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[Neonivek]

Unless you read the Tenants of the Blackguard.

Lets just say that evil that hates good in all forms is stupid no matter how you slice it.

[Bohandas]

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?

The "Divine Blast" ability from Deities and Demigods for one thing.

[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?

The "Divine Blast" ability from Deities and Demigods for one thing.

Which isn't in the original book that dealt with divinity. Are these third parties or one offs?

*checks section*

No... there is a Divine Blast... that does untyped damage.

[Bohandas]

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?

The "Divine Blast" ability from Deities and Demigods for one thing.

Which isn't in the original book that dealt with divinity. Are these third parties or one offs?

*checks section*

No... there is a Divine Blast... that does untyped damage.

No, its a WoTC product.

Its even in the damn System Reference Document. Under "Divine Abilities and Feats"

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35

[Heron TSG]

There are a number of rulebooks published by Wizards of the Coast that were published after the core rulebooks. I personally own 41 hard-cover books, and I have PDF copies of all 124 Wizards of the Coast sourcebooks that I've been able to find. Beyond that, I have the Dragon Compendium and digital versions of several dozen issues of Dragon and Dungeon magazines. The strength of 3.5 is that there is so much source material. And most of it's pretty good! There is a splatbook for just about anything you'd want to do.

(You can actually check the Deities and Demigods book, there's a Wizards of the Coast logo in the first credits page, and Skip Williams is one author amongst the many. He along with Monte Cook wrote more 3.0/3.5 books than just about anyone I can think of)

To quote the ability:

The deity can use this ability a number of times per day equal to 3 + its Charisma bonus. The ray created can extend up to one mile per rank (the deity chooses the length). Targets the ray strikes take 1d12 points of damage per rank of the deity, plus 1d12
points of damage per point of Charisma bonus the deity has. There is no saving throw, but the deity must make a ranged touch attack to hit a target. The deity can make the ray look, sound, smell, and feel like any-thing it desires. Despite the appearance of the ray, the damage it deals results directly from divine power and is therefore not subject to being reduced by protection from elements and similar magic.

which you may recognize from Flame Strike and many other abilities that deal divine damage. But this is getting pretty silly.

[Bohandas]

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

We once had a discussion about how the spell "Rainbow Blast" (from the 3.5e Spell Compendium) sounds like a gay thing. And how it might therefore be condemned by the stodgier faiths (and conversely how the elven faiths might be overly fond of it.

---------------

Speaking of elves and horribly inappropriate rpg stuff:
I also had an idea - which never came to anything - to have a campaign centering around a conflict between the normal elves and the drow (dark elves), wherein the church of Corellon Larethian (god of the non-drow elves and enemy of the drow) would gradually be depicted as being more and more like the Ku Klux Klan as campaign progressed, complete with white robes, lynchings, giant burning holy symbols and being led by a "grand wizard". Having it turn out that the elves are jiat racist seems like an obvious plot twist, but I haven't seen it done elsewhere (perhaps it's so obvious that it comes off as trite???)

[Kadzar]

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35

For easier readability (i.e. not having to download crap) here's a link to the relevant entry from the HTML SRD.

(You can actually check the Deities and Demigods book, there's a Wizards of the Coast logo in the first credits page, and Skip Williams is one author amongst the many. He along with Monte Cook wrote more 3.0/3.5 books than just about anyone I can think of)

Speaking of Monte Cook, has anyone had any experience with Numenera? I haven't looked into it much at all, since I don't know what to expect of the guy. On the one hand, I've heard he's responsible for the ridiculous caster superiority in 3.5 and a lot of the trap options, which he apparently said were intentional. On the other hand, Unearthed Arcana had a lot of good ideas in it; not just for 3.5, but for rpgs in general.

Oh, and also, has anybody here tried out Dungeon World? That's the other system I've been interested in.

[Bohandas]

Here's something that's ironic and more than a little bit vexing.

I have nearly complete sets of expensive rulebooks for three different tabletop RPGs (D&D 3.5, Paranoia, and Toon) but have yet to play a campaign in any of them that didn't fall apart before it started. Of course, I've only so far made two attempts (both with D&D), owing to the difficulty of getting a group together; but both of them fell apart durin or shortly after character creation.

A game of Toon would probably be more stable due to its relative simplicity. But due to the relative obscurity of the game it would prpbably be even harder to get a group together.

[Criptfeind]

Unless you read the Tenants of the Blackguard.

If you are talking about 3.5, "The Tenants of the Blackguard" is not something that actually exists. Blackguards don't have any sort of code equivalent to the paladin one. The closest to that they have is the simple requirement to be evil to take class levels.

Anyway, I don't really understand your complaint about how religion and alignment work in D&D. Sure it's a bit simplistic in some areas, but most fiction is. And sure it's vague in some ways, but that's to make room for the players and the GM to interpret it however is appropriate for their campaign.

