The fiends made a mistake...

[WeAreUnity]

I just re-read from the point the fiends sho up, and i noticed something they overlooked.

They never forbade V from using all that epic magic AGAINST THEM.

So if i was V, (and i regularly play evil sorcerers), i would kill dragon, take family to durkon, then planeshift to the fiends, and throw indiscriminate epic spells till nothe exists in the area.

After that, V won't have to worry about the price, cause there's no fiends to collect.

[X2]

Interesting theory, provided the fiends are actually weaker than the soul-spliced V. Because he could dump epic level spells and they could end the soul-splice prematurely and then use his carcass for an air-freshener and go on to the next bozo who dreams of ultimate arcane power. *gets an idea*

[RMS Oceanic]

This assumes that they wouldn't have taken precautions against their clients attacking them. If I were them I'd have some sort of "kill switch" that would end the splice if V attacks.

[Tempest Fennac]

I assumed that the Feinds were more powerful then Soul Spliced V based on their ability to bind the 3 powerful spellcasters to V. If they aren't, I'm assuming they would have a back-up which would end the splice.

[Zeitgeist]

This assumes that they wouldn't have taken precautions against their clients attacking them. If I were them I'd have some sort of "kill switch" that would end the splice if V attacks.

This is correct.

I in no way believe they are more powerful than V now, or they'd own the world for sure. There would also be no reason to bother with a soul splice.

[zyphyr]

The splice only lasts as long as V can hold it together by force of will.

V isn't doing anything the 3 souls disapprove of currently, so they aren't fighting to end it.

If V goes to try to kill the fiends, I would expect at least one of the souls to start resisting. Such resistance is probably the built in 'kill switch'.

[Tempest Fennac]

Now that I think about it, would the souls have a reason to stop V from killing the Fiends? Assuming the Fiends are less powerful then the souls (which, admittedly, is unlikely), would they be bothered about V succeeding? (They may see the Fiends being killed as a shortcut to gaining more influence.)

[Sebastian]

This is correct.

I in no way believe they are more powerful than V now, or they'd own the world for sure. There would also be no reason to bother with a soul splice.

I think the three fiends are more powerful than Spliced-V

And I also think that there is still somebody in the multiverse (entity or group) even more powerful than them.

Why they don't own the world? For the same reason a human don't bother to "own" an anthill.

[Volkov]

The three fiends probably have a Demon Prince or an Archdevil on call. A gates of hell asmodeus or demogorgon would surely put uber-v down.

[zyphyr]

Now that I think about it, would the souls have a reason to stop V from killing the Fiends? Assuming the Fiends are less powerful then the souls (which, admittedly, is unlikely), would they be bothered about V succeeding? (They may see the Fiends being killed as a shortcut to gaining more influence.)

I am operating under the assumption that each of the three fiends provided one of the souls.

If that is in fact the case, one of the souls is Lawful Evil and would almost assuredly be under orders to resist in such a case. Being Lawful, it would obey.

The reactions of Neutral and Chaotic would be harder to predict.

Of course, all 3 could have been provided by the Chaotic side and then all bets are off.

[Lissibith]

Now that I think about it, would the souls have a reason to stop V from killing the Fiends? Assuming the Fiends are less powerful then the souls (which, admittedly, is unlikely), would they be bothered about V succeeding? (They may see the Fiends being killed as a shortcut to gaining more influence.)

Is it possible that a splice could end if the one of those who cast it dies? That could explain both why they wouldn't want V to kill the fiends and why V might not go after them?

[V'icternus]

I personally beleive that they can dispel it, because technically, they do own those souls, they are just lending them out.

Add that to the fact that they cast the spell that attached them to V, and we've got a pretty good case against them dying due to their little "triple-soul-splice" plan.

[Silverraptor]

Interesting theory. But V doesn't know which domain the three fiends are now.

[Rotipher]

For that matter, V probably doesn't know their real appearances or names. It'd be even harder to find them, if that's the case.

[Silverraptor]

For that matter, V probably doesn't know their real appearances or names. It'd be even harder to find them, if that's the case.

Uhhh... There names are right here. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0632.html)

[Korwin]

If that is in fact the case, one of the souls is Lawful Evil and would almost assuredly be under orders to resist in such a case. Being Lawful, it would obey.


How I dislike the alignment in D&D...

Do you know which of the Law and Chaos paradigm [see spoiler] are the correct for OOTS?



