[Campaign Advice] The Divine Right Of Kings (To Screw Up)

[Woot]

So I’ve been tossing around some ideas for running a low-level to potentially epic-level D&D5 campaign. The initial framing is straightforward: a local count has fallen on hard times due to his land’s historical dependance on a neighboring barony and it’s iron mines. The baron’s castle is now filled with demi-human bandits, the mines are full of kobolds and worse, the swamp to the south is full of gribbly horrors, etc. The count is too old and poor to confront all these problems directly, but has offered to elevate to the rank of baron anyone who can fix up the barony and swear fealty to the count. All very standard D&D tropes, really.

As the adventure progresses, they receive various cryptic warnings about a coming apocalypse, and as well as a warning that they should not swear fealty to the count. They also find evidence of two rival groups, both composed largely of well-off and well-connected tieflings, which seem to be engaged in a campaign of manipulation and assassination against each other. Eventually one of these groups contacts the party about aiding them in preventing the coming apocalypse.

Further digging and hermeneutics work reveals that the force behind the coming apocalypse is the gods of good! A deeper dive into the history reveals that 1000 (or some impressively suitable number) years ago the entire kingdom was on the verge of collapse - the rulers had fallen into idleness, sloth, pacts with evil beings, being a dick to neighboring powers, and as a result of this, the gods of god had turned away from the kingdom and the neighboring lands had teamed up to carve up the failing kingdom for themselves. A loyal general and court wizard formed a desperate plan: depose the current rulers and make themselves the rulers, and then negotiate with devils to ensure 1000 years (or whatever) of peace. A suitably brutal regicide, possibly with suitably graphic ritual acts, happens, and our new king & queen suddenly have an army of devils at their command, who proceed to force all the local lords to swear fealty to the new rulers, and then drive the invading armies from the land, etc. This “Time of Devils” passes into legend, but fortunately for the new rulers, it is largely blamed on the prior rulers. Still, the ruling family, as part of the curse, tends to give birth to numerous tieflings, who are hidden from public view but often set up with comfortable lives. In exchange for all this, the devils will come to claim the kingdom, and the rulers (and all who derive their authority from them, i.e. all nobles) are pact-bound to aid them in claiming what’s rightfully theirs.

1000 years (or whatever) are nearly at hand, and the gods of good have come up with a radical plan: the pact with devils was made by the legitimate rulers of the kingdom (by Right and/or Rite of Conquest) and bars them from interfering with the devil’s plan or the ruling family. Over centuries of study, angelic lawyers have discovered a loophole: while the gods of good cannot directly oppose the devil’s plan, they are not forbidden from destroying the kingdom in it’s entirety, which they view as preferable as allowing the kingdom to become an outpost of the 9 Hells on the material plane. The gods have revealed this only to their most trusted high-level priests, but a small group of angels, dissatisfied with the plan, have allowed word of it to leak out by way of a cryptic prophecy.

The two warring cults are royal-descended tieflings who are aware of both the devil pact and the good god’s plan. One faction is loyal to the kingdom and views it as their home, and wishes to prevent the apocalypse AND prevent a devilish takeover. The other seeks to prevent the apocalypse, but wishes to aid the devilish takeover so that they may be rewarded by the devils with the authority and rank that their birthright should have given them.

One possible solution to this situation would be to supplant the ruling family and become the new rulers of the kingdom - since one party to the pact was eliminated, it's null and void, and the gods of good are no longer bound not to interfere directly, which eliminates the need to destroy the kingdom and makes the threat of devilish invasion far less likely. The other solution would be to visit the hells and take out the demon who created the pact; it specifically arranged the pact so that in the event of his destruction no one else would inherit the pact, to discourage his ambitious underlings from assassinating him. I can also imagine a third solution where the PCs manage to convince the gods of good to stay their hand long enough to try their own plan, which involves rallying the neighboring lands (who would be in dire peril if their neighbors’ kingdom was suddenly overrun with devils) to help defend the kingdom (since they’re not bound by the pact) and making it too difficult for the devils to conquer.


1) What are your thoughts about the usage of the Divine Right of Kings as a rationale to limit the power of the gods?

2) Likewise, the use of fealty as a (story) mechanic to bind the hands of local rulers who would seek to interfere (including the PCs, if one of them swears fealty to the count and becomes a baron/ness.)

3) Are there any big logic holes I’m not seeing?

[Username17]

So I’ve been tossing around some ideas for running a low-level to potentially epic-level D&D5 campaign.

This conversation seems to derail around the first sentence. D&D5 stops functioning altogether if there are two digits worth of dudes on a side. The lords of hell trade off for like thirty or forty archers. The great krakens of the sea can be repulsed by the crew of a medium sized boat.

It's like how I'd never condone trying to do tank warfare in any edition of Shadowrun because the rules for heavy vehicles do not work. 5th edition D&D just full stop does not function for large or numerous combatants. It isn't just that the epic level skill results are all undefined (although of course they are), or that high level characters can't even achieve them because of the awkwardly slow growth of mastery bonuses (although this is also true). It's that the offensive output of a mighty champion of justice can be matched or exceeded by a number of bow wielding conscripts that you can count on your fingers.

Epic level play just doesn't exist in 5th edition D&D. The machinations of gods and kings are not things that the game can meaningfully model. The city guard of anything larger than a small town is already so many troops that the game's combat engine chokes and dies. If you start talking about mobilizing counties or kingdoms, the game engine already completely gave up a long time ago and you've been playing magical teaparty for a while.

