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Yoctogram
2010-05-11, 01:07 PM
I'm new here, so forgive me if this has already been asked.
The whole sigil, city of doors thing is my plane of choice,
BUT, there is a alarming lack of stats for the lady of pain.

All the books say are "She's a being of godlike power" and so on, and so on.
I don't care if it's homebrewed.

Thanks.

LibraryOgre
2010-05-11, 01:10 PM
Probably, but I don't see why.

She's similar to Ao of FR... you don't need stats so much as a personality, because her spells per day and spells known entries are simply "Yes."

Yora
2010-05-11, 01:10 PM
If there are stats for it, it can be defeated. The Lady isn't supposed to be defeated, so there have never been official stats for her.
She doesn't care how powerful characters are. Whatever is the highest level characters can attain in the setting, she is still far more powerful.

Caliphbubba
2010-05-11, 01:13 PM
It's generally considered taboo amoung Planescape lovers to want to stat the LoP as far as I can tell. there might be someting over here www.planewalker.com and I think I remember someone doing a build over her on some iteration of the the Dicefreaks boards, but I don't know exactly where.

Suffice to say she has the power of plot. and atleast strong enough to smoke-check a greater god and bar all other god-level powered beings from her domain.

good luck.

arguskos
2010-05-11, 01:18 PM
It's generally considered taboo amoung Planescape lovers to want to stat the LoP as far as I can tell. there might be someting over here
That's a light way of saying it. More precisely, it's SACRILEGE. See, the Lady is a metaphysical concept given a name and general form. She exists in a way that other beings don't, more akin to an elemental than anything else really.

Giving the Lady of Pain stats is like giving anger stats. It just defeats the entire point of the concept to begin with.

On a related note, what concept the Lady personally embodies changes with the telling, and if you're a smart cutter, you won't carry that chant too far, lest you walk the mazes. :smallcool:

Doc Roc
2010-05-11, 01:22 PM
Berk, we dunnae even stat the Dabs.

Grommen
2010-05-11, 01:22 PM
Their are some things that should always be some "You loose" things in RPG's.

That would be one of them.

Mess with the Lady. You loose. You don't need stats for that. :smallbiggrin:

WoodenSword
2010-05-11, 01:23 PM
I could whip up stats, but she's probably BEYOND epic. Like ECL 2000 beyond...

arguskos
2010-05-11, 01:27 PM
Berk, we dunnae even stat the Dabs.
Oi basher, no need to name 'im a berk, just a crude. Yocto, all this planar's got to say is dis: it's the Lady's word on dis one. Take yer jink and get back to an oasis. Damn, I need to practice my cant more, it's rusty.

Cicciograna
2010-05-11, 01:28 PM
...that would be as statting Chuck Norris :smallbiggrin:

hamishspence
2010-05-11, 01:29 PM
Berk, we dunnae even stat the Dabs.

Are you talking about the dabus? Expedition to the Demonweb Pits stats them out- they are CR2.

druid91
2010-05-11, 01:31 PM
here you go the only stat you need.

I Win.(Ex): The lady gains plus infinity to AC, BaB, all saves, and wins any opposing skill check. this ability may be used to grant the lady any ability or spell she wants as a free action. Her Hit-Points change to - as she can take no damage and gains SR 999999999999999999999999999999999999.
:smallbiggrin:

that sound good?

Saph
2010-05-11, 01:32 PM
I think someone did a set of stats for the Lady of Pain once.

It had entries such as:

HP: More
AC: You miss
Attack: Hits
Damage: Choose effect
Saves: Yes

. . . and so on. You get the idea.

Gamerlord
2010-05-11, 01:33 PM
I'm new here, so forgive me if this has already been asked.
The whole sigil, city of doors thing is my plane of choice,
BUT, there is a alarming lack of stats for the lady of pain.

All the books say are "She's a being of godlike power" and so on, and so on.
I don't care if it's homebrewed.

Thanks.



Lady of Pain
n/a Supreme Queen of all
HD 1000000 d20 (Don't even bother figuring out)
Speed 100000 ft. (a lot of squares)
Init: +1000000
AC: A metric ton
BAB +a lot; Grp +1000000
Attack everything
Full-Attack everything
Space n/a ft.; Reach n/a ft.
Special Attacks all
Special Qualities all
Saves Fort +1000000 Ref +1000000 Will +X 1000000
Abilities Str 1000000, Dex 1000000, Con 1000000, Int 1000000, Wis 1000000, Cha 1000000
Skills all
Feats all
Environment all
Organization Name Pray to your DM it is one
Challenge Rating 100000000000000000000000000000000000000
Treasure everything gold; everything gems; everything art; everything magical items
Alignment None
Advancement by all;all
Level Adjustment you've gotta be kidding me

That answer you question? :smalltongue:

Doc Roc
2010-05-11, 01:34 PM
Are you talking about the dabus? Expedition to the Demonweb Pits stats them out- they are CR2.

Hoy, I seen that, and ta me it tasted like it was sorta.... Through a Bonebox, Darkly. Screed, I mean.

Noedig
2010-05-11, 01:35 PM
It makes me sad that I can understand Sigil-speak, but not write it.

Kurald Galain
2010-05-11, 01:35 PM
Let me put it like this. She can take down The Nameless One without breaking a sweat. And, for that matter, Aoskar of the Portals, Ravel Puzzlewell, and friggin' Vecna. Stats don't do her justice.

BlckDv
2010-05-11, 01:37 PM
Are you talking about the dabus? Expedition to the Demonweb Pits stats them out- they are CR2.

Oh well, sure, if you're going to go quoting facts and suchlike...

My take has always been just because a few Dabus here and there get told to take a dive doesn't mean you've tumbled to the dark of how they work.

druid91
2010-05-11, 01:39 PM
It makes me sad that I can understand Sigil-speak, but not write it.

It makes me sad that I understand none of it.

Caliphbubba
2010-05-11, 01:50 PM
That's a light way of saying it. More precisely, it's SACRILEGE. See, the Lady is a metaphysical concept given a name and general form. She exists in a way that other beings don't, more akin to an elemental than anything else really.

Pontificating to da choir, berk. :smallbiggrin:

The Demented One
2010-05-11, 01:56 PM
Giving the Lady of Pain stats is like giving anger stats. It just defeats the entire point of the concept to begin with.

I'm pretty sure Krimm has done exactly that.

The Demented One
2010-05-11, 01:57 PM
HD 1000000 d20 (Don't even bother figuring out)

This is a finite number, and therefore she can be killed. Might wanna take care of that.

Tavar
2010-05-11, 02:00 PM
I'm pretty sure Krimm has done exactly that.

Well, I think it's the Exalted Mindset. The embodiment of Virtue and victory has stats, and can be beaten by relatively new characters, if they cripplingly specialize themselves.

deuxhero
2010-05-11, 02:00 PM
Acctually yes. I have heard there is a sheet for her with stuff like "AC:You miss" and "Initiative:Goes First" .

Ravens_cry
2010-05-11, 02:02 PM
Lady of Pain
n/a Supreme Queen of all
HD 1000000 d20 (Don't even bother figuring out)
Speed 100000 ft. (a lot of squares)
Init: +1000000
AC: A metric ton
BAB +a lot; Grp +1000000
Attack everything
Full-Attack everything
Space n/a ft.; Reach n/a ft.
Special Attacks all
Special Qualities all
Saves Fort +1000000 Ref +1000000 Will +X 1000000
Abilities Str 1000000, Dex 1000000, Con 1000000, Int 1000000, Wis 1000000, Cha 1000000
Skills all
Feats all
Environment all
Organization Name Pray to your DM it is one
Challenge Rating 100000000000000000000000000000000000000
Treasure everything gold; everything gems; everything art; everything magical items
Alignment None
Advancement by all;all
Level Adjustment you've gotta be kidding me

That answer you question? :smalltongue:
You still hit it on a 20.

Caliphbubba
2010-05-11, 02:03 PM
look what I found....

http://dicefreaks.superforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=5&start=120

hamishspence
2010-05-11, 02:05 PM
Oh well, sure, if you're going to go quoting facts and suchlike...

My take has always been just because a few Dabus here and there get told to take a dive doesn't mean you've tumbled to the dark of how they work.


Or, the CR 2 versions represent the bare minimum power level, but they can be upgraded considerably.

Noedig
2010-05-11, 02:10 PM
Blasphemy.


*Edit* Not the spell.

The Demented One
2010-05-11, 02:12 PM
Well, I think it's the Exalted Mindset. The embodiment of Virtue and victory has stats, and can be beaten by relatively new characters, if they cripplingly specialize themselves.
Mm. While the specifics of design would need to be tweaked for D&D's style, I think that Exalted's notion of "Everything can be statted, everything can be represented mechanically" would work well in it. It'd just take sufficient cleverness to stat something like the Lady of Pain while still retaining her position of cosmic power.

hamishspence
2010-05-11, 02:12 PM
The Dicefreaks version of the Lady?

It does have Regeneration 50- with nothing specified as overcoming it.

WoodenSword
2010-05-11, 02:15 PM
I dig the stats for Lady of Pain, with a couple of additions:

HP: 20000000000000000000000000d% [Always MAX HP] (really cowboy? wanna calculate THIS?)
Spells: EVERYTHING
BAB: Infinity

IthilanorStPete
2010-05-11, 02:17 PM
SCS had a rather nice post ont his subject a while back...


People react with an uneasy discomfort at the suggestion of taking on The Lady of Pain for a reason by the way. The line "She's not a diety" is just brushing the surface of why there's a collective reaction of "no, just, no" to the idea of attacking her or besting her in any way, and it's not because she's got a huge number of hitpoints.
It's not that The Lady is a deity and therefor tougher than you. It's the fact that she's a CONCEPT. And I don't mean in game, she's a concept to the culture that spawned her.

The concept is this: You are a person, and no matter how big and strong and powerful you become, there are things in this world that you simply can't begin to approach understanding.
The Lady of Pain isn't in charge of sigil because someone put her there, she doesn't kill people because she's angry at them, and the fact that we use the word "she" when talking about her doesn't mean she actually has a gender...or is even a thing as we understand it. She's there because she's there. She does the things she does because she does. And trying to apply any kind of number, or impose any kind of ruling, or even saying anything other than "Her Shadow falls on you, and now you no longer exist" isn't so much a lack of understanding as it is an insult to the subculture that spawned the concept itself.

The same applies to, say, Asmodeus, or Cthulhu, or an overdeity like AO.

Asmodeus doesn't have stats. The thing standing in front of you when you meet Asmodeus has stats, but that thing standing in front of you is actually just something your fragile, young (as in not-older-than-time), unprepared mind created because it couldn't process the face of the serpent coiled around the bubble of reality, constricting and pulsating slightly, causing blood to leak from your eyes when it speaks because its pure undiluted evil from which all the ills of this entire universe spring forth are more than any man could come face to face with.

Cthulhu doesn't have stats. Cthulhu's only stat is "1d4 investigators per round". The lucky ones die immediately, the unlucky ones stay concious long enough to puke out their own insides and watch as the fabric of reality shreds and the viscous unknownable unreality reasserts itself over this strange soap bubble with laws and physics and other such nonsense.
He's not a squid faced giant with wings, he's an unnamable force older than the universe, the embodiment of the foot of whatever came before the big bang shoving itself into the door of reality and prying it open to peak in at us.

Ect, ect...

Now don't get me wrong, if you want to shoot cthulhu with a shotgun and sneak up on the lady of pain with garrote wire, that's totally your business, and I hope you enjoy your game immensly.

But please understand that coming to a large gathering of similar geeks and announcing how easy it was to shoot Cthulhu with a sniper rifle is kinda akin to going to a holy temple and loudly denouncing the local faith.
Yeah, it's your opinion, and you're more than entitled to have it, and to speak it loud and proud. But those who DO respect the concept you're deriding are going to lean over and ask "what's the deal, bro?"

This is a gaming forum. That means that, odds are, the majority opinions are that
- Asmodeus is unspeakable primal evil so powerful that he probably came up with the IDEA of evil
- Cthulhu doesn't so much eat you, as reality unravels around him and your death is an incidental side effect to him being concious, and
- The Lady of Pain will throw your keister in an eternal maze for speaking her name too loudly.

so please whisper if you talk about her inside these walls...

DragoonWraith
2010-05-11, 02:17 PM
I dig the stats for Lady of Pain, with a couple of additions:

HP: 20000000000000000000000000d% [Always MAX HP] (really cowboy? wanna calculate THIS?)
Spells: EVERYTHING
BAB: Infinity

It'd be 2000000000000000000000000000. That was easy.

But the correct answer is "Whatever she likes" for every stat, ability, power, or other relevant or irrelevant stat.

WoodenSword
2010-05-11, 02:20 PM
It'd be 2000000000000000000000000000. That was easy.

But the correct answer is "Whatever she likes" for every stat, ability, power, or other relevant or irrelevant stat.

with that on top of that insane HP

Ravens_cry
2010-05-11, 02:28 PM
It'd be 2000000000000000000000000000. That was easy.

But the correct answer is "Whatever she likes" for every stat, ability, power, or other relevant or irrelevant stat.
So she's Pun Pun.
*blinks*
My gods, that's why she wears a mask, there's a kobold under there!

Lateral
2010-05-11, 02:29 PM
Hmm. It might be fun to stat out LoP... to make an "I win" character. Yeah, I'll get right on that... as soon as I finish statting Chuck Norris, Cthulhu, and O-Chul.

@^: No, she most certainly is NOT pun-pun. Pun-pun can be defeated. It's seemingly impossible, but it's not. Without stats, the LoP can't be defeated.

Also, in that quote above, it mentions "AO". Who-?
Also, it puts Asmodeus with Cthulhu in gametwistness. Why?
Also, does CoC have stats for Cthulhu?

IthilanorStPete
2010-05-11, 02:32 PM
So she's Pun Pun.
*blinks*
My gods, that's why she wears a mask, there's a kobold under there!

No...she's actually six giant squirrels wearing a cloak, a ring of levitation and an illusion spell.

The Demented One
2010-05-11, 02:35 PM
Hmm. It might be fun to stat out LoP... to make an "I win" character. Yeah, I'll get right on that... as soon as I finish statting Chuck Norris, Cthulhu, and O-Chul.
It's entirely possible to stat something that is transcendentally powerful and still have it be a meaningful exercise. Difficult. But possible.

Ravens_cry
2010-05-11, 02:36 PM
@^: No, she most certainly is NOT pun-pun. Pun-pun can be defeated. It's seemingly impossible, but it's not. Without stats, the LoP can't be defeated.
Like Good Cat.
But people ,as we can see, keep insisting on giving her stats. It's a conspiracy, I tells you, to weaken her to the point a usurper may take over.

Caliphbubba
2010-05-11, 02:36 PM
No...she's actually six giant squirrels wearing a cloak, a ring of levitation and an illusion spell.

LOL I wondered how long before this old chestnut would show up. Tho I'd always heard a burlap sack instead of a cloak :smallbiggrin:

Cicciograna
2010-05-11, 02:36 PM
She's easy prey for the Mortiverse (http://www.enworld.org/forum/2873260-post1.html).

This is why she shouldn't be statted out: if you want her to be the uberruler of the Entire Cosmos, then she should be able to defeat the Mortiverse. Dicefreaks' version? She won't survive 1 round.

nyarlathotep
2010-05-11, 02:41 PM
Weren't Dabus statted in an old second edition book? They weren't terribly powerful there either and really they don't have to be. Sure they communicate for the Lady but all they have in terms of power is that hurting them makes her mad.

Fortuna
2010-05-11, 02:43 PM
Lady of Pain
n/a Supreme Queen of all
HD 1000000 d20 (Don't even bother figuring out)
Speed 100000 ft. (a lot of squares)
Init: +1000000
AC: A metric ton
BAB +a lot; Grp +1000000
Attack everything
Full-Attack everything
Space n/a ft.; Reach n/a ft.
Special Attacks all
Special Qualities all
Saves Fort +1000000 Ref +1000000 Will +X 1000000
Abilities Str 1000000, Dex 1000000, Con 1000000, Int 1000000, Wis 1000000, Cha 1000000
Skills all
Feats all
Environment all
Organization Name Pray to your DM it is one
Challenge Rating 100000000000000000000000000000000000000
Treasure everything gold; everything gems; everything art; everything magical items
Alignment None
Advancement by all;all
Level Adjustment you've gotta be kidding me

That answer you question? :smalltongue:

A 1d2 crusader rolling a natural 20 still obliterates her in one hit. Then laughs because they just broke every concept of WBL ever.

taltamir
2010-05-11, 02:46 PM
the lady of pain is a FORCE, she bitch-slaps gods around...
If you statted it, you can kill it. Also if you stat it then it is familiar and not scary.
The lady of pain is scary, she is unstoppable, she crushes any who oppose her, even gods.
So, no... no stats for the lady of pain. She cannot be killed, and she is meant to be a scary unknown...

Actually, we can stat her...
Name: Lady of Pain
Age: unknown
Combat: she wins

Gamerkid has the right idea, but even a ridiculous value such as +1000 can be beat. Don't set a target value.

Lateral
2010-05-11, 02:48 PM
A 1d2 crusader rolling a natural 20 still obliterates her in one hit. Then laughs because they just broke every concept of WBL ever.

...huh?

I... umm... what?

Are we thinking of different crusaders?

Cuz, I'm thinking of the ToB class.

Do crusaders have some power involving d2's and nat. 20's that I'm not aware of...?

Seatbelt
2010-05-11, 02:50 PM
She's easy prey for the Mortiverse (http://www.enworld.org/forum/2873260-post1.html).

This is why she shouldn't be statted out: if you want her to be the uberruler of the Entire Cosmos, then she should be able to defeat the Mortiverse. Dicefreaks' version? She won't survive 1 round.

What is even the point of that thing? Its not cool. Its just dumb.

Optimystik
2010-05-11, 02:50 PM
I think someone did a set of stats for the Lady of Pain once.

It had entries such as:

HP: More
AC: You miss
Attack: Hits
Damage: Choose effect
Saves: Yes

. . . and so on. You get the idea.

Going with this one.

Zeta Kai
2010-05-11, 02:53 PM
I recall seeing some stats for her somewhere, but it had a lot of ∞'s in it. It's hard easy to calculate the implications of that.

Yukitsu
2010-05-11, 02:53 PM
A 1d2 crusader rolling a natural 20 still obliterates her in one hit. Then laughs because they just broke every concept of WBL ever.

Only on a natural 20 to hit, assuming she gives him the first round.

The Demented One
2010-05-11, 02:56 PM
...huh?

I... umm... what?

Are we thinking of different crusaders?
1d2 Crusader deals infinite damage with silly gimmicks.

Ravens_cry
2010-05-11, 03:00 PM
Only on a natural 20 to hit, assuming she gives him the first round.
Get 20, 25 to be safe, d2 crusaders. At least one of them has a very good chance of getting a 20.

Do you stat out gravity,
Not the effect, the force itself
Can you pull in gravity with a fishhook
or tie down his tongue with a rope?
Can you put a cord through his nose
or pierce his jaw with a hook?
Will he keep begging you for mercy?
Will he speak to you with gentle words?
(apologies to Job)

Eurus
2010-05-11, 03:01 PM
I think she's better statted as an effect, not a creature.

The Lady's Shadow
You are either destroyed or mazed, according to the Lady's unfathomable reasoning process. No save.

