It is, however, a damn sight more entertaining than reading yet another clickbait link about drag queens reading Everybody Poops to kindergarteners.
Funny Events of the "Woke" world
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
- Start date
Yeah, that's probably because it's on the ground already.
Why not, we're taking you seriously when you're whining about some fan kit as a proxy for whining about some dungeons having ramps now. Fuck, I'm sorry I even brought it up, I'd thought we were mature enough to not fly off that handle at some rando's fucking homebrew. The fact that some forums had to shut down to get a handle of flame wars should've been my first clue on how this was gonna go, that's my bad
I'll say as the final point though, ramps are not inclusivity in gaming, nobody else here has actually made the inclusivity argument to D&D.
Talk with your players and develop the story with their help for both of you as well as the other people at the table to have a satisfying story.
Talk with your players and develop the story with their help for both of you as well as the other people at the table to have a satisfying story.
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Even despite the definition of high magic being a little woolly, FR clearly does not meet the definition by the internal logic of D&D, according to the very sourcebooks. You can imagine it as "high magic" by your personal standards, but your personal opinion is a moot point.
That seems to suggest FR was high magic, like back in the historical days of Netheril a thousand or few years before the player campaigns are set, and players get magic items largely by exploring the ruins of those past civilisations.
It's not the source material, it's a quote that the author describes as being from 3e.
I mean, I posted actual 3e sourcebook material in black and white outright saying magic is everywhere and affects everyone down to commoners constantly with a huge tirade about how mages run everything, but that's apparently not enough. I don't know what to say. It's not my standard that it's high magic, the book itself said it was... until 5e.
Well, rich people and capitalism run everything in the real world, and not everyone has lots of money. To me, that excerpt makes it sound like the magic using types are the 1%.
Well would you then say we live in a low or mid capitalism world?
That would be symptomatic of the fact that it's a low to the ground mount rather than a flying mount.
Ok, first of all, I didn't say that the spell was 9th level. I said that it was a 9th Level Overland Flight. I can see how that was poor phrasing on my part though and how it led you to that conclusion, and I do apologize for that. Overland Flight is a spell that scales duration based off of Caster Level, one hour per level. So as a 5th level spell, it has up to a 5 hour duration when you first gain access to it. By level 9, it has a duration of 9 hours, the same as the Broom of Flying. That was my intention.
As to why I used that as reference, that would be because Overland Flight's duration and scaling made it a much simpler point of comparison than Fly, considering that Fly only has a 10 minute duration and does not scale duration. If anything, using Overland Flight as reference is more generous as it actually does provide an avenue to realistically replicate the Broom's ability (duration and all), whereas replicating it with Fly would require casting Fly 54 times in a single day because each cast only lasts for 10 of the broom's 540 minutes of fly-time.
Having now explained that, would you perhaps like to walk back your assumption that I must have been blinded by anger and therefore my arguments must have been comprised of sloppy mistakes? I don't think I'm out of line for asking that you at least assume good faith.
Bluntly, that it's "on the DM to account for it" is itself an admission that it is indeed a game changer. That's kinda a matter of definition. And it speaks to feature creep that you simply assume that such countermeasures are a given.
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Or that it grants resistance to trip, bull rush, and other effects which knock the user prone or off of it.
Well, no, that's just how spells scaled in 3rd edition and in Pathfinder (as it's based off the 3.0 d20 system): by caster level. As a 5th level spell, the earliest a full caster could get it is 9th level regardless. This particular spell is no different mechanically than any other with scaling mechanics. 5e spell scaling works off the level of spell slot used to cast the spell.
Overland Flight is frankly a dogshit-tier spell: Teleport is also 5th level, completely obviating the need for conventional overland travel in the first place. Plane Shift is a 5th level spell for clerics and summoners, allowing for the Rope Trick trick which is the equivalent to Teleport Without Error/Greater Teleport. Even if it were published in a 5e book, it would still be useless: Teleportation Circle was moved to 5th level, albeit in a slightly nerfed form from earlier editions.
Either way, Phantom Steed is still the gold standard for overland travel spells until a caster gets Teleportation Circle. Being able to ritual cast it destroys any balancing factor.