2.2.3 Law and Chaos: Your Rules or Mine?

Let’s get this out in the open: Law and Chaos do not have any meaning under the standard D&D rules.
We are aware that especially if you’ve been playing this game for a long time, you personally probably have an understanding of what you think Law and Chaos are supposed to mean. You possibly even believe that the rest of your group thinks that Law and Chaos mean the same thing you do. But you’re probably wrong. The nature of Law and Chaos is the source of more arguments among D&D players (veteran and novice alike) than any other facet of the game. More than attacks of opportunities, more than weapon sizing, more even than spell effect inheritance. And the reason is because the “definition” of Law and Chaos in the Player’s Handbook is written so confusingly that the terms are not even mutually exclusive. Look it up, this is a written document, so it’s perfectly acceptable for you to stop reading at this time, flip open the Player’s Handbook, and start reading the alignment descriptions. The Tome of Fiends will still be here when you get back.
There you go! Now that we’re all on the same page (page XX), the reason why you’ve gotten into so many arguments with people as to whether their character was Lawful or Chaotic is because absolutely every action that any character ever takes could logically be argued to be both. A character who is honorable, adaptable, trustworthy, flexible, reliable, and loves freedom is a basically stand-up fellow, and meets the check marks for being “ultimate Law” and “ultimate Chaos”. There aren’t any contradictory adjectives there. While Law and Chaos are supposed to be opposed forces, there’s nothing antithetical about the descriptions in the book.

Ethics Option 1: A level of Organization.
Optimal span of control is 3 to 5 people. Maybe Chaotic characters demand to personally control more units than that themselves and their lack of delegation ends up with a quagmire of incomprehensible proportions. Maybe Chaotic characters refuse to bow to authority at all and end up in units of one. Whatever the case, some DMs will have Law be well organized and Chaos be poorly organized. In this case, Law is objectively a virtue and Chaos is objectively a flaw.
Being disorganized doesn’t mean that you’re more creative or interesting, it just means that you accomplish less with the same inputs. In this model pure Chaos is a destructive, but more importantly incompetent force.

Ethics Option 2: A Question of Sanity.
Some DMs will want Law and Chaos to mean essentially “Sane” and “Insane”. That’s fine, but it doesn’t mean that Chaos is funny. In fact, insanity is generally about the least funny thing you could possibly imagine. An insane person reacts inappropriately to their surroundings. That doesn’t mean that they perform unexpected actions, that’s just surrealist. And Paladins are totally permitted to enjoy non sequitur based humor and art.
See, insanity is when you perform the same action over and over again and expect different results. In this model we get a coherent explanation for why, when all the forces of Evil are composed of a multitude of strange nightmarish creatures, and the forces of Good have everything from a glowing patch of light to a winged snake tailed woman, every single soldier in the army of Chaos is a giant frog. This is because in this model Limbo is a place that is totally insane. It’s a place where the answer to every question really is “Giant Frog”. Creatures of Chaos then proceed to go to non Chaotically-aligned planes and are disappointed and confused when doors have to be pushed and pulled to open and entrance cannot be achieved by “Giant Frog”.
If Chaos is madness, it’s not “spontaneous”, it’s “non-functional”. Actual adaptability is sane. Adapting responses to stimuli is what people are supposed to do. For reactions to be sufficiently inappropriate to qualify as insanity, one has to go pretty far into one’s own preconceptions. Actual mental illness is very sad and traumatic just to watch as an outside observer. Actually living that way is even worse. It is strongly suggested therefore, that you don’t go this route at all. It’s not that you can’t make D&D work with sanity and insanity as the core difference between Law and Chaos, it’s that in doing so you’re essentially making the Law vs. Chaos choice into the choice between good and bad. That and there is a certain segment of the roleplaying community that cannot differentiate absurdist humor from insanity and will insist on doing annoying things in the name of humor. And we hate those people.

Ethics Option 3: The Laws of the Land.
Any region that has writing will have an actual code of laws. Even oral traditions will have, well, traditions. In some campaigns, following these laws makes you Lawful, and not following these laws makes you Chaotic. This doesn’t mean that Lawful characters necessarily have to follow the laws of Kyuss when you invade his secret Worm Fort, but it does mean that they need to be an “invading force” when they run around in Kyuss’ Worm Fort. Honestly, I’m not sure what it even means to have a Chaotic society if Lawful means “following your own rules”. This whole schema is workable, but only with extreme effort. It helps if there’s some sort of divinely agreed upon laws somewhere that nations and individuals can follow to a greater or lesser degree. But even so, there’s a lot of hermits and warfare in the world such that whether people are following actual laws can be just plain hard to evaluate.
I’d like to endorse this more highly, since any time you have characters living up to a specific arbitrary code (or not) it becomes a lot easier to get things evaluated. Unfortunately, it’s really hard to even imagine an entire nation fighting for not following their own laws. That’s just. . . really weird. But if you take Law to mean law, then you’re going to have to come to terms with that.