...Of course, this means you could conceivably Iron Heart Surge the Lady away. Hmm. :smallamused:

Optimystik
2010-05-11, 03:03 PM
Get 20, 25 to be safe, d2 crusaders. At least one of them has a very good chance of getting a 20.

If they are in the same reality, they die.
If they aren't in the same reality, they don't have line of sight, and thus can't attack.

Ravens_cry
2010-05-11, 03:04 PM
I think she's better statted as an effect, not a creature.

The Lady's Shadow
You are either destroyed or mazed, according to the Lady's unfathomable reasoning process. No save.

...Of course, this means you could conceivably Iron Heart Surge the Lady away. Hmm. :smallamused:Unless it has a duration measured in 1 or more rounds, then no.

taltamir
2010-05-11, 03:04 PM
I think she's better statted as an effect, not a creature.

The Lady's Shadow
You are either destroyed or mazed, according to the Lady's unfathomable reasoning process. No save.

...Of course, this means you could conceivably Iron Heart Surge the Lady away. Hmm. :smallamused:

*taltamir bursts a blood vein in his forhead*
That was epic of you.

Anyways, are we sure the "lady" is female?
is her race known? (I am pretty sure it isn't)
is her age known? (I am pretty sure it isn't)

MCerberus
2010-05-11, 03:05 PM
Also, does CoC have stats for Cthulhu?

I'm pretty sure it's "C'thulu eats 1d6 investigators per round"

Eurus
2010-05-11, 03:05 PM
Unless it has a duration measured in 1 or more rounds, then no.

What, "from now until the end of eternity or such a time as the Lady's inscrutable goals motivate her to free you" can't be measured in rounds?

Haven
2010-05-11, 03:06 PM
As a Planescape fanboy: aside from the knee-jerk response of "Heresy!" this idea brings about, the fact of the matter is, if someone could have killed the Lady by now, they would have. The setting is old and large and full of things more powerful than any character can ever be, any number of whom would love to take down the Lady and claim Sigil for their own or just enjoy the resultant chaos.

lsfreak
2010-05-11, 03:07 PM
Only on a natural 20 to hit, assuming she gives him the first round.

The thing is, if you give her stats, there's ways of getting around that. That's the problem with stating LoD out.

Tavar
2010-05-11, 03:08 PM
As a Planescape fanboy: aside from the knee-jerk response of "Heresy!" this idea brings about, the fact of the matter is, if someone could have killed the Lady by now, they would have. The setting is old and large and full of things more powerful than any character can ever be, any number of whom would love to take down the Lady and claim Sigil for their own or just enjoy the resultant chaos.

So, then the PC's can't have any meaningful effect on the setting? That's rather limiting.

Lapak
2010-05-11, 03:09 PM
Also, in that quote above, it mentions "AO". Who-?
Also, it puts Asmodeus with Cthulhu in gametwistness. Why?
Also, does CoC have stats for Cthulhu?AO is the Overgod who rules the universe of the Forgotten Realms. Can raise up or throw down deities at will or fundamentally alter their nature (it's Ao that caused their power to be tied to their worshippers, for example). He stands apart from the world and just administers the pantheon; he doesn't act directly in the world in any way or grant power to worshippers or anything.

Cthulu had the stat mentioned in passing: can't be killed, eliminates 1d4 investigators per round. So, yeah. Run.

Asmodeus is considered by some to be the primary embodiment of intelligent evil, not just an arch-fiend, and as such is set up on the uber-god level by those folks.



It's entirely possible to stat something that is transcendentally powerful and still have it be a meaningful exercise. Difficult. But possible.Something transcendentally powerful, sure. Something that is more of a concept than a person, not so much. You can stat out the Avatar of Misery, say, but you can't stat out what Misery is itself.

Now, I'd put the Lady of Pain in that category of potentially-stat-able things. Like one of Neil Gaiman's Endless: you can't stat Death-the-force, but you can stat Death-the-embodiment/perspective/personality. I'm not sure it's worth the effort, though, because any game in which you'd USE those stats would be better served by a system other than D&D.

Eurus
2010-05-11, 03:12 PM
So, then the PC's can't have any meaningful effect on the setting? That's rather limiting.

Not really, because killing the Lady wouldn't so much affect Planescape as... well, make it not Planescape anymore. Of course the PCs can have an effect; the whole theme of Planescape is the incredible power that belief has, and how it can do/change almost anything. But in a significant sense, the Lady is Sigil, or a significant portion thereof, and it really wouldn't be even a similar place without her/

Ehra
2010-05-11, 03:13 PM
So, then the PC's can't have any meaningful effect on the setting? That's rather limiting.

Only if the only thing you consider to be a "meaningful effect" is to destroy the most powerful entity in the setting and remove part of what makes the setting interesting in the first place.

Going by that, you could say that the existence of AO means it's impossible for PCs to have any "meaningful effect" on the Forgotten Realms setting.

edit: Now that I think about it, doesn't AO show up in Dragonlance also?

The Cat Goddess
2010-05-11, 03:14 PM
So, then the PC's can't have any meaningful effect on the setting? That's rather limiting.

Depends on what you mean by "meaningful effect"...

Do you mean overthrowing some petty tyrant who is lording over a small section of the city? You can do that.

Do you mean knocking down the gates of the first layer of Hell and giving the Demons a huge advantage in the Blood War? You can do that.

Do you mean reviving a Being who had become nothing more than a Vestige and restoring his religion? You can do that.

Do you mean wiping out the cornerstone of the entire game-setting and potentially destroying hundreds of planes at once? You shouldn't be able to do that.

Edit: Neat thing about Cuthulu... according to Modern Cuthulu you can blow him up with a Nuke. He just reforms 1d4 rounds later... and now he's radioactive!

chiasaur11
2010-05-11, 03:16 PM
No...she's actually six giant squirrels wearing a cloak, a ring of levitation and an illusion spell.

And the creation of Pun Pun requires creating seceral DR 0 squirrels!

It. All. Adds. Up.

Drascin
2010-05-11, 03:18 PM
SCS had a rather nice post ont his subject a while back...

My main beef with that post is that Cthulhu really isn't all that overpowerful. I mean, if you said, say, Yog-Sothoth, the principle applies. But Cthulhu is a glorified Bishop with tentacles, really :smalltongue:.


So, then the PC's can't have any meaningful effect on the setting? That's rather limiting.

I think it's more that the Lady is Sigil. No Lady, no Sigil. No Sigil, no Planescape. No Planescape, no setting, end of campaign, everything dies. It's akin to saying "the players can't destroy the solar system Oerth is located in? That's limiting!" - yes, it is limiting, but it's a kind of limit that's not practical to test anyway.

Myou
2010-05-11, 03:19 PM
So, then the PC's can't have any meaningful effect on the setting? That's rather limiting.

Yeah, this is why I find it so annoying when people say that you musn't ever have any possibility of fighting a character like this. So what if she's a 'force of nature'? We overcome gravity just by standing up. And in any case, bad metaphors aside, she's a creature, and creatures can be killed. If the players become powerful enough then they have the right to be able to have a real impact on the world, witout a walking deus ex machina with breasts appearing to spoil their fun (no save).

I don't even know why everyone likes her so much. Oh wait, because she's a chick. A BDSM chick. Yeah. :smalltongue:

I guess I might be a little more amenable to a Lord of Pain. >.>


I think it's more that the Lady is Sigil. No Lady, no Sigil. No Sigil, no Planescape. No Planescape, no setting, end of campaign, everything dies. It's akin to saying "the players can't destroy the solar system Oerth is located in? That's limiting!" - yes, it is limiting, but it's a kind of limit that's not practical to test anyway.

So every BBEG trying to destroy the world (sometimes succeeding) is being impractical? :smalltongue:

taltamir
2010-05-11, 03:20 PM
So, then the PC's can't have any meaningful effect on the setting? That's rather limiting.

We are talking about a being who destroys gods at will.
To make an OOTS analogy, the lady of pain is more equivalent to the snarl. Roy and company can have a meaningful effect on the setting without killing the snarl in combat.

the notion of V casting disintegrate at it is hilarious though.

LibraryOgre
2010-05-11, 03:24 PM
Not really, because killing the Lady wouldn't so much affect Planescape as... well, make it not Planescape anymore. Of course the PCs can have an effect; the whole theme of Planescape is the incredible power that belief has, and how it can do/change almost anything. But in a significant sense, the Lady is Sigil, or a significant portion thereof, and it really wouldn't be even a similar place without her/

Hmmm... so, I take my unearthly Charisma (because I'm old school, we're talking a 25 here) and start to gather followers (look! Clerics can have 180 just for reaching high level!), and start a religion. One of the tenets is that everything is mortal... all things die in time, or can be killed. We camp out in the plane of Concordant Opposition (the "Outlands", I suppose, for you youngsters), and just start to talk about accepting the inevitability of death for all things.

At what point does the Lady become mortal?

Morty
2010-05-11, 03:25 PM
So, then the PC's can't have any meaningful effect on the setting? That's rather limiting.

Not being able to kill a couple of powerful beings and generally turn the multiverse inside-out counts as "not having any meaningful effect on the setting"? :smallconfused:

Eldan
2010-05-11, 03:27 PM
As a Planescape fan, my answer is this:

You can kill the Lady of Pain. Perhaps even in combat. You just have to approach it correctly.
How you ask? Gather the people. Gather more and more of them, until they are beyond number. Be a leader of men. Learn to speak to them in a manner that they cry their souls out of their eyes just from hearing your speeches. Refine your words further until the gods weep with joy from your every word and the blood war stops in it's millenia-old path. Speak such that reality groans and trembles from every syllable, and the laws of the multiverse bend ever so slightly at every letter emerging from your lips.
And then tell them.
Tell them of the Lady of Pain, that unjust tyrant ruling over the greatest city ever created by a sapient being, keeping a lid on that crossroad between realities, and holding untold dreams back from becoming real by bending it's portals away from their destinations.
Tell them how she has cruelly slain countless noble heroes, how she flayed noble souls until the streets ran red with their blood, how she engineered the Great Upheaval and the Faction War for her own sick amusement.
And then... then tell them of a sword, and your arm wielding it. How their belief in you empowers you to bring freedom and justice to a multiverse so long enslaved by this force of evil and tyranny. How you will slay the Lady and carry her head through the streets and sing sweet songs of liberty.
Then take up your blade and pray and walk out, alone, through that portal. Go weeping, for you will know that no matter what happens that night, you will have gone beyond the achievements of lesser men and heroes and that your actions may start a conflict bloodier than the blood war and stronger than the enmity between fiend and celestial. A war in which worlds will burn as every planar power will try to take the city for his own.

That is how you try and defeat the Lady. Not by the sword, but by the faith, the dream and the belief of untold mortals.

Project_Mayhem
2010-05-11, 03:27 PM
Hmmm... so, I take my unearthly Charisma (because I'm old school, we're talking a 25 here) and start to gather followers (look! Clerics can have 180 just for reaching high level!), and start a religion. One of the tenets is that everything is mortal... all things die in time, or can be killed. We camp out in the plane of Concordant Opposition (the "Outlands", I suppose, for you youngsters), and just start to talk about accepting the inevitability of death for all things.

At what point does the Lady become mortal?

At about the same point the Planes do?

LibraryOgre
2010-05-11, 03:29 PM
And wasn't Asmodeus statted up in the first Monster Manual? And what are all of you kids doing on my lawn?

Kurald Galain
2010-05-11, 03:31 PM
See, this is what I like about White Wolf. According to their official source books, the stats for Caine are,
You Lose.

Yes, that Caine, the first vampire, who sired the lost second generation, who sired the Antediluvians, and those guys are already transcendentally powerful.

That Dicefreaks thread? Aside from misspelling "dabus" and giving her silly low-level feats like Dodge, Skill Focus, and Spring Attack, it is missing a number of points in attempting to stat out a transcendent entity.

Myou
2010-05-11, 03:31 PM
As a Planescape fan, my answer is this:

You can kill the Lady of Pain. Perhaps even in combat. You just have to approach it correctly.
How you ask? Gather the people. Gather more and more of them, until they are beyond number. Be a leader of men. Learn to speak to them in a manner that they cry their souls out of their eyes just from hearing your speeches. Refine your words further until the gods weep with joy from your every word and the blood war stops in it's millenia-old path. Speak such that reality groans and trembles from every syllable, and the laws of the multiverse bend ever so slightly at every letter emerging from your lips.
And then tell them.
Tell them of the Lady of Pain, that unjust tyrant ruling over the greatest city ever created by a sapient being, keeping a lid on that crossroad between realities, and holding untold dreams back from becoming real by bending it's portals away from their destinations.
Tell them how she has cruelly slain countless noble heroes, how she flayed noble souls until the streets ran red with their blood, how she engineered the Great Upheaval and the Faction War for her own sick amusement.
And then... then tell them of a sword, and your arm wielding it. How their belief in you empowers you to bring freedom and justice to a multiverse so long enslaved by this force of evil and tyranny. How you will slay the Lady and carry her head through the streets and sing sweet songs of liberty.
Then take up your blade and pray and walk out, alone, through that portal. Go weeping, for you will know that no matter what happens that night, you will have gone beyond the achievements of lesser men and heroes and that your actions may start a conflict bloodier than the blood war and stronger than the enmity between fiend and celestial. A war in which worlds will burn as every planar power will try to take the city for his own.

That is how you try and defeat the Lady. Not by the sword, but by the faith, the dream and the belief of untold mortals.

Ahhh, now that's awesome. I love a dm like that, who works with the palyers to make their ideas pratical, rather than just saying "lol no lady of pain has infinite stats lololol". xD

LibraryOgre
2010-05-11, 03:32 PM
At about the same point the Planes do?

That's the chant of a Sinker, berk. ;-)

taltamir
2010-05-11, 03:34 PM
Hmmm... so, I take my unearthly Charisma (because I'm old school, we're talking a 25 here) and start to gather followers (look! Clerics can have 180 just for reaching high level!), and start a religion. One of the tenets is that everything is mortal... all things die in time, or can be killed. We camp out in the plane of Concordant Opposition (the "Outlands", I suppose, for you youngsters), and just start to talk about accepting the inevitability of death for all things.

At what point does the Lady become mortal?

why would she? only gods who are lesser then overgods are beholden to worshipers and the faith of mortals (at the decision of the over-god Ao), the lady of pain is not a goddess, she is a transcendent being who kills gods, bars them from her dimension, and otherwise pushes them around. She requires no worship and in fact PUNISHES those who worship her as a goddess... she has no living worshipers as a result...

So when does she become mortal? never.
When does your little cult get mazed or killed? very soon.

Kurald Galain
2010-05-11, 03:37 PM
Hmmm... so, I take my unearthly Charisma (because I'm old school, we're talking a 25 here) and start to gather followers (look! Clerics can have 180 just for reaching high level!), and start a religion. One of the tenets is that everything is mortal... all things die in time, or can be killed. We camp out in the plane of Concordant Opposition (the "Outlands", I suppose, for you youngsters), and just start to talk about accepting the inevitability of death for all things.

Yeah, you know this fellow named Aoskar? He tried precisely that. If you haven't heard of him, that should tell you how well that turned out...

Drascin
2010-05-11, 03:37 PM
Yeah, this is why I find it so annoying when people say that you musn't ever have any possibility of fighting a character like this. So what if she's a 'force of nature'? We overcome gravity just by standing up. And in any case, bad metaphors aside, she's a creature, and creatures can be killed. If the players become powerful enough then they have the right to be able to have a real impact on the world, witout a walking deus ex machina with breasts appearing to spoil their fun (no save).

I don't even know why everyone likes her so much. Oh wait, because she's a chick. A BDSM chick. Yeah. :smalltongue:

I guess I might be a little more amenable to a Lord of Pain. >.>

You are rather missing the point (and being a bit insulting on the side as well, but I'm going to guess that's mostly intended as joke :smalltongue:). I don't think of the Lady as female, not anymore than, say, a ship is female. The Lady is just something, not someone. She shouldn't even appear in most campaigns. She's the background reason for a place like Sigil (which would be absolutely impossible otherwise) to exist, and the universal keystone. She's not an NPC. She - it - is just Sigil, as in the whole plane, and its defense mechanism. You can destroy her - but not in combat, because what you fight is just a random avatar body. It would require destroying Sigil itself, probably by making it so enough people disbelieve in the place. That's why you don't need stats for the Lady. The whole point is that nobody can kill her by going up to her with a sword (otherwise, someone would have done already).


So every BBEG trying to destroy the world (sometimes succeeding) is being impractical? :smalltongue:

Well, yes. I mean, duh. Destroying the world is always impractical. The BBEGs are just too supremely stupid to notice, or too mad to care. That's kind of what they do.

Besides, I honestly doubt most people will get into a campaign with the aim of the last words by the DM being "You succeed, everything is erased forever, there is no multiverse anymore. So, who's DMing the next campaign". There's a reason most smart BBEGs want to take over the universe, not blow it up :smallamused:.


why would she? only gods who are lesser then overgods are beholden to worshipers and the faith of mortals (at the decision of the over-god Ao), the lady of pain is not a goddess, she is a transcendent being who kills gods, bars them from her dimension, and otherwise pushes them around. She requires no worship and in fact PUNISHES those who worship her as a goddess... she has no living worshipers as a result...

So when does she become mortal? never.
When does your little cult get mazed or killed? very soon.

No, Ao is only FR. Planescape works on belief as a whole, not on worship for gods. Belief makes things exist or not in PS. The plan would probably work, if you manage to not get killed in the meantime.

The part where the universe breaks when you remove the keystone would be problematic, though :smalltongue:.

Eldan
2010-05-11, 03:37 PM
That's the chant of a Sinker, berk. ;-)

And he's perhaps more right than he thinks. If a player came to me and told me "My character's goal is ending the Abyss", I'd nod and think of a way that could be approached. It will probably never be done, but the player can certainly try and fail gloriously while striving for that one slim, slim chance.

electricbee
2010-05-11, 03:40 PM
As a Planescape fan, my answer is this:

You can kill the Lady of Pain. Perhaps even in combat. You just have to approach it correctly.
How you ask? Gather the people. Gather more and more of them, until they are beyond number. Be a leader of men. Learn to speak to them in a manner that they cry their souls out of their eyes just from hearing your speeches. Refine your words further until the gods weep with joy from your every word and the blood war stops in it's millenia-old path. Speak such that reality groans and trembles from every syllable, and the laws of the multiverse bend ever so slightly at every letter emerging from your lips.
And then tell them.
Tell them of the Lady of Pain, that unjust tyrant ruling over the greatest city ever created by a sapient being, keeping a lid on that crossroad between realities, and holding untold dreams back from becoming real by bending it's portals away from their destinations.
Tell them how she has cruelly slain countless noble heroes, how she flayed noble souls until the streets ran red with their blood, how she engineered the Great Upheaval and the Faction War for her own sick amusement.
And then... then tell them of a sword, and your arm wielding it. How their belief in you empowers you to bring freedom and justice to a multiverse so long enslaved by this force of evil and tyranny. How you will slay the Lady and carry her head through the streets and sing sweet songs of liberty.
Then take up your blade and pray and walk out, alone, through that portal. Go weeping, for you will know that no matter what happens that night, you will have gone beyond the achievements of lesser men and heroes and that your actions may start a conflict bloodier than the blood war and stronger than the enmity between fiend and celestial. A war in which worlds will burn as every planar power will try to take the city for his own.

That is how you try and defeat the Lady. Not by the sword, but by the faith, the dream and the belief of untold mortals.


