Why do people hate Complete Psionic?

[Vrock Bait]

I’ve seen a lot of people voice their hatred of Complete Psionic, and I’m not sure why. Sure, Divine Mind was depressing, but so was Compwar’s Samurai and nobody hates Compwar for that. I thought the Synads and Ardents had cool flavor, and the anarchic initiate is one of the strongest psionic prestige classes in the game. So what gives?

[StevenC21]

Because it nerfed a bunch of stuff in the XPH, including stuff that didn't really need a nerf.

Furthermore, by doing this, the actual rules are a bit nebulous, considering that CP is obviously intended to override the XPH... But it isn't errata. And you can't assume that access to CP is standard. XPH is mostly SRD material, as is most errata.

So there's arguing about what RAW even is. And of course CP added a bunch of lame stuff without much cool stuff.

That's my perspective - and I own it.

[Psyren]

I don't disagree with all the nerfs. The "only one astral construct at a time" thing was stupid because no other summoner archetype in the game was restricted that way (and DSP rightfully got rid of that), but the "spells that deal physical damage are subject to damage reduction" made sense, and DSP kept that.

Also, nerfing Energy Missile's save DC just made sense - it scaled twice as fast as the DC of any spell; adding +17 DC might as well be no-save for many monsters, and that thing could hit 5 targets at a time to boot. But even worse than Energy Missile was Energy Stun, which had all the same scaling issues but a much worse effect on a failed save, and was a core power instead of a discipline one to boot.

...Come to think of it, the AC nerf might be the only one I disagreed with.

[Segev]

As StevenC21 said, it's partially the psuedo-nerfs, but also that very little of it was both good and thematic.

What was mechanically attractive was easily cheesed and often very poorly fits the "psionic feel." A lot of the material - good and bad - feels like somebody said, "I want psionics to do things that magic does," and shoehorned it in. The elemental envoys, the various necromancy-like effects (and I like my necromancy), the summoning "powers" whose only nod to being "psionic" is that they summon technically-psi-themed-monsters (seriously, summoning giant illithid tadpoles?)...

The whole thing very much screams "we wanted to crank out a book with a minimum word count and struggled to meet even that."

There is SOME good stuff. The Ardent is a reasonable attempt at a psionic "cleric," though it's still awkward. But even there, it's at least partially as well-received as it is for its breakability rather than its actual quality.

It's just low-quality as a splat, and it shows. And its low quality comes with a mix of things that are breakable because they were poorly-thought-out, things that are athematic AND underpowered, and things that are just plain obnoxious (the astral construct nerf).

Most of it is forgettable and ignorable, and I don't think I've ever heard of anybody using any of the PrCs. I've only even seen serious discussion of the Ectopic Adept, which is...barely keeping up with a core Shaper.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

CPsi also introduced Metapower and Linked Power, so it was a bit of nerf whack-a-mole.

[Psyren]

Most of it is forgettable and ignorable, and I don't think I've ever heard of anybody using any of the PrCs. I've only even seen serious discussion of the Ectopic Adept, which is...barely keeping up with a core Shaper.

Well... Anarchic Initiate sees a fair amount of play for being one of the very few 10/10 PrCs in psionics, you can see it come up several times in this forum's archive. And Soulbow was a lot more popular back when it was the only way to salvage a Soulknife, instead of everyone just collectively deciding to use the DSP version instead.

But yeah, most of the good Psionic PrCs come from Mind's Eye rather than CPsi.

[Segev]

Well... Anarchic Initiate sees a fair amount of play for being one of the very few 10/10 PrCs in psionics, you can see it come up several times in this forum's archive. And Soulbow was a lot more popular back when it was the only way to salvage a Soulknife, instead of everyone just collectively deciding to use the DSP version instead.

But yeah, most of the good Psionic PrCs come from Mind's Eye rather than CPsi.

Ah, good point; I'd forgotten those two. They do come up a bit. Soulbow was actually decent, for a non-caster PrC (they usually are awful). Soulknife into it was still a bit painful, but horrific since you could do it before the flaws got too glaring.

Definitely go with the DSP version of Soulknife, though, instead, if you can. That class looks downright fun.

[Vrock Bait]

I really wasn’t sure what you guys meant by “DSP” until I looked it up and realized you were talking about Hyperconscious. You might want to make that clearer, since abbreviations for 3rd Party splats are less widely known.

[Troacctid]

Sure, Divine Mind was depressing, but so was Compwar’s Samurai and nobody hates Compwar for that.
Hey, speak for yourself, I'll put CPs above CW any day of the week.

[Psyren]

I really wasn’t sure what you guys meant by “DSP” until I looked it up and realized you were talking about Hyperconscious. You might want to make that clearer, since abbreviations for 3rd Party splats are less widely known.

Despite being third-party, they're pretty well known on this board so almost everyone abbreviates them. Don't worry, the longer you're here the more quickly you'll pick up on the lingo :smallcool:

And actually, Hyperconscious wasn't by them - that was written by Bruce Cordell, the same guy who was lead designer for the XPH. DSP are better known for being the guys who converted psionics to Pathfinder several years ago, followed by some other popular conversions like ToB and MoI.

[Segev]

I really wasn’t sure what you guys meant by “DSP” until I looked it up and realized you were talking about Hyperconscious. You might want to make that clearer, since abbreviations for 3rd Party splats are less widely known.

Yeah, “DSP” is “Dreamscarred Press,” and their work on a Pathfinder-compatible life of 3.5 psionics is very good.

Check out their take on the soulknife ( https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alternative-rule-systems/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/), for instance.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I really wasn’t sure what you guys meant by “DSP” until I looked it up and realized you were talking about Hyperconscious. You might want to make that clearer, since abbreviations for 3rd Party splats are less widely known.DSP stands for DreamScarred Press. It's a separate company than the one that did Hyperconscious, although it considers Hyperconscious "canon" if you're using it. Basically, it builds off of the fluffy goodness in Hyperconscious and expects you to have access to it (because it's awesome). Hyperconscious was written by the author of the XPH (Bruce Cordell); the DSP stuff isn't.

[edit] Multininja'd.

[Rater202]

Yeah, “DSP” is “Dreamscarred Press,” and their work on a Pathfinder-compatible life of 3.5 psionics is very good.

Check out their take on the soulknife ( https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alternative-rule-systems/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/), for instance.

Oh my god, that is so much better.

[Vrock Bait]

Hey, speak for yourself, I'll put CPs above CW any day of the week.
I honestly don’t like CompWar too much either. CompChamp did it better.

Despite being third-party, they're pretty well known on this board so almost everyone abbreviates them. Don't worry, the longer you're here the more quickly you'll pick up on the lingo :smallcool:

And actually, Hyperconscious wasn't by them - that was written by Bruce Cordell, the same guy who was lead designer for the XPH. DSP are better known for being the guys who converted psionics to Pathfinder several years ago, followed by some other popular conversions like ToB and MoI.
....well, my two years on this forum were useless. I should have lurked longer.

Yeah, “DSP” is “Dreamscarred Press,” and their work on a Pathfinder-compatible life of 3.5 psionics is very good.

Check out their take on the soulknife ( https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alternative-rule-systems/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/), for instance.
Nice. It’s not in monk-range of weakness anymore at least, but is still basically a beatstick.

DSP stands for DreamScarred Press. It's a separate company than the one that did Hyperconscious, although it considers Hyperconscious "canon" if you're using it. Basically, it builds off of the fluffy goodness in Hyperconscious and expects you to have access to it (because it's awesome). Hyperconscious was written by the author of the XPH (Bruce Cordell); the DSP stuff isn't.

[edit] Multininja'd.
....didn’t Cordell also write CompPsi?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

....didn’t Cordell also write CompPsi?IIRC, most of his stuff was overridden and "edited" by other, far yuckier devs.

Also, a ton of CPsi was either copy-pastes of each other (such as all the "choose one weapon" soulknife feats, which could've been condensed into ONE feat; in other words, a huge waste of space) or copy-pastes of stuff in other splatbooks.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Some reasons why CPsi has issues:
1) Weird flavor. Addressed.
2) Pay for errata, one of which (astral construct) was spite errata instead of fixing actual issue like the DC errors that covered the energy power in the Expanded Psionics Handbook.
3) Fantastic editing. Best editing. Finest editing since Magic of Incarnum. I'm not lying about that either; I never lie. And you know that bit about not lying wasn't a lie because I never lie.
4) Weird design issues. Why don't mantles just follow a nice 1-9 selection? Nah b, instead you can build a nice flavorful character and struggle to pick 8ths and 9ths... Why have 12 billion weapon feats for soul knife?

[newguydude1]

i love comp psi. comp psi enabled my character to regenerate power points at level 3 without any items. id take that over more astral constructs anyday especially since soul crystal lets you completely ignore that nerf.

comp psi also gave my psion elemental envoy which makes him one of the strongest 1st level characters in the game.

comp psi also gave my psion a summon power called elemental steward. soooo much utility. for example, summon a geodite, manifest matter agitation on an enemy, and have the geodite grab you and burrow into the ground. gotta hold my breath though if im not warforged.

geodite burrow speed lets you cut chunks of stone in seconds. including dungeon walls.

spamming emberling is better than spamming energy ray yourself.

i love comp psi.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I like Linked Power and synchronicity, along with a few minor odds and ends scattered haphazardly through the book, most of which are direct copy/pastes from other splatbooks, except when they were "edited" to make no sense whatsoever.

[Psyren]

Nice. It’s not in monk-range of weakness anymore at least, but is still basically a beatstick.


Well yeah, what else was it supposed to do? :smalltongue: It's a fighter that makes its own weapon.

If you do want more utility for it though, check out the Gifted Blade archetype (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alternative-rule-systems/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/gifted-blade/)

[Segev]

I often wonder, when this is brought up, what the editors' goals were.

[ZamielVanWeber]

I often wonder, when this is brought up, what the editors' goals were.

I get the sense them editors were having an "off day" when this book was written. It's not just confusing: shtuff is flat out missin'.

[Psyren]

I often wonder, when this is brought up, what the editors' goals were.

I think there are other books that deserve this sort of speculation far more. (*glances at Truenamer*)

[Aotrs Commander]

Oh my god, that is so much better.

Their soulknife was literally the catalyst for me spending, frack, eight months now (and counting...) completely overhauling 3.Aotrs, because that nonsense started when I thought "Iwonder if anyone's done a better soulkinife than in Untapped Potential (their 3.5 work) yet, oh, wait, that's much better") and it went from there...



