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FMguru posted:The weird early RPG "Fantasy Wargaming" actually had full stats for God, Lucifer, Mary, and other biblical figures. This was always such a headscratcher. The closest you could get to a birth sign is obviously Capricorn. Was there some esoteric reasoning going on? Did they count back to when the stars were created, and some exegesis tradition claimed that happened between July 23 and August 23?
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Aug 14, 2019 02:59
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RiotGearEpsilon posted:How can you post this tweet here without linking to your creation as well? Why would you deny us this? I beseech thee: He's referring to the Theion Charmset in Shards of the Exalted Dream.
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Aug 14, 2019 03:01
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GRITTY 90S REBOOT OF HEAVEN
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Aug 14, 2019 03:16
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:This was always such a headscratcher. The closest you could get to a birth sign is obviously Capricorn. Was there some esoteric reasoning going on? Did they count back to when the stars were created, and some exegesis tradition claimed that happened between July 23 and August 23? 
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Aug 14, 2019 03:25
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FMguru posted:The whole book is just the most baffling thing. A Fantasy Heartbreaker from 1981. The Virgin Mary loves mothers but hates people who have had sex.
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Aug 14, 2019 04:13
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ZeroCount posted:The Virgin Mary loves mothers but hates people who have had sex. Well you see, she didn't need any for it, so why should they?
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Aug 14, 2019 04:18
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I like the entries for James the Great and James the Less (Great, presumably). He's going to be known as James the Less Great forever and he just has to live with that.
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Aug 14, 2019 04:56
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ZeroCount posted:The Virgin Mary loves mothers but hates people who have had sex. If I was going to do a Deities and Demigods for Christian mythology, I'd probably focus on the various saints and demons from Catholicism. Too bad it would be horribly offensive to Catholics.
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Aug 14, 2019 05:10
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Tibalt posted:Saint Gerard is for fertility issues, Saint Valentine is for love, and Saint Raphael is for "Happy Meetings". If it was a respectful guide to the saints with some numbers at the end of each entry you might not get burned at the stake. If done as a Catholic-saints-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off supplement for WFRP that be an interesting product.
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Aug 14, 2019 05:25
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Tibalt posted:Saint Gerard is for fertility issues, Saint Valentine is for love, and Saint Raphael is for "Happy Meetings".
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Aug 14, 2019 05:32
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Prism posted:I like the entries for James the Great and James the Less (Great, presumably). It actually is James the Less or James the Lesser depending on how you want to call him. He's one of the twelve apostles. Also, he's the cousin of Jesus, not the actual brother (that would be heresy), but pretty much everyone calls him the brother because that just how things are. Or it could be that he's actually three different people because it turns out the bible is really confusing and James the Lesser is barely mentioned. Not a lot to work with. Tibalt posted:Saint Gerard is for fertility issues, Saint Valentine is for love, and Saint Raphael is for "Happy Meetings". You would have a hard time doing worse than things already written by Catholics.
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Aug 14, 2019 06:23
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I genuinely dont think non-american catholics would care at all and american catholics probably for the most part wouldnt either. Now if youll excuse me Im going to stat up St. Bibania, patron saint of hangovers
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Aug 14, 2019 06:28
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also why is it Paul specifically who hates women?
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Aug 14, 2019 06:31
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ZeroCount posted:also why is it Paul specifically who hates women?
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Aug 14, 2019 06:35
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Terrible Opinions posted:If you can think of a new testament thing saying something real regressive about woman 99% of the time it's Paul who says it. Guy was a dick. Pretty much, Paul also was really against marriage and sex in general, lot of his statements wouldn't be too out of place on an incel forum.
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Aug 14, 2019 06:59
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Jesus could have a half-brother, surely?
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Aug 14, 2019 06:59
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Nessus posted:Jesus could have a half-brother, surely? edit:Like reasonably yeah probably, but monks got real real weird about God's mom having sex with anyone. Terrible Opinions fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Aug 14, 2019 |
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Aug 14, 2019 07:00
