It's basically a demon that summons full strength replicas of anyone that enters its dungeon. The replicas are easily identifiable as such and don't speak, so there's no concerns about getting confused by imposters. There's no apparent limit on how many people it can replicate and it can eventually resummon destroyed replicas, but it can seemingly only summon one replica of each person at a time. The demon itself is incredibly fragile, but it lies at the very bottom of the dungeon and seems to leave its strongest replica to guard the entrance of its lair. When intruders near the lair, the other replicas throughout the dungeon will converge at the bottom.
>Monster that has any abilities other than 2 slashes and a bite attack
Too complex for D&D 5e. The game can't even manage CR correctly with it's incredibly bland assortment of existing monsters, let alone anything actually interesting.
>Too complex for D&D 5e.
The frick are you talking about, this is the easiest thing I've ever heard of to stat out. Have you tried playing D&D?
It's basically a demon that summons full strength replicas of anyone that enters its dungeon. The replicas are easily identifiable as such and don't speak, so there's no concerns about getting confused by imposters. There's no apparent limit on how many people it can replicate and it can eventually resummon destroyed replicas, but it can seemingly only summon one replica of each person at a time. The demon itself is incredibly fragile, but it lies at the very bottom of the dungeon and seems to leave its strongest replica to guard the entrance of its lair. When intruders near the lair, the other replicas throughout the dungeon will converge at the bottom.
Challenge rating is based on the personal combat power of the npc or monster, not its minions. You haven't described exactly what "fragile" means, but based on everything you've said it's a CR 1 at most, if you absolutely have to give it stats.
However, I'd need a bit more information to be sure, but to be honest this sounds more like a dungeon hazard like brown mold or something than an actual creature. I wouldn't give it a Challenge Rating at all; rather, the challenge (and XP) is all the other monsters in the dungeon.
>Its almost like CR is a pointless system
I dunno, I've personally found it massively useful when making custom monsters. It's not perfect, but it's good enough to get a rough gauge of power.
I feel a lot more confident about the power level of an NPC or monster I make for 5e D&D than I do for an NPC or monster I make for a game like Vampire, anyway. Not that I let that stop me from making a big ol' V20 Monster Manual.
Giving a rough estimate of a creature's power is hardly pointless. The issue comes from trolls who don't understand CR, and expecting it to be some sort of absolute number instead of just a unpersonalized general assessment. These trolls have been repeating this same nonsense for the last two decades, and all because they think that a much better system is just not giving any sort of rough estimate and forcing a GM to evaluate every enemy line by line before deploying them against a party.
A creature that summons exact duplicates of anything that enters the dungeon is basically a deity-level entity, because it has functionally infinite power and a demon like that would definitely be employed far, far more effectively in other ways than just sitting in a dungeon. If, however, there are caps to its strength, ie. number of creatures it can create, how strong those creatures are, etc., then we might actually be able to determine what its CR would be beyond "infinite".
But, since this is less a monster and more of a narrative device masquerading as a monster by the laziest of writers, a more useful value is just the equivalent CR of the party entering the dungeon and not bothering to give a CR to the variable power plot device. I don't understand why anyone is confused by any of this.
If a DM isn't competent enough to be able to control the difficulty of monster encounters, despite being omniscient as far as determining the outcomes of battles goes, they are just as likely to inadvertently kill players with appropriate CR for their party as they are to invent their own encounters and kill players that way. It's a problem of individual intelligence. I know it's not popular to say that, but it is true. If you're fricking stupid you can arrive at a TPK by a dozen different ways because you lack the mental processing power to use your monsters as anything other than brainless videogame-y murder robots. Alternatively, if you're not a total idiot you can maneuver any encounter into a possible victory - or at least a draw, or escape - for your Players.
CR only helps people that can't think for themselves and apply the monster stat blocks in a literal, linear way. Those people shouldn't DM.
So in other words you wouldn't hesitate to throw an Adult Red Dragon against a party of 1st level characters, because whether they survive a battle or not has nothing to do with the players' skill, but rather whether you have personally decided if it's time for them to die.
2 months ago
Anonymous
A: that isn't railroading, you're strawmanning
B: my point is that no functioning human needs CR to tell him or her not to throw an Adult Red Dragon at a party of 1st level characters, and if for some reason they do, CR wouldn't help them unfrick that encounter.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>A: that isn't railroading
It one hundred percent is. You outright talked about manipulating combat to reach an outcome that you, the DM, want to occur rather than whatever the players end up with as a result of their choices and their luck. That is the distilled essence of railroading, the DM making choices for the players.
>my point is that no functioning human needs CR to tell him or her not to throw an Adult Red Dragon at a party of 1st level characters
On what basis? I'm being serious, walk me through the logic here as to why you know that a 1st level party shouldn't face an Adult Red.
Also you seem to be forgetting the other reason CR exists, which is to reward experience. Say a party (not necessarily the 1st level party) beats the Adult Red. How much XP do they get?
2 months ago
Anonymous
>It one hundred percent is. You outright talked about manipulating combat to reach an outcome that you, the DM, want to occur rather than whatever the players end up with as a result of their choices and their luck.
In the event that you frick up and throw an encounter at them that they can't deal with, through no fault of their own, yes. NOT fudging the dice and giving the players an out in that scenario is a much more egregious case of railroading, it's "rocks fall everyone dies" but with extra steps and you, as the DM, are completely in control of it.
Maybe learn to read and stop reflexively strawmanning shit that personally offends you.
>I'm being serious, walk me through the logic here as to why you know that a 1st level party shouldn't face an Adult Red.
I don't know maybe you read its fricking stats and apply basic mathematics to questions of its AC, damage output, action economy, etc. What you as the DM has that the game designers do not, and is missing in CR, is knowledge of how you intend every creature to use all of those stats. The whole reason some people still frick up and destroy their players with intellect devourers or what have you is because they don't treat these monsters as living creatures with a fear of death and imperfect knowledge of the game state. Game designers can't account for this tendency through either CR or writing tons of fluff about what you *should* do, some people lack the capacity to run TTRPGs with nuance.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>In the event that you frick up and throw an encounter at them that they can't deal with
My job as the DM is to challenge the player characters - not keep them alive. That's their players' job.
>NOT fudging the dice and giving the players an out
I'll always provide a way out - though it's up to the players to find it - but fudging dice rolls? Never.
>I don't know maybe you read its fricking stats
So based on a quick read of the stats, a 3rd level party of 4 should be good enough, right?
>they don't treat these monsters as living creatures with a fear of death
No, but that has naught to do with how challenging or not a monster is, since obviously many monsters (constructs and unintelligent undead, chiefly) WOULDN'T have a fear of death and WOULD fight to the bitter end. Plus crazy cultists, or mind-controlled guards, or summoned monsters who will just discorporate anyway...
Regardless, 5e is designed around the idea that a standard party of 4 using standard attacks/cantrips should be able to take out a monster of a given CR in about 3 rounds. And I've done the math, believe it or not, it usually checks out. And yes, I took to-hit into account.
Taking the adult red as an example, a 17th level party...
Fighter w/longsword VS AC >[(1d10+5)x4]x0.65 = 27.3 dmg/rnd
Rogue w/rapier vs. AC >[(1d8+5)+(9d6)]x0.65 = 26.65 dmg/rnd
Cleric w/sacred flame vs. DEX save >(4d8)x0.6 = 10.8 dmg/rnd
Wizard w/ray of frost >(4d8)x.65 = 11.7 dmg/rnd
TOTAL: 76.45 dmg/rnd
VS 256 hp = dragon is dead in 3.35 rounds
2 months ago
Anonymous
nice white room cuck
2 months ago
Anonymous
I don't "throw" anything at the players. Things exist in the world and the players can encounter them or not.
Pretty much, except Deepspawn take a while to formulate their clones and have the caveat where they have to eat the original first. Other than that, superior in all aspects.
I like the cocnept but one Issue I had with it is that without proper explanation of the rules I feel something being able to create a mana-made creature with more mana/power than the maker you is kinda bullshit. Sounds like something that could be very easily abused, specially since in the own show, despite calling it a mosnter, it feels more like a complex security system.
And they only were able tod efeat it because Frieren willingly shared her weakness and had the help of her apprentice, who's also bullshit enough to get 1 opening.
A "why isn't this thing or who made this thing dominating the world with a more complex version of the spell?"
Then again, magic in Frieren seems to be the "visualization type" rather than the Mathematical one.
Does it matter? Its gimmick means its always the appropriate CR for whatever party tries to face it, since the threat is always exactly equal to the party. Level 1 or level 20, the challenge is in theory the same.
Because with a simple casting of "Dispel Magic" it's entire gimmick doesn't mean shit. But bad monster design that can be completely and utterly bypassed by casters is nothing new to 5e.
Except neither Frieren nor any of the other very high level mages who faced it were capable of dispelling the effect despite being entirely capable of dispelling magic.
Basically zero, since it's entire gimmick relies on being at the bottom of a dungeon where the replicas have plenty of time to hunt down and attack intruders.
If you just throw one of these things in a random combat encounter, it dies in one turn because D&D doesn't really have "aggro" mechanics and there is literally no way it can prevent players from focus-firing it, which kills all it's replicas anyway.
Could be an interesting monster in a better-designed game, but not in D&D.
The issue is getting to it, because its at the bottom of a dungeon populated by replicas of the party.
OP is asking about CR, so he's clearly asking for D&D, not the anime. In actual D&D, Dispel Magic would completely shut down it's gimmick instantly, barring some moronic "Dispel Magic just doesn't work because reasons" clause in the monster's stat block.
>Any spell of 3rd level or lower on the target ends. For each spell of 4th level or higher on the target, make an ability check using your spellcasting ability. The DC equals 10 + the spell’s level. On a successful check, the spell ends.
what D&D spell is it casting, and of what level?
>In actual D&D, Dispel Magic would completely shut down it's gimmick instantly, barring some moronic "Dispel Magic just doesn't work because reasons" clause in the monster's stat block.
I mean not really, because you'd only be dispelling one of the clones (using Simulacrum as a point of comparison) at a time and that's provided you succeed the Dispel check every single time. That'd definitely make things easier, but you'd need to dedicate a lot of your spells to that in a situation where you likely can't Long Rest and can still suffer from being ambushed.
>The issue is getting to it, because its at the bottom of a dungeon populated by replicas of the party.
Literally not how CR is calculated though. CR is calculated in a whiteroom scenario. Not dependent on environment at all. Don't get mad at me, get mad at D&D for being designed like shit and CR being a garbage system for figuring out encounter difficulty.
>Literally not how CR is calculated though
Okay? I hope you do understand I wasnt talking about the CR but you crying about "aggro mechanics" or the lack thereof.
If you can target the demon you should target the demon, thats not an issue with dnd, youre just a moron for assuming that the demon can be targeted
>youre just a moron for assuming that the demon can be targeted
This is LITERALLY how CR is calculated. You can call me a moron all you want, but it won't change the fact that D&D's CR system is absolute trash.
>despite being entirely capable of dispelling magic
Since when is dispelling magic a thing in Frieren's setting? We never see it used even when it would be a far superior option to brute force barriers.
Frieren does it multiple times, both against Auras animated armors and in a larger scale but less instant way against the impenetrable barrier for the first test
there is also her dispelling the golden transmutation curse
> Because with a simple casting of "Dispel Magic" it's entire gimmick doesn't mean shit.
That assumes it is dispelable, when even in DnD that is not a universal solution to magical problems. Not that you would be allowed to cast it anyway, any character capable of casting dispel would result in a replica that can ALSO cast dispel, turning into a blue mirror match.
Basically zero, since it's entire gimmick relies on being at the bottom of a dungeon where the replicas have plenty of time to hunt down and attack intruders.
If you just throw one of these things in a random combat encounter, it dies in one turn because D&D doesn't really have "aggro" mechanics and there is literally no way it can prevent players from focus-firing it, which kills all it's replicas anyway.
Could be an interesting monster in a better-designed game, but not in D&D.
Either it has 0 CR, or its replica summoning ability is a Lair Action in which case you can't white room it out and now it just has subjective CR.
Its almost like CR is a pointless system and DMs entirely drive how difficult an encounter is or isn't by how they determine enemies behave and what dice they fudge, or something.
>Too complex for D&D 5e.
The frick are you talking about, this is the easiest thing I've ever heard of to stat out. Have you tried playing D&D?
[...]
Challenge rating is based on the personal combat power of the NPC or monster, not its minions. You haven't described exactly what "fragile" means, but based on everything you've said it's a CR 1 at most, if you absolutely have to give it stats.
However, I'd need a bit more information to be sure, but to be honest this sounds more like a dungeon hazard like brown mold or something than an actual creature. I wouldn't give it a Challenge Rating at all; rather, the challenge (and XP) is all the other monsters in the dungeon.
>Its almost like CR is a pointless system
I dunno, I've personally found it massively useful when making custom monsters. It's not perfect, but it's good enough to get a rough gauge of power.
I feel a lot more confident about the power level of an NPC or monster I make for 5e D&D than I do for an NPC or monster I make for a game like Vampire, anyway. Not that I let that stop me from making a big ol' V20 Monster Manual.
Giving a rough estimate of a creature's power is hardly pointless. The issue comes from trolls who don't understand CR, and expecting it to be some sort of absolute number instead of just a unpersonalized general assessment. These trolls have been repeating this same nonsense for the last two decades, and all because they think that a much better system is just not giving any sort of rough estimate and forcing a GM to evaluate every enemy line by line before deploying them against a party.