And then she cackles as she cedes to you her power her mantle her distance and you realize that she is now you and you are the result of all that is and are no different than she ever was. You are lost inside all that made her and made her great and terrible and powerful. And you are lost until such time as one will challenge belief in you.

LibraryOgre
2010-05-11, 03:43 PM
why would she? only gods who are lesser then overgods are beholden to worshipers and the faith of mortals (at the decision of the over-god Ao), the lady of pain is not a goddess, she is a transcendent being who kills gods, bars them from her dimension, and otherwise pushes them around. She requires no worship and in fact PUNISHES those who worship her as a goddess... she has no living worshipers as a result...

So when does she become mortal? never.
When does your little cult get mazed or killed? very soon.

You're rattlin' your bone-box, but you're comin' off as a Prime. This Ao ain't worth a dabus's fart outside his little corner of the Prime. I'm not talking about faith in the Lady. I'm talking about belief, and its power to change the multiverse. Strong enough belief can move an entire town from the Outlands to other planes... I was there, last time Arcadia's gate town crossed over (that bit with the pit fiend, and the sword of a paladin, rescued from the Fires of Dis... ye've heard of it).

One o' the things that keeps the Lady immortal and in power is that everyone believes that she's immortal and in power. Every so often, some berk will disbelieve it, try to take her down... but one idiot against the entire multiverse is a losing proposition.

Eldan
2010-05-11, 03:49 PM
And then she cackles as she cedes to you her power her mantle her distance and you realize that she is now you and you are the result of all that is and are no different than she ever was. You are lost inside all that made her and made her great and terrible and powerful. And you are lost until such time as one will challenge belief in you.

That is one way for this to end, and one which I thought of. A good one, even.
The other? You overwrote the destiny of the multiverse, using the power of tales and stories. You are now a being of legend, a concept of the same level as the Lady. You are not her, but you are in her league, and in many ways similar. Also a fitting way to end a campaign.

The morale of the story? If approached correctly, everything is possible. But the DM should appreciate the consequences. Killing the lady will not result in happy fun times.

Lapak
2010-05-11, 03:49 PM
*snip*

That is how you try and defeat the Lady. Not by the sword, but by the faith, the dream and the belief of untold mortals.
See, that makes sense to me. But it's why I said:

Now, I'd put the Lady of Pain in that category of potentially-stat-able things. Like one of Neil Gaiman's Endless: you can't stat Death-the-force, but you can stat Death-the-embodiment/perspective/personality. I'm not sure it's worth the effort, though, because any game in which you'd USE those stats would be better served by a system other than D&D.D&D is (mostly for better, sometimes for worse) a system that is custom-designed for high heroic fantasy, where the outcome often comes down to "I hit it / throw spells at it until it dies." What you're talking about there, and what I'm talking about there, is not high heroic fantasy. If that's the kind of campaign someone is running, it's my opinion that they'd be better off using something that is designed for things like "doing battle using the concept of freedom as a weapon" or "focusing the faith of thousands into a balancing force to an entity that does not live or die as mortals understand those words," like Nobilis or something similar. d20 (and this is not a fault of the system!) breaks down when you're trying to stat such things. If it didn't, it wouldn't handle heroic fantasy very well, something that Nobilis (for example) does not!

Project_Mayhem
2010-05-11, 03:51 PM
And he's perhaps more right than he thinks. If a player came to me and told me "My character's goal is ending the Abyss", I'd nod and think of a way that could be approached. It will probably never be done, but the player can certainly try and fail gloriously while striving for that one slim, slim chance.

Well hold on - 'More right than he thinks'? That was my point. The belief needed to depose the lady would probably be equal to the belief needed to destroy Sigil. Very unlikely, and possibly not possible.

Eldan
2010-05-11, 03:52 PM
See, that makes sense to me. But it's why I said:
D&D is (mostly for better, sometimes for worse) a system that is custom-designed for high heroic fantasy, where the outcome often comes down to "I hit it / throw spells at it until it dies." What you're talking about there, and what I'm talking about there, is not high heroic fantasy. If that's the kind of campaign someone is running, it's my opinion that they'd be better off using something that is designed for things like "doing battle using the concept of freedom as a weapon" or "focusing the faith of thousands into a balancing force to an entity that does not live or die as mortals understand those words," like Nobilis or something similar. d20 (and this is not a fault of the system!) breaks down when you're trying to stat such things. If it didn't, it wouldn't handle heroic fantasy very well, something that Nobilis (for example) does not!

And yet, that is just what Planescape is. I've run games like this, and they worked. Well, kind off. They never got as insanely epic as described here, but my players have certainly used faith for little things.

And have a look at Planescape: torment. It's what every Planescape campaign strives to be, and it is AD&D-based.

BlckDv
2010-05-11, 03:52 PM
To drop cant for the Clueless;

If you want to run a D&D Campaign involving the many planes of existence in which the PCs (or villains) are able to interact with and engage in meaningful mechanics based challenges against a figure called "The Lady of Pain" who seems to control a city called Sigil, more power to you. As a DM, anything you can find players willing to play is fair game.

That said, when conversing with other players and DMs outside of that group, it would be best not to call such a game a Planescape Campaign, as it would run counter to the core ethos of that published game world, just as running a game about flower planting halflings who live under the protection of the kind Dragon Borys on the edge of a great ocean should not be called a Dark Sun campaign. It is a campaign that borrowed some setting and story elements from the published setting to make a homebrew setting, which is great and commendable.

Togo
2010-05-11, 03:53 PM
Starting a religion in the Outlands would be difficult, surely? You'd alter the nature of the Outlands sooner than you'd start reaching Sigil.

Project_Mayhem
2010-05-11, 03:53 PM
And yet, that is just what Planescape is. I've run games like this, and they worked. Well, kind off. They never got as insanely epic as described here, but my players have certainly used faith for little things.

And have a look at Planescape: torment. It's what every Planescape campaign strives to be, and it is AD&D-based.

Although the actual system is the weakest part of PS:T

Eldan
2010-05-11, 03:54 PM
Well hold on - 'More right than he thinks'? That was my point. The belief needed to depose the lady would probably be equal to the belief needed to destroy Sigil. Very unlikely, and possibly not possible.

Ah. Sorry, then, good Sir. (And sorry for the dramatic tone. This thread made me all epic-minded.) I read your statement as "that's impossible" instead of "that would take as much power as something nearly impossible."
We agree, then.

Tavar
2010-05-11, 03:56 PM
Not being able to kill a couple of powerful beings and generally turn the multiverse inside-out counts as "not having any meaningful effect on the setting"? :smallconfused:

That's not the point I was referring to, though I think everything can be beaten someway. It might not be a good idea to, but it's possible. However, the quote I was replying to justified her invulnerability because it's never been done before in a large and old setting. So? Using the old definition of heroics, the word simply refers to great deeds, and often refers to firsts. Plus, if we take this idea and expand it to other actions, then many things can't be done, because they haven't been done before. Well, new players are in town, and maybe they'll finally be the ones to shake things up.

Eldan
2010-05-11, 03:57 PM
Although the actual system is the weakest part of PS:T

Of course. But then, the D&D system has never been more than a guideline anyway.

Lapak
2010-05-11, 04:09 PM
Of course. But then, the D&D system has never been more than a guideline anyway.But... that's the entire point I was making in my post: that it's possible to shoehorn such a campaign at such a fundamental-to-the-universe level into D&D stats, but that there are better ways to accomplish it if that's what you're doing.

I never tried to say Planescape at the more-mortal scales couldn't work in D&D - it does - or even that you couldn't stat the Lady in d20: just that you're going to have to fudge so much anyway to do so that you might as well use a system that's designed for that kind of thing.

Eldan
2010-05-11, 04:10 PM
That's not the point I was referring to, though I think everything can be beaten someway. It might not be a good idea to, but it's possible. However, the quote I was replying to justified her invulnerability because it's never been done before in a large and old setting. So? Using the old definition of heroics, the word simply refers to great deeds, and often refers to firsts. Plus, if we take this idea and expand it to other actions, then many things can't be done, because they haven't been done before. Well, new players are in town, and maybe they'll finally be the ones to shake things up.

See, I'm all for "everything is possible", especially in Planescape. But it should never, ever be easy.
The thing about the Lady of Pain is this: she is sitting on the strategically most important place in the multiverse. She controls portals leading everywhere. She has the power to breach every fortress, find every secret and almost seal off every region of the planes, at least in a cosmic sense.
And everyone with an agenda wants Sigil. She is what's keeping the gods from getting their hands on it. You can bet that geniuses like Asmodeus or the General of Gehenna have spent numerous million years plotting how to remove her and take control of Sigil without it falling into the enemy's hand.

So, the first thing you should think about when contemplating if your players can defeat the Lady is: why hasn't anyone else done it this way?

Eldan
2010-05-11, 04:13 PM
But... that's the entire point I was making in my post: that it's possible to shoehorn such a campaign at such a fundamental-to-the-universe level into D&D stats, but that there are better ways to accomplish it if that's what you're doing.

I never tried to say Planescape at the more-mortal scales couldn't work in D&D - it does - or even that you couldn't stat the Lady in d20: just that you're going to have to fudge so much anyway to do so that you might as well use a system that's designed for that kind of thing.

True enough. The thing is, though: I like D&D. It's a system I understand reasonably well and that works for me. Converting an entire setting to another system is a lot of work I'd rather use for writing more fluff, or characters, or homebrew.
Yes, any number of settings might work better for this kind off game. However, my players are ****ing lazy. I played with them for about five years before we all moved to different countries, and they barely managed to remember the bare bones of the core books.

Lapak
2010-05-11, 04:19 PM
True enough. The thing is, though: I like D&D. It's a system I understand reasonably well and that works for me. Converting an entire setting to another system is a lot of work I'd rather use for writing more fluff, or characters, or homebrew.
Yes, any number of settings might work better for this kind off game. However, my players are ****ing lazy. I played with them for about five years before we all moved to different countries, and they barely managed to remember the bare bones of the core books.Fair point. As my post history should indicate, I'm as much of a fan of D&D as anyone - heck, as often as not when someone is looking for a mechanic to change 3.x I recommend looking at earlier (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8398469&postcount=2) editions (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8460451&postcount=9), but for some things I think it's worth going further afield. It's not practical for every group though, as you say. :smallsmile:

The Glyphstone
2010-05-11, 06:05 PM
So, the first thing you should think about when contemplating if your players can defeat the Lady is: why hasn't anyone else done it this way?

Well, maybe they are?. Something special about the PCs makes them capable of this, Asmodeous has become aware of them, and devotes his inconcievable intellect into manipulating them into a position where they are able to do it. Or, the PCs happen to be the culmination of his ultimate Xanatos Gambit, the result of thousands of years of plotting, scheming, selective breeding to produce the four to six people he needs to accomplish this.

Of course, that's not as much fun for the players to find out the entire point of their existence and possibly that of their entire family line is as dupes and pawns, but YMMV.

Platinum_Mongoose
2010-05-11, 06:17 PM
I tried to stat the Lady of Pain once, but my notebook got sent to the mazes.

Sir Homeslice
2010-05-11, 06:28 PM
{Scrubbed}

Platinum_Mongoose
2010-05-11, 07:28 PM
This thread was cool until somebody spilled hate all over it.

Lord Loss
2010-05-11, 07:36 PM
As much as I would like to stat out the Lady of Pain, I can't. This is because when anyone tries to stat her out, she comes all the way to them and kills them. Assuming she's not too busy. Presenting her with homemade fudge is one of the few ways to avoid her wrath. Usually.

ScionoftheVoid
2010-05-11, 07:45 PM
{Scrubbed}

Some advice: Don't read more than three pages of a thread on a subject you hate only to indirectly insult the posters. It tends to mean that you get hated a lot less yourself.

On-topic: I agree that giving the Lady stats is missing the point. You know when people say that "there's always someone better"? That is the Lady. If it has stats it can be killed, if the Lady could be killed it would probably have happened by now. If you need stats for the Lady you're so far from the established setting that asking fans of it for help isn't going to get you far (AFAIK).

SilverClawShift
2010-05-11, 07:46 PM
Annnnnd we spontaneously veer away from a discussion about the Lady into petty hostility. GO GO INTERNET!

Khatoblepas
2010-05-11, 08:29 PM
If you forced me to stat The Lady, which I wouldn't bother doing, I would try to keep to her "Always the Bigger Fish" schtick. She is literally unbeatable, since she pushes back with as much force as you push her with. She will match you and then some, just to retain the Balance in Sigil. She has the inertia OF THE ENTIRE MULTIVERSE to do this with.

The Lady of Pain (Avatar)
Size/Type: Large Outsider (Unique)
Hit Dice: 40d8 (320 hp)
Initiative: +0
Speed: fly 300 ft. (60 squares)
Armor Class: 17 (+1 size, +6 natural), touch 11, flat-footed 17
Base Attack/Grapple: +40/+44
Attack: Flaying Glance (Reduces target to -9hp, fort DC 10 or die)
Full Attack: Flaying Glance (Reduces target to -9hp, fort DC 10 or die)
Space/Reach: 10 ft./10 ft.
Special Attacks: flaying glance, lady's shadow, maze, portal control
Special Qualities: divine rank 18 fulcrum, know sigil, global immunity, stasis absolute,
Saves: Fort +0, Ref +0, Will +0
Abilities: Str 10, Dex 10, Con 10, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 10
Skills: All +43
Feats: Any 14 (May swap between them as a free action)
Environment: Sigil
Organization: Solitary
Challenge Rating: N/A
Treasure: None.
Alignment: Always true neutral
Advancement: Special (see text)

Flaying Glance (Ex): As an attack action, The Lady may turn her wrathful gaze upon one individual who has earned her wrath. They are automatically reduced to -9hp, and must make a Fortitude Save (DC10) or die. Those without a constitution score are immune to this ability, but instead suffer 40d6 damage, fort save DC10 for half.

Fulcrum (Ex): The Lady is the fulcrum on which the planes exist. Sigil cannot be allowed to shift in any one of the aligned directions - else the planes themselves will collapse - and The Lady is one holding Sigil in place. Any creature who threatens this tentative balance is matched by the Lady - her stats become equal to her foe, or her own stats, whichever is higher. She gains a bonus on any attack, damage, ability or skill roll equal to twice her foe's level+3. Any weapon she chooses to wield is Axiomatic, Anarchic, Holy, or Profane depending on her foe's alignment. It is possible that her weapons become all four without ill effect to her. Her alignment remains Neutral. Her save DCs become equal to the foe's level x 3, plus any ability modifiers.

In the case that more than one creature threatens her, she gains the highest bonus from each creature. During this time, she thinks of nothing else but destroying or banishing them - and will confront them immediately to do this. Once the threat is removed, The Lady loses any bonuses or changes granted by this ability.

Global Immunity: The Lady of Pain is immune to ability damage, drain, energy drain, poison, drowning, dazing, stunning, any elemental energy, sonic damage, force damage, all mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects), paralysis, sleep effects, fatigue, exhaustion, polymorph effects, critical hits, and necromancy effects.

All spells of the Divination school automatically fail when used on The Lady of Pain. Foresight does not forewarn or otherwise function on the Lady of Pain's actions.

Epic Magic or any spell that allows SR, when targetted on or around the Lady, does not function. It merely dissipates harmlessly.

Know Sigil (Ex): The Lady of Pain can see all of Sigil as if through her own eyes, everywhere, from any point in space. She can also teleport (as the spell) as a free action anywhere within Sigil.

Lady's Shadow (Ex): Any creature that begins it's turn in the Lady's threatened area is torn apart by her shadow, recieving 40d6 damage. Any creature reduced to 0 hit points by this spell is disintergrated into a fine red mist, with no recognisable body salvagable from the remains.

Maze (Su): The Lady sometimes uses this ability on threats she feels are minor, or inconsequential. While in Sigil, she can wrap the city around itself and create a demiplane of a small section of it containing her target as a standard action. There is no save to avoid this ability, though sometimes she leaves a tiny hole in the plane for people to escape from.

Portal Control (Ex): The Lady may control portals within Sigil as a free action, opening and closing them at will, even sealing them forever or opening up new ones to wherever she wants.

Stasis Absolute (Ex): While in Sigil, The Lady may not be damaged by any creature with a lower divine rank than her. She has a divine rank of the highest ranking deity in Sigil, or 18, whichever is higher.

Need I mention Deities are banned from Sigil? This is just the base I would use for the Lady. Think about how much XP she would get from defeating Vecna.

Or maybe she's three squirrels under a giant robe with a rod of flaying?

Who knows.

Tiki Snakes
2010-05-11, 08:51 PM
With everything that's been said, in these threads, about the Lady of Pain, I have some pretty odd theories.

Amongst them is the idea that, the first step, or possibly the key to killing her...is to get people to worship her as a God. (Probably best to do so outside of Sigil, or it won't really get very far).

Just a hunch.

But as they say, Sigil is a cage. The Cage. But is it keeping things in, or keeping things out? There are plenty of interesting facets to the situation.

Never did get round to statting her out for my 4th Ed campaign yet. Maybe one day. Maybe not. :smallwink:

Darkxarth
2010-05-11, 08:55 PM
If you forced me to stat The Lady, which I wouldn't bother doing, I would try to keep to her "Always the Bigger Fish" schtick. She is literally unbeatable, since she pushes back with as much force as you push her with. She will match you and then some, just to retain the Balance in Sigil. She has the inertia OF THE ENTIRE MULTIVERSE to do this with.

The Lady of Pain (Avatar)
Size/Type: Large Outsider (Unique)
Hit Dice: 40d8 (320 hp)
Initiative: +0
Speed: fly 300 ft. (60 squares)
Armor Class: 17 (+1 size, +6 natural), touch 11, flat-footed 17
Base Attack/Grapple: +40/+44
Attack: Flaying Glance (Reduces target to -9hp, fort DC 10 or die)
Full Attack: Flaying Glance (Reduces target to -9hp, fort DC 10 or die)
Space/Reach: 10 ft./10 ft.
Special Attacks: flaying glance, lady's shadow, maze, portal control
Special Qualities: divine rank 18 fulcrum, know sigil, global immunity, stasis absolute,
Saves: Fort +0, Ref +0, Will +0
Abilities: Str 10, Dex 10, Con 10, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 10
Skills: All +43
Feats: Any 14 (May swap between them as a free action)
Environment: Sigil
Organization: Solitary
Challenge Rating: N/A
Treasure: None.
Alignment: Always true neutral
Advancement: Special (see text)

Flaying Glance (Ex): As an attack action, The Lady may turn her wrathful gaze upon one individual who has earned her wrath. They are automatically reduced to -9hp, and must make a Fortitude Save (DC10) or die. Those without a constitution score are immune to this ability, but instead suffer 40d6 damage, fort save DC10 for half.

Fulcrum (Ex): The Lady is the fulcrum on which the planes exist. Sigil cannot be allowed to shift in any one of the aligned directions - else the planes themselves will collapse - and The Lady is one holding Sigil in place. Any creature who threatens this tentative balance is matched by the Lady - her stats become equal to her foe, or her own stats, whichever is higher. She gains a bonus on any attack, damage, ability or skill roll equal to twice her foe's level+3. Any weapon she chooses to wield is Axiomatic, Anarchic, Holy, or Profane depending on her foe's alignment. It is possible that her weapons become all four without ill effect to her. Her alignment remains Neutral. Her save DCs become equal to the foe's level x 3, plus any ability modifiers.

