I like to think that these are all true, if not all true at the same time, that Rakshasa culture changes through the years the same way that mortal cultures do.
Dungeons and Dragons Megathread
- Thread starter Havocfett
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- Location
- Somewhere
Given their lifespans, it hasn't even been a generation.
Given their violent lifestyles, I expect more reincarnations to be due to violent death rather than old age.
Ser_Serendipity
Building Character
Enough Rakshasa getting their shit rocked by heroes and adventurers that over the course of a couple hundred years they went from martial honor freaks to pragmatic cowards sounds both hilarious and believable.
- Pronouns
- He
Found a major advantage of playing D&D in person instead of Exalted online. Snacks. Four people brought food to yesterday's session, while no matter how much I licked my computer screen, I could never taste the pictures that the other Exalted players posted.
- Location
- United Kingdom
I started a thread on rpg.net, and to save copying and pasting a load of links - I may as well link directly to it.
Favourite 5e DMS Guild Products.
forum.rpg.net
I hope you find some of it useful?
Favourite 5e DMS Guild Products.
Favourite 5e DMS Guild Products | Dungeons & Dragons / Fantasy D20 Spotlight
What it says on the tin. Please share your favourite 5e DMS Guild products. Is it a particular publisher? Or one product. Say what you like, and why - sharing is caring! Seriously though, it would help those of us understand that do not have it, and whether we may want to purchase it.
forum.rpg.net
I hope you find some of it useful?
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Okay I'm in the process of building a ultroloth pc, what class do you y'all recommend for him? I'm honestly thinking fighter would fight pretty well as a whole with maybe eldritch knight.
- Location
- Great Khanate of Scotland
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The average D&D Rakshasa is weird because of how much they diverged from their roots for honestly unclear reasons. In the very earliest versions of the game, there was no actual description of a Rakshasa - sure, the art in the Monster Manual gave us the classic tiger-headed demon look, but Dragon Magazine #84 also gave us this...idk, demon orangutan thing?
Note the backwards hands - there's really no explanation for why this became a characteristic of the Rakshasa, it doesn't appear in any myths. My theory is that it was an art error that got mistaken as an intentional choice. Or maybe it was just to make them distinct, you don't want them to be mistaken for weretigers I suppose.
Anyway, the tiger-headed model became the default since that was the one in the Monster Manual - it's basically just artists copying each other. Pathfinder as I recall actually mixed this up by having a whole host of Rakshasa subtypes with different physical forms and animal heads and special abilities.
The mythological Rakshasa is more like a typical demon. They have fangs and horns and skin that's dark or blue or red. They usually appears as violent bloodthirsty killers, but occasionally one will appear in a supportive role as a poet or philosopher. The female of the species, the Rakshasi, is usually depicted as a seductress. Rakshasas do have shapeshifting abilities so I guess one could turn into a tiger-headed dude with backwards hands if he wanted.
Historical art of Rakshasas. The first image depicts Kumbhakarna, main antagonist of the Hindu epic the Ramayana. The second image depicts another Rakshasa from the Ramayana, the supporting character Kabhanda, shown here literally supporting the heroes Rama and Lakshmana.
Contemporary art of Rakshasas in what I consider the more traditional style.
Note the backwards hands - there's really no explanation for why this became a characteristic of the Rakshasa, it doesn't appear in any myths. My theory is that it was an art error that got mistaken as an intentional choice. Or maybe it was just to make them distinct, you don't want them to be mistaken for weretigers I suppose.
Anyway, the tiger-headed model became the default since that was the one in the Monster Manual - it's basically just artists copying each other. Pathfinder as I recall actually mixed this up by having a whole host of Rakshasa subtypes with different physical forms and animal heads and special abilities.
