Wait a minute, why did the ABD care that V killed her son?

[paladinofshojo]

I don’t know if this has already been discussed before or if it hasn’t, but I am curious as to why the black dragon cared so much about her son?

When ordinarily most black dragons do not give a damn about their offspring’s wellbeing or survival. Why did she go out of her way to track down Vaarsuvius and come up with that whole revenge plot?

[woweedd]

She loved her son? Even if Black Dragons normally don’t, there’s an exception to everything, and, even though she’s Evil, that doesn’t she can’t love.

[MesiDoomstalker]

Because she actually cared? Because individuals are allowed independent thought regardless of what a book says is typical of its kind. Because Evil doesn't mean loner nor that one cannot have a family and friends which they genuinely care about.

[facw]

When ordinarily most black dragons do not give a damn about their offspring’s wellbeing or survival. Why did she go out of her way to track down Vaarsuvius and come up with that whole revenge plot?

Because obviously she did care very much about her son's well being and survival, regardless of whether others of her kind would care. She clearly did. As to why, she does tell us that he was the only thing she had left of his father. But she probably cared for her son on his own merits as well, and I don't think any explanation is required if that is somewhat aberrant among black dragons. Not every member of a given species will be the same.

[Peelee]

When ordinarily most black dragons do not give a damn about their offspring’s wellbeing or survival.

[citation needed]

[Zenzis]

[citation needed]

Yeah I checked the SRD and didn't see anything about this.

[Gift Jeraff]

She was lying. All evil creatures always lie unless they're lawful evil in which case they always lie by omission.

[Knaight]

We've seen exactly one parent child relationship involving black dragons in OoTS, and the ABD clearly cared about her son in it. The implication there is more that that's the norm than that we must assume it isn't but that there's one exception.

[paladinofshojo]

Yeah I checked the SRD and didn't see anything about this.

Oh, I was under the assumption that the fact that they don’t guard their eggs nor willing to risk their lives to save their children being an indication of them not being “good parents”

However this is what I got off of Forgotten Realms Lore I’m not sure if Black Dragon’s behave differently in other settings.

[Zenzis]

Oh, I was under the assumption that the fact that they don’t guard their eggs nor willing to risk their lives to save their children being an indication of them not being “good parents”

However this is what I got off of Forgotten Realms Lore I’m not sure if Black Dragon’s behave differently in other settings.

Yeah I was going by the SRD. I am not sure what you are taking about but when I searched it this wiki page (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Black_dragon) came up. Notably it has this paragraph:

"Black dragons were not noted as good parents, relying more upon disguise and hiding to protect their eggs than upon guarding them personally. Black dragon eggs must be submerged in strong acid while growing, which helped protect the dragon as well.[citation needed] Black dragons would only protect their young so long as that responsibility didn't threaten their own life. If they had to choose between saving their own life or those of their clutch or spawn, they would most certainly choose the former; though they would assuredly seek revenge afterwards.[5]"

In any case there is a big spectrum between risking your life for someone and caring about them, and guarding an egg feels a lot different to me than when your child has actually hatched and been raised by you.

[Peelee]

Yeah I was going by the SRD. I am not sure what you are taking about but when I searched it this wiki page (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Black_dragon) came up.

OotS is not in the Forgotten Realms, so if you notice discrepancies, I would not assume the FR version is the correct one.

[factotum]

OotS is not in the Forgotten Realms, so if you notice discrepancies, I would not assume the FR version is the correct one.

Isn't Forgotten Realms supposed to be a bit odd even by D&D standards? The whole thing of every barkeep in remote villagers being a retired level 9 fighter, for instance.

[King of Nowhere]

As a general principle, you can't import lore from one world to another.

[Morty]

Isn't Forgotten Realms supposed to be a bit odd even by D&D standards? The whole thing of every barkeep in remote villagers being a retired level 9 fighter, for instance.

There's one barkeep in the Forgotten Realms that's a retired high-level adventurer, one of the secret rulers of the city and using being a barkeep as cover. People took that and made it a meme. Forgotten Realms is a bog-standard D&D setting, just with a lot of legacy characters and even more wizard and mage fanboyism than usual.

As for the topic of the thread, I'm confused as to how anyone could read through this whole comic and still leave with the conclusion that creatures listed as evil are supposed to be one-dimensional monsters. Or that they could see the dragon clearly caring for her son and react with "but some entirely unrelated book says that's not supposed to happen!".

[hroþila]

I'd say there's plenty of animals that would flee when a predator they can't fend off threatens their offspring, but they still care and they'll often be quite distressed afterwards. Regardless, the ABD didn't flee or anything, so the only thing we know is that her caring was presented not only as normal, but as something that should have been obvious.

[Lacuna Caster]

Isn't Forgotten Realms supposed to be a bit odd even by D&D standards? The whole thing of every barkeep in remote villagers being a retired level 9 fighter, for instance.
To be fair, that's sort-of the level they'd need to be to cope with typical inter-PC barfights.

[Borris]

Isn't Forgotten Realms supposed to be a bit odd even by D&D standards? The whole thing of every barkeep in remote villagers being a retired level 9 fighter, for instance.

Compared to settings like Eberron, Planescape, or Darksun, to name a few of the most popular ones, Forgotten Realms is pretty much vanilla D&D.

[Resileaf]

The Giant strongly disagrees with settings where morality can be so easy that every single orc or goblin will be chaotic evil. Is it really so surprising that even evil dragons would be caring parents?

[paladinofshojo]

As a general principle, you can't import lore from one world to another.

I’ll give you that, however I am unable to find any other lore on how black dragons raise their young from different worlds that even exists, let alone contradicts this.

[Peelee]

I’ll give you that, however I am unable to find any other lore on how black dragons raise their young from different worlds that even exists, let alone contradicts this.

There's lore from Order of the Stick: Black dragons let their young stay with them at least into young adulthood, keep rough track of their dating lives, and violently and severely avenge any who kills their young.

[Resileaf]

There's lore from Order of the Stick: Black dragons let their young stay with them at least into young adulthood, keep rough track of their dating lives, and violently and severely avenge any who kills their young.

And at least one black dragon has had a loving family with a mortal woman, raising three children together.

[Peelee]

And at least one black dragon has had a loving family with a mortal woman, raising three children together.

ABD also mentioned that her child was all she had left of the father as well, and was visiting the young adult's uncle, which was why he was alone in the cave.

All indications point to Black Dragons having strong relationships with their families.

[Jasdoif]

I’ll give you that, however I am unable to find any other lore on how black dragons raise their young from different worlds that even exists, let alone contradicts this.Since you ask(?), and assuming all the usual caveats of sapient creatures being individuals have been noted already....



Dragons follow a number of reproductive strategies to suit their needs and temperaments. These help assure the continuation of a dragon’s bloodline, no matter what happens to the parent or the parent’s lair. Young adults, particularly evil or less intelligent ones, tend to lay clutches of 1d4+1 eggs all around the countryside, leaving their offspring to fend for themselves. These hatch into clutches of dragons, usually juvenile or younger, which stick together until they can establish their own lairs.

Older and more intelligent dragons form families consisting of a mated pair and 1d4+1 young. Mated dragons are always adults or mature adults; offspring found with their parents are of wyrmling (01–10 on d%), very young (11–30), young (31–50), juvenile (51–90), or young adult (91–100) age. Shortly after a dragon reaches young adult (or rarely, juvenile) age, it leaves its parents to establish a lair of its own.

A pair of mated dragons beyond mature adult age usually splits up, independence and the lust for treasure driving them apart. Older females continue to mate and lay eggs, but only one parent stays in the lair to raise young. Often an older female lays many clutches of eggs, keeping one to tend herself and one for her mate, and leaving the rest untended. Sometimes a female dragon places an egg or a wyrmling with nondraconic foster parents.There are no exceptions listed for black dragons, and Draconomicon specifically says black dragon parents are "protective". And for an ancient (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0627.html) black dragon to have a young adult (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0188.html) son requires her to have been at least "very old" when he was born.

[Fyraltari]

... You're asking "how come a mother loves her child?". There are moments where you really ought to stop and think about what you're doing.

[KorvinStarmast]

Wait a minute, why did the ABD care that V killed her son?

1. the plot required it
2. Intelligent creatures can make moral choices (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/76787/can-a-black-dragon-hatchling-be-raised-to-be-good-or-is-it-inherently-evil/76790#76790).

Ever check an ABD's Int score?

... You're asking "how come a mother loves her child?". There are moments where you really ought to stop and think,about what you're doing. On the humorous side, the child was depicted as being a teenager. (See also the ref to goblin teenagers early in the strip) :smallwink:

[hroþila]

Wait a minute, why did the ABD care that V killed her son?

1. the plot required it
2. Intelligent creatures can make moral choices (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/76787/can-a-black-dragon-hatchling-be-raised-to-be-good-or-is-it-inherently-evil/76790#76790).

I don't see it as a moral choice, it's either black dragons work like this or they don't. In principle, not all sentient creatures need to work like humans for them to be moral.

[SlashDash]

Oh, I was under the assumption that the fact that they don’t guard their eggs nor willing to risk their lives to save their children being an indication of them not being “good parents”

However this is what I got off of Forgotten Realms Lore I’m not sure if Black Dragon’s behave differently in other settings.

I'm surprised someone who is familiar with Forgotten Realms would ask that question.

I mean come on man, all drow are evil but you still have Drizzt, right?

Characters do not behave like their stereotypes all the times. You have exceptions for everything.

And seriously, a very common motif in OotS is that monsters have feelings too.

[Kish]

Because she's a character.

You kind of haven't been taking in much of the comic at all, have you?

[KorvinStarmast]

, it's either black dragons work like this or they don't. I do not accept this false dichotomy. There's plenty of room for inbetween, and any DM/Worldbuilder can shade it in one direction or the other. Plus, what SlashDash said.

[Fyraltari]

I do not accept this false dichotomy. There's plenty of room for inbetween, and any DM/Worldbuilder can shade it in one direction or the other. Plus, what SlashDash said.

I never typed that. Please fix it.

[hroþila]

I do not accept this false dichotomy. There's plenty of room for inbetween, and any DM/Worldbuilder can shade it in one direction or the other. Plus, what SlashDash said.
Sure, there can be exceptions, but this was never presented as an anomaly. Everything in the comic would lead me to think that stable families and caring for relatives are absolutely standard black dragon behaviour. Thus, I don't think it was a moral choice, or to the contrary, that dragons not living as a family would necessarily have any bearing on their morality if that was how they were biologically wired.

[Fyraltari]

It's either stable family and protective instincts toward the offspring or making a bajillion babies and hoping two of them make it as far as natural selection is concerned anyway.

Oh and the cuckoos have their trick as well.

[Peelee]

It's either stable family and protective instincts toward the offspring or making a bajillion babies and hoping two of them make it as far as natural selection is concerned anyway.

Oh and the cuckoos have their trick as well.

r/K selection theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory) is what that's called, if anyone's interested. Reminds me of a presentation that E. O. Wilson gave that I got to see. Yeah, I can pathetically name-drop the father of biodiversity, what up.

[understatement]

Even Evil Has Loved Ones (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvenEvilHasLovedOnes)

If goblins and kobolds have been demonstrated loving their family, there's no reason ABD is excluded.

Also, it's her child.

[Kantaki]

I'm surprised someone who is familiar with Forgotten Realms would ask that question.

I mean come on man, all drow are evil but you still have Drizzt, right?

Characters do not behave like their stereotypes all the times. You have exceptions for everything.

And seriously, a very common motif in OotS is that monsters have feelings too.

Isn't Drizzt just a normal elf who got dunked into a ink pot*?:smalltongue:

Seriously though, that's the kind of question I would expect from Miko**.
Walking the path of Miko Myazaki you shall not, young paladin.
Only to Fall and an undignified end it leads.

*Struwwelpeter reference.
Great book you want to traumatize your kids.

**Actually no, she wouldn't.
In fact she would smite us all for even contemplating the idea.

[KorvinStarmast]

Sure, there can be exceptions, but this was never presented as an anomaly. Everything in the comic would lead me to think that stable families and caring for relatives are absolutely standard black dragon behaviour. Thus, I don't think it was a moral choice, or to the contrary, that dragons not living as a family would necessarily have any bearing on their morality if that was how they were biologically wired. And black dragons can also have dysfunctional families, like Roy's, Like Elan's, Like Haley's ... :smallcool:

[Peelee]

*Struwwelpeter reference.
Great book you want to traumatize your kids.

I very vaguely remember that from way back when. Dunno if my mom read it to me or if we just had it and I read through it myself, but that's definitely an... interesting collection. She now laughs at how ridiculously terrible that book is for kids.

[Kantaki]

I very vaguely remember that from way back when. Dunno if my mom read it to me or if we just had it and I read through it myself, but that's definitely an... interesting collection. She now laughs at how ridiculously terrible that book is for kids.

The message of those stories is just wonderful, isn't it?
„Dear children, don't act like children or you'll be killed and/or maimed horribly.”
Lessons every kid should learn.

[Peelee]

The message of those stories is just wonderful, isn't it?
„Dear children, don't act like children or you'll be killed and/or maimed horribly.”

Now now, IIRC at least one of the kids didn't really have anything bad happen to him, his parents were just angry. Because in a book about the consequences of one's actions, the consequences should absolutely be arbitrary and wildly all over the place!

[paladinofshojo]

I'm surprised someone who is familiar with Forgotten Realms would ask that question.

I mean come on man, all drow are evil but you still have Drizzt, right?

Characters do not behave like their stereotypes all the times. You have exceptions for everything.

And seriously, a very common motif in OotS is that monsters have feelings too.

To be fair, Drizzt was clearly intended to be an exception to the rule, as his race was still a bunch of unrepentant, genocidal, demon worshipping monsters.

However while the ABD seems to be an exception, she did have some typical D&D black dragon characteristics, such as being a bit “unsure” about her son seeing that green dragon girl when she was away.

Which is a throwaway gag to how chromatic dragons are territorial against one another.

Also, V even assumes that she was initially there for the Starmetal, meaning that there’s at least a stereotype that dragon’s are just greedy monsters.

[Peelee]

However while the ABD seems to be an exception
She doesn't seem to be an exception, because she's not in Forgotten Realms.

she did have some typical D&D black dragon characteristics, such as being a bit “unsure” about her son seeing that green dragon girl when she was away.
She was explicitly welcome to the idea (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0628.html) about her kid being with the green dragon. She pretty much expected it.

[Kish]

Also, V even assumes that she was initially there for the Starmetal, meaning that there’s at least a stereotype that dragon’s are just greedy monsters.
Yes, congratulations, you have observed that the character who, as the entire point of the arc, committed a horrifying atrocity as a direct result of thinking exactly like you are thought exactly like you are.

[paladinofshojo]

She doesn't seem to be an exception, because she's not in Forgotten Realms.

She was explicitly welcome to the idea (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0628.html) about her kid being with the green dragon. She pretty much expected it.


I meant exception in general to D&D inspired dragons, not to OotS dragons.Seeing as most black dragons in other D&D settings outside of FR still behave the same way in terms of child rearing, or at the very least their ecology is never stated to contradict it.

She also stated that she tried to be “open minded” about it, which to me implies there is some prejudice towards the concept of different chromatic dragons mingling together.

[Resileaf]

I meant exception in general to D&D inspired dragons, not to OotS dragons.Seeing as most black dragons in other D&D settings outside of FR still behave the same way in terms of child rearing, or at the very least their ecology is never stated to contradict it.

She also stated that she tried to be “open minded” about it, which to me implies there is some prejudice towards the concept of different chromatic dragons mingling together.

She also specifically called the green dragon 'nice', showing that she personally has no such prejudice.

[hroþila]

She also stated that she tried to be “open minded” about it, which to me implies there is some prejudice towards the concept of different chromatic dragons mingling together.
I took it as her being open minded about her son pursuing relationships or having sex at the family house. I didn't think about racism until just now. She described the green dragon as "nice", after all.

[Peelee]

I meant exception in general to D&D inspired dragons, not to OotS dragons.Seeing as most black dragons in other D&D settings outside of FR still behave the same way in terms of child rearing, or at the very least their ecology is never stated to contradict it.

Haven't read a lot of D&D inspired stuff, so I'm pretty unfamiliar with this; what stories and sources are you talking about that have black dragon child rearing practices?

I took it as her being open minded about her son pursuing relationships or having sex at the family house. I didn't think about racism until just now. She described the green dragon as "nice", after all.
Seconded.

[Morty]

However while the ABD seems to be an exception, she did have some typical D&D black dragon characteristics, such as being a bit “unsure” about her son seeing that green dragon girl when she was away.

Which is a throwaway gag to how chromatic dragons are territorial against one another.


Or a throwaway gag about a mother being nosy about who her son might or might not be dating. But I get that it doesn't support... whatever it is you're arguing for.

