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

[Surgo]

Evidence for people.

Evidence of a supernatural effect, not that it came from an actual god (see my next point).

It proves it to the religious follower. Why do you assume everyone by default is lying about undead and the afterlife?

The point you seem to be missing here is that the religious follower has no way to tell what comes from an actual god and what does not. Cleric magic does not make a sound of trumpets when it's cast (unless there's a specific spell that actually makes the sound of trumpets, and even then it's just that spell), and even if it did, that could be replicated by ghost sound. And with many more non-clerics in the world capable of performing supernatural effects compared to the number of clerics -- you should be able to see where that's going.

Any non-cleric with spellcasting powers of any kind can make as believable a set-up as a cleric. More believable in some cases, as some of those classes get Diplomacy/Bluff as class skills and don't dump charisma.

[virgil]

One thing to consider, something that Sphere's been bringing up, is the question of motivation. What is there to gain in deceiving the masses that having your corpse animated is bad for you? The only ones that would would be the clerics of good-aligned gods, because they're the only ones that can't and thus would try to discourage its use so they're not behind in power; assuming that you keep the [Evil] tag on animate dead spell. Barring that small number of power players, the rest are generally capable of using undead, and thus should see it as profitable to make the public believe it to be acceptable so they don't get lynched when they get around to doing it.

[K]

Proof for whom?

Evidence for people.

Lots of people have magic powers. It doesn't prove anything to a non-cleric.

It proves it to the religious follower.

How? How does a religious follower know that a spell is divine and comes from his particular god and is not a trick of some other spellcaster?

And besides, a cleric can unequivocally prove it. He casts Imbue with Spell Ability. He chooses an Augury spell. He instructs the commoner to ask and find out for himself. Something like: “Will bringing this cleric a corpse to animate cause evil?” There. You finally have your proof.

That sounds clever, but it is actually not.

How is the person this spell is cast on know that he hasn't just been the victim of a mind control or memory altering spell, and not the combo of spells that you suggest? The ranks in Spellcraft that he doesn't have?

He doesn't. All he knows is that the cleric says "let me cast this spell on you, and then you'll believe me....." Yeh, that's not any kind of evidence.

Rogues have access to magical equipment.
...
A rogue that intends to ever make checks can do so better than any angel.

That is an amazingly idiotic statement. You see, a Solar is an angel. A solar can use wish as an innate spell-like ability.

Lesser angels don't even have to gain levels to summon efreet, they just ask the solar.

FFS.

Really? Where in their monster description does it say that they have access to the Wishes of the more powerful angels? Where does it say that anywhere?

Support your arguments. You are making assumptions not supported in the rules.

You are mixing issues, which is very sloppy.

Actually, you are. Nice move, trying to project your own argumentative failings on me. I made my thesis point very clear:

I'll restate my assertion: Assuming that animating the dead doesn't harm their soul in any way, the majority of people will become aware of this, and believe it to be the case. As such, many would willingly donate their corpses to their clerics upon their death, or at least not think of animating the dead as an evil act.

The issues you were mixing was whether spellcaster who potentially could cast animate dead might support a philosophy that made it seem unattractive, and the issue of you've restated above.

Keep up, shortbus. Those are two separate issues.

It doesn't say true religion.

It says “Deities rule the various aspects of human existence:…knowledge” It cannot be more plain.

The SRD (and Dieties and Demigods) clearly outlines the powers of the god. Rulership is not one of those powers.

At best, Intermediate and more powerful gods can spot events that happen to individuals that relate to their domain. Then they can use their own powers to intervene (which in general are no better than any powerful spellcaster).

But the rules, they don't even have angels or demons at their command, or fortresses, or anything. Some have domains, and that is a function of their powers, but in no place does ot say "this god has 200 of this angel at his command (though some demon lords do, as flavor text)".

Your one line of flavor text does not trump the pages of written rules. You are assuming that some kind of divine organization exists when nothing in the rules grants those powers.

Only five out of six villages have a cleric, four out of six hamlets, and half of thorpes. That's a lot of people who don't have any access to any clerics.

Less than half of all people don’t live in the same community as a cleric. People move, they go to market, they go on pilgrimages, they go to festivals. Some clerics do the same. As a result, almost everyone will have seen a cleric.

[/quote]

"Seeing a cleric" was an expression denoting people's access to a cleric where they could hear sermons and the like.

The potential that maybe you saw a cleric once at a fair is not the same as being convinced by a sermon or being a believer of a religion. As far as you know, the guy at the fair who said he was a cleric was a commoner with some Bluff who was begging for change.