The mythological Rakshasa is more like a typical demon. They have fangs and horns and skin that's dark or blue or red. They usually appears as violent bloodthirsty killers, but occasionally one will appear in a supportive role as a poet or philosopher. The female of the species, the Rakshasi, is usually depicted as a seductress. Rakshasas do have shapeshifting abilities so I guess one could turn into a tiger-headed dude with backwards hands if he wanted.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
YOUR "CLEVER TWIST" SUCKS, AND HERE'S WHY
What are Clever Twists, and why do they suck so much? Simply put, Clever Twists are the GM knowingly-or-unknowingly abusing the common social contracts of tatterpigs to (supposedly) surprise and delight the other people at the table. Here's a few common cases:
1. SECRET WIZARD HITLER
There's a long history of questgivers secretly (or "secretly") being evil sorcerors/demons/wizard hitler in disguise, then revealing this once the PCs have delivered The Testicles Of Destiny into their hands so they can monologue about what fools they were, to fail to notice that the kindly priest Rad Witz Rileh had a toothbrush moustache, that the swastika on his robe was not, in fact, a Buddhist Manji, and also that his name is an anagram of "Wizard Hitler."
The issue here, of course, is that they definitely fucking noticed. The issue, further, is that because there is usually a spoken or unspoken social contract that when the GM brings an adventure to the table, everyone's going to go on the adventure regardless of the fine details of motivation or it being, strictly speaking, a good idea. So, like, what the fuck are you supposed to do when the GM hands you a quest from an obviously shady motherfucker, say "Actually, GM, we've decided not to go on an adventure this week," or something? Of course not, that would make you an obstructive dickhead, you're gonna go on that ill-advised adventure.
And, like, this is fine, if the GM doesn't get some damn fool idea into their head of making the other players/their characters "work out" that Rad Witz Rileh the kindly Buddhist priest is really Wizard Hitler and they shouldn't bring him The Testicles Of Destiny. Because:
So they do the polite thing and bring Rad Witz Rileh the balls, then
"Fools!" cried Rad Witz Rileh, tearing off his moustache to reveal a slightly smaller moustache, "I was Wizard Hitler all along!!!!!"
Then the GM goes on Reddit and gloats about how stupid his players are, while everyone else at the table starts making Killer Vagrant characters out of spite.
2. DOPPELGANGERS AND DOUBLE-CROSSERS
There is an equally long history of GMs collaborating with one other player to insert a mole into the PC Party, generally either by having the player make a character who is secretly an agent of Wizard Hitler or by replacing a regular non-shithead PC with a shapeshifter, clone, or evil twin. The mole then spies on the other PCs, sabotages their endeavours, and generally is a total bellend, usually through the medium of passing notes to and from the GM like teenagers in films made before texting was invented. Eventually, if the campaign doesn't collapse (highly unlikely, in my opinion), there will be a Big Reveal when, at the Worst Possible Moment, Dick Molemann stabs the party in the back, stuffs The Testicles Of Destiny into, fittingly, a sack, and teleports to Wizard Hitler's castle. Then, when the PCs give chase and storm Wizard Hitler's castle, they either find the real Dick Molemann in a cell and he explains that actually the guy who fucked them over was a different person entirely, though still played by the same dirty backstabbing fuck grinning at them across the table; or, they confront Dick Molemann and Wizard Hitler in a grand, climactic battle because this whole, year-long campaign has actually been The Dick Molemann And Wizard Hitler Show, Also Featuring Some Rubes, then they're expected to go back to treating Dick Molemann's player's characters like they're not potentially ticking time-bombs of horseshit. The worst version of this is when Dick Molemann is Rad Witz Rileh, kindly party healer, for obvious reasons.
The issue here, of course, is that there's no way to avoid getting fucked over by Dick Molemann without acting like, once again, a real dickhead; table ettiquette asks players to just accept that Dick Molemann the conveniently placed rogue is basically trustworthy, because the alternative is spending hours of alleged leisure time grilling your alleged friend by, like, tying his character to a chair and shining a lantern in his face while Chunk The Barbarian slaps him and yells "WHO DO YOU WORK FOR?"