-Username17

[Dean]

Stating that the good gods have been totally out of contact gets heavily into the "Good is dumb" trope. I talk about some of the problems with the good D&D gods here but the TLDR is that saying all the good gods have allowed the setting to turn to hell on earth when they could just tell people not to do that sucks. What do you think about this idea/addition to your concept...

The gods that are worshiped in the the Sun Kingdom are good noble gods with large followings. There is a god of charity, a god of justice, a god of protection, a god of life, and an all-father god. People give money to the temples of the god of charity, spill the blood of their enemies for the god of justice, and have their funerary rights performed by the priests of the god of life. These gods speak through their high priests and are an active presence in the religious life of the Sun Kingdom who's nobles, yes, do have a fair number of tieflings that pop up occasionally. The catch? All those "Good Gods" are the Demon Lords who conquered the Sun Kingdom long ago. The God of charity is Mammon, demon prince of greed, bathing his yellow skin in the gold of his unwitting followers. The god of justice is Bal demanding blood and war from the empire. Orcus's priests perform the funerary rights and amass vast armies of the undead in their crypts ready to use them as they wish. Asmodeus rules over all and maintains this dark ruse. The actually Good gods like Pelor have had their cults banished and hunted down for nearly a millenia until their ability to speak on earth is almost nothing. Possibly the PC's might even be a part of the groups that hunt down these false gods.

Basically you could run your entire campaign around the idea of Demons just figuring out the power of PR. The most evil people in America carry bibles and wear flag pins on their suits, have that be true in your fantasy world. If the demons came to power they would absolutely call themselves gods and get the public to blame the 1000 years of darkness on the "Demon Cults" of Pelor or whoever the fuck. You could keep your entire campaign model but have an awesome swerve when you reveal your apocalypse plan AND have a sensible reason why the gods ability to communicate to the world of men has been almost totally cut off. If all of society has been wiping out the good gods followers and temples then you can totally have your players getting dropped hints about the coming apocalypse by secretive priests using whispers and hidden messages because anything more open risks their own death and destruction.

[deaddmwalking]

Telling the PCs not to swear fealty will come off as heavy-handed; don't do that. If the PCs swear fealty, just roll with it. Let them break their oath if they want.

There's a Star Trek Next Generation episode about a society that made just such a deal - in that case the twist is that the person trying to collect is a charlatan imitating Satan.

I favor 'distant gods' so you can do everything you're doing and just leave them out of it.

Most campaigns don't make it that far. I'd lay it out a bit like seasons of a TV show. The first season you deal with the barony stuff, and you play it straight. You have some minor foreshadowing about the count being...unpleasant. Just some animals that don't seem to like him and he is quite old. Stories are that he had heirs, but they've all died before attaining adulthood due to some mysterious illness.

The second season should be about external forces that appear to be 'good' declaring war with the kingdom. Like the 'paladin kingdom' or whatever that is. PCs, especially if they've sworn fealty may defend the kingdom. Or maybe they'll investigate why a good kingdom has gone to war with them when they haven't done anything wrong. Having Tieflings start popping up to serve their kingdom's interests as important messengers/generals/royal agents may make them question things. Make sure those guys are dicks. If things go well, the PCs stop the foreign invasion but at the same time learn that it was motivated by good intentions of stopping a breach.

Third season you go more into what's causing the breach. There doesn't have to be 'a thousand years of rule' strictly speaking. The king (and his agents) have been working on opening the portal. There's a living being who is critical for the success - some powerful demon thing that was spawned for this purpose. Season three ought to end with them defeating the king and his minions, but 'the thing' has escaped, and it's just a matter of time before it comes back with the legions of hell.

The 4th season is going into hell and stopping the 'thing'. There are a few major demons. If you figure out who the major demons are, you can 'flavor' some of the encounters in the earlier seasons with references to these demons. I'd pick some small number (like 4) to represent the demon factions that are in on the plan so the PCs can defeat them one at a time. You could potentially make each major demon their own season depending on the pacing.

[Thaluikhain]

The most evil people in America carry bibles and wear flag pins on their suits, have that be true in your fantasy world.

Sure, but they also overtly or semi-covertly support being evil.

Nobody (well, ok, Caitlyn Jenner, nobody else) was surprised when Trump's administration turned out to be against LGBT people. PCs shouldn't be fooled like that.

The demons would have to suspend being demonic (or at least obviously so) for the duration.

(Also raises the question, what happens when a demon lords remains evil, but realises it's counter-productive and thoroughly goes through the motions of being good because it's in their interests?)

[Woot]

So I’ve been tossing around some ideas for running a low-level to potentially epic-level D&D5 campaign.

This conversation seems to derail around the first sentence.

"But aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"

While I'd quibble around the edges, I think your point is basically sound. Last fall I started running a campaign that took players from levels 1-8 and never had more than 20 mooks opposing 6 players, and it worked pretty well, actually, albeit with a good deal of mindcaulk to make the bare-bones 5E skill system somehow relevant to Spelljammer.

The basic problem is that a quick rundown of the various rulesets my group has familiarity with reveals NONE of the candidates are perfectly suitable.

Call of Cthulhu: Not geared for medieval fantasy, though not actually hard to adapt (I've done it before!) but the skill system makes baby Cthulhu cry.

Shadowrun: Not really designed for it, and I personally hate it's dicepool system.

GURPS: Could work, actually, but requires a fair bit of handholding to build the scaffolding for races (and perhaps classes) and more handholding to avoid the "I built a totally useless character" problem.

