Breelana moves to the front of the cave, not willing to stand there and watch anymore. The eladrin kneels by the water that goes over the edge and trails her hand in the little stream, maybe subconciously washing her hands of what is occuring further in the cavern.
Tovar starts to clean the muck off himself while the others look around the area. His head comes up when he hears Breelana yell at Bartok. He looks over to what the priest is doing, with a dissapionted look on his face and is about to speak up when Leaf adds her opinion to the fray.
He watches as Breelana exits the cavern. He stays for a minute watching the exchange between Vaius and Bartok, then he turns and exits the cavern. He moves to where Breelana is diping her hands in the water. He then sits down next to her.
"It's rare, in our line of work, to find someone who would stick up for the... races diferent from our own. Mercenary attitudes seem to be prevelant... pay enough gold and the sword is yours to command..." a sad look crosses the Dwarfs face. "Never loose that hope of a better way."
"Will you sit with me as I offer a prayer?" he asks. Breelana nods.
"Moradin, guide us here. Give us strength, when confronted with tough decisions when no options seem right. Help us to do what is best. Forgive us when we misstep." He pauses, for a long time. Breelana starts to wonder if he's done when she hears a loud swallow and he continues. "Help guide the souls of those unborn, to an afterlife where they can be with those like them, without fear, and where they can be at peace... May you hear our prayer." Tovar then moves a hand to his face to scratch his eyebrows, covering his eyes as he briefly rubs them while the other hands absently draws in the dirt of the ground.
With a sigh, he stands and offers Breelana a hand. "I think it's time to finish what we came here for. Let's go get the others and find the rest of the threat."
Breelana takes his hand and stands up, then leans down to hug him tightly. "You are the bestest person I have ever met, Earthbeard. I hope you know that I adore you and I'm so happy that you consider me a friend."
Bartok gives Vaius a grateful nod and move off to the fresher water to quickly rinse off his boots and staff. It pains him to see Breelana upset and he is glad that Vaius is willing to shoulder both the physical and emotional burden. The priest had enough on his conscience as it was.
Seeing Leaf poking around in the pile of skulls - no moral dilemmas there, those are obviously dead - Bartok picks up the sunrod and carries it over to provide her some additional light. He looks over her shoulder, careful to stay out of the light, curious to see what made the creatures pile up the skulls here and what sorts of skulls they were.
Leaf kicks the skulls around, nudging them to the side with the tip of her shoe and the flat of her sword. She feels Bartok creeping up on her from behind, and when she feels she's close enough she quickly snakes a hand around the Friar's head, clamping it down against her shoulder. He struggles to free himself, but Leaf holds him fast, turning her head towards his. "Didn't know you had a fascination for skulls, holy man." she whispers into his ear, nibbling at his earlobe to infuriate him further. She laughs, then releases him, throwing him a few stumbling steps backwards.
"Here, catch!" she shouts, kicking a dusty skull she just snaked her toes into towards his chest. She laughs even louder when his eyes grow wide in shock, then almost seem to pop out of his skull when he catches the thing by reflex. "See if you can find anything of value. I'll keep checking this pile here."
When Leaf kicks the skull away, she reveals the corner of a chest hidden beneath the pile. Uncovering it, she finds it to be unlocked and easily opened, revealing quite the stash.
• 170 gp • sapphire (100 gp) • potion of healing • Flame Bracers • Healer's Brooch
Not long after, while you're still sorting out what's in the chest, a loud croaking sound echoes through the chamber, coming from outside the caverns. Leaf recognizes it as being a primordial version of a greeting from a returning friend… a greeting that she thinks might demand a response in kind….
