Lets us collect examples of ridiculous inconsistencies from the D&D game, and maybe some ways of removing them. Examples:

1) In D&D (the Expert Rules) a spectre can only be hit by magical weapons, it is close to invisible, it can fly faster than a running horse, it can kill any normal human with a single touch (double energy drain) and the victims rise the next night as new spectres. Since the spectres are presumably evil monsters that would love to kill as many humans as possible, I find it totally inconsistent that the fantasy world is not populated by spectres instead of humans. With the stats given, the spectres wconquer the whole world very easily.

2) Why build expensive castles? As soon as the opposition includes high lever magic users, the castle offers no protection. Its walls can be circumvented with fly, invisibility and teleport, and its garrison can easily be wiped out with fire balls (if not possible in a single day, kill a few soldiers every day with a fire balls and keep going until they are all dead). In a world with such powerful assassins I see hiding as the only possible defense. Sitting on a throne in a castle is being a sitting duck to any magic user. As soon as his whereabouts are known, a fighter is of course easy prey to any magic user who knows 'fly' and 'fire ball'.

3) Why do humans behave as if they are on top of the food chain if they are not? In a world with dragons humans would be animals of prey, living underground as mice, only coming out at night.

4) Why does every fantasy world village contain ten farmhouses and an inn? How many people travel through this small village in the hills? How many people live in the village?

5) Why raise armies? 1000 normal men are insignificant compared to a magic user with fly, invisibility and fire ball. The magic user's ability as an assassin would exert much more military pressure on a decision maker than an army of ridiculous normal men with swords and shields. In other words: the military confrontations that mattered, would be between powerful individuals, not masses of men or goblins. (Everybody knows that goblins are only there for the show, but the men would not matter either).

Please add more examples, and let us ridicule these game designers with no ability for logic reasoning.

Better yet. Lets ridicule Arohtar for trotting that old troll chestnut... again...

1: Because
A: alot of undead are tied to a location like a tomb or place they died.
B: most cannot travel in the day and may be vulnerable during the day.
C: clerics

2: Because
A: Wizards arent the only threat, in fact up till 5th ed they were a very fragile threat. Walls keep out the plethora of beasts and hostile races that plague the land.
B: Most fantasy settings have at least one abandoned castle or whole city. Usually overrun by more conventional means.
C: wizards

3: Because
A: They usually dont act like they are the top if they have any sense.
B: Dragons have better things to do that play Godzilla.
C: adventurers

4: Because
A: the OP either lives in a city. Or is stupid. Possibly both. Even today in 2014 there are still farm towns.
B: Trade route. Project. Formerly prosperous. etc.
C: enough

5: Because
A: see 2A
B: Not everyone has a wizard on their side. Or even high level characters other than wizards.
C: See 2C

Yeah, you cant do that without specifying a specific D&D setting. Because it assumes any number of things that arent universally true, such as that magic users are incredibly common and willing to fight in wars, that a dragon is a match for a human army, and that spectres actually care about "taking over the world", etc.

A logical inconsistency in a setting does not mean that its defacto just because a rule system allows it to happen: thats in the hands of the GM (and to a somewhat lesser extent, the author)

Quote from: Arohtar;806558Please add more examples, and let us ridicule these game designers with no ability for logic reasoning.

Surely this is said in a purely sarcastic tone...

It rather depends on which version of D&D, though.

The spectre rant is just nuts...yes, they have lots of powers, but when you can't go but a few yards from where you died, it's a problem.

In earlier versions, it wasn't a given a mage would learn fly and fireball, and there weren't alot of mages....which had to sleep sometime. As you go to later versions, yeah, , optimizes mages are a problem...except for  optimized mages on the other side...so, a nonissue.

Dragons? Well, yeah, they could (hey, wasn't there a game world based around that), trouble is, that big ol' hoard is a bit of a problem. As soon as a dragon figured out "hey, I can burn down a village, maybe get 20 gold, or I can just kill a younger dragon and get a whole PILE of treasure", that dragon started doing pretty well. Nowadays, dragons have little choice but to be pretty secretive because they have to hide from other dragons just as much as they need to hide from adventurers, until they reach 800 years old or so, by which time it's sort of a habit.

I admit, in D&D land, just about every settlement should at the least have a small wall (and, hey, that's how it worked, at least with settlements that lasted a generation or so), and a keep. I was rather surprised in Hoard of the Dragon Queen where there's a village with a tiny stone keep, and not even a palisade...and a garrison incapable of driving off a few hundred weak warriors, in a village with a population of at least 500. Not sure what's up that that, myself.

As for the rest, well, I have a life.

So, like, in Star Wars, why didn't the Empire just make the Death Star come out of hyperspace within line of sight of Yavin so that they could just blow it up right away? MORANS

Couple thoughts.

For 2, at least the second part:  In TSR D&D, spell save difficulties were largely static, while fighter's saves just kept getting better.  Fighters started at level 1 with the worst saves and ended with the best at high level.  So a name level fighter with a couple of mid level fighter henches actually had a good chance against a name magic user.  Between their odds of shrugging off save-or-die spells and the way spell disruption worked, if they've got ranged weapons or can close to melee, the magic user's the one who's got to worry about being assassinated.

