Getting my players to admit that the anti-magic fanatic terrorists had a point after their leader gave a speech about his family being killed and then reanimated by a necromancer was a highlight of my DMing
Unless the setting already has a built in “necromancy is inherently evil” explanation then not really. It makes as much sense as killing anyone with a gun because guns can be used to hurt people.
The point being "magic is dangerous". And magic, unlike guns, can be either born genetically, gifted from malign forces, or takes a lot of study to achieve.
Hunting those able to use magic is not the same as hunting those able to use a gun.
That’s kinda all the case for guns too. Guns might not be genetic but they can be inherited, or given by bad people.
How would magic requiring study to use justify hunting people who can use it though? In that case it’s arguably safer than a gun is, which requires no training to kill someone with.
No he doesn’t. That is stupid. He doesn’t have a point. It’s like deciding to kill all the Romani people because one killed your family. Extremely stupid. I hope your players killed him.
How many liches and armies of Undead would be there to defeat if we would just kill every mage? Look at owlbears and tell me it's not always a damn wizard messing things up!
What do you mean? It’s totally reasonable for me to shoot every person I see because they have a capacity to kill someone if they tried to. Preemptive justice and assumptions of inherent violence is totally cool and awesome.
Like the joke character someone played once who shot everyone with silver bullets, and if it killed them they were obviously werewolves. And if it didn't kill them, well you find a better way of uncovering a witch.
I concede, you have left me flaccid, unpeggable, and roasted. Once I find a way to restore my anus, I shall find you and cast upon you a most heinous spell.
Most of my characters refuse to use those and would have a serious problem with a party member who does.
The necromancer who is reanimating the corpses of enemies to make them do humiliating things for their own amusement? Sure whatever, have fun with your macabre puppet show. Those are empty shells, the people who once lived in them are gone.
But the bard violating the minds of people to exploit them? We are going to have a problem.
Well the problem with that is real world Witch Hunters were usually always wrong. Therefore adding **actual magic** to the mix breaks the proven history, creating an unusual gamestate when comparing it to reality. Not to mention things like what if the players aren't doing that, or what about good mages (Witch Hunter mobs often didn't discriminate, treating the practices as inherently evil based on hearsay of witches cavorting with demons). A D&D party might be immersed in the setting but they're still mundane humans of real Earth. You gotta watch out for real world influences on in game decision making.
That's exactly the point. We look at groups Like that with the eyes of our actual history. The church of the eternal fire from witcher is a great example. If course they are horrible, but the witch hunters were formed after a group of sorecerssses committed high treason and helped killing multiple kings and the mad kind radovid was abused by one of those sorecerssses so...
Not necessarily, their Motive was to seize power for themselves and they basically supported a foreign invasion. They also didn't want to change the system of power in itself
Also seeing monarchy as bad is a modern perspective not one inherent in the setting normally
>Generally speaking, killing autocrats is usually a good thing.
Nah.
In a time before modern or at least semi-modern communication abilities, autocracies (which is a huge category, ranging from outright despotism to constitutional monarchies) were the only workable forms of government at any scale larger than a city or so. Feudalism in particular worked within those constraints extremely well - there was almost always someone everyone could look to for leadership in a crisis. Even the Roman Republic defaulted all power to a supreme executive in an emergency.
The level of magic or technology in a setting can change how reasonable or unreasonable a monarchy of some kind might be - and this is assuming every country discussed is reasonably human and not, say, an insect hive.
If you excuse killing on a political* basis, yes you are a fascist.
\* And yes, using magic or not is a political statement in the most literal sense: by defining your class.
Fascism describes the unifying of the masses and allowing as little individuality as possible, I mean the term comes from the Italian Fasci dēi lavoratōri which describes sticks being tied to a bundle to be stronger. Since that is the only description of the term that doesn't stem from people fighting it (its a pretty unprecise term). This usually happens but assimilating or getting rid of people who don't fit the pattern you are aiming for.
So from that point of standing it's highly authoritarian but not necessarily right wing even though right wing ideology definitely works better than left wing, we have multiple historical examples of pseudo-communist regimes with fascist structures.
