Having been granted rulership over the city of Vanhoover, and confessed their feelings for each other, Lex Legis and Sonata Dusk have started a new life together. But the challenges of rulership, and a relationship, are more than they bargained for.
Lex glared balefully at Severance, the weapon having gone completely still in response to his accusation.
By itself that wasn’t unusual; since it was capable of unassisted flight, it was common for Severance to simply hover in the air when Lex wasn’t holding or carrying it. But now, gripping it in his telekinesis, he could feel the difference. Although it was still aloft, there was a sensation of resistance to it now, as though it were sunk deeply in concrete even though it was currently surrounded by nothing but air. It’s readying itself in case I try to fling it to the ground again, realized Lex, remembering what had happened a few hours ago when he’d lost his temper after Severance had confirmed the deaths of Cloudbank’s group. Despite his fatigue, the scythe’s recalcitrance fanned the flames of his anger. “Your warning was never anything more than chicanery! You had no intention of deserting me no matter how I used you!”
It was only then that Severance spoke up, issuing a cool denial in a voice that was filled with either smugness or condescension, Lex wasn’t sure which. But the scythe’s assurance that it would indeed have left him and returned to the Night Mare’s side if he’d come to rely upon it too much did little to quell Lex’s sense of betrayal. “Liar!” he hissed, his eyes blazing green and purple. “Ever since I received you, I’ve put you to work on numerous tasks of vital importance!” He began to list them off then, punctuating each one with a stamp of his hoof. “Serving as a battery to renew my magic! Guarding me in my sleep! Protecting the backs of the ponies that I brought here from the shelter! To say nothing of the critical role you played in procuring an escape route for the ponies I sent into Vanhoover! All of that, and you’re still here!” He narrowed his eyes then, lips curling back in a snarl. “I demand to know why, if you never planned on leaving, you made that threat in the first place?!”
He kept his voice low, not wanting anypony to hear that Severance was the reason he was able to use his strongest magic so liberally, though the furious tenor wasn’t dampened for it. But if Severance was shaken by Lex’s anger, it hid it well. Its voice was still clipped as it asked in what had to be a rhetorical manner if those tasks constituted overreliance.
The weapon’s reply sounded more like an evasion than an answer to Lex, and had he been able to lift a hoof off the ground for more than a second without falling over he would have pointed it at the weapon. “You tell me! You were the one who refused to provide any sort of parameters or guidelines, even though I inquired as to them!” Despite his anger, Lex was aware of a stirring in the back of his mind, identical to when he’d been pondering the mystery of Block Party’s death, letting him know that there was something salient that he was overlooking, some sort of key connection that he hadn’t made. With regard to Block Party, it had ended up being that Nosey – when he’d been issuing those identity tests to her – hadn’t used her horn to move anything. But now…what was it?
The realization was enough to blunt his anger, and as if it sensed that, Severance spoke up again…this time in acquiescence, offering to describe the conditions of overreliance in full. That was enough to make Lex raise an eyebrow, caught off-guard by its sudden capitulation, but not so much that he didn’t move to confirm it immediately. “You should have said that before,” he snapped. “Now, tell me clearly and precisely what actions and circumstances are acceptable uses of your capabilities versus those you’re proscribing as overly dependent.”
But what Severance said next caused Lex’s brow to furrow in confusion.
“What?” he frowned. “‘Legitimate utilization is the subsumption of another’s capabilities to your will,’” he echoed, his voice filled with disbelief. “‘Overreliance is the opposite’?! You can’t be serious! That’s not a guideline, it’s an axiom! It makes things less clear, not more!”
But Severance disagreed, pointing out how it had ceased to operate for Cloudbank after she had asked it for help when the kraken had taken control of her motor functions. In doing so, she had not only declared that she was powerless, but had presented that powerlessness as a plea for Severance to come to her aid. That, the scythe explained, was her willful abandonment of any pretense of authority over it, and so had declared that there was no reason for it to obey her. Even the most loyal of minions, it finished, would lose faith in a master who openly surrendered control over them.
