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4 years ago ::
Jun 21, 2009 - 2:54PM
#41
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Date Joined:
Dec 24, 2005
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Certainly - the Church of the Silver Flame is simply the most recent church to draw on the power of the Silver Flame, but you've got the shulassakar, the people of Khalesh, the orcs of the Demon Wastes... and those are just ones we've described so far.
Beyond that, I wouldn't be too limited by the PHB description of a class. I played a deva avenger who we defined as a human peasant who was serving as a host to a host of restless spirits seeking vengeance against the cult that had slain them. My Memories of a Thousand Lives were actually the shadows of THEIR memories, and my powers weren't from any god, but rather reflected the host of ghosts empowering me. So technically I was a deva, and technically I was an avenger, but I wasn't actualy serving a god and I didn't have white and purple skin.
All I'm saying is that the core books (and any books for that matter) should serve as inspiration as opposed to restriction. Looking to 3.5 Eberron, the quote in the begining of the book is that you should be able to find a plae for anything in Eberron, but you may want to change it to fit the tone of the setting.
I am trying to get him to look beyond what is stated in the PHB but he is the type of player that tends to get stuck on what is stated in the core rules. Thanks for the ideas. I will definitely throw them at him next time I have the chance.
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4 years ago ::
Jun 21, 2009 - 4:05PM
#42
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Date Joined:
Jul 22, 2006
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I am trying to get him to look beyond what is stated in the PHB but he is the type of player that tends to get stuck on what is stated in the core rules. Thanks for the ideas. I will definitely throw them at him next time I have the chance.
If he's the kind of guy that "gets stuck on what the handbooks say", then I can almost guarantee his Avenger will follow the Silver Flame. According to the EPG, the Devas are "spirits of light in mortal form" who fought alongside the couatls during the Age of Demons.
You can't get any stronger a connection to the Silver Flame than that. The Devas would have been there to see their war won by the sacrifice of their couatl allies. That sacrifice created the Silver Flames that still bind their fiendish adversaries within Khyber.
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4 years ago ::
Jun 21, 2009 - 4:23PM
#43
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Date Joined:
Jul 22, 2006
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All I'm saying is that the core books (and any books for that matter) should serve as inspiration as opposed to restriction. Looking to 3.5 Eberron, the quote in the begining of the book is that you should be able to find a plae for anything in Eberron, but you may want to change it to fit the tone of the setting.
It's interesting that you mention this and the Silver Flame within the same post.
Before the release of the EPG my tentative explanation for Devas in Eberron was that they are couatls that took on mortal form in lieu of joining their brethren as part of the silver flames. They would serve as watchful guardians of the world to come, protecting the world from a new age of evil.
Honestly, I still slightly prefer my concept to the official one, and haven't settled on which my PC (assuming I go with my Deva Avenger) will be. The core concept may be slightly more versatile, with a lesser connection to the couatls, and by extension the Silver Flame, but not necessarily.
I can easily combine the two, saying Devas are the immortal spirits of both couatls and their allies bound in humanoid forms to serve the purpose I described above.
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4 years ago ::
Jun 21, 2009 - 4:34PM
#44
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- Eberron Designer
- Moo, Baby, Moo
Date Joined:
Dec 11, 2002
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Before the release of the EPG my tentative explanation for Devas in Eberron was that they are couatls that took on mortal form in lieu of joining their brethren as part of the silver flames. They would serve as watchful guardians of the world to come, protecting the world from a new age of evil.
In my personal campaign, I use devas as a "metarace" as opposed to a species... using the core idea of someone with the memories of many lives but exploring different variations. I've already mentioned one. Looking to the Silver Flame, it's said that noble souls join with the Flame, and we know that Tira Miron herself was empowered by a couatl. So rather than go with the literal eternally-reborn-spirit, I go with the human tapping into the memories of the fallen heroes who are part of the Flame itself (and thereby gaining the necrotic/radiant resistance from that divine connection). With a little bit of tinkering (change the immortal origin to fey, for example), you can reskin a deva as a Tairnadal elf with a close connection to a patron ancestor, and have the memory of a thousand lives reflect that ancestral guidance. You could be a Cyran avenger channeling the souls of those killed by the Mourning, driven to find a new homeland for your people... or on the immortal end, be a spirit of war from Shavarath bound to mortal flesh and doomed to continue the eternal war on Eberron. And so on. Personally, I prefer to limit the number of races in my campaign, and since devas are supposed to be rare to begin with, I'm happy to essentially have them be special cases than an actual species. But there's no reason these ideas can't exist in concert with incarnate couatl or benevolent ancient spirits; it's just a matter of what makes the most satisfying story.
If he's the kind of guy that "gets stuck on what the handbooks say", then I can almost guarantee his Avenger will follow the Silver Flame.
Bear in mind that Shard's character in question was an invoker... I'm the one who turned it to avengers. 
