THE OotS Thread, Part IV.

[Ralin]

Pretty much, yeah. Drawing a blank on examples of intelligent constructs but it usually doesn't work that way.

I personally think that's a bad decision and apparently Pathfinder agreed with me and removed most of that sort of immunity, but that's neither here nor there.

[Bedlam]

Pretty much, yeah. Drawing a blank on examples of intelligent constructs but it usually doesn't work that way.

I personally think that's a bad decision and apparently Pathfinder agreed with me and removed most of that sort of immunity, but that's neither here nor there.

Warforged?

[Ralin]

Pretty much, yeah. Drawing a blank on examples of intelligent constructs but it usually doesn't work that way.

I personally think that's a bad decision and apparently Pathfinder agreed with me and removed most of that sort of immunity, but that's neither here nor there.

Warforged?

Occurred to me, but I haven't actually read the Ebberon books and I thought I remembered them having changed some construct traits for them.

[Bedlam]

Pretty much, yeah. Drawing a blank on examples of intelligent constructs but it usually doesn't work that way.

I personally think that's a bad decision and apparently Pathfinder agreed with me and removed most of that sort of immunity, but that's neither here nor there.

Warforged?

Occurred to me, but I haven't actually read the Ebberon books and I thought I remembered them having changed some construct traits for them.

I remember them being classed as 'living constructs' but I can't remember what that actually entailed, I think for game balance they are probably effected by criticals, they did have quite a few strengths, not needing to sleep, eat or breath with the major down side that 'cure' spells didn't work on them, they needed 'mend' spells instead.

[Napoleon the Clown]

A few Warforged basics that separate them from all other constructs I know of: They have a Con score and are susceptible to critical hits/sneak attacks but have a chance at resisting. They are susceptible to mind-affecting spells except those that cause sleep effects. That sort of thing. Though there is a prestige class that gets rid of some of the weaknesses they have relative to other contructs, at the expense of a few perks and the ability to socialize to any meaningful degree.

Inevitables are an example of intelligent construct, as I recall. But they have no Con score and are immune to precision damage and the like.

[Venator]

If you were a kickstarter back the third story is out...

For, Therkla this time.

That was a great read;
Spoiler

Started very entertaining, but the tie-in at the end was a pretty classic OOTS "oh shi-" callback. Good to know he still has the knack for it.

[Raesene]

977 is up.

[Crazedwraith]

More gnomes having a bad time of it, I see. They can't be effective after all they're npcs.

I wonder if the little rifle like things they've got are guns or harpoon guns or more lighting guns?

[Crazedwraith]

New OotS

[Simon_Jester]

Hm. You know, until this strip you could, purely on the strength of her dialogue, argue that Crystal wasn't actually sentient, and was just uttering canned statements in response to changing circumstances.

Then again, Grubwiggler's probably enough of a creep to program "I feel nothing but pain" into a nonsentient construct just as a way to creep people out.

[Crazedwraith]

Progress

Though if neither Bozzok or the golem guy have any kind safety override on their expensive golem I'll be amazed.

[Rogue 9]

Flesh golems have a percent chance of going berserk when they're in combat that increases every round. The golem's creator can reestablish control by speaking firmly to it and making a fairly difficult Charisma check.

Of course, the Crystal-golem is obviously nonstandard, both because it seems to be smarter even than Crystal was in life ( ) and because lightning strikes only break slow effects on flesh golems, not give them haste. So who knows?

[Napoleon the Clown]

Well Crystal was pretty slow to begin with...

[Crazedwraith]

new oots
Spoiler

we certain seem to be going through villians quickly now. But is there a point beyond clearing up loose ends?

[Irbis]

Spoiler

I can't think of any reasoning OotS didn't simply dropped this subplot after Celia's mediation besides padding printed books with bonus content. If anything, killing Crystal caused million discussions on GitP forums on how Haley is supposedly good if she is willing to kill and mutilate defenceless woman in cold blood (and hack & slash morons arguing it was good deed) that we could have honestly skipped.