And, again, if Dick Molemann really is a conveniently placed rogue who wants to join your party because Roger The Ranger got obliterated by a thwomp and his player just wants to get on with the game, that'd be a real dickhead move.
3. A RIDDLE WRAPPED IN A MYSTERY INSIDE AN ENIGMA
GMs, especially the kind of GMs who like mysteries and have a disproportionate prep-to-game ratio, often forget two things:
First, fictional mysteries are, generally, meant to be solved, which ideally means that there should be a way for the other people at the table to work out what the hell is going on. Generally this is because the GM'sself-insert villain has been envisioned as just too intelligent to make amateur blunders like "leaving clues" or "being noticed." ("Well obviously when he stole The Testicles Of Destiny he took the simple precautions of being invisible, magically disguised as a guardsman, and wearing a Wizard Nixon mask, he's not stupid.") Which is all very well if you're writing Diabolik comics, I guess, but if you're running a roleplaying game you may want to throw the rest of the table a bone or two. A frustrating subset of this is when the GM does provide clues, but you'd need the deductive skills of Adam West's Batman to piece them together correctly ("A single Size 18 shoeprint was found at the scene of the murder, and the victim had recently voted to withdraw funding from the arts. The only possible conclusion is that this man was killed by a vengeful clown.").
Second, in fiction, things do not exist if the audience is not aware of them. So while the GM may have an annotated chart of which townspeople are secretly members of The Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night, if there's no way to discover this information and most of the Elucidated Brothers don't ever appear "onscreen" in their black hooded robes, then functionally the chart is just the GM playing with himself. If Rad Witz Rileh the kindly town priest is, secretly, Wizard Hitler, but he never does any Wizard Hitler shit the players or their characters can find out about, Rad Witz Rileh is, for all intents and purposes other than the GM playing with himself, not Wizard Hitler.
This generally leads to PCs wandering around aimlessly, rifling through desk-drawers in the vain hope that there might be something relevant to the plot in there, and resorting to shining lanterns in the faces of captured goons while Chunk The Barbarian slaps them and yells "WHO DO YOU WORK FOR?" Eventually, the GM will either take pity on them and have Rad Witz Rileh start leaving post-it notes with his evil plans on them all over the place, like in Shadows Over Bögenhafen, or just have his evil plan come to fruition, probably dropping rocks on the PCs' heads in the process.
It's rare for a Clever Twist to be recieved well; even in cases where the table seems to like it, there's often at least one player privately fantasising about throwing dice at the GM. While Clever Twists are an issue across tatterpigs as a form, they seem especially common in the d20sphere, probably because:
Fortunately, THERE IS A CURE! Whenever you, as the GM, think something's going to be So Fucking Cool and the other players are going to love it, take a moment to put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself: "Is this Fucking Cool? Would I love it if it were sprung unexpectedly upon me? Am I actually telling and showing them enough information for them to make choices based on more than blind instinct and playing hot-and-cold with me, the GM?"
If the answer to any of those questions is "No," you might have fucked up.
What are Clever Twists, and why do they suck so much? Simply put, Clever Twists are the GM knowingly-or-unknowingly abusing the common social contracts of tatterpigs to (supposedly) surprise and delight the other people at the table. Here's a few common cases:
1. SECRET WIZARD HITLER
There's a long history of questgivers secretly (or "secretly") being evil sorcerors/demons/wizard hitler in disguise, then revealing this once the PCs have delivered The Testicles Of Destiny into their hands so they can monologue about what fools they were, to fail to notice that the kindly priest Rad Witz Rileh had a toothbrush moustache, that the swastika on his robe was not, in fact, a Buddhist Manji, and also that his name is an anagram of "Wizard Hitler."
The issue here, of course, is that they definitely fucking noticed. The issue, further, is that because there is usually a spoken or unspoken social contract that when the GM brings an adventure to the table, everyone's going to go on the adventure regardless of the fine details of motivation or it being, strictly speaking, a good idea. So, like, what the fuck are you supposed to do when the GM hands you a quest from an obviously shady motherfucker, say "Actually, GM, we've decided not to go on an adventure this week," or something? Of course not, that would make you an obstructive dickhead, you're gonna go on that ill-advised adventure.
