Why did they scrap Orcus?

[Seerow]

Then dont choose an idol as enemy but as an friend.
What I read about 13 Age suggest it costs the same.
Right if you want Trouble with an idol it costs you points you could spend to buy an friendly relatetionship with an idol.

But I got the impression its only an slightly different flavor for the same mechanical thing.

Wait... really? As in, you have the option to, and are encouraged to, spend points that could be spent on allies that aid the party, on enemies which cause trouble instead? That's madness.

Well I don't think the allies are really intended to give you tangible aid. If I'm understanding correctly, it sounds like it's all about giving the characters a little background, and giving the DM story hooks. It doesn't matter if the Lich King is interested in you as a tool or as an annoyance, the fact that he's interested in you will create storyline one way or the other.


(I say this having not read the material at all, and am going by what has been said in the thread so far)

[OgreBattle]

Does 13th age have any elements of Orcus/Bo9S?
Recharging mechanics for different powers?


What exactly are we defining as 'elements of Orcus' anyways?

[Username17]

The Great Gold Wyrm being your friend doesn't involve him showing up to help you in any tangible way because the Great Gold Wyrm doesn't have stats. For the same reason that you'll never actually get attacked by the Lich King if he is your enemy.

The Icons relationships merely represent the unstoppable giant penis NPCs that the DM gets to explain to you why they aren't personally solving your problems (even though they are capable of doing so and apparently want to) or why they aren't personally coming to kick your ass (even though they are capable of doing so and apparently want to). It's like the Problem of Evil, except the unsatisfying Apologetics are invoked to explain why anything the players ever do ever matters.

Does 13th age have any elements of Orcus/Bo9S?
Recharging mechanics for different powers?

Not really. 13th Age is a slightly cleaned up 4e with gonzo narrative stuff from Feng Shui grafted on sideways.

What exactly are we defining as 'elements of Orcus' anyways?

Hard to say. All we know for sure is that Orcus definitely didn't have Daily powers, apparently had 8 classes, probably didn't have a Warlock and probably did have a Swashbuckler, and seemingly had a more magic-oriented Ranger. Oh, and that the power recharge mechanics for Bo9S were "adapted" by Rich Baker and Mike Mearls right out of the Orcus design document.

The Warblade and the Sword Sage might have actually originally been the same mechanic, since in either case it's "spend an action to replenish a maneuver". The Crusader's card drawing system out of Orcus could have easily been wildly different, because we don't know how many cards the Orcus template class got in their "deck" or "hand". But fundamentally, we know that there was at least one class that spent combat-time actions to load a hand of maneuvers (and could thus start every encounter with a full hand), and at least one class with a card-based WoF system. And 8 classes total.

-Username17

[Mask_De_H]

The 13th Age Icons are basically codified plot hooks for lazy people. Your Feng Shui hook can be (and was, for two of the pregens) usurping an Icon or becoming a new one. They're intended to be factions more than giant DM penises, Frank.

I was a playtester and that seemed to be the plan when it was explained to me. No plan survives contact with the enemy though.

[Username17]

The 13th Age Icons are basically codified plot hooks for lazy people. Your Feng Shui hook can be (and was, for two of the pregens) usurping an Icon or becoming a new one. They're intended to be factions more than giant DM penises, Frank.

I was a playtester and that seemed to be the plan when it was explained to me. No plan survives contact with the enemy though.

The intent is clearly to mimic the (quite effective) melodramatic hook rules from Feng Shui (coincidentally written by the same person). However, the reality is that having a relationship with a named character in a one-shot action movie RPG is fundamentally different from having a relationship with a named character in an ongoing level-based fantasy campaign.

In Feng Shui, having Shang Tsung as an enemy means that you're going to fight Shang Tsung or one of his immediate lieutenants at the end of your one-shot adventure and then the credits roll. In D&D, having the Lich King as your personal nemesis means that at first level you'll be repeatedly frustrated by the fact that there is jack shit you can do to the Lich King, because you're first fucking level.

It's just a failure to understand the difference in scale here. Characters who are that much bigger than the PCs do not make good personal antagonists. You can have all your enemies be members of the Lich King's organization. But at first level you need to be up against Regnak the Ghoul Herder or something.