• Ad Hominem— Attacking the person's circumstances, not addressing the argument. • Ad Hominem Abusive (Personal Attack)— Insulting the person, not addressing the argument. • Ad Hominem Tu Quoque— Saying the person's inconsistent, not addressing the argument. • Appeal to Authority/Belief/Common Practice/Consequence of a Belief/Emotion/Fear/Flattery/Novelty/Pity/Popularity/Ridicule/Spite/Tradition— Using emotion instead of Fact. • Bandwagon— Use of peer pressure. • Begging the Question— Assuming premises which haven't necessarily been agreed to. • Biased Sample— Using a sampling which may not properly represent the whole. • Burden of Proof— Shifting it to the wrong side. • Circumstantial Ad Hominem— Attacking the person's interests in supporting their argument. • Composition— Assuming that the whole has the same qualities as individual parts. • Confusing Cause & Effect— Assuming that one thing causes another because they appear in conjunction. • Division— Assuming that the individual parts have the same qualities as the whole. • False Dilemma— Assuming that only two options exist. • Gambler's Fallacy— Assuming the odds have changed because of past occurances • Genetic— Assuming a perceived defect in the origin of a claim is proof of a defect in the claim. • Guilt by Association— Attacking others who agree with the claim. • Hasty Generalization— Assuming a quality based on too small a sample size. • Ignoring the Common Cause— Assuming there is no outside cause of two connected things. • Middle Ground— Assuming the midpoint of two extremes must be correct. • Misleading Vividness— Assuming a colorful anecdote outweighs statistical evidence. • Poisoning the Well— Using unprovable claims about the person instead of addressing the argument. • Post Hoc— Assuming that something caused something else simply because it happened first. • Questionable Cause— Assuming that one thing causes another. • Red Herring— Using irrelevant evidence to divert a discussion. • Relativist Fallacy— Asserting that a claim may be true for some but not for the speaker. • Slippery Slope— Assuming the inevitability of one event based on another. • Special Pleading— Claiming exemption without justification. • Spotlight— Assuming individuals that get the most attention to be indicative of the whole. • Straw Man— Misrepresenting the opposing argument. • Two Wrongs Make a Right— Justifying something unethical/immoral as response or pre-emption to something else unethical/immoral.
Response to those who like to compare 4e to a Video GameShow
Also, I find that the "D&D 4e is like an MMO" argument is often a sign of someone who is deliberately being obtuse and/or is potentially ignorant of actual MMO play. As someone who only ended a 6-year World of Warcraft addiction a year ago, I can say that most of your bullet points actually don't match up to the truth of it.
In D&D 4e, you can choose a hybrid, you can choose to play one class as though it were another (people played Warlords as Bards frequently, when the edition first came out, and Rangers were refluffed to Monks), you can focus your class on its secondary role (a Warlock who is more controller than striker, for instance), you can multiclass, and you can create a particular concept (a mounted lancer, a charger, etc.) within the mechanics via feats, choice of powers, and choice of skills. You decide which set of stats you use--are you a Chaladin, Straladin, or Baladin?--and you have ultimate influence on how your character turns out in the end. Yes, powers require you to be using a particular weapon within your class's available selection, but the powers are not themselves tied to the gear. Powers tied to weapons or armor are typically powers that belong to the item, not to the character class that's most likely to use it.
Yes, there are only so many powers available, and these will be what you do in battle; this is all that the designers created. Yes, there is a time-frame in which they can be used; this has always been the case, even in the days of Vancian casting. Yes, there are suggested builds, but you can routinely ignore those if it pleases you; the only parts of a class you have to take are the class features, and even those have options at this point. But the only way that this can be considered at all conflatable with MMO character building/playing is if you are deliberately ignoring all of that.
In WoW, you choose a class and you're done. No multiclassing or hybridization, no way to mimic one class with careful building of a different one. There is a firm dividing line on what is a WoW class. No secondary roles or creative concepts, either; you're going to be what the class sets out to be, and that's it. You'll always have the same stat allocation as another of your class, because you get set numbers as you level up, and you've got at best four options--and that's only the Druid class--to build, and if you plan on running dungeons, particularly heroic level ones, or raiding, you'd better not even think of deviating from the single defined best build on the talent tree for what you want to do. It was only recently, with the complete tear-down and recreation of talent trees for Mists of Pandaria, that there was a concept of there being anything but the one best build that people who calculated such mechanical advantages (the folks on Elitist Jerks, for example), and the people who did things like achieve "World First" at various top-tier raids set precedent for.
Also, no class will ever not have a specific set of powers; all Priests in WoW have the same baseline, with deviation only based upon their talent tree specialization, where a D&D4e player could take whatever power in their class pleases them. Any Retribution Paladin will be the same as any other in terms of powers, because that is what a RetPally is. Any Assassination Rogue will always have the same powers as another, etc. All powers are always on specific cool-downs, but will always be there when they start a battle, where a 4e PC might enter an encounter with only At-Wills, or without their Daily powers due to what plot has done up until that point. Furthermore, no power that is not already specifically tied to an item will ever "require" you have that item, to my recollection. Classes get all their powers based on class; gear only gives bonuses to stats, possibly cuts down cast times for abilities or cooldowns, grants temporary extra bonuses to stats (the latter two most often on the raid tier equipment), and on rare occassions an extra power that may or may not be valuable, as some are only special effects instead of valuable abilities.
