LotR gets filtered from D&D more with each edition.

[Username17]

The whole "people don't know what this monster is" seems for a big part made up to a) curb "metagaming" and b) make some knowledge skills kind of useful. That the DC to recognize a famous monster is higher than to recognize a weaker monster is another problem.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that if you can identify a Mind Flayer that you should let it in. Although of course walls of any kind are no help at all against a Mind Flayer because they can just come in anyway. But on the off chance that you recognize a horrible brain eating monster that is for some reason asking to be let in by the front door, you probably should keep that door shut.

However, if you don't recognize a creature and it is asking to be let in, you should at least preliminarily let it in. Because you not recognizing it indicates that it is powerful enough that not letting it in is just going to piss it off.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

That's only the case, Frank, if your culture/team hasn't proven by not going extinct so far, but actually thriving, that on a Team vs. Team level, your team wins.

If you have enough medium and high level adventurers, soldiers etc. to have handled monster incursions regularily enough to survive, and did not rely on allies (apart maybe on special "threats to the world" occasions) then you don't need to be friendly to suspected threats - they have to prove they are no threat before you deal with them.

Why should you care about your security precautions also possibly driving a potential ally away when you already have enough high level characters on your team to provide the security you need? Why try to make friends with every stranger on the more or less off-chance that it'll be an ally later when a crack team of heroes is just a scroll of sending and the wizard's teleport away, after having cleaned out the monsters from the area in the past already?

[Fuchs]

Or to sum it up: Would you really want an ally who gets pissed and angry for not getting to shop in your town without first proving he or she is no threat, and then tries to attack you? That makes for a rather shaky alliance in the best case.

And the fact that this would be done despite historical precedences of such attacks leading to the death of said "Ally", his family, and maybe even entire race, and their treasures wandering into the vaults of the latest adventuring group, means said ally was a tad too excitable to survive anyway, and being allied with it would have meant an unneeded war with another culture over similar slights as its ally - something one should avoid too.

[violence in the media]

I think the overall point is that it is nonsensical to apply the "looks funny" metric if you're simply going to allow and random group of humans, elves, or dwarves through the gate. No chance for mischief there, amirite? If a troll is bad enough rampaging around your village streets, isn't a 10th level evil Cleric of Murder even worse?

Instead, the proposal is that you treat all visitors in the same manner, as mere visual identification is hopelessly useless. Just being a human dirt farmer isn't enough for a free pass through security, and being a lizardman isn't grounds for immediate rejection. Now, once you know that this is Noel the human dirt farmer from across the valley, and that's Ss'thik the Ravager, it's ok to just let Noel in and drive off Ss'thik with violence. But by visual racial identification alone, you're ignoring the very real possibility that Noel is the Ravager and Ss'thik just wants to trade pigs.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Why should you care about your security precautions also possibly driving a potential ally away when you already have enough high level characters on your team to provide the security you need?

If you actually have high-level adventurers providing security for your side then why are you so afraid of a pack of goblins carrying pigs?

While it's credible that a pack of ogres might curbstomp a hamlet for the lulz, if the same pack of ogres came across some city nice enough to have gates and uniformed do you really think that they're just itching for the chance to bust in and crack some heads before getting killed? Psychopaths who are willing to raid the henhouse and get shot before they carry out a chicken do exist, but do you think that describes the behavior of most intelligent beings?

I mean, really, if you're some loser village with a few thousand people in it and a couple of unidentified giants come strolling by, you're not going to start shit because you can't do anything. But if you're a city with fifty-thousand people in it with a team of adventurers in it, you have no reason to start shit because unless the giants behave like said psychopaths you're just going to curbstomp them if they misbehave anyway.

The only way your reasoning makes sense if you only look at monsters as a bundle of barely repressed hate who are willing to trade torture and death for the chance to kill some peasants; they're willing to wear the 'neutral NPC' tag long enough until enough people enter their 'kill before you're killed' counter. That's the only way this rubric makes sense.

If you think this is true of most intelligent beings unless they have smooth skin, look human, and are white then you need to stop playing those damn MMORPGs for awhile, son.

[Cielingcat]

If you think this is true of most intelligent beings unless they have smooth skin, look human, and are white then you need to stop playing those damn MMORPGs for awhile, son.

