Which is the least bad published D&D setting?

[virgil]

Why should you care that hard? The Lady is explicitly a backdrop element, unlike Elminster, only acting when you attempt to do something like destroy the city/her.

Sorry, bro, but that's not even close to accurate.

'Destroy' is such an equivocation, too. It can mean anything from leveling the city with a magical nuke to undermining the command staff by encouraging non-violent resistance to edicts. And everything I've heard about this nickel-plated Babby's First Mary Sue points to the latter.

Because the debate was totally settled?

Destroy isn't an equivocation; the attempted coup of the Lady of Pain along with the open & wide-scale warfare in the streets is the reason for the Faction War. Seeing as how the Lady's edicts consist of forbidding the gods from entry and placing a cap of 15 factions (or none, depending on the timeline), undermining those regardless of methods is undeniably petty.

I forget who came up with the "if you stat it, your party will kill it" theory, but it seems to hold in a metaphorical sense here too. Nobody rails about how they can't have/be clerics on Athas (no use of Spelljammer or Planescape), destroy a crystal sphere, or bring back the dead in Shadowrun (or go back in time); they're just rules that make the setting. If the rules were given a face that did nothing but stop people from praying to gods instead of elements or researching resurrection spells (aka, more of a reason why not than "just cause"), then suddenly these are rules that must be broken?

The Lady of Pain isn't a Mary Sue, but an evocative anthropomorphic figurehead. She doesn't go out and hire the party for adventures, write fourth-wall breaking books, or even maintain a harem. She just floats by once in awhile to give ambiance. Go on about how Planescape gets full of itself with droning on with the cant, focuses way too much on spikes without actually elaborating on stuff to do, poorly thought-out philosophy brochures, or whatever; but railing about how small your dick is compared to three squirrels in a coat is just plain sad.

[Username17]

The Lady of Pain explicitly has a 3% chance of secretly infecting you with a deadly disease that you don't get a saving throw against and which blocks resurrection for no reason every time you enter the city if you're part of her least favorite faction (the Indeps, whose specific crime is that they were numerous and didn't care about anything in particular - explicitly). Anyone who says the Lady of Pain keeps her hands off unless you attack her or doesn't wander around using lethal force that flagrantly violates the rules for essentially no reason just to remind the players that she's a giant penis NPC against whom you cannot win is either a liar or misremembering.

Even today, she monitors the Free League more carefully than she does any other faction. And, amused by historian's attempts to attribute the massive Indep deaths to some sudden plague, she's created a real plague that's striking the Free League today. Every time an indep PC enters Sigil, the DM must secretly roll percentile dice for the character. A roll of 98 or higher indicates the PC has caught the fever and will die in either 1d10 days (if the percentile roll was 98 or 99) or 1d20 hours (if the percentile roll was 00). During that time, the PC remains in a feverish state, unable to fight, speak, or even think coherently. No cure or resurrection attempts will succeed outside of Tradegate; only in that Indep gate-town do they know the dark of curing the plague. (The DM's free to invent the specifics of the cure. - Ed.)

The Lady of Pain is and was "that bad." However bad an unstatted, unstoppable, penis extension NPC could possibly be - that is how bad the Lady of Pain was. She is and was the worst example of overpowered NPC abuse in the history of D&D. No exceptions.

-Username17

[shadzar]

The Luggage, though made from sapient pearwood it may be, is not a sapient construct. It is animate luggage, nothing more.

The Luggage is a large chest .. It is made of sapient pearwood (a magical, intelligent plant

Terry would like to have a few words with you.

At least you understand that warforged and The Luggage are basically animate X and nothing more, so thus not something that should be PCs. glad we at least cleared that up.

Data like Frankenstein's Monster are just golems same as warforged, and nothing more than animated constructs. they are NOT a race. again, galed-duhr would be a better fit for a PC race, as it is a race rather than some one-shot creation. i dont care how many Hellcow created for eBerron, they are still just a joke. they have no place in core D&D, they should and can stay in eBerron, or personal games that wish to cross them into other places. knock yourself out doing that, but they should NOT be forced unto everyone as they are NOT A RACE. the thousands of brooms in Fantasia does not make them a race, just because they were made and copied and have large numbers. That is actually a better analogy for warforged is that they are JUST like the brooms in Fantasia, nothing more. if it requires some eBerron diety to make them fit in other D&D outside of eBerron, then they belong solely in eBerron where that deity exists.