Besides, the ABD is hardly an exception to black dragons being evil, seeing how she was willing to subject innocent children to a fate worse than simply dying. It just doesn't in any way imply she wouldn't care about her own child's death.

[hamishspence]

Haven't read a lot of D&D inspired stuff, so I'm pretty unfamiliar with this; what stories and sources are you talking about that have black dragon child rearing practices?


This:


Yeah I was going by the SRD. I am not sure what you are taking about but when I searched it this wiki page (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Black_dragon) came up. Notably it has this paragraph:

"Black dragons were not noted as good parents, relying more upon disguise and hiding to protect their eggs than upon guarding them personally. Black dragon eggs must be submerged in strong acid while growing, which helped protect the dragon as well.[citation needed] Black dragons would only protect their young so long as that responsibility didn't threaten their own life. If they had to choose between saving their own life or those of their clutch or spawn, they would most certainly choose the former; though they would assuredly seek revenge afterwards.[5]".

appears to draw from 3e's Draconomicon.

[Fyraltari]

This looks like a good place to drop this :

I'm going (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17002999&postcount=27) to save this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?331495-Is-killing-black-dragons-evil) and link to it the next time someone tells me that the themes I put in the comic are so simple and obvious that I shouldn't be bothering expressing them, because everyone already knows that you shouldn't kill people for being different than you.

Needless to say, I disagree with every single word of the opening post, as I would have thought was obvious from reading the actual story.

[Peelee]

This looks like a good place to drop this :

Two different links when a single button will suffice. Tsk tsk tsk.:smalltongue:


I'm going to save this thread and link to it the next time someone tells me that the themes I put in the comic are so simple and obvious that I shouldn't be bothering expressing them, because everyone already knows that you shouldn't kill people for being different than you.

Needless to say, I disagree with every single word of the opening post, as I would have thought was obvious from reading the actual story.

Further, this thread is 1.) continuing a topic that is already under discussion elsewhere, 2.) has included mentions of real-world politics, and 3.) has included flaming. Thread locked, scrubbing and infractions forthcoming.

[Fyraltari]

Two different links when a single button will suffice. Tsk tsk tsk.:smalltongue:

https://media0.giphy.com/media/ZYTAlnmOIE7ja/200w.webp?cid=3640f6095c90223f5065514c4951400f

[zimmerwald1915]

Yeah I checked the SRD and didn't see anything about this.
Generally speaking, the SRD doesn't contain much fluff, if any at all. Nothing more to add to the actual topic.

[Peelee]

https://media0.giphy.com/media/ZYTAlnmOIE7ja/200w.webp?cid=3640f6095c90223f5065514c4951400f

https://media.tenor.com/images/4b9c1738f6b7346ffe326c4c1bde111b/tenor.gif

[Fyraltari]

https://media.tenor.com/images/4b9c1738f6b7346ffe326c4c1bde111b/tenor.gif

https://media0.giphy.com/media/kPMwTWvKadCG4/giphy.gif?cid=3640f6095c9024694d49676b32042504

[paladinofshojo]

I took it as her being open minded about her son pursuing relationships or having sex at the family house. I didn't think about racism until just now. She described the green dragon as "nice", after all.

Well to be fair, in D&D Lore, the territories of green and black dragons overlap, leading to a bit of fighting and disputes. But since green dragons are usually more powerful they will usually have the upper hand, however, greens will occasionally allow black dragons to remain in their forests, so long as they remain in the swamp lands.

I would assume that if inter-chromatic relations amongst black and green dragons are the same that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to support this, hence the term “open minded” in my opinion at least.

[GrayGriffin]

To be fair, Drizzt was clearly intended to be an exception to the rule, as his race was still a bunch of unrepentant, genocidal, demon worshipping monsters.

Don't the Drizz't books end up with more and more good "exception" drow constantly showing up? I remember seeing some of my RP friends joking about that before.

[mjasghar]

1) good Drow is a feature of FR as seen by elistraee
2) I’m not entirely a fan of the normalisation of evil that Rich does - cf real life horrific people whose apologists show them being nice to their pets or own family
What she planned to do to Vs kids shows she was evil

[woweedd]

1) good Drow is a feature of FR as seen by elistraee
2) I’m not entirely a fan of the normalisation of evil that Rich does - cf real life horrific people whose apologists show them being nice to their pets or own family
What she planned to do to Vs kids shows she was evil
I have good news...It seems Rich agrees with you:

I can't think of anything more boring than a character who always wins and never gets emotionally impacted by anything.

Also, undercutting that so-called "redefinition of evil" is sort of the point. Because it's bull****. It's not a real thing. You can't be a torturing, mass-murdering rapist and then go home and turn your Evil Switch to the "off" position to spend time with your kids. It doesn't work that way. If you are the sort of person that can commit the acts that Tarquin does daily, then that will find its way into every aspect of your existence. It's who you are. This idea that Tarquin was this perfectly rational actor despite being a complete monster at his Day Job is a pipe dream. Tarquin wants you (and Elan) to think that what he does is separate from who he is—that he's a fundamentally decent man who just so happens to murder a bunch of people here and there—because that's how he tricks you into slowly accepting his blatant Evil as a valid life choice that needs to be respected. Which it is not.

Some people want to love the villain without having to face the fact that villains are largely terrible people who do horrific things with deficient reasoning. Not on my watch.

[Fyraltari]

1) good Drow is a feature of FR as seen by elistraee
2) I’m not entirely a fan of the normalisation of evil that Rich does - cf real life horrific people whose apologists show them being nice to their pets or own family
What she planned to do to Vs kids shows she was evil

It's a false dichotomy to think people willing to do terrible hurt to people are incapable of coaring about other people. This is the kind of black and white reasoning that leads to the worst crimes.

[Lacuna Caster]

1) good Drow is a feature of FR as seen by elistraee
2) I’m not entirely a fan of the normalisation of evil that Rich does - cf real life horrific people whose apologists show them being nice to their pets or own family
What she planned to do to Vs kids shows she was evil

I have good news...It seems Rich agrees with you:

It's a false dichotomy to think people willing to do terrible hurt to people are incapable of caring about other people. This is the kind of black and white reasoning that leads to the worst crimes.
Well, hang on a second. If apologists for real-life horrific people can nonetheless point to documented instances of them being nice to pets or family members, then this actually contradicts Rich's assertion that you can't "go home and turn your Evil Switch to the off position". Now, I don't know if this assertion "leads to the worst crimes", but it does seem to be the intended point of Tarquin's arc.

I happen to agree that there are certain forms of moral pathology that tend to result in both external cruelty and the incapacity to form intimate relationships (i.e, psychopathy), but psychopaths do not account for any and all forms of destructive human behaviours. (Although I will say, in this regard, I find Belkar's arc to be far more disturbing and misinformative than Tarquin's.)

[hamishspence]

Well, hang on a second. If apologists for real-life horrific people can nonetheless point to documented instances of them being nice to pets or family members, then this actually contradicts Rich's assertion that you can't "go home and turn your Evil Switch to the off position". Now, I don't know if this assertion "leads to the worst crimes", but it does seem to be the intended point of Tarquin's arc.

The point of Tarquin's arc is that while he can be superficially nice - when it comes to the crunch, he treats even "loved ones" evilly.

[Goblin_Priest]

Don't the Drizz't books end up with more and more good "exception" drow constantly showing up? I remember seeing some of my RP friends joking about that before.

I've read a bunch of those books when I was young, and I don't remember more than 1, or maybe 2 other good drows. And those good drows might very well have been neutral. Been ages, though, and I think they kept pumping out books well after I stopped reading them.

It did create a cliché that many players then wanted to copy, for various reasons, though.

[Razade]

I don’t know if this has already been discussed before or if it hasn’t, but I am curious as to why the black dragon cared so much about her son?

When ordinarily most black dragons do not give a damn about their offspring’s wellbeing or survival. Why did she go out of her way to track down Vaarsuvius and come up with that whole revenge plot?

Black Dragons are highly intellegent, sapient beings. Them caring about their offspring isn't really a stretch is it? Even if you don't accept that. You already solved it. "Most Black Dragons". This one wasn't most.


If even that's not enough, it's how the story went.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I’m not entirely a fan of the normalisation of evil that Rich does - cf real life horrific people whose apologists show them being nice to their pets or own family
What she planned to do to Vs kids shows she was evil

Yes, so was what V did to her. Do you have any proof that the dragon was this evil before she lost her only son, leaving her alone in the world with no hope for the future?

As far as I can tell, she was perfectly neutral until she was pushed past breaking point.

Grey Wolf

[Vinyadan]

The message of those stories is just wonderful, isn't it?
„Dear children, don't act like children or you'll be killed and/or maimed horribly.”
Lessons every kid should learn.

I think that the exaggeration was recognizable as a joke back then, but that's just me.

[zimmerwald1915]

As far as I can tell, she was perfectly neutral until she was pushed past breaking point.

Grey Wolf
She was only ever seen on-panel being Evil, and while keeping to yourself is a Neutral act, anyone can do it, including Evil people. Might as well say that every character is Neutral until they appear and do things, which strikes me as just as absurd as a simultaneously alive and dead cat.

What's more reasonable is to project a character's first-seen actions bearing on alignment back into the past.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

She was only ever seen on-panel being Evil, and while keeping to yourself is a Neutral act, anyone can do it, including Evil people. Might as well say that every character is Neutral until they appear and do things, which strikes me as just as absurd as a simultaneously alive and dead cat.

What's more reasonable is to project a character's first-seen actions bearing on alignment back into the past.

Even more reasonable? To not assume she is lying about how her life went before her kid was killed. A life where she was open minded about cross chromatic relations, visits with friends and family etc does not scream evil. She wasn't away from the cave burning villages for the lols, she was visiting family.

So, again: in absence of proof, I don't see a reason to assume she was evil before she lost everything that made her life worth living.

Grey Wolf

[hroþila]

You're assuming a significant alignment shift for which there is no proof either. Personally, I find it hard to believe that someone who carefully planned her revenge the way she did for weeks before executing it in cold blood wasn't Evil all along. And I see no conflict between this interpretation and accepting what she said about her previous life as the truth.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

You're assuming a significant alignment shift for which there is no proof either. Personally, I find it hard to believe that someone who carefully planned her revenge the way she did for weeks before executing it in cold blood wasn't Evil all along. And I see no conflict between this interpretation and accepting what she said about her previous life as the truth.


You can't be a torturing, mass-murdering rapist and then go home and turn your Evil Switch to the "off" position to spend time with your kids. It doesn't work that way.

GW c

[zimmerwald1915]

Even more reasonable? To not assume she is lying about how her life went before her kid was killed.
Never did. I said as much - that her acts that we know of were Neutral. However, one can easily be Evil and not commit Evil acts for a while, out of laziness, or prudence, or for other reasons. This dragon had already lost her mate to adventurers, and could have laid low for that reason.

One can even be open-minded about the value of other peoples and be Evil. It is LE specifically that is called out as being prejudicial, and in any event other things, for example, eagerness to employ disproportionate force in vengeance, can outweigh tolerance. Hilgya, for instance, is open to the value of human culture, but is to my mind unambiguously Evil.


So, again: in absence of proof, I don't see a reason to assume she was evil before she lost everything that made her life worth living.
I think positing a pre-appearance alignment shift is far more of an assumption than positing a mere change in how she expressed her existing alignment.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Never did. I said as much - that her acts that we know of were Neutral. However, one can easily be Evil and not commit Evil acts for a while, out of laziness, or prudence, or for other reasons. This dragon had already lost her mate to adventurers, and could have laid low for that reason.


You can't be a torturing, mass-murdering rapist and then go home and turn your Evil Switch to the "off" position to spend time with your kids. It doesn't work that way.

I don't give a damn in this particular case what you believe, Zim, because we aren't discussing a real person. We are discussing a creation of Rich Burlew, and he doesn't believe that you can, and I quote, "a torturing, mass-murdering rapist and then go home and turn your Evil Switch to the "off" position".

Consequently, I stand by my statement that the ABD wasn't an evil torturer before V pushed her to be one.

Grey Wolf

[hroþila]

GW c
I disagree with that interpretation of the Giant's quote, for reasons that someone else already elaborated on in this thread. Taken that literally, the quote is demonstrably false.

[hamishspence]

It's worth remembering the rest of the quote:


If you are the sort of person that can commit the acts that Tarquin does daily, then that will find its way into every aspect of your existence. It's who you are. This idea that Tarquin was this perfectly rational actor despite being a complete monster at his Day Job is a pipe dream. Tarquin wants you (and Elan) to think that what he does is separate from who he is—that he's a fundamentally decent man who just so happens to murder a bunch of people here and there—because that's how he tricks you into slowly accepting his blatant Evil as a valid life choice that needs to be respected.

[Morty]

I feel like this is all pretty academic. Tarquin and the black dragon are or were evil, but otherwise they were completely different characters with different stories and roles in the narrative. Which honestly one of the problems with alignment when you think about it.

[Peelee]

I think that the exaggeration was recognizable as a joke back then, but that's just me.

Yes, the Germans are quite well-known for their sense of humor.

For reals, though, have you read that book? To its intended audience?

[Kish]

I don't think Rich ever meant anyone to think the ancient black dragon wasn't evil.

Post 636, anyway. (I still remember someone speculating, entirely validly at the time, that Vaarsuvius was going to arrive at a perfectly intact house and find tacked to the door a note that said, "I could have, but I'm better than you.")

I would also say something about her choosing an elaborate revenge scheme and scrolls of the ninth-level spell Soul Bind over getting her son back and one scroll of the ninth-level spell True Resurrection, but Rich indicated a while ago that she couldn't find anyone willing to cast True Resurrection for her, and might actually have been planning to try once she'd taken revenge on Vaarsuvius, so never mind that.

I also don't see how the logic "if she could try to do something that bad, she can't have loved her son" (let me know if you disagree with this paraphrase) doesn't also lead to "Vaarsuvius never loved their children."

(Pointing to Vaarsuvius' trace-deprived and generally emotionally distraught state would hinge on an invalid assumption that the ancient black dragon was not in comparable emotional distress at the time.)

[Lacuna Caster]

The point of Tarquin's arc is that while he can be superficially nice - when it comes to the crunch, he treats even "loved ones" evilly.

I don't give a damn in this particular case what you believe, Zim, because we aren't discussing a real person. We are discussing a creation of Rich Burlew, and he doesn't believe that you can, and I quote, "a torturing, mass-murdering rapist and then go home and turn your Evil Switch to the "off" position".
Well, as I see it, that is rather the problem with Rich's assertion here. It's implied that Tarquin's ability to inflict horrendous atrocities is incompatible with sincere attachment to his friends and family, and then we have this bunch of other characters (Redcloak, the Elder Dragon, Sabine and Tsukiko after a fashion, and even Belkar after development) that it's strongly implied do have genuine pro-social attachments in their life despite going on gleeful murder sprees.

Now, if he was arguing that it's psychologically possible to be this way and Tarquin in particular just wasn't, that would be one thing. But he's making a broader categorical argument that these qualities aren't compatible at all. In which case... why is Redcloak the designated woobie antihero?

[Rodin]

I don't think we can say with any certainty what alignment the ABD was. Game mechanics make it likely she was Evil, per the usual Color Coded For Your Convenience. Without that purely game-oriented distinction, there's little to draw on.

We know almost nothing of the ABD prior to her encounter with Vaarsuvius. And because she didn't survive said encounter, we know nothing afterwards either.

What I'm getting at here is that we're looking at a single page out of the ABD's life. You could do the same thing for Vaarsuvius and simply pull the time they spent as Darth V, which paints the picture of an unrepentant monster who is willing to commit genocide at the drop of a hat.

In broader terms, we know that the ABD loved her son, because she told us as much and demonstrated by dropping everything and seeking revenge for a period of months. Other than that, we simply don't know enough about the ABD's personality or actions prior to appearing in the comic to establish anything about her character, much less something as fickle as her alignment. Characters with far more screen time than the ABD have debates raging over what alignment they are and whether said alignment has changed over time.

[Vinyadan]

Well, as I see it, that is rather the problem with Rich's assertion here. It's implied that Tarquin's ability to inflict horrendous atrocities is incompatible with sincere attachment to his friends and family, and then we have this bunch of other characters (Redcloak, the Elder Dragon, Sabine and Tsukiko after a fashion, and even Belkar after development) that it's strongly implied do have genuine pro-social attachments in their life despite going on gleeful murder sprees.

Now, if he was arguing that it's psychologically possible to be this way and Tarquin in particular just wasn't, that would be one thing. But he's making a broader categorical argument that these qualities aren't compatible at all. In which case... why is Redcloak the designated woobie antihero?

