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[Neonivek]

If you ask me, there's too much 4e stuff that crept back in for me to touch it with an 11-foot pole.

What about a 12 foot pole? One of my favorite items from the Magic Item Compendium. The meta-joke is worth the extra cash to buy it.

As well as [5th edition] adding "Holy damage" allowing for future divine offensive spells.

Divine damage was already a thing in 3.5, like in Flame Strike. In fact, there were hundreds of offensive divine spells, depending on what you mean by divine. (In 3.5 that means 'castable by clerics and other divine casters', though if you mean 'deals divine damage' that's only a few dozen.)

No outright holy damage. Just imitation elemental damage or non-type damage.

[AlleeCat]

4e had radiant damage. That's sort of the same?

[Neonivek]

4e had radiant damage. That's sort of the same?

4th and 5th have holy damage and unholy damage as its own separate type indeed.

Warlocks being one of the few arcane classes that can even do unholy/holy damage because of their quasi-divine origins.

[Yoink]

Let's share our creepiest, most horribly inappropriate rpg stories!

Well, three players in my old Pathfinder group were starting new characters on the same day, due to half our party being wiped (in an incredibly stupid fashion) during the last session. So there's me with my half-orc rogue (I spoke in this annoying growly voice, it was a miracle I didn't get hoarse from it), a tiefling ranger (played by a more experienced DnD player, probably the most competent of the trio) and a halfling. I don't even remember what class the halfling wa- actually, that's right, he was a druid who later learned to ride around on a velociraptor.

Anyway, the three of us were in a tavern, having met recently on the road to whatever city we were in now.
It was a very ambiguous opening, but oh well. As all good adventurers do, we started drinking heavily. (It was at this point my character gained the nickname 'Shitdrinker', which followed him around for the rest of his life, due to saying the booze "tastes like shit".)

There was some various stupidity with the rough-looking occupants of the seedy place we were in, we moved on to stronger drinks, and then we ended up failing a whole bunch of CON rolls and blacking out. We came two under a wagon somewhere in the city, naked (almost? I think we still had underwear, or some sort of loincloths, but I can't remember) and incredibly hungover, and the halfling had some lewd phrase written around his mouth.
So, we'd lost all our gear, money, dignity (pfft), everything.

Once the tiefling and I had managed to beg some rubbishy clothing off a sympathetic shopkeeper, we had to think up a way to make some cash. We ended up hanging a sign around the halfing's neck (he was still wearing his loincloth) advertising a price for a sweet piece of halfling ass. He then wandered through the seedy dock area we were in, flirting with likely customers whilst the rest of us followed at a discreet distance.

Once he finally found an unscrupulous, scummy-looking sailor who was actually interested, we waited until his purse was in his hands and they were standing in some sort of alleyway, then the tiefling and I jumped out, bashed him over the head and grabbed the money before running off.

Unfortunately for us, the city we'd decided to commit this crime in turned out to be Waterdeep, which apparently has a pretty hardcore system of law enforcement. (I didn't even know about this OOCly) It wasn't long before we were being pursued. The tiefling surrendered peacefully, I tried to fight and was swiftly knocked out, and the halfling used some feat-or-other to run a ridiculous distance in a short space of time.
That was when they called in some sort of Wizard-Cops to catch him, which they did quite quickly.
So, we ended up thrown into some dungeon or other, having nowhere near enough money to bribe our way out of it.

Tl;Dr: We whored out our halfling on the docks of Waterdeep and robbed his customers to make quick cash, were promptly caught and jailed.

(This is just one of many creepy, inappropriate stories from that group, haha. Man, I miss playing with them.)

[scriver]

Yoink, you seem to have a knack for having characters wake up drunk in awkward states

4e had radiant damage. That's sort of the same?

4th and 5th have holy damage and unholy damage as its own separate type indeed.

Warlocks being one of the few arcane classes that can even do unholy/holy damage because of their quasi-divine origins.