Complete Psi had some potential. The trouble was that they half did the job on the classes; e.g. ardent, because they apparently couldn't be bothered to actually make a proper load of psionic domain powers. (Though to be fair, after a complete re-build of the lurk and Divine Mind, I did throw my hands up myself and just link the mantles to domains and said "right, you get those spells as psi-like abilities," because there are limits to even what I'll attempt at once...)

[Vrock Bait]

I think there are other books that deserve this sort of speculation far more. (*glances at Truenamer*)

Alternatively, whoever did the Tome of Battle errata. Serpents Kingdoms is also pretty bad.

[The Viscount]

Don't forget the Lurk, rendered nearly pointless by the psychic rogue. Admittedly it does have stronger manifesting, but it has worse everything else.

Also the Erudite, which ignores the whole benefit of psionics letting you allocate your PP by turning you into a wizard. I don't think I've ever heard them mentioned without the spell-to-power version from Mind's Eye.

There are certainly things I like from Complete Psionic. As mentioned, ardent is cool, even if it brings in the pseudo-divine hangups and makes wilder and psychic warrior look awkward by having more powers known than wilder and better manifesting than psychic warrior.
Synad's fun, and is a better way to roll aberration than Elan.
I'm a big fan of Soulbow. Neat options, and a reason to take soulknife, if only until you qualify.

[Troacctid]

Don't forget the Lurk, rendered nearly pointless by the psychic rogue. Admittedly it does have stronger manifesting, but it has worse everything else.
Counterpoint, clerics have stronger spellcasting than paladins, but they have worse everything else.

[redking]

The Dreamscarred Press material is great. Races of the Mind: Elan for 3.5e is my go-to explanation for the existence of elans.

[StSword]

Nice. It’s not in monk-range of weakness anymore at least, but is still basically a beatstick.

If it's more versatility you want, you might want to check out DSP's 3.5 book for soulknives "The Mind Unveiled: Mind Blade Feats."

It turns the mindblade into a set of feats so you can have a Monk who makes weaponry out of their own ki to Paladins who form divine weapons.

[The Viscount]

Counterpoint, clerics have stronger spellcasting than paladins, but they have worse everything else.

The reason I compared lurk and psychic rogue is because they're closer than paladin and cleric are and fill similar roles. Both classes are average BA, have rogue-esque skill lists, and have sneak attack.

Lurk casting caps out at 6ths, with 20 powers known (same as psychic warrior) as compared to psychic rogue capping out at 5ths with 15 powers known. Lurk's certainly numerically better, but it's not apples and oranges like cleric and paladin.
The price you pay for this is why I bristle at lurk.
Lurk only gets 4d6 SA compared to psychic rogue's 7d6, and lurk's only works when you're psionically focused. Lurk has 4 points and a truncated list; psychic rogue has 6 points and the rogue list plus autophypnosis, concentration, and knowledge (psionics).
I also just hate the lurk augment system. They only apply to melee attacks for reasons I cannot fathom. A number of the augments have you spend PP for greater effect, but lurk have the same PP as psychic warrior, so this is just another drain on their resources. You also have a limit on the absolute number of augments you can use in addition to using up your PP, which is insult to injury.

The end result is that yes, lurk is more "caster-y" if that makes sense, with more PP and higher level powers, but not by that much, and it still tries to do the same thing as before, which it isn't as good at.

I'll put this bit last because a lot of people (like me) don't care about traps, but if your campaign is one with traps, it might matter that psychic rogue has trapfinding and DD, and lurk does not. They try to fix this in the expanded classes article, but the way they do it involves the lurk augment list so doesn't actually work.

[Psyren]

Counterpoint, clerics have stronger spellcasting than paladins, but they have worse everything else.

Counter-counterpoint, 5 spell levels difference is significantly more than 1 :smalltongue:

[Troacctid]

I'm just saying, I personally think the trickster spellthief is significantly more powerful than the standard spellthief. 🤷

[Emperor Tippy]

The biggest issue with Complete Psionics is that it could have been so much more.

You have to remember, when the Expanded Psionics Handbook came out it was basically the first splat to introduce a fundamentally new casting mechanic (ToB, MoI, ToM, etc.); and it ties with ToB for being the best of those expansions.

The Psion is what the Sorcerer should have been, and at the time of release everyone was looking forward to Complete Psionics.

Imagine if instead of the Lurk, we had gotten the Factotum with Psionics instead of Arcane spells as the Psionic skillmonkey/rogue analogue?

Then we get into CPsi, it nerfed Astral Construct (one of the most popular focuses of Psions at the time) egregiously and unnecessarily. Most of the powers it added were essentially (barely) refluffed spells (compare to XPH where the majority of powers were new), and it just generally didn't do anything that anyone was super happy with.

Looking at the whole of 3.5 now that it is complete, Complete Psionics is still probably in the top third (certainly top half) of books but at the time it was published it was pretty uncontestedly rated as the worst 3.5 book while XPH was consistently rated among the very best.

[vasilidor]

My group has a habit of ignoring nerfs that we do not like, because we can. most of the time this applies to stuff done to nerf martials, but there are a lot of spells we avoid because there broken.

[SirNibbles]

Alternatively, whoever did the Tome of Battle errata. Serpents Kingdoms is also pretty bad.

The editors' goals with Serpent Kingdoms are perfectly clear: book about snakes and stuff. It's much better than anything psionic, which is basically 'what if magic but not magic?'.

[Psyren]

The editors' goals with Serpent Kingdoms are perfectly clear: book about snakes and stuff. It's much better than anything psionic, which is basically 'what if magic but not magic?'.

That's not editing; Editing means taking the concept the designers are shooting for, and making sure the language is clear and fits with the desired balance level of the rest of the game. Serpent Kingdoms fails that goal by a country mile.

[Rater202]

So how does serpent kingdoms fail?

[DeTess]

So how does serpent kingdoms fail?

IIRC, it's one of the most blatantly broken 3.5 books. It provides the corner-stone for what makes pun-pun work, for example.

[Zombimode]

IIRC, it's one of the most blatantly broken 3.5 books. It provides the corner-stone for what makes pun-pun work, for example.

That particular bit is rather irrelevant. Pun-Pun is not a serious consideration for a real game.

Things like Venomfire are actually problematic because they are relevant for real play and blantanty powerful that you have to come up with reason why you're not using it.

[Rater202]

IIRC, it's one of the most blatantly broken 3.5 books. It provides the corner-stone for what makes pun-pun work, for example.

That's not a good example. You have to abuse unrelated supplements in order to use that power that way, otherwise is far, far more limited.

If the problem is that the stuff in Serpent Kingdoms is too powerful, then it's really not comparable to a book whose problem is "incredibly bland powers that barrel fit the theme and also classes are underpowered," is it?

[StevenC21]

Serpent Kingdoms has atrocious editing, from spells (like venomfire) that are so absurdly powerful, cost effective, and scalable that there's almost no functional advantage to any similar spell, to entire descriptions of creatures and effects that can't be parsed because they're too vague to make any "RAW backed" ruling.

Cool fluff I guess. But psionics fluff is cooler anyways.

[Segev]

Cool fluff I guess. But psionics fluff is cooler anyways.

Except in Complete Psi, where it got so confused that it lost most of its unique distinction from magic.

[StevenC21]

CPsi is, as I've stated above, a complete and utter abortion of a sourcebook that deserves to be force fed to Pit Fiends that are insufficiently evil and corrupt.

[Segev]

CPsi is, as I've stated above, a complete and utter abortion of a sourcebook that deserves to be force fed to Pit Fiends that are insufficiently evil and corrupt.

Right, but the thread is asking WHY we feel that way. ;)

[StevenC21]

Yep, and I've given my reasons above.

[Vrock Bait]

So how does serpent kingdoms fail?

Ability Rip.

[Rater202]

Ability Rip.

Could you maybe give a detailed explanation instead of saying two words an assuming that I know what you mean?

[Psyren]

If the problem is that the stuff in Serpent Kingdoms is too powerful, then it's really not comparable to a book whose problem is "incredibly bland powers that barrel fit the theme and also classes are underpowered," is it?

Putting aside the subjective determination of which problem is "worse" - the one you're describing is not an editing issue, but one of concept or design philosophy.

Put another way - they set out to make astral construct weaker, and the language in the book does that, so it was edited correctly. Whether you agree with what they were trying to do is a different matter.

[illyahr]

Design problem example: The swordsage gets a Wisdom bonus to AC while wearing light armor, allowing an absurd level of AC very early in the game. The ability does exactly what the designers intended it to do. Whether it was a good idea, is another matter.

Editing problem example: The swordsage gets 6 + Int skill points per level, with x6 at first level, according to ToB. The usual rule is x4 at first level so the swordsage gains a distinct advantage, skill-wise, compared to other classes.

The Serpent Kingdoms book does exactly what it was designed to do. It still is a broken mess that doesn't follow the rules the rest of the game sets.

[StevenC21]

If the Swordsage is going to try to abuse the Wis to AC, then he's suddenly quite a bit more MAD then before, which, outside of high optimization, means either:

(1) His other stats that he NEEDS are lower

(2) He's losing valuable magic item slots for a comparatively inefficient AC buff

It's not that broken.

Yeah that skills thing is obviously a typo, not that there's anything we can do about it.

[Kayblis]

Could you maybe give a detailed explanation instead of saying two words an assuming that I know what you mean?

Ability Rip is a 7th level spell with a 1 hour casting time and 1 hour/lv duration that lets you steal a supernatural ability from a creature. This part is interesting, because it requires you to restrain a creature in a more or less permanent manner.

The egregious part is, when you do it, the creature gaining the ability in exchange permanently loses one supernatural ability it already has. Permanently. For an ability that lasts a day or so. It fails if you don't have a Su ability to trade. This is so bad of a design choice that the best way to use it is to actually use it in reverse, to permanently take away Su abilities from a creature by temporarily giving her more.

Either you don't use it at all, or you abuse it. The other way to abuse it would be to not pay the cost at all, and 'permanently' trade away abilities from temporary sources, like Su abilities from Shapechange that would go away at the end of the spell's duration anyways. It's a terrible spell all around, and the worst way to use it is to use it normally.

[Psyren]

Design problem example: The swordsage gets a Wisdom bonus to AC while wearing light armor, allowing an absurd level of AC very early in the game. The ability does exactly what the designers intended it to do. Whether it was a good idea, is another matter.