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Deities & Demigods 1E Part 10: The Classic Conflict of Law vs. Evil  Eh, since I already showed the chapter header in the last post, may as well reuse the generic header in this one. Okay, this wasn't originally intended to be a separate post; I'd written the review of all the Chinese Mythos chapter up as a single post. But, as I mentioned at the end of the last post, it turned out to be so long a post that when I tried to post it I found out it exceeded the maximum message length, so I have to split it up. Yeah... I guess I got a little carried away with this chapter, maybe. In any case, I don't expect that any future chapter is going to require quite so much research as this one, so I hope there won't be that much time between posts again—and I don't expect I'm going to write enough about any future chapter to have to divide it into two posts again, either. (No promises, though.) Xiahou Dun, who is in his own words "an academic focusing on medieval Chinese things" and who therefore, unlike me, is an expert on this subject, posted some further information about the material in this chapter and what's wrong with it. Those who have been following along in the forum will have of course already read his post but, for the sake of the eventual archiving of these posts, I'll link to it here. Selachian posted:I will note that along with Mjolnir and Stormbringer, Ma Yuan's omni-weapon gadget was one of the most sought-after bits of loot from this book back in the day. At least among Monty Haul campaigns where god-killing was a popular recreation. Huh. That's something I didn't consider. I almost didn't even bother mentioning the "omni-weapon gadget" at all; the only reason I added it into the post at the last minute was because its description was very similar to a bit in the quote from Werner's Myths and Legends of China, strengthening the evidence that this may have been a primary source for Kuntz and Ward's treatment of this mythos. (As we'll see in this post, that evidence in aggregate turns out to be pretty strong!) I knew in the abstract there were players who enjoyed powergaming campaigns where they'd fight the gods and would treat the descriptions of their possessions as a shopping list, but like I said in the second post in this review, I've never run or played in such a campaign, and I don't tend to think that way, so it didn't really occur to me how desireable such an item would be from a powergaming player's perspective, but I guess I can see that. Anyway, let's continue from where we left off... SHAN HAI CHING (god of wind & sea)  He looks as confused as the people seeing this illustration are. Shan Hai Ching posted:This god has a roc's body with the oversized head of a man. So, yeah, not only is he a bird with the head of a man, but he's a bird with the head of a man and a sixty-foot wingspan. Shan Hai Ching posted:The god and his clerics serve all beings using the sea, and any trip out into the oceans requires a sacrifice to this deity for good winds and the like. Oh, he's one of those gods. The protection racket gods. "Oh, so you're traveling on the sea, eh? Nice ship. Be a shame if anything happened to it." Shan Hai Ching posted:His wind force is said to be able to last a full day when "great wrath is upon the deity". Wait... so how long does his weather control last normally? Also, why is that last bit in quotation marks? Is it quoting something? Amusingly, we're told in "Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes" that while Shan Hai Chang "is perfectly able to fly for himself, he likes to ride on the back of an imperial dragon (explained later)." So if you think he looks silly now, just imagine that awkward human-headed bird sitting on the back of a dragon. I think that makes it even worse. Or better. Shan Hai Ching is so special he gets two illustrations... though, alas, neither shows him sitting on a dragon.  Shan Hai Ching, seen here serenely contemplating his ridiculous appearance. I think Kuntz and Ward got a little confused about this one. There is, as far as I can find, no actual Chinese god named Shan Hai Ching, or anything similar. There is, however, a very famous Chinese book called the Shan Hai Ching (山海經; Shānhǎi Jīng in pinyin), which in English is usually called the Classic of Mountains and Seas. This book dates back at least to the Han dynasty (and parts of it are almost certainly much older), and contains many fanciful descriptions and illustrations of mythical beasts—including at least three different birds with human heads.  One of several illustrations of human-headed birds in the Classic of Mountains and Seas. So my guess is that Kuntz and Ward found one of these illustrations and misunderstood the caption, mistaking the name of the book from which it was taken for the name of the entity it represented. I don't know for sure that that's what happened, of course, but it seems as good an explanation as any.  Another illustration from the Classic of Mountains and Seas. This one has nothing to do with any entry in Deities & Demigods, but it amuses me. (In case you're wondering, this is the Ti Chiang (帝江; Dìjiāng in pinyin), a faceless, eyeless creature that likes to sing and dance.) SPIRITS OF THE AIR These again are monsters, not gods: minions of the wind gods who "exist to fight for the gods" and "can be summoned by them in numbers of up to 100 every day." Spirits of the Air posted:They have black skin, large bat wings, clawed feet (which they use in battle), and a tusked monkey's head. "Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes" also says they have an eagle's beak, but that disappeared from later descriptions. Anyway, Deities & Demigods doesn't include an illustration of them, but if you really want to see one, just be patient; they also appear in the Planescape Monstrous Supplement, included in the Planescape Campaign Setting boxed set, which we'll be getting to eventually, and they do have an illustration there. I guess these things provide yet more evidence for Werner's Myths and Legends of China having been a source for "Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes" (as I mentioned before, the main (and probably only) source for the "Chinese Mythos" chapter in Deities & Demigods seems to have been "Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes" itself), because that includes a description of a "spirit of thunder" that's pretty much an exact match for these "spirits of the air": Myths and Legends of China posted:The Spirit of Thunder, for whom Lei Tsu is often mistaken, is represented as an ugly, black, bat-winged demon, with clawed feet, monkey’s head, and eagle’s beak, who holds in one hand a steel chisel, and in the other a spiritual hammer, with which he beats numerous drums strung about him, thus producing the terrific noise of thunder. According to Chinese reasoning it is the sound of these drums, and not the lightning, which causes death. (Who's Lei Tsu? Well, there was a goddess of crafts and silk named Lei Tsu (嫘祖; Léi Zǔ in pinyin), the wife of the Yellow Emperor, but that doesn't seem to be the intended referent here. Rather, it seems that "Lei Tsu" (雷祖; Léi Zǔ in pinyin again) was also an alternate name for Wên Chung, whom we'll be getting to shortly.) The problem is that there was apparently a bit of a misunderstanding here, because if you read carefully Werner isn't referring to multiple spirits of thunder, but to a singular spirit of thunder... and in fact that spirit of thunder is identified with Lei Kung, who already appeared in this chapter as a god. So... oops? TOU MU (goddess of the north star)  I know it's not the intent, but it's always looked to me in this illustration like she's wearing three-eyed goggles. So what would you expect the "goddess of the north