I understand that quote in a different way. Alignment-wise, those people stay evil in spite of having a safe-area of people they like and don't want to hurt. Although I am not sure of who that is in Redcloak's case (he made it clear that the plan was more important than resurrecting the elder artisan). Tarquin in particular didn't have such a safe area around his family, because of how his character saw his family as an extension of his story; Malak, however, may have been part of it. His female colleague sees things in a different way about family, but I think that she's still evil.


Yes, the Germans are quite well-known for their sense of humor.

For reals, though, have you read that book? To its intended audience?

Actually, I remember a study in a book by the Goethe Institut saying that Germans will laugh more easily than any other nationality. (I also remember saying that in another form some time ago, and people being -- probably rightfully -- offended).

I have read it, yes, when I was a kid, and I did find it upsetting. But I think that it makes no sense to look at it as we are used to today. We are talking about a time when it was normal to give children stories in which the bad guy was tortured and killed by the good guys. Just think about the tolerance for violence we have in Tom & Jerry. Or this horrific thing:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWQwgJVvd5s

which becomes funny once you realise it's a parody of the samurai, and probably a manga genre in general.

I think that children back then were aware of certain kinds of "terror" being a part of how stories worked, and simply went along. And it's also possible that the metre used in the poems also made them funny; from this point of view, I am completely tone-deaf, as I think most people have become.

The pictures are generally so out of proportion that they can only be read as comedy, with a few exceptions -- the thing with the scissors in particular.

It's also true that old women in Europe had a tradition of telling stories to keep children entertained and that fear is entertaining, so it's possible that certain stories are deliberately scary. But, in the end, the objective was passing a message. There aren't many better way to pass the concept of "don't play with fire or you'll burn yourself" than showing a child actually burning and turning into a pile of ash, with her cats wearing mourning ribbons around their tails and dousing the ashes with their tears.

Also, remember clowns. Nowadays, clowns have been taken over in pop culture by horror. It didn't use to be that way.

[Fyraltari]

why is Redcloak the designated woobie antihero?

I issed that memeo, I thought Redcloak was the tragic villain.

[Kish]

In which case... why is Redcloak the designated woobie antihero?
Because your snide slogan ignores the fact that what Rich has actually written with Redcloak is as much an illustration of what he said as Tarquin is. In exactly the same way, even: You are my family member whom I love, and when you don't do what I want you to do, I demonstrate this by murdering you.

[AvatarVecna]

There's one barkeep in the Forgotten Realms that's a retired high-level adventurer, one of the secret rulers of the city and using being a barkeep as cover. People took that and made it a meme. Forgotten Realms is a bog-standard D&D setting, just with a lot of legacy characters and even more wizard and mage fanboyism than usual.

So I know it's not necessarily canon to every edition or every setting, but the 3.5 DMG has rules for randomly generating settlements...and in those books, while they can work with any setting, FR is the default assumed. So while those rules aren't necessarily canon to other editions/settings, they are at least indicative of how WotC feels about demographics in Faerun. A randomly generated thorp/hamlet has a ~13%/~25% chance of having a lvl 10+ commoner around, and a ~5% chance of having a ranger and druid of level 8+. A randomly generated metropolis (population 25000+) will have 64 NPCs of lvl 13+ across the core classes, which can include lvl 18 clerics and druids, level 20 fighters and rogues, and lvl 28 commoners.

[Morty]

So I know it's not necessarily canon to every edition or every setting, but the 3.5 DMG has rules for randomly generating settlements...and in those books, while they can work with any setting, FR is the default assumed. So while those rules aren't necessarily canon to other editions/settings, they are at least indicative of how WotC feels about demographics in Faerun. A randomly generated thorp/hamlet has a ~13%/~25% chance of having a lvl 10+ commoner around, and a ~5% chance of having a ranger and druid of level 8+. A randomly generated metropolis (population 25000+) will have 64 NPCs of lvl 13+ across the core classes, which can include lvl 18 clerics and druids, level 20 fighters and rogues, and lvl 28 commoners.

D&D's perennial inability to reconcile its presented setting with the power of the people that inhabit it - and deal with the power of high-level PCs in general - is a topic for another discussion.

[Kish]

The 3.5 core books assume Oerth (Greyhawk) as the default.

Level 28 characters in any metropolis, hm. Seriously disappointing.

[woweedd]

The 3.5 core books assume Oerth (Greyhawk) as the default.

Level 28 characters in any metropolis, hm. Seriously disappointing.
Level 28 COMMONERS. Now, granted, D&D’s assumes default setting can get a tad ridiculous. We are talking a world where your average level 1 Commoner, with his 1d6 hit dice, can get cold stabbed in the face, and have even odds of walking it off, any major metropolis contains at least one person able to literally raise the dead, and there are entire ecological niches devoted to “screwing over adventurers” and/or “bored wizards thought it’d be funny”.

[Themrys]

I'd say there's plenty of animals that would flee when a predator they can't fend off threatens their offspring, but they still care and they'll often be quite distressed afterwards. Regardless, the ABD didn't flee or anything, so the only thing we know is that her caring was presented not only as normal, but as something that should have been obvious.

Indeed. The dragon not caring that V killed her son would only make sense if her species was known for laying their eggs wherever and then leaving them.

Even with the species of sea turtles who lay their eggs on land and then leave you could argue that they do care, as they dig a hole to hide their eggs in and all.

And of course, mommy dragon is an intelligent creature capable of human speech, therefore, she logically as per the Giant's rules for his universe, can feel the same range of emotions as humans can. (At this point in the narrative, we can tell he doesn't go with the "always evil" thing, and especially doesn't write evil people as incapable of loving their children)

There's men who sleep around and don't care what becomes of any potential offspring, sure.

But because humans are intelligent enough to understand how babies are made, there's women who would never donate eggs because they don't want their own children to be raised by someone else.

Even if the disappointment mommy dragon would have experienced over one of her eggs being destroyed would have been equivalent to that of a human getting her period despite having tried for a baby, she can still deeply care about her already hatched son.

@Grey Wolf: Mass-murdering, torturing rapists are evil towards their own species. Especially rapists tend to hate women. Which doesn't bode well for a happy family life with a wife.

I don't know exactly what constitutes "evil" in D&D world, but assuming that black dragons just eat adventurers like cats eat mice, that would be evil enough to justify their reputation among other sentient species and still not render them incapable of loving their offspring.

[Kish]

We are talking a world where your average level 1 Commoner, with his 1d6 hit dice,
1d4 .

[woweedd]

1d4 .

True. Still, if a Goblin Commoner were to stab them, they could have even odds of living.

[Prinygod]

I understand that quote in a different way. Alignment-wise, those people stay evil in spite of having a safe-area of people they like and don't want to hurt. Although I am not sure of who that is in Redcloak's case (he made it clear that the plan was more important than resurrecting the elder artisan). Tarquin in particular didn't have such a safe area around his family, because of how his character saw his family as an extension of his story; Malak, however, may have been part of it. His female colleague sees things in a different way about family, but I think that she's still evil.

Maybe I am remembering the context wrong, but at the time there was criticism that Tarquin killing nale was out of character, as previously established. Gaint's comment was in response to that criticism. That if you thought Tarquin was "decent", that was just a facade. I feel like there might have been speculation that the Giant was concerned that Tarquin was well-liked by the community, more than he expected from a brutal dictator. And thus he "changed" Tarquin as a response.

[woweedd]

Maybe I am remembering the context wrong, but at the time there was criticism that Tarquin killing nale was out of character, as previously established. Gaint's comment was in response to that criticism. That if you thought Tarquin was "decent", that was just a facade. I feel like there might have been speculation that the Giant was concerned that Tarquin was like by the community more than he expected, and he "changed" Tarquin as a response.
Very much not true. Everything about Tarquin, from his possevie jelsolusuly to his profound sense of entitlement towards other people’s rights and property, to his petty raging screams “sociopathic narracist”. Such people do not make good parents.

[Kish]

That said, there was certainly speculation, if you choose to overdignify certain distressed posts with that term, that everything Rich wrote that depicted Tarquin the unraveling control freak instead of Tarquin the perfectly in control warlord was some kind of dishonest and manipulative retcon.

[Jasdoif]

That said, there was certainly speculation, if you choose to overdignify certain distressed posts with that term, that everything Rich wrote that depicted Tarquin the unraveling control freak instead of Tarquin the perfectly in control warlord was some kind of dishonest and manipulative retcon.And The Giant had a specific response:



Just out of curiosity, who was it that told the story about how Tarquin was a tactical genius and the mastermind behind his party's plot? Was it…Tarquin?

If you bought into Tarquin's story that Tarquin was a competent chessmaster when all of the evidence in the comic points to him being a quasi-delusional control freak that needs to be reigned in by one of his allies half the time, that's on you. I gave you the evidence to see what he was, you just chose to believe his spin instead and then criticize me for not living up to it. The characterization is consistent all the way through—including the part where he talks himself up to be the central character in his group's history. But look at the way Laurin and Miron talk to him; does that sound like people who think he's the mastermind that got them to where they are? Or does it sound like how people talk to Elan? Why do you think that strip was even in there, except to reveal that Tarquin's version of his place in the group had been inflated by Tarquin?

Look, people are taking me to task because for the first half of the story, they thought Tarquin was calm and collected, and now they're upset that he's not. If you looked at the things that happened in the Empire of Blood and thought, "Hey, he's petty, erratic, and short-sighted," then congratulations, you grasped his character better than they did.

[Themrys]

Tarquin wasn't even able to correctly deduce from what he knew about his ex-wife and about Elan's heroics, that Elan would not be impressed by slaves being burned at the stake in his honour.

I didn't do much thinking on how competent his group views him, but it was pretty obvious to me that he isn't really all that clever.

[Vinyadan]

What did not click for me was how mistaken Malak was -- it was clear that he listened a lot to Tarquin, and he considered him a man of some calibre (like when he accepted Tarquin's assertion that the Order was a party, or he accepted his apologies, or talked about him to Durkon while they were fighting).

But now, looking back, I see that Malak was probably delusional about a lot of things. From calling Durkon "Brother" and thinking the undead would be his sibling, to calling his spawn his children, to making impossible proposals to Durkon, to thinking that Nale would not react after he had pretty much got Tarquin's permission to kill him later. Not delusional-delusional, like Tsukiko, more like "playing a pretence game imagining a world where things were as he liked them, and talking to people in such a way as if that world were real, and expecting others to join in". Kind of an interpersonal role play.

[Resileaf]

I imagine that like any party, the Vector Legion's strength was how they completed themselves perfectly. Tarquin's flaws could be reigned back by his allies, Malack's delusions could be kept in check, and I assume everyone else had their strengths and flaws that were handled by someone else in the party.
The OotS also have their flaws, but they have flaws that a (mostly) good party would have, and handle those flaws how a (mostly) good party does.

[hamishspence]

What did not click for me was how mistaken Malak was -- it was clear that he listened a lot to Tarquin, and he considered him a man of some calibre (like when he accepted Tarquin's assertion that the Order was a party, or he accepted his apologies, or talked about him to Durkon while they were fighting).

Apparently

"You don't spend time with a general of Tarquin's calibre without learning a few things about attrition"

is a shot at Tarquin's generalship - a hint that he only wins wars by having more troops than his opponents.

[denthor]

To show love is a harmful emotional state that is to be avoided at all cost.

Nameless NPC'S are doomed to die. Reread the Azure City arc. Where Belkster gets the idea with the catapult. Then later a nameless one gets a name then saves his last name for later.

Real answer she was related to an order of the scribble member.

[Fyraltari]

What did not click for me was how mistaken Malak was -- it was clear that he listened a lot to Tarquin, and he considered him a man of some calibre (like when he accepted Tarquin's assertion that the Order was a party, or he accepted his apologies, or talked about him to Durkon while they were fighting).

But now, looking back, I see that Malak was probably delusional about a lot of things. From calling Durkon "Brother" and thinking the undead would be his sibling, to calling his spawn his children, to making impossible proposals to Durkon, to thinking that Nale would not react after he had pretty much got Tarquin's permission to kill him later. Not delusional-delusional, like Tsukiko, more like "playing a pretence game imagining a world where things were as he liked them, and talking to people in such a way as if that world were real, and expecting others to join in". Kind of an interpersonal role play.

I disagree that Maalack was delusional. Tarquin's assessment of the Order as a party was completely accurate and The Giant once stated (summon Banana IX) that this kind of narrative insights is what Tarquin brings to the table of Vector Legion.
"Brother" is common way to adress priests and may in fact be Durkon's title just like Brother Sandstone (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1095.html), that's not Malack thinking of Durkon as a brother (yet), that's him being polite.
His spawns were his children in a very literal sense, there's no way to know if they thought of themselves as such but I don't see why not. Durkon* during his undeath was in transitional place for a vampire, one Malack planned oon helping him go through as a vampire thrall. Absent that and Hel's plan I think Durkon* would have accepted his place as Malack's brother and may even come to reciprocitate. I don't think we ever heard what durkon did in fact think of Malack, maybe he did (I doubt it, though). His proposals weren't impossible, it was perfectly possible for Durkon to accept them but he wouldn't because he has strong moral principles. It was dishonest of Malack not to suggest that the VL/LG retreat but not delusional.
I don't think he thought Nale wouldn't react but rather that there was nothing Nale could do and indeed there wasn't until Malack cast Protection From Sunlight on Durkon*.

[hroþila]

Personally, I suspect The Giant swung the pendulum a bit too far on the other direction when he said that Tarquin was basically Elan on the forum, as he's admitted to doing from time to time, and I also suspect that if he had taken the time to explain Tarquin in more detail in that post he wouldn't quite have put it in those words, although of course he would still have kept the substance intact. The way I see it, Tarquin was highly competent, and he did command the respect of the others, who nonetheless saw him as an equal, not a leader, and they didn't think his story stuff was all that important. Malack was probably more willing to indulge Tarquin than the others because he was probably more of a hands-off guy and less interested in the day-to-day running of the Empire, at least for the time being, before his mates died and the Empire became truly his. But that's just my personal interpretation, and I can only defend it so far because after all I *am* going against Word of God here, unless he somehow decides to show up here and say I'm right for some reason.

Of course, that he was highly competent doesn't preclude him from being absolutely delusional and someone who broke down when he wasn't in full control of the situation.

[zimmerwald1915]

Apparently

"You don't spend time with a general of Tarquin's calibre without learning a few things about attrition"

is a shot at Tarquin's generalship - a hint that he only wins wars by having more troops than his opponents.
Most wars are won by having more troops - or, more accurately, having a society that is able to mobilize more troops, whether through superior manpower, superior logistics, or both - than your opponents. Individual battles may be won by brilliant tactics or operations despite having fewer troops available, but over the course of a war, numbers tend to tell. [I had historical examples here, but I thought better of including them.]

The kind of brilliant general that can win a whole war, and not merely a few battles, with a numerical disadvantage and technological parity with or inferiority to an opponent appears but once in multiple generations. The only one who comes immediately to mind is Alexander of Macedon.

I agree that Malack's statement is meant to be more derogatory than complimentary. I don't think, however, that Malack really appreciates how little he's putting Tarquin down.

[AvatarVecna]

The 3.5 core books assume Oerth (Greyhawk) as the default.

Level 28 characters in any metropolis, hm. Seriously disappointing.

Well, that lvl 28 commoner is a might be. 4d4+12 rolled four times. There ends up being a ~1.5% chance there's a lvl 28 commoner in the city across those four rolls, which isn't great odds, but there's only a 30% chance that none of those four commoners accidentally end up higher than lvl 21, and they'll average at lvl 22. In other words, it's not a lvl 28 commoner in every metropolis...but there's almost certainly at least one commoner in basically every metropolis, and the ones that don't have a commoner on the cusp. Just more of how WotC doesn't really handle demographics well, but eh.

https://i2.yuki.la/c/0a/561885afcfe73af17467208923e4ddf59bcb2ec2a2ab88dfa2 b5de54bafc90ac.jpg

[woweedd]

I disagree that Maalack was delusional. Tarquin's assessment of the Order as a party was completely accurate and The Giant once stated (summon Banana IX) that this kind of narrative insights is what Tarquin brings to the table of Vector Legion.
"Brother" is common way to adress priests and may in fact be Durkon's title just like Brother Sandstone (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1095.html), that's not Malack thinking of Durkon as a brother (yet), that's him being polite.
His spawns were his children in a very literal sense, there's no way to know if they thought of themselves as such but I don't see why not. Durkon* during his undeath was in transitional place for a vampire, one Malack planned oon helping him go through as a vampire thrall. Absent that and Hel's plan I think Durkon* would have accepted his place as Malack's brother and may even come to reciprocitate. I don't think we ever heard what durkon did in fact think of Malack, maybe he did (I doubt it, though). His proposals weren't impossible, it was perfectly possible for Durkon to accept them but he wouldn't because he has strong moral principles. It was dishonest of Malack not to suggest that the VL/LG retreat but not delusional.
I don't think he thought Nale wouldn't react but rather that there was nothing Nale could do and indeed there wasn't until Malack cast Protection From Sunlight on Durkon*.
Except the part where he though Elan was the leader, and there's his problem. He's a narcissist, who can't conceive of the idea that he, and, to a lesser extent, his sons, are not the center of the universe. As far as he's concerned, there's one, and only one, main character, and that character is Elan, and,w ell, him, but theoretically Elan. He's unable to understand an Ensemble Cast, chiefly because the concept of sharing the spotlight is anathema to his very being. The Order of The Stick isn't about Tarquin, or Elan, or even really Roy: It's about THE ORDER OF THE STICK, all of them, individually and as a group, all of them with their thoughts, goals, dreams, and all the rest, splitting the role of hero six ways between them. The point is, like all narcissists, there is no world where Tarquin gets what he wants, because what he wants is for the entire world to revolve around him, and it just doesn't. He can predict the story, but he can't change it, at least, not on that level, anymore then a volcanologist could control volcanoes. There's a big difference between understanding and control.