Editing problem example: The swordsage gets 6 + Int skill points per level, with x6 at first level, according to ToB. The usual rule is x4 at first level so the swordsage gains a distinct advantage, skill-wise, compared to other classes.

The Serpent Kingdoms book does exactly what it was designed to do. It still is a broken mess that doesn't follow the rules the rest of the game sets.

I doubt the sanity of anyone who thinks Manipulate Form was intended. "You can add an extraordinary ability" without any kind of limitations or even guidelines is ludicrously bad editing, even by FR power standards.

[Vrock Bait]

Ability Rip is a 7th level spell with a 1 hour casting time and 1 hour/lv duration that lets you steal a supernatural ability from a creature. This part is interesting, because it requires you to restrain a creature in a more or less permanent manner.

The egregious part is, when you do it, the creature gaining the ability in exchange permanently loses one supernatural ability it already has. Permanently. For an ability that lasts a day or so. It fails if you don't have a Su ability to trade. This is so bad of a design choice that the best way to use it is to actually use it in reverse, to permanently take away Su abilities from a creature by temporarily giving her more.

Either you don't use it at all, or you abuse it. The other way to abuse it would be to not pay the cost at all, and 'permanently' trade away abilities from temporary sources, like Su abilities from Shapechange that would go away at the end of the spell's duration anyways. It's a terrible spell all around, and the worst way to use it is to use it normally.

Thanks Kayblis.

[Rater202]

Putting aside the subjective determination of which problem is "worse" - the one you're describing is not an editing issue, but one of concept or design philosophy.

Put another way - they set out to make astral construct weaker, and the language in the book does that, so it was edited correctly. Whether you agree with what they were trying to do is a different matter.

...And you're arguing with me how?

I said the two problems weren't comparable... You've supported my argument with what you've said.

[Psyren]

...And you're arguing with me how?

I said the two problems weren't comparable... You've supported my argument with what you've said.

I'm not arguing with you at all. I told somebody else "that's not editing" and you started replying to me. I'm glad we agree.

[illyahr]

If the Swordsage is going to try to abuse the Wis to AC, then he's suddenly quite a bit more MAD then before, which, outside of high optimization, means either:

(1) His other stats that he NEEDS are lower

(2) He's losing valuable magic item slots for a comparatively inefficient AC buff

It's not that broken.

Yeah that skills thing is obviously a typo, not that there's anything we can do about it.

I think the Swordsage's abilities are Wis-based, so not all that MAD. The problem is that you can wear a mithril breastplate and add your Wis to your AC on top of that and this bonus applies to touch also. Not all that potent overall but, as I said, ridiculous in the early game. Especially since the swordsage is flavored more towards the "glass cannon" style of combat.


I doubt the sanity of anyone who thinks Manipulate Form was intended. "You can add an extraordinary ability" without any kind of limitations or even guidelines is ludicrously bad editing, even by FR power standards.

Extraordinary or Supernatural ability. The ability that does this is a Su ability. Yeah, I question their sanity also.

[Rater202]

At will, a sarrukh can modify the form of any Scaled One native to Toril, except for aquatic and undead creatures. With a successful touch attack, it can cause one alteration of its choice in the target creature's body. The target falls unconscious for 2d4 rounds due to the shock of changing form. A successful DC 22 Fortitude save negates both the change and the unconsciousness. Sarrukh are immune to this effect. A sarrukh may use this ability to change a minor aspect of the target creature, such as the shape of its head or the color of its scales. It may also choose to make a much more significant alteration, such as converting limbs into tentacles, changing overall body shape (snake to humanoid, for example), or adding or removing an appendage. Any ability score may be decreased to a minimum of 1 or increased to a maximum equal to the sarrukh's corresponding score. A sarrukh may also grant the target an extraordinary, supernatural, or spell-like ability or remove one from it.Considering that the subject has to be native to toril and that the power doesn't work on Sauruk...

Basically, it's only a problem if you abuse Wish and get the GM to waive the "native to Toril" requirement to be effective, or if you've built avery specific character background, and if you need GM approval to abuse a power then there's not really a problem.

(How is "scaled one" defined again? The Punpun write-up seems to treat it as "reptilian subtype" but...)

[NigelWalmsley]

I doubt the sanity of anyone who thinks Manipulate Form was intended. "You can add an extraordinary ability" without any kind of limitations or even guidelines is ludicrously bad editing, even by FR power standards.

It does have guidelines. There are a couple of abilities listed in the entry, and they're tiny bonuses you don't care about. The reading that you can use it to give yourself any ability you want is only dubiously RAW.


IIRC, it's one of the most blatantly broken 3.5 books. It provides the corner-stone for what makes pun-pun work, for example.

Yes, that's one example. But can you name any other examples? It's not like the book is full to bursting with broken things. It's just that the one broken thing it contains happens to be very famous.

[Psyren]

Considering that the subject has to be native to toril and that the power doesn't work on Sauruk...

Basically, it's only a problem if you abuse Wish and get the GM to waive the "native to Toril" requirement to be effective, or if you've built avery specific character background, and if you need GM approval to abuse a power then there's not really a problem.

(How is "scaled one" defined again? The Punpun write-up seems to treat it as "reptilian subtype" but...)

"Native to Toril" is literally every creature/character in the game's most popular setting who isn't from another planet. I don't think it's all that niche.

And yes, Scaled One is every [reptilian] creature and a boatload more besides.

[Rater202]

"Native to Toril" is literally every creature/character in the game's most popular setting who isn't from another planet. I don't think it's all that niche.

And yes, Scaled One is every [reptilian] creature and a boatload more besides.

In my experience, most GMs prefer to play in their own unique settings that just so happen to use the Faerun/Greyhawk pantheon if not a completely self-created setting from the ground up.

So again, unless the GM waives the "Native Toril" requirement or lets you be a refugee from another universe and lets a non-Saurek Wish to have the power. Anything that isn't specifically enumerated in the Wish spell is subject to GM approval and interpretation: "I wish I had the manipulate format ability" could just get you turned into a Sauruck, which kills the Pun-Pun build dead because the ability doesn't work on them. A sufficiently legalessed wish to get exactly what you want could be rejected.

Presumably, in actual play, you'd need to actually know an ability existed to give it to someone, too, so unless the GM lets you metagame or you have some really good knowledge rolls, once you have it your ability to use it is limited.

The level 1 Kobald sorcerer who invokes Pazuzu the second the game starts and wishes for the power can only break the game if the GM lets them.

Total Op White Void Room theorizing is one thing, but if you need the GM's permission to break the game with something in actual play then it's not broken

[NotASpiderSwarm]

Yes, that's one example. But can you name any other examples? It's not like the book is full to bursting with broken things. It's just that the one broken thing it contains happens to be very famous.Venomfire.

[Psyren]

In my experience, most GMs prefer to play in their own unique settings that just so happen to use the Faerun/Greyhawk pantheon if not a completely self-created setting from the ground up.

So again, unless the GM waives the "Native Toril" requirement or lets you be a refugee from another universe and lets a non-Saurek Wish to have the power. Anything that isn't specifically enumerated in the Wish spell is subject to GM approval and interpretation: "I wish I had the manipulate format ability" could just get you turned into a Sauruck, which kills the Pun-Pun build dead because the ability doesn't work on them. A sufficiently legalessed wish to get exactly what you want could be rejected.

Presumably, in actual play, you'd need to actually know an ability existed to give it to someone, too, so unless the GM lets you metagame or you have some really good knowledge rolls, once you have it your ability to use it is limited.

The level 1 Kobald sorcerer who invokes Pazuzu the second the game starts and wishes for the power can only break the game if the GM lets them.

Total Op White Void Room theorizing is one thing, but if you need the GM's permission to break the game with something in actual play then it's not broken

That's a lot of words for Oberoni.

[Segev]

In my experience, most GMs prefer to play in their own unique settings that just so happen to use the Faerun/Greyhawk pantheon if not a completely self-created setting from the ground up.

So again, unless the GM waives the "Native Toril" requirement or lets you be a refugee from another universe and lets a non-Saurek Wish to have the power. Anything that isn't specifically enumerated in the Wish spell is subject to GM approval and interpretation: "I wish I had the manipulate format ability" could just get you turned into a Sauruck, which kills the Pun-Pun build dead because the ability doesn't work on them. A sufficiently legalessed wish to get exactly what you want could be rejected.

Presumably, in actual play, you'd need to actually know an ability existed to give it to someone, too, so unless the GM lets you metagame or you have some really good knowledge rolls, once you have it your ability to use it is limited.

The level 1 Kobald sorcerer who invokes Pazuzu the second the game starts and wishes for the power can only break the game if the GM lets them.

Total Op White Void Room theorizing is one thing, but if you need the GM's permission to break the game with something in actual play then it's not broken

I mean, the 5e game I'm running right now is taking place in Chult, which is on Toril, and all the PCs are natives. They're even fighting scaled ones (yuan-ti).

[Rater202]

That's a lot of words for Oberoni.

By RAW, a Saruhk is the only thing that can use the ability, it can only use it on other organisms that are not other Saurak, and it cannot make something smarter, faster, wiser, more charismatic, tougher, or stronger than itself.

It's a powerful ability, but even in player hands it's not that powerful. It's not rule Zero Fallacy if Rule Zero is in fact the balance point. It doesn't matter that Warshaper by RAW doesn't limit your natural weapons if the GM limits you to one per limb and that's an ordinary player intended class that doesn't require you to jump through hoops. Assuming they agree to let you take it in the first place. This we're talking about a Monster Power that can normally only be gained by 1: Being that monster, 2: Talking that Monster into giving it to you no strings attached(I hope you've got a good Cha bonus and lots of ranks in diplomacy), or 3: using a carefully worded wish to gain that ability without transforming into that monster.

We're talking something that was never meant to be in PC hands. A PC is only getting it if the GM agrees. That's just how the game is played.

Used as written and intended, the power functions exactly as it is intended to: To give reasonable buffs or debuffs to certain classes of creature.

It only becomes problematic if you use Wish to get it on something that was never supposed to have it and barring GM fiat you're gonna be so late in the game by the time you have wish that it really doesn't matter because you're a full caster with 9th level spells. Not to mention
Wish is the mightiest spell a wizard or sorcerer can cast. By simply speaking aloud, you can alter reality to better suit you.

Even wish, however, has its limits.

A wish can produce any one of the following effects.