And, like, this is fine, if the GM doesn't get some damn fool idea into their head of making the other players/their characters "work out" that Rad Witz Rileh the kindly Buddhist priest is really Wizard Hitler and they shouldn't bring him The Testicles Of Destiny. Because:
- it's laughably obvious, and
- it goes against all the tenets of common table ettiquette to say "Hey, lads, let's chuck this magical bollocks into a millpond and go stab the shit out of that kindly priest, 'cause I think he might be some kind of Wizard Hitler,"
So they do the polite thing and bring Rad Witz Rileh the balls, then
"Fools!" cried Rad Witz Rileh, tearing off his moustache to reveal a slightly smaller moustache, "I was Wizard Hitler all along!!!!!"
Then the GM goes on Reddit and gloats about how stupid his players are, while everyone else at the table starts making Killer Vagrant characters out of spite.
2. DOPPELGANGERS AND DOUBLE-CROSSERS
There is an equally long history of GMs collaborating with one other player to insert a mole into the PC Party, generally either by having the player make a character who is secretly an agent of Wizard Hitler or by replacing a regular non-shithead PC with a shapeshifter, clone, or evil twin. The mole then spies on the other PCs, sabotages their endeavours, and generally is a total bellend, usually through the medium of passing notes to and from the GM like teenagers in films made before texting was invented. Eventually, if the campaign doesn't collapse (highly unlikely, in my opinion), there will be a Big Reveal when, at the Worst Possible Moment, Dick Molemann stabs the party in the back, stuffs The Testicles Of Destiny into, fittingly, a sack, and teleports to Wizard Hitler's castle. Then, when the PCs give chase and storm Wizard Hitler's castle, they either find the real Dick Molemann in a cell and he explains that actually the guy who fucked them over was a different person entirely, though still played by the same dirty backstabbing fuck grinning at them across the table; or, they confront Dick Molemann and Wizard Hitler in a grand, climactic battle because this whole, year-long campaign has actually been The Dick Molemann And Wizard Hitler Show, Also Featuring Some Rubes, then they're expected to go back to treating Dick Molemann's player's characters like they're not potentially ticking time-bombs of horseshit. The worst version of this is when Dick Molemann is Rad Witz Rileh, kindly party healer, for obvious reasons.
The issue here, of course, is that there's no way to avoid getting fucked over by Dick Molemann without acting like, once again, a real dickhead; table ettiquette asks players to just accept that Dick Molemann the conveniently placed rogue is basically trustworthy, because the alternative is spending hours of alleged leisure time grilling your alleged friend by, like, tying his character to a chair and shining a lantern in his face while Chunk The Barbarian slaps him and yells "WHO DO YOU WORK FOR?"
And, again, if Dick Molemann really is a conveniently placed rogue who wants to join your party because Roger The Ranger got obliterated by a thwomp and his player just wants to get on with the game, that'd be a real dickhead move.
3. A RIDDLE WRAPPED IN A MYSTERY INSIDE AN ENIGMA
GMs, especially the kind of GMs who like mysteries and have a disproportionate prep-to-game ratio, often forget two things:
First, fictional mysteries are, generally, meant to be solved, which ideally means that there should be a way for the other people at the table to work out what the hell is going on. Generally this is because the GM's
Second, in fiction, things do not exist if the audience is not aware of them. So while the GM may have an annotated chart of which townspeople are secretly members of The Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night, if there's no way to discover this information and most of the Elucidated Brothers don't ever appear "onscreen" in their black hooded robes, then functionally the chart is just the GM playing with himself. If Rad Witz Rileh the kindly town priest is, secretly, Wizard Hitler, but he never does any Wizard Hitler shit the players or their characters can find out about, Rad Witz Rileh is, for all intents and purposes other than the GM playing with himself, not Wizard Hitler.