Because playing to people's prejudices is a sure route to power. Undead are gross, and anyone who says it's evil is going to win tithe-paying and sword carrying followers.

Amra summed it up well:

Taking your own cultural prejudices and projecting them into a world where animating corpses is not only possible but happens on a frequent basis is total bullshit in that context.

"People think rotting corpses are bad" is not a cultural prejudice. It's a near universal human taboo. That's why people all over the world and in every culture have graveyards and rituals and all the other things to deal with this essential fact. Some wildly isolated people eat their dead and most put them in the ground or burn them or leave them in sacred spot to decay, but no one says "you know what this living room needs...a rotting corpse."

At the core, the reason I don't think any pro-animation philosophy would ever become widespread is:

You can't prove that it does not harm the soul or the person. Seriously.

Consider Intelligent Design. People believe in it despite mountains of independently verifiable evidence proving evolution that is impossible to fake. People still believe in ID because evolution makes them mildly uncomfortable, despite the fact that it has no impact on their lives one way or the other.

Now you want me to believe that people are going to buy a deeply uncomfortable truth that has an immediate impact on the lives of them and their loved ones when the facts that are supposed to comfort them are impossible to verify? Clerics don't even have any powers that could force such a belief.

Stop thinking like a gamer who knows the rules, and start thinking like a person who lives in a world without defined black and white rules where deception is easy. For those people, they only know what they can prove and what the most convincing person around is telling them, and they tend to disbelieve people who are trying to hurt them and their families.

DnD is a world full is a world full of illusions and shapechangers and mind controllers and unknowable things. At best, people have a healthy distrust and at worse they don't believe in anything they can't touch or kill.

[Psychic Robot]

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1048443

Discussion of TWF. It burns, mildly.

[Psychic Robot]

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=231555

How does Cause Fear work? (This too is depressing. Of course, I'm just looking for material to derail the sub-thread.)

[K]

One thing to consider, something that Sphere's been bringing up, is the question of motivation. What is there to gain in deceiving the masses that having your corpse animated is bad for you? The only ones that would would be the clerics of good-aligned gods, because they're the only ones that can't and thus would try to discourage its use so they're not behind in power; assuming that you keep the [Evil] tag on animate dead spell. Barring that small number of power players, the rest are generally capable of using undead, and thus should see it as profitable to make the public believe it to be acceptable so they don't get lynched when they get around to doing it.

The last time I checked there were only 2 and 2/3 base classes that could make undead (Wizards, Sorcerers, and N and E clerics), and the rest needed magic items to make any. Basically, the vast majority of powerful creatures have incentives to not have undead running around as private armies of unreasoning killers obeying only a select few.

And second, people don't need a motivation to have contrary beliefs. They'll have beliefs based on how they were raised and what they learned and what they are comfortable with and what is useful to them. If someone comes from a culture that says burning the dead is the way to go then all of your pro-animation propaganda is not going to convince them because they won't even listen long enough for you to get a Diplomacy check, and if you tell them that Bhaal says it's OK to turn mom into a zombie they'll say that the Stone God that lives in the funny shaped stone says it's bad.

Faith in the true gods is by no means certain either, so it's not like they can send a memo. If people follow the Peacock Totem and their religious leader is a Sorcerer, they won't really care if some cleric rolls up and tries to enlighten them. He'll have some fancy tricks but so does their guy, so its not like he is is any way special. Like the conversion efforts of our world, people generally believe the things that are useful to them and don't believe the things that aren't. Unless you want to enforce your pro-animation agenda at the point of the sword, don't expect conversion. Especially don't expect conversion on a topic that innately repulses people.

[Leress]

And no for something completely different.

Frank and K's Tome

[Jerry]

LOL at Foil Action being overpowered.

A core Wizard, if he wins initiative, can summon some monsters to distract the Fighter in order to get 30-60 feet away. Or use Expeditious Retreat.

Or turn Invisible so Fighters without Blind-fight have to guess where he is first.

[Kaelik]

Other ways a Wizard can get around foil action: Use swift action to teleport far away. Or use various items to teleport with swift action. Or have summons, or be invisible, or have the Planar Bound Chain Devil use up foil actions, or Shapechange into a Two Headed Bird with two standard actions, two move actions and two swift actions, and still escape a pair of fighters using foil action exclusively on him.

[Jerry]

How is Teleport a Swift Action?

Also, where are the stats for a two-headed bird?

[CatharzGodfoot]

A fighter can still foil a mage's swift teleport (immediate actions can interrupt whatever), but if the mage has another teleport memorized she can get away just fine--unless the fighter can foil twice in a round. At that point the mage might as well have a contingency (nonaction), as well as a ridiculous touch AC and some miss chance.