Duplicate any wizard or sorcerer spell of 8th level or lower, provided the spell is not of a school prohibited to you.
Duplicate any other spell of 6th level or lower, provided the spell is not of a school prohibited to you.
Duplicate any wizard or sorcerer spell of 7th level or lower even if it’s of a prohibited school.
Duplicate any other spell of 5th level or lower even if it’s of a prohibited school.
Undo the harmful effects of many other spells, such as geas/quest or insanity.
Create a nonmagical item of up to 25,000 gp in value.
Create a magic item, or add to the powers of an existing magic item.
Grant a creature a +1 inherent bonus to an ability score. Two to five wish spells cast in immediate succession can grant a creature a +2 to +5 inherent bonus to an ability score (two wishes for a +2 inherent bonus, three for a +3 inherent bonus, and so on). Inherent bonuses are instantaneous, so they cannot be dispelled. Note: An inherent bonus may not exceed +5 for a single ability score, and inherent bonuses to a particular ability score do not stack, so only the best one applies.
Remove injuries and afflictions. A single wish can aid one creature per caster level, and all subjects are cured of the same kind of affliction. For example, you could heal all the damage you and your companions have taken, or remove all poison effects from everyone in the party, but not do both with the same wish. A wish can never restore the experience point loss from casting a spell or the level or Constitution loss from being raised from the dead.
Revive the dead. A wish can bring a dead creature back to life by duplicating a resurrection spell. A wish can revive a dead creature whose body has been destroyed, but the task takes two wishes, one to recreate the body and another to infuse the body with life again. A wish cannot prevent a character who was brought back to life from losing an experience level.
Transport travelers. A wish can lift one creature per caster level from anywhere on any plane and place those creatures anywhere else on any plane regardless of local conditions. An unwilling target gets a Will save to negate the effect, and spell resistance (if any) applies.
Undo misfortune. A wish can undo a single recent event. The wish forces a reroll of any roll made within the last round (including your last turn). Reality reshapes itself to accommodate the new result. For example, a wish could undo an opponent’s successful save, a foe’s successful critical hit (either the attack roll or the critical roll), a friend’s failed save, and so on. The reroll, however, may be as bad as or worse than the original roll. An unwilling target gets a Will save to negate the effect, and spell resistance (if any) applies.
You may try to use a wish to produce greater effects than these, but doing so is dangerous. (The wish may pervert your intent into a literal but undesirable fulfillment or only a partial fulfillment.)

Duplicated spells allow saves and spell resistance as normal (but save DCs are for 9th-level spells).

Material Component
When a wish duplicates a spell with a material component that costs more than 10,000 gp, you must provide that component.

XP Cost
The minimum XP cost for casting wish is 5,000 XP. When a wish duplicates a spell that has an XP cost, you must pay 5,000 XP or that cost, whichever is more. When a wish creates or improves a magic item, you must pay twice the normal XP cost for crafting or improving the item, plus an additional 5,000 XP.

since "give me a supernatural ability" isn't one of the enumerated effects, the game is all but outright giving the GM blanket permission to screw with the wish in whatever which way if.

If it's only a problem in a white room scenario that could never happen in actual gameplay unless the whole table agreed ahead of time, it's not a problem.

It's like saying that the Tarrasque's regeneration(40) with no weaknesses is overpowered because a PC might use it to become impervious to normal attacks by getting it with a Wish.Yeah, could be a problem, but if the GMn lets him do it then it's on the GM, not the game designer.

[Aotrs Commander]

In my experience, most GMs prefer to play in their own unique settings that just so happen to use the Faerun/Greyhawk pantheon if not a completely self-created setting from the ground up.

So again, unless the GM waives the "Native Toril" requirement or lets you be a refugee from another universe and lets a non-Saurek Wish to have the power. Anything that isn't specifically enumerated in the Wish spell is subject to GM approval and interpretation: "I wish I had the manipulate format ability" could just get you turned into a Sauruck, which kills the Pun-Pun build dead because the ability doesn't work on them. A sufficiently legalessed wish to get exactly what you want could be rejected.

Presumably, in actual play, you'd need to actually know an ability existed to give it to someone, too, so unless the GM lets you metagame or you have some really good knowledge rolls, once you have it your ability to use it is limited.

The level 1 Kobald sorcerer who invokes Pazuzu the second the game starts and wishes for the power can only break the game if the GM lets them.

Total Op White Void Room theorizing is one thing, but if you need the GM's permission to break the game with something in actual play then it's not broken

Sloppy rules writing is sloppy, no matter which way you cut it. If you are being paid by people in actual money to produce a thing you better damn well do the job properly, or you shouldn't be getting paid to do it. If you, as a person being paid by other people to write rules, are not always thinking "how can this rule interpreted and how might it be abused and how do I make my phrasing explictly clear to make sure that it can only be interpreted in the way I intend it to be and the latter can be properly curbed?" You are not doing your job properly. Nor is brevity is not an excuse for lack of clarity. If the wording of your ability needs to have ten pages of explanation to make it emphatically clear how it works, and you haven't got ten pages, then DON'T. INCLUDE. IT.

Slipshod rules-writing is what gives us endless forum arguements and stupid rules interactions which clearly stem from nothing more than the writer simply not considering things otuside of the one context they were thinking of at the time. (See: 3.5 and drowning heals your negative hit points, a state of affairs that just needed "or lose 1 hit point if less.") "But it's so obvious, no-one will interpret it that way," is not an excuse. A good rules writer avoids "implied but not stated" at all times. Say what something can do, say how, and say what it can't. Especially when designed for a broad customer release and double-especially when you know damn well that rules-lawyers are a thing that exists, and they exists in every system that has rules.

I as DM can make up any crap I want and rule stuff anyway I want. But I can do that with any damn system, from HeroQuest to Rolemaster. So I work on the basis that if you are expecting actual money to be put into your hand by other people, you damn well better make sure you're giving something that means they're not having to do the work themselves, because otherwise, why are they bothering with you?



(And if that person is ME, it's STILL going to be gone over with a fine-tooth comb anyway 900+ pages and eight months 3.aotrs upgrade later and ongoing...)

[NotASpiderSwarm]

First off, never introduce anything to the world that would be broken if players got it. They will dominate dragons, get infected with lycanthropy, or planar bind demons. Saying “that wasn’t meant for players” is just proof the designer didn’t think when writing.

Second, Wish does not grant manipulate form. Wish gets you a Candle of Invocation, that gets you a bound Sarrukh, the Sarrukh gets you Manipulate Form. There’s alternate builds that don’t need a Sarrukh at all(Master of Many Forms is clearest).

[Aotrs Commander]

First off, never introduce anything to the world that would be broken if players got it. They will dominate dragons, get infected with lycanthropy, or planar bind demons. Saying “that wasn’t meant for players” is just proof the designer didn’t think when writing.

I think there are SOME times when you can say "this is explictly only for the NPCs, by which I expiclty mean the boss monsters," but that in general those instances need to basically explictly be labelled up with flashing neon signs as "things PCs cannot have" and be few and far between. (I myself have a template that is applied to boss monsters that in very short, fundementally increments hit points so that they are a viable encounter for 6-8 PCs; 5E legendary actions I believe are the same sort of thing.) But those instances should really only be put into place where you have to make a decision between versimiltude and game mechanics and lean towards the latter (in that specific case between "maintaining the otherwise desireable PC/NPC transparceny" verses "being able to have boss fights that don't end anticlimactically halfway through the first round, yes Rolemaster, very specifically looking at you...")

[hamishspence]

I think there are SOME times when you can say "this is explictly only for the NPCs, by which I expiclty mean the boss monsters," but that in general those instances need to basically explictly be labelled up with flashing neon signs as "things PCs cannot have" and be few and far between.

"Manipulate Form cannot be given to non-sarrukh - ever" seems like the sort of thing that should have been specified.

[Rater202]

Second, Wish does not grant manipulate form. Wish gets you a Candle of Invocation, that gets you a bound Sarrukh, the Sarrukh gets you Manipulate Form. There’s alternate builds that don’t need a Sarrukh at all(Master of Many Forms is clearest).


Candle of Invocation: Each of these special tapers is dedicated to one of the nine alignments. Simply burning the candle generates a favorable aura for the individual so doing if the candle’s alignment matches that of the character. Characters of the same alignment as the burning candle add a +2 morale bonus on attack rolls, saving throws, and skill checks while within 30 feet of the flame.

A cleric whose alignment matches the candle’s operates as if two levels higher for purposes of determining spells per day if he burns the candle during or just prior to his spell preparation time. He can even cast spells normally unavailable to him, as if he were of that higher level, but only so long as the candle continues to burn. Except in special cases (see below), a candle burns for 4 hours.

In addition, burning a candle also allows the owner to cast a gate spell, the respondent being of the same alignment as the candle, but the taper is immediately consumed in the process. It is possible to extinguish the candle simply by blowing it out, so users often place it in a lantern to protect it from drafts and the like. Doing this doesn’t interfere with its magical properties.

Strong conjuration; CL 17th; Craft Wondrous Item, gate, creator must be same alignment as candle created; Price 8,400 gp;Weight 1/2 lb.At absolute most, a Candle of Invocation will give you a small bonus to the diplomacy roll to convince a Sarrukh you happened to find to convince you to give it it's power with no strings attached: A Candle of Invocation gives you no ability to summon or control a Sarrukh, becuase a Sarruhk isn't an extraplaner creature and Gate can only summon extraplanar creatures.

The Candle of Invocation build flat out doesn't work.

[hamishspence]

A Candle of Invocation gives you no ability to summon or control a Sarrukh, becuase a Sarruhk isn't an extraplaner creature and Gate can only summon extraplanar creatures.

The Candle of Invocation build flat out doesn't work.

All creatures are extraplanar, if they're not on their home plane. Presumably character travels to a different plane before burning the candle.

[Rater202]

All creatures are extraplanar, if they're not on their home plane. Presumably, character travels to a different plane before burning the candle.

At first level? Candle of Invocation by Raw uses Gate to contact a being, not to travel. The Candle of Invocation's builds whole gimmick is that it happens at first level.

[hamishspence]

Candle of Invocation by Raw uses Gate to contact a being, not to travel.

As written, it just says "Cast a Gate spell" - it doesn't say which of Gate's functions is used.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#candleofInvocation

In addition, burning a candle also allows the owner to cast a gate spell, the respondent being of the same alignment as the candle, but the taper is immediately consumed in the process. It is possible to extinguish the candle simply by blowing it out, so users often place it in a lantern to protect it from drafts and the like. Doing this doesn’t interfere with its magical properties.

Presumably, you need to abuse Efreeti Wish Looping out the wazoo to gain the ability to control the sarrukh when it arrives - and to get the candles in the first place, is done by invoking Pazuzu.

