Still more Threads that make us Laugh, Cry, or Both

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Jun 15, 2008 3:09 pm

Psychic Robot wrote:Wait, people needed to see numbers to figure out that Improved Critical is better for TWF than it is for THF? TWF = more attacks. More attacks = more criticals.

No, it's worse. Criticals just do more damage on a percentage of your attacks. THF does more damage, TWF attacks more and does less damage.

So with TWF you critical more often but get less bonus damage when that happens. Improved Critical therefore gves more total bonus damage to THF than it does to TWF.

-Username17

Talisman · Post by **Talisman** » Sun Jun 15, 2008 4:30 pm

But TWF + crazy crit range is so coooooool...

At least conceptually.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 12:12 am

FrankTrollman wrote:No, it's worse. Criticals just do more damage on a percentage of your attacks. THF does more damage, TWF attacks more and does less damage.

So with TWF you critical more often but get less bonus damage when that happens. Improved Critical therefore gves more total bonus damage to THF than it does to TWF.

-Username17

Oops, I misread. Can anyone link to a thread with the math?

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 12:23 am

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=231209

Fuck Archmage. Good God, there's more 4e-dicksucking going on at ENWorld than there is on the WotC forums.

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 12:42 am

Looks like someone found out that making custom monsters for their campaign is going to fail.

As much as I didn't like the constructing custom monster for 3.5, doing reverse engineering in 4e seems to be slightly worse.

I still have to slog through the 4e books (my god these are boring reads)

ENworld has been 4e's whore for a good while even before WOTC forums were, even before the announcement of 4e. Voss has show enough threads from there to make me not want to register there.

Here are threads from a more neutral group...

How is it?
DnD 4.0

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 1:09 am

Psychic Robot wrote:Well, the "animate dead" is one of those beaten-horse discussions where you're going to rule it as BadWrong or morally ambiguous. I tend to lean toward morally ambiguous in the alignment sense, although most people in the world see it as BadWrong. Probably because they are the ones who get eaten by the undead.

Really? I don't see it as BadWrong or morally ambiguous. I see it as a logic use for something thats essentially a complete waste of space. Cheap slave labor and cannon fodder in a form that isn't morally ambiguous at all, essentially the same as animating a mindless clay statue.

And yes, the EN folks do love the WotC-cock, much more so than their actual boards. (They're pretty effective at group brow-beating dissenting opinions, and driving most of the nay-sayers off) Other than baiting them for shits and lulz, their only use was they were good at picking up the scoops and rumors. They are, of course, officially useless now.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 1:18 am

I see animate dead as being morally ambiguous in the sense that you're desecrating a corpse for selfish reasons. Then again, there's a whole ethics debate wrapped up in animate dead.

K · Post by K » Mon Jun 16, 2008 1:41 am

Animating zombies is morally wrong because it violates the dignity of the person. It's the same reason that rape is a more serious crime than assault. It doesn't matter that the zombie doesn't know it's been violated in the same way that rape/murders are worse than just murder.

The problem is that DnD very often operates with "war morality" where doing an evil in extreme circumstances is OK if it prevents a greater evil from occurring, so animating in battle to save your friends or kill a villain is an act that gets a pass.

Considering that even longterm animation can save innocent lives by protecting villages and the like from attack or building defensive fortifications means that even then it probably gets a pass. I've animated a chimera with a clear conscience since I knew I'd need the flying mount to stop an invasion.

Animating for labor in the fields or other non-emergencies is just evil.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 1:43 am

You aren't really desecrating it. You're just taking it out for some exercise.

A lot of the bullshit has to do with the Evil with the capital E alignment system, and nothing to do with desecrating (which, in D&D land, is just about making undead stronger). Supposedly the spell has the big E, but it really doesn't have any more Evil than a fireball. Skeletons don't wander off a strangle puppies in their spare time. They just stand there and rot.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 2:04 am

I've never quite gotten how it is that raising undead is pue evil. I understand where the idea comes from, which is the common religous belief that the corpse's intergrity is essential to the spirit in the afterlife, but DnD does not seem to support that. in fact, in DnD it is common practice to leave dead enemies and allies to rot where they fell. yet somehow, rasing the undead is a horiffic act of evil. it can make sense if you are drawing the guy's spirit out of the afterlife to a life of suffering, but DnD does not imply that raising undead works like that.

Wrights, OTOH, consist of spirits called from the afterlife to hurt other people and generally have a poor time in the world, and that is evil. however, how is a zombie different from a golem, minus the tortured slave from an elemental plane and with different components? is making a golem evil? slavery, after all, is pretty high up on the list of bad things to do.

Talisman · Post by **Talisman** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 2:11 am

Wrights are craftsmen (i.e., wheelwright). As a carpenter, I take offense at the idea that wrights are inherently evil.

If you're talking about wights, OTOH, that's a different story.