Ethics Option 4: My Word is My Bond.
Some DMs are going to want Law to essentially equate to following through on things. A Lawful character will keep their word and do things that they said they were going to. In this model, a Lawful character has an arbitrary code of conduct and a Chaotic character does not. That’s pretty easy to adjudicate, you just announce what you’re going to do and if you do it, you’re Lawful and if you don’t you’re not.
Here’s where it gets weird though: That means that Lawful characters have a harder time working together than do non-lawful characters. Sure, once they agree to work together there’s some Trust there that we can capitalize, but it means that there are arbitrary things that Lawful characters won’t do. Essentially this means that Chaotic parties order one mini-pizza each while Lawful parties have to get one extra large pizza for the whole group – and we know how difficult that can be to arrange. A good example of this in action is the Paladin’s code: they won’t work with Evil characters, which restricts the possibilities of other party members. In the world, this means that if you attack a Chaotic city, various other chaotic characters will trickle in to defend it. But if you attack a Lawful city, chances are that it’s going to have to stand on its own.

Adherence to Self: Not a Rubric for Law
Sometimes Lawfulness is defined by people as adhering to one’s personal self. That may sound very “Lawful”, but there’s no way that makes any sense. Whatever impulses you happen to have, those are going to be the ones that you act upon, by definition. If it is in your nature to do random crap that doesn’t make any sense to anyone else – then your actions will be contrary and perplexing, but they will still be completely consistent with your nature. Indeed, there is literally nothing you can do that isn’t what you would do. It’s circular.

Rigidity: Not a Rubric for Law
Sometimes Lawfulness is defined by people as being more “rigid” as opposed to “spontaneous” in your action. That’s crap. Time generally only goes in one direction, and it generally carries a one to one correspondence with itself. That means that as a result of a unique set of stimuli, you are only going to do one thing. In D&D, the fact that other people weren’t sure what the one thing you were going to do is handled by a Bluff check, not by being Chaotic.

[Rotipher]

Uhhh... There names are right here. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0632.html)

Again, V doesn't necessarily know their real appearances or names. Fiends who hand out their business cards to powerful wizards use an alias, assuming they don't enjoy answering Planar Binding spells.

[hamishspence]

Going by Fiendish Codex 2 descriptions of Obesiant (extremely Lawful) acts- Law has a lot to do with authority and obedience.

Swearing fealty
Accepting legal judgements that go against you
Following rules you personally consider stupid
Obeying a superior that you do not respect
Carrying out sentences imposed by a court

These are examples of Law in action- at its strongest.

Which is not to say Qaar can't say: "I've changed my mind" after all, he hasn't sworn fealty to V- that is, promised to obey any order he gives.

[Korwin]

@hamishspence
Did you respond to my post?
My point was/is that D&D Sourcebooks contradict themselves about alignments, you can quote one and it means nothing, because I could find another book thats says something contradictory.

And we have no knowledge which interpretation is the correct one in OOTS...



A character who is honorable, adaptable, trustworthy, flexible, reliable, and loves freedom is a basically stand-up fellow, and meets the check marks for being “ultimate Law” and “ultimate Chaos”. There aren’t any contradictory adjectives there.

[hamishspence]

yes- though it was general comment as well.

Its the only book with actual rules mechanics- sure, you can find flavor text to support both merciful and merciless as LG, but when you actually have a mechanical rule "Doing this act grants you Law points, basically" its a bit more solid.

[Porthos]

yes- though it was general comment as well.

Its the only book with actual rules mechanics- sure, you can find flavor text to support both merciful and merciless as LG, but when you actually have a mechanical rule "Doing this act grants you Law points, basically" its a bit more solid.

<broken record>

Yeah, but the FC books suck and should be roundly mocked whenever possible. :smalltongue:

</broken record>

NOTE: Sorry, bad habit of mine when it comes to those two books. Believe me, I do usually hold my tongue when it comes to them. But sometimes I do fail my Will save. :smalltongue:

[hamishspence]

I find them pretty good on most things- monsters, details on the Lower Planes, etc.

the whole Evil Acts require Repentance+Restitution, not just alignment change, to get you out of Hell, is a little unusual, but it's an interesting concept.

[Volkov]

I just re-read from the point the fiends sho up, and i noticed something they overlooked.

They never forbade V from using all that epic magic AGAINST THEM.