Note that in WoW, this:

Is a good guy (or at least a PC, since there are two sides of PCs), and this:

Is the end boss of the entire expansion.

So yeah, that's not true even of WoW.

[RandomCasualty2]

Or to sum it up: Would you really want an ally who gets pissed and angry for not getting to shop in your town without first proving he or she is no threat, and then tries to attack you? That makes for a rather shaky alliance in the best case.

Any intelligent being isn't going to necessarily take offense to this. They realize that the world is a dangerous place too, and that low level humans tend to be near the bottom of the power curve.

I mean any reasonably intelligent creature is going to say "Fuck I look like a monster. Of course they don't trust me."

While it's credible that a pack of ogres might curbstomp a hamlet for the lulz, if the same pack of ogres came across some city nice enough to have gates and uniformed do you really think that they're just itching for the chance to bust in and crack some heads before getting killed? Psychopaths who are willing to raid the henhouse and get shot before they carry out a chicken do exist, but do you think that describes the behavior of most intelligent beings?

Well no. They're not going to put themselves at much risk if they can avoid it. This is exactly why having your gates actually help you.

As far as being psychopaths, they absolutely are. This is what "usually chaotic evil" means. They have no concern for human life, no concern for loyalty or law, and will fuck your ass up if they think they can get away with it. This is why it's especially dangerous to let ogres into your town.

I mean, really, if you're some loser village with a few thousand people in it and a couple of unidentified giants come strolling by, you're not going to start shit because you can't do anything. But if you're a city with fifty-thousand people in it with a team of adventurers in it, you have no reason to start shit because unless the giants behave like said psychopaths you're just going to curbstomp them if they misbehave anyway.

What if you're a town with some mid level guys, but only enough to deal with the threat if all your best guys are gathered in one place? Most towns and small cities probably fall in that range. They've got a band or two of adventurers, and when the dire threat comes they want to be able to have those guys in one place, since being adventurers, they're really not going to necessarily be on guard duty. So when a lookout spots trouble at the gates, they need time to go get them.

Contrary to popular belief, adventuring teams aren't perpetually together while in the city. Wizards are off doing research, warriors are out womanizing and clerics are praying at the temple. Letting monsters into your wall means that you give those monsters a chance to assassinate the adventurers while they're not grouped. So a threat that you may have been able to handle before becomes very deadly when you allow monsters to be assassins. Because seriously, the first thing they're probably going to do is gangbang the most powerful dude you have while he's alone.

If you think this is true of most intelligent beings unless they have smooth skin, look human, and are white then you need to stop playing those damn MMORPGs for awhile, son.

Honestly, the whole "Monsters are treated as humans" bullshit came out of MMOs. Where it doesn't matter if you're a troll or a Tauren or whatever, the villagers sense your PC flag and let you in.

[Koumei]

RC, how can you speak with Tolkien's dick in your mouth? Still, the main point I take issue with is this:

I mean any reasonably intelligent creature is going to say "Fuck I look like a monster. Of course they don't trust me."

I'm pretty sure the other races wouldn't think "Humans are the normal, baseline creature. I look like a monster, because I'm different from the normal things."

Some might think "Shit, those pink-brown things with only two legs look pretty scary, I hear they're all wizards!" Others might think "Those little people look funny compared to a normal troll, but w/e." Others yet think "They might not be all nice and scaly and metallic like me, but on the plus side, they're not big and scaly and RED, so I have no need to be scared."

Or maybe some think "I must look like a fucking god to those squishy things."

But I doubt they'd be thinking they look like monsters.

This is what "usually chaotic evil" means.

That's hilarious - that you think "Usually Chaotic Evil" means anything. I'm not only talking about the "usually" there, the "chaotic" and to a lesser extent the "evil" are also known for being very vague in this matter.

[Starmaker]

Honestly, the whole "Monsters are treated as humans" bullshit came out of MMOs. Where it doesn't matter if you're a troll or a Tauren or whatever, the villagers sense your PC flag and let you in.

Hell no. If you're a Tauren or a Troll, the Tauren and Troll villages are fine with you appearing at the gates, but the humans are going to try to tear you apart even if you just wanted to catch a fish or buy a kitten.