-Username17

[K]

The weird thing about this turn in the discussion is that people are flipping out and saying "you can't kill these people because they don't have stats and so this a sign of DM abuse" and not seeing it as "you won't ever fight these NPCs because they don't have stats and the DM can't use them at direct antagonists."

The Icons don't seem any more disempowering than running a canned adventure. It's not like they have stats and you are expected to personally fight them.

Honestly, it's no different from having any other more powerful NPC in the game. The same people who hate the Icons are also going to be upset if you tell them that they can't kill the King and take over the Kingdom at 1st level.

There seems to be a lot of flipping out over nothing. I'm really starting to wonder if this board is only capable of trashing things regardless of the merits.

[Username17]

Honestly, it's no different from having any other more powerful NPC in the game.

A powerful NPC that is specifically your personal enemy that you can't ever defeat or even be an even match for. Elminster is fucking annoying. But if Elminster was literally unbeatable and statless, he'd be more annoying. And if he cared about your character personally and interfered with the campaign on a regular basis, he'd be more annoying still.

The same people who hate the Icons are also going to be upset if you tell them that they can't kill the King and take over the Kingdom at 1st level.

That comparison isn't valid for a lot of reasons. Firstly, because if you gain enough levels you actually can kill the King and take over the Kingdom. The statement "that is an action you have to wait until level 9 to be able to do" is a lot less dismissive than "you won't ever be able to do that". Secondly, people don't normally have "locked in a life or death struggle with the king, from which their only chance to survive is to take over the kingdom" written on their character sheet at level 1. And thirdly, if some character does decide they want to kill the king, that is an in-character action that the other players can out vote. The other players could simply decide to go fight Frost Giants or some shit instead. With these Icons, one player really is forcing the entire table to deal with some undefeatable Lich King regardless of what the other players want to do.

No one is saying that you can't have high level NPCs in your campaign. We're saying that the specific combination of "statless and unbeatable" with "personally interested in the wellbeing of your low level ass" is an extremely annoying and disempowering combination. It's the "Harlequin" model from Shadowrun, and it is the most aggravating model of high level NPCs it is possible to have.

-Username17

[Mask_De_H]

K, you've gotten kinda whiny lately, but I can see it both ways. General consensus in places that aren't here side with K, and even if it's a straight copy of Feng Shui's melodramatic hook rules, it doesn't seem to play out the same way unless the players will it so. However, having statless ubercharacters that hate my guts does raise agency and logistics problems.

[hyzmarca]

In Feng Shui, having Shang Tsung as an enemy means that you're going to fight Shang Tsung or one of his immediate lieutenants at the end of your one-shot adventure and then the creditshttp://www.tgdmb.com/posting.php?mode=editpost&p=272030 roll. In D&D, having the Lich King as your personal nemesis means that at first level you'll be repeatedly frustrated by the fact that there is jack shit you can do to the Lich King, because you're first fucking level.

It's just a failure to understand the difference in scale here. Characters who are that much bigger than the PCs do not make good personal antagonists. You can have all your enemies be members of the Lich King's organization. But at first level you need to be up against Regnak the Ghoul Herder or something.

-Username17

Why not? You could, hypothetically, be the PC versions of Tucker's Kobolds and murder the fuck out of vastly more powerful characters through creative rules abuse. You'll have to remove some spell and powers that explicitly say you must to this tall to ride this monster, but stealing a nuclear bomb and dropping it on Orcus is totally something that you can do at first level if you build right. Unless, of course, your DM takes one look at your plan and says that no, he isn't going to let you go to Earth and steal a nuclear bomb from Pakistan so that you can vaporize a demon prince.

Low level PCs fighting high level NPCs can be fun, providing that there's a way that the low level characters can actually win baring Deus ex Machina. Everybody loves an underdog story.

Slaughtering the gods is not an accomplishment if you already have godlike power yourself. Slaughtering the gods when you're vastly outmatch, on the other hand, is worthy of respect and can potentially be very fun.

[ModelCitizen]

Honestly, it's no different from having any other more powerful NPC in the game. The same people who hate the Icons are also going to be upset if you tell them that they can't kill the King and take over the Kingdom at 1st level.