[Jasdoif]

Personally, I suspect The Giant swung the pendulum a bit too far on the other direction when he said that Tarquin was basically Elan on the forum, as he's admitted to doing from time to time, and I also suspect that if he had taken the time to explain Tarquin in more detail in that post he wouldn't quite have put it in those words, although of course he would still have kept the substance intact. The way I see it, Tarquin was highly competent, and he did command the respect of the others, who nonetheless saw him as an equal, not a leader, and they didn't think his story stuff was all that important. Malack was probably more willing to indulge Tarquin than the others because he was probably more of a hands-off guy and less interested in the day-to-day running of the Empire, at least for the time being, before his mates died and the Empire became truly his. But that's just my personal interpretation, and I can only defend it so far because after all I *am* going against Word of God here, unless he somehow decides to show up here and say I'm right for some reason.For the record:




I don't really see him as the Elan of the team; he certainly seemed to be much more bossy and his teammates do listen to him and follow his lead, even if he has to do it by saying "its business" or "I'm calling in that favour".

I think if you plan to reveal that he was always completely incompetent that would be overstating things (and isn't very faithful to Elan, either).Well, it's an analogy, not a perfect substitution. Maybe I oversold it when I said they treat him like Elan, but the main point was that he had overstated his own agency in their mutual plan. He may have had the initial concept, but if he had been left to run it himself it would have certainly failed, precisely because he would have had no one to keep him from going off the deep end at the first bump in the road. It's not a coincidence that Tarquin's breakdown started with Malack's death.

[zimmerwald1915]

The Order of The Stick isn't about Tarquin, or Elan, or even really Roy: It's about THE ORDER OF THE STICK, all of them, individually and as a group, all of them with their thoughts, goals, dreams, and all the rest, splitting the role of hero six ways between them.
You're gonna have to do a lot more to prove that Roy isn't the singular main character of the Order of the Stick.

[hroþila]

For the record:



I would brag about being smart now, but in all probability my interpretation stemmed from reading that very quote and then completely forgetting about it, so yeah, that's probably the opposite of smart.

(Thanks!)

[Doug Lampert]

The kind of brilliant general that can win a whole war, and not merely a few battles, with a numerical disadvantage and technological parity with or inferiority to an opponent appears but once in multiple generations. The only one who comes immediately to mind is Alexander of Macedon.

George Washington.

[zimmerwald1915]

George Washington.
I suppose YMMV as to whether getting multiple great powers to pull your chestnuts out of the fire counts. As your feat of generalship and not someone else's feat of diplomacy, no less.

[Fyraltari]

I supposed YMMV as to whether getting multiple great powers to pull your chestnuts out of the fire counts. As a feat of generalship and not diplomacy, no less.

Like the French or the Germans were going to let an opportunity to mess with the British pass without doing anything.

[Prinygod]

Most wars are won by having more troops - or, more accurately, having a society that is able to mobilize more troops, whether through superior manpower, superior logistics, or both - than your opponents. Individual battles may be won by brilliant tactics or operations despite having fewer troops available, but over the course of a war, numbers tend to tell. [I had historical examples here, but I thought better of including them.]

The kind of brilliant general that can win a whole war, and not merely a few battles, with a numerical disadvantage and technological parity with or inferiority to an opponent appears but once in multiple generations. The only one who comes immediately to mind is Alexander of Macedon.

I agree that Malack's statement is meant to be more derogatory than complimentary. I don't think, however, that Malack really appreciates how little he's putting Tarquin down.

Well consider that he adopted that strategy, and was talking to durkon whom would no context that Tarquin was incompent. Also consider that when Tarquin initially tried conquest, it took several kingdom's to stop, him per Red. Either these were red herrings, or giant was playing it straight in this aspect.

[mjasghar]

Many heroic soldiers in real life wars who were seen as great family men committed rapes during those wars - and many people who commit those crimes and similar ones have apologists who say oh look at his/ her charity work etc
The main common factor is their empathy is only toward their own group
It’s like the mafia dons who are all sweet and cuddly with their daughters but run horrific under age prostitution rings etc
It’s a sad fact of human life that we can compartmentalise our empathy that way - cf slave plantation owners and their children
So the abd could easily be evil but empathise with chromatic dragons and black one should in particular- but by d and d standards easily evil due to eating sentient non dragons etc. Also I doubt her hoard was obtained by trade

[zimmerwald1915]

Like the French or the Germans were going to let an opportunity to mess with the British pass without doing anything.
What Germans? I was referring to the French, Spanish, and Dutch.

[Fyraltari]

What Germans? I was referring to the French, Spanish, and Dutch.

Poor phrasing on my part, I meant that when fighting the British, getting the French or the Germans on your side is not particularly hard. Then again I think one prominent French instructor was actually a German impostor but I may be thinking of something else.

[Resileaf]

Poor phrasing on my part, I meant that when fighting the British, getting the French or the Germans on your side is not particularly hard. Then again I think one prominent French instructor was actually a German impostor but I may be thinking of something else.

Aside from the Jaegers fighting on the side of the British, were there Germans involved in that war?

[nmphuong91]

Tarquin wasn't even able to correctly deduce from what he knew about his ex-wife and about Elan's heroics, that Elan would not be impressed by slaves being burned at the stake in his honour.

I didn't do much thinking on how competent his group views him, but it was pretty obvious to me that he isn't really all that clever.

But Elan was impressed...0760 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0760.html), and Tarquin wasn't surprised.

[Ruck]

Don't the Drizz't books end up with more and more good "exception" drow constantly showing up? I remember seeing some of my RP friends joking about that before.

I think this strip joked about it in Zz'dtri's introduction.


I disagree with that interpretation of the Giant's quote, for reasons that someone else already elaborated on in this thread. Taken that literally, the quote is demonstrably false.

Yeah, I'll co-sign that. I think it's far more likely that the ABD was Evil all along, and simply wasn't being pushed to act in a particularly Evil manner.

(I don't think someone goes from "Neutral" to "willing to kill and Soul Bind children" overnight over anything.)


The point of Tarquin's arc is that while he can be superficially nice - when uit comes to the crunch, he treats even "loved ones" evilly.

Regarding Tarquin, I wish more people had seen The Shield, because Vic Mackey is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, but: Think of an Evil character like Tarquin as having a morality expressed as a set of priorities. I'm sure Tarquin even believed he loved his sons, but as soon as that came into conflict with his higher priority of "controlling their lives and telling the story he wants to tell," he murdered one and tried to murder everyone the other one cared about. Because he's Evil, and he always was.


Because your snide slogan ignores the fact that what Rich has actually written with Redcloak is as much an illustration of what he said as Tarquin is. In exactly the same way, even: You are my family member whom I love, and when you don't do what I want you to do, I demonstrate this by murdering you.

Indeed.


To show love is a harmful emotional state that is to be avoided at all cost.

Nameless NPC'S are doomed to die. Reread the Azure City arc. Where Belkster gets the idea with the catapult. Then later a nameless one gets a name then saves his last name for later.

Real answer she was related to an order of the scribble member.

I'm sorry, what?

[Peelee]

I think this strip joked about it in Zz'dtri's introduction.

Having read none of the books, I always assumed that was commentary on Drow PCs.

[Kish]

The Drizzt books don't, to my knowledge, feature any other nonevil drow (except Drizzt's father, who dies in the first book he's in). Salvatore himself expressed distress that any except Drizzt existed (in things he didn't write). Ironically, the 2ed AD&D sourcebook Drow of the Underdark, which I believe came out before Salvatore ever wrote a book with Drizzt in it, said that 85% of drow were evil and introduced a Chaotic Good deity (Elistraee) whose entire raison d'etre was about being the goddess of the other 15%.

[Harbinger]

Because if she didn't, the most interesting plot point in the whole comic wouldn't have happened.

[137beth]

The ABD isn't just an ABD: she's also a blah blah blah blah (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?212381-Wouldn-t-people-like-to-buy-a-book-about-the-lives-of-Haerta-Ganonron-and-Jephton&p=11707099). As she is the only blah blah blah blah shown in the entire series, the implication seems to be that all blah blah blah blah parents care a lot about their kids deaths.


For real though, I would expect that most people in the OOTSverse regardless of species care about their families to some extend, aside from some extreme villains like Tarquin (who only cares about people to the extent that they make good characters in "his" story), or Xykon.

[Lacuna Caster]

Because your snide slogan ignores the fact that what Rich has actually written with Redcloak is as much an illustration of what he said as Tarquin is. In exactly the same way, even: You are my family member whom I love, and when you don't do what I want you to do, I demonstrate this by murdering you.
Aside from how Redcloak's killings are far more plausibly rational within the context of the narrative, that the emotional toll they take is explicit, and that he legitimately risks his life to minimise hobgoblin casualties during the siege of azure city, at the going rate there is an excellent chance that Redcloak- Redcloak, the genocidal tyrant, of all people- will be the person who not only saves the world, but all possible worlds. Equating him with Tarquin is ridiculous.

(Also, in fairness to Tarquin, I have a hard time blaming anyone for killing Nale and consider it virtually criminal that he was allowed to live as long as he did.)


That said, there was certainly speculation, if you choose to overdignify certain distressed posts with that term, that everything Rich wrote that depicted Tarquin the unraveling control freak instead of Tarquin the perfectly in control warlord was some kind of dishonest and manipulative retcon.
It wouldn't surprise me, though I think it's much clearer (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?575576-When-did-everyone-become-so-powerful&p=23587200&viewfull=1#post23587200) in the case of certain other characters.

[paladinofshojo]

Indeed. The dragon not caring that V killed her son would only make sense if her species was known for laying their eggs wherever and then leaving them.



I don’t know about the OotS-verse, but if we’re going by D&D black dragons then......

[Morty]

You do know about OotS verse. You saw that at least one black dragon mother cared about her child's death. You just keep refusing to accept that for some reason.

[paladinofshojo]

You do know about OotS verse. You saw that at least one black dragon mother cared about her child's death. You just keep refusing to accept that for some reason.

There’s a difference between seeing at least one and seeing only one...

[Kish]

One is a superset of the other. Is that supposed to justify your flat refusal to engage with the story presented rather than the story your interpretation of the Monster Manual says should be there?

[paladinofshojo]

One is a superset of the other. Is that supposed to justify your flat refusal to engage with the story presented rather than the story your interpretation of the Monster Manual says should be there?

What? I am just asking as to any sort of speculation as to why the ABD would behave so differently than how her kind would behave stereotypically in a D&D world.

However, everyone is acting as if her behavior is the norm and when I and several others pointed out that according to established D&D Lore that it isn’t, everyone simply throws it out in favor of their own interpretations.....

Isn’t that a bit hypocritical to assume I’m the one subscribing to a personal narrative here?

[hroþila]

There’s a difference between seeing at least one and seeing only one...
We see the ABD in a stable family unit together with her son and, before he was killed, her husband. We're also told that this extends to her son's uncle, since the ABD is close enough to him to pay him a visit and stay with him for a few months. That uncle was either her brother or her husband's brother, in either case pointing to at least another stable family unit (otherwise, she would have had little reason to visit him). We're also shown the black dragon ancestor of the Draketooth pairing with a human to form yet another stable family unit, as they had three children. We've also seen at least one black dragon in a cave with their offspring (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0639.html), which again suggests the adult is taking care of their young.

Her behaviour is the norm for OOTS. This was answered a while ago in this thread, so your insistence on bringing up other D&D settings is a bit puzzling.

[Ruck]

What? I am just asking as to any sort of speculation as to why the ABD would behave so differently than how her kind would behave stereotypically in a D&D world.

Like, seriously, have you read this comic?

[CriticalFailure]

What? I am just asking as to any sort of speculation as to why the ABD would behave so differently than how her kind would behave stereotypically in a D&D world.

I think in OOTS most if not all sentient creatures are pretty human in their motivations, as the humor often plays off of contrasting and reconciling the fantasy setting with the normal details of life (see Squirmy Death being polite and a bit shy in the latest comic). While there are good stories that really get into the idea of what sentient life looks like when fundamentally different than humans (Ender Series and 3 Body Problem come to mind) I don't think OOTS wants to look at those topics at all.

Different GMs and players can have different takes on the topic. I also think playing with this idea could potentially be interesting in terms of the question of why people are OK with killing young dragons if someone wanted to go that way.

[Peelee]

What? I am just asking as to any sort of speculation as to why the ABD would behave so differently than how her kind would behave stereotypically in a D&D world.
This is not a stereotypical D&D world. It's a specific D&D world with its own quirks and foibles. Have you asked why the characters can pull out Monster Manuals or know their dice rolls? Those don't show up in stereotypical D&D worlds either.

However, everyone is acting as if her behavior is the norm
Because from all indications, it is the norm.

I and several others pointed out that according to established D&D Lore that it isn’t
Great, but established lore that doesn't mesh with the what we see in the comic is entirely irrelevant.

[Ariko]

What? I am just asking as to any sort of speculation as to why the ABD would behave so differently than how her kind would behave stereotypically in a D&D world.

However, everyone is acting as if her behavior is the norm and when I and several others pointed out that according to established D&D Lore that it isn’t, everyone simply throws it out in favor of their own interpretations.....

Isn’t that a bit hypocritical to assume I’m the one subscribing to a personal narrative here?
Not so much exception as the norm, according to another post in the first page.

Yeah I was going by the SRD. I am not sure what you are taking about but when I searched it this wiki page (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Black_dragon) came up. Notably it has this paragraph:

"Black dragons were not noted as good parents, relying more upon disguise and hiding to protect their eggs than upon guarding them personally. Black dragon eggs must be submerged in strong acid while growing, which helped protect the dragon as well.[citation needed] Black dragons would only protect their young so long as that responsibility didn't threaten their own life. If they had to choose between saving their own life or those of their clutch or spawn, they would most certainly choose the former; though they would assuredly seek revenge afterwards.[5]"

In any case there is a big spectrum between risking your life for someone and caring about them, and guarding an egg feels a lot different to me than when your child has actually hatched and been raised by you.

[ShadowSandbag]

I don’t know about the OotS-verse, but if we’re going by D&D black dragons then......

Apologies if I've missed something, but the only concrete example I recall seeing was the Forgotten Realms one which, while valid, still does not indicate some sort of larger pattern. What exactly are you referring to when you say "D&D Black Dragons"?

[Morty]

What? I am just asking as to any sort of speculation as to why the ABD would behave so differently than how her kind would behave stereotypically in a D&D world.

However, everyone is acting as if her behavior is the norm and when I and several others pointed out that according to established D&D Lore that it isn’t, everyone simply throws it out in favor of their own interpretations.....

Isn’t that a bit hypocritical to assume I’m the one subscribing to a personal narrative here?

Which "several others" do you mean, exactly? Because it seems like you're the only one to make any claim about "established D&D lore", which you haven't actually backed up in any way. And you ignored quotes from Draconomicon and the FR wiki which directly contradicted your claims.

[Kish]

What? I am just asking as to any sort of speculation as to why the ABD would behave so differently than how her kind would behave stereotypically in a D&D world.

However, everyone is acting as if her behavior is the norm and when I and several others pointed out that according to established D&D Lore that it isn’t, everyone simply throws it out in favor of their own interpretations.....

Isn’t that a bit hypocritical to assume I’m the one subscribing to a personal narrative here?
1) Claiming several others who don't exist is an excellent way to broadcast that you actually know what you're saying is untrue.

2) An observation is not an asssumption.

3) You've gotten lots of answers. You've ignored nearly all of them because you don't wish to acknowledge that your premise is bollocks.

4) You're looking at a plot arc where the entire point was "Vaarsuvius makes a morally horrendous assumption it's fair and safe to treat a race of sapient beings as murderbots and learns how horribly wrong they were" and asking, "Why didn't that black dragon act more like the murderbot she's supposed to be?" If you would like to be able to comprehend anything about the comic, you really need to take in things, whether from the comic or from posts, that you've unfortunately demonstrated the will and the ability to make bounce off your mind.