In the case that more than one creature threatens her, she gains the highest bonus from each creature. During this time, she thinks of nothing else but destroying or banishing them - and will confront them immediately to do this. Once the threat is removed, The Lady loses any bonuses or changes granted by this ability.

Global Immunity: The Lady of Pain is immune to ability damage, drain, energy drain, poison, drowning, dazing, stunning, any elemental energy, sonic damage, force damage, all mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects), paralysis, sleep effects, fatigue, exhaustion, polymorph effects, critical hits, and necromancy effects.

All spells of the Divination school automatically fail when used on The Lady of Pain. Foresight does not forewarn or otherwise function on the Lady of Pain's actions.

Epic Magic or any spell that allows SR, when targetted on or around the Lady, does not function. It merely dissipates harmlessly.

Know Sigil (Ex): The Lady of Pain can see all of Sigil as if through her own eyes, everywhere, from any point in space. She can also teleport (as the spell) as a free action anywhere within Sigil.

Lady's Shadow (Ex): Any creature that begins it's turn in the Lady's threatened area is torn apart by her shadow, recieving 40d6 damage. Any creature reduced to 0 hit points by this spell is disintergrated into a fine red mist, with no recognisable body salvagable from the remains.

Maze (Su): The Lady sometimes uses this ability on threats she feels are minor, or inconsequential. While in Sigil, she can wrap the city around itself and create a demiplane of a small section of it containing her target as a standard action. There is no save to avoid this ability, though sometimes she leaves a tiny hole in the plane for people to escape from.

Portal Control (Ex): The Lady may control portals within Sigil as a free action, opening and closing them at will, even sealing them forever or opening up new ones to wherever she wants.

Stasis Absolute (Ex): While in Sigil, The Lady may not be damaged by any creature with a lower divine rank than her. She has a divine rank of the highest ranking deity in Sigil, or 18, whichever is higher.

Need I mention Deities are banned from Sigil? This is just the base I would use for the Lady. Think about how much XP she would get from defeating Vecna.

Or maybe she's three squirrels under a giant robe with a rod of flaying?

Who knows.

I think this is the best the OP is going to get as far as actual stats (excepting the AC: Miss, Attack: Hit, etc.). She has stats and is technically not invulnerable, just seemingly as close as one can get.

lsfreak
2010-05-11, 09:22 PM
Just a minor nitpick: the DC of the saves for the Avatar of the Lady of Pain's abilities should be 30, as saves for abilities are 10 + 1/2 hit dice + ability score modifier. As-is, a level 1 character can do something dumb, piss her off, and the save DC for her abilities - while still lethal - could be as low as 1 or 2.

There's still the issue that, unless I missed something, an ubercharger will still one-shot her if he's in a position to go first.

A mailman with Searing Spell still drops her in the surprise round, if I'm not mistaken, and things that do untyped or physical damage with SR-, while very rare, can still damage the LoD.

The Tygre
2010-05-11, 09:44 PM
I recall, long ago, back before there were tieflings, the guys at DiceFreaks statted out the Lady, just to make a point. 'To stat the unstattable'; old site motto. I could always ask around, see if anyone still has the build. Probably got lost in one of the server shifts, though.

The Glyphstone
2010-05-11, 09:53 PM
Just a minor nitpick: the DC of the saves for the Avatar of the Lady of Pain's abilities should be 30, as saves for abilities are 10 + 1/2 hit dice + ability score modifier. As-is, a level 1 character can do something dumb, piss her off, and the save DC for her abilities - while still lethal - could be as low as 1 or 2.

There's still the issue that, unless I missed something, an ubercharger will still one-shot her if he's in a position to go first.

A mailman with Searing Spell still drops her in the surprise round, if I'm not mistaken, and things that do untyped or physical damage with SR-, while very rare, can still damage the LoD.

There's the thing where she can't be damaged by being with a lower DvR than her....the average Mailman build doesn't come with DvR18.

Drakevarg
2010-05-11, 10:08 PM
Lady of Pain's Stats:
http://magisteria.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/infinity1.jpg
Sufficient?

poisonoustea
2010-05-11, 10:14 PM
Uhm. I'm not convinced about this. "As a free action" doesn't make sense in her stats. That's too slow. Thinking doesn't take any time :smallconfused:

I believe Psycho's opinion to be the most accurate :smallbiggrin:

(A lil' bit of resizing wouldn't hurt, though...)

Drakevarg
2010-05-11, 10:19 PM
's what the spoiler tags were for. It's just something offa Google image search, and there were no smaller copies of it.

Besides, bigness does it more justice.

Yukitsu
2010-05-11, 10:23 PM
There's still the issue that, unless I missed something, an ubercharger will still one-shot her if he's in a position to go first.

A mailman with Searing Spell still drops her in the surprise round, if I'm not mistaken, and things that do untyped or physical damage with SR-, while very rare, can still damage the LoD.

Since she's a "counts as" rank 18 diety, it doesn't matter if they do. No non-deific means can kill her.

chiasaur11
2010-05-12, 12:49 AM
I recall, long ago, back before there were tieflings, the guys at DiceFreaks statted out the Lady, just to make a point. 'To stat the unstattable'; old site motto. I could always ask around, see if anyone still has the build. Probably got lost in one of the server shifts, though.

Berk, you know the cant, I know the cant.

They bark at the lady, try to shed something, the mazes for them, mazes for their Slaad-story.

It's gone, and anyone who tries for it's winding up a ladywatcher.

Man, if that dictionary was wrong, I'm looking awfully silly right now. And that Kobold looked so sincere...

arguskos
2010-05-12, 01:00 AM
Berk, you know the cant, I know the cant.

They bark at the lady, try to shed something, the mazes for them, mazes for their Slaad-story.

It's gone, and anyone who tries for it's winding up a ladywatcher.
Shut yer brain-box! Yer chant be lily, but Tygre ain't no sodding berk! 'E's a blood, and dat be da dark of it!

As fer da Lady, best to be givin' the laugh to 'er, ya carry me?

lsfreak
2010-05-12, 01:04 AM
There's the thing where she can't be damaged by being with a lower DvR than her....the average Mailman build doesn't come with DvR18.

Aaand that would be the crucially important thing that I missed.

I still don't like her save DC's being as low as 1-2, though (1st level character with a negative ability score in whatever ability controls the save DC). The outcome will almost always be no different, but still.
EDIT: Level 3 Hexblade, with a 8 in whatever controls Flaying Glance (likely Cha) and an 18 in Con. Lives through her Flaying Glance 95% of the time. Probably gets Flayed to death at level 1 just for trying to pull it off. :smalltongue:

Somebloke
2010-05-12, 02:06 AM
...1d4 players per round.

There. Done.

crazedloon
2010-05-12, 02:20 AM
I will admit I know little about the setting (at least compared to other people who may have idea's about the subject)

however anybody ever think that the lady of the plane is a Genius Loci of the entire city of sigil. To kill her would destroy the city and thus its strategic importance, and the reason she has absolute power there is because she has absolute control over herself. Any physical form that is seen of her is simple a avatar or a person controlled with its will.

Also I don't mean the actual stated Genius Loci in the epic level handbook but if you wish (i.e. really need) to use something to emulate her I would say that and a enslaved epic caster should do the trick of being her (since epic casters can do pretty much anything).

Eldan
2010-05-12, 02:27 AM
Well, over on Planewalker.com, there are many dozen theories about the Lady of Pain, ranging from the interesting to the crazy.
Things I've seen suggested:

Sigil is her cage. She has been locked up for:
-Committing a crime against the multiverse's creator.
-Being said creator
-Being a threat to the multiverse

She is an Avatar of Sigil, representing it's desire for independence. Note that this implies sapience for the city itself. Alternatively, without her, Sigil ceases to exist.
She is the ultimate force of neutrality, the zero-point around which all the other alignments and viewpoints are defined.
Her existence defines the multiverse and holds the Far Realm at bay. The Multiverse is ring-shaped because it is centered on her.
She is the Queen of the eusocial Dabus species.
She is the original dreamer dreaming up the multiverse. (Hooray Sign of One!)

There have been dozens of other theories, but those are some of the more interesting ones.

Ozymandias9
2010-05-12, 03:37 AM
Think about how much XP she would get from defeating Vecna.

This. I know that any time this comes up it can look a lot like a fan wank about the Lady, but it's more that her being more powerful than anyone else is an element of the setting*. The only significant threat to the LoP ever described in cannon was when Venca was going to remake the entire multiverse.

She is, essentially, an over-deity with better press. While the structure of apotheosis in the setting is such that it doesn't work that way here, if you were to look at FR for example, beings at relative level of power create gods at because they can. If you're looking to kill her in anything resembling cannon, you should probably be looking at a party where everyone is at least a greater deity.

You are essentially asking for the stats for a character who has, as their level one feat, rule 0.

On an quasi-related note, mighty Zeus do I hate Planescape.

*I.E. It's a fan wank about the setting, not the character.

Killer Angel
2010-05-12, 03:40 AM
Well, over on Planewalker.com, there are many dozen theories about the Lady of Pain, ranging from the interesting to the crazy.
Things I've seen suggested:

Sigil is her cage. She has been locked up for:
-Committing a crime against the multiverse's creator.
-Being said creator
-Being a threat to the multiverse

She is an Avatar of Sigil, representing it's desire for independence. Note that this implies sapience for the city itself. Alternatively, without her, Sigil ceases to exist.
She is the ultimate force of neutrality, the zero-point around which all the other alignments and viewpoints are defined.
Her existence defines the multiverse and holds the Far Realm at bay. The Multiverse is ring-shaped because it is centered on her.
She is the Queen of the eusocial Dabus species.
She is the original dreamer dreaming up the multiverse. (Hooray Sign of One!)

There have been dozens of other theories, but those are some of the more interesting ones.

I like how the Lady spreads all those false rumors, to hide her true nature... :smallcool:

(jokes apart, interesting theories, indeed. Good starting points for a big adventure)

crazedloon
2010-05-12, 03:45 AM
I like how the Lady spreads all those false rumors, to hide her true nature... :smallcool:

(jokes apart, interesting theories, indeed. Good starting points for a big adventure)

an interesting adventure would be if the lady was indeed the cities avatar but the avatar has gone rogue and the city helps the adventurers kill itself to prevent the avatar causing a destabilization in the multi-verse itself....

Superglucose
2010-05-12, 03:49 AM
Lady of Pain:

Wizard 21. Also she has infinite time for Solar abuse and the Epic Spellcasting feat.

Go nuts.

Killer Angel
2010-05-12, 03:51 AM
an interesting adventure would be if the lady was indeed the cities avatar but the avatar has gone rogue and the city helps the adventurers kill itself to prevent the avatar causing a destabilization in the multi-verse itself....

...and some of the Lady's powers, don't function properly, without a city "willing" to support the rogue Avatar. For example, the Maze ability.

I really MUST write a Planescape adventure for my players. Years have passed since the last one.

The Tygre
2010-05-12, 03:57 AM
Shut yer brain-box! Yer chant be lily, but Tygre ain't no sodding berk! 'E's a blood, and dat be da dark of it!

As fer da Lady, best to be givin' the laugh to 'er, ya carry me?

'Tis good to be a blood, berk. :smallbiggrin: 'Dem lemons keep howlin from their idea-pots. No respec', ain't put no lannin' that s'all a demiplane. Best to mum on ol' metal head 'fore we all countin' worms, tho...


I like how the Lady spreads all those false rumors, to hide her true nature... :smallcool:

's lyin' like a 'loth. Don't be chattin' dat, tho. Good mephits lost dat way.

kamikasei
2010-05-12, 04:25 AM
Amongst them is the idea that, the first step, or possibly the key to killing her...is to get people to worship her as a God. (Probably best to do so outside of Sigil, or it won't really get very far).

Given her tendency to make people who try to worship her suddenly and spontaneously Not Be, I took this as fairly heavily implied (granted, it could be some other side effect of whatever her nature is). If people started worshipping her, their worship would start to define her. She doesn't want others deciding her shape.

Another possibility: if in Planescape belief shapes reality, maybe she's a fixed point in the shared belief of the multiverse; something that has to be believed in by everyone everywhere all the time and can't meaningfully change; if it did, belief itself would be different. Not sure what such a thing would be. The sense of self?

Amiel
2010-05-12, 04:32 AM
As a Planescape fan, my answer is this:

Aoskar tried this; in the eons before the deities were barred from the Cage, Aoskar was the god of portals. A countless multitude were his followers, and eventually he arose as the principal deity in all Sigil. He became the most-worshipped god Sigil had ever seen, as even residents moved to his worship. Some devout followers even considered the Lady of Pain to be an aspect of Aoskar.
Throughout all this, the Lady did nothing.
In his arrogance, Aoskar considered himself superior to Her Serenity; unchained by Her laws, the Lady's decrees were viewed with contempt. The Lady still did nothing; until one of her own servants "fell."
Aoskar now exists as nothing but an empty husk, perpetually floating within the Astral sea; his body pierced by many great blades; all of his worshippers were obliterated save for one Fell. His temple, among the grandest and most opulent in Sigil is now forever known as the Shattered Temple.


Duke Rowan Darkwood tried this; in his hubris he viewed the Lady as nothing more than an obstacle to be overcome, and orchestrated events to dethrone the Lady and claim rulership of Sigil for himself. He was prideful but also extremely intelligent, skillfully moving his pawns and manipulated servants as chess pieces across a great board. He sought great magic and items that held the capacity to defeat a being of Her Serenity's majesty and found them and used them.
But the Lady was always at least nine moves ahead. His Grace now perpetually exists within a closed time loop, forever cursed to move against and fail epically against the Lady of Pain. This is his fate. This is his punishment.


The Expansionists and the Incantificiers tried this; they sought to claim the Cage as their own, from which an empire, their empire, would arise and cross the very planes themselves. Manipulating opinions and allies to and in their favour, the Lady was viewed as nothing more than a senseless sod who knew nothing about the intricacies of power.
Their members are now dispersed and destroyed, with scant few willing to return to Sigil to face the Lady's wrath. Their factols rot within Her Serenity's mazes.

Eldan
2010-05-12, 04:57 AM
And none of them tried the right thing.

The Expansionists and Incantifiers gathered belief in themselves, making themselves powerful. But they did not try and change the nature of the Lady through belief.

Rowan Darkwood gathered Power, as they did. He gathered attempts others had made in defeating the Lady, for he believed that she was fallible. She failed.

Aoskar gathered belief in himself as well. In the end, he got closest, perhaps, as some began to think the Lady was weaker than him. But he did not actively try and diminish her.

They all tried to improve themselves, to bring themselves to a level where they could take on the Lady, instead of warping the lady into something which could be defeated.

In a manner, they strengthened her: their belief was that the Lady was so strong that they needed the strongest powers available in the multiverse to take her on. Which also implied that anything less had no hope of doing so.

Amiel
2010-05-12, 05:11 AM
Actually, every one of them tried the right thing, in terms of their perceptions of the world.

The Expansionists and Incantificiers gathered belief in themselves, as this was their faction doctrine.

Rowan Darkwood gathered power and sought to take it for himself, as this was what his faction espoused.

Aoskar gathered belief in himself because he was a deity and empowered by belief.

All of them nearly succeeded, in their own warped perceptions; each coming closest to victory.
The Expansionists and Incantificiers gathered objects, artifacts and actively sought to influence the belief of others.
Rowan Darkwood gathered allies and artifacts to persecute his eventual takeover of the City of Doors.
Aoskar gathered worshippers, to the extent of being the principal deity within the city and the one with the greatest amount of worshippers.

All of them sought to diminish the Lady, by words, actions and deeds. The factions spreading propaganda and lies and the obfuscation of truth. And Aoskar by claiming he was beyond the Lady.
Each of them spectacularly failed.

To go against the Lady is self-defeating. Her Belief, one can argue, is intrinsically and fundamentally tied to the reality of the Cage itself; She is the Cage and the Cage is her. She also seems to be the purest embodiment of neutrality. This is why no one has ever seen her beyond the confines of Her City. While the nature of a man can be changed and affected, nothing can affect a fundamental reality of Existence.


Which also implied that anything less had no hope of doing so.

Yes, nothing less than the Lady can hope to equal Her let alone defeat Her.

Eldan
2010-05-12, 05:18 AM
While the nature of a man can be changed and affected, nothing can affect a fundamental reality of Existence.

And I still disagree on that... ever since Planscape: Torment. If you can change it, it's not a man's nature.


Anyway, that aside: I think they all did one thing fundamentally wrong.
"To defeat the Lady, you have to be enormously powerful, because she is enormously powerful."

olentu
2010-05-12, 05:28 AM
While the nature of a man can be changed and affected, nothing can affect a fundamental reality of Existence.

Oh come now enough messing around in sigil would surely change superspace.

kamikasei
2010-05-12, 05:28 AM
Actually, every one of them tried the right thing, in terms of their perceptions of the world.

But it didn't work, so obviously it wasn't the right thing. If you want to say there is no right thing, no approach that could bring down the Lady, that's one thing. But you seem to be saying that because they took the approach their beliefs told them would work, they were acting correctly, even if those beliefs a) didn't match reality or b) if you look on reality as mutable by belief, were instead inherently self-defeating. That seems like either missing Eldan's point or abusing the meaning of "the right thing".

Kurald Galain
2010-05-12, 05:32 AM
And I still disagree on that... ever since Planscape: Torment. If you can change it, it's not a man's nature.

Those are the words of the Transcendent One.

The Nameless One knows better,

"If there is anything I have learned in my travels across the Planes, it is that many things may change the nature of a man. Whether regret, or love, or revenge or fear - whatever you believe can change the nature of a man, can. I’ve seen belief move cities, make men stave off death, and turn an evil hag's heart half-circle. This entire Fortress has been constructed from belief. Belief damned a woman, whose heart clung to the hope that another loved her when he did not. Once, it made a man seek immortality and achieve it. And it has made a posturing spirit think it is something more than a part of me."

Balor01
2010-05-12, 05:33 AM
I am a wiz.
I get epic lvls.
I go so far back in time, LoP is just a toddler. Before Cage, before ... anything. no time limit.
I go medieval on her tush.

Planescape fans go mad.

WIN :smallbiggrin:

Eldan
2010-05-12, 05:35 AM
And yet, these are all mere facets of a man's personality. They are his outward appearance, maybe even his thoughts.
But they are not his innermost nature. The tiny, tiny core inside man that makes him what he is, always was, and always will be. A minuscule unchanging splinter that always will be the same, in every incarnation and every iteration of a man's life.
That is nature. Everything else is just façade.

Kurald Galain
2010-05-12, 05:36 AM
And yet, these are all mere facets of a man's personality. They are his outward appearance, maybe even his thoughts.
But they are not his innermost nature. The tiny, tiny core inside man that makes him what he is, always was, and always will be. A minuscule unchanging splinter that always will be the same, in every incarnation and every iteration of a man's life.
That is nature. Everything else is just façade.

That strikes me as the moral from V for Vendetta; the moral from Planescape Torment is pretty much the opposite.

Amiel
2010-05-12, 05:39 AM
And I still disagree on that... ever since Planscape: Torment. If you can change it, it's not a man's nature.

Not sure if PS:T is canon or not, as amazing as it is.
I would disagree, if you can change it but the fundamental nature remains the same, it is still a man's nature.



Anyway, that aside: I think they all did one thing fundamentally wrong.
"To defeat the Lady, you have to be enormously powerful, because she is enormously powerful."