For a moment, Lex could only gape in reply, utterly aghast at both the reasoning and at the sentiment behind it. “That’s completely absurd,” he scoffed. “Not only is that sentiment completely in the eye of the proverbial beholder, it puts all of its emphasis on disposition and none at all on actual ability! By that logic, someone who conducts themselves imperiously without having the requisite power to enforce their will-” But Severance interrupted him then, asserting that any such individual would quickly find themselves overthrown anyway, since prerogative without sufficient power would make it impossible to keep rebellious or ambitious followers in line. Those who deserved to rule, it concluded, were those with both the power and the desire to impress their will on others.
“Sophistry,” hissed Lex. “What you’re spouting is nothing more than meritocratic determinism, with no conception of justice or moral virtue as integral components!” But Severance’s reaction to this was bobbing slightly in the air, an action that Lex guessed was its equivalent of a shrug. He was proven right a moment later as Severance casually asserted that those were empty words, defined only insofar as they were enforced by those with power. After all, it noted idly, such ideas were entirely the creation of sapient creatures, and so sapient creatures could make them mean whatever they wanted.
“You’re wrong,” shot back Lex, refusing to let this go. He knew that this wasn’t the time for it, that this was a distraction he couldn’t afford, but he couldn’t help himself. Everything the weapon had just said was an insult to the moral framework he had spent the majority of his life developing. It went beyond amorality, straight into moral nihilism, and absolutely could not go unchallenged. “Other people have intrinsic value to them beyond being made to serve as extensions of your will-” He stopped in mid-sentence as he suddenly realized what he’d been overlooking.
This is what the Night Mare was talking about! he realized, a horrified chill going down his spine. When the goddess had appeared in his dream earlier that evening, she had excoriated him for trying to accomplish everything “on his own.” He had found the rebuke hypocritical of her, since although he knew little about her dogma, he knew that self-reliance was a central part of it. Wasn’t attempting to solve the challenges facing him under his own power the very epitome of the beliefs that she championed?
But now, the abhorrent philosophy that Severance had been spouting made it clear that, from the scythe’s standpoint – and therefore the Night Mare’s, since Severance was surely her mouthpiece in this – there was an alternate, warped interpretation of what constituted “self-reliance.” It’s not just personal ability, Lex realized, his eyes wide and staring at nothing as the realization came crashing down on him. “The subsumption of another’s capabilities to your will!” That’s what Severance said! Which means her religion considers those who act in service to another to be an extension of that individual’s power!
It was, he realized, extremely close to his own philosophy regarding the distribution of authority. After all, the proactive government that he intended to build would need a massive infrastructure built, with a great many ponies staffing it, all so they could implement the reforms and changes that he intended to enact. As government employees working to apply the laws and regulations that he would create, and in the course of that duty be ultimately answerable to him, they could be characterized as being subsumed to his will. There’s no such thing as a government of just one individual, Lex knew. Suddenly, the Night Mare’s insistence that he knew almost nothing about leadership was extremely disturbing.
Lex shook his head then, squeezing his eyes shut as he forced his thoughts back into order. “You’re wrong,” he repeated, opening his eyes and looking at Severance again. “The recognition of other members of the moral community is a vital component in ruling-”
“All done!” called Sonata, trotting over happily, brushing some dust from her coat. “I totes spread the tent over all the holes! Those ghouls are so gonna trip over them when they come here!” She knew because she had done that a bunch of times just now. “So, you think of a plan?”
“I would have,” snapped Lex peevishly, “but this miscreant weapon’s continued insistence that…”
Sonata bit her lip at Lex’s angry response, not sure what to make of the way he suddenly trailed off at the end. “Are you guys getting into another fight?” she asked, worried and exasperated all at once. “‘Cuz this really isn’t the time for you two to try and measure who’s bigger.” Not that she’d ever been clear about why guys would want to compare sizes when they got into a fight, but Adagio and Aria had said many times that was what they did. Which is, like, super weird. Can’t guys tell who’s taller just by looking?
But Lex wasn’t paying attention to her, instead tracing back the conversation he’d been having with Severance. If he was right, then there was a salient point that he’d overlooked…one that might be absolutely vital for what was about to happen. “You do realize,” he began, considerably calmer now, “that by your own reasoning, you’re subordinate to me.” He’d presumed that was the case when the Night Mare had presented the scythe to him, of course, but now he wanted Severance to acknowledge it personally.