No. But I would be upset if I also couldn't kill the king at 5th or 10th or 20th level, because the DM / writer decided he was too important to be killed by a mere PC and thus didn't even give him stats.

Here's a mechanic that's similar but not shitty: If a PC takes Lich King emnity the DM actually stats up a big bad undead wizard and works it into his world somehow. The book doesn't have to include a statblock for any one Lich King, it's just an archetype that's assumed to be represented by at least one character in every possible campaign world. Depending on your campaign's level that archetype might be represented by the level 7 ruler of a 50 square miles of swamp, or it might be the undead god-king of the ancient super-civilization from three planes over. However, the game does assume the Lich King must be an actual NPC with actual stats, and the rules for the Wizard or Necromancer class are written to support that well. Scrying is well-defined and very limited, low-mid-level wizards can make lots of low-level undead and send them out to do stuff but can't really coordinate them well, and so on.

That could actually be good, but it's not what 13th Age does.

[K]

K, you've gotten kinda whiny lately, but I can see it both ways. General consensus in places that aren't here side with K, and even if it's a straight copy of Feng Shui's melodramatic hook rules, it doesn't seem to play out the same way unless the players will it so. However, having statless ubercharacters that hate my guts does raise agency and logistics problems.

How do you know that they are uber-characters? They don't have stats and they aren't ever going to interact with PCs except through statted proxies. They aren't "undefeatable," they are "irrelevant" since you will never fight them.

They get some fluff that makes them sound important, but that's it. For all we know, the Lich King is first level and simply commands a lot of armies from some undisclosed location that can't be found.

The only danger is a slight hit to verisimilitude like similar story mechanics like treasure parcels, but that's no different from having a DM flat deny any attempts to take over the kingdom because it ruins the setting. Considering no game I've ever played allowed that in the rules and big setting changes are always done by DM fiat, I don't even see an issue with that.

[Wrathzog]

I'm with K on this. I do not see how Icons are a bad thing at all. I mean, it literally brings nothing new to the table. Unstoppable giant penis NPCs are just part of a DM's toolbox... making it an official part of a character sheet isn't going to change how any individual DM uses unstoppable giant penis NPC's in his game. It's going to be good or bad independent as to whether or not you've got THE LICH KING written down.

The fact that the Players get a say in the campaign direction at all can only be a good thing.

[chaosfang]

I'm with K on this. I do not see how Icons are a bad thing at all. I mean, it literally brings nothing new to the table. Unstoppable giant penis NPCs are just part of a DM's toolbox... making it an official part of a character sheet isn't going to change how any individual DM uses unstoppable giant penis NPC's in his game. It's going to be good or bad independent as to whether or not you've got THE LICH KING written down.

The fact that the Players get a say in the campaign direction at all can only be a good thing.

Agreed. In fact, I've already used Icons in a custom game I created using publicly available 13th Age information + D&D 4E rules for those rules that aren't publicly available (since I've been running 4E for quite awhile already). Also, I allowed my players -- within reason -- to help me establish who the Icons are (names, publicly-known history and motivations, and modifications to their relationships with other Icons [again, within reason])... and the results are nothing short of amazing

Even with meticulously-written out rules, a DM can always, always invoke "rocks fall, everyone dies, EVERYONE DIES" (no matter how immune to rocks you normally are). Nothing stops a dick DM from being a dick, even if no one plays under that DM.

These "Icons" however, seem to provide a lot of roleplaying AND campaign-building potential, and it is something I would certainly add to all future campaigns almost regardless of system

I would still love to have a more complete copy of the rules though; even just the first or second playtest rules of 13th Age would be nice Could someone that has a copy and is willing to send me a copy PM me on the matter?

[ Going on the original topic: It's really sad that Orcus was scrapped, it would have been a very groundbreaking game for sure. It's also interesting how like 75% or more of everything that is deemed "wrong" about 4E was introduced by D&D Next's current lead developer... that can't be good, now can it? ]

[chaosfang]

Honestly, it's no different from having any other more powerful NPC in the game. The same people who hate the Icons are also going to be upset if you tell them that they can't kill the King and take over the Kingdom at 1st level.

No. But I would be upset if I also couldn't kill the king at 5th or 10th or 20th level, because the DM / writer decided he was too important to be killed by a mere PC and thus didn't even give him stats.