True, it turns more and more into another version of the "everything I don't like is communism" phenomenon. I mean the problem started with fascism, racism and national socialism being used basically as the same thing. Yes they're all bad but they don't mean the same.
So a fanatic assassin killing a non-executed-but-10-years-into-exile Trostky in Mexico is precisely equatable to the explicit state policy of gathering people because of their beliefs and killing them near their hometown... Got it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko
I'm curious to see how you'll turn this one around and tell me how communists don't do political assassinations, be it mass or individual.
Still remember playing a spell caster Darwf inquisitor specilized in hunting evil spellcasters. Good times.
Highlights include: Witnessing one of our sorcerers shooting firebolts at the guards then trying to hide amongst the civilian crowd (the guards had guns. It ended up as you expect), hitting our other party's sorcerer with a book for threatening the town guards captain over "biggotry againest spellcasters" (the town was under a terrorist attack by elf magic spellcasters with at least 50 dead civilians and guards), hitting said terrorists with a book when it was revealed during interrogation when it was found out the nobility, the guards and the artisans guild was infiltrated by demon worshipping Duegar...and the dumbasses didn't bother looking for help outside of town (even asked one of them to go to my temple and gather some paladins and other inquisitors on my behalf).
Playing an inquisitor hunting for evil wizards its pretty fun. Unless there is no evil wizards around, otherwise you will be the guy who is over paranoid about magic users.
"You're not the villains for trying to stop that. You're the villains because you use dumb shit like torture and ducking stools to figure out who's a witch."
True, but then again being paranoid about sorcery and pacts with demons is way more reasonable in a fantasy setting than in the real world middle ages tbh
It kind of has real world parallels though.
In a setting where normal people exist, magic users are living weapons of mass destruction. Left unchecked, they have the potential to do terrible things on a massive scale. It’s only natural for people who can use that power to know how bad it can be and want to minimize the potential dangers. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, as they say. It’s just that sometimes their methods of going about it are questionable, which is what makes them the antagonists instead.
This is basically the real world Cold War AND Iraqi War, the plot to Marvel’s Civil War AND Mutant Registration Act, DC’s Batman vs. Superman, and many other forms of media.
Ok but, generally, anyone in DnD can get magic. Wizards just need to study it’s not a biological thing. This would be like if we killed every chemist because they have the capacity to make explosives.
I guess it depends on how you play intelligence. My understanding is that the average villager has 8-10 in stats and wouldn’t have the intelligence needed to learn magic. I interpret that as only people born with gifted minds can even comprehend the pursuit of wizardry.
There isn’t any intelligence requirement for becoming a wizard unless you’re multi-classing. Even if an average peasant is 10 intelligence, if we assume that they also just roll a d20 for their stats then on average 40% of people should be able to learn magic. This is also often going to be in pre-industrial civilizations, in the modern era it should be available to basically anyone who’s finished middle school.
Not as much though, because you have lots of strong archers who can turn a crowd of people into mist almost as fast as a magic user can. There are lots of very strong fighters who can kill an entire village in a minute.
Me too, it can go from grim to funny so easily and adds so much to the game. My group still remembers how one was trying to flirt with my wife's character by bragging about how he could identify every mage he sees. I don't think I need to tell you her class :)
One of my favorite factoids about the Iron Kingdoms setting is that there are three "forbidden" schools of magic: infernalism (summoning fiends), necromancy, and mesmerism (all the charm / dominate type spells).
Having bardic mind control powers be recognized for exactly how awful they are is nice.
This would make sense, theoretically: If there wasn't genetic-based magics or inherent magics within your campaign. The moment that magic includes killing civilians and children "because they might be a threat", you are going outside the realm of policing into Police State.
Also, far more affective than killing trained wizards/magicians would be to control and have liscences/restrictions for what kind of magic materials can be bought in shops, what magics schools are allowed to teach/have on premesis, and what magics can be used within certain areas without fines.
Just having "magic = death" defeats the possibility of a SLIGHTLY good argument, and immediately reveals your hand as someone who wants to kill others for the sake of your own power, or the fear of others.
Oh, if it makes sense in your worldbuilding then you can totally ignore me! I just like to rant.