[tussock]

Planescape: LoP is there to put a game-face on the DM telling you to shut up and play this whole "Victorian England D&D in the afterlife" properly. Otherwise your character will be punished to some arbitrary degree. Masque of the Red Death did the fluff better, and mechanically the outer planes are only made navigable at lower levels by constant DM fiat and handholding. Meh. The Races are OK, Bariaur and Gith and Tieflings. Nice art.


Darksun: is a place you can't get to from the outer planes, just to note. Anyway, it's D&D characters turned up to 11 with backups standing by, and then mercilessly slaughtered by the birds and trees because you get no treasure. Hard-mode powergaming against a brutal DM, only built into the world. Thematically everything's backwards, so elves are Evil dicks and Hobbits are terrors of the night and there's no Gods for your Clerics or armour for your Fighters. Nice art. Secretly not that hard and you can just win, but whatever. No point in the 3e/4e versions at all.


Ravenloft: is how you get out of Darksun. Except moving between adventures in Ravenloft is specifically a DM-only power. Every little mini-module is cut off from everything else until the DM gets bored and lets you move on or go play some other world. And most of the modules are terrible because there's one BBEG surrounded by junk (or hundreds of 16th level Drow, whatever) and it's always omniscient and can just make you go away at will. A giant soft-focus gothic railroad with whatever ending the DM wants. Often cool takes on classic monsters.


Al Quadim: Tales of 1001 nights for D&D, but really it's just human-only D&D with optionally different Wizards. Cool Wizard classes in the splatbook for it, often with severe mechanical issues. Everything else is where it's kinda hot and dry, but not nearly as hot and dry as Darksun, and the deserts are also basically empty. So whatever. Good for political trade type games with a side of dungeon bashing against mostly humans. Did I mention it's basically just humans?


Known World: It's an immense kitchen sink. So you're playing Basic, and your Dwarf has to take over a tribe of dwarfs at level 10 or whatever? Yeh, it provides a nation of dwarf tribes and a whole book of things for your Dwarf to do once you're level 10. Only for everything. Like Rome? It's there. Venice? Yep. Mongols? Yep. Spaceships? Sure. Flying sailboats? Duh. Dinosaurs and Ninjas and Pirates and Dogs with Guns? Of course. Also has a nation ruled by a hundred level 36 Wizards, because no you are not changing all that much around here. But you can also go left a bit and find whatever you wanted to make already in existence. Also immortals plotting all sorts of end-of-everything shit because you're supposed to graduate to being one and play that instead.


Pigs in Space: just say no. If you take it as dark humour it's got some good jokes, gallows humour at the extermination camps stuff. But playing it by the book is a thing where the beholder ship disintegrates yours at huge range and you all just fucking die, no save. If you ignore that and play pirates in space, well, it's a ship full of monsters who will literally eat your face and lay eggs in your corpse, so it's a pretty grim last-man-standing thing all the time. Pretty dry books.


Realms: oh god the lore. Have you read all 100+ books and novels? Recently? Because you're probably doing it wrong. There's a reason they blew it up and shunted forward a couple centuries for 4e, as shitty as that was. Pretty good for holding people's hands through gigantic world-spanning plots that are secretly quite petty and never go anywhere. Invulnerable and immortal epic NPC Wizards with strong agendas abound, but they don't ever do anything so ... whatever.


Greyhawk: is a sandbox, possibly full of deathtraps. You're supposed to have the PCs blow it up and make it their own. Like, one of the modules is "there are now Giants everywhere and you can either kill them off or set up new trade routes or something, in whatever order you like." Some of the stuff from early 2nd edition ignored that but you should not. There's even a central megadungeon you have to make for yourself.


Birthright: is a world without any high level stuff at all. There's a handful of big monsters in the whole place and you can just kill them and take their stuff by about level 7. Only then you'd have to use the associated realm management stuff and you probably shouldn't. People seem to like the fluff, but not me.

tldr
Planescape: Thank'ee Guv'ner.
Darksun: like you cheated a lot and still lost because the DM is a total dick, by the rules.
Ravenloft: stuff happens and then you lose and change nothing.
Al Quadim: minimalist D&D with funky Wizards.
Mystara: everything to everyone and not that good at any of it.
Spelljammer: death worlds, LOL.
The Realms: story time.
Greyhawk: you can Greyhawk it.
Birthright: low level and then you win.