Ultimately, the queston of animating the dead comes down to the opinion of the individual GM/gaming group. I fall into the "It's Evil" camp, but I can understand the (poor, misguided) other opinion.

It would help immensely had WotC bothered to mention why they slapped the [Evil] tag on animate dead and related spells. If aniimating a corpse prevents the soul of the fallen from continuing on to their afterlife, then yeah, it's pretty obviously evil. If it's just a matter of plugging the flesh-robot into the Negative Energy Plane, it becomes morally neutral (albeit icky)...UNLESS it's established that negative energy itself is evil, for some reason. Maybe spreading it weakens the powers of Light or something.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 2:26 am

Animate Dead is considered evil because it's icky. It's the same bogus popularity-based morality that makes it cool to kill ugly races and uncool to kill pretty races.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 2:44 am

You know, I'm pretty sure both viewpoints were covered in the Tome of Necromancy.

Personally, I find animating corpses to be morally ambiguous. Icky is a good word for it, actually. I'm pretty sure one of the Discworld books described burial rights and similar as "a reverential form of garbage disposal," and there's a grain of truth to that. So, yeah, I wouldn't slap the Evil tag on one of my players if, in a time of need, he visited a graveyard to get an army going. But, as one player did in a game last year, killing people just so you can animate the corpses is just plain sick.

Jerry · Post by **Jerry** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 3:46 am

Hey, what if somebody wants to be animated? The idea that a soldier's body can be of use in battles that he is not present at can be appealing to some.

Talisman · Post by **Talisman** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 4:03 am

Jerry wrote:Hey, what if somebody wants to be animated? The idea that a soldier's body can be of use in battles that he is not present at can be appealing to some.

It still depends. If animating his body condemns the soldier's soul to endless torment, it's still Evil, the soldier's noble sacrifice notwithstanding. OTOH, if the animating force is morally neutral and doesn't affect the soldier's soul, the act of animation is morally neutral as well - though it edges towards evil if the soldier didn't want to be animated.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 4:31 am

Ah, yes, Magic of Incarnum--that abomination--introduced us to the concept that the souls of undead were damned to torture with necromancy or somesuch.

Again, this hinges on an ethics debate. Let's go back to making fun of douchebags and save the thinking for Kant.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 4:59 am

Voss wrote:You aren't really desecrating it. You're just taking it out for some exercise.

This.

And a view on undead animation evility really comes down to the common cultural view on dealing with dead.
Just like how ancient humans and some modern tribes/cults/shamanic rituals eating the dead is out of respect or envy for power, animating undead as either tools or to preserve the soul in a corporeal state (as with the Eberron dark elves) or as forbidden, ghastly, unholy monsters is up to the creator and their goals.

Eating dead doesn't make a living human evil in any way. It makes them an "eater of dead" as a matter of fact. The ascribing of "ghoul" or "vile desecrator of flesh" would come about as result of external opinion.

So, animating undead would never, ever be inherently evil unless the setting forced necromancers to align with the arbitrary banner of Evil and doing such a dead was an Evil act, no matter what the purpose.
I personally prefer the neutral aspect from a scientific, nihilistic view.
It's an abandoned body. Scavengers and worms would normally dispose of it.
What would you do with a corpse otherwise? Bury it in a box for later for a 'day of salvation'? Burn it? pssh.
One might as well clean it off and use it, and not let a good resource go to waste in times of need.

Harlune · Post by **Harlune** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 6:17 am

In a game where characters commit genocide on green/brown/orange/grey skin creatures just because they're 'just born evil' and will even enslave intelligent elementals as a free power source... making a mindless. empty husk do your yard work doesn't seem so bad.

What about in cases where you have permission to use the body?

*Timmy the Holy casts Speak with Dead*
"Hey Grampa, mind if I use your corpse as a guard for my tower?"
'Eh... what? Oh sure, what ever, I sure the hell don't need it anymore. And quit bothering me, I'm in the middle of talking the wife I lost to the plague, the wife that was killed by those bugbears, and the wife that died giving birth to your pa into a foursome'
"Thanks Grampa, Uh...Good luck, grampa"

Would that still be evil?

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 6:28 am

Harlune wrote:In a game where characters commit genocide on green/brown/orange/grey skin creatures just because they're 'just born evil' and will even enslave intelligent elementals as a free power source... making a mindless. empty husk do your yard work doesn't seem so bad.

What about in cases where you have permission to use the body?

*Timmy the Holy casts Speak with Dead*
"Hey Grampa, mind if I use your corpse as a guard for my tower?"
'Eh... what? Oh sure, what ever, I sure the hell don't need it anymore. And quit bothering me, I'm in the middle of talking the wife I lost to the plague, the wife that was killed by those bugbears, and the wife that died giving birth to your pa into a foursome'
"Thanks Grampa, Uh...Good luck, grampa"

Would that still be evil?

Only if you cast true resurrection on your grampa

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 8:54 am

Is organ donorship evil?