Duke Darkwood and the factols of those two aforementioned Factions weren't exactly powerful; that's precisely why they had to resort to artifacts.


Oh come now enough messing around in sigil would surely change superspace.

Good luck with doing something the Lady explicitly forbids. Don't come crying to me if you end up mazed or worse :smalltongue:


But it didn't work, so obviously it wasn't the right thing. If you want to say there is no right thing, no approach that could bring down the Lady, that's one thing. But you seem to be saying that because they took the approach their beliefs told them would work, they were acting correctly, even if those beliefs a) didn't match reality or b) if you look on reality as mutable by belief, were instead inherently self-defeating. That seems like either missing Eldan's point or abusing the meaning of "the right thing".

Either you seem to be missing my point, or you are misunderstanding. In an above post, I explained that all them failed in their plots and intrigues, and gave examples and ultimate fates.
I even used the words 'in their perceptions;' I'm not arguing that they approached it in the right or wrong manner in terms of the real world, I'm talking how they approached the matter according to their own factional doctrine and their points of reference (this is how us mortals view the world all the time).
Their methods certainly don't seem flawed; the only hole there was thinking they could defeat the Lady.

Also, Planescape is fundamentally shaped by belief. If you can believe enough in something, you can alter/affect its outcome.
Conclusively, I could argue that the Lady is beyond belief or it somehow anchors Her to Existence.

Eldan
2010-05-12, 05:39 AM
That strikes me as the moral from V for Vendetta; the moral from Planescape Torment is pretty much the opposite.

Of course.

That doesn't mean I have to agree with it. :smalltongue:

Project_Mayhem
2010-05-12, 05:40 AM
"If there is anything I have learned in my travels across the Planes, it is that many things may change the nature of a man. Whether regret, or love, or revenge or fear - whatever you believe can change the nature of a man, can. I’ve seen belief move cities, make men stave off death, and turn an evil hag's heart half-circle. This entire Fortress has been constructed from belief. Belief damned a woman, whose heart clung to the hope that another loved her when he did not. Once, it made a man seek immortality and achieve it. And it has made a posturing spirit think it is something more than a part of me."

That. Quote. Makes. Me. Shiver.

Every time.

olentu
2010-05-12, 05:44 AM
Good luck with doing something the Lady explicitly forbids. Don't come crying to me if you end up mazed or worse :smalltongue:

I don't suppose you missed my very vague reference.

Amiel
2010-05-12, 05:45 AM
Yes, it tends to happen with very vague references.

Aotrs Commander
2010-05-12, 05:48 AM
I think Vecna's little jaunt into Sigil proves the Lady isn't quite totally omnipotent. Granted, Vecna himself had used the power of another god and the annhilation of a demiplane to thrust himself into Sigil - and that only because he was basically told how to do it by one of the other most fundemental things in the multiverse i.e the Serpent, which, as I understand it, is the incarnation of magic itself. It perhaps, then, is to magic what the Lady is to belief. (Either that of it's something Vecna's madness dreamed up, in which case, dear pantheons, the guy has serious brains.)

Vecna proved he had some serious Awesome when he not only simultaneously kicked the Powers of Ravenloft in the shins - because they didn't LET him out, he literally broke Ravenloft to get out1, but proceeded to waltz into Sigil, become a greater god and TIE UP the Lady with enough power that she couldn't outright kill him and still had just enough umph left to pose a challenge to that mysteriously nebulously-described band of heroes sent to duff him up. And the net result was HE GOT AWAY WITH IT. Sure, he got banned from Sigil forever - but compared to the fate of the rest who tried to do over the Lady, really, that counts as a outright win. And he managed to remake the universe so it didn't work quite the same way ever again (AD&D=>3.0...)

Not bad for a Wiz20/Clr20 (and the lowest levelled deity in Deities and Demogods.) Give him his due.

It's the closest anyone's ever got. Though it might be argued that it boiled down to a direct conflict between BELIEF (i.e. the Lady) and MAGIC (i.e. the Serpent through Vecna) and that two infinities cancel each other out. And again, Vecna would have ultimately achived victory by a means not related to stats, and more to changing the fundemental structure of the Universe.

(One wonders if he truly got away with it because she actually couldn't kill him or because she was privately impressed and just shoved him out. Still, as far a Vecna is concerned, he still did something no-one else has ever done either way...)

Of course, he was a Lich, and we are, of course, totally awesome after all, so that probably helped.



1And for a while (until Ravenloft 3.x came out) - it was implied in the Die Vecna Die! he'd destroyed the whole of Ravenloft, not just the Burning Peaks cluster.

olentu
2010-05-12, 05:52 AM
I think Vecna's little jaunt into Sigil proves the Lady isn't quite totally omnipotent. Granted, Vecna himself had used the power of another god and the annhilation of a demiplane to thrust himself into Sigil - and that only because he was basically told how to do it by one of the other most fundemental things in the multiverse i.e the Serpent, which, as I understand it, is the incarnation of magic itself. It perhaps, then, is to magic what the Lady is to belief. (Either that of it's something Vecna's madness dreamed up, in which case, dear pantheons, the guy has serious brains.)

Vecna proved he had some serious Awesome when he not only simultaneously kicked the Powers of Ravenloft in the shins - because they didn't LET him out, he literally broke Ravenloft to get out1, but proceeded to waltz into Sigil, become a greater god and TIE UP the Lady with enough power that she couldn't outright kill him and still had just enough umph left to pose a challenge to that mysteriously nebulously-described band of heroes sent to duff him up. And the net result was HE GOT AWAY WITH IT. Sure, he got banned from Sigil forever - but compared to the fate of the rest who tried to do over the Lady, really, that counts as a outright win. And he managed to remake the universe so it didn't work quite the same way ever again (AD&D=>3.0...)

Not bad for a Wiz20/Clr20 (and the lowest levelled deity in Deities and Demogods.) Give him his due.

It's the closest anyone's ever got. Though it might be argued that it boiled down to a direct conflict between BELIEF (i.e. the Lady) and MAGIC (i.e. the Serpent through Vecna) and that two infinities cancel each other out. And again, Vecna would have ultimately achived victory by a means not related to stats, and more to changing the fundemental structure of the Universe.

(One wonders if he truly got away with it because she actually couldn't kill him or because she was privately impressed and just shoved him out. Still, as far a Vecna is concerned, he still did something no-one else has ever done either way...)

Of course, he was a Lich, and we are, of course, totally awesome after all, so that probably helped.



1And for a while (until Ravenloft 3.x came out) - it was implied in the Die Vecna Die! he'd destroyed the whole of Ravenloft, not just the Burning Peaks cluster.

Ah the old rag tag band of adventures, the last defense against any plan. And this was the reference.

Amiel
2010-05-12, 05:55 AM
Would someone else like to handle Die, Vecna, Die? Eldan perhaps? :smallcool:

Yeah, there's a reason why people tend to dislike that supplement; not the least is how it manhandles logic and prior continuity.

kamikasei
2010-05-12, 05:58 AM
Either you seem to be missing my point, or you are misunderstanding. In an above post, I explained that all them failed in their plots and intrigues, and gave examples and ultimate fates.
I even used the words 'in their perceptions;' I'm not arguing that they approached it in the right or wrong manner in terms of the real world, I'm talking how they approached the matter according to their own factional doctrine and their points of reference (this is how us mortals view the world all the time).
Their methods certainly don't seem flawed; the only hole there was thinking they could defeat the Lady.

Eldan described an approach to taking down the Lady. You listed examples of people who have tried and failed, as if rebutting him. He pointed out that their approaches were not his, and that though superficially similar they differed on a key point: they didn't try "the right thing", i.e., the approach he described. Your response was that they did try "the right thing" according to their beliefs.

So I don't think I'm misunderstanding you so much as that I don't see what that statement has to do with the flow of the argument.

If some guy with a particular philosophy attempts something according to the method that philosophy suggests, and fails, that has no bearing on whether someone else with a different philosophy could try something different, and succeed.

Pointing out that people in the past who tried different things failed is not an argument for why someone now trying a new thing is also doomed to fail.

And as Eldan points out, their methods were flawed. Their methods consisted of trying to build themselves up to be big enough to take on the awesome and indestructible Lady - but the idea that the Lady is awesome and indestructible is still there. The approach Eldan describes is to make people stop believing the Lady is awesome and indestructible.

It might still be impossible - maybe for some reason the entire multiverse has to believe that the Lady can't be defeated. But you haven't shown that.

Amiel
2010-05-12, 06:06 AM
The flaw in his (and your argument if you are extending on his) is that there is such as thing as a "right way to doing things." I approached this is in terms of previous efforts; contrary to your suggestion, these did actively seek to diminish the Lady; in other words, they did stop believing the Lady is awesome and indestructible (of course they did; also contrary to your post, I actually gave examples) and attempted to proliferate that belief throughout the Cage.

Go reread my posts, you'll find what you seek therein.

Eldan
2010-05-12, 06:08 AM
Yes. What I wanted to say is this:
In a setting where believing your enemy is powerful actually makes him stronger, amassing enough power, from whatever source, with the final goal of becoming strong enough to have a chance against them... that's not the way to go.

And yes, I apologize for calling it "the right way". That's the wrong term. and implies it's the only way. But obviously, theirs was the wrong way, as they all failed.

kamikasei
2010-05-12, 06:11 AM
Go reread my posts, you'll find what you seek therein.

Understood them fine on the first read, thanks. They didn't address the argument Eldan just repeated; and I still don't see how "they did the right thing according to their beliefs" has anything to do with "they did the right thing to achieve their goals".

Aotrs Commander
2010-05-12, 06:12 AM
Would someone else like to handle Die, Vecna, Die? Eldan perhaps? :smallcool:

Yeah, there's a reason why people tend to dislike that supplement; not the least is how it manhandles logic and prior continuity.

Perhps...but disliking an element of canon doesn't make it less canon. Ewoks on Return of the Jedi, for example, or Jar-Jar Binks. And Die Vecna Die! wasn't remotely in that ball-park.

(I personally liked it, enough that I ran in 3.5 as the culmimation of Vecna Lives and Vecna Reborn.)

crazedloon
2010-05-12, 06:16 AM
I will have to agree with Eldan, what he is trying to say is that a plan of debuffing the lady to your power level is the way to go. This way the mass belief that she is to powerful to defeat disapears and she looses power and you can defeat her. But with this plan you do not gain any strength (well at least not to defeat her) all the plans you listed were people gathering strength to defeat her.

I think your explanation of one such story has a hint of the above plan


Aoskar tried this; in the eons before the deities were barred from the Cage, Aoskar was the god of portals. A countless multitude were his followers, and eventually he arose as the principal deity in all Sigil. He became the most-worshipped god Sigil had ever seen, as even residents moved to his worship. Some devout followers even considered the Lady of Pain to be an aspect of Aoskar.
Throughout all this, the Lady did nothing.
In his arrogance, Aoskar considered himself superior to Her Serenity; unchained by Her laws, the Lady's decrees were viewed with contempt. The Lady still did nothing; until one of her own servants "fell."
Aoskar now exists as nothing but an empty husk, perpetually floating within the Astral sea; his body pierced by many great blades; all of his worshippers were obliterated save for one Fell. His temple, among the grandest and most opulent in Sigil is now forever known as the Shattered Temple.

Notice the second her power began to fail her (via a follower falling) and she began to lower in power down to the level of Aoskar she made her move. If I am not mistaken (because I am not intimately familiar with planescape) this was the first attempt to overpower her and every attempt after she was sure to squash any attempt well before this point

Amiel
2010-05-12, 06:17 AM
But that way also involves diminishing your opponent and actively persecuting your desires through subversion; it's not all about theatrics and easily spotted intrigue. All of these were underhanded; the Expansionists, Incantificiers and the Duke moreso due to their high intelligence. They knew how to play the game, they considered the collateral damage, they weren't two-bit bit players who didn't know the front end of intrigue from the other.
What they needed to consider was despite all their planning, all their efforts, all their alliances, they were ultimately doomed to fail; exactly because of the Lady, not due to any right or wrong way, flawed or otherwise.


And yes, I apologize for calling it "the right way". That's the wrong term. and implies it's the only way. But obviously, theirs was the wrong way, as they all failed.

I still wouldn't call their way was wrong just because they failed. I feel that ultimately their way of thinking was flawed, compounded by their hubris, but they approached it in terms of eventual success.
This does mean what you wish to attempt would also fail.


Understood them fine on the first read, thanks. They didn't address the argument Eldan just repeated; and I still don't see how "they did the right thing according to their beliefs" has anything to do with "they did the right thing to achieve their goals".

Right, yet you still felt the need to reiterate points that I already addressed? :smallconfused:

kamikasei
2010-05-12, 06:19 AM
Notice the second her power began to fail her (via a follower falling) and she began to lower in power

I'm not sure you can call the Dabus "followers" of the Lady, or say her power derives from them in any way. (It's possible that having one of her servants abandon her is bad for PR and damages belief in her supremacy generally, but it's equally possible it just offended her pride.)

Amiel
2010-05-12, 06:22 AM
I will have to agree with Eldan, what he is trying to say is that a plan of debuffing the lady to your power level is the way to go. This way the mass belief that she is to powerful to defeat disapears and she looses power and you can defeat her. But with this plan you do not gain any strength (well at least not to defeat her) all the plans you listed were people gathering strength to defeat her.

I think your explanation of one such story has a hint of the above plan

Which wouldn't ultimately work since the Lady is undesirious of worship and thusly cannot be affected through belief. When you attempt to worship Her in PS:T, the consequence of your action is Her flaying you.
I addressed by saying that the Cage is Her and She is the Cage.



Notice the second her power began to fail her (via a follower falling) and she began to lower in power down to the level of Aoskar she made her move. If I am not mistaken (because I am not intimately familiar with planescape) this was the first attempt to overpower her and every attempt after she was sure to squash any attempt well before this point

It is because of the dabus Fell that She made Her move; She didn't care at all for Aoskar or his petty power schemes. What She found distasteful was how Aoskar's religion drew in Her servant.

Eldan
2010-05-12, 06:26 AM
Which wouldn't ultimately work since the Lady is undesirious of worship and thusly cannot be affected through belief. When you attempt to worship Her in PS:T, the consequence of your action is Her flaying you.


I wouldn't conclude that she can't be affected through belief. The effect of belief is even more a core aspect of the setting than the Lady herself.
Actually, a popular fan theory is that she doesn't permit worship because she would be affected by it: an organized belief would eventually set up rituals, and from those rituals derive laws according to which the lady should behave. And eventually, this belief could limit her freedom to act in the ways she sees as necessary.
Instead, she could well powered by the unspoken dread and terror all cagers feel by the mere mention of her name or the sight of her figure in the distance. It's a much less defined belief, and as such also defines her nature much less.

kamikasei
2010-05-12, 06:27 AM
Which wouldn't ultimately work since the Lady is undesirious of worship and thusly cannot be affected through belief. When you attempt to worship Her in PS:T, the consequence of your action is Her flaying you.
...
It is because of the dabus Fell that She made Her move; She didn't care at all for Aoskar or his petty power schemes. What She found distasteful was how Aoskar's religion drew in Her servant.

I see I've been ninja'd on this, but you seem to be assuming one interpretation as true where the canon is pretty much set up to leave the interpretation open. We don't know why the Lady discourages worship. We don't know what her motives in destroying Aoskar were.


Right, yet you still felt the need to reiterate points that I already addressed? :smallconfused:

I don't see how you have addressed them.


What they needed to consider was despite all their planning, all their efforts, all their alliances, they were ultimately doomed to fail; exactly because of the Lady, not due to any right or wrong way, flawed or otherwise.
...
I still wouldn't call their way was wrong just because they failed. I feel that ultimately their way of thinking was flawed, compounded by their hubris, but they approached it in terms of eventual success.
This does mean what you wish to attempt would also fail.

This seems as though you're not actually trying to argue for any flaw in Eldan's plan, but simply deciding in advance that it can't work because the Lady simply can't be beaten and that therefore citing past instances where she wasn't beaten is sufficient rebuttal.

And I still don't see how "every one of them tried the right thing, in terms of their perceptions of the world" has anything to do with anything.

Eldan
2010-05-12, 06:29 AM
We don't know what her motives in destroying Aoskar were.

Yeah, that too. I really liked a little piece of fan fiction I read a long while back.

It's subject? The love story between Aoskar and the Lady. It ended badly. :smallbiggrin:

kamikasei
2010-05-12, 06:42 AM
Posting rather than editing because, well, I've been editing in followups too much and it's probably getting confusing.


Which wouldn't ultimately work since the Lady is undesirious of worship and thusly cannot be affected through belief.

I'm undesirous of being shot in the face. This isn't because I cannot be affected by being shot in the face. And I'm pretty sure it doesn't make is so that I cannot be affected by being shot in the face.

Killer Angel
2010-05-12, 07:10 AM
We don't know why the Lady discourages worship.


Because the current way pleases her sufficiently? :smallbiggrin:


We don't know what her motives in destroying Aoskar were.


Some things are better left unanswered...

Eldan
2010-05-12, 07:13 AM
I'm undesirous of being shot in the face. This isn't because I cannot be affected by being shot in the face. And I'm pretty sure it doesn't make is so that I cannot be affected by being shot in the face.

And now I have the idea of a group of Xaositects starting to worship individual Athar just to piss them off.

megabyter5
2010-05-12, 07:15 AM
The LoP doesn't just need infinitely high stats, she also needs unfathomable stats. Ergo, I have created the following stat block for her.

The Lady of Pain
N/A N/A
Hit Dice: id∞ (since damage can only subtract, a complex number will never hit zero, let alone negative nine)
Abilities: Her dump stat is charisma. Even on an untrained check, she could bluff the multiverse into believing it did not exist, causing it to vanish in a puff of logic. On a natural one. YOU FIGURE IT OUT.
Attack: Don't bother checking. She hits.
Damage: ((your HP total)^(the last digit of pi))+i if the Lady wishes it.
Critical: Well, duh.
Armor Class: ∞
Initiative: "inb4u"
Special Qualities: Damage Reduction ∞/+i, Fast Healing ∞, Regeneration ∞ (no bypass damage), Darkvision ∞, Blindsight ∞, Tremorsense ∞, All-Around Vision (literally), Super Awesome Ability She Totally Already Had*
Space/Reach: i/∞
Environment: Wherever she damn well pleases, are YOU gonna tell her to leave?
Challenge Rating: If you have to ask, you've probably been mazed by now.
Level Adjustment: +∞ and instant banishment from D&D and all other RPGs for life just for considering it.

*This allows her to add any new power, retroactively, at will. This does not use an action.

Eldan
2010-05-12, 07:21 AM
I'm not sure of these stat blocks people are throwing around here.
Not only are they vastly unhelpful, they also pose the question:
Can the lady really do that?
Has the Lady ever bluffed anyone? Can she even bluff?
Is the Lady really that fast or could a hasted Quickling on speed outrun her?
Can she be in every environment? So far, she seems limited to Sigil.
Can she really heal wounds, or has she just never been wounded?
Does she have or need any abilities?

In a way, I think these "arbitrarily large" stat blocks are just as limiting to the Lady as any other stat block. They kill the mystery and replace it with something not only useless, but also boring. Infinity.

Amiel
2010-05-12, 07:29 AM
I wouldn't conclude that she can't be affected through belief. The effect of belief is even more a core aspect of the setting than the Lady herself.

