The Gaming Den

Dude, you need to read the rest of that stat block, not just the shit that jumps out at charoppers. Thank you for implying I didn't read the rest of the statblock. I did, it's still laughably bad. Friendly reminder: 3.X dnd deities are defacto immune to magic from people of lesser divine rank than ...

I don't know about that. D&D 3.X gods have terrible builds. You could probably kill them with a character half their level. Yeah, but how often do you get to play a 15th level character? I've run two campaigns that reached level 15+ at this point and I'm hoping to have two more in the near futu...

The module I've been playing in recently has Iuz show up, knock the players about a bit (without a proper stat block), and then get immediately defeated by a, uh... Machina Ex Deus. That sounds insufferable. So, we talked about the Lady of Pain and Elminster. Are there any other infamous Penis Exte...

So, we talked about the Lady of Pain and Elminster. Are there any other infamous Penis Extension NPCs in D&D?

What are you talking about? Checks only prolong not drowning, it doesn't save you from not needing to make another check to not drown. And the rules set is built to eventually force a character to fail that check. Eventually you drown, no save. Thank you for repeating what I said. You get checks to...

Out of interest, supposing the Lady of Pain didn't randomly off people via plague, if she just sat somewhere where the PCs never saw her, but was given as the reason why Sigil is Sigil, would that be ok? At minimum, the Lady of Pain needs stats. Preferably, she wouldn't be a fuck off epic level cha...

Again, do you complain the plane of water is filled with a liquid that will drown you with no save? That literally nothing can be done to remove this liquid from the plane? What are you talking about? You get checks to avoid drowning! You can use magic to keep yourself from drowning! The lady of pa...

Complaining about the lady of pain is like lamenting heaven is filled with angels or it's windy in the plane of air. I don't know of any player who thought they lacked agency because they couldn't douse the plane of fire. No, it's not. Angels have stats, they can be killed. The Lady of Pain is purp...

Why is preventing large-scale changes to the setting a bad idea, exactly? It's almost always toxic to player agency. If the PCs can't change the setting, they ultimately don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Note that in this context I'm using, "change", very broadly. Now, the Lady ...

I know Elminster is the most infamous Penis Extension NPC in D&D, but how do Mordenkainen and Raistlin compare? I know Raistlin is laughably built (something like a 10 in CON), but Mordenkainen isn't. They're not nearly as well known (EDIT: Mordenkainen isn't), are they actually worse than Elmin...

That's because you keep thinking that setting police are by some internal definition automatically and inherently "the bad ones" and not just NPCs policing a setting. You keep conflating execution and function, not just in what you are saying, but rather clearly in how you even understand...

PhoneLobster wrote:You don't realise it. But what you are stupidly saying is that no NPCs should ever oppose the party.

At this point, I'm convinced you're willfully misconstruing what I'm saying. Or else you are utterly lacking in reading comprehension.

I'm all for giving players agency, and that means they can have meaningful impact on a setting. That said, if the setting were easily changed, it would already be different, right? Look at D&D. Most D&D settings don't have the Wish Economy or end up as a Tippyverse, despite that being an en...

I'm complaining that that is what you are doing by declaring their function to be a problem because you wanted to glibly answer "all of the above". I will attempt to go into more detail, one last time, then I give up. There are three elements here. 1. Specific NPCs. I think that's self-ex...

While NPCs like Elminster, Nadja Taviar, Doctor Destroyer (or any Champions' supervillain, considering Peterson and friends' self-serving writing style), Theo Bell (or any WoD NPC) and others were written by the games' writers and not the GMs, those NPCs are clearly created for use of the GM's peni...

Are you seriously trying to conflate low level mooks with the types of powerful NPCs I'm complaining that that is what you are doing by declaring their function to be a problem because you wanted to glibly answer "all of the above". No, my answer didn't even remotely imply that. Mooks tha...

Are you complaining about the specific NPCs, or the functions they perform, or the execution of it? Yes to all. So, for instance, you are complaining about the very function of setting police NPCs as being bad. Minus the bad execution, minus the specific examples given, NPCs policing settings are a...

The problem is "DMPC" none of those PCs were made by DMs. Yes, DMPC has at some point become the same as "every NPC I don't like", as far as I'm aware originally it had slightly more specific meaning than that which would exclude every NPC you listed, but whatever, past or prese...

Actually, speaking of examples, I remembered one from Tomb of Annihilation , which my group recently wanted me to convert to 3.5. Acererak (yeah, the guy from Tomb of Horrors ) is the final boss and is CR 23. In a campaign that's only reaches level 11... Yeah, Acererak only shows up if you kill the ...

I give the lady of pain a pass since she's more of a setting than an npc, it's like complaining the plane of fire burns you, the lady of pain a plot crutch to explain away why gods, demigods, and pcs don't wreck sigil. They could of come up with other explanations but that's the one they went with,...

I didn't really go into much detail about the NPCs in Exalted . I'll mostly just refer to to this thread. Particularly because new statblocks for them tended to be in line with intent of these rules. Whenever new mechanical information about Deathlords and their peers was published, it gave them mas...

True, but, again taking the Lady of Pain as an example, does she do anything to interact with the players? Unless they decide to break her rules and explicitly do something they know they aren't supposed to, she leaves them alone, right? If she was to rock up at the PCs house and order them to go o...

You know the type. The big dick wavy NPCs that are supposed to either fuck the players over or keep the setting's status quo. The especially bad ones arbitrarily win any conflict they might have with the PCs, but some of them are just so OP they pretty much will always win even though they technical...

Now for Crazy Hawt Fey Queen herself. She’s hiding in a pocket dimension courtesy of an artifact, because of course she has an artifact. Paizo doesn’t know enough about their own fucking game to design villains without making up artifacts that let them do whatever they want. To be fair, magic in Dn...

Chapter 6: Sound of a Thousand Screams (Did Paizo write the chapter name based on peoples’ reaction to reading this shit?) This is it. The final chapter of Kingmaker. God this review took way longer than it should have… I’m not going to make a pretense of pretending this chapter saves the entire adv...