The weapon did so a moment later, not hesitating to recognize Lex’s strength and his ambition. “And you have no intent to challenge me with regard to either of those factors?” he replied, tensing slightly. He doubted that it did, since the worst it had ever done was threaten to return to the Night Mare; even when he’d thrown it on the ground and stomped on it, the most it had ever done was move to defend itself, rather than fight back. Sure enough, the weapon replied in the negative a moment later, asserting that it was created to assist those who both acknowledged the Night Mare and lived up to her ideals.
Lex frowned slightly at that, but managed to let the philosophical argument lie for now. There would be time to resume it after the current crisis was over. “In that case,” he said slowly, bringing the scythe closer, “I have a new order for you for when the ghouls attack.”
Idly, he swung the blade, letting it cleave through rock that had been dragged nearby when Sonata had pulled the top of the medical tent away from its bottom half. Unsurprisingly, Severance cleaved through the stone as though it was made of butter, but Lex’s eyes were on the ground nearby. The earth around the rock was undamaged, which was unsurprising considering that the blade hadn’t made contact with it. But in his mind’s eye, Lex was comparing it to what had happened when Cloudbank swung the scythe at the ship fragment that the Great Lord of the Deep had thrown at them, completely bisecting it in one stroke.
“When the undead ponies get here,” said Lex, holding the blade out in front of him, “I’m going to wield you, and you’re going to use your full power.”
Lex insists on Severance's clarifying what it considers "overreliance," and a philosophical duel ensues.
What will Severance's full power look like when it's unleashed?
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The philosophical debate was amusing. You seem to have a good grasp on the workings of the Night Mare.
He's going to chop the ghoul army in half with one stroke?
I want you to witness the firepower of this fully operational Nightmare Moon Battlescythe.
Oh look, pity theres no Sahaguin left otherwise it would really be Sushi?.. Or with Ghouls, will it be Sashimi?
So it wasn't a matter of how high the parameters were, but rather a matter of perspective, namely the Night Mare's and her tenets. Given how close his own philosophy(barring some personal views and morailty) is to the Night Mare's dogma, I doubt Severance will abandon Lex any time soon.
Still, even with Severance and its considerable power at Lex's disposal, I wonder if Lex and Sonata can handle the incoming horde. While Severance did wipe out a horde of lesser angels and stalemated an angel stronger than Xiriel, it was because the angels were focused on one target (Severance) whereas the ghouls would likely avoid fighting Lex when he shows them how formidable he is and go after the much more vulnerable camp ponies instead.
Given the open area the camp is at, there's no way to form a bottleneck defense. Well, unless Lex decides to use Severance to carve up the landscape into something more defensible terrain. Regardless, I'm looking forward to seeing Lex and Sonata fight side by side for once.(Or did that happen earlier in the story? I can't recall.)
8914106 The Night Mare's faith is one of contradictions. She's a tyrant who encourages others to be strong. She lauds self-reliance while wanting ponies to be leaders. These and other paradoxes were things I had fun resolving as I got deeper into her religious tenets.
8914109 Wouldn't that be a sight to see.
8914444 Oh, I'd say that one way or another, the ghouls are going to be cut down to size.
*scribbles down note to have Sonata make that joke later, circumstances permitting.*
8914448 Lex is finally realizing that this was an issue of how he related to Severance, rather than what he told it to do.
Severance is the Night Mare's tool, and exists to propagate her dogma. That it abandons those who prove unsuitable to wield it is the counterpoint to its changing the alignment of those who try to Lawful Evil. It ultimately wants to make those who would follow in the Night Mare's hoofprints into her (philosophical) image, and wants nothing to do with those who are ultimately unable or unwilling to bear that mantle. In Lex, it's already found someone who naturally takes after its goddess (hence why the Night Mare herself recognized Lex), and so the warning was essentially perfunctory; it's about as likely to abandon Lex as it is to try and change his alignment; that is to say, neither is necessary, since he's already living his life according to her ideology (though his insistence on the importance of morality remains a sticking point).
