rather than being the actual intrinsic structure of the universe they're an attempt by very limited mortal minds to comprehend things that just aren't actually completely possible to comprehend. 

Golarion is pretty much part of the D&D multiverse, since it's closer to the standard than even some major settings like Dark Sun and Dragonlance.

Due to the links between universes that have kind of been hinted at repeatedly through various spells, characters meeting one-another, and the whole concept of Planescape, there are a whole bunch of interloper deities shared between settings even beyond the elven, dwarven, etc. pantheons. Some Faerûnians worship Boccob, for instance.

EDIT: the Wall of the Faithless does not actually exist

----------


## Archpaladin Zousha

> Wee Jas has the voice of Grey DeLisle.


Huh...I always imagined her more as Natalie Portman.  Her art kind of even LOOKS like her (Grey DeLisle still works though, after all, she DID voice Padme in the animated Clone Wars)!

----------


## Sniccups

> I actually have a more elaborate (and therefore more useless in actual play) one for Infernal.
> 
> Infernal isn't actually the language of Devils.  At least, not the one they use when talking to each other.  It's a highly simplified version specifically for use with mortals, possibly literally a constructed language.  When Devils talk to each other, there are _hugely_ complicated and very, very precise rules dictating what speech patterns, grammar, vocabulary, and sometimes even entire dialects, you're supposed to use with a given other Devil, depending on your relative ranks in the hierarchy and some other factors (eg there's a subset of rules for what happens when a Devil assigned to tempting mortals is talking with another one who's working in Hell's military legions).  If you don't want to handicap a player that took Infernal too hard, you might say that for-mortals Infernal can at least get the gist of a conversation you might be eavesdropping on.  But there's probably a lot of information passing between them about rank, role, station, ambitions, etc. that a mortal who just speaks "Infernal" is going to completely miss.
> 
> It's not _impossible_ for a mortal to learn to speak Infernal like a native, but it'd take decades of research, lessons, and probably first hand experience living in Hell to get even passable at it.  And most Devils know that mortals using Simplified Infernal is fine (only so much can be expected of such limited creatures after all).  But if you don't know _exactly_ what you're doing, trying to speak fully-fledged Infernal is arguably more dangerous.  You do _not_ address a Lord of one of the Circles of Hell the same way you would address just any Pit Fiend, and accidentally using rules for "speaking to Asmodeus himself" when speaking to _anyone_ else would be literally seen as open treason or rebellion.  And if you're speaking non-simplified Infernal, you're expected to know better, so if you want to claim it was a mistake, you better have a sky high Persuasion check on top of a natural 20 too back out of _that_ gaffe.


I love this idea.




> The githyanki remind me more of the Alternian trolls from "Homestuck". Given the whole thing where they live their adult lives on the astral plane but grow up on material planets, they have psychic powers, they lay eggs, and they are rules by a sadistic queen with formidable supernatural powers


This is a good idea, but I think it kind of falls apart when you try to integrate Doc Scratch and Lord English.

----------


## Belac93

Most of the traditional races evolved to be distance hunters, like humans. However, humans came out on top in the civilization game.

Elves beat out humans by being fast and having to sleep less; even though they might have to rest more often, they don't need to rest as long. They got out-competed because of low birth rates.

Orcs tried to beat humans by being overall tougher, able to run for longer. However, they are much more dependant on eating meat, and other races developed agriculture, so they weren't able to create stable large societies.

Halflings are small and energy efficient, allowing them to eat less and travel in larger groups. They invented agriculture early, but a racial lack of ambition (similar to the neanderthal's lack of wanderlust and curiosity) made them less inclined to build more than necessary.

Dwarves don't fit into this, because they're actually carrion-eaters, with extra constitution, resistance to poison, and a slower speed. Their alcohol is a byproduct of fermented mushrooms which they eat to pad out their diets when there isn't enough meat to go around. Also, the rare dwarven hunter is basically a trapdoor spider with handaxes that hunts deer.

----------


## martixy

> The astral plane is an explosion of color and light, everything being in sharp clarity and vibrant, while the ethereal plane is muted and dry, all objects warped and indistinct. This is because the astral plane connects to the planes that exemplify and expand on material plane phenomena and ideas, and the ethereal plane connects to planes that are syntheses of material ideas, like the core elements.


Random note:
Those already exist. They are called the Plane of Shadow and the Plane of Radiance [Dr. 321].

So... when is it some random head-canon and when is it just your own personal homebrew cosmology? Cuz I could rant a lot about the latter. _A lot._

For the smaller stuff...
I don't do monoculture races, so this does not apply universally, but I like completely ridiculous combinations such as
- Drow that sound like russian immigrants
- Minotaurs that sound like posh british butlers
- Redneck orcs, etc.

P.S. Is there any word on why Sigil is called the Cage? Someone mentioned the idea of it being a prison for Her Serenity, and that name fits rather well, so how much of actual canon could we have there?

----------


## Bohandas

> Random note:
> Those already exist. They are called the Plane of Shadow and the Plane of Radiance [Dr. 321].


IIRC there's actually TWO planes of radiance. The Demiplane of Radiance and the Quasielemental Plane of Radiance

----------


## Beleriphon

> P.S. Is there any word on why Sigil is called the Cage? Someone mentioned the idea of it being a prison for Her Serenity, and that name fits rather well, so how much of actual canon could we have there?


Everybody knows that the Lady of Pain is a canonically five psionic squirrels in fancy dress with a magic item.

----------


## SunderedWorldDM

Demons are responsible for the worst crimes of the multiverse. The Abyss is their divine prison, and the devils are their jailers. The Blood War is simply quelling a jailbreak. Yugoloths play both sides as the god that made them was infamously one who double crossed people and played both sides in the divine conflict.

----------


## Mark Hall

> Everybody knows that the Lady of Pain is a canonically five psionic squirrels in fancy dress with a magic item.


And since squirrels are just fancy rats, the Lady of Pain is a cranium rat.

----------


## Scots Dragon

> Everybody knows that the Lady of Pain is a canonically five psionic squirrels in fancy dress with a magic item.





> And since squirrels are just fancy rats, the Lady of Pain is a cranium rat.


Ah, but this is kinda backwards.

All rodents are avatars and aspects of the Lady of Pain.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> Everybody knows that the Lady of Pain is a canonically five psionic squirrels in fancy dress with a magic item.


I really wish people would stop making up ridiculous "facts" like that about beloved Planescape NPCs.

She's _six, non-psionic_ squirrels, geez.  Get it right.  :Small Tongue:

----------


## Mark Hall

> Ah, but this is kinda backwards.
> 
> All rodents are avatars and aspects of the Lady of Pain.


... she's also unbeatable.

I just figured out the Lady of Pain.

----------


## Belac93

The lady of pain is obviously a mass delusion. Everyone is actually seeing Mr. Scruffles, a perfectly normal cat that the zeitgeist of the city is going to incredible lengths to protect.

As for the disappearances and mazes and anti-god stuff, the city just kinda _does_ that.

----------


## No brains

The Lady of Pain is a contrivance that allows the Planescape setting to exist. I mean, that's what she is _in world_. Somebody brought up that it would be cool if Planescape existed and all of the gods kind of murmured in lukewarm agreement and are all insisting that there is totally a Lady of Pain who can stop gods. All this so they could hear Homer Simpson voice a modron.

----------


## Lord Torath

The Crimson Sphere (the crystal sphere containing Athas and the Dark Sun Campaign) is located in a space where all phlogiston rivers flow away from it.  You can exit the sphere, but you can't come back (except through a portal at the center of a flame ring in Krynnspace that dumps your now-ruined ship in the upper atmosphere of Athas).

----------


## Luccan

> The Crimson Sphere (the crystal sphere containing Athas and the Dark Sun Campaign) is located in a space where all phlogiston rivers flow away from it.  You can exit the sphere, but you can't come back (except through a portal at the center of a flame ring in Krynnspace that dumps your now-ruined ship in the upper atmosphere of Athas).


To be fair, I think most people in the setting would be happy with a one-way ticket out. I hear the other spheres have water.

----------


## Scots Dragon

> To be fair, I think most people in the setting would be happy with a one-way ticket out. I hear the other spheres have water.


Therefore it's actually the other way around.

You can get trapped on Athas very easily. Escaping? Not so much.

----------


## Azuresun

Given the German / Russian influences on Karrnath, I now imagine this being their national anthem.

----------


## Beleriphon

> Given the German / Russian influences on Karrnath, I now imagine this being their national anthem.


But with Zombies doing the dance?

----------


## Azuresun

> In hextor's land, to make the people work more, they increased the lenght of the week. There is still only one sunday. Every once in a while, a leader will add another day to the week.
> Currently they have 23 days, and counting. The extra days are all called monday, because everyone hates mondays.


*Spoiler*
Show

----------


## a_flemish_guy

> Therefore it's actually the other way around.
> 
> You can get trapped on Athas very easily. Escaping? Not so much.


additional thinking: when the githyanki stuck their noses out of their portals on athas and looked around at the endless dessert, psionic superhuman population, immortal sorceror kings and souped-up dragon they not only decided that they had someplace more important to be but also that they'd rather these guys didn't get out and actively blocked of any means of creating portals

----------


## Mark Hall

> additional thinking: when the githyanki stuck their noses out of their portals on athas and looked around at the endless dessert, psionic superhuman population, immortal sorceror kings and souped-up dragon they not only decided that they had someplace more important to be but also that they'd rather these guys didn't get out and actively blocked of any means of creating portals


The Gith (not Githyanki, just Gith) are actually a fairly common enemy on Athas.

----------


## Lord Torath

> The Gith (not Githyanki, just Gith) are actually a fairly common enemy on Athas.


Not to be confused with the Pirate Gith that sail around Wildspace.  Pirate Gith are supposed to be an offshoot of the Githyanki/Githzerai race that fled into Wildspace instead of the Astral plane when the big split happened. 

I think Athasian Gith might be distantly related to the other Gith, but I don't really remember how.

----------


## Mark Hall

> Not to be confused with the Pirate Gith that sail around Wildspace.  Pirate Gith are supposed to be an offshoot of the Githyanki/Githzerai race that fled into Wildspace instead of the Astral plane when the big split happened. 
> 
> I think Athasian Gith might be distantly related to the other Gith, but I don't really remember how.


I always figured they were Gith who got stuck... like, they looked for a Prime world to raise their kids on, and then realized they couldn't leave. So you have this group of incredibly inbred gith, stuck on the Prime Material.

----------


## noob

> additional thinking: when the githyanki stuck their noses out of their portals on athas and looked around at the endless dessert, psionic superhuman population, immortal sorceror kings and souped-up dragon they not only decided that they had someplace more important to be but also that they'd rather these guys didn't get out and actively blocked of any means of creating portals


They live in dessert?
I did not know that.

----------


## Lord Torath

> They live in dessert?
> I did not know that.


Their homes are made of Sandies.   :Small Wink:

----------


## Dr paradox

Necromancy is the art of soul manipulation.

This may seem obvious, but it has specific ramifications for Animate Dead, and the many proponents of the "Good Necromancer."

See, Golems and other animated objects don't use necromancy. They all use Conjuration or Transmutation. So there's got to be something specific about animating corpses that sets it apart from binding elementals or sewing movement into a suit of armor. To me, the answer is that when a skeleton is animated, the soul that once inhabited it is torn from its final rest, in whole or in part, and bound to the decaying remains, forced to carry out the caster's wishes. They are subjected to metaphysical torture until their release.

This is why necromancy, and animating the dead in particular, is evil.

(I guess the way to test this theory would be to cast "Clone," die, then attempt to animate your own corpse? RAW, I believe that works fine, so there's evidence against my theory...)

----------


## noob

> Necromancy is the art of soul manipulation.
> 
> This may seem obvious, but it has specific ramifications for Animate Dead, and the many proponents of the "Good Necromancer."
> 
> See, Golems and other animated objects don't use necromancy. They all use Conjuration or Transmutation. So there's got to be something specific about animating corpses that sets it apart from binding elementals or sewing movement into a suit of armor. To me, the answer is that when a skeleton is animated, the soul that once inhabited it is torn from its final rest, in whole or in part, and bound to the decaying remains, forced to carry out the caster's wishes. They are subjected to metaphysical torture until their release.
> 
> This is why necromancy, and animating the dead in particular, is evil.
> 
> (I guess the way to test this theory would be to cast "Clone," die, then attempt to animate your own corpse? RAW, I believe that works fine, so there's evidence against my theory...)


Does it means that when I cast animate deathless on a rat it takes the soul of the rat and use it to animate the deathless?
Does it means that rat souls are as much valuable as any other soul?

----------


## Dr paradox

> Does it means that when I cast animate deathless on a rat it takes the soul of the rat and use it to animate the deathless?
> Does it means that rat souls are as much valuable as any other soul?


Er. Doing some quick research.

So, deathless are a positive energy equivalent to undead from the Eberron setting specifically, and "Animate Deathless" is a homebrew spell from this forum, posted about six years ago?

That's... kind of its own headcanon, isn't it?

To answer your question, I would say that a rat soul is as valuable as a rat deathless. Given that the homebrew spell in question both excludes sapient creatures and produces a notably weaker creature than Create Deathless does, it seems to indicate that a rat soul would be weaker than other souls.

That said, I'm not sure how one would judge the relative strength of souls.

----------


## noob

> Er. Doing some quick research.
> 
> So, deathless are a positive energy equivalent to undead from the Eberron setting specifically, and "Animate Deathless" is a homebrew spell from this forum, posted about six years ago?
> 
> That's... kind of its own headcanon, isn't it?
> 
> To answer your question, I would say that a rat soul is as valuable as a rat deathless. Given that the homebrew spell in question both excludes sapient creatures and produces a notably weaker creature than Create Deathless does, it seems to indicate that a rat soul would be weaker than other souls.
> 
> That said, I'm not sure how one would judge the relative strength of souls.


I am sorry I meant create deathless which is not homebrew but from the book Eberron campaign setting.
Create deathless have no restriction on what it can animate and always create the same kind of creature.

----------


## JBPuffin

Ioun, patron goddess of librarians (and of magic if youre like me and use the Dawn War pantheon as your go-to), is an ascended mortal; she took on the mantle of goddess of magic when the old god of that domain was slain. She found his spellbook, copied the spells into hers, and ascended as an unintentional side effect, making her one of the more approachable deities in the pantheon.

Shardminds arent the products of some Living Gate falling apart, but what happens when the crystalline stars fall to earth. Their natural psionic resonance collects memories, language data, and such from passers-by until the combination creates a sort of identity construct which it then embodies.

There are no giraffes on any of the normal Primes because they are, in fact, Far Realm brings domesticated by nature deities - you know, the kind that are kept out of meetings because they smell and might bring another hydra to the meeting and dont understand why clothes are a common decency and so on. Most Primes simply dont have the required gods for the task of creating a stable breeding population.

----------


## Dr paradox

> I am sorry I meant create deathless which is not homebrew but from the book Eberron campaign setting.
> Create deathless have no restriction on what it can animate and always create the same kind of creature.


I don't know that the "Strength" of a given soul is strictly relevant to the headcanon. More interesting is that Deathless retain the memories they had in life, suggesting that there is indeed a connection between their present state and the soul they had in life.

Aside from that, Deathless are a part of Eberron specific lore, and not D&D lore generally.

----------


## Kelb_Panthera

> I don't know that the "Strength" of a given soul is strictly relevant to the headcanon. More interesting is that Deathless retain the memories they had in life, suggesting that there is indeed a connection between their present state and the soul they had in life.
> 
> Aside from that, Deathless are a part of Eberron specific lore, and not D&D lore generally.


In point of fact, deathless were introduced in the 3e Book of Exalted Deeds well before the ones in the 3e Eberron Campaign Setting. At least that's the earliest incarnation that I'm aware of. That and a few Eberron books are the only places they were printed though so it's certainly an understandable error.

----------


## Dr paradox

> In point of fact, deathless were introduced in the 3e Book of Exalted Deeds well before the ones in the 3e Eberron Campaign Setting. At least that's the earliest incarnation that I'm aware of. That and a few Eberron books are the only places they were printed though so it's certainly an understandable error.


Well, shut my mouth!

It's certainly fair that there's plenty of material to contradict my headcanon. It's mostly the thing that makes sense for the often stated position that Necromancy is evil, plus the thematics that eem more potent that way (Death is the natural order, defying death is an act of mortal hubris, death is larger than ourselves, the undead as a symbol of a decrepit and monstrous past, relying on undead labor as visual metaphor for slavery).

----------


## lightningcat

All Cure spells and other similar healing spells are in the Necromancy school.

As they always hould have been. And as they were back in the older editions.

----------


## Avigor

The Human racial deity (possibly now a vestige, such as Amon, Balam, Naberius, or Orthos) developed the ambition to attempt to contact what some Athar now refer to as the Great Unknown, and the other deities absolutely panicked, believing that if such a thing did exist that if it were made aware of them that it would destroy them (or at least ruin their fun), so they attempted to wipe the human deity out of existence (with questionable success). They allow the modern Athar, who may have been inspired by an old legend of this event, to exist only because they don't have access to the sheer, ridiculous power required to attempt the ludicrous 13th level spell/ritual (borrowing from what I've heard of old concepts of epic magic that afaik were far beyond 3.5 "epic magic") that the original attempt entailed.

----------


## noob

> I don't know that the "Strength" of a given soul is strictly relevant to the headcanon. More interesting is that Deathless retain the memories they had in life, suggesting that there is indeed a connection between their present state and the soul they had in life.
> 
> Aside from that, Deathless are a part of Eberron specific lore, and not D&D lore generally.


Value != strength.
I talked about soul value.
Not about soul strength.
Any soul is valuable through the ability to be turned into the soul of a deathless if you consider necromancy puts the soul of the corpse within the created creature.
Essentially any soul of a dead creature can suddenly become a good aligned soul full of good intentions.

----------


## Mark Hall

> All Cure spells and other similar healing spells are in the Necromancy school.
> 
> As they always hould have been. And as they were back in the older editions.


Related:  "Necromancy" concerns positive and negative energy. If the spell involves that, it's at least part necromancy.

----------


## Scots Dragon

> In point of fact, deathless were introduced in the 3e Book of Exalted Deeds well before the ones in the 3e Eberron Campaign Setting. At least that's the earliest incarnation that I'm aware of. That and a few Eberron books are the only places they were printed though so it's certainly an understandable error.


Adding into this, though they were never clarified as 'Deathless' as such, since they precede the term, the Forgotten Realms has had something similar floating about for ages. 

There are elven pseudo-liches called Baelnorns, which cannot be turned and serve as powerful lorekeepers and protectors of ancient elven secrets. They are generally lawful good, and date back to the AD&D days.

----------


## hamishspence

The FR also had plenty of nonevil human liches, who were usually referred to as archliches.

----------


## Spriteless

The Ring of Sybiris was built to keep the Dal Quor from infecting other realities' dreams.

Or to seal away whatever weapon the Giants used to break their predecessors.

----------


## Leon

> *Trolls eat a lot because their regenerative abilities are metabolically taxing. This, combined with their poor mental abilities and lack of discipline leand to them attacking livestock, which leads to altervations with ranchers, which leads to their regeneration being needed, which turns into a vicious cycle


When the Iron Kingdoms Monsternomicon came out it had Dire Trolls listed as CE, it was later noted to be not the case as while the people who have lost everything to rampaging Trolls might see them as Evil they are actually Chaotic Hungry.

----------


## RedMage125

> Necromancy is the art of soul manipulation.
> 
> This may seem obvious, but it has specific ramifications for Animate Dead, and the many proponents of the "Good Necromancer."
> 
> See, Golems and other animated objects don't use necromancy. They all use Conjuration or Transmutation. So there's got to be something specific about animating corpses that sets it apart from binding elementals or sewing movement into a suit of armor. To me, the answer is that when a skeleton is animated, the soul that once inhabited it is torn from its final rest, in whole or in part, and bound to the decaying remains, forced to carry out the caster's wishes. They are subjected to metaphysical torture until their release.
> 
> This is why necromancy, and animating the dead in particular, is evil.


So...this is actually backed up in some quasi-canonical sources.  In the Dragon magazine #350 article "Core Beliefs: Wee Jas", it states:
"Her focus is on the spirits of the dead, not their bodies, and thus she tolerates necromancy-especially if the subject is willing (although she frowns on stealing lawfully-buried bodies). Because she guards the spirits of the dead, she is displeased when these spirits are involuntarily summoned back to the mortal world and corrupted into undead (again, voluntray corruption into undead-bodied or bodiless-does not disturb her). Her belief in the sanctity of death is so strong that her clergy are forbidden from raising the dead by any means without first consulting her (whether directly via commune or indirectly through a divine messenger)."
"Wee Jas does not appreciate the use of Suel spirits for creating undead, and any arcane spellcaster bent on creating undead should be careful about what sort of spirit his spell draws to the Material Plane. In most cases, undead-creating spell (including animate dead) can be adjusted as they are cast to avoid contacting the remnant of a Suel spirit, and doing so does not alter their casting or effects in any way. A few spells, however, specifically draw on the soul that once inhabited the target body (often intended as a punishment for the dead person)..."

So the spirit that animates an undead creature is apparently a mortal soul.

Also, to wit: If your buddy is killed, and you take a finger from his body to take back to town to get a Resurrection, but some necromancer turns that body into a zombie in the meantime?  No resurrection.  His body could be disintegrated and True Resurrection would work, but make him a zombie, and lock that zombie in a lead-lined box with a permanent Nondetection and Dimensional Anchor on it, drop it in the ocean?  No mortal magic can bring your friend back to life, and you're gonna have to find that box manually to kill the zombie.  So there is SOME connection between the soul of the person who passed and the undead creature.




> (I guess the way to test this theory would be to cast "Clone," die, then attempt to animate your own corpse? RAW, I believe that works fine, so there's evidence against my theory...)


That is, of course, the crux.  No one's clear on what happens then.  Presumably, you're fine, and you get an undead version of you, but what happens when your cloned body is killed?  Does that undead need to be killed before you can be resurrected?




> All Cure spells and other similar healing spells are in the Necromancy school.
> 
> As they always hould have been. And as they were back in the older editions.


I make mention of that in a little fun mental exercise I was working on.

----------


## Bohandas

> Also, to wit: If your buddy is killed, and you take a finger from his body to take back to town to get a Resurrection, but some necromancer turns that body into a zombie in the meantime?  No resurrection.  His body could be disintegrated and True Resurrection would work, but make him a zombie, and lock that zombie in a lead-lined box with a permanent Nondetection and Dimensional Anchor on it, drop it in the ocean?  No mortal magic can bring your friend back to life, and you're gonna have to find that box manually to kill the zombie.  So there is SOME connection between the soul of the person who passed and the undead creature.


Yes, but if you do it in the reverse order it works fine.

----------


## Grey Watcher

> ...
> 
> That is, of course, the crux.  No one's clear on what happens then.  Presumably, you're fine, and you get an undead version of you, but what happens when your cloned body is killed?  Does that undead need to be killed before you can be resurrected?


Why would Animate Dead work on an unused clone?  In 5e, the clone is "inert" not dead.  And if memory serves l, 3e had similar language.

----------


## RedMage125

> Why would Animate Dead work on an unused clone?  In 5e, the clone is "inert" not dead.  And if memory serves l, 3e had similar language.


I meant the new, cloned body that you are curently using.  If and when you die again.

So...
Prime Body: Dead, now a zombie. Caster's consciousness is in Clone
Clone: Now also dead.  Can this person be brought back with Raise Dead?  Or does the zombie of Prime Body need to be killed first?  The way the RAW are worded is unclear.

----------


## Grey Watcher

> I meant the new, cloned body that you are curently using.  If and when you die again.
> 
> So...
> Prime Body: Dead, now a zombie. Caster's consciousness is in Clone
> Clone: Now also dead.  Can this person be brought back with Raise Dead?  Or does the zombie of Prime Body need to be killed first?  The way the RAW are worded is unclear.


Sorry about that.  I think I somehow skipped over a word in there (specifically the word "die").

I think by 5e RAW you should end up alive in your clone body with your original body as a pet zombie.  (A really disturbing pet....)  The rules don't bar it and RAW never spells out the metaphysics, so it's not like it's there to draw inference from.

----------


## No brains

The apparent disconnect between class starting age and the ability to multiclass on a whim comes from the schedule of basic training for all classes. All classes are going to need to learn how to jog for several miles, carry a heavy pack, hold their breath absurdly long, and do other elementary system functions. It's just that a wizard doesn't prioritize those and makes slower progress getting to the level 1 competency stage of doing those things. Barbarians and sorcerers have precious little else to do but learn those, so they start adventuring earlier.

----------


## RedMage125

> Sorry about that.  I think I somehow skipped over a word in there (specifically the word "die").
> 
> I think by 5e RAW you should end up alive in your clone body with your original body as a pet zombie.  (A really disturbing pet....)  The rules don't bar it and RAW never spells out the metaphysics, so it's not like it's there to draw inference from.


You're still missing the last half.  After that, if you die AGAIN in your cloned body, does the zombie of your original body need to be destroyed in order to resurrect you? The Clone spell carries with it no rules that say how it interacts with spells that resurrect a player that has been turned into an undead, but ONLY if the undead creature is destroyed first.

----------


## Jay R

It is my opinion that elves mature at the same rate that humans do, and in the same way.  When they are in the range from 20-80 years, they are mostly concerned with sex, politics, football, and role-playing games, just like humans are.  The difference is that an elf isn't considered mature until he or she grows out of it.  Humans, unfortunately, don't live long enough to grow out of this unfortunate time of life.

This is also why elves generally look down on humans.

----------


## Eldan

That's pretty much how Tolkien wrote it, I think. Elves dont' age much slower than humans until they are in their mid 20s or so, at which point they stop aging. At least until either their fiery soul gets too hot for their body or their soul accumulates too many negative emotions and they just die. 

They didn't look any different from humans either, though.

----------


## Bohandas

Zagyg's castle is capable of completely reconfiguring its interior, that's why every Castle Greyhawk/Castle Zagyg adventure has had a different layout

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

On the subject of elf maturation rates, here's a 3e headcanon/joke I've referenced a few times:




> It's really quite simple.  Elves are perfectionists, and the 3e rules bear out the aging discrepancies.
> 
> *Spoiler*
> Show
> 
> In 3e, anything you can do is a skill or ability check.  "Notice something large in plain sight" is a DC 0 Spot check, for instance--a check that cannot be failed by anyone with at least 10 Wis and no distractions, even if they're untrained, but a skill check nonetheless.  Most of the time, you can ignore those checks, because they're impossible to fail, so humans and halflings and dwarves and all the rest simply take 10 on them.  However, elves cannot abide doing anything less than perfectly, so they take 20 on every single check, which takes 20 times as long as making the check normally.
> 
> Every.  Single.  Check.  Walking?  DC 0 Balance check.  Talking?  DC 0 Diplomacy check.  Eating?  DC 0 Dex check.  Using the bathroom?  Er, you get the idea.  That's why everyone sees elves as being the most beautiful, most awesome, etc. beings out there.  Eating a sandwich will take them an hour where it would take a human 3 minutes, but by Corellon it'll be the most-gracefully-eaten sandwich you ever did see!
> 
> ...

----------


## KillianHawkeye

> Zagyg's castle is capable of completely reconfiguring its interior, that's why every Castle Greyhawk/Castle Zagyg adventure has had a different layout


Dracula must have gotten his castle from the same place.  :Small Wink:

----------


## Scots Dragon

> Zagyg's castle is capable of completely reconfiguring its interior, that's why every Castle Greyhawk/Castle Zagyg adventure has had a different layout


This actually applies to most dungeons. Not all of them do change layout, but most of them are capable of it.

----------


## Matuka

Just as angels are capable of falling, demons are capable of rising.

Angels (and demons) are not literally cast out of there respective locations. When either stops being the alignment of there home realm, they "fall" or "rise" in dimensional frequency. This drops them off at the dimensional middle ground, the material plane.

Necromancy is the manipulation of an energy that flows throughout the worlds. Souls and spirits naturally form from this energy through eggs/wombs. They can also form due to great events/locations (immense forests spawn nature spirits, and so on). Yes there are evil necromancers, but there are always evil users of any magic.

Lastly, butter is flammable. I have no idea if it really is that way but it came up in my dnd campaign, we all said it was that way so now it is that way, in my world anyway.

----------


## Lord Torath

> Lastly, butter is flammable. I have no idea if it really is that way but it came up in my dnd campaign, we all said it was that way so now it is that way, in my world anyway.


I don't know that I'd call it "flammable", but I suspect if you stuck a wick in a stick of butter you could have a butter candle.  (Turns out:  you can!)

----------


## Bohandas

The Abyssal language uses the same word for both "artist" and "serial killer"

----------


## Spriteless

> The Abyssal language uses the same word for both "artist" and "serial killer"



Oh man, how boring and repetitive their art must be.

----------


## lightningcat

> The Abyssal language uses the same word for both "artist" and "serial killer"


Torturer should be in there as well.

----------


## Bohandas

> Dracula must have gotten his castle from the same place.


Dracula, or Strahd? Because Strahd's castle explicitly does this

"_...others believe that Strahd's magic causes the crypts to shift and move around each time mortals dare enter them_" -Castle Ravenloft Boardgame, Rulebook, page 5, paragraph 1

----------


## RedMage125

> Dracula, or Strahd? Because Strahd's castle explicitly does this
> 
> "_...others believe that Strahd's magic causes the crypts to shift and move around each time mortals dare enter them_" -Castle Ravenloft Boardgame, Rulebook, page 5, paragraph 1


Castlevania lore about the castle shifting itself pre-date the Ravenloft Board Game.

----------


## Bohandas

*The specific actions required to prepare a given spell vary both from person to person, and from place to place and day to day according to current local magical conditions. The writing in a wizard's spellbook changes itself to reflect current magical conditions and what they mean for its specific owner. The variation from person to person is why a wizard can't simply prepare a spell from any other wizard's spellbook. The changing writing in a spellbook is the part that makes it so expensive and necessitates the weird materials.

*Xoriat is not a plane. It is a gaping hole in Eberron's multiverse through which things come in from outside





> So the spirit that animates an undead creature is apparently a mortal soul.


That's not controversial. The question is its relevance, to wit, whether zombies and skeletons have a spirit at all

----------


## Spore

> Castlevania lore about the castle shifting itself pre-date the Ravenloft Board Game.


The dark realms as a whole are in a kinda of timeless featureless limbo of sorts in my head anyway. After all it is meant as purgatory for the Dark Lords. Time does not move the same for all inhabitants. Of course Strahd or Dracula only has direct control over his castle, otherwise the heroes defeating him are kind of pointless. Once you are inside, once you have found his chambers, it is on.

----------


## AlignmentDebate

Like some other people said, elves are idiots who take over 100 years to attain basic competence in anything.

Also, from reading the linked thread just now:




> If anyone has read forgotten realms literature, you will know that most species of Elves spend their first century learning about their culture and their interests. For example, the drow of Faerun send their young to academies for many years before they are a true part of society.


You know, drow society suddenly makes a lot more sense when you realize that they all spent decades in high school.

----------


## Luccan

All the impractical exotic weapons in D&D are almost universally of elvish design. The elves, of course, have decades to centuries to master these weapons, letting them develop unpredictable techniques that all but the most dedicated of other races just don't have the time for when a sword or axe will usually do just as well.

Those of extra planar design are usually just born into the minds of their wielders, creating an instinctual ability to use them, formed by a travelling psychic intelligence obsessed with battle.

----------


## Bohandas

The drow are not dark-skinned, their skin is bruised all over. When the first drow attacked Corellon and his followers, Corellon stomped them so hard that even their descendents had bruises.

----------


## lightningcat

> The drow are not dark-skinned, their skin is bruised all over. When the first drow attacked Corellon and his followers, Corellon stomped them so hard that even their descendents had bruises.


Iirc, an older canon was that he lit them all on fire, and the dark skin was from the charred flesh.

----------


## Sam113097

Trolls regenerate so quickly by incorporating the bones, muscles, and structures of the creatures they consume, so trolls are shambling, misshapen masses with too many joints, limbs that move at strange angles, and claws made of broken bones from creatures they have eaten. I described a troll like this to my players, and it made it a memorable and disgusting encounter, especially when the troll grew a new hand made out of the bones of a guard it ate.

----------


## Bohandas

The exact means of preparing a given wizard spell shifts from day to day, from place to place, and from person to person (due to a variety of reasons relating to ley lines, weather, individual physiology, etc.)

A wizard's spellbook is a minor magic item which constantly updates itself to reflect what its owner needs to do to prepare a spell at the current time and place. 

This is the reason why it takes special materials to write a spell into one's spellbook, why a spell from someone else's spellbook can't be easily prepared or copied, and why a wizard who prepares the same spell every day still can't prepare it from memory.

----------


## D&D_Fan

Modrons speak in a coding language, like C and Java, and their speech is really just commands, and If you speak modron, you can control them to some degree.

The mind flayers were originally Gith.

The Far Realm is actually an alternate universe, or the space between universes. Also the D&D universe might exist, but it has vastly different rules than our own universe.

There are monsters more powerful than CR30. One example is Daurgothoth who is thought to be CR50.

----------


## SunderedWorldDM

> The mind flayers were originally Gith.


Woah, that's cool! Could you shed more light on that one?

----------


## Bohandas

> The mind flayers were originally Gith.





> The Far Realm is actually...the space between universes.


Both of these are headcanons that I have as well

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> The exact means of preparing a given wizard spell shifts from day to day, from place to place, and from person to person (due to a variety of reasons relating to ley lines, weather, individual physiology, etc.)


The Magicians series by Lev Grossman uses similar fluff for magic:




> [Learning magic] turned out to be about as tedious as it was possible for the study of powerful and mysterious supernatural forces to be. The same way a verb has to agree with its subject, it turned out, even the simplest spell had to be modified and tweaked and inflected to agree with the time of day, the phase of the moon, the intention and purpose and precise circumstances of its casting, and a hundred other factors, all of which were tabulated in volumes of tables and charts and diagrams printed in microscopic jewel type on huge yellowing elephant-folio pages. And half of each page was taken up with footnotes listing the exceptions and irregularities and special cases, all of which had to be committed to memory, too. Magic was a lot wonkier than Quentin thought it would be.





> "You are here to internalize the essential mechanisms of magic. You think"[Professor Mayakovsky's] accent made it _theenk_"that you have been studying magic....You have practiced your Popper and memorized your conjugations and declensions and modifications. What are the five Tertiary Circumstances?"
> 
> It popped out automatically. "Altitude, Age, Position of the Pleiades, Phase of the Moon, Nearest Body of Water."
> 
> "Very good," he said sarcastically. "Magnificent. You are a genius."
> [...]
> "You have been studying magic the way a parrot studies Shakespeare. You recite it like you are saying the Pledge of Allegiance. But you do not _understand_ it...You cannot study magic. You cannot learn it. You must ingest it. Digest it. You must merge with it. And it with you.
> 
> "When a _magician_ casts a spell, he does not first mentally review the Major, Minor, Tertiary, and Quaternary Circumstances. He does not search his soul to determine the phase of the moon, and the nearest body of water, and the last time he wiped his ass. When he wishes to cast a spell he simply casts it. When he wishes to fly, he simply flies. When he wants the dishes done, they simply are."
> ...


It's not my preferred explanation for how spell preparation work, but it's definitely good for in-character magibabble.




> A wizard's spellbook is a minor magic item which constantly updates itself to reflect what its owner needs to do to prepare a spell at the current time and place. [...] This is the reason why[...]a wizard who prepares the same spell every day still can't prepare it from memory.


Since D&D magic is, canonically, heavily centered around spoken and written magical language (power words, true names, Words of Creation, spell scrolls, runes, sigils, glyphs...), the flavor I usually use to explain the use of spellbooks is that spell preparation involves the parts of the brain related to reading and language much more than the parts relating to visualization, willpower, or whatever.  Thus, even if a wizard can rattle off all the details of a spell from memory, the physical act of reading a spell's writeup in a spellbook makes it much faster and easier to prepare the spell by engaging those parts of the brain automatically and subconsciously.  It's much like how memorizing a speech or remembering something someone said or the like takes some effort, but you don't need to _think_ about reading things, you just do it, or how e.g. an expert juggler can try to constantly and consciously think of all six balls he's juggling but it's much easier to rely mostly on muscle memory to keep everything flowing smoothly.

The special inks and such, then, are there to give different visual, tactile, and maybe even olfactory properties to the text for more efficient information storage, to engage slightly different parts of the brain, and to convey metatextual information, much like how if you've been on this forum for a while you "hear" blue text as sarcasm because that totally makes sense, without someone having to add a bunch of qualifiers to get the tone across.

We know the spellbook is at least partially just a mnemonic aid, as it's entirely possible to prepare spells without the spellbook, from the basic _read magic_ spell every wizard can prepare from memory to Spell Mastery that lets a wizard focus on a few spells and internalize them without needing the shortcuts.  But it's quite difficult beyond a certain point (the Eidetic Spellcaster ACF requires a wizard to use literal mind-altering substances to form connections between the language and visualization portions of the brain to get the same benefits normally gained by simply reading a spellbook), hence why most wizards just stick with spellbooks.




> Also the D&D universe might exist, but it has vastly different rules than our own universe.


Actually, canonically Earth exists in D&D as one of many Material Plane worlds, and the lack of magic and difficulty in accessing other planes is just a quirk of the local physics like any other sealed crystal sphere.

Many of the gods and peoples in the Forgotten Realms originated on Earth, one of the two reasons for the setting's name being that supposedly there were lots of connections between Earth and Toril thousands to hundreds of years ago, and the connections to the foreign _realms_ have faded and been _forgotten_ as various creatures left Earth; various settings (such as d20 Past) and modules (such as The Immortal Storm) take place on, or send people to, alternate Earths; and Mordenkainen of Oerth, Elminster of Toril, Dalamar of Krynn, and Ed Greenwood of Earth used to get together for the occasional chat, as recorded in the Wizards Three articles in Dragon Magazine.

----------


## a_flemish_guy

> The mind flayers were originally Gith.


ooh, that's even better then my idea that the mindflayers would come about as a direct consequence of gith actions

----------


## Luccan

I've recently come to the idea that kobolds have a limited racial memory. Every kobold, even one hatched alone and raised by badgers, knows it is a kobold and knows what that _means_ relative to the rest of the world. They also all have a singular inborn fear of _something_. Usually, this is identical within a tribe: the Wristbite tribe all fears water too deep to stand in, for instance. Some scholars theorize this is tied to their racial memory: one of their ancestors died so horrifically to whatever they fear that it's stained into the tribes memory until something equally terrible happens in to another kobold and changes its descendants' fear.

----------


## Bohandas

It occurs to me that the souls and corporeal undead issue from the past few pages could be solved by adding the hun-soul/po-soul distinction from the game _Exalted_

EDIT:

On an unrelated note, everyone in Elysium acts like they're high all the time, and everyone in Hades spends all their time rolling around on the ground sobbing uncontrollably

----------


## Eldan

> It occurs to me that the souls and corporeal undead issue from the past few pages could be solved by adding the hun-soul/po-soul distinction from the game _Exalted_
> 
> EDIT:
> 
> On an unrelated note, everyone in Elysium acts like they're high all the time, and everyone in Hades spends all their time rolling around on the ground sobbing uncontrollably


Similar concepts, but I used a simplified version of the Egyptian five-part soul.

----------


## Esprit15

The natural gods dont care about how many followers they have - their divinity is an aspect of their existence just as much as having lungs is for us. The few that seek worship normally only do so to further their own ends, rather than because they need it to exist.

The ascended gods on the other hand _do_ gain their power from the faith of their followers, which is why they are often far more aggressive in recruitment.

----------


## No brains

There are so many ways for paladins to become evil, (blackguards, oathbreaker, death knight, narzugon) that I speculate that paladin powers came from a source that was originally evil. Then through some tomfoolery, the powers of good appropriated the paladin for their ends. Now paladins are either struggling to kludge their class to run off a good power source or that they are all sleeper agents placed to go off where they can inflict the most harm.

----------


## Spriteless

> There are so many ways for paladins to become evil, (blackguards, oathbreaker, death knight, narzugon) that I speculate that paladin powers came from a source that was originally evil. Then through some tomfoolery, the powers of good appropriated the paladin for their ends. Now paladins are either struggling to kludge their class to run off a good power source or that they are all sleeper agents placed to go off where they can inflict the most harm.


I don't normally like alignment, but this makes sense of it. It ties into how evil gods don't give their followers free will. Why do palis have such restrictive oaths? Because they've tapped into power keyed to control its users. So now they can choose to revert to their powers' original master.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> I don't normally like alignment, but this makes sense of it. It ties into how evil gods don't give their followers free will.


A comparative lack of free will isn't an "evil gods" thing at all, it's a matter of extremity in any direction (and if it were associated with a certain alignment, it would be Law, not Evil).  The more someone devotes themselves to a god or alignment principle(s), the closer their values, thoughts, and actions are required to align with those of their patron; classes with strict codes of conduct, divine casters who can lose their power for displeasing a god, and the like exist for every alignment and religion.  On the low end, a generic LG fighter and a generic CE fighter have roughly the same (lack of) constraints on behavior as one another despite their wildly opposed alignments, and on the high end an exalted paladin of honor and a vile paladin of slaughter are forced into stereotypical/archetypal molds to similarly degrees.

Which implies something interesting in conjunction with the "paladins' power source is secretly of evil origin" thing.  You'd expect exaltedness and vileness to look very similar in degree of constraint on behavior but totally different in what those strictures actually entail, yet it's a common complaint that a lot of stuff from BoED is basically the same stuff from BoVD but with the alignment flipped and nonsensical exceptions carved out--diseases are evil and despicable to use, but ravages are totally hunky dory because reasons, for instance.  However, paladins are the poster children for exalted characters, and if exalted material literally originated _in-character_ as evil things that were palette-swapped to good things by force (a la _sanctify the wicked_ on a much grander scale) then that suddenly makes a horrifying kind of sense.

----------


## Spriteless

Dice I only meant the story reason for why Orks are no longer playable.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> Dice I only meant the story reason for why Orks are no longer playable.


Were you suggesting that "evil gods don't allow their followers free will" is your headcanon for that, then?  'Cause "no longer playable" implies you're talking about 5e and I don't see anything about that in the 5e MM.  In that case, yeah, that's a good way to do things if you want to justify orcs being non-playable and kill-on-sight.

That's pretty similar to how they retconned 5e gnolls, though, and I'd say having two "totally normal savage humanoid that's secretly basically a demon with no conscience or morals" races is at least one such race too many, if not two.  If they want to make hyena-like demons and boar-like demons, they should do that, not turn classic races into sorta-kinda-demons and nuke all the relevant lore and history.

----------


## Millstone85

> Ghaunadaur can restore the intellect of oozes as easily as it took that intellect away.
> That Which Lurks, true to its name, is just lying low on the faith-o-meter until the time is right.


This is a copy-paste of my post.

----------


## Khedrac

> This is a copy-paste of my post.


This is a known tactic of Bots (to make their posts look relevant), in which case the best option is to report the post, something I am about to do.

----------


## vasilidor

Does anyone mind if i pillage this thread for ideas?
also my personal headcanon for DnD etc: the "alignment system" was a contrivance of the gods whom are now sincerely regretting there choices (for those old enough to remember when it was set up).
also every gnome dreams of one day having a cannon for a head.

----------


## Bohandas

My headcanon for the alignment system is that it's inconsistent in-world. And the reason it's inconsistent is because the outer planes are shaped by belief, and people's beliefs are inconsistent.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> Does anyone mind if i pillage this thread for ideas?


That's what it's here for!




> also my personal headcanon for DnD etc: the "alignment system" was a contrivance of the gods whom are now sincerely regretting there choices (for those old enough to remember when it was set up).





> My headcanon for the alignment system is that it's inconsistent in-world. And the reason it's inconsistent is because the outer planes are shaped by belief, and people's beliefs are inconsistent.


Canonically speaking, alignment actually predates the gods, because it arose during the War of Law and Chaos before gods and most mortal races were a thing.  And as fundamental cosmic forces, alignments had very little to with humanoid morality and ethics originally:
Law is basically the cosmic force of "the multiverse should have a fixed existence and operate everywhere and everywhen according to certain fundamental laws" (hence e.g. the Great Wheel's rigid shape and structure even on the "chaotic" side, since Law won the war, and Mechanus being the engine keeping the rest of the multiverse running smoothly).Chaos is basically the cosmic force of "the multiverse should have no fixed existence and should work differently everywhere and everywhen" (hence e.g. chaotic outsiders and aberrations often having un-fixed forms and no apparent relation to other creatures, and the Abyss being wonky in multiple ways)Good is basically the cosmic force of "Law and Chaos can both coexist on roughly equal terms in the same multiverse" (hence e.g. angels coming in all three Good alignments equally).Evil is basically the cosmic force of "Law and Chaos cannot coexist, one must prevail over the other" (hence e.g. the Blood War picking up where the War of Law and Chaos left off).Neutrality is basically the cosmic force of "existence itself is a compromise and is incompatible with any one alignment completely dominating the others" (hence e.g. early druids being "actively neutral" and trying to shut down overreaches of Good and Law as much as Evil and Chaos).
The gods are no more arbiters of morality and ethics than they are sources of divine power, they're merely conduits/lenses/etc. of greater cosmic forces that definitely don't have the same views of "goodness" and "chaos" that mortal creatures do; it would be reasonable for the gods to not particularly like the alignment system, since it wasn't their doing and there's nothing they can really do about it.

Mortal alignment isn't inconsistent so much as it is insufficiently specific when applied to mortals; that is, there are e.g. three different planes of Lawful Goodness representing L(N)G, LG, and LG(N)--and a hypothetical fourth cordant plane representing L(N)G(N) as well--so three or four different mortals labeled as "lawful good" can reasonably have a variety of different takes on a given moral or ethical issue before you even get into philosophical/religious/etc. disagreements within one (sub-)alignment.

----------


## Millstone85

> Law is basically the cosmic force of "the multiverse should have a fixed existence and operate everywhere and everywhen according to certain fundamental laws" (hence e.g. the Great Wheel's rigid shape and structure even on the "chaotic" side, since Law won the war, and Mechanus being the engine keeping the rest of the multiverse running smoothly).