star" to be like? Would you expect her to be a chaotic evil twenty-foot-tall monster with three eyes, sixteen arms, and red scaly skin who carries around the living head of a red dragon that breathes fire on her enemies, and likes running people over with the unbreakable jade wheels of her five adamantine flying chariots? Because that's what she is. Also, if you say you expected that, I don't believe you. She carries around other things besides the red dragon head; that's just kind of the weirdest item... though the "piece of the moon that is able to block any single hit directed at her person in any given melee round" is a close second, and I guess the "lotus flower that heals all wounds at a touch" is in the running too. The red flag that shoots death spells is also a bit odd; that's not really something you'd expect a flag to do. Anyway, I guess since she has sixteen arms she's able to carry all this stuff around and still have plenty of hands free. There's nothing in the text to indicate what her actual goals are, or what if anything she presides over besides "the north star". The first paragraph of her two-paragraph description is mostly about all the weapons and random doodads she totes with her, and the second paragraph is entirely devoted to describing her chariots. Oh well. We get a little more information in the "Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes" description of her. If she likes an "especially valiant fighter", she will give him a magical book: either a "tome of death" that "allows anyone reading it to use one death ray spell once a day", or an unnamed book that "allows anyone to raise the dead once a day". (Not just a person reading it; the very fact that this book exists means that anyone is able to raise the dead. Okay, obviously that's not what the authors meant, but it... could have been worded better.) We are specifically told that she has an unlimited supply of these books (just in case any Dungeon Master was thinking of having her run out, I guess), and that the books are "made of a very brittle paper, but will remain useable as long as they are not exposed to hard wear and tear." Oddly, we are told at first that whether or not she likes a particular fighter is the "judge's option", but later in the paragraph we're told that "[t]he chance of her doing this is 3% in any battle having 1,000 or more persons", so apparently there's a fixed percentage chance and it's not just "judge's option" after all. You might think that rewarding valiant fighters doesn't seem like a particularly chaotic evil thing to do. I think you would probably be right. Alignments aren't mentioned for most of the gods in "Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes" (the only items in their brief stat blocks are Armor Class, Move, Hit Points, Magic Ability, Fighter Ability, and Psionic Ability), but there's nothing there to indicate that she's supposed to be evil, and at least one item that suggests that she's not: her gadget collection includes one pair of items that doesn't appear in Deities & Demigods, "2 amulets of Yin and Yang that protect the Goddess from spells sent by any person of the lawful and evil alignments." Okay, this is a bit strange, because "lawful and evil" aren't really contrasting alignments, because original D&D generally didn't refer to "evil" alignments anyway, and because weren't we specifically told at the beginning of this section not to think of the gods of this mythos as lawful or chaotic? Still, one would think that an evil goddess wouldn't have items to protect her against evil alignments. Maybe when they wrote Deities & Demigods and had to assign an alignment to her, Kuntz and Ward didn't remember their original source, and just figured that a goddess that weird and inhuman-looking had to be evil. Mythologically, Tou Mu (斗母; Dǒumǔ in pinyin—the name means "Mother of the Big Dipper") is a kind and virtuous goddess who keeps a book in which she records the life and death of every person in the world. She does have three eyes and sixteen arms, though, at least in some depictions. (In other depictions she has only eight arms, though sometimes she has four faces.) Tou Mu is yet another figure who still plays a role in modern Buddism and Taoism; I admit I don't know much about either Buddhism or Taoism, but my guess is that neither Buddhists nor Taoists would in general be thrilled about her being depicted as a chaotic evil horror. WEN CHUNG (minister of thunder) Wen Chung posted:Wen Chung has 3 eyes in his head and a massive dark-skinned body. He summons weather for Lei Kung and for his chaotic worshipers. Okay, wait. So the other gods outsource their bad omens to Lei Kung, and then Lei Kung outsources them to Wen Chung. Huh. I guess this really is a bureaucracy. Wen Chung is the third god in this mythos to live in the Elemental Plane of Air. Not sure why that's such a popular place for Chinese gods. Maybe they just like the atmosphere. Wên Chung (闻仲; Wén Zhòng in pinyin) is another character from Investiture of the Gods, though he's also described in Myths and Legends of China, so Kuntz and Ward probably got him from there. (The same is true, by the way, of Lu Yueh.) He has quite an elaborate backstory, none of which is even hinted at in his brief four-sentence entry in Deities & Demigods (half of which is, of course, about his combat abilities).  Deities & Demigods doesn't include an illustration of Wen Chung, but Myths and Legends of China does. YEN-WANG-YEH (judge of the dead)  "I heard vertical stripes are slimming." Yen-Wang-Yeh posted:This god collects all the souls and spirits of the dead and makes sure that they are transported to the proper plane and do not roam the earth at will. He tracks down spirits that do and makes them suffer for eternity. He has no power over the dead who have risen to a higher plane through their good deeds. So either there are no undead in settings where the Chinese Mythos is worshipped, or Yen-Wang-Yeh isn't very good at his job. Also, he can shoot death rays out of his eyes and "shape change into an oriental dragon", and "[a]nyone touching his body with anything" has to succeed on a saving throw or be paralyzed. Yes, I said I wasn't usually going to mention the gods' combat abilities anymore, but my reasons for mentioning them in this case will become clear momentarily. This is the other god who had a different name in "Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes". He's there—the description doesn't mention the black skin, but it does list the same combat abilities: it doesn't specify the form of an "oriental dragon" for his shape changing, but it does say he can shapechange, and the death rays and the thing about being paralyzed if you touch him with anything are there. But his name in "Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes" isn't Yen-Wang-Yeh: it's "Yama". Now, that's not necessarily