Of course, Severance's full power, while it will doubtlessly be impressive, might not be enough, depending on the number of ghouls that are about to arrive. As they say, quantity is a quality all its own. Certainly, as you noted, there's no real obstacle between them and the camp ponies, so defending them might very well mean having to kill every single ghoul before they can get past him and Sonata...that might be tough.
But do note that Lex and Sonata have fought together before, albeit briefly, against Monitor and the Cripple/Aria (see chapter 84).
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Only the weak are afraid of leading the strong. The strong do not tolerate being led by the weak. One should cultivate this strength in themselves and all around them above and below. True strength begets strength.
8915018
Only the weak are afraid of leading the strong. The strong do not tolerate being led by the weak. One should cultivate this strength in themselves and all around them above and below. True strength begets strength.
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Sounds like we agree. I just assume someone's general disposition has a fairly big influence on their actions, though of course there are circumstantial factors.
Interesting. The way outsiders of an aligned subtype currently are, sounds like.
Ah fair enough. I just meant that alignment is a fairly useful shortcut so the GM can quickly visualize in their head Hobgoblin Mercenary #2's thought processes. I agree that every NPC should be the hero of their story, and I'll probably borrow that line from you in the future.
That's true. There's a reason they leave vague the thinking of things like the Dark Tapestry, Blue-and-Orange morality is hard to picture.
That's logical.
Yeah, but thats' a big if. Maybe if an NPC is low on hit points, they take one last attack at the downed character and retreat. But either they think they're going to win this fight, in which case knocking every single creature below 0 as fast as possible is the best way to survive, or they think they will lose the fight, in which case they should start the withdraw action this round. Speaking of player typical reactions, don't those guys usually target the guy who just killed their friend? And wouldn't an NPC guess that this is likely?
Ugh. Summon Nature's Ally 2 should have no effect on CR for a Titan, and makes tons of lore sense! Thanks for the link, I like their logic about Pit Fiends and Unhallow.
I'd say it's to survive the fight and destroy the enemy's ability to resist. Once there are no active threats, its easy to go around slitting throats. (And I think as a good GM you should track dying NPCs, and if PCs immediately leave the room and/or the NPC stabilizes have that NPC back in the fight tomorrow).
Sure, that's true for most GMs. Heck, lots of GMs forget to count out how many NPCs a cleric can actually exclude from selective channel, even though some of those enemies should survive.
But I take it that you don't do this with your players. After a bunch of fights where your intelligent NPCs spend their actions reviving their comrades, haven't your players started diverting some of their actions to finishing off NPCs?
And of course, if the PCs do the Booga Booga strategy and aren't exceptionally careful about hiding in the middle of it, they could well draw a train of the entire dungeon of buffed-up denizens down on their un-buffed hides!
Shoot, you know that could be really interesting working for some kind of neutral organization, where there are a bunch of alignment extreme organizations in the area, and your job is to try and keep them all of equal power to maintain balance. Your boss calls you in and says "nice work helping those freedom fighters overthrow the local Hellknights keep. Now they've seized the keep and started agitating revolutions all over the area, I need you to salt their crops so they're weakened."
Ah, White Plume Mountain. "I demand financial compensation for acts of homicide!"
To me, the opposite type of player is the one who bugs me. The one who doesn't seem to be contributing to the party's success in skill checks, diplomatic encounters or combat, because they're focused on telling their character's story and they don't want to do something as gauche as play a useful character.
Oh you're absolutely correct about slumber. But Evil Eye doesn't take someone out of the fight, it just costs a standard action to increase the odds by 10% that the target will be hit by the rest of the party, or will be 10% less likely to hit members of the party. Now, I'm not saying that's useless. Strategic use of Evil Eye when the rest of the party is in melee, and/bracketed with uses of Cackle and Misfortune, can be quite effective when targeting a single dangerous monsters that will be in the fight for many rounds. But on its own Evil Eye is fairly underpowered.
I mean, he's the new player, so someone on the podcast will be relatable to everyone. I can understand that. What drove me nuts is when a bunch of fans wrote in to explain how his typical deploying of Evil Eye was so useless, he gave a 5 minute speech about how Evil Eye was incredibly powerful because it could change the odds of hitting an enemy from 45% to 55%.
Yup.
8915004 I'm imagining Aria saying
"You see this gal Sonata is a bad sister-" and then she starts croaking, and the attending cleric tells her to shut her mouth.