This generally leads to PCs wandering around aimlessly, rifling through desk-drawers in the vain hope that there might be something relevant to the plot in there, and resorting to shining lanterns in the faces of captured goons while Chunk The Barbarian slaps them and yells "WHO DO YOU WORK FOR?" Eventually, the GM will either take pity on them and have Rad Witz Rileh start leaving post-it notes with his evil plans on them all over the place, like in Shadows Over Bögenhafen, or just have his evil plan come to fruition, probably dropping rocks on the PCs' heads in the process.
It's rare for a Clever Twist to be recieved well; even in cases where the table seems to like it, there's often at least one player privately fantasising about throwing dice at the GM. While Clever Twists are an issue across tatterpigs as a form, they seem especially common in the d20sphere, probably because:
- D&D is The Roleplaying Game; it's where a lot of people get their start as a GM, and newbie GMs frequently don't get how much something sucks until they've experienced it first-hand, which is also why they keep trying to capture PCs or put them in unwinnable fights they're supposed to run away from.
- Matt Mercer, The Worst Dungeon Master In The World, is apparently addicted to Shocking Betrayals and Player-Versus-Player Strife along with interminable fucking descriptions; but, because popular consensus holds that the guy who voices The Cowboy Who Must Not Be Named is the World's Best DM (he's not, but this post isn't about how overrated he is), people think Clever Twists are the right way to GM.
Fortunately, THERE IS A CURE! Whenever you, as the GM, think something's going to be So Fucking Cool and the other players are going to love it, take a moment to put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself: "Is this Fucking Cool? Would I love it if it were sprung unexpectedly upon me? Am I actually telling and showing them enough information for them to make choices based on more than blind instinct and playing hot-and-cold with me, the GM?"
If the answer to any of those questions is "No," you might have fucked up.
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- Location
- Somewhere
1. Player vs Player strife is bad, and Mercer is bad for encouraging it.
2. The rest of that rant was wrong. Yes, literally any person you encounter might have a secret evil plot. But the vast majority don't.
The problem isn't that betrayal and/or doppleganger replacement style tricks are bad, it's that they need to be used sparingly.
If it happens once in ten adventures, it's not going to turn players into paranoid loons who think their DM is literally out to get them personally unless they had trust issues either of their own or with that DM prior to the in-game events.
2. The rest of that rant was wrong. Yes, literally any person you encounter might have a secret evil plot. But the vast majority don't.
The problem isn't that betrayal and/or doppleganger replacement style tricks are bad, it's that they need to be used sparingly.
If it happens once in ten adventures, it's not going to turn players into paranoid loons who think their DM is literally out to get them personally unless they had trust issues either of their own or with that DM prior to the in-game events.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I feel like you're missing my point a little. I'm not complaining about, like, the possibility of secret villainy, I'm complaining about the tendency for secret villainy to present players with catch-22 situations where the only way to unravel the sinister schemes and elaborate plots arrayed against them is to act like total shitheads toward the actual other people at the table.
Like, if a perfectly well-meaning GM has secretly told one player that their character has been replaced by a shapeshifting servant of darkness, even if the other players manage to work this out they're going to be weighing their in-character understanding that Fredward The Fighter is acting strangely with the out-of-character knowledge that, if they're wrong and Fredward's player is just having an off day or whatever, it'd be a total dick move to whack Fredward over the head, tie him to a chair, shine a lamp in his face, and have Chunk The Barbarian slap him while yelling "WHO ARE YOU?"
But if they don't do that, Evil Fredward's sudden yet inevitable betrayal could bring the campaign to a shuddering halt when he leads them into a TPK situation, so...
Eh personally my 'clever' twists is just tweaking encounters a little and throwing a different creature at my players then they expected, I like tailoring stuff for my players and keeping them on their toes but not to a stupid degree or actively trying to stomp them.
And as a player and a dm, everything goes in dnd as far as classes and races go, just within reason, so if someone wants to play a hald dragon then sure, just find a good homebrew for it and I'll talk it over with you and probably okay it.