A lot of them try to solve the problem of high level Wizards in different ways, you could argue many of them succeed at that.

[silva]

The only time my group decided to play Planescape we agreed the Lady of Pain would be a kind of mythological figure from the past, that hasnt been seen by eaons and no one knows if really existed but everybody still respected out of superstition. We defined that the Factions were the true power behing Sigil (though even they were superstitious enough to respect the Lady figure too).

I think this approach is a more interesting one.

[Cyberzombie]

Data like Frankenstein's Monster are just golems same as warforged, and nothing more than animated constructs. they are NOT a race. again, galed-duhr would be a better fit for a PC race, as it is a race rather than some one-shot creation. i dont care how many Hellcow created for eBerron, they are still just a joke. they have no place in core D&D, they should and can stay in eBerron, or personal games that wish to cross them into other places. knock yourself out doing that, but they should NOT be forced unto everyone as they are NOT A RACE. the thousands of brooms in Fantasia does not make them a race, just because they were made and copied and have large numbers. That is actually a better analogy for warforged is that they are JUST like the brooms in Fantasia, nothing more. if it requires some eBerron diety to make them fit in other D&D outside of eBerron, then they belong solely in eBerron where that deity exists.

Warforged are a race in Eberron because they can obtain class levels. They can also be resurrected and have souls. That's what makes them unique from stone golems and animated brooms.

[virgil]

quotes Factol's Manifesto

Then it's a failure of remembrance on my part, as I never owned a copy of the Manifesto until 2004, and then it was a PDF and I wasn't running a Planescape game; so I missed that paragraph that had her do more than keep the city vaguely in place.

I still maintain that Elminster is a worse example of NPC-insert than the Lady, by dint of being way more active; especially since he's not like an elemental weird and can go places to insert his penis.

[talozin]

Also has a nation ruled by a hundred level 36 Wizards, because no you are not changing all that much around here.

Worse. It's 1,000. Each with 9 9th level spell slots per day, because BECMI.

[Prak]

The Luggage, though made from sapient pearwood it may be, is not a sapient construct. It is animate luggage, nothing more.

The Luggage is a large chest .. It is made of sapient pearwood (a magical, intelligent plant

Terry would like to have a few words with you.

At least you understand that warforged and The Luggage are basically animate X and nothing more, so thus not something that should be PCs. glad we at least cleared that up.

Data like Frankenstein's Monster are just golems same as warforged, and nothing more than animated constructs. they are NOT a race. again, galed-duhr would be a better fit for a PC race, as it is a race rather than some one-shot creation. i dont care how many Hellcow created for eBerron, they are still just a joke. they have no place in core D&D, they should and can stay in eBerron, or personal games that wish to cross them into other places. knock yourself out doing that, but they should NOT be forced unto everyone as they are NOT A RACE. the thousands of brooms in Fantasia does not make them a race, just because they were made and copied and have large numbers. That is actually a better analogy for warforged is that they are JUST like the brooms in Fantasia, nothing more. if it requires some eBerron diety to make them fit in other D&D outside of eBerron, then they belong solely in eBerron where that deity exists.

...

there's one BBEG surrounded by junk

I'm sorry, I read this, and I just got an image of Strahd surrounded by dicks.

There's even a central megadungeon you have to make for yourself.

Actually, WotC published The Ruins of Castle Greyhawk, or whatever, and I actually have it.

I still maintain that Elminster is a worse example of NPC-insert than the Lady, by dint of being way more active; especially since he's not like an elemental weird and can go places to insert his penis.

Possible places include your face while you're sleeping, as he teleports into your room at night to leave a pompous letter pedagogue-ically welcoming you to the life of an adventurer on the eve of your first adventure.

[nockermensch]

I think that FR would be much more acceptable if not by the terrible "Wall of Faithless" post-death affair (that paladins, druids and rangers are forced to pick a god also doesn't help).

GH and Mystara always looked as the easiest places to tackle homebrewed places, since they seemed sparser than FR and more generic than the other settings.

[Username17]

Actually, WotC published The Ruins of Castle Greyhawk, or whatever, and I actually have it.