OWoD: Not designed for it, and hilariously unbalanced.

NWoD: Moderately better balance, but far from perfect (schoolbus of kids w/ rocks vs werewolf problem) and not designed for it.

AD&D 2e: Not without it's old-school charm and bright spots (actually has the best multiclassing system in all of D&D, if you disagree FITE ME IRL, MANLET!) but hideously, hideously clunky and an excellent reminder of why the world so eagerly embraced 3.0

D&D 3.5: Perhaps as close as D&D has ever gotten to perfection, but still with big glaring flaws that have been well discussed over the last 15 years and need no rehashing here. I personally have come to dislike the splatsplosion with 500 different totally uncompelling prestige classes alongside the ability to combine obscure splats in unintended ways to break the game wide open

4e: A slow and overcomplicated but not-terrible miniatures wargame with your choice of a dozen lobotomized skill systems to choose from!

5e: Has enough built-in tropes to function as a dungeon fantasy RPG, and few enough options to keep anyone who doesn't eat crayons from coloring too far outside the lines. Weak skill system and goes off the rails at high levels (but then, what doesn't?)

For what it's worth, I'm not actually interested in simulating county and kingdom sized armies in my RPG; I'm OK with MTPing that stuff. If I wanted to do that sort of thing (and sometimes I do!) the most sensible thing to do is drop the RPG books altogether and pick up some wargaming books.

I'll also throw in the caveat that our group swaps around games and MCs very frequently - it's rare for us to run a game for more than 6 months or so before switching out, though we definitely do return to old campaigns. As a result, poor performance at high levels is an undesirable trait but not necessarily a fatal flaw for our group.

So I'll turn this around - if you were in my shoes, what system would you use, and why?

[Woot]

@Dean The gods thread is actually what inspired me to post about this campaign idea; I've been following it and it's given me a good deal to think about!

I'm actually trying to avoid the "Good is dumb" trope as best I can. The good gods aren't out of contact, precisely - it's just that their hands are tied. Now, maybe you object to my premise that "the Divine Right of Kings can work backwords in ways that prevent even the gods from violating a king's sworn will" and that's fine, but here's roughly the chain of thought I followed:

- Why has this part of the world fallen into such a shambles such that it needs the party to fix everything up?
- Maybe central authority has become impotent?
- Wait... what if central authority isn't impotent so much as checked out, or given up?
- Why would they do that? What if the temporal Powers that be know that an apocalypse is coming and are quietly hiding, fleeing, or spending their lives in dissipated luxury?
- Why don't the Forces of Good stop the apocalypse? What if... because they're the ones behind it?
- Why would the Forces of Good want an apocalypse? What's so bad that destroying the world would seem preferable to them?
- Devils! Lots and lots of devils! A devil invasion! (Or some other supernaturally and irredeemably evil foe.)
- Ok, but why don't they just stop the devil invasion?
- They're prevented somehow in a way they dare not directly oppose.
- Ok, but what force could prevent that?
- Aha! A deal that they would be honor-bound not to violate. But who would have the authority to make such a deal?
- What if... what if the Divine Right of Kings worked in reverse...?

Beyond that, I like your proposal! It adds the sort of conspiratorial depth I like in my campaign background, and provides at least as good a reason (if not better) for the gods of good to want to angrily flip the table! The issue I have with it is: wouldn't people eventually notice? Like, "Hey, whenever I try to turn undead they start obeying me?" or "Whenever I contact an outsider aligned with my god, it's always a devil; why?" or more broadly some form of, "Hey, why do the clerics glow red and not blue when they use their power?"

[Woot]

@deaddmwalking I'm absolutely thinking about this in terms of "seasons" as you describe, simply due to how my local group games: 3-6 months at a stretch, then switch games and MCs. For the first "season" I'm shooting for a very "standard tropes" campaign, seasoned with occasional nudges to make the party wonder why this backwater but resource-rich county (barony, rather!) has fallen into such disrepair and why it's been left that way for the past few decades, without the (admittedly somewhat far off) ruler not lifting a finger to help.

By the time they've cleaned up the area to a reasonable degree of prosperity, they should realize that they've succesfully cleaned and bandaged a wound on a victim that's going septic (and hence, to save their hard-won gains and their new titles and/or riches, they need to address the kingdom's problems as well!)

BUT THAT IS A STORY FOR NEXT TIME WOOT IS MISTER CAVERN!

[pragma]

D&D5 stops functioning altogether if there are two digits worth of dudes on a side. The lords of hell trade off for like thirty or forty archers. The great krakens of the sea can be repulsed by the crew of a medium sized boat.

I want to quibble with this: Demon lords in 5e D&D can present significant logistical and leadership challenges to armies.

This GiTP thread, particularly post #20, does some analysis of how a sizable army with bows would stand up to Zariel. The army would fare poorly in a knock down drag out because Zariel can keep them at long range to impose disadvantage, take a pittance of damage and regenerate it, then kill ~50/round with fireballs (there's an inherent tension between bringing all your bows to bear and being fireball resistant).

A kraken could probably do similar hit and run tactics against a ship of a few hundred soldiers. It could grapple 12/turn and just swim away to kill them.

None of which is to dispute that 5e sets its bars comically low or that a named archdevil shouldn't need to spend 20 minutes playing peekaboo with unnamed commoners with bows.

It's that the offensive output of a mighty champion of justice can be matched or exceeded by a number of bow wielding conscripts that you can count on your fingers.