A creature that summons exact duplicates of anything that enters the dungeon is basically a deity-level entity, because it has functionally infinite power and a demon like that would definitely be employed far, far more effectively in other ways than just sitting in a dungeon. If, however, there are caps to its strength, ie. number of creatures it can create, how strong those creatures are, etc., then we might actually be able to determine what its CR would be beyond "infinite".
But, since this is less a monster and more of a narrative device masquerading as a monster by the laziest of writers, a more useful value is just the equivalent CR of the party entering the dungeon and not bothering to give a CR to the variable power plot device. I don't understand why anyone is confused by any of this.
>But, since this is less a monster and more of a narrative device masquerading as a monster by the laziest of writers
Hey, the fight with Dark Link was one of the most memorable parts of Ocarina of Time for a reason, and almost made the pain of the Water Temple worth it all on its own. It's not necessarily "deep" to fight an equal but opposite clone, but it's fun and memorable when it happens. Given that D&D is a *game*, presumably fun and memories are the primary things we're here for. There's nothing wrong with sheer spectacle for spectacle's sake when used well.
Copying an idea is lazy. Doing it in an extremely meta way where you're left with questions like "Why is there a functional deity just sitting at the bottom of a dungeon, only making copies and not just making the strongest thing it can over and over again" is even worse. The whole "We need to defeat copies of ourselves!" has been done so many times, and so many times poorly, that just saying "a demon is doing it" might be one of the laziest ways of forcing that setup that I've encountered yet.
Also, the Dark Link was a thematic encounter (an evil reflection in a water-themed area) that was easily explained by Ganondorf's magic and his penchant for illusions and copies and toying with people, as demonstrated by Phantom Ganondorf. At some point, Ganondorf going "That little shit is nothing special, I could literally make a clone of him with hardly any effort," is perfectly in character and works in the context of the game/setting, as is Link overcoming Dark Link by exceeding Ganondorf's expectations.
The whole central dynamic between the two is Ganondorf is powerful, but Link has something more than power, ie. the courage (and infinite continues) to face any challenge.
[...]
If a DM isn't competent enough to be able to control the difficulty of monster encounters, despite being omniscient as far as determining the outcomes of battles goes, they are just as likely to inadvertently kill players with appropriate CR for their party as they are to invent their own encounters and kill players that way. It's a problem of individual intelligence. I know it's not popular to say that, but it is true. If you're fricking stupid you can arrive at a TPK by a dozen different ways because you lack the mental processing power to use your monsters as anything other than brainless videogame-y murder robots. Alternatively, if you're not a total idiot you can maneuver any encounter into a possible victory - or at least a draw, or escape - for your Players.
CR only helps people that can't think for themselves and apply the monster stat blocks in a literal, linear way. Those people shouldn't DM.
Man, shut the frick up. >a GM is just going to look at CR and call it a day! CR is thus bad!
No, they're going to use CR as a starting point, you dumbass troll. All those words you typed up, all these years you've been complaining about CR, and you never considered that, even though the books explain that you need to actually consider what you're throwing at a party beyond just glancing at the CR.
>>a GM is just going to look at CR and call it a day! CR is thus bad!
A GM CAN just look at CR and call it a day. Since CR doesn't actually accurately reflect the level of danger to the party, this makes CR at best unnecessary and at worst harmful.
>a GM CAN use CR wrong, even when the books tell them not to and explain how CR actually works!
Why are you blaming CR when you're complaining about GM's like yourself not actually reading how CR works? Seriously, just shut up, and quit making a fool out of yourself.
Christ, your entire argument depends on "Every GM is as stupid and lazy as I am!" and that's a real shitshow of a way to try to argue. Do yourself a favor and quit telling everyone how stupid you are.
2 months ago
Anonymous
If anything I'm more convinced that I'm right from how hard you're pissing and shitting about CR. Any position that makes you bark like a fricking dog must be correct.
2 months ago
Anonymous
I like how you've dropped any pretense of not being anything other than a dumb troll.
It's nice to know that "You're a moron, read the fricking book" actually works on occasion.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>I stamped my feet and pissed and shitted everywhere, making everyone laugh at me! That means I'm right!
Yeah okay bud
2 months ago
Anonymous
Here's another (you) and a reminder to read
Copying an idea is lazy. Doing it in an extremely meta way where you're left with questions like "Why is there a functional deity just sitting at the bottom of a dungeon, only making copies and not just making the strongest thing it can over and over again" is even worse. The whole "We need to defeat copies of ourselves!" has been done so many times, and so many times poorly, that just saying "a demon is doing it" might be one of the laziest ways of forcing that setup that I've encountered yet.
Also, the Dark Link was a thematic encounter (an evil reflection in a water-themed area) that was easily explained by Ganondorf's magic and his penchant for illusions and copies and toying with people, as demonstrated by Phantom Ganondorf. At some point, Ganondorf going "That little shit is nothing special, I could literally make a clone of him with hardly any effort," is perfectly in character and works in the context of the game/setting, as is Link overcoming Dark Link by exceeding Ganondorf's expectations.
The whole central dynamic between the two is Ganondorf is powerful, but Link has something more than power, ie. the courage (and infinite continues) to face any challenge.
[...]
Man, shut the frick up. >a GM is just going to look at CR and call it a day! CR is thus bad!
No, they're going to use CR as a starting point, you dumbass troll. All those words you typed up, all these years you've been complaining about CR, and you never considered that, even though the books explain that you need to actually consider what you're throwing at a party beyond just glancing at the CR.
But, that's all the kindness you're getting out of me.
>Why is there a functional deity just sitting at the bottom of a dungeon, only making copies and not just making the strongest thing it can over and over again" is even worse
When you get right down to it, it's just a Mirror of Opposition that can think and makes worse copies ("worse" due to them being incapable of impersonating their originals). This is powerful magic, sure, but not quite what I'd call deity-level based on how it was described to work (it can make copies of things that *enter the dungeon*, i.e., it's no use if removed from the dungeon; and it can create only one copy of a creature at a time, i.e., it can't use a single real goblin to create an army of goblin clones).
>The whole "We need to defeat copies of ourselves!" has been done so many times
Sure, but to paraphrase an old maxim of the comic industry, every time is someone's first time. Just because it's been done dozens of times doesn't mean that the players have encountered it dozens of times, or even once.
Plus I would assume a DM isn't just randomly sticking this thing in a dungeon, but rather it has a reason or purpose for being there.
Mirror of Opposition starts off as a 15th level item and requires Clone, meaning it needs someone who can cast 8th level spells. Make the range several hundreds of feet and not requiring either line of sight or effect, and we're talking about magic that far exceeds 9th level spells. Once you're in the 10th+ level area, we're talking Deity-level magic, especially when there's no use limit. Remember, Demigods begin as early as 21st level, and we're talking about something that exceeds that.
Is there a way to make such a lazy idea work? Possibly, but in D&D, there are limitations on power and people generally try to be efficient with their use of it. Older editions did often have dungeons with plenty of inexplicable incredibly powerful magical artifacts being used as random traps with little logic or motivation behind them beyond the whim of the designer, but people have slowly moved towards wanting things to make sense within the context of the world, in no small part thanks to influence from other games and just the general evolution of RPGs.
A demon that just clones whoever enters its dungeon is a very, very meta idea where it's clear what the DM's intention was, and how little they cared about making it make sense in the context of the world. It's little different from Maxwell inventing a demon just to mess around with thermodynamics. It's fine for a physics thought experiment, but for a world that's meant to exist with more logic than a bottom-tier Twilight Zone episode, it's pretty weak.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>Mirror of Opposition starts off as a 15th level item and requires Clone, meaning it needs someone who can cast 8th level spells. Make the range several hundreds of feet and not requiring either line of sight or effect, and we're talking about magic that far exceeds 9th level spells.
But there are numerous drawbacks, again.
- The clone can't impersonate anyone due to lack of independent will
- The clones might not even be able to leave the dungeon
- The monster itself can't leave the dungeon
- The demon can create only one clone per person at a time
However I'm less interested in the in-universe aspects of it then in the fact that when you get down to it, it's not that powerful an ability *for the players to face*. A 5th level party entering this dungeon is going to face...another 5th level party, plus some assorted other monsters that may be in the dungeon left over from previous people who entered it.
>And how little they cared about making it make sense in the context of the world
I mean, you can't possibly say that without knowing more about the world that it exists in. For the record, I don't, I have no idea what this thing is from. But I can see a lot of ways to make it work just fine. Why can't you?
2 months ago
Anonymous
>But I can see a lot of ways to make it work just fine.
You're walking into one of the largest traps that GMs and fantasy writers, hell, writers in general have a bad habit of stumbling into. The idea that if you can hit the most minimum bar of explaining something, you've done your job, regardless of how convoluted or unsatisfying the explanation is.
If we're talking about a world where demons exist solely to provide meta-challenges for adventuring parties that wander into dungeons, sure, you've checked the box, but that's about as satisfying as just outright being told "The world is paper thin, don't try to look beyond its surface." Hell, going a step beyond that and trying to come up with some convoluted reason why the demon's limitations are what they are beyond "meta-considerations" is almost worse than just flat out saying it's a meta-construct, because at least then you're not insulting your group's intelligence and just admitting to be lazy.
Could I personally come up with a scenario where a party entering a dungeon encounters antagonistic copies of themselves? Sure. There's a million and one ways to explain it, with everything from alternate dimensions to excellent cosplayers being up for grabs. But, I generally design from the perspective of less "How do I fit this scenario into my world" and more "What interesting scenarios could organically emerge from my world?". If I've done a proper job designing, I should have no shortage of logical and satisfying reasons beyond "Look, it's just a demon who does it, okay!?"
A demon powerful enough that it can make full-powered copies of anything that enters its dungeon, but who has arbitrary limitations that are entirely inexplicable, is simply unsatisfying, especially when its ripe for abuse unless further arbitrary limitations keep it or other demons from exploiting its abilities.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>excellent cosplayers
2 months ago
Anonymous
>but who has arbitrary limitations that are entirely inexplicable
They're not inexplicable, you just personally don't like the explanation. You need to learn to distinguish between the two, you'll be a better and more complete person when you can.
Off the top of my head as a way to make this concept work:
Eberron Campaign Setting. The Day of Mourning that destroyed Cyre and resulted in magic going haywire within it also affected many of the magical items within Cyre. Most notably it affected an actual Mirror of Opposition in the tower of a Cyran wizard, damaging it so that it could only create imperfect copies - but the same magic also granted the Mirror sapience (as per a standard sapient magic item), in a manner similar to how the Day of Mourning created living spells. In the five years since the Day of Mourning, the Mirror of Opposition has been slowly but surely building up minions within the tower. The Mirror is not innately evil, in fact it knows basically nothing beyond the tower and the fact that it's in some place very dangerous and full of death and monsters (the Mournland, natch), which has made it paranoid. It sends out its copies to scout around and bring it back knowledge. Through its minions, the Mirror has also set up fractured pieces of itself throughout the tower, through which it can perceive and even still use its abilities, though the range is limited to 100 feet (in any direction). Beyond this limit the fractured pieces of the Mirror beyond ordinary glass.
The players can encounter it by going into the Mournland and to the wizard's tower. Any number of reasons could bring them there, such as...
- A relative of the wizard wants some heirloom from the tower (possibly even the Mirror itself, not knowing that it's now sapient)
- The players are exploring the Mournland for other reasons and take refuge in the tower, not knowing the danger
2 months ago
Anonymous
Your explanation relies on the Mirror of Opposition.
Actually think about that for a minute. Have you ever considered how dumb a Mirror of Opposition is? It's a vestige of an older style of play, and suffers from the problem that the more you think about it, the dumber it gets.
If that's the core of your explanation, go for it. But please, consider how dumb it is that the Mirror of Opposition isn't some cursed item where its magic is distorted and not functioning correctly, but that someone designed an incredibly expensive item that makes violent copies of whoever appears in it but those copies disappear if that item breaks, and made it a fragile mirror.
2 months ago
Anonymous
It's a magical object, dude. Might as well ask why Sauron made his object of power a ring that could be cut off from his finger. Was he stupid?
2 months ago
Anonymous
Did you notice that Sauron made the One Ring nearly indestructible? Seems like a good idea.
>Was he stupid?
I mean, generally yes. Tolkien goes to great lengths explaining that he is evil, and that evil is fundamentally unwise. Sauron never expected anyone to be able to challenge him in combat sufficiently to be ever concerned about his finger being cut off, and its that exact hubris that was his downfall. Hell, the very center of the story is about how Sauron is so arrogant and foolish that the best way to defeat him was to send the last thing he would expect, a creature from a race he considered worthless, right into the center of his domain.
Also, the Mirror of Opposition is an expensive item that exists for either the six second payoff of a player smashing it, or the horrifiying sidestory of the players exposing the lone female member of the party to the mirror and then proceeding to subdue and ravage her clone because "clones don't count." Either way, weird item.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>Your explanation relies on the Mirror of Opposition.
Yeah, I still have no idea what the thing in OP actually is, so instead I'm just running off the concept of a thing that can copy stuff that gets too close and how I'd run that concept.
>Have you ever considered how dumb a Mirror of Opposition is?
Not even once, because it's not, it's fricking awesome.
2 months ago
Anonymous
I believe the explanation in the show is that it's an ancient tomb complex from an era of high magic and the demon was bound there as its guardian.
2 months ago
Anonymous
That half-way explains why the demon is there, but definitely not why it has its powers or why its powers have those specific limitations.