Another testament of Law's victory is found on the very plane of Chaos. Indeed, the "chaos-stuff" of Limbo can be shaped, and given relative permanence, by sufficiently disciplined minds such as the githzerai. This trait of the plane comes from a piece of Mechanus that is floating through it. The piece is known as the Spawning Stone for it is also the origin of the slaadi, at least in their modern and suspiciously uniform appearance.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> Another testament of Law's victory is found on the very plane of Chaos. Indeed, the "chaos-stuff" of Limbo can be shaped, and given relative permanence, by sufficiently disciplined minds such as the githzerai. This trait of the plane comes from a piece of Mechanus that is floating through it. The piece is known as the Spawning Stone for it is also the origin of the slaadi, at least in their modern and suspiciously uniform appearance.


Note that the Spawning Stone being a part of Mechanus and/or creation of Primus is a 5e retcon.  Originally, the Spawning Stone was simply a natural feature of the slaad life cycle, which was later altered by the Slaad Lords (all of which were unique beings of great power who came in a wide variety of forms) to ensure that no slaad would ever arise thereafter who could be as powerful as they were and could challenge them for dominance.  This fixed the slaad into a certain set of forms with defined life cycles because, essentially, the best way to weaken exemplars of Chaos is to impose Law upon them.

Limbo being able to be shaped and stabilized, meanwhile, is an intrinsic quality of the plane, a side effect of the fact that even the "pure Chaos" of Limbo is more of a "lowercase-c chaos" constrained by the Law of the Great Wheel compared to the Chaos that came before and thus "wants" to be ordered as much as any other chaotic plane does/is.


Regarding the actual thread topic, my particular headcanon about Limbo-shaping is that it functions by exactly the same mechanism as gods being able to shape Divinely Morphic planes.  Every Outer Plane can be shaped via belief by any being, in theory, but each has a certain metaphysical resistance to being shaped based on how Lawful it is, how defined its structure is, how many gods have their realms on that plane (as the realms serve as "anchors" of sorts, imparting some of the metaphysical weight of the gods' defined natures on the plane itself), and so on.

Gods have willpower and belief in spades, so they can shape almost any plane almost anywhere, barring other divine realms where other gods override them and a few scattered places even the gods find too fixed to easily alter, and most planes are fixed enough that they actually _require_ that level of willpower and belief to shape (at least to any reasonable degree in any reasonable amount of time).

Limbo, however--as the least-Lawful and least-structured plane, the plane with the fewest gods (a grand total of three, as I recall), and a plane whose very nature says that any structure (such as that of divine realms) is quite localized--has a low enough metaphysical resistance that any beings can shape it as easily as gods, the only difference being that gods don't need to consciously focus on it because to them shaping a mass of "spiritual matter" like that of which their bodies are made is as easy as a human maintaining their balance while standing.

Hence why the divine realms on Limbo are just Susanowo's big ball of water and storms, Agni's big ball of fire, and Indra's big floating island, like supersized versions of things that any mortal Limbo-shaper could create, and why the _planar perinarch_ spell (lets the caster shape a Divinely Morphic plane) is an extension of the _perinarch_ spell (makes the caster better at shaping Limbo).

----------


## Millstone85

> Note that the Spawning Stone being a part of Mechanus and/or creation of Primus is a 5e retcon.


Calling it a piece of Mechanus may have been an exaggeration on my part. The 5e MM says that Primus created "_a gigantic, geometrically complex stone imbued with the power of law_", which I imagine would make visitors think of Mechanus until they come across a stream of chaos-stuff or a bunch of slaadi.




> Originally, the Spawning Stone was simply a natural feature of the slaad life cycle, which was later altered by the Slaad Lords (all of which were unique beings of great power who came in a wide variety of forms) to ensure that no slaad would ever arise thereafter who could be as powerful as they were and could challenge them for dominance.


I think the two backstories could be reconciled to an extent, with the current form of the Spawning Stone being the result of a pact between the Slaad Lords and Primus.

And now I am imagining a bunch of things about the Spawning Stone:
Contrary to what the MM says, there is one last modron enclave in Limbo. Deep under the surface of the Spawning Stone are chambers guarded by constructs that specialize in extracting the control gem from a slaad's body, as well as by the many slaadi they have thus enslaved.The Spawning Stone is a major stage of the Great Modron March, which not only involves many low-level modrons but also high-level ones, inevitables (also linked to Primus in 5e), and War-of-the-Worlds tripods (just because).Further into the depths of the Spawning Stone are refineries where chaos-stuff is permanently transformed into elemental power, and used to maintain the balance of the Elemental Planes. This level is mainly guarded by elemental myrmidons of modron design.

----------


## Bohandas

*When we hear about slain outsiders merging with their plane, that's in the sense of literally turning into a partnof the landscape that wasn;t there before, like slain primordial deities in many mythologies, or like the hag countess when Asmodues killed her. It just happens on a smaller scale. They might turn into a tree or a building or something (edit: or even an object)

*Inevitables are responsible for multiverse-wide price-fixing that keeps prices largely the same no matter where you are and keeps coins largely interchangable. (they're also somehow responsible for why you can't conjure gold and gems and stuff and why the method for making the philosopher's stone is lost; they suppress the knowledge of how to do that stuff)

*Every type of environment has it's own type of inevitable dedicated to maintaining it, comparable to the Anhydrut (see Sandstorm) and its place making sure that deserts keep being deserts. Lawful Neutral drhids work heavily with these inevitables

*The weave is not the _source_ of magic in Faerun/Toril/Abeir-Toril/Realmspace, but merely stabilizes that place's naturally wild magic and makes it safely usable

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> *The weave is not the _source_ of magic in Faerun/Toril/Abeir-Toril/Realmspace, but merely stabilizes that place's naturally wild magic and makes it safely usable


That's canonical, actually.  Regarding the "the Weave is just the interface" part:




> Mortals cannot directly shape raw magic.  Instead, most who wield magic make use of the Weave.  The Weave is the manifestation of raw magic, a kind of interface between the will of a spellcaster and the stuff of raw magic.  Without the weave, raw magic is locked away and inaccessible--an archmage can't light a candle in a dead magic zone.
> [...]
> The Weave is the conduit spellcasters use to channel magical energy for their spells, both arcane and divine.  Finally, the Weave is the fabric of esoteric rules and formulas that comprises the Art (arcane spellcasting) and the Power (divine spellcasting).


And regarding the "wild magic" part, well, the actual goddess of magic in Realmspace is (meant to be) Lurue.  Hints and tidbits of that have shown up in FR novels and some splatbooks (mostly AD&D ones) over the years, and Ed Greenwood has expanded on that several times in interviews, such as:




> Originally, Lurue WAS magicbefore Julia Martin added the name Weave to my GenCon explanations of the great web of magic thats everywhere in Toril, binds Toril together, and IS Toril, Lurue was the embodiment of the Weave.
> [...]
> The TSR designers quite rightly (given the humanocentric core of that version of AD&D, with its level and power limits on non-humans) wanted human gods to be front and center and of the greatest power and importance, so Mystra (most important to intelligent creatures trying to USE magic) became also the Guardian or Mother of the Weave, and Lurue sort of . . . danced sideways. To become the awe-inspiring mystery she is now.

----------


## Bohandas

Much of the items and architecture in the Abyss just appears. A lot of the dark fortresses and stuff weren't built by anyone.

----------


## aj77

Night hags are an alternate form (a different caste, or just the female equivalent) of baernaloths.

----------


## Bohandas

> Night hags are an alternate form (a different caste, or just the female equivalent) of baernaloths.


I think you mean Yugoloths. "Baernaloth" refers specifically to Yugoloth archfiends (and specifically the most ancient Yugoloth archfiends, the ones who date to the time of the baatorans and obryiths)

EDIT:
Strike that. Apparently there's multiple canons and sometimes they're just an ancient caste of regular yugoloths

----------


## Bohandas

Clever diviners will learn at least one language that uses compounding rules similar to German. That way the one word answer allotted to many divinations can be something like "Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenüber  tragungsgesetz" that crams an entire sentence into a single word

----------


## Yora

Japanese also works really well for that.

----------


## Bohandas

Based on what I know about hyenas, I've come to the conclusion that Yeenoghu is actually female

----------


## Luccan

> Based on what I know about hyenas, I've come to the conclusion that Yeenoghu is actually female


Alternately, if you want to set Gnolls as a not inherently evil race; Yeenoghu _is_ male, but he's a usurper. Gnolls do have a real deity, in fact a whole pantheon, but the head deity is female.

----------


## Eldan

> Clever diviners will learn at least one language that uses compounding rules similar to German. That way the one word answer allotted to many divinations can be something like "Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenüber  tragungsgesetz" that crams an entire sentence into a single word


Playing in German, I in fact do know players who have tried that. Like, spending half an hour making up new compound words to put a longer message into the twenty-something words you can send with some spells. And then arguing with the DM whether Bad-guy-lair-map-coordinate and things-discovered-by-the-expeditionary-archer-corps-that-we-sent-west and event-in-which-our-main-fighter-died-to-a-poison-arrow-shot-by-insert-name-here are one word or not.

----------


## Mark Hall

> Playing in German, I in fact do know players who have tried that. Like, spending half an hour making up new compound words to put a longer message into the twenty-something words you can send with some spells. And then arguing with the DM whether Bad-guy-lair-map-coordinate and things-discovered-by-the-expeditionary-archer-corps-that-we-sent-west and event-in-which-our-main-fighter-died-to-a-poison-arrow-shot-by-insert-name-here are one word or not.


This makes me indescribably happy.

----------


## SunderedWorldDM

Radiant damage is literally radiation. Gods are entities of great cosmic and universal power, so it makes sense that they would be nightmares of irradiation. Divine healing is using targeted bursts of radiation to take care of infections and problems to allow the wounds to heal significantly faster and with much less risk. Radiation is dangerous to most creatures, but undead in particular are susceptible, as their bodies are already withered- a blast of radiation would do irreparable damage. The Abyss might be the gods blasting the place with their energy, demons being the mutated spawn of the radiation-scoured landscape.

(If I got any facts wrong, please let me know. I'm far from an expert on the matter, and I haven't done research to back up these comparisons yet!)

----------


## Luccan

> Radiant damage is literally radiation. Gods are entities of great cosmic and universal power, so it makes sense that they would be nightmares of irradiation. Divine healing is using targeted bursts of radiation to take care of infections and problems to allow the wounds to heal significantly faster and with much less risk. Radiation is dangerous to most creatures, but undead in particular are susceptible, as their bodies are already withered- a blast of radiation would do irreparable damage. The Abyss might be the gods blasting the place with their energy, demons being the mutated spawn of the radiation-scoured landscape.
> 
> (If I got any facts wrong, please let me know. I'm far from an expert on the matter, and I haven't done research to back up these comparisons yet!)


Isn't radiation generally dangerous due to the damage it does to living cells? How would that be more dangerous to undead?

----------


## SunderedWorldDM

> Isn't radiation generally dangerous due to the damage it does to living cells? How would that be more dangerous to undead?


Yeah, that was a stretch. I think that perhaps the undead can't replicate cells, so if the ones they have are damaged, they're done- they need to keep what they got going.

----------


## Luccan

> Yeah, that was a stretch. I think that perhaps the undead can't replicate cells, so if the ones they have are damaged, they're done- they need to keep what they got going.


I suppose that could work. You could say undead cells are actually pretty close to living cells, but non-replicating and theoretically immortal (if you don't finish the undead off). So they don't fall apart on their own, but can't heal without magic. Then of course regenerating undead are already clearly more magical than zombies or skeletons and the like. Hmm... if Undeath is a sort of biological change, that could explain why it generally turns you evil. It's changing how everything, even your brain, works.

----------


## RedMage125

> Alternately, if you want to set Gnolls as a not inherently evil race; Yeenoghu _is_ male, but he's a usurper. Gnolls do have a real deity, in fact a whole pantheon, but the head deity is female.


I like this.  I do something different in my world, but this is still neat.

In my world, I leave it as an unanswered mystery.  Yeenoghu-worshipping gnolls (called "the Butcher's Brood" by other gnolls) make up about 25% of gnolls.  And with the advent of 5e's Volo's Guide, I decided that they can, in fact, reproduce in that fashion, but those gnolls are also sterile.

The rest of gnolls in my world tend to be more close to nature.  A lot of Primal classes (Rangers and Druids) among them.  They hold that Yeenoghu corrupted several tribes of gnolls in the past and that they are a naturally occurring race.  These gnolls can breed normally.  Now, keep in mind, that most of these gnolls (about 70%), even though they are not demon-worshippers, are still Evil.  Their most typical patron deity is Ragashak, the Chaotic Evil deity of Beasts, Slaughter, and Winter.  But their druids are still part of Druid society, still welcome at Druid Moots, and so on.  But they hate the Butcher's Brood with a passion.

A small number of gnolls (maybe 5% of the total population) are more Primal-class focused and worship non-evil forces (either Neutral nature deities, or just revere Nature like a standard druid).  But these tribes tend to be paranoid and xenophobic, namely because most non-gnolls will be quick to blame them for the works of their evil kin.

While no one knows the truth (if the Primal gnolls somehow broke free of Yeenoghu or if their story is correct), evidence seems to point in the direction of the Primal gnolls' story, as even if one of their kin falls to worship of Yeenoghu, they will start being able to create more gnolls in the fashion of the Butcher's Brood.  It is basically a mark that stains their soul.  Yeenoghu asserts that all gnolls are his by right, and seeks to corrupt as many other gnolls as he can into his worship.

----------


## Bohandas

Number of deeds affects alignment significantly more than the magnitude of those deeds. This rectifies some of alignment's aparent contradictions, such as the lizardfolk in _Book of Lairs_ being neutral despite engaging in premeditated murder, and yet humans being evenly divided between alignments, despite nowhere near a third of the population doing anything so heinous.

----------


## Luccan

In addition to generally low birthrates, the vast majority of longer-lived races die relatively young, compared to their full lifespans. The longer you live, the more likely you are to die of disease, accidents, violence, etc. This is part of the reason the nigh immortal races aren't in charge of everything, at least for humanoids: they aren't good enough at not dying of everything else for it to be too significant an advantage.

*Spoiler: Inspired by this video*
Show

----------


## Bohandas

> Clever diviners will learn at least one language that uses compounding rules similar to German. That way the one word answer allotted to many divinations can be something like "Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenüber  tragungsgesetz" that crams an entire sentence into a single word


It just occurred to me that you could do a version of this using proper nouns as well. Like you could buy a bunch of animals and name them after commonly used phrases. Like a cross between those weird long names that racehorses tend to have combined with that one old Geico commercial with the collect phonecalls.

----------


## No brains

Attempting to cheat the word limitations on divinations is the origin of at least one variety of Inevitable. They act as the Fantasy Commune Commission to regulate ethereal contact with gods.  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## ideasmith

Blink dogs and worgs actually speak the same language. It simply has two different names, since blink dogs refuse to call the language they speak 'worg' and worgs refuse to call the language they speak 'blink dog'.

----------


## martixy

> Isn't radiation generally dangerous due to the damage it does to living cells? How would that be more dangerous to undead?


When normal people think radiation, what they're referring to is usually "ionizing radiation" which is a type of radiation which can knock electrons out of their molecules, altering their chemical properties and ability to participate in chemical reactions. In living cells that can result in damage as the basic chemistry life relies on gets gets disrupted - this can result in DNA and protein damage and a whole host of other effects.

But radiation is more than just that. You rely on radiation to see. The cones in your eyes are stimulated by very particular wavelenghts of radiation in the 400-700 nm range. Your oven relies on radiation to cook your dinner. And no, I am not talking about microwave ovens, although that applies equally. No, your normal oven uses infrared radiation emmited from the heating elements. Wifi is also radiation you can use to carry data (because of its longer wavelenght it isn't as impeded by obstacles as much).

That said, radiant damage could easily be some kind of funky magic radiation that disrupts whatever process keeps undead going. Or counter that energy, returning them to a neutral un-animated state. Since you generally need an energy gradient for things to happen. So if we were to theorize the mechanics of the undead, a flow of energy from the material plane to the negative energy plane could be one way to power an automaton. Another would be a flow of energy from the positive energy plane to the material.

Which actually brings me to my headcanon - long winded as it is - healing is a direct counter to undead. If undead are removing energy from the world, healing adds energy, helping maintain a kind of balance. So clerics get 2 ways to help maintain balance:
1. Stop the drain of energy.
2. Offset the drain of energy by adding more.

----------


## Xuc Xac

> Blink dogs and worgs actually speak the same language. It simply has two different names, since blink dogs refuse to call the language they speak 'worg' and worgs refuse to call the language they speak 'blink dog'.


Kind of like North and South Korea. They both speak the same language, but North Korea calls it "choson-mal" and South Korea calls it "hanguk-mal" because Korea had a lot of names and they both picked a different one.

----------


## Bohandas

*There is greater than normal malice between gnolls and hellhounds

*Elves' long lifespan leads to a much greater part of their population being able to train as adepts, experts, and magewrights. This leads to a higher quality of life in elven settlements. This, in turn, leads to their haughtiness elsewhere.

*Elves talent with longswords and bows is totally instinctual. They can pick one up and use it without having ever seen one before.

*Elves' long lifespans make multi-generational feuds impracticable among elves

----------


## Bohandas

Improved evasion represents duck-and-covering and this is also why Olidammara has the armadillo as his sacred animal

----------


## Xuc Xac

Elves reach maturity at the same rate as humans. They grow up, learn a trade, get married, have children, sing songs, have grandchildren, and teach their trades to their descendants. Once their grandchildren finish their apprenticeships, the elf's obligations to society are fulfilled and they are free to do risky things that might get them killed.

An elf over a century old starts adventuring at 1st level because they haven't learned much that's useful for an adventurer. They spent decades making shoes, singing songs, and enjoying leisurely three-hour liquid lunches with their friends. Adventuring is their retirement hobby.

----------


## ideasmith

Since I feel the need to explain why anyone would choose to gain a level in an NPC class: 

Characters with no levels in PC classes can gain levels without adventuring. Also, Characters who do have levels in PC classes are infertile, although magic can bypass this.

----------


## KillianHawkeye

> Since I feel the need to explain why anyone would choose to gain a level in an NPC class: 
> 
> Characters with no levels in PC classes can gain levels without adventuring. Also, Characters who do have levels in PC classes are infertile, although magic can bypass this.





> Characters who do have levels in PC classes are infertile, although magic can bypass this.





> Characters who do have levels in PC classes are infertile


WTF?  :Small Eek:  Why, tho?  :Small Confused:

----------


## Luccan

> WTF?  Why, tho?


Off the top of my head: "Yes my new fighter, Leonardo Viginti, is a direct descendant of my last 20 characters, what of it?" Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but I could see how the wrong players might make that annoying. Don't know if that's the reason for it though.

----------


## Bohandas

> Since I feel the need to explain why anyone would choose to gain a level in an NPC class: 
> 
> Characters with no levels in PC classes can gain levels without adventuring. Also, Characters who do have levels in PC classes are infertile, although magic can bypass this.


Isn't there sort of a consensus that adept and magewright are superior to the martial classes though>

----------


## Luccan

> Isn't there sort of a consensus that adept and magewright are superior to the martial classes though>


Only sort of. If you look at the retiering threads, Magewright ranks below a number of "bad" martial classes, both rank under ToB classes and several other martials. Adept specifically is generally (and I use the word loosely because people will die fighting for 3.X fighters to be considered equal to casters) considered better than the "mundane" martials, in terms of ability to deal with the game as a whole. It's also probably better than any of the martials in core besides Rogue just because most of the martials best stuff is outside it. Magewright is actually pretty bad and is only "saved" by the fact that it gets to abuse Animate Dead... several levels after everyone else who can cast that spell gets it.

Oh, and I cast _protection from thread derailment_ for my action.

----------


## Silly Name

Back on headcanons: on Krynn, the gods were actually preoccupied with some terrible extraplanar threat after the Cataclysm, because the whole "the gods abandoned Krynn but actually it was the people who abandoned the gods because they didn't answer prayers but that was because..." ordeal is ridiculous. It works if the gods are like Greek Olympians and are cruel and don't care about mortals, but at least some of them are supposed to be Good.

So the gods were actually forced to turn away from Krynn while defending it from Chtulhu or whatever it was, and when they were done they found out people had stopped worshipping them and so had to work through Goldmoon and friends to get people to believe in them again, instead of behaving like abusive partners.

----------


## ideasmith

> WTF?  Why, tho?


In addition to the reason stated, this allows ducking various subjects a group may find it pleasant or prudent to duck.



> Off the top of my head: "Yes my new fighter, Leonardo Viginti, is a direct descendant of my last 20 characters, what of it?"


Those 20 characters would have had access to magic. They are, after all, characters in a D&D world.  The lack of official pregnancy magic gives the DM a lot of leeway when adding/designing such. Hiring an Adept to cast _lesser stork call_ is only difficult if the DM wants it to be.



> Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but I could see how the wrong players might make that annoying. Don't know if that's the reason for it though.


That is part of the reason.

----------


## Silly Name

> Those 20 characters would have had access to magic. They are, after all, characters in a D&D world. The lack of official pregnancy magic gives the DM a lot of leeway when adding/designing such. Hiring an Adept to cast lesser stork call is only difficult if the DM wants it to be.


Are people in your world actually aware of classes and levels? Like, the characters themselves _know_ they're an 8th level Fighter or a 12th level Rogue or whatever?

Because in most worlds that's not a thing. People don't "level up", they naturally accrue experience - the game aspect of levelling up is an abstraction of this process, not a tangible, quantifiable thing in-universe. A Wizard doesn't consciously take her fifth wizard level to access 3rd level spells, she masters the arcane incantations and meditative disciplines necessary to access more powerful spells.

Likewise, a farmer never decides to "take levels" in Commoner: he was born in a farmhouse and will live and die there, never getting to swing a sword or try to cast a spell and thus having zero access to the skills and training necessary to become something else. Or maybe he simply never cared for that. The Commoner class exists to give those people stat blocks if the need be, to represent completely average people with no formal training or innate supernatural talents - those are for special people (PCs and their opposition), not James the innkeeper or Mary the cook.

I don't think I've ever come across a campaign setting (that wasn't explicitely comedic and riffing on those things) whose inhabitants acknowledged ideas like "class levels", "feats" and "skill points" as _real_.

----------


## ideasmith

> Are people in your world actually aware of classes and levels? Like, the characters themselves _know_ they're an 8th level Fighter or a 12th level Rogue or whatever?
> 
> Because in most worlds that's not a thing. People don't "level up", they naturally accrue experience - the game aspect of levelling up is an abstraction of this process, not a tangible, quantifiable thing in-universe. A Wizard doesn't consciously take her fifth wizard level to access 3rd level spells, she masters the arcane incantations and meditative disciplines necessary to access more powerful spells.
> 
> Likewise, a farmer never decides to "take levels" in Commoner: he was born in a farmhouse and will live and die there, never getting to swing a sword or try to cast a spell and thus having zero access to the skills and training necessary to become something else. Or maybe he simply never cared for that. The Commoner class exists to give those people stat blocks if the need be, to represent completely average people with no formal training or innate supernatural talents - those are for special people (PCs and their opposition), not James the innkeeper or Mary the cook.
> 
> I don't think I've ever come across a campaign setting (that wasn't explicitely comedic and riffing on those things) whose inhabitants acknowledged ideas like "class levels", "feats" and "skill points" as _real_.



While characters are not aware of game terms, they *are* aware of the abilities that the terms are abstractions of. So while a first level cleric would not be aware of classes and levels as such she *would* be aware that she had different abilities than her ranger pal, that she was going to be able to cure diseases before she became able to raise the dead, and that she was not yet able to do either. 

*And that farmer you described would be aware that if he stayed a farmer, he wouldnt learn to fight or cast spells.*  

Your suggestion that he doesnt leave the farm because he cant  - and that all the other characters with NPC classes are similarly stuck - is a valid head cannon. As it happens, I have enjoyed imaginary worlds that used this idea in the past and will certainly enjoy such worlds in the future. It is not, however my preferred head cannon for D&D and it was therefore not what I chose to post in this thread.

----------


## vasilidor

none of the gods of krynn are actually good.

----------


## Avista

Eldritch abominations like the beholder are aliens, and the Gith are space elves.

Nothing can convince me otherwise.

----------


## ideasmith

Most spellcasters are surprised when (if) they learn that most rainbows don't detect as magical.

Quite a few simply don't believe it until they've tried it themselves. If then.

----------


## el minster

Pelor is evil

----------


## vasilidor

the moment a fiend or similar stops being evil, they stop being a fiend. similarly, the moment a celestial stops being good, they stop being a celestial.

----------


## Bohandas

All matter in the D&D world is negative mass compared to matter in the real world. This is why pholgiston, which is basically the negation of oxygen, acts as an oxidizer.

----------


## Stattick

Bards and druids were once the same thing. That's why druids used memorize epic poems that took hours to recite. But once writing was invented, one group of Druids decided that all that memorization crap was unnecessary and a waste of time - just write it down. They dedicated themselves to nature and balance. The splinter faction thought that stories, poem, and song were important, and dedicated themselves to preserving it, so it wouldn't die, since writing was so time consuming and expensive, that only the most important of important things ever got written and preserved. Druids and Bards have disliked each other ever since the schism.

The Ur-Druids above were the first mortals to use magic. Their most powerful verses led to the belief that gave rise to the first gods. Naturally, this contradicts what priests, religions, and gods say. But you can't trust them, they have a vested interest in wanting people to believe what they say, as opposed to what everyone else says.

You know how some religions and occultic philosophies have a symbol of a tree with a big, branching canopy, and a similar big, branching root system beneath the tree? This is a good example of history. The trunk, near the ground, seems to be one solid thing. But as you move upward, there are more and more branches - different possible paths the future might take. The past is like the tree's root system. Many different possibilities that lead to the same trunk. Where you find major discrepancies in myth or historical accounts, or just remember some childhood incident completely differently than your sister, it's not that one story is true and the other false. They're both true. Things are remembered differently, because they happened differently for some people.

----------


## Stattick

Souls aren't eternal. As the centuries pass, the dead slowly loose their identity and memory, then joining and become part of the god or god's realm where the soul resides. In a sense, the Gods eat the dead. Mortals, as the food of the gods, choose who or what to feed by becoming worshipers of that thing.

----------


## Xuc Xac

> the moment a fiend or similar stops being evil, they stop being a fiend. similarly, the moment a celestial stops being good, they stop being a celestial.


Isn't that already canon? 




> Bards and druids were once the same thing.


Yeah, in 1E. The bard in AD&D was basically the first prestige class they had to be Fighter-Thief-Druids to qualify as a bard.

----------


## vasilidor

[QUOTE=Xuc Xac;24616777]Isn't that already canon? 


no, not that i am aware of.

----------


## Yuki Akuma

> Eldritch abominations like the beholder are aliens, and the Gith are space elves.
> 
> Nothing can convince me otherwise.


I think canonically Gith are closer to space humans.

----------


## Xuc Xac

"A devil does not choose to be lawful evil, and it doesn't tend toward lawful evil, but rather it is lawful evil in its essence. If it somehow ceased to be lawful evil, it would cease to be a devil."--PHB 122

----------


## ebarde

Because Elminster can do all sorts of interdimensional travel shenanigans, he has been mostly shielded from all the retcons and weird magical nonesense that happened between editions. This means he still has access to all OP mechanics from earlier editions of the game, while everyone else has been severely nerfed

----------


## vasilidor

> "A devil does not choose to be lawful evil, and it doesn't tend toward lawful evil, but rather it is lawful evil in its essence. If it somehow ceased to be lawful evil, it would cease to be a devil."--PHB 122


this, i think, is one of those things that varies by edition. for me this is a thing that i would have carry across all editions.

----------


## vasilidor

also: head canons are a gnomish weapon. never really caught on, even amongst gnomes.

----------


## Enixon

> this, i think, is one of those things that varies by edition. for me this is a thing that i would have carry across all editions.


Yeah, in 3.5 one of Wizards' free adventure modules had the party rescue a Succubus Paladin. Granted this adventures was made because "Succubus Paladin" won a "Weird Monster" Poll so I don't know how "canon" you'd treat that. 

What was interesting about her though was that she had all four alignment subtypes and would detect as such. IIRC the idea was that she still had the [Chaos] and [Evil] tags because as a demon her body was still essentially "made" of the stuff even though she had long since stopped being Chaotic Evil, [Law] and [Good] because as a Paladin Lawful Good was her actual alignment.

----------


## Millstone85

> "A devil does not choose to be lawful evil, and it doesn't tend toward lawful evil, but rather it is lawful evil in its essence. If it somehow ceased to be lawful evil, it would cease to be a devil."--PHB 122





> this, i think, is one of those things that varies by edition. for me this is a thing that i would have carry across all editions.





> Yeah, in 3.5 one of Wizards' free adventure modules had the party rescue a Succubus Paladin. Granted this adventures was made because "Succubus Paladin" won a "Weird Monster" Poll so I don't know how "canon" you'd treat that.


As it happens, on the 5e forum, I just made a post that mentions these things.

I didn't know that Eludecia was the result of a poll. What about Felthis ap Jerran, the ultroloth ruler of Ecstasy?

----------


## Man on Fire

Auriel and Umbrelee are lovers

Ao had stripped Vecna from his godhood, this is why the guy jumped to Exadia to try ascend to godhood again.

----------


## Archpaladin Zousha

I miss Eludecia.  She was awesome.  :Small Frown:

----------


## Bohandas

The Use Magic Device skill consists of making up convincing sounding technobabble. That's why it's based on charisma rather than intelligence or wisdom

----------


## Wizard_Lizard

> the moment a fiend or similar stops being evil, they stop being a fiend. similarly, the moment a celestial stops being good, they stop being a celestial.


I mean The  radiant idol is an evil celestial... and empyreans can be, but I see your point.

----------


## Bohandas

Most non-adventuring wizards don't typically prepare spells. They spend the extra 15 minutes to cast the spell they need on an ad hoc basis

----------


## noob

> Most non-adventuring wizards don't typically prepare spells. They spend the extra 15 minutes to cast the spell they need on an ad hoc basis


I actually do keep a bunch of free spell slots for this kind of occasions.
It is just that non adventuring wizards are often much lower level and thus does not have many spell slots to keep prepared so they might as well only have free spell slots for last moment spell preparing (takes 15 minutes but if you except to cast few spells per day it is not a huge problem)

----------


## Luccan

Being naturally resistant to poison and prone towards physical labor, dwarves value beer more for caloric intake than its ability to get them drunk. In fact, it's very hard to get a dwarf truly brick-faced and a dwarf in a more integrated community or who pursues a non-physical career is no more likely to value beer than anyone else. On top of that, the actual preferred form of alcohol amongst "stereotypical" dwarves varies by region

However, dwarven alcohol brewed for the purpose of revelry is _very_ strong and most people of even somewhat higher tolerance will find themselves quiet easily inebriated by it.

----------


## Bohandas

The true leaders of the Rilmani are not the Aurumachs, but rather a hidden secret caste known as the Aluminati

EDIT:
And I like that dwarven beer thing. 

In regard to the last part about their actual recreational liquors having to be extra strong, I have a similar headcanon about demons. Only in the case of the demons it's much more extreme, and many of the more powerful tanar'ri intoxicants double as chemical weapons of mass destruction. Some of their condiments double as chemical weapons as well, including the use of mustard gas as a substitute for mustard.

EDIT:



> I mean The  radiant idol is an evil celestial...


Radiant Idols CAN be evil, but according to the Eberron wiki they don;t have to be. Also, they're not the same creature as they were when they were a celestial; for one thing they have a different aura

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> The true leaders of the Rilmani are not the Aurumachs, but rather a hidden secret caste known as the Aluminati


I ran a Planescape campaign many years ago in which the Rilmani were a somewhat prominent faction.  To emphasize their balance-focused nature, I 'brewed up three more rilmani subraces so they'd have nine total (three threes) to fit better with the Rule of Three.  The party ran into the new low caste and the new middle caste pretty early on, but went most of the campaign without discovering the new high caste and were wondering what their deal was.

When I finally revealed that the highest caste was the Alumach and their ruling council was, in fact, the Aluminati, the round of facepalms around the table was quite satisfying indeed.  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Mark Hall

All editions after 2nd edition are, in fact, games played by people otherwise existing in 2nd edition. ;-)

----------


## No brains

If you want a recipe for hazardous dwarven booze in 5e, consider this:

The drinker rolls a DC11 constitution save. On a failure, they take two poison damage. On a success, they take 1 poison damage. If they take any poison damage, they are poisoned until they finish a long rest.

The beauty of this is that over half the time a dwarf drinks this, their poison resistance keeps this from doing anything to them since a save with advantage and resistance rounds this down to 0 damage. For others, they instantly get drunk and commoners could die after having seconds.

Though Yuan-ti purebloods are still the champion competitive drinkers. Them and other poison immune creatures probably drink something that does acid or necrotic damage and inflicts exhaustion for kicks.

----------


## KillianHawkeye

> Though Yuan-ti purebloods are still the champion competitive drinkers. Them and other poison immune creatures probably drink something that does acid or necrotic damage and inflicts exhaustion for kicks.


Wow, necromantic liquor?  :Small Eek: 

This talk of magical booze is making me want to play a dwarven wizard who specializes in potions and alchemy. Or a Pathfinder alchemist, maybe.

----------


## Bohandas

The Power Words are "Ni" "Peng" and "Nee-Wom"

----------


## Draconi Redfir

Goblins are the ones who invent Black Powder, and/or Gunpowder.

It was however Hobgoblins who refined the substance into firearm use.

Dwarves or Gnomes probably took it a step further and made modern bullets.

----------


## Enixon

> All editions after 2nd edition are, in fact, games played by people otherwise existing in 2nd edition. ;-)



Many of them dwarves that longed to be wizards or other demihumans barred from their dream job by racial class restrictions.

----------


## Mark Hall

> Many of them dwarves that longed to be wizards or other demihumans barred from their dream job by racial class restrictions.


"Godsdammit, I *know* I am a halfling, but I want to be a ****ing paladin!"

----------


## Batcathat

> "Godsdammit, I *know* I am a halfling, but I want to be a ****ing paladin!"


That reminds me of Mazzy in Baldur's Gate 2 who's pretty much the ideal paladin, except she's a halfling so she can't be one. I always suspect she was created by some developer who wanted to lampshade the weird class restrictions.

----------


## Mark Hall

> That reminds me of Mazzy in Baldur's Gate 2 who's pretty much the ideal paladin, except she's a halfling so she can't be one. I always suspect she was created by some developer who wanted to lampshade the weird class restrictions.


There's a conversation later where they do just that... she and Aerie discuss her not being a paladin, and Mazzy speculates that halflings might become paladins in some future edition.

----------


## Spore

> There's a conversation later where they do just that... she and Aerie discuss her not being a paladin, and Mazzy speculates that halflings might become paladins in some future edition.


I mean, Baldur's Gate 2 was VERY late in the life cycle of AD&D, so that was likely just some teaser anyhow.

----------


## Hellpyre

I like to believe that the Hex Warrior feature in 5e consists of replacing your pants/fauld/cuisse/what-have-you with a leather thong, and the damage and to-hit bonuses come from mesmerizing opponents just enough to make an easier fight.

----------


## Starlit Dragon

Most aberrations came from the sea. 
Some came from other planes.
Some were created when the Far Realm brushed against the world.
None came from the Far Realm itself, or if they were, the have been changed by this world so completely to be almost one of us.

----------


## Bohandas

*Ascended mortals who become deities know more about divinity than older established born deities. For roughly the same reason why a person who designs SONAR equipment might be assumed to have a greater technical understanding of echolocation better than a dolphin or a bat does.

*Like tree shrews, elven toilets are grown from a specialized species of pitcher plant

----------


## ixrisor

Tree shrews are grown from a type of pitcher plant? Today I learned.

----------


## Bohandas

No, they use pitcher plants as toilets.

EDIT:
https://www.discovermagazine.com/pla...-see-this-week

----------


## Azuresun

> I like to believe that the Hex Warrior feature in 5e consists of replacing your pants/fauld/cuisse/what-have-you with a leather thong, and the damage and to-hit bonuses come from mesmerizing opponents just enough to make an easier fight.


I always imagined it as fighting like Randy Savage, Hulk Hogan, the Ultimate Warrior, or some other really flamboyant wrestler from the 80's or 90's. But I really like your suggestion as well.  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Spriteless

A material plane doesn't need to have all 4 classical elements, but you do need them all for most mortal life. The gods create many such planes, or bring balance to uninhabitable planes, to cultivate mortal souls. There are some material planes where the balance happens naturally by chance without gods, like Athas, but then the balance is delicate and easy for mortals to destroy. As they have...

There are beings that can exist with less elements. The Aboleths can live in 'worlds' of cold, sunless waters, and have done so long before mortals existed. This is how they know such dark secrets...

----------


## Mark Hall

> A material plane doesn't need to have all 4 classical elements, but you do need them all for most mortal life. The gods create many such planes, or bring balance to uninhabitable planes, to cultivate mortal souls. There are some material planes where the balance happens naturally by chance without gods, like Athas, but then the balance is delicate and easy for mortals to destroy. As they have...


My slight tweak on that is that all will have all 4 elements... to at least some extent. Athas, for example, is close to Earth and Fire, far from water, and "low"... closer to Negative than Positive energy plane. However, it has also WANDERED in its history... Blue Age Athas was obviously closer to the Plane of Water, and rhul-than lifeshaping means it may have been close to the positive plane. The Pristine Tower may have, among other things, moved Athas through the material planes.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> My slight tweak on that is that all will have all 4 elements... to at least some extent. Athas, for example, is close to Earth and Fire, far from water, and "low"... closer to Negative than Positive energy plane. However, it has also WANDERED in its history... Blue Age Athas was obviously closer to the Plane of Water, and rhul-than lifeshaping means it may have been close to the positive plane. The Pristine Tower may have, among other things, moved Athas through the material planes.


To take this idea a bit further...in the Variant Cosmologies section of MotP there's an Orrery Cosmology where the elemental planes "orbit" the Material Plane and take turns being ascendant (and thus more influential on and accessible to the material world), in a proto-Eberron sort of way.  In that case each plane gets one season, but one could posit that Athas has something similar on the order of millennia to tens of millennia, with the movement of the planes driving  events on Athas and being driven by them in turn.

The Blue Age, as you said, was Water-dominant (not just because of the planet-wide ocean but because water is associated with life and so forth).  The Green Age could be seen as a time of Air dominance, with all civilizations leaning heavily on flying vehicles and architecture (Giustenal's flying platforms, Carsys's skyships, ogrish floating fortresses, and so on), long-distance travel being common and widespread, and the anaerobic Brown Tide giving way to lush forests.  The Cleansing Wars and Brown Age would be Fire-dominant, of course: cities razed, races put to the torch, magma-spewing gates opened, seas evaporated into silt, and the heat of a vast red sun beating down on endless deserts.  And a hypothetical overthrow of the Sorcerer-Kings and a cleansing and renewal of the land would be Earth-dominant, with growth, fertility, and rebirth being the dominant themes.

We know that the Blue Age has ~500 years of _recorded_ history, the Green Age ~10,000, and the Brown Age ~3500, so each plane's dominance being around 10,000 years long (with the Blue Age we know being the tail end of the era of Water and the Brown Age being not even halfway into the era of Fire) would make sense.  For shorter timescales and a more optimistic outlook for Athas, one could posit that the Green Age actually spanned two eras (with Water still being dominant for a good portion of it and the oceans being lowered "early" via the Pristine Tower), that each plane is dominant for closer to 4,000-5,000 years, and that the Brown Age perhaps might be coming to an end in a mere few centuries.


Regardless of exact timing, this cycle might also explain why Athas' local paraelemental (demi)planes are different from the Great Wheel's: each "paraelemental" plane is actually a mixture of two adjacent elements _plus_ the currently-dominant element, and the planes change in nature with the change in eras--we don't actually _know_ that the planes were the same pre-Cleansing Wars when elemental priests were still a new phenomenon, after all, and few records survive from that time to say either way.

Seen in this light, the odd paraelemental planes make perfect sense: earth plus double fire gives a Plane of Magma that might be even hotter than the normal Paraelemental Plane of Magma; air plus fire gives a warm and heat-haze-y Smoke, and adding fire again gives the hot and even-more-heat-haze-y Plane of Sun; air plus water gives Ice, and adding fire melts that ice to give Rain; and water plus earth gives Ooze, and adding fire dries out that ooze into a dusty choking Silt.  Perhaps back in the Blue Age the paraelemental planes were instead Ice, Silt (in the standard "river-carried sediment" meaning), Obsidian (Magma quenched in water, and a possible reason for the prevalence of obsidian-based psiotech in the later Green Age), and Steam (hot wet vapor instead of Smoke's hot dry particulates), and with the turning of another Age perhaps they will change once again.


Where do the Positive and Negative Energy Planes fit in?  They don't, and that's why defiling happens.  As per the 1e DMG explanation of how spellcasting works, magic involves channeling power from various other planes, and in particular prepared spells (and expendable magic items and so on) are "charged" with positive energy which is later released to bridge the planar gap and perform the spell's effect, with some amount of energy "backflow" occurring as negative energy destroys any material components, the air exhaled by verbal components, and so on and released positive energy flows back to the Positive Energy plane (or vice versa, with a negative energy source and backflow and components being infused with positive energy).

In most planes of the Great Wheel, this obviously means pulling energy from the Positive and Negative Energy Planes, and energy can transfer back and forth between them freely and easily.  In Athas, though, where there is no connection to either plane and no local source of positive energy (like Eberron's plane of Irian)?  Why, the only source of positive energy available is that which is bound up in nearby living things, of course, and the lifeless black dust-like ash left behind by defiling certainly looks like earth infused with negative energy (and, indeed, two of the Negative quasielemental planes are Ash and Dust).  We know the reverse reaction occurs in the Gray, where wizards can draw power from incorporeal undead instead of plants and where the Deep Gray is suffused with large amounts of negative energy (likely the backflow of centuries' worth of Athasian defiling).

And finally, we see the sun used as a great power source for all sorts of world-spanning magic in Athas but _not_ on other worlds because sunlight (and all other light, really) is quasielemental Radiance, which is a combination of fire and positive energy, so Athas's sun is basically a big ol' positive energy battery that its epic magic-users are forced to use in lieu of natural connections to the Positive Energy Plane.

----------


## Mark Hall

> To take this idea a bit further...in the Variant Cosmologies section of MotP there's an Orrery Cosmology where the elemental planes "orbit" the Material Plane and take turns being ascendant (and thus more influential on and accessible to the material world), in a proto-Eberron sort of way.  In that case each plane gets one season, but one could posit that Athas has something similar on the order of millennia to tens of millennia, with the movement of the planes driving  events on Athas and being driven by them in turn.


This is AMAZING and I love it ENTIRELY. If you're not on Dragonsfoot, do you mind if I post it there? Or to the Dark Sun Facebook group? I started this conversation both places, but I love this idea a LOT.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> This is AMAZING and I love it ENTIRELY. If you're not on Dragonsfoot, do you mind if I post it there? Or to the Dark Sun Facebook group? I started this conversation both places, but I love this idea a LOT.


Glad you like it.  :Small Big Grin:  Feel free to post it wherever so long as you credit me for it.  And I'd love to get a link to the mentioned threads/pages, I'm always down for more Dark Sun theorizing.

----------


## Mark Hall

> Glad you like it.  Feel free to post it wherever so long as you credit me for it.  And I'd love to get a link to the mentioned threads/pages, I'm always down for more Dark Sun theorizing.


PM sent, but something I thought about when talking about timescale: Dragaera and the Cycle.

So, the Great Cycle is this huge stone wheel in the afterlife (which is also a physical location you can go if you are crazy enough) and, when it turns, it marks the change of control from one house to another. When Phoenix is at the top, Jhereg is at the bottom. Whether this change of control is caused by the Cycle, or the Cycle moves in response to a change in control isn't entirely clear... but a given "phase" of the cycle isn't set in time (save that it will in some way be divisible by 17, and no less than 17 squared and no more than 17 cubed... Dragaera is weird). No Teckla revolt will succeed if there isn't an Orca on the throne... it simply cannot happen by the laws of the universe.

But, then we have this cosmology. The Blue Age continued for an undetermined amount of time. The Green Age for 10,000 years. The Brown Age has been shorter than that, so we might think that ~10,000 years is how long it will last... but what if it's more like the Cycle, and less like seasons? The Brown Age might end at any time... if the PCs can "change the season", as it were.

----------


## Luccan

While it ultimately destroys what makes Dark Sun special, I think a renewed Athas could be an interesting setting to play in. Though slightly deviating on PairO'Dice's ideas, what if the next age is when everything has died... at least on the surface. The age closely associated with the plane of Earth begins with the final death of the (current) sun, forcing remaining peoples into the earth itself. The Dragon-Sorcerers _are_ dead, with nothing left to sustain them, but life in the tunnels and caves still proves difficult for the inhabitants of Athas. The only reason to go up to the frozen, dead surface is to pick through the scraps of scraps left by the "great" cities of the Brown Age. I'd probably call this the Grey Age or something similar that sounds appropriately lifeless. The question, of course, is what new horrors and magic restrictions can you cook up to inflict on the hapless people of Athas?

Para-elemental planes shifting to be in line with Earth becoming a dominant element is also an interesting idea.

Earth+Earth: Metal? Iron? Ore? Sounds good to the metal-deficient Athas, but when everyone lives in the ground word of a new vein travels fast and you get a bloody, violent ore-rush. Ore priests tend to hold a great deal of power in their communities, but often succumb to greed

Earth+Fire: Doing Magma again seems less interesting, unless you can turn it in someway, so I submit Meteor. Another danger as the Prime Material finally dies is celestial bodies crashing into Athas. But similar to Ore, this _can_ be valuable in the right hands. Meteor priests are often seen as madmen and are some of the most likely to take trips to the surface.

Earth+Water: Mud?