How is thus different from 3.5s Divine damage?

[Neonivek]

Because 3.5 has no divine damage... The closest is negative and positive energy...

Where are people getting the idea that there is a separate divine damage?

[Heron TSG]

Read Flame Strike for the classic example.

A flame strike produces a vertical column of divine fire roaring downward. The spell deals 1d6 points of damage per caster level (maximum 15d6). Half the damage is fire damage, but the other half results directly from divine power and is therefore not subject to being reduced by resistance to fire-based attacks.

There are a number of spells with similar wording.

Then you have spells like Holy Storm:

A driving rain falls around you. It falls in a fixed area once created. The storm reduces hearing and visibility, resulting in a -4
penalty on Listen, Spot, and Search checks. It also applies a -4 penalty on all ranged attacks made into, out of, or through the storm.
Finally, it automatically extinguishes any unprotected flames and has a 50% chance to extinguish protected flames (such as those of lanterns). The rain damages evil creatures, dealing 2d6 points of damage per round (evil outsiders take double damage). In addition, each round, a blast of frost strikes a randomly selected evil outsider within the spell's area, dealing 5d6 points of cold damage.
After the spell's duration expires, the water disappears.

That deal an untyped damage that only affects evil creatures, and bonus against evil outsiders like demons and devils. The Book of Exalted Deeds has loads of stuff like that.

[scriver]

Indeed. While I'm not sure about Barbarossa's second example, I have never heard of the damage in Flame Strike (and all of the others like) being referred to as anything but Divine damage.

[Neonivek]

So there no holy damage, just untyped.

Indeed. While I'm not sure about Barbarossa's second example, I have never heard of the damage in Flame Strike (and all of the others like) being referred to as anything but Divine damage.

Because most people are not really experienced in the contradictions and other abilities that do "untyped" damage.

Some forms of "divine damage" hit against Damage reduction for example (Holy weapons for example). It isn't an entity on its own, it isn't modified or altered except by the very word of each individual spell and ability.

4e and 5e both added Divine and Unholy damage as an entity on its own unmodified by the inherent goodness or evil of the individual (Because frankly 3.5's divinity stuff is often grade school anyhow), with energy resistances dealing directly with those forms of damage.

It is especially helpful since many unholy attacks just use negative energy.

[Heron TSG]

....It's literally called divine damage. It's right in the spell description. There are other spells that deal untyped damage, and they usually say when they do. There are other feats and class abilities that reference divine damage as something distinct that can be dealt. As far as 'unholy' damage, how about the Vile damage type? There are lots of evil spells that deal it, and even a metamagic that can make any arcane spell deal it.

This feat adds the evil descriptor to a spell. Furthermore, if the spell deals damage, half of the damage dealt is vile damage. For example, a violated lightning bolt cast by an 8th-level wizard deals 8d6 points of damage: 4d6 points of electricity damage and 4d6 points of vile electricity damage (but creatures immune to electricity take no damage). A violated spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level.

It's also worth noting that there are damage reduction in 3.5 for alignments, and your average cleric can make a weapon 'Good' for the purposes of bypassing DR, and so forth. There are also ways for clerics (and other divine casters) to give themselves and/or their allies damage reduction that requires an aligment to pass.

What makes something holy as opposed to unholy, asides from the relative 'good' or 'evil' of the deity providing the power to the divine caster? Or are unholy spells provided by nega-gods? There's still positive/negative energy in 3.5, neither of which carries an inherent alignment. If you're looking for divine damage that isn't good or evil, there's a couple for you.

Every edition of D&D has clear-cut lines of good and evil in its cosmology, with the only major exception being the Eberron Campaign Setting. (Which involves such things as a relatively good-and-stable kingdom using armies of necromancy-fueled skeletons to wage war to preserve its living citizens.)