In fact, it raises the question of why an intelligent being would have the demon make copies of people that enter, and not something much more reliable and consistent, or why the limitation is one copy per person, alongside a myriad of other considerations. Hell, we're talking about binding an incredibly powerful demon, and effectively setting it up so that it's always going to be at a disadvantage since whatever group it copies will have its faux-members be initially separated while the original group will be able to stick together and just eliminate the individual copies one-by-one.
That's pretty dumb for a genius who figured out how to bind an amazingly powerful demon and set silly and self-defeating restrictions on it.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>why an intelligent being would have the demon make copies of people that enter
Immediate thought is part of a trial, challenge, or ritual. >or why the limitation is one copy per person
I mean sometimes you gotta just say "because magic", and limitations like this are one of those times. Else you start asking why mana points/spells per day are a thing as opposed to being able to cast spells at will like in Harry Potter. >we're talking about binding an incredibly powerful demon
Again, it's not really that powerful. It creates objectively worse copies of people. That can throw an unprepared and incautious person for a loop but I don't expect it to really be a threat to any serious adventuring party.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>I don't expect it to really be a threat
Which makes it a pretty shitty guardian, especially considering the effort involved in binding a demon of sufficient power.
>Immediate thought is part of a trial, challenge, or ritual.
Which decreases the satisfaction of the explanation.
Writing 101 tells us to never write off the events of a story as "It was all a dream." The more concrete a story is, the more involved its characters are, the more satisfying it is. If you have people who are presenting situations that are intentionally underwhelming as opposed to doing their absolute best to actually defend something, it starts to enter the more illusory territory that makes the explanation less satisfactory. It can work in a pinch, and I've used that explanation myself in the past on numerous occasions, but it's something we should try to avoid. When you have challenges that are half-assed, they certainly feel half-assed when you explain that whoever created the challenge wasn't really trying.
Really, take any challenge, and then add the asterisk that whatever you just overcame was intentionally weakened, and see how people react to that explanation.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>Writing 101 tells us to never write off the events of a story as "It was all a dream."
And Writing 102 tells us that if you're telling an engaging enough story, you can ignore Writing 101, because there is no such thing as an inviolate rule in writing. And not merely "in a pinch", you can set out from the get go with the full intention of violating anything that some pretentious Ganker refugee tells you is a rule, because there are no rules, just guidelines and templates.
>and then add the asterisk that whatever you just overcame was intentionally weakened
How do you know it was weakened? It could have been strengthened. The demon might ordinarily have the ability to make only a single copy of one creature, but as part of the trial, challenge, or ritual it has been strengthened.
You lack imagination.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>you can ignore Writing 101
You can never ignore Writing 101. Yes, for every rule, there's an exception, but for every exception, there's a rule. You need to be aware of and conscious of the rules so you can make intelligent choices and not just mistakes, and recognize the risks involved. So, please, don't try to pull some sort of "Rules are for homosexuals, do whatever you want" nonsense again.
>How do you know it was weakened? It could have been strengthened.
Because the weakness we're talking about is a terrible strategy, not a question of power. Are you paying attention, or just trying to come up with arguments without thinking?
2 months ago
Anonymous
>You can never ignore Writing 101
Spoken like someone who's never written a single thing in his life that wasn't for a school project.
Yes, knowing the fundamentals is important so you can make intelligent choices, but that's not the same thing as insisting zat zer ist EIN UND ONLY EINEN PROPER VAY OF DOINK THINKS. And don't try to say you didn't mean that: in the post I responded to you said "never write off", not "rarely" or "occasionally" or "every now and then".
>Because the weakness we're talking about is a terrible strategy
Again, how do you know that the demon, in its default state, is simply capable of creating a single imperfect copy, but whowever summoned it and placed it in the dungeon strengthened it so that it could create many copies, desiring to create something that will allow the dungeon to serve as part of a ritual, trial, or challenge?
Think of it this way - if you're making a dungeon that's supposed to be full of monsters, this one demon allows you to bind a single monster and nevertheless have a fully stocked dungeon without needing to find additional creatures.
You continue to lack imagination.
2 months ago
Anonymous
I'm getting a strong sense that you're not really worth talking to. It's like you're intentionally avoiding the points being made.
You might find it fun being dumb, but it's actually very tedious dealing with you, when you can't even handle something as simple as "for every rule, there's an exception, but for every exception, there's a rule."
If you can't get past that thought, why would you imagine you have anything of any importance to say?
I'll give you another chance, but really, last one.
2 months ago
Anonymous
Ah hey, are you the noblegay.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>Again, it's not really that powerful. It creates objectively worse copies of people.
It does not, that was entirely the issue with it. The copies don't even have the mindset to quickly defeat or accomplish their goal, they act like the originals but with the intent to protect the demon. They show how clone dude copy did not destroy the golem bottle despite being the optimal strategy, because he still thinked like the original. Frieren is both implied to be way stronger than the monster and unable to defeat the copy by herself.
Hell the only one who actually defeats their copy 1v1 is the psycho girl and does so precisely by gambling.
But it's specially egregious that it can then create infinite copies of everyone but only one at a time if it's defeated.
They focused a lot on mana supply/size yet this creature seems to have an unlimited amount when we don't havce a reason to think it is anywhere stronger than Frieren.
2 months ago
Anonymous
You're unironically overthinking it and not just in a "it's just a cartoon dude" way. It's a demon with magical powers. Why it has those powers and the inherent limitations of its powers are entirely arbitrary. That much is simply within the "it's fricking demon magic" territory.
But the funny part is you're also underthinking it. As was originally described in this thread, the demon will resummon destroyed copies over time, so picking them off one-by-one isn't a guaranteed win. And also it was stated that the copies will converge near the bottom. So by the time you get to the bottom, you could be facing a mirror match against fresh opponents while you've been getting worn down traversing the dungeon. That's not an inherently bad strategy by any means. Really it's a more proactive defense mechanism than most dungeons I've ever gone through on the tabletop, where there's just traps and some monsters (both of which the dungeon in question has as well).
2 months ago
Anonymous
>Why it has those powers and the inherent limitations of its powers are entirely arbitrary.
That's not how it works.
That's not how anything works.
What are you even on? Demons don't just have random powers that only exist to satisfy some clearly meta-constructed challenge. They're not "get out of actually having to think up motivations, histories, and even just simply lines of logic" cards that turn anyone into a genius designer the moment they're waved.
>so picking them off one-by-one isn't a guaranteed win.
It's at an incredible disadvantage, especially considering that the same exact power can be used far more efficiently and intelligently with even just ten seconds of thinking. It's almost like it was clearly designed to fail, which surprise surprise, it was.
Another common failure of design is painting yourself into a corner. When a designer initially makes something too powerful, they have to figure out ways to restrict it so the players have a chance, and those added limitations very often feel extremely forced. Copy-clone scenarios are very often the victim of this, where the clones often have some stupid added/contrived weakness because otherwise an equal party would just match up with and cancel out/eliminate an equal party, and the writer needs to figure out some way for the original party to win.
When this copy demon's effects/limitations are unknown, how badly it's designed is not immediately apparent. But, as that mystery diminishes, ie. as the players do what they're expected to do and learn about the scenario so they can better form a coherent strategy, the terrible design choices become more and more apparent. That's the exact opposite of what you want to happen, and it comes when you write anything carelessly ass-backwards.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>Demons don't just have random powers that only exist to satisfy some clearly meta-constructed challenge.
Pretty sure they traditionally do have exactly that. My first, immediate thought is the Devil suddenly being a fiddle player. In fact I'm pretty sure that most monster stories consist of the monsters being utterly indefatigable except for one convenient weakness. Sauron conveniently having a tiny chink in his armor just perfect for Bard, for example.
>and intelligently
Why do you assume that this demon is even intelligent?
2 months ago
Anonymous
>Sauron
*Smaug. Mea culpa.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>My first, immediate thought is the Devil suddenly being a fiddle player.
You mean talented in just about everything. He has the skill to be a fiddle player not because he came across a fiddle player and fiddle playing just happened to be the Devil's only talent, because that would be quite stupid, it's because the Devil has no shortage of talents and abilities that combine together to make fiddle playing trivial. The frick kind of reasoning are you even trying for?
>In fact I'm pretty sure that most monster stories consist of the monsters being utterly indefatigable except for one convenient weakness.
Except, aside from you being quite wrong in general (you're even focusing on exceptions in Tolkien's works, rather than the rule), you're especially wrong when we're talking about D&D monsters. Hell, the demons of D&D are notoriously lacking in convenient weaknesses, typically requiring one hell of a fricked up and complicated chain of events to ever actually kill. And, the challenge is rarely, if ever, a "meta-constructed challenge," and instead is an at-times awkward result of the way the cosmology is set up.
>Why do you assume that this demon is even intelligent?
Please, pay attention. Regardless of the demon, whoever bound the demon had to have some measure of intelligence. If it just ends up being that everyone involved just happened to be stupid, than that's about as unsatisfying an explanation one could have. Basically Star Wars Prequel territory.
2 months ago
Anonymous
You keep calling it a stupid challenge, but it sure sounds like a more active challenge than most dungeons. Imagine going through a dungeon but periodically a full power copy of the rogue sneaks up on you and tries shanking someone. Or a copy of the wizard shows up and chucks fireballs around. Even if they're suicide attacks that you fend off, they're still gonna do some damage. If you try stopping to rest and recover, you'll just get continuously harried by the copies as they're resummoned. And at the end of it all, you'll probably end up having to fight against the copies all over again, except they're fresh and you're worn out.
2 months ago
Anonymous
Please, pay attention. The challenge was described as lazy, and it is. It's incredibly lazy design. The stupid part comes later, when it's clear that the limitations are strategically inept and made not to use the abilities of the demon to anywhere near its real potential as a guardian. Doing something obviously stupid is adding that asterisk of "This challenge was deliberately weakened."
>Imagine
Imagine facing an exact party line up, altogether, rather than one by one. There's a reason why most parties tend to employ that same strategy.
It's ultimately explained with "It's just a test," ie. it was all just a lazily explained meta-construct with no more meaning behind it than "a wizard did it."
2 months ago
Anonymous
>The challenge was described as lazy, and it is
No, it's not. You've made the claim but you've failed to convincingly argue the point. You've instead only demonstrated an inability to distinguish between things you personally dislike, and things that are actually bad.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>but you've failed to convincingly argue the point.
No, I have, the problem is simply you're a dullard.
I've already explained how it's lazy. It's a pretty unoriginal trope used hundreds of times, and explained away with "A demon did it" because it's all a test and the stakes and challenge are artificial to begin with.
You personally don't think it's lazy. That's because you actually think "Your argument is an opinion, and even though you've supported it, I can say you haven't because I disagree with your opinion" is actually an argument.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>dullard
This be not Oxford, ye mountebank. No extra points shall ye receive for arcane vernacular.
>I've already explained how it's lazy.
I said "convincingly". You've explained, but clearly not to anyone's satisfaction (protip: I am not the only one you've been arguing with). At this point an intelligent man would stop to consider if perhaps he's in the wrong.
>It's a pretty unoriginal trope used hundreds of times
Originality doesn't come from what tropes you use, it comes from how you use them, and how well you've done so is dependent on the larger story that they're used in. Tropes are tools. None of them are inherently good or bad in and of themselves, no matter how common or rare they are. A good writer knows this, so, we've now established that you're not.
>the stakes and challenge are artificial to begin with
Artificial in what sense? Because they're part of a test? That doesn't make them invalid stakes. Within the context of the story, passing or not passing the test is what will determine if the elf-mage and her entourage can continue on the way they want to go in a timely and reasonable fashion, or if they'll instead have to take a long, arduous, inconvenient, and expensive side route. Within the dungeon itself, if they fail to deal with the problems the demon is throwing their way, then they'll die in the worst case; or forfeit the test in the best case, and have to spend time waiting to take the test again, which I'm assuming would take a significant time.
Those are meaningful stakes. The demon and the challenge it creates is a genuine impediment to the party's goals. You dullard.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>Artificial in what sense?
With artificial limitations constructed by man? Deliberately underutilized below its optimal capacity, for reasons that are independent of the principle actors involved? Y'know, something that would make any question of how strong or weak something or what it's actual limitations are meaningless because it's being deliberately capped?
We don't actually know what the demon can or cannot do, what's the reasoning behind the limitations, because that can all just be chalked up with "It's a test." No one is trying to figure out the maximum potential or capacity of the Demon because the stakes are not that high (the worst result is people passing) and they're not actually attempting to violently murder everyone with no chance of anyone succeeding.
>Originality doesn't come from what tropes you use, it comes from how you use them
And lazily using it as a test explained away by a demon is a terrible use. Uninspired. Lazy.
Look, I know it's your favorite show or whatever, but frick me, you don't seem capable of appreciating bad writing even as you commit it. I'm genuinely struggling to get through your laborious, dull posts with no intelligence or insight or even rudimentary basic semblance of thought.
Here's the bottom line.
The "demon" is nothing more than a transparently obvious plot device with only the laziest bits of fluff scattered around it, artificial in every sense of the word. It's lazy writing. Maybe not the laziest writing ever conceived, but not everyone spends their life surrounded by whatever you happen to be producing.
2 months ago
Anonymous
> And lazily using it as a test
But it’s not “lazy”. It serves a valid purpose in-story.
2 months ago
Anonymous
You're really trying hard to ignore people attempting to correct you're faulty assumptions. It's making it difficult to take you seriously when you build pillars on sand and claim they're absolutely sturdy.
>No one is trying to figure out the maximum potential or capacity of the Demon because the stakes are not that high (the worst result is people passing) and they're not actually attempting to violently murder everyone with no chance of anyone succeeding.