completely wrong. There is a god of death in Buddhist tradition sometimes called Yama. But there are two problems here. First of all, "Yama" is a name for the god, but not really a Chinese name for him; the Chinese call him "Yen" (阎; Yán in pinyin), though they generally don't use that name alone, but as part of a longer name as in "Yenwang" (阎王; Yánwáng in pinyin—the name means basically "King Yama") or "Yen Lo Wang" (閻羅王; Yánluó Wáng in pinyin). Secondly, he was ultimately derived from the same source as the Hindu god Yama, which wouldn't be an issue except that that god also appears in "Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes", in the "Gods of India" section. My guess is that the reason for the name change has more to do with the second reason: probably that the authors noticed they had two gods of death with the same name who were otherwise completely different, and realized that would be confusing, so they decided to change one of them. (And yes, the Hindu god Yama does appear in Deities & Demigods. We'll see him when we get to the "Indian Mythos".) ...Wait, hold on, "Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes" also includes yet another god named Yama in the "Robert E. Howard's Hyborea" section. I mean, Howard's Yama was almost certainly based on the Hindu Yama, but his description here is completely different. So... that's three Yamas. That is altogether too many Yamas. "Yen-Wang-Yeh" (閻王爺; Yán Wáng Yé in pinyin) is in fact just another Chinese title for Yama. Of course, I don't know whether Kuntz and Ward knew this was another name for the same god or whether they ran across a reference to a Chinese death god named "Yen-Wang-Yeh" and assumed it was an entirely different god, but I guess it doesn't really matter. Anyway, that's it for the Deities & Demigods chapter on the "Chinese Mythos". But while all the gods in this chapter also appeared in the "Eastern Mythos" section of "Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes", the reverse is not true—there are a few entities in "Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes" that didn't make the cut for Deities & Demigods. So before I end this post, let's take a look at those. TAI YANG TI CHUN GOD OF THE SUN Tai Yang Ti Chun posted:This God appears as a noncorporal [sic] column of light that stands 20 feet tall and 4 foot [sic] wide. Hm. Maybe he didn't make it into Deities & Demigods just because the authors thought a god with such an abstract form wouldn't be a good fit? I don't know. T‘ai Yang (太陽; Tàiyáng in pinyin) is the Mandarin word for "sun", but as far as I can tell the most usual name for the Chinese sun god is T‘ai Yang Hsing Chün (太陽星君; pinyin Tàiyáng Xīngjūn). However, the name T‘ai-yang Ti-Chün (太陽帝君; Tàiyáng Dìjūn in pinyin) does appear in, you guessed it, Werner's Myths and Legends of China. (Not that it appears only there, but I mean by now I think we've pretty much established that was probably one of Kuntz and Ward's main sources, if not the main source.) LEI CHEN TZU DEMI-GOD "SON OF LEI KUNG" Lei Chen Tzu posted:Lei Chen Tzu stands 10 feet tall, has green scaled skin, 2 large tusks in his one head, an overly long nose, red spotted wings with a span of 30 feet, has the strength and the damaging power of a I think it's kind of amusing that the authors feel it necessary to specify he has "one head", but given there are two gods in this mythos with three heads, I guess maybe it's understandable. (By the way, does each of his eyes act as a mirror of life trapping, or do both eyes act jointly as a single mirror? I guess that only really matters under certain special circumstances.) Lei Chen Tzu posted:Anyone daring to kill this darling boy will suffer the revenge of Lei Kung. I'm assuming the bit about referring to him as a "darling boy" is meant ironically, but if so it's a rare touch of intentional humor in this very dry book. I do find it kind of charming that the lawful evil Lei Kung has such a strong sense of paternal affection. (Granted, "Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes" didn't say he was lawful evil; his alignment wasn't specified until Deities & Demigods.) Okay, the first thing I checked for a reference to this god was Myths and Legends of China and, surprise, he's there—as Lei Chên-tzŭ (雷震子; Léizhènzǐ in pinyin)—, and the desciption in "Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes" pretty much matches his description there. Not all sources make him out to be a son of Lei Kung (and in fact some sources say he simply is Lei Kung by another name), but Myths and Legends of China does so so does "Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes". Even according to the accounts in which he is Lei Kung's son, he was actually abandoned by his father Lei Kung and adopted by a hermit, so I'm not sure Lei Kung would really care that much if he was killed, but Myths and Legends of China never addresses that question so neither does "Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes". That's it for the gods, but then we get some non-god entities: SHEN SHU: powerful spirits that guard portals the most powerful of which are called Yu and Lei. Yes, that's how the heading appears. And despite the heading referring to them in the plural, the descriptive text refers to "[t]his spirit", singular. Shen Shu: powerful spirits that guard portals the most powerful of which are called Yu and Lei posted:This spirit seems to be a man until he starts to fight. What does he look like after he starts to fight? We aren't told. Shen Shu: powerful spirits that guard portals the most powerful of which are called Yu and Lei posted:It stands by a portal summoned by a very powerful wizard or God in ethereal form and when beings of the wrong type try to enter it moves to stop them. It fights in plus 2 armor and shield and uses a halberd. What are beings of the "wrong type"? I guess that's defined by whoever summons the shen shu, but the text doesn't explicitly say that. Also, wasn't the spirit a "he" in the previous sentence? Why is it an "it" now? Turns out these guys are also in Werner's Myths and Legends of China, as two "Door-gods" named Shên Shu (神荼; Shénshū in pinyin) and Yü Lü (鬱壘; Yùlǜ in pinyin). However, in this case that may not have been Kuntz and Ward's only source on these beings, because other sources give the other door god's name as Yulei (郁垒; Yùlěi in pinyin), the syllables of which match their names for the "most powerful" shen shu. Of course, that still doesn't explain why they decided to split the name of one door god in half to make two different names and use the name of the other door god as the generic name for the type, especially when there already was a generic Chinese name for the door gods, mênshên (门神; ménshén in pinyin). But hey, Werner didn't mention that name, so... (Wait, actually, I take that back, Werner actually does mention that the "Door-gods" are known as "Mên Shên"... but several pages back from where they're described in more detail and Shên Shu and Yü Lü are named, so Kuntz and Ward may have missed it.)  