Invoking Pazuzu starts Efreeti Wish Looping - with enough wishes at your disposal (and appropriate alignment changes), you can control whatever beings you summon.

If I remember rightly, Sarrukh are NE - so you first need to change alignment to LE to summon efreeti, wish for more candles, loop over and over till you have near-infinite candles, and wishes available, then change to NE, use wishes to make sure the sarrukh is controllable when it arrives, then summon up the sarrukh.


With (near) infinite wishes, doing anything becomes trivial though, so in that sense, what's broken is the Efreeti Wish Loop, far more than the sarrukh ability.

Presumably the reward to the efreeti for cooperating, is that they get some wishes spent on them, getting around the fact that they can't grant wishes to each other.

[NotASpiderSwarm]

With (near) infinite wishes, doing anything becomes trivial though, so in that sense, what's broken is the Efreeti Wish Loop, far more than the sarrukh ability.

Presumably the reward to the efreeti for cooperating, is that they get some wishes spent on them, getting around the fact that they can't grant wishes to each other.3 wishes. One for getting to the astral plane, one for a Candle, one for a ham sandwich. The Candle needs to match the alignment of the creature called, you do not. The whole Efreeti/Pazuzu nonsense is just so that you can do it at lvl 1, the actual requirement is Plane Shift+an 8,400 GP item+a viper familiar.

[hamishspence]

The Candle needs to match the alignment of the creature called, you do not.
Good point.


The whole Efreeti/Pazuzu nonsense is just so that you can do it at lvl 1, the actual requirement is Plane Shift+an 8,400 GP item+a viper familiar.

Controlling Sarrukh to get them to do what you want, requires higher level, or more wishes.

Hence the idea that the problem is the candle, and the efreeti - the efreeti-wish-looping granting potentially near-infinite power.

If the DM dislikes the idea of actually contradicting RAW, having already decided that the campaign's set in Faerun and that Sarrukh still exist - then they can still shut it down with:



"You arrive on the astral plane - about 5 ft away from a hungry astral dreadnought, which promptly attacks you."



People who try to derail campaigns by accessing infinite power, should expect this kind of technically legal, "rocks fall everyone dies" counterapproach - the game requires cooperation between both DM and players, and if the players won't, the DM doesn't have to either.



There’s alternate builds that don’t need a Sarrukh at all(Master of Many Forms is clearest).
The DM can shut those down by pointing out that the ability specifically says:

At will, a sarrukh can modify the form of any Scaled One native to Toril, except for aquatic and undead creatures.

not

At will, a creature with this ability can modify the form of any Scaled One native to Toril, except for aquatic and undead creatures.


if they don't want to end the campaign just yet. Warning the players that trying to get this ability will not work, or lead to the campaign ending, also may help.

[NotASpiderSwarm]

Controlling Sarrukh to get them to do what you want, requires higher level, or more wishes.

Hence the idea that the problem is the candle, and the efreeti - the efreeti-wish-looping granting potentially near-infinite power.
The Candle is fine, if it didn’t exist a scroll of Gate would work. and let’s be real, no one complains that Gate is broken.
(And controlling is done based on the caster level of the Gate spell, not yours, so no additional wishes needed there)

[hamishspence]

The Candle is fine, if it didn’t exist a scroll of Gate would work. and let’s be real, no one complains that Gate is broken.

Because it's a 9th level spell. Access to Gate at 1st level is massively broken.

Scrolls at least have to contend with things like Required Ability Score (19 for 9th level spells) and Caster Level Checks (if below 17th level, 18th level if the scroll was created by a Sorcerer), and the user of the scroll needing to be a spellcaster that has the spell on their class list. Sorcerers and wizards can't use Cleric scrolls of Gate. Clerics can't use Sorcerer or Wizard scrolls of Gate.

Removing all these limitations, is what makes the Candle of Invocation a Broken Item. The existence of Efreeti, is what makes the LE Candle of Invocation even more broken than the other ones.

[NotASpiderSwarm]

Because it's a 9th level spell. Access to Gate at 1st level is massively broken.

Scrolls at least have to contend with things like Required Ability Score (19 for 9th level spells) and Caster Level Checks (if below 17th level, 18th level if the scroll was created by a Sorcerer), and the user of the scroll needing to be a spellcaster that has the spell on their class list. Sorcerers and wizards can't use Cleric scrolls of Gate. Clerics can't use Sorcerer or Wizard scrolls of Gate.

Removing all these limitations, is what makes the Candle of Invocation a Broken Item. The existence of Efreeti, is what makes the LE Candle of Invocation even more broken than the other ones.The build already is a Wizard with 18 int. And while yeah, the candle lets it work at lvl 1, it would still be doable at like lvl 6 with a proper build If you tried using a scroll. The problem is not Gate. The problem is that the Sarrukh has a blatantly reality-warping ability that was clearly not thought through, and the instant someone gets access to it who does think, the game world ends.

[hamishspence]

The problem is not Gate. The problem is that the Sarrukh has a blatantly reality-warping ability that was clearly not thought through, and the instant someone gets access to it who does think, the game world ends.

Access to it can be limited. As I pointed out, the ability itself says "the sarrukh" not "the creature".


Efreeti wish looping, accessed via the Candle of Invocation, is equally reality-warping and capable of ending the game, and arguably more so.

And because it's all Core, it's a problem for all game worlds, and not just Faerun.


The build already is a Wizard with 18 int.

The iconic "Pazuzu way" requires a Paladin, because it's only Paladins that Pazuzu is notable for never twisting the wishes of.

[Rater202]

Which means it needs at least two levels: One of Paladin and one of Wizard/Sorcerer to get the familiar.

So basically, are we in agreement that Manipulate Form is only broken if the GM lets you abuse another broken combo?

Like, I'll be honest, if I was a GM I'd probably let someone have Manipulate form if their character knew the steps to get it with the caveat that I'll come down hard on Cheese and metagaming.

Give your Viper familiar better ability scores and a few spells that you know (the existence of) as SPA, even at will? Fine. Be a Pokemon Master, could be fun. But Pun Pun was never actually intended to be played, it was just a thought exercise so you try and derail the game with it and that's when you get randomly summoned before whatever God keeps reality in one piece, stripped of your powers, and tossed into a pit full of Inevitables.

It's only cheesy when you start exploiting other loopholes in the game and mess around with exact wording.

[StevenC21]

Eh, once Pun Pun ascends he'll be the one doing the "tossing you into a pit of inevitables".

[hamishspence]

Greater Gods know events related to their portfolio a minimum of 16 weeks in advance.

Given that Pun Pun is magic, and Pun-Pun's "ascension" would be a world-shaking event,

a deity such as Mystra or Boccob will know about it 16+ weeks before it happens, and take steps accordingly.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Pun Pun is magicAs is friendship.

Is Pun Pun the essence of friendship?

Pun Pun is love, Pun Pun is life.

Are there any gods with that in their portfolios?

I think I just found a loophole...

[magicalmagicman]

Pun Pun doesn't exist. If he could exist then the Sarrukhs, Genies, Glabrezus, Pit Fiends, Solars, and Zodars all would've ascended.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Pun Pun doesn't exist. If he could exist then the Sarrukhs, Genies, Glabrezus, Pit Fiends, Solars, and Zodars all would've ascended.You're assuming that anyone or anything else in the whole game is smart enough to do so. Have you SEEN the character builds of the people statted out in the sourcebooks? They're utterly incompetent.

Even the characters with access to redunkulous amounts of power already in their hands are pretty awful. There are, like, dozens of ways to become invulnerable and immortal easily available, and yet people think it's desirable to become an insane, rotting corpse instead of casting a few spells (or even just one) and NOT becoming a rotting corpse, while getting all the best benefits of living forever.

[Rater202]

You're assuming that anyone or anything else in the whole game is smart enough to do so. Have you SEEN the character builds of the people statted out in the sourcebooks? They're utterly incompetent.

Even the characters with access to redunkulous amounts of power already in their hands are pretty awful. There are, like, dozens of ways to become invulnerable and immortal easily available, and yet people think it's desirable to become an insane, rotting corpse instead of casting a few spells (or even just one) and NOT becoming a rotting corpse, while getting all the best benefits of living forever.

To be fair, spells need to be reuped and can be dispelled/surpressed. With a Lich you just put the Phylactery somewhere safe and that's the end of it. hide it in an pure-ore adamantine suit of armor sealed up tight and enchanted with Greater Acid resistance and toss it in the Tarrasque's gullet, dig a 60-foot deep hole in a random dessert, toss it in the bottom, half fill the hole, toss a fake in 30 feet deep, then finish filling it, put it in a safe deposit box in a bank in a differant country managed through a few intermediaries and a fake ID that can't be traced back to you...

[NontheistCleric]

Even the characters with access to redunkulous amounts of power already in their hands are pretty awful. There are, like, dozens of ways to become invulnerable and immortal easily available, and yet people think it's desirable to become an insane, rotting corpse instead of casting a few spells (or even just one) and NOT becoming a rotting corpse, while getting all the best benefits of living forever.

Well, no one says you have to be insane or rotting. A lich who cleans up properly can be a pristine skeleton or well-preserved corpse and never has to worry about bodily needs again, along with bonuses to mental stats, immortality and a fun paralyzing touch.

[StevenC21]

And maybe some people just LIKE the idea of becoming a rotting corpse. I swear, liches are so marginalized in modern day Faerun.

#LichesArePeopleToo

[NontheistCleric]

And maybe some people just LIKE the idea of becoming a rotting corpse. I swear, liches are so marginalized in modern day Faerun.

#LichesArePeopleToo

Also true. I simply imagine that in general, not-rotting-ness would be preferred for practical reasons—being less off-putting to others, not having bits fall off at inconvenient times, clothes being easier to keep clean, and so on.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

To be fair, spells need to be reuped and can be dispelled/surpressed. With a Lich you just put the Phylactery somewhere safe and that's the end of it. hide it in an pure-ore adamantine suit of armor sealed up tight and enchanted with Greater Acid resistance and toss it in the Tarrasque's gullet, dig a 60-foot deep hole in a random dessert, toss it in the bottom, half fill the hole, toss a fake in 30 feet deep, then finish filling it, put it in a safe deposit box in a bank in a differant country managed through a few intermediaries and a fake ID that can't be traced back to you...Even with the possibility of being dispelled or disjoined, there are lots of ways to do so. Permanent Instantaneous* body swaps with impossibly tough critters, residing on another plane entirely and projecting yourself elsewhere, implanted acorns (with the acorn of far travel spell on them, and shielded to prevent any outside effect from affecting them) from timeless planes with Ysgard's auto-res trait, perma-stealing the abilities of immortal monsters, and plenty more.