[mean_liar]

"Usually Chaotic Evil" means that they "usually murder". Fuck going into nuance about alignment. A CE anything that can kill an average person at whim in one round is basically just an absent witness away from killing and robbing someone. Unless you're down for that kind of pants-shitting experience, you don't let them come in.

[Fuchs]

The only way your reasoning makes sense if you only look at monsters as a bundle of barely repressed hate who are willing to trade torture and death for the chance to kill some peasants; they're willing to wear the 'neutral NPC' tag long enough until enough people enter their 'kill before you're killed' counter. That's the only way this rubric makes sense.

If you think this is true of most intelligent beings unless they have smooth skin, look human, and are white then you need to stop playing those damn MMORPGs for awhile, son.

I assume that in a world where their forefathers cleared the land from orcs, goblins, ogres and the occasional elf or gnome tribe who got în the way of manifest destiny, humans generally distrust strangers, especially those who do not look or act like them. I also assume that monsters and humans have a long history of strife, almost perpetual mutual hatred, and generally expect the other side to try to kill them. Therefore I expect humans to think that a monsters is just that - a bundle of barely suppressed hate.

That doesn't mean I think the assumptions humans in my game have are true in our world. But there's preconcpetions, and there's awareness and reasonable precautions. If you think that just because that guy at the corner watching you dresses like a bum, looks like he has the shakes from withdrawal, and has both hands in his pockets gripping something means he could very well be an undercover cop just posing as a druggie looking for a mugging victim to pay his next shot, so you don't have any reason to be on your guard at all and should give him a ride... well, you'd not make it far in D&D.

[Fuchs]

RC, how can you speak with Tolkien's dick in your mouth? Still, the main point I take issue with is this:

I mean any reasonably intelligent creature is going to say "Fuck I look like a monster. Of course they don't trust me."

I'm pretty sure the other races wouldn't think "Humans are the normal, baseline creature. I look like a monster, because I'm different from the normal things."

Some might think "Shit, those pink-brown things with only two legs look pretty scary, I hear they're all wizards!" Others might think "Those little people look funny compared to a normal troll, but w/e." Others yet think "They might not be all nice and scaly and metallic like me, but on the plus side, they're not big and scaly and RED, so I have no need to be scared."

Or maybe some think "I must look like a fucking god to those squishy things."

But I doubt they'd be thinking they look like monsters.

So, would your PC think "Oh, I look like a human, and ogres are known to eat humans, and we fought like three wars to wipe them out so we can live in peace in the last 50 years, and last year the town hero brought back the ogre leader's head as a trophy, but I doubt I'll look like an enemy to them"? Or assume "Hey, I look like a human, and humans are their enemies, so I better be careful about approaching them"?

[violence in the media]

So, in your world there can be no empires that assimilate conquered peoples into their culture and society? All kingdoms are racially pure? Elves owe more allegiance to other elves on the other side of the planet than they do to the denizens of whatever kingdom that they live in?

What do you do when PCs want to do something as dramatic as play mixed-race parties? As I asked earlier, how does this get further complicated when one of them elects to play something not default-white?

[Rejakor]

Okay, i'm going to come out of the closet and say that I disagree with both of the positions that seem to be forming.

Frank, you're basically saying that people with 1 HD of humanoid, i.e. the entire human race apart from 4 random adventurers who are the PCs, are utterly at the mercy of team monster and HAVE to survive by making friends and using/abusing their Diplomacy score to it's utter limit so that when the Otyughs start rising out of the river, a Silver Dragon will swoop down and save them.

ALSO, you're assuming that the encounter tables listed in the DMG are an accurate estimation of monster population density, something I will literally take a sword to you over. Adventurers seek out challenges, monsters, enemies, overlords, marauding bandits. They do so to get magical loot without paying full shop price for it, and they do it to gain gold so they can afford ale, whores and nice soft feather beds, and they do it to improve and hone their own skills, something they don't think of as a weird practice because it just works and it always has and they have no reason to think differently.

I have a problem with two assumptions in point 1 and one assumption in point 2.