Again, not really. It's in the same category as AC and save stacking, and the aforementioned survival and environmental hazard issues: the DM must accept this is simply part of the game, and a commonplace part of the game to boot. This is no different than if the DM presented an encounter with a flying monster: in which case, it's on the players to have prepared for the eventuality by having ranged weapons, even if as backup, and ranged spells prepared (as they likely would anyways).
PC's are incredibly likely to have encountered at least one flying monster before ever having gained the ability to fly themselves (unless one or more PC's chose a race with innate flight).
And yes, such countermeasures very much are a given. A hold monster -- or hell, sleep -- spell will fuck a flying PC's world just as badly as it will a flying monster's, thanks to the accompanying fall damage and vulnerability that comes with crowd control spells against flying targets. What a flying creature/character often doesn't have is cover or concealment, thereby making it a prime target for the longbow or light/heavy crossbow that comes standard with almost every martial character's starting kit, and the ranged attacks that come with most humanoid monsters' stat blocks.
Or to put it another way, everybody gangsta until the NPC rogue with sharpshooter whips out their shortbow and goes to town with steady aim. That's not an explicit countermeasure against flying PC's, that's an NPC with the second most-common class behind fighter, using the staple feat for ranged weapon builds, wielding the most common ranged weapon in the game and part of the rogue's starting kit, using a class feature gained at 3rd level to attack what is almost certainly the easiest target on the board due to lack of cover or concealment. It's a fuck-simple build for fuck-simple play, and it's so common because it's universally applicable and because it works.
I just don't think that's necessarily true. Because I think it all ultimately comes back to the golden rule. It's your game. You can do whatever you want in your game.
Maybe someone is running a game with a very light tone where the story isn't necessarily meant to be entirely coherent. Maybe there's some meta dimension to the whole thing and it's a plot point that the story being told through the game isn't entirely trustworthy. Also, most people never find a group to run massive years-long campaigns with. Maybe you just want to play a two-shot game based around a single location, so whatever contrivances were needed to make it accessible aren't really going to register.
Also, who says every dungeon needs to be wheelchair accessible. Maybe you're just bored of having the wheelchair bound PC needing to be helped down stairs and want to put them in an environment where they can excel for once.
Because I don't think the problem here has anything to do with having to come up with justifications to put a wheelchair or ramps in a fantasy game. The problem is that people hate being reminded that disabled people exist. It's like every time a forthcoming game puts out a release about something incredibly innocuous like adjusting UI colours to make it easy for red/green colourblind people, and suddenly the comments will inevitably be full of people insisting that there needs to be a separate colourblindness mode so they never have to look at the colour blue and be reminded that it is this way because some people can't distinguish green from red. I guaruntee you, those people never thought about UI colour schemes before that moment, but are very, very offended at the thought that one might be designed around people who are not them.
People just hate being reminded of disability for some reason. It evokes a particular kind of fragility in people.
And that's fine. If you want to play games where being disabled absolutely sucks, if you feel personally insulted by the idea of a fantasy world where disability isn't as punitive as it is in real life, then you can do that. It's your game. But it's also everyone else's game too.
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"Most Faerunians never learn to speak a spell, but magic touches their lives in ways they do not always see." Mmm.
From DM Guide 3e, page 164, explicit definition of high magic (low res but the best I could get):
Note: "Spells are used to light homes, keep people warm, and communicate. The function they serve is as commonplace as modern-day technology is in the real world"
Forgotten Realms is not a setting where most characters have a level or two of a spellcaster class, and it is a place where magic is plainly a resource sufficiently rare and expensive that the majority of the population do not use it or have ready access to it. Magic items are almost certainly not found in shops "like any other commodity", but only in very scarce and specialised outlets.
Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting 3e (p94):
In which it clearly states that magic is not technology, and the level of access most people have of magic is "seen magic gimmicks at some point in their lives" and uncommon even for the moderately better off upper middle classes to own a modest magical iteam.
Therefore, even in 3.0, D&D does not think FR is "high magic".
I played plenty of D&D, but I never actually liked the system very much. The big advantage, of course, is that it has comprehensive support (i.e. campaigns) especially for beginners. I'm not fond of things which have this massive profusion of special abilities, spells, etc. (some of which are frankly silly), or excessively fiddly with dice rolling and all that stuff. There's got a basic combat system, use it: you don't then need eight class-specific special melee attacks to bolt on because someone thought "Hit it with my sword" somehow isn't sufficient.