The stakes are deadly. Almost everyone who'd ventured into the dungeon before had been slaughtered. The only reason people aren't dying during the exam is because the proctor handed out the escape golem bottles. I suppose you might be assuming those are some kind of common magic item, but they're not. They're basically an experiment by another top mage which the proctor appropriated because she didn't want too many people dying like they did in the previous test. The demon's copies aren't playing around either. They're going for blood. One of them even manages to snatch someone's golem bottle so he couldn't use it, though he's saved by another examinee.
You know I could've clarified these things if you'd asked some questions instead of just assuming shit left and right.
2 months ago
Anonymous
You're tossing a pretty big heap of bad writing at me.
>it's a test >BUT IT'S DEADLY TEST, SO TAKE IT SERIOUSLY >but, okay, it can't be TOO deadly, here's some golem bottles >BUT THEY'RE SUPER RARE, OKAY?! >Though, everyone still gets one so it doesn't change that they make the test less deadly >YOU CAN HAVE YOUR BOTTLE STOLEN, SUPER SERIOUS
It's like first-thought writing from some wimpy amateur stumbling into his first pitfalls, one after the other, without ever looking back or learning any lessons.
2 months ago
Anonymous
The previous test actually had gotten people killed, which the second proctor rightly thought was a waste of human life, so she brought countermeasures to minimize the loss of life in her own test. And yes, being able to have your bottle stolen does demonstrate that the test is still very dangerous. You can call the author a chicken for not letting the guy die, but a story doesn't need to constantly keep killing people off in order to communicate stakes.
2 months ago
Anonymous
I like the story and specially the character interactions, but the second test is definetly flawed from a story and setting perspective.
We're told the dungeon is old and still not properly mapped out, with the exact lcoation of the innermost chamber being a mistery. They're aware of the copy demon inside, but also that they don't have the proper means to deal with it (past parties were all wiped).
So the Mage society, or Sense decides to make the test about well, finishing this dungeon.
But what makes no fricking sense to me is why in the everlasting frick did Sense enter the dungeon? Not only did she knew that would spawn one clone of her, but she had no way to know if she (Sense) would get out with her and Frieren's clone there. The golems were a good idea but I really wish one would've gotten crushed or broken because msot major injuries the character suffered were plot convenient and not mortal. Way more should've died not because of realism but because this wasn't an exam, it was a suicide mission where the main culprit was mage society themselves.
There is also no fricking way that sociopath girl was let go nonchalantly after killing a first grade mage. You telling me she oneshots the 1st rank guy known for being invulnerable and all she gets is a slap on the wrist and "try again next exam"?
People would be all over her, trying to figure out her magic and probably offering jobs or easy acces to stuff, if not thrown in jail for being such a menace to society.
Who the frick sees a random dude knock out Mike tyson with a single jab and goes "well it's not an official match so it doesn't count"
2 months ago
Anonymous
>There is also no fricking way that sociopath girl was let go nonchalantly after killing a first grade mage. You telling me she oneshots the 1st rank guy known for being invulnerable and all she gets is a slap on the wrist and "try again next exam"?
In fairness here, it's pretty hard for them to punish her. She was specifically and directly told to attack the guy, with everyone figuring the dude would be perfectly fine given his specialty. Hard to accuse her of anything untoward when she only did specifically what she was told. That and most of the mages there figured that Serie would be actually interested in her, given Serie is who she is.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>People would be all over her, trying to figure out her magic and probably offering jobs or easy acces to stuff, if not thrown in jail for being such a menace to society.
They know exactly how her magic works. The entire point of her is that magic has a huge component of belief: if you believe something can happen, magic will make it happen.
The issue here is that belief's a lot harder than just saying it. That's the whole point of how the exam went wrong: she knows a spell that can cut anything so long as the user believes it can be cut. The mage she was attacking was wearing a cloak, and she grew up the daughter of a seamstress, because she'd seen her mother cut cloth all the time, she believed she could cut the cloak. The issue here is anyone else would realize that the mage had layered that cloak with so much defensive magic that you could never cut it, but to her, that didn't matter: it was cloth, and it could be cut.
Her magic isn't what's strange, it's her mentality and perception of the world that allows her to believe things that everyone else would think impossible.
2 months ago
Anonymous
> I know it's your favorite show or whatever
Babylon 5 is my favorite show. Freiren isn’t even my favorite anime (I’m not even sure I have one), it’s just one I’m watching.
> I'm genuinely struggling to get through your laborious, dull posts
I believe you’re struggling, but not for the reasons you suggest here.
> but not everyone spends their life surrounded by whatever you happen to be producing.
I mean, if we’re whipping out our dicks now? Then on the fanfiction website i’ve been most active on, over the course of the ten years I wrote 1.1 million words across 35 stories. My most viewed story on that site has over 270,000 views and over 1.2k comments, while my highest-ranked story is currently 398th out of over 150,000 stories on the site, and it’s one of three that are all in the site’s top 1,000 stories. I also on that site ran a collaborative universe that had over two dozen authors and more than 150 stories all part of the same shared, cohesive universe.
Now, yes, fan fiction, though I have plenty of original fiction too. And of course for all I know you’ve got some similar numbers from AO3 or something under your belt. But I think it’s pretty obvious that I’ve got a solid grasp on how to write engaging, appealing stories. I am not just whistling Dixie; I have practical experience in entertaining people with the written word. I know what I’m talking about. You are not talking to a rank amateur - though based on your responses I strongly suspect that I am.
2 months ago
Anonymous
Here's some free help. >Then on the fanfiction website
Here's where I gave up reading the rest of your post.
2 months ago
Anonymous
> Here's where I gave up reading the rest of your post.
The part where I established practical experience in something you barely have schooling in? Yeah. That’s pretty on-brand for you based on your posts throughout this thread.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>The part where I established practical experience
Where?
I went back, struggled through your post, and I found nothing that looked practical. If anything, I only found evidence to the contrary.
I'll be kind to you. I'll tell you a brief part of my own story, a fairly early part, so you'll understand why I'm not even mildly impressed by what you dropped down.
Back in my college days, I thought my own internet stats were pretty impressive. I cared about how well my own writing did on various online platforms, and I even obsessively tracked the numbers like you do now. I wasn't so dumb as to care about how many words I wrote, but I did pay attention to views and rankings, and some of my stories have enjoyed millions of views, high rankings, and other things I thought might have mattered once. Hell, even my stories posted here have done quite well, and I just checked to find a good number of them on the first page of suptg, bless its little heart.
I'm doing you a kindness by telling you that your stats, aside from being quite underwhelming as far as being something to brag about, don't mean much when you stop to take a look around. Go ahead and read the 400 stories ranked higher than your own on that fanfiction site, and see how shit they are all going to be.
2 months ago
Anonymous
I thankfully have friends who are also writers, and we manage to keep our egos in check by keeping things in perspective. At the end of the day, even looking back at my most popular stories that spread in various forms throughout the internet and have gotten millions of views, I can objectively say they're trash. Fun trash, trash that some people have literally commented to say that it's their favorite story every told, but still trash.
I can actually thank a good friend of mine, because he hit me with a great one-two blow several years ago. He discovered that someone had taken an old story I wrote, made an audiobook out of it, and published it on youtube and gotten several hundred thousand views on it. And, just when I was about to feel some measure of pride about that, he reminded me that the story was still terrible. There was a moment where I was actually going to argue with him, to try and use youtube stats to say the story wasn't half bad, but then I had a beautiful epiphany and remembered that he was the one who was ultimately right.
I debated whether or not I would give you any response, largely because your post wasn't any sort of argument and had no point to it, but in the end, I think a measure of pity won out in the end. You still haven't had that great epiphany yet, where you can look at even your highest rated stories and realized just how much more work you need to do as a writer. Here's hoping in some time, you'll find be able to actually listen to someone tell you write like trash and you'll be able to take that to heart and grow from it.
Also, you write like trash.
2 months ago
Anonymous
I thankfully have friends who are also writers, and we manage to keep our egos in check by keeping things in perspective. At the end of the day, even looking back at my most popular stories that spread in various forms throughout the internet and have gotten millions of views, I can objectively say they're trash. Fun trash, trash that some people have literally commented to say that it's their favorite story every told, but still trash.
I can actually thank a good friend of mine, because he hit me with a great one-two blow several years ago. He discovered that someone had taken an old story I wrote, made an audiobook out of it, and published it on youtube and gotten several hundred thousand views on it. And, just when I was about to feel some measure of pride about that, he reminded me that the story was still terrible. There was a moment where I was actually going to argue with him, to try and use youtube stats to say the story wasn't half bad, but then I had a beautiful epiphany and remembered that he was the one who was ultimately right.
I debated whether or not I would give you any response, largely because your post wasn't any sort of argument and had no point to it, but in the end, I think a measure of pity won out in the end. You still haven't had that great epiphany yet, where you can look at even your highest rated stories and realized just how much more work you need to do as a writer. Here's hoping in some time, you'll find be able to actually listen to someone tell you write like trash and you'll be able to take that to heart and grow from it.
Also, you write like trash.
Nta, but good heavens you're one smug c**t.
2 months ago
Anonymous
I mean, yeah. It's kind of hard not to feel smug when someone brags about something you stopped caring about ages ago, and this guy never even reached your level.
I genuinely want him to also grow past the phase where he thinks those "stats" are special or even "intimidating." If I want to be brutally honest, I'm getting second-hand cringe at remembering how proud I was when one of my stories hit over a million views. I didn't brag about it online like this kid is doing, but I did momentarily start thinking that I was the next Dumas, and not just a dumbass.
See that? That's the kind of line I have enough self-awareness to groan at. You don't develop that kind of awareness when you're still stuck counting views and using each one to pad your ego.
2 months ago
Anonymous
I want you to understand that I think that other anon is a loser for throwing out his numbers and being proud about fanfiction. Having said that, a loser is better than a former loser who's become a c**t. If you have even an ounce of the self-awareness that you claim to have, I hope you're able to reflect on that.
2 months ago
Anonymous
I'm glad you found some way of feeling superior, but it's kind of weird you imagine your high ground can be built out of immediate hypocrisy, That's a pretty weak foundation.
I actually don't think that anon is a loser so much as he might just be in an embryonic stage. There's a chance he can grow past the instinct to look at an argument, and instead of facing it head-on, to try and pull rank using internet numbers. I might never have been quite that bad, but I can sympathize, because internet numbers did use to mean something to me.
2 months ago
Anonymous
Anon, my friend, consider what you've posted so far. You saw someone trying to brag about his dick size and then went into a spiel about how dick measuring contest are silly and immature, while insisting your dick was bigger the whole time. Really think about it for a second. What do you think you've demonstrated to him? To anyone?
But now I have to concede defeat because I need to sleep and thus you'll get the last word.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>What do you think you've demonstrated to him? To anyone?
...Don't wave your dick? I mean, what?
What's the proper reaction to someone dropping their pants and showing off their teeny weenie? Running in fear? That just leads to them dropping their pants more often.
I shared a bit of my past here, not to show off the size of my genitals, but to reaffirm that dick measuring contests are dumb and a good way to get slapped in the face.
By a big meaty dick.
Hell, I spared everyone any of my actual writing credentials; all I did was mention what I did back in college. All I've done so far is say "Internet shit is weak, tuck that shit back in."
2 months ago
Anonymous
>when someone brags
Again, wasn't bragging since as I said for all I know you have similar stats. Was establishing more than a decade of experience in writing to entertain people to make it clear that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to entertaining people with writing, to establish clearly that you sound like someone saying "you're not funny!" to a, say, stand-up comedian who might never have made it big but can in fact regularly get a crowd at bars to laugh.
I want you to understand that I think that other anon is a loser for throwing out his numbers and being proud about fanfiction. Having said that, a loser is better than a former loser who's become a c**t. If you have even an ounce of the self-awareness that you claim to have, I hope you're able to reflect on that.
>and being proud about fanfiction
I'm not proud about fanfiction in and of itself. I'm proud that even in only in some small way, I've entertained people and told stories they enjoyed. Not just with fanfiction, either, I do have original works.
I'm glad you found some way of feeling superior, but it's kind of weird you imagine your high ground can be built out of immediate hypocrisy, That's a pretty weak foundation.
I actually don't think that anon is a loser so much as he might just be in an embryonic stage. There's a chance he can grow past the instinct to look at an argument, and instead of facing it head-on, to try and pull rank using internet numbers. I might never have been quite that bad, but I can sympathize, because internet numbers did use to mean something to me.
>to try and pull rank using internet numbers
Dude, the only reason why I "tried to pull rank" was because YOU kept trying to do the same by trying to place yourself on a pedestal above everyone else in this thread and, by implication of your arguments, above the writers of the TV show that you admit you've never even seen. You've been smugly "pulling rank" this entire thread without a single thing to back up doing so since you self-evidently don't have a clue what you're going on about when you talk about story structure, meta-narrative, purpose for including this and that in a story, etc.
And AS A REMINDER, the only reason we're on this line of discussion at all is over the idea of using a copy of the anime's monster in a game, that you play with friends, where originality takes the back of the buss next to engaging the players with a memorable and fun encounter. Literally everything you've tried to bring up about the idea of meta-narrative is meaningless because all hat matters is if the players were entertained for however long it takes to traverse the dungeon and face the demon and its minions. Originality isn't important in this context.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>I went back, struggled through your post, and I found nothing that looked practical.
Ten years of writing stories that people have apparently loved to read isn't practical experience? What is, then?