[Terralthra]

Haley's good? I thought she was Chaotic Neutral. She scanned as not evil, but I don't remember her saying "good" outright.

[Sinewmire]

Hayley is Chaotic Good. Ish!

[Rogue 9]

And that was three rounds of study while he was talking. Poor, poor decision there, Bozzok.

[Venator]

And that was three rounds of study while he was talking. Poor, poor decision there, Bozzok.

At first I thought he was going to remain as he was, a recurring villain who would crop up when least convenient after taking a thorough thrashing.
Spoiler

Then Crystal perforated his torso with her bare hands...

[Serafina]

Nice to see that at least someone had an exit strategy.
And that teleport could have easily rescued Bozzok as well, all it'd have required is for Grubwiggler to touch him. Nice to see that he didn't.

[Simon_Jester]

Spoiler

I can't think of any reasoning OotS didn't simply dropped this subplot after Celia's mediation besides padding printed books with bonus content. If anything, killing Crystal caused million discussions on GitP forums on how Haley is supposedly good if she is willing to kill and mutilate defenceless woman in cold blood (and hack & slash morons arguing it was good deed) that we could have honestly skipped.

It's an interesting question; under 3.5E alignment rules, how much evil does it take to remove one's good alignment? Killing one defenseless innocent might be enough. Killing one defenseless violent nemesis who has repeatedly tried to kill you in the past and may well do so again?

[Esquire]

I believe that's pretty firmly filed under "DM's discretion." By extrapolation from the rules-as-written on fallen paladins, rationalization is no defense and certain actions are inescapably evil, but God knows my group never played that way.

[Simon_Jester]

Thing is, paladins can fall either by ceasing to be Lawful, or by committing an Evil act..

The latter represents an instantaneous thing. Willfully do evil once and WHAM you're a fighter with no feats.

The former represents alignment change. That's something different.

And there is no evidence that a single Chaotic act will cause a paladin to fall. If it were, they'd just say "a paladin who willfully commits an evil OR chaotic act falls," instead of saying "a paladin falls for ceasing to be lawful good OR willfully committing an evil act."

Instead, the rules raise the possibility that a paladin can fall for committing an evil act... but still be Lawful Good.

Now, there might be a single action so heinous that committing it makes you automatically Evil (or at least non-Good) no matter why you did it. The question is, what is that action?

Willfully killing an innocent might be that evil. But killing a corrupt, evil, and vicious person is not necessarily the same morally as killing an innocent in D&D morality.

Killing a defenseless person almost certainly isn't that evil in itself, either. Because there are so many ways to make someone defenseless or effectively so in D&D. I mean, if killing people who can't realistically fight back is evil, then it would be evil for high-ranking Good outsiders to kill orcs. Because said orcs don't stand a whelk's chance in a supernova of even landing a hit through the outsider's defenses, let alone beating them.

[Grumman]

Being Lawful Good does not have to mean fighting by Queensberry rules. It can actually be more good to fight dishonourably - to disable a warlord's guards with Drow sleeping poison rather than grinding your way through twenty men to get to the man whose evil needs to be stopped. If fighting dishonourably would cause a Paladin to fall, it would be because it is a chaotic act to discard a code of conduct you have sworn to abide by.

I would argue that Hayley's killing was neither Good nor Evil. Killing an enforcer for a band of murderous thieves for being the enforcer for a band of murderous thieves is not Evil just because she wasn't murdering anyone at right that second, but it's not Good if your reason for doing so is because she has wronged you personally and not to protect her other future victims.

[Simon_Jester]

I would argue that a paladin falls by one of three separate mechanisms:

1) Committing any evil act
2) Committing enough chaotic acts that they cease to be lawful
3) Breaking one's oath.

It is possible that (1) or (2) are subsets of (3) and that ONLY breaking one's oath is the cause of the fall. It seems unlikely to me that (3) is actually a subset of (2).