It takes 160 peasant archers with shortbows into AC 21 (no proficiency, resistance, advantage or disadvantage) to match a 20th level fighter with a +3 sword (at 56 damage per round). So I guess it depends on how you're counting: using fingers for unsigned binary codes can represent up to 1023.

[Emerald]

Beyond that, I like your proposal! It adds the sort of conspiratorial depth I like in my campaign background, and provides at least as good a reason (if not better) for the gods of good to want to angrily flip the table! The issue I have with it is: wouldn't people eventually notice?

Houserules and misdirection are your friend here.

Like, "Hey, whenever I try to turn undead they start obeying me?"

You could replace Turn Undead with homebrewed god-specific abilities; there's precedent in 3e, where you can give up Turn/Rebuke Undead for various alternate class features (which are basically never worth it if [Divine] feats are available, but the ACFs do exist). You can justify it to your players as another flavorful way to distinguish the gods in addition to domains, and justify it cosmologically because the gods are actually Dukes of Hell and Turn Undead is a divine thing--which can serve as foreshadowing in and of itself.

"Whenever I contact an outsider aligned with my god, it's always a devil; why?"

A player calls up a handful of divine servants: a tall figure encased in shining golden armor from head to toe with a vaguely canine helm and mounted on a pure-white holy steed, serving the God of Justice; a beautiful winged woman clad in sky-blue robes, serving the God of Charity; and a distinguished gray-haired black-robed magistrate-looking man holding a legal codex and a scepter, serving the High God.

Are those a hound archon paladin, a movanic deva, and a tome archon, servants of truth, justice, and the [insert nationality] way? Or are they a narzugon, an erinyes, and a falxugon, physically disguised and doing their best celestial impressions?

"Hey, why do the clerics glow red and not blue when they use their power?"

Presumably, the devils have had plenty of time to think about how to sell this deception, so they can slowlt and subtly tweak the religion's teachings to explain anything away.

Clerics of the God of Justice glow dark red when they smite people, and things tend to have a very fiery motif? His holy colors are crimson and gold, and he commands his followers to purify the wicked with his holy fire. Clerics of the God of Life dress in black face-covering robes when they carry out funeral rites? Funerals are solemn occasions, and in that role they are speaking for their god so they dress as psychopomps to help guide the soul to the afterlife. And so on and so forth.

And, again, if players notice anything a bit off about things, play it off initially as adding flavor and color to the setting and it becomes foreshadowing that things aren't what they seem.

[Stahlseele]

https://books.google.de/books?id=aUqZCw ... AHoECAUQAQ

King Uther lusting after and demanding from Merlin the Wife of another man.
Even if it were to mean war.
For that, Merlin took Excalibur from him and put it into the Stone for the true King to claim at a later point.
Uther has runied his life and future and that of the entire kingdom by letting his pocket sword do the thinking.

[Zaranthan]

Please either spoiler the link, embed it, or tinyurl it. You’re breaking the page.

[Stahlseele]

Please either spoiler the link, embed it, or tinyurl it. You’re breaking the page.

whoops, my bad.
Spoilered for trying to unbreak things.

[Dean]

The most evil people in America carry bibles and wear flag pins on their suits, have that be true in your fantasy world.

Sure, but they also overtly or semi-covertly support being evil.

They don't exactly. They support positively themed versions of their evil thing which is exactly what I'm saying the devils would do. You don't say you want "eternal war" you say "security", you don't say you want "total corporate rulership" you say "free market", you don't say "racial cleansing" you say "border control".

D&D exists in a paper thin morality as it is. If the "Good" church tells you to destroy all the enemy temples and cultists, bring back all of their wealth for your gods, and purge the unclean races from their dens that is honestly just business as usual. If you just don't have the bad team use scary voices and say how horny murder makes them I actually think the challenge will be making their evil background noticeable at all.

The issue I have with it is: wouldn't people eventually notice? Like, "Hey, whenever I try to turn undead they start obeying me?" or "Whenever I contact an outsider aligned with my god, it's always a devil; why?" or more broadly some form of, "Hey, why do the clerics glow red and not blue when they use their power?"

There is nothing inherently good about turning undead rather than rebuking them. If a combat cleric in your party controlled the skeletons that were trying to kill you and said he would use them to destroy the evil hiding in this dungeon I don't think anyone would bat an eye against that, especially if you say he follows a religion which supports that. If someone Commune's with a powerful Devil there's no reason that devil needs to respond in a snake tongue voice telling them to do eeeeeeevvvillllll. These fiends are geniuses with powerful magics, they can control themselves for a 2 minute phone call. If a Cleric of Bal asks for advice he can get a stern voice telling them that their enemies must be crushed and driven before them, that it is their duty to protect their brethren and be the first into battle to earn their rewards in the afterlife.

I want to quibble with this: Demon lords in 5e D&D can present significant logistical and leadership challenges to armies.

This GiTP thread, particularly post #20, does some analysis of how a sizable army with bows would stand up to Zariel. The army would fare poorly in a knock down drag out because Zariel can keep them at long range to impose disadvantage, take a pittance of damage and regenerate it, then kill ~50/round with fireballs (there's an inherent tension between bringing all your bows to bear and being fireball resistant).

