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[pikachu17]

In that same post you just quoted I said that the paladin I'm working on now is not the one of Hades. Also, Hades is True Neutral, not Evil.
Another rhetorical question related to the first rhetorical question, can I be LG paladin of a neutral God? I recall that in 3.5 a cleric could be two steps alignment-wise from his God, but I don't know about paladin's in 5E.
I am totally going to take the Oath of Vengeance. Can I choose to smite evil tyrants such as my paladin's half-elf dad?

[Harry Baldman]

Unearthed Arcana for 5E has the Oath of Treachery as an alternative to the Oathbreaker, being generally expected to be the slipperiest and most treacherous fucker there ever was. And they get some amazing powers for it too, like getting to use Channel Divinity to create an illusion of yourself or poison your weapon, and getting haste, both kinds of invisibility, confusion and dominate person as bonus spells!

In that same post you just quoted I said that the paladin I'm working on now is not the one of Hades. Also, Hades is True Neutral, not Evil.
Another rhetorical question related to the first rhetorical question, can I be LG paladin of a neutral God? I recall that in 3.5 a cleric could be two steps alignment-wise from his God, but I don't know about paladin's in 5E.
I am totally going to take the Oath of Vengeance. Can I choose to smite evil tyrants such as my paladin's half-elf dad?

In 5E the PHB says a paladin can be any alignment they want to be, I'm fairly sure. 5E in general doesn't give two shits about what you think alignment means as long as it makes sense to both you and the DM.

[pikachu17]

Oh, then I'm then I'm definitely going to be NG. I strike from the shadows, but I only kill after they have a chance to surrender.

[Harry Baldman]

I especially like that in the 5E PHB it mentions that "your oath and alignment might be in harmony, or your oath might represent standards of behavior you have not yet attained", which gives delightful wiggle room and character ideas from the get-go.

[heydude6]

This is oathbreaker and death cleric btw. I know you aren’t doing Hades anymore, but if you ever decide to, you should consider it. The powers are very thematically appropriate.

[Rolan7]

Huh, well I learned a little more about 5e.  We're still playing 3.5e, but we're still planning to try 5th someday.
And weird as it sounds, LG paladins can sneak attack even in 3.5e.  There's even a prestige for rogue/paladins.  They can't lie or use poison, but feinting and sneak attacking is apparently kosher.

EDIT: @ half elf or half orc discussion. I’ll go into this in more detail when I get back to my computer, but a half orc and half elf coupling roughly have a 25% chance for a human baby, 25% chance for half-elf baby, 25% chance for a half-orc baby, and a 25% chance for a miscarriage. I don’t want to break out the cladogram just yet but, just trust me on this.

This is pretty much what I meant, but I'm less optimistic.  I was implying that the orc "genes" and elf "genes" would be in conflict.  They might cancel each other out, or one might win, but the result would *probably* be a miscarriage.  And it's even harder to imagine the child surviving with both elf and orc genes, which is usually considered impossible.

But again, PCs are one in a million (;  Also magic makes everything possible, yeah.

[wierd]

*mutters about overly simplistic views on genetics.

*mutters that sufficient generations of consistent half-race marriage could result in compatible unions, by having homogeneous alleles from the human admixture, allowing full hybridization.

*mutters about examples in 'lethal white' in horses, where direct cross breeding results in infant mortality, but sufficient outcrosses to breed out the single specific gene that causes the mortality result in stock that can freely intermingle.

*Mentions that half-elves who marry half-elves are said to produce full half-elven children, even though the results of such unions can have any color eyes, instead of the fixed "green" given by the player's handbook for the offspring of an elf and a human parent, suggesting that such genetic shuffling happens in faithful marriages between half-elven populations.

Basically, while direct crosses between humans and the antithetical races (in this case, orc and elf) result in hybrids that are heterogeneous for whatever genes cause stillbirth, and where the direct coupling of antitheticals is 100% incompatible (due to homogeneous prevelence of incompatible genes), the viability of the human genestock with either provides a sufficient alternative, "viable" solution space, if the hybrid populations remain in isolation for many generations, and breed true within their demographic.  This would produce individuals that have only human variants of the incompatible genes, while still retaining racial characteristics of the hybrid demographic they belong to. (See for instance, eye color explicitly lamplit in the player's guide for half-elves.)  It becomes possible to have individuals produced from these respective pools that would have 100% cross compatibility, due to having the non-conflicting human genomic components for the conflicting sequences.

(Will edit with punnett squares to show how after gen2 hybrids, you have 75% success rate between the groups.)



(returns to dark hole that spawned him)

[heydude6]

It's fine, I just looked over my explanation and realized that I was completely wrong. Cladograms are meant for individual alleles, they aren't meant for entire genomes. There is going to be some mixture of elf and orc genes no matter what and assuming that is what causes the problem, then a miscarriage is likely going to happen.

[IcyTea31]

One more thing about 5e paladins: they're not even necessarily linked to a deity. They're powered by faith and Charisma, but that faith can also be for causes, concepts and people. I'd even argue paladins are very closely related to sorcerers: if we take the Oath of the Crown, which is to a mortal sovereign and the law of the land, where do the powers come from if not from the paladin's own inner strength?

[wierd]

It's fine, I just looked over my explanation and realized that I was completely wrong. Cladograms are meant for individual alleles, they aren't meant for entire genomes. There is going to be some mixture of elf and orc genes no matter what and assuming that is what causes the problem, then a miscarriage is likely going to happen.

Again, based on the number of specifically incompatible genes that are heterogenous with pure elf and pure orc genomes that cause lethal combination, sufficient generations of faithful half-breed propagation will result in populations with increasingly compatible genomic profiles.