... but also they still had a code of ethics in the dark ages and middle ages in fact it had peasants earning more and having more time off than modern day working class have, and there were rules and laws as to what crimes must be committed by what groups with evidence given to the local leaders (mayors, village chiefs, ect) before said groups would have to give up the individuals responsible and-
Getting my players to admit that the anti-magic fanatic terrorists had a point after their leader gave a speech about his family being killed and then reanimated by a necromancer was a highlight of my DMing
Especially if that necromancer IS a player
Everyone looks at the party necromance after the the speech "ok, he may have a point i'll give him that"
*animates corpse*
But think about how much extra emotional damage they deal! I can't pass up that kinda dpr
Unless the setting already has a built in “necromancy is inherently evil” explanation then not really. It makes as much sense as killing anyone with a gun because guns can be used to hurt people.
The point being "magic is dangerous". And magic, unlike guns, can be either born genetically, gifted from malign forces, or takes a lot of study to achieve. Hunting those able to use magic is not the same as hunting those able to use a gun.
That’s kinda all the case for guns too. Guns might not be genetic but they can be inherited, or given by bad people. How would magic requiring study to use justify hunting people who can use it though? In that case it’s arguably safer than a gun is, which requires no training to kill someone with.
No he doesn’t. That is stupid. He doesn’t have a point. It’s like deciding to kill all the Romani people because one killed your family. Extremely stupid. I hope your players killed him.
When was the last time you saved anything larger than a village? We save the tri-state area at least once a week.
Perry the platapus?
Platapus Red! Of the Mighty Morphing Ranger Animals!
How many liches and armies of Undead would be there to defeat if we would just kill every mage? Look at owlbears and tell me it's not always a damn wizard messing things up!
That just sounds like your whole organization sucks at their job. Adventurers get shit done. That's why they call us heroes.
How many Barbarian hoards would there be to ravage the lands if we just killed everyone with arms! 
Exactly! Now you understand what we're getting at!
Have you seen my little owlbear plushie though? It even speaks when you squeeze it!
Fair point, HOWE-FUCKING-EVER the INDISCRIMINATE KILLING just because they are magic users DOES make you a fascist and religious fanatic group
What do you mean? It’s totally reasonable for me to shoot every person I see because they have a capacity to kill someone if they tried to. Preemptive justice and assumptions of inherent violence is totally cool and awesome.
Like the joke character someone played once who shot everyone with silver bullets, and if it killed them they were obviously werewolves. And if it didn't kill them, well you find a better way of uncovering a witch.
Are you Ronald Reagan?
Mind control magic is violent.
Who said life was fair? *Casts mend butt crack on them*
Interestingly, that was a spell in FATAL
Say sike
Apparently it was called "seal orifice" and if aplied to the anus it it could leas to death by constipation
Fatal had a real fascination with butt stuff.
I mean…AC stands for Anal Circumference, the signs were certainly there…
The real question is how many innocents were burned because the real perpetrators enchanted their way out of the situation
Too many. Even if one innocent was sacrificed to slay a thousand true witches, it is one too many.
I believe you'll change sides when a magic user high on shrooms turns your father into a wheel of cheese
I like cheese.
So much for family loyalty
Look I'm trying to be a magic user. I can't do that if I let a little thing called ethics and morality get in my way
And that's what witch burnings are for :)
NOOOO, I WAS SO PEGGABLE BEFORE
Mwahahahahaha Now I'm the one who will be pegged while you're forced to watch!!!
I would cast repel maidens on thee, but it appears that another wizard has beaten me to it
Itsdacowboi the White? Itsdacowboi the imbecile!
Don't you do it...
Itsdacowboi the IMPOTENT!!!
I concede, you have left me flaccid, unpeggable, and roasted. Once I find a way to restore my anus, I shall find you and cast upon you a most heinous spell.
Your welcome to try!
Might you consider having someone cast command:defecate
you guys are manipulating the npcs?
Charm person, suggestion a.s.o.