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I'm of the opinion that it serves as a general indication of where they're starting from, with regard to a particular interaction or situation, with other factors helping to determine things that are more specific. It's like how if someone's in a bad mood, then it's going to color the rest of how they act.
Sort of; I think I'm not explaining it very well. It's like how, in Poul Anderson's novel Three Hearts and Three Lions, "Chaos" is the way of faeries and witches and similar creatures. It's why they're burned by iron, but also why they can use magic. "Law," by contrast, is what humans are formed of, and is why they can't use magic but can touch iron and be fine with it, for instance. (Of course, it also equates "Law" with Heaven/Jesus/God, so there's that.)
Alignment is a shortcut, I just think that the degree to which that's been taken as a truism has been taken too far. Though, to be fair, a lot of this is gamist in nature, i.e. "enemies are there to be killed." As I said before, running every single NPC as a dynamic individual is really difficult to do.
The irony being that in such cases it is more plausible to have such creatures simply be monsters to be slain; when they're so alien as to be inexplicable in their motivations (or at least, have such different values as to be utterly irreconcilable with your own), and what they do is necessarily harmful to your community (whether intentionally or not), then there's not much left to do but try and slay them.
Even for chaotic creatures.
I don't see it as being as absolute as what you're suggesting here. It's not like characters can see each other's hit points, so issues of how clear it is that anyone is winning or losing themselves have little to go by. Even having members of your side die isn't necessarily going to be taken as "crap, we're losing," since it's going to be a judgment call as to how much your fighting force has been depleted (which, again, gets back into the whole issue of healing downed characters who aren't dead yet). Even then, issues of what you do in response to that aren't going to be absolute either. If you expect that your enemies will retreat (and heal up their guys) if they're losing, then that's all the more reason to kill any of them that are below 0 hit points, otherwise they'll retrieve them and heal them up and you can fight them again tomorrow. Likewise, if you don't think that your own death is imminent, there's no reason why you wouldn't want to deal some parting shots by killing a downed enemy before you leave (again, to stop them from being healed later on).
Well, they did give the 3.5 titan summon nature's ally IX, so there's that, but the overall point still stands if you compare the two titans' spell-like abilities. Demons and devils took a similar hit, as did a fair number of other creatures. Personally, I agree with what the guys at Dicefreaks said about it. It's very similar to what Thoth called the pointlessly awesome.
What I meant was that if things have already reached the point of armed conflict, then at least one group has decided that killing their opposition is either the best way to achieve their goals, or is their goal. Hence, killing the other guys are what you're trying to accomplish (at least if you're the aggressor). Even then, the defender is likely to come a similar realization along the lines of "the best way to make them stop trying to kill me is to kill them first." That, of course, has to be held secondary to "stay alive," but doesn't lose overall strategic importance even if it's not the most important thing. (Notably, "going around slitting throats" implies that people are left behind. This certainly seems to happen with monsters - though I think that's probably exaggerated more than it should be; you don't need to be altruistic to understand the concept of favors being owed, let alone that having more of your guys up and fighting tomorrow increases your own chances of survival - but PCs rarely leave any of their own dying on the battlefield that I've seen.)
In point of fact, I haven't GM'd for my players in a long time; I think I mentioned before, but they think that I'm a "killer GM" because I have the NPCs they encounter do things like what I've been talking about, and so the body count tends to be higher than what they're used to. That, and a few of them seemed uncomfortable with the idea of going around killing downed NPCs after the fight was over. I'm still not sure if that was an alignment (or character-conception) thing or if they honestly didn't like it.
Which goes to show that any strategy can go pear-shaped if it's not properly implemented. Of course, even if it is properly implemented there are a lot of things that can go wrong too, which is why you usually want to do some intelligence-gathering work first. And sometimes the dice just roll against you.
Well, that depends on why you'd want them all to stay in balance. The idea balance itself is fairly ideological, and to my mind only Outsiders are so invested in their alignment as a force that they want to act purely for its supremacy. Most mortals are going to be a little more pragmatic about what they're trying to accomplish, with their alignment determining how they do it. Like, if your goal is "get rich," then your alignment will help to determine if you're more inclined to do so by working hard for a long time or simply knocking over a bank.