Earth+Air: Not sure about this one. Dust feels too similar to Silt.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> But, then we have this cosmology. The Blue Age continued for an undetermined amount of time. The Green Age for 10,000 years. The Brown Age has been shorter than that, so we might think that ~10,000 years is how long it will last... but what if it's more like the Cycle, and less like seasons? The Brown Age might end at any time... if the PCs can "change the season", as it were.


That's kind of what I was getting at with the second timing suggestion, where the Green Age overlaps two eras.  The planar orbits aren't a known and obvious phenomenon, and Dark Sun isn't the kind of setting where you can do one thing and _yay, everything's fixed now!_, so having eras change at the flip of a switch upon completion of an adventure doesn't really work...but having the PCs' actions and events in the larger world "nudge" the eras to come sooner or later than they otherwise would (perhaps by a significant margin) would certainly work.

It's like how global temperature changes have affected the seasons over the past few years in the real world.  It was never the case that on June 19th it was full-on spring with mild breezes and a bit of rain while on June 20th it was full-on summer with cloudless skies and scorching heat, "spring" to "summer" is an artificial change of labels applied to a gradual natural transition...but now with the higher temperatures, it feels like spring and summer are a bit muddled, everything gets hotter earlier, and summer kinda feels like it stretches into autumn a bit and full-on winter never really manages to get here.  So an adventuring party couldn't fix things right now, but they can push the timetable up a few decades or centuries and that might make all the difference.




> While it ultimately destroys what makes Dark Sun special, I think a renewed Athas could be an interesting setting to play in.


It definitely can be, especially because renewing Athas doesn't suddenly mean all the defiled land is healed or that defiling stops being a thing.  Defilers are hated in the present, when the world is obviously dying and there's nothing anyone feels they can do about it; how much more reviled would they be when there's finally a hope for Athas again and the defilers are going around visibly killing that hope?  The Sorcerer-Kings hoarded lore about defiling magic and managed to maintain their tyranny in a blasted wasteland; how long would it take for greedy usurpers to try to uncover that lore and become a new set of tyrants, how much worse would inter-city-state fighting be when more resources make it easier to raise and supply standing armies, and how much more devastating could psionic enchantments be with whole forests' worth of life to defile?

Just those two plot points could drive a whole neo-Athasian campaign, but there are a ton more things to explore in such a setting.  Now that the Silt Sea could be irrigated into a normal sea once more, what kinds of ancient ruins and artifacts might be uncovered from its depths?  Now that the land is flourishing, might whatever drove the thri-kreen out of the Crimson Savannah finally choose to follow them into the Tablelands?  Now that the atmosphere is much more humid and the winds less chaotic, what effect might that have on the eternal Cerulean Storm, and what effect might the Storm's growth and/or movement have on the surrounding lands?  Now that Athas isn't a desolate wasteland that kills unwary travelers, what threats--or potential allies!--might emerge from the Planar Gate or the Crimson Monolith?




> Though slightly deviating on PairO'Dice's ideas, what if the next age is when everything has died... at least on the surface. The age closely associated with the plane of Earth begins with the final death of the (current) sun, forcing remaining peoples into the earth itself. The Dragon-Sorcerers _are_ dead, with nothing left to sustain them, but life in the tunnels and caves still proves difficult for the inhabitants of Athas. The only reason to go up to the frozen, dead surface is to pick through the scraps of scraps left by the "great" cities of the Brown Age. I'd probably call this the Grey Age or something similar that sounds appropriately lifeless. The question, of course, is what new horrors and magic restrictions can you cook up to inflict on the hapless people of Athas?


This can still fit in with my idea, since for life to survive simply hiding in the earth wouldn't be enough, the planet's core would cool eventually and they'd need to do something to restart the sun to survive beyond that.  And once you [plot hook] the [plot device] to cast the [plot spell] to reignite the sun, the brand-new bright blue sun would melt the frozen surface, flooding the world with water and swinging things from Earth-dominance back to Water-dominance to bring a new Blue Age.  :Small Cool: 




> Para-elemental planes shifting to be in line with Earth becoming a dominant element is also an interesting idea.
> 
> Earth+Earth: Metal? Iron? Ore? Sounds good to the metal-deficient Athas, but when everyone lives in the ground word of a new vein travels fast and you get a bloody, violent ore-rush. Ore priests tend to hold a great deal of power in their communities, but often succumb to greed
> 
> Earth+Fire: Doing Magma again seems less interesting, unless you can turn it in someway, so I submit Meteor. Another danger as the Prime Material finally dies is celestial bodies crashing into Athas. But similar to Ore, this _can_ be valuable in the right hands. Meteor priests are often seen as madmen and are some of the most likely to take trips to the surface.
> 
> Earth+Water: Mud?
> 
> Earth+Air: Not sure about this one. Dust feels too similar to Silt.


I'd say something like Double Earth + Fire would be Metal (earth for ores, fire for smelting it), Double Earth + Water would indeed be mud (as it's earthier than river silt), Air + Water+ Earth would be Wood in the "renewed Athas" scenario (soil plus water plus CO2 giving rise to plant life) or Ice in the "snowball Athas" scenario (Ice, but specifically covering Earth), and Air + Fire + Earth would be...hmm, Dust would work in the "snowball Athas" scenario as the temperature gradients cause massive windstorms that whip up the Silt Sea into finer airborne grit to scour the world, but I can't think of anything offhand that fits in the "renewed Athas" scenario.

Either way, this matches the Blue-Age-2.0 idea nicely, since early Athas had plenty of iron and steel before it was all mined out (Metal) and the Mud Palace and surrounding mud flats are an iconic Athas location from the ancient era (Mud), so bringing those into focus makes it feel like things are coming full circle.

----------


## Bohandas

> and Air + Fire + Earth would be...hmm


Maybe a dust explosion

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

Somewhat inspired by the "and then Athas dies" scenario but otherwise totally unrelated to Dark Sun, I just thought of something regarding Tharizdun: the reason he's so incredibly powerful relative to other gods (still being an Intermediate deity even while imprisoned and requiring an entire pantheon to imprison because they weren't able to destroy him) is that he's running on entirely different rules of "divine physics" from the rest of the gods...because he's a remnant of the pre-Great Wheel Mystaran cosmology and is, effectively, the incarnation of the Sphere of Entropy.

So, in BECMI, all Immortals belonged to one of the five Spheres of Power that made up the multiverse: Matter, Energy, Time, Thought, and Entropy.  These spheres (and associated planes) don't exactly map to the structure of the Great Wheel, but four of them kind of correlate to it, with ephemeral Thought, solid Matter, intense Energy, and flowing Time being respectively strongly associated with Air, Earth, Fire, and Water; with structured Matter, steady Time, and dynamic Energy being respectively strongly associated with Law, Neutrality, and Chaos; and Matter, Energy, Thought, and Time kinda sorta mapping to the Elemental Planes (made of "stuff," even things like solid air and liquid fire), Energy Planes (self-evident), Outer Planes (everything is shaped by emotion and belief), and Transitive Planes (time passes differently and physics is wonky).

But that mapping leaves out Entropy, because Entropy was an outlier in the Mystaran cosmology.  The multiverse supposedly functioned best when all five Spheres were balanced, but Entropy explicitly opposed all the other Spheres and "If one should ever gain an overwhelming dominance over the others, only Entropy would win, for balance between all the Spheres is necessary for harmony."  Entropy was also called the Sphere of Death and had no associated element, and was explicitly called "Evil" when Good and Evil did not exist as alignments in BECMI.

This brings us to the Great Wheel...which doesn't actually _have_ entropy as a concept, when you stop to think about it.  In Mystara, all the Immortals knew that the Sphere of Entropy wanted to destroy everything and would do so if any side ever grew too strong or weak, and fully expected Entropy to win in the end; and in the real world we have concepts like "the heat death of the universe"  or the Big Crunch, or other ways that the universe will ultimately come to an end; but that's not at all the case in the Great Wheel."Entropy" in the sense of ultimate destruction kinda sorta maps to negative energy (hence e.g. Entropic creatures coming from the Negative Energy Plane), but sages don't worry about "the negative energy death of the universe" or whatever because the multiverse isn't trending towards a state of uniform negative energy; rather, the Negative Energy Plane is like one terminal of a gigantic cosmic battery along with the Positive Energy Plane, and the Wheel turns with the clockwork regularity of Mechanus.  Negative energy is an equal and fundamental building block along with positive energy and the four elements, and there's no sense that the multiverse will slow down or die or end or anything like that as a natural part of its existence."Entropy" in the sense of uncertainty or randomness kinda sorta maps to chaos (hence e.g. _entropic shield_ being a random deflector), but the Chaos of the great wheel isn't trying to erode the structure of the Wheel or anything like that; rather, Chaos in the Wheel is a polite, tamed, leashed form of Chaos left over after it lost the War of Law and Chaos, and even Limbo and the Abyss are pretty orderly places in the big picture.  That kind of entropy is more a trait of the Far Realm, which is outside the Wheel entirely."Entropy" in the sense of the direction of time sorta kinda maps to Temporal Prime, but "time's arrow" in the Wheel is more of a guideline than a law: temporal magic is plentiful, backwards time travel is...well, not _easy_, but definitely doable, and there are a full three canonical planes or realms dealing with time (Temporal Prime, the Temporal Energy Plane, and the Demiplane of Time).
So what happened to entropy as a concept and Entropy as a cosmic force between the death of the old cosmology and the birth of the new?  In a word, Tharizdun.

We know that the Mystaran cosmology would end in a victory for Entropy if and only if any one of the Spheres gained dominance, so if that cosmology imploded then the strongest force at that time (and the only force left around to "turn the lights off" at the end, so to speak) would obviously be Entropy.  Tharizdun is possibly, and even likely, the embodiment of that Entropy:Tharizdun is Neutral Evil, the alignment one would have if you were able to add Evil--but not the full nine alignments--into BECMI's alignment axis, where most "destroy everyone"-type beings in the Wheel end up as Chaotic Evil (demon princes, Erythnul, Talos, etc.).Tharizdun does not take a humanoid shape, or in fact the shape of any being native to the Wheel, as even other edgy gods of doom and gloom like Shar and Eythnul do; instead, he takes on a "dark, amorphous form reminiscent of a sentient _sphere of annihilation_"...and the Blackball (Umbral Blot in 3e), a classic Mystaran monster often associated with the Sphere of Entropy, is basically a sentient _sphere of annihilation_.Tharizdun is the _only_ god with Entropy in its portfolio.  Certainly, other gods in various settings with themes of "want to destroy everything" and/or "hate all life" have related portfolio elements like Loss (Shar), Destruction (Talos), Malice (Beltar), Death (Nerull), and so on, but Entropy is Tharizdun's alone.Tharizdun is described as a "primordial" deity in many sources and is said to be "a malevolent being being from some other reality, an incredibly powerful invader" in the description of the Demiplane of Imprisonment in Dragon #353, supporting the idea that he came from a previous multiverse.
This neatly explains why Tharizdun is easily more powerful than a whole pantheon containing bunches of Greater Gods: he is an embodiment of at least one-fifth of the entire cosmic mojo of a collapsed multiverse (much more than that if he consumed the power of the other Spheres at the end), comparable to a Great Wheel deity who was the ultimate embodiment of Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, or Neutrality above and beyond any gods with those alignments in their portfolios.  Heck, even if one regards the Twin Serpents myth as completely true and Jazirian and Asmodeus are primordial powers of Law on a similar level, they still had to split the power of Ultimate Cosmic Law between themselves while Tharizdun gets Entropy (Ultimate Cosmic Evil, if you will) all to himself.

And this theory even explains why Tharizdun (a god of destroying everything) acts through the aspect of the Elder Elemental Eye and its servants the Princes of Elemental Evil (planar lords of fundamentally creative forces): in the context of the Great Wheel the Inner Plane elements and the Outer Plane alignments are largely separate and there's not much of a thematic interplay between them to justify that relationship (there are fiery and icy layers of Hell, for instance, but they're not Elemental Fire or Paraelemental Ice), but the Elder Elemental Eye corrupting the four elements to evil and exerting hidden influence through apparently-innocuous elemental cults is a blatant recapitulation of Entropy undermining and consuming the four other Spheres of Power and winning even when one of the other Spheres appears to be supreme.  If the embodiment of Entropy retained dominion over its defeated foes in one multiverse, of course it would retain some measure of control over its foes' successors in the next even if some of the underlying rules change.


So, in short, Tharizdun is such a powerhouse and such a big problem for the gods of the multiverse because he's one big honkin' Outside-Context Problem who is the multiverse's sole embodiment of a fundamental concept and whose essence is anathema to the very fabric of reality.  Given all that, far from wondering why he couldn't simply be defeated once and for all, one has to applaud the gods who imprisoned him merely for doing even as well as they did against him.

----------


## hamishspence

> Entropy was also called the Sphere of Death and had no associated element, and was explicitly called "Evil" when Good and Evil did not exist as alignments in BECMI.


They might not have been _alignments_, but they _were_ "ways of _describing_ beings" - in Rules Cyclopedia.

Hydrax (page 187) 

"Although the hydrax are Lawful in behaviour, most are evil"

Djinni (page 166)

"Djinn are basically good-hearted, in spite of their Chaotic alignment"

Helion (page 184) - Lawful

"Helions are extremely good, and shun violence"

Undine (page 210)

"Undines are Chaotic in behaviour, but (similar to djinn) have very good intentions and despise evil"

Lich (page 188)

"It looks like a skeleton wearing fine garments, and was once an evil and chaotic magic user of level 21 or greater"

Horde (page 185) - Lawful

"When a horde needs more room, it will simply try to take it, without regard for other creatures; thus, they are considered evil"

Efreet (page 174) - Chaotic

"Efreet are irritable and often evil"

Metamorph (page 195)

"Most are Chaotic (though Neutral  and Lawful ones do exist) but few are noticeably evil or good"

Drake (page 173)

"They may be evil or good (50% chance of each) but, except for Elemental forms, are always very Chaotic"




It even mattered _mechanically_ in some cases. Spirits for example,  were immune  to all spells_ except_ those that could harm evil.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> They might not have been _alignments_, but they _were_ "ways of _describing_ beings" - in Rules Cyclopedia.
> [...]
> It even mattered _mechanically_ in some cases. Spirits for example,  were immune  to all spells_ except_ those that could harm evil.


Yep, BECMI had spells like _detect evil_ and _dispel evil_, artifacts that were "evilly enchanted" (almost all of which were Entropy-associated), and so on.  The point I was getting at was emphasizing that Entropy feels like the odd Sphere out among the five, because Matter/Time/Energy were described in terms of Law/Neutrality/Chaos and Thought was "composed of all alignments," with no mention of good or evil, and then Entropy was described as evil with no mention of Law/Neutrality/Chaos (not even "any of the three alignments, but tilted towards evil" or something) as if it existed outside the alignment system altogether like it did with the elements system.

----------


## hamishspence

I don't know about dispel evil, but their version of detect evil was more like "detect hostility" - it only detected those who mean harm to you. 

A Chaotic (evil-leaning) cleric sneaking around a fortress occupied by  their Lawful (good-leaning) enemies, could use it to see if there were enemies nearby, and it would work.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> I don't know about dispel evil, but their version of detect evil was more like "detect hostility" - it only detected those who mean harm to you. 
> 
> A Chaotic (evil-leaning) cleric sneaking around a fortress occupied by their Lawful (good-leaning) enemies, could use it to see if there were enemies nearby, and it would work.


This is true, and _dispel evil_ was also less concrete, given the lack of an explicit evil alignment, but the writeups weren't entirely alignment-agnostic.  For reference:




> When this spell is cast, the cleric will see evilly enchanted objects within 120' glow. It will also cause creatures that want to harm the cleric to glow when they are within range. [...] Remember that a Chaotic alignment does not automatically mean Evil, although many Chaotic monsters have evil intentions.





> This spell may affect all undead and enchanted (summoned, controlled, and animated) monsters within range.
> [...]
> This spell will also remove the _curse_ from any one cursed item, or may be used to remove the influence of any magical _charm_.


"Evilly enchanted" is a specific category that doesn't just mean "enchanted to an alignment opposed to the user" (the sample artifact, the _mask of Bacraeus_, is themed after a medusa cult and tagged with Entropy and Evil), _detect evil_ calls out "evil intentions" (and only for Chaotic creatures, not Lawful ones, there's that Chainmail bias showing), and curses and charms are considered evil by _dispel evil_.  So the description of Entropy as "evil" was definitely intended to mean more than just "opposed to the other Spheres in a morally-neutral way."

----------


## Bohandas

Speaking of alignments and of ages of the world, I believe that the current medieval stagnation started around the time of the Battle of Pesh. In addition to empowering law, the pact primeval also disempowered chaos by using the power of the gods of law to shackle the world to a small selection of societies and technologies and prevent progress. Prior to this was an advanced society in constant flux, flux which was tied sympathetically to the demons who tore each old order down and the eladrins who simultaneously built the replacement societies up

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

As far as the far realms being the space between cosmologies

I like the idea of it being the space between multiverses. In fact, it's an established thing in my setting. All fictional settings (and even earth, maybe) are dreams of Far Realms (which I call the Dreaming Dark) entities known as Dreamers. These dreams may be huge (in fact infinite) or they may be small (my setting, including all the planes, is only about 4 AU in radius). The standard D&D cosmology/Great Wheel is one of these Dreams, shared between a bunch of Dreamers who all went in on it. As is the MtG planar structure, all the weird ones like Dark Sun, Eberron, etc.

There's a concept of "conceptual distance" that governs the Far Realm--things that are similar are close together. Things that are different are further apart. But it's a realm of pure thought, so for most creature of the more structured Dreams, it's really hostile by its very nature. They go insane or dead.

I also posit that there are _things_ out there that are hostile to the dreams, so most surviving universes have some form of barrier to keep those _things_ out. Whether pure distance (you have to go infinitely far into the Astral to get there) or an active defense mechanism, or whatever. This makes travel through the Dark to other cosmologies quite dangerous.

The first Dreamers arose when the Dark itself dreamed of self. The existence of self implies the existence of non-self, so by dreaming of self, it also dreamt the other, the Dreamers into existence.

One other head canon--dragons and giants get most of their "food" (ie energy input) from things other than food. Otherwise the ecology just doesn't work. Can't have enough to maintain a breeding population without scouring the land bare. Sure, they eat regular food, but that's more for taste than for sustenance.

For dragons, they tap into the natural/elemental magic via their hoards. That's why they get so pissy about theft--you're literally starving them. Gathering their hoard is literally about ensuring their energy source.

Giants I've always seen associated with runes, so they have runes embedded in them that tap into the natural magic and keep them going. Hill giants are too dumb to realize they don't need to eat normally. Things like trolls and ogres are failed giants--they're always hungry because their bodies are sized for this extra energy source that isn't working.




> To take this idea a bit further...in the Variant Cosmologies section of MotP there's an Orrery Cosmology where the elemental planes "orbit" the Material Plane and take turns being ascendant (and thus more influential on and accessible to the material world), in a proto-Eberron sort of way.


I actually like the reverse--the planets orbit through the (fixed) influence of the elemental planes. My own setting has 12 elemental planes (3 each of the primaries, representing 2 mixtures with adjacent elements + 1 "pure" plane). Basically promoting the quasi-elementals to pure status. Each of those gets a month.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> Speaking of alignments and of ages of the world, I believe that the current medieval stagnation started around the time of the Battle of Pesh. In addition to empowering law, the pact primeval also disempowered chaos by using the power of the gods of law to shackle the world to a small selection of societies and technologies and prevent progress. Prior to this was an advanced society in constant flux, flux which was tied sympathetically to the demons who tore each old order down and the eladrins who simultaneously built the replacement societies up


You know, it's interesting that people characterize D&D settings as being in Medieval Stasis, because it's not actually the case that they've been basically the same for thousands of years.  Rather, in every setting there's a constant flux of advanced civilizations rising and falling due to various minor apocalypses (Suel and the Rain of Colorless Fire, Baklun and the Invoked Devastation, Ishtar and the Cataclysm, Imaskar and the Mulhorandi rebellion, Netheril and Karsus' Folly, Jhaamdath and the Nikerymath tidal wave...and those are only the big human civilizations!), and the world is never more than ~1800 years (the approximate combined length of the Medieval and Renaissance eras from which D&D draws its aesthetics and technology levels) from the last big cataclysm: Greyhawk's Twin Cataclysms happened 175 years before the "present" (as of 3e), FR's Avatar Crisis happened 17 years ago (or, if you don't count that as an apocalypse, the Fall of Netheril happened 1714 years ago), Dragonlance's Cataclysm and Second Cataclysm happened 813 and 430 years ago, and so on.

So, if anything, D&D isn't in Medieval Stasis, it's in Constant-Post-Apocalypse Stasis, with any civilizations making it past a pseudo-Renaissance tech level being hard-reset by the latest apocalypse in a manner similar to the eladrins-and-demons cycle you mentioned.  Which is exactly the kind of scenario you want to have, if you want there to be lots of ruins to dungeon-crawl through and ancient artifacts to unearth, but not exactly fun for the world's inhabitants.

---

On that subject, though, my personal theory on the comparative lack of technology compared to magic isn't the usual "If people can shoot fireballs and fly, why make cannons or planes?" thing (since that ignores the benefit of technology for the non-magic-using public) or the "Gond makes smokepowder not function throughout the Realms except for his priests" thing (because divine meddling doesn't apply to every setting), but rather an issue of supply lines and infrastructure.

It's a common thought experiment to wonder whether you could, say, send a modern person back to the pre-Medieval era and have them kickstart the Industrial Revolution by introducing gunpowder and advanced metallurgy and such, but the conclusion that eventually results is that no one can really do that on their own: you can't just make advanced technology from scratch, you have to build the tools that let you build the tools that let you build the tools that let you build modern tech, and you need large numbers of people moving vast arrays of diverse resources from far-off places to get anywhere meaningful.

Cut to D&D, where someone trying to invent a flintlock rifle or a steam train in Toril has all the problems of a time traveler trying to do the same in Medieval England, _plus_ the fact that the wilderness is chock-full of monsters and other hazards.  You want to supply a rifle corps?  Better hope there are no kobolds in the saltpeter mines.  You want to build a railway between Neverwinter and Waterdeep?  Better make sure your wood-and-iron railroad is as dragon- and rust monster-proof as a plan stone road...and that it doesn't go through any forests with fey who would object to you harvesting lots of wood and putting lots of iron in the middle of their home.

So magic wins out over technology on a societal level because magic use is personal and infrastructure-independent while technology is communal and infrastructure-dependent, and the only civilizations powerful enough to get the ball rolling on non-magical technological progress to benefit the common folk are those with enough magic coming out their ears that the common folk are already benefiting from magical equivalents anyway.




> I actually like the reverse--the planets orbit through the (fixed) influence of the elemental planes. My own setting has 12 elemental planes (3 each of the primaries, representing 2 mixtures with adjacent elements + 1 "pure" plane). Basically promoting the quasi-elementals to pure status. Each of those gets a month.


I posited that the planes orbit Athas because that's the way it works in the Orrery and Eberron cosmologies, but it might equally be the case that Athas moves relative to fixed planes.  There's really no way for an Athasian scholar to tell the difference, much like there's no real way for one to tell whether Athas orbits its sun or vice versa because there are no other planets in Darkspace to use as reference points.  A spelljamming scholar might be able to determine the truth from their privileged vantage point, of course.

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

> So, if anything, D&D isn't in Medieval Stasis, it's in Constant-Post-Apocalypse Stasis, with any civilizations making it past a pseudo-Renaissance tech level being hard-reset by the latest apocalypse in a manner similar to the eladrins-and-demons cycle you mentioned.  Which is exactly the kind of scenario you want to have, if you want there to be lots of ruins to dungeon-crawl through and ancient artifacts to unearth, but not exactly fun for the world's inhabitants.


Exactly. D&D as post-apocalyptic fiction has always made the most sense to me. It's not stasis, it's yo-yo, with games mostly set in the "medieval + anachronisms" portion of the yo-yo cycle, because "everyone scrabbling to survive without the time to raise their heads" is a different genre.

And nothing else really explains having all those ruins sitting around. Stable cultures would have looted them long ago.

I threw in (forward only) time-travel shenanigans in my setting--there's a way of basically cutting a chunk of terrain and its contents off from the flow of time and space (the world heals up around it as if it had never been there). Some random time later, it rejoins. Within the bubble, some small amount of time passed. Outside, maybe centuries. This lets me have "fresh" ruins or areas belonging to earlier epochs sitting around, conveniently when adventurers are going adventuring.

----------


## Bohandas

> You know, it's interesting that people characterize D&D settings as being in Medieval Stasis, because it's not actually the case that they've been basically the same for thousands of years.  Rather, in every setting there's a constant flux of advanced civilizations rising and falling due to various minor apocalypses (Suel and the Rain of Colorless Fire, Baklun and the Invoked Devastation, Ishtar and the Cataclysm, Imaskar and the Mulhorandi rebellion, Netheril and Karsus' Folly, Jhaamdath and the Nikerymath tidal wave...and those are only the big human civilizations!), and the world is never more than ~1800 years (the approximate combined length of the Medieval and Renaissance eras from which D&D draws its aesthetics and technology levels) from the last big cataclysm: Greyhawk's Twin Cataclysms happened 175 years before the "present" (as of 3e), FR's Avatar Crisis happened 17 years ago (or, if you don't count that as an apocalypse, the Fall of Netheril happened 1714 years ago), Dragonlance's Cataclysm and Second Cataclysm happened 813 and 430 years ago, and so on.
> 
> So, if anything, D&D isn't in Medieval Stasis, it's in Constant-Post-Apocalypse Stasis, with any civilizations making it past a pseudo-Renaissance tech level being hard-reset by the latest apocalypse in a manner similar to the eladrins-and-demons cycle you mentioned.  Which is exactly the kind of scenario you want to have, if you want there to be lots of ruins to dungeon-crawl through and ancient artifacts to unearth, but not exactly fun for the world's inhabitants.
> 
> ---
> 
> On that subject, though, my personal theory on the comparative lack of technology compared to magic isn't the usual "If people can shoot fireballs and fly, why make cannons or planes?" thing (since that ignores the benefit of technology for the non-magic-using public) or the "Gond makes smokepowder not function throughout the Realms except for his priests" thing (because divine meddling doesn't apply to every setting), but rather an issue of supply lines and infrastructure.
> 
> It's a common thought experiment to wonder whether you could, say, send a modern person back to the pre-Medieval era and have them kickstart the Industrial Revolution by introducing gunpowder and advanced metallurgy and such, but the conclusion that eventually results is that no one can really do that on their own: you can't just make advanced technology from scratch, you have to build the tools that let you build the tools that let you build the tools that let you build modern tech, and you need large numbers of people moving vast arrays of diverse resources from far-off places to get anywhere meaningful.
> ...


The thing is that I imagine the gods as being an infrastructure. At the very least, with the gods squabbling the way they generally do in D&D, they ought to be at least re-arming their followers almost immediately.

Also, the methods of mining and working steel, mithril, and adamantine don't seem to be lost, so materials don't seem to be the issue.

Additionally, it happens even when there hasn't been an apocalypse. IIRC the time of the Company of Seven was like 300 years before the time 1e was set. The paladins of Heironeous ought to have AK-47s by now instead of just sometimes occasionally a handgun of the same model that Murlynd originally recovered from Boot Hill all those centuries ago.

And there's evidence of much greater empires prior to these great ancient empires. IIRC Netheril never managed to copy the nether scrolls.

Which leads to the main point that this theory addresses. Why _can't_ you just copy the Nether Scrolls? Why can't you conjure up mithril and adamantine? Why do the gods generally speak in riddles instead of communicating clearly? Why, in the context of the game world, should any of these things be the case?

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> Also, the methods of mining and working steel, mithril, and adamantine don't seem to be lost, so materials don't seem to be the issue.
> 
> Additionally, it happens even when there hasn't been an apocalypse. IIRC the time of the Company of Seven was like 300 years before the time 1e was set. The paladins of Heironeous ought to have AK-47s by now instead of just sometimes occasionally a handgun of the same model that Murlynd originally recovered from Boot Hill all those centuries ago.


"Like 300 years" doesn't delineate a defined amount of technological progress.  Compare the 300-year period between 1700 and 2000 with the period between 1640 and 1940--the two starting years have basically the same tech level for all intents and purposes, being in the tail end of the Renaissance, whereas the gap between 1940s tech and 2000s tech is absolutely massive.  Compare either one to the period between 1720 and 2020 and you end up with yet more massive technological leaps.

And remember, technology doesn't follow a "tech tree" model in the real world where technology steps through through a fixed and known set of advancements at a fixed and reliable pace:

1) One technology doesn't necessarily follow another: Ancient China invented gunpowder in 850 and didn't do anything with it beyond fireworks and primitive rocket weapons, whereas Europe discovered gunpowder in the late 1200s and developed the first handheld firearms in the 1360s.  Totally different contexts (a long-dominant empire vs. kingdoms at war, to massively oversimplify) and totally different uses cases lead to totally different outcomes, and a post-apocalyptic D&D world would be yet a third context and use case.

2) The next technology is not always obvious: Early firearms were very inaccurate, and every gunsmith wanted to find a way to improve their accuracy, yet it wasn't until 1498 that rifling was invented.  Nearly a century and a half to develop what seems to be an obvious invention (because most inventions seem obvious in retrospect), and that's with many experts working on the problem from many angles over a long period of time.  Start with a few ancient one-of-a-kind revolvers (which might have been lost, stolen, corroded into uselessness, not allowed to be disassembled for study because they're holy relics, etc.) with no existing tech base or expertise (i.e. having to reverse-engineer gunpowder, needing to invent standardized parts manufacturing, etc.) and there's no guarantee that a prospective gunsmith would make any useful progress before giving the endeavor up as a lost cause.

Both of those factors go double for a world with functioning and widespread magic, which all of the published D&D settings are (except debateably Dark Sun, and in that case the raw materials for technological alternatives simply don't exist), where the kingdom may never invest in rocketry research when _wands of fireball_ are capable of filling the "make all those people over there explode" role just fine and where primitive guns may not measure up to existing weapons (not even magic ones, just arbalests and such) well enough to justify continuing down an obviously-dead-end route.




> The thing is that I imagine the gods as being an infrastructure. At the very least, with the gods squabbling the way they generally do in D&D, they ought to be at least re-arming their followers almost immediately.


Even putting aside the fact that gods have a limited ability to act on the Prime (which we'll get to in a minute), you forget that even if a given god helps out their own followers (A) they can only really act in a way that fits with their portfolio and (B) other gods can act to prevent or meddle with their help.

For instance, in the Forgotten Realms, it is flat-out impossible for anyone to make gunpowder because Gond, god of technology, has decreed it so.  You _can_ try to make smokepowder, an alchemical substance with similar properties, but only if you're a priest of Gond, otherwise it's flat-out impossible because Gond has decreed it so.  No amount of innovation over any amount of time will get you from revolvers to AK-47s while on Toril, and those revolvers would themselves stop working the moment you took them into Realmspace.

Now, this unilateral decree is allowed because the other gods agree that everyone getting their hands on gunpowder would be...suboptimal...and so let his ban go by without issue.  But if Gond started arming all of _his_ followers with tons of gunpowder weapons while still barring it to other gods' followers, you can bet your last copper that Torm would be arming his own followers with ballistas while making siege weapons not work for any other gods' followers, Umberlee would be giving her followers ships while sinking any ships used by other gods' followers, and so forth...at which point all the many and varied servants of Mystra from novice priests to her Chosen stomp everyone flat because they've got magic coming out their ears and no one else can cast the simplest cantrip.

(None of which would actually happen because of Ao's rules to the contrary, of course, but that scenario is _why_ those rules exist.)

This scenario isn't exactly analogous in every setting (gunpowder obviously works just fine on Oerth, and we have no reason to believe it wouldn't on other worlds), but the general principle stands that wherever there are active gods there are constraints on those gods' behavior to avoid too much interference (either positive or negative) with mortals.




> And there's evidence of much greater empires prior to these great ancient empires. IIRC Netheril never managed to copy the nether scrolls.
> 
> Which leads to the main point that this theory addresses. Why _can't_ you just copy the Nether Scrolls?


It's an artifact.  By definition, artifacts and relics are magic items whose means of (re)creation are unknown.

As a point of clarification, you _can_ just copy the Nether Scrolls in the sense of writing down what they say; writing down the teachings on magical theory and spreading them around is precisely how Netheril ended up with tons of powerful wizards, and you can copy spells out of them like you can a regular scroll.  You just can't Xerox a set of Nether Scrolls and get a copy with the artifact-level powers the originals possess.




> Why can't you conjure up mithril and adamantine?


You can.  _Major creation_ will do it temporarily and _true creation_ or _reality revision_/_wish_ will do it permanently.  The problem, of course, is that those are 5th and 8th/9th level spells and powers, the former lasts only a few rounds, and the latter costs large amounts of XP, so mining for it is much more time- and cost-effective than conjuring it.

If you mean "Why does it require such a high-level spell and a large XP cost to permanently conjure up mithral and adamantine," well, it's the same reason why _raise dead_ and _teleport_ are 5th level: in-game because that magical effect is hard and complex to achieve, out-of-game because certain magical effects "come online" at different levels as the game changes in scope and PC capabilities expand.




> Why do the gods generally speak in riddles instead of communicating clearly? Why, in the context of the game world, should any of these things be the case?


Because the gods all agreed that directly meddling in the lives of mortals would have majorly bad consequences and are thus in the midst of a metaphysical and philosophical cold war, and things like limiting the revelations they give their followers fits into that.

As for why they would come to such an agreement in-game, well, lots of real-world pantheons have a myth about how one pantheon got its collective butt handed to it by a different pantheon and then was slain/imprisoned/etc.--Apsu and Tiamat by Marduk and the other Babylonian gods, the Titans by the Olympians, the Vanir by the Aesir and then the Jotnar by the Aesir and Vanir, and so on--and the D&D multiverse started with the War of Law and Chaos in which lots of primordial beings got their butts kicked by other primordial beings, so it's not a big stretch for the gods to want to avoid suffering the same fate.

----------


## noob

> Because the gods all agreed that directly meddling in the lives of mortals would have majorly bad consequences and are thus in the midst of a metaphysical and philosophical cold war, and things like limiting the revelations they give their followers fits into that.
> 
> As for why they would come to such an agreement in-game, well, lots of real-world pantheons have a myth about how one pantheon got its collective butt handed to it by a different pantheon and then was slain/imprisoned/etc.--Apsu and Tiamat by Marduk and the other Babylonian gods, the Titans by the Olympians, the Vanir by the Aesir and then the Jotnar by the Aesir and Vanir, and so on--and the D&D multiverse started with the War of Law and Chaos in which lots of primordial beings got their butts kicked by other primordial beings, so it's not a big stretch for the gods to want to avoid suffering the same fate.


It still does not makes sense for them to make their predictions cryptic: by doing a cryptic prediction they just get it to be read by someone intelligent enough to understand it which then can explain it and if the prediction is not intentionally ambiguous to the point of uselessness then they granted information and interfered.

So they should just not send predictions if the goal was non interference.

Especially since in most published adventures and campaigns the "cryptic" predictions are so obvious and non ambiguous monkeys could understand them just fine (because they want all the playtesters even the one who is just sitting at the table and not listening because it is where their friends are to understand the prediction)
So there is no real point in making them cryptic if you use the amount of cryptic used in published campaigns.

----------


## Mark Hall

Another point I like to make about Medieval Stasis is allocation of resources.

In most worlds and their cultures, smart people go into magic. High Int, you should be a wizard apprentice. And wizards mostly learn how magic works, not mundane physics or chemistry, so they're less likely to make leaps that lead to gunpowder or cartridge rifles.

Now, this does not mean the entire world is stupid, but it will slow the technological process, especially when many needs that might be met with science are instead met with magic. Do they practice three field agriculture, if you can use Plant Growth to do the same thing? Do they study epidemiology if Cure Disease is always at someone's fingertips? What about Meterology when a Gust of Wind spell seven hundred miles away leads to the entire model falling apart? Magic throws a lot of sciences into disarray, even assuming they would work like they do in the real world (Forgotten Realms, for example, long held that gunpowder simply did not work in the setting; you had to use smokepowder, which was functionally identical, but prevented people from whipping up a cannon every time they faced a gorn.)

----------


## Bohandas

I just thought of something. The city of Sigil itself is probably a portal to somewhere. The largest and most prominent bounded space in the city is the center of the torus.




> Now, this does not mean the entire world is stupid, but it will slow the technological process, especially when many needs that might be met with science are instead met with magic. Do they practice three field agriculture, if you can use Plant Growth to do the same thing? Do they study epidemiology if Cure Disease is always at someone's fingertips? What about Meterology when a Gust of Wind spell seven hundred miles away leads to the entire model falling apart? Magic throws a lot of sciences into disarray, even assuming they would work like they do in the real world (Forgotten Realms, for example, long held that gunpowder simply did not work in the setting; you had to use smokepowder, which was functionally identical, but prevented people from whipping up a cannon every time they faced a gorn.)


Why not study those things when divination magic is at their fingertips?

Also, gunpowder not working doesn't really matter. There are plenty of other things in D&D that could produce similar explosive reaction. In 1e you could do create an explosion by mixing two magic potions of the correct types together (DMG p.119). It would be a simple matter to store small samples of the correct liquids in small glass capsules that could be smashed by a hammer operated by the trigger and thereby allowed to intermix.

EDIT:
And furthermore, in a more general sense, not working the same way as in the real world is not the same as not working

----------


## noob

> I just thought of something. The city of Sigil itself is probably a portal to somewhere. The largest and most prominent bounded space in the city is the center of the torus.
> 
> 
> 
> Why not study those things when divination magic is at their fingertips?
> 
> Also, gunpowder not working doesn't really matter. There are plenty of other things in D&D that could produce similar explosive reaction. In 1e you could do create an explosion by mixing two magic potions of the correct types together (DMG p.119). It would be a simple matter to store small samples of the correct liquids in small glass capsules that could be smashed by a hammer operated by the trigger and thereby allowed to intermix.
> 
> EDIT:
> And furthermore, in a more general sense, not working the same way as in the real world is not the same as not working


Does not works because gond magically makes the writers of that setting unable to realise the fact that guns are not solely the result of gunpowder but instead the result of being able to get high amount of energy under the form of short bursts.

I mean it is among the least consistent settings do not try to find logic in it.

----------


## Bohandas

> "Like 300 years" doesn't delineate a defined amount of technological progress.  Compare the 300-year period between 1700 and 2000 with the period between 1640 and 1940--the two starting years have basically the same tech level for all intents and purposes, being in the tail end of the Renaissance, whereas the gap between 1940s tech and 2000s tech is absolutely massive.  Compare either one to the period between 1720 and 2020 and you end up with yet more massive technological leaps.
> 
> And remember, technology doesn't follow a "tech tree" model in the real world where technology steps through through a fixed and known set of advancements at a fixed and reliable pace:
> 
> 1) One technology doesn't necessarily follow another: Ancient China invented gunpowder in 850 and didn't do anything with it beyond fireworks and primitive rocket weapons, whereas Europe discovered gunpowder in the late 1200s and developed the first handheld firearms in the 1360s.  Totally different contexts (a long-dominant empire vs. kingdoms at war, to massively oversimplify) and totally different uses cases lead to totally different outcomes, and a post-apocalyptic D&D world would be yet a third context and use case.
> 
> 2) The next technology is not always obvious: Early firearms were very inaccurate, and every gunsmith wanted to find a way to improve their accuracy, yet it wasn't until 1498 that rifling was invented.  Nearly a century and a half to develop what seems to be an obvious invention (because most inventions seem obvious in retrospect), and that's with many experts working on the problem from many angles over a long period of time.  Start with a few ancient one-of-a-kind revolvers (which might have been lost, stolen, corroded into uselessness, not allowed to be disassembled for study because they're holy relics, etc.) with no existing tech base or expertise (i.e. having to reverse-engineer gunpowder, needing to invent standardized parts manufacturing, etc.) and there's no guarantee that a prospective gunsmith would make any useful progress before giving the endeavor up as a lost cause.
> 
> Both of those factors go double for a world with functioning and widespread magic, which all of the published D&D settings are (except debateably Dark Sun, and in that case the raw materials for technological alternatives simply don't exist), where the kingdom may never invest in rocketry research when _wands of fireball_ are capable of filling the "make all those people over there explode" role just fine and where primitive guns may not measure up to existing weapons (not even magic ones, just arbalests and such) well enough to justify continuing down an obviously-dead-end route.





> It's an artifact.  By definition, artifacts and relics are magic items whose means of (re)creation are unknown.
> 
> As a point of clarification, you _can_ just copy the Nether Scrolls in the sense of writing down what they say; writing down the teachings on magical theory and spreading them around is precisely how Netheril ended up with tons of powerful wizards, and you can copy spells out of them like you can a regular scroll.  You just can't Xerox a set of Nether Scrolls and get a copy with the artifact-level powers the originals possess.


It's not just technology though. As you yourself have pointed outed about artifacts, it's magic as well. Magic doesn't stay advanced, and there's evidence of a past time so advanced that even Netheril, which is generally an exception to this, couldn't replicate its achievements.

Also I brought up Murlynd specifically because he's a combination of immortal, brilliant, rich, and specifically interested in firearms technology. Because of him alone it should have advanced.




> You can.  _Major creation_ will do it temporarily and _true creation_ or _reality revision_/_wish_ will do it permanently.  The problem, of course, is that those are 5th and 8th/9th level spells and powers, the former lasts only a few rounds, and the latter costs large amounts of XP, so mining for it is much more time- and cost-effective than conjuring it.
> 
> If you mean "Why does it require such a high-level spell and a large XP cost to permanently conjure up mithral and adamantine," well, it's the same reason why _raise dead_ and _teleport_ are 5th level: in-game because that magical effect is hard and complex to achieve, out-of-game because certain magical effects "come online" at different levels as the game changes in scope and PC capabilities expand.


Yeah, but IIRC True Creation is 2 levels higher than raise dead. And Major Creation can't create cold iron (I think that may have been what I was thinking of in my original post




> Even putting aside the fact that gods have a limited ability to act on the Prime (which we'll get to in a minute), you forget that even if a given god helps out their own followers (A) they can only really act in a way that fits with their portfolio and (B) other gods can act to prevent or meddle with their help.
> 
> For instance, in the Forgotten Realms, it is flat-out impossible for anyone to make gunpowder because Gond, god of technology, has decreed it so.  You _can_ try to make smokepowder, an alchemical substance with similar properties, but only if you're a priest of Gond, otherwise it's flat-out impossible because Gond has decreed it so.  No amount of innovation over any amount of time will get you from revolvers to AK-47s while on Toril, and those revolvers would themselves stop working the moment you took them into Realmspace.
> 
> Now, this unilateral decree is allowed because the other gods agree that everyone getting their hands on gunpowder would be...suboptimal...and so let his ban go by without issue.  But if Gond started arming all of _his_ followers with tons of gunpowder weapons while still barring it to other gods' followers, you can bet your last copper that Torm would be arming his own followers with ballistas while making siege weapons not work for any other gods' followers, Umberlee would be giving her followers ships while sinking any ships used by other gods' followers, and so forth...at which point all the many and varied servants of Mystra from novice priests to her Chosen stomp everyone flat because they've got magic coming out their ears and no one else can cast the simplest cantrip.
> 
> (None of which would actually happen because of Ao's rules to the contrary, of course, but that scenario is _why_ those rules exist.)
> 
> This scenario isn't exactly analogous in every setting (gunpowder obviously works just fine on Oerth, and we have no reason to believe it wouldn't on other worlds), but the general principle stands that wherever there are active gods there are constraints on those gods' behavior to avoid too much interference (either positive or negative) with mortals.
> ...


I'm not sure if something like Gond's ban is even _possible_ in other crystal spheres. Usually (individual) gods' power in D&D doesn't seem to be quite so absolute. It may be dependent on either the weave or Ao to hold (Or failing that it may have required a very long term project to cover the whole sphere in interdiction effects, or possibly a single interdiction zone that slowly grows). (And even if the power of the gods was that absolute in general, it would still be possible for any other god of technology to cancel it)

In any case, I don't really see the chaotic and evil deities (and especially the chaotic evil deities) willingly agreeing to this*, and actually intending to honor the bargain, and reliably sticking to that intent. (Or, for that matter, not forum shopping and paying off the Lords of Woe to issue rulings in their favor that have nothing to do with the Compact;s actual terms). It would have to be forced on them somehow.

*(as in any of it. The pact, the ban, any of it)

----------


## NigelWalmsley

Honestly, D&Dland probably isn't so much in Medieval Status as locked into a cycle of repeating apocalypses. You can summon demons that can destroy mid-sized kingdoms, and there are literal slaughter cults that can summon those demons and who want nothing more than to destroy anything they can find. This is not a setup that produces a stable equilibrium. So realistically, the reason that everything is medieval is the same one invoked in _The Stormlight Archive_ during the Desolations: it's really hard to hold on to technology, let alone advance, when the world ends every couple generations.




> Yeah, but IIRC True Creation is 2 levels higher than raise dead. And Major Creation can't create cold iron (I think that may have been what I was thinking of in my original post


Three, actually (at least in 3e). And a good sight rarer, as the former is a Domain spell, while the latter is known to literally every single Cleric.

----------


## noob

> Honestly, D&Dland probably isn't so much in Medieval Status as locked into a cycle of repeating apocalypses. You can summon demons that can destroy mid-sized kingdoms, and there are literal slaughter cults that can summon those demons and who want nothing more than to destroy anything they can find. This is not a setup that produces a stable equilibrium. So realistically, the reason that everything is medieval is the same one invoked in _The Stormlight Archive_ during the Desolations: it's really hard to hold on to technology, let alone advance, when the world ends every couple generations.
> 
> 
> 
> Three, actually (at least in 3e). And a good sight rarer, as the former is a Domain spell, while the latter is known to literally every single Cleric.


we were talking about forgotten realms which is not the same thing as dnd land.
There is so many dnd settings with all their own reasons for stagnation.
Some even have no medieval stasis and have tech that does absolutely everything provided someone skilled enough designs it(ravenloft) but are awful because everything is wrong.