Werner even includes illustrations again. DEMONS Demons posted:Refer to the India section and the Rakshasas for their powers. While these beings are evil they have been on occasion on the side of the Gods in battle. Against whom? Who are the gods and demons jointly battling against? FAIRIES Wait... fairies in Chinese mythology? What? Fairies posted:At the top of every large mountain is a group of 1-10 Fairies. These beings stand 1 foot tall with gossamer wings and a delicate elfin appearance. One member of this group is a 15th level wizard and the rest are from the 7th to the 10th. They are very afraid of mortals and will react violently at any incursion of their land. If the weakest fairies are 7th-level wizards, why are they afraid of mortals? Apparently if you go up to the top of a large mountain in China, you're just begging to get fireballed. EVIL SPIRITS That's very specific, thank you. Evil Spirits posted:These noncorporal creatures of the air roam the earth with the ability to inhabit statues and use them for evil destructive purposes. So I guess their statistics refer to them when they're in statues? Anyway, they're pretty slow, have no magical abilities (aside from the statue possession), and don't have a huge number of hit points (25), so these things don't seem horribly deadly... though they do have a good Armor Class and some psionic ability. Okay, that's all the monsters from the Eastern Mythos, but we're still not done. Now we get magic items. Eastern Mythos posted:NOTE: The Gods have magic devices that they use in common of which they are very fond and will react violently at their misuse. So, once again, these magic items are used by the gods, and aren't intended for mortals, and are therefore pretty much useless for a campaign. (Except maybe, I guess, for a powergaming campaign where the players run around killing the gods and looting their corpses, the exact kind of campaign that Gary Gygax and the editor insist should never happen.) Anyway, all seven magic items from the Chinese Mythos chapter in Deities & Demigods are here, but there are also a few extras: THE 5 FIRE, 7 FEATHER FAN OF DEFENDING The 5 Fire, 7 Feather Fan of Defending posted:This device acts as a Jade Scepter of Defending and also negates all spells used against the holder. THERE ARE 4 PURPOSE WHIPS Please express your item header in the form of a complete sentence. The whips are presented in a numbered list: There Are 4 Purpose Whips posted:
Ah yes, once again the classic D&D conflict of Law vs. Evil. There are no descriptions of these whips. Apparently the authors decided the names were self-explanatory. YIN-YANG MIRROR Yin-Yang Mirror posted:Paralyzes all beings of the lawful or evil alignment that look into it: duration - 1 year So... does it sustain them without food or drink for that year? Also, "lawful or evil"? Seriously, what is it with this section (and only this section) repeatedly contrasting law with evil? Are we meant to assume that lawful = yin and evil = yang? Because that's certainly not the impression given by the paragraph at the beginning of the section. Anyway, we're still not quite done, because now we get: NOTES ABOUT DRAGONS Notes About Dragons posted:The Eastern dragon goes through 3 stages of metamorphosis in growing. While young, he has the head of a horse, the body of a lizard, tail of a snake, large red wings, and 4 lion legs ending in talons. In its middle years it has the horns of a deer, head of a camel, eyes of a demon, neck of a snake, scales of metal, claws of an eagle, and legs of a tiger with large yellow spotted wings. In old age it appears as the classical type.  ♪ He has... the head of a camel... ♫ "Oriental dragons" would eventually appear in AD&D in the Fiend Folio, but very differently from how they're presented here. Here there are six types of Eastern dragon, most of which are color-coded like standard D&D dragons, though it's not clear whether they're supposed to be otherwise similar to the standard dragon of the same color. There are green dragons who "are lawful and unaffected by anything with wood in it", blue dragons who "are made of the sky and neutral and not affected by anything launched in the air at them", and red dragons who "are very evil and breathe fire". (Again we have law vs. evil. Huh.) Then there are gold dragons who "are found in all 3 alignments" and get no further description; "Imperial Dragons" who are yellow and live in the sea and "can cause wind and rain storms, breathe fire, and fly, even though [they do] not have wings"; and an unnamed "dragon of treasure whose skin is made of gems and gold" and that "attracts treasure to its body as a magnet to iron". "Evil dragons live in mountains and hills, whereas good dragons live in water areas", and now they're not even trying to stick to the usual law and chaos alignments of original D&D. (Or the yin and yang alignments indicated at the beginning of the section.) All Eastern dragons "can polymorph themselves, become invisible, and use the ESP spell".  "Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes" doesn't have an illustration of an "Eastern dragon", but Deities & Demigods does. With a bunch of gibberish fake Chinese characters (that bear very little resemblance to actual Chinese characters) in a box to the right. The leftmost of which are designed to resemble the artist's initials, but maybe he figured people wouldn't notice that so he also put his initials above the box. Wait... there's a different artist's monogram below the box. Did it take two artists to make this illustration for some reason? And now we're finally done with this chapter. In terms of actual gameplay applicability, useless magic items aside, this may be the best chapter so far; it includes an interesting assortment of gods, and as I said, it's the first one to include gods of all nine alignments. In terms of mythological accuracy and cultural sensitivity, though, well, I'm not sure it's worse than the abysmal "American Indian Mythos", but it's definitely down at that level. There are, alas, other chapters to come that are just as bad in that respect. But first, we'll take a short break from mutilating ancient mythologies... Next time: Three Synonyms for "Tentacle"
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Aug 14, 2019 07:05
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Terrible Opinions posted:Those are very much fighting words. The usually way that Jesus had a half brother was that it was Joseph's son from a previous marriage, but thats all I remember of it other than the fact that monks also vigorously debated whether or not Jesus had an older half brother. He might have been one interpretation of (the multiple?) Jame(s).