Magic makes nearly anything possible; yeah, one of those possibilities is "walking corpse," but I doubt anyone with any competence (or sanity) would take that route when there are alternatives that are actually easier.





*I hate WotC's nomenclature for durations; it's confusing, in myriad ways.

[NontheistCleric]

Magic makes nearly anything possible; yeah, one of those possibilities is "walking corpse," but I doubt anyone with any competence (or sanity) would take that route when there are alternatives that are actually easier.

Competence might be a factor, if one didn't want to be a walking corpse but ended up that way through a botched ritual or the like—but in a fantasy world, why would genuinely aiming for that be necessarily insane? Not everyone likes being a living thing full of disgusting fluids and bodily needs.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Competence might be a factor, if one didn't want to be a walking corpse but ended up that way through a botched ritual or the like—but in a fantasy world, why would genuinely aiming for that be necessarily insane? Not everyone likes being a living thing full of disgusting fluids and bodily needs."Invulnerable construct body" is still a possibility. A regenerating riverine construct in whatever shape you want is fairly easy to construct, and its immunities are comparable to that of an undead. And it's not difficult to come back in your new body even if it's destroyed, like a phylactery would do.

All I'm saying is that canon characters are pretty awful, even those who don't have crippling character build idiocy going on. They don't make use of the resources they have, instead just going for low-hanging (and ironically difficult) fruit.

[Rater202]

I'm gonna be honest, if I could guarantee that the end product would be "me" and not just something with my memories that thinks it's me, I'd trade this tub of lard that spends half the day sleeping, eating, and dealing with the consequences eating out for supernaturally durable bones. I'm 26, I shouldn't have arthritis already!

I don't see where "rotting" comes in, either. The default is usually either desiccated and skeletal or full skeleton.

[hamishspence]

I don't see where "rotting" comes in, either. The default is usually either desiccated and skeletal or full skeleton."Withered flesh" (and near-skeletal) is the default, with "eyes long ago lost to decay"

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lich.htm

The implication is that the decaying process still happens after the lich transformation is accomplished, that this particular lich is old, and that a very new lich may still have eyes.

In the Forgotten Realms module City of the Spider Queen, one of the antagonists is a lich that got their hands on a robe of gentle repose, and wore it pretty much from their transformation onward, so they are virtually indistinguishable from a living being - having all their flesh, and their eyes.

[NontheistCleric]

Of course, that also implies that a lich losing its flesh would not hurt it, so it could easily scour its bones clean and not have to deal with any flesh it didn't want to.

[hamishspence]

Having DR/Magic & Bludgeoning might make the de-fleshing process a little tricky.

Though you could fluff it as "only the bones have DR, the meat can be removed, and has no hit points at that."

[NontheistCleric]

Even if you didn't, anyone capable of creating a phylactery should be able to overcome that DR fairly easily.

[hamishspence]

The first thing OoTS's Xykon did when transformed is "rip off his flesh" (it's rather quick) - so IMO it's probably fairly easily removable even for a new lich.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

The first thing OoTS's Xykon did when transformed is "rip off his flesh" (it's rather quick) - so IMO it's probably fairly easily removable even for a new lich.Too bad Belkar didn't use Magical Social Media to saddle Xykon with the nickname of "The Boner."

[NontheistCleric]

Too bad Belkar didn't use Magical Social Media to saddle Xykon with the nickname of "The Boner."

Unfortunately, he's not a cleric (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0739.html).

[Aotrs Commander]

And maybe some people just LIKE the idea of becoming a rotting corpse. I swear, liches are so marginalized in modern day Faerun.

Let's not split hairs; when was the last time someone made a movie about a Lich and not a leech-inna-dinner suit or a shambling corpse. Pretty much freaking never.

(An even when a Lich is involved, they never actually call them that...)




#LichesArePeopleToo

Though generally only by the loosest definition of "people," at any rate, in fairness.

But hey, equality means as long as I'm not straight up murdering you in the face right now, you have to consider me (with the extar incentive of what might happen to your soul's internal organs if you don't), so it still counts.

[Morty]

Complete Psionics might be particularly bad, but all the Complete series have a pretty bad ratio of useful content to filler and outright bad options.

[Emperor Tippy]

"Manipulate Form cannot be given to non-sarrukh - ever" seems like the sort of thing that should have been specified.

Manipulate Form cannot give any creature Manipulate Form.
Manipulate Form cannot be used by any creature except a Sarrukh.
Manipulate Form can only give already extant abilities.

Sarrukh have the ability that prevents anyone else from taking their form (can't remember the name or monsters with it at the moment).

Those restrictions solve most of the issues.

Although what I would do is also change Manipulate Form to "Manipulate Form can only give Ex or Su abilities that the Sarrukh, or a creature it is touching, has." So if you want to give a creature an ability, you also need another creature with that ability on hand.

[hamishspence]

Sarrukh have the ability that prevents anyone else from taking their form (can't remember the name or monsters with it at the moment).

Sharn - Archetypal Shape:

Archetypal Shape (Ex): No other creatures can polymorph or shapechange themselves (or anyone else) into a sharn's shape, or anything approximating it.

[Emperor Tippy]

Sharn - Archetypal Shape:

Archetypal Shape (Ex): No other creatures can polymorph or shapechange themselves (or anyone else) into a sharn's shape, or anything approximating it.

That's the one, thanks.

[NotASpiderSwarm]

Complete Psionics might be particularly bad, but all the Complete series have a pretty bad ratio of useful content to filler and outright bad options.
There are definitely a lot of cruft, but a lot of the Completes are less broken than Core and at least have some reasonable options to take. There's stuff in Scoundrel, Mage, Arcane, Adventurer, and Warrior that's at least in consideration when I'm making characters. I wouldn't call them the best books ever, and there's definitely some decisions that were very much wrong(why so many organization-linked PRCs? Why have a half-casting PRC ever?), but they're not terrible.

[nijineko]

And Soulbow was a lot more popular back when it was the only way to salvage a Soulknife, instead of everyone just collectively deciding to use the DSP version instead.

only the people who don't use the official 3.5 soulknife prestige class (which is better, imo) use the DSP version.

[Rater202]

Let's not split hairs; when was the last time someone made a movie about a Lich and not a leech-inna-dinner suit or a shambling corpse. Pretty much freaking never.

(An even when a Lich is involved, they never actually call them that...)There's a tendency in Anime and videogames to use the term "Lich" to refer to any undead spell caster instead of to someone who usesed Dark Magic specifically to become immortal

The closest thing to a true Lich in Anime I can think of is Orochimaru from Naruto, who developed a means to bind pieces of his soul to people(which makes them stronger but also slowly alters their behavior to his taste) which in turn lets him respawn if he's ever sealed away or permakilled and the "Living Corpse Reincarnation" technique where he merges his body with yours and absorbs your soul to maintain his youth and increase his power but has the caveat of being a literal living corpse: If the most recent host isn't strong enough to support him(or he suffers severe damage) then he'll eventually start rotting alive and will have to take a new one asap.

Though generally only by the loosest definition of "people," at any rate, in fairness.

Are they sentient? Sapient? Capable of empathy? Able to experience at least the same range of emotions as a human or other being that is generally considered a "person?" If the answer to most of those is yes then they're people.

The argument can be made that, in the case of sapient undead such as Ghouls, Lich's, and various well-preserved-parasites that the term "negatively alive" would be more accurate than "undead"

[Troacctid]

Let's not split hairs; when was the last time someone made a movie about a Lich and not a leech-inna-dinner suit or a shambling corpse. Pretty much freaking never.

(An even when a Lich is involved, they never actually call them that...)
The Harry Potter series is the second-highest grossing film franchise of all time. 💁

[StevenC21]

Well actually, according to Libris Mortis, undead are literally incapable of having "good" emotions, soooo...

[Rater202]

Well actually, according to Libris Mortis, undead are literally incapable of having "good" emotions, soooo...

Libris Mortis also has an undead God of Love who is explicitly the patron of non-evil undead, a template that turns you undead with no frills without impacting your behavior, thoughts, or alignment, rules for entire cities of sapiant undead with a note that not all of them are going to suck for the living to live in, and a varient of the Lich template that is explicitly for "Good" people but is actually stronger than the base "evil" Lich template.

If Father O'Benevolence, Lawful Good Cleric of the God of Goodness, Justice, Mercy, Compassion, Charity, Platonic and Fraternal Love, and Cupcakes is suddenly incapable of feeling happiness, love, or compassion becuase he chose to delay his eternal reward indefinitely using explicitly "Good" means in lieu of dying of old age and risking his successor not being as good at protecting the innocent as he is then the problem is with the fluff and that single bit of fluff should be ignored as contradicting other parts of the book.

[Aotrs Commander]

The Harry Potter series is the second-highest grossing film franchise of all time. 💁

Voldy being a Lich but not called such was one of the examples I was thinking of (the other example I had in mind is Skullduggery Pleasant, a nonEvil lich-in-all-but-name protagonist), but Harry Potter is not a "lich film" like you have "vampire," "zombie," "ghost" or "mummy" films. His lichdom is almost incidental.




Well actually, according to Libris Mortis, undead are literally incapable of having "good" emotions, soooo...

My love for chocolate and starships make mockery of that, even if any casual examiniation of even D&D's own past lore wouldn't likely turn up enough example to do so.

The splats were REALLY, REALLY bad at alignment stuff, the alignemnt books in particular, so they can be safely ignored as the load of bollocks they were in that regard.



(It still kills me that animating a golem is not considered evil when it literally involves binding an unwilling (just not formely humanoid) spirit into a body, exactly the same way as necromancy works. Or not even that, if unsing animated undead which are essentially necromantic-energy powered robots...)

[Rater202]

The problem is that they never actually go into depth about the elemental spirit except that they're from the Earth Plane. We don't know if they're they're just an animating presence or if they have a will of their own that's being subverted.

It's especially jarring in the case of Flesh Golems and their variations becuase 1: They're made of corpses and thus have all of the same ethical issues as undead and 2: The Animate dead spell is used in their creation.

If hacking two corpses apart and stitching the pieces together before using NEcromacy to bring them to life using a possibly sapiant/unwilling spirit as a mindless slave is kosher than so should just reanimating the bodies using just raw negative energy and necromancy. It'd be cheaper, too.