Fuchs, et al. Your argument is one I, broadly, agree with. However, it is based on assumptions that are wrong. Not fundamentally, but in application. You're assuming that humans especially, and any race that can gain PC levels, when pushed, will immediately gain the power to push back. That isn't true. It depends entirely on the situation. Humanity as a race generally survives. They do this, just like in real life, by using every advantage they can get their hands on. If that's class levels, it's class levels. If that's friendly monsters, that's friendly monsters. If that's mundane defences, that's mundane defences. Absolute systems do not work very well in varied environments. Absolute isolationist K-O-S policies would be overperformed by mixed policies, and so would absolute make-friends-with-it-at-all-costs policies. Absolute isolationist only works when your local town/village has enough oomph to defeat every that threat that comes at it - and when it can't, it dies. Make-friends-with-it-at-all costs policy only works when the benefits for making friends with something outweigh the costs for making it a friend, and the humans in this example have no way of knowing that, AT ALL.

Furthermore, psychologically, humans wouldn't do either! They would do a mix of what they thought was the best course of action at the time and what their individual psychology dictated! If the monster could clearly overpower their classleveled denizens and town guard and traps and magic items, by virtue of being, say, a Titan, then they either run or give it what it wants while trying to find a way to murder it in it's sleep! So YEAH you could have xenophobic cultures, but generally, they will be outperformed by cultures that maintain a wary outlook but generally will offer the cautious hand of you-might-be-a-monster friendship. Evolution, blahdy blah. However you wouldn't have 'do what you like with us, sir!' cultures, because some bastard will have done what he wants with them, cause not everything is rational or even has a mind, and there would be a bunch of diplomatic corpses in a charred what used to be a town.

Okay, now onto Frank's 3 assumptions and why I think they are incorrect.

Assumption 1: Monsters exist frakking everywhere.

No. Just no. Monsters need to eat, drink, sleep, pee, and procreate, and if they don't they need necromancers or astral pools or mutagenic vats or underdark tunnels or something that stops them from existing everywhere, always. If you chop down a monster's forest, kill all it's babies, and drive it into the wilderness, your children are not going to have to deal with that monster's children unless they come out of the wilderness swearing revenge and that is only going to happen a limited number of times due to revenge not being particularly profitable and adventurers killing off all of them.

Assumption 2: The only way weak little humanoids are going to be able to stand against the monsters that exist everywhere and everywhen is by enlisting the aid of people with more racial bonuses to stats and supernatural abilities to beat them up.

This is more complicated. So i'm only rebutting half of it. Yeah, sure, if you have a bunch of angels living in your town, you could totally enlist their help to beat up the otyughs climbing out of the river to eat your populace. However, it's a fairly established fact that humans can be really awesome. And dwarfs and elves etc. Also there's all kinds of nasty mundane traps and things you can use. So, depending on the nature of the monster threat, humans could, yes, could, deal with it on their own.

Assumption 3: That the monster that attacks you tomorrow and the monster that attack you today could be wildly different in terms of power.

If you have an equal % chance of a Balor attacking your town as you do 1d4 hobgoblin bandits, then any human civilization erupts into spontaneous flames, no save, or you end up with a bunch of wandering tribes made up of badasses with 20-30 levels in something each, in a post apocalyptic wasteland. If the majority of monsters in an area are low CR, then humans have ways of dealing with them. Like colonialism, humans reactions to 'other species' will depend on the individual humans, the military power of the 'other species' and what factors there are influencing conflict(racism, monetary gain from attacking, etc).

There isn't 'one best response' to all monster situations, and human psychology wouldn't allow for it anyway. What you're going to get is a spectrum of responses, most of which are going to fall in the center band of 'don't make enemies but don't trust stuff that doesn't look like something that you know what it is, and even then, if you can get a mage to scan it for evil/magicks, then that's a good thing'.

[RandomCasualty2]

I'm pretty sure the other races wouldn't think "Humans are the normal, baseline creature. I look like a monster, because I'm different from the normal things."

Probably not in those words, but they definitely can see the similarity where they look like an organic killing machine (and probably *are*). Seriously, when I walk over to a tiny dog and it growls or bites, it's doing that shit because it's scared. I would think that most intelligent creatures would be able to realize the same reaction with humans.

In any case, you look scary. They probably don't refer to themselves as "monsters", but they certainly know they're scary shit.

That's hilarious - that you think "Usually Chaotic Evil" means anything. I'm not only talking about the "usually" there, the "chaotic" and to a lesser extent the "evil" are also known for being very vague in this matter.