It's nice to see that somebody else knows Paul Kidd's Greyhawk books! I've read all three (plus the two short stories in Dragon magazine), and they're great fun, even if they butcher a lot of the lore of the setting.
I've encountered that less often, but yes, that does happen too. To me, it's less of an issue of them building a character with terrible mechanics than it is them being obsessed with some storyline that they seem to have their heart set on, and can't be bothered to focus on anything else. This is the guy in that parable who is hyper-focused with overthrowing the monarchy and instituting a democracy while everyone else wants to go fight the Lich Lord.
Okay, I thought you were still talking about slumber. My mistake, there. But yeah, using nothing but a minor buff/debuff unto itself isn't going to change very much. It's not useless, but if there's more that you could be doing, then you should be doing it. That's particularly egregious for a full-progression arcane spellcaster who also has other unlimited-use abilities the way the witch does. To be fair, I can see a new player making this sort of mistake, but with some coaching from the other players and earnest engagement on their part that should be something they'd get over fairly quickly, I would hope. (Of course, if those fans were coming down on him rather hard, then I'm not surprised be acted stubbornly about it; this entire fic is written around the premise that it's quite often not enough to be right. How you engage with other people when you tell them that is often more important than the actual point you're making. It's why Lex needs Sonata so badly, and can't seem to accomplish much without her.)
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Ah yes. I kind of like the idea of alignment as more of a team you belong to, but I also hated the whole "Law=Good, Chaos=Evil" thing early alignment systems had. One of the reasons I knew 4E wasn't for me was they only had Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil, not the reverse.
It's true, you can't really negotiate with Cthulhu.
Well you gotta teach them a lesson about that. The next day they're in a fight, have one of the enemies they knocked unconcious who stabilized show up with a scar matching the weapons of one of the PCs, and helpfully pointing out the tactics the PCs used yesterday. They'll come around on "making sure" soon enough!
Any strategy not properly implemented will go pear shaped, unless the dice really go against the NPCs.
I could see that. Druids are more "pro-nature" than "balance everything." Maybe your organization turns out to be in the pay of weirdo outsiders then. Pathfinder Society used to be fairly good at being neutral, before Season 4. They were just like "we're here to study things, swipe magical artifacts and sell them to the Blakros family, and stop the Aspis Consortium from getting their hands on those sweet sweet artifact first."
Oh that too. That PC who wants to interrupt every box text because their character has something related to their backstory they want to squeeze in here.
In the guy's defense, he's started using his spells in an intelligent way, like web to cut the battlefield in half when they're out-numbered.
That's the annoying thing: Dude has Misfortune. In one or two fights he's even misfortuned an enemy and then hung around cackling, being incredibly useful. But he almost never uses Misfortune because, as he bitterly complains "the enemy always makes their save and then its wasted." None of the more experienced players has apparently coached this guy on Accursed Hex. Instead, he just leveled (in the place where I'm up too) and got Extra Hex feat to pick up Brew Potion, which I find annoying because I know they're never going to stop and create potions.
If this was a normal player of course. But what bothered me is he apparently spent a bunch of time doing statistical analysis of Evil Eye on Attacks, AC and Saves, without once thinking about the cost of actions, or bothering to do any additional research on witch abilities and options.
A normal new player shouldn't be expected to learn all the rules and configurations possible for their pathfinder class. A new player making a semi-professional podcast attempting to offer detailed analysis of that class's abilities? The bar's a little higher.
The next time Lex sleeps, the Tulpa should force him to listen to a podcast with obviously incorrect statistics cited in it. I guarantee he'll be begging to go back to hearing a litany of his failures.
Finally caught up on the chapters. I love this explanation, basically Severance will only respond to demands, never to pleas.
I just realized, thank goodness for Kara, dating advice from the Night Mare would probably just be classic pick-up artist BS.
Also,
8917247
The funny thing here is that I used to think that way, until I started seeing the ways in which this was used in the pulps. The basic idea there was that "Law = civilization" whereas "Chaos" was equated, not so much with barbarism, but with a world that didn't operate according to any sort of rational principles, which made barbarism humanity's only real way of interacting with such a world. "Chaos" in those old tales, wasn't about personal freedoms or individual liberties; it was about a world where, on a fundamental level, things didn't make sense and you just had to deal with it (or, in extreme cases, giving away your humanity in order to become a thing that could take advantage of the disordered nature of reality for your benefit).