[Fyraltari]

I'm starting to suspect which paladin of Shojo, paladinofshojo is. I've narrowed it down to two possibilites.

[woweedd]

I'm starting to suspect which paladin of Shojo, paladinofshojo is. I've narrowed it down to two possibilites.
Neither of those people were Paladins at time of death.:smallamused:

[Fyraltari]

Neither of those people were Paladins at time of death.:smallamused:

Both of them would disagree with that statement. Or at least feel it should be false.

[Goblin_Priest]

Well, that lvl 28 commoner is a might be. 4d4+12 rolled four times. There ends up being a ~1.5% chance there's a lvl 28 commoner in the city across those four rolls, which isn't great odds, but there's only a 30% chance that none of those four commoners accidentally end up higher than lvl 21, and they'll average at lvl 22. In other words, it's not a lvl 28 commoner in every metropolis...but there's almost certainly at least one commoner in basically every metropolis, and the ones that don't have a commoner on the cusp. Just more of how WotC doesn't really handle demographics well, but eh.

https://i2.yuki.la/c/0a/561885afcfe73af17467208923e4ddf59bcb2ec2a2ab88dfa2 b5de54bafc90ac.jpg

Considering what it takes to get to epic levels, the idea that anyone would get all the way there purely with the commoner class is beyond absurd. A lvl 10 barb would get the same BAB as a lvl 20 commoner, with more HP, more skill points, and actual abilities worth mention. The commoner class was basically designed to be worse than everyone for everything. Worst HD, worst skill progression, worst saves, worst BAB, no abilities. Someone who wants to be the best farmer ever, even if he started in the commoner class, would certainly eventually switch to another class, like rogue and/or barbarian, where the skill points will make him better at what he does, and where various abilities (like raging for more str) also will.

[Resileaf]

Considering what it takes to get to epic levels, the idea that anyone would get all the way there purely with the commoner class is beyond absurd. A lvl 10 barb would get the same BAB as a lvl 20 commoner, with more HP, more skill points, and actual abilities worth mention. The commoner class was basically designed to be worse than everyone for everything. Worst HD, worst skill progression, worst saves, worst BAB, no abilities. Someone who wants to be the best farmer ever, even if he started in the commoner class, would certainly eventually switch to another class, like rogue and/or barbarian, where the skill points will make him better at what he does, and where various abilities (like raging for more str) also will.

Assuming of course that a peasant can change 'classes' at will.

[Fyraltari]

Someone who wants to be the best farmer ever, even if he started in the commoner class, would certainly eventually switch to another class, like rogue and/or barbarian, where the skill points will make him better at what he does, and where various abilities (like raging for more str) also will.

And now I'm picturing a musclebound farmer finishing the harvest faster because he's pissed at the corn for existing.

[hamishspence]

Assuming of course that a peasant can change 'classes' at will.

I would speculate that most of the high-level commoners are very old - so they'll have aging bonuses and penalties to their stats.

Adventurers might be able to achieve epic levels in a matter of months - but that doesn't mean NPCs will.

[Lacuna Caster]

I'm starting to suspect which paladin of Shojo, paladinofshojo is. I've narrowed it down to two possibilites.
Really? Is that the entire group who assaulted Redcloak's village, or the person who the author specifically defended against accusations of reflexive dragon-smiting?


4) You're looking at a plot arc where the entire point was "Vaarsuvius makes a morally horrendous assumption it's fair and safe to treat a race of sapient beings as murderbots...
There's no particular indication that V was concerned, at the time, with whether black dragons were sapient murderbots or not. They simply wanted to eliminate any and all persons who might possibly be motivated by revenge against themselves or their family. (The topic comes up later in the chat with Blackwing when searching for potential rationalisations after the fact, but that's, well, after the fact.)

[hroþila]

There's no particular indication that V was concerned, at the time, with whether black dragons were sapient murderbots or not. They simply wanted to eliminate any and all persons who might possibly be motivated by revenge against themselves or their family. (The topic comes up later in the chat with Blackwing when searching for potential rationalisations after the fact, but that's, well, after the fact.)
The reason why that course of action was on the table at all was that V considered them nothing but murderbots.

[Lacuna Caster]

The reason why that course of action was on the table at all was that V considered them nothing but murderbots.
Look, maybe I'm missing something here, so feel free to add citations, but I see no explicit evidence that if, say, a gold dragon had sought gruesome and disproportionate revenge on V's adoptive offspring, that V wouldn't have retaliated in the same manner.

(It is, of course, vastly less likely that a gold dragon would ever do so, and it seems pretty clear to me the EBD would not seek revenge in that specific manner unless the value they attached to others' lives was basically nil by default. But the prior evidence for murderous racism is actually not particular (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0207.html) to V.)

[hamishspence]

There's this, at least, from Don't Split the Party:


Vaarsuvius finds him/herself at the dragon's mercy because he/she never thinks to take precautions against her, despite knowing that the dragon he/she killed shared a home with another. Vaarsuvius then repeats and amplifies this misconception when he/she casts the custom-made familicide spell, essentially speaking for all players who say, "All monsters are evil and exist only for us to kill." But hopefully when the reader sees the scale on which Vaarsuvius carries out the devastation, the error of this thinking is more obvious. If it is wrong to kill a thousand dragons simply because they are dragons, then it is wrong to kill a single dragon for the same reasons.

Seems like a strong hint that V killed the first black dragon "because it was a dragon" (or rather, assuming V knows of metallics, "because it was a chromatic dragon").

When combined with V's admission that V had assumed that all black dragons are ravenous killers:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0866.html

I think it's safe to say that V would not have cast Familicide on a being that V did not regard as "fair game by species".

[woweedd]

The reason why that course of action was on the table at all was that V considered them nothing but murderbots.
Indeed. V admitted that their lack of guilt derived primarily from not thinking that a Black Dragon COULD be Non-Evil.

[zimmerwald1915]

Look, maybe I'm missing something here, so feel free to add citations, but I see no explicit evidence that if, say, a gold dragon had sought gruesome and disproportionate revenge on V's adoptive offspring, that V wouldn't have retaliated in the same manner.
"Until this moment, my mind had never considered that any of the dragons that I slew were anything but ravenous killers." (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0866.html)

EDIT: ninja'd

[Fyraltari]

V also assumed she had come for her hoard, which she call them out on (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0628.html).

[Lacuna Caster]

"Until this moment, my mind had never considered that any of the dragons that I slew were anything but ravenous killers." (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0866.html)
Fair enough.

[Goblin_Priest]

Assuming of course that a peasant can change 'classes' at will.

There's no rules against multiclassing into PC classes. As the joke went in the early strips, regarding Elan ditching all the education of starting as a wizard by just multiclassing into it. Rogue, barbarian, bard, cleric, and/or wizard would all be pretty good choices for a farmer, for example, or just about any professional. Any class, including the other NPC classes, would, actually.

A lvl 20 commoner is absurd. Commoner is basically the class for the untrained. An epic level commoner is basically a godly trained untrained person, who is godly good at absolutely nothing.

[zimmerwald1915]

There's no rules against multiclassing into PC classes.
There's a soft requirement somewhere in the DMG that NPCs need the Elite Array or a stat array of equivalent or better worth in point-buy in order to take PC classes. IIRC, it appears in two places: where the instructions for building NPCs are given, and in the monster advancement section (where monsters are given ad hoc ability score adjustments to mimic the difference between the monster's normal array of 10s and 11s to the Elite Array). The latter, incidentally, is not meant to model a monster's advancement over the course of its life (despite the section being titled "Monster Advancement"), but rather that the monster always had those stats and they allowed it to gain PC class levels.

There's an anthropic argument to be made that this limit must exist in order to account for NPCs with more than one level in an NPC class. It was not simply that every NPC so built made bad life decisions, but that the rules of the universe prevented them from taking PC classes.

[Resileaf]

There's no rules against multiclassing into PC classes. As the joke went in the early strips, regarding Elan ditching all the education of starting as a wizard by just multiclassing into it. Rogue, barbarian, bard, cleric, and/or wizard would all be pretty good choices for a farmer, for example, or just about any professional. Any class, including the other NPC classes, would, actually.

A lvl 20 commoner is absurd. Commoner is basically the class for the untrained. An epic level commoner is basically a godly trained untrained person, who is godly good at absolutely nothing.

Sure, there's no rule, but the average peasant isn't going to get rogue or barbarian training. The average peasant is going to work on his land all of his life. He doesn't have opportunities to take a different class.
At best, he gets other NPC classes, such as expert if he manages to get a trade of his own or warrior if he joins the militia.

[Goblin_Priest]

Sure, there's no rule, but the average peasant isn't going to get rogue or barbarian training. The average peasant is going to work on his land all of his life. He doesn't have opportunities to take a different class.
At best, he gets other NPC classes, such as expert if he manages to get a trade of his own or warrior if he joins the militia.

What "training"? You gain XP, you gain a level, you can put it in the class you want. "Training" is RP, not mechanical, unless you want to go by the starting age rules, then sorcerers, rogues, and barbarians are essentially untrained.

I'm also not sure what land an urban commoner would be working.

And besides, even expert would be a huge improvement over commoner. No matter what he does. He's a farmer? He'll want more skill points, for stuff like profession (farmer), crafts, handle animal, appraise, search/spot/listen, heal, knowledge, ride, sense motive, survival, use rope, for example.

I'm not quite sure what a commoner does in a metropolis, though. But a farmer needs a lot of skills to be successful. Much more than the class skills they have, and the skill points they get. There'd be no reason not to dip at least in expert.

[Resileaf]

What "training"? You gain XP, you gain a level, you can put it in the class you want. "Training" is RP, not mechanical, unless you want to go by the starting age rules, then sorcerers, rogues, and barbarians are essentially untrained.

I'm also not sure what land an urban commoner would be working.

And besides, even expert would be a huge improvement over commoner. No matter what he does. He's a farmer? He'll want more skill points, for stuff like profession (farmer), crafts, handle animal, appraise, search/spot/listen, heal, knowledge, ride, sense motive, survival, use rope, for example.

I'm not quite sure what a commoner does in a metropolis, though. But a farmer needs a lot of skills to be successful. Much more than the class skills they have, and the skill points they get. There'd be no reason not to dip at least in expert.

So, if it's so easy to become barbarian or rogue, why would anyone decide to pick the commoner class?

[Kish]

Because most D&D settings aren't self-aware fourth-wall-breaking parody settings. And in the ones that are, the dirt farmers are proud of their dedication to mechanical uselessness.

[137beth]

I'm starting to suspect which paladin of Shojo, paladinofshojo is. I've narrowed it down to two possibilites.

This entire thread I had not been mentally parsing the OP's username, just reading them as "pala***jo." Now that I have seen your post it all makes sense:smallamused:

[Peelee]

What "training"? You gain XP, you gain a level, you can put it in the class you want. "Training" is RP, not mechanical

Anyone who actually has the Commoner class is RP, not mechanical. You don't need townspeople.

[zimmerwald1915]

So, if it's so easy to become barbarian or rogue, why would anyone decide to pick the commoner class?
Did I not post earlier about the class gatekeeping role played by stats? I could've sworn I did.

[Vinyadan]

I wonder if commoners gain xp based on how they roleplay.

[Resileaf]

Did I not post earlier about the class gatekeeping role played by stats? I could've sworn I did.

Mostly I'm confused by Goblin_Priest treating non-OotS settings as having OotS mechanics.

[Morty]

And that, kids, is why 3E D&D's attempts at realistically simulating the world fall flat. Though to be honest, that's more about people thinking it simulates anything than any actual attempt on its part. But the Commoner class is a good example of something that just has no reason to exist... plus some ideas about history that mostly come from Monty Python.

[Rodin]

I wonder if commoners gain xp based on how they roleplay.

I'm now imagining this one D&D player who is playing by mail. He changes groups every time a group breaks up, but always manages to bring his character with him. Except, he isn't with the party going on adventures, because he wanted to play Farmville decades before it came out.

So, he's been pencil-and-paper RPing a farmer for decades. His character is now so high-level he could wipe out any group of adventurers he wishes, conquer any country, slay the gods...

...but he doesn't, because if he did he'd miss lambing season, and he has a responsibility.

[mjasghar]

There's no rules against multiclassing into PC classes. As the joke went in the early strips, regarding Elan ditching all the education of starting as a wizard by just multiclassing into it. Rogue, barbarian, bard, cleric, and/or wizard would all be pretty good choices for a farmer, for example, or just about any professional. Any class, including the other NPC classes, would, actually.

A lvl 20 commoner is absurd. Commoner is basically the class for the untrained. An epic level commoner is basically a godly trained untrained person, who is godly good at absolutely nothing.
Because they aren’t adventurers doesn’t mean they can’t be skilled at something - it just means they are able to cope with pain and suffering in combat (higher levels of hp are abstraction)
A da Vinci or Mozart could be an epic commoner

[Lacuna Caster]

Because they aren’t adventurers doesn’t mean they can’t be skilled at something - it just means they are able to cope with pain and suffering in combat (higher levels of hp are abstraction)
A da Vinci or Mozart could be an epic commoner
There's an essay where some guy (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2) argues that Einstein was only a 4th or 5th-level Expert. The math checks out.

[Goblin_Priest]

Anyone who actually has the Commoner class is RP, not mechanical. You don't need townspeople.

I have far less issues with people starting with a class according to their background, than people sticking to that class through their epic journey of life even if there is no reason whatsoever to do so.

Up to level 5 or so, keeping with their NPC class, sure, sure. But the enormous amount of XP required to get to high levels implies the luxury of changing class. If PCs can do it, there's no reason NPCs can't. Because an epic-level NPC must have basically lived the PC life to get there, unless it's the kind of world that goes "YOU HARVESTED 1 LETTUCE HEAD! HURRAY, PLUS 500XP!". By RAW, the only thing I remember awarding XP is killing stuff. I can't find the rule for RP XP, but I seem to recall it's optional, at the DM's discretion.


Mostly I'm confused by Goblin_Priest treating non-OotS settings as having OotS mechanics.

Funny, I thought we were talking about D&D 3.5? I cited OotS once, and I did so because it was making a gag specifically of the D&D mechanics being referred to, not it's own original mechanics.

[woweedd]

I have far less issues with people starting with a class according to their background, than people sticking to that class through their epic journey of life even if there is no reason whatsoever to do so.

Up to level 5 or so, keeping with their NPC class, sure, sure. But the enormous amount of XP required to get to high levels implies the luxury of changing class. If PCs can do it, there's no reason NPCs can't. Because an epic-level NPC must have basically lived the PC life to get there, unless it's the kind of world that goes "YOU HARVESTED 1 LETTUCE HEAD! HURRAY, PLUS 500XP!". By RAW, the only thing I remember awarding XP is killing stuff. I can't find the rule for RP XP, but I seem to recall it's optional, at the DM's discretion.



Funny, I thought we were talking about D&D 3.5? I cited OotS once, and I did so because it was making a gag specifically of the D&D mechanics being referred to, not it's own original mechanics.
No, he’s referring to the fact that most D&D settings aren’t self-aware towards the rules. In D&D, “Classes” are a rule construct, not a known fact. Most priests are not Clerics, in the game-mechanical sense, and you actually need training to join a class. In OOTS, you can just declare “I want to multiclass to Cleric” and, at your next level, automatically become one, no training required...Beceause it’s a PARODY.

[Themrys]

I'm now imagining this one D&D player who is playing by mail. He changes groups every time a group breaks up, but always manages to bring his character with him. Except, he isn't with the party going on adventures, because he wanted to play Farmville decades before it came out.

So, he's been pencil-and-paper RPing a farmer for decades. His character is now so high-level he could wipe out any group of adventurers he wishes, conquer any country, slay the gods...

...but he doesn't, because if he did he'd miss lambing season, and he has a responsibility.

Then, someday, a new player joins his group, and before anyone can tell the new player that the farmer at whose house the adventurers are guests is a PC, the new player decides to molest the farmers' daughter and set fire to the lambing shed, because he can and he's that kind of player.

That would be interesting to watch.


Commoners are the real oppressed class of DnD, are they? Goblins have it bad, but the commoners are the ones whose lives really suck. I suppose the groups overlap, but it might have been clever of the goblins to team up with those poor people who can be farmers for decades and never get any good at it, all the while thieves get better at lockpicking by fighting monsters.

[Kish]

By RAW, "killing stuff" doesn't award XP. "Overcoming challenges" does: can be killing, can be diplomacy, can be disarming a trap without ever interacting with another living creature.