For a single gene, you will have ~50% chance of viable combinations at the first generation of hybridization with humans, and 75% chance of viability after generation 2 faithful hybrids.  With selective pressures, you can achieve 100% viability in 3 generations of faithful propagation.

This is likely to be co-existent with certain features associated with either elven or orcish breeding, eg-- "elven eyes", or "Orcish nose".  This can lead to "Rule of thumb" on what features to look for in a mate when attempting such a union. (EG, look for human eyes, or human noses.) 

It gets significantly more complicated to calculate viability percentages per generation when the number of genes in conflict increase, but thankfully, if there are two populations that are trying to mingle in this way, the valid human variant geneotype will be STRONGLY selected for, and whatever non-conflicting race-specific genes from the antitheticals will be able to mix freely.

[SOLDIER First]

get your disgusting science out of my orc/elf kissing

[wierd]

Hey, My filthy science says that if you have two groups of culturally consistent half-breeds that have been around for a long time, then shove them together, you will have a greater than 50% chance of viable offspring right away, with increasing viability (due to infant mortality culling invalid sequences from the breeding population) with each generation thereafter.

EG, say you have Half-Elf county, and Half-Orc county.  The king decides that both are vile abominations, and exiles both to the same tiny reservation. Love knows no boundaries, and nothing brings people together like a common foe, (in this case, a racist king), and after a few generations, you will have perfectly valid Orc-Human-Elf hybrids, that have no problems whatsoever making babies.

[scriver]

One more thing about 5e paladins: they're not even necessarily linked to a deity. They're powered by faith and Charisma, but that faith can also be for causes, concepts and people.

This was true for vanilla 3.5 too, with the exception of forgotten realms setting which did require divine patrons. I assume this setting specific caveat still applies for 5th Ed too, but I haven't read anything about it.

[Jimmy]

Meanwhile, a big thanks to Rolan7 for posting that interspecies breeding chart! That actually got use last night at my Pathfinder game.

To set the scene, the group, travelling on their airship through the Shadow Plane, was experimenting with their airship engine, which is composed of a mysterious block of umbrite. They know it has shadow powers, so the shadow bloodline sorcerer decided to cast her highest level shadow spell into the engine to see what would happen.

As a GM, I live for these moments.

The NPC airship captain screams out to brace for impact, and there's an almighty crash. The group exit to discover they've broken into someone's pocket dimension within the Shadow Plane, which contains a floating castle. Their airship is buried half inside one of the castle's towers, and the entire ship has lost power for eight hours.

With time on their hands, the adventurers decide to check out what's inside the castle. They peer inside, carefully listening as they shout echoing calls through the empty corridors, when I call for Perception checks. With a DC 30, two of them hear noise deep within the castle: the sound of clinking coins cascading across each other, and a creature emitting an enormous yawn.

Yep, they've just ram-raided a dragon's lair.

They're still arguing about whether to advance or retreat a few minutes later when a human man suddenly appears in the midst of the group. I describe him as having raven black hair that glistens like an oil slick, smooth unblemished ebony skin and unblinking eyes that are two bottomless pits of pure darkness. The ones who beat the extremely low DC to see through his disguise notice his shadow warps and twists into shapes completely at odds with his form, with claws, wings or a tail appearing momentarily. The Sorcerer makes the arcana check to identify this as an umbral dragon.

They show good sense and try the diplomatic route first, which the dragon plays along with, seemingly amused at their antics. He invites them inside his castle, insisting on showing his unexpected guests his hospitality. They go along, and one of the players who has invested strongly into ranks in baking skills cooks up a feast inside the dragon's kitchen. He even serves the dragon a dessert of trifle pudding inside the skull of the previous chef, whose bones he discovered chained to the wall inside the kitchen. The dragon is delighted, not only consuming the meal but eating the skull as well.

During the entire meal, he keeps throwing out thinly veiled threats as he asks each of the group about themselves, which actually helps immensely to give everyone an opportunity to delve into their character's backstory. The dragon even becomes an erstwhile plot device, commenting on their stories with snippets of lore and background that he recalls living through in his younger centuries. He makes it a point to ask about the group's status within society, commenting on how sad it is that nobody would miss them if they're gone for the ones that play lone wolf characters with no social ties, and genuflecting on how long it's been since he considered beginning a family when those with more blood ties give their own account.

He offers them a tour of his library after dinner in response to learning that the female aasimar cleric is a librarian by trade, and his impressive collection of books allows many of the group to make knowledge checks on stuff they really should have spent time studying before. The barbarian ends up with some rather interesting pornographic tomes as well, enchanted with illusions to give moving pictures and sound. One of the players asks for information about what species it's possible for dragons to mate with, and I grin and grab Rolan7's link, opening it up on a laptop and saying they find a natural philosophy tome containing that chart, which makes for an awesome moment when they discover the answer to their question. The look on their face is something I'll treasure for a long time to come.

After this, despite a few mentions of returning to the ship, the dragon insists they enjoy his hospitality for the evening, and they cautiously accept despite their misgivings, doing their utmost to avoid offending their host. He spends time saying how fascinating he finds the blood of the shadow sorcerer, to her immense discomfort. But the capstone to the evening is between the dragon and the young aasimar cleric, who is of course the last to leave the library and retire to her room. He gets her to admit to not having a love interest, either currently or in the past, before his final words to her for the evening: "You should know that being a virgin makes you remarkably attractive."

Can't wait for next week's session!

[wierd]

You should have made mr dragon into "pervert bard" archetype.

But where does he go shopping for zombie meat, all camped out in an extraplanar sphere like that?  Does he raise his own? (tee hee hee.)