The cosmology of Greyhawk and many of the D&D gods and planes has been basically the same since AD&D. It's straightforward and clear-cut because it makes for good storytelling scenarios. The archetypical D&D campaign involves a party of adventurers embarking on a difficult journey to save the world from some terrible thing or other. A campaign all about solving world hunger could be interesting, but it's both easy and very dramatic for the campaign to be about saving their land from invasion by a powerful and cruel empire, or rescuing a princess from a ghastly ritual perpetrated by a cult of Takhisis. Call it tacky, but a conflict that a grade-schooler can understand isn't necessarily a bad thing for a roleplaying game.

[scriver]

Going of a quick search online, 3.5 has Holy and Unholy damage (alignment based, for Good and Evil respectively, complemented by Axiomatic and Anarchic for the Law-Chaos spectrum), Sacred and Profane damage, as well as Sanctified and Vile (which are basically good/evil divine damage++) damage.

And yeah, Divine damage is supposed to be indefensible against, given that it's basically direct divine damage.

[Neonivek]

Dungeons and dragons certainly has its own unique take on good and evil.

Which as much as I complain about WAY TOO MUCH... is probably for the best. It shouldn't require college level analysis just to understand nuance. Better people to easily grasp onto the game and have fun.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Can I have a link scriver? and not just fluff.

Also Barbarossa that stuff was unique to that book and otherwise everything else ignored it.

Every edition of D&D has clear-cut lines of good and evil in its cosmology, with the only major exception being the Eberron Campaign Setting. (Which involves such things as a relatively good-and-stable kingdom using armies of necromancy-fueled skeletons to wage war to preserve its living citizens.)

Yeah but the issue with that is it creates the Jesus versus Satan scenario. But then again Dungeons and Dragons was always VERY Christian in the way it often presented its cosmology.

I keep expecting mythology especially eclectic mythology from settings that outright lift deities from other mythologies... but it always just boils back down to VERY modern and narrow ideals.

I guess it is to say that the Dungeons and Dragons pantheons have always been rather childish. In both their attempts at creating a mythology and their world views in general. But it is typical of dungeons and dragons with their inability to decide how their very own alignment systems function in general.

But that is because dungeons and dragons started off as a very paragon based game. Paladins were pretty much like people trying to be the Avatar from Ultima (Hmmm... and Paladin is a Christian thing HMMM!!!) so the game started off being a sort of extreme in this sense. It isn't so much childish as dungeons and dragons is trying to present a mythology of good versus evil in very broad strokes to give the players very easy to grasp concepts.
-AND HOLY GOODNESS do Blackguards and Anti-paladins not even FUNCTION in any conceivable sense. There is no way someone could be a Blackguard and still be alive after a year. Evil is dumb!

I remember how hard it was to read every single religion and basing my cleric off of their individual teachings... what clothes they had to wear, what tenants they had to keep, what they were to do with their money. So I can understand the need for simplification.

Note: The Spoiler is an inane rant that sounds like I was drunk or half-asleep while writing it. I tend to leave these up for honesty sake... but if you do respond to it, know I regret ALL OF IT!

[Kadzar]

I feel like making a quick post to say that Neonivek is misremembering the names of the damage types in 4e and 5e. They are called Radiant and Necrotic.

[Neonivek]

I feel like making a quick post to say that Neonivek is misremembering the names of the damage types in 4e and 5e. They are called Radiant and Necrotic.

Well I am not misremembering exactly. Radiant and Necrotic are divine damage.

[Heron TSG]

Yeah but the issue with that is it creates the Jesus versus Satan scenario. But then again Dungeons and Dragons was always VERY Christian in the way it often presented its cosmology.

I think Zoroastrianism predates Christianity with regards to that dynamic, and there's a reason it's such a common theme in religions. Everyone like to feel like they're the good guys trying to defeat the bad guys.

-AND HOLY GOODNESS do Blackguards and Anti-paladins not even FUNCTION in any conceivable sense. There is no way someone could be a Blackguard and still be alive after a year. Evil is dumb!

There are a few classes and variants for evil paladins that all work pretty well in 3.5.