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 Rules for 'Uplift' of animals

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Rhishisikk
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Rhishisikk


Posts : 94
Join date : 2008-02-14
Age : 54

Character sheet
Name: Typhon
Title: Sea Viper
Primary Domain: Sea

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PostSubject: Rules for 'Uplift' of animals   Rules for 'Uplift' of animals I_icon_minitimeSat Mar 08, 2008 9:19 am

What prevents a deity of Animals from granting rabbits d4 Mind and d4 Spirit? Our 'genius' god of Mankind is trying to create a Bunny Belief Battery. His worshippers will breed like rabbits, granting him a profound increase in Belief basis.

If it were this simple, why haven't deities done this before? I've started threads in the Myths portion for potential drawbacks, the intention of this thread is to question whether the rules allow this manner of racial genesis. If so, we can drop the 'of Mankind' off the game title - people will become experts on whatever species lives at least two years in its adult phase of life and breeds most quickly. But that's turning into a rant, and I'll take my own advice and post that thread seperately.
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Varchild_Marquee
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Posts : 103
Join date : 2008-02-20
Age : 47
Location : http://varchildmarquee.livejournal.com

Character sheet
Name: Valdjag'r
Title: Devil in the Boughs
Primary Domain: Forests

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PostSubject: Re: Rules for 'Uplift' of animals   Rules for 'Uplift' of animals I_icon_minitimeMon Mar 10, 2008 6:39 pm

Except for said god and the god of innovation in our games, the rest of the group doesn't like this plan, if there is a reason given not to allow it to work, I will use it. And I think Fate has provided several perfectly good reasons why it will not work. I'd have been on here Saturday but I was helping someone move into a new apartment and then attending a friend's bachelor party as designated taxi. Sunday, I crashed like George of the Jungle and a tree. Not the best combination of events for a full day's adventures.

But I know that the vote is six against two of him performing this miracle. All he's going to end up with is a bunch of bunnies with free will and a penchant to eat and multiply. By Fate, they're a horde! I wonder does it classify as cannibalism to eat a sentient bunny rabbit?
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Rhishisikk
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Rhishisikk


Posts : 94
Join date : 2008-02-14
Age : 54

Character sheet
Name: Typhon
Title: Sea Viper
Primary Domain: Sea

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PostSubject: Re: Rules for 'Uplift' of animals   Rules for 'Uplift' of animals I_icon_minitimeMon Mar 10, 2008 8:24 pm

Roleplaying Gamer's Rule #1: Real life always comes first.

As to cannibalism: Cannibalism is eating your own species. I'm not sure what the term is for eating sentient species other than yours, ask a dragon some time - but be sure to text out his reply before he eats you.
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Varchild_Marquee
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Posts : 103
Join date : 2008-02-20
Age : 47
Location : http://varchildmarquee.livejournal.com

Character sheet
Name: Valdjag'r
Title: Devil in the Boughs
Primary Domain: Forests

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PostSubject: Re: Rules for 'Uplift' of animals   Rules for 'Uplift' of animals I_icon_minitimeTue Mar 11, 2008 7:25 pm

Rhishisikk wrote:
As to cannibalism: Cannibalism is eating your own species. I'm not sure what the term is for eating sentient species other than yours, ask a dragon some time - but be sure to text out his reply before he eats you.

Well if you're going to bring Dragons into this, then I have to bring the Dungeon half... Book of Vile Darkness stated that Cannibalism was the devouring of any sentient species. be it Dragon, Goblinoid, or your own race. Thus throwing a monkey wrench into every game session ever to have involved the eating of dragon back ribs and fried gizzards after an illustrious kill. Don't know how well this holds up, half of my friends say when 3.5 came out and didn't reprint the rules from the book it was the company's way of saying "these rules are not cannon material" other friends say that anything printed is cannon material until it is reprinted with alterations. Go figure. The company has never taken a sstand on what material is considered cannon material, unlike the old days of TSR.
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Rhishisikk
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Rhishisikk


Posts : 94
Join date : 2008-02-14
Age : 54

Character sheet
Name: Typhon
Title: Sea Viper
Primary Domain: Sea

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PostSubject: Re: Rules for 'Uplift' of animals   Rules for 'Uplift' of animals I_icon_minitimeWed Mar 12, 2008 4:51 pm

That should grate my cheese, that they wouldn't issue something for fear of reducing the BoVD to a collector's item that no gamer would really want. Unfortunately, I've just had a satisfying meal of leftovers, and all is good and right with the world for at least the next twenty minutes.

Honestly, though, I tend to use the older DnD books as source material - although I've never seen a more comprehensive guide to gemstone powers than the original DMG. And there are some things that just SHOULD be dumped, usually in the same books with things that should have been kept.
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tygerr
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Posts : 81
Join date : 2008-03-14

Character sheet
Name: Saya
Title: The Guardian
Primary Domain: Protection

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PostSubject: Ways in which to make the Bunny Belief Battery fail...   Rules for 'Uplift' of animals I_icon_minitimeFri Mar 14, 2008 12:36 am

My position: it won't work. Or at least, it's not that simple. Or else one of the Elder Gods would've done it ages ago. Heck, if it was THAT simple, one of the Elder Gods would've found out *accidentally* ages ago.

