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A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

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silvanknight said:
Is there a lvl up we can add to the vote?
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I'll add Anya's level up to mine when I get back to my computer.

EDIT: Plan updated to include Anya's level up.

[] Anya Level Up
-[] Class: +1 Mystic Theurge
-[] Feat: Retrain Expanded Arcana (Mirror Image) >>> Expanded Arcana (Elation, Mirror Image)
-[] Skills (4 points): +4 Concentration
--[] Divine Spells:
---[] 0 Level: Create Water
---[] 2nd Level: Divine Insight, Elation
---[] 3rd Level: Channeled Divine Shield, Greater Stunning Barrier, Mass Conviction
--[] Arcane Spells:
---[] 1st Level: Retrain Stunning Barrier >>> Moment of Greatness
---[] 3rd Level: Heroism
 
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[X] Goldfish

I'm voting for this since I know the devils will use our lack of hesitation against us somehow.
 
I'm honestly not sure dispelling will be less effective than the original plan. Aside from that, these girls are an important symbol in the region, and may actually be useful.

[X] Goldfish

Goldfish said:
Not having the Shield Other effect on the children will make it easier for the other stuff we're using against it to be effective, since even a basic Shield Other spell increases the recipient's saving throws.
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Funnily enough, we could of really used the ability to dispel magical shielding on hit that we just retrained off of Richard.
 
Archibald said:
Funnily enough, we could of really used the ability to dispel magical shielding on hit that we just retrained off of Richard.
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Really, that feat is extremely inefficient even for its original purposes. Statistically speaking you are more likely to do something useful to one or more creatures by attacking during your turn regardless of AC bonus than dispelling AC boosting effects with a standard action.

The feat also only targets effects that boost AC, if that wasn't clear. It doesn't do anything to any other kind of active bonus attributed from a spell.
 
So this is the third or possibly fourth time weve encountered this gambit?

Time to ask again!

Does anybody feel like hitting up the moon singer for an item to counter this specific type of effect? It appears to be very popular. And Azel pointed out it should be even more popular in the future.
 
zxzx24 said:
So this is the third or possibly fourth time weve encountered this gambit?

Time to ask again!

Does anybody feel like hitting up the moon singer for an item to counter this specific type of effect? It appears to be very popular. And Azel pointed out it should be even more popular in the future.
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I mean, they're literal devils from hell, of course it's going to be a popular tactic. What are we going to do? Complain about war crimes in the transplanar tribunal?

So long as @DragonParadox don't remove this entirely just to avoid thinking about it I'm fine. It would really break immersion if somehow the literal devils stop using these tactics until we find a proper counter to it, either a spell/tactic/divine blessing, or just because we stop caring about them.
 
Tbh this doesn't stop being a valid tactic even if we spontaneously ceased to care about it.

Disregard for hostages isn't something that is automatically a strength. They wouldn't make valid hostages just by dint of demographics, they could have something else special about them (like these ones) that being responsible for their death still bites you in the ass.
 
Crake said:
Tbh this doesn't stop being a valid tactic even if we spontaneously ceased to care about it.

Disregard for hostages isn't something that is automatically a strength. They wouldn't make valid hostages just by dint of demographics, they could have something else special about them (like these ones) that being responsible for their death still bites you in the ass.
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Keeping an eye out for high value targets in vulnerable positions is just good sense :V
 
Too bad this isn't the Old Gods quest.
"Generations of their ancestors have used my children as living shields" would be a perfectly valid argument in that case and we could agree with the divine servant before moving on to kill her and the kids who deserve it by inherited guilt.
 
Inherited guilt is just tribalism and inability to exercise critical thinking. Realistically ASOIAF and to a certain extent ASWaH demonstrates the hypocrisy of your atypical revanchistic Old Gods worshipper (the Mountain Clans) who think that all Andals are basically the same and as long as it grants you glory, favor from the Gods and some loot all are equal targets, just like the Knights of the Vale equate the clansmen with animals who you can overhunt into scarcity but would be a fools errand to render extinct (more trouble than it is worth).

It just creates new grudges for new, personal reasons ("You kidnapped and forced yourself on my daughters", "You killed my father", "You burned down my keep"), and so on. The idealization is that "this will be the war that ends everything and I will have my vengeance on all the descendants of the people who wronged me (in the case of the OG) or "those lowlanders who killed my kin", but the reality is even if you got rid of all the people involved in your grudge, to paddle your way up that river, you are going to make a bunch of new enemies to do it.