And that, kids, is why 3E D&D's attempts at realistically simulating the world fall flat. Though to be honest, that's more about people thinking it simulates anything than any actual attempt on its part. But the Commoner class is a good example of something that just has no reason to exist... plus some ideas about history that mostly come from Monty Python.
I think it's more:

"Now that everyone has at least one level, we need a class for those people who were Normal Men* in Basic and 0th-level fighters in 2ed. Let's call it Commoner."
"Capped at first level?"
"Nah, that would be an unjustifiable specific rule. No DM's going to give those people more than one hit die. Maybe two, if they want exceptionally tough mooks for some reason."
"Okay. I sure hope the people who work on the new Dungeon Master's Guide think enough not to create a table which suggests epic-level commoners."

*Including the women.

[zimmerwald1915]

I suppose the groups overlap, but it might have been clever of the goblins to team up with those poor people who can be farmers for decades and never get any good at it, all the while thieves get better at lockpicking by fighting monsters.
Oy! You got your class politics in a story about racism! Y'can't do that!

[Peelee]

Oy! You got your class politics in a story about racism! Y'can't do that!

You got your story about racism in my class politics!

[Goblin_Priest]

No, he’s referring to the fact that most D&D settings aren’t self-aware towards the rules. In D&D, “Classes” are a rule construct, not a known fact. Most priests are not Clerics, in the game-mechanical sense, and you actually need training to join a class. In OOTS, you can just declare “I want to multiclass to Cleric” and, at your next level, automatically become one, no training required...Beceause it’s a PARODY.

I don't think the core rulebooks actually say this, though I haven't read the old 3.5 books in a while. The point about priests not necessarily being cleric might be mentioned, that does sound familiar, but it's also irrelevant to the issue at hand. Other than there's nothing in RAW that says you can't just do it, if you decided to declare "I want to multiclass to cleric".

Also, how far exactly do you think the lack of self-awareness goes, in standard D&D settings (Greyhawk / Forgotten Realms)? I seem to remember people being specifically called out by class. And class abilities being mentioned. There comes a point where the game is not a real world simulation, and is governed by a number of universal rules, which one would need to be incredibly oblivious to not become aware of.

[Doug Lampert]

And that, kids, is why 3E D&D's attempts at realistically simulating the world fall flat. Though to be honest, that's more about people thinking it simulates anything than any actual attempt on its part. But the Commoner class is a good example of something that just has no reason to exist... plus some ideas about history that mostly come from Monty Python.

Yeah, since I did want my rules to at least come closer to simulating a world when I was playing 3.x, I ditched all the 3.x NPC classes and replaced with classes that were actually BETTER for a non-adventuring NPC than the PC classes.

The new classes were in my houserules, and no PC ever touched them, because they were substantially weaker for an adventurer, but they made a lot more sense in setting:

Specialist replaced commoner, and effectively every level gave you a +1 to one skill ABOVE ranks and feats (there were some additional benefits, but that was the big one). If you wanted to earn a living via profession, craft, or perform it really was the best choice.

Generalist replaced expert, and got all skills as class skills and 8 skill points a level and an occasional bonus feat that could only be used on skill focus or the +2/+2 feats (and added a +2 feat for any skill that didn't have a +2/+2 feat).

Warrior mostly got an upgrade so it could perform ANY of its listed roles (tribal hunter, with no survival or move silently; part time militia man, with no profession or craft; town guard or watch, with no sense motive, spot, listen, or gather information). Seriously, I use the warrior class existing and going unchanged between 3.0 and 3.5 as my proof that WotC paid absolutely no attention whatsoever to any attempt to simulate anything with NPC classes. The class is totally non-functional at everything it's supposed to be used to model.

Aristocrat and Adept were more complicated, but followed the same sort of idea. Make a class that a character in the class might actually take level 2 in it, because it WORKS for what he's actually doing.

[Morty]

Yeah, since I did want my rules to at least come closer to simulating a world when I was playing 3.x, I ditched all the 3.x NPC classes and replaced with classes that were actually BETTER for a non-adventuring NPC than the PC classes.

The new classes were in my houserules, and no PC ever touched them, because they were substantially weaker for an adventurer, but they made a lot more sense in setting:

Specialist replaced commoner, and effectively every level gave you a +1 to one skill ABOVE ranks and feats (there were some additional benefits, but that was the big one). If you wanted to earn a living via profession, craft, or perform it really was the best choice.

Generalist replaced expert, and got all skills as class skills and 8 skill points a level and an occasional bonus feat that could only be used on skill focus or the +2/+2 feats (and added a +2 feat for any skill that didn't have a +2/+2 feat).

Warrior mostly got an upgrade so it could perform ANY of its listed roles (tribal hunter, with no survival or move silently; part time militia man, with no profession or craft; town guard or watch, with no sense motive, spot, listen, or gather information). Seriously, I use the warrior class existing and going unchanged between 3.0 and 3.5 as my proof that WotC paid absolutely no attention whatsoever to any attempt to simulate anything with NPC classes. The class is totally non-functional at everything it's supposed to be used to model.

Aristocrat and Adept were more complicated, but followed the same sort of idea. Make a class that a character in the class might actually take level 2 in it, because it WORKS for what he's actually doing.

I don't see any real point in giving class levels to NPCs you're not supposed to engage in combat, period. The D&D class and level system was made for adventuring PCs and it breaks apart very quickly outside of it. Non-combatant NPCs should just get appropriate skill ranks in whatever the PCs are likely to engage them in.

[Goblin_Priest]

Yeah, since I did want my rules to at least come closer to simulating a world when I was playing 3.x, I ditched all the 3.x NPC classes and replaced with classes that were actually BETTER for a non-adventuring NPC than the PC classes.

The new classes were in my houserules, and no PC ever touched them, because they were substantially weaker for an adventurer, but they made a lot more sense in setting:

Specialist replaced commoner, and effectively every level gave you a +1 to one skill ABOVE ranks and feats (there were some additional benefits, but that was the big one). If you wanted to earn a living via profession, craft, or perform it really was the best choice.

Generalist replaced expert, and got all skills as class skills and 8 skill points a level and an occasional bonus feat that could only be used on skill focus or the +2/+2 feats (and added a +2 feat for any skill that didn't have a +2/+2 feat).

Warrior mostly got an upgrade so it could perform ANY of its listed roles (tribal hunter, with no survival or move silently; part time militia man, with no profession or craft; town guard or watch, with no sense motive, spot, listen, or gather information). Seriously, I use the warrior class existing and going unchanged between 3.0 and 3.5 as my proof that WotC paid absolutely no attention whatsoever to any attempt to simulate anything with NPC classes. The class is totally non-functional at everything it's supposed to be used to model.

Aristocrat and Adept were more complicated, but followed the same sort of idea. Make a class that a character in the class might actually take level 2 in it, because it WORKS for what he's actually doing.

Seems like a lot of work for little gain. XD

(mind you, I always do things that are a lot of work for little gain)

[Doug Lampert]

Seems like a lot of work for little gain. XD

(mind you, I always do things that are a lot of work for little gain)

Not a lot of work. Maybe 5 pages of rules and ~4 hours of thinking and typing (mostly thinking), and I had adventure hooks from the Adept write-up as it worked well for monsters, and the NPC warrior type henchmen worked better with the rules.

I agree that pretty much any other edition's "just assign numbers" for NPCs works a LOT better. Fourth edition even gave a very good set of guidelines as to what sorts of numbers to assign.

But one of the central conceits of 3.x is the idea that the NPCs and PCs are playing by the same rules and designed by the same rules (carefully does not look at when a character qualifies for epic feats) and this was before I realized the extent to which any simulationism in the 3.x rules was purely smoke and mirrors.

The DMG demographics that GIVE you epic level commoners are part of the same "we never actually use this in our campaigns and it doesn't actually work" sort of window dressing. Does anyone think that if WotC designers had been using a table that gave most cities a level 21+ commoner in their home campaign that the rules would have STAYED that way between editions? Similarly, if they'd been using the random community generator for anything they might have noticed that D&D land is (much) more heavily urbanized than the modern USA. Hint: 1% of communities having 25,000+ adults does not mean only 1% of adults live in such communities. Not even close.

[Goblin_Priest]

The stats of the plebes is just about never relevant in our games, so that's 5 hours for mechanics that would never actually see the light of day, though. Even when I GMed, and I like lower-level adventures and made extensive homebrew rules for my world, I was fairly content just slapping a level of warrior on the mooks, and one for few levels of PC classes on the elite troops.

[Riftwolf]

The stats of the plebes is just about never relevant in our games, so that's 5 hours for mechanics that would never actually see the light of day, though. Even when I GMed, and I like lower-level adventures and made extensive homebrew rules for my world, I was fairly content just slapping a level of warrior on the mooks, and one for few levels of PC classes on the elite troops.

You've never been in a game where an NPC guard with sense motive and perception was needed? Hell, I had to stat up elite castle guards just to make a Chaotic Neutral Barbarian stand in the courtyard and wait to meet someone.

[Morty]

You've never been in a game where an NPC guard with sense motive and perception was needed? Hell, I had to stat up elite castle guards just to make a Chaotic Neutral Barbarian stand in the courtyard and wait to meet someone.

Figuring out appropriate modifiers for sense motive or perception doesn't require giving them an entire stat blocks, levels and all.

[Goblin_Priest]

Figuring out appropriate modifiers for sense motive or perception doesn't require giving them an entire stat blocks, levels and all.

Agreed.

To be honest, I had made a bunch of pre-made NPC stats for the most common/likely foes, which I amply re-used, but a random dude they cross where I need to roll a check? He'll probably have -2 to +6 modifier, which I'd just wing on the spot.

I really don't see the point of statting up the castle guards unless you had reason to believe the barbarian was going to significantly interact (see: fight) with them.

[Bacon Elemental]

There's also the old secret statblock trick where anyone whose stats are unlikely to matter reuses the same standard statblock.

[Riftwolf]

I really don't see the point of statting up the castle guards unless you had reason to believe the barbarian was going to significantly interact (see: fight) with them.

You clearly didn't know this Barbarian. When the party was asked to wait to see the guard captain to take a job, said barbarian decided to single handedly storm the castle. And got pretty far into it. Thinking about it, I probably should've just let him crush jewelled thrones beneath his sandled feet.

[runeghost]

Isn't Forgotten Realms supposed to be a bit odd even by D&D standards? The whole thing of every barkeep in remote villagers being a retired level 9 fighter, for instance.

In the long-ago days of The City-State of the Invincible Overlord and the Judges Guild, when D&D was three (or more) small paperbacks and AD&D was just something Gary talked about, this was actually par for the course. And that is when Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood started playing.

[Goblin_Priest]

You clearly didn't know this Barbarian. When the party was asked to wait to see the guard captain to take a job, said barbarian decided to single handedly storm the castle. And got pretty far into it. Thinking about it, I probably should've just let him crush jewelled thrones beneath his sandled feet.

I don't know what kind of games you guys run, but randomly charging a castle solo would almost certainly end with "ok, roll up a new character" in ours. And probably fairly quickly, too. Along with many glares from the GM and fellow players, if not a smack behind the head. Castles are meant to keep armies at bay. If they struggle with a mere individual, they're doing it wrong.

I have a hard time imagining how that kind of behavior can be productive and justified.

[paladinofshojo]

Apologies if I've missed something, but the only concrete example I recall seeing was the Forgotten Realms one which, while valid, still does not indicate some sort of larger pattern. What exactly are you referring to when you say "D&D Black Dragons"?

Well, outside of FR, there is very little information on dragon ecology, let alone anything that contradicts the FR lore on how black dragons nurture and rear their young.

[Morty]

This post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23784691&postcount=23) and this one (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23783432&postcount=10) do contradict what you've been claiming but failed to back up in any way. One of them quotes the Forgotten Realms wiki, even.

[facw]

Castles are meant to keep armies at bay. If they struggle with a mere individual, they're doing it wrong.

Armies of "normal" soldiers, who in D&D are mostly low-level fighters. A high, or even mid-level D&D adventurer (even from a class normally considered low-tier) is way more powerful than most normal individuals in the game world. Instead of single man storming the castle, it's probably better to look at it as a super hero (or villain) attacking.

[paladinofshojo]

This post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23784691&postcount=23) and this one (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23783432&postcount=10) do contradict what you've been claiming but failed to back up in any way. One of them quotes the Forgotten Realms wiki, even.

Okay if we’re talking about Forgotten Realms wiki, this is what they say about black dragon
child rearing:

“Black dragons were not noted as good parents, relying more upon disguise and hiding to protect their eggs than upon guarding them personally. Black dragon eggs must be submerged in strong acid while growing, which helped protect the dragon as well.[citation needed] Black dragons would only protect their young so long as that responsibility didn't threaten their own life. If they had to choose between saving their own life or those of their clutch or spawn, they would most certainly choose the former; though they would assuredly seek revenge afterwards.”

I get why an evil black dragon would seek revenge against anyone who killed their progeny. It gives them an excuse to kill and torment another creature.

That is not something I’m questioning, however she knew that doing this plan would come at some risk to herself. She had scryed Vaarsuvius for months and had to wait for him/her to be alone. This was a big IF on her part seeing as Vaarsuvius’s own arrogance was the reason why the elf was on that island. She even expressed surprise about it.

As such, I am confused as to why she would even consider taking such risks on her own life? Since as a black dragon, she should value her own life much more than her child’s.

Furthermore, she seems to actually be in pain and distraught by her son’s death. She doesn’t strike me as having revenge for lawful evil dragon motivations, such as say “you’re nothing more but a bipedal ape, how dare you forget your place in the food chain and kill one of my children!” or some sort of dragon superiority rhetoric on why it enrages her that her son is killed by what amount to lower lifeforms in her eyes. She seems to be taking the whole revenge very.... personally. It was less of “you, ELF!!! you killed my son!” And moreso “you, elf!!! YOU KILLED MY SON!”.

I feel like she actually loved her son enough that she would have avenged him regardless of who his murderer was, be it Xykon or a hungry tarrasque or another monster on another league above a black dragon.

[hamishspence]

What the wiki says that, if the parental dragon is forced to choose between saving their own life and saving their offspring's life, they'll save their own life.

But it also says they will seek revenge afterward, on the cause of their offspring's death. And it doesn't place a cap on how much they will risk themselves to get revenge.

There's plenty of room for "will take great personal risks for revenge" - even for typical black dragons.

[GrayGriffin]

I mean, that quote technically doesn't say anything about not risking their life for their revenge. Furthermore, she had already prepared anti-magic against Vaarsuvius, and probably knew they couldn't teleport while she could, so it seems like it wasn't that big a risk. "Three gentlemen from the lower planes offer the elf a deal to become supremely powerful" really seems like something she couldn't have foreseen. At all.

[Rodin]

Furthermore, she seems to actually be in pain and distraught by her son’s death. She doesn’t strike me as having revenge for lawful evil dragon motivations, such as say “you’re nothing more but a bipedal ape, how dare you forget your place in the food chain and kill one of my children!” or some sort of dragon superiority rhetoric on why it enrages her that her son is killed by what amount to lower lifeforms in her eyes. She seems to be taking the whole revenge very.... personally. It was less of “you, ELF!!! you killed my son!” And moreso “you, elf!!! YOU KILLED MY SON!”.

I feel like she actually loved her son enough that she would have avenged him regardless of who his murderer was, be it Xykon or a hungry tarrasque or another monster on another league above a black dragon.

This is an accurate depiction of how she felt. So I'm not sure why you're confused on what her motivations were.

Again, as repeatedly stated, this story is not D&D. It's not Forgotten Realms, or . It resembles Dungeons and Dragons [I]unless otherwise stated.. And this case, the statement is made by the actions of the ABD. She cared about her son very much and would do literally anything to avenge him. And if you showed her the Monster Manual and tried to explain to her why she shouldn't love her son, she'd bite your head off.

[Morty]

The "This isn't D&D" argument, while accurate, isn't necessary here. Jasdoif quoted information from Monster Manual and Draconomicon that either makes no statements about black dragons being selfish or outright calls them protective. Paladinofshojo just chose to ignore it, instead focusing on picking sentences from the FR material to support their claim.

[Fyraltari]

Even if paladinofshojo is right about black dragons in D&D (which I'm not convinced of), this kind of idea "black dragon implies unable to care about her young" is exactly the kind of idea The Giant sets out to criticize with these sequences.

So the answer is

A) This is not how it works,

and

B) If it is, then it ought no to!

[Peelee]

As such, I am confused as to why she would even consider taking such risks on her own life? Since as a black dragon, she should value her own life much more than her child’s.

Furthermore, she seems to actually be in pain and distraught by her son’s death.
Wheeeeeee!

... You're asking "how come a mother loves her child?". There are moments where you really ought to stop and think about what you're doing.

[Borris]

She doesn’t strike me as having revenge for lawful evil dragon motivations.

Black dragons are noted as "always chaotic evil".