When you start viewing it through that lens, all of a sudden the idea of Chaos being what the bad guys were beholden to makes a lot more sense. But somewhere along the way D&D moved away from that ("somewhere along the way" being extremely early, since the addition of the Good/Evil axis in AD&D First Edition was where that idea started to fall away), and Chaos become about hating authoritarianism and individual autonomy rather than modes by which reality was defined.
Well, I haven't GM'd in quite some time, because in all honesty the idea of "teaching them a lesson" isn't something they're fairly keen on. I've tried taking an instructive stance via cause-and-effect before, and for the most part all it's done has been to increase tension in the group. At the end of the day, they're just looking to kick back, relax, and play casually. They don't want to take things as seriously as I do, and they don't appreciate my suggesting that they should be going about it another way.
I remember one of the best ideas I heard about druids, back in the days of AD&D (when they could only be True Neutral), was that there were different druidic organizations in a given world. It's been largely forgotten, but back then druids were one of several classes whose organizational hierarchy was written into their class mechanics. Certain levels corresponded to ranks within the organization, and if you wanted to gain a level you had to formally challenge and defeat an existing member at that level (who lost his level if you won). Given that, having only a single, monolithic organization for the entire world would have meant that the number of high-level druids was exceptionally small (unless you wanted to say that there was an unusually large number of hierophants; druids who had basically leveled beyond the highest spot in the organization and were now beyond the political aspects of the group). Saying that there were the druids of a particular large desert, those of a huge forest, etc. helped to open things up a lot more, to my mind.
Today, of course, most of those ideas are heretical; having alignment restrictions on classes at all is rapidly going the way of the dodo, let alone building in an organization to a class at the mechanical level. Still, it's helpful when looking at things now to have a sense of how they used to be.
See, this is another aspect of design philosophy that's changed over time, and is still changing now: the idea of "wasted actions" when you attempt something that doesn't work. More specifically, whether it's a flaw of game design or not. This is one of those questions that will probably never go away, as everyone has different (legitimate) ideas of what to do about this. It's why we have "fail forward" in some RPGs, where even on the worst possible results your action still succeeds; it just succeeds in a way that has other consequences or complications. It's why D&D 4E had attacks that did damage on a miss (requiring that "hit points" be flat-out said to not be physical damage...though that debate had already been going on for decades anyway).
Personally, I'm okay with "wasted" actions, if for no other reason that I find attempts to "correct" them (at least most of the time) to lead to redesigning character abilities in ways that aren't helpful for simulationism, which is an aspect of the game-play that I very much enjoy.
The funny thing for me is that statistical analysis isn't nearly as fun when it's done to try and improve your character's abilities as it is to develop a deeper understanding of the game. In that regard, the d20 System is actually less fun for me to dig into because it's well-designed enough that there isn't very much new understanding to have (to my mind, at least) by crunching the numbers. There's some, to be certain, but nothing like AD&D First Edition, which even now seems like it's constantly gushing forth new insights when you take the time to really dig into it.
Well, it depends on what the stated goal is. As our conversation thus far has shown, you can take very different things away from various aspects of the game, and each point of view will have its merits. Trying to say "you're doing it wrong" isn't going to fly, not just because people hate to hear that, but because there's numerous approaches that are all valid.
Hey now, that would just be cruel.
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Basically. The person wielding it still needs to be holding true to the Night Mare's values and ideals for it to work for them at all (and it will abet users in this regard, from suggesting ideas and teaching doctrine to forcing an alignment change), and if the wielder rejects those values then it will cease to respond until they correct their behavior. Hence what happened with Cloudbank, since the strong do not beg or plead, ever.
Hey, it's still better than the dating advice you'd get from Blaze, Everglow's Chaotic Evil demon-goddess of war.
That's our Sonata!
Sigh.
Yep. Severance is Lex's servant, basically, and as such will do anything he wants.
9219869 Pretty much anything. It's still the Night Mare's tool first and foremost.