Then that is a DM/table problem. If the player wants to kill the king at 1st level, he could certainly try at my table, although he'd probably have to call in a lot of favors**, and even if he kills the king, the political upheavals and other story-based effects would still go on... it's not like everybody will all of a sudden cheer then rolling credits would come up and the story would end.

Although if the PC's only motivation was to kill the king in the first place, I'm going to have to ask the player to change his PC's motivation once the king is dead, simply because it doesn't make sense to kill a non-undead dead guy.

** extensive use of the relationship die, which could be established as Enemy of Icon +X (being able to acquire aid from those who dislike the Icon themselves but are unable to act themselves [fear of breaking status quo, political status, or whatever other reasons as established by the DM and players])

Here's a mechanic that's similar but not shitty: If a PC takes Lich King emnity the DM actually stats up a big bad undead wizard and works it into his world somehow. The book doesn't have to include a statblock for any one Lich King, it's just an archetype that's assumed to be represented by at least one character in every possible campaign world. Depending on your campaign's level that archetype might be represented by the level 7 ruler of a 50 square miles of swamp, or it might be the undead god-king of the ancient super-civilization from three planes over. However, the game does assume the Lich King must be an actual NPC with actual stats, and the rules for the Wizard or Necromancer class are written to support that well. Scrying is well-defined and very limited, low-mid-level wizards can make lots of low-level undead and send them out to do stuff but can't really coordinate them well, and so on.

That could actually be good, but it's not what 13th Age does.

Here's a 13th Age mechanic that I consider even better:

The PCs want to kill the king? Sure, go ahead. Now comes several hours' or sessions' worth of storytelling and challenges that could ultimately bring the PCs to the point where they catch the king unaware and unable to defend himself (like if he's asleep and they get to go past the guards). He's unaware, he's unable to defend himself, and they want to kill him. What happens next? Simple: they kill him. One slit of the throat, or stuffing his face in a pillow, or one bullet/bolt/arrow/dagger/fullblade to the head. It's not like they can miss at that point, now can they?

No stats doesn't mean invulnerability. It simply means that the stats are irrelevant. If they want to face the king in open combat, then by all means give him stats. But most of the time it'll be vague and distant interactions with the king (likely interactions with lower ranking people instead), interactions that don't require combat rules in the first place.

4E tells you to only give stats when they're necessary or relevant. If a PC wants to kill an NPC and the NPC is not combat-effective, there is no reason to suddenly bring out a complex battlemat just to know if he lives or dies. Seems like 13th Age embraces and enhances that tradition

[erik]

How does waving DMwangNPCs in character's faces provide a lot of roleplaying and campaign-building potential? In my experience that just tends to make PCs want to kill the NPCs and then resent the experience when they learn that they cannot.

[NineInchNall]

You have some highly bloodthirsty PCs, then.

[K]

How does waving DMwangNPCs in character's faces provide a lot of roleplaying and campaign-building potential? In my experience that just tends to make PCs want to kill the NPCs and then resent the experience when they learn that they cannot.

If the PCs want to kill every NPC they come across, both helpful and annoying, you have bigger problems at your table than just mechanics.

[ModelCitizen]

If they want to face the king in open combat, then by all means give him stats.

Is that what the rules actually tell you to do? You've read more of 13th Age than I have, so I'm asking, but according to that "mkill" guy from the RPGnet thread that the rules explicitly tell you *not* to do that. If he's wrong and you can cite rules text showing that he's wrong, then I'll withdraw my objection.

By the way, stop with the fucking smilies. The only people who use that many smilies are trolls on over-moderated boards who have to maintain plausible deniability. If you're not a troll you look like one, and if you are you're being way too subtle for this place.

[erik]

Heh, we probably do have some bloodthirsty PCs, but the game is about storming into the homes of sentient creatures to kill them and take their stuff. It's a bloodthirsty game.

However. However!

How does waving DMwangNPCs in character's faces provide a lot of roleplaying and campaign-building potential? In my experience that just tends to make PCs want to kill the NPCs and then resent the experience when they learn that they cannot.

If the PCs want to kill every NPC they come across, both helpful and annoying, you have bigger problems at your table than just mechanics.