But make not mistake: foil action is still an excellent way to ruin a caster's day. It can keep them locked down just enough to let the fighter charge in and do some real damage. If the fighter has a helm of teleportation, bamfing to within 30' of the wizard still leaves that immediate action to trip up the wizard.

[Jerry]

Oh, not to mention Mirror Image and Blink. That can screw over Foil Action with some regularity.

[Kaelik]

1) Teleport is a swift action with items or with Quickened Spells.

2) I am well aware that he can foil the swift action, my point is that with that combined with other actions, the Fighter can't lockdown the Wizard. Yes it makes him waste spells, but it goes something like this:

Move action, if it isn't foiled, then he's out of range and he can cast freely. If it is, then swift action item or Dimension Door to get out of range, possibly really far away, if not foiled, cast freely, if foiled, cast freely. At which point of course you cast Mirror Image, Greater Invis, Blink, ect, ignoring that you probably had those up before, or you teleport far away, or you summon up a wall of force, or you cast spell of disable fighter X, or you kill him, or you summon up some allies.

3) Yes, foil action is good. Yes it is part of what makes the Tome Fighter not crap like the PHB Fighter. No it isn't overpowered, and no it doesn't make the Fighter able to super lockdown anything. It does however make it possible for him to lockdown some things, or require actual resource expenditure to get out on those things that he can't lockdown.

The best Lockdown build non-caster possible under WotC books can start directly adjacent to my unbuffed Wizard, give us each one round of prep time with no moving from that square and no offensive actions, and then I will win Init (100% of the time) and then roll 1d20 to determine which of the many ways that I can escape and disable him I want to use. With the Tome Fighter, I'd actually be moderately worried, with a well built one, genuinely so.

[Leress]

They keep harping about Mageslayer Feat like it's the shit. Yes it helps but it's not that great.

[K]

The thing I don't get is the fact that people don't seem to realize that the Wizard actually has a really good touch AC most of the time since their second stat is Dex, their AC improving spells usually add to touch AC, and the fact that the only thing they have to spend gold on is AC improving items.

[Jerry]

The thing I don't get is the fact that people don't seem to realize that the Wizard actually has a really good touch AC most of the time since their second stat is Dex, their AC improving spells usually add to touch AC, and the fact that the only thing they have to spend gold on is AC improving items.

Mage Armor, Cat's Grace, and Foresight FTW!!

[SphereOfFeetMan]

How? How does a religious follower know that a spell is divine and comes from his particular god and is not a trick of some other spellcaster?

Religious faith (and see below). Since deities rule peoples lives, that includes faith and knowledge.

That sounds clever, but it is actually not. How is the person this spell is cast on know that he hasn't just been the victim of a mind control or memory altering spell, and not the combo of spells that you suggest? The ranks in Spellcraft that he doesn't have? He doesn't. All he knows is that the cleric says "let me cast this spell on you, and then you'll believe me....." Yeh, that's not any kind of evidence.

The cleric can lend the commoner a magic item that allows the wielder to use the Augury spell independent from the cleric. The commoner can use the spell to divine some other future event first. Once the Augury has been proven to successfully predict the future, the commoner can ask about undead. There is your proof, and it is about as irrefutable as you can get. I hope you are not going to fall back on the ‘closing your eyes and sticking fingers in your ears’ defense again.

Really? Where in their monster description does it say that they have access to the Wishes of the more powerful angels? Where does it say that anywhere? Support your arguments. You are making assumptions not supported in the rules.

So you are asserting that a good Solar would not help a lesser good angel with identical or similar ideals? A CR 14 Angel has the same innate ability to obtain magic items as a 14th level Rogue. At worst, they have the same capability to obtain magic items. If you go on to assume a good angel would help another angel, then they are ahead of the rogue.

The issues you were mixing was whether spellcaster who potentially could cast animate dead might support a philosophy that made it seem unattractive, and the issue of you've restated above. Keep up, shortbus. Those are two separate issues.

Actually, shortbus, they are directly related as I’ve explained previously. Reread my posts if you need to.

The SRD (and Dieties and Demigods) clearly outlines the powers of the god. Rulership is not one of those powers.

Irrelevant. The entire chapter on religion in the Phb explicitly states, or implies, that gods rule over humanoid existence.

The typical person has a deity whom he considers to be his patron.

Those described here are the deities most often worshiped among the common races, by adventurers, and by villains.

So most people worship deities that are real. End of argument.