Most honest/open response on why DDN needs to be InclusiveShow
I've always felt it is in the best interests of D&D to be as inclusive across the playerbase as they can be and still have a game. I've never felt though that making a game that was inclusive within a group was very useful or even desirable. DM's and players can decide amongst themselves what options or restrictions they want for their games. I tend to lean to the DM to make most of those decisions but again that is a group specific thing.
Having said that. I get the distinct impression that there are a lot of players on these boards who come from groups that generally ruled against their own desires. It's almost like they are an oppressed minority from a gaming perspective. I also get the impression that they tend to advocate against things that if available their fellow group members might like and vote them down on.
Do a lot of you feel this way?
Just for clarification...here are some examples... 1. Alignment restrictions as an option. 2. Alignment Mechanics 3. Martial healing 4. Races being included or not.
I know my perspective is not that I often play at tables where my likes are not represented. Instead, my perspective comes from the many years I spent being a bad DM. I was a bad DM because my guidance came from the books, and the books gave bad advice. The books told me that alignment was a useful approach to roleplaying, so I went with it even though it felt kind of weird to me. Now I know that, at least in my style of running games, alignment destroys rp. I trusted the books to give good advice, and it messed up my game. Now I'm much more mature as a DM, so I know how to take advice with a grain of salt. And I still learn new stuff every session I run.
I don't want future DMs to go through my problems again. There's a big enough DM shortage as it is. DMing well is hard.
The biggest thing I had to unlearn in my process of becoming a good DM was the idea that the game is a simulation of a world. I understand many DMs prefer a more simulationist approach, although I am always skeptical simply because I would have said the same thing until I learned and grew as a DM. This doesn't mean their approach is completely invalid, but it still gives me a personal twinge when I see a regression back to 3e era sim style gaming.
I also have noticed many groups where one or two old-school players run a whole group's playstyle because the newer players aren't even aware there are other ways of doing things. The newer players tell me stories of things they hated in the session, and I end up explaining to them how those things they hate are very fixable, and in fact are fixed in the newer edition of the game their older players have told them is terrible.
In regard to things like martial healing, I don't think it's necessary for it to be in the game for the game to be fun. However, the attitude that says martial healing is terrible and shouldn't exist is an attitude that, to me, reveals a wrongheaded approach to the game. Therefore, my fight for it to be an option is to help legitimize the more narrative approach that I think is what most players want, but many don't know is possible, because they've never been exposed to it.
Leaf never was good at sneaking gold into her pockets before anyone could notice it, so the girl instead drags the chest out of the pile of skulls, dropping it onto the floor with a heavy thud and a billowing cloud of dust.
"Found something." she says simply, before flipping the top and taking a peek inside. The others are quick to join her, some waiting to see if Leaf doesn't fall over, and quickly and efficiently Leaf divides the spoils. Like in her old pirating days, she feels that, with everyone putting in an equal share of bloodshed, each has earned his or her share of the loot. She leaves the bracers and the brooch, sensing the others would probably be able to find a better use for it.
The loud croak makes Leaf sit up, rising to a half-crouch when she realises what she just heard. She locks eyes with Bree, whom is looking at her in surprise, and feels a grin spread across her face. "Got more company." she says softly for her companions to hear, before switching to Primordial, speaking up loud enough so that whoever or whatever called the greeting hears what she says.
"Greetings to you, too, my hidden friend. Why don't you come out and greet us properly, eh?"
"What did it say?" Breelana asks quietly. If it's a mama come looking for her babies, I'm gonna toss Vaius and Bartok over the edge to her. She was still a bit upset about the whole matter, but was trying hard to keep it inside. Vaius she could see doing it; he was cold blooded and a bit of an arse. But Bartok? She'd thought that he was starting to come around.
Vaius gave a wide grin as his eyes took in the ancient craftsmanship on the bracers with the flame motif. Craftsmanship from the ruined empire of his people, forged in hellfire on the anvils of Bael Turath. As they locked into place on his wrists the tiefling could hear and feel the call of the flames, begging release. "These too will serve."
"More company? You mean more grotesque parodies of life. Let us spill their bloated entrails and send them to hell with their slain kindred and decimated eggs."