[NontheistCleric]

The Harry Potter series is the second-highest grossing film franchise of all time. 💁

Although Voldemort is not exactly a lich—his Horcruxes have his soul (or at least parts of it) in them all the time and he exists in what appears to be a living body when taking physical form, among other things.


Well actually, according to Libris Mortis, undead are literally incapable of having "good" emotions, soooo...

Even if that was true of all undead, and I don't think Libris Mortis makes that claim, "good" is entirely subjective. It doesn't even have a strong relation to good in the moral sense, or Good as it exists in D&D. While certain undead may not have the emotions some mortals label as "good", there's no reason they couldn't consider some of the emotions they do feel (and their undead state may allow them, conversely, to feel things mortals could not) to be positive and others negative, in their own subjective worldviews.

[sorcererlover]

People hate Complete Psionics for 3 reasons.
1. They hate the nerfs. The astral construct one is especially bitter considering the PrC in Complete Psionic that alleviated the nerf is absolutely atrocious.
2. They hate Linked Power.
3. They hate Synchronicity.

Complete Psionics actually provides a lot of new options for psionic characters. Especially ardent dip which is the same as a cleric dip for domain powers. But the above 3 things are the only things Complete Psionic is known for and they draw a hell of a lot of hate.

[Segev]

People hate Complete Psionics for 3 reasons.
1. They hate the nerfs. The astral construct one is especially bitter considering the PrC in Complete Psionic that alleviated the nerf is absolutely atrocious.
2. They hate Linked Power.
3. They hate Synchronicity.

Complete Psionics actually provides a lot of new options for psionic characters. Especially ardent dip which is the same as a cleric dip for domain powers. But the above 3 things are the only things Complete Psionic is known for and they draw a hell of a lot of hate.

A lot of people who will say good things about Ardent and Ardent dips still think C.Psi is bad because the bad outweighs the good. Even the good things, though, are more on the "weird" side of RAW interactions than not, which leads to feeling like you're entering TO territory even when you're not doing anything particularly overpowered, and for all that we enjoy theorycrafting and powergaming builds, it still feels somewhat "wrong" to consider bringing such TO-style stuff into real games. So even if it's not broken, it can feel like you're already asking a lot to be allowed to "get away" with your TO choices, and that can diminish the feeling that you're playing "right."

Not really saying it should be that way, just...articulating a vague sense of unease that even the good stuff from C.Psi can induce.

[NigelWalmsley]

Well actually, according to Libris Mortis, undead are literally incapable of having "good" emotions, soooo...

Listening to the designers rantings about Undead and Evil in Libris Mortis or The Book of Vile Darkness generally just makes your game stupid, so I would typically recommend ignoring them. It's not like they're even actual mechanics anyway. The game is better if Necromancy is treated the way it is in the PHB -- dangerous, and potentially suspect, but not inherently irredeemable.

[FaerieGodfather]

Listening to the designers rantings about Undead and Evil in Libris Mortis or The Book of Vile Darkness generally just makes your game stupid, so I would typically recommend ignoring them. It's not like they're even actual mechanics anyway. The game is better if Necromancy is treated the way it is in the PHB -- dangerous, and potentially suspect, but not inherently irredeemable.

Except if we're ignoring all of the reasons that the undead are monsters and not people, Necromancy isn't really dangerous and there's no reason to consider it suspect. I can easily understand why someone would want to change these assumptions in their own game, their own setting, but for the life of me I don't understand this bizarre fixation with testing how broken some of D&D's assumptions are while deliberately ignoring the assumptions that keep them in check.

[NigelWalmsley]

Except if we're ignoring all of the reasons that the undead are monsters and not people, Necromancy isn't really dangerous and there's no reason to consider it suspect.

Is fire dangerous? I would certainly say that it is. And we don't have to believe that fire is a moral monstrosity that taints your soul to say that, we can just observe that it's very easy to cause massive damage or loss of life by being careless with it. That's the take on necromancy suggested by the core rules, and it is better for the game than the rantings we got later on.

[Aotrs Commander]

Except if we're ignoring all of the reasons that the undead are monsters and not people, Necromancy isn't really dangerous and there's no reason to consider it suspect. I can easily understand why someone would want to change these assumptions in their own game, their own setting, but for the life of me I don't understand this bizarre fixation with testing how broken some of D&D's assumptions are while deliberately ignoring the assumptions that keep them in check.

Except they aren't even consistent in their own rules from book to book, even in their OWN books. There is at least two ways of having at least a neutral animation-raising specialist (and Pale Master was even in Libris Mortis).

So I think you absolutely do want to ignore a lot of the nonmechanical guff in the splatbooks as its not unifed or consistent. Along with the "good is pretty, evil is ugly" thing trhat BoED and BoVD spouted, their inability to properly define Lawful and Chaotic, the muddy stance on Undead which clearly varied from person to person depending on whether they wanted to consider Undead a large ball of XP or not -

- one notes at this point the general tendancy for previously dedicated Evil races (orcs/goblins/drow etc etc) which were basically always The Bad Guys to be "promoted" to "well, these can be good now, so they can be PCs et al" in popular culture; even Pathfinder, after the first appearance of their goblins being absolutely ireedemably Evil to the point of having an encounter specifically to show how bad they were, have apparently moved them to a full PC race in PF 2, so Undead are not in a different boat -

- the "advice" on builds in Complete Arcane, I think it was... There is a great deal in those splatbooks which are a complete load of old cobbler's, and should be treated as much.

(And not a fair portion of the mechanics, actually, looking at you complete warrior samurai, for example...)

[Nifft]

Except if we're ignoring all of the reasons that the undead are monsters and not people, Necromancy isn't really dangerous and there's no reason to consider it suspect. *Necropolitan PC shuffles away quietly*

But even ignoring these alleged "monsters", there's the whole soul manipulation & trapping thing, Bestow Curse and friends, permanent Blindness / Deafness, all the [Fear] effects, and since we're in the middle of a global pandemic let's not forget about how Necromancy creates contagious diseases.

Even if the only thing you fear is [Fear] itself, Necromancy delivers.

===== ===== =====

Anyway, back on the thread's topic...

One of the few things in CPsi which I liked was the new Augmentation section for Psi Dimension Door. It gave broader utility to a power which I already liked, gave something unique to Psions (both a premium version and a *discount* version when you buy the regular one), and that spawned a bunch of homebrew powers Augmentation *discounts* ... which may eventually be complete enough to post.

That one power had a novel and worthwhile mechanical innovation.

(Still not happy with the book, but I wanted to say something nice.)

[FaerieGodfather]

Except they aren't even consistent in their own rules from book to book, even in their OWN books. There is at least two ways of having at least a neutral animation-raising specialist (and Pale Master was even in Libris Mortis).

And here I was using the statements that the undead and creating the undead were unequivocally Evil as among the most consistent (internally and externally) statements available on the topic. Though if you're going to argue that the entire alignment system is garbage and shouldn't be used for mechanical limitations and penalties for characters... I'm afraid I'm not going to put up much of a fight.

[Psyren]

Except if we're ignoring all of the reasons that the undead are monsters and not people, Necromancy isn't really dangerous and there's no reason to consider it suspect. I can easily understand why someone would want to change these assumptions in their own game, their own setting, but for the life of me I don't understand this bizarre fixation with testing how broken some of D&D's assumptions are while deliberately ignoring the assumptions that keep them in check.

Agreed - and more to the point, f undead are truly this endless and benign energy source just waiting to be tapped, why has nobody in the world throughout all the ages of the campaign setting's history thought of this obvious idea until the special snowflake PC necromancer comes along? Why is there scarcity at all by the time the campaign starts?

I'm not against discussing the most efficient ways to use undead to generate power as a thought experiment for one's own setting or version of a setting, but for me, the default D&D settings containing a rule that says "making a bunch of undead is pretty immoral even if you try to use them to do something beneficial" makes sense. You could even have a campaign set around disabling that cosmic rule so that necromancy is no longer an evil act, I could see that being interesting. But the rule being part of the printed settings in the first place is not a bad thing.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Except if we're ignoring all of the reasons that the undead are monsters and not people, Necromancy isn't really dangerous and there's no reason to consider it suspect. I can easily understand why someone would want to change these assumptions in their own game, their own setting, but for the life of me I don't understand this bizarre fixation with testing how broken some of D&D's assumptions are while deliberately ignoring the assumptions that keep them in check.


And here I was using the statements that the undead and creating the undead were unequivocally Evil as among the most consistent (internally and externally) statements available on the topic.


I'm not against discussing the most efficient ways to use undead to generate power as a thought experiment for one's own setting or version of a setting, but for me, the default D&D settings containing a rule that says "making a bunch of undead is pretty immoral even if you try to use them to do something beneficial" makes sense. You could even have a campaign set around disabling that cosmic rule so that necromancy is no longer an evil act, I could see that being interesting. But the rule being part of the printed settings in the first place is not a bad thing.

The idea that undead creation (and Necromancy in general) leans toward (or is intrinsically) evil is a change made in 3e, and before that the actual assumptions and rules of the game and the default setting was that it was morally neutral. Skeletons and zombies were True Neutral in AD&D, but were made Always Neutral Evil in 3e despite (A) all other mindless critters being Neutral and (B) negative energy explicitly not being intrinsically evil. Cure spells were Necromancy in AD&D, but were made Conjuration (Healing) in 3e despite (A) Necromancy explicitly covering "the power of death, unlife, and the life force" and (B) Good clerics not being barred from casting Necromancy spells in general. Heck, it wasn't even the case that positive energy = good and negative energy = evil in general and the 3e devs were just updating alignment stuff to reflect that, since AD&D mummies were actually powered by positive energy despite their "hatred of life" and their "weird un-life state."

Most notably, liches, the poster boys and girls for the most badass necromancers around, went from being basically transhumanist (trans-demihuman-ist?) arcanists who might lean slightly toward evil but had no need to commit evil on the way to lichdom and were mostly concerned with seeking immortality for its own sake...


Alignment: Neutral (evil)

A lich exists because of its own desires and the use of powerful and arcane magic. The lich passes from a state of humanity to a non-human, nonliving existence through force of will. It retains this status by certain conjurations, enchantments, and a phylactery. A lich is most often encountered within its hidden chambers, this lair typically being in some wilderness area or vast underground labyrinth, and in any case both solidly constructed of stone and very dark.