That person’s math is wrong. Commoners have a +2 to hit so against AC 21, disadvantage means 1/100 hit, then Zariels resistance halves that damage. Each archer deals 3.5 damage on a normal hit and 7 on a crit.
1000 archers deal 4.375 divided by 100, divided by 2, times 1000. So about 22 damage a turn.
The person in the post has 2000 archers. The poster assumes you always shoot at Zariel at long range but Zariel’s attacks only have a 150 foot range so he has to teleport in to use them. If you command a ton of people (say half the army for ease of conversation) to ready an action to shoot when she teleports in then half the army would deal 22 damage at range, just enough that she can’t just sit out there, and the readied group would deal 218 damage every time she teleported in. Every 2 rounds she would need to leave to regenerate or else be killed. I grant you if she wants to continuously retreat every 2 rounds of combat and heal up in the bushes for 3 minutes and then do that repeatedly she would eventually win over a great deal of time. I will note that the original scenario presented was Zariel trying to defend some sort of portal and that scenario she absolutely loses. Really anything preventing Zariel from having total free will to leave for three minutes, fight for 1 to two rounds, then flee makes this a loss for her.

It takes 160 peasant archers with shortbows into AC 21 (no proficiency, resistance, advantage or disadvantage) to match a 20th level fighter with a +3 sword.

Commoners have a +2 to hit, if they have no advantage or disadvantage or anything they deal .4375 damage per shot to someone with AC 21 with a shortbow. So 128 rather than 160. I think everyone was forgetting about critical hits in their math. It is notable however that those numbers come down incredibly quickly as we move anywhere upward from totally untrained peasantry though. 21 basic orcs match that output for instance. The thing I would put forward is that you can have that be true and still have a campaign be “epic” just in the LoTR sense and not the traditional D&D sense. I think it’s totally fine to have a campaign world where the worlds biggest baddest would probably lose in a fight with 30 proffessional soldiers. Conan works like that for example, where Conan is awesome but he generally gives up if 20 dudes point spears at him. Your campaign can still be grand and sweeping and epic in a world where each party member is only worth a few dozen enemies. It still even makes sense to get a bunch of those people together into an adventuring party so that you can compress the equivalent of hundreds of trained soldiers into half a dozen people able to easily sneak in and out of places. Your party doesn’t need to be personally able to fight armies in order to be tasked to grand and important missions the only thing you need to do is change the setting expectations and definitely don’t do the thing where 5e literally tells you that 20th level threats are supposed to level cities.

[Whipstitch]

They don't exactly. They support positively themed versions of their evil thing which is exactly what I'm saying the devils would do.

This.

High functioning brutality typically comes pre-packaged with apologetics and is particularly fond of declaring things regrettable but necessary. E.g., in the Bible there's an incident where 42 youths sass the prophet Elisha by calling him an old baldy who should take his teachings elsewhere. God responds to this with the Dens' favorite tactic: quantum bears. Now, tearing 42 people limb from limb via bear attack is an overreaction by most standards, but to this day you can find websites and bible study guides stressing that this incident wasn't truly about baldness but rather the notion that the Israelites had strayed from the Covenant by not obeying the Prophets and obviously contractual obligations are super important.

[Thaluikhain]

They don't exactly. They support positively themed versions of their evil thing which is exactly what I'm saying the devils would do. You don't say you want "eternal war" you say "security", you don't say you want "total corporate rulership" you say "free market", you don't say "racial cleansing" you say "border control".

Certainly, but if someone agrees with all that, my first thought is hardly going to be that they are an innocent dupe of a propaganda campaign. People support that because the evil behind it appeals to them, they just might not want to admit it.

D&D exists in a paper thin morality as it is. If the "Good" church tells you to destroy all the enemy temples and cultists, bring back all of their wealth for your gods, and purge the unclean races from their dens that is honestly just business as usual.

Sure, but then if the evil church is exactly the same as the good church, where is the evil? Sure, you could go "surprise, the orcs in this setting are people too" halfway through or something, but don't know how well that'd go down.

[Chamomile]

This GiTP thread, particularly post #20, does some analysis of how a sizable army with bows would stand up to Zariel. The army would fare poorly in a knock down drag out because Zariel can keep them at long range to impose disadvantage, take a pittance of damage and regenerate it, then kill ~50/round with fireballs (there's an inherent tension between bringing all your bows to bear and being fireball resistant).

If you're handing out shortbows to random peasants, yes. If you're levying even slightly competent longbowmen (if, for example, you're English and it's the Hundred Years War), you've got better range than almost all spells and your odds of hitting a 21 AC have relatively skyrocketed (a +3 archer will hit on an 18 instead of a 20, three times as often). Frank's constant insistence that 50 longbowmen can kill anything in the Monster Manual is very straightforwardly and mathematically false and the actual number is considerably higher, but it is also considerably lower than the several thousand necessary to take out Zariel using random yahoos given shortbows.

Also, specifically mentioning "the lords of Hell" is doubly stupid, on account of demon princes being some of the only monsters in the game who have flat-out immunity to non-magical weapons. The only archdevil to receive official stats is Zariel, who is resistant and has regeneration, thus being vulnerable to a sufficient amount of archers, although that amount is at least considerably higher than, for example, the amount needed to bring down an ancient red dragon from the original Monster Manual, who have no damage resistances, are immune only to fire, whose flight speed and fear aura are outranged by a longbow meaning they're obligated to tank arrows when flying in for a strafing run, and whose frightful presence must be used as an action instead of its breath weapon rather than in addition (although it can at least make melee attacks in addition to frightful presence, which is helpful against heroes, though useless except for edge cases against armies).