----------


## Bohandas

> Honestly, D&Dland probably isn't so much in Medieval Status as locked into a cycle of repeating apocalypses. You can summon demons that can destroy mid-sized kingdoms, and there are literal slaughter cults that can summon those demons and who want nothing more than to destroy anything they can find. This is not a setup that produces a stable equilibrium.


It's still static in the same way that the society in the first act of Gurren Lagaan was static. Continuing the Gurren Lagaan metaphor, the version of the Age Before Ages and early Blood War that I'm imagining is somewhat similar to the later acts of Gurren Lagaan, where there is destruction on a cosmic scale, but things continue on regardless (edit: I think at one point in the movie the entire universe is destroyed and even that doesn't end the fight).

Another possible metaphor for what I'm imagining in the Eldar empire from WH40K. The entire empire was overrun my mass murder, mass mayhem, mass destruction, and widespread degeneracy and corruption, and being a serial killer was considered a legitimate artform, but due to its magical and technological might it was in no danger of being destroyed by these things directly (it did eventually end them indirectly when the Eldar's souls eventually collapsed into a singularity of pure chaos due to hundreds of reincarnation cycles of being exposed to this society, but it was in no danher of destroying them directly is my point)

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> It still does not makes sense for them to make their predictions cryptic: by doing a cryptic prediction they just get it to be read by someone intelligent enough to understand it which then can explain it and if the prediction is not intentionally ambiguous to the point of uselessness then they granted information and interfered.
> 
> So they should just not send predictions if the goal was non interference.
> 
> Especially since in most published adventures and campaigns the "cryptic" predictions are so obvious and non ambiguous monkeys could understand them just fine (because they want all the playtesters even the one who is just sitting at the table and not listening because it is where their friends are to understand the prediction)
> So there is no real point in making them cryptic if you use the amount of cryptic used in published campaigns.


The best reason to make cryptic pronouncements is a letter of the law/spirit of the law issue.  If the Divine Compact says "Thou shalt not tell your followers how to do X" and you make a big stone tablet appear in some random place with a riddle on it, well, you're not breaking the rules, are you?  You just created a thing (which your followers _happened_ to stumble across) that _could_, perhaps, be interpreted to _imply_ how to do X, which is totally a different thing.

Look at _commune_ and _contact other plane_, the most direct way a priest has to communicate with his patron or a wizard has to communicate with a planar lord.  One gives yes/no answers, or a five-words-or-fewer phrase "in cases where a one-word answer would be misleading or contrary to the deitys interests," while the other gives any single-word answers.  Why are those spells so constrained, when one has to be a powerful caster already to be able to cast them so their usage is pretty limited?  Presumably because the Divine Compact says so.  Why are the two spells so open-ended in what they can communicate in edges cases?  Possibly so the gods can cheat like hell around the exact wording of the Divine Compact.

(The out-of-game reasons for vague divinations are totally unrelated, of course, but vague-but-easily-decipherable pronouncements show up in mythology all the time so there's plenty of precedent.)




> Also, gunpowder not working doesn't really matter. There are plenty of other things in D&D that could produce similar explosive reaction. In 1e you could do create an explosion by mixing two magic potions of the correct types together (DMG p.119). It would be a simple matter to store small samples of the correct liquids in small glass capsules that could be smashed by a hammer operated by the trigger and thereby allowed to intermix.





> Does not works because gond magically makes the writers of that setting unable to realise the fact that guns are not solely the result of gunpowder but instead the result of being able to get high amount of energy under the form of short bursts.


You're both coming at the issue from the perspective of _wanting_ to invent guns and trying to reverse-engineer a way for magic-users to develop them, either justifying the invention of gunpowder or finding an equivalent alchemical or magical substance to use as a substitute.  But a magic-user isn't going to look at a potion explosion, think that's something that could be weaponized, save a bunch of samples, and start researching how to stick it in a metal tube to let commoners chuck tiny bits of metal at each other, he's going to go "Oh no, my _potion of flight_ and _elixir of fire breath_ have just reacted poorly with one another, utterly ruining two powerful and valuable potions spell!  Damn you, Ioulaum's Theorem of Potion Miscibility, damn you straight to Baator!"

_If_ an arcanist wanted to make a non-wand projectile weapon of some sort, and _if_ he wanted to do so without simply enchanting a crossbow with an object-launching spell or the like, and _if_ he wanted to base the weapon on unknown principles of an entirely new area of research, and _if_ he didn't think that doing things with exploding powders was a job better suited to an alchemist, and _if_ a bunch of other caveats, then yes, any magic-user likely has the Int score, the resources, and the creativity to invent guns and gunpowder.  But there's nothing inevitable about guns and there's a _ton_ of baggage both cultural and personal pushing magic-users in a bunch of other directions to make their development quite unlikely.




> It's not just technology though. As you yourself have pointed outed about artifacts, it's magic as well. Magic doesn't stay advanced, and there's evidence of a past time so advanced that even Netheril, which is generally an exception to this, couldn't replicate its achievements.


This is true, every advanced magical civilization has its own form of advanced magic on which its civilization is built (Batrachi dimensional shenanigans for the Imaskari, 10th+ level spells and mythallars for the Netherese, teachable psionics and udoxia for the Jhaamdathi, ubiquitous bound demons and Things Man Was Not Meant To Know for the Nar, circle magic and place magic for the Raumathari, and so on).  But every one of those magical civilizations started from the same baseline of low-level magics that survived the previous civilizations' falls, and none of them branched off in radically different directions because they were focused on recovering secrets of the past and honing their own unique specialties.




> Also I brought up Murlynd specifically because he's a combination of immortal, brilliant, rich, and specifically interested in firearms technology. Because of him alone it should have advanced.


Technology doesn't advance because of one person's interests, no matter how rich and eccentric they may be.  Henry Ford didn't invent cars and interstates, Thomas Edison didn't invent batteries and the national electric grid, Elon Musk didn't invent rocketry and flying drones.  All that Murlynd tinkering with guns for a few centuries might do is ensure that _he_ has a bunch of advanced firearms, all of which would basically be strange artifacts just like his original enchanted revolvers, because one hobbyist does not a field of industry make.

Even if we stipulate that Murlynd opened Murlynd's Academy of Teaching People to Build and Shoot Guns and started trying to spread his love for and knowledge of guns, there's no guarantee it would take off.  It might be banned by local rulers who find it a threat to their rule, shunned by other wizards who consider it beneath them, attacked by demons who don't want cold-iron-bullet-chucking weapons to be more common, and so on--and even if Murlynd can deal with all of those things because he's a badass, it's not great for his PR and wouldn't necessarily attract a lot of adherents if everyone's ganging up on him for it.

And note that that's something he _didn't_ do, instead ascending to be the Hero-Deity of Magical Technology--_magical_ technology, not plain ol' normal technology--and then giving his priests _and only his priests_ access to firebrands (magical _equivalents_ of firearms, not actual firearms) to use to aid the common people.  The one guy best placed to do what you propose explicitly didn't do that, and instead set himself up as a bottleneck and arbiter of technological development on Oerth, just like Gond did in Toril.




> Yeah, but IIRC True Creation is 2 levels higher than raise dead. And Major Creation can't create cold iron (I think that may have been what I was thinking of in my original post


Cold iron indeed can't be created by magic, because it's a magic-resistant metal whose properties derive from it originating in specific places and being subject to specific manipulation.  It makes plenty of sense that you can't create a magic-resistant metal with magic and have it retain its properties, and that you can't create "iron mined in the Underdark" by magic (because conjured iron and other materials are pulled from the Inner Planes) in the same way that Joe Wizard can't create "silver conjured by Bob the Sorcerer," because it's a contradiction in terms.




> In any case, I don't really see the chaotic and evil deities (and especially the chaotic evil deities) willingly agreeing to this*, and actually intending to honor the bargain, and reliably sticking to that intent. (Or, for that matter, not forum shopping and paying off the Lords of Woe to issue rulings in their favor that have nothing to do with the Compact;s actual terms). It would have to be forced on them somehow.
> 
> *(as in any of it. The pact, the ban, any of it)


Being Chaotic and Evil doesn't mean refusing to enter agreements or being unable to abide by them; Chaotic does not mean Insane or Arbitrarily Contrary and Evil does not mean Psychopathic or Compulsively Antisocial.

It is, in fact, in the best interests of Chaotic and/or Evil powers-that-be to agree to a bargain that limits divine interference on the Material Plane across the board.  If anyone can pop on down to the Prime in person at any time to do what they want, Chaotic and/or Evil gods are going to get stomped by Lawful and/or Good ones because Law and Good are good at cooperating against common enemies (Law won the War of Law and Chaos, after all, and Good is all about playing nice with others) and Chaos and Evil manifestly are not.  If anyone can empower any number of followers and avatars to mess around on the Prime, Lawful and/or Good gods can afford to spend their power on that because they have allies to watch their backs on their nice and safe home planes while Chaotic and/or Evil gods can't afford to weaken themselves like that because they'll get ganked by their minions, other gods, demon princes, etc. while their backs are turned.  And so on.

If, on the other hand, only indirect action is possible, then that's _great_ for Chaotic and/or Evil gods!  A Chaotic god can get tons of mileage out of empowering one high priest to go poison a bunch of water supplies in one kingdom and frame a neighboring kingdom for it to kickstart a war, and an Evil church can tempt tons of mortals into giving in to their base impulses for power and slowly corrupt them until their souls are headed for the Abyss.  Good gods, meanwhile, get to empower one high priest who has to go around foiling evil plans and saving orphans from burning buildings and such, and what the heck is a Lawful god going to "tempt" people with, tax deductions?  :Small Amused:

----------


## Xuc Xac

> But a magic-user isn't going to look at a potion explosion, think that's something that could be weaponized, save a bunch of samples, and start researching how to stick it in a metal tube to let commoners chuck tiny bits of metal at each other...


That's literally what happened in the real world. Chinese alchemists tried to make a potion of longevity and ended up making gunpowder by accident instead. They used it to make rockets and guns.

----------


## noob

> You're both coming at the issue from the perspective of _wanting_ to invent guns and trying to reverse-engineer a way for magic-users to develop them, either justifying the invention of gunpowder or finding an equivalent alchemical or magical substance to use as a substitute.  But a magic-user isn't going to look at a potion explosion, think that's something that could be weaponized, save a bunch of samples, and start researching how to stick it in a metal tube to let commoners chuck tiny bits of metal at each other, he's going to go "Oh no, my _potion of flight_ and _elixir of fire breath_ have just reacted poorly with one another, utterly ruining two powerful and valuable potions spell!  Damn you, Ioulaum's Theorem of Potion Miscibility, damn you straight to Baator!"
> 
> _If_ an arcanist wanted to make a non-wand projectile weapon of some sort, and _if_ he wanted to do so without simply enchanting a crossbow with an object-launching spell or the like, and _if_ he wanted to base the weapon on unknown principles of an entirely new area of research, and _if_ he didn't think that doing things with exploding powders was a job better suited to an alchemist, and _if_ a bunch of other caveats, then yes, any magic-user likely has the Int score, the resources, and the creativity to invent guns and gunpowder.  But there's nothing inevitable about guns and there's a _ton_ of baggage both cultural and personal pushing magic-users in a bunch of other directions to make their development quite unlikely.


Not only did gond give basic firearms to their followers thus making non initiate realise it is doable and know what it is after killing an initiate(only the powder is impossible to do for non gond followers) but there is also a story of cost reduction.
You need to do a basic magic missile wand to spend a full 750 gold.
That is huge in fact and it does not provide a lot of firepower and can not hit targets that are in antimagic zones.
So if you find an alternate way to do your magic missile wand cheaper or significantly more powerful(ex: make the projectile non magical and propelled by magic as an intermediary step to guns) of course you will use it and then it will spread.
Magical items being ridiculously expensive to make are a huge motivating factor to seek cheaper or better non magical alternatives.
Even more since you can just cast fabricate to make instantly any non magical item.
So clearly gond mind controls people to make them not take his gun designs and use something else than his copyrighted powder.

----------


## Bohandas

> Being Chaotic and Evil doesn't mean refusing to enter agreements or being unable to abide by them; Chaotic does not mean Insane or Arbitrarily Contrary and Evil does not mean Psychopathic or Compulsively Antisocial.


Itmdoes generally imply that they have no honor though, and I would point out that many of the CE deities are indeed portrayed as just full on psycho (Erythnul and Urdlen come to mind)

----------


## NigelWalmsley

I mean, alignment doesn't make any sense to begin with, but Erythnul's issues may have more to do with being the god of concepts like "Hate" and "Malice". Drow apparently manage to have an extremely complicated society despite being chaotic and evil (though, of course, that's one of the parts of alignment that doesn't make any sense).

----------


## Bohandas

> You're both coming at the issue from the perspective of _wanting_ to invent guns and trying to reverse-engineer a way for magic-users to develop them, either justifying the invention of gunpowder or finding an equivalent alchemical or magical substance to use as a substitute.  But a magic-user isn't going to look at a potion explosion, think that's something that could be weaponized, save a bunch of samples, and start researching how to stick it in a metal tube to let commoners chuck tiny bits of metal at each other, he's going to go "Oh no, my _potion of flight_ and _elixir of fire breath_ have just reacted poorly with one another, utterly ruining two powerful and valuable potions spell!  Damn you, Ioulaum's Theorem of Potion Miscibility, damn you straight to Baator!"


Yeah. Admittedly he'd probably simply be making a bomb for 1/3 the price (of a 1 use sound burst item) instead. Well, maybe not from those potions specifically, but from two level 1 potions

----------


## noob

It is true that they might not do guns and instead do grenade launchers and explosive shell siege weapons but if you start doing this kind of things and that you have crossbows then guns are not very far from being invented.

----------


## RedMage125

> I mean, alignment doesn't make any sense to begin with, but Erythnul's issues may have more to do with being the god of concepts like "Hate" and "Malice". Drow apparently manage to have an extremely complicated society despite being chaotic and evil (though, of course, that's one of the parts of alignment that doesn't make any sense).


That's because you're taking a very narrow view of alignment.  It's ALWAYS been true that alignment is not an absolute barometer of action nor affiliation.

The War of the Spider Queen series is actually quite clear on Lolth's tendency towards Chaos, and how her children -the drow- do not fully appreciate and embrace it.  To Lolth, Chaos is a crucible.  One become stronger by fully embracing chaos.  To the drow, Chaos is a means to an end.  They attempt to harness Chaos, to direct and use it for their advantage.  They don't fully surrender to the ebb and flow of Chaos, and Lolth believes it holds them back.

Erythnul, OTOH, is a savage, almost animalistic god of slaughter.  He is Chaotic because he acts upon every savage whim and impulse.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> That's literally what happened in the real world. Chinese alchemists tried to make a potion of longevity and ended up making gunpowder by accident instead. They used it to make rockets and guns.


The major difference here, of course, being that the Chinese alchemists were (A) experimenting with unknown materials and procedures to (B) try to create a hypothetical substance  but (C) ended up accidentally inventing a novel substance which (D) had a lot of new and interesting applications, whereas a magic-user brewing potions who caused an explosion via potion miscibility was (A) working through a standard procedure with standard ingredients to (B) create a standard potion that's been known about for thousands of years but (C) ended up accidentally generating one of a bunch of random effects that don't depend on the input materials at all [because potion miscibility results don't depend on which potions were used, just that multiple potions were used at all] which (D) had zero usefulness compared to the panoply of magical effects that he could already generate.

It's like the difference between a Bronze Age person accidentally stumbling across iron smelting (by e.g. picking up a rock containing iron ore, accidentally dropping it into a forge, noticing an interesting result, and going from there) versus a Medieval smith working on forging an iron sword and accidentally getting a chunk of bronze in the molten iron.  The former could lead to a major serendipitous advancement in metalworking, the latter is a mistake that messed up what he was already working on to no real effect.




> Yeah. Admittedly he'd probably simply be making a bomb for 1/3 the price (of a 1 use sound burst item) instead. Well, maybe not from those potions specifically, but from two level 1 potions





> It is true that they might not do guns and instead do grenade launchers and explosive shell siege weapons but if you start doing this kind of things and that you have crossbows then guns are not very far from being invented.


For the umpteenth time, bombs and guns are _not_ an inevitable advancement, _especially_ when the world already has magic weapons!

Seriously, early firearms _sucked_.  Big, heavy, slow to load, slow to fire, short-ranged, unpredictably timed, weak, inaccurate, and pretty much pathetic in every way compared to bows and crossbows.  The gun _eventually_ overtook the crossbow (around 600 years after the gun was invented) because it had been slowly increasing in accuracy and range and decreasing in weight and reload times while the crossbow had improved at a much slower rate...but in D&D settings, there are two major advantages to an enchanted crossbow compared to a gun:

1) Ease of creation.  A reasonably handy peasant can make a crossbow himself with access to common materials, and then a spellcaster can enchant it himself, or a sufficiently handy spellcaster can do the whole thing himself.  A usable gun, however, requires a lot more precision in its creation than a usable crossbow, and it involves more materials for the gun itself, rare materials and special expertise for the powder, and so on, so you need more people involved to create it and it's unlikely a spellcaster would be able to do the whole job himself.  An adventurer or researcher or hobbyist wouldn't care, they're willing to go to some length to make or fund one, but a king trying to outfit his army is going to care about the expense and difficulty of creation and a village trying to equip its militia is going to care about the skill floor and difficulty of sourcing materials.

2) Cost-effectiveness.  Someone used to enchanted crossbows is used to weapons that, once enchanted, can shoot flaming bolts (or exploding bolts or sleep bolts or whatever) forever with needing to be re-enchanted, making the only ongoing cost that of the bolts, which can be created by peasants relatively easily and cheaply.  A gun already has a higher upfront cost than a crossbow, but then you add on the fact that the bullets are more expensive and harder to make, and _then_ you add on the fact that every shot consumes gunpowder for an additional cost.  Again, an individual might not care about the cost, but it would definitely hamper widespread adoption.

In the real world, guns provided a quantitatively different kind of projectile weapon and were worth investigating because firearm technology was something entirely novel.  In D&D settings, primitive guns are strictly inferior to weapons they already have and don't provide any novel benefits.

The only ways in which guns are possibly superior to enchanted crossbows are (A) when comparing _enchanted_ guns to enchanted crossbows, but to get to that point you have to have guns already, and (B) if you want the populace to be able to make their own weapons without being reliant on spellcasters, and I say _possibly_ superior here because there's a really good chance that all the people who might otherwise research guns would have as patrons rulers who don't want the masses to get their hands on any better weapons than they already have, and so they would discourage such research even _if_ they thought it might provide benefits over enchanted crossbows.  But again, that's possibility, not inevitability.




> Not only did gond give basic firearms to their followers thus making non initiate realise it is doable and know what it is after killing an initiate(only the powder is impossible to do for non gond followers) but there is also a story of cost reduction.
> You need to do a basic magic missile wand to spend a full 750 gold.


Why would you compare a gun to a _wand of magic missile_?  A much more direct comparison would be to a heavy crossbow, and not even an enchanted one.

As per the DMG, a musket deals 1d12 damage (x3 crit) with a range increment of 50 feet, weighs 10 lbs, and takes a full-round action to reload, while a heavy crossbow deals 1d10 damage (19-20/x2 crit) with a range increment of 120 feet, weighs 8 lbs, and takes a standard action to reload.  A musket costs 500 gp upfront and costs 1.4 gp to fire (0.3 gp per bullet, 1.1 gp per measure of gunpowder), while a heavy crossbow costs 50 gp upfront and costs 0.1 gp to loose (0.1 gp per bolt).  The only dimensions along which the musket isn't equal to, equivalent to, or strictly worse than the heavy crossbow are the damage (and 1 point on average is trivial) and reload time (and full-round vs. standard only gives you better mobility, it doesn't let you fire any faster).

And if you _do_ compare the gun to a _wand of magic missile_?  Well, firstly, the wand has a bunch of advantages: automatically hits, can hit incorporeal creatures, ignores DR, weighs practically nothing, requires no ammunition, and has no reload time.  (And, if you craft one with a higher CL, you get things like multi-targeting, better single-target damage, longer range, etc., but we're just talking the basic version.)   Yes, there are edge cases like fighting in dead magic zones, but lots of settings have "that one enclave of weird and secretive tinker gnomes experimenting with clockwork and alchemy" somewhere on the map where magic is less common or less than reliable, and if dead magic or wild magic is common enough for anyone to need to take that into account when picking weapons, you're dealing with a "DM's poor attempt at a low-magic setting" situation where all the standard assumptions go out the window anyway.

And secondly, the cost isn't actually that exorbitant, comparatively: a CL 1 _wand of magic missile_ is 750 gp for 50 charges, while a musket is 570 gp for 50 shots (500 gp musket + 50 * 1.4 gp ammo), so it's not like you'd get a half-dozen guns for the cost of one wand, you don't even get _two_ guns for the cost of one wand--but you can get 13 heavy crossbows (50 gp crossbow + 50 * 0.1 gp ammo) for the cost of 1 wand, or 10 crossbows for the cost of 1 gun.  Certainly, _over time_ the gun gets comparatively cheaper since you don't need to buy a new musket every 50 shots like you do a wand, but (A) it's not the kind of drastic price difference that would make the initial investment choice obviously in favor of the gun over the wand and (B) if you're considering arming your rank-and-file soldiers with wands of anything at all, you have enough magic at your disposal to do much more impressive things than make guns or crossbows.




> Itmdoes generally imply that they have no honor though, and I would point out that many of the CE deities are indeed portrayed as just full on psycho (Erythnul and Urdlen come to mind)


You don't need to be honorable, or adhere to any rules of behavior at all, to make a deal and then hold to it if you believe that holding to it is in your best interests; that's basic game theory.  And of course we see that Chaotic and/or Evil gods do try to cheat around the Divine Compact all the time--whenever you have a "the cult of [god] is trying to summon [god/god's avatar/etc.] to the Material Plane" plot or a "the followers of [god] is [impersonating/slaying/etc.] the followers of [god's rival] on a large scale" plot or similar, like the entire basis for the Red Hand of Doom adventure path--it's just that whenever they try it they get their butts handed to them by adventurers so the other gods are incentivized not to try that again for a while.




> I mean, alignment doesn't make any sense to begin with, but Erythnul's issues may have more to do with being the god of concepts like "Hate" and "Malice". Drow apparently manage to have an extremely complicated society despite being chaotic and evil (though, of course, that's one of the parts of alignment that doesn't make any sense).


Drow society makes perfect sense with the alignment system if you recall that (A) _having_ a baroque social structure doesn't mean _valuing_ a baroque social structure (drow society is imposed on them by Lolth for kicks and giggles and they do their best to cope within it, as RedMage noted) and (B) that whole thing is just a facade.  To quote myself from an earlier thread on the topic:




> People like to complain about drow society being "obviously" LE with its strict rules and hierarchy when drow themselves are CE, so drow should really be LE instead, but the whole point is that the drow _don't follow any of their own supposed rules_.
> 
> Lesser Houses absolutely aren't allowed to wage wars against their betters...but they do anyway and no one cares unless they get caught, in which case they're punished not because they broke the rules but because they were incompetent enough to not cover their tracks well enough and the Greater Houses just like punishing rivals when they know no one's going to object.  All priestesses are absolutely unified under Lolth and follow a strict hierarchy of favor where lesser priestesses defer to greater ones...but yochlol go around actively sowing dissent among the priestesshood and any priestess who schemes against a rival on her own and manages to depose said rival is immediately recognized and rewarded for it.  Males are absolutely not allowed to hold any positions of power and are supposed to be utterly disposable for the needs of the priestesshood...but many powerful archmages rival or exceed priestesses in power, and house mothers often protect favored males from their sisters' schemes (or cede power to them outright).
> 
> The drow have instituted a superficially-complex web (heh) of laws and rules and commandments, but they don't actually believe in any of it.  All of the rules go out the window the moment someone either thinks they can get away with something that will improve their standing without getting caught or is ordered by Lolth to do a particular thing.  No one actually respects the law itself or trusts that anyone else respects the law--especially since "the law" is basically "whatever the Matron Mother feels like doing at the moment"--but solely focuses on how they can do whatever they want despite the law.
> 
> There's only one commandment, "Thou shalt not go against Lolth," and that's less a "commandment" and more a handy piece of advice like "Don't go near a rabid dog" or "Don't piss off a hungry tiger."

----------


## noob

> The major difference here, of course, being that the Chinese alchemists were (A) experimenting with unknown materials and procedures to (B) try to create a hypothetical substance  but (C) ended up accidentally inventing a novel substance which (D) had a lot of new and interesting applications, whereas a magic-user brewing potions who caused an explosion via potion miscibility was (A) working through a standard procedure with standard ingredients to (B) create a standard potion that's been known about for thousands of years but (C) ended up accidentally generating one of a bunch of random effects that don't depend on the input materials at all [because potion miscibility results don't depend on which potions were used, just that multiple potions were used at all] which (D) had zero usefulness compared to the panoply of magical effects that he could already generate.
> 
> It's like the difference between a Bronze Age person accidentally stumbling across iron smelting (by e.g. picking up a rock containing iron ore, accidentally dropping it into a forge, noticing an interesting result, and going from there) versus a Medieval smith working on forging an iron sword and accidentally getting a chunk of bronze in the molten iron.  The former could lead to a major serendipitous advancement in metalworking, the latter is a mistake that messed up what he was already working on to no real effect.
> 
> For the umpteenth time, bombs and guns are _not_ an inevitable advancement, _especially_ when the world already has magic weapons!
> 
> Seriously, early firearms _sucked_.  Big, heavy, slow to load, slow to fire, short-ranged, unpredictably timed, weak, inaccurate, and pretty much pathetic in every way compared to bows and crossbows.  The gun _eventually_ overtook the crossbow (around 600 years after the gun was invented) because it had been slowly increasing in accuracy and range and decreasing in weight and reload times while the crossbow had improved at a much slower rate...but in D&D settings, there are two major advantages to an enchanted crossbow compared to a gun:
> 
> 1) Ease of creation.  A reasonably handy peasant can make a crossbow himself with access to common materials, and then a spellcaster can enchant it himself, or a sufficiently handy spellcaster can do the whole thing himself.  A usable gun, however, requires a lot more precision in its creation than a usable crossbow, and it involves more materials for the gun itself, rare materials and special expertise for the powder, and so on, so you need more people involved to create it and it's unlikely a spellcaster would be able to do the whole job himself.  An adventurer or researcher or hobbyist wouldn't care, they're willing to go to some length to make or fund one, but a king trying to outfit his army is going to care about the expense and difficulty of creation and a village trying to equip its militia is going to care about the skill floor and difficulty of sourcing materials.
> ...


The problem is that you used the dungeon master manual stats which were intended to balance firearms with regular ranged weapons and did not include any of the advantages of early firearms such as armour piercing (except against bullet proof armour that is close to being masterwork plate armour since basically the smith makes a full plate armour and tests if the torso blocks a bullet  by firing at it and if it does not then the plate armour is not bullet proof) or being easier to use than a crossbow at point blank range.
Guns progressively improved over time because there was people using them and/or developing them despite the fact they were not yet superior to crossbows and bows in real life so saying "crossbows and bows are superior in dnd" is not a good argument since it did not work in real life.
Also when comparing to a magic missile wand you are using the costs instead of the cost/3 which is wrong since a high level wizard comparing making guns and making magic missile wands knows the existence of fabricate which would allow them to make a whole bunch of guns at 1/3 of the written cost in a single cast and would not take weeks. (because when making 50 magic missile wands you spend 50 days while for making 50 guns it takes a single cast of fabricate)

The existence of fabricate makes non magical things vastly easier to produce than magical things.

As for damage everyone knows that in real life we can scale up guns firepower and weight until they kill the target it is intended to kill and the fact it is possible to do is easy to realise when you see how guns works.
You could literally make guns that kills elephants on a good hit with late era blackpowder guns that were wearable by humans in 1850(so a critical strike with 104 damage in dnd terms)

The possibility of scaling up firepower is extremely interesting seeing how many big dangerous creatures there is in dnd or just adventurers with way too many hp.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

You might want to delete the block quote and only quote the portion that you're responding to, makes things shorter and easier to read.




> The problem is that you used the dungeon master manual stats which were intended to balance firearms with regular ranged weapons and did not include any of the advantages of early firearms such as armour piercing (except against bullet proof armour that is close to being masterwork plate armour since basically the smith makes a full plate armour and tests if the torso blocks a bullet  by firing at it and if it does not then the plate armour is not bullet proof) or being easier to use than a crossbow at point blank range.


None of that is true.

1) The DMG stats are generally balanced with non-firearm weapons, but they weren't "nerfed" to fit in or anything; early firearms actually were on par with contemporary weapons, and the modern and futuristic weapon stats are indeed stronger than Renaissance firearms, as you'd expect.

2) Early pistols were basically ineffective against contemporary plate armor, and longarms were ineffective at battlefield ranges, hence why firearms and plate coexisted for about 200 years.  The first firearms were quite effective against shoddy, mass-produced plate armor, which then drove the development of better forms of plate armor that could resist bullets fairly easily (at the cost of being heavier and more expensive).  It wasn't until massed arquebus fire became a thing that plate really started to go obsolete.

3) Early firearms were not easier to use than crossbows.  Crossbows require either a four-step process (load bolt, pull back cord, aim, fire) for lighter ones or a six-step process (attach winch, winch back cord, detach winch, load bolt, aim, fire) for heavier ones, while even the simpler muskets required a twelve- to fourteen-step process and were much harder to aim (the flash pan got in the way and could blind you momentarily when it fired) and fire (the pricker or match was fairly unreliable).

The assumption you're making, once again, is that the inventor of firearms in a given setting would jump right from "what's a firearm?" to "1700s-level firearms," skipping decades of knowledge and refinement and ignoring any corresponding defensive advancements.  Sure, if a mid-level wizard cast _summon flintlock rifle from 18th century Earth_ and got such a gun it would be very effective, but that's not how the development process works.




> Guns progressively improved over time because there was people using them and/or developing them despite the fact they were not yet superior to crossbows and bows in real life so saying "crossbows and bows are superior in dnd" is not a good argument since it did not work in real life.


People worked on developing guns because they had a large psychological effect and gunpowder was already being used in bombards and other siege weapons so the logistics were already in place, but neither of those apply in D&D (blasting spells and flaming/thundering bolts are already effective psychological weapons and there's no infrastructure in place).




> Also when comparing to a magic missile wand you are using the costs instead of the cost/3 which is wrong since a high level wizard comparing making a gun and making a magic missile wand knows the existence of fabricate which would allow them to make a whole bunch of guns at 1/3 of the written cost in a single cast and would not take weeks. (because when making 50 magic missile wands you spend 50 days while for making 50 guns it takes a single cast of fabricate)


Firstly, a wizard who can _fabricate_ a bunch of muskets can do the same for heavy crossbows, which as noted before still have several advantages even if you remove the cost...assuming, of course, that the wizard has the Craft ranks to make the gun, the gunpowder, and the bullets, which isn't guaranteed given that bows have their own Craft subskill and so guns might as well, gunpowder might be considered alchemical and require Craft (Alchemy), and so forth.

Secondly, wands can be crafted starting at 5th level, so there's actually a 4-level range in which a wizard can craft a _wand of magic missile_ but not _fabricate_ guns or crossbows.  And given the demographics rules, every Large Town can have wizards making wands but you need to be in a Small City to have a chance to have _fabricating_ wizards or a Large City to guarantee it, which runs into the issue of logistics and infrastructure again.




> As for damage everyone knows that in real life we can scale up guns firepower and weight until they kill the target it is intended to kill and the fact it is possible to do is easy to realise when you see how guns works.
> You could literally make guns that kills elephants on a good hit with late era blackpowder guns that were wearable by humans in 1850(so a critical strike with 104 damage in dnd terms)
> 
> The possibility of scaling up firepower is extremely interesting seeing how many big dangerous creatures there is in dnd or just adventurers with way too many hp.


Actually, it would only need to be 50 damage if the elephant fails the massive damage Fort save, meaning ~17 average damage before a x3 crit multiplier; not all that impressive.

But that aside, yes, you can kill stronger people with big explosions.  You may have heard of this convenient spell called _fireball_ and wands thereof?  :Small Amused: 

Early forays into grenades and bombs were, as with guns, unreliable and heavy and inaccurate and so on and so forth.  Given the choice between that and a nice, reliable, safe-to-the-caster, lethal-to-his-enemies, very-long-range, no-crater-making _fireball_, there's once again very little reason to detour into bomb development.

EDIT: The gunpowder derail has gone on for almost a full page.  If anyone wants to continue the discussion I'd be happy to make a new thread for that, but we should probably get back from head cannons to headcanons at this point.

----------


## noob

> You might want to delete the block quote and only quote the portion that you're responding to, makes things shorter and easier to read.
> 
> 
> 
> None of that is true.
> 
> 1) The DMG stats are generally balanced with non-firearm weapons, but they weren't "nerfed" to fit in or anything; early firearms actually were on par with contemporary weapons, and the modern and futuristic weapon stats are indeed stronger than Renaissance firearms, as you'd expect.
> 
> 2) Early pistols were basically ineffective against contemporary plate armor, and longarms were ineffective at battlefield ranges, hence why firearms and plate coexisted for about 200 years.  The first firearms were quite effective against shoddy, mass-produced plate armor, which then drove the development of better forms of plate armor that could resist bullets fairly easily (at the cost of being heavier and more expensive).  It wasn't until massed arquebus fire became a thing that plate really started to go obsolete.
> ...


You are wrong on the 50 damage: the thing is that a shot in the head that enters the brain does not just cause 50 damage nor does the death corresponds to massive damage.(else elephants that have a bullet enter the head would have only 15% chance to die)
I think that a bullet entering the head of the elephant is quite definitively a one hit kill critical rather than massive damage death since massive damage death corresponds more to the traumatic shock causing death while it could have not killed and the odds of a bullet in the brain of the elephant not killing it are not 85% which is what it would be if it was massive damage rules.
They did not say "after a fortitude save the location of the hit retroactively changes" which is the only way to make it be excessive damage death and consistent with the odds of the elephant dying from a shot in the brain.
Also early fireballs were unreliable and lethal to the caster in early dnd: fireballs progressively became less and less dangerous to the caster with the editions (like how it can not bounce back anymore nor kill you with flame returns when used in a corridor and so on) so it fits exactly the same progress pattern: people would understand "seeing how fireballs progressed in all odds bombs will probably become safe to use too after a bunch of tinkerings"

Also you did nor read well I told "early firearms are easier to use point blank" and you did think I meant "early firearms are easier to use" which is not the same thing: it was common for people to fire a firearm at point blank then switch to a melee weapon which is hard to do with a crossbow but there is no dnd rule saying that firearms does not provoke aoo when shot at point blank range while it hardly opens any aoo opportunities (not more than a sword swing).

----------


## Stattick

I shoot my gunsword at him. Then I swing my gunsword at him. Gunswords are great.

----------


## Spore

> I shoot my gunsword at him. Then I swing my gunsword at him. Gunswords are great.


I mean there is also the faction that thinks gunblades and similar fantasy constructs are horrible and bad. Like in WH 40k, someone who has a chainsaw sword, when the enemy has long range ray cannons, or weaponized disease.

Sometimes suspension of disbelief kicks in, sometimes it does not. Gunblades are very viable in a weird Final Fantasy style game, but make little or no sense in other media such as sword and sorcery that just happens to mull over into the industrial revolution (ala Arcanum, if you know the game). 

But then again, this game's gadgeteer class has much much less believable trinkets.

----------


## NigelWalmsley

Having a weapon that is both a melee weapon and a gun isn't a "fantasy construct". That's just a bayonet, something that has existed for basically as long as guns have. Certainly you could imagine fantasy bayonets that were physically implausible, but so are the absurdly giant swords of fantasy.

That said, I don't really understand the hangup on guns specifically. There probably should be more guns in fantasy, on the basis that the Powder Mage books are cool, but in-world there's way more low-hanging fruit.




> having[/I] a baroque social structure doesn't mean _valuing_ a baroque social structure (drow society is imposed on them by Lolth for kicks and giggles and they do their best to cope within it, as RedMage noted) and (B) that whole thing is just a facade.  To quote myself from an earlier thread on the topic:


Then why is _Lolth_ pushing the baroque social structure? It doesn't really matter if she's imposing a Lawful social structure because she thinks it's fun. You've still lost any predictive power alignment might have had when one baroque backstabbing nightmare is "Lawful" and another is "Chaotic".

----------


## hamishspence

> Having a weapon that is both a melee weapon and a gun isn't a "fantasy construct". That's just a bayonet, something that has existed for basically as long as guns have. Certainly you could imagine fantasy bayonets that were physically implausible, but so are the absurdly giant swords of fantasy.


I believe people are thinking more of "swords with built-in guns" Which are _also_ historical:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistol_sword

----------


## Khedrac

> Then why is _Lolth_ pushing the baroque social structure? It doesn't really matter if she's imposing a Lawful social structure because she thinks it's fun. You've still lost any predictive power alignment might have had when one baroque backstabbing nightmare is "Lawful" and another is "Chaotic".


It doesn't have to just be Lolth.  From the look of things a lot of powerful chaotic beings will impose a very rigid/lawful structure on the society they head in an attempt to control it - they don't see the laws as applying to them.  (Also, lots of people in the struture will support it for similar reasons.)

Conversely people who are innately lawful may have a much more chaotic society because they don't see the need for rules...

----------


## RedMage125

> Then why is _Lolth_ pushing the baroque social structure? It doesn't really matter if she's imposing a Lawful social structure because she thinks it's fun. You've still lost any predictive power alignment might have had when one baroque backstabbing nightmare is "Lawful" and another is "Chaotic".


Did you not even read what I responded?  Drow society is an imperfect reflection of what Lolth teaches.

Can this thread get back to "D&D Head Canons"?

----------


## KillianHawkeye

> I shoot my gunsword at him. Then I swing my gunsword at him. Gunswords are great.


This actually makes me want to play like a crazy gnomish rogue who uses a big swiss army knife contraption that has a sword part and a hammer part and a built in crossbow and thieves' tools and whatever else all attached to it. Like a gnome hook hammer, but with just everything he owns stuck on.

I have no idea how that would work in an actual game, but it would be amazing and hilarious.  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Bohandas

> This actually makes me want to play like a crazy gnomish rogue who uses a big swiss army knife contraption that has a sword part and a hammer part and a built in crossbow and thieves' tools and whatever else all attached to it. Like a gnome hook hammer, but with just everything he owns stuck on.
> 
> I have no idea how that would work in an actual game, but it would be amazing and hilarious.



That's actually an item in the videogame _Dungeons of Dredmor_

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hTzZNEP5V...1600/lai03.JPG

----------


## Bohandas

> Then why is _Lolth_ pushing the baroque social structure? It doesn't really matter if she's imposing a Lawful social structure because she thinks it's fun. You've still lost any predictive power alignment might have had when one baroque backstabbing nightmare is "Lawful" and another is "Chaotic".


I think it's possibly like the difference between a Baatezu courtroom, vs the Abyssal courtroom layer Woeful Escarand. The baator court is going to be cruel but it's going to follow the rule of law, whereas the abyssal court exists as a mockery of the rule of law and is openly corrupt.

----------


## Stattick

Headcannon: There are _very few_ battleaxes out there that only do slashing damage. For that, you'd need a battleaxe that has an axeblade on both sides of the shaft, and that's just silly. What you want, is an axeblade on one side of the shaft, and either a pick on the other side of the shaft, or a hammer. Or you start with a pick on the side opposite of the hammer, and then when you snap off the spike in someone's head, take it to the blacksmith and have him grind it down and affix a bludgeon in the place of the spike. Hell, for that matter, who even uses an axe? Put a bludgeon on one side of the shaft and a spike on the otherside.

Oh, that isn't supported in the official weapon's list? So, if you want that, you'd need a GM that'll say "yes" and let you spend an extra 2d10 GP on your melee weapons? Sure. I mean, what else is a warrior gonna spend his coin on?

----------


## Xuc Xac

> Hell, for that matter, who even uses an axe? Put a bludgeon on one side of the shaft and a spike on the otherside. Oh, that isn't supported in the official weapon's list?


That's a warhammer. If you look at images of actual medieval warhammers instead of game illustrations of sledgehammers labeled "warhammer", you can see a lot of examples of them.

----------


## KoDT69

I have a head cannon to share. Since I've played most editions up to 3.5, this is how I see it all as being the same world. Basically as time passes, the laws of magic and whatever it is that governs the powers available to the living people/creatures changes and evolved over time. That would explain how even PC classes started with minimal capabilities and we're very limited in power, then developed immunities, resistances, faster actions, etc. 
The timeline as I see it:
OD&D - Early Dark Ages
AD&D 1E - Transition of Dark Ages to Early Renaissance
AD&D 2E - Early Renaissance
D&D 3.0-3.5 - Mid Renaissance
D&D 4E - NEVER HAPPENED - or possibly a past timeline off of the d20 Modern setting
D&D 5E - After Renaissance, maybe just before what would have been our Industrial Revolution
*Eberron in play is like adding the Industrial Revolution to the edition's timeline

I've been considering converting some older edition magic items but making them with no change if possible and tagging them as "Heirloom" or "Ancient" just to see how it goes.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> Then why is _Lolth_ pushing the baroque social structure? It doesn't really matter if she's imposing a Lawful social structure because she thinks it's fun. You've still lost any predictive power alignment might have had when one baroque backstabbing nightmare is "Lawful" and another is "Chaotic".





> I think it's possibly like the difference between a Baatezu courtroom, vs the Abyssal courtroom layer Woeful Escarand. The baator court is going to be cruel but it's going to follow the rule of law, whereas the abyssal court exists as a mockery of the rule of law and is openly corrupt.


Pretty much this.  It's the age-old question of _Who are you when no one is watching?_, that is, if you take a bunch of drow out of Menzoberranzan or remove Lolth's influence on their society (permanently and in a way that they all know it's the case, not temporarily and in a way that her priestesses try to cover it up like during Lolth's Silence), what does their new society look like?

This is actually something that happens in-setting, with Chaotic-but-not-quite-so-Evil drow leaving the Underdark and joining with followers of Eilistraee, a CG goddess.  The Church of Eilistraee is still a matriarchal theocracy, but it has a very flat hierarchy, different settlements (and groups within those settlements) are only loosely interlinked, and male and female drow can take on any desired role (and males can lead, though mostly they don't), a far cry from the traditional strict hierarchy with strict House associations and strict gender roles--so, much closer to other Chaotic societies like the moon elven cities or orc tribes than the byzantine Lolthian drow culture.




> I have a head cannon to share. Since I've played most editions up to 3.5, this is how I see it all as being the same world. Basically as time passes, the laws of magic and whatever it is that governs the powers available to the living people/creatures changes and evolved over time. That would explain how even PC classes started with minimal capabilities and we're very limited in power, then developed immunities, resistances, faster actions, etc. 
> The timeline as I see it:
> OD&D - Early Dark Ages
> AD&D 1E - Transition of Dark Ages to Early Renaissance
> AD&D 2E - Early Renaissance
> D&D 3.0-3.5 - Mid Renaissance
> D&D 4E - NEVER HAPPENED - or possibly a past timeline off of the d20 Modern setting
> D&D 5E - After Renaissance, maybe just before what would have been our Industrial Revolution
> *Eberron in play is like adding the Industrial Revolution to the edition's timeline
> ...


I do something similar in my games.  For instance, the thing where 1e psionics only involved random wild talents, 2e psionics had classes but required some innate talent, and 3e psionics allowed anyone to train in psionic classes, and in AD&D psionics was different from magic by default but in 3e they're transparent by default?  In several of my long-running settings that survived long enough to go through edition changes (and under my own take on FR's history), the former is due to psionicists reverse-engineering and codifying psionics in the same way that wizardry was first developed and the latter is due to research collaboration between psionicists and arcanists to unify their magical traditions.  Scholars in-setting know that psionics used to work differently and will talk about So-and-So's early experiments in awakening psionic potential or Such-and-Such's Theory of Thoughtform Universality or the like when discussing the history of magic/psonics interactions.

Several of my longer campaigns have involved time travel to some extent (either short jaunts into the past or areas that were brought forward in time), and when that happens I've broken out older-edition rules for a few sessions and/or converted things to newer edition rules to hammer home the difference.  The very first time I did this, I secretly converted all my player's characters from 3e to 2e beforehand in preparation for an upcoming temporal jaunt; when they stepped through a time portal (thinking it was a regular portal) and one of them asked to make a Knowledge (Planes) check to see if they could figure out where the portal sent them, with a perfectly straight face I responded "There's no such non-weapon proficiency; perhaps you mean Portal Feel or Planar Survival?" while handing over their 2e sheets, and it really drove home the "we're not in Kansas anymore" feel of the adventure.

----------


## noob

> Pretty much this.  It's the age-old question of _Who are you when no one is watching?_, that is, if you take a bunch of drow out of Menzoberranzan or remove Lolth's influence on their society (permanently and in a way that they all know it's the case, not temporarily and in a way that her priestesses try to cover it up like during Lolth's Silence), what does their new society look like?
> 
> This is actually something that happens in-setting, with Chaotic-but-not-quite-so-Evil drow leaving the Underdark and joining with followers of Eilistraee, a CG goddess.  The Church of Eilistraee is still a matriarchal theocracy, but it has a very flat hierarchy, different settlements (and groups within those settlements) are only loosely interlinked, and male and female drow can take on any desired role (and males can lead, though mostly they don't), a far cry from the traditional strict hierarchy with strict House associations and strict gender roles--so, much closer to other Chaotic societies like the moon elven cities or orc tribes than the byzantine Lolthian drow culture.
> 
> 
> 
> I do something similar in my games.  For instance, the thing where 1e psionics only involved random wild talents, 2e psionics had classes but required some innate talent, and 3e psionics allowed anyone to train in psionic classes, and in AD&D psionics was different from magic by default but in 3e they're transparent by default?  In several of my long-running settings that survived long enough to go through edition changes (and under my own take on FR's history), the former is due to psionicists reverse-engineering and codifying psionics in the same way that wizardry was first developed and the latter is due to research collaboration between psionicists and arcanists to unify their magical traditions.  Scholars in-setting know that psionics used to work differently and will talk about So-and-So's early experiments in awakening psionic potential or Such-and-Such's Theory of Thoughtform Universality or the like when discussing the history of magic/psonics interactions.
> 
> Several of my longer campaigns have involved time travel to some extent (either short jaunts into the past or areas that were brought forward in time), and when that happens I've broken out older-edition rules for a few sessions and/or converted things to newer edition rules to hammer home the difference.  The very first time I did this, I secretly converted all my player's characters from 3e to 2e beforehand in preparation for an upcoming temporal jaunt; when they stepped through a time portal (thinking it was a regular portal) and one of them asked to make a Knowledge (Planes) check to see if they could figure out where the portal sent them, with a perfectly straight face I responded "There's no such non-weapon proficiency; perhaps you mean Portal Feel or Planar Survival?" while handing over their 2e sheets, and it really drove home the "we're not in Kansas anymore" feel of the adventure.