Even the OG lucking their way into basically reverse patronage from Viserys and company received it in spite of their desire for revenge rather than because of it. We have done more to temper their motivations than encourage them, because eventually we are going to run out of people worth persecuting and will want things to be peaceful again.

At the end of the day you can only get two people involved in a grudge to bury a grudge for mutually beneficial reasoning. The consequences for fulfilling revenge often outweighs the benefits from succeeding in enacting it.

I say this, realizing how hypocritical that might seem given our stated desire to end House Lannister, but really, we're flexible on how we do that in more ways than the OG are.

I would say it would be way more trouble to hunt down and exterminate all trace of them, probably more so than if we tried to do the same with the Freys who are even more prolific in how many families they've married into than the Lannisters have cadets and branches and cousins.
 
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Azel said:
1. You are using it as a narrative beatstick instead. One that always feels contrived due to how it is disconnected from the logic of what the opposition would actually do when presented with such an easy and obvious handle. Either use it or don't use it, but don't use it as a cheap drama button that comes and goes without rhyme or reason except for the convenience for the encounter.
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I disagree. It makes a better story. The logic doesn't matter all that much.
We are here for a story and not a worldbuilding simulator.
 
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Acolyte said:
I disagree. It makes a better story. The logic doesn't matter all that much.
We are here for a story and not a worldbuilding simulator.
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Opponents being illogical, when it is a huge part of lore/story itself that they are literal masterminds is SoD-straining at best, and bad writing at worst.

Enemies being illogical is fine when we are facing opponents as disorganized as Demons/Daemons/most Fey or small groups that never thought we'd come for them (see that Illithid-dragon we fought not too long ago).

Not with Devils.
Them being smart about how they run things is a huge reason why the setting we are playing in is a shitshow.

We made a precedent for caring about children's lives IC.
We are the biggest unaffiliated factor for Devils to care about in this half of Planetos.
By all rights, they should be using this as a precaution more often?

But dp is only human, and writing smart enemies is hard (with us being as OP as we are - even more so).

Drama for the sake of drama is not good storytelling as you imply, it is drama for the sake of drama.
 
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egoo said:
Opponents being illogical, when it is a huge part of lore/story itself that they are literal masterminds is SoD-straining at best, and bad writing at worst.

Enemies being illogical is fine when we are facing opponents as disorganized as Demons/Daemons/most Fey or small groups that never thought we'd come for them (see that Illithid-dragon we fought not too long ago).

Not with Devils.
Them being smart about how they run things is a huge reason why the setting we are playing in is a shitshow.

We made a precedent for caring about children's lives IC.
We are the biggest unaffiliated factor for Devils to care about in this half of Planetos.
By all rights, they should be using this as a precaution more often?

But dp is only human, and writing smart enemies is hard (with us being as OP as we are - even more so).

Drama for the sake of drama is not good storytelling as you imply, it is drama for the sake of drama.
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Devils being intelligent and/or masterminds isn't in question. Just because a being is intelligent, however, doesn't mean they make good decisions all the time. Devil's have a lot of baggage, both cultural and metaphysical, that doesn't always lend itself to rationality or long-term planning. They've oftentimes got built in patterns of behavior or instincts that handicap them when they're not fulfilling the task in Hell which they were specifically designed to accomplish. Sure, the higher up the Infernal food chain a Devil is, the more likely they are to be able to overcome this, but those are a lot rarer than the foot soldiers and middle managers.

That said, we might not actually dealing with a Devil at the moment, or if we are it's a very new one. This creature belongs to the Lady of Spear and could be a Divine Avatar or Herald, or just an Outsider she created to serve her. Whatever the case may be, we saw from its dialogue in the previous chapter that it's probably got a grudge against the former powers that be in the city and doesn't mind taking that out on their children.
 
Goldfish said:
Devils being intelligent and/or masterminds isn't in question. Just because a being is intelligent, however, doesn't mean they make good decisions all the time. Devil's have a lot of baggage, both cultural and metaphysical, that doesn't always lend itself to rationality or long-term planning. They've oftentimes got built in patterns of behavior or instincts that handicap them when they're not fulfilling the task in Hell which they were specifically designed to accomplish. Sure, the higher up the Infernal food chain a Devil is, the more likely they are to be able to overcome this, but those are a lot rarer than the foot soldiers and middle managers.