Besides, waiting for Varsivius to be alone before striking makes it seem like the ABD was not taking any risk. Especially with antimagic prepared. Without the soul splice thingy, the plan would have succeeded quite easily.

[factotum]

Besides, waiting for Varsivius to be alone before striking makes it seem like the ABD was not taking any risk.

She didn't just wait until he was alone, she also waited until he'd burned all his high-level spells as well...she was cautious almost to the point of cowardice, frankly. An Ancient Black Dragon is CR 19, so they ought to be a reasonable challenge for an entire party of level 19 adventurers, much less a single level 15-16 mage.

[zimmerwald1915]

An Ancient Black Dragon is CR 19, so they ought to be a reasonable challenge for an entire party of level 19 adventurers, much less a single level 15-16 mage.
A single level 14 mage, at that time.

I'm vaguely troubled by the fact that people are taking away from The Order of the Stick the idea that it is always morally wrong not to anthropomorphize non-humans. It strikes me as arrogant, and dangerous going into the ASI-enabled future.

[Rodin]

A single level 14 mage, at that time.

I'm vaguely troubled by the fact that people are taking away from The Order of the Stick the idea that it is always morally wrong not to anthropomorphize non-humans. It strikes me as arrogant, and dangerous going into the ASI-enabled future.

It's not anthropomorphizing non-humans, it's analyzing the actions of a sentient being. The ABD is a highly intelligent creature that both thinks and feels on the same level (or greater) than humans do.

As such, we absolutely can criticize lumping an entire species of creature into a specific bucket. To say otherwise gets offensive really quickly, which could easily be demonstrated by using real-world examples that I absolutely will not bring up. Suffice to say, stating "People from region X or culture Y do not care about their children" would result in an immediate firestorm, and arguing that about any non-human sentient is exactly the same.

Now, if dragons were just giant lizards that reacted purely on instinct you could make an argument. If a fish that lays eggs and then swims off without caring suddenly comes back to defend the brood, that is something worth commenting on. Once you introduce human intelligence and sentience, however, all bets are off. Maybe 99 out of 100 Black Dragons in OOTS world don't care about their kids. This one did, as amply demonstrated during the story.

I would also say that AI is a whole different kettle of fish, and one not terribly relevant to the discussion at hand. An AI operates on such a different standard to organic life that it's impossible for us to imagine how it would value things.

[hroþila]

It's not anthropomorphizing non-humans, it's analyzing the actions of a sentient being. The ABD is a highly intelligent creature that both thinks and feels on the same level (or greater) than humans do.
I don't think that's the point, though. Of course the ABD was written this way and there's every indication that she was an absolutely standard black dragon in this regard as far as the OOTS world is concerned. However, the point is that it would be legitimate for dragons to work differently for biological reasons (as they apparently do in some settings), and it would be wrong to judge their alignment on that basis if that were the case. It doesn't have to be a matter of whether the dragon is sentient or operates purely on instinct. Forcing our own standards on other species is definitely anthropomorphizing them.

[Peelee]

I don't think that's the point, though. Of course the ABD was written this way and there's every indication that she was an absolutely standard black dragon in this regard as far as the OOTS world is concerned. However, the point is that it would be legitimate for dragons to work differently for biological reasons (as they apparently do in some settings), and it would be wrong to judge their alignment on that basis if that were the case. It doesn't have to be a matter of whether the dragon is sentient or operates purely on instinct. Forcing our own standards on other species is definitely anthropomorphizing them.
Wheeeeeee!

no fiction is meaningful if its lessons cannot be applied to the world that we, real actual humans, live in. If you are going to dismiss any themes or subtext present in any fantasy story as simply not applying to our world because that world has dragons and ours doesn't, then you have largely missed the point of literature as a whole, and are likely rather poorer for it. Fantasy literature is ONLY worthwhile for what it can tell us about the real world; everything else is petty escapism.

[hamishspence]

She didn't just wait until he was alone, she also waited until he'd burned all his high-level spells as well...she was cautious almost to the point of cowardice, frankly. An Ancient Black Dragon is CR 19, so they ought to be a reasonable challenge for an entire party of level 19 adventurers, much less a single level 15-16 mage.

She probably has a minimum of 1 level of sorcerer to grant her the ability to cast Antimagic Field (requires a 12th level sorcerer to cast, ancient black dragons are effectively 11th level sorcerers). She does say that her passion for the arcane arts exceeds what's typical of her kind, after all.

Since Sorcerer is an Associated Class for dragons, that would put her CR as 20 minimum.

[hroþila]

Wheeeeeee!
Since I've been very clear about the way dragons work in the OOTS world, I don't think that quote is that relevant, because I don't need to agree with The Giant about whether or not exploring other hypothetical sentient biologies would be a worthy endeavour in itself, independently from OOTS. And at any rate, as zimmer alluded to, there are also real-world societal evils that can come from anthropomorphizing non-human species.

I'm not saying it's bad that OOTS black dragons work much like humans. I'm saying it's bad to judge non-human species only on the basis of how similar they are to us.

[Peelee]

Since I've been very clear about the way dragons work in the OOTS world, I don't think that quote is that relevant, because I don't need to agree with The Giant about whether or not exploring other hypothetical sentient biologies would be a worthy endeavour in itself, independently from OOTS. And at any rate, as zimmer alluded to, there are also real-world societal evils that can come from anthropomorphizing non-human species.

I'm not saying it's bad that OOTS black dragons work much like humans. I'm saying it's bad to judge non-human species only on the basis of how similar they are to us.

A.) regardless of whether you agree with someone on the value of exploring something, if the author writes a story about it, then it's clearly an exploration of that.
2.) there are no real-world non-human species that are fully sapient like humans, so dragons are very obviously much more analogous to humans than any other real-world non-human species.

[zimmerwald1915]

I'm not saying it's bad that OOTS black dragons work much like humans. I'm saying it's bad to judge non-human species only on the basis of how similar they are to us.
Precisely. The Order of the Stick is a story in large part about racism, and one of the ways it explores that theme is by criticizing the impacts of the way D&D, and fantasy more broadly, creates monsters - by exaggerating the way we racialize other humans - on players. Anthropomorphizing every D&D monster under the sun is part and parcel of its theme.

There is another tradition in speculative fiction - typically associated with science fiction rather than fantasy - that explores the alien as much as it can be conceived, and tries to avoid anthropomorphization. That The Order of the Stick does not fall within that tradition does not make it invalid or not useful.

[zimmerwald1915]

2.) there are no real-world non-human species that are fully sapient like humans, so dragons are very obviously much more analogous to humans than any other real-world non-human species.
This is arrogant presumption. There are no other species that create the kind of complex societies that look like human societies, and no other species where labor has played the role that it has in human biological and social evolution. That does not mean that there are no existing sapient species, or that such species cannot be created, contact humanity, or come to exist in the future.

[Peelee]

This is arrogant presumption. There are no other species that create the kind of complex societies that look like human societies, and no other species where labor has played the role that it has in human biological and social evolution. That does not mean that there are no existing sapient species, or that such species cannot be created, contact humanity, or come to exist in the future.

And when we find any such species I'll agree. Until then, though, no use tossing a method trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist when we can apply that method to a problem that does exist.

[Aveline]

2.) there are no real-world non-human species that are fully sapient like humans [...]

Dubious, if not outright solipsistic.

I am fond of the Hofstadter story where the tortoise visits the anteater, who is currently entertaining an ant colony with whom she is friends. The ant colony forms words with the ants, and occasionally offers ants to the anteater, who eats them. The anteater and the ant colony explain to the tortoise that the ant colony, which is intelligent, is distinct from the ants, which are not. (Ultimately the story was about the complementarity of holism and reductionism, and it remains a story, but still.)

[Fyraltari]

What is ASI ?

This is arrogant presumption. There are no other species that create the kind of complex societies that look like human societies, and no other species where labor has played the role that it has in human biological and social evolution. That does not mean that there are no existing sapient species, or that such species cannot be created, contact humanity, or come to exist in the future.

*coughs*socialinsects*coughs*

[zimmerwald1915]

What is ASI ?
Artificial super-intelligence.


*coughs*socialinsects*coughs*
They were one of the things I was alluding to, yes. Inasmuch as their societies do not "look like human societies" and yet exist, and that labor played a role in their evolution yet not "the role that it has [played] in human. . . evolution."

[hroþila]

A.) regardless of whether you agree with someone on the value of exploring something, if the author writes a story about it, then it's clearly an exploration of that.
2.) there are no real-world non-human species that are fully sapient like humans, so dragons are very obviously much more analogous to humans than any other real-world non-human species.
The way I see it, this discussion is almost entirely out of the realm of OOTS. OOTS black dragons are basically real-world humans, which has been acknowledged by everyone in this thread (save for paladinofshojo). The discussion about black dragons with different biologically-dictated behaviours in other stories therefore is not about OOTS, and thus the author is not particularly authoritative. So A doesn't apply. As for #2, an element that is very obviously central to OOTS (that of treating fellow sapient beings as fellow sapient beings) won't be diminished by pointing out societal evils that aren't part of the narrative and which are very often not acknowledged as evils at all. They're not incompatible, anyways.

If the ABD had been treated as just a monster in the comic, that would have been bad. And that would still have been bad if for whatever reason OOTS black dragons had happened to be wired differently so that their young were left to fend for themselves.

[woweedd]

Artificial super-intelligence.


They were one of the things I was alluding to, yes. Inasmuch as their societies do not "look like human societies" and yet exist, and that labor played a role in their evolution yet not "the role that it has [played] in human. . . evolution."
ASI?...I have an idea....*ahem* ROKO'S BASILISK. Are you familiar with that one?

[Peelee]

Dubious, if not outright solipsistic.


No known. Better?

[Aveline]

No known. Better?

Sure, but human knowledge and understanding is necessarily astronomically small compared the depth of what could possibly be understood, so the proposition follows from incomplete information.

Don't mind me, I'm just picking nits. I get your general point.

[paladinofshojo]

The "This isn't D&D" argument, while accurate, isn't necessary here. Jasdoif quoted information from Monster Manual and Draconomicon that either makes no statements about black dragons being selfish or outright calls them protective. Paladinofshojo just chose to ignore it, instead focusing on picking sentences from the FR material to support their claim.

Okay I’ll give you that most of the Monster Manual or the Draconomicon ignores black dragon parenting, but I can’t find anything there that contradicts FR material. If you can please link it.

[woweedd]

Okay I’ll give you that most of the Monster Manual or the Draconomicon ignores black dragon parenting, but I can’t find anything there that contradicts FR material. If you can please link it.
Why does it matter to you? This is how Black Dragons work in this setting, nothing in the Monster Manuel contradicts it, and, indeed, NOTHING contradicts aside from fluff for a completely different setting which OOTS is mutually incompatible with in dozens of other ways.

[paladinofshojo]

Why does it matter to you? This is how Black Dragons work in this setting, nothing in the Monster Manuel contradicts it, and, indeed, NOTHING contradicts aside from fluff for a completely different setting which OOTS is mutually incompatible with in dozens of other ways.

Because he’s putting words in my mouth which are untrue? Isn’t that reason enough to defend myself?

[Peelee]

The way I see it, this discussion is almost entirely out of the realm of OOTS. OOTS black dragons are basically real-world humans, which has been acknowledged by everyone in this thread (save for paladinofshojo). The discussion about black dragons with different biologically-dictated behaviours in other stories therefore is not about OOTS, and thus the author is not particularly authoritative.
Except the discussion of about "why aren't the biologically-dictated behaviors in other stories not being followed in this story?" Its directly and explicitly relating to OotS, where the author is particularly authoritative.

Sure, but human knowledge and understanding is necessarily astronomically small compared the depth of what could possibly be understood

I'd be very sad if that wasnt the case. :smalltongue:

[hamishspence]

I can’t find anything there that contradicts FR material. If you can please link it.

Keep in mind that wikis aren't always accurate. Sure, someone wrote that stuff on the FR wiki - but how much did they get from previous info, and how much did they make up?

[Morty]

Okay I’ll give you that most of the Monster Manual or the Draconomicon ignores black dragon parenting, but I can’t find anything there that contradicts FR material. If you can please link it.

Which FR material? You haven't actually quoted anything or given the name of a book.

[Kish]

She didn't just wait until he was alone, she also waited until he'd burned all his high-level spells as well...she was cautious almost to the point of cowardice, frankly. An Ancient Black Dragon is CR 19, so they ought to be a reasonable challenge for an entire party of level 19 adventurers, much less a single level 15-16 mage.
"A reasonable challenge" in D&D 3.5 terms means "you burn 20% of your resources defeating her," not "she has a coinflip's chance of winning." The ancient black dragon didn't want to make Vaarsuvius earn the XP for her death; she wanted them to lose.

Artificial super-intelligence.
Centuries in the future at absolute best.

So many people look at Star Trek and the Terminator movies and think Python scripts are suddenly going to start having opinions on things. Our current AI is all A and very little that a programmer could mistake for true I, believe it or not.

[Goblin_Priest]

Against high-level casters, anyone is pretty much always a save away from death. And since nat 1s autofail a save, one has a risk of death of a minimum of 5% per turn.

Sure, not all turns will be spent on save-or-dies, and extra defenses like SR/antimagic can come play into this, but the ABD wanted enough leeway to be fairly certain of not only defeating V, but defeating him, exposing her plan, and then going to enact said plan.

[zimmerwald1915]

So many people look at Star Trek and the Terminator movies and think Python scripts are suddenly going to start having opinions on things. Our current AI is all A and very little that a programmer could mistake for true I, believe it or not.
The AI currently in widespread use, the AI currently in development, and the AI that are theoretically within our current means to create are all different things. The latter two do, however, build on the first, and the last builds on the first two. At least a part of the research and development is market-driven and therefore tends to recklessness. For these reasons, it is worth thinking about the problems posed by AI, and about how to relate to it. We want to have a firm grasp of these things before building them in earnest, rather than diving in blind. There is thus social utility to fiction that does not anthropomorphize alien beings.

There is also intellectual utility to such stories - they are interesting to think about.

There is also social utility to stories which do anthropomorphize alien beings, to the extent (and it is broadly large) that we tell stories about alien beings as a way of telling stories about other groups of people (and to stories like The Order of the Stick which criticize the way we other groups of people). To say that this is and can ever be the only kind of story with any utility seems to me false.

[woweedd]

The AI currently in widespread use, the AI currently in development, and the AI that are theoretically within our current means to create are all different things. The latter two do, however, build on the first, and the last builds on the first two. At least a part of the research and development is market-driven and therefore tends to recklessness. For these reasons, it is worth thinking about the problems posed by AI, and about how to relate to it. We want to have a firm grasp of these things before building them in earnest, rather than diving in blind. There is thus social utility to fiction that does not anthropomorphize alien beings.

There is also intellectual utility to such stories - they are interesting to think about.

There is also social utility to stories which do anthropomorphize alien beings, to the extent (and it is broadly large) that we tell stories about alien beings as a way of telling stories about other groups of people (and to stories like The Order of the Stick which criticize the way we other groups of people). To say that this is and can ever be the only kind of story with any utility seems to me false.
i mean, if you define the, ugh, this feels pretentious, "utility' of a story as what it can tell us about the real world, then, by definition, any useful story will mainly involve humans, in truth if not in name

[Fyraltari]

i mean, if you define the, ugh, this feels pretentious, "utility' of a story as what it can tell us about the real world, then, by definition, any useful story will mainly involve humans, in truth if not in name

Hey, you never know, First Contact may be tomorrow.

[Kish]

The AI currently in widespread use, the AI currently in development, and the AI that are theoretically within our current means to create are all different things. The latter two do, however, build on the first, and the last builds on the first two. At least a part of the research and development is market-driven and therefore tends to recklessness. For these reasons, it is worth thinking about the problems posed by AI, and about how to relate to it. We want to have a firm grasp of these things before building them in earnest, rather than diving in blind. There is thus social utility to fiction that does not anthropomorphize alien beings.

There is also intellectual utility to such stories - they are interesting to think about.

There is also social utility to stories which do anthropomorphize alien beings, to the extent (and it is broadly large) that we tell stories about alien beings as a way of telling stories about other groups of people (and to stories like The Order of the Stick which criticize the way we other groups of people). To say that this is and can ever be the only kind of story with any utility seems to me false.
The value of anthropomorphization is an argument you can have with Rich without me (though, it appears, also without him). I'm sticking to the "ASI" angle and telling you: You're vastly overestimating current technology. Actual real-world computer sapience will not be a concern for us, for our children, or for our children's children. It doesn't matter if everyone currently working on AI would unhesitatingly produce Skynet or slaves if they could, in the same way it doesn't actually matter if I would erase half the life in the universe if I had the Infinity Gauntlet: because this is the realm of fantasy, not reality, and if "ASI" is even actually a possibility, it will be realized in a society we could no more accurately envision than the Roman Empire could envision modern society.