So the 3rd edition switch to improving spell save DCs was huge.  To the extent I would guess the effects weren't anticipated or intended at the time.  But if you're talking about scy-and-die being a problem, that really only got started with 3.0.  In my (limited) personal experience, it hadn't emerged organically in earlier editions.

Regarding 4, for a strict definition of "inn" I agree.  Ten house hamlets shouldn't have full time, store front inns.  They likely would have "public houses" in the old sense, of one housewife who lived there anyway brewing extra beer, selling it for small change, and keeping a spare room for travelers.  In other places and times, monasteries filled that role, with the holy brothers brewing massive amounts of beer for internal use and external sale, and hosting travelers.  (Sometimes free for one or two days, then charging the going rate.)  On trade routes, fortified caravanserais were the order of the day, with enough open space walled in to bring your caravan in, but still basically an inn inside.

I actually blame the sign-boarded (Color) (Animal) Inn on modern gamers more than on designers.  As soon as we got past the early war-gamer phase, we got gamers some of whom don't want to so much as hear the word "realism" even when the tiniest amount of research would fit in with and improve their fantasy game.  But I'm willing to put up with sign-board inns as a place-holder for the variety of establishments I would expect to see.

My own pet peeves in a world filled with orcs, goblins, wargs and everything else are:

6)  Un-walled, peaceful villages.  A ditch and palisade is not rocket science.  Takes some labor and time, but it beats the hell out of being dinner.  D&D should be a land of fortified farmhouses and walled towns, not thatch and wattle cottages out in the open.

7)  Useless, non-combatant farmers and burghers.  Okay, granted, they can't train full time or nobody eats.  But, given the stated fate of villages that do get overrun by orcs, darwinian processes will rapidly select for a militia or fyrd approach to social organization over disarmed peasants in the European continental model.  1st level characters should be less head-and-shoulders heroes over peasants, and more just the guys brave enough or dumb enough to take the fight outside the city walls.

This post should have been followed by "here's my logical, perfectly balanced, scientifically accurate fantasy setting"?

Of course, if it's written down, you can't change it.

If your elves are Methane breathing aliens who are here to grow an illegal oxygen-based plant for their galactic drug trade and your Dwarves are silicate lifeforms who carved themselves into the likeness of statues they found when they landed in the hope of "tricking the locals with useless trinkets" while they mine the core for Unobtanium for their spaceships - you get extra brownie points.

Quote from: Omega;806562Better yet. Lets ridicule Arohtar for trotting that old troll chestnut... again...

1: Because
A: alot of undead are tied to a location like a tomb or place they died.
B: most cannot travel in the day and may be vulnerable during the day.
C: clerics

2: Because
A: Wizards arent the only threat, in fact up till 5th ed they were a very fragile threat. Walls keep out the plethora of beasts and hostile races that plague the land.
B: Most fantasy settings have at least one abandoned castle or whole city. Usually overrun by more conventional means.
C: wizards

3: Because
A: They usually dont act like they are the top if they have any sense.
B: Dragons have better things to do that play Godzilla.
C: adventurers

4: Because
A: the OP either lives in a city. Or is stupid. Possibly both. Even today in 2014 there are still farm towns.
B: Trade route. Project. Formerly prosperous. etc.
C: enough

5: Because
A: see 2A
B: Not everyone has a wizard on their side. Or even high level characters other than wizards.
C: See 2C

1A: A lot? Not in the D&D game (OD&D). For the spectre no tying is mentioned, hence nothing is preventing the spectres from going on a rampage.
1B: And so what? Even if the spectres were "vulnerable" during the day (no such vulnerability is mentioned in the rules) they can conquer the world during night. A single spectre in a town could kill hundreds of people during one night, and the next night these hundreds of people would all be new spectres.
1C: A cleric has to be level 11 to be able to destroy spectres with turning. A cleric needs to sleep, and when woken by the touch of one of the many spectres inhabiting the land, he would immediately be two levels lower. It takes a long time for a human to reach level 11, and in a spectre infested world I doubt anyone would make it. The cleric can also only destroy one spectre per round (2d6 hit dice, and a spectre has 6 HD), so if he is surrounded by 4 spectres (or 100), the massive energy drain will quickly send him below level 11.

2A: That is true, the expensive castles can protect you from minor threats like wolves and giant rats, but not from any of the major threats of the fantasy world, like magic users and spectres (for example).
2B: And so what?
2C: Huh? Are wizards a reason to build castles? In the real world castles were built despite their cost because they actually protected against the primary threat of the time: other men. I am arguing that a castle does not satisfy this condition in a fantasy setting with flying monsters, wizards, giants and so on. In the real world people stopped building castles when gunpowder was invented, because the castles did not provide protection any more. Why should castles exist in a fantasy world? (Apart from the DM thinking they are cool). I am arguing that the castles do not have a reason that is consistent with the fantasy laws of nature.