I said every NPC? Really? I thought I said DMwangNPCs. Yep, I just looked up at what you quoted, and I did say DMwangNPCs. Fantastic. Perhaps I did not clarify my terminology. DMwangNPCs are in unkillable, super-powerful mary sue NPCs that are far less interesting than the DM thought they would be.

No, not all NPCs are Eliminster or unkillable icons or deity avatars, and no people at my table don't want to kill all NPCs. But if you keep having the undefeatables show up and remind you of your low spot in the pecking order, it's extremely annoying. And if they want you dead and they have the means to scry and teleport to you, then it makes very little sense why they don't do that.

[chaosfang]

If they want to face the king in open combat, then by all means give him stats.

Is that what the rules actually tell you to do? You've read more of 13th Age than I have, so I'm asking, but according to that "mkill" guy from the RPGnet thread that the rules explicitly tell you *not* to do that. If he's wrong and you can cite rules text showing that he's wrong, then I'll withdraw my objection.

By the way, stop with the fucking smilies. The only people who use that many smilies are trolls on over-moderated boards who have to maintain plausible deniability. If you're not a troll you look like one, and if you are you're being way too subtle for this place.

So... I'm not serious enough for this forum?

And I, as a DM, have to be explicitly allowed by the game designers to write stats for my Icons?

And that should the Icons *not* have stats, they are automatically unkillable?

That's a lot of assumptions. But at the very least, I should answer the 13th Age-related question, yes?

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?630 ... over/page6

Right. Icons aren't individuals so much as Thematic Archetypes which certain people sometimes hold; there have been a succession of Emperors, for example, and at least two Orc Lords. You can kill an Icon, you can take an Icon's place, you can become a new kind of Icon, and you can even change an existing Icon's archetype; the Lich King used to be the Wizard King until he grew corrupt and evil and dead. It's really nothing like a "pet character' because they aren't really characters as presented; they're more like positions you can hold such as King or Pope. There's also advice for how to modify them for your campaign.

Honestly, your reaction to the Icons is reasonable insofar as that would be one way you could go with the Rules as Written, and hearing people talk about the Icons on forums doesn't really decenter that impression. But in play it simply isn't like that, if you don't want it to be. Think of the Icons as Jungian archetypes more than real NPCs - none of them are named like, oh, Elminster or Bigby.

The Lich King is the Big Bad Evil Undead Guy Plotting to Destroy the World, likely who the PCs will fight at the end of a long campaign. The Elf Queen is the ruler of all the elves, and I could see a campaign all about deposing her, destroying the political stability of the elven nation, or anything like that. The Crusader is the Paladin of the Dark Gods: he's fighting demons to pave the way for the rule of evil - a useful ally if you're out to kill or dethrone the Diabolist, a bad-ass antagonist if your PCs are the Champions of Light.

13th Age PCs are powerful. 10th Level 13th Age PCs are going to be world-shatteringly awesome - and replacing/dethroning/deposing an Icon seems to me to be as natural an end-game as anything else. It's certainly what one of my two 13th Age campaigns is about.

But yeah, the Icon stuff in play is more about defining the shape of the campaign than anything else. PCs with Negative relationships with the Orc Lord suggest that players will want a conflict between Civilization and Barbarism to be the endgame: by the end of the campaign, PCs should be leading the armies of civilization in an all-out war with the Orcish/Mongol Hordes. Their relationships to the Icon of the Orc Lord are both a literal way to mechanically represent what they want the game to be about as well as a mechanic that allows them narrative control: so invoking your relationship with the Orc Lord after a fight might give a PC the right to dictate a new fact about the campaign world ("these monsters were sent here to kill us and prevent us from stopping an Orcish invasion of this nearby city! We have to hurry and save the town!") or something to that effect (but way less obvious than the really big example I just gave as an attempt to illustrate the mechanic's potential to shape play).