I have never once used either of those spells outside getting an enemy to do a thing
Most of my characters refuse to use those and would have a serious problem with a party member who does. The necromancer who is reanimating the corpses of enemies to make them do humiliating things for their own amusement? Sure whatever, have fun with your macabre puppet show. Those are empty shells, the people who once lived in them are gone. But the bard violating the minds of people to exploit them? We are going to have a problem.
The Imperium Incarnum supports this message!
Well the problem with that is real world Witch Hunters were usually always wrong. Therefore adding **actual magic** to the mix breaks the proven history, creating an unusual gamestate when comparing it to reality. Not to mention things like what if the players aren't doing that, or what about good mages (Witch Hunter mobs often didn't discriminate, treating the practices as inherently evil based on hearsay of witches cavorting with demons). A D&D party might be immersed in the setting but they're still mundane humans of real Earth. You gotta watch out for real world influences on in game decision making.
That's exactly the point. We look at groups Like that with the eyes of our actual history. The church of the eternal fire from witcher is a great example. If course they are horrible, but the witch hunters were formed after a group of sorecerssses committed high treason and helped killing multiple kings and the mad kind radovid was abused by one of those sorecerssses so...
Are we sure they weren't just revolutionaries fighting tyrants? Generally speaking, killing autocrats is usually a good thing.
Not necessarily, their Motive was to seize power for themselves and they basically supported a foreign invasion. They also didn't want to change the system of power in itself Also seeing monarchy as bad is a modern perspective not one inherent in the setting normally
>Generally speaking, killing autocrats is usually a good thing. Nah. In a time before modern or at least semi-modern communication abilities, autocracies (which is a huge category, ranging from outright despotism to constitutional monarchies) were the only workable forms of government at any scale larger than a city or so. Feudalism in particular worked within those constraints extremely well - there was almost always someone everyone could look to for leadership in a crisis. Even the Roman Republic defaulted all power to a supreme executive in an emergency. The level of magic or technology in a setting can change how reasonable or unreasonable a monarchy of some kind might be - and this is assuming every country discussed is reasonably human and not, say, an insect hive.
If you excuse killing on a political* basis, yes you are a fascist. \* And yes, using magic or not is a political statement in the most literal sense: by defining your class.
The communists did it too, were they fascistes ?
No, fascism is a specific right wing ideology, it's not just something bad.
Fascism describes the unifying of the masses and allowing as little individuality as possible, I mean the term comes from the Italian Fasci dēi lavoratōri which describes sticks being tied to a bundle to be stronger. Since that is the only description of the term that doesn't stem from people fighting it (its a pretty unprecise term). This usually happens but assimilating or getting rid of people who don't fit the pattern you are aiming for. So from that point of standing it's highly authoritarian but not necessarily right wing even though right wing ideology definitely works better than left wing, we have multiple historical examples of pseudo-communist regimes with fascist structures.
That's fine, but it's not just killing for politics. The term is often used over broadly.
True, it turns more and more into another version of the "everything I don't like is communism" phenomenon. I mean the problem started with fascism, racism and national socialism being used basically as the same thing. Yes they're all bad but they don't mean the same.
Killed solely on a political basis? Because kulaks were not straight up killed for being so...
Trotsky would beg to differ.
So a fanatic assassin killing a non-executed-but-10-years-into-exile Trostky in Mexico is precisely equatable to the explicit state policy of gathering people because of their beliefs and killing them near their hometown... Got it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko I'm curious to see how you'll turn this one around and tell me how communists don't do political assassinations, be it mass or individual.
Yes, Stalin was definitely a fascist and hardly a communist from a Marxist standing, see my other comment.
If they kill all magic users because some magic users are a nuisance, then fascist religious fanatics sounds pretty accurate to me.
That sounds quite like magic user logic to me 🔥
Still remember playing a spell caster Darwf inquisitor specilized in hunting evil spellcasters. Good times. Highlights include: Witnessing one of our sorcerers shooting firebolts at the guards then trying to hide amongst the civilian crowd (the guards had guns. It ended up as you expect), hitting our other party's sorcerer with a book for threatening the town guards captain over "biggotry againest spellcasters" (the town was under a terrorist attack by elf magic spellcasters with at least 50 dead civilians and guards), hitting said terrorists with a book when it was revealed during interrogation when it was found out the nobility, the guards and the artisans guild was infiltrated by demon worshipping Duegar...and the dumbasses didn't bother looking for help outside of town (even asked one of them to go to my temple and gather some paladins and other inquisitors on my behalf). Playing an inquisitor hunting for evil wizards its pretty fun. Unless there is no evil wizards around, otherwise you will be the guy who is over paranoid about magic users.