3A: In most fantasy settings people seem to feel safe in their towns and villages.
3B: Really? Like what? If I was a dragon, I would love to play Godzilla. Kill men by the hundreds and steal their gold. Lay waste to the land. What does your dragons like to do? Read books?
3C: Yeah, if you are a 20th level adventurer, you can walk proudly around like you own the place (if you have your friends with you), but 99,9 % of the population, the ordinary people better keep a low profile, not building big population centers like cities.

4A: What does OP stand for?
4B: Trade route: yes; formerly prosperous: no, then the inn would be closed (because of formerly). Fantasy worlds have a ridiculously high density of inns. That is the point.

5: True, the people without magic users would of course resort to armies like in the historical world. The point is that as soon as the magic users are present, they are the force to be reckoned with, not the army. In a consistent world rulers would spend their money and time making alliances with with magic users or magical monsters, not raising legions of normal humans. Your 10000 archers will not protect you when the magic user teleports in, casts disintegrate and disappears again.

Quote from: Doom;806571It rather depends on which version of D&D, though.

The spectre rant is just nuts...yes, they have lots of powers, but when you can't go but a few yards from where you died, it's a problem.

What version of the game are you reading? I was referring to the Expert Rules of the D&D (OD&D) game, and no range limitation is mentioned there. On the contrary a 300 yards per round flying speed is mentioned - whics is not much use if "you can't go but a few yards".

So maybe this rule is something you are making up yourself, like Omega did, or maybe TSR fixed the spectre monster in a later edition. The rant was not nuts, it was quite accurate.

Quote from: trechriron;806576This post should have been followed by "here's my logical, perfectly balanced, scientifically accurate fantasy setting"?

Of course, if it's written down, you can't change it.

If your elves are Methane breathing aliens who are here to grow an illegal oxygen-based plant for their galactic drug trade and your Dwarves are silicate lifeforms who carved themselves into the likeness of statues they found when they landed in the hope of "tricking the locals with useless trinkets" while they mine the core for Unobtanium for their spaceships - you get extra brownie points.

Internal consistency has nothing to do with science. I am asking for spells and monsters to have consequences for the game setting that seem realistic.

I asked for suggestions that could fix the inconsistency problems. Of course the original authors should be ridiculed for not fixing them themselves.

i dont know about expert but in 3.5 at least a town with only 10 houses would not be called a village thats a thorp or maybe a hamlet if there are very large familys

Quote from: Necrozius;806572So, like, in Star Wars, why didn't the Empire just make the Death Star come out of hyperspace within line of sight of Yavin so that they could just blow it up right away? MORANS

Something like that, yes. Or why did Frodo and his company not just ask the big eagles to fly over Mount Doom so they could drop the ring into the lava? I think those are perfectly fine questions, and if I was a player in your setting, and I asked such a simple question, and you were not able to answer it, but instead got angry and called me a moron, I would think your setting lacked internal realism, I would not find it interesting, and I would think you were a moron.

as for spectres sure most medium level people can only kill a few a day but the really high level ones can cut through huge swaths plus theres more ways to kill an undead then turning

you are really overestimating wizards a spell capable of killing that many people at once would take all day to cast and i can assure you the castle is still a defence against dragons its a heavy stone wall plus there are good dragons

also you want to mass murder thats disturbing

op stands for original post or original poster you idiot

and walls are situational not everybody lives near monsters as an example my party is currently in a town whos only threat is skeletons they rely on there clerics to keep them save (they use to have a much bigger problem but its mostly gone now). the skeleton infestation kept so many monsters out of the area they have nothing coming after them

Quote from: Arohtar;806580Internal consistency has nothing to do with science. I am asking for spells and monsters to have consequences for the game setting that seem realistic.

I asked for suggestions that could fix the inconsistency problems. Of course the original authors should be ridiculed for not fixing them themselves.

The authors of OD&D expected the DM to create a fix that worked for the DM's world. Any reason why you can't do that for your world?

Here I'll give you a start.

1. Because

a) Undead don't want to rule the world. The shades of the dead are unconcerned with material things and worldly power or rule.

b) Undead are by nature extremely selfish and paranoid and don't want to share their power with other undead. Any new undead is a potential rival for that really nice dark crypt and maybe even a threat to the existence of any other wight/wraith/spectre. Intelligent undead may ally with the existing inhabitants of their cemetery or crypt, but this is always a local group and or a temporary alliance and there is always the risk of treachery.

c) Undead have vulnerabilities once they are outside their crypts. Natural daylight destroys them. They cannot enter the abodes of living men/women where blessed clerical symbols are displayed unless the hit dice of the individual wight/wraith/spectre is > the number of cumulative hit dice of the living humans inside the home or village.

d) Wights/Wraiths/Spectres can only travel up to 100 meters x their # hit dice from their resting place. (If you want a bigger range use 1KM x # hit dice.)

e) Make up something else that lets wraiths et al to be interesting but not world dominating.