In order to become a lich, the wizard must prepare its phylactery by the use of the enchant an item, magic jar, permanency and reincarnation spells. The phylactery, which can be almost any manner of object, must be of the finest craftsmanship and materials with a value of not less than 1,500 gold pieces per level of the wizard. Once this object is created, the would-be lich must craft a potion of extreme toxicity, which is then enchanted with the following spells: wraithform, permanency, cone of cold, feign death, and animate dead. When next the moon is full, the potion is imbibed. Rather than death, the potion causes the wizard to undergo a transformation into its new state. A system shock survival throw is required, with failure indicating an error in the creation of the potion which kills the wizard and renders him forever dead.

...to always-evil megalomaniacs who become undead mostly as a means to carry out nefarious plots and uncover That Which Man Was Not Meant To Know:


Alignment: Any evil

A lich is an undead spellcaster, usually a wizard or sorcerer but sometimes a cleric or other spellcaster, who has used its magical powers to unnaturally extend its life.

As a rule, these creatures are scheming and, some say, insane. They hunger for ever greater power, long-forgotten knowledge, and the most terrible of arcane secrets. Because the shadow of death does not hang over them, they often conceive plans taking years, decades, or even centuries to come to fruition.

[...]

The process of becoming a lich is unspeakably evil and can be undertaken only by a willing character.

Essentially, AD&D liches brew themselves a big ol' potion of lichification, no more evil than a potion of polymorph any object, while 3e liches have to do something undefined but "unspeakably" evil to achieve lichhood. Pretty significant difference there, and the lack of moral judgment on 2e liches is particularly notable considering that 2e was published during the "Satanic Panic" era where the devs sanitized a lot of material, renamed the fiends from demons/daemons/devils to tanar'ri/yugoloths/baatezu, and so forth.

So I'd say that sticking with the undead-as-morally-neutral option is more faithful to the original setting material, and trying to come up with an extra flavor justification for their innate evilness (in general, as opposed to in specific settings where Necromancy might be viewed as inherently evil but then so might e.g. Conjuration because only demons are available to summon) is just adding epicycles onto the half-assed extra flavor justification added by some (but not all or even most) of the 3e designers.


Agreed - and more to the point, f undead are truly this endless and benign energy source just waiting to be tapped, why has nobody in the world throughout all the ages of the campaign setting's history thought of this obvious idea until the special snowflake PC necromancer comes along? Why is there scarcity at all by the time the campaign starts?

There are a bunch of possible reasons beyond "undead are inherently evil and mass animation of undead will cause Bad Things in the campaign world" and/or "the populace thinks necromancy is icky and spooky and won't tolerate it." For just a few examples:

1) The unemployment problem. A skeleton farmer never eats, sleeps, or stops working, so a single one can do the daily work of at least three living peasants without requiring any of the resources or living space. If Baron Joe the Necromancer fires all of his peasants and replaces them with skeletons, he suddenly has a bunch of penniless, starving, angry people looking to overthrow him...which he could then kill and turn into more skeletons, of course, but then he has no subjects and thus no source of more bodies, subjects capable of gaining levels, intelligent advisors, etc. Baron Joe could give his peasants other things to do and other sources of income to take things in a post-scarcity direction, but there's no guarantee he would, for many and varied reasons that start to verge on real-world politics to go into.

So it's not out of the question that the PCs are simply the first ones to think of making a necrotech utopia and then actually want to follow through with it instead of continuing to oppress the peasants.

2a) The cleric problem. Clerics of 2nd level or higher are exceptionally common by the 3e demographics rules, there being the possibility of at least one such cleric in every single community of Thorp size or larger and the guarantee of more than one such cleric in every community of Large Town size or larger. If you have a workforce of 1-HD skeletons, any one of those clerics could destroy (if serving a Good or Neutral god) or co-opt (if serving a Neutral or Evil god) a bunch of those skeletal workers on a whim.

And even if you get all of those clerics on board so they want to leave your workforce alone, you're then dependent on those clerics to direct all those skeletons. If there's a floor or orc invasion or dragon attack or whatever, endangered peasants can run screaming for the local fortress, but endangered skeletons have to be manually corralled by your own clerics; missed skeletons can easily be destroyed, your clerics can easily be put in danger and killed, and there goes a big chunk of your workforce.

2b) The god problem. Gods like worshipers, and if your peasants are no longer farming (and so praying to Obad-Hai or Chauntea), fishing (and so praying to Procan or Umberlee), and so on, they're no longer granting as much power to the gods. Not a big deal if the only gods your communities care about are gods that wouldn't be affected, but that's much easier to do as a part of PCs setting up a fresh settlement than a power bloc changing an existing settlement with entrenched religions. And the best way to get a clerical crusade coming for your skeletons is to tick off a bunch of gods in the local region until they want to dethrone you at swordpoint and/or flame strike-point.

So it's not out of the question that the PCs are simply the first ones to want to go to the trouble of getting clerics on board, placating local religions, fortifying labor areas, distributing command of undead, and so forth, where other governments didn't want to go to the logistical effort of doing so or wasn't willing to tick off certain faiths or power groups to make it happen.

3) The spellcaster potential problem. To animate skeleton workers, you need people capable of casting animate dead. A psionics-heavy kingdom, or a duchy heavy on sorcerers and favored souls who just happen not to develop necromantic spells known, or an oppressive empire where literacy is forbidden so wizardry isn't an option, or an enclave where there are few magic-users capable of 3rd-level magic and the ones who can do it can't or won't animate undead, is going to have a really hard time bootstrapping a skeletal workforce. (Sure, there are easier and lower-level ways of getting undead in general, like fell drain magic missile, but a wightpocalypse isn't exactly gonna achieve your goals.)

So it's not out of the question that the PCs and their cohorts and followers are simply the first ones to happen to have a critical mass of animate dead-capable casters in one place to get the process started, and other polities would have done the same if they had the option.


And so on and so forth. There are a bunch more possible reasons, and the same or similar reasons apply to alternate labor forces like golems, astral constructs, elementals, demons, or heck, even cheery anarcho-communist lantern archons.

[hamishspence]

The idea that undead creation (and Necromancy in general) leans toward (or is intrinsically) evil is a change made in 3e, and before that the actual assumptions and rules of the game and the default setting was that it was morally neutral. Skeletons and zombies were True Neutral in AD&D, but were made Always Neutral Evil in 3e despite (A) all other mindless critters being Neutral and (B) negative energy explicitly not being intrinsically evil. Cure spells were Necromancy in AD&D, but were made Conjuration (Healing) in 3e despite (A) Necromancy explicitly covering "the power of death, unlife, and the life force" and (B) Good clerics not being barred from casting Necromancy spells in general.

A few of these changes weren't made in 3.0 but in 3.5, to be fair.

Given that Monte Cook was really pushing the "creating undead is Always Evil" thing in the 3.0 book BOVD, I'd speculate that he was behind most of these changes.

He recommended in BOVD, changing the Deathwatch spell so that it gained the [Evil] subtype, and sure enough, in 3.5 it was changed, despite this not making much sense, and other early 3.5 writers not being informed of it (supported by Always Good 3.5 spellcasters like the Miniatures Handbook healer, and the BOED Slayer of Domiel, getting it).

[Aotrs Commander]

And here I was using the statements that the undead and creating the undead were unequivocally Evil as among the most consistent (internally and externally) statements available on the topic. Though if you're going to argue that the entire alignment system is garbage and shouldn't be used for mechanical limitations and penalties for characters... I'm afraid I'm not going to put up much of a fight.

Yep. The existance of the Pale Master (which came in from 3.0 even, mostly unchanged - I had one) that just couldn't be Good aligned, and ditto for the Dread Necromancer (and the necropolitan) kind of undermined their whole thing, really.



I do, for the record, think that the basic concept of trying to pidgeon-hole the enture complex breadth of varity of all sapient/sentient beings into nine delineated catgories is adoomed to failure. I still use alignment in my games (and I still broadly have the concept of evil/neutral/good even in games without alignment), but mostly because it's so deeply buried into the rules and some of the mechanical implentation is interesting and useful. But I deal with it with a loose hand (alignment restrictions are officially gone with sole exception of the paladin and antipaladin) and it's almost more like a soft subtype descriptor for What Spells Affect You.


Skeletons and zombies were True Neutral in AD&D, but were made Always Neutral Evil in 3e despite (A) all other mindless critters being Neutral and (B) negative energy explicitly not being intrinsically evil.

I suspect even that part of that was 3.0 making the in-hindsight very misguided attempt to go all-in on alignment and make it so mechanically importatnt; if animated Undead didn't have the evil alignment, then, for example, holy weapons wouldn't work on them (well, not as they stood as "do damage to evil" and so forth. And the rest of it is probably whoever on the writing team just decided they wanted necromancy to be on the unequivocably evil side.

(I have myself offically noted that animated Undead are classed as NE solely because they are subject to effects which affect Evil creatures, but are themselves morally neutral as mindless creatures.)

...

You know, it's been so long, I'd forgotten that cure spells were conjuration (and inflict were necromancy) and the more I think about it, the more conjuration REALLY doesn't need that, it's got enough stuff on it and the less sense it makes.

I ouight to consider whether it's worth making MORE for myself (at the poiint I'm so nearly DONE!) and convert all the Conjuration (Healing) spells to something else. (I mean, you know they only used conjuration because they were scribing "well, it's Making new flesh, innit," but I'm not sure that's really sensible, considering the SHARP limitations on what you can create with conjuration. Hell, one feels that's an arguement to be made on whether both curs and inflict shoudl be EVOCATION, since all they are doing is pulling a type of energy and shoving it into people. The healing is entirely a property of the energy itself, not the spell, after all. (Though that would require also adjusting every spell that inflicts negative energy levels, so... No.)

...

Well, I was considering renaming negative energy to "necrotic" and positive energy to... something I hadn't got a good name for, since Radiant has been used already in the literal sense of "electromagnetic radation" e.g. light. Might as well do that at the same time, right...?

(Hmm... topic for a new thread one thinks.)



Edit: I did (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?611595-Should-Cure-Spells-really-be-Conjuration&p=24488376), if anyone wants to come jump in on this debate.

[Segev]

Guys, much as I love a discussion on the undead and the morality of making them, this is a thread on Complete Psionic. Isn't there already a thread on undead as limitless energy we could move this other conversation to?

[Psyren]

Guys, much as I love a discussion on the undead and the morality of making them, this is a thread on Complete Psionic. Isn't there already a thread on undead as limitless energy we could move this other conversation to?

Good point! I actually confused these two threads for a second.