Actually, a popular fan theory is that she doesn't permit worship because she would be affected by it: an organized belief would eventually set up rituals, and from those rituals derive laws according to which the lady should behave. And eventually, this belief could limit her freedom to act in the ways she sees as necessary.
Instead, she could well powered by the unspoken dread and terror all cagers feel by the mere mention of her name or the sight of her figure in the distance. It's a much less defined belief, and as such also defines her nature much less.

However, we can extrapolate from what we already know and come to a logical conclusion based on such. We know there is a ward in Sigil known as the Lady's Ward; we can also assume that the inhabitants might use her name as either an oath, or within 'casual conversation.' This is insofar they don't place religious connotations upon her name.
By mechanics, any utterance of her name, her titles or associations thereof can be construed as acknowledging her through their belief. Yet for all this, the Lady remains ambivalent towards Cagers and interlopers.

Edit to add; the definition of belief you argue for in the latter part of your paragraph is different to the Belief presented on a large scale that is inherent to the Planes.

Incidently, official canon suggests the Lady is three ratatosks or squirrels in a levitating robe.

I see I've been ninja'd on this, but you seem to be assuming one interpretation as true where the canon is pretty much set up to leave the interpretation open. We don't know why the Lady discourages worship. We don't know what her motives in destroying Aoskar were.

We can, however, reach a logical conclusion. She only instigated action once one of her dabus moved to worship Aoskar; prior to this, the Lady was unconcerned and "dismissive" of the level of threat (your implication) Aoskar may have presented. This presents the precise reason and presents her precise motive. While Aoskar was pierced by her blades and his worshippers expunged, you'll find that one Fell still exists, probably as a warning to others.


I don't see how you have addressed them.
Are you willlfully ignoring them are you truly not seeing?
Go reread my posts; carefully.


This seems as though you're not actually trying to argue for any flaw in Eldan's plan, but simply deciding in advance that it can't work because the Lady simply can't be beaten and that therefore citing past instances where she wasn't beaten is sufficient rebuttal.

No, since we have nothing else to go on, and any possible suggestion to a possible triumph over the Lady is ultimately conjecture and speculation at best, I can only argue from the point of view of canon.
Funny how canon works, simply deciding in advance that it can't work because the Lady simply can't beaten.


And I still don't see how "every one of them tried the right thing, in terms of their perceptions of the world" has anything to do with anything.

Less restrictions upon literal definitions; you'll note that Eldan retracted his statement.


I'm undesirous of being shot in the face. This isn't because I cannot be affected by being shot in the face. And I'm pretty sure it doesn't make is so that I cannot be affected by being shot in the face.

Planescape doesn't work that way; nor even does D&D.
While the underlying concept and premise of Planescape is Belief, there are many instances where that position is refuted or denied; also, see my post where I address this.
Even some deities, where the default position is empowerment through belief or extinction by a lack of, remain unchanged in the presence of faith, belief or worship; this is especially true of Greyhawk gods.

kamikasei
2010-05-12, 07:44 AM
We can, however, reach a logical conclusion.

You're looking at the actions of a being who's pretty much set up specifically to be inscrutable and assuming you can take the apparently simplest explanation for them as confirmed in canon. That's presumptuous.


Are you willlfully ignoring them are you truly not seeing?
Go reread my posts; carefully.

I'm truly not seeing. But at this point the discussion doesn't seem likely to become fruitful.


No, since we have nothing else to go on, and any possible suggestion to a possible triumph over the Lady is ultimately conjecture and speculation at best, I can only argue from the point of view of canon.
Funny how canon works, simply deciding in advance that it can't work because the Lady simply can't beaten.

Was this a copy-paste error? If not I can't parse what you're trying to say.[/spoiler]


Planescape doesn't work that way; nor even does D&D.
While the underlying concept and premise of Planescape is Belief, there are many instances where that position is refuted or denied; also, see my post where I address this.
Even some deities, where the default position is empowerment through belief or extinction by a lack of, remain unchanged in the presence of faith, belief or worship; this is especially true of Greyhawk gods.

I have no idea what you're talking about. My point was that you were saying that because the Lady doesn't want to be worshipped, therefore if people do worship her it can't affect her. That doesn't make any sense.

Amiel
2010-05-12, 07:59 AM
You're looking at the actions of a being who's pretty much set up specifically to be inscrutable and assuming you can take the apparently simplest explanation for them as confirmed in canon. That's presumptuous.

You do realise that the Lady always has an ultimate plan and acts towards an ultimate goal, don't you? and this is written in a way to be, while convoluted and twisting, understood by us readers. Canon itself even emphasises that it was only after Fell's movement towards the worship of Aoskar that the Lady was 'compelled' to act.
This is despite the fact that previously Aoskar did not warrant attention at all from the Lady; else, if she seriously considered the god of portals a threat (and he would have been given he was the deity with most amount of worshippers and hence had the most influence) she would have already acted to restrict or manipulate him.
She moved to remove the Expansionists, the Incantificiers and Duke Darkwood. By strawmanning and saying that what I am doing is 'simply taking the simplest explanation' to suit your argument is preposterous.


I'm truly not seeing. But at this point the discussion doesn't seem likely to become fruitful.
Well, I can only sound like a broken record so many times; but everything is already written.


Was this a copy-paste error? If not I can't parse what you're trying to say
You attempt to argue that it was I who simply decided that the Lady cannot be beaten, attempts to the contrary be damned; this simply isn't true. Canon agrees.


I have no idea what you're talking about. My point was that you were saying that because the Lady doesn't want to be worshipped, therefore if people do worship her it can't affect her. That doesn't make any sense.

'That because the Lady doesn't want to be worshipped, if people do worship her it can't affect her' is true to some settings.

Eldan
2010-05-12, 08:13 AM
'That because the Lady doesn't want to be worshipped, if people do worship her it can't affect her' is true to some settings.

Do you have any evidence at all for this? Because this sounds massively illogical.

Amiel
2010-05-12, 08:24 AM
Do you have any evidence at all for this? Because this sounds massively illogical.


Even some deities, where the default position is empowerment through belief or extinction by a lack of, remain unchanged in the presence of faith, belief or worship; this is especially true of Greyhawk gods.

Boccob, Tharizdun, Istus, Cyndor et al. See also the Eberron deities.

Heliomance
2010-05-12, 08:34 AM
Hypotheticaly, just saying, I suspect a gnome could pull it off.

Shadowcrafted Ice Assassin, anyone?

kamikasei
2010-05-12, 08:55 AM
Yeah, this is going nowhere productive. From my point of view you're presenting inferences (albeit reasonable ones) as established fact; apparently from your point of view your assertions are so self-evidently true that they can't be clarified at all. There's not really going to be a common ground to find there.


'That because the Lady doesn't want to be worshipped, if people do worship her it can't affect her' is true to some settings.

The grammar here appears broken. I think you're saying that in some settings the fact of a powerful being not wanting to be worshipped is sufficient to keep worship from affecting them. That might be true. I don't see how you've demonstrated that it's true for the Lady though.

Your response to Eldan only confuses the matter further, because as far as I can tell you're listing deities who apparently aren't affected by how much or how little people believe in them, which has nothing to do with whether they want worship or not. If an entity is unaffected by worship, you'd expect them not to care who does or doesn't worship them. If they do care, you'd expect it to be because worship has an effect that they do or don't desire. And in neither case is there any reason to think that they're affected or not by worship because they do or don't want it.

I don't actually expect clarification on this point, but it's a microcosm for the conversation so far from my point of view, if it helps to get the reason for my frustration across.

Yukitsu
2010-05-12, 09:47 AM
It's probably true in that people who try to believe something about her that defines her, get mazed or bladed. That's a pretty strong method by prevention.

kamikasei
2010-05-12, 09:51 AM
It's probably true in that people who try to believe something about her that defines her, get mazed or bladed. That's a pretty strong method by prevention.

Going back to my earlier analogy, that's like saying "I don't want to be shot, so that makes me immune to bullets. This is proven by the fact that I kill anyone who comes too close to me with a gun, before they get a chance to fire."

Yukitsu
2010-05-12, 09:53 AM
Going back to my earlier analogy, that's like saying "I don't want to be shot, so that makes me immune to bullets. This is proven by the fact that I kill anyone who comes too close to me with a gun, before they get a chance to fire."

If you can do it 100% of the time, I think that's a pretty darn good immunity to being shot, what with how people can't do it without dying before they can.

Yora
2010-05-12, 09:57 AM
Going back to my earlier analogy, that's like saying "I don't want to be shot, so that makes me immune to bullets."
In Planescape, this might actually work. :smallbiggrin:

kamikasei
2010-05-12, 09:58 AM
If you can do it 100% of the time, I think that's a pretty darn good immunity to being shot, what with how people can't do it without dying before they can.

"No one is able to shoot me" and "I am immune to bullets" are not the same thing. "The Lady is unaffected by worship/belief" and "no one who tries to worship her lives long enough to have any effect" are not the same thing. If we're speculating about what would happen if someone spread a certain belief about the Lady (that was not worship of her), the distinction is important.

Yukitsu
2010-05-12, 10:01 AM
What would happen is, they'd all die or be mazed. :smallconfused:

Yora
2010-05-12, 10:03 AM
If she's worshiped, she might become a deity. And currently she's in control of the only place where deities are completely powerless. And all evidence hints that she doesn't want anything to change about her current position and function, whatever those might be?

BobVosh
2010-05-12, 10:05 AM
Going back to my earlier analogy, that's like saying "I don't want to be shot, so that makes me immune to bullets. This is proven by the fact that I kill anyone who comes too close to me with a gun, before they get a chance to fire."

Which doesn't prove anything. It does indicate that if being worshiped directly effects her she will prevent it. However consider this: her one well defined motivation is to keep balance within Sigil. How would being worshiped affect that? I could see it seriously messing up the balance.

Also I'm curious, where does this squirrel thing come from?

*Edit* Woah 5 posts in the time I took to type that. I personally believe that she couldn't be directly harmed or shaped by the belief bestowed in her, but that it could effect her goal.

kamikasei
2010-05-12, 10:07 AM
Which doesn't prove anything.

Did I suggest it did? That was rather the opposite of the point I was trying to make.

Tiki Snakes
2010-05-12, 10:09 AM
If she's worshiped, she might become a deity. And currently she's in control of the only place where deities are completely powerless. And all evidence hints that she doesn't want anything to change about her current position and function, whatever those might be?

Take one of the possibles on the situation; That Sigil IS a cage in some way.

So, in all the millenia that she's been there, no effort to leave? Not even for a holiday?

You're telling me she has no outside interests, perhaps? Her life too full of urban joy and revelries? Doesn't that seem odd?

I can't help but think that, just perhaps, there is an essentially defensive philosophy in the situation. It's not, necessarily, that she can't leave. But she certainly won't.

So, if that's the case, what is the Lady scared of? And why would she care if there were deities allowed in Sigil, if she could take them out with no trouble whenever they become a problem? Really, a whole portion of her behaviours seem inherantly defence minded.

That intruiges me.

WhiteHarness
2010-05-12, 10:21 AM
The lady of pain is the reason I'd never, ever play in a Sigil campaign, which is a pity, since the setting is otherwise compelling.

What I'd like to see is sort of a wizard of Oz situation with her--behind the mask is something surprisingly weak. And of course, I'd like to see her killed off; that'd make the setting playable and enjoyable.

It wouldn't be so bad if she weren't more powerful than the gods...

kamikasei
2010-05-12, 10:29 AM
I don't really understand that attitude. What's so grating about the Lady? She's so much an impersonal force of nature that she need have no direct bearing on a game set right under her feet at all.

Yora
2010-05-12, 10:30 AM
You're telling me she has no outside interests, perhaps?
I wouldn't dare to tell anyone anything regarding the lady. Her motives are completely unknowable. :smallbiggrin:

But as I see it, she probably is something very different from any other beings, including mortals, outsiders, demon lords, and deities. Sigil is an annomaly of the multiverse, and I suspect her to be part of it. Whatever she is, it's something completely unique unlike any other being or power in the multiverse. If she is a manifestation of Sigils unique nature, I think it doesn't seem very unlikely that she really doesn't care about anything outside the city or about anything other beings would care for. I don't think attention, admiration, wealth, or pleasure have any meaning for her at all.

All we know about her is that her activities maintain the status quo of Sigil, and there is no evidence that it had ever been different or that this would change at any point in the future. So I don't see any reason why there should be anything more to her.

Aotrs Commander
2010-05-12, 10:35 AM
I don't really understand that attitude. What's so grating about the Lady? She's so much an impersonal force of nature that she need have no direct bearing on a game set right under her feet at all.

Likewise.

And D&D is one of the exceptions, too; in most worlds/RPG systems (or at least more often that not) "regular" gods are not killable either. (E.g. Warhammer or Warhammer 40k for one.)

Or is it just the fact the Lady is simply more pro-active than many deities in dealing with people who want to break the universe, and the larger potential for "rocks fall, you die" on PCs?

Killer Angel
2010-05-12, 10:36 AM
The lady of pain is the reason I'd never, ever play in a Sigil campaign, which is a pity, since the setting is otherwise compelling.


:smallconfused:
This makes no sense, you can have whole campaigns in Sigil, with many high-level intrigues, without involving the Lady.

Ehra
2010-05-12, 11:01 AM
If you can do it 100% of the time, I think that's a pretty darn good immunity to being shot, what with how people can't do it without dying before they can.

This is how I'd take it as well. After all, doesn't a person being "immune" to something just mean their body's immune system can fight off whatever causes that specific thing before it can cause any damage to the body? A Hepatitis A immunization doesn't actually make you "immune" to the disease itself, it just allows your body to fight off what causes Hepatitis A before you ever get it.

FatR
2010-05-12, 11:15 AM
I'd stat LoP at around CR 25 (assuming CR still has any meaning at this point), with a Screw You field that applies solely to gods. This way she still has enough power to at least draw against Superman, but actually is something PCs can have a meaningful interaction with (even if this interaction boils down to killing her and taking her stuff at the pinnacle of a worlds-shaking campaign), rather than a floating extension for GM's penis.

Aharon
2010-05-12, 11:17 AM
Didn't read the whole thread, so my apologies if it was already mentioned...

The 2nd ed Sigil handbook did have a chronology of the city, I don't remember it exactly, but I think the earliest date was some tens of thousand years in the past. If we assume that the Lady exists since Sigil does, we at least know she didn't exist since the Great Wheel does.

(I dimly remember there were some references somewhere that the Great Wheel has not always existed, can anybody confirm that?)

Also, Manual of the Plane had her alignment as neutral, didn't it? So we know Blasphemies and Holy Words can't hurt her :smalltongue:

Samb
2010-05-12, 11:23 AM
One quality I think should be on there:

Temporal Aloof:
The Lady stands outside the stream of time. She observes and experiences time as someone reading and editing a book. As a result, any attempt to foil or kill her by means of time travel is automatically revealed to her. Unbound by time also allows her to take turns anytime she desires, and make as many actions per round as she wants.


Basically, she wins action economy; always. Yes, even if you travel back in time, she knows it. Just ask the Duke.

FatR
2010-05-12, 11:28 AM
:smallconfused:
This makes no sense, you can have whole campaigns in Sigil, with many high-level intrigues, without involving the Lady.
I can't say for him, but for me a DnD campaign that does not involve the end of the current age for whatever is "the world" in it is a DnD campaign not worth playing. (Because if I play a high fantasy game it had better deal with high fantasy themes, and if the game is not high fantasy, there are better systems for that.) NPCs like LoP whose only purpose - at best, realistically they serve to smack PCs down whenever they do something the GM doesn't like - is to maintain status quo forever, do not allow for that.

Kurald Galain
2010-05-12, 11:33 AM
you can have whole campaigns in Sigil, with many high-level intrigues, without involving the Lady.

Yes. She works very well as a superstition. Many people in Sigil believe that attacking dabus is bad luck. This, too, is superstition: their belief keeps these people from attacking dabus, and these people will never find out if their superstition is correct or not, precisely because they'd rather not find out.

So this does not interfere with your campaign unless your player characters explicitly want to attack dabus for some reason (or for no reason).

"Don't go overturn the multiverse because it will upset The Lady" does not impact your campaign unless you actually have player characters who want to overturn the multiverse. Most PCs, at least in my experience, don't.


I can't say for him, but for me a DnD campaign that does not involve the end of the current age for whatever is "the world" in it is a DnD campaign not worth playing.
...that is a valid point. Not one I agree with, though. Yes, if you want to play in the Sigil equivalent of the Time Of Troubles, then The Lady may prove an obstacle.

Drascin
2010-05-12, 11:36 AM
I can't say for him, but for me a DnD campaign that does not involve the end of the current age for whatever is "the world" in it is a DnD campaign not worth playing. (Because if I play a high fantasy game it had better deal with high fantasy themes, and if the game is not high fantasy, there are better systems for that.) NPCs like LoP whose only purpose - at best, realistically they serve to smack PCs down whenever they do something the GM doesn't like - is to maintain status quo forever, do not allow for that.

That is... an interesting stance, to be sure. Never ever heard that particular argument, to be honest. So a D&D campaign, to be D&D for you, needs to be about turning the entire universe upside down? Well, it's a valid thematic preference, I guess, if a bit of an odd one from my perspective.

CrypticOcean
2010-05-12, 11:37 AM
Also, Manual of the Plane had her alignment as neutral, didn't it? So we know Blasphemies and Holy Words can't hurt her :smalltongue:

Actually, Blasphemy and Holy word respectively effect -any- Nongood or Nonevil target. Not any Good or Evil target. So, technically, the only "word" spell she is immune to is Word of Balance.

Although being a Lovecraftian concept, I am doubting any creature has enough HD to affect her with any part of the spell other than the weakest tier.

Samb
2010-05-12, 11:38 AM
I can't say for him, but for me a DnD campaign that does not involve the end of the current age for whatever is "the world" in it is a DnD campaign not worth playing. (Because if I play a high fantasy game it had better deal with high fantasy themes, and if the game is not high fantasy, there are better systems for that.) NPCs like LoP whose only purpose - at best, realistically they serve to smack PCs down whenever they do something the GM doesn't like - is to maintain status quo forever, do not allow for that.

This just sounds like Planescape isn't for you. The LoP is the personification that anything is possible in Sigil. If you like traditional high fantasy stuff and good vs. evil then no, Planescape isn't for you.

But if like the thought of angels and devils disscusing philosophy over an expensive bottle of wine, then Planescape is for you.

Aharon
2010-05-12, 11:47 AM
@CrypticOcean
D'oh. Should read the rules before posting. Thanks :smallsmile:

arguskos
2010-05-12, 12:12 PM
'Tis good to be a blood, berk. :smallbiggrin: 'Dem lemons keep howlin from their idea-pots. No respec', ain't put no lannin' that s'all a demiplane. Best to mum on ol' metal head 'fore we all countin' worms, tho...
Lily white, ye be. Dis here stype can scrip it, lest we be scribin de Dead Book.

Oi, Tygre, you be a rounder, dis here screed, what's the chant on it from the Laugh anyhow?

Killer Angel
2010-05-12, 12:15 PM
I can't say for him, but for me a DnD campaign that does not involve the end of the current age for whatever is "the world" in it is a DnD campaign not worth playing.

mmm... I know at least one playgrounder that probably thinks the same (Volkov?).
I don't like to play with such attitude, and I'm almost sure this point of view it's certainly not the common one, still, if your playstyle is that, is respectable.
But I'm sure that with those premises, someone can imagine a creative way to turn Sigil upside down, involving millenia schemes with Archdevils, etc... You must win where Gods failed, but it can be done. Indeed Epic.