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Aug 14, 2019 07:44
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Ronwayne posted:Granted, its a scum vessel, so there's a higher than average chance Doom guy/girl is aboard. Which is also a recurring conversation with my EP GMs. "NO, YOUR FURY DOES NOT NEED MORE MODS." pointing lady/sneering cat meme. there is now a mod for classic doom where you play as this lady:  https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=64378&sid=4bb9d8ce26add40f0acec1e310f5c476 it's pretty badass. even gets a power loader in case you need to take out some xenomor- defiler exsurgents
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Aug 14, 2019 08:18
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Communist Zombie posted:The usually way that Jesus had a half brother was that it was Joseph's son from a previous marriage, but thats all I remember of it other than the fact that monks also vigorously debated whether or not Jesus had an older half brother. He might have been one interpretation of (the multiple?) Jame(s).
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Aug 14, 2019 08:32
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Mors Rattus posted:Rabbinical commentary and Aggadic tradition. Most importantly, Reuben gave his name to best sandwich, so 
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Aug 14, 2019 11:32
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FMguru posted:The whole book is just the most baffling thing. A Fantasy Heartbreaker from 1981. Now why has John got the next highest combat level in heaven, second only to God, stronger than all the archangels...?
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Aug 14, 2019 11:41
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:Now why has John got the next highest combat level in heaven, second only to God, stronger than all the archangels...?
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Aug 14, 2019 11:59
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Terrible Opinions posted:
Which one was it? JcDent fucked around with this message at 12:38 on Aug 14, 2019 |
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Aug 14, 2019 12:08
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DigitalRaven posted:Most importantly, Reuben gave his name to best sandwich, so Best Boy Reuben did nothing wrong, ever, even when inventing non-kosher sandwiches.
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Aug 14, 2019 13:07
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AT-43 has the best far future humanity, immortal post-singularity beings who are trying to encase every star in a dyson sphere in order to somehow prevent the Big Rip from destroying all matter and life in the universe. The trouble is they've spent so long living inside the internet that they're all idiots, and approach warfare like a 12 year old going rambo in GTA. So despite having managed to build a dyson sphere around every star in the milky way, and technology far far in advance of any other race, they still lose battles due to their inability to take anything seriously or apply any strategy. They're like if the necrons had the numbers of the tyranids but the brains of the three stooges. And also somehow more believable as a vision of how humanity would end up if we reached the singularity than almost any of the more serious options. edit: also their home base in the region of the game is a factory ship twice the size of earth that has a white dwarf as its core. only 20% of the energy and materials it has are used to actually build war machines, the rest is used to satisfy the bizarre whims of its passengers. and they consider it to be a lovely little junk ship compared to any of their real stuff. juggalo baby coffin fucked around with this message at 13:32 on Aug 14, 2019 |
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Aug 14, 2019 13:28
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juggalo baby coffin posted:there is now a mod for classic doom where you play as this lady: Furies are like the best thing about EP because they turn that whole "WH40K Space Marines are ALWAYS male" on its head, because the biomorphs are RAW as being female to emotionally/hormonely compensate for how physically powerful they are, in like a Dune's Fish Speaker way.
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Aug 14, 2019 13:38
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juggalo baby coffin posted:AT-43 has the best far future humanity, immortal post-singularity beings who are trying to encase every star in a dyson sphere in order to somehow prevent the Big Rip from destroying all matter and life in the universe. The trouble is they've spent so long living inside the internet that they're all idiots, and approach warfare like a 12 year old going rambo in GTA. So despite having managed to build a dyson sphere around every star in the milky way, and technology far far in advance of any other race, they still lose battles due to their inability to take anything seriously or apply any strategy. Where's the "useful idiots for a massive corporation" angle?
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Aug 14, 2019 13:46
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Terrible Opinions posted:Those are very much fighting words. I mean, this is the plot of Dogma. The idea that being a married man and woman with pulses, of course they had sex and other children. This was omitted from the Bible because it would detract from Mary's image as a perfect virginal being.
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Aug 14, 2019 13:55
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Kurieg posted:I mean, this is the plot of Dogma. The idea that being a married man and woman with pulses, of course they had sex and other children. This was omitted from the Bible because it would detract from Mary's image as a perfect virginal being. More importantly, as Jews, they...almost certainly would have been having sex. A married woman has a legal right to it. Like, literally, a woman can divorce her husband for refusal to have sex. It's part of the marriage contract, boilerplate. (That said, having a child would mean their legal requirement to have a kid was met, and in the eyes of Jewish law Jesus would've counted because we don't buy the whole son-of-God story now and would not have then.)
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Aug 14, 2019 14:08
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Nessus posted:Jesus could have a half-brother, surely? Christopher Moore has you covered, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000OVLK2W/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 Fantastic novel.