Another example of why this isn't Mary Sue syndrome run amok. One of my players took a negative relationship with The Dragon Emperor (the leader of humanity) as a feature of their half-orc barbarian. This doesn't mean that they actually know the Dragon Emperor (although I did suggest that I would be fine if their explanation of this negative relationship was something along the lines of "I ate the Dragon Emperor's cousin after raiding a human village - it was an honest mistake!"). Instead, he took this relationship to indicate that he was a wanted criminal, and agents of the human government were looking to find him and execute him. He'll invoke Icon rolls whenever he thinks something relevant to this (creating another criminal to serve as a contact in a new city is one thing he's done, dictating that the city boasts a corrupt official who'll trade information with him for a favor to be named later is another, and so on) might be an interesting thing to impact the narrative.

If you aren't a fan of narrative mechanics, then I don't think this aspect of the game will be for you. And that's definitely OK! But the Icon rules are one of the best tools for narrative-focused improvisation I've encountered in a TTRPG - and my players LOVE rolling to invoke these relationships because it means they're getting an opportunity to dictate where the game is going to go! We're doing a full campaign, and at no point has anyone felt like the Icons were NPCs who were destined to be better than them - rather, they were goals (ascension), adversaries, erstwhile allies that fleshed out the campaign world. The game isn't about the Icons; rather, the Icons are there to help players define how and why the PCs are the protagonists of this story, and invoking Icon relationships is a chance for players to change the narrative to better direct the story we're collectively telling.

I have to say that, despite my love for 4e, 13th Age is rapidly becoming my go-to RPG. One of my 4e players who always had a hard time with 4e (because the narrative never really matched up with what he wanted to happen to his character) is loving 13th Age because it allows him more ways to impact the shared story than his skills outside of combat and his attack rolls in combat; another member of my group is a 21 year old woman who has never played a TTRPG before in her life, and (even playing a complex caster) has taken to roleplaying much, much quicker than anyone else I've introduced to the hobby. Although I loved 4e because of it's freeform rules outside of combat, 13th Age's Icon mechanics allows even an inexperienced player rules whereby they can make the campaign about what they think is cool (and thus keep wanting to play the game!). For me as a GM, the biggest problem with the system is that all this narrative sharing makes it much, much harder to prep anything beyond combat and the given circumstances that start a session (and maybe a plot hook or two to get the PCs moving) - I'm pretty much improvising and saying "Yes, and" for four hours as the players drive the game in character-specific directions. Most games, I'm covered in sweat at the end because I've been pacing and improvising so much.

These Icons sound like Unknown Armies Avatars... I'm curious though... do these Icons pre-suppose certain assumptions about one's campaign setting?

Sort of. There's an implied campaign setting along with the map, but the Icons themselves tend to be the sort of thing that pops up in nearly every D&D setting: orc raiders, powerful empires, demonic bargains, undead lords, fairy queens, etc. You can also think of them as themes, as well as people; civilization, anarchy, secrets, temptation, beauty, etc. 13th Age just embodied them and then provided a system that lets you mechanically define your PC's relationship to these people/organizations/themes. It's pretty cool, and flexible, and is a good way to judge the types of things your players are interested in and gives them a buy-in to the setting; if someone puts 3 points into a conflicted relationship with the Elf Queen, they probably want to see some elfy-welfy stuff go on.

And if so, are you suppose to create your own Icons?

Yes, or alter existing ones, or leave them alone oif you like them as is. The game is very big on hacking the rules and fluff to fit your table.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/32495 ... s-d-d.html

So what does 13th Age have? Here's a list:

- Icons: Each character gets a set number of dice to roll in relation with the setting's big movers and shakers. 13th Age comes with its own set of icons, but they're the same sort of Movers and Shakers you'd find in any fantasy universe. Eberron, for example, could have Icons in each Dragonmarked house, each of the religions, each of the Five Nations, the Inspired, the Order of the Emerald Claw, the various druid sects... you get the idea.

Relationships can be positive, negative, or complicated - a positive relationship means you're allied with them, a negative one means you're opposed, a complicated one is just that. These relationships are the game's version of alignment - rather than alignment with abstract philosophical notions, they're alignment with actual organizations and people who have a complex web of relations with each other.

To put it simply, the Icons don't have stats by default, following the NPC design philosophy of D&D 4E: you only give the NPC stats if the stats are relevant to them.

Can they die? Yes! Do they need stats to die? Only if you'd want a level 1 Fighter to swing their axe several dozen times at the neck of a dictatorial emperor who was supposedly level 7-10 in the book.