2e and 1e are not so far from 3e and 5e in terms of classes but multiclassing worked very differently(there was dual classing and some other form of multiclassing and classes and multiclassings allowed depends on the race) so if 3e/5e characters were multiclassed it could make the conversion to earlier editions painfully complex to do.(and it is odd to see your dwarf something suddenly lose a bunch of levels "because they were above the class level cap for a dwarf" but that is kind of excepted when changing editions)
And for converting a 4e caster to any other edition you need to do a lot of complicated stuff.(because spells works massively differently between this edition and the others)

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> 2e and 1e are not so far from 3e and 5e in terms of classes but multiclassing worked very differently(there was dual classing and some other form of multiclassing and classes and multiclassings allowed depends on the race) so if 3e/5e characters were multiclassed it could make the conversion to earlier editions painfully complex to do.(and it is odd to see your dwarf something suddenly lose a bunch of levels "because they were above the class level cap for a dwarf" but that is kind of excepted when changing editions)


Yes, I'm well aware of how AD&D multiclassing and dual-classing work.  I did all the conversions to preserve capabilities as closely as possible, not just looking at levels and going "Welp, he's a Dwarf Fighter 5 in 3e so he gets what a Dwarf Fighter 5 gets in AD&D."  Certainly there's no way to figure out arbitrary conversions between AD&D and 3e, but converting individual characters is quite easy if you know both editions, especially if you're going between 2e and 3e and are willing to dip into Player's Options stuff.




> And for converting a 4e caster to any other edition you need to do a lot of complicated stuff.(because spells works massively differently between this edition and the others)


You can't time travel between 3e and 4e, as 4e is obviously an alternate Mirror Universe timeline where all the PCs' equivalents wear goatees, and said timeline is rightfully stricken from existence by the end of the adventure.  :Small Amused:

----------


## Bohandas

> You can't time travel between 3e and 4e, as 4e is obviously an alternate Mirror Universe timeline where all the PCs' equivalents wear goatees, and said timeline is rightfully stricken from existence by the end of the adventure.


On a related note, one of my headcanons is that the Abyss contains chaotic evil alternate versions of all the other planes

----------


## KillianHawkeye

> On a related note, one of my headcanons is that the Abyss contains chaotic evil alternate versions of all the other planes


It is recursive? Is there another entire alternate Abyss inside the Abyss?

----------


## noob

> It is recursive? Is there another entire alternate Abyss inside the Abyss?


it is called the layers of the abyss I guess.
each layer of the abyss is the abyss within itself?
Is the abyss a layered cake made of abysses?

----------


## Millstone85

> Is the abyss a layered cake made of abysses?


Well now, you made this classic image look yummy yummy.

----------


## noob

> Well now, you made this classic image look yummy yummy.


Just flip the image and it is a layered cake.
I can confirm.

----------


## Wizard_Lizard

> it is called the layers of the abyss I guess.
> each layer of the abyss is the abyss within itself?
> Is the abyss a layered cake made of abysses?


It would explain why the abyss has infinite layers.

----------


## KillianHawkeye

It's Abysses all the way down.  :Small Amused:

----------


## Bohandas

The Athar's "Great Unknown" is either the DM or Gary Gygax

----------


## Bohandas

It just occurred to me that the reason why low level adventures haven't already been solved by higher level heroes is because high level heroes teleport everywhere and are never in the small out of the way villiages that low level adventures happen in

----------


## Yora

There is only a single dwarf in existence. He is an alcoholic racist miner who speaks with a Scottish accent and exist in many places and times, and even in multiple universes at the same time.

----------


## Mark Hall

> There is only a single dwarf in existence. He is an alcoholic racist miner who speaks with a Scottish accent and exist in many places and times, and even in multiple universes at the same time.


...ok, this makes the dwarven orgy I was at last week REALLY weird.

----------


## Cicciograna

> There is only a single dwarf in existence. He is an alcoholic racist miner who speaks with a Scottish accent and exist in many places and times, and even in multiple universes at the same time.


I assume you are familiar with this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe

----------


## Millstone85

> I assume you are familiar with this:
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe


I still have to watch _Tenet_, but...


> Yoichiro Nambu later applied it to all production and annihilation of particle-antiparticle pairs, stating that "the eventual creation and annihilation of pairs that may occur now and then, is no creation nor annihilation, but only a change of directions of moving particles, from past to future, or from future to past."


 sounds a lot like what I read about it.

----------


## Bohandas

Have I suggested yet that Truespeak sounds like modem noise

----------


## Hellpyre

> Have I suggested yet that Truespeak sounds like modem noise


As if Truespeaking didn't have enough problems already - now no one wants to be in the same room while you do your thing.

----------


## noob

Truespeaking warps things through warping their names in such a way creatures from the far realms are terrified of those who use truespeak for the fear they might actually understand their names and pronounce those so bad they would become three dimensional creatures.
Because seriously true-speak checks reach the realms of nonsense like 180 at which point basically anything could be possible.
When you think about how reality is bent by a high skill check in a mundane skill a high truespeak check would bend reality supremely.

----------


## Velaryon

> There is only a single dwarf in existence. He is an alcoholic racist miner who speaks with a Scottish accent and exist in many places and times, and even in multiple universes at the same time.


Can confirm; I have met this dwarf several times across multiple campaigns and multiple DMs. He is inescapable.

----------


## noob

> Can confirm; I have met this dwarf several times across multiple campaigns and multiple DMs. He is inescapable.


Some instances of that dwarf also works in forges or teleports around and casts disintegrate.
The trick is that in its very long life it changed carrier a lot of times because after spending 10^143 years mining you want to do something else.

----------


## Amdy_vill

Hobgoblins have a Russian accent

Dwarves are Scottish

Thay is less evil than the books make it out to be. still evil but not mustache-twirling villain evil. more child-friendly Russia evil.

Krynn is the Frist World Created

Spelljammers are more common than the lore makes them out to be. in lore Spelljammers are very common but the books make them out to be kinda rare, I like to ply it up instead of being common their supper common. like people in small farming villages know what spelljammers are, not like by sight but have heard of them and maybe seen one or two.

all gods are *******s, I like the idea of dnd having a massively different morality from us and playing into that making the gods more *******-ish than the lore makes them out to be.

----------


## noob

> Hobgoblins have a Russian accent
> 
> Dwarves are Scottish
> 
> Thay is less evil than the books make it out to be. still evil but not mustache-twirling villain evil. more child-friendly Russia evil.
> 
> Krynn is the Frist World Created
> 
> Spelljammers are more common than the lore makes them out to be. in lore Spelljammers are very common but the books make them out to be kinda rare, I like to ply it up instead of being common their supper common. like people in small farming villages know what spelljammers are, not like by sight but have heard of them and maybe seen one or two.
> ...


You do not need a lot of effort if you are in the forgotten realms for the last thing.
Spelljammers being common makes a lot of sense.
It would explain why there is so many campaigns with them at some random place: spelljammers are precious so you would not find one stuck in a place often if they were rare.
Thay have explicitly slavery but it does not means they inflict cruelty to their slaves for no reason: while there is a lot of things oriented about slavery and violence against slaves in thay prcs and spells it could be a thing mostly to be used against slaves that escapes.
Nybor's Gentle Reminder is explicitly said to now be used mostly in fights by thayan mages while before it was used to motivate slaves through pain suggesting that the slave conditions in thay improved(so it is probably just horrible slavery instead of horrible slavery with gratuitous cruelty) so your headcannon seems compatible with the low amount of fluff I have read about thay.

----------


## Amdy_vill

> You do not need a lot of effort if you are in the forgotten realms for the last thing.
> Spelljammers being common makes a lot of sense.
> It would explain why there is so many campaigns with them at some random place: spelljammers are precious so you would not find one stuck in a place often if they were rare.
> Thay have explicitly slavery but it does not means they inflict cruelty to their slaves for no reason: while there is a lot of things oriented about slavery and violence against slaves in thay prcs and spells it could be a thing mostly to be used against slaves that escapes.
> Nybor's Gentle Reminder is explicitly said to now be used mostly in fights by thayan mages while before it was used to motivate slaves through pain suggesting that the slave conditions in thay improved(so it is probably just horrible slavery instead of horrible slavery with gratuitous cruelty) so your headcannon seems compatible with the low amount of fluff I have read about thay.


I feel is compatible because more recent thay info dumps have been moving them towards my view. Thay is my personal favorite setting as I love to play necromancers that aren't evil and several sources call out thay for having that. Thay is just a great piece of lore that I wish got more attention.

----------


## Bohandas

I'd like to throw my support behind the suggestion by someone on one of the other threads that the fiendish familiar symbiont (Fiend Folio pg219) is a byproduct to Yugoloth promotion to ultraloth status. It's a little evil face from the lower planes, and yugoloths lose their faces when they become ultraloths

----------


## Lvl45DM!

About half the things that people chalk up to "crazy wizard did it" are just naturally or super-naturally occurring monsters. Owlbears are neither owls nor bears, just a super predator that evolved to hunt Dire Deer and Giant Rats. Otyughs evolved from various algae and bacteria that ate other stuff like that that evolved into black puddings.

----------


## Bohandas

> About half the things that people chalk up to "crazy wizard did it" are just naturally or super-naturally occurring monsters. Owlbears are neither owls nor bears, just a super predator that evolved to hunt Dire Deer and Giant Rats.


I agree with this. It's like how in real life the platypus isn't closely releated to either the duck or to the beaver despite the fact that it looks dead on like both of them

----------


## Eldan

I remember some old, old comment about how owlbears might be related to some dinosaurs. 

If you have a body a bit like a protoceratops, with a beaked head on a four-limbed body, plus feathers, like a lot of dinosaurs had, you're basically halfway there.
*Spoiler*
Show

----------


## RedMage125

> About half the things that people chalk up to "crazy wizard did it" are just naturally or super-naturally occurring monsters. Owlbears are neither owls nor bears, just a super predator that evolved to hunt Dire Deer and Giant Rats. Otyughs evolved from various algae and bacteria that ate other stuff like that that evolved into black puddings.


I say this as constructive criticism, and not an attempt to "debunk", but...

How does this explain the fact that (pre-5e) Otyughs can speak Common?

----------


## noob

> I say this as constructive criticism, and not an attempt to "debunk", but...
> 
> How does this explain the fact that (pre-5e) Otyughs can speak Common?


Otyughs are smart enough for that so it is just a matter of having the right culture since there is not really such thing as "inadapted vocal chords" in dnd.

----------


## Ajustusdaniel

> I agree with this. It's like how in real life the platypus isn't closely releated to either the duck or to the beaver despite the fact that it looks dead on like both of them


The platypus also has venomous ankle spurs, no stomach, sense electricity through their beak, sweat milk, glow green under ultraviolet light and lay eggs.  I'm not entirely prepared to rule out the possibility that there was a wizard involved.

----------


## Archpaladin Zousha

> I say this as constructive criticism, and not an attempt to "debunk", but...
> 
> How does this explain the fact that (pre-5e) Otyughs can speak Common?


Wait, they can't speak Common in 5e? That was the best thing about them!  :Small Eek: 

I hereby headcanon that 5e otyughs can speak Common just like in previous editions.  :Small Cool:

----------


## Bohandas

> Otyughs are smart enough for that so it is just a matter of having the right culture since there is not really such thing as "inadapted vocal chords" in dnd.


I'm sure I've seen notes in monster entries to the effect that certain monsters can understand but not speak certain languages

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

> I'm sure I've seen notes in monster entries to the effect that certain monsters can understand but not speak certain languages


They're all over the place. Including lots of the beasts and a bunch of undead--the skeleton has "Understands all languages it knew in life but can't speak".

----------


## noob

> They're all over the place. Including lots of the beasts and a bunch of undead--the skeleton has "Understands all languages it knew in life but can't speak".


The skeleton have no vocal chords and the beasts that can understand a language but not speak it specifically(ex: can understand common but not speak it) can then speak any new language they learn(by raw).
So it suggests the problem is cultural in their case.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> How does this explain the fact that (pre-5e) Otyughs can speak Common?


Not only do Otyughs speak Common, but so do most things that can speak at all, even things like Krakens that rarely if ever interact with surface races, Chuuls whose mouthparts are nowhere near humanoid-like, and Gibbering Mouthers who are for all practical purposes insane.  Further, Common isn't just the common tongue of a single region or a single world, but a multiversal constant: people from Oerth, Toril, and Krynn can chat with each other in Common over drinks, and spelljamming crews can drop in on a random backwater planet and say hi to the locals in Common, and everyone can understand each other just fine even if certain worlds have their own regional languages or dialects.

For those reasons, it's my headcanon that Common is just as much a primordial or fundamental language as Draconic, the outsider and elemental languages, and other languages spoken by highly-magical (near-)immortal beings.  Draconic is a language of power, strongly associated with magical writings and possibly related to the Language Primeval; Celestial is a language of perfection, believed to descend from the same language as the Words of Creation; and Common is a language of unity, facilitating communication regardless of physiology, psychology, origin, or any other factors.  Every single sapient race or creature that can speak at all becomes able to speak Common (or a dialect like Undercommon) as soon as they evolve or are created (though some creatures may eventually evolve to not speak it, such as some aquatic or Plane of Water creatures that now only speak Aquan due to never having the opportunity to use Common).

Also, dragons, celestials and fiends, and elementals have special exclusive magic/templates/etc. (breath weapon spells, spells with Archon components, etc.), can crossbreed with just about anything due to their intrinsic magical nature (see: all the Half-X templates), and have their own fancy magical languages, right?  Well, humans are famous for sleeping with just about anything to produce half-elves, half-orcs, lots of genasi, tons of planetouched, and so forth, and they're also uniquely receptive to magical mutation or transformation into elan, azurins, illumians, kalashtar, and the like; there are a bunch of human- and human-offshoot-specific options (especially in Races of _Destiny_), and part-humans can take advantage of their non-human blood for even more options; and Common is often said to be (or have been derived from) a singular multiverse-spanning original human language.  Coincidence?  I think not.  :Small Amused:

----------


## No brains

> I remember some old, old comment about how owlbears might be related to some dinosaurs. 
> 
> If you have a body a bit like a protoceratops, with a beaked head on a four-limbed body, plus feathers, like a lot of dinosaurs had, you're basically halfway there.
> *Spoiler*
> Show


IIRC the Owlbear was one of the original D&D monsters that came from a pack of cheap plastic 'dinosaurs'. Art imitates life, I guess.

----------


## Luccan

> IIRC the Owlbear was one of the original D&D monsters that came from a pack of cheap plastic 'dinosaurs'. Art imitates life, I guess.


The bulette as well. Speaking of, here's my "head canon": it's pronounced bullet. Now, I know some of you will be surprised, as I was, to hear that's not the original pronunciation the guys at TSR intended (for official release). According to Tim Kask, they did call it a bullet at first, but changed the spelling and moreover pronunciation to boo-lay because for whatever reason they thought that would be a funny way to mock the French. Or people's obsession with the French language? Was that a thing in the 70s? Anyway, that's a dumb sounding name which I've also been informed isn't even accurate to how you would pronounce that monster name even if it _were_ French, so we arrive at my head canon that it's just pronounced bullet. And not BOO-let or boo-LET either, which I've also heard.

Slaadi aren't a threat to most planes/people because they usually find the consistency of everywhere that isn't their home plane dull

----------


## Silly Name

> The bulette as well. Speaking of, here's my "head canon": it's pronounced bullet. Now, I know some of you will be surprised, as I was, to hear that's not the original pronunciation the guys at TSR intended (for official release). According to Tim Kask, they did call it a bullet at first, but changed the spelling and moreover pronunciation to boo-lay because for whatever reason they thought that would be a funny way to mock the French. Or people's obsession with the French language? Was that a thing in the 70s? Anyway, that's a dumb sounding name which I've also been informed isn't even accurate to how you would pronounce that monster name even if it _were_ French, so we arrive at my head canon that it's just pronounced bullet. And not BOO-let or boo-LET either, which I've also heard.


Uh, pretty funny. Here in Italy I've always heard it pronounced  "BOO-let", which sounds vaguely French now that I think about it.

We also apparently pronounce a lot of names "wrong" since books don't really come with a pronunciation guide and we obviously default to different pronunciation rules than American English. I still refuse to make "drow" rhyme with "cow".

----------


## Archpaladin Zousha

The DM I play with on Skype is like that: he pronounces "drow" like "crow."

----------


## Luccan

> Uh, pretty funny. Here in Italy I've always heard it pronounced  "BOO-let", which sounds vaguely French now that I think about it.
> 
> We also apparently pronounce a lot of names "wrong" since books don't really come with a pronunciation guide and we obviously default to different pronunciation rules than American English. I still refuse to make "drow" rhyme with "cow".


Eh, that's a little different. Perhaps I shouldn't have been so all-encompassing. My issue is with primary American English speakers pronouncing it in odd ways for seemingly no reason or to deliberately make the pronunciation "off". I would object to the other pronunciations significantly less than Boo-lay

----------


## Cicciograna

> Uh, pretty funny. Here in Italy I've always heard it pronounced  "BOO-let", which sounds vaguely French now that I think about it.
> 
> We also apparently pronounce a lot of names "wrong" since books don't really come with a pronunciation guide and we obviously default to different pronunciation rules than American English. I still refuse to make "drow" rhyme with "cow".


That's interesting, because I'm from Italy too, and I always pronounced it as boo-LET. Come to think of it, I have absolutely no idea why I picked this pronunciation, it just sort of came to me.

But yeah, for me "drow" rhymes with "though".

But then, the word "bow" can be pronounced in two different ways, depending on if it's referring to a kowtow or to a weapon.

----------


## Bohandas

The Athar are right regarding the gods. This is less headcanon, and more strict rules as written (at least in 3.x). The gods (as written in _Deities and Demigod_ have a passel of themed abilities, but with few exceptions have little special ability to control their portfolio in an overarching manner or from across the planes. And they all have more or less the same abilities because the themed abilities are all redundant with the _alter reality_ ability that most of them have. So none of them are really the 'god of x' or 'god of y', they're just a hobbyist interested in x or y who happens to have a lot of paranormal abilities.

----------


## SpyOne

> (snip) ... they thought that would be a funny way to mock the French. Or people's obsession with the French language? Was that a thing in the 70s?


In the population in general? No.
Among people discussing mideval weapons and armor? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Then, now, and always.
Knock-down, drag-out fights over how to pronounce "trebuchet" that led a lot of people to start saying "tree-bucket".
Arguments over how to pronounce the "ch" in machicolation (which depends on whether the word came from French or directly from Latin).
And endless arguments about whether both French and anglicized pronunciations are acceptable or whether only one, and which one. (There are a precious few words that came into French from English.)

----------


## Luccan

> In the population in general? No.
> Among people discussing mideval weapons and armor? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Then, now, and always.
> Knock-down, drag-out fights over how to pronounce "trebuchet" that led a lot of people to start saying "tree-bucket".
> Arguments over how to pronounce the "ch" in machicolation (which depends on whether the word came from French or directly from Latin).
> And endless arguments about whether both French and anglicized pronunciations are acceptable or whether only one, and which one. (There are a precious few words that came into French from English.)


Honestly, Tree-Bucket is a good euonym for a trebuchet. But that makes sense, with Gary and all those guys coming from the war game scene and making a medieval fantasy game.

----------


## Bohandas

> But yeah, for me "drow" rhymes with "though".


It is now part of my headcanon that the dark elves are all named Drew

nvm. Misread your post. I thought you said rhymes with "through" not "though"

----------


## vasilidor

beware the drew, they like the darker places in the world.

I love it.

----------


## Satinavian

> Uh, pretty funny. Here in Italy I've always heard it pronounced  "BOO-let", which sounds vaguely French now that I think about it.
> 
> We also apparently pronounce a lot of names "wrong" since books don't really come with a pronunciation guide and we obviously default to different pronunciation rules than American English. I still refuse to make "drow" rhyme with "cow".


In the German translation it is called Landhai, which means land shark. Presumable one reason why they changed it is because "bulette" is just a minced meat dish here.

I still always get hungry when i read bulette in some English D&D text.

----------


## Eldan

Landshark is in the English monster manual too, as an alternate name of the monster.

----------


## Bohandas

Ok, I thought I figured out a way to explain how there can be multiple unaffiliated gods of the same sun by analogy with rival cellphone carriers or internet service providers that all connect you to the same network. But then I realized that I don't understand how those work either.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> Ok, I thought I figured out a way to explain how there can be multiple unaffiliated gods of the same sun by analogy with rival cellphone carriers or internet service providers that all connect you to the same network. But then I realized that I don't understand how those work either.


That's a pretty good analogy.  The ELI5 version of the technology is that ISPs and carriers can either use different hardware (separate cables or their own cell towers) to deliver their own service to you or there can be shared infrastructure (a single cable hook-up to a house or a single cell tower network) on which the different ISPs and carriers rent capacity to deliver their services, and in the latter case so long as the different companies are using different protocols, different portions of the spectrum, etc. there won't be interference.

In the case of competing gods, you have the single set of "hardware" (the sun) and each god provides different "service" (divine casting) to their "users" (priests) on different metaphysical "channels" (portfolios) and in different "service areas" (pantheons).  Ao, then, would be Realmspace's "government regulating agency" who forbids multiple gods from existing with the same portfolios in the same pantheons because the "interference" from multiple gods using the same "frequencies" would provide a poor user experience for the gods' respective priests.

You can extend the analogy to a bunch of other magic-related concepts: a priest of Pelor who ends up on Toril can draw power from Lathander because Pelor and Lathander have "roaming" agreements, changing faiths requires some sort of quest or other demonstration of faith because you have to port your "number" to the new "network," and so forth.

----------


## a_flemish_guy

> In the German translation it is called Landhai, which means land shark. Presumable one reason why they changed it is because "bulette" is just a minced meat dish here.
> 
> I still always get hungry when i read bulette in some English D&D text.





> Landshark is in the English monster manual too, as an alternate name of the monster.


I once read they once asked one of designers how bullete ought to be pronounced and he said "I don't know, I just call it a landshark"

----------


## Kane0

Bouncing off the idea the magic (the weave) is generated by the friction between planes:

Mechanus relies on this to keep the planar cogs moving in a sort of catch 22. Perfect order and uniformity would take away the power source and grind the gears to a stop.

Each plane is infinite in some way by necessity, acting as a sink to combat overflow. 

Mortals like to blame gods for cataclysmic events but in many instances they are as much victims as the mortals are. Planar earthquakes cause all sorts of chaos and more often than not the highly magically inclined are more severely affected by any distuptions. Which reminds me I should probably come up with some magic counterpart to tectonic verbiage.

----------


## Bohandas

Changelings, in acknowledgement of their ability to freely change shape, all have names that could apply to either sex. ie. "Tracy" "Jamie" "Ash" "Sam" "Fran" "Paris" "Sandy" "Carmen" etc.

----------


## Beleriphon

> The bulette as well. Speaking of, here's my "head canon": it's pronounced bullet. Now, I know some of you will be surprised, as I was, to hear that's not the original pronunciation the guys at TSR intended (for official release). According to Tim Kask, they did call it a bullet at first, but changed the spelling and moreover pronunciation to boo-lay because for whatever reason they thought that would be a funny way to mock the French. Or people's obsession with the French language? Was that a thing in the 70s? Anyway, that's a dumb sounding name which I've also been informed isn't even accurate to how you would pronounce that monster name even if it _were_ French, so we arrive at my head canon that it's just pronounced bullet. And not BOO-let or boo-LET either, which I've also heard.


I always went with bew-let, like Ferris Bueller.

----------


## Gemini Lupus

Gnomes and halflings belong to the same race but are two subraces - gnome is the races proper name, while halfling is a derogatory term, used by the big folk. Two children from the same parents may manifest the racial traits of either halflings or gnomes. And they only have three fingers and a thumb (like gelflings in the Dark Crystal). This is mostly because I think the two races are too close to fulfilling the same niche in most campaign settings among the standard races 

On that same note, racial traits from the various subraces may manifest in any member of a particular race - two wood elves may give birth to a high elf, though it might be less likely. The exception is the drow (rhymes with plow  :Wink: ) who are their own distinct race, separate from the rest of elvenkind. 

Gnomish cuisine is made up of exotic foods such as pizza, tacos, spaghetti and meatballs, and sauced chicken wings. What are the culinary arts if not alchemy after all?

Dwarven beards are courser than human beards, produce special oils, and have mites which clean bacteria and such from the beards, all to function as a filtration system for all the dust they would otherwise inhale from their mine-work. Thus, shaving a dwarfs beard is not just a cultural insult, but actually depriving them of a key element of their biology. 

Im certain I have more, I just cant think of them right now.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> Gnomes and halflings belong to the same race but are two subraces - gnome is the races proper name, while halfling is a derogatory term, used by the big folk. Two children from the same parents may manifest the racial traits of either halflings or gnomes. And they only have three fingers and a thumb (like gelflings in the Dark Crystal). This is mostly because I think the two races are too close to fulfilling the same niche in most campaign settings among the standard races


I used to do something similar back in the AD&D days but with dwarves instead of halflings, as the original metagame niche that gnomes fulfilled was basically "dwarves but with magic" since dwarves couldn't be arcane casters.  I basically said that whatever arcane ability was present in humans and elves was somehow dormant in dwarves thanks to their innate magic resistance, like some sort of magical gene with dominant "magic-resistant" and recessive "magic-capable" alleles, so physically-weaker-but-magically-capable dwarves would pop up once in a blue moon and what humans knew as "gnomes" were basically true-breeding populations of those unusual dwarves who'd gone off and made their own communities.




> On that same note, racial traits from the various subraces may manifest in any member of a particular race - two wood elves may give birth to a high elf, though it might be less likely. The exception is the drow (rhymes with plow ) who are their own distinct race, separate from the rest of elvenkind.


I like the explanation that because elves are so long-lived that natural selection is basically irrelevant on a species-wide level, elves basically evolve to fit their environment on an individual level to compensate.  It's not that wood elves live in the woods, arctic elves live in the arctic, etc. because they're adapted to those environments, but rather an elf born and raised in the woods becomes a wood elf, one born and raised in the arctic becomes an arctic elf, and so on, and most elven communities are made up of just one subrace of elf because if a wood elf moves to a high elf city their kids become high elves so they literally _can't_ maintain populations of multiple elven subraces in one place over time.

----------


## Sharur

> Gnomes and halflings belong to the same race but are two subraces - gnome is the raceÂs proper name, while halfling is a derogatory term, used by the Âbig folk.Â 
> 
> ....racial traits from the various subraces may manifest in any member of a particular race - two wood elves may give birth to a high elf, though it might be less likely. The exception is the drow (rhymes with plow ) who are their own distinct race, separate from the rest of elvenkind.


Conversely,
Gnomes are descendants of pairings between dwarves and elves, while halflings are descendants of pairings between dwarves and humans. They are shorter than either of their lineages due to outbreeding depression (which is a real thing). (The Muls of Darksun are also dwarf/human hybrids, but they are sterile).

In contrast, half-elves and half-orcs don't "merit" a unique name, because they don't "breed true" and can't maintain a stable population. A half-elf that mates with an elf will produce elvish progeny, the children of two half elves will be human 45% of the time, an elf 45% of the time and half-elf the remaining 10% of the time.

Subraces are more cultures than ethnicities (except for dragonborn)...Mountain dwarves live in regimented subterranean communities with mandatory military service, while Hill Dwarves live in more diverse, above ground settings where they grow up breathing fresher air; Wood Elves societies attempted to run and hid from the Archfey while Ancient High elves tried playing their games (mostly aiming to become vassals). Drow aren't born as Drow, but are elves "made" into Drow as infants, via a ritual dedicating them to Lloth involving injecting the infant with spider venom (which has a very high mortality rate). Varying depictions of Drow skin tone are the result of this ritual performed with different species of spiders.

There are no morally neutral dragons; dragons have binary, rather than trinary moralities. Dragons wear their hearts on their scales. A Metalic dragon that falls "below" good will go straight to evil, and become the corresponding Chromatic type(E.g. a falling Gold Dragon will become a Red Dragon); likewise, a Green Dragon who rises "above" evil will shoot into being good and a brass dragon.

Adult and older metallic dragons have secondary breath-weapons due to learning how to perform alchemy using the metals in their scales.

Alignments are semi-sentient/super-sentient. Non-neutral souls eventually are absorbed into these "alignments" and then are "reincarnated" as outsiders(angels, devils, demons, morons, etc.). Neutral souls are reincarnated in the Material Plane. All of the things that are reincarnated in the Material plane are the material plane's version of "outsiders". The Material Plane is the middle layer of the "Neutral" plane, along with the Feywild and the Shadowfell.

Slaadi don't belong to the Chaotic Neutral plane, they belong to the Neutral Chaotic Evil plane (Pandemonium), but are drawn to the Spawning Stone.

Limbo isn't the Chaotic Neutral plane; The Chaotic Neutral plane is the Elemental Chaos, which has "layers" of the classical elements, and Elementals are the Chaotic Neutral "outsiders"; Limbo is a relatively stable region of the Elemental Chaos, formed around the Spawning Stone.

Deities are former mortals(like Mystara Immortals), who exemplified an alignment in life; Their absorption/reincarnation has been delayed so that they can serve as an interface between their alignment and mortals...Essentially they are super-clerics in service to their alignments.

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

For a setting where fixed alignments aren't a thing:

The difference between chromatic and metallic dragons is whether they can change their shape. Metallics can, chromatics never decided to learn how. But if they do, their scales change.

90+% of the time, metallic also means spellcaster.

Also, cats were originally intended as psychopomps. That's why they can see ghosts. Many have forgotten or never learned this.

*Spoiler: KorvinStarmast stay out*
Show


Those that do know this secret can walk into the border of the Ethereal through people's shadows and speak in mortal tongues if they wish. Most are way too lazy and prefer to just be treated like royalty though, so they don't.

----------


## Spore

I never truly got the "Orcs are corrupted elves/bad cloning experiments". It makes much much more sense for them to be dwarf clones. Both are hale and hearty, both have darkvision, dwell in caverns and they hate each other as much as only estranged siblings can. Yes I understand they are the antithesis of many elven traits, but that is what makes me doubt their common heritage. Now every other D&D setting has their own origination myth for orcs, but if you have dwarves, they are brothers.

----------


## Archpaladin Zousha

Fantasy Flight's _Midnight_ setting did that! They even had hybrids called "dworgs." Unfortunately, being a dark fantasy setting where the Sauron analogue won, most dworgs have "really ugly backstory."  :Small Annoyed:

----------


## Gemini Lupus

> I never truly got the "Orcs are corrupted elves/bad cloning experiments". It makes much much more sense for them to be dwarf clones. Both are hale and hearty, both have darkvision, dwell in caverns and they hate each other as much as only estranged siblings can. Yes I understand they are the antithesis of many elven traits, but that is what makes me doubt their common heritage. Now every other D&D setting has their own origination myth for orcs, but if you have dwarves, they are brothers.


Like many tropes in D&D, this comes from Tolkien - Orcs were created by Morgoth when he captured and tortured some elves, twisting and corrupting them until they became something no longer resembling elves.

----------


## hamishspence

And Tolkien himself wasn't exactly satisfied with that explanation for orcs, and dabbled in others, such as "twisted humans" rather than "twisted elves" - or even "uplifted animals".

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

> And Tolkien himself wasn't exactly satisfied with that explanation for orcs, and dabbled in others, such as "twisted humans" rather than "twisted elves" - or even "uplifted animals".


My current setting uses "humans and orcs are both artificial offshoots of hobgoblins, created roughly at the same time by opposing forces of elves. As usual, it got out of hand."

----------


## Bohandas

Olidammara started out as a teickster armadillo god and hangs out with a whose posse of other trickster animal gods

----------


## Asmotherion

-Boccob created magic so that mortals wouldn't bother him with prayers etc. Basically the Deity version of "you can figure it out yourself". 

-Lloth was jealous of Corellon and how everyone in the pantheon adored him, and that was the reason she betrayed him. I'm also kinda convinced there was kind of a Zeus-Hera dynamic in the relationship (as they are portraied in "Hercules, the legendary journey").

-The intention for the original Demons was that they would be somehow related to the Far Realm, and basically be the "Lovecraftian Horrors" based versions of the D&D multiverse; Aberations were originally meant to be "Alien-based" creatures. 

-Dwarves are just small Giants, the same way Gnomes are small Elves and Halfings are small Humans. Also, Goblins with Hobgoblins, Orcs with Ogres and Kobolts with Dragonborn share a similar relation, as in "they are basically different races of the same species" or even "it all started when (insert lager race) has a multiple instances of dwarfism, who made their own settlements, and created the first (insert small race). 

-Dragons, especially Metalic ones pass most of their time in Humanoid or Animal form, and blend into society and/or the wildlife. They leave a simulacrum that is way weaker in magic than themselves, and it appears to be sleeping because it's mostly meant to scare would-be thieves, but is much weaker than the original. That's why a lot of Dragons don't usually cast spells in combat; it's a finite resource, as they are Simulacrums. 

-Liches deliberatelly circulate false rumors among the centuaries of what object their Phylactery is. They are smart enough to hide their true phylactery in a demiplane that is accessible only by them. 

-On the subject of Liches; Since their soul basicaly hides inside the Phylactery, they are practically Ghosts who Remote Control an Undead that acts as their Avatar (kinda how we control a Character in a First Person Video Game). The undead body is made to believe that it is the one that makes the decisions, and is completelly unaware that it is a different entity than the Lich Soul controling it. 

-Summoning a monster does not conjure it's real body; It just conjures a part of it's subconsious that replicates it's personality, and creates a magical temporary body for it. That is why summoned monsters don't really die. (I'm not sure if this is cannon or not, but that was always the way I interpreted it).

-Asmodeus doesn't really need to consume food, and rarelly does so. But when he does, either socially, or just for pleasure, he doesn't eat any meal... just deserts.

-Szass Tam and Larloch are drinking buddies. They meet at the end of each centuary, and discuss memories and evil ideas. And yes, their drink of choice is a Bottle of Black Lotus Extract bottled at the begining of each centuary. 

That's the ones I remember right now. I'll add if I remember anything else.

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

As to giants and dwarves:

My setting canonically states that both giants and dwarves are related to goliaths.

Specifically, giants are formed from goliaths who undergo a runic ritual. The original intent of this was to make titans, but that path got broken long ago by some greedy titans. So now storm giants are as close as it gets.

Those same titans, as part of breaking things, drained the runic nature out of masses of their lesser kin, turning them into dwarves.

So dwarves and goliaths are descendants of the same ur-race, and giants are "promoted" goliaths. Giant kin (ogres, etc) are the offspring of failed promotion attempts or the direct result. Ironically, giants are sterile, but failed giants breed true.

----------


## Hopeless

_*The power a deity gains through worshippers has a strongly diminishing return as number of followers increases beyond a certain point, hence why unpopular deities seem to be more active. The popular deities are over extended, as they reach a point where adding followers merely adds more duties_

This is actually true in my campaign.

A Lantern Archon in service to Sehanine Moonbow has twice kicked down the Divine Gates to drag a specific god out to answer a request for aid.

In the first instance it was Pelor and amused the Stormlord so much that they dropped a permanent thunderstorm atop of the Dawnfather Cathedral in Gilieam thats been usurped by the Cult of the Strife Emperor.

In the second occasion Kestra mocked Melora into acting after her Temple in Wrenn was taken over by the Cloaked Serpent using Naga Spawn (think Gou'ald meet Slaad or Illithid) who responded by causing an Earthquake to collape the Cloaked Serpent Portals beneath the church they had usurped.

I'm running a Cleric in another campaign who is a member of this faith, I've yet to experience a scene where my cleric introduces herself as a Follower of Kestra and asked "Who?!", but I'm still hoping!

----------


## KillianHawkeye

> -On the subject of Liches; Since their soul basicaly hides inside the Phylactery, they are practically Ghosts who Remote Control an Undead that acts as their Avatar (kinda how we control a Character in a First Person Video Game). The undead body is made to believe that it is the one that makes the decisions, and is completelly unaware that it is a different entity than the Lich Soul controling it.


TIL that liches invented magical VR through necromancy.  :Small Amused:

----------


## Bohandas

When a petitioner becomes one with their deity, they essentially become  a free extra aspect or proxy

----------


## Starlit Dragon

The story of the drow is false, backwards even. The High Elves were once matriarchal slavers of "lesser races". Revolution came, and the elves that refused to change were driven away, where they would eventually settle in the Underdark. Demons took advantage of this and corrupted Lolth.

----------


## Stattick

Mortals are food for the gods.

When you die, you go to your god. But it isn't an eternal life. You can still die in the afterlife. When you do, your energy is absorbed by the god you serve, one of their servants, and/or absorbed by the realm of the plane you reside on. Either way, your death in the afterlife adds to your god's power. The whole thing about souls being devoured and used as currency in The Lower Planes is just a slightly more expedient form of the same thing. There's nothing mortals can do to change this. All you can do is make an informed decision as to who you want to feed in the afterlife. Or plan to scramble hard in the afterlife to get on top of the pile of corpses, so you're one of the eaters instead of one of the eaten.

----------


## noob

> Mortals are food for the gods.
> 
> When you die, you go to your god. But it isn't an eternal life. You can still die in the afterlife. When you do, your energy is absorbed by the god you serve, one of their servants, and/or absorbed by the realm of the plane you reside on. Either way, your death in the afterlife adds to your god's power. The whole thing about souls being devoured and used as currency in The Lower Planes is just a slightly more expedient form of the same thing. There's nothing mortals can do to change this. All you can do is make an informed decision as to who you want to feed in the afterlife. Or plan to scramble hard in the afterlife to get on top of the pile of corpses, so you're one of the eaters instead of one of the eaten.


It is way too setting dependant (there is settings where when you die it is instantly over and nobody benefits except if they are close enough to cast a spell on the corpse) and works only for people worshipping something.
Specify the setting for which you made this headcannon.

----------


## Stattick

> It is way too setting dependant (there is settings where when you die it is instantly over and nobody benefits except if they are close enough to cast a spell on the corpse) and works only for people worshipping something.
> Specify the setting for which you made this headcannon.


Forgotten Realms

----------


## Taevyr

> -Boccob created magic so that mortals wouldn't bother him with prayers etc. Basically the Deity version of "you can figure it out yourself".


"Give a man magical solutions and he, his pals, and all his descendants will bother you every day for more of it. Teach a man how to create magical solutions and you'll be left alone before you know it."

----------


## hamishspence

The "you will eventually die again in the afterlife" thing is very much true in 4e at least.

----------


## noob

Is there is an afterafterlife for people that die in the afterlife?

----------


## Bohandas

> The "you will eventually die again in the afterlife" thing is very much true in 4e at least.


And in 2e and 3e. 

(I'm not familiar with 1e or 5e and can't speak for them)

----------


## noob

> And in 2e and 3e. 
> 
> (I'm not familiar with 1e or 5e and can't speak for them)


In 3e and 2e there is also settings with no afterlife at all I believe.(while I am not sure 4e had those too)

----------


## Bohandas

*Elves are hipsters
**All forms of magical tattoos were invented by elves as part of being hipsters

----------


## Spore

> *Elves are hipsters
> **All forms of magical tattoos were invented by elves as part of being hipsters


***I want to cast magic, and we are incredibly bored in our millenium long life spans, and we cannot go above 9th circle spells, so OF ****ING COURSE I WANT TO CAST MAGIC WITH TATTOOS!

----------


## Stattick

> ***I want to cast magic, and we are incredibly bored in our millenium long life spans, and we cannot go above 9th circle spells, so OF ****ING COURSE I WANT TO CAST MAGIC WITH TATTOOS!


Just imagine being one of the people with an early prototype tattoo. "Good news, it works. Bad news, sometimes it wild surges."

----------


## Batcathat

> Just imagine being one of the people with an early prototype tattoo. "Good news, it works. Bad news, sometimes it wild surges."


On the upside, those are the very hipsterest of elvish hipsters. "_I_ got a magical tattoo before it was cool (or safe)!"

----------


## Spore

> On the upside, those are the very hipsterest of elvish hipsters. "_I_ got a magical tattoo before it was cool (or safe)!"


There is a new trend, magical brandings and piercings. Though these ones are more Dwarven than Elven. A few people tried it, you might recall the ruins of Myth Drannor. Yeah, burning magical markings and treefolk don't mix.

----------


## Wizard_Lizard

That if there is a material, someone has made a golem of it.
Cheese golems I am looking at you. Horace

----------


## quinron

Lizardfolk's relative primitiveness comes from the fact that they're recently liberated slaves of the yuan-ti/serpentfolk who are just now starting to build their own society. That's also why the yuan-ti/serpentfolk empires are in such sharp decline.

----------


## noob

> That if there is a material, someone has made a golem of it.
> Cheese golems I am looking at you. Horace


I believe golem golems and brains golems are things too.(why???)
As is golem made out of evil and golem made out of good(there is surprisingly no golem made out of law or golem made out of chaos among the dnd 3.5 golems)

----------


## Cicciograna

> That if there is a material, someone has made a golem of it.
> Cheese golems I am looking at you. Horace


I remember that in a supplement, published I think for April's Fool, WotC introduced us to the glory that is the _ Calzone Golem_.

----------


## quinron

> I believe golem golems and brains golems are things too.(why???)
> As is golem made out of evil and golem made out of good(there is surprisingly no golem made out of law or golem made out of chaos among the dnd 3.5 golems)


As an aside - one of my favorite books, China Mieville's _Iron Council,_ has a main character who's a golem crafter. In the climax of the book, he stops the bad guys from killing his friends by

*Spoiler*
Show

making a golem out of _time._

----------


## Bohandas

As per the movie _Labyrinth_ some goblins look like David Bowie

----------


## Luccan

> As per the movie _Labyrinth_ some goblins look like David Bowie


As per the movie _Spiderman_ some goblins look like Willem Dafoe

----------


## Adrastos42

> As per the movie _Labyrinth_ some goblins look like David Bowie


Much like a dominant male orangutan developing cheekpads, as a goblin rises in power and authority and becomes a Goblin King, they begin to look more and more Bowielike.

----------


## No brains

I think Bowie is a goblin in a context outside of the taxonomic context for the word 'goblin' in D&D. I think he's a generalized boogeymanoid being. 

However I would support hobgoblins looking exactly like Bowie, Dafoe, or like Creedence Leonore Geigud from Troll 2. I guess hobgoblins look like humans wearing a lot of makeup.

----------


## ideasmith

The following crosses all result in halflings:

Dwarf/Gnome
Dwarf/Elf
Dwarf/Human
Gnome/Elf
Gnome/Human
A variety of other, generally similar cross-breeds.

That is why they are called halflings.

Given the variety of sizes in sentient beings, it doesn't make sense for the name to refer to their size.

----------


## Luccan

> Given the variety of sizes in sentient beings, it doesn't make sense for the name to refer to their size.


It does if the default assumption is that Common is the _human_ tongue (which it usually seems to be) and that the word for halfling in other languages isn't literally translated as "half person". I think in FR their own name for themselves is _hin_. In one of my own settings they're called halflings because they're the only humanoid allies humans have had since pre-history. Basically humans introduced them to everyone else as halflings and they rolled with it because they're used to living in a world mostly populated by, relatively speaking, giants. I'm also exclusively using Ghostwise Halflings for that setting, so I just picked "The Ghostwise" for what they call themselves.

I do like your head canon though. But why does it make them all so short? At least two of those pairings are a foot or more taller than tall halflings.

----------


## ebarde

I wonder if some halflings dislike that name, as they feel it derives from a medium-centric perspective. Some could even as a joke start calling humans doublings or something, while others wonder why gnomes don't receive a similar treatment or something lol

But looking at the real world, I think we can see plenty of examples of naming that isn't really the most accurate and just stuck around cause people got used to it. Ultimately a lot of people don't really care about accuracy, and will just use what get's the information across. Iceland and Greenland are good examples of names that don't really give off the most accurate idea of the place they're trying to convey. I can only assume halflings could have just as well been the names for gnomes or goblins, and it being just a completely arbitrary name that just stuck, maybe at one point the term could have been inclusive of all small races and then it just became exclusive to one as language changed

----------


## No brains

The word halfling is comes from a mistranslation that attempted to describe them as pastoral farmers.

The intended message was, "We are people of the pitchfork."

It came out as, "Our people are 'hay-flings'." :Small Tongue:

----------


## Wizard_Lizard

Celestials are just aberrations that got trapped in the upper planes. Explains biblical angels.

----------


## a_flemish_guy

> The bulette as well. Speaking of, here's my "head canon": it's pronounced bullet. Now, I know some of you will be surprised, as I was, to hear that's not the original pronunciation the guys at TSR intended (for official release). According to Tim Kask, they did call it a bullet at first, but changed the spelling and moreover pronunciation to boo-lay because for whatever reason they thought that would be a funny way to mock the French. Or people's obsession with the French language? Was that a thing in the 70s? Anyway, that's a dumb sounding name which I've also been informed isn't even accurate to how you would pronounce that monster name even if it _were_ French, so we arrive at my head canon that it's just pronounced bullet. And not BOO-let or boo-LET either, which I've also heard.
> 
> Slaadi aren't a threat to most planes/people because they usually find the consistency of everywhere that isn't their home plane dull



new headcannon: uplifted landsharks answer their sendings "bulette residence, lady of the house speaking, no not bullet, boulée"

----------


## Bohandas

The Demiplane of Dread is actually a secret layer of Carceri

----------


## Stattick

If you go east, off the map of the known continent in the Ravenloft setting, you'll find Westeros.