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Aug 14, 2019 14:14
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Mors Rattus posted:More importantly, as Jews, they...almost certainly would have been having sex. A married woman has a legal right to it. Like, literally, a woman can divorce her husband for refusal to have sex. It's part of the marriage contract, boilerplate. (That said, having a child would mean their legal requirement to have a kid was met, and in the eyes of Jewish law Jesus would've counted because we don't buy the whole son-of-God story now and would not have then.) Around Easter I happened to go with my parents to one mass or another where one of the readings was spending about 15 minutes line itemizing Josephs line of ancestry so that we can be sure that Jesus was of the house of David but.... he's.. not? Like by literal definition Jesus is a virgin birth, so he is not of descent from David. The bible clearly establishes him as important but spends precious little time describing things he actually did compared to Mary, it spends very little time on Jesus' childhood in general even accounting for the timeskip to 30.
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Aug 14, 2019 14:24
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Well, legally he'd be considered Joseph's kid. Because, again, the 'son of God' and virgin birth stuff is on Christianity, not Judaism.
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Aug 14, 2019 14:42
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JcDent posted:Where's the "useful idiots for a massive corporation" angle? Yeah I don't remember anything about the Therians having anything to do with any corporations.
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Aug 14, 2019 14:57
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Mors Rattus posted:(That said, having a child would mean their legal requirement to have a kid was met, and in the eyes of Jewish law Jesus would've counted because we don't buy the whole son-of-God story now and would not have then.) I mean, literally did not then. Except for the Jews who did, of course.
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Aug 14, 2019 15:32
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Aberrant d20 Edition Some Background on Background So, you remember Backgrounds from Storyteller, right? How you get some dots to put into things like 'I have money' or 'I'm the main character' or 'I am covered in guns?' Well, rather than just say there's no equivalent sort of thing in d20 like quitters, our brave and highly unidentified authors on Aberrant d20 (Again, weirds me the hell out that I can't find the writers' names on the PDF anywhere) have decided they're going to do Backgrounds as Feats! You get 1 free Background Feat, plus every even character level of a normal PC class (or the 2nd level of Superhuman) gives you another one for free. In place of actual class abilities, of course; do you think we're just made of mechanical power here!? You fool! Every Background has 3 levels, so you can invest up to 3 feats in it. Backgrounds are stuff like 'I have clothes made of magic meta-materials that can store 2 PP per rank I've taken and is immune to my powers and fits me no matter how much I change shape. Also it gives +X AC as a Natural Armor bonus where X is how much juice I have stored in it and I can draw the juice out whenever I need to', which is honestly pretty nice. Or Node, where you can spend more PP a round and regenerate PP much faster, but also take more Negative Levels in one whack if you mess up a Taint Check but given how rarely you should be making those get Node you fool. Especially as the faster regen basically negates the main reason you might end up taking Taint Checks, because this game is well designed. They are also stuff like "I HAVE A NEMESIS" (You get PP back when you foil them or discover they're behind things, but this mostly generates an increasingly powerful person who wants to kill you) or the other usual 'Merits and Flaws' style stuff, translated into Feat Trees. So if you want a Fortress of Solitude or a lot of money, you spend Feats for it and buy up Backgrounds. One of the issues with them is the translation to Feats means that you're advancing your Backgrounds as you go, rather than taking these at the start of the game. Which ends up making them weirder. Say I take a Mentor at character creation: They're 2 levels higher than me (5), max of 10. Then I upgrade them at level 4. Now they're 3 levels higher than me, max 15. Then I upgrade them at level 6. Now my Mentor is 4 levels higher than me and will be until level 18. So my Mentor is shooting ahead of me in power like a WW NPC (which, well, in-genre I guess) but because it's done by Feats, I couldn't have started with a Rank 3 Mentor (without spending my non-Background Feat Slots, anyway, and that's sort of a sucker's game) and been connected to someone who is a big deal at the beginning. Also, all the various 'I have Money' or 'I'm Famous' Backgrounds being things you keep advancing as you go conflicts with the game being an active thing. After all, you're a Nova. They can be tremendously famous, and Get Money trivially by going in hard on a public persona or working for amoral superhuman Blackwater or the UN Conspiracy or whatever. Stuff like Reputation or Resources or Fame feels like the stuff you'd be gaining naturally by playing the game, instead of being tied to taking Feats. It would be more organic if you just got some Backgrounds at creation and that was it, but the designers are just wedded to 'no, we're gonna make these part of the Feat System goddamnit'. Backgrounds also give me a good segue to talk about SUPERSCIENCE, the next Powerset for Novas. It is, like Megas, significantly better than most actual Quantum Powers! Specifically if you take Invent Organism. Now, one of the Backgrounds you can take is owning something made by a superscientist. These are items that can simulate other Quantum Powers like D&D Wands (With Charges and everything, but Charges are restored by spending a single PP to add a Charge so that's trivial). They can also just be +X items. Using the 'Simulate a Quantum Power' Inventions is really fiddly and annoying, but also potentially insanely powerful because you can just spend time off-screen building stuff and that is a much less limited resource than Character Levels and Power Slots. The real power is in the Invent X options: You need Invent Device, Invent Organism, or Invent Compound to do superscience (all Feats, all reasonably easy for a starting PC to get), but Invent Organism is the most bullshit one for reasons we're about to get into. See, to do Superscience, you need time, a lab, and dice. You go to the tables of enhancements and Science