Well alignment debates aside, we can at least agree that "Usually chaotic evil" means you're talking about a race that's usually the bad guys. They'll kill you, rob you and possibly defile your corpse.

So, in your world there can be no empires that assimilate conquered peoples into their culture and society? All kingdoms are racially pure? Elves owe more allegiance to other elves on the other side of the planet than they do to the denizens of whatever kingdom that they live in?

No of course not. You can very well have mixed races, but those races are pretty much humanoid races. Elves and dwarves (and even orcs and drow on some worlds) are pretty much just your basic humanoids. Unless the race has some kind of bad reputation, you're going to let them in. If people don't know that the drow are evil, they'll actually be welcome in surface towns. Because really, they're not any more dangerous than your average humans, so you expect that the guards can probably handle them. The risk is pretty much the same as letting in a group of unknown humans. In fact, with some races, like normal elves, they actually lean towards good alignments, which makes them less of a risk than other humans.

Now on average if you're dealing with a monster that looks more dangerous than that... whether it's a troll or a minotaur or whatever, then you're taking some big risks, because it may well not be something your town guard can handle. The risk here is much higher.

It's not about racial purity or anything like that, it's a simple matter of calculated risks. Now I could actually see a society of elves or other naturally good races being racially pure simply because to them, humans being neutral is actually riskier than an average elf, who is likely good aligned. Still though, that's a pretty big extreme, and not many societies would go that way.

The majority of societies simply would ban races that look evil.

[Kaelik]

Rejakor, why do you always roll into everything and stupid it up?

None of those are assumptions that Frank is making. You can tell that by just reading the thread.

1) Monsters don't have to exist everywhere. It doesn't matter if your peaceful village lasts 10 years or 20 or 50 or 100, at some point, some monster, be it Ogre or Balor or Guardian Naga or whatever is going to show up. When these things show up, they are going to matter. If you are too big for Ogres to matter, then okay fine, later a Balor shows up, and the only thing that matters in the long run, is how you respond to powerful monsters showing up. And the more powerful you become, the more powerful "monsters" you are likely to draw.

2) Wrong again, he specifically called out how high level characters look like monsters as much or much more than low level trolls and shit. I have a character in another game that is literally made of ice. Sure he was once humanish, but know he walks around covered in fucking ice. I I saw him, I'd flip a coin, heads he's ice man, tails he's an ice elemental.

That's why how you treat "weird looking people" also effects how you treat glowing eyed Wizards, Dwarves who change color and who's skin turns to stone, and walking Ice people. High level PCs are also "monsters" and "strange" and "weird looking"

And if you are actually claiming that 1HD humanoids can actually defend a city against a naga, just go die already, I don't want to hear your bullshit level 1 commoner fap off again.

3) Not part of the deal at all. If you actually read what frank writes, you can see in his other work that he very much is aware of what sort of things cause monsters to come about. His actual claim is that you will run into a bunch of monsters, and at any point based on information you actually have, it is better or equal to be nice than mean.

If your town is level 5, in the sense that the militia is level 3, and the local Wizard and Guard captain and maybe mayor are level 5, then you are a level 5 town.

Several things can happen:

1) Good/Neutral/Evil
2) Weaker/Same/Stronger

If you run into something weird looking at the gate, you won't know which one it is, but if you ask it what it wants, and it says anything other than "to eat you" you should be nice to it.

1) Good Weaker: You are an asshole for killing it vs You get a friend.
2) Neutral Weaker: You are an asshole for killing it vs You get a trading partner.
3) Evil Weaker: You can still rofl stomp him inside the walls anyway, so who cares, he's not going to be evil to people who are more powerful than him. You aren't really an asshole for killing him (even though you are because you didn't know he was evil) vs You get a trading partner.

1) Good Equal: You are asshole for trying to kill him, and 50% odds on some karmic punishment like bad weather or something when he reports to his boss if he has one. vs You get a powerful friend/trading partner.
2) Neutral Equal: You start a fight and you have a pretty good chance of having your town roflstomped by the Ogre trading Group. Or you come out looking like shit at the end of big old battle and you have to repair houses and people died vs You get some trading partners.
3) Evil Equal: You lose out on a surprise round, or he gets one, but you have a 50% chance of the town surviving the fight either way, maybe it's a 45/55 split and you being a jerk to the two guys above gives you a slight edge in this one instance.