Our task is to justify that position within the logical framework of the game.

1) There is a whole section of animals in the FHB--and many of them have Mind and Spirit scores higher than d4. Yet none of them worship, none of them create Belief. So there's obviously more to this whole "soul-worthiness" business than boosting a critter's stats.

2) The Animal Friend Miracle in the NGH boosts stats for an animal. Granted, it boosts Body and Mind, rather than Mind and Spirit, but the adaptation is patently trivial and obvious. And yet nobody's done it before?

Okay. So he's a God, and he wants to try. I say let him TRY. But he'll fail to achieve what he's really after...and the GM doesn't HAVE to tell him why. Gods are all-POWERFUL, not all-KNOWING. *evil laugh*

Here's a potential series of rabbit holes :-D for him to waste Belief on in the attempt.

1) Boost the Mind and Spirit of the rabbits. That's TWO, count 'em, Miracles, not one, each requiring at least Household scale (multiple mated pairs, after all) and Permanent duration...with annual maintenance costs. This won't work, though, because they won't breed true. You can also toss in a ruling that only entities BORN soul-worthy will recieve them.

2) Add another Miracle (probably Legendary, because we're mucking about with genetics in the germ line, a much more delicate business than mere body-sculpting or brain-sculpting) to make them breed true. This will also have to be Permanent, with maintenance, at least for the first couple generations. This won't work, though, and you needn't explain it...though you might note that they're not up to the Mind/Body "weight class" of other sentient races. Whereupon he tries again, with bigger, beefier Miracles in step one.

3) In the meantime, he's got a RAPIDLY-growing population of sentient (but soulless) bunnies...who need to be fed and protected from predators. More Miracles and more Belief spent, either to give 'em opposable thumbs and a bipedal gait, or to feed/protect them through direct divine intervention. Sooner or later, they're going to become pests in the neighbors' fields...and you can take your pick as to which of Fertility, Abundance, Healing, or Hunt are going to use highly-appropriate and in-Domain Miracles to obliterate them.

This is getting to be a pretty long post. Next I'll explore the "If it was that easy--or even POSSIBLE--one of the Elder Gods would have done it by now" theory.
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tygerr
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Posts : 81
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Character sheet
Name: Saya
Title: The Guardian
Primary Domain: Protection

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PostSubject: Ways to make the Bunny Belief Battery fail, pt 2   Rules for 'Uplift' of animals I_icon_minitimeFri Mar 14, 2008 12:52 am

In fact, if you read the history of the world in the FHB, it turns out that there IS a race created by an Elder God doing something similar to what our Evil Genetic Genius is contemplating. The race is shorter-lived than other sentients, but relatively fecund and highly adaptable. It also turned out to be remarkably disloyal to its creator and of mercurial fickleness in worship.

You might want to ask Plthunlos just how well his "humanity" experiment is working out for him. *lol*

Yup. HUMANS are the "orcs" of this world. Or alternatively, a more-or-less backfired effort at creating something very like the BBB.

So...let's presume he somehow, against all odds and a GM-stacked deck, succeeds at something which appears to have been a long-term challenge even for an Elder God, and multiple generations of altered bunnies get souls. They're even shorter-lived than humans...and therefore even more fickle. They forsake the dull and plodding Human God who created them pretty much as soon as they're *capable* of generating Belief (so he's still out all the Belief he spent and doesn't get any return for his troubles), and soon Bunny Gods start popping up left and right, with lifespans measured in mere seasons before some older and more capable God squashes them (and/or their worshipers, which amounts to the same thing) as nuisance pests or as imminent *dangers* (due to the very fecundity which made them appealing test subjects in the first place).

Gives us some built-in plot bunnies (*groan*) for adventures, and maybe takes some Elder Race attention away from the humans, but not so much with the Phenomenal Cosmic Power (insert evil laugh) envisioned by their creator.
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tygerr
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Posts : 81
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Character sheet
Name: Saya
Title: The Guardian
Primary Domain: Protection

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PostSubject: Re: Rules for 'Uplift' of animals   Rules for 'Uplift' of animals I_icon_minitimeFri Mar 14, 2008 12:58 am

It occurs to me...if he does his homework, he might want to find out how Plthunlos pulled it off. Of course, that should solve the problem quite nicely as well--in the remote chance that Plthunlos doesn't squash him like a bug, he'll still have to deal with the hazards of messing with Invader stuff.

Fate is doubtless aware of how Plthunlos managed it (and may well have been involved in the project for all we know), but how likely is it that he'd tell?
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Fate
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Fate


Posts : 254
Join date : 2007-11-19
Age : 51

Character sheet
Name: Fate
Title: Steward of the Cosmos
Primary Domain: Destiny

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PostSubject: Re: Rules for 'Uplift' of animals   Rules for 'Uplift' of animals I_icon_minitimeFri Mar 14, 2008 12:01 pm

So many good points.

I doubt I could elaborate any more on this subject.

alien
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