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4 years ago ::
Jun 21, 2009 - 4:58PM
#45
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Date Joined:
Jul 22, 2006
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connection). With a little bit of tinkering (change the immortal origin to fey, for example), you can reskin a deva as a Tairnadal elf with a close connection to a patron ancestor...
Hah! I'd thought about doing this very thing, but worried I might be suspected of munchkinism. I'd likewise considered an Undying Aereni reborn to fulfill a specific part of the prophecy. (It would have to be one heck of a prophecy, no doubt, for the Aereni to go this route.) The second idea seemed less likely to elicit complaints of munchinkism, but that particular concept is on the back-burner, for now. So many characters, so little time.
I agree that the Deva is perfect for "reskinning". It probably more readily lends itself to this usage than any race to date.
Bear in mind that Shard's character in question was an invoker... I'm the one who turned it to avengers.
I didn't read Shard's post carefully enough. That said, the obvious ties to the Silver Flame still apply.
If the player would prefer to keep that "honor the whole pantheon" type of feel that the PH2 sort of implied, the Sovereign Host couldn't be more perfect.
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4 years ago ::
Jun 21, 2009 - 5:32PM
#46
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- Eberron Designer
- Moo, Baby, Moo
Date Joined:
Dec 11, 2002
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Hah! I'd thought about doing this very thing, but worried I might be suspected of munchkinism... I agree that the Deva is perfect for "reskinning". It probably more readily lends itself to this usage than any race to date.
That's the thing. Racial reskinning isn't something I'd do casually, and I've had cases where people have requested it and I've turned them down. It's something I specifically like for devas because I see them as being more interesting as a metarace than as one more species in a world of many races. There's many interesting ways to explore the concept of humanoid-empowered-by-divine-force-and-holding-memories-of-many-lives... and since as is there aren't really supposed to be deva communities, the setting doesn't really lose anything from having this varied approach. But I wouldn't normally let people make elves with dwarf stats or dwarves with human stats or whatever.
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4 years ago ::
Jun 21, 2009 - 5:41PM
#47
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Date Joined:
Sep 27, 2005
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One of my players is playing a invoker deva and he has yet to settle on religion until we get the EPG. He had expressed an interest in following the Silver Flame but pointed out that the PHB states the deva only follow the "old gods" and the Flame is a "new god". I pointed out that to the common races the Silver Flame was a new god but that did not have to be the case for him.
I would love to have a Follower of the Silver Flame in the party but he still seems skeptical. So I can't wait to get my hands on the new EPG and ECG to see if there are new ideas on incorporating devas and Eberron faiths.
When fluff interferes with a gamers fun and really does not matter (invoker fluff) then ignore the hell out of it. The old god thing is really just fluff. I think invokers could work for any religion or god.
If he is one of those gamers that see written product as some form of "canon" (ugh) then use CyberDave's argument that the Flame is an "Old" Deity so it should be no problem.
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4 years ago ::
Jun 21, 2009 - 5:44PM
#48
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Date Joined:
Jul 22, 2006
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That's the thing. Racial reskinning isn't something I'd do casually, and I've had cases where people have requested it and I've turned them down. It's something I specifically like for devas because I see them as being more interesting as a metarace than as one more species in a world of many races. There's many interesting ways to explore the concept of humanoid-empowered-by-divine-force-and-holding-memories-of-many-lives... and since as is there aren't really supposed to be deva communities, the setting doesn't really lose anything from having this varied approach. But I wouldn't normally let people make elves with dwarf stats or dwarves with human stats or whatever.
QFT.
I have the trust of my gaming group, I believe, and probably wouldn't get any push-back if I tried this. I probably could've better phrased my post this way: "I expected to be accused of munchkinism if I'd shared my idea in these forums".
Many things that appear in our games never directly appear in my posts here, mostly because I don't feel like wading through trolls to get to the valuable feedback of the few. The Eberron forum-goers are a little more reasonable crowd, though, and that's one more reason I'm glad the Eberron forums have sprung to life, again. The Star Wars crowd is a likewise amiable lot.
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4 years ago ::
Jun 21, 2009 - 5:51PM
#49
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Date Joined:
Jul 22, 2006
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The old god thing is really just fluff. I think invokers could work for any religion or god.
Yep. I don't think I've conceptualized an Invoker yet that has been intentionally in-line with this "old god" bit.
For the purposes of Shard's friend, I think any of Eberron's faiths will do, regardless of how stringently he follows the fluff. All of Eberron's faiths are ancient. None of them are new. The Host, the Flame, the Blood of Vol, the Undying of Aerenal, so on and so forth -- they've all been around in some form since before human civilization.
If those aren't "old gods", I don't know what is.
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4 years ago ::
Jun 21, 2009 - 8:02PM
#50
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Date Joined:
Nov 13, 2005
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Changelings have changed drastically between editions... but that's just their job.
[/joke]
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