----------


## Bohandas

Actually, on further consideration, I think the Plane of Dread may be connected with Sigil somehow. The Lady's absolute control of who can come and go mirrors that of a darklord, as does the fact that she might not be able to leave. Furthermore, Vecna breaking out of one and into the other with the same magic ritual suggests some connection as well

----------


## Spore

> As per the movie _Spiderman_ some goblins look like Willem Dafoe





> Much like a dominant male orangutan developing cheekpads, as a goblin rises in power and authority and becomes a Goblin King, they begin to look more and more Bowielike.





> The following crosses all result in halflings:
> 
> Dwarf/Gnome
> Dwarf/Elf
> Dwarf/Human
> Gnome/Elf
> Gnome/Human
> A variety of other, generally similar cross-breeds.
> 
> ...


Considering the use of the insult "goblin" in modern languages, it is far more likely that everything not visually pleasing and small is referred to as goblins. 




> The Demiplane of Dread is actually a secret layer of Carceri





> Actually, on further consideration, I think the Plane of Dread may be connected with Sigil somehow. The Lady's absolute control of who can come and go mirrors that of a darklord, as does the fact that she might not be able to leave. Furthermore, Vecna breaking out of one and into the other with the same magic ritual suggests some connection as well


I think the idea behind the Demiplanes of Dread is that they can exist literally in any cosmology, as long as they are - well demiplanes of eternal torment and punishment. I can see them existing in Eberron's nightmare and dream realm of Dal Quor. They basically are ever lasting nightmares. 

Though I personally reject the headcanon (or even canon) that all D&D planes are somewhat connected. Especially the weird idea of Elminster having a wizarding pupil from Earth. One can make such connection but should veil their transitions in mist, because interplanar stuff quickly becomes a pissing contest between extremes, where planes just become planets of hats rather than fully fledged worlds each of their own.

----------


## Luccan

White and Silver Dragons don't expel cold, they suck in heat.

The most common Chromatic and Metallic dragons derive from the same ancient dragons based on element (Reds and Golds, Blues and Bronze, etc. share ancestry). The exception is that Green and Brass dragons share an ancestry, despite having different elemental affinity. However, they're also the most similar of the opposing forces in personality, valuing intelligent "treasures" and trickery as sport and tactics. Academics debate if the sleep breath of Brass dragons is a variation on the Green's poison and their fire breath a mystic adaptation to distance themselves from their cousins. These comparisons are the one area of conversation Brass dragons don't like to entertain.

----------


## Spore

> White and Silver Dragons don't expel cold, they suck in heat.


Temperature movement (aka heating and chilling) is a purely semantic thing. You move energetic particles somewhere else. I know physics and D&D mix VERY BADLY, but I am not even sure D&D seasons are linked to the planetary cycle around its central star but rather just fights between divine portfolios. Take Chauntea and Auril from Faerun; summer and winter seems just like an eternal struggle between the two.

----------


## Luccan

> Temperature movement (aka heating and chilling) is a purely semantic thing. You move energetic particles somewhere else. I know physics and D&D mix VERY BADLY, but I am not even sure D&D seasons are linked to the planetary cycle around its central star but rather just fights between divine portfolios. Take Chauntea and Auril from Faerun; summer and winter seems just like an eternal struggle between the two.


I'm just fond of the sensory description of it and it's a cool way to make a couple dragons feel distinct. I also like to imagine that's part of how they keep themselves warm in their environments. It's not a hardcore scientific explanation, it's a bending of physics everyone might be familiar with for flavor purposes. These are giant winged lizards we're talking about, I'm not gonna pretend it explains how their breath weapons would be possible in reality when I can't explain most other parts of their existence.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> Though I personally reject the headcanon (or even canon) that all D&D planes are somewhat connected. Especially the weird idea of Elminster having a wizarding pupil from Earth. One can make such connection but should veil their transitions in mist, because interplanar stuff quickly becomes a pissing contest between extremes, where planes just become planets of hats rather than fully fledged worlds each of their own.


I assume by "planes" here you mean "Material Plane worlds" given the mention of Elminster and Earth?  If so, it's kind of hard to avoid Oerth and Toril having been connected to a bunch of worlds because in the former case there are crashed spaceships and portals to Earth and suchlike in various adventures and in the latter case the elves came from their own world, the Mulhorandi and Untheric pantheons explicitly came from Earth, and so forth in the setting background, but there's nothing saying that those worlds are _still_ connected to lots of worlds in the modern era, so you can avoid that coming up without ignoring canon at all.

If you really do mean planes, you can't really change the fact that at least the Prime is connected to basically every other plane without breaking lots of things (ghosts, xill, and other Ethereal critters; basically all of Conjuration; mortal-deity connections, both in life and in the afterlife; and much more), but the planes often have a planet of hats feel because the devs only hit the high points in books like MotP due to limited space and to let adventures throw in lots of out-of-the-way adventure sites.  The best way to avoid the issue is probably to involve _more_ planar travel to flesh out the planes, just like FR can feel very same-y if you just stick to the Sword Coast and heading to the Lake of Steam, the Moonshaes, Rashemen, and other less-explored places can help counteract that.




> Temperature movement (aka heating and chilling) is a purely semantic thing. You move energetic particles somewhere else. I know physics and D&D mix VERY BADLY, but I am not even sure D&D seasons are linked to the planetary cycle around its central star but rather just fights between divine portfolios. Take Chauntea and Auril from Faerun; summer and winter seems just like an eternal struggle between the two.


One can't really talk about "D&D seasons" given that every Prime world has its own local physics.  Some planetary systems are geocentric, some are heliocentric; some have one sun, some have many; some have a big ball of fire as the sun, some have a vortex to the Plane of Fire or Plane of Radiance; some have a world with an axial tilt to create seasons, some have a sun that grows hotter and colder in a certain pattern.

In general, though, the Prime and the Inner Planes run more on physics while the Outer and some Transitive Planes run more on metaphysics.  Summer and winter arising from a conflict between various gods is something you'd see on the Outer Planes, and while Chauntea gaining power relative to Auril might have some knock-on effects on Toril regarding the harshness of winters, it's not like Chauntea falling into a coma would lead to eternal winter or stabbing Lathander in the face would cause the sun to go out (not least because Realmspace has at least 6 other current gods of the sun and at least 2 dead gods of the sun, so you'd have to do lots of divine face-stabbing to put out the sun, but still).





> I'm just fond of the sensory description of it and it's a cool way to make a couple dragons feel distinct. I also like to imagine that's part of how they keep themselves warm in their environments. It's not a hardcore scientific explanation, it's a bending of physics everyone might be familiar with for flavor purposes.


Personally, I headcanon that cold-breathing dragons (and other non-elemental creatures with cold breath/gaze/etc. abilities) are literally "cold blooded" in the sense that their metabolisms basically run backwards and they have "body cold" instead of "body heat" and so on.  After all, cold in D&D isn't merely an absence of heat but an actual opposing force/substance to fire, with its own Inner Plane and everything, so it makes sense that some critters would have a cold-based biology to better fit their environment.

----------


## Bohandas

> I know physics and D&D mix VERY BADLY, but I am not even sure D&D seasons are linked to the planetary cycle around its central star but rather just fights between divine portfolios. Take Chauntea and Auril from Faerun; summer and winter seems just like an eternal struggle between the two.


I'm not sure there's any primary campaign worlds that have the kind of unpredictable _Game of Thrones_ style seasons that that would imply

----------


## Clistenes

> I wonder if some halflings dislike that name, as they feel it derives from a medium-centric perspective. Some could even as a joke start calling humans doublings or something, while others wonder why gnomes don't receive a similar treatment or something lol
> 
> But looking at the real world, I think we can see plenty of examples of naming that isn't really the most accurate and just stuck around cause people got used to it. Ultimately a lot of people don't really care about accuracy, and will just use what get's the information across. Iceland and Greenland are good examples of names that don't really give off the most accurate idea of the place they're trying to convey. I can only assume halflings could have just as well been the names for gnomes or goblins, and it being just a completely arbitrary name that just stuck, maybe at one point the term could have been inclusive of all small races and then it just became exclusive to one as language changed


In the manga Dungeon Meshi "human" is the common name for real world humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings, all of which are considered subspecies of the humans species. All of these races can interbreed, but they haven't merged into a single unified race because mixbloods are sterile (that, and differences in lifespan make relationships painful, so most people avoids them...).

Normal humans are called "Tallmen" because they have the greatest average height. 

It seems Elves were the ones who gave the other races their names, hence Elves have their own name, that doesn't mean anything in particular, while real world humans are called Tallmen because they are taller than Elves, Dwarves  are called so because they are shorter than Elves, and Halflings are called "Half-foot" probably because they are half a foot shorter than Dwarves.

"Gnome" means "Wise One"... I guess Elves respected them (Gnomes are second only to Elves in magical skill and knowledge, and it seems they worked together in many projects in the distant past...).

When a group of foreigners explains that in their country only Tallmen are considered true humans, the listener is shocked...

Halflings are called "Half-foot" because the author didn't want to get into legal trouble and avoided using any race, species or monster that had an origin in D&D or fantasy rather than in real world mythology (hence Cockatrices and Griffons are okay, but Beholders and Mindflayers aren't...).

----------


## Bohandas

I think dragons may be a bit like bees or ants and that may be why they can breed with everything. Half-dragons fill the roles of sterile workers (even though they're not necessarily sterile, half-dragons don't exactly produce more proper dragons)

----------


## Wizard_Lizard

Clerics of Bane have their ritual that they do it in the dark as per _I was born in the darkness!_

----------


## Blackdrop

Any "curses" that dark elves supposedly suffer at the hands of the other gods, are actually part and parcel of any blessings Lloth bestows on her favored disciples as a means of control and isolation. Much easier to keep the dark elves compliant and worshipping her if they think Correlon/Pelor/etc is out to get them.

----------


## calam

Other humanoid breeding combinations not covered by races still happen but they don't breed into special mixed races. While human orc hybrids are half orcs orc halfling hybrids either come out full orc or full halfling, possibly with minor aesthetic differences like a halfing with greenish skin or a shorter orc.

Another headcanon is that objects with continual flame is the pottery shards of dungeon crawling, every ancient tomb, lost city and ancient castle is lousy with marbles and burnt out ioun stones that glow. Nearby towns are lit up like New York because of this.

----------


## Beleriphon

> I think Bowie is a goblin in a context outside of the taxonomic context for the word 'goblin' in D&D. I think he's a generalized boogeymanoid being. 
> 
> However I would support hobgoblins looking exactly like Bowie, Dafoe, or like Creedence Leonore Geigud from Troll 2. I guess hobgoblins look like humans wearing a lot of makeup.


The art already makes them look that way. They really have the alien of the week from Star Trek, or regular guest star Jeffy Coombs.

There's a new one. Hobgoblins all look like some version of Jeffery Coombs.

----------


## Stattick

Just sayin, Jeffery Coombs should play Green Goblin.

----------


## Luccan

Hmm, you know, I wouldn't consider this a headcanon, but I had thought years ago that it would be fun for the different D&D races to be the "evolved" versions of different animal groups. For our purposes, humans would be the "advanced ape" and I kind of imagined elves being evolved from some relative of rabbits. Orcs would go back to their snouty Ganon-like appearance as boarfolk.  But I was just thinking that WotC gives hobgoblins an ever so slightly feline look, so if I ever do anything with this quarter-baked idea, I think I have my big cat people. This would be a setting without things like half-elves, of course.

----------


## NovenFromTheSun

The obyrith are the byproduct of a group of beings who tried to separate themselves from their inner evil. The Shard of Ultimate Evil has a similar effect in the current multiverse: it absorbs a little Evil from everywhere and projects it into the Lower Planes. This means that most people outside those planes are slightly more Good than theyd be otherwise, but at the cost of the Lower Planes growing at such a rate that only the Blood War is keeping them in check.

(Might be doing a bit of edition stream crossing here.)

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> Hmm, you know, I wouldn't consider this a headcanon, but I had thought years ago that it would be fun for the different D&D races to be the "evolved" versions of different animal groups. For our purposes, humans would be the "advanced ape" and I kind of imagined elves being evolved from some relative of rabbits. Orcs would go back to their snouty Ganon-like appearance as boarfolk.  But I was just thinking that WotC gives hobgoblins an ever so slightly feline look, so if I ever do anything with this quarter-baked idea, I think I have my big cat people. This would be a setting without things like half-elves, of course.


I did this in a previous campaign, but didn't restrict myself to mammalian ancestors:Elves evolved from sharks, since they have incredibly long lifespan with few signs of aging, little to no body hair, exceptional senses, exceptional skill with blades, reputations as ambush predators and skirmishers over stand-up warriors, aquatic versions that look identical to the land-bound versions as if they'd remained unchanged for eons, etc.  They ended up bald with grayish skin and unsettlingly wide grins, and had a penchant for sushi.Dwarves evolved from sapient fungi, since they're squat and top-heavy, live underground in concentrated colonies, can survive without access to natural light, feed on fermented and decaying grains with every meal, etc.  Their "beards" were actually mycelia (the vegetative tendrils that a fungus absorbs nutrients with), hence why dwarves always seem to spill lots of alcohol on their beards when drinking.Goblinoids evolved from dogs and wolves, since they come in large families, love to burrow, have keen senses, rule their lessers through strength and dominance challenges*, have a special bond with canines already, and come in many widely varying breeds from "small and yappy" to "large and scary" while still being the same critter overall.  They ended up a lot furrier and more excitable, and with exceptionally large and soulful eyes.Gnomes evolved from foxes, since they are inquisitive and elusive, are smaller than the rest, also love to burrow, have good noses, and are viewed as either adorable scamps or irritating pests depending on what they've gotten up to most recently.  They ended up having unusually large ears, uniformly red or orange (or rarely white) hair, and a very loud and cheeky laugh.
Meanwhile, halflings evolved from monkeys just like humans evolved from apes, and orcs evolved from boars per their original appearance.

Aside from a few cosmetic details I really didn't have to change much for any of the races since they fit so well already, and it gave me a good jumping-off point when playing around with their cultures and gods and so forth.

* Yes, I know the whole "alpha wolf" thing is only the case for wolves in captivity and the original study that came from was retracted by the author, but it's a fantasy staple for werewolves and other canid races now, so it works.

----------


## Spore

You do realize about half of your creation myth is straight from Golarion, if you squint a bit. Goblins there are basically just bipedal demonic dogs. Gnomes are not foxes, but the next best mythical thing, fey creatures. Elves are aliens (that started on Golarion but came back), dwarves were forged by a god. Your orcs are spot-on as well, with them being proto-humanoids at the start of recorded history.

----------


## Asmotherion

-Metalic Dragons are essentially the same species as their Chromatic counterparts. They just mutate depending on the Alignmental Energy they channel. A good Red Dragon will eventually turn into a Gold Dragon, and an Evil Bronze will turn Blue.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> You do realize about half of your creation myth is straight from Golarion, if you squint a bit. Goblins there are basically just bipedal demonic dogs. Gnomes are not foxes, but the next best mythical thing, fey creatures. Elves are aliens (that started on Golarion but came back), dwarves were forged by a god. Your orcs are spot-on as well, with them being proto-humanoids at the start of recorded history.


Technically, half of Golarion's creation myth would be straight from my setting, because I did my setting workup back in 2006ish before Golarion was a thing.  :Small Wink:   On the Campaign Builder's Guild, if anyone remembers that site before they migrated and lost all the old material.  Ah, the good ol' days for homebrew.

But in general, the "different races have very different origins instead of being humans in different hats" thing isn't all that novel.  Elves, dwarves, and gnomes being somehow special (in-game because they have their own racial pantheons doing their own thing, out of game because they have more of a fantasy pedigree than halflings and PC-side orcs and goblins and such) has been done for a while, and in fact "elves come from a different planet" was done in Forgotten Realms and "dwarves were forged by a god" was done in Dragonlance long before most spinoff or homebrew settings existed.  Meanwhile, the "different evolutionary line" explanation came up a lot when orcs and kobolds looked more obviously pig-like and dog-like, respectively, and lots of the early monstrous humanoids were basically half-animal people (lizardfolk and hyena-people [gnolls] and fish-people [sahuagin and kuo-toa] and so forth), and one of the reason OSR products are full of frog people and snake people is because they're going for the same "humanoid monsters are more primordial/prototypical creatures than the modern races" angle.

What _would_ be novel is headcanonizing an explicit origin for humans that doesn't just put them as the "mix of all the other races"/"collaboration between gods" race, since everyone likes to play around with the various demihumans but nearly always leave humans alone.

EDIT: Actually, along those lines...




> -Metalic Dragons are essentially the same species as their Chromatic counterparts. They just mutate depending on the Alignmental Energy they channel. A good Red Dragon will eventually turn into a Gold Dragon, and an Evil Bronze will turn Blue.


So, humans and dragons both have four interesting things in common:

1) They can breed with basically anything. Part-human planetouched are everywhere (compared to part-other-race planetouched, which are more rare and only come in specific combinations) and near-humans like rilkan and illumians are plentiful, and half-[elves/orcs/dwarves/etc.] are a thing while e.g. orc/dwarves and gnome/elves aren't.  Half-dragon and draconic creatures are everywhere, and there are even true-breeding part-dragon offshoots like chimerae and dragon turtles.

2) They come in different colors.  Dragons obviously have their very colorful metallic, chromatic, and gem dragon families plus a bunch of one-offs (shadow dragons, planar dragons, etc.) in a rainbow of colors, but humans are also pretty colorful in that they're nearly always the only race in a setting to come in a wide variety of skin tones for a single race; even elves tend to only come in pale/brown/black for high/wood/drow elves, with any other subraces fitting in those general categories.

3) They're disruptive to the status quo.  Most settings have some backstory element along the lines of "elves and dwarves and giants and other really old and really-long lived races were chilling for a few thousand years, and then bam, humans came along and in less than a few centuries they're everywhere and running everything," and out of all the monsters out there, dragons are the most likely to just swoop in out of nowhere, burn down a few towns, and take over the area.

4) They're highly changeable and adaptable.  All metallic and several other kinds of dragons have some sort of innate shapechanging capability, and all true dragons have distinct age categories that grant them different capabilities over time, while humans are generally the most adaptable PCs (in AD&D they could dual-class instead of multiclass and had no class or level restrictions, in 3e and later they have generalist ability score boosts and fewer or no multiclassing restrictions)

What other race can breed with anything, comes in a bunch of colors, disrupt everything they come in contact with, and are known for their mutations?

Slaad.

Positing that, like slaad, humans and dragons are creatures of innate chaos would put an interesting twist on a setting.  It explains why humans burst onto the scene and took charge from the other humanoid races after they'd been chugging along in an orderly fashion for millennia, why it's always the humans that are setting up crazy-powerful empires that are constantly rising and falling and having major side effects on the setting, why (in earlier editions) humans work so differently from the other races mechanically and flavor-wise, and so on.

It would also give you a good opportunity to flip the usual implicit "Law is better than Chaos" assumption a bunch of people have.  Make Paladins of Freedom the default paladin and all the good theocracies CG instead of LG!  Toss the Law-leaning monarchies and empires with their feudalism and massive armies and such and fill the continent with Chaos-leaning city-states and federations with bands of adventurers privateers instead of standing armies!  Paint the archons and devils as the truly alien and inscrutable beings that they are and paint the eladrin and demons as having more relatable and human-like motivations!  Instead of emphasizing the Chaotic-ish weirdness and uniqueness of aberrations, emphasize the unnatural Lawfulness of illithid/elder brain hive minds and thrall-keeping aboleths and beholders!

And sure, there are lawful dragons and humans and they appear to average out to neutrality on a race-wide level, but everyone knows they're really all a bit chaotic where it counts.  Even the naturally-Chaotic slaad churn out naturally-Lawful gormeels every so often.  :Small Amused:

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

> What _would_ be novel is headcanonizing an explicit origin for humans that doesn't just put them as the "mix of all the other races"/"collaboration between gods" race, since everyone likes to play around with the various demihumans but nearly always leave humans alone.


Would "artificially created out of hobgoblins via magical genetic engineering" (along with orcs, just by different sets of elves) count? Because that's how my setting handles humans. And since hobgoblins are _temporary_ forced-mutations of goblins (when a tribe has excess group psychic energy, they pump it into a member and create a hobgoblin, and the process is reversible), that makes humans technically descended from goblins.

Heck, none of the gods even existed as such until well after most of the current races were in place and in general had little or nothing to do with creating races.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> Would "artificially created out of hobgoblins via magical genetic engineering" (along with orcs, just by different sets of elves) count? Because that's how my setting handles humans. And since hobgoblins are _temporary_ forced-mutations of goblins (when a tribe has excess group psychic energy, they pump it into a member and create a hobgoblin, and the process is reversible), that makes humans technically descended from goblins.


I've seen both "humans are magically-/alchemically-/genetically-modified X" and "goblinoids are all one race that Pokévolve into different forms with time/combat experience/environmental pressures/etc." several times before, and of course the collective-tribal-psychic-energy thing sounds a bit like 40K orks, but all three things together with the reversibility is definitely a novel combination with a lot of plot hook potential.

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

> I've seen both "humans are magically-/alchemically-/genetically-modified X" and "goblinoids are all one race that Pokévolve into different forms with time/combat experience/environmental pressures/etc." several times before, and of course the collective-tribal-psychic-energy thing sounds a bit like 40K orks, but all three things together with the reversibility is definitely a novel combination with a lot of plot hook potential.


Oh, and I forgot to mention that goblins have a form of unconsious collective memory within a tribe. In fact, a tribeless goblin is basically a human intellect cat, except without more than the most basic object permanence. So tribes kinda work as swarms and individualized thought is doable but not natural.

----------


## Spore

> It would also give you a good opportunity to flip the usual implicit "Law is better than Chaos" assumption a bunch of people have. Make Paladins of Freedom the default paladin and all the good theocracies CG instead of LG!


I have always felt CN is the most natural of all alignments, if any D&D universe has any semblance to increase entropy automatically, and have order or decrease in entropy be a man-made thing (or in some case, extraplanar robot thing). In a followup to that logic, LG and LE are the two most unnatural alignments. CE is just nature run rampant and selfish (and I do enjoy the idea of demons just being smart beasts of primal sin), so in my headcanon CG is not the default paladin, but NG would be.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> I have always felt CN is the most natural of all alignments, if any D&D universe has any semblance to increase entropy automatically, and have order or decrease in entropy be a man-made thing (or in some case, extraplanar robot thing). In a followup to that logic, LG and LE are the two most unnatural alignments. CE is just nature run rampant and selfish (and I do enjoy the idea of demons just being smart beasts of primal sin), so in my headcanon CG is not the default paladin, but NG would be.


Well, at least for all the settings that are part of the Great Wheel, Law is the more natural/default force than Chaos (in-game because Law won the War of Law and Chaos and got to set up the multiverse as it wanted, out-of-game because a lot of early writers equated Law with Good and Chaos with Evil), hence why the Chaotic planes are shoved into the same ordered framework as the Lawful ones, slaad and demons and such have the same neatly categorized sets of forms that modrons and devils and such do, and so forth...and as I pointed out in a post a few pages back, the concept of "entropy" doesn't really exist in the Wheel in the same sense as it does in the real world.  So Chaos = natural and Law = unnatural doesn't quite work.

But for a homebrew world using a variant cosmology, or for a campaign that takes the basic Wheel setup and drops the AD&D/Planescape lore?  Yeah, making Chaos the "natural" alignment instead of True Neutral would be a nice twist on things, and would work nicely for a campaign with a "magic vs. technology" or "good wilderness vs. bad industrialization" theme.  It even _almost_ works with the Wheel as-is, with CG being fairly nature-y (eladrin are animalistic, the Court of Stars are elflike, and Elysium, the Beastlands, Arborea are a pastoral paradise, full of animals, and exaggerated natural terrain, respectively) and the Abyss having a bunch of nature-themed layers (spiders in the Demonweb Pits, snakes in Smargard, the Brine Flats, etc.).

It's more "reflavoring" than "headcanon," granted, but here's a quick stab at how you could make some minor tweaks to the Outer Planes to whip up an alternate Great Wheel emphasizing the "nature vs. artificiality" theme.  On the Chaos side:Elysium: Removed as the NG plane, though one could add an "Elysium" back as a new layer of Arborea.Beastlands, Arborea: No change.Ysgard: Its name becomes Vanaheim, and rather than focusing on humanoid warriors fighting each other, it's about all sorts of living beings hunting one another, in a "nature red in tooth and claw" kind of way.Limbo: Its title changes from "Ever-Changing Chaos of Limbo" to "Primordial Ooze of Limbo," the morphic traits lineup goes from a purely elemental air/earth/fire/water to a more swamp-y wood/earth/storm/water, and the slaad take on all sorts of reptilian and amphibious forms, not just froglike ones.Pandemonium: Drop the insanity-inducing wind and focus on the fact that it's a maze of endless tunnels, the Underdark writ large.Abyss: Remove or change any layers that aren't obviously themed around "nature gone bad."Carceri: Its name becomes Faerie, and it changes from "six prison planets you physically can't leave" to "six faerie courts that the rulers don't want to let you leave," which works nicely because the bog/jungle/desert environments of the first three layers and barren mountains/cold ocean/ice environments of the last three layers already fit into a classic Summer/Winter setup.Hades: Removed as the NE plane, though one could add it back as a new middle layer of Faerie to provide a gradient between Summer desert and Winter mountains.
And on the Law side:Bytopia: Make Dothion more urban and Shurrock as settled as Dothion is now, so the layer dichotomy goes from "settled half vs.  wild half" to "place for people who like to live where it's settled vs. people who want to go out and do the settling."Celestia: Its title changes from "Seven Mounting Heavens of Celestia" to "Sevenfold Citadel of Celestia," and Celestia itself changes from a mountain to a tower--specifically a fortress-monastery of sorts--with the Silver Sea becoming a Silver Moat.Arcadia, Mechanus, Acheron: No changes.Baator: Add cities or fortresses to Stygia and Malbolge to complete the "diabolical city/fortress surrounded by a Captain Planet villain's dream environment" theme.Gehenna: The volcanoes belching lava are now strip-mined mountaintops belching smog.

----------


## Bohandas

The Kalashtar are habitually late, habitually forget to get dressed, and various other dream cliches

----------


## Starlit Dragon

> The Kalashtar are habitually late, habitually forget to get dressed, and various other dream cliches


Do their teeth fall out?

----------


## Mark Hall

> Do their teeth fall out?


Yes, but they're back in the next scene, without explanation.

----------


## Bohandas

> Do their teeth fall out?


I'm thinking yeah, but that they regrow them like sharks

----------


## Bohandas

The main causes of death for trolls are stomach diseases and cancer, both of which are unimpeded by the trolls' regeneration

----------


## Spore

> The main causes of death for trolls are stomach diseases and cancer, both of which are unimpeded by the trolls' regeneration


If troll regeneration is just rapid cell growth, cancer is the leading cause in troll deaths.

----------


## Xuc Xac

> If troll regeneration is just rapid cell growth, cancer is the leading cause in troll deaths.


Considering how quickly trolls grow bodily tissue, any troll that gets cancer turns into a huge mass of tumors and dies in a matter of hours.

----------


## Mark Hall

> Considering how quickly trolls grow bodily tissue, any troll that gets cancer turns into a huge mass of tumors and dies in a matter of hours.


Or becomes something else...

----------


## Spriteless

> Considering how quickly trolls grow bodily tissue, any troll that gets cancer turns into a huge mass of tumors and dies in a matter of hours.


But what if their cancers get cancer?

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

My setting has trolls that don't have a natural age limit. At least...unless they've ever been injured. Because their regeneration means that for every time they have to heal, a little _more_ grows than should. So trolls get progressively more and more knobbly and distorted each time they regenerate, until they suffocate under the weight of their regrown flesh. And since this regeneration takes energy, trolls are always hungry. Which makes them get injured trying to acquire food (usually from something that'd rather not be eaten)...

----------


## Bohandas

> But what if their cancers get cancer?


Have you ever seen the _Sealab_ episode about whale cancer?

----------


## No brains

What if trolls don't get cancer because they are cancer?

It's at least true on the internet.

----------


## KillianHawkeye

I think when a troll gets cancer, it should grow out of control until it becomes the monster from Akira.

----------


## Stattick

OMG, I just realized that Deadpool is a troll.

----------


## Beleriphon

> OMG, I just realized that Deadpool is a troll.


He is in every sense of the word.

----------


## thorr-kan

> He is in every sense of the word.


Not every; he does not live Below the Bridge.

----------


## Wizard_Lizard

The entire elven race is being manipulated by mind flayers, and drow were a mind flayer experiment. The elven gods are secretly a cabal of mind flayers.
_alternatively_ all subraces are the cause of mindflayer manipulation!

----------


## not_a_fish

The axes of draconic alignment are not good/evil and order/chaos. Draconic alignment fluctuates between sated/hungry and asleep/awake. 

Scale color and resistances are sympathetic reactions to their environment, not species-level traits. A dragon with a volcanic lair that moves to an arctic ice cavern will change from red to white the next time she molts (which could be months or years; the specifics of draconic lifecycles are still poorly understood, and individual dragons have some degree of conscious control over the process).

----------


## KillianHawkeye

> The axes of draconic alignment are not good/evil and order/chaos. Draconic alignment fluctuates between sated/hungry and asleep/awake.


I know the underlined word is correct, but when I started reading this I imagined literal axes and had a brief moment of confusion.  :Small Confused: 

I might me a little tired, LOL.

----------


## Mark Hall

> The axes of draconic alignment are not good/evil and order/chaos. Draconic alignment fluctuates between sated/hungry and asleep/awake.





> I know the underlined word is correct, but when I started reading this I imagined literal axes and had a brief moment of confusion. 
> 
> I might me a little tired, LOL.


If we knew how hungry you were, we could guess your alignment!  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Wizard_Lizard

> If we knew how hungry you were, we could guess your alignment!


I think that if we're guessing alignment from tiredness and hungriness.... I am probably somewhere south-east of neutral.

----------


## Forevaxp

Sammaster is a distant relative to the members of the Wyvernspur family to explain why Flattery Wyvernspur (a clone of Finder) looks almost identical to him.

----------


## Vknight

Not a head canon but my own setting Humans are interesting.

Since all gods were once mortals in setting.  The setting implies evolution as some of the dragon gods remember proto-humans and talk about how the divergence between humans and the elves was caused when they settled the fey and the material with the elves then offshooting repeatedly post that into the various types.
The head of the dwarven pantheon it is assumed was well a dwarf who magically granted his descendants the same special abilities he had leading to the divergence of dwarves.
Well the head of the orc pantheon took a collection of humans and dwarves who would become the orcs.
Halflings are a modern off shoot of humans.  Goblins are a similar offshoot but to orcs.  Gnomes are a similar offshoot but to elves.
Tritons are early humans who adapted to the plane of water without infusing elemental energy.  With the sea elves being a interbreeding of them and elves.
Centaurs are assumed to be a mage who granted a nomad clans wish to forever be apart of their horses.  And would develop into the culture you later see, along with some druids messing around leading to off-shots like elven centaurs who would eventually develop deer traits.
Minotaurs are implied to be the sons of the first centaur god after he shagged a herd of cows.  Others say the first minotaur shagged a group of horses and made centaurs.  Because the two are one deity.
Kitsune are the descendants of humans and folk spirits becoming their own distinct lineage both fox spirit and not.
Catfolk no one knows some guess they were a mages attempt to prove evolution with cats.  But that would raise the question then why do dog folk have a deity but cats don't.  Or why the rabbit and otter folk both also don't have a god.
Merfolk are suspected to be tritons and/or sea elves who modified themselves or magically conceived with sea life

----------


## Bohandas

Industrization, assembly lines, etc. are among the forbidden secrets that turn you into an allip.

----------


## Silly Name

Goblins were created by hobgoblins by starting with kobolds and using magic and breeding programs to make them what they wanted, meaning the goblin race has a distant draconic ancestry. 

in 4e lore, He Who Was (god of good and peace and rumored creator of humanity, slain by Asmodeus) is Rao from Greyhawk. This is actually true in a setting of mine whose mythology is mish-mash of 4e, Greyhawk lore and some of my players' input.

----------


## KorvinStarmast

> Like mules, half-elves and half-orcs are sterile and cannot reproduce (without the aid of fertility magic).


 That's canon in my world.  



> I run kobolds as the old-school vaguely canine humanoids, not this new-fangled mini-draconian nonsense, so the notion that they're dragon-kin is absurd on the face of it.


 Likewise. 



> Hags are female ogres.
> 
> Both are grotesque versions of humans that capture and eat people. Males display strength and physical violence, and females use lies and deception.


 *clap* Keeping this. 



> Humans tend to win races. Because of their bonus feet.


 must not *groan* 



> Troglodytes are corrupted lizardfolk. They come from eggs stolen by sahuagin, and the most dangerous and organized troglodytes are the sharkfolk's main weapon in hilly terrain.


 Hmm, might steal this.  



> So, more of a circle surrounding True Neutral, rather than the traditional grid


 Yep. 



> In fact, didn't OD&D only have 5 alignments?


 Nope. Law, Neutrality, Chaos. 



> "Halfling pipe-weed" is marijuana. The reason halflings eat so much despite being Small and typically sedentary is that they all have the munchies all the time. 
> 
> (Also halflings are hobbits, not kender.)


 Now canon in my worlds (the munchies bit; kender are dead to me, and the pipe weed reference goes back to _Bored With The Rings_.   :Small Smile: 



> Elves behave like over the top stereotypes of west coast americans who flit between different melodramatic causes, questionable fad diets, and bizarre art trends on a bi-weekly basis


 While funny, the elves in my worlds are a bit more taciturn, aloof, and serious than that. For a more beer and pretzels game, that's a great framework.  



> Half-dwarves don't exist since dwarves did not take part in this disgusting interracial breeding program.


 We had a succubus recently in the game world where I DM who conned two NPC acolytes of life deity into trying to create a half dwarf/half human breed. Incubus/succubus showed up (disguised) in the form of a dwarf who was quite randy and who impregnated them with ... demon-seed. (Interesting to see how the party sorted that out ...) 


> Halfling burgers are a thing.


 Most bulettes agree with this.  :Small Cool: 



> Demons are responsible for the worst crimes of the multiverse. The Abyss is their divine prison, and the devils are their jailers. The Blood War is simply quelling a jailbreak. Yugoloths play both sides as the god that made them was infamously one who double crossed people and played both sides in the divine conflict.


 Keeping this, thanks. 



> Ioun, patron goddess of librarians (and of magic if youre like me and use the Dawn War pantheon as your go-to), is an ascended mortal;


Ioun stones, from Vance's Dying earth stories, are forever (for me) tied to Vance's story.  Yours is an interesting take, thank you for that.   :Small Smile:  



> An elf over a century old starts adventuring at 1st level because they haven't learned much that's useful for an adventurer. They spent decades making shoes, singing songs, and enjoying leisurely three-hour liquid lunches with their friends. Adventuring is their retirement hobby.


 Bravo, well done. I've played with a few people who take that approach for their elves.  



> Exactly. D&D as post-apocalyptic fiction has always made the most sense to me.


 The original game had a heavy post apocalyptic, post 'fallen empire' feel to it.  Also, Chaos was relentless (entropy, decay, degradation) and Law had to fight just to keep the status quo.  



> Honestly, D&Dland probably isn't so much in Medieval Status as locked into a cycle of repeating apocalypses.


 Yes, rise and fall of kingdom/empire/civilization you name it. 


> That's literally what happened in the real world. Chinese alchemists tried to make a potion of longevity and ended up making gunpowder by accident instead. They used it to make rockets and guns.


 Viagra, the original version.  :Small Cool: 



> That's because you're taking a very narrow view of alignment.  It's ALWAYS been true that alignment is not an absolute barometer of action nor affiliation.


 Rust never sleeps (chaos) and it's easier to tear things down than to build them (Law).  Fundamental tension in the Law/N/Chaos system.  "good and evil" is just name calling.   :Small Yuk: 



> OD&D - Early Dark Ages


Correct that to "early dark ages through crusading era" and I think you nailed it. I agree with the rest of your theme, I think it fits really well. Nicely done. 



> It just occurred to me that the reason why low level adventures haven't already been solved by higher level heroes is because high level heroes teleport everywhere and are never in the small out of the way villages that low level adventures happen in


 And they charge higher fees that villages and small manors can't afford. 



> The DM I play with on Skype is like that: he pronounces "drow" like "crow."


 That's how we pronounced it when we first encountered one in a Giants module ... a long time ago. Those who pronounce it to rhyme with 'how" confuse me.   :Small Confused: 



> Bouncing off the idea the magic (the weave) is generated by the friction between planes:
> 
> Each plane is infinite in some way by necessity, acting as a sink to combat overflow. 
> 
> Mortals like to blame gods for cataclysmic events but in many instances they are as much victims as the mortals are. Planar earthquakes cause all sorts of chaos and more often than not the highly magically inclined are more severely affected by any disruptions. Which reminds me I should probably come up with some magic counterpart to tectonic verbiage.


 So stealing this.   :Small Smile: 



> I always went with bew-let, like Ferris Bueller.


 When the original MM came out in 1977, we arrived at "boo-lette" with accent on the second syllable. Not sure why we did that. I can see how other pronunciations were grown. Also, Landshark was an SNL skit.  :Small Yuk:   (Chevy Chase era, as I recall).  



> As to giants and dwarves:


 And it works, lore wise, as well as any lore I've ever run across regarding giants. Like it.  



> Just imagine being one of the people with an early prototype tattoo. "Good news, it works. Bad news, sometimes it wild surges."


 Premature evoculation?  :Small Eek:  



> That if there is a material, someone has made a golem of it.
> Cheese golems I am looking at you. Horace


 Wallace and Gromit have probably beaten us to the punch on that one.  :Small Frown: 



> The word halfling is comes from a mistranslation that attempted to describe them as pastoral farmers.
> The intended message was, "We are people of the pitchfork."
> It came out as, "Our people are 'hay-flings'."


 _Groan_ in progress, and consider that stolen.   :Small Big Grin: 

My *head canon* as regards magic, wizards, artificers, dragons and deities. 

a. Dragons are the originators of magic in The World.  
b. The original language of magic is Draconic (the elder version, like Linear B's relationship to Ancient Greek if you like)  
c. Wizards (particularly human wizards) are upstarts, who often meddle with forces they barely understand, which predictably causes cataclysms. (The Greyhawk _Rain of Colorless Fire_ that caused the Sea of Dust as but one example = various other game worlds have their examples ... Athas, Faerun, Krynn, and so on)   
Dragons have, over the years, engaged in efforts to stamp that out.  Periodically, various dragon clans ally with the intent of tracking down and eliminating wizards.  They often use human/humanoid/demi human agents to effect this policy. With that being a fact, the study and predominance of magic in the world ebbs and flows but it is almost always underground.  

d. Artificers are an ofshoot of Magic Users/Wizards.  The greatest artificer in the history of the world, Dav Inji, created the Rod of Seven Parts. (Artifact of immense power).  That rod, whose initial purpose is lost in the mists of time, led to a variety of conflicts for possession of it. Kingdoms rose and fell as a result, and war seemed to be always looming or in progress.  Eventually artificers were viewed as the root cause of conflict.  

e. In a witch hunt to end all witch hunts, artificers were hunted down and systematically executed over most of the world. 
They discovered that _you can run but you can't hide_.   Result? No artificers in the world. (Or darned few, and they have to keep their true craft hidden lest they become one of the hunted.  Eberron is the one refuge in the multiverse where artificers can live without the ever present fear of yet another witch hunt).  Now and again, various clerics of the 'crafty' deities tried their hands at making similar holy, or unholy, items, with mixed results.  This was, and remains, an effort generally done behind closed doors to avoid attracting attention from those not within the circle of trust for that group ... 

f. Demons, devils, celestials: manifestations of the stuff of their planes.  Embodiments of spirit, just as elementals are embodiments of the elemental planes.  A solar might be an embodiment of Truth, of Light, and so on.  

g. There are no deities, per se, but there are forces and philosophies.  The worship and reverence that life, light, water, honor, death, nature, harvest, etcetera attract often results in that aspect of existence attracting a name.  (For example The Storm might be called Umberlee, or Thor, or what have you) and thus pantheons grow.  From these forces and philosophies clerics and druids are occasionally blessed with divine powers ... but that doesn't always make them welcome nor popular.  

h. Why and how do magical items still exist? Over the centuries and millenia, wizards and artificers alike (and to a lesser extent, clerics and druids) were busy little beavers who turned out all kinds of stuff.  Elves, dwarves and gnomes did likewise but their stuff is rarely available outside of their 'circles of relationship' and clan or kin.  Some of the things made over the years that have not been found and destroyed are still around, but finding them is both hard and dangerous - but their value is considerable, and that is why some folk (adventurers) now and again head off to find them.  
Many die in the attempt.  

Adventuring: some call it archeology, others call it grave robbing, some call it treasure hunting, others call it theft. 

The adventurers frequently meet in a tavern ...  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Bohandas

> That's how we pronounced it when we first encountered one in a Giants module ... a long time ago. Those who pronounce it to rhyme with 'how" confuse me.


What if it was pronounced "Drew" :D

(and what if the Krynnish god Paladine was pronounced "Paula Deen")

----------


## KorvinStarmast

> What if it was pronounced "Drew" :D


 We'd break out with a chorus of _Cleveland Rocks_ whenever we arrived in Menzobaranzin ... (I never could spell that city's name without looking it up) 

*Spoiler: ref*
Show

Reference? Drew Carey show

----------


## Bohandas

> Rust never sleeps (chaos) and it's easier to tear things down than to build them (Law).  Fundamental tension in the Law/N/Chaos system.  "good and evil" is just name calling.


On a related note, tying this into the tech discussion, Things can't be built up until the old things are torn down. Imagine how much of a mess we'd be in if anybody cared for the livelihood of the handloom weaver, the manual rail spiker, the whaler, or the guy who makes weapons and tools out of bronze.

I think the reason why D&D tends toward late medievak technology, and why multiple levels of technology often coexist wigin a single society, is because the D&D multiverse has an excess of order and stability.

----------


## RedMage125

Just came up with this in another message group online...

Humans are a hybrid species.  Thousands of years ago, a civilization of elves and orcs co-existed.* Their hybrid children had much of the grace and creativity of elves, but had the tenacity, strength, and, most importantly, _ability to breed insanely quickly_ of orcs.  That is, of course, humans. The hybrid children adapted better and eventually, no true orcs or elves remained in that kingdom. Eventually, everyone forgot that they even WERE a hybrid species.**

Over thousands of years of evolution (or hey, it's fantasy, maybe the gods made the change), elves and orcs are no longer genetically compatible.  But humans share genes with both of them, which is why half orc and half elf hybrids are still possible.

*as a bonus rider idea, perhaps the fall of this kingdom and the rise of humans as a species that supplanted both parent species is the real reason elves and orcs hate each other, but no one remembers anymore.

**also explains why there is no "creator deity" for humans. Orcs know Gruumsh made them. Elves have Corellon, Dwarves have Moradin.  Humans do not have a deity who molded them.  They rose to prominence through achievement.  They were a product of the world itself, and carry the favor of Natural Selection. This is also why humans prefer deities that correlate to what they DO (a warrior prefers a war God, a scholar prefers a God of knowledge, a healer a God of medicine, etc). Humans value merit and achievement over some kind of "x deity made us and said we're perfect" mentality.

----------


## NovenFromTheSun

Because of Strahd being called the first vampire, I think that the world Barovia came from is older than most other prime material worlds, perhaps one of the first inhabited (by humans at least).

----------


## RedMage125

I just saw someone's head Canon online in a FB group, and wanted to share.  DISCLAIMER: this is not my original idea.

Mimics reproduce by sometimes pretending to be a chest full of coins, and then let people take those coins...which are baby mimics.

----------


## Stattick

Humans are the default, in a mystical and alchemical sense. That's why humans have no creator. That's why humans can breed with more races than anything else. That's why something can be half human, but not half this and half that if one of those half isn't human.

You let orcs and elves mate - they produce humans. Elves and dwarves - more humans. Halflings and gnomes - humans. Tabaxi and dragonborn - humans. Centaurs and satyrs... well, not much chance of a pregnancy there, but if it it happens, then it'll produce humans. It's like when your computer's operating system fails to load, so you run DOS.

----------


## Luccan

> Humans are the default, in a mystical and alchemical sense. That's why humans have no creator. That's why humans can breed with more races than anything else. That's why something can be half human, but not half this and half that if one of those half isn't human.
> 
> You let orcs and elves mate - they produce humans. Elves and dwarves - more humans. Halflings and gnomes - humans. Tabaxi and dragonborn - humans. Centaurs and satyrs... well, not much chance of a pregnancy there, but if it it happens, then it'll produce humans. It's like when your computer's operating system fails to load, so you run DOS.


Half-Dragons?

----------


## KillianHawkeye

> Humans are the default, in a mystical and alchemical sense. That's why humans have no creator. That's why humans can breed with more races than anything else. That's why something can be half human, but not half this and half that if one of those half isn't human.
> 
> You let orcs and elves mate - they produce humans. Elves and dwarves - more humans. Halflings and gnomes - humans. Tabaxi and dragonborn - humans. Centaurs and satyrs... well, not much chance of a pregnancy there, but if it it happens, then it'll produce humans. It's like when your computer's operating system fails to load, so you run DOS.





> Half-Dragons?


Clearly, dragons must be hyper-evolved humans from the future.  :Small Wink:

----------


## KorvinStarmast

> Clearly, dragons must be hyper-evolved humans from the future.


_Humans originally got their reptilian brain from dragons, right?_   :Small Cool:

----------


## Stattick

> Half-Dragons?


Honestly, I didn't even consider them. It's one of those things I tend to forget. I played 2nd edition, a little 4th (it wasn't my bag, so I didn't dig into the system at all), and now 5th.