It doesn't say anything like that, but it DOES say questionable things about the person who designed the dungeon - you're equating "ramps" with "wheelchair accessible."
If I'm a king/lord/whatever who's building a dungeon, under normal circumstances, the conditions of my prisoners would be of little concern. If there's a prisoner who's paraplegic, chances are the guards are just going to drag them into the prison rather than be all nice like.
None of this is to rule out the hypothetical king/lord being like Vertinari from Discworld, whose approach to dungeons is (paraphrased) "never build a dungeon if you wouldn't want to spend the night in it yourself," but that usually requires an explanation, not to mention that Discworld is sattire, and most fantasy (heck, most fiction) isn't. A king COULD care about the welfare of his prisoners, a lord COULD design a wheelchair accessible dungeon for his chief interrogator, the realm COULD have prisoner welfare laws, but the problem with the woke approach is that it's taking a starting point (real-world inclusivity) and demanding that the setting cater to that point, regardless as to how it gets there.
For instance, let's switch this to sci-fi. If there's a setting where paraplegia simply doesn't exist due to advances in medical technology, it certainly doesn't rule out a wheelchair-bound character (see Captain Pike in Star Trek for a rough example), but it DOES necessitate in-universe reasoning behind it. A good writer will ensure versimilitude isn't broken, a woke writer won't.
Okay, but that really depends on what kind of setting it is, isn't it?
If I wanted to write a story about a dwarf with a cybernetic arm (which is a weird starting point, but okay), I'd have to narrow down settings which have dwarfs in them, then narrow it further down to settings where cybernetic-armed dwarfs are feasible. I don't have time to check my homepage for an IP list, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that cybernetic-armed dwarfs aren't that common in fiction. For instance, it would be far easier to get away with a cybernetic dwarf in, say, Warhammer 40,000 (via squats/Leagues of Votann, who aren't really dwarfs, I know) as opposed to Lord of the Rings.
Well again, read what I said.
If your hypothetical king/lord/whatever designs a dungeon specifically allowing for wheelchairs, I can infer a number of possibilities:
1: The ruler in question cares a great deal about the welfare of their prisoners.
2: Regardless of what the ruler may think, the realm has strong prisoner welfare laws
3: The dungeon has been specifically designed for a specific individual that's involved in the running of the dungeon who's paraplegic (maybe an interogator, maybe the lord themself is paraplegic)
4: The author didn't think things through, because in the real-world, prisoner welfare is a relatively modern development
Options 1-3 are perfectly fine, and make for interesting story/worldbuilding opportunities, option 4 less so. If this dungeon is "inclusive," then any reasonable person is going to wonder why, because in both fiction and reality, dungeons aren't usually inclusive, but are downright unpleasant. It becomes even more of a stretch when the setting is unpleasant by design (Diabo, Warhammer, etc.) Pleasant dungeons aren't impossible (heck, one of the things I'm writing now has such a thing), but there usually needs to be justification behind it, or at the very least, it should be acknowledged (which I made sure to do).
It's amazing how debates end up circling back to the start: this has already been covered.
This is not, apparently, a wheelchair accessible dungeon by in-game explanation. It is a dungeon that happens to be wheelchair accessible should any visitors be in a wheelchair, but with some other reason. There are enough plausible reasons for why this might be the case that it's not really worth questioning... except of course for those driven by petty rage about "woke" or god knows what other malfunction.
And welcome to the fantabulous world of RPGs and 'class flavour', its really fucking aggravating the instant it moves beyond fluff.
From all this I take it it's a good thing I never got into D&D. Unless we mean the cartoon show. Do we?
Pretty apt for this discussion.
(Holy shit, is that a tit?!)
Pretty apt for this discussion.
(Holy shit, is that a tit?!)
Actually, yes. You get up to some weird shit when you grew up in the rural Midwest before the days of the internet. Boffer and Nerf fighting on the back of ATV's, dirt bikes, and tractors was the tip of the fuckin' iceberg on that one.
It's surprisingly easy to knock someone off one, especially if they aren't prepared for it.