Eldan
2010-05-12, 12:18 PM
The lady of pain is the reason I'd never, ever play in a Sigil campaign, which is a pity, since the setting is otherwise compelling.

What I'd like to see is sort of a wizard of Oz situation with her--behind the mask is something surprisingly weak. And of course, I'd like to see her killed off; that'd make the setting playable and enjoyable.


Actually, I think she is one of the few things making the setting playable. The planes are full of hostile critters and extreme philosophies. Just about every spot of land out there is ruled over by some powerful entity with an agenda.
But there, in the middle, is this city. It connects to every other place, and has extreme strategic value for every planar conflict. And yet, it is the one neutral place in the multiverse, where not one, but every agenda is represented.
It's a place where every player character, no matter his beliefs, can coexist in relative peace. Such a place is important in a campaign setting.



It wouldn't be so bad if she weren't more powerful than the gods...
[/quote]

As has been mentioned: is she really? She killed one god, perhaps. Or at least, one god crossed her, then died. No one saw her do it.
And since then? She has been holed up in her city, trying to keep all the divine and powerful creatures out. Why? Perhaps because it's the only way she knows of dealing with them. Portal control and the ability to flay or maze mortals are the only certainly known abilities she has. God-exploding? Not on the list.

FatR
2010-05-12, 12:28 PM
This just sounds like Planescape isn't for you. The LoP is the personification that anything is possible in Sigil.
Uh... please explain how LoP existing specifically to stop anything meaningful from happening and keep the status quo forever makes her the personification that anything is possible?


If you like traditional high fantasy stuff and good vs. evil then no, Planescape isn't for you.
All popular fantasy is "vs. evil". Practically no exceptions. Not always there are actual "good" on the other side, as protragonists can be bastards who just happen to fight far worse bastards. But even in A Song of Ice and Fire or Witcher you have evil forces that intend to wipe out manking as the main threat the characters will be dealing with in the end, or an evil wizard who wishes to take over the world as the main antagonist, respectively.

More importantly, the presence of a good vs. evil angle, although practically mandatory for games that actually intend to emulate fantasy, is not at all relevant to my point. What I mentioned as a defining trait of high fantasy is not the struggle of good vs. evil, but the theme of end of an age, with heroes playing the key part. Since Tolkien and Moorcock, the defining trait of high fantasy is the world being thoroughly shaken up and changed forever by the time heroes are done with their main quest. If a game which offers PCs power level waaaaay beyond anything normally seen in high fantasy fails to replicate this, then I don't want anything to do with such game.


But if like the thought of angels and devils disscusing philosophy over an expensive bottle of wine, then Planescape is for you.
I always found this idea to be ridiculously grimdark, to the point of being offensive. Like discussing morality with serial killers.

FatR
2010-05-12, 12:38 PM
...that is a valid point. Not one I agree with, though. Yes, if you want to play in the Sigil equivalent of the Time Of Troubles,
No, I don't want to play in any equivalent of the Time Of Troubles. The Time of Troubles' modules (yes, I did read them) sucked, and the general idea boiled down to creating an appearance of a major change, while keeping the world almost exactly the same. For example, by the time they decided to resurrect Bane for 3E he found Zhentarim in the position of roughly the same power it was before ToT.

BlckDv
2010-05-12, 12:51 PM
Uh... please explain how LoP existing specifically to stop anything meaningful from happening and keep the status quo forever makes her the personification that anything is possible?

Well, to make it simple, My set of "anything interesting" is not bounded by the clause "alters the fundamental nature of the city of Sigil" Ending the Blood War? Interesting in my book. Shifting Gatetowns across planar boundaries? Interesting. Resurrecting a Dead God? Very Interesting. None of these require entering into any conflict, or even encounter, with the Lady. And at least two of them can lead to the "Birth of a New Age" in which the world (or multiverse) is a different place. Limiting your ability to have fun to kicking over one specific anthill sure gives those ants a lot of power over your fun.

EDIT: The word "interesting" in the quoted section was changed to "meaningful". I am not altering my wording, as I think the point is still clear.


I always found this idea to be ridiculously grimdark, to the point of being offensive. Like discussing morality with serial killers.

Well, that may be why you don't find Planescape appealing. Discussing morality with a serial killer has happened more than once in my Planescape games, often to my players delight.

You are welcome to your Cataclysm style games, but there is quite a wide range of Fantasy that has nothing to do with the End of the World (Age), and those of us who prefer the scope scaled down enjoy our fantasy no less for it, the triumph (or fall) of one lone hero on the fringes of history can be very moving.

chiasaur11
2010-05-12, 01:00 PM
You are welcome to your Cataclysm style games, but there is quite a wide range of Fantasy that has nothing to do with the End of the World (Age), and those of us who prefer the scope scaled down enjoy our fantasy no less for it, the triumph (or fall) of one lone hero on the fringes of history can be very moving.

Agreed.

I mean, Lord of the Rings is great. Sure.

But the only the cataclysmic end of an age for you?

Well, that eliminates half the major source material, easy.

Most stuff Conan did? Not age ending. The Hobbit? Not age ending. Fafhd and the Grey Mouser?

Petty crooks half the time, petty swords for hire the other. Well, petty might be wrong with the whole "best there's ever been when it comes to stabbing" thing, but you get the idea.

Fantasy isn't just cliche apocalypses. The good stuff always has room to kick back with some buddies, head into some lost crypts, and kill you some draculas. Hating even the potential for that just seems sad.

crazedloon
2010-05-12, 01:08 PM
As far as the worship of the LoP no one seems to have tried to create a cult outside of Sigil. Which in my honest opinion would be the way to go about defining her power to a point where you could kill her. She seems to have little too no power outside of her city (besides I presume minions, all of which are probably killable) but belief transcends the planes (see how it effects gods from the material plane to their home plane) Once you have a sufficiently large worship base outside Sigil you could begin defining her power by belief by limiting her effect on the city itself, i.e. only punishing those who do not believe in her as a god. With that limit cap placed on her maze abilities you can move your worship into the city itself (Where belief has more power) and begin to truly limit her power. Once she is demoted to a simple god (and with the right manipulation of your cult a weak one) just fight her the good ol fashioned way.

She seams very similar to Ao in the respect she hates worshipers and her power level. Ao has the ability to smack gods down (so does she) however he seems unwilling to have any worshipers and erases all knowledge of his existence from the material. When someone somehow finds out about him he crushes their cult with absolute power and erases the knowledge of him and the cult from the records. The only difference is he has power everywhere (As an overdeity of the entire mutliverse) she only has power in Sigil and thus her 1 weakness vs him.

Ozymandias9
2010-05-12, 01:12 PM
You attempt to argue that it was I who simply decided that the Lady cannot be beaten, attempts to the contrary be damned; this simply isn't true. Canon agrees.

"Can not" does not necessarily follow from "has not." The canonical attempts have a measure of the same understanding of the power of belief in the setting, but a basic presumption in method of raising the actor(s) up to a level where they can challenge the lady-- they certainly tried to diminish her as well, but they were still amassing power for a confrontation.

The proposed method starts with a presumption of doing nothing be lowering the lady down. In belief structures, "I am greater than the LoP" is not necessarily the same thing as "The LoP is less than me," and is no where near "The LoP is nothing."

We've seen no canonical effort to such. To my knowledge there is no canonical description of her as explicitly unbeatable or that the multiversal belief structure does not apply to her.

You're extrapolating from canon, not standing firmly on it. This is a necessity of the topic. But it grants you no more protection for your arguments than any other poster doing the same.


Her motives are completely unknowable. :smallbiggrin:Nothing that exists is unknowable. You're just not giving proper effort.


:smallconfused:
This makes no sense, you can have whole campaigns in Sigil, with many high-level intrigues, without involving the Lady.
Because the 20 ton metaphysical sacred cow is still in the room? I can't speak for the person you're replying to (I have other objections to PS as well), but I would find the setting at least marginally more palatable if it didn't have a anthropomorphic force that people could direct their fan love at.

Aharon
2010-05-12, 01:15 PM
@all:
So, does anybody know when Sigil was created? And if the Great Wheel is eternal or not?

@crazedloon
Ao doesn't do that. In fact, there is a cult of Ao in Waterdeep. It's just very small and insignificant because he doesn't grant anything to his followers. Also, Ao isn't the overdeity of the entire multiverse, just Toril.

Edge
2010-05-12, 01:20 PM
If you want to stat the Lady of Pain, I'd say go ahead. Just stat her more powerful than anything else.

For what its worth, the Dicefreaks version of the Lady (http://dicefreaks.superforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=5&start=120) is functioning in a setting with the following context (http://dicefreaks.superforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=171). In addition, if I remember correctly, mortal characters are limited to a hard cap of 30 or 40 HD or levels.

For further comparison, here is said setting's version of Zeus (http://dicefreaks.superforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=5&start=315), a greater deity.

The stats you assign to the Lady, if you are going to stat her not just leave Her as a living embodiment of Rule 0, should take into account the statistics you assign deities in your game.

Eldan
2010-05-12, 01:30 PM
@all:
So, does anybody know when Sigil was created? And if the Great Wheel is eternal or not?

@crazedloon
Ao doesn't do that. In fact, there is a cult of Ao in Waterdeep. It's just very small and insignificant because he doesn't grant anything to his followers. Also, Ao isn't the overdeity of the entire multiverse, just Toril.

This is the most extensive timeline I know. (http://www.planewalker.com/forum/planescape-timeline#comment-4314)

Aharon
2010-05-12, 01:36 PM
Cool!
Thank you, Eldan.

Kurald Galain
2010-05-12, 01:43 PM
This is the most extensive timeline I know. (http://www.planewalker.com/forum/planescape-timeline#comment-4314)

Okay, what is it with all those Great Modron Marches anyway?

Samb
2010-05-12, 01:46 PM
Uh... please explain how LoP existing specifically to stop anything meaningful from happening and keep the status quo forever makes her the personification that anything is possible?
Her being the maintainer of the status quo...... I haven't heard of that. She just does what she wants. Only a few laws are abolute with her
1) don't worship her
2) no gods in Sigil.
She turns a blind to everything else. In fact many "shake-ups" have occurs canon wise in the history of the planes and Sigil.

She maintains the status as in "Sigil will have no gods" but there have been at least two fraction wars and then fractions which have always been a part of Sigil were done away with by her mandate. To say that she names things static is inaccurate.

Eldan
2010-05-12, 03:09 PM
Okay, what is it with all those Great Modron Marches anyway?

Every something years (I think it was something like 17x17) the Modrons get tired of collecting information from Mechanus and take a hands on approach. They send a few legions of modrons out in a march once around the Great Wheel. If any survive the trip, they report their experiences. Usually, they also tend to trample everything in their path for the first parts.
Then there was the Great Modron March they named an adventure path after. That one was at the wrong time, for reasons later revealed in a follow-up adventure.

LibraryOgre
2010-05-12, 03:09 PM
...1d4 players per round.

There. Done.

Wow. Even old-school, I'd only kill the characters.

The Lady IS tough.

:smallbiggrin:

FatR
2010-05-12, 06:03 PM
Well, to make it simple, My set of "anything interesting" is not bounded by the clause "alters the fundamental nature of the city of Sigil" Ending the Blood War? Interesting in my book. Shifting Gatetowns across planar boundaries? Interesting. Resurrecting a Dead God? Very Interesting.
I said "meaningful" not "interesting" (although to me the former is a prerequisite for the latter). Ending the Blood War (in a way that allows suspension of disbelief) is not possible in the setting as written, unless you have infinite cosmic power and can reshape the multiverse at will. Other events are not meaningful. Gods are dime a dozen in Planescape and Gatetowns shifting is not something anyone, but their inhabitants will care about and will not even change anything except in short term.



You are welcome to your Cataclysm style games, but there is quite a wide range of Fantasy that has nothing to do with the End of the World (Age), and those of us who prefer the scope scaled down enjoy our fantasy no less for it, the triumph (or fall) of one lone hero on the fringes of history can be very moving.
And DnD is one of the least appropriate systems for games like this. Meteoric rise to world-shaking power is hardcoded into its very core. (However hard setting authors who think that only their pet characters/former PCs have any right to be the protagonists try to convince people otherwise.) Trying to keep PCs down and prevent genre-appropriate developments by using NPCs who have even more ridiculous abilities is disingenious and punishes players for success (because they must manage far more complex mechanics while doing basically the same stuff they did at level 5 - that's, by the way, was one of the main reasons for ELH failure). Certainly, if I'd have an idea to run a campaign about small fry, I'd pick something like Warhammer for it.

ScionoftheVoid
2010-05-12, 07:08 PM
1)Ending the Blood War (in a way that allows suspension of disbelief) is not possible in the setting as written, unless you have infinite cosmic power and can reshape the multiverse at will.2) Other events are not meaningful.3) Gods are dime a dozen in Planescape

Bolded text added by me for easier sectioning of my reply.

1) Why not and what does it have to do with the Lady of Pain (her presence being your original complaint)? I see no reason for the Lady to stop you and anything else stopping is basically irrelevant to your complaint (that there is always someone better than you, the Lady specifically).

2) Anything short of stopping what is quite possibly the longest war in existance, fought between Law and Chaos incarnate in their most vile guises, a feat beyond even the gods is not meaningful? Really? At about Epic levels it might be the sort of thing you'd do as a very draining challenge, requiring great allies. Epic levels were not really covered in the starting rules. Of the first twenty levels (the ones meant for the most use, judging by the fact that they are detailed greatly in the core books), defeating a Beholder (just one) is considered a very high challenge for almost half of them. Defeating some of the weaker Great Wyrms (any one) is supposed to be a near-overwhelming challenge for characters approaching Epic levels. Either your claims that D&D is made for "end of an age" stories were vastly misinformed and/or exaggerated or many more things are "meaningful" than you have admitted. Personally, I'd say if the world was approximately Earth-sized that anything on the scale of saving a metropolis or larger area is meaningful. Things capable of threats on such scale are generally CR~15, or challenging with chance of death to a party of levels tens and elevens (mid-levels, unless I'm horribly mistaken). Things capable of threatening a country are probably Epic level challenges (or near it). This makes these things very meaningful. Ending the Blood War? Stopping it for even a day is beyond meaningful. (IMO. This assumes a party not greatly abusing things: no abuse of Polymorph, Celerity, Gate, etc. though use of such things is not unheard of)

3) The PHB alone has at least thirteen deities, gods are not uncommon in most settings, as far as I am aware.

Edit: Levels one through fifteen or so disprove the second paragraph of your post (for the most part). The only levels appropriate to "end of the world" scenarios are approximately sixteen up unless you're in a setting where a few Orcs could likely take on a small village by themselves (Middle Earth in the time of the Fellowship, maybe?). If D&D wasn't intended to handle low-impact, less world-warping adventures levels five downwards would almost definitely be gone.

Add to this that your approximation of D&Ds intended power level seems very high to some in this thread (including me, and I jump on high power games without hesitation), and that the designers were commonly thought to have wanted a game at much lower power than the game actually turned out to be, and your statements on intended power seem very unlikely. D&D is a high power setting, to the point that you could outdo any person in our world by about level 5/6 without fail if you had a shared focus, not to the point that characters are intended to massively alter a setting with little effort or resistance.

Basically, if you want to completely upend the setting such that you could destroy or seriously alter the basic nature of the multiverse then you're going to have to work for it! In Planescape that means making and enacting a plan to not be stopped by the Lady of Pain.

I have no objection to you not playing in Planescape but what you're blaming on the Lady would probably, IME, be blamed on not having a doormat for a DM. That the setting allows you free reign to alter cities, countries, even whole planes of existance is freedom enough. Apparently you must be able to topple the most powerful beings in the setting and be able to warp the setting such that it doesn't even seem to be the same setting any more. I wouldn't consider D&D to truly be D&D if the Blood War could be stopped by any being that could not also take Sigil from the Lady (as the LoP is now, mind), but if you don't want to have to face opposition when stopping what is quite possibly the longest war in existance, fought between Law and Chaos incarnate in their most vile guises, a feat beyond even the gods then that's valid too. Just don't assume that D&D is meant to be played that way, or suggest that any setting which includes a built-in reminder for the DM ("don't be a doormat") is somehow diminished for this. Particularly when said reminder is not known to operate outside of one area, a god-free zone and therefore probably not the place to hang out if your list of achievable goals includes ending the Blood War (only example you gave, sorry for the repetition).

Killer Angel
2010-05-13, 02:16 AM
Because the 20 ton metaphysical sacred cow is still in the room? I can't speak for the person you're replying to (I have other objections to PS as well), but I would find the setting at least marginally more palatable if it didn't have a anthropomorphic force that people could direct their fan love at.

:smallsigh:
That "sacred cow", object of "fan love", is the reason that justify Sigil. As Eldan said, the city of doors is a unique place in the multiverse, every power wants to control it, but they can't, so you have the only neutral place in the setting, and this gives the players a huge place to interact with everything.
The Lady is simply a justification for Sigil's existance, and her power is strictly limited to the city.
To support this, there's the fluff with all the past stories that show the failure of every try to replace her.
Were not the fan, that made the Lady what she is: it's the setting that is written in this way, for a precise reason.
You don't like it? nothing stops you to create a campaign where the players (given enough power and cunning) can effectively remove the Lady form her virtual throne. With all the related consequences.

And frankly, I find the whole "Oh no, the Lady is unbeatable, if I cannot kill her, I cannot have fun, because the setting is limiting my possible choices and freedom of changing the universe", a very poor excusation (not saying that this is your case, but it's the more common attitude Vs Planescape).
In a "standard" campaign (aka not epic level), the Gods are untoucheable powers, and I don't recall this limiting my fun, only because I'm not adventuring to slay a Pantheon.

Balor01
2010-05-13, 02:51 AM
So everyone just overlooked my "Back to the future approach"? And planting a hydrogen bomb/black hole way back, when Lady of pain was just a Toddler of pinpricks. Or, why not plant a black hole on Sigil itself? Have the plane devoured ...

The Rose Dragon
2010-05-13, 02:56 AM
So everyone just overlooked my "Back to the future approach"? And planting a hydrogen bomb/black hole way back, when Lady of pain was just a Toddler of pinpricks..

That assumes that the Lady of Pain was ever anything other than the Lady of Pain.

Kaiyanwang
2010-05-13, 03:32 AM
:smallsigh:
That "sacred cow", object of "fan love", is the reason that justify Sigil. As Eldan said, the city of doors is a unique place in the multiverse, every power wants to control it, but they can't, so you have the only neutral place in the setting, and this gives the players a huge place to interact with everything.
The Lady is simply a justification for Sigil's existance, and her power is strictly limited to the city.
To support this, there's the fluff with all the past stories that show the failure of every try to replace her.
Were not the fan, that made the Lady what she is: it's the setting that is written in this way, for a precise reason.
You don't like it? nothing stops you to create a campaign where the players (given enough power and cunning) can effectively remove the Lady form her virtual throne. With all the related consequences.

And frankly, I find the whole "Oh no, the Lady is unbeatable, if I cannot kill her, I cannot have fun, because the setting is limiting my possible choices and freedom of changing the universe", a very poor excusation (not saying that this is your case, but it's the more common attitude Vs Planescape).
In a "standard" campaign (aka not epic level), the Gods are untoucheable powers, and I don't recall this limiting my fun, only because I'm not adventuring to slay a Pantheon.