From the material publicly available via the Internet (as in forums discussions and podcasts), I basically surmised that Icons are only as relevant, powerful and accessible as the group allows -- not just the DM, and certainly not just the player -- and as noted in the above quotes, they are as mutable and changeable as the DM (and to some extent, the rest of the group) desires.

[chaosfang]

Heh, we probably do have some bloodthirsty PCs, but the game is about storming into the homes of sentient creatures to kill them and take their stuff. It's a bloodthirsty game.

However. However!

How does waving DMwangNPCs in character's faces provide a lot of roleplaying and campaign-building potential? In my experience that just tends to make PCs want to kill the NPCs and then resent the experience when they learn that they cannot.

If the PCs want to kill every NPC they come across, both helpful and annoying, you have bigger problems at your table than just mechanics.

I said every NPC? Really? I thought I said DMwangNPCs. Yep, I just looked up at what you quoted, and I did say DMwangNPCs. Fantastic. Perhaps I did not clarify my terminology. DMwangNPCs are in unkillable, super-powerful mary sue NPCs that are far less interesting than the DM thought they would be.

No, not all NPCs are Eliminster or unkillable icons or deity avatars, and no people at my table don't want to kill all NPCs. But if you keep having the undefeatables show up and remind you of your low spot in the pecking order, it's extremely annoying. And if they want you dead and they have the means to scry and teleport to you, then it makes very little sense why they don't do that.

I see no reason why the Icons cannot be killed. Just because they don't have the plot armor (hit points, defenses) initially stated doesn't mean they can't be killed. If any, this gives PCs even greater capability to kill them should they be cunning, devious and skillful enough to be able to pull off an Oceans 11-esque attempt to kill the Emperor for instance, without having to kill anyone other than the emperor himself (in true Hitman-style fashion).

Statless != unkillable. Not unless the DM says so. And no amount of rules will stop a sicko DM from being a sicko.

[erik]

I see no reason why the Icons cannot be killed. etc.

That's possibly fair. I'll reserve judgement til I know more about how the system is supposed to go down.

[kzt]

I see no reason why the Icons cannot be killed. Just because they don't have the plot armor (hit points, defenses) initially stated doesn't mean they can't be killed.

Plot armor does not mean what you think it means. The Icons have plot armor. Which is why Frank thinks the entire idea sucks.

[K]

Heh, we probably do have some bloodthirsty PCs, but the game is about storming into the homes of sentient creatures to kill them and take their stuff. It's a bloodthirsty game.

However. However!

How does waving DMwangNPCs in character's faces provide a lot of roleplaying and campaign-building potential? In my experience that just tends to make PCs want to kill the NPCs and then resent the experience when they learn that they cannot.

If the PCs want to kill every NPC they come across, both helpful and annoying, you have bigger problems at your table than just mechanics.

I said every NPC? Really? I thought I said DMwangNPCs. Yep, I just looked up at what you quoted, and I did say DMwangNPCs. Fantastic. Perhaps I did not clarify my terminology. DMwangNPCs are in unkillable, super-powerful mary sue NPCs that are far less interesting than the DM thought they would be.

Icons are just regular NPCs, so any objections you have to them also apply to other NPCs.

First, to be "DMwangNPCs," you'd have to assume that they are super-powerful. Second, you'd have to assume that they are "unkillable," an assumption that includes the fact that you'd be put into direct physical combat despite the fact that they aren't statted. Third, you assume that they are Mary Sue characters even though they have no listed abilities and the most vague kind of role in the campaign written in.

From what little that I've seen of the rules, none of those assumptions are true. All of your objections are to your own assumptions.

[ModelCitizen]

Chaosfang: Are any of those guys you quoted Jonathan Tweet or Rob Heinsoo? Because that just looks like a bunch of fanboy apologia. If Icons are supposed to be statted then it should be really easy to show that. "They are, because Page XX of the playtest has stats for them" or "they are because Page YY instructs the DM to stat them up himself like any other NPC" or even "they aren't right now because the game isn't finished, but here's one of the devs saying they will be."

This would be so much easier if someone could just link the damn playtest pdf, but I can't find it and it looks like it's not supposed to be fully public.