The "or whatever" is pretty important. The 1988 "Castle Greyhawk" is a joke dungeon full of Star Trek references. The 1990 "Greyhawk Ruins" is an actual dungeon adventure, though it's full of Gygaxian asshattery and made for 2nd edition AD&D. The 2007 "Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk" is a 3.5 adventure that is mostly a rehash of the 1990 experience with some of the more extreme pieces of bullshit smudged off.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

I think that FR would be much more acceptable if not by the terrible "Wall of Faithless" post-death affair (that paladins, druids and rangers are forced to pick a god also doesn't help).

I've been trying to repress that shit for a few months now.

Fucking Mask of the Betrayer.

[Wiseman]

Planehopping campaigns I've run haven't really had all that much to do with sigil, and I quite frankly find most of the factions stupid. Or at least I find the execution of their ideas to be done poorly.

As to the lady of pain, I've never used her for anything at all. The mythic figure who hasn't been seen in ages idea works pretty well actually.

[Prak]

Actually, WotC published The Ruins of Castle Greyhawk, or whatever, and I actually have it.

The "or whatever" is pretty important. The 1988 "Castle Greyhawk" is a joke dungeon full of Star Trek references. The 1990 "Greyhawk Ruins" is an actual dungeon adventure, though it's full of Gygaxian asshattery and made for 2nd edition AD&D. The 2007 "Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk" is a 3.5 adventure that is mostly a rehash of the 1990 experience with some of the more extreme pieces of bullshit smudged off.

-Username17

It's the 2007 Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk. I just couldn't remember the exact title.

[silva]

Planehopping campaigns I've run haven't really had all that much to do with sigil, and I quite frankly find most of the factions stupid. Or at least I find the execution of their ideas to be done poorly.

As to the lady of pain, I've never used her for anything at all. The mythic figure who hasn't been seen in ages idea works pretty well actually.

Yup, and we treated the Dabus the same way. Except for Fell, which we found awesome enough to have around.

Perhaps are there better executed "plane-hopping from a central hub" settings out there? ( I know Everway does this too but never managed to play it so I dont know how it fares. Same with Gurps Infinite Worlds ).

[shadzar]

Warforged in Eberron can obtain class levels.

good for eBerron, they can do that there and stay there. Vampires in Twilight sparkle, does that mean all vampires should now sparkle, and Nosferatu/Blade/Vampirella should look like a Lisa Frank sticker?

[Prak]

Hey, vampires didn't burn in sunlight before Nosferatu, so apparently it is the rule that one poorly written example make the rule. I for one welcome our new ineffectively nocturnal haemovore predator overlords.

[hogarth]

It's fr No, I don't know why Mearls declares that only Gygax materials up to the Greyhawk box set count, and neither Gygaxian materials after the box set nor any of the post Gygax materials count - I suspect it's really just that he happens to have the old Greyhawk box set and not other things.

As someone whose first encounter with Greyhawk was through the box set, it makes sense to me -- the box set is mostly a blank slate and that's what he's looking for. The country descriptions are just short blurbs that are deliberately vague about recent history. For example, the description of the Horned Society just says that (a) 25% of the residents are hobgoblins, (b) the residents are devil worshippers led by some high-level clerics, magic-users, thieves and fighters and (c) evil humans took over the leadership "some decades ago". I guess you could complain that the random encounter table fails to mention tieflings and hence tieflings couldn't possibly live there, but that would be some pretty weak shit.

So why would he use the World of Greyhawk if he's going to use it as a blank slate? Presumably to save time; all kinds of rivers, lakes, mountain ranges, hill ranges, political boundaries, exotic locations, etc. are already prefabricated.

[deaddmwalking]

Perhaps are there better executed "plane-hopping from a central hub" settings out there? ( I know Everway does this too but never managed to play it so I dont know how it fares. Same with Gurps Infinite Worlds ).

Stargate SG-1?

[Lago PARANOIA]

I still maintain that Elminster is a worse example of NPC-insert than the Lady, by dint of being way more active; especially since he's not like an elemental weird and can go places to insert his penis.

No way. The LoP is worse by a good margin. Elminster can be cajoled, bullied, petitioned, seduced, convinced, and you can even go over his head. He's by no means omnipresent or omnipotent as even low-level mooks can thwart and flaunt his agenda -- let alone groups of people near-equal or even superior to him in power. Hell, you can even kill him if you want. Like, straight-up teleport right to him with a group of friends and Ides of March him. 4E D&D explicitly emasculated him and his Aunt Sugar, probably the only thing people appreciated about the setting revamp.

