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Mar 1, 2012 -- 12:33PM, Keithric wrote:

Wow, tons of discussion. In no particular order...

1) D&D gods discorporate. They all have that ability. Technically, even Lolth (who is not the best designed of gods) - it's just only on her spider queen form, which methods of stopping her from shapechanging would force her to assume. There's no real getting around discorporate, except in plot terms ("Sure, you can kill Moradin, but first you need to sacrifice a primordial within his great forge to weaken his soul" etc). It's just one of those special epic things... that's why it was such a big deal that Sinmaker knew of a way to prevent discorporation, why Lolth went to such efforts to obtain it and inflict it on Corellon, etc. That's been part of the big metaplot since day 1 of the campaign. (Other options might include getting Ao to invoke another Time of Troubles, becoming an actual god, or obtaining a sword called Godslayer that may or may just be a god in sword form ergo able to sidestep that restriction)

I'm not sure if EVERY god has discoropate, but my feelings on that power are not a knock at you guys - its a general complaint I have about this edition.  Its one of the many unexplained mechanics that unbalances the playing field arbitrarily.  In previous editions they explained the mechanics of magic etc. and gave you ways to develop workarounds for this sort of thing.  Now it's - make arcana checks 12 times in row... 72 seconds later (or less) you have mastered the words of creation!  Tada!  Again, that is not a knock at mod authors - its the 4e mechanics.


community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758... 

A great place to go and check out the published stats thus far.  And PS: they all suck and can be pwnd'ed by characters well below the level intended. 

And Keith, not suprisingly, as you are awesome, I agree with all of what you said here.  I just think you know, we are currently participating in exactly a Time of Troubles-esque series of events, so Gods should be casualties.

Scales of War?  By the last 10 mods or so, you are seeing the death of both Bahamut and Tiamat (serious major gods - not lesser crap gods like the Red Knight or whatever).

I will say, I didnt read 4-1 yet, all I have is the play experience I had, and we didn't learn much by way of roleplaying other than her family tree and that she was investigating us.  That's not really like the same as having been thwarted by her several times without realising it until now and being really afraid to face her awesomeness.  As the first poster in this thread said, DM'ing can really impact things in that regard.   

Sinmaker is from Manual of the Planes, and has been around a long time as an aspect of grazz't.  His stats in the final mod draft are actual much lesser than such an Aspect would have as I recall from glancing at them a couple months ago. 

Regardless, I think Bill's point is valid.  It's really about how much choice do we really have?  Let me get this straight, we met a guy with the god-slaying formula and agreed to help him escape a permanent prison... gosh there's no chance at all that people will... get that formula as a condition of the contract...  and see above re: Lolth and Corellon death.  Instead we have the ILLUSION of choice.  Here's a bad guy have at it... but it doesnt really matter what you do the script will take us where it will. 

And sadly, I dont really have a play group - I've done a couple playtests, but for me as a mobile kind of guy with no real local roots, the reason I play Living Campaigns is for the availability of public events that I can show up to without much comittment.  Epic mods are the one-night stands of the LFR community.  Incidentally, its also why I design ridiculous stand alone characters.  I never know who Im going to sit down with and dont want to die for want of a (leader/defender/striker). So yes, usually my PC's are able to more or less solo fights that are tiered accordingly (if they have to). 

Skill challenges and roleplaying are a different story, but to me, those are the fun parts of the mods and they are mostly independant of pc stat blocks - so it doesnt matter how much character builder fu the other players have.  I'd always rather lose because of storytelling and problem solving than because of dice rolls.  And I think that is both fun and appropriate to kill PCs as a result of roleplaying decisions, while killing them with random dice rolls seems unfair and pointless.

Mar 1, 2012 -- 1:15PM, JohnnyBlaise wrote:

Regardless, I think Bill's point is valid.  It's really about how much choice do we really have?  Let me get this straight, we met a guy with the god-slaying formula and agreed to help him escape a permanent prison... gosh there's no chance at all that people will... get that formula as a condition of the contract...  Instead we have the ILLUSION of choice. 

You're making a faulty assumption here. 

Spoiler: Show

While in retrospect, it may seem like the writers "forced the outcome they needed to tell their story," the truth is that we have discussed plans for either outcome, and will progress the story based on what the PCs chose to do.   

Mar 1, 2012 -- 1:15PM, JohnnyBlaise wrote:

Scales of War?  By the last 10 mods or so, you are seeing the death of both Bahamut and Tiamat (serious major gods - not lesser crap gods like the Red Knight or whatever).

* River Song voice* Spoooooilers.
 
Spoiler: Show

What you seem to want is deific carnage all over the place. If that's the story you want, go ask your DM to run that for you. The Epic writers will do what they do best, write their story and give it to DMs to let them run as they see fit.

Mar 1, 2012 -- 2:31PM, JohnnyBlaise wrote:

What I want is a campaign that FEELS EPIC.  Epic means god-level awesomeness. 

Epic:
Saving Corellon, and also PS getting to beat on him a little.  Pretty cool.
Hunting and then beating up that crazy heroslayinghydraMonsterTheDMMadeHimself.  TOTALLY Epic.
Rolling up on Lolth.  Awesome sauce. 
Negotiating the release of the devil's apothecary from a limitless hell dimension.  Fairly epic. 
Sucking deific power out of statues.  Robert Jordan Wheel of Time Epic.
Deciding to accept/refuse the offer of limitless power from a shard of pure evil.  Galactus Epic.

Not Epic:
Boatjacking.  Okay, let's be fair, spaceboat-jacking.
Rafting down demoncarp river.
Playing Demon Qbert.
Chatting with some Shou about thier mom in thier living room.
Putting out fires in the library of congress.
Chasing some Shou necro-mom.
Not actually being allowed to accept the offer of limitless power from a shard of pure evil.
Not actually getting deific power from the statues.

Okay, this made me more than chuckle. Fair evaluation. But come on, not EVERYTHING is going to be Epic, otherwise the truly Epic moments won't feel quite as.... Epic. Just because you're playing an Epic PC doesn't mean you have to eat, $#!+ and breathe Epic, does it? Hopefully the scales will tip more towards Epic as the campaign progresses.

In an Organized Campaign the impact of choice will always be limited compared to that of a home game. Your choices will have an impact, but don't expact choices to have major story altering impacts on the very next adventure type (those are already nearly finished by the time the previous part is released). Besides, many of those major altering events are often the result of one table out of dozens making an odd choice. Those choices won't stick simply because the majority did not make that choice.

Pointing at LG is also not fair, since you are talking about regional events taking place at special conventions. I can assure you, nothing like what you are stating would work for core events or regional adventures played outside those special conventions. In fact, chances are it might not even work at the regional events because the local triads and/or globals instantly work in a sollution that would totally off-set your choices. All too often I have read about people threatening to overrun a supposedly unwinnable fight and the organizers simply adding a balor or pitfiend with or without the player's knowledge (mind you, more often than not those special events were hardly detailed and written on the spot anyway).