700 longbowmen can safely alpha strike an ancient red as it moves into range to use its breath weapon (although not all 700 will be able to hit it in the very first round, each of them will be able to attack the dragon at least once before they are within range of its breath weapon - because the breath weapon is shorter range than the longbows, many of them will be able to attack twice). A similar number have less of a knockout blow against Zariel because Zariel has resistance, but they are still very probably going to win because they have more than enough attacks to stay ahead of her regeneration by a wide enough margin that she probably can't inflict significant fatalities against them before succumbing to volleys (assuming they're smart enough to space themselves out, although they can probably win even in a close formation - the radius on a fireball isn't great). These are monsters that couldn't terrorize Yorkshire, let alone the entire kingdom of England. Late medieval kings assemble armies over an order of magnitude larger than that when they go to war, and those armies are peanuts next to the armies of classical antiquity. That is the kind of framing the issue needs, because it draws attention to the fact that 700 longbowmen is actually a very small number, all things considered. It seems very large next to "thirty or forty archers," who, even if they got phenomenally lucky and all crit, would deal an average of about 60% of an ancient red's health before being vaporized by its breath weapon.

[Dean]

Certainly, but if someone agrees with all that, my first thought is hardly going to be that they are an innocent dupe of a propaganda campaign. People support that because the evil behind it appeals to them, they just might not want to admit it.

The people chanting for blood and soil know what they're doing. But buying propaganda isn't a hard right wing only phenomenon. How many Americans even on the left would be willing to identify as anti-soldier? Now how many of those people would tell you murder is the most evil thing? If you culturally program people you can get them to be innocent dupes of all kinds of crazy cognitive dissonance.

Sure, but then if the evil church is exactly the same as the good church, where is the evil?

Asking the actual difference between the two is legitimate. My assumption is that if supernaturally good beings with incredible power and super-genius IQ's were the ones actually in charge of the setting it wouldn't still be a violent bronze age society with people dying of dysentery even after 1000 years. The actually good church would still need to get their followers to murder a bunch of people and orcs to oust the demons from rulership, so your life path as an adventurer won't actually change that much, but the presumption is that once team good wins the world would actually improve.

[Username17]

So I'll turn this around - if you were in my shoes, what system would you use, and why?

Depends on what parts of your story are important to you. You've already said that when it comes to the "epic" actions of counties and kingdoms clashing you intend to basically ignore the rules and just "tell a story."

What an RPG system brings to the table is provide an answer to the question of "what can my character do?" I am very down on 5th edition D&D because it basically doesn't answer that for anything. A combination of missing DCs with an explicitly incomplete skill list (proficiency with fucking tools!) with an insanely flat and swingy base random number generator means that I don't know what my character can do under any circumstances and even if the DM and I both agree that my character should be able to do something the actual mechanics are going to output failure about as often as an unweighted coin.

3rd edition D&D has a weak skill system but a very strong skirmish minigame. Shadowrun 4th edition has a bad skirmish minigame and a very strong skill system. HERO has an intermediate skill system and an intermediate skirmish combat game. What's important to you depends on what part of the story you think it's important to model with the "game" part of the RPG. If you intend to go from skirmish combat to skirmish combat with railroad cut scenes in between, it's really hard to beat 3e D&D. If combat is something you intend to ignore and even avoid for whole sessions while the players investigate and intrigue, 4th edition Shadowrun is a very good base.

But one thing I will say is that even if you do intend to use some variant on D&D, that if you're wedded to the big reveal that "actually we've been the bad guys all along" that this is totally incompatible with detect evil being a thing that exists. Most off-brand D&D settings explicitly toss alignment into the garbage can, which is for the best, really. But if you use default spell lists and default alignment assumptions of any edition of D&D, big reveals like that are essentially impossible.

-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

But one thing I will say is that even if you do intend to use some variant on D&D, that if you're wedded to the big reveal that "actually we've been the bad guys all along" that this is totally incompatible with detect evil being a thing that exists. Most off-brand D&D settings explicitly toss alignment into the garbage can, which is for the best, really. But if you use default spell lists and default alignment assumptions of any edition of D&D, big reveals like that are essentially impossible.

-Username17

Undetectable Alignment would block Detect Evil in 3.5 and is available to 3rd level clerics. That'd still tell you something was up when you thought to cast Detect Good on the Bishop of "Charity" and got no reading, but there are RAW workarounds (which would leave a paper trail that you presumably want found).

Though my first impulse was actually to allude to the spicier take "Detect Evil doesn't do what a reasonable person in the real world would expect, because your local definition of Cosmic Evil and Cosmic Good were written by Republicans" but that requires either so much filing off of serial numbers or so much semantics that you're better off trashing alignment, and in any case isn't the scam woot suggested.

[Woot]

Well, this has given me a lot to think about already, so hats off to everyone who’s spoken up!

Some issues I’ve been thinking through:

- Detect Evil isn’t that big a problem. In 3.5, it’s a cleric only spell (through paladins get it as an ability) and who grants that spell or ability? The forces of evil, of course*, who since they grant the ability, can plausibly interfere with how it works. The 5e equivalent, Detect evil and good, also cleric and paladin only, only detects supernatural evil (or good) but interestingly, the text is unclear as to whether it merely informs the user if something is evil (or good) or if it’s more specific as to the nature of whatever is detected. Protection from evil and good is more widely available, and has the same ambiguity in the text: “Until the spell ends, one willing creature you touch is protected against certain types of creatures: aberrations, celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead.”