1) Good More Powerful: You get roflstomped, because you proved that you are evil, and it's not hard for him. vs You get a powerful ally.
2) Neutral More Powerful: You get roflstomped. vs Maybe he worms his way in and rules as a tyrant, maybe he's just a trading partner, maybe he gets bored and leaves. All of those are better than the roflstomp.
3) Evil More Powerful: You get Rolfstomped no matter what.

Now, the only situation in which being mean gets a better result is the equal evil, and it's minor benefit. Compare that against every single other one, and it's pretty fucking dumb.

Now, based on previous things frank has written, I'm going to assume this is something he believes to be generally true, but it's definitely my opinion:

As a town, you'll get a lot of weaker thans, but they don't matter as much, since the benefit they bring is small, and you can just kill them all and your town will be standing 99% intact regardless.

The most common is going to be equals, because Ogre Trading Caravans will only trade with people who have stuff they want, and who also want what the Ogres have, and Ogre War Parties sent by the Ogre Tyrant are only going to sack cities that have something they want but the ogres can actually stand a chance of winning, and the Ogre Renegade from the Ogre Tyrant seeking asylum is only going to go someplace where people can generally beat back the Ogre Tyrant, but he can still provide them with something they actually want.

Sure, every once in a while, random Displacer beasts might attack and not be able to get over the wall, or Mind Flayers will show up to harvest your brains, but that's rare, and more often you'll be dealing with situations in which people who show up at your gates can actually pose a relative risk, and can provide you with something you don't have enough of, but also want something you have.

[RandomCasualty2]

Everything about the anti-isolationist position is a bunch of hyperbole. Lets stop that shit now, because it's really aggravating. I feel like I'm arguing with Phonelobster here.

Here are a few clarifications and honestly I dont' want to have anyone else mistating this shit. It's getting really tiring. So I've bold faced these points, with the hope that someone will actually read them.

1. You don't open fire on everyone who is monstrous, you tell them to go away first. You are not picking needless fights.

Why is everyone against this position simply incapable of understanding that it doesn't mean that you open fire the moment something comes to the gates. Seriously, you actually yell out "Leave or we're going to shoot you."

This means that you're not going to start these imagined battles with good or neutral creatures at all. You tell them to go away, they pretty much will.

2. There are more settlements than small unwalled villages and high level cities. Yes, they have some guards, and no, these towns are not completely helpless!

The majority of towns have moderate defenses to them. They're not totally helpless, nor are they super awesome enough to curb stomp anyone who screws with them.

Yes, towns are going to have some mid level people in them. You're talking level 5s to 7s probably, and being able to mobilize those guys is important.

3. This isn't emphasizing single race towns. Human-like races are okay. Monstrous ones are not.

You're only banning shit that looks like monsters, not the humanoid races. All this "you're forming the Aryan union, how can you have dwarf PCs" crap can stop, because that's not even an issue here. Humans, dwarves and elves are fine. Trolls and bugbears are fucking monsters.

---

I don't want to hear anyone bring up any of the above points again, because I'm getting tired of people pulling this hyperbole/strawman bullshit out. If you want to argue the position, then argue the position, but don't argue against shit that isn't what anyone is talking about.

[Kaelik]

RC, you are a liar, and you are dumb.

First of all, you specifically just said "Because really, they're not any more dangerous than your average humans, so you expect that the guards can probably handle them."

And that undermines everything you ever said, because now you are specifically kicking out people that are stronger than you, including PCs, and you can shut your lying "only monstsers" crap.

2) There no fucking "looks evil" shit. There is no such thing as looking evil. Coutals are good, nagas are bad except when they are good, ect.

When you say "looks evil" you mean "doesn't look like me" which is the fucking reason people are calling you racist, because you are.

Orcs even fucking look like you, as do drow, hobgoblins, goblins, bugbears, ogres, evil dwarves ect.

You are not kicking people out because they "look evil" you are kicking them out because they "don't look like humans" Which is just as fucking arbitrary and bigoted and completely unfounded in actual experience as hating black people, except in many ways more so sense humans can be evil, and silver dragons literally cannot be.

[Fuchs]

One can also assume that such xenophobia mostly applies to strangers, not to people one has had peaceful if at the start very cautious contact with (at some neutral trade meet, or diplomacy by some adventurers or other bold people).