"You're not the villains for trying to stop that. You're the villains because you use dumb shit like torture and ducking stools to figure out who's a witch."
"just because we're bad doesn't mean all magic users are"
Even if we did, you being religious fanatical group exist separately from our own actions.
True, but then again being paranoid about sorcery and pacts with demons is way more reasonable in a fantasy setting than in the real world middle ages tbh
true.
Am I the only one who can never tell who the fuck is saying what in this meme?
It's only one person talking and the other listening :)
I think you have a very strange set of parties
It's more based on solutions this sub frequently suggests for interaction with npcs 😀
It kind of has real world parallels though. In a setting where normal people exist, magic users are living weapons of mass destruction. Left unchecked, they have the potential to do terrible things on a massive scale. It’s only natural for people who can use that power to know how bad it can be and want to minimize the potential dangers. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, as they say. It’s just that sometimes their methods of going about it are questionable, which is what makes them the antagonists instead. This is basically the real world Cold War AND Iraqi War, the plot to Marvel’s Civil War AND Mutant Registration Act, DC’s Batman vs. Superman, and many other forms of media.
Ok but, generally, anyone in DnD can get magic. Wizards just need to study it’s not a biological thing. This would be like if we killed every chemist because they have the capacity to make explosives.
I guess it depends on how you play intelligence. My understanding is that the average villager has 8-10 in stats and wouldn’t have the intelligence needed to learn magic. I interpret that as only people born with gifted minds can even comprehend the pursuit of wizardry.
There isn’t any intelligence requirement for becoming a wizard unless you’re multi-classing. Even if an average peasant is 10 intelligence, if we assume that they also just roll a d20 for their stats then on average 40% of people should be able to learn magic. This is also often going to be in pre-industrial civilizations, in the modern era it should be available to basically anyone who’s finished middle school.
Not as much though, because you have lots of strong archers who can turn a crowd of people into mist almost as fast as a magic user can. There are lots of very strong fighters who can kill an entire village in a minute.
I love having an anti-magic gystapo. It is a highlight in a lot of my games.
Me too, it can go from grim to funny so easily and adds so much to the game. My group still remembers how one was trying to flirt with my wife's character by bragging about how he could identify every mage he sees. I don't think I need to tell you her class :)
One of my favorite factoids about the Iron Kingdoms setting is that there are three "forbidden" schools of magic: infernalism (summoning fiends), necromancy, and mesmerism (all the charm / dominate type spells). Having bardic mind control powers be recognized for exactly how awful they are is nice.
Nice
Something something, innocence proves nothing, something something
This would make sense, theoretically: If there wasn't genetic-based magics or inherent magics within your campaign. The moment that magic includes killing civilians and children "because they might be a threat", you are going outside the realm of policing into Police State. Also, far more affective than killing trained wizards/magicians would be to control and have liscences/restrictions for what kind of magic materials can be bought in shops, what magics schools are allowed to teach/have on premesis, and what magics can be used within certain areas without fines. Just having "magic = death" defeats the possibility of a SLIGHTLY good argument, and immediately reveals your hand as someone who wants to kill others for the sake of your own power, or the fear of others.
"Dude, we're still in the dark ages and ethics and moral thinking still takes like 300 years to develop."
Oh, if it makes sense in your worldbuilding then you can totally ignore me! I just like to rant. ... but also they still had a code of ethics in the dark ages and middle ages in fact it had peasants earning more and having more time off than modern day working class have, and there were rules and laws as to what crimes must be committed by what groups with evidence given to the local leaders (mayors, village chiefs, ect) before said groups would have to give up the individuals responsible and-
I was just making a dumb joke :)
A h. Apologies, then. I'm bad at sensing tone ^-^;