----------


## Spore

So is human default "black" aka the absence of all essence, or is it "white" a combination of every available essence?

----------


## KorvinStarmast

> So is human default "black" aka the absence of all essence, or is it "white" a combination of every available essence?


Human default essence is green *Spoiler: what kind of green?*
Show

... soylent green.
  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## thorr-kan

> Human default essence is green *Spoiler: what kind of green?*
> Show
> 
> ... soylent green.


Nononono!

Humans should be Forest Service Green https://encycolorpedia.com/639e7e, i.e. the "Green Not Found In Nature!"

----------


## Luccan

This isn't so much a head canon as an interesting quirk. IIRC the 3e DMG mentions Gnomes as the most likely race to form a republic. Remember this for your Rome-expy next time you're world-building. 

If I _were_ to head-canon this quirk, I would shuffle it less under their drive for experimentation (forming a republic just to see if it worked or because nobody else was doing it) and instead place it more in the realm of their love of tricks. The keenest political manipulators are often Gnomes and a republic allows them to put this form of trickery to work the most.

----------


## stack

> This isn't so much a head canon as an interesting quirk. IIRC the 3e DMG mentions Gnomes as the most likely race to form a republic. Remember this for your Rome-expy next time you're world-building. 
> 
> If I _were_ to head-canon this quirk, I would shuffle it less under their drive for experimentation (forming a republic just to see if it worked or because nobody else was doing it) and instead place it more in the realm of their love of tricks. The keenest political manipulators are often Gnomes and a republic allows them to put this form of trickery to work the most.


The gnoman republic, leading to the mighty gnoman empire?

----------


## Archpaladin Zousha

I mean, it worked for Kingdoms of Amalur!

----------


## Kane0

> The gnoman republic, leading to the mighty gnoman empire?


Did they famously defeat a rival state's defences by smuggling a bunch of legionnaires inside a gift wood golem?

----------


## Sharur

> Did they famously defeat a rival state's defences by smuggling a bunch of legionnaires inside a gift wood golem?


If they are the Gnomian Republic/Empire, then they wouldn't have been the defeaters, but the defeated.

They learned the power of trickery first hand.

----------


## Bohandas

The reason werebears are LG is because rather than a generic bear they turn specifically into Winnie the Pooh :D

----------


## Batcathat

> The reason werebears are LG is because rather than a generic bear they turn specifically into Winnie the Pooh :D


Winnie being a werebear would explain him wearing a shirt but no pants, I guess...

----------


## hewhosaysfish

> Winnie being a werebear would explain him wearing a shirt but no pants, I guess...


In his human form he can wear a very baggy sweater and when the full moon comes out he expands to fit it. 
But his pants can only be so baggy without falling down, so when he transforms he always bursts out of them. "Oh, bother."

----------


## Batcathat

> In his human form he can wear a very baggy sweater and when the full moon comes out he expands to fit it. 
> But his pants can only be so baggy without falling down, so when he transforms he always bursts out of them. "Oh, bother."


Or maybe he and the Hulk had to share one set of shapeshifting clothes, explaining why the Hulk's pants stay on (in addition to keeping every man on the planet from feeling inadequate by comparison).

----------


## KorvinStarmast

Winnie the Hulk is what a Wear Bear is, yes?  :Small Smile:

----------


## Luccan

Dwarves start to go gray fairly early for their long lifespans. Tradition dictates that a dwarf is still a young adult* until they start to get gray hairs in their beard. "Graybeard" is both a teasing jab for a dwarf past their prime and a term of respect for a dwarf's experience. "A head full of [color] hairs" is a term implying immaturity, inexperience, and/or ignorance.

*Equivalent 18-30, in this case.

Edit: On werebears, the reason they don't willfully spread their disease to everyone is because much like other lycanthropes are compelled to do evil things, a werebear is compelled to do good. If any area is relatively peaceful, a werebear is compelled to leave behind _everything_ to go find somewhere that needs their help. They don't like making people abandon a stable life, friends, and family if the person does not fully understand what may happen

----------


## vasilidor

> Dwarves start to go gray fairly early for their long lifespans. Tradition dictates that a dwarf is still a young adult* until they start to get gray hairs in their beard. "Graybeard" is both a teasing jab for a dwarf past their prime and a term of respect for a dwarf's experience. "A head full of [color] hairs" is a term implying immaturity, inexperience, and/or ignorance.
> 
> *Equivalent 18-30, in this case.
> 
> Edit: On werebears, the reason they don't willfully spread their disease to everyone is because much like other lycanthropes are compelled to do evil things, a werebear is compelled to do good. If any area is relatively peaceful, a werebear is compelled to leave behind _everything_ to go find somewhere that needs their help. They don't like making people abandon a stable life, friends, and family if the person does not fully understand what may happen


By that same note, in an area overrun with evil they may feel compelled to turn others to fight against said evil. I am now imagining a roving band of werebear warriors that actively hunt evil and recruit as needed.

----------


## ideasmith

Any school of magic can be used to mimic any other school of magic, but mostly at such a low efficiency that it is only used to enhance the school's appropriate effects.	 That is why such spells as incendiary cloud can exist.


*Incendiary-less Cloud*
Conjuration (Creation) [Fire]
*Level:	*Sorcerer/Wizard 8 (maybe a bit lower)
*Components:	*V, S
*Casting time:	*1 standard action
*Range:	*Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
*Effect:	*Cloud spreads in 20-ft. radius, 20 ft. high
*Duration:	*1 round/level
*Saving Throw:	*None
*Spell Resistance:	*No

An incendiary-less cloud spell creates a cloud of roiling smoke. The smoke obscures all sight as a fog cloud does. 

As with a _cloudkill_ spell, the smoke moves away from you at 10 feet per round. Figure out the smokes new spread each round based on its new point of origin, which is 10 feet farther away from where you were when you cast the spell. By concentrating, you can make the cloud (actually its point of origin) move as much as 60 feet each round. Any portion of the cloud that would extend beyond your maximum range dissipates harmlessly, reducing the remainders spread thereafter.

As with _fog cloud_, wind disperses the smoke, and the spell cant be cast underwater.

----------


## Spore

> By that same note, in an area overrun with evil they may feel compelled to turn others to fight against said evil. I am now imagining a roving band of werebear warriors that actively hunt evil and recruit as needed.


Werebears are actually crafted after British were creature stories, where werewolves help out families in need, and werebears guide lost wanderers back to civilization. Werecreatures having a bad name comes from the German(ic) culture.

So I am imagining a fantasy smear campaign against werecreatures. Organizations like Eberron's Silver Flame send out hunters of the werecreatures, who largely are innocent. Of course a few enraged outliers exist, as do warring packs of were beasts that resist the human tyranny. But each "flavor" of werecreature deals with this fervor on their own.

Werewolves hunt humans. Werebears hide in caves, unless provoked. Wererats hide in sewers, often organized with crime rings for protecting each other. Wereraptors (anything flying) just build their nests in very high mountain peaks. As thus, I have the head-canon that werecreature "typical" alignment is less a personality trait or a trait of their curse, and more something written by an overeager monster hunter primer author.

----------


## Wizard_Lizard

I saw this on reddit but I'm 100% using it now.
(Can't find the link rn)
But Genies reproduces by the process of someone wishing for infinite wishes, causing them to turn into genies, who have infinite wishes that they cannot use on themselves..

----------


## Bohandas

> I saw this on reddit but I'm 100% using it now.
> (Can't find the link rn)
> But Genies reproduces by the process of someone wishing for infinite wishes, causing them to turn into genies, who have infinite wishes that they cannot use on themselves..


Wasn't that the end of _Alladin 2_?

----------


## Lord Raziere

> Wasn't that the end of _Alladin 2_?


No thats the end of Aladdin 1, Aladdin 2's ending was Jafar dying when his lamp was destroyed.

----------


## Wizard_Lizard

Oh huh. I guess I should rewatch Aladdin it's been so long I don't remember that at all...

----------


## Millstone85

> Oh huh. I guess I should rewatch Aladdin it's been so long I don't remember that at all...


Neither do I. Or well, it is debatable.

Jafar's wishes were:
"_I wish to rule on high, a sultan!_""_I wish to be the most powerful sorcerer, in the world!_""_I wish to be an all-powerful genie!_"
The last one results in the apparition of cuffs around Jafar's wrists, and of a lamp that sucks him in.

Now, yes, it could be said that Jafar wished for more wishes. Personally, I thought that was already the case with his second wish. But anyway, he explicitly wanted to become a genie.

The surprise was the enslavement. And in Jafar's defense, or Aladdin's charge, why would either of them think that genies begin their existence as slaves?

In the sequel, it is revealed that Genie lost some of his power after being freed. So I suppose it could retroactively be said that an "all-powerful genie" had to be bound to a lamp.

----------


## Spore

> Oh huh. I guess I should rewatch Aladdin it's been so long I don't remember that at all...


Do it. The movie holds up and is in some ways more modern than newer Disney movies. Plus you'll get a few references now that you might have missed.




> Now, yes, it could be said that Jafar wished for more wishes. Personally, I thought that was already the case with his second wish. But anyway, he explicitly wanted to become a genie.


We have no frame of reference of what it means to be "the most powerful sorcerer in the world". But I think wish-granting is explicitly exclusive to Genies in this world. Wish as in: reality-altering stuff. 




> The surprise was the enslavement. And in Jafar's defense, or Aladdin's charge, why would either of them think that genies begin their existence as slaves?


I mean without resorting to actual mythology which makes the whole movies questionable, you have the frame of reference that "djinns are bound". Genie is the djinn's name, but also its status and type of creature. So yes, it would be known that they start as slaves.




> In the sequel, it is revealed that Genie lost some of his power after being freed. So I suppose it could retroactively be said that an "all-powerful genie" had to be bound to a lamp.


Mythology rant: Genie is a "djinn" in the widest sense, a less powerful genie, which is an air spirit that protects humans and nature. Jafar is modelled after a more demonic and evil "ifrit", that is actively malicious and wants to destroy humanity, make them suffer and coax them into sinning. 

Much of it is doused in real-world religion (genies are proto-religious creatures, which are retroactively used in religious texts) so if you are interested, research on your own, it is pretty interesting.




> But Genies reproduces by the process of someone wishing for infinite wishes, causing them to turn into genies, who have infinite wishes that they cannot use on themselves..


An interesting head-canon but I actually feel like it is much nicer to make genies nothing but just "banished" devils. An ifrit would be a banished devil; they are LE, they need to fulfill their contracts, they love fire. They got a bit overzealous, wanting to overthrow the evil establishment with the ultimate power of spells, and they got their wish (heh!). It would be so perfectly on brand for 5e devil lore to create genies that have ultimate power to fulfill the wildest dreams, but cannot use them for themselves.

----------


## Millstone85

> We have no frame of reference of what it means to be "the most powerful sorcerer in the world". But I think wish-granting is explicitly exclusive to Genies in this world. Wish as in: reality-altering stuff.


We know it lets you trap people inside hourglasses, or turn yourself into a giant snake.

And for what it is worth, a deleted song would have confirmed that all "Prince Ali" got was a larger and louder version of Cinderella's carriage and attendants.

*Jafar:* _What were the horses?_
*Genie:* _They were roaches._

*Jafar:* _And the camels?_
*Genie:* _They were gnats._

*Jafar:* _And the elephant?_
*Genie:* _His monkey, and the rest of them were rats._

*Jafar:* _They were rodents?_
*Genie:* _Yes, diseased ones._

*Jafar:* _Oh, how very very sad._

If only Genie had pulled the same thing on "Sultan Jafar". Instead of taking over an actual country, let's send you to some remote anthill and fancy it up.  :Small Tongue:

----------


## SpyOne

> The surprise was the enslavement. And in Jafar's defense, or Aladdin's charge, why would either of them think that genies begin their existence as slaves?


Aladdin references right then why he would think that, by paraphrasing something Genie had said to him: It's all part-and-parcel of the whole genie package - phenomenal cosmic power, itty bitty living space.
Genie had told Aladdin that being a genie meant being bound to a lamp, unless someone wished for your freedom.

To Jafar, of course, that came as a complete surprise.

----------


## vasilidor

Evil gods keep their followers evil by punishing good deeds and commanding evil be done to prove their loyalty.

----------


## Luccan

> Evil gods keep their followers evil by punishing good deeds and commanding evil be done to prove their loyalty.


This is almost explicitly how Maglubiyet works in Volo's (5e). It raises a lot of questions since he apparently smites any goblinoid that steps out of line.

----------


## NovenFromTheSun

Im not actually sure if this is just a headcanon or implied somewhere in the text, but the ring of Sigil is a door with a key somewhere.

----------


## hamishspence

> This is almost explicitly how Maglubiyet works in Volo's (5e). It raises a lot of questions since he apparently smites any goblinoid that steps out of line.


I've been rereading that, and I couldn't find any references to_ him_ smiting goblinoids.

The two bugbear deities, yes - but they don't usually have clerics, and that's how their manifest their disapproval, rather than having clerics do it.

----------


## Silly Name

> I've been rereading that, and I couldn't find any references to_ him_ smiting goblinoids.
> 
> The two bugbear deities, yes - but they don't usually have clerics, and that's how their manifest their disapproval, rather than having clerics do it.


D&D gods usually aren't Discworld gods who go around breaking the windows of atheists. Being directly smote by a deity should require some tremendous act against said deity, such as despoiling their main temple or destroying a relic of theirs... Simply doing something the deity disapproves of in general shouldn't cut it, otherwise Lathander would be able to immediately kill every necromancer in Faerun.

(Showing disapproval with a follower in non-lethal ways is probably more tolerated - sending omens and the like)

----------


## hamishspence

Yup - when Drizzt saves an elf's life, Lolth doesn't smite him, she has a demon minion warn the house leader that the house is "out of the favour of Lolth" - and lets the _house_ members do all the investigating.

----------


## Millstone85

> Im not actually sure if this is just a headcanon or implied somewhere in the text, but the ring of Sigil is a door with a key somewhere.


The Spire is the key. You just need to find how to lower the city a bit.

----------


## vasilidor

1. the gods are not omniscient in Faerune.
2. the gods also reward behavior they like, see clerics and other divine classes, with power.
3. most of the punishment is dealt with by minions and clerics.

----------


## Silly Name

> 1. the gods are not omniscient in Faerune.
> 2. the gods also reward behavior they like, see clerics and other divine classes, with power.
> 3. most of the punishment is dealt with by minions and clerics.


I'm pretty sure all of those things are actual canon.

----------


## Luccan

> I've been rereading that, and I couldn't find any references to_ him_ smiting goblinoids.
> 
> The two bugbear deities, yes - but they don't usually have clerics, and that's how their manifest their disapproval, rather than having clerics do it.


I got them mixed up. I think Volo's tried to make humanoid monsters sympathetic in all the wrong ways and that particular one always stuck out to me as being weirdly PC-hostile for a book that let you actually play one of those creatures

----------


## vasilidor

> I'm pretty sure all of those things are actual canon.


I am aware, but it is an explanation as to why every instance of someone acting good in the Drow homes and amongst goblins is not autopunished by gods who want evil while said gods are trying to make everyone evil.

----------


## Witty Username

Some Abyss personal lore. Killing a Demon Lord within the Abyss will cause the absorbed world they are within to return to being a material plane. And then they will reform in another area of the Abyss along with any demons that had been killed in the area.

----------


## noob

> Some Abyss personal lore. Killing a Demon Lord within the Abyss will cause the absorbed world they are within to return to being a material plane. And then they will reform in another area of the Abyss along with any demons that had been killed in the area.


So if you kill an infinity of times a specific demon lord you can unabyss the entire abyss?

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> Killing a Demon Lord within the Abyss will cause the absorbed world they are within to return to being a material plane.


...did 5e retcon Abyssal layers to all be corrupted former Material Plane worlds that were then absorbed into the Abyss, or something like that?  Or is "Abyssal layers are absorbed Material worlds" part of the headcanon?

----------


## Millstone85

> ...did 5e retcon Abyssal layers to all be corrupted former Material Plane worlds that were then absorbed into the Abyss, or something like that?  Or is "Abyssal layers are absorbed Material worlds" part of the headcanon?


Not necessarily all layers, but 5e's description of a typical demonic invasion does end with:


> When a demonic incursion runs its course, no vestige remains of the world that existed before--in effect, the realm has become another layer of the Abyss.

----------


## thorr-kan

> Not necessarily all layers, but 5e's description of a typical demonic invasion does end with:


There are also a few references in late 3E material to ongoing demonic invasions to different material planes.

----------


## noob

how many campaigns are about defeating a demonic invasion?

----------


## Satinavian

> So if you kill an infinity of times a specific demon lord you can unabyss the entire abyss?


Even if that would work, no.

Calculating with infinities is tricky. No matter how many layers you destroy, the number of remaining layers does not change. Also only if the layers are countable you would even arrive at every given layer at a finite time.

----------


## Cicciograna

> Even if that would work, no.
> 
> Calculating with infinities is tricky. No matter how many layers you destroy, the number of remaining layers does not change. Also only if the layers are countable you would even arrive at every given layer at a finite time.


New head canon: Abyss layers have cardinality of aleph TWO.
Because CHAOS!

----------


## KillianHawkeye

> how many campaigns are about defeating a demonic invasion?


A theoretically infinite number.  :Small Smile:

----------


## Witty Username

> ...did 5e retcon Abyssal layers to all be corrupted former Material Plane worlds that were then absorbed into the Abyss, or something like that?  Or is "Abyssal layers are absorbed Material worlds" part of the headcanon?


I expect the intention is there is a core Abyss and it is surrounded-connected to a vast expanse of conquered worlds.
Because Demon Lords are referred to in the invasion stuff, I figure their domains are mostly worlds conquered over the millennia.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> Not necessarily all layers, but 5e's description of a typical demonic invasion does end with:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  Originally Posted by Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, p25
> 
> When a demonic incursion runs its course, no vestige remains of the world that existed before--in effect, the realm has become another layer of the Abyss.


 :Small Annoyed: 

<morbo>Outer Planes do not work that way!</morbo>




> There are also a few references in late 3E material to ongoing demonic invasions to different material planes.





> I expect the intention is there is a core Abyss and it is surrounded-connected to a vast expanse of conquered worlds.


There's a proud tradition of demons invading various worlds and demon princes trying to conquer worlds for themselves, going all the way back to the Queen of the Demonweb Pits module wherein Lolth's realm had portals to seven different worlds that her forces had conquered or were in the process of conquering.  Having lots of portals/breaches/rifts/etc. between certain Abyssal layers and certain Material worlds is totally kosher.

But that's very different from bunches of Material Plane worlds getting yoinked _into_ the Abyss, especially if that's supposed to be a natural consequence of having a critical mass of demons rather than it resulting from a fancy one-off ritual of some sort.  Regions shifting between planes due to local philosophical shifts has always been only an Outer Plane thing (layers moving between planes, Outlands gate towns getting absorbed into their connected planes, etc.), and it kinda has to work that way because otherwise it severely undermines the Material Plane's position as a cosmic Switzerland and one would start seeing things like the Blood War spilling out into every Prime world as both sides try to absorb worlds for themselves.

That bit of 5e lore is simply very poorly considered and, appropriately for this thread, should be shot with a headcannon.

----------


## Witty Username

That is kinda why the Nine Hells exist. By Tome Of Foes assessment. Devils can no longer add to the Nine Hells due to the Pact Primeval acting as a limit on how much they can exploit any given material world. And Asmoudeous uses the Blood War as a justification for his continued existence because of how much he devotes to containing the Abyss. Mordenkienen's take being that they are close enough in power that it is difficult for either to make permanent gains and will periodically aid one side or the other to maintain that out of fear that if either wins the entire multiverse will be put at risk.

----------


## Millstone85

> By Tome Of Foes assessment. Devils can no longer add to the Nine Hells due to the Pact Primeval acting as a limit on how much they can exploit any given material world. And Asmoudeous uses the Blood War as a justification for his continued existence because of how much he devotes to containing the Abyss.


MToF describes how Asmodeus got Primus to acknowledge him as a force of law and a necessary evil. It also attributes to Primus the creation of the Ruby Rod as an artifact that "_grants Asmodeus and his underlings the right to enter into contracts with mortals for their souls but unleashes an inescapable punishment upon any devil that breaches such a contract_" (MToF p10).

I don't see anything about a limit on how much they can exploit any given material world. Also, the book soon after says that Stygia may once have been a world of the Material Plane, whose "_inhabitants, facing annihilation, are said to have pledged their souls and their world to Asmodeus_" (MToF p14). That would have been a good place to mention such a pact now being forbidden.

----------


## Bohandas

The races that seem to be monocultures aren't. They just look that way from the outside

----------


## Witty Username

Devils can contract mortals use make use of martial worlds via imperialism, but there isn't going to be a 10th Hell anytime soon. I would need to double check if that was in Tome of Foes, though.

----------


## vasilidor

Orc fashion is based around being such a gaudy Eyesore that no one can stand to look at you because it hurts too much.
Imagine Chartreuse with the most brilliant orange dots and pink stripes.

----------


## HidesHisEyes

In my Forgotten Realms games, Drizzt, Elminster and all the other celebrities are long-dead heroes of legend. This way they cant swoop in and save the day, and dont need contrived reasons not to. I like the player characters to be unequivocally the most powerful people for thousands of miles around except for their enemies.

----------


## KorvinStarmast

> In my Forgotten Realms games, Drizzt, Elminster and all the other celebrities are long-dead heroes of legend.


You are my hero. 



> This way they cant swoop in and save the day, and dont need contrived reasons not to. I like the player characters to be unequivocally the most powerful people for thousands of miles around except for their enemies.


 So do I.

----------


## dafrca

> In my Forgotten Realms games, Drizzt, Elminster and all the other celebrities are long-dead heroes of legend.


I like this idea. Allows the stories to still be told but allows the new legends to grow and be built by the party. Nice.  :Small Smile:

----------


## HidesHisEyes

> You are my hero. 
>  So do I.





> I like this idea. Allows the stories to still be told but allows the new legends to grow and be built by the party. Nice.


Thanks! Yeah it works for me. And if you are playing with people who know and like those characters you can still put in little nods to them, like they could find one of Drizzts swords or something.

----------


## Luccan

> Orc fashion is based around being such a gaudy Eyesore that no one can stand to look at you because it hurts too much.
> Imagine Chartreuse with the most brilliant orange dots and pink stripes.


Funny thing, the 3.5 Monster Manual (and I assume the 3.0 as well) specifically mentions orcs dressing in horrendous colors, at least by human taste. This has just helped me form my own headcanon as to why they dress that way (in 3.5): Orcs actually have weak eyes for identifying color, probably linked to their light sensitivity. In order for an Orc to appear flashy and stand out, as they might want to do in battle to distinguish themselves, they have to wear vibrant colors that stick out from their surroundings so other orcs can appreciate the difference.

----------


## KorvinStarmast

> Funny thing, the 3.5 Monster Manual (and I assume the 3.0 as well) specifically mentions orcs dressing in horrendous colors, at least by human taste. This has just helped me form my own headcanon as to why they dress that way (in 3.5): Orcs actually have weak eyes for identifying color, probably linked to their light sensitivity. In order for an Orc to appear flashy and stand out, as they might want to do in battle to distinguish themselves, they have to wear vibrant colors that stick out from their surroundings so other orcs can appreciate the difference.


 Hmm, so they dress like golfers in the 1960's and 1970's.  :Small Big Grin:  
(The outrageous colors golfers wore then was common currency for jokes and gags when I was growing up 
 - I've noticed that only a few golfers now do that, but some still do).

----------


## Bohandas

In fantasy in general I'm struck with the idea of most summoning diagrams actually being based on petrie polygons of regular polytopes, such as the 4-simplex and the octohedron

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

I've actually used that exact flavor explanation before!  The "Grand Unified Theory of Magic" I use in my games involves spells/powers/etc. being something along the lines of 27-dimensional geometric constructs, and the prevalence of written magic and glyphs and such in the rules is thus due to the ease of projecting portions of such constructs onto 2D and 3D surfaces.

To assign specific shapes to different kinds of magic circles (because in one game I needed an in-game reason to use summoning circles with a bunch of different kinds of polygrams), I ruled that the summoning diagrams for LG, CG, LE, and CE outsiders incorporated pentagrams, nonagrams, triangles, and heptagrams, respectively.  Pentagrams for LG because Celestia is opposed by the Abyss and pentagrams are the classical demon thing, nonagrams for CG because Arborea is opposed by the _Nine_ Hells, triangles for LE because Arborea has three layers, and heptagrams for CE because of the Seven Heavens.

TN outsiders got octagrams, for the eight alignments surrounding the "center" of the Outlands; natives of the Transitive Planes got hexagrams, for the two sets of three known Transitive Planes (Astral/Ethereal/Ordial and Dream/Shadow/Mirror); elementals got diamonds, for the four Elemental Planes; energons got circles with lines down the center, for the two Energy Planes; and plain ol' magic circles covered everything else that didn't fit into those categories, so that covered all the numbers from 1 through 9 and made for a nice logical-seeming progression.

----------


## Wizard_Lizard

Fiends will seek out sorcerers who haven't tapped into their magic yet and make deals for their souls in exchange for magic as a scam.

----------


## NovenFromTheSun

> Because of Strahd being called the first vampire, I think that the world Barovia came from is older than most other prime material worlds, perhaps one of the first inhabited (by humans at least).


With Fizbangs Treasury of Dragons, Im going to update this to say that Barovia was part of the First World.

----------


## thorr-kan

> With Fizbangs Treasury of Dragons, Im going to update this to say that Barovia was part of the First World.


Oh, that's a clever one.  It would be a nice, deep bit of lore.

----------


## NovenFromTheSun

> Oh, that's a clever one.  It would be a nice, deep bit of lore.


Thank you kindly!

I have some other thoughts on it:
1) The Sunless Spire is listed as a place with echoes across the worlds, and where Gulthias, who from what I understand was also an early vampire, got staked and unleashed the plague of Gultheas Trees and their blight offspring. Possible evidence for my theory?

2) A possible snag is that the Ulmest Inquisitors entry in VRGtR states that their current home base is in a city north of where Barovia once was. I could say thats its on a world echo that contained the site of Barovia, but it still feels like papering it over.

----------


## Vknight

> Hmm, so they dress like golfers in the 1960's and 1970's.  
> (The outrageous colors golfers wore then was common currency for jokes and gags when I was growing up 
>  - I've noticed that only a few golfers now do that, but some still do).


My orcs do it because each clan has there own unique and terrible colour scheme that they proudly wear to stand out when battling one another.

----------


## dafrca

> My orcs do it because each clan has there own unique and terrible colour scheme that they proudly wear to stand out when battling one another.


The mental image of a bunch of orcs battling while dressed like golfers from the 70's is just too good to pass up. I would love to see that as an illustration myself.  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Vknight

> The mental image of a bunch of orcs battling while dressed like golfers from the 70's is just too good to pass up. I would love to see that as an illustration myself.


The more hybrid celtic and golfer but correct

----------


## Spore

> My orcs do it because each clan has there own unique and terrible colour scheme that they proudly wear to stand out when battling one another.


Imagine their battles being ABOUT the color scheme.

"Rose be superior color. Death to Mauve clan!!

"Waaaaaaagh!"

And they would  behead a fellow orc for calling turquoise blue.

----------


## KorvinStarmast

> Imagine their battles being ABOUT the color scheme.
> 
> "Rose be superior color. Death to Mauve clan!!
> 
> "Waaaaaaagh!"
> 
> And they would  behead a fellow orc for calling turquoise blue.


 Yes, a thousand times yes! Kind of like football fans   :Small Eek:

----------


## Mark Hall

> Imagine their battles being ABOUT the color scheme.
> 
> "Rose be superior color. Death to Mauve clan!!
> 
> "Waaaaaaagh!"
> 
> And they would  behead a fellow orc for calling turquoise blue.


Consider: If orcs have a different color range (perhaps they see into the infrared, but lose blues and purples.

And so you have orcs who are partially dressed in outlandish colors because they just kinda look greyish.

----------


## KorvinStarmast

> And so you have orcs who are partially dressed in outlandish colors because they just kinda look greyish.


 _Elf Eye for the Fashionable Orc_ might become a huge hit as a traveling show ...

----------


## Bohandas

animate dead isn't [Evil] for any particular philosophical or consequentialist reason but simply because of a mechanistic quirk of karmic dynamics

----------


## Spore

> animate dead isn't [Evil] for any particular philosophical or consequentialist reason but simply because of a mechanistic quirk of karmic dynamics


Evil and Good being cosmic forces based on objective criteria (belonging or opposing the Upper Planes) is long in my serious D&D head canon.

----------


## KorvinStarmast

> The timeline as I see it:
> OD&D - Early Dark Ages
> AD&D 1E - Transition of Dark Ages to Early Renaissance
> AD&D 2E - Early Renaissance
> D&D 3.0-3.5 - Mid Renaissance
> D&D 4E - NEVER HAPPENED - or possibly a past timeline off of the d20 Modern setting
> D&D 5E - After Renaissance, maybe just before what would have been our Industrial Revolution
> *Eberron in play is like adding the Industrial Revolution to the edition's timeline


 I'd suggest OD&D is Late Dark Ages (Clovis-Charlemagne) to early Medieval, given that it has Turcopoles showing up for a cleric when they build a stronghold.  :Small Wink:  
But I love your timeline, would use!

----------


## No brains

I'd also like to imagine a kind of continuity between the editions. Old recurring characters were present for the changes of edition, remember the way things were, and maybe had a hand in the change. I remember reading something about _Die, Vecna, Die!_ being the 'end of 2E' and I love to take that literally. Vecna ascending to godhood brought forth the d20 system. His evil plan to destroy d10 initiative and percentile skills won.

----------


## Bohandas

Each layer of Mount Celestia is onfinitely tall. That's why normal mountaineering is insufficient to ascend it

----------


## RedMage125

> Evil and Good being cosmic forces based on objective criteria (belonging or opposing the Upper Planes) is long in my serious D&D head canon.


Pretty sure that's actually canon...

----------


## Beleriphon

> Yes, a thousand times yes! Kind of like football fans


Almost like another franchise in space has football hooligan orks...

Git em boyz! Deff to da humies! Krump em roight good! Kick em roight in da teef!

----------


## KorvinStarmast

> Almost like another franchise in space has football hooligan orks...
> 
> Git em boyz! Deff to da humies! Krump em roight good! Kick em roight in da teef!


 I am not a WH40K player, so I'll just guess at that reference and recall that GW originated in the UK.  :Small Cool:

----------


## Beleriphon

> I am not a WH40K player, so I'll just guess at that reference and recall that GW originated in the UK.


Very much WH40K. Orks were always a straight up parody of the football hooligans.

I need ta fin' da boyz and give sum humie a good krumpin!

----------


## Steven K

Lawful Good deities are just as willing and able to find and abuse major exploits in rules systems, even ones they crafted themselves, as any Lawful Evil creature. As such, at least some of them likely can and do have ways of influencing the nine hells and its denizens directly in subtle ways.

For example, a relatively junior devil or collective thereof finally gathers the resources to become a warlock patron. They choose an adventurer, and said adventurer joins a party with a cleric whose deity is actively paying attention to that cleric at the time. This deity is one of the savier lawful good types in the pantheon (maybe one of the important figures, maybe a comparatively recent and minor godling who nonetheless was taught or intuitively knew a great deal about what they could and could not get away with). 

Said deity somehow has a comprehensive knowledge of the infernal bureaucracy, enough to quietly send a request to negotiate directly with the warlock's patron(s) to whoever could, and also would, approve it and do so quickly and secretly, maybe in exchange for some minor concession or drawing on a precedent already established by someone further up the chain, or a favour owed. They might do this under an alias of some kind, possibly posing as or working through a fictional or complicit devil to avoid undue attention from both sides. 

They get permission, and in short order contact the warlock patron, and spin a totally true justification that convinces the devil to make a 'non-aggression' contract or whatever, ostensibly to protect the cleric, but does so in perfect  (infernal) legalese such that the devil is both genuinely impressed, and suddenly privy to 'secret information' about the gods and their dealings, which might suggest to it for any number of reasons a course of action it had never considered before, without realising the god was actively working  towards some longstanding plan or purpose designed to favour Law as a whole or long-term overall Good, a plan conceived long before that devil was even an imp.

----------


## Bohandas

Despite being ostensibly concerned specifically with arcane secrets and forbidden knowledge, the cult of Vecna's money and influence comes more from trading in day-to-day secrets and blackmail

----------


## Mark Hall

Kobolds do not "have scales like reptiles", but rather "have horrible skin conditions". They're MANGY in the truest sense of the word. Kobolds with access to skin care or Cure Disease? They look like little dog-people.

----------


## Luccan

> Kobolds do not "have scales like reptiles", but rather "have horrible skin conditions". They're MANGY in the truest sense of the word. Kobolds with access to skin care or Cure Disease? They look like little dog-people.


I'm considering moving Kobolds to be seen in-universe as a descriptor for "those tiny, thieving, violent things that aren't goblins or our local murderous amphibians". Some kobolds are dog people, some are tiny dragon/lizard folk. Others are more like bipedal rats and then some are based on those early mammal-reptile ancestors I can't remember the name of (which I might have read the idea for in this thread).

----------


## Mark Hall

> I'm considering moving Kobolds to be seen in-universe as a descriptor for "those tiny, thieving, violent things that aren't goblins or our local murderous amphibians". Some kobolds are dog people, some are tiny dragon/lizard folk. Others are more like bipedal rats and then some are based on those early mammal-reptile ancestors I can't remember the name of (which I might have read the idea for in this thread).


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapsid

----------


## Luccan

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapsid


Yeah that's the one. I don't remember where I saw the art of Synapsid kobolds, but now I have too many options for different kobolds to not use them all.

----------


## Spore

> Pretty sure that's actually canon...


Sorry for the late reply. Yes and no, because the debate on whether Good and Evil are cosmic or karmic forces changes from game to game.




> I'm considering moving Kobolds to be seen in-universe as a descriptor for "those tiny, thieving, violent things that aren't goblins or our local murderous amphibians". Some kobolds are dog people, some are tiny dragon/lizard folk. Others are more like bipedal rats and then some are based on those early mammal-reptile ancestors I can't remember the name of (which I might have read the idea for in this thread).


Goblins, kobolds, faeries, pixies and brownies are actually just exchangable descriptions for the average D&D commoner to describe "tiny ugly humanoids" that robbed us, killed some of our livestock and are generally ugly to be around. When described that a group of goblins has raided a nearby farm, make sure to get a proper description, else your group might be caught in a weird game of fey origin as said goblins are suddenly brownies and other fey instead of the expected low level mooks.

Remember, the farmer has half a dozen hearty children, a wife and a toolshed full of make-shift weapons. He could fend of something as poorly coordinated as a goblin raid. Fey however? Their grandma has told them not to screw with fey.

----------


## elros

For me, thieves dont have beards but all assassins do.

----------


## KillianHawkeye

> For me, thieves dont have beards but all assassins do.


What? Why?  :Small Confused:

----------


## Bohandas

I think he means specifically that they have goatees

----------


## ideasmith

> For me, thieves dont have beards but all assassins do.


This calls for more explanation. This is the first time I have heard of a class having facial hair restrictions. 

Also, how do female assassins meet this requirement?

----------


## No brains

Assassins have beards because taking beards off of bodies is a way to prove you did a job. Beards have terrible resale value anywhere else and that's why thieves don't take them.

----------


## elros

> What? Why?


I know it is silly, but it started because halflings and elves had dexterity bonuses, and neither race is known for having facial hair. And no self respecting dwarf would be a thief, so only a beardless dwarf would be one. 
And the idea of an assassin having a beard grew out of the Star Trek joke that evil counterparts had facial hair. 
This was actually a running joke in one of our campaigns. And yes, we were dorks.

----------


## RedMage125

> And the idea of an assassin having a beard grew out of the Star Trek joke that evil counterparts had facial hair.


LOL, you mean this...



> I think he means specifically that they have goatees


was correct?

----------


## KillianHawkeye

It was only the evil Spock who had facial hair. Everyone else's mirror counterparts were identical to the normal universe version. Well, I think Sulu had a big scar on his face. Should all assassins have big scar on their face?

----------


## elros

> It was only the evil Spock who had facial hair. Everyone else's mirror counterparts were identical to the normal universe version. Well, I think Sulu had a big scar on his face. Should all assassins have big scar on their face?


You have to remember in the 1980s there was no streaming or internet, so we had to rely on our memories of the Star Trek episodes. Details like goatees and others were glossed over for the sake of levity. 
Its the same reason why we quoted Monty Python- it was near impossible to watch, so our quotes were how we shared the experience. I am sure we made mistakes about of the exact dialogue, but we were close enough to be entertained.

----------


## KillianHawkeye

> You have to remember in the 1980s there was no streaming or internet, so we had to rely on our memories of the Star Trek episodes. Details like goatees and others were glossed over for the sake of levity. 
> Its the same reason why we quoted Monty Python- it was near impossible to watch, so our quotes were how we shared the experience. I am sure we made mistakes about of the exact dialogue, but we were close enough to be entertained.


In the 80s, you could easily find some TV channel playing reruns of Star Trek in syndication. That's how I watched it as a kid.

----------


## elros

> In the 80s, you could easily find some TV channel playing reruns of Star Trek in syndication. That's how I watched it as a kid.


You are 100% right, and Star Trek was shown consistently on one of my local TV channels since 1969, so a lot of people knew about Star Trek. The problem, however, was that there was no "on demand", so we had to watch whatever episode was showing at whatever time slot the station wanted, which was usually midnight. There were some die-hard Star Trek fans who knew a lot about the show, but I was not that into it, so there were a lot of episodes I didn't see. On top of that, there was no internet to fact check or discuss issues, so I had only passing familiarity with the show. That's why we knew about the parallel universe and evil Spock had facial hair, but not enough to know Mr Sulu had a big scar instead. If I had known that, I *absolutely* would have had assassins with big scars on their faces!

BTW, growing up in the 80s I found that D&D players were more into LoTR and other fantasy novels than into science fiction, but that might have just been my experience. The people who liked sci-fi gravitated more to Traveller or BattleTech.

----------


## No brains

Because they are tiny, stealthy, and can all turn invisible/ change shape, everyone is constantly watched by imps, quasits, pixies, and sprites. It's very hard to prove otherwise, and a great tool for DMs to have NPCs of any alignment learn what the PCs are up to.

----------


## Bohandas

The ability boost books change to tell their specific reader the specific things they personally need to know to improve themself in that area. That's why copying them over normally doesn't do any good; before they've been used they don;t really say anything, and after they've been used they say things that are specific to one oarticular person

----------


## Wizard_Lizard

Nonwerewolf Lycanthropes really hate the term 'Lycanthrope' as 'lycan' is wolf, so other were-creatures use terms such as 'zooanthrope' or other terms specific to their condition.

----------


## Lord Raziere

> Nonwerewolf Lycanthropes really hate the term 'Lycanthrope' as 'lycan' is wolf, so other were-creatures use terms such as 'zooanthrope' or other terms specific to their condition.


the universal term is therianthrope actually.

----------


## Millstone85

> Nonwerewolf Lycanthropes really hate the term 'Lycanthrope' as 'lycan' is wolf, so other were-creatures use terms such as 'zooanthrope' or other terms specific to their condition.





> the universal term is therianthrope actually.


I was going to follow up with a related humorous headcanon, but it turns out it is plain canon that the werewolf-vs-wolfwere feud is shared between all therianthropes and antherions.  :Small Big Grin: 

However, I disagree with the latter condition being passed only to offsprings. A normal wolf bitten by a wolfwere should become a wolfwere.

----------


## Mark Hall

> I was going to follow up with a related humorous headcanon, but it turns out it is plain canon that the werewolf-vs-wolfwere feud is shared between all therianthropes and antherions. 
> 
> However, I disagree with the latter condition being passed only to offsprings. A normal wolf bitten by a wolfwere should become a wolfwere.


"Even a wolf who is clean of fur, and licks himself by night, may become a wolfwere when the moon is full and the belladonna blooms."  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## KorvinStarmast

> Should all assassins have big scar on their face?


 Only if they deal in hard drugs and have an Uzi a repeating crossbow as their Little Friend.  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Metastachydium

> 'lycan' is wolf


No it isn't. Contrary to popular belief, lycanthrope does not combine the roots *lycan- and *throp-; it comes from the Greek term _λυκανθρωπος_ (transl. lykanthrōpos), a combination of _λυκος_ ('wolf') and _ανθρωπος_ ('human').




> so other were-creatures use terms such as 'zooanthrope' or other terms specific to their condition.


That would be _zoanthrope_ and the common term is indeed _therianthrope_.

----------


## Millstone85

> 'lycan' is wolf





> No it isn't. Contrary to popular belief, lycanthrope does not combine the roots *lycan- and *throp-; it comes from the Greek term _λυκανθρωπος_ (transl. lykanthrōpos), a combination of _λυκος_ ('wolf') and _ανθρωπος_ ('human').


... Okay, I had to parse that.

You are saying the word commonly thought to be a contraction of lycan-anthrope is actually just lyc-anthrope.

----------


## elros

> The ability boost books change to tell their specific reader the specific things they personally need to know to improve themself in that area. That's why copying them over normally doesn't do any good; before they've been used they don;t really say anything, and after they've been used they say things that are specific to one oarticular person


I really like that explanation! It is fluffy and provides a justification for one use books.

----------


## Metastachydium

> ... Okay, I had to parse that.
> 
> You are saying the word commonly thought to be a contraction of lycan-anthrope is actually just lyc-anthrope.


Precisely. The Greek etymon of _lycanthrope_ derives from _λυκο-ανθρωπος_ (transl. lyko-anthrōpos) through the elision of the stem-final _o_ in _λυκο-ς_ (which can be treated as an irregular contraction as well, but I digress), and thereby, _lycanthrope_ is ultimately indeed really just _lyc(o)-anthrope_. In fact, _λυκαν-_ as a root isn't even a thing in Greek (well, _λυκαν_ (transl. lykān) _does_ exist as the contracted (!) Doric (!) singular accusative (!) of λυκεη ('wolfskin'), but inflected forms like that entering a compound like this makes no sense whatsoever grammatically).

----------


## Millstone85

> Precisely. The Greek etymon of _lycanthrope_ derives from _λυκο-ανθρωπος_ (transl. lyko-anthrōpos) through the elision of the stem-final _o_ in _λυκο-ς_ (which can be treated as an irregular contraction as well, but I digress), and thereby, _lycanthrope_ is ultimately indeed really just _lyc(o)-anthrope_. In fact, _λυκαν-_ as a root isn't even a thing in Greek (well, _λυκαν_ (transl. lykān) _does_ exist as the contracted (!) Doric (!) singular accusative (!) of λυκεη ('wolfskin'), but inflected forms like that entering a compound like this makes no sense whatsoever grammatically).


Since you understand how to properly make words from Greek roots, which I really don't, what do you think of the aforementioned "antherion"? Should it have been left as "anthrotherion"? Is there better?

----------


## Metastachydium

> what do you think of the aforementioned "antherion"?


It's a perfectly good Greek word and one that's close to my heart. It also absolutely doesn't mean what the developers seem to have thought it means. It is the diminutive substantivized form of _ανθηρ-ος/-α/-ον_ ('flowery, blooming etc.'). It would mean something like 'little flowering plant' and similar stuff.




> Should it have been left as "anthrotherion"?


Definitely _not_. That means, well, _nothing_. Unlike _andro-_ ('(male hu)man'), _*anthro-_ is not the root/stem of any Greek word that I know of. Please don't use this one.




> Is there better?


Certainly. It's a bit on the bulky side, however. It'd look something like _anthropotherion_, _anthropother_ or (following a common pattern of anglicization) _anthropothere_.

----------


## Millstone85

> It's a perfectly good Greek word and one that's close to my heart. It also absolutely doesn't mean what the developers seem to have thought it means. It is the diminutive substantivized form of _ανθηρ-ος/-α/-ον_ ('flowery, blooming etc.'). It would mean something like 'little flowering plant' and similar stuff.


It does go well with your username and avatar.  :Small Big Grin: 




> Definitely _not_. That means, well, _nothing_. Unlike _andro-_ ('(male hu)man'), _*anthro-_ is not the root/stem of any Greek word that I know of.





> It'd look something like _anthropotherion_, _anthropother_ or (following a common pattern of anglicization) _anthropothere_.


Ah, I see. Like how we have anthropology and not just "anthrology". Also, yes, I like anthropothere. It feels in line with therianthrope, and like it only needs an é to become a French word.

----------


## Metastachydium

> It does go well with your username and avatar.


Right?




> Ah, I see. Like how we have anthropology and not just "anthrology".


Mhm.




> Also, yes, I like anthropothere. It feels in line with therianthrope, and like it only needs an é to become a French word.


Glad I could help!

----------


## RedMage125

> No it isn't. Contrary to popular belief, lycanthrope does not combine the roots *lycan- and *throp-; it comes from the Greek term _λυκανθρωπος_ (transl. lykanthrōpos), a combination of _λυκος_ ('wolf') and _ανθρωπος_ ('human').


I mean...that one poster aside*, a lot of D&D players already knew that it was "lykos" and "anthropos" (I know there are accent marks in there, but I'm tired and forgot the hotkeys).  It was explicitly mentioned (along with the proper "therianthrope" moniker) in the 2e Monstrous Manual.  Not to mention, those familiar with the root word of "anthropology" or "anthropomorphic" (with respect to "animal people" races), "philanthropy", etc.

I really think that more people were familiar with "lykos+anthropos" than you give them credit for.

*I suppose younger generations who grew up with the Underworld series already being a thing might also have mistaken "Lycan" for a distinct word. But I always caught that the "-an" was indicative of "anthropos".  I kind of assumed that in that world, "Lycan" was something of a slur, implying that they were less than human. But the first of those movies came out when I was in college, and my generation also had a search engine called "lycos" (spelling is off, I know), whose mascot was a wolf.




> That would be _zoanthrope_ and the common term is indeed _therianthrope_.