[RandomCasualty2]

First of all, you specifically just said "Because really, they're not any more dangerous than your average humans, so you expect that the guards can probably handle them."

And that undermines everything you ever said, because now you are specifically kicking out people that are stronger than you, including PCs, and you can shut your lying "only monstsers" crap.

Yeah, but PCs are humans.. so they are just as much of a risk as letting in any human or elf.

2) There no fucking "looks evil" shit. There is no such thing as looking evil. Coutals are good, nagas are bad except when they are good, ect.

If it looks like afucking monster, then it looks pretty evil.

When you say "looks evil" you mean "doesn't look like me" which is the fucking reason people are calling you racist, because you are.

Yes, this is all about racial profiling.. but you know, that shit keeps you alive in the D&D world. It's a fact that most monstrous looking races are evil.

Orcs even fucking look like you, as do drow, hobgoblins, goblins, bugbears, ogres, evil dwarves ect.

Bugbears totally do not look like humans. They're furry and bestial.

You are not kicking people out because they "look evil" you are kicking them out because they "don't look like humans" Which is just as fucking arbitrary and bigoted and completely unfounded in actual experience as hating black people, except in many ways more so sense humans can be evil, and silver dragons literally cannot be.

It's not a misconception, this is actually a fact. It's a numbers game like I said before. Yes, sometimes you're wrong, but that doesn't necessarily make it a bad decision as a general policy, because most of the time you're right.

Honestly, take a look through the monster manual... compare how many of those creatures are good versus how many are evil.

Are you telling me that some random beast like monster is more likely to be benevolent than evil? Because if you are, then you're flat out lying.

You can call me racist and all that bullshit, but fuck you can't change that fact. I know you don't like it, but this is D&D, and most monsters are shit that kills you. It's not dungeons and diplomacy. This is a game of kill or be killed. Racial profiling saves lives and it's fucking stupid not to do it. Most of the shit that looks bestial in the D&D world pretty much is out to kill you.

You're not against it because of any rational reason, but because you find racism bad in real life and want to state some crusade about how there should be brotherhood among all living things, even if those living things belong to a race of sociopaths. This isn't real life, and comparing black people to bugbears is idiotic. Bugbears are by nature evil and that makes the situation totally different. Yes, you seriously should fear them. Its like letting Hannibal Lecter near your kids because "sociopaths are people too."

[Username17]

It's not a misconception, this is actually a fact.

No it isn't. You have no idea how many monsters of various types are on various sides. There are more Devils listed in the Monster Manual than Archons, but it is stated fact that there are definitionally the same number of both "in the world."

Your "numbers game" is just you saying "I heard Black guys commit more crime!" You don't actually have any statistics, you seriously have no fucking idea.

A creature shows up, and you don't know what it is. It asks to come in. It could be Good, Neutral, or Evil. It could be Weaker, Stronger, or As-Powerful as you are. Those are the only parameters you know. Give that matrix, when would it be advantageous to tell it to stay out on pain of death? When would it be detrimental to tell it to stay out on pain of death? That's seriously all you know.

As for your bizarre and frankly racist assumption that letting white people into the city is somehow OK, need I remind you that humans have the same alignment as Lizardmen and Doppelgangers? Worse, there's like fifty million evil things that have a human form. Anything that looks like "a human" could again be good or evil, more powerful or less powerful. That fact that it looks like a white man doesn't in any way change that equation.

In fact, the number of straight evil things that look exactly like a human are far outnumbering the number of evil things that look like a lizard man.

"Number of entries in the Monster Manual" is not admissible, because it's specifically stated to not be a representative sample. If you don't know what it is, you don't know what it is.

-Username17

[Orca]

In Sharn: City of Towers there's a list of creatures which might live there or be met somewhere there. It's long.

If you set up your own fantasy world you can have whatever creature distribution you like. If you're using Eberron or FR the 'kitchen sink' distribution makes the situation lean to Franks argument I think.

RandomCasualty, what actual game world are you thinking of?

[mean_liar]

I'm pretty sure that the things that are "usually" or "always" Chaotic Evil made it to the short list of Things You Don't Let In The City. By their actions they'd be ingrained into most civilized culture's histories and myths as Team Evil.