There's just no comparison.

[virgil]

There's just no comparison.

Bull. Getting away with thwarting Elminster is a matter of MTP and house rules, based on how the DM feels like he'll react; doubly so when dealing with rules for a power level that haven't worked from the beginning. He slept with the source of magic itself for the setting. If stabbed him somehow, he'd just be brought back and then you'd lose. If you're overwriting the will of Mystara, then you're in pure house rule territory and you might as well overrule the Lady for the same reason.

His agenda is whatever he chooses it to be, and can be proactive about it to boot. You can actually escape the Lady by not being in the city; you can't escape Elminster without your campaign becoming dedicated to that.

Hell, the Lady's been thwarted before, so you can't even use that excuse. Random schmuck greybeards have made spells that permit gods to reach through the barrier. Vecna popped in after ascending. There's an entire organization dedicated to destroying portals, and anti-portal fields are standard spells. Simply joining the Doomguard requires you interfere with the dabus; and judging by their membership, it's not exactly the realm of legend to do so. Escaping her mazes (her punishment) is a thing you can do, and there's a low level adventure dedicated to breaking someone out; so it's not like her actions are absolute.

On top of all this is the fact that there's also overall message. Elminster's interventionist behavior is plastered all over the setting and jammed in your face; you're almost encouraged to have him insert his penis. It takes fvcking obscure readings to find evidence that the Lady does more than keep out the gods and the city not on fire, especially judging by the overall Planescape fan's interpretation. I have seen/heard of one DM use the Lady as more than atmosphere, and that guy would have gods come down in person before level 2 PCs to either hand them artifacts or smite them (or both) on a whim.

[Username17]

Bull. Getting away with thwarting Elminster is a matter of MTP and house rules, based on how the DM feels like he'll react

This is horseshit apologia. Elminster has fucking stats. Beating him isn't even difficult. He only gets to automagically win if and because the DM breaks the rules for him. The Lady of Pain has no stats. It literally just says you can't beat her and if you do anything she doesn't like she'll put you in a condescending timeout or straight up murder you. And furthermore, that she'll do this whether or not you had any reason to know it was something she didn't like.

Seriously. That is what it fucking says. There is absolutely no comparison between the Lady of Pain and any other big penis NPC that has ever been written for any setting. Even the Immortal Elves of Shadowrun weren't that fucking insulting, because they only got to automagically win in a direct confrontation. The Lady of Pain gets to automagically murder you without even being there. Really. It fucking says that. She gets to know what you're saying and what you're thinking and put you on timeout in a maze automatically because fuck you.

It is hands down, without exception, the most insulting character that has ever been written in any context. If it didn't come with a cool picture, it wouldn't have any fans at all. It has no redeeming features from a literary or game structural standpoint. It opens no narrative doors and closes too many to count. It serves no conceivable purpose except to marginalize the choices made by the other players at the table.

It takes fvcking obscure readings to find evidence that the Lady does more than keep out the gods and the city not on fire, especially judging by the overall Planescape fan's interpretation.

Are you fucking high? First of all, let's look at her fucking description on wikipedia:

The Lady is sometimes seen as a floating, robed, giant-sized woman with a mantle of blades around her expressionless face. She has never been heard to speak aloud, although she may communicate through her servants, the dabus. She can cause her victims to sprout wounds with a glance, and her shadow can flay the flesh from their bones.

Her obvious objective is maintaining the balance within Sigil, by throwing defilers and denizens who anger her into one of her magical mazes. Often, she will only interfere when the very balance and stability of Sigil is threatened.

The Lady is an entity of inscrutable motives, and often those who cross her path, even if accidentally, are flayed to death or teleported to one of her Mazes (an almost inescapable pocket universe in the Ethereal Plane).

Got that? Flaying victims and causing people to explode by looking at them funny is the second sentence in her wikipedia description. The thing where she throws people she doesn't like into mazes is sentence three, and the thing where she flays people to death and/or dumps them into inescapable extraplanar dungeons because they accidentally ran into her is sentence five. How fucking far did you read this character bio? Because the thing where she wanders around auto-killing people for lulz is five sentences into her description. This is not fucking obscure. I submit that it is literally impossible for you to read any actual Planescape material without finding the evidence that the Lady of Pain is a giant interventionary douche.