Amra · Post by **Amra** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 12:11 pm

Quoth K:

"Animating zombies is morally wrong because it violates the dignity of the person."

Animating the lifeless husk of someone after they're dead isn't violating their dignity because there's no-one left in there to have their dignity violated. Sure, in D&D cosmology there's a chance that said departed individual might be in a position to know what you're doing with their corpse and thoroughly disapprove of it but, you know, tough.

The care and respect with which we treat our dead is as much (or more, in today's more secular society) about the people they left behind as it is about the deceased. Yeah, it's callous and unfeeling to raise a zombie and have them hoeing the vegetable patch out back of their widow's house, but EEEEEVIL? Puh-lease.

If "violating someone's dignity" is a criterion for Evil, with a capital "E", what about turning someone into a frog? Or charming someone such that they regard the caster as a trusted friend even though they just watched said caster turn their allies into charcoal biscuits? Or making a respected merchant Irresistible Dance his way through the town square so he can never show his face in town again? Or even slapping a Geas on someone so's they have to do what you say regardless of whether it contravenes their personal beliefs?

By comparison, raising someone's corpse and using them as a hatstand doesn't even register on the scale of things you can do to strip someone of their dignity in D&D.

All of this, of course, has to be taken with the caveat mentioned above: "Unless by so doing you're messing with the subjects' immortal souls". THEN it's Evil, but nowhere does it say that animating a corpse has that effect. You can put said corpse to evil uses, for sure, but there's no particular reason to suppose that the act of animation is inherently evil apart from cultural bias.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 12:49 pm

Honestly, I don't buy the idea that messing with the enemy immortal souls is Evil. Not even evil. You're fighting a war, and the immortal souls of enemies can and do go on to bigger and better things after they die. Great generals will be brought back from the dead again and again if they aren't exalted into powerful outsiders.

The immortal souls of your opponents are a resource like any other. Destroying them right now is not really different from destroying them after they become a Vrock or a Deva, save that it is currently easier to do. Attacking the souls of your enemies is kind of like attacking enemy wounded or even enemy training camps. It's not very sporting, and it is probably a bad move if you intend to make peace any time soon, but it's basically just like any other tactically sound decision: you destroy your enemies while they are in a position of weakness and find it difficult to fight back.

Remember: the enemy warlord is not going to be forgiven by a loving god and sent to live out a life of peace and contemplation. The enemy warlord is going on to be judged by Orcus and thrust into a new life as a rampaging wraithlord. Leaving off his soul just because he's dead isn't good, it's retarded.

-Username17

Amra · Post by **Amra** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 3:32 pm

Good point. What I was thinking when I wrote it was more specific than I explained; if your actions in reanimating a person's dead body screwed up their chances of a Good afterlife, that's Evil.

We were, after all, discussing the general case: "Is animating a random dead body an Evil thing to do?" If doing so would have the effect of condemning someone to eternal shit-shovelling duties when they would otherwise have spent their time bumming around on a beach in Celestia, that would be a bad thing. I agree that screwing up the prospects of a major badass for the rest of eternity isn't automagically Evil, although that depends on whether you swallow the Exalted stuff or not because you're precluding the possibility of future redemption.

In a system with (*snigger*) objective Good and Evil you can actually make calls like that. The point I was making stands though; the system doesn't say that you're dooming a creature to eternal *anything* by strapping it to the magical lightning rod, and thus isn't evil, even if you do it to a dead Paladin.

The only class that's got a truly legitimate beef against using dead guys as manual labour and/or damage sponges is the Druid; and then only 'cos the stiffs ought to be making a valuable contribution to the local ecosystem in the form of fertiliser.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 6:06 pm

If 4E found a way to make an infernal pact warlock into a good guy, I'm sure they'll find some way to make a good necromancer too.

Personally though, I tend to like the idea of undead being inherently evil. I hate the "undead robot" mentality for zombies and skeletons. I like the idea that the zombie or skeleton wants to tear your heart out and eat it. You're just keeping it under control with your magic, but it's just waiting for your control to slim just slightly, so it can lash out and kill you.

Tydanosaurus · Post by **Tydanosaurus** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 6:49 pm

The only class that's got a truly legitimate beef against using dead guys as manual labour and/or damage sponges is the Druid; and then only 'cos the stiffs ought to be making a valuable contribution to the local ecosystem in the form of fertiliser.

yah, but even there, eventually the zombie's going to fall apart and get turned into toadstools and worm pooh.

I've never really understood the Absolute, Gut-Drenching Evilness of Animate Dead (or any of the other necromantic stuff, actually.) We're ok with atheists killing people dead, dead, dead, so long as the cause as just and all that. But Oh Noes! You're keeping Killy McKidrape from going to to the Seven Hells in the afterlife! Evvvvvviiiiiiiilllll!

Still, if people want to argue about it on message boards for days and days, more power to 'em.