Throwing your hands up and saying that it'd be all so dang complicated that no one would/could bother being discerning is stupid and basically relies on that dumb Knowledge DC to identify a monster.

Ogres definitely are a no. Same for drow, orcs, bugbears, and everything else that murders for fun, and that goes double for things that eat humanoids as a food source.

Given that there are PCs in there, there logically needs to be some kind of acceptance and integration mechanism, but in a world where there are a billion kinds of terrorists that can kill swaths of people with little to no preparation (and some do it for the simple fact that they like it), I find it nearly impossible to believe that paranoia and xenophobia would not reign.

Your "numbers game" is just you saying "I heard Black guys commit more crime!" You don't actually have any statistics, you seriously have no fucking idea.

"Usually" or "always" Chaotic Evil explicitly means "these guys commit more crime". Ignoring that to call someone racist is complete bullshit. It's like some perverted Monster Anti-Defamation League action.

[Username17]

I'm pretty sure that the things that are "usually" or "always" Chaotic Evil made it to the short list of Things You Don't Let In The City.

First of all, that's completely orthogonal to the discussion. The discussion being about what you do in response to something that shows up that you cannot identify. If you can identify it, then you go into an entirely different logic puzzle where you re no longer dealing with an unknown. Obviously you're going to shoot to kill if you see a Mind Flayer and recognize it as such.

The discussion is exclusively about things that are green and ugly and unidentified who ask to come in. No one is discussing the philosophical implications of trying to pet carrion crawlers, because they don't talk and don't ask to come in.

But that being said, I will take umbrage with this claim of yours even though it's totally irrelevant to the rest of the discussion:

"Usually" or "always" Chaotic Evil explicitly means "these guys commit more crime".

I object because you are implying that alignment means something. The alignment descriptions are fucked up. And while yes, the Chaotic Evil description says they commit more crime, the Chaotic Good description says they commit more crime too! The Lawful Evil description says that they are total jerks who commit less crime!

Do I have any hands for allowing Mind Flayers and Gelugon into the city while kicking out all the High Elves and Halflings? I thought not.

The alignments, even when known, don't actually mean anything. The descriptions of creature behavior go much farther than the alignments ever did. So while page 105 of the PHB is telling us that Mind Flayers care about "tradition, loyalty, and order" the far more important Mind Flayer description tells us that they run around enslaving and eating every humanoid they can catch. The Neutral Alignments are even less helpful. With some Neutral beings being the impassioned protectors of the weak and innocent and other Neutral beings running around murdering everything they see without exception or discrimination.

The fact is that Evil (person) is just a guy who happens to be a jerk. The PHB includes genuine pillars of the community in its rundown of iconic Evil characters. Seriously, the "scheming baron" is not someone you're going to want to bar entry to the city to. The Evil (demon) designator is totally different and should get marked somehow. And for a number of creatures, there's no "official" answer as to what their real flavor is.

And sometimes it's not what you'd think it is. Dark Nagas are loyal, clever, and greedy (and apparently evil); while Spirit Nagas are loathsome villains who torture and murder wherever they go - but that just ears them the same "Usually Evil" that the Dark Nagas get. According to the description you can invite the Dark Naga in for a beer and he's enough of a charming selfish bastard to tell you awesome stories all night while you foot his bar tab. Ad also according the immediately adjacent description, a Spirit Naga will fucking rip you to shreds with its teeth and then roll around in your corpse in order to collect rotting man parts all over its scales.

So... yeah. Eve if we were talking about identified creatures, which we are not since FatR and RC are claiming that they can use the power of prejudice to spot dangerous creatures without identifying them, then there'd still be the fact that the alignment tag on a monster tells you absolutely nothing about whether they should be let into the city. It's much more complicated than that.

I will say that you are right that a lot of the creatures on the short list of things not allowed in the city are listed as Chaotic Evil. But even that rule is not consistent. Orcs are just people, and indeed totally interbreed with humns all the time. So they get let in. They probably have family in your human town. Magmin are always Neutral, but they are definitely on the "not allowed" list, because all they do is run around setting people on fire and laughing about it.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

One thing I don't get: Why wouldn't humans be racist xenophobes in D&D? They are in real life, and we know racism is wrong.

I think having humans act so decidely unhuman would stretch my suspense of disbelief.