* - this leads into the potentially interesting question of how devils are granting spells, which may be considered academic and handwaved away, or could be an end goal of the campaign - figure how how devils have enslaved a divine power source and put a stop to it; but in either case is not immediately applicable to the "clean up the county" starting plot.

- There are certain creatures which ought to see through the bullshit: good dragons, unicorns, etc. but their absence can be explained away easily enough.

- Warlock patrons are likely to know the score. Fiendish ones might be in on the scam; Great Old Ones might not notice (or care), and Archfey may or may not care (or even be impressed with the level of cunning trickery involved!) so their associated warlocks might be ignorant of the truth.

- Druids may or may not notice, depending on how careful the devils are. Any druid is going to be pissed if their forests get clear-cut or fiendish animals start running around, but if the devils are smart enough to hide any corruption they cause (and/or quick on the draw to eliminate any druid who notices) they could get away with it.

- Sorcerers and Wizards may or may not be a problem. Solitary beings, sorcerers are probably more likely to be individually swayed by appeals to personal power or ego. Wizards (and particularly wizard guilds) could be co-opted through generous donations, particularly generous donations to "research projects" that lead the wizards to research in directions that lead away from where the devils want them to look. "We've just received a 100000 gold grant to research owlbear breeding, as a potential source of shock troops; we'll get our best mages on it right away!" Individual cunning old wizards are likely to have figured out the score, but may be blackmailed (or co-opted, as sorcerers might be.)

- Uncorrupted neighboring kingdoms are a real problem. The gods (or at least, the good aligned ones) of neighboring lands are likely to notice and send forth their minions to battle the corrupted kingdom, either openly or at least as an insurgency.

- It’s worth remembering that not every cleric or noble is going to be a devil in disguise. This could potentially lead to a schism, where the earnest and unironic worshippers of the gods in the lower and middle levels of the church hierarchy turn against the more-obviously corrupt senior leadership. In fact, having that happen at some point in the past to provide an extra layer of cover would be a suitably diabolic plan - sacrifice a few mortal clerics to convince everyone the church has been already purged of any corruption! Alternatively, the conflict could be happening in the campaign present, though that risks turning the background story of “why we have to clean up this backwoods border province, anyway” into the setup for the Protestant Reformation and/or the Thirty Years War, which is cool, but is also a rather far-reaching scope creep for what I’m trying to do.

- What would the pantheon look like? Our group plays enough with custom settings and oddball ideas that it’s not necessarily suspicious for me to say, “Ok, here’s the pantheon if you want your character to be a cleric and/or pious.” The tricky thing, as others have pointed out, is to make a pantheon which isn’t obviously evil. For example, organized slavery would be a reasonable thing for devils to encourage, and has happened historically in many cultures, but with modern players, is going to immediately trigger “SOMETHING IS WRONG HERE” alarm bells. Sketching it out before coffee, here’s what I’ve got for a “reasonable on the surface but subtly abusive deities”:

Lord of Purity: God of crusades and defense; fire theme. His justice is harsh but dealt out according to well-defined precepts. Only by remaining vigilant can the wicked be kept at bay!

Lady of Knowledge: Learning is good, and the learned are more capable than the ignorant, and thus, more fit to lead. However, some knowledge can be dangerous, and thus must be carefully guarded from those who would misuse it or misunderstand it.

Lord of Selfless Service: Serving others selflessly is the greatest good, even in the face of harsh treatment or unreasonable demands - it is a test of faithfulness! Self sacrifice is the highest virtue, particularly in the service of one’s superiors.

Lady of Proper Order: All things must be in their place. Sloppy work, being lazy or impudent, or asking questions beyond what is necessary is a sign of poor moral character. A proper citizen is a lover of good order, and arranges their personal life to give each person his or her due, as befits their divinely-appointed station in life.

Lord of Comfort: Tending the wounded and comforting the mourning are the goals of this god. Life is often painful, and the priests of this god encourage their followers to avoid pain and seek comfort. Work is a necessary evil, certainly, but being too ambitious only leads to hardship. Take it easy!

Lady of Abundance: Abundance is a sign of being blessed by the gods. Abundance of material goods is natural and good, a result of pious behavior, but also fruitfulness in producing offspring is a blessing. The clerics of this god have worked to change the laws so that “bastard” is no longer a legal category - all children are wanted children. Likewise, laws against adultery have been revoked: it’s far too easy for people to be slandered by such accusations, so the best approach is to be tolerant of such things.

[Thaluikhain]

The people chanting for blood and soil know what they're doing. But buying propaganda isn't a hard right wing only phenomenon. How many Americans even on the left would be willing to identify as anti-soldier? Now how many of those people would tell you murder is the most evil thing? If you culturally program people you can get them to be innocent dupes of all kinds of crazy cognitive dissonance.

I disagree. Or, rather, I agree that you can use propaganda to spread all sorts of ideas amongst fairly innocent people, but don't agree that you can make them support those ideas to the extremes we are seeing whilst being innocent. Only having white friends or whatever is one thing, but ardently supporting a party or politician that is openly and actively racist is another. However, getting a bit off-topic.

Asking the actual difference between the two is legitimate. My assumption is that if supernaturally good beings with incredible power and super-genius IQ's were the ones actually in charge of the setting it wouldn't still be a violent bronze age society with people dying of dysentery even after 1000 years. The actually good church would still need to get their followers to murder a bunch of people and orcs to oust the demons from rulership, so your life path as an adventurer won't actually change that much, but the presumption is that once team good wins the world would actually improve.

My first thought, rather flippantly, was that they must be elves.