____________________

But the rules, they don't even have angels or demons at their command, or fortresses, or anything. Some have domains, and that is a function of their powers, but in no place does ot say "this god has 200 of this angel at his command (though some demon lords do, as flavor text)".

Solars are the greatest of the angels, usually close attendants to a deity or champions of some cosmically beneficent task (such as eliminating a particular type of wrongdoing).

Planetars can cast divine spells as 17th-level clerics. A planetar has access to two of the following domains: Air, Destruction, Good, Law, or War (plus any others from its deity.)

Solars can cast divine spells as 20th-level clerics. A solar has access to two of the following domains: Air, Destruction, Good, Law, or War (plus any others from its deity.)

It is explicitly stated that these angels both have the power of clerics, and have patron deities. Maybe you should take your own advice and “Support your arguments. You are making assumptions not supported in the rules.”

_______________________

You are assuming that some kind of divine organization exists when nothing in the rules grants those powers.

You see, clerical religious orders are ‘divine organizations’ that are, and try to keep up, granted powers by deities. It isn’t just one line of text. It is paragraphs of text supporting the powerful religious institutions of the clerics, and virtually all of the flavor text in D&D’s mythos.

"Seeing a cleric" was an expression denoting people's access to a cleric where they could hear sermons and the like.

Fine, back-peddle. Even if we go by your assumptions that clerics never go to other towns to preach, or that people never go on pilgrimages, or to religious gatherings, significantly more than half of all people live in a community with a cleric.

You can't prove that it does not harm the soul or the person. Seriously.

I have proven it. Read my statements above.

Consider Intelligent Design.
...
Stop thinking like a gamer who knows the rules, and start thinking like a person who lives in a world without defined black and white rules where deception is easy.

I wondered which one of us would bring up real world religions first. In Dnd land, both the religious majority and the lying minority have access to deceitful magic, so it’s a wash. Lets remove it from the equation. So there are only two meaningful differences between the real world and Dnd land concerning religious belief. These being: Some people have proof of the knowledge of deities, and virtually all of the varied religions agree on the afterlife.

Given those two changes to the real world, consider how widespread agreement on the afterlife would be. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Scientologists, etc, would all agree on the afterlife and have people who actually know it for a fact. So it is easily concluded that people in dnd land would know and believe that animating the dead isn’t evil.

You are arguing against your own point, and have proven mine. Thank you. Hopefully you now understand, and the discussion can be put to rest.

_______________________

You have been proven wrong so completely, and so often, that it has become tiring to correct you. I hope you now have a better understanding of the issue. I also hope you will refrain from being so prodigious in making false statements in the future, because I think I might let the issue rest soon, if not now.

[RandomCasualty2]

The game isn't really about mage against fighter. I'm thinking more about fighter versus monster. And for monsters, quickened teleports and all that shit are damned rare. And if I'm not mistaken, you can foil a swift action too anyway, so you can lock down a character even with quickened abilities. Even a dragon can't even quicken spells.

So you can use foil action to Tekken Juggle people.

[SphereOfFeetMan]

On to other issues...

Yes, foil action is broken. Consider the following situation:

A 20th level Barbarian, 9th level fighter team
Vs
A 20th level barbarian, 9th level monk team.

The fighter only needs to tag the enemy barbarian with a ranged touch attack to completely negate him. Meanwhile the fighters lvl 20 barbarian teammate kills the monk in one round, and then starts attacking the enemy barbarian, who can't act.

[Jerry]

Foil Action is very powerful, but I still think that it is on par with some of the stuff that Clerics, Druids, and Wizards can do.

[name_here]

K, have you heard of an organization with membership scattered across the world, which launched at least 3 major wars, known as the Catholic Church? That is the kind of power religion can gather.

also, if the cleric openly rasies a dead community figure, that basically gives everyone who attempts to persude people in that area that there is no afterlife a -10 to -20 to their bluff check, per http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/bluff.htm

[angelfromanotherpin]

K, have you heard of an organization with membership scattered across the world, which launched at least 3 major wars, known as the Catholic Church? That is the kind of power religion can gather.

As there's no objective proof that the Catholic Church has more authority to say what happens after death than, say, I do, that's more of an example of the kind of power that flim-flam can gather.

[name_here]

As there's no objective proof that the Catholic Church has more authority to say what happens after death than, say, I do, that's more of an example of the kind of power that flim-flam can gather.

True, but the point was that religions can gain that kind of power even with no objective proof, and K was saying there was no objective proof that the DND religions were vaild in-setting.

[Jerry]

Clerics don't need religion to rule over towns; just look at the spells that they get.

[Psychic Robot]

Clerics don't need religion to rule over nations; just look at the spells that they get.

Fixed.