And as a player and a dm, everything goes in dnd as far as classes and races go, just within reason, so if someone wants to play a hald dragon then sure, just find a good homebrew for it and I'll talk it over with you and probably okay it.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Literally Divine Fiat. Lloth wants it this way and so it is.
That's been a running joke for decades now:
Someday Araushnee is going to declare that she's finished her sociology experiment and the drow are going to be so confused.
Do you have source for this by any chance?
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- Location
- Patriarchova
Except that this degree of constant, proactive divine intervention doesn't exist anywhere else in the setting. Only with the drow.
Why is Lolth uniquely able and/or willing to micromanage her worshippers' society and miraculously cause it to hold together in circumstances that civilizations of every other race can and have collapsed under?
The answer is that it's a bullshit copout ass-covering explanation from lazy hack writers.
To the second thing: are you asking for the post that had the typo that inspired me in it? If so, it was from multiple years ago and in a server I'm no longer part of.
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- Location
- Somewhere
She micromanages them to an insane degree, but she's also rather explicitly insane herself. She's basically a toxic mother who got one of the kids in the divorce and is micromanaging their life and making sure to teach them to hate dad and their siblings.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
No, but nothing we really see of Forgotten Realms indicates that the Gods can actually micromanage that much, or they wouldn't need, y'know, to work and operate as they do?
It's like, sure, plenty of rulers wish that they were not just absolute rulers, but the meme of absolute rulers where it actually just means absolute... but that's in fact not really doable?
The idea that she's the only control freak among all the Gods... wouldn't make much sense, tbh.
It's like, sure, plenty of rulers wish that they were not just absolute rulers, but the meme of absolute rulers where it actually just means absolute... but that's in fact not really doable?
The idea that she's the only control freak among all the Gods... wouldn't make much sense, tbh.
Honestly I wouldn't worry about how drow society hasn't imploded ready, lolth is legit bugfuck nuts and bounces around giving boons and punishments around like crazy, hell in one setting the drow got sick of her shit and she had to rely on goblin converts. It's only by a miracle she manages to keep them afloat with her micromanagement.
Besides, I ain't a big fan of drow so I could care less about them, I'm all about that draconic grindset. Still hoping fo rainy semi official half dragons
Besides, I ain't a big fan of drow so I could care less about them, I'm all about that draconic grindset. Still hoping fo rainy semi official half dragons
This comes across as generally kinda hostile and unpleasant to read. If you're trying to do a Newbie GM Advice Series, I'd suggest tuning it way, way down on the insults and general hostility, and way, way up on proactive advice and explanation of gaming social dynamics, though you do have the latter present to a degree.
- Location
- Patriarchova
If that's what the players signed up for, then it's fine.
LordInsane
Loyalist to the Alvarian Merchant's Guild
- Location
- Bohuslän, Occupied Norway
She's the only control freak among all the gods who has achieved a local dominance over her divine neighbourhood (that is, her pantheon) and has actually managed to stick around. Gilgeam, literal God-King, was really not that far removed from her towards the end of his reign, it's just that Gilgeam was one of the gods who died in the Time of Troubles and didn't come back later plus hadn't been alone in the Untheric pantheon for nearly as long as Lloth has been the ruler of the Dark Seldarine.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Oh, you were quoting yourself. Sorry, that wasn't clear to me.
Honestly I'm not sure if the "Lloth wills it" is actual canon or just popular fanon, but I've always found it funny.
I got the impression that they were quoting off of some blog, rather than personally giving unsolicited advice. I may be mistaken.
Pretty sure it's canon, since there are repeated mentions of Lolth actively punishing Drow that work against "the way things are done".
- Location
- Somewhere
Like, she physically visits each city once a year. She sent a literal army of demons lead by a Balor to calm shit down when the civil war shit got too big in the main FR drow city. She's pretty invested.
- Location
- Patriarchova
Why can't the other gods do this with their own worshippers?