More seriously, is the evil church holding back process by being rubbish at managing their territories, by ruling harshly and maliciously, or by actively suppressing attempts to change and improve? Interspersed with having to kill dangerous priests summoning demons to eat the locals, you have to kill dangerous priests preaching about working together for a better tomorrow?

[pragma]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

@Dean
* Commoners don't have +2 to hit according to the SRD. Maybe you were presuming proficiency? I suspect this accounts for the differences between our numbers, but didn't go back and check.
* I'm using this calculator, which definitely does include crits. Poster #20 also mentioned that his calculator included crits, though it's hard to verify.
* Agreed that you can play some tricks with readied actions. I contend that represents a significant leadership and logistical challenge for the army. Also agreed that Zariel's strafing runs don't necessarily stop the army from getting to the portal in that scenario.
* I think that the idea of the 5e setting looking more like Conan than Wheel of Time is a cool way to imagine the consequences of the rules.

@Cham
* Mea culpa: I confuse devils with demons all the time.
* The ancient red definitely fares worse. High-level monster's army resistance seems mostly linked to crazy mobility, imposing disadvantage and reasonable damage resistance.
* Consequently, I think getting rid of DR was a huge mistake for the edition: it makes a great "this tall to ride" label for a monster.
* The idea that a fairly small number of longbowmen will kill or threaten a dragon is really interesting. It suggests to me a world where monsters mostly prey on the weak rather than on armies, one where the problem is that they move around and are hard to find.

More broadly: the suitability of D&D 5e for this campaign at high levels seems tightly linked to your assumptions of what high level play looks like. I'd love to see the developers leaning into the consequences of their rules when writing setting material.

[Username17]

- Detect Evil isn’t that big a problem. In 3.5, it’s a cleric only spell (through paladins get it as an ability) and who grants that spell or ability? The forces of evil, of course*, who since they grant the ability, can plausibly interfere with how it works.

If you pulled something like that on me, I would certainly consider punching you in the fucking mouth.

Role playing games exist so that we aren't just playing cops and robbers in the back yard. There are fucking rules. I have a character sheet, and it has words on it. I have abilities, and they do things.

Yes, the DM can come up with complicated behind-the-scenes reasons why the abilities on your character sheet don't do what they say they do, and in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide Gary Gygax endorses this as a great idea. Spoiler: it's not a good idea. If the DM says "the rules of the game secretly aren't what you thought they were and your character's abilities do not function as written." the DM is telling you that not only do you not have any agency, but that you never had any agency. That the toys you thought you were playing with never actually existed and the bargains you thought you were making were never intended to be honored.

That's fucked. That's the worst thing. I would seriously rather listen to the DM tell me his furry porn fantasies than have all of the time I've invested into an RPG retroactively set on fire with a bullshit move like that. That kind of shit is simply unacceptable. It's a friendship ruining move. That is not an exaggeration for effect.

-Username17

[Woot]

Well, I suppose there are many ways of responding to Frank’s most recent post, some of them involving lots of tedious internet posturing and exchanging insults, but let’s accept that posting in a maximally melodramatic fashion is just part of Frank’s charm and see what results if we instead take his core criticism seriously and think through it’s implications and what space that leaves for the story we’re brainstorming.

Now, as I take it, his objection may charitably be expressed as “The game must function in accordance with the rules as written.” Presumably, he would allow for the caveat: “An exception may be made for house rules expressed clearly at the start of the game that specifically call out what they override; i.e. ‘Yes, elves are in the rulebook, but they’re extinct in my world, so you can’t create elven characters.’” I’ve little doubt Frank will correct me if I’m mistaken here.

(As an aside, I don't actually think screwing with detect evil is really that unprecedented. There’s Ravenloft, which I seem to recall as having specifically shit on alignment detection magic, but it’s been 25 years since I’ve read that stuff and I cannot recall if they make that explicit to the players as well as the DM. Of course, I also vaguely recall an OSSR review where Frank was just generally furious about the Ravenloft setting as written, so in the interest of peace we’ll set it aside.)

One obvious solution to the problem, at least as far as NPCs, is the spell undetectable alignment. Presumably, evildoers could cast that on themselves, or perhaps every noble has a signet ring that is also a ring of mind shielding. That’s one solution. Perhaps cheap, and cheesy if overdone, but entirely consistent with the rules as written.

Another solution might be to announce at the start that clerics have restricted spell lists: perhaps out of respect to the Lord of Purity’s affinity for fire, his allied gods refrain from granting fire spells to their clerics. This isn’t obviously supported in 3.5 (though spells specifically involving good, evil, law and chaos are) but was not unknown in earlier editions. Here, the move would be to make sure to drop a few spells from each diety’s list, and make sure that detect evil is dropped from all of them. However, this does nothing to solve the paladin’s detect evil at-will ability. On the other hand, the devils knowing this might ensure that paladins are a very rare (if not unknown) class in the kingdom as a result - “There are no paladins native to this kingdom” would be in-bounds to announce at character creation time.

A trickier issue, and one that I’m not sure that has ever actually been solved, is, “What, exactly, counts as evil?” Is the kind-hearted, hard-working, self-effacing village cleric who serves the Lord of Selfless Service going to detect as evil? Does the village church detect as evil? I cannot claim complete mastery of all 3.5 material ever published, but I seem to recall issues like this are never really answered, though the Books of Vile Darkness and Exalted Deeds at least make some gestures at possible solutions. It’s hard to see where the solution to this problem isn’t going to be MC fiat.