Poll: Do you play with Vile content?

[User3]

I'm not just talking about the feats and classes for NPCs, but do you have Pcs using the rules for drugs, souls for power, nastier diseases, etc?

How black are your black mages?

[Josh_Kablack]

No.

Some of my players are interested in things a bit darker than the usual fare, but generally we can handle that within the core rules and roleplaying with an occasional evil artifact or unique ritual to deal with the traditional "souls for power" thing.

As DM, my opinion that the mechanics in the BoVD are pretty universally abominable goes a long way to keeping that material out of the game.

[Username17]

I rather like Vile Damage. It's just like regular damage except that it can't be healed until you go all the way home. This means that for low to early mid levels, it can offer an interesting and reasonably fair mechanic for making the party actually have an occassional combat at below full-strength.

Once the PCs hit 9th level, Vile Damage is just a teleport away from being normal damage, so it doesn't matter at all. But for those crucial levels of 1-8, vile damage is a pretty decent game mechanic.

-Username17

[fbmf]

A rogue in my game has experimented with some of the narcotics, but decided pretty fast that it wasn't worth it. In general, I agree with Josh: We handle "vile" stuff through roleplaying mostly.

Game On,
fbmf

[Desdan_Mervolam]

I use anything I think might make for an interesting scenario in my game. That said, alot of stuff in the BOVD is either horribly written, or seems like it was written by a 16yo after reading through threads on Alt.Sex.BDSM, or both. I wouldn't rule out using some of it, but most of it will not be used.

-Desdan

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I use it slightly.

My players don't have teleport, so Vile damage is still a bit of a worry for them. And although none of them particularly want to use any drugs, I've had NPCs use them, and drug trade does exist. (Which technically, I don't even need the rules to use them, in that respect.)

I haven't used the PrCs, because they tend to suck, and a few are totally overpowered at the same time. (A vermin lord who can create a hive mind with a 3.5 vermin swarm can get literally hundreds of sorceror levels with a liberla interpretation of the rules.)

[Maj]

Flavor: No. The BoVD has nothing on a good DM who knows exactly how to target his players and what will get them moving. They are also largely ass because, in stereotypical fantasy fashion, everything evil is abhorently gross and ugly (unless it polymorphs).

Mechanics: No. They mostly suck.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I haven't looked through it for mechainics, but Green Ronin's book Evil was, in my opinion, a better book for flavor, if I may interject my opinion.

Mechanics wise, I couldn't tell you how Evil is, because I suck at it, and I haven't played around with it too much.

[Username17]

"Evil" is by AEG. I actually hate the company since they symolically decapitated me in effigy and put my virtual head on a stick, but I have to admit it's a pretty good book for flavor. It gives a much better set of examples of Evil behavior than I have seen in any other book by any company and should probably e required reading for anyone playing an Evil character.

Mechanics wise... eh. There are some PrCs you'll never ever take because they suck, and some feats which are just sort of suck. I don't remember if anything is brokenly powerful or not, it's been a while since I've looked it over. Mechanically there's just not much there, certainly nothing a PC is going to be bending over backwards to try to get access to.

-Username17

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Oh yeah, I remember reading that a while back.

Well, Frank, whatever you did made quite an impression to make them do something that juvenile. that in and of itself is braggable.

[MrWaeseL]

DIdn't evil have that feat that gave you regeneration like a tarrasque (i.e which didn't say what type of damage overcomes it), and with the PRC that had to take a crapload of feats for his longbow to qualify, only to get a different bow at level 1 for which all those feats didn't count?

[User3]

Evil had a few PrCs that either sucked or lended themselves to brokenness(much like any supplement). It really excelled in the RP articles and the feats. It had a few feats that did crazy things like make it easier to take hostages in battle(something the current mechanics do not support) or redirect an attack onto an ally(funny as hell).

-------------------

My real question about the Vile content is more of a conceptual one: do you let flavor break the rules, also known as the "this is cool, and it doesn't have to be balanced."

I mean, using the "souls as power" or sacrifice or "liquid pain" rules, you can have wizards and clerics creating evil magic items at no real cost(no XP cost, and corrupting RP side effects). But, it makes sense from a story standpoint (the Wheel of Time books are a prime example: all the weapons of the badguys are made of souls or pure evil, and they have horrible corrupting side effects).

Also, low level characters get pimp powers that are really quite beyond their level, but perfect for NPC plots(A low level guy with that Dark Speech/tongue/whatever feat and an insect collecting fetish can create level 20 Sorcerers.
A 1st level wizard can, with a little prep and the right feats, summon demons far beyond his CR.)

Basically, game balance breaks when a guy puts all his power in a pile, and it hits critical mass and goes nuclear, but I can name a dozen stories where the villain does just that. Why is it OK for the villain and not the hero?

Where is the place for content like that?