Bonuses you can give a thing, then you work out how long R&D will take based on which enhancements you took and how many you took, then you work out the R&D DC. The DC is 15+Number of Enhancements+2 Extra Per Rank of The Same Enhancement. So like, if I'm trying to make a hyper-rifle with +2 Damage and +2 To Hit, I would need 15+4 (Number of Enhancements)+4 (Two places where I took the same Enhancement twice)=19 on the eventual Do Science check. These are all Knowledge checks, so one trivial application of Mega Int and its Mental Prodigy Enhancement (which is free and always on) will get you +2xQuantum to all Superscience checks while also enhancing your Int, so if you're doing Super Science and don't have that you are a sillybilly. If you roll a 1 while making a superscience device you can never again try to make that superscience device. If you beat the DC by a lot, you research the device or surgery or whatever faster, but not much faster given most devices take months to research and you get 1 day knocked off per 3 you beat the DC by. Now, the bullshit comes in with a little sidebar that says if you have the Invent X Feat, you can just start with any device with that Feat already researched and ready, because you 'made it during your background'. Without actually paying for the Gadget Background. This is kind of bullshit. But even if this wasn't here, the smart move is to grab 2 ranks of Gadget at your starting career and get an Invention with 10 Enhancements. And make the invention My Awesome Biology. Because you can only take up to 10 Enhancements on any organism anyway. And Enhancements in Invent Organism are things like 'permanent +2 to a stat, up to 3 times' or 'Permanent +4 Natural Armor Stacks With Everything, DR 2/-'. A character with 10 Enhancements on their biology can pop out of the Genetic Enhancement Chamber with +8 Natural Armor That Stacks With Everything, DR 3/-, and +14 to their other stats. Or just +20 to their stats, overall. Or they can turn themselves into a cat person but really, no mechanical pluses. Note there are 3 different sources of +Charisma (Plastic Surgery up to 3 Ranks, Pheromone Generators up to 2 Ranks, and 'Lobomatic Behavioral Modification' up to 2 ranks) so you could conceivably come out of the chamber at +14 to Charisma. Smarter move is boosting more useful stats in a d20 context, but it's hilarious. Still, just having Invent Organism entitles you, RAW, to all this delicious madness. Or taking 2 ranks of Gadget. Superscience is off the rails. Similarly, you can invent items that just, uh, simulate powers. No need for Superhuman or Aberrant levels. The item will only work for 1 week per point you beat its build DC by unless you permanently lower your Quantum by 1 to make it forever (or just take Gadget, those last forever, and can simulate up to 2 3rd level powers at Rank 3 anyway) and still takes PP to run, and you have to make it harder to make to give it a better to-hit or ability to operate via a byzantine formula of 'It starts with 1/2 your Quantum skill/to-hit and then gets +2 per 3 days you spend working on it, up to your 2xQuantum, then can go higher than that by making it harder to build' but c'mon. You can get much better bang for your buck here than by spending power slots and dead levels; one or two Feats will get you access to most Quantum Powers, effectively. Most of these magic devices can only be used by their maker, but for +4 research DC you can make them usable by any superhuman. For +8, even those silly mundanes can use your Magnetoray Cannon or whatever nonsense bullshit you called it. And now that all that's out of the way, I can finally make an example PC. They are obviously going to be a superscientist who Gene-Modded themselves TO THE MAX for maximum power (or just someone who took 2 Gadgets to get in the Gene Enhancement Chamber), but aside from that, I'm open to suggestions as per usual. Seriously, I'm not leaving +20 to stats on the table when I'm trying to make a genetic superbeing. And keep in mind even with all this bullshit, d20 Aberrant characters are still significantly weaker than the Storyteller ones to the point that the fluff feels a bit off. After all, anyone could go into the Gene Enhancement Chamber, and a character who was upgraded there can end up significantly more super than someone who hosed up and got 1 Quantum at creation even if they're technically a 'baseline'. Superscience being batshit broken isn't a result of Novas being powerful, it's a result of Superscience being really, really poorly thought out. Superscience is batshit because the resources it's asking you to use are theoretically unlimited and depend on the pleasure of your GM and campaign (who knows how precious in-setting time is going to be) while normal Powers and things cost a deeply limited, hard-locked resource (Power/Feat Slots). Next Time: A Modern Prometheus Night10194 fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Aug 14, 2019 |
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Aug 14, 2019 16:45
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Night10194 posted:You can completely sidestep the need to spend permanent character resources on powers just by taking a couple Feats. 
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Aug 14, 2019 16:56
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Zereth posted:Feats are a permanent character resource, though? I more meant you can get a lot more out of the Feats than you would out of just buying the powers. As in, for Invent Device, I can now completely ignore needing Superhuman Levels or taking Level 2 or 3 Powers because I can just build a magic item that does those things. E: Edited it for clarity, thanks for pointing that out. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Aug 14, 2019 |
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Aug 14, 2019 16:58
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Night10194 posted:I more meant you can get a lot more out of the Feats than you would out of just buying the powers. As in, for Invent Device, I can now completely ignore needing Superhuman Levels or taking Level 2 or 3 Powers because I can just build a magic item that does those things. EDIT: wait, if you don't actually NEED mega-intelligence to do super-science, is it possible to build the Gene Enhancement Chamber without being a Nova at all? EDIT EDIT: I mean, assuming you haven't already been enhanced by a helpful nova to be smarter, starting from Baseline Human, possibly with intermediary steps to enhance your intelligence so you can meet the DC to enhance your int more Zereth fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Aug 14, 2019 |
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Aug 14, 2019 17:06
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