As to actual Planescape fans, no they don't fucking hide from how much of a Mary Sue the Lady of Pain is. They revel in it. Check out what happens when people Ask About LoP stats.

She's similar to Ao of FR... you don't need stats so much as a personality, because her spells per day and spells known entries are simply "Yes."

If there are stats for it, it can be defeated. The Lady isn't supposed to be defeated, so there have never been official stats for her.
She doesn't care how powerful characters are. Whatever is the highest level characters can attain in the setting, she is still far more powerful.

It's generally considered taboo amoung Planescape lovers to want to stat the LoP as far as I can tell.

That's a light way of saying it. More precisely, it's SACRILEGE. See, the Lady is a metaphysical concept given a name and general form. She exists in a way that other beings don't, more akin to an elemental than anything else really.

Giving the Lady of Pain stats is like giving anger stats. It just defeats the entire point of the concept to begin with.

On a related note, what concept the Lady personally embodies changes with the telling, and if you're a smart cutter, you won't carry that chant too far, lest you walk the mazes.

Berk, we dunnae even stat the Dabs.

Their are some things that should always be some "You loose" things in RPG's.

That would be one of them.

Mess with the Lady. You loose. You don't need stats for that.

I could whip up stats, but she's probably BEYOND epic. Like ECL 2000 beyond...

You note how not one person apologized or walked back any of the Lady of Pain's wankery? Not one. Planescape fans only try to make excuses for the Lady of Pain when they realize they are in polite company and people no longer think unbeatable NPCs that serve as prosthetic penises for the DM to cock slap players with are socially acceptable. When they are among their own kind they whip their dicks out and jerk off to how much the Lady of Pain can do anything and overwrite any choice or ability of any player character at the slightest whim from the DM. All the time. Wherever they congregate.

-Username17

[malak]

It takes fvcking obscure readings to find evidence that the Lady does more than keep out the gods and the city not on fire, especially judging by the overall Planescape fan's interpretation. I have seen/heard of one DM use the Lady as more than atmosphere, and that guy would have gods come down in person before level 2 PCs to either hand them artifacts or smite them (or both) on a whim.

Anecdotes are the best arguments.

[DSMatticus]

The Lady is sometimes seen as a floating, robed, giant-sized woman with a mantle of blades around her expressionless face. She has never been heard to speak aloud, although she may communicate through her servants, the dabus. She can cause her victims to sprout wounds with a glance, and her shadow can flay the flesh from their bones.

Her obvious objective is maintaining the balance within Sigil, by throwing defilers and denizens who anger her into one of her magical mazes. Often, she will only interfere when the very balance and stability of Sigil is threatened.

The Lady is an entity of inscrutable motives, and often those who cross her path, even if accidentally, are flayed to death or teleported to one of her Mazes (an almost inescapable pocket universe in the Ethereal Plane).

Look, I don't want to defend the Lady of Pain, but anyone who reads that and thinks "the Lady of Pain rampages through Sigil exploding people erry day all day" as opposed to "let's spend a few sentences fapping to the Lady of Pain," is being deliberately obtuse in order to advance an agenda. The quoted text actually does define the circumstances under which you are most likely to receive a visit from the Lady of Pain, and it's when the "very balance and stability of Sigil is threatened." The rest is a bunch of bullshit wankage and it's there to tell you how totally oh my god awesome she is, not what she does or does not do in the setting. Shame on the author for masturbating in public, but that's about as far as you can go with that.

Now, can you actually find examples of the Lady of Pain being an interventionary douche? Sure. I'd wager that the further back you go the more of them there are, because smacking the players around with your dick was more acceptable in the good old days. Do DM's use her as a penis extention? Yes. All the fucking time. Is she a net harm to the setting as is? No fucking doubt. She's a status quo lock. When the players come up with some clever idea using problematic abilities that would force the DM to change his story (or worse, might even significantly alter the setting), the DM is supposed to Lady of Pain at the problem until it goes away. That's an inherently disempowering role, and it's her most prominent function in the setting.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The quoted text actually does define the circumstances under which you are most likely to receive a visit from the Lady of Pain, and it's when the "very balance and stability of Sigil is threatened."

This would be a lot more convincing if 'the very balance and stability of Sigil is threatened' didn't apparently extend to things like praying, being in the wrong faction, or just trying to get a look at her.

It's like saying that the Imperium isn't that harsh because the only crime that they seriously punish is heresy. Well, guess what?