I also had an idea - which never came to anything - to have a campaign centering around a conflict between the normal elves and the drow (dark elves), wherein the church of Corellon Larethian (god of the non-drow elves and enemy of the drow) would gradually be depicted as being more and more like the Ku Klux Klan as campaign progressed, complete with white robes, lynchings, giant burning holy symbols and being led by a "grand wizard". Having it turn out that the elves are jiat racist seems like an obvious plot twist, but I haven't seen it done elsewhere (perhaps it's so obvious that it comes off as trite???)

It's a pretty good and interesting idea. Although in D&D at least you might need to make some changes to how some things work. It's hard to be secretly evil racists when good and evil are objective and everyone literally glows with their morality. (Although I guess depending on how you handled it the rank and file elves and clergy might not be evil, just misled. Which would make it easier.)

[Gentlefish]

Divine Salience might make for a good forum diety game.


Hmm....

But first I should update my already-running game a few more times

[scrdest]

Unless you read the Tenants of the Blackguard.

If you are talking about 3.5, "The Tenants of the Blackguard" is not something that actually exists. Blackguards don't have any sort of code equivalent to the paladin one. The closest to that they have is the simple requirement to be evil to take class levels.

Anyway, I don't really understand your complaint about how religion and alignment work in D&D. Sure it's a bit simplistic in some areas, but most fiction is. And sure it's vague in some ways, but that's to make room for the players and the GM to interpret it however is appropriate for their campaign.

I also had an idea - which never came to anything - to have a campaign centering around a conflict between the normal elves and the drow (dark elves), wherein the church of Corellon Larethian (god of the non-drow elves and enemy of the drow) would gradually be depicted as being more and more like the Ku Klux Klan as campaign progressed, complete with white robes, lynchings, giant burning holy symbols and being led by a "grand wizard". Having it turn out that the elves are jiat racist seems like an obvious plot twist, but I haven't seen it done elsewhere (perhaps it's so obvious that it comes off as trite???)

It's a pretty good and interesting idea. Although in D&D at least you might need to make some changes to how some things work. It's hard to be secretly evil racists when good and evil are objective and everyone literally glows with their morality. (Although I guess depending on how you handled it the rank and file elves and clergy might not be evil, just misled. Which would make it easier.)

You might go with the reinterpreted morality axes - good/evil as, essentially, conduits for positive/negative energy and law/chaos as 'has/hasn't a destiny assigned by a higher power'. So, you may have a lowercase good Good Paladin, a good Evil Friendly Necromancer, and an evil Good Knight Templar-type, for example, and so on.

[Neonivek]

The deity can use this ability a number of times per day equal to 3 + its Charisma bonus. The ray created can extend up to one mile per rank (the deity chooses the length). Targets the ray strikes take 1d12 points of damage per rank of the deity, plus 1d12
points of damage per point of Charisma bonus the deity has. There is no saving throw, but the deity must make a ranged touch attack to hit a target. The deity can make the ray look, sound, smell, and feel like any-thing it desires. Despite the appearance of the ray, the damage it deals results directly from divine power and is therefore not subject to being reduced by protection from elements and similar magic.

which you may recognize from Flame Strike and many other abilities that deal divine damage. But this is getting pretty silly.

Unless it specifically says it does Divine Damage and not "The source of this damage is divine" it doesn't count. It is untyped.

If you are talking about 3.5, "The Tenants of the Blackguard" is not something that actually exists. Blackguards don't have any sort of code equivalent to the paladin one. The closest to that they have is the simple requirement to be evil to take class levels

If a blackguard does an action that is good... They fall.

They better hope they don't have friends, allies, loved ones, or anything of the sort.

Not doing evil is TOUGH but do-able. Not doing good is basically nonsense.

Anyway, I don't really understand your complaint about how religion and alignment work in D&D. Sure it's a bit simplistic in some areas, but most fiction is. And sure it's vague in some ways, but that's to make room for the players and the GM to interpret it however is appropriate for their campaign

Mostly it has to do with how the idea of good and evil are in play. Often just boiling down to very modernistic tenants.

Basically Dungeons and Dragons idea of good and evil usually plays out like how Bioware thinks good and evil operate.

[Criptfeind]

If a blackguard does an action that is good... They fall.

This is not actually true.

[Neonivek]

An antipaladin must be of chaotic evil alignment and loses all class features except proficiencies if he willingly and altruistically commits good acts. This does not mean that an antipaladin cannot take actions someone else might qualify as good, only that such actions must always be in service of his own dark ends. An antipaladin’s code requires that he place his own interests and desires above all else, as well as impose tyranny, take advantage whenever possible, and punish the good and just, provided such actions don’t interfere with his goals.

[Criptfeind]

A: Antipaladins are not Blackguards
B: That's even not from D&D. From what I can see that's from pathfinder.
C: That doesn't preclude friends or allies. It might not even preclude loved ones depending on how your world handles love. The concept as a whole is very weird and antisocial, but it's not "not even FUNCTION in any conceivable sense." The person would probably be insane from our standards. But in a world where evil is a actually valid world view (That's super modern of course of course!) supported in many ways by the way the universe works and a person can achive such a high level of personal power... It wouldn't even be physically that hard to make work.