That said, we might not actually dealing with a Devil at the moment, or if we are it's a very new one. This creature belongs to the Lady of Spear and could be a Divine Avatar or Herald, or just an Outsider she created to serve her. Whatever the case may be, we saw from its dialogue in the previous chapter that it's probably got a grudge against the former powers that be in the city and doesn't mind taking that out on their children.
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Or a priestress with very weird mutations, like worse than Damphair had.
 
Acolyte said:
I disagree. It makes a better story. The logic doesn't matter all that much.
We are here for a story and not a worldbuilding simulator.
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If you do not care about world-building or internal, logical consistency of a story, then there is literally nothing I can or want to say to you on that topic anymore.
Goldfish said:
Devils being intelligent and/or masterminds isn't in question. Just because a being is intelligent, however, doesn't mean they make good decisions all the time. Devil's have a lot of baggage, both cultural and metaphysical, that doesn't always lend itself to rationality or long-term planning. They've oftentimes got built in patterns of behavior or instincts that handicap them when they're not fulfilling the task in Hell which they were specifically designed to accomplish. Sure, the higher up the Infernal food chain a Devil is, the more likely they are to be able to overcome this, but those are a lot rarer than the foot soldiers and middle managers.

That said, we might not actually dealing with a Devil at the moment, or if we are it's a very new one. This creature belongs to the Lady of Spear and could be a Divine Avatar or Herald, or just an Outsider she created to serve her. Whatever the case may be, we saw from its dialogue in the previous chapter that it's probably got a grudge against the former powers that be in the city and doesn't mind taking that out on their children.
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Look. There are three reasons why I generally try not to offer critique.
1. If I do it politely and softly, it will be brushed off or ignored entirely.
2. Even if I do it privately, it will spill into the thread. Either way, I will be painted as the bad guy for making DP sad.
3. People, especially you, will start making excuses for why something makes internal sense in this singular instance, while my gripe is a long-standing issue with the narrative itself. Which makes your responses feel as if you are missing the point on purpose.

My issue is that the battle is largely pointless and got shored up by adding DP's go-to solution for cheap drama. Little kids will be harmed, which will make Dany and some others sad. This has happened repeatedly over the course of the quest. It never was not contrived.

And again, because I feel this so very, very hard: This battle is pointless. It is padding. It's an encounter for the sake of an encounter. There is no new information conveyed, no new characters or goals introduced or anything of value added to the overall plot-line of Slavers Bay, let alone the quest as a whole. You could replace the names of the people involved and copy and paste this very encounter to Sarnor, the Iron Isles, the Plane of Fire or literally anywhere else. There will certainly be some kind of excuse-plot with the kids after this, but that too will be largely pointless padding to what we are actually here for. The goal is to attack the pseudo-fleshforge under the city, not waffle around elsewhere. This is the second battle worth of padding here. It's all there to gloss over the fact that there are no characters worth reading about in this whole arc. None. Zero.

We got a big, stompy Deimavigga and a big, stompy Devil Dragon. Their motivations? As usual, generic doomsday villainy.
Just. Fucking. Kill them. And get back to something that is actually interesting to read. This quest used to be very good and it still has good movements, but in the last year, it just gets constantly bogged down in pointless minutia and story-arcs that are dragged out by forgettable and flat NPCs, and fights substituting for plot.


This rant was presented by the Devils For Better Villains Society.
 
....for what it's worth I agree with the criticism wholeheartedly.
Sadly, I had been a big part in pushing the current state of narrative into being.

We waffle around.
Even the more consistent "1 chain of events, uninterrupted by interludes"-way of storytelling we have now waffles around and stretches out when it really shouldn't.
See the "Undead town" Post-tiamat as the most egregious example.

And when we meet villains? They are inarguably the "big bad of the week"-variety.
Can y'all name a single rememberable villain of the last year OOC that was remeberable for their motivation?
F!Aegon, maybe. And he's canon character.
Stuff people in thread took part in writing doesnt count.

And @Goldfish, no offense meant, but I also have to agree that you act an apologist in most of the cases you can, even when you probably shouldn't.

DP is just a person, and we are a horde of people planning around whatever he comes up with.
It is understandable that it is hard for him to come up with something that can challenge us.
But that we start arguing back the moment we see something disagreeable isn't helping, especially with how amiable DP is to ret-conning his stuff at the slightest push.
 
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