What I found funny was that "zoanthrope" was the word used for the video game series Bloody Roar (awesome fighting game, where each character had a hybrid beast form).  And I must confess that, when I was younger, I had thought it was a made-up word.  Then when I was older, and started getting into etymology as a hobby interest (I am that big of a nerd), I found it wasn't.  It was around the time I learned that "zoology" should probably sound more like "zoh-ah-lo-gee" than "zoo-ah-lo-gee".  Which makes me think that even the shortened form of just "zoo" stems from American mispronunciation becoming so rampant.

----------


## Spore

With werecreatures, and creaturewere, I do suspect there are (permanent) transformations from humanoid to humanoid in D&D. The reincarnation spell is a heavy tip towards that idea. Aside from horrific wizard experiments (which base around 80% of weird monsters in this game) the idea of multiple personalities being reborn in one body is a cool concept (I admittedly stole from Final Fantasy 14, which stole it from Native American mythology) which would also explain both the idea that elves see being disconnected from one's physical sex a blessing and why transgender identities exist in D&D.

Because if half-breeds only exist because the gods allow the races to mix, after the same logic trans identities would form. "Hey, we have this male body right here. I know your person is melded with at least 7 people and three of them are male, so good luck in that life." shouts the god before thrusting the soul back into the body.

----------


## Runa_Dacino

> With werecreatures, and creaturewere, I do suspect there are (permanent) transformations from humanoid to humanoid in D&D. The reincarnation spell is a heavy tip towards that idea. Aside from horrific wizard experiments (which base around 80% of weird monsters in this game) the idea of multiple personalities being reborn in one body is a cool concept (I admittedly stole from Final Fantasy 14, which stole it from Native American mythology) which would also explain both the idea that elves see being disconnected from one's physical sex a blessing and why transgender identities exist in D&D.
> 
> Because if half-breeds only exist because the gods allow the races to mix, after the same logic trans identities would form. "Hey, we have this male body right here. I know your person is melded with at least 7 people and three of them are male, so good luck in that life." shouts the god before thrusting the soul back into the body.


Savage Species shows rituals for permanent Humanoid-to-Humanoid transformations! It gives one idea of Orc to elf, I believe, or ogre to elf.

Within the Persistent World I play, my main character used to be a human worshipper of Sehanine Moonbow, and transgender to boot. She served her deity faithfully, did some Epic (TM) deeds in her service and was rewarded with a Miracle.

The Miracle reset her from a powerful sorcerer and adventurer to a Commoner Moon Elf woman, and she had to work to be an Adventurer proper again. She believes she was born in the body of a human man to learn empathy and insight which she lacked in her previous life. The Miracle, in technical terms, was a "Reincarnation". She is now a Bard/Cleric/Duelist after witnessing Time of Troubles on Evermeet.

I do doubt that Seldarine in Forgotten Realms would meld souls like that - Individuality is treasured for elves, after all! While Angharradh exists as a form of "Melded entity" - she is closer to the idea of elven marriage and villages and societies. Angharradh requires that a society/couple can "become one" during times of crises, and return to normalcy that celebrates differences when the crisis passes (after all, Aerdrie, Sehanine and Hanali continue to exist and do their own thing!)





As for my own headcanon in line with this: Chaotic Good clergies should have spells that match the body to the soul. This is backed up by the Halfling Pantheon granting spells that can forcibly turn those who have been gross enemies of halflings into a halfling (Demihuman Deities, Yondalla, Yondalla spells, Day in the Life)

----------


## Bohandas

One of my headcanons is that overdeities are limited to very specific areas where their overdeity powers actually work. This explains why Lord Ao seems to do nothing outside of Realmspace, the High God is unheard of outside of Krynnspace, and the Lady of Pain never seems to exert any direct influence boyond the city of Sigil

----------


## Starlit Dragon

The Wall of the Faithless is ardently defended by many evil gods, a few neutral ones, and a significant number of devils. The good aligned deities hate it, but tearing it down would be extremely difficult. Added to the fact that the Wall's existence benefits them, many benevolent gods grudgingly turn their heads aside.

The idea that the Wall is just or good in any manner is false, but many of its defenders have spread this idea among mortals. 

Good aligned Outsiders often raid the wall, much as the fiends do. Slaadi also tear a few souls from it on occasion. Gods and their servants tend to be sparing and subtle, as not to start a divine war.

----------


## Morphic tide

> Only planar creatures can have alignments.


The cosmology completely breaks from that. Alignment is something mortals _have_, while for Outsiders it's something they _are_. With mortals, their Alignment is a "pointer" made up of their acquired resonance with Outer Plane forces, with "Always" Evil being a matter of xenopsychology like Beholders, biological dependency on atrocity like Illithids, or overwhelmingly dominant culture-group exaltation of Evil-aligning behavior. With Outsiders, they are literally, physically, made out of the forces of Alignment. It doesn't matter that a Succubus turned out so strange she became a Paladin, she's still Evil because she's made out of the stuff of the Abyss. Meanwhile, "always Evil" mortals are a mix of fundamentally hostile xenopsychology like Beholders, biological dependency on atrocity like Illithid, and the work of Evil deities reinforcing cultural exultation of Evil acts like the Drow.




> Abominations are the original yuan-ti. The human-like ones are the crossbreeds.


Actually, as they're _literally_ human-snake hybrids descended from human cultists to various snake gods doing _weird_ things with snakes, it's extremely likely the original Yuan-ti was most similar to a Broodguard, an obviously haphazard admixture of humanoid and reptilian characteristics. Also fits with being something that can be done to Humans. Unless the Abomination is just a high-power flavor of Sarrukh-Human hybrid, if one is willing to accept Serpent Kingdoms _anything_.




> And Elans are the missing link. The creation of an elan kills the human, implanting a proto-tadpole. Elans are usually not aware of this themselves.


Wait, does this mean the Adversary accidentally completed the Elan project by figuring out how to finish survival of personality? I think it'd be better if the issue with Elans is that their "rebirth" introduces _most_ of a new soul that occupies _most_ of the central nervous system in a proto-Ceremorph, actually being _harder_ to undo than Ceremorphosis because of the active dependency on this chimerism. Would have the funny side-effect that the Elan dies with further "rebirths", yet the original Human continues their unconscious half-life. It'd be a suitably ironic failure mode that gives a solid causative chain from Elan to Illithid.




> Carceri was the first lower plane. Devils are an offshoot of its original jailers, and demons of its original inmates.


This implies that Evil was a late-comer rather than original to the cosmology for its source to be containment, and in any case this has wonky implications for the evolution of the cosmology.




> Benevolent great old ones exist. But these entities rarely manifest in the planes, for they know their mere presence would warp matter and minds. Here are a few of them:
> The Ophanim, with its many concentric flaming wheels sprouting wings with eyes for feathers.The Flumph Seer Magnum, who protectively enfolds the Great Wheel in its noodly appendages.The Purring Pit of Flerken, simply the most ad'awrable eldritch horror. Beware the claws, though.
> Her Serenity the Lady of Pain is also a GOO. She would reabsorb the Great Wheel if she stepped out of the Cage.


So your ideas for them are "Biblically Accurate Angel stating Be Not Afraid", "The Flying Spaghetti Monster", "Obligatory Adorable Friend", and "Lady Of Pain is the First Cause"?




> Now that "planes" from _Magic: The Gathering_ are being adapted to 5e D&D, the Aether is totally another name for _Spelljammer_'s Phlogiston.


Well, they _are_ both highly flammable and neither sticks around in Planes very long... _Normally_. The reaction to Khaladesh from Spelljammers would be _hilarious_, a Plane with an active Phlogiston cycle that's used in widespread industry and _sapients made of the stuff_. Would also mean Aetherborn would not age in the Blind Eternities/Rainbow Ocean as basically the sole mechanism of that is Aether dissolution.




> The creator of the couatls was, of course, Quetzalcoatl. He was also the lone good-aligned god of the yuan-ti.


The Yuan-ti are very opportunistic with their worship, the thing of their "Pantheon" is that snake gods have a nasty habit of sleeping for _ridiculous_ amounts of time. As previously mentioned, they're descendants of your Swords and Sorcery snake-cults who decided to hybridize with Snakes. If you want to square that with the absurdity that is the Sarrukh, it'd be collaberators among early Humans.




> Illithids are the degenerate descendants of aboleths..


While one of the impressively direct routes, there's too much missing and too drastic a decline. Illithids being the result of "plugging" holes in the Elan organism with Abeloth biology until the result was a functional species, if an odd mix of endoparasite and predator largely locked to a narrow band of Humanoids, would give answers for basically all the properties.




> When Asmodeus fell he likely took a layer of Celestia with him. It seems the kimd of thing likely to happen upon a whole bunch of archons turning evil. Akin to when one of the layers of Arcadia fell into mechanus when its inhabiyants ceased being good


This happening in one go is a pretty drastically unlikely event, which implies a layer of Celestia going through Arcadia, then Nirvana, then Acheron, before becoming a new layer of Hell. Which... Fits surprisingly well, as Avernus is a continuous bloody battlefield like most of Acheron, with any remnants of its time as a part of the Heavens lost to the constant blasting. Mount Celestia formerly having an _actual_ base instead of sloping directly into the Silver Sea would also make it fit in noticeably better with the "adjacent" Planes of Arcadia and Bitopia, the lost layer being filled with "raw" Good to create the Silver _Sea_ where it used to be more marshy.

---

As for my own, I go with Incarnum being spiritual "slag". For every Lemure, there's a little bit of Essentia that makes its way to Arboria, a little bit that floats around, bits and pieces that cycle into new souls getting a slight disposition to Good and Chaos from the act. The Silver Sea is filled by the doubts of those who's Alignment alone brought them to the Abyss, Carceri's walls are lined by the forsaken cruelties of Bytopian residents, Mechanus adopts the reason of Limbo petitioners, each Outer Plane fueled by what its opposite does not take. And a great deal becomes scattered to Astral winds, waiting to be grasped by all manner of things.

This also feeds into why there's such a bias towards Standard Humanoids. Petitioners are oddly finite in their power, suggesting a rather stark throughput limit on what Alignment brings. This results in a significantly stronger "counterweight" effect, as powerful champions in life find far more of their soul's raw power go to their opposition without specific deals to bring along the _whole_ soul, and also means that innately powerful creatures need express interventions to get much more than a lowly Kobold upon death. That the Lower Planes do this on the regular is one of the big _issues_ causing Celestials to keep the Blood War going.

----------


## noob

> As for my own, I go with Incarnum being spiritual "slag". For every Lemure, there's a little bit of Essentia that makes its way to Arboria, a little bit that floats around, bits and pieces that cycle into new souls getting a slight disposition to Good and Chaos from the act. The Silver Sea is filled by the doubts of those who's Alignment alone brought them to the Abyss, Carceri's walls are lined by the forsaken cruelties of Bytopian residents, Mechanus adopts the reason of Limbo petitioners, each Outer Plane fueled by what its opposite does not take. And a great deal becomes scattered to Astral winds, waiting to be grasped by all manner of things.
> 
> This also feeds into why there's such a bias towards Standard Humanoids. Petitioners are oddly finite in their power, suggesting a rather stark throughput limit on what Alignment brings. This results in a significantly stronger "counterweight" effect, as powerful champions in life find far more of their soul's raw power go to their opposition without specific deals to bring along the _whole_ soul, and also means that innately powerful creatures need express interventions to get much more than a lowly Kobold upon death. That the Lower Planes do this on the regular is one of the big _issues_ causing Celestials to keep the Blood War going.


Does it means casting disintegrate on an outsider is like torturing incarnum and is evil like the use of necrocarnum?

----------


## Bohandas

Regarding the illithids' origin, ai think they're descended from far future githyanki

----------


## Lvl45DM!

Illithids were the last sentient species. In the twilight of the universe, the last world capable of life, the last sun setting, the last species decided screw all this entropy nonsense and flung themselves back in time.
Illithids are descendent of all the species, convergent evolution combined with the rigors of massive time travel.


Aboleths aren't as old or as badass as they think they are. They came from the Far Realm and lived in ponds of protoplasmic slime and could control the microscopic organisms that came about, maybe exert some minor influence over the first wriggling fish, but they never had a real empire ruling all enslaving beings, they just THINK they did. Flawless memories dont preclude self deception. Aboleths have risen to their current state of power by sheer bloodymindedness

----------


## Morphic tide

> Does it means casting disintegrate on an outsider is like torturing incarnum and is evil like the use of necrocarnum?


Not any more than running a Lemur through a woodchipper. Probably less, even, since it's a very abrupt Transmute-to-dust effect. The whole subject of Transmuting Outsiders and Elementals is _weird_, given their lack of soul-body distinction, but since there's nothing noting it to be particularly wrong to Baleful Polymorph a Solar it doesn't _seem_ to be the case that "ordinary" Transmutation of the Outsider's physical composition constitutes the sort of spiritual defilement that's on the short list of "No Questions Asked Straight Down Under" actions.

----------


## noob

> Not any more than running a Lemur through a woodchipper. Probably less, even, since it's a very abrupt Transmute-to-dust effect. The whole subject of Transmuting Outsiders and Elementals is _weird_, given their lack of soul-body distinction, but since there's nothing noting it to be particularly wrong to Baleful Polymorph a Solar it doesn't _seem_ to be the case that "ordinary" Transmutation of the Outsider's physical composition constitutes the sort of spiritual defilement that's on the short list of "No Questions Asked Straight Down Under" actions.


I was talking about the fluff of necrocarnum which was that it was incredibly evil because it caused intense suffering to the incarnum.
Also running a lemur through a woodchipper does look evil.

----------


## Jay R

Elves do not mature slower than humans.  Just like most humans, they spend the first eight or so decades of life obsessed with sex, football, role-playing games, and/or politics.

The difference is that elven cultures believe that you're not really mature until you get past that stage.

----------


## Morphic tide

> I was talking about the fluff of necrocarnum which was that it was incredibly evil because it caused intense suffering to the incarnum.


Disintegrate is a Transmutation, its function is very literally turn-to-dust. Doesn't have much capacity to inflict pain because it either turns something to dust or does not, so there's nothing there to feel pain. Partial disintegration may expose nerves in an exceptionally painful fashion, but this is no different from lopping an arm off with a sword. "Unnecessary suffering" as a benchmark for Evil is rather nonsensical with all the Bludgeoning damage, anyways. If repeated blunt impact until the subject dies of crushed organs or internal bleeding is not Evil, I seriously question how simple pain factors in _at all_.




> Also running a lemur through a woodchipper does look evil.


For one, animal cruelty is seemingly irrelevant for Alignment, for another, I was referring to Lemure as in the Mindless Fiends. Left off the 'e' at the end.

----------


## Runa_Dacino

Healing spells have a Will save component.

Therefore, scars are universally healable. The reason someone cannot heal their scars is because their subconscious rolls to resist the healing spell, and most clerics do not force the issue.

Subconcious is controlled by the player, leaving whether a character is scarred, disfigured or mutilated up to their player.

ICly, however - it can be explained as:

 Culture: Some people grew up in cultures that oppose the idea of treating scars or disfigurement. Even if consciously the character wants it gone, their entrenched beliefs give them difficulty. In order to heal their scars, these people must go through an ordeal of rejecting their old beliefs and culture and truly embracing who they are today. Religion: While Sunites, Hanalites and Chaotic Good deities may have religions that say you should have ownership over your own bodies, lawful religions may dictate that you should accept the cards fate dealt you. For neutral ones, they may consider such superficial treatment as a waste of divine Power, and reject it. For characters with such faiths and scars, they need to find a way to reconcile their conscious discomfort with their beliefs, perhaps find a justification why removing scars actually fits their belief. The clerics may say it's OK, but the person themselves has to make this mental paradigm shift. Trauma: The character earned that scar within an event that gave them lasting mental trauma - loss of a loved one, failure, the sort of thing. A sort of survivor's guilt perhaps, or simply "I associate this scar with this person I loved." For these people, to heal their scars they must overcome the trauma through either facing their demons (such as trying again and succeeding), or simply having a paradigm shift that their bodies need not be mutilated to remember their loved ones, to overcome their guilt. General Identity: Some characters, not due to trauma, just simply how they perceive the world have incorporated their non-naturally healing injuries into their concept of Self. Healing scars for these people is most unlikely, but for these people their subconcious and ego are likely in good agreement. On the flipside, someone who has a very strong sense of Self (Chaotic characters in general, but also elves due to their Reverie) might be able to shrug off cultural, religious and trauma reasons for being unable to heal their scars, since scars infringe upon their concept of Self.


This interpretation/headcanon of "Do healing spells heal scars? Does Regenerate leave permanent damage when restoring a limb?" is inclusive for both those who want non-perfect healing, and those of us who prefer magic to enable people to take ownership over their physical forms (I may be biased towards CG!)

----------


## Bohandas

> "Unnecessary suffering" as a benchmark for Evil is rather nonsensical with all the Bludgeoning damage, anyways. If repeated blunt impact until the subject dies of crushed organs or internal bleeding is not Evil, I seriously question how simple pain factors in _at all_.


I mean, there's a qualitative difference between clubbing someone to death normally and breaking them on the wheel

----------


## Mark Hall

> I mean, there's a qualitative difference between clubbing someone to death normally and breaking them on the wheel


Or "killing in self defense" v. "killed a man just to watch him die."

----------


## KorvinStarmast

> Or "killing in self defense" v. "killed a man just to watch him die."


 In Reno. The party (me DM) kind of did the latter last night with a drow wizard they had captured.

----------


## Mark Hall

> Or "killing in self defense" v. "killed a man just to watch him die."





> In Reno. The party (me DM) kind of did the latter last night with a drow wizard they had captured.


Look, don't be limited to just Reno. I've killed men just to watch them die lots of places.

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

Head Canon--

All spells and active magical effects (including magic item use) has ecological and metaphysical consequences beyond what's explicitly printed. If you're not in the Dark Sun setting, those effects _mostly_ are minor and transitory. They get worse with _volume_ and _duration_. A single guy casting _fireball_ a few times and then moving on? Trivial. Sure, that little area is _slightly_ attuned to elemental fire, but well within the normal variation and goes away within a few hours, maybe a day or so. An armageddon-style apocalyptic battle between armies of casters all spamming fire spells? Yeah, that region is going to be messed up beyond just the overt "blown up landscape/dead bodies" problems for a long time. Droughts, desertification, spontaneous wildfires, etc. You've pulled in crap-tons of fire energy and left it laying about the landscape. Similarly, a single use of _create water_ (or similar) isn't an issue. But if you try to supply a town with a self-resetting trap of _create water_ or Decanters of Endless Water...you're attuning that area to elemental water. Expect things to become more swampy, humid, and have spontaneous water weird effects. This can be "abused" to change climates, but it's unpredictable--you could get _poisonous_ or _salt_ water intrusion instead of fresh. Depending on the local circumstances.

Arcane magic is the most prone to this effect, since direct hacking bypasses all the normal safeguards. Druidic magic is the least prone to this, but even large-scale spells like _plant growth_ (used in its fertility aspect) have effects--_plant growth_ pulls fertility forward (effectively depleting the normal nutrients, etc). Sure, you double your crop this year. But the next 5 will have below-normal crops to compensate. So to really do it well, you'd have to rotate--have one field actively being used with _plant growth_ and several fallow ones used for grazing. And most druids won't tolerate the extra land use enough to spend their spells on it. Which means that most nations _don't_ have an agricultural revolution on the back of _plant growth_.

Undead and fiend-summoning are the worst, though. Summoning fiends actually aligns the area toward Evil in a measurable, significant way. Have all the good intentions you want, but areas that tolerate (or are forced to tolerate) rampant fiend summoning become evil over time. Attitudes change; self-justification becomes easier, etc. Undead are more _destructive_--they exist to destroy life. They _are_ death, made flesh. Animated by spirits of entropy and decay. As such, their very presence eats away at the life and fertility of the area around them. A single skeleton is a trivial drain. But a drain. The longer it's there, the more can leak through spontaneously. And the less fertile the land becomes. Until, left alone long enough, the area becomes sterile, incapable of sustaining life. Even the rocks themselves start to break down--asymptotically, everything becomes dust and ash. A landscape devoid of anything useful. Bigger, smarter undead often end up trying (and failing) to sate their existential hunger by devouring people; they can hide it, but they need the life force of larger beings to sustain their own existence.

Why don't the PHB (etc) say these things? For two reasons
1. They're written by *Wizards* of the Coast, and we all know wizards don't care about the ecology whatsoever. Look at owlbears. No, not the individuals. Their existence. Proof enough. Not even blue, because true.
2. Adventurers are rarely in one area casting enough spells for it to matter. It's only when you get to the civilization-changing scale that things start being really apparent. A single _teleport circle_? Meh. A Tippyverse? Is going to have permanently weakened barriers between the Material and whatever plane is used to sidestep distance (probably the Ethereal? depends on edition). And all sorts of fun things will leak through.

----------


## Bohandas

> Similarly, a single use of _create water_ (or similar) isn't an issue. But if you try to supply a town with a self-resetting trap of _create water_ or Decanters of Endless Water...you're attuning that area to elemental water. Expect things to become more swampy, humid, and have spontaneous water weird effects.


Supplying the town with decanters of endless water will do that by itself, even without having to weaken the boundry to the elemental plane of water. You're conjuring all this water up and (in the absence of something that banishes it back) it's gotta go somewhere.

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

> Supplying the town with decanters of endless water will do that by itself, even without having to weaken the boundry to the elemental plane of water. You're conjuring all this water up and (in the absence of something that banishes it back) it's gotta go somewhere.


But that's much more predictable--you can dig channels/sewers/aqueducts or funnel the excess into large fields that can handle the pure volume of water (which, frankly, you should have already thought of, because of waste products if nothing else). The problem with the larger-scale effects is that they're _not_ predictable either in location or timing. You might get underground erosion causing sinkholes, you might just get more rain (yay!), etc. Over a much wider, more random area.

Edit: The point being--D&D magic _seems_ nice and controllable. Even mechanistic. Do thing, get result. Done. But that's just Wizardly delusion--_everything_ has consequences. Not always _bad_ consequences, but certainly consequences.

And it opens up things like "a culture that uses [Good] spells frequently will, in fact, become more Good." And vice versa. The point isn't to preach some pseduo-"green" message about man always making a mess of everything, it's to open up new vistas into worldbuilding that aren't simply "exploit effect for power" and express the mystery and wonder and unpredictability of meddling in cosmic forces.

----------


## Satinavian

> Edit: The point being--D&D magic _seems_ nice and controllable. Even mechanistic. Do thing, get result. Done. But that's just Wizardly delusion--_everything_ has consequences. Not always _bad_ consequences, but certainly consequences.


If that really is a thing, it soon will be a known thing and explored and used and people (especcially rulers) becoming more concerned with manipulating those large scale long lasting effects than with normal magic. And then you get stupid stuff like law forcing spellcasters to cast "protection from evil" and "protection from chaos" every day to make a nice, law abiding society etc.

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

> If that really is a thing, it soon will be a known thing and explored and used and people (especcially rulers) becoming more concerned with manipulating those large scale long lasting effects than with normal magic. And then you get stupid stuff like law forcing spellcasters to cast "protection from evil" and "protection from chaos" every day to make a nice, law abiding society etc.


Only if the consequences are predictable and consistent. Magic is a squirrely thing--studying it means it studies you. And has a wicked sense of humor.

----------


## KillianHawkeye

I think the main issue with figuring out the long term effects of magic, at least in settings like the Forgotten Realms, is that every couple hundred years (or less) the whole setting gets turned upside down and a new deity is put in charge of how magic works and all the rules change.

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

> I think the main issue with figuring out the long term effects of magic, at least in settings like the Forgotten Realms, is that every couple hundred years (or less) the whole setting gets turned upside down and a new deity is put in charge of how magic works and all the rules change.


One more reason not to use those settings. Number 1366347637864357 if my count isn't off #notblueiftrue

----------


## Witty Username

> If that really is a thing, it soon will be a known thing and explored and used and people (especcially rulers) becoming more concerned with manipulating those large scale long lasting effects than with normal magic. And then you get stupid stuff like law forcing spellcasters to cast "protection from evil" and "protection from chaos" every day to make a nice, law abiding society etc.


Sounds like preservation and defilement in Dark Sun.

----------


## No brains

The lore is left vague and unsatisfying to deliberately draw the fire of prospective DM head canons.

Where is Gith?
Was Kurtulmak or the gnome gods the aggressor?
Just what is up with that Raven Queen?

Why don't you tell me?

----------


## Bohandas

I think it's vaguely implied that Gith is Vlaakith

----------


## Mark Hall

> I think it's vaguely implied that Gith is Vlaakith


Gith is just a title. The real Gith is... Nameless.  :Small Wink:

----------


## KorvinStarmast

> Look, don't be limited to just Reno. I've killed men just to watch them die lots of places.


 OK, we'll broaden our horizons ... wait, isn't that how we get traveling murder hoboes?  :Small Eek: 



> Head Canon--
> 
>  All spells and active magical effects (including magic item use) has ecological and metaphysical consequences beyond what's explicitly printed. -snip- Arcane magic is the most prone to this effect, since direct hacking bypasses all the normal safeguards. -snip- Druidic magic is the least prone to this, but even large-scale spells like _plant growth_ (used in its fertility aspect) have effects--_plant growth_ pulls fertility forward (effectively depleting the normal nutrients, etc). Sure, you double your crop this year. But the next 5 will have below-normal crops to compensate.


Yes, magic is both powerful and dangerous,  in that it has side effects.  



> --snip the rest of supporting points, and agree --And all sorts of fun things will leak through.


Yes. That was something I used in my brother's campaign, and in my Salt Marsh campaign. Stuff kept leaking through, and the party had to to into The Void to seal the leaks.  A murder hobo version of the boy with his finger in the dike.  



> The point being--D&D magic _seems_ nice and controllable. Even mechanistic. Do thing, get result. Done. But that's just Wizardly delusion--_everything_ has consequences. Not always _bad_ consequences, but certainly consequences.


 Side effects, like acid rain...



> and express the mystery and wonder and unpredictability of meddling in cosmic forces.


 What, it's a non linear effect? Arrrrrrrgghh!   :Small Eek:  (reminds me of the very old joke about the monkey trying to put the plug back into the pig) 



> Magic is a squirrely thing--studying it means it studies you. And has a wicked sense of humor.


 That's very old school. +1   



> I think the main issue with figuring out the long term effects of magic, at least in settings like the Forgotten Realms, is that every couple hundred years (or less) the whole setting gets turned upside down and a new deity is put in charge of how magic works and all the rules change.


 Side effects with non linear magnitudes.   :Small Wink:   (Or just achieving the threshold energy for the nuclear explosion analogy that is the various "magic changed" cataclysm as editions change)  



> Just what is up with that Raven Queen?


 She's emo, so she's never up, she's always down   :Small Yuk:

----------


## Bohandas

Nolzur's Marvelous Pigments are made at least partially out of coyote parts

----------


## animorte

Every kobold ever featured in one of my games (NPC, monster, or PC) knows or was somebody from Tuckers. Though it doesnt often come up.

----------


## Archpaladin Zousha

Because elves are big into agroforestry and sustainable stuff, they really REALLY don't like cattle, given the environmental destruction caused by both cattle and the humans who ranch them.

The most common herd animals found in elven settlements as a result are goats.

----------


## noob

> Because elves are big into agroforestry and sustainable stuff, they really REALLY don't like cattle, given the environmental destruction caused by both cattle and the humans who ranch them.
> 
> The most common herd animals found in elven settlements as a result are goats.


What?
Did you never see a goat?
Goat are the destroyers of trees, ravagers of wild-lands.
They will make tons of efforts to seek each tree and try to eat them to death or destroy all their bark and reachable leaves resulting in them dying later.
I participated in making barriers around trees to protect them from goats and despite barriers, many of them still died to goats because they did everything to circumvent the barriers or push them in order to get close enough to the tree to eat its bark or its leaves.
They are a bad pick if you like trees.

----------


## Spore

> Because elves are big into agroforestry and sustainable stuff, they really REALLY don't like cattle, given the environmental destruction caused by both cattle and the humans who ranch them.
> 
> The most common herd animals found in elven settlements as a result are goats.





> What?
> Did you never see a goat?
> Goat are the destroyers of tree, ravagers of wild-lands.
> They will make tons of efforts to seek each tree and try to eat them to death or destroy all their bark and reachable leaves resulting in them dying later.
> I participated in making barriers around trees to protect them from goats and despite barriers, many of them still died to goats because they did everything to circumvent the barriers or push them in order to get close enough to the tree to eat its bark or its leaves.
> They are the bad pick if you like trees.


Which is why I enjoy Elder Scrolls' Wood Elves. They just went: "screw it, we love trees and nature so we are EXCLUSIVELY eating meat to reduce those pesky leaf eating things." which is weird, twisted and illogical, but if we live in a world where a 3rd level cleric could theoretically feed dozens (or worse, the Tippyverse where Create Food "Traps" are a thing), I don't see carnivorous elves as the pinnacle of breaking immersion.

In connection to elves, I feel it is implied orcs in almost any setting are just a horrible accident or curse brought upon some noble and arrogant elves. While Faerun Orcs seem to be space invaders, there must be a reason for Gruumsh's hatred for Corellon's fluidity of form. I say they are elves who wanted to reenact Corellon's perfection, but failed. Either through a terrible curse, a backfiring infernal contract or simply hubris. The most ugly one became their god instead.

----------


## Metastachydium

> What?
> Did you never see a goat?
> Goat are the destroyers of tree, ravagers of wild-lands.


Yup. Those ugly bastards are basically the herbivorous equivalents of feral/free-reanging cats: quadrupedal ecologic disasters that climb better than they have any right to.




> Which is why I enjoy Elder Scrolls' Wood Elves. They just went: "screw it, we love trees and nature so we are EXCLUSIVELY eating meat to reduce those pesky leaf eating things." which is weird, twisted and illogical, but if we live in a world where a 3rd level cleric could theoretically feed dozens (or worse, the Tippyverse where Create Food "Traps" are a thing), I don't see carnivorous elves as the pinnacle of breaking immersion.


Oh yes! Bosmer are the bos_s_mer! And what they do is entirely sustainable; they eat people too!

----------


## Archpaladin Zousha

> What?
> Did you never see a goat?
> Goat are the destroyers of trees, ravagers of wild-lands.
> They will make tons of efforts to seek each tree and try to eat them to death or destroy all their bark and reachable leaves resulting in them dying later.
> I participated in making barriers around trees to protect them from goats and despite barriers, many of them still died to goats because they did everything to circumvent the barriers or push them in order to get close enough to the tree to eat its bark or its leaves.
> They are a bad pick if you like trees.


The studies I looked at implied they were more environmentally friendly because they browse instead of graze the way cows do, meaning they don't tear out the roots of plants which contributes to stuff like soil erosion and nutrient depletion.  :Small Confused:

----------


## Morphic tide

> The studies I looked at implied they were more environmentally friendly because they browse instead of graze the way cows do, meaning they don't tear out the roots of plants which contributes to stuff like soil erosion and nutrient depletion.


Any monocultural overpopulation is environmentally hazardous, especially when out of touch with the animals' original ecological niche. Most domesticated goats come from mountainous areas, so there's a whole bunch about low-lying forest flora they'll strip bare. Cattle ranching, meanwhile, has seen its largest scale implementations as just substituting a native large ruminate for oxen (because clearing a non-grassland to _make_ pasture is time consuming), resulting in rather little ecological damage because everything the cattle are doing was already being done. Indeed, there's some details in the Great Plains where things got worse from the decline of ranching, because the cattle were the only thing filling the bison's former role, and the bison were not in any position to bounce back to resume it.

Ecological damage from livestock tends to be a matter of either shoving too many in too small an area, or deciding to clear forests for them. It is very difficult to clear D&D forests, and the dominant actual use _demanding_ the felling of trees pre-industrially was basically just house frames and ships. While I cannot for the life of me recall the term, the largest supply of wood tended to be cultivated trees who's low-lying branches would be split and made to regrow repeatedly, giving a renewable supply for wicker-work that made up the far larger share. And since the _demand_ for felling trees is stuff that is measured in decades, it's very easy for the elves to just sell their sustainably-grown trees as lumber, even before offering preservative measures to stretch the weathering losses out to centuries.

----------


## Metastachydium

> The studies I looked at implied they were more environmentally friendly because they browse instead of graze the way cows do, meaning they don't tear out the roots of plants which contributes to stuff like soil erosion and nutrient depletion.


Part of their appeal is that they are stupidly hardy and largely indiscriminate in their choices of food. They can reach pretty much anything they want (they can climb trees, fences, vertical rock faces  you name it) and go for the young shoots if available. They might leave the grass alone as long as they can locate some of their preferred prey, but they'll strip the shrubs and younger/smaller trees clean, leaves, buds and younger, softer branches included. They are pests.

----------


## Kane0

> every couple hundred years (or less) the whole setting gets turned upside down and a new deity is put in charge of how magic works and all the rules change.


I suspect that would largely be because there is no handover documentation.

----------


## NovenFromTheSun

The fact that the Lower Planes are producing such an output that the Blood War is necessary to keep them under control is the result of the Nameless Ones first sin. Thats why he has to fight in the Blood War, the only way he can fix what he did is by going down and wrecking so much fiendish *** that the scales eventually balance again.

----------


## Chauncymancer

> Any monocultural overpopulation is environmentally hazardous, especially when out of touch with the animals' original ecological niche. Most domesticated goats come from mountainous areas, so there's a whole bunch about low-lying forest flora they'll strip bare. Cattle ranching, meanwhile, has seen its largest scale implementations as just substituting a native large ruminate for oxen (because clearing a non-grassland to _make_ pasture is time consuming), resulting in rather little ecological damage because everything the cattle are doing was already being done. Indeed, there's some details in the Great Plains where things got worse from the decline of ranching, because the cattle were the only thing filling the bison's former role, and the bison were not in any position to bounce back to resume it.
> 
> Ecological damage from livestock tends to be a matter of either shoving too many in too small an area, or deciding to clear forests for them. It is very difficult to clear D&D forests, and the dominant actual use _demanding_ the felling of trees pre-industrially was basically just house frames and ships. While I cannot for the life of me recall the term, the largest supply of wood tended to be cultivated trees who's low-lying branches would be split and made to regrow repeatedly, giving a renewable supply for wicker-work that made up the far larger share. And since the _demand_ for felling trees is stuff that is measured in decades, it's very easy for the elves to just sell their sustainably-grown trees as lumber, even before offering preservative measures to stretch the weathering losses out to centuries.


Coppicing is the word I believe

----------


## Spore

In my games all demiplanes of dread are connected and divided by the deadly mists of Ravenloft. Only the Vistani can pass them, but not because they are in league with the Dark Lords, but because they are their jailors. Torturing the Darklords instead of releasing them to their just afterlives is just preventing evil powers from gaining powerful souls. Things the Dark Powers want to for themselves.

In that vein there are several (neutral to evil) gods in other settings that directly benefit from that power and can grant their followers spells despite their worship being too little for true godhood.

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

One microfortnight (1e-6 of 14 days) is exactly 1.2096 seconds. Which means that really, the base "round length" for 3e+ D&D isn't _6 seconds_, it's _5 microfortnights_. 5 is better than 6, so I claim[1] that really the real unit system of D&D is the FFF unit system.

[1] without any real evidence, just whimsy.

----------


## KorvinStarmast

> One microfortnight (1e-6 of 14 days) is exactly 1.2096 seconds. Which means that really, the base "round length" for 3e+ D&D isn't _6 seconds_, it's _5 microfortnights_. 5 is better than 6, so I claim[1] that really the real unit system of D&D is the FFF unit system.
> 
> [1] without any real evidence, just whimsy.


Why, because we have five digits on our hands? Why not use base 8, which is the same as base 10 if you are missing two fingers.  :Small Yuk:

----------


## Bohandas

All the different published versions of Castle Greyhawk/Castle Zagyg exist in the same place at the same time. Possibly through something to do with the plane of shadows; one of the versions had a very powerful illusionist* living in the lowest sub-basement.


*(like, more powerful a mage overall than Mordenkainen if I'm understanding 1e multiclassing correctly; he was a (generalist) magic user 23/Illusionist 27, whereas Mordenkainen was Magic User 29 )




> Why, because we have five digits on our hands? Why not use base 8, which is the same as base 10 if you are missing two fingers.


I mean, if we're going by hands we should be doing base 6. 1-2-3-4-5 and then the next hand is the sixes column

EDIT: I'd say base two, but some patterns of fingers up versus fingers down are very awkward to do. Also, some numbers (such as 4, 128, and 132) would involve having just the middle finger up on at least one hand

EDIT:
Though I do imagine learning to do wizard spells with somatic components involves learning to quickly do all 1024 patterns of fingers up versus fingers down

----------


## KorvinStarmast

> I mean, if we're going by hands


 I was referencing a joke from Tom Lehrer's song  "New Math" - it is on Youtube somewhere .

----------


## Zelphas

Most Dwarves are teetotalers; they don't touch a drop of alcohol. The ones that do drink, the ones that are responsible for the widely-spread belief that all Dwarves are heavy drinkers, are the ones who venture above ground. Alcohol is their "medicine", the thing that they need to get around the horrifying fact that _there is nothing above their heads but empty air_, and _there's a ball of fire in the sky way high up that just... hangs there, and burns you if you look at it_. Non-Dwarves who visit Dwarven cities don't actually get into the cities themselves; they spend their time in the recovery/preparation wards for those who go Too Far Up... and therefore bring back even more stories about how all Dwarves are obsessed with alcohol and drink heavily at all hours of the day.

----------


## noob

> Most Dwarves are teetotalers; they don't touch a drop of alcohol. The ones that do drink, the ones that are responsible for the widely-spread belief that all Dwarves are heavy drinkers, are the ones who venture above ground. Alcohol is their "medicine", the thing that they need to get around the horrifying fact that _there is nothing above their heads but empty air_, and _there's a ball of fire in the sky way high up that just... hangs there, and burns you if you look at it_. Non-Dwarves who visit Dwarven cities don't actually get into the cities themselves; they spend their time in the recovery/preparation wards for those who go Too Far Up... and therefore bring back even more stories about how all Dwarves are obsessed with alcohol and drink heavily at all hours of the day.


The phobia of empty air would make sense in dnd: there is too many flying creatures that can kill you from a distance.
I could see it evolved as an adaptation to a dangerous world.
Just like how humans have some degree of snake phobia by default due to snakes having been around for long.

----------


## KorvinStarmast

An idea that got stuck into my head by a nice lady at work: 
Mummies are zombies from a different, more affluent, socio-economic origin.  :Small Eek:  
And I can't help seeing in my mind's eye a little alligator embroidered onto the wrappings over the left side of a standard mummy's chest ... arrrrgggg!   :Small Eek:

----------


## NovenFromTheSun

The stuff that ghosts, spirits, outsiders and souls are made of and the stuff flesh and bone is made of arent that different. I could point to how ghostly creatures tend to just have resistance to physical attacks, but an even better example comes from the rutterkin and sibriex. They can turn a person into a manes, just like a chaotic evil soul becomes a manes when they go to the Abyss, but in their case everything suggest that this is a bodily transformation for their victim rather than a spiritual one in the later case. And yet the result is completely the same.

----------


## No brains

Asmodeus got into his position by representing the worst kind of evil: the necessary evil.

Everything Asmodeus does is ostensibly to a good end, but he has zero reservations about what it takes to get there. This is evidenced by hell often opposing evil either directly or by proxy, such through the Blood War, imprisoning Tiamat, or hurting mind flayers through empowering Githyanki and Duergar. By perpetuating the idea of evil as a means and not an end, he's able to expand the influence of evil through the repercussions of those means that mortals might not fully comprehend.

He also hates liches and other soul eating evils. Though this is out of a pragmatic concern, as a creature that promises its soul and then gets it devoured has in his eyes committed metaphysical credit fraud.

----------


## Bohandas

> The stuff that ghosts, spirits, outsiders and souls are made of and the stuff flesh and bone is made of arent that different. I could point to how ghostly creatures tend to just have resistance to physical attacks, but an even better example comes from the rutterkin and sibriex. They can turn a person into a manes, just like a chaotic evil soul becomes a manes when they go to the Abyss\


Rutterkin? Are you sure you're not thinking of the nalfeshnees or molydeus?

----------


## NovenFromTheSun

> Rutterkin? Are you sure you're not thinking of the nalfeshnees or molydeus?


I know rutterkin have an ability to turn people into manes, Ill have to check the others.

----------


## Kane0

> He also hates liches and other soul eating evils. Though this is out of a pragmatic concern, as a creature that promises its soul and then gets it devoured has in his eyes committed metaphysical credit fraud.


Ooh, now i'm imagining an Archdevil working with some inevitables on that front, collecting on debts owed by those that steal, entrap and/or devour souls

----------


## KorvinStarmast

> Everything Asmodeus does is ostensibly to a good end, but he has zero reservations about what it takes to get there. ---snip---
> He also hates liches and other soul eating evils. Though this is out of a pragmatic concern, as a creature that promises its soul and then gets it devoured has in his eyes committed metaphysical credit fraud.


 Now that's funny. Acererak's credit rating is in the tank.

----------


## Starlit Dragon

It's not too difficult for a mage to raise a few skeletons or zombies, powering and controlling them solely through their own energy. It's a useful trick, and there's nothing morally objectionable about it, besides being a bit icky. 

But that takes energy and spell slots, and it's difficult to keep up for long. You can't really make armies of undead with that. But what you can do is force a soul back into their recently dead body and power it like that. That gives you undead minions that last until they're hacked into pieces, can be as intelligent as you want, and don't draw on your own energy at all. It also leaves the soul trapped and suffering until it's severed from the body with divine magic. That is why people don't like necromancers. 

And the thing is, the souls aren't neccesarily freed when the undead are killed. Only divine magic or certain arcane spells can do that. Just hacking them apart leaves the soul still bound to it. That's why people really, really don't like necromancers. 
_____
On an unrelated subject: once someone chipped a shard from the Spire at the heart of the Outlands, and made it into a sword. Unfortunately, it proved impossible to transport by any magical means. They say it's still stuck somewhere past the Gatetowns, surrounded by a field of anti-magic.

----------


## Altheus

You know how elves don't sleep, they just meditate, well they don't strictly speaking have to meditate and they can sleep just like anyone else. However, Elves are wildly emotional if they don't meditate, feeling everything so much more intently than everyone else. Means they become total vengance at the drop of a hat, fall in love with a moment's glance, completely unmanageable.

Thing is, when elves sleep they dream, and those dreams can influence people outside their own minds. With one or two sleeping elves people just get a few vivid dreams, all good fun, sometimes laid on at the right sort of parties. Get a lot of sleeping elves together and you get something quite different.

Ever hear of the wild hunt? When enough elves dream their minds produce the hunt, terrible riders who will seek all about for something to kill and will turn on the elves if they can't find anything else.

So, that's why elves meditate, keeps them calm and stops the wild hunt.

Then there's the renegade sleepers, gangs of elves, several dozen strong who rove around doing whatever they please, their emotions running wild. Bandits, heroes, whatever mood strikes them at the time, mad bastard fighters too, nothung quite like an elf who _really_ wants you dead!

----------


## Spore

> Now that's funny. Acererak's credit rating is in the tank.


It is also a gross waste of ressources. The Book of Vile Darkness shows that you can have souls suffer eternally to power your evil plans like a perpetuum mobile of debasedness. Instead you just destroy them for instant power. That's the kind of horrific thing an engineer would see if you sold a solar panel's electronics to pay for your next bunch of coal to heat your home.

----------


## Bohandas

The plane of Ravenloft is ruled over by the ancient baernaloth lords and is a sort of laboratory for studying applied evil

----------


## NovenFromTheSun

When a Dread Domain strays too far from the Dark Powers desires, too far for the subtle approach to get it back on track, they have one ace up their sleeves. Domain reset: roll back the domain to the day it first entered the Mist, usually with a few elements changed to fix the bug that necessitated the reset in the first place.

----------


## thorr-kan

> When a Dread Domain strays too far from the Dark Powers desires, too far for the subtle approach to get it back on track, they have one ace up their sleeves. Domain reset: roll back the domain to the day it first entered the Mist, usually with a few elements changed to fix the bug that necessitated the reset in the first place.


With that in place, one wonders how it relates to Sithicus and Soth.

----------


## NovenFromTheSun

> With that in place, one wonders how it relates to Sithicus and Soth.


Thats the guy who got kicked out because he stopped taking the bait right? He admittedly wasnt on my mind when I came up with the idea, but I vaguely remember reading something that said that afterward he outright re-died a hero. So perhaps at some point he had a change of heart that couldnt be fixed. Im decently sure the Dark Powers avoid outright mind controlling Darklord candidates (because what would that prove?) so they had to leave him with that.

----------


## thorr-kan

> Thats the guy who got kicked out because he stopped taking the bait right? He admittedly wasnt on my mind when I came up with the idea, but I vaguely remember reading something that said that afterward he outright re-died a hero. So perhaps at some point he had a change of heart that couldnt be fixed. Im decently sure the Dark Powers avoid outright mind controlling Darklord candidates (because what would that prove?) so they had to leave him with that.


Exactly; he got sent back because he was boring.  Though now I'll need to look up what happened to him POST-sent back.

It leaves the possibility that a Darklord can reform.  It's terribly difficult, but Redemption is possible...

----------


## Spore

> When a Dread Domain strays too far from the Dark Powers desires, too far for the subtle approach to get it back on track, they have one ace up their sleeves. Domain reset: roll back the domain to the day it first entered the Mist, usually with a few elements changed to fix the bug that necessitated the reset in the first place.


Opened a ticket where Strahd was not properly simping for a mortal girl's soul: fixed.  :Small Wink:

----------


## Talakeal

> Exactly; he got sent back because he was boring.  Though now I'll need to look up what happened to him POST-sent back.


He refused to serve Takhisis so she "cured" him of his curse and allowed him to die.

----------


## thorr-kan

> He refused to serve Takhisis so she "cured" him of his curse and allowed him to die.


Yeah, that's what I read.  I suppose at that point, Takhisis is just one more Dark Power.

----------


## NovenFromTheSun

> Opened a ticket where Strahd was not properly simping for a mortal girl's soul: fixed.


Theyre glad it happened once though, Strahds pipe organ cover of Your Reality went hard.

----------