Wel said! *applause*

Ravens_cry
2010-05-13, 03:43 AM
That assumes that the Lady of Pain was ever anything other than the Lady of Pain.
She was probably once the Young Woman of Unreasonable Discomfort and, further back, the Girl of Boo-Boos.:smalltongue:

The Rose Dragon
2010-05-13, 04:00 AM
She was probably once the Young Woman of Unreasonable Discomfort and, further back, the Girl of Boo-Boos.:smalltongue:

If she was once, she was also the only thing that knows about it. The Lady of Pain is the Lady of Pain is the Lady of Pain is.

poisonoustea
2010-05-13, 04:23 AM
[...] Ending the Blood War [...]
New-generation characters seem to have a serious problem with ambition :smallconfused:

The Tygre
2010-05-13, 04:27 AM
Lily white, ye be. Dis here stype can scrip it, lest we be scribin de Dead Book.

Oi, Tygre, you be a rounder, dis here screed, what's the chant on it from the Laugh anyhow?

Not much, I'm afeared. Der's new Lady's Sharper Eye worth a scry. Cos' no jink, true that, es' the true cant now. Ah' always fine a good gate key in the groke 'oases. Oar ah' used to 'fore they all kissed the dust. But ah' saw the stirrin' Bloodbaths an' all the blinds,so ah' leaf binded' em' like a bloodcrow. It melted mah' days and bled the cully dries thrice, but ah' can tell ya' 'bout all tha' Abyssal Lards now. Ah'm gad Mimir bah now!d

'Nuff 'bout mah' cant. Cage is slow; no waggers, no wars to be at. Bah! Lissen' me talkin' like sum' blood wit' no zills! Dem' sirens screed, they don't wigwag! Just scan the wards n' da hive n' da gates. Just gotta' remember each days' jumpin' out tha window, so to' speak.


New-generation characters seem to have a serious problem with ambition :smallconfused:

AHAHA HA HAAAHA AHAHHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAH AHAAHHAH Berk, dem' conies'll hear the Lady sing first! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH Ohhhh. Full flam. Full flam shore.

Balor01
2010-05-13, 04:30 AM
If she was once, she was also the only thing that knows about it.

Nothing PunPun's knowledge (history) +11.230 skill check could not solve. In doubt add a couple of thousands of skillpoints.

So ... I want you all to say hi to Girl of Boo-Boos.

Rage? :smallbiggrin:

The Tygre
2010-05-13, 04:39 AM
Nothing PunPun's knowledge (history) +11.230 skill check could not solve. In doubt add a couple of thousands of skillpoints.

So ... I want you all to say hi to Girl of Boo-Boos.

Rage? :smallbiggrin:

Cony... Der' was da Lady and der' was the Cage back 'fore there were tieflin's. Ain't nee'r been anythin' but. Yur' unhende Kobold King's lyin' like a 'loth if he ses else. 'Is plan is two greens n' up goes the fhorge! Then e's trolley-womped n' thrown to da' clocks.

Balor01
2010-05-13, 04:44 AM
Ain't nee'r been anythin' but.
My pimped Delorean may prove you wrong :smallbiggrin:

Hmm. Kobold in a Delorean. Now that is a thought.

The Tygre
2010-05-13, 04:49 AM
My pimped Delorean may prove you wrong :smallbiggrin:

Hmm. Kobold in a Delorean. Now that is a thought.

Oi, tha' addle-coved prod's either lost ur' mappin' the planes...

The Rose Dragon
2010-05-13, 04:54 AM
Berk, even a Prime like me knows better than to go prying too deep into the dark of it where the Lady is concerned. Even if there is an answer, it's the folly of the wise to look for it.

poisonoustea
2010-05-13, 04:57 AM
Berk, dem' conies'll hear the Lady sing first!
Aye, barmy sods think the Cage's a cake-walk... Ain't seen any primes last long 'nough to get sour yet; all penned in the dead-book faster than they can say 'ambition'.

Heliomance
2010-05-13, 06:06 AM
No-one's answered my question as to whether a Shadowcrafted Ice Assassin could take the Lady.

paddyfool
2010-05-13, 06:07 AM
To kill that which is greater than gods, first write rules for a tier beyond epic.

Then, if you can find a bunch of players who'd like to play at that tier, go ahead and start butchering or otherwise besting overdeities and other setting-defining beings of cosmic power (which is the general tier on which the Lady would appear to be on). Then proceed with rebuilding the planes from the ground up, if that's fun for you.

It's only a game, after all.

Samb
2010-05-13, 06:15 AM
So everyone just overlooked my "Back to the future approach"? And planting a hydrogen bomb/black hole way back, when Lady of pain was just a Toddler of pinpricks. Or, why not plant a black hole on Sigil itself? Have the plane devoured ...

Everyone overlooked your post because it has been attempted already by Duke Darkwood and failed so very epicly that one assumes all previous and future attepmts failed as well.

Tha LoP clearly sees time in a different way that we see and experience it. Such mundane (and uncreative) methods will have no effect since a precedence has been set already by canon.

BlckDv
2010-05-13, 08:23 AM
Just to clarify, as the Blood War was dragged in by my comments, I was not intending to comment on the plausibility or wisdom of any of my examples, merely provide a set of examples that would serve to show how much wider the areas of the game that The Lady might never even appear in your campaign were than the scope (take Sigil away from her / defeat her) in which she would be an active and critical NPC... trying to demonstrate that if you don't like the Lady, you could still run a competent and complete Planescape campaign without ever having to even to be aware of her existing. (ICly, OOCly you'd kind of notice the logo I'd imagine)

I'll add in a couple of examples from published material of world reshaping possibilities if you want epic play:

1) Removing the ability of almost all fiends to Teleport without Error.
2) Confronting the Multiverse's first known Undead God and taking him out.
3) Participating in a massive civil uprising that results in several of the defining political movements of the world being wiped out, scatters more of them to the winds, and gives birth to whole new movements. (For U.S. playgrounders it would be like causing the Republican and Democratic Parties to lose their influence on politics.. pretty fundamental change)

As for meteoric rise to world changing power.. that's a campaign level truth, not universal. I freely admit I have run games in which a rag-tag band out powers kings and dragons after a scant year or two of adventure.... but I've also run games where the heroes gained shy of a level an in game year due to lots of travel and many non-combat focused sessions. Some of my most memorable campaigns have ended with PCs clustered around level 12.

All that said; I think we come back to the simple truth Penny Arcade shared so well "It's not FOR you." What Planescape does best of all is humble us. It reminds us that their is always another horizon, always a greater mystery. We can make changes that redefine our lives and alter who we are, but one thing we can never do is grasp the whole of reality, and if we can't grasp it, at some level it will always be out of our control. That isn't for everyone... but it doesn't have to be. Nothing prevents any DM from mining Planescape books for information to use in their own plane hopping campaign without choosing to make it a Planescape game.

I'll be honest, I have an antipathy towards Forgotten Realms that may be as deep as FatR's dislike for Planescape... I simply elect not to play in that setting, and try to steer clear of conversations about it. It does not harm me for the FR fans to talk about how awesome Elminster or Drit'zt (sp?) are, and no purpose would be served by trying to inform them that they are wrong about FR being a fun campaign.

arguskos
2010-05-13, 12:39 PM
Cony... Der' was da Lady and der' was the Cage back 'fore there were tieflin's. Ain't nee'r been anythin' but. Yur' unhende Kobold King's lyin' like a 'loth if he ses else. 'Is plan is two greens n' up goes the fhorge! Then e's trolley-womped n' thrown to da' clocks.
Oi', dese addle-cove cony's be barmy as da Spire god, lettem bark da flam to da wind.

OI, an' I love dat barmy ol' codger, wit his fhorge! Hahaha, great show, great show, what a blood he was, afore da Hardheads bashed in his brain-box.

Eldan
2010-05-13, 01:54 PM
I never manage good cant, not even written. It's more or less standard english with some slang expressions when I do it. Because I never get the hang of the grammar and all the contractions and stuff.

The Rose Dragon
2010-05-13, 02:00 PM
I never manage good cant, not even written. It's more or less standard english with some slang expressions when I do it. Because I never get the hang of the grammar and all the contractions and stuff.

Hey, being a Prime isn't a bad thing at all. For instance, your closet door is much less likely to open up one day to reveal a sucking vortex into the Abyss. Or Cania.

Eldan
2010-05-13, 02:02 PM
Sure. On the other hand, I DM Planescape a lot, and it would be nice if I could do cagers convincingly.

WoodenSword
2010-05-13, 02:02 PM
Great question:

Why would you want to kill Sigil?

Killing Lady of Pain = BAD THINGS go down

Eldan
2010-05-13, 02:08 PM
You could be an Anarchist or Xaositect.

Ravens_cry
2010-05-13, 02:10 PM
Great question:

Why would you want to kill Sigil?

Killing Lady of Pain = BAD THINGS go down
What if you want Bad Things?
What if you think, rightly or wrongly, that you could reform the omniverse in your own image, a better image, and little* bit of unbridled chaos is the only way to get the ball rolling.
They who put their faith in the sanity of sentients are sure to be disillusioned.

*for a given value of little

WoodenSword
2010-05-13, 02:12 PM
What if you want Bad Things?
What if you think, rightly or wrongly, that you could reform the omniverse in your own image, a better image, and little* bit of unbridled chaos is the only way to get the ball rolling.
They who put their faith in the sanity of sentients are sure to be disillusioned.

*for a given value of little

You're a sick demented individual and you should have to be tied to a chair, forced to watch Barney?

Drascin
2010-05-13, 02:29 PM
What if you want Bad Things?
What if you think, rightly or wrongly, that you could reform the omniverse in your own image, a better image, and little* bit of unbridled chaos is the only way to get the ball rolling.
They who put their faith in the sanity of sentients are sure to be disillusioned.

*for a given value of little

Well, as I said back in the beginning of the thread, if you want to play the BBEG who is crazy and dumb enough to believe blowing up the multiverse is a good idea, well, okay, you can try finding a way to destroy the Lady. Just don't whine when the campaign ends with the DM simply saying "And everything is destroyed forever, as the multiverse collapses on itself and nothing exists anymore. So, who DMs the next campaign?" :smalltongue:

Ravens_cry
2010-05-13, 02:29 PM
You're a sick demented individual and you should have to be tied to a chair, forced to watch Barney?
Ah, but what if they succeeded? After all, is that not what the Lady of Pain has done? She has made the world so that she has always been in control of Sigal, the ultimate strategic point of the Multiverse, and always will be.

Eldan
2010-05-13, 02:32 PM
Well, as I said back in the beginning of the thread, if you want to play the BBEG who is crazy and dumb enough to believe blowing up the multiverse is a good idea, well, okay, you can try finding a way to destroy the Lady. Just don't whine when the campaign ends with the DM simply saying "And everything is destroyed forever, as the multiverse collapses on itself and nothing exists anymore. So, who DMs the next campaign?" :smalltongue:

I'm not sure the Multiverse would end...
Someone, I think on Planewalker, wrote up a campaign setting. The name was something along the lines of Planescape: Apocalypse.
In it, Sigil had fallen from the Spire, since the alignment of it's population had become too much skewed to one side. As a result, planar borders began to dissolve, and the planes are now more or less a continuous endless plane. Travelling is incredibly hard, since there are no portals, anywhere, and all travel magic is dead. There were also other apocalyptic effects.

arguskos
2010-05-13, 02:34 PM
I never manage good cant, not even written. It's more or less standard english with some slang expressions when I do it. Because I never get the hang of the grammar and all the contractions and stuff.
I'm not great, though I'm alright at it I guess. Tygre is amazing at it though, not gonna lie.

FatR
2010-05-13, 03:25 PM
2) Anything short of stopping what is quite possibly the longest war in existance, fought between Law and Chaos incarnate in their most vile guises, a feat beyond even the gods is not meaningful? Really?
More or less yes. As the chance of me playing more than one long-running high-level campaign in any particular setting approach zero (both because of burnout and because it is hard enough to organize even one campaign where PCs reach high levels), unless the defining conflicts of the setting still are not solved by the time PC are done, then what was the point?



At about Epic levels it might be the sort of thing you'd do as a very draining challenge, requiring great allies.
Well, if by "Epic" you mean levels 13+, then I agree. If you mean the silly DnD 3.0 definition of Epic, once you master Epic magic and start sling stars around, nothing with official stats is a challenge anymore, except for other epic casters who started exploiting the same loops before you. But DnD Epic is borked. And couldn't have been not borked, because it's practically impossible to add a new tier of power to characters who already are more powerful than anything we can see in fantasy (short of actual deities and maybe a few dudes who have plot device magic with no apparent upper limit), without making everything fall apart.



Epic levels were not really covered in the starting rules. Of the first twenty levels (the ones meant for the most use, judging by the fact that they are detailed greatly in the core books), defeating a Beholder (just one) is considered a very high challenge for almost half of them. Defeating some of the weaker Great Wyrms (any one) is supposed to be a near-overwhelming challenge for characters approaching Epic levels. Either your claims that D&D is made for "end of an age" stories were vastly misinformed and/or exaggerated
Not at all. It is just that by any reasonable standards, Beholders are really goddamn powerful. Despite, you know, being made relatively weak and over-CRed in 3.X. Not many fantasy characters can boast surviving an armored sphere that spams death rays. In fact, most fantasy characters will probably drop dead if hit with one, instead of resisting insta-kill magic or petrification by force of their sheer badassery.
And Great Wyrms are completely ridiculous. In nearly all fantasy they'll be world-breaking monsters. To beat one you need to be not only better than Kratos (of God of War fame), but A LOT better than Kratos, because unlike those big and ultra-strong things he defeated, Great Wyrms are not slow, possess razor-sharp senses and can use tons of reality-warping magic. And Kratos, you know, was awesome enough to wipe out a whole pantheon.
Standards that say that even being far more awesome than such a dude is not enough to turn the world on its head, are skewed indeed. In fact, skewed deliberately, to deprotagonize PCs. [/QUOTE]
So the fact is, if by high levels your PCs aren't piercing the heavens with their spells and make the earth tremble, you're deliberately hamstringing them. Because your average fantasy hero is far more important to his setting, despite being far weaker. Yes, practically all setting and adventure authors do so, generally because PCs are not really supposed to be protagonists in their settings, no, this still is not excuse, because, I hope, in your campaign they are.



3) The PHB alone has at least thirteen deities, gods are not uncommon in
most settings, as far as I am aware.
That's exactly what I said. There are so many gods, that no one really cares if one of the bites the dust or is revived, and nothing changes in the grand scheme of things.



Edit: Levels one through fifteen or so disprove the second paragraph of your post (for the most part). The only levels appropriate to "end of the world" scenarios are approximately sixteen up unless you're in a setting where a few Orcs could likely take on a small village by themselves (Middle Earth in the time of the Fellowship, maybe?). If D&D wasn't intended to handle low-impact, less world-warping adventures levels five downwards would almost definitely be gone.
In DnD a few orcs could likely take on a small village by themselves, because DnD is supposed to have a low-level adventures too. You just said yourself, that it is. Except, you're not saying B after having said A. Yes, level 5- adventures are low-impact and not world-warping. No one argues with that. But, you know, the power level of PCs skyrockets from there. And to make this exponential increase meaningful, instead of just adding more bookkeeping and math, the impact of their adventures should skyrocked too. Unless the world magically level-ups to keep up with the PCs, they, I believe, should be saving countries from about level 7, regions from level 11, and by level 15 the party is routinely dealing with people or things who can threaten whole planets.



Add to this that your approximation of D&Ds intended power level seems very high
It is not approximation. Just look at things in Monster Manual that have CR 15+. Then compare and contrast with usual fantasy stuff.

Examples from this thread
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19527850/Tiers_of_Power:_Fluffy,_video-demonstrated_benchmarks_for_level-appropriate_people.
also can be useful to illustrate how bat**** insane the power level of DnD 3.X is, even without infinite loops and other campaign-ending abuses.



to some in this thread (including me, and I jump on high power games without hesitation), and that the designers were commonly thought to have wanted a game at much lower power than the game actually turned out to be,
Again, look at the inhabitants of Monster Manual. Also, this is one of the cases where intent more or less meaningless.



D&D is a high power setting, to the point that you could outdo any person in our world by about level 5/6 without fail if you had a shared focus, not to the point that characters are intended to massively alter a setting with little effort or resistance.
Who said anything about "little effort or resistance"? Getting to high levels and creating characters who can survive there is quite an effort already.



I have no objection to you not playing in Planescape but what you're blaming on the Lady would probably, IME, be blamed on not having a doormat for a DM. That the setting allows you free reign to alter cities, countries, even whole planes of existance is freedom enough.
No, it isn't. Particularly because it doesn't. Lady just blocks any meaningful change in the sole piece of the setting that both matters at all and is not infinite in scope (and therefore impossible to affect). Also, being a good DM, who actually recognizes that the setting exist for players =/= being a doormat.

Axolotl
2010-05-13, 03:28 PM
Am I the only person who dislikes the Lady of Pain because she's a massive failure at the stated design intent for her?

olentu
2010-05-13, 03:30 PM
Well, as I said back in the beginning of the thread, if you want to play the BBEG who is crazy and dumb enough to believe blowing up the multiverse is a good idea, well, okay, you can try finding a way to destroy the Lady. Just don't whine when the campaign ends with the DM simply saying "And everything is destroyed forever, as the multiverse collapses on itself and nothing exists anymore. So, who DMs the next campaign?" :smalltongue:

Eh a DM might choose to let you pull a vecna if you make up a good enough plan. Perhaps even a final battle with a rag tag party of good adventurers and some sufficiently motivated neutrals or evils over who controls the fate of the multiverse.

Kaiyanwang
2010-05-13, 04:34 PM
Am I the only person who dislikes the Lady of Pain because she's a massive failure at the stated design intent for her?

*UMD an awken on a pear*

*cast dominate monsters targetting the pear*

*orders to the pear to say: LOL WUT?*

FoE
2010-05-13, 04:35 PM
You can't kill the Lady of Pain because she's the device that allows Sigil to exist. She's there to explain why you can have a city connecting to all the planes without some other-dimensional army conquering it or all-out war breaking out between the various factions. She facilitates this magnificent place filled with angels and demons and everything in between.

So if you want Sigil, then you need the Lady of Pain.

Axolotl
2010-05-13, 04:57 PM
*UMD an awken on a pear*

*cast dominate monsters targetting the pear*

*orders to the pear to say: LOL WUT?*Look at the end result of her presence in Planescape. Hell this thread alone is a tribute to the sheer failure of her design.

Drascin
2010-05-13, 05:00 PM
Look at the end result of her presence in Planescape. Hell this thread alone is a tribute to the sheer failure of her design.

Wait, so the problem with the Lady is not the Lady, but the fact that a few very vocal people miss the point entirely? :smallconfused: Or did I misunderstand?

Axolotl
2010-05-13, 05:21 PM
Wait, so the problem with the Lady is not the Lady, but the fact that a few very vocal people miss the point entirely? :smallconfused: Or did I misunderstand?The lAdy of Pain was supposed to represent the enigmatic nature of the planes and how in the Planescape setting anything is possible. Yet virtually every disscusion about her (and she's easily one of the most discussed aspect of the setting) centres around how she's an unchallegable authority. This is not a vocal minority, it's the vast majority of Planescape fans potray The Lady as nothing more than a motiveless supremebeing who can never, ever be worked against in any way.