So if i was V, (and i regularly play evil sorcerers), i would kill dragon, take family to durkon, then planeshift to the fiends, and throw indiscriminate epic spells till nothe exists in the area.

After that, V won't have to worry about the price, cause there's no fiends to collect.

The only thing they'll be thinking about is how to escape Tiamat's wrath. Which is beyond their ability. When Tiamat gets them, they will be demoted back to manes, grubs, and lemures respectively. Then tormented for all eternity with their mind's painfully aware of what's happening to them.

[Volkov]

<broken record>

Yeah, but the FC books suck and should be roundly mocked whenever possible. :smalltongue:

</broken record>

NOTE: Sorry, bad habit of mine when it comes to those two books. Believe me, I do usually hold my tongue when it comes to them. But sometimes I do fail my Will save. :smalltongue:

They are amazing books and give incredible amounts of backstory to each of the fiendish races. Too bad 3.5 was killed before they could make a third one about the Yugoloths. I wanted to see the General of Gehenna's stats and the stats of the Current Oinoloth.

[hamishspence]

Might depend on how important the archdevil member is in the Hellish Lowerarchy. Tiamat has to maintain relations with the rest of Hell- might not be able to just launch an attack to take out one archdevil (duke of hell, exile?) without aggravating the others.

[Volkov]

Might depend on how important the archdevil member is in the Hellish Lowerarchy. Tiamat has to maintain relations with the rest of Hell- might not be able to just launch an attack to take out one archdevil (duke of hell, exile?) without aggravating the others.

She can freely kill Cedrick and Nero as they don't have one rule of hell protecting them. Well maybe not Nero since Devils are keen on maintaining friendly relations with the Yugoloths, but Cedrick is good as dead since Baator's lower downs tend to turn a blind eye on the slaughter of important demons.

[David Argall]

They never forbade V from using all that epic magic AGAINST THEM.

So if i was V, planeshift to the fiends, and throw indiscriminate epic spells till nothe exists in the area.

After that, V won't have to worry about the price, cause there's no fiends to collect.

The fiends are way above V in power. Note they cast Time Stop and it lasts as long as they want, not the 2-5 rounds V has to put up with. They were also the ones to create this splice and had no problem in controlling those souls.

So no, if V tries to take out the fiends, she will get spanked.

[GSFB]

I don't believe the fiends could stop uber V if uber V really wanted to take them on - except for the very good argument that they could terminate the soul splice if they wanted to.

Sure, they had the power to stop time beyond the normal spell and to come up with the soul splice in the first place. But we have no idea what they had to do in order to achieve these. I doubt they have such power available with spontaneous casting. I would suspect they had to spend ages on intricate rituals to set it all up. Why else would it be a "once a century" sort of deal?

V, on the other hand, has spells of epic doom ready to cast spontaneously. I believe V could wipe out the 3 fiends in a single round... but then, I also believe the 3 fiends would simply dismiss the splice if necessary.

Now, as for the "why wouldn't they already own the world" bit... just because you can put together an uber caster for a limited duration doesn't mean you can accomplish anything with that power. Sure, you could wipe out quite a few enemies, but nature abhors a vacuum. Wipe out a few celestial rulers, and some other righteous beings take their place. The splice appears to have a limited duration. Where would the fiends be once the splice ended if they tried to create an uber caster to take on the Heavens? They'd be roasting on celestial spits.

That's the problem with power like this. It is fairly limited in application, and you had better plan out how to make the most lasting impression with it, because once the juice runs out, you become a big fat target. That's their plan with V. It isn't about using all that power. It's about maneuvering an agent, willing or not, into a position to exercise that power with surgical precision when the timing is just right.

Once the splice wears off and V is "normal" (though V will never be "normal" again), then the fiends have what they want: an agent who, when the timing is right, will HAVE to surrender control and obey.

The fiends made no mistakes. It is V who made the mistake. V gave up everything, and will probably still lose the family in the end anyway.

[silvadel]

Lawful evil is only lawful up to the point where one can take over. Assassinating one's superior isnt an unusual method of moving up in a LE society.

In essence if the three really get a feel for the added power of being one and they thought they could take the fiends -- I do not think they would be averse to making a go of it if V decided on that course.

Thing is also that if they took a direct hand in ending the splice -- that would be a breach of contract even if V were attacking them.

[holywhippet]

I can think of one possible mistake the fiends made - they didn't think V would get any experience (or no significant experience) from anything he/she did during the soul splice. However, they were assuming he/she was going to kill a single black dragon - not genocide the entire species or something close to that.