-------------------

I think that good vile content is more like spells like the one where you shoot your fingers, or you explode people's eyes.

Its not really heroic adventuring when you start chopping into monsters not to stop them, but to harvest their organs.

I mean, any spell or mechanic can be used for a vile purpose(Magic Jar always comes to mind for me), but some spells as just signature Black Mage spells, and some techniques should only be for the truly evil.

[User3]

I would like to add something as well.

I really like the idea of currupted magic. I think that there should be unspeakably evil magic that corrupts you. however, I don't like the mechanics for it, because the curruption cost is always too high for the spell effects.

So, I altered it, and combined it with the OA maho idea, casting the spells causes you to be tainted.

My only complaint is that it hurts wisdom casters more than intellegence and charisma casters, I'm considering allowing a fortitude save to avoid taint, which would mean that wizardly types get tainted easier than priestly types, but the priestly types would suffer more from taint, so in the weird thought processes I call logic, it seems okay.

Plus, my variant allows undead and fiend casters to cast as much corrupted magic as they want.

Mechanically, my rules probably suck, most rules I make do suck. But it matches my idea of how it should work, so I'm going with it.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

The above post was from me, I forgot I wasn't logged in.

[Username17]

Mechanically, my rules probably suck

Yep. The Fort Save against Taint means that a heavily prestige classed Cleric or Dwarven Cleric is going to get to the situation where they are going to cast Taint spells all the time because there is no cost, while Elven Clerics essentially don't have those spells.

More importantly of course, the fact that the Divine Casters have ways to cure taint means that it's basically never balanced in the hands of the PCs. The PCs presumably work together, so it can be assumed that if anyone has the ability to cure taint it eventually will be.

Assuming that spells with a taint cost are more powerful than those which don't have one, then you've set up a situation where characters will be entirely willing to cast taint spells now with the understanding that their taint will be cured later. And since Wizards don't really give a damn about their Wisdom except in an abstract sense, their the ones who will generally do it.

So then they'll teleport home and have the Cleric massage their feet for a while, and come back ready to whomp. Essentially you've given the party more power in exchange for "longer rest periods". But longer rest periods don't matter, since what happens during rest periods is you have an assistant drag a piece of cardboard across the stage that says "18 hours pass", and it doesn't actually change the story in any meaningful way.

Essentially you've just "invented" the "age cost" - only the age costs are really small. And just like the old age costs, noone is ever going to feel the sting of paying them.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

Well the age costs served an entirely different function. They were purely an NPC deterrant, and a minor PC deterrant just to ensure that spells weren't totally abused.

It was great that spells liek raise dead had an aging cost, it made it so that NPC clerics were reluctant to cast them, and it made them potentially priceless. After all, what cost would you put on one or more years of your life?

The age cost actually did thier job IMO.

[Lago_AM3P]

Wrong.

[MrWaeseL]

So an age cost in 2e was in the order of 1 year?

[Username17]

The age cost actually did thier job IMO.

Sometimes it is difficult to tell if RC is trolling or not.

-Username17

[fbmf]

Okay, folks. Let's keep it civil and avoid accusing other folks of trolling, please.

[/The Great Fence Builder Speaks]

[User3]

1088586474[/unixtime]]So an age cost in 2e was in the order of 1 year?

It depends on the spell, and my memory is a lot clearer on 1e than 2e.

In 1e something as simple as casting Haste aged the targets a year, and stuff like Wish and Resurrection could go as high as six or seven years. Even Regenerate had an age cost. And in 1e this kinda worked, because races like elves and dwarves were pretty much not allowed to advance to levels in spellcasting classes where they could cast these kinds of spells (actually, in 1e only something like two or three non-human races, among which elves were not included, could become PC clerics at all). So going for lichdom actually kinda made sense once you reached very high level, because then you could pretty much cast all the wishes you want and not have to care about the aging cost. It was also very hard to get rid of aging unless you found an artifact with the right quality, as potions of longevity had a clause essentially stating that there was a chance they'd kill you every time you drank one, and that chance kept going up until by the 10th potion or so it became 100%.

In 2e some of the costs were changed and a lot of them were lowered, and, more importantly, the demi-human level limits were raised to the point where elves could become arch-mages, and at that point things were pretty much over because when you've got 500 years of lifespan or whatever to burn, handing over seven of them to have one of your wishes granted is pretty much a no-brainer.

--d.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1088523530[/unixtime]]

Mechanically, my rules probably suck

Yep. The Fort Save against Taint means that a heavily prestige classed Cleric or Dwarven Cleric is going to get to the situation where they are going to cast Taint spells all the time because there is no cost, while Elven Clerics essentially don't have those spells.

Well, I'm in a good situation. My players aren't smart enough to abuse it, I'm not smart enough to fix it. <shrug>

I suppose this might be known as the Arioch fallacy, the "I know my rules are broken, I just don't care" line, because I seem to say it an awful lot.