[factotum]

"A reasonable challenge" in D&D 3.5 terms means "you burn 20% of your resources defeating her," not "she has a coinflip's chance of winning." The ancient black dragon didn't want to make Vaarsuvius earn the XP for her death; she wanted them to lose.

So 20% of a typical 4-man party at level 19 works out as pretty close to 100% for a level 16 solo adventurer, I reckon, which means V would have to burn *everything* to have a reasonable chance of winning against a regular ABD. And let's not forget the dragon said she was more practiced in magic than most of her kind, which suggests some additional class levels on top of what she'd normally have.

[Squire Doodad]

The AI currently in widespread use, the AI currently in development, and the AI that are theoretically within our current means to create are all different things. The latter two do, however, build on the first, and the last builds on the first two. At least a part of the research and development is market-driven and therefore tends to recklessness. For these reasons, it is worth thinking about the problems posed by AI, and about how to relate to it. We want to have a firm grasp of these things before building them in earnest, rather than diving in blind. There is thus social utility to fiction that does not anthropomorphize alien beings.

There is also intellectual utility to such stories - they are interesting to think about.

There is also social utility to stories which do anthropomorphize alien beings, to the extent (and it is broadly large) that we tell stories about alien beings as a way of telling stories about other groups of people (and to stories like The Order of the Stick which criticize the way we other groups of people). To say that this is and can ever be the only kind of story with any utility seems to me false.
If I had any kind of relevance in the right community, I would propose SI (Synthetic Intelligence) to refer to proper intelligence bordering on or reaching proper sentience in artificial beings. HAL, GlaDOS, Data, etc. would all by Synthetic Intelligence. A program that beats world champions at Poker is Artificial Intelligence.

[Fyraltari]

I'm not sure I understand the difference between regular A.I. and A.S.I. but advances in computer science as well as neuroscience are pretty fast and showing no sign of slowing down. Sure it's not within our technical capacities now, but our capacities are vasstly superior to what they were fifty years ago and nobody can honestly say they know where they will be fifty years from now, so that's a discussion that's worth having.

Also, there's already one robot who has citizenship of one country (Saudi Arabia, of all places) : Sophia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_(robot)).

[Knaight]

Precisely. The Order of the Stick is a story in large part about racism, and one of the ways it explores that theme is by criticizing the impacts of the way D&D, and fantasy more broadly, creates monsters - by exaggerating the way we racialize other humans - on players. Anthropomorphizing every D&D monster under the sun is part and parcel of its theme.

There is another tradition in speculative fiction - typically associated with science fiction rather than fantasy - that explores the alien as much as it can be conceived, and tries to avoid anthropomorphization. That The Order of the Stick does not fall within that tradition does not make it invalid or not useful.

That tradition absolutely exists, yes. Orcs very clearly didn't come out of it though, and even that tradition is in position to take some of the same criticisms ("Look at this alien, inhuman, bizarre society. It resembles a lot of real world societies, but not the author's.").

[hroþila]

Except the discussion of about "why aren't the biologically-dictated behaviors in other stories not being followed in this story?" Its directly and explicitly relating to OotS, where the author is particularly authoritative.
*shrugs* I disagree. That's certainly the original discussion in this thread, but I don't think that was the discussion we were having at the moment anymore.

[Goblin_Priest]

Except the discussion of about "why aren't the biologically-dictated behaviors in other stories not being followed in this story?" Its directly and explicitly relating to OotS, where the author is particularly authoritative.


Have we actually seen any good-aligned members of evil races? Good orcs? Good goblins? Good chromatic dragons?

[Squire Doodad]

Have we actually seen any good-aligned members of evil races? Good orcs? Good goblins? Good chromatic dragons?
Depending on your interpretation of the scene, you could argue that the Hobgoblin that was locked up with the other human slaves in Azure City might be good. There's also an argument to be made about the Giggles-worshipping orcs, though you could argue they are Neutral. All in all, we haven't seen any explicitly good members of most of the major evil races, but there are plenty of murky examples that may be Good but probably are Neutral but leaning towards good. So Not Evil(tm)? Certainly! Good(C)? Sorta, not really.

[Kish]

Redcloak's brother being Neutral is the closest example I can think of.

I'd argue that that's kind of unfortunate, though I don't think "and that's kind of unfortunate" is quite the conclusion Goblin_Priest was aiming for.

[Goblin_Priest]

Depending on your interpretation of the scene, you could argue that the Hobgoblin that was locked up with the other human slaves in Azure City might be good. There's also an argument to be made about the Giggles-worshipping orcs, though you could argue they are Neutral. All in all, we haven't seen any explicitly good members of most of the major evil races, but there are plenty of murky examples that may be Good but probably are Neutral but leaning towards good. So Not Evil(tm)? Certainly! Good(C)? Sorta, not really.

I had always assumed that hobgoblin was a spy, myself. Sneak in some undisguised spies so that they don't think about polymorphed ones, like revealed later, that kind of thing.

Aren't the Giggles-worshippers evil?

I think there's quite a gap between " it's all petty escapism" (which I don't share Rich's apparent disdain of) and "it's all telling something about the real world". The real world is not black and white, and many stories tries to use this theme of shades of grey, to a level or another. But sometimes, an evil race can just be a handy narrative device, without necessarily needing a RL parallel. Sometimes you want to pass a message across, which too much greyness would just muddy, dilute, or mask. This story is also based on a game which is based on a specific work of fantasy and various interpretations of myths. Unlike something entirely novel, a lot of the stuff we see is just legacy from that. I think that in this case maintaining some tropes of the like of "all black dragons are evil" or "killing chromatic dragons is fine" should not be interpreted as a RL condoning of racism/eugenism/genocide.

[Kish]

There is no explicit statement of the alignment of any orc in the webcomic. Either concluding that the Giggles-worshipers are evil or that they're good would be an assumption.

[Squire Doodad]

I had always assumed that hobgoblin was a spy, myself. Sneak in some undisguised spies so that they don't think about polymorphed ones, like revealed later, that kind of thing.

Aren't the Giggles-worshippers evil?

First point: there's a slave who looks like the polymorphed spy (that rogue who betrays them all) in line as the hobgoblin is interrogated/murdered, so it seems plausible that he was there to ensure the polymorphed spy got in. He could have been legitimate but I honestly doubt it.

As for the second point:
Aside from the human sacrifice (which is a whole other can of worms), the Giggles Orcs don't actually do anything too bad that isn't plausibly justified. Associating with explicitly Evil entities? Qarr was with a half-orc, who falls into the "you can trust me, I'm one of your kind" category. Rampaging towards the paladins? The party was encroaching on their territory and once the party was taken in as guests instead, they were wrongfully taking the orcs' newfound deity. When they finished rampaging, the orcs went back to learn grammar. They also take immediately friendly actions towards strangers, and proceeded in comic to be legitimately friendly once the issue at hand was resolved. There's no backstabbing, no cheating, not even the desire to do so or to be prepared to do so (that we know of). These are very atypical Orcs - if they are Evil, it is in the "only care about themselves/their tribe" sense as opposed to the storybook sense. Again, I'm not sure if they are truly good, but they are probably the closest to Good orcs we have seen in this entire comic.


There is no explicit statement of the alignment of any orc in the webcomic. Either concluding that the Giggles-worshipers are evil or that they're good would be an assumption.
The Giant's comments on Therkla and Thog notwithstanding, right? It was part of a list of people's alignments. There was one of those a long time ago, so I don't have the link. They may well not be Good, but they are a perfect of a primarily Evil race not being Evil.

[Peelee]

The Giant's comments on Therkla and Thog notwithstanding, right? It was part of a list of people's alignments. There was one of those a long time ago, so I don't have the link. They may well not be Good, but they are a perfect of a primarily Evil race not being Evil.

They're half-orcs.

[Rrmcklin]

And Thog is confirmed to be Chaotic Evil anyway, so I don't see how it matters.

[Fyraltari]

First point: there's a slave who looks like the polymorphed spy (that rogue who betrays them all) in line as the hobgoblin is interrogated/murdered, so it seems plausible that he was there to ensure the polymorphed spy got in. He could have been legitimate but I honestly doubt it.

Yeah and he looks angry at the hobgoblin (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0707.html). Also I really doubt that the comic would show someone killing a hobgoblin because "the only good goblins are dead goblins" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Sheridan#Indian_Wars) and then imply that it was right to kill that hobgoblin.

[Vinyadan]

Uh, even according to his version, that wasn't a good hobgoblin. That was a racist hobgoblin who hated "greenskins" and was put into jail for roughing up immigrants.

[Squire Doodad]

I think I've made a major mistake - while I was basically playing Devil's Advocate, I have no desire to go die on the hill I pointed out. If you want to dissect the argument I made, have fun, but I am not planning on defending it.

[Oxenstierna]

I think this is more a problem with D&D trying to fit in ‘dragons’ without a specific setting than a problem with this story.

Like the world-building piece with gnomes starts out, there’s a range of folk tales to draw upon: with gnomes as forest-dwelling tricksters, city-dwelling tinkerers, and so on. You can’t fit in every aspect of every existing fictional account of them, so in combination it’s all a bit silly. Best to make something that is more coherent in a particular setting.

http://www.giantitp.com/articles/Y2BEzifZZgrsSdReVf4.html

With dragons, you have medieval tales of monsters to be slain where the dragon is more like a serpent. This has obviously changed over time. You have a range of portrayals in more modern tales, where the dragon is intelligent and potentially helpful like in Earthsea, or bred and domesticated such as the Dragons of Pern.

Now this usually wouldn’t be a problem, except that in trying to be helpful D&D has to shoehorn in everyone’s possible vision of ‘dragons’ into a workable game. Instead of small, medium, or large snake, you have young, aged, or ancient dragons. Are they just beasts that attack? Tamed and domesticated? Are they as intelligent as humans, or more so? You have to choose to be coherent, but D&D tries to offer it all.

That’s because of the differing roles people expect dragons to hold in a story. Dungeons and Dragons suggests the medieval vision of a beast-like dragon guarding a hoard of treasure. It’s not really a satisfying story to slaughter domesticated dragons! Hyper-intelligent dragons offers an even wider range of tales to tell, able to raise interesting moral choices and questions.

So with every possible story from mindless serpent to godlike wish-granter, I don’t blame people whose only or main experience of dragons as ‘evil beasts’ leads them to question this more nuanced portrayal. Ultimately it’s the author’s world and choice, but in using a creature with a certain amount of cultural baggage, there are associated expectations. A D&D troll is not usually seen as a Hasbro toy with pink hair...

[Corneel]

Aside from the Jaegers fighting on the side of the British, were there Germans involved in that war?
The Prince-Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg.

[zimmerwald1915]

A D&D troll is not usually seen as a Hasbro toy with pink hair...
Speak for yourself, those are my main source of minis :smalltongue:

[GrayGriffin]

With dragons, you have medieval tales of monsters to be slain where the dragon is more like a serpent. This has obviously changed over time. You have a range of portrayals in more modern tales, where the dragon is intelligent and potentially helpful like in Earthsea, or bred and domesticated such as the Dragons of Pern.

I wouldn't really say it's "changed over time," so much as other classic versions of dragons have been brought in. You do know that classic Eastern mythology often has dragons as benevolent creatures, right?

[Resileaf]

The Prince-Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg.

Relately, I just realized that I meant 'Hessians', not jaegers.

[Squire Doodad]

I wouldn't really say it's "changed over time," so much as other classic versions of dragons have been brought in. You do know that classic Eastern mythology often has dragons as benevolent creatures, right?

Many non-European mythologies have dragons as being typically benevolent or otherwise majestic creatures, with exceptions of course. Even some of the earlier European mythologies have dragons as creatures known for their might, power and majesty over destructive might. It's sort of a bathtub curve, with "good" dragons being popular early on, continuing to be popular for a considerable amount of time, fading out some time before the Dark Ages, then having a resurgence in the 20th century.

[Knaight]

Many non-European mythologies have dragons as being typically benevolent or otherwise majestic creatures, with exceptions of course. Even some of the earlier European mythologies have dragons as creatures known for their might, power and majesty over destructive might. It's sort of a bathtub curve, with "good" dragons being popular early on, continuing to be popular for a considerable amount of time, fading out some time before the Dark Ages, then having a resurgence in the 20th century.

It's worth noting that there the term "dragon" gets stretched pretty dramatically in translation to make this happen - it's essentially multiple different traditions operating at the same time.

[georgie_leech]

It's worth noting that there the term "dragon" gets stretched pretty dramatically in translation to make this happen - it's essentially multiple different traditions operating at the same time.

Remember, the Tarasque used to be a dragon from the Tarascon region of France. (https://www.artpopulaire.fr/la-faramine-de-tarascon-sculpture/)

[Edhelras]

I have good news...It seems Rich agrees with you:


Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
I can't think of anything more boring than a character who always wins and never gets emotionally impacted by anything.

Also, undercutting that so-called "redefinition of evil" is sort of the point. Because it's bull****. It's not a real thing. You can't be a torturing, mass-murdering rapist and then go home and turn your Evil Switch to the "off" position to spend time with your kids. It doesn't work that way. If you are the sort of person that can commit the acts that Tarquin does daily, then that will find its way into every aspect of your existence. It's who you are. This idea that Tarquin was this perfectly rational actor despite being a complete monster at his Day Job is a pipe dream. Tarquin wants you (and Elan) to think that what he does is separate from who he is—that he's a fundamentally decent man who just so happens to murder a bunch of people here and there—because that's how he tricks you into slowly accepting his blatant Evil as a valid life choice that needs to be respected. Which it is not.

Some people want to love the villain without having to face the fact that villains are largely terrible people who do horrific things with deficient reasoning. Not on my watch.

This.

It's strange and somewhat frustrating to see how many seem to want "Evil" in DnD to be kind of good, but just a bit naughty or rough. In contrast to real life, DnD is constructed as a game where Evil and Good are absolutes and real things. You may kill innocents when playing DnD, but you cannot do it and go on portraying yourself as the good guy. You may kill innoncents and be kind to orphans and old ladies - but then you are IMHO just a lousy DnD player. You want to play a game of fantasy, with no boundaries - yet you want there to be no boundaries at all. No consequences to your actions. Like nobody notices that you are there. At one moment, you kill a prisoner, gruesomely. At the next, you act like a Samaritan. That kind of behaviour (unless you are playing like an utterly Chaotic, or rather lunatic, character) would be impossible to relate to, for other players and NPCs. Sure, you may do it, but why?

It's a wonder to me why people want to play Evil characters and do Evil things in a game like DnD. It's one thing to be unfettered by the bonds of reality, to be able to be badass or even create a bar brawl for the fun of it. But true Evil acting, it's sad that ordinary people feel drawn to that. DnD enables you first and foremost to enter a make-believe universe where you don't have to think too much about the nuances of morality. You don't have to think about your opponent being at the same time a loving parent or some grandmother's loyal helper, or the owner of a cute cat. You can erase the gray zones and just accept that villains are simply villains.

It's very fine with a comic like OOTS to see that villains, in the context of this comic, may be something more, more fleshed-out and deeper personalities, with a background story explaining how they came to be villains. Also, it's good to see a challenge to the idea that monsters listed as "Evil" are simply that and may be killed without a second thought. However, there is a limit to nuances in DnD, and most importantly, characters themselves should not erode altogether the distinction between Good and Evil.

Unless you want the game to be a boundless psychodrama - should I kill that goblin attacking me, should I not, what about his kids, what about that orc I killed yesterday, there was a moment I really thought I might have build a bond with that mind flayer, etc... - I think you have to accept the premise of players being Good-ish and monsters being Evil-ish, and these two opposites kill each other, in order to be able to proceed through the standard setting of the DnD game. It's a way to keep the game moving.

[martianmister]

You can't be a torturing, mass-murdering rapist and then go home and turn your Evil Switch to the "off" position to spend time with your kids.

Problem with this, this describes all evil characters in this strip, from Belkar to Xykon, from Tsukiko to Sabine. They can all switch their evil buttons if they want.

[georgie_leech]

Problem with this, this describes all evil characters in this strip, from Belkar to Xykon, from Tsukiko to Sabine. They can all switch their evil buttons if they want.

When they're not in conflict, at least. Belkar hasn't really had a moment yet where anything that he actually cares about would be affected by his lust for blood or general dickery (pre hippy vision quest he didn't have anyone he actually cared about). Meanwhile with Tarquin, once his pathological need for control and use of brutal punishments went up against his children, he killed the one, and then skewered the other and tried to murder all of his friends. I think the point is that Evil, as far as Rich is concerned, is most exemplified in a willingness to discard those you care about in service to some other goal or priority. It will be interesting to see what happens if Belkar ever faces a genuine choice between being the Sexy Shoeless God of War he loves to be, and Mr. Scruffy.