Subj : Re: 3rd Edition, part 1 To : All From : yl112@cornell.edu Date : Thu Sep 07 2000 02:23 pm From: yl112@cornell.edu Subject: Re: 3rd Edition, part 1 On Thu, 7 Sep 2000, Jason Tamez wrote: > At 04:16 PM 9/7/00 -0500, Michelle wrote: > > > If a barbarian becomes lawful, he loses the ability to Rage and cannot gain > > > levels. > > > >This is dumb. I can maybe see loosing the ability to Rage, but > >Barbarian cultures have their own "laws" in the form of traditions and > >cultural taboos, and a lawful mind set should be perfectly possible to a > >barbarian character. > > In D&D terms, "lawful" implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to > authority, reliability, and sometimes close-mindedness, judgmentalness, > rigid adherence to tradition, and lack of adaptability. The barbarian's > reckless berserker rage is pretty much at odds with this, in my opinion. I'd tend to agree with Michelle's viewpoint. I can't remember which Germanic tribe it was, but there *was* one with a legal code that covered crimes, fines and penalties. Injuring a woman and causing her to lose a child was Very Bad and very expensive. Injuring a woman past childbearing age was looked upon much more leniently. My favourite is the provision for the fine you pay another man if you split his skull open such that the brains are showing, but he survives. :-p Also, a "barbaric" culture wouldn't be the first one to consider it perfectly honorable to slaughter/"rage"/butcher/berserker against "the enemy," I'm sure. > I just paged through the alignment section, and it's toned down somewhat. > They still discourage you from playing "evil" but they make it clear that > alignment's not a straightjacket. They give examples like a lawful good > character with a greedy streak that sometimes makes him take or hoard > things even when it's not the lawful good thing to do. Alignment is mostly > your general tendency as a person, and not an absolute thing. I find it a lot more fun to have characters with possible codes, or lack thereof, of ethics, but this is an old quibble and I'm going to shut up about it. I do wish they'd gotten rid of it. YHL -- |Fidonet: yl112@cornell.edu |Internet: scott@conchbbs.com | | Standard disclaimer: The views of this user are strictly his own. --- # Origin: (1:106/357.99) * Origin: ConchGate (1:106/357.0) .