>I thought my own internet stats were pretty impressive
I don't think they're impressive though. You missed the point entirely. I wasn't putting numbers to my name to say "and therefore I'm better than you", I don't know you and like I pointed out myself, for all I know you've got similar numbers from AO3. I brought them up to point out that I know what the frick I'm talking about because I've been writing engaging stories for more than a decade.
>and see how shit they are all going to be.
I have, and they're not. Even if not all of them are necessarily things that I personally enjoy, I can still recognize the reason why they are where they are, I can appreciate that other people enjoy them. Which, as I've said a few times, is the main point of a story, to be entertaining, or rather engaging (since you strike me as someone who hears "entertaining" and thinks "fart jokes and explosions" when that is not what I mean at all). All the writing talent and deep and meaningful messages in the world don't mean shit if you can't put butts in seats and get your story read.
>he reminded me that the story was still terrible
Couldn't have been that terrible if it got hundreds of thousands of views. Your friend sounds like an ass. It's one thing to point out flaws or areas where improvement is needed, it's another thing to take something that people obviously engaged with and enjoyed and call it terrible. That's just objectively wrong, and you strike me as someone who's just taking out his trauma over the experience on other people.
2 months ago
Anonymous
The demon isn't there because of the test the test is just set to take place in a dungeon that existed prior. Try to keep up
2 months ago
Anonymous
>It's incredibly lazy design.
Far less lazy than the average dungeon if you think about it for a bit.
>The stupid part comes later, when it's clear that the limitations are strategically inept and made not to use the abilities of the demon to anywhere near its real potential as a guardian. >Imagine facing an exact party line up, altogether, rather than one by one. There's a reason why most parties tend to employ that same strategy.
Ah, I think I finally see the problem here. Okay, so I think the demon's "strategy" wasn't properly conveyed and you're thinking that the demon always scatters the copies randomly until it decides to converge them. And that notion has been supported by the talk of sporadic suicide attacks and such. No, as far as I recall the copies aren't obliged to be scattered at the start. They're spread out in the story because there's multiple groups entering the dungeon, but the copies can and do group up and can even coordinate as a team. One of the groups runs into their exact mirror match early on and they're stuck fighting it for a long time.
Now perhaps you're imagining it would be better if all the copies grouped together immediately and went around steamrolling the groups one at a time would be more efficient, but the efficiency of that depends on how the groups are spread out through the dungeon. And either way it'll just end in a mirror match with the survivors. Likewise, having all of the copies just staying at the end guarding the door in one big group is just a mirror match as well.
There's also risk in forcing a full mirror match at the wrong time. If the group wins the mirror match and then rushes through the rest of the dungeon fast enough, there may not be time to resummon the destroyed copies and the demon is fricked.
That said, I'm sure having to face multiple full mirror matches is precisely why the dungeon hadn't been conquered up to the point.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>The frick kind of reasoning are you even trying for?
So he has all these limitless skills and yet nevertheless can be "in a bind 'cause he's way behind"? Who, exactly, is breathing down the Devil's neck reminding him about soul quotas, Ganker refugee? >Except, aside from you being quite wrong in general
Almost every single monster in Greek myth says "hi".
>typically requiring one hell of a fricked up and complicated chain of events to ever actually kill
Not really? You just have to go to its home plane. By the time you're high enough level to care whether the demons you're fighting are dead or merely discorporated, you'll have access to Plane Shift. Hell if you really want you can go to the Abyss even earlier through a few different means - you can pay someone of sufficient level to cast Plane Shift on your behalf for just 515 gp in 5e.
>whoever bound the demon had to have some measure of intelligence
Binding one monster to ensure a perpetually stocked dungeon isn't intelligent?
2 months ago
Anonymous
>Almost every single monster in Greek myth says "hi".
Oh wow, you're actually stupid.
I'll give you a big hint: Just because a monster died in one fashion doesn't mean it only had a single convenient weakness.
Next thing I know you're going to tell me JFK's only weakness was bullets.
2 months ago
Anonymous
Anon, answer the question I've asked twice now: how is binding one monster to ensure a perpetually stocked dungeon not intelligent?
2 months ago
Anonymous
That question is pretty irrelevant. Binding a demon to make them create minions to defend a dungeon isn't dumb, but the manner in which this particular demon is being used is quite dumb, and deliberately so.
Just about every limitation is awkward and arbitrary if it was actually intended for defending something. Even just a small change in strategy would make it considerably more effective. It's the sort of thing that an intelligent mage would look at, and at the very least go "Yeah, no, let's see if I can get the demon to spawn the clones together, that would actually probably be easier for it anyway."
If we're talking about the mage being unable to control any of the limitations, we're talking about a very, very odd array of limitations that seem pretty deliberately geared towards being functionally useless as a real deterrent because it's comically always at a severe disadvantage, regardless of what party enters.
A smart mage would just be all "look, it can copy anything? Let's just figure out its maximum capacity and just have it copy that, maybe throw in a little variety. I don't know, anything other than this 'copy a party but make it so they're easy to pick off' business."
2 months ago
Anonymous
nta, but I knew it. You're assuming the demon is more locked into a particular strategy than it is. To be clear, it's not your fault since you're working off of limited information. That said, you are being a bit of a jackass about it and simply assuming the worst instead of asking for clarification.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>but the manner in which this particular demon is being used is quite dumb
It seems quite intelligent to me.
>we're talking about a very, very odd array of limitations
Anon it seems to have just three limitations: the clones it creates are not intelligent and instead just mindlessly either defend the demon or attack intruders; it doesn't work outside of the dungeon; and it can only create one clone per person at a time.
The first just means its creating ants with perks. It's the queen of a colony. The behavior of the clones it makes is exactly that of ants defending a colony from attack. If you wouldn't have a problem with ants defending their queen then you shouldn't have a problem here.
The second is easily explained by a binding spell. The idea that you can trap something inside of an are with the right ingredients and magic words is an intrinsic part of fantasy and mythology.
The third is a necessary answer to the question, "why doesn't it just make infinite clones? Why has the world not collapsed into a clone singularity?" Magic is ALWAYS bound by some kind of rule like that. You might as well demand to know why vampires prefer human blood when there really shouldn't be much of a difference between that and animal blood. You can come up with some arbitrary explanation like "souls" or whatever but it's no less arbitrary than the demon's own.
>Let's just figure out its maximum capacity
They did. It was one copy of any given thing at a time. You just aren't accepting that for some nonsensical reason. You're also going on about meta-narrative when, again, it's painfully obvious that you've never written anything that wasn't for a school project. I dunno, MAYBE a campaign or two for anyone unfortunate enough to have you as a DM, but I can only imagine it was a terrible experience for everyone.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>Magic is ALWAYS bound by some kind of rule like that.
No, it's rarely bound by rules that are only convenient for constructing a meta-narrative and have no semblance of in-world logic. That's incredibly lazy writing.
I think I understand what your problem is. You're thinking in terms of fairy tales. The third prince will always succeed after the first two have failed and the dragon can only be killed by a silver spoon wetted by a maiden's tears. You're not actually thinking of mythology, which you're clearly no expert of, and your only exposure to fantasy seems to be fairly weak at best if you're stuck thinking that fairy tale logic is any kind of actual logic.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>No, it's rarely bound by rules that are only convenient for constructing a meta-narrative
It is ALWAYS bound by rules that are convenient for constructing a meta-narrative. Literally every single time it has ever been used in every story that has ever featured magic, ever.
Go on, I'll prove it. Name a time magic was used in any reasonably well-known story. I say reasonably well-known because there's only so many hours in the day so obviously I haven't read all of them.
But, for example, as a start: Why can the genie only grant his master 3 wishes? Why can't he kill anyone, make anyone fall in love, or bring people back from the dead?
Or if you want to go back to the original Arabian Nights version of Aladdin, why did the hitherto absolutely loyal and obedient Genie of the Lamp, who had never displayed any kind of personal whim or ego, suddenly throw a fit and say Aladdin and his wife deserved to be burn to ashes for asking for a roc's egg, and then disappear forever?
2 months ago
Anonymous
The People of the Black Circle, my favorite Conan story, as another example.
The Master of Yimsha is able to, with a gesture, rip out Kerim Shah’s heart from across a room. Why didn’t he then do this to Conan? >Conan was protected by Khemsa’s belt
The belt didn’t manage to protect Khemsa himself from three lesser sorcerers from Yimsha, and the Master of Yimsha is presented as much more powerful than the three combined.
For that matter, when he Master of Yimsha tried to kill the Devi at the end of the story he does so transformed into a bird. Why not just use magic to rip *her* heart out? Or fly overhead as a bird but then transform into a rhinoceros?
Man, Robert E. Howard was a hack.
No he wasn’t, obviously
2 months ago
Anonymous
Conan was actually protected by being a foreigner as well. He literally had magic resistance from not understanding their magic, which actually had a psychological component. The more you believed and feared the magic, the more effective it was.
It's almost like the magic has in-world considerations and depth to it. Huh.
2 months ago
Anonymous
> The more you believed and feared the magic, the more effective it was.
Then why not just use something that’s a gerunteed win? Fly over Conan and then transform into a whale. There is no psychological component to forty tons of blubber landing on top of you.
There’s also the obvious question of “why” does the Master of Yimsha’s magic have a psychological component when no other magic in Howard’s Conan corpus is show to work that way? That’s very convenient for Conan, isn’t it? Almost like the narrative had been set up by the author to give him an advantage he logically shouldn’t have based on how precious magic had functioned.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>Then why not just use something that’s a gerunteed win?
Because he wasn't aware of just how resistant Conan could be. Conan was a foreigner with incredibly strong will and an anti-magic belt, that's not something even the Master would encounter often.
>There’s also the obvious question of “why” does the Master of Yimsha’s magic have a psychological component when no other magic in Howard’s Conan corpus is show to work that way?
It does. Plenty of magic depends upon it, with examples of hypnotism and illusion being the most common, and Conan's will being able to help him get through those on a few occasions.
It's actually kind of sad that People of the Black Circle was your favorite Conan story, and you didn't even understand some basic things about it.
2 months ago
Anonymous
Oh frick me, Aladdin?
My mistake for saying fairy tale just for you to open up with a folk tale. Jesus christ I knew I had your problem mapped out, you've never progressed beyond that point.
>Literally every single time it has ever been used in every story that has ever featured magic, ever.
No, sometimes, people have magic and use magic because that's who the character is, not what the story needs from them in order to progress in a fashion that only makes sense as a meta-construct. When Gandalf makes the tip of his staff glow, it's not because it's the only way to get through the Mines, it's because it's more convenient than using torches or a lantern, and as a master of light and fire at bare minimum he should be able to do that.
2 months ago
Anonymous
> people have magic and use magic because that's who the character is
Yeah, because that’s who the story needed them to be.
> When Gandalf makes the tip of his staff glow, it's not because it's the only way to get through the Mines
Ah, cool, Tolkien. Good choice on your part.
The Nine can expressly not be harmed by any mortal weapon. How, then, was Aragorn able to drive off five of them at Weathertop with nothing more than gumption and a flaming brand?
Why did Smaug have a chink in his armor? And why was it not mentioned earlier? It isn’t brought up until the bird tells Bard about it, literally all of a paragraph before Bard kills Smaug. Speaking of, the fact that certain Men can talk to birds comes up for the first time in the same paragraph. As does Bard himself but that’s not magic so we won’t worry about it. Seems like Tolkien had written twelce dwarves and a midget arriving at a mountain to face a dragon and only belatedly realizing that based on their previous performance there’s no way they’d be able to kill Smaug.
O how convenient for Bilbo to just stumble across a helpful troglodyte with a magic ring that he’s willing to give up! Tolkien himself realized the problem here and retconned it.
Hey speaking of the Ring and the Nine, why can the Ringwraiths see through its invisibility? It had previously been established as *just* being invisibility, but. Is something about actually entering the spirit world?
Tom. Bombadil.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>How, then, was Aragorn
You mean one of the most powerful humans to ever exist? The kingliest king to ever king in the history of kinging? THAT Aragorn, against a bunch of the Nine who CAN be hurt by fire, were far from Mordor, and not anywhere near their full strength thanks to it being tied to Sauron's power, which was still growing at the time?
Wow, it's like... thought. Like thought was put into it.
> And why was it not mentioned earlier?
You mean, when Bilbo, the only guy who ever had a chance to get a good long look at Smaug, noticed it? And him telling the dwarves was when the bird overhears that little fact?
The frick is wrong with you? I'm all for pointing out plot holes and what not, but you're just demonstrating that you're actually pretty dumb.
>Yeah, because that’s who the story needed them to be.
No, see, that would be bad writing. If something is too convenient or convoluted, it's bad writing.
A bird overhearing Bilbo tell the dwarves about the missing scale so that there's something that can deliver that information to Bard? Is anyone going to argue that's good writing? No, it's way too convenient, way too convoluted.
But, when characters feel natural, and the story seems like its following them make intelligent decisions and understanding the world and solving problems and so on, we start to see good writing emerge. Y'know, with magic that exists like Lembas bread, with the Hobbits carefully considering just how magical it was before going off to Mordor with it, and not just assuming it would last them forever because the plot needed them to survive. Hell, they even ran out of that Lembas bread. Even though that happens because Tolkien wanted the hobbits to really suffer in Mordor, it feels natural and makes the world feel more real, not less.
2 months ago
Anonymous
Man, this just sounds like "The stuff I like is well written, the stuff I hate is badly written."
2 months ago
Anonymous
>I like well written stuff and hate badly written stuff
And now I'm going to pretend this is a bad stance to take so I don't lose an anonymous internet argument
NTA btw
The actual problem you guys are trying to get at is arguing in bad faith. The wannabe Ganker anon has been arguing in bad faith from the start, consistently showing more interest in talking shit than actually knowing what he's talking shit about. You can see how he dodges around attempts to correct his misunderstandings while honing in on specific details to nitpick.
2 months ago
Anonymous
> against a bunch of the Nine who CAN be hurt by fire
They are invisible noncorporeal ghosts. Why can they be hurt by fire? Also, is there any actual instance of them being worried by fire except here? Also, if fire is all that’s needed, how could it be possible that the Witch-King can’t be killed by a Man’s hand?
> You mean, when Bilbo, the only guy who ever had a chance to get a good long look at Smaug, noticed it?
You know what, you’re actually right for a change - I just re-read the chapter and Bilbo does in fact notice it. However that doesn’t change the fact that the one to take it out Smaug is a man who can talk to birds who is first introduced not three paragraphs before he actually does it with no warning or setup for him or his ability to talk to birds.
> And him telling the dwarves was when the bird overhears that little fact?
I didn’t question how the bird learned it, Anon, I questioned why Smaug was killed by a guy who is literally introduced only three paragraphs before he does the deed, who has a hitherto unknown bird-talking power. Good thing he happened to live nearby!
> it feels natural
No, it feels like a plot device inserted for a purpose. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, mind, because that’s what literally every action in every story in history is. It’s just that you, personally, are willing to overlook it because you, personally, like it or at least don’t mind it.
> It does
It does not. Not once in any other Howard-written Conan story does the idea that Conan wasn’t raised in a culture of mesmerism and so therefore it doesn’t work as well on him come up.
> and you didn't even understand some basic things about it.
I understood it perfectly well, which is the reason that I know that it’s concept of “the magic doesn’t work as well on people who weren’t raised to it” never comes up in another Conan story and hadn’t come up in a previous one.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>You're not actually thinking of mythology
Chiefly I'm thinking of Dungeons & Dragons and what's actually fun to both run and play in, yes, seeing as that's presumably at the crux of OP's question (i.e., why he wants a CR for the demon at all). "Fun" is, after all, the overriding goal of any game, the thing that is of paramount importance.
2 months ago
Anonymous
You pretty much figured out the limits from anime. I'd add that the copies have another, peculiar weakness - they act based on demon's ability to copy the mind of their original, which means that they have all the quirks of the original. For example, clone of pacifist had habit of opening with attacks that weren't immediately lethal and clone of sadist took its sweet time.
2 months ago
Anonymous
It's literal demon magic. What exactly are you looking for, the demon's personal explanation for why it's magic works the way it does? It's not gonna explain shit to anyone, the people who bound it are long dead, and everyone else only knows what's been observed of it.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>It's literal demon magic
Yes. Even if you wanted to try and provide the explanation that it's just pure chaos, that actually works against you because it's incredibly unlikely and convenient for the limitations to just so happen to correctly align with what's clearly a meta-constructed challenge.
Everyone who observes it enough to understand it is going to go "huh, those specific limitations are pretty inconvenient in a very specific way, that only really makes sense if... OH GOD, WE'RE MERELY CHARACTERS IN A CONSTRUCTED NARRATIVE?!"
2 months ago
Anonymous
I get the feeling you're projecting a great deal of genre awareness onto the characters. Regardless, I'm still not clear what you actually want from the story. What would they have to say to make it not "clearly a meta-constructed challenge"?
2 months ago
Anonymous
>Demons don't just have random powers that only exist to satisfy some clearly meta-constructed challenge.
Yes they do moron, have you ever read actual myths or folklore? They aren't Naruto villains with a "power level".
2 months ago
Anonymous
>Why it has those powers and the inherent limitations of its powers are entirely arbitrary.
That's not how it works.
That's not how anything works.
What are you even on? Demons don't just have random powers that only exist to satisfy some clearly meta-constructed challenge. They're not "get out of actually having to think up motivations, histories, and even just simply lines of logic" cards that turn anyone into a genius designer the moment they're waved.
>so picking them off one-by-one isn't a guaranteed win.
It's at an incredible disadvantage, especially considering that the same exact power can be used far more efficiently and intelligently with even just ten seconds of thinking. It's almost like it was clearly designed to fail, which surprise surprise, it was.
Another common failure of design is painting yourself into a corner. When a designer initially makes something too powerful, they have to figure out ways to restrict it so the players have a chance, and those added limitations very often feel extremely forced. Copy-clone scenarios are very often the victim of this, where the clones often have some stupid added/contrived weakness because otherwise an equal party would just match up with and cancel out/eliminate an equal party, and the writer needs to figure out some way for the original party to win.
When this copy demon's effects/limitations are unknown, how badly it's designed is not immediately apparent. But, as that mystery diminishes, ie. as the players do what they're expected to do and learn about the scenario so they can better form a coherent strategy, the terrible design choices become more and more apparent. That's the exact opposite of what you want to happen, and it comes when you write anything carelessly ass-backwards.
They actually explain it evolved / came about similar to a different monster, which was psychic carnivorous plant that would construct illusions of people to lure them to their deaths and eat them. The reason why it's strange and arbitrary is it evolved that way because doing that was successful enough.
2 months ago
Anonymous
I thought they just drew the comparison to highlight that the Spiegel's copies were physical, rather than illusory like the other demon's. Though I'll admit I might not be remembering the dialogue fully.
At any rate, I'm pretty sure it's worthless trying to explain it to him. He's already made up his mind.
2 months ago
Anonymous
I thought they just drew the comparison to highlight that the Spiegel's copies were physical, rather than illusory like the other demon's. Though I'll admit I might not be remembering the dialogue fully.
At any rate, I'm pretty sure it's worthless trying to explain it to him. He's already made up his mind.
I'll give you another free lesson.
You can explain away anything. Anything. No matter how terrible a decision you make might be, you can invent justifications for it. With that being true, whether something has a justification or not is no longer the bar to clear, because everything can jump that bar.
How convoluted something is becomes a more important standard. How much exposition you need to go through, how many crossed lines of logic you need to untangle, all become vastly more important than the mere presence of an explanation.
And, more importantly, any explanation you provide will be competing with the most obvious explanation of all; It was convenient to write it that way. If you've got something that's clearly a meta-construct, you're going to have to do some heavy lifting to convince people it isn't, and done poorly you'll end up looking like a liar on the defensive, which is essentially what you are.
This isn't even me commenting about the carnivorous plant or whatever. A good chunk of this thread has been me trying to convey the simple idea that an explanation by itself is not enough; it needs to be satisfying. I could actually say quite a bit about whether the plant business makes things better or worse, but I think the important thing is to remember that potentially yes, it does make things worse.
2 months ago
Anonymous
Go back to Ganker already, jesus. If you actually do play games, I pity the poor souls who have to put up with this drivel in real life.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>A 5th level party entering this dungeon is going to face...another 5th level party, plus some assorted other monsters that may be in the dungeon left over from previous people who entered it.
A mirror match, almost by definition, should be a coin flip. Being worn down by the other monsters in the dungeon should then put the odds against you. Add on that the demon will eventually start resummoning destroyed replicas if you take too long, then it's a pretty nasty encounter.
2 months ago
Anonymous
While it seems to be a coin flip, the copies are suggested to be perfect replicas, but seem to lack either the judgement of the originals. One of the copies willingly engages an opponent the original notes they have absolutely zero chance at defeating, for example, and the human specifically strategize to match themselves up against the opponents they'd be weakest against while the copies seem to wander almost randomly, and even move towards the deepest part of the dungeon in a staggered fashion rather than grouping up.
Everything suggests that while they're perfect copies, they're also entirely reactive in how they function.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>Add on that the demon will eventually start resummoning destroyed replicas if you take too long, then it's a pretty nasty encounter.
Sure, but ultimately I'm one guy and the players are four (actually five in my particular group's case but the game's math assumes four). I cannot possibly out-think or out-strategize them even when playing with all the same resources. I'm speaking from experience here. Twice, actually, I've run two mirror matches, once in a Kingdom Hearts game and once in D&D when I sent my players through literally the Water Temple from OoT.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>this thing is a nonsensical, meta idea because... because i don't know how else to win the argument, ok?
This post helps to prove that people who say 'have you tried not playing DnD?' are doing the world a service, because they are, in fact, too fricking stupid to play DnD.
Alright, since this conversation seems to be steering more towards story than dungeon design, I'll do my best to summarize.
Core premise: >Story follows an elf wizard following in the footsteps of her old adventuring party's 10 year long journey to defeating the BBEG 70 years prior >The focus is primarily on her reflecting on her experiences and how a mere decade in the midst of her centuries long life changed her >Along the way one of her now elderly party members on his deathbed bids her to take his ward, an orphan girl with a talent for magic, as an apprentice >The end goal of the journey is a place that the Elf's long dead master had visited once, where the spirits of the dead can be spoken to, located at the northernmost point of the continent, not too far off from where the BBEG's old castle was
I'll skip through the travels up to what leads them to the dungeon: >Eventually, the route northward takes them through a region that's been cordoned off because of a sharp rise in demon and monster activity >Only people accompanied by a first class magician are allowed through >Though she's one of the most powerful wizards in the world, the Elf can't be bothered to keep up with the ever changing status of human regulatory bodies, so her credentials are hopelessly outdated >The immediate alternatives are hiring a wizard with proper certifications or taking a ship around, which are both prohibitively expensive >Her apprentice implores her to just go take the upcoming certification exam, since it should be easy for her and it'll save them time and money >The Elf reluctantly agrees but she forces her apprentice to take the exam too >Turns out the exams are run by cold-blooded bastards for cold-blooded bastards and the first test is deadly, but both the Elf and her apprentice pass >The second test is to reach the bottom of the dungeon being discussed in this thread
cont...
>The dungeon is an ancient tomb complex hailing from a time when the whole continent was united under a magic empire >It is defended by traps and monsters as usual, but in the bottom, innermost chamber is the OP pic, a water-mirror demon bound there by the magicians of the era >Its capabilities are described here
It's basically a demon that summons full strength replicas of anyone that enters its dungeon. The replicas are easily identifiable as such and don't speak, so there's no concerns about getting confused by imposters. There's no apparent limit on how many people it can replicate and it can eventually resummon destroyed replicas, but it can seemingly only summon one replica of each person at a time. The demon itself is incredibly fragile, but it lies at the very bottom of the dungeon and seems to leave its strongest replica to guard the entrance of its lair. When intruders near the lair, the other replicas throughout the dungeon will converge at the bottom.
>The examinees (around a dozen or so at this stage) are each provided with a sort of "escape rope" in the form of a golem jar, which will pop out a sturdy golem that will haul the examinee out to safety when the jar is broken, though using it obviously means failing the exam >Many of the examinees are still wary of one another due to the previous exam and enter in separate groups >The proctor, a very powerful magician in her own right, also enters the dungeon nominally to verify that the examinees made it to the bottom (thus the demon makes a copy of her as well), but she refuses to assist any of the examinees in any regard >She ends up following the Elf and her apprentice, who take a very circuitous route because the Elf mainly just wants to reminisce about dungeon delving with her old party >Several examinees are forced to retreat due to the hazards of the dungeon and just plain bad luck (one group runs into the proctor's copy and find out the hard way that the copies are immune to mental charms) >The demon's lair is protected by the copy of the Elf, who hopelessly outclasses everyone else present >The groups who made it to the bottom come together and decide to cooperate like they should've from the start >The strategy is that the Elf and her apprentice will take on the Elf-copy and then the demon while the rest of the examinees hold off the rest of the copies converging on the inner chamber >To make it brief, the plan works and the Elf is able to destroy her copy and destroy the demon just as the mages outside were being overwhelmed by copies (several forced to use their escape golems)
>The dungeon is an ancient tomb complex hailing from a time when the whole continent was united under a magic empire >It is defended by traps and monsters as usual, but in the bottom, innermost chamber is the OP pic, a water-mirror demon bound there by the magicians of the era >Its capabilities are described here [...] >The examinees (around a dozen or so at this stage) are each provided with a sort of "escape rope" in the form of a golem jar, which will pop out a sturdy golem that will haul the examinee out to safety when the jar is broken, though using it obviously means failing the exam >Many of the examinees are still wary of one another due to the previous exam and enter in separate groups >The proctor, a very powerful magician in her own right, also enters the dungeon nominally to verify that the examinees made it to the bottom (thus the demon makes a copy of her as well), but she refuses to assist any of the examinees in any regard >She ends up following the Elf and her apprentice, who take a very circuitous route because the Elf mainly just wants to reminisce about dungeon delving with her old party >Several examinees are forced to retreat due to the hazards of the dungeon and just plain bad luck (one group runs into the proctor's copy and find out the hard way that the copies are immune to mental charms) >The demon's lair is protected by the copy of the Elf, who hopelessly outclasses everyone else present >The groups who made it to the bottom come together and decide to cooperate like they should've from the start >The strategy is that the Elf and her apprentice will take on the Elf-copy and then the demon while the rest of the examinees hold off the rest of the copies converging on the inner chamber >To make it brief, the plan works and the Elf is able to destroy her copy and destroy the demon just as the mages outside were being overwhelmed by copies (several forced to use their escape golems)
Hey whaddya know, a ritual, trial, or challenge. Called it. Also dammit spoilers. Oh well, that anime is very much about the journey and not the destination.
>CR is a vague measure of an enemy suited around the average level of the party >enemy exclusively defends itself through exact copies of the party >"guys what would be the CR of this encounter"
>I like well written stuff and hate badly written stuff
And now I'm going to pretend this is a bad stance to take so I don't lose an anonymous internet argument
NTA btw
Funnily, a duplicate of your party is a fight in Shining Force CD, and despite being a perfect replica of your party it's considered one of the hardest fights in the game, assuming you don't cheese it by unequipping everyone's weapons.
One thing about summoners is that summoned monsters don't give XP, and that their summons are considered part of their CR. Depending on how this thing is encountered, you'd have to either handwave that rule altogether or give it something like party's CR +2.
What's that? A torch?
It's basically a demon that summons full strength replicas of anyone that enters its dungeon. The replicas are easily identifiable as such and don't speak, so there's no concerns about getting confused by imposters. There's no apparent limit on how many people it can replicate and it can eventually resummon destroyed replicas, but it can seemingly only summon one replica of each person at a time. The demon itself is incredibly fragile, but it lies at the very bottom of the dungeon and seems to leave its strongest replica to guard the entrance of its lair. When intruders near the lair, the other replicas throughout the dungeon will converge at the bottom.
>Monster that has any abilities other than 2 slashes and a bite attack
Too complex for D&D 5e. The game can't even manage CR correctly with it's incredibly bland assortment of existing monsters, let alone anything actually interesting.
>Too complex for D&D 5e.
The frick are you talking about, this is the easiest thing I've ever heard of to stat out. Have you tried playing D&D?
Challenge rating is based on the personal combat power of the npc or monster, not its minions. You haven't described exactly what "fragile" means, but based on everything you've said it's a CR 1 at most, if you absolutely have to give it stats.
However, I'd need a bit more information to be sure, but to be honest this sounds more like a dungeon hazard like brown mold or something than an actual creature. I wouldn't give it a Challenge Rating at all; rather, the challenge (and XP) is all the other monsters in the dungeon.
>Its almost like CR is a pointless system
I dunno, I've personally found it massively useful when making custom monsters. It's not perfect, but it's good enough to get a rough gauge of power.
I feel a lot more confident about the power level of an NPC or monster I make for 5e D&D than I do for an NPC or monster I make for a game like Vampire, anyway. Not that I let that stop me from making a big ol' V20 Monster Manual.
I make monsters in my spare time. It's fun.
If a DM isn't competent enough to be able to control the difficulty of monster encounters, despite being omniscient as far as determining the outcomes of battles goes, they are just as likely to inadvertently kill players with appropriate CR for their party as they are to invent their own encounters and kill players that way. It's a problem of individual intelligence. I know it's not popular to say that, but it is true. If you're fricking stupid you can arrive at a TPK by a dozen different ways because you lack the mental processing power to use your monsters as anything other than brainless videogame-y murder robots. Alternatively, if you're not a total idiot you can maneuver any encounter into a possible victory - or at least a draw, or escape - for your Players.
CR only helps people that can't think for themselves and apply the monster stat blocks in a literal, linear way. Those people shouldn't DM.
So in other words you wouldn't hesitate to throw an Adult Red Dragon against a party of 1st level characters, because whether they survive a battle or not has nothing to do with the players' skill, but rather whether you have personally decided if it's time for them to die.
A: that isn't railroading, you're strawmanning
B: my point is that no functioning human needs CR to tell him or her not to throw an Adult Red Dragon at a party of 1st level characters, and if for some reason they do, CR wouldn't help them unfrick that encounter.
>A: that isn't railroading
It one hundred percent is. You outright talked about manipulating combat to reach an outcome that you, the DM, want to occur rather than whatever the players end up with as a result of their choices and their luck. That is the distilled essence of railroading, the DM making choices for the players.
>my point is that no functioning human needs CR to tell him or her not to throw an Adult Red Dragon at a party of 1st level characters
On what basis? I'm being serious, walk me through the logic here as to why you know that a 1st level party shouldn't face an Adult Red.
Also you seem to be forgetting the other reason CR exists, which is to reward experience. Say a party (not necessarily the 1st level party) beats the Adult Red. How much XP do they get?
>It one hundred percent is. You outright talked about manipulating combat to reach an outcome that you, the DM, want to occur rather than whatever the players end up with as a result of their choices and their luck.
In the event that you frick up and throw an encounter at them that they can't deal with, through no fault of their own, yes. NOT fudging the dice and giving the players an out in that scenario is a much more egregious case of railroading, it's "rocks fall everyone dies" but with extra steps and you, as the DM, are completely in control of it.
Maybe learn to read and stop reflexively strawmanning shit that personally offends you.
>I'm being serious, walk me through the logic here as to why you know that a 1st level party shouldn't face an Adult Red.
I don't know maybe you read its fricking stats and apply basic mathematics to questions of its AC, damage output, action economy, etc. What you as the DM has that the game designers do not, and is missing in CR, is knowledge of how you intend every creature to use all of those stats. The whole reason some people still frick up and destroy their players with intellect devourers or what have you is because they don't treat these monsters as living creatures with a fear of death and imperfect knowledge of the game state. Game designers can't account for this tendency through either CR or writing tons of fluff about what you *should* do, some people lack the capacity to run TTRPGs with nuance.
>In the event that you frick up and throw an encounter at them that they can't deal with
My job as the DM is to challenge the player characters - not keep them alive. That's their players' job.
>NOT fudging the dice and giving the players an out
I'll always provide a way out - though it's up to the players to find it - but fudging dice rolls? Never.
>I don't know maybe you read its fricking stats
So based on a quick read of the stats, a 3rd level party of 4 should be good enough, right?
>they don't treat these monsters as living creatures with a fear of death
No, but that has naught to do with how challenging or not a monster is, since obviously many monsters (constructs and unintelligent undead, chiefly) WOULDN'T have a fear of death and WOULD fight to the bitter end. Plus crazy cultists, or mind-controlled guards, or summoned monsters who will just discorporate anyway...
Regardless, 5e is designed around the idea that a standard party of 4 using standard attacks/cantrips should be able to take out a monster of a given CR in about 3 rounds. And I've done the math, believe it or not, it usually checks out. And yes, I took to-hit into account.
Taking the adult red as an example, a 17th level party...
Fighter w/longsword VS AC
>[(1d10+5)x4]x0.65 = 27.3 dmg/rnd
Rogue w/rapier vs. AC
>[(1d8+5)+(9d6)]x0.65 = 26.65 dmg/rnd
Cleric w/sacred flame vs. DEX save
>(4d8)x0.6 = 10.8 dmg/rnd
Wizard w/ray of frost
>(4d8)x.65 = 11.7 dmg/rnd
TOTAL: 76.45 dmg/rnd
VS 256 hp = dragon is dead in 3.35 rounds
nice white room cuck
I don't "throw" anything at the players. Things exist in the world and the players can encounter them or not.
Isn't that just like a shitty deepspawn?
Pretty much, except Deepspawn take a while to formulate their clones and have the caveat where they have to eat the original first. Other than that, superior in all aspects.
So why didn't you put this in your opening post, moron?
I like the cocnept but one Issue I had with it is that without proper explanation of the rules I feel something being able to create a mana-made creature with more mana/power than the maker you is kinda bullshit. Sounds like something that could be very easily abused, specially since in the own show, despite calling it a mosnter, it feels more like a complex security system.
And they only were able tod efeat it because Frieren willingly shared her weakness and had the help of her apprentice, who's also bullshit enough to get 1 opening.
A "why isn't this thing or who made this thing dominating the world with a more complex version of the spell?"
Then again, magic in Frieren seems to be the "visualization type" rather than the Mathematical one.
>What's its CR?
Yours
Please keep all DnDogshit questions in the DnDogshit containment thread. Thanks.
High blood pressure.
YWNBAJ
I dunno, I don't watch Critical Role
Does it matter? Its gimmick means its always the appropriate CR for whatever party tries to face it, since the threat is always exactly equal to the party. Level 1 or level 20, the challenge is in theory the same.
Because with a simple casting of "Dispel Magic" it's entire gimmick doesn't mean shit. But bad monster design that can be completely and utterly bypassed by casters is nothing new to 5e.
Except neither Frieren nor any of the other very high level mages who faced it were capable of dispelling the effect despite being entirely capable of dispelling magic.
The issue is getting to it, because its at the bottom of a dungeon populated by replicas of the party.
OP is asking about CR, so he's clearly asking for D&D, not the anime. In actual D&D, Dispel Magic would completely shut down it's gimmick instantly, barring some moronic "Dispel Magic just doesn't work because reasons" clause in the monster's stat block.
I don't think Dispel Magic works how you think it does.
>"Dispel Magic just doesn't work because reasons" clause in the monster's stat block.
Which it clearly has, because it was not dispelled
>Any spell of 3rd level or lower on the target ends. For each spell of 4th level or higher on the target, make an ability check using your spellcasting ability. The DC equals 10 + the spell’s level. On a successful check, the spell ends.
what D&D spell is it casting, and of what level?
Simulacrum? But eschewing the truly absurd amount of 1500gp ruby dust per copy.
Yes, the primary reason being that you have to make a caster level check to dispel magic, and as a monster, its caster level can be arbitrarily high.
>In actual D&D, Dispel Magic would completely shut down it's gimmick instantly, barring some moronic "Dispel Magic just doesn't work because reasons" clause in the monster's stat block.
I mean not really, because you'd only be dispelling one of the clones (using Simulacrum as a point of comparison) at a time and that's provided you succeed the Dispel check every single time. That'd definitely make things easier, but you'd need to dedicate a lot of your spells to that in a situation where you likely can't Long Rest and can still suffer from being ambushed.
>The issue is getting to it, because its at the bottom of a dungeon populated by replicas of the party.
Literally not how CR is calculated though. CR is calculated in a whiteroom scenario. Not dependent on environment at all. Don't get mad at me, get mad at D&D for being designed like shit and CR being a garbage system for figuring out encounter difficulty.
>Literally not how CR is calculated though
Okay? I hope you do understand I wasnt talking about the CR but you crying about "aggro mechanics" or the lack thereof.
If you can target the demon you should target the demon, thats not an issue with dnd, youre just a moron for assuming that the demon can be targeted
>youre just a moron for assuming that the demon can be targeted
This is LITERALLY how CR is calculated. You can call me a moron all you want, but it won't change the fact that D&D's CR system is absolute trash.
If you're encountering one or more duplicates without the creature present, then the CR is the CR of those duplicates, not the creature.
>despite being entirely capable of dispelling magic
Since when is dispelling magic a thing in Frieren's setting? We never see it used even when it would be a far superior option to brute force barriers.
When she dispelled the enchantment on the armors/bodies that Aura the Guillotine was controlling
Frieren does it multiple times, both against Auras animated armors and in a larger scale but less instant way against the impenetrable barrier for the first test
there is also her dispelling the golden transmutation curse
> Because with a simple casting of "Dispel Magic" it's entire gimmick doesn't mean shit.
That assumes it is dispelable, when even in DnD that is not a universal solution to magical problems. Not that you would be allowed to cast it anyway, any character capable of casting dispel would result in a replica that can ALSO cast dispel, turning into a blue mirror match.
You're addressing an obvious troll.
Basically zero, since it's entire gimmick relies on being at the bottom of a dungeon where the replicas have plenty of time to hunt down and attack intruders.
If you just throw one of these things in a random combat encounter, it dies in one turn because D&D doesn't really have "aggro" mechanics and there is literally no way it can prevent players from focus-firing it, which kills all it's replicas anyway.
Could be an interesting monster in a better-designed game, but not in D&D.
Either it has 0 CR, or its replica summoning ability is a Lair Action in which case you can't white room it out and now it just has subjective CR.
Its almost like CR is a pointless system and DMs entirely drive how difficult an encounter is or isn't by how they determine enemies behave and what dice they fudge, or something.
Should have linked you in this post,
. Mea culpa.
>Its almost like CR is a pointless system
Giving a rough estimate of a creature's power is hardly pointless. The issue comes from trolls who don't understand CR, and expecting it to be some sort of absolute number instead of just a unpersonalized general assessment. These trolls have been repeating this same nonsense for the last two decades, and all because they think that a much better system is just not giving any sort of rough estimate and forcing a GM to evaluate every enemy line by line before deploying them against a party.
A creature that summons exact duplicates of anything that enters the dungeon is basically a deity-level entity, because it has functionally infinite power and a demon like that would definitely be employed far, far more effectively in other ways than just sitting in a dungeon. If, however, there are caps to its strength, ie. number of creatures it can create, how strong those creatures are, etc., then we might actually be able to determine what its CR would be beyond "infinite".
But, since this is less a monster and more of a narrative device masquerading as a monster by the laziest of writers, a more useful value is just the equivalent CR of the party entering the dungeon and not bothering to give a CR to the variable power plot device. I don't understand why anyone is confused by any of this.
>But, since this is less a monster and more of a narrative device masquerading as a monster by the laziest of writers
Hey, the fight with Dark Link was one of the most memorable parts of Ocarina of Time for a reason, and almost made the pain of the Water Temple worth it all on its own. It's not necessarily "deep" to fight an equal but opposite clone, but it's fun and memorable when it happens. Given that D&D is a *game*, presumably fun and memories are the primary things we're here for. There's nothing wrong with sheer spectacle for spectacle's sake when used well.
Copying an idea is lazy. Doing it in an extremely meta way where you're left with questions like "Why is there a functional deity just sitting at the bottom of a dungeon, only making copies and not just making the strongest thing it can over and over again" is even worse. The whole "We need to defeat copies of ourselves!" has been done so many times, and so many times poorly, that just saying "a demon is doing it" might be one of the laziest ways of forcing that setup that I've encountered yet.
Also, the Dark Link was a thematic encounter (an evil reflection in a water-themed area) that was easily explained by Ganondorf's magic and his penchant for illusions and copies and toying with people, as demonstrated by Phantom Ganondorf. At some point, Ganondorf going "That little shit is nothing special, I could literally make a clone of him with hardly any effort," is perfectly in character and works in the context of the game/setting, as is Link overcoming Dark Link by exceeding Ganondorf's expectations.
The whole central dynamic between the two is Ganondorf is powerful, but Link has something more than power, ie. the courage (and infinite continues) to face any challenge.
Man, shut the frick up.
>a GM is just going to look at CR and call it a day! CR is thus bad!
No, they're going to use CR as a starting point, you dumbass troll. All those words you typed up, all these years you've been complaining about CR, and you never considered that, even though the books explain that you need to actually consider what you're throwing at a party beyond just glancing at the CR.
>>a GM is just going to look at CR and call it a day! CR is thus bad!
A GM CAN just look at CR and call it a day. Since CR doesn't actually accurately reflect the level of danger to the party, this makes CR at best unnecessary and at worst harmful.
>a GM CAN use CR wrong, even when the books tell them not to and explain how CR actually works!
Why are you blaming CR when you're complaining about GM's like yourself not actually reading how CR works? Seriously, just shut up, and quit making a fool out of yourself.
Christ, your entire argument depends on "Every GM is as stupid and lazy as I am!" and that's a real shitshow of a way to try to argue. Do yourself a favor and quit telling everyone how stupid you are.
If anything I'm more convinced that I'm right from how hard you're pissing and shitting about CR. Any position that makes you bark like a fricking dog must be correct.
I like how you've dropped any pretense of not being anything other than a dumb troll.
It's nice to know that "You're a moron, read the fricking book" actually works on occasion.
>I stamped my feet and pissed and shitted everywhere, making everyone laugh at me! That means I'm right!
Yeah okay bud
Here's another (you) and a reminder to read
But, that's all the kindness you're getting out of me.
>Why is there a functional deity just sitting at the bottom of a dungeon, only making copies and not just making the strongest thing it can over and over again" is even worse
When you get right down to it, it's just a Mirror of Opposition that can think and makes worse copies ("worse" due to them being incapable of impersonating their originals). This is powerful magic, sure, but not quite what I'd call deity-level based on how it was described to work (it can make copies of things that *enter the dungeon*, i.e., it's no use if removed from the dungeon; and it can create only one copy of a creature at a time, i.e., it can't use a single real goblin to create an army of goblin clones).
>The whole "We need to defeat copies of ourselves!" has been done so many times
Sure, but to paraphrase an old maxim of the comic industry, every time is someone's first time. Just because it's been done dozens of times doesn't mean that the players have encountered it dozens of times, or even once.
Plus I would assume a DM isn't just randomly sticking this thing in a dungeon, but rather it has a reason or purpose for being there.
Mirror of Opposition starts off as a 15th level item and requires Clone, meaning it needs someone who can cast 8th level spells. Make the range several hundreds of feet and not requiring either line of sight or effect, and we're talking about magic that far exceeds 9th level spells. Once you're in the 10th+ level area, we're talking Deity-level magic, especially when there's no use limit. Remember, Demigods begin as early as 21st level, and we're talking about something that exceeds that.
Is there a way to make such a lazy idea work? Possibly, but in D&D, there are limitations on power and people generally try to be efficient with their use of it. Older editions did often have dungeons with plenty of inexplicable incredibly powerful magical artifacts being used as random traps with little logic or motivation behind them beyond the whim of the designer, but people have slowly moved towards wanting things to make sense within the context of the world, in no small part thanks to influence from other games and just the general evolution of RPGs.
A demon that just clones whoever enters its dungeon is a very, very meta idea where it's clear what the DM's intention was, and how little they cared about making it make sense in the context of the world. It's little different from Maxwell inventing a demon just to mess around with thermodynamics. It's fine for a physics thought experiment, but for a world that's meant to exist with more logic than a bottom-tier Twilight Zone episode, it's pretty weak.
>Mirror of Opposition starts off as a 15th level item and requires Clone, meaning it needs someone who can cast 8th level spells. Make the range several hundreds of feet and not requiring either line of sight or effect, and we're talking about magic that far exceeds 9th level spells.
But there are numerous drawbacks, again.
- The clone can't impersonate anyone due to lack of independent will
- The clones might not even be able to leave the dungeon
- The monster itself can't leave the dungeon
- The demon can create only one clone per person at a time
However I'm less interested in the in-universe aspects of it then in the fact that when you get down to it, it's not that powerful an ability *for the players to face*. A 5th level party entering this dungeon is going to face...another 5th level party, plus some assorted other monsters that may be in the dungeon left over from previous people who entered it.
>And how little they cared about making it make sense in the context of the world
I mean, you can't possibly say that without knowing more about the world that it exists in. For the record, I don't, I have no idea what this thing is from. But I can see a lot of ways to make it work just fine. Why can't you?
>But I can see a lot of ways to make it work just fine.
You're walking into one of the largest traps that GMs and fantasy writers, hell, writers in general have a bad habit of stumbling into. The idea that if you can hit the most minimum bar of explaining something, you've done your job, regardless of how convoluted or unsatisfying the explanation is.
If we're talking about a world where demons exist solely to provide meta-challenges for adventuring parties that wander into dungeons, sure, you've checked the box, but that's about as satisfying as just outright being told "The world is paper thin, don't try to look beyond its surface." Hell, going a step beyond that and trying to come up with some convoluted reason why the demon's limitations are what they are beyond "meta-considerations" is almost worse than just flat out saying it's a meta-construct, because at least then you're not insulting your group's intelligence and just admitting to be lazy.
Could I personally come up with a scenario where a party entering a dungeon encounters antagonistic copies of themselves? Sure. There's a million and one ways to explain it, with everything from alternate dimensions to excellent cosplayers being up for grabs. But, I generally design from the perspective of less "How do I fit this scenario into my world" and more "What interesting scenarios could organically emerge from my world?". If I've done a proper job designing, I should have no shortage of logical and satisfying reasons beyond "Look, it's just a demon who does it, okay!?"
A demon powerful enough that it can make full-powered copies of anything that enters its dungeon, but who has arbitrary limitations that are entirely inexplicable, is simply unsatisfying, especially when its ripe for abuse unless further arbitrary limitations keep it or other demons from exploiting its abilities.
>excellent cosplayers
>but who has arbitrary limitations that are entirely inexplicable
They're not inexplicable, you just personally don't like the explanation. You need to learn to distinguish between the two, you'll be a better and more complete person when you can.
Off the top of my head as a way to make this concept work:
Eberron Campaign Setting. The Day of Mourning that destroyed Cyre and resulted in magic going haywire within it also affected many of the magical items within Cyre. Most notably it affected an actual Mirror of Opposition in the tower of a Cyran wizard, damaging it so that it could only create imperfect copies - but the same magic also granted the Mirror sapience (as per a standard sapient magic item), in a manner similar to how the Day of Mourning created living spells. In the five years since the Day of Mourning, the Mirror of Opposition has been slowly but surely building up minions within the tower. The Mirror is not innately evil, in fact it knows basically nothing beyond the tower and the fact that it's in some place very dangerous and full of death and monsters (the Mournland, natch), which has made it paranoid. It sends out its copies to scout around and bring it back knowledge. Through its minions, the Mirror has also set up fractured pieces of itself throughout the tower, through which it can perceive and even still use its abilities, though the range is limited to 100 feet (in any direction). Beyond this limit the fractured pieces of the Mirror beyond ordinary glass.
The players can encounter it by going into the Mournland and to the wizard's tower. Any number of reasons could bring them there, such as...
- A relative of the wizard wants some heirloom from the tower (possibly even the Mirror itself, not knowing that it's now sapient)
- The players are exploring the Mournland for other reasons and take refuge in the tower, not knowing the danger
Your explanation relies on the Mirror of Opposition.
Actually think about that for a minute. Have you ever considered how dumb a Mirror of Opposition is? It's a vestige of an older style of play, and suffers from the problem that the more you think about it, the dumber it gets.
If that's the core of your explanation, go for it. But please, consider how dumb it is that the Mirror of Opposition isn't some cursed item where its magic is distorted and not functioning correctly, but that someone designed an incredibly expensive item that makes violent copies of whoever appears in it but those copies disappear if that item breaks, and made it a fragile mirror.
It's a magical object, dude. Might as well ask why Sauron made his object of power a ring that could be cut off from his finger. Was he stupid?
Did you notice that Sauron made the One Ring nearly indestructible? Seems like a good idea.
>Was he stupid?
I mean, generally yes. Tolkien goes to great lengths explaining that he is evil, and that evil is fundamentally unwise. Sauron never expected anyone to be able to challenge him in combat sufficiently to be ever concerned about his finger being cut off, and its that exact hubris that was his downfall. Hell, the very center of the story is about how Sauron is so arrogant and foolish that the best way to defeat him was to send the last thing he would expect, a creature from a race he considered worthless, right into the center of his domain.
Also, the Mirror of Opposition is an expensive item that exists for either the six second payoff of a player smashing it, or the horrifiying sidestory of the players exposing the lone female member of the party to the mirror and then proceeding to subdue and ravage her clone because "clones don't count." Either way, weird item.
>Your explanation relies on the Mirror of Opposition.
Yeah, I still have no idea what the thing in OP actually is, so instead I'm just running off the concept of a thing that can copy stuff that gets too close and how I'd run that concept.
>Have you ever considered how dumb a Mirror of Opposition is?
Not even once, because it's not, it's fricking awesome.
I believe the explanation in the show is that it's an ancient tomb complex from an era of high magic and the demon was bound there as its guardian.
That half-way explains why the demon is there, but definitely not why it has its powers or why its powers have those specific limitations.
In fact, it raises the question of why an intelligent being would have the demon make copies of people that enter, and not something much more reliable and consistent, or why the limitation is one copy per person, alongside a myriad of other considerations. Hell, we're talking about binding an incredibly powerful demon, and effectively setting it up so that it's always going to be at a disadvantage since whatever group it copies will have its faux-members be initially separated while the original group will be able to stick together and just eliminate the individual copies one-by-one.
That's pretty dumb for a genius who figured out how to bind an amazingly powerful demon and set silly and self-defeating restrictions on it.
>why an intelligent being would have the demon make copies of people that enter
Immediate thought is part of a trial, challenge, or ritual.
>or why the limitation is one copy per person
I mean sometimes you gotta just say "because magic", and limitations like this are one of those times. Else you start asking why mana points/spells per day are a thing as opposed to being able to cast spells at will like in Harry Potter.
>we're talking about binding an incredibly powerful demon
Again, it's not really that powerful. It creates objectively worse copies of people. That can throw an unprepared and incautious person for a loop but I don't expect it to really be a threat to any serious adventuring party.
>I don't expect it to really be a threat
Which makes it a pretty shitty guardian, especially considering the effort involved in binding a demon of sufficient power.
>Immediate thought is part of a trial, challenge, or ritual.
Which decreases the satisfaction of the explanation.
Writing 101 tells us to never write off the events of a story as "It was all a dream." The more concrete a story is, the more involved its characters are, the more satisfying it is. If you have people who are presenting situations that are intentionally underwhelming as opposed to doing their absolute best to actually defend something, it starts to enter the more illusory territory that makes the explanation less satisfactory. It can work in a pinch, and I've used that explanation myself in the past on numerous occasions, but it's something we should try to avoid. When you have challenges that are half-assed, they certainly feel half-assed when you explain that whoever created the challenge wasn't really trying.
Really, take any challenge, and then add the asterisk that whatever you just overcame was intentionally weakened, and see how people react to that explanation.
>Writing 101 tells us to never write off the events of a story as "It was all a dream."
And Writing 102 tells us that if you're telling an engaging enough story, you can ignore Writing 101, because there is no such thing as an inviolate rule in writing. And not merely "in a pinch", you can set out from the get go with the full intention of violating anything that some pretentious Ganker refugee tells you is a rule, because there are no rules, just guidelines and templates.
>and then add the asterisk that whatever you just overcame was intentionally weakened
How do you know it was weakened? It could have been strengthened. The demon might ordinarily have the ability to make only a single copy of one creature, but as part of the trial, challenge, or ritual it has been strengthened.
You lack imagination.
>you can ignore Writing 101
You can never ignore Writing 101. Yes, for every rule, there's an exception, but for every exception, there's a rule. You need to be aware of and conscious of the rules so you can make intelligent choices and not just mistakes, and recognize the risks involved. So, please, don't try to pull some sort of "Rules are for homosexuals, do whatever you want" nonsense again.
>How do you know it was weakened? It could have been strengthened.
Because the weakness we're talking about is a terrible strategy, not a question of power. Are you paying attention, or just trying to come up with arguments without thinking?
>You can never ignore Writing 101
Spoken like someone who's never written a single thing in his life that wasn't for a school project.
Yes, knowing the fundamentals is important so you can make intelligent choices, but that's not the same thing as insisting zat zer ist EIN UND ONLY EINEN PROPER VAY OF DOINK THINKS. And don't try to say you didn't mean that: in the post I responded to you said "never write off", not "rarely" or "occasionally" or "every now and then".
>Because the weakness we're talking about is a terrible strategy
Again, how do you know that the demon, in its default state, is simply capable of creating a single imperfect copy, but whowever summoned it and placed it in the dungeon strengthened it so that it could create many copies, desiring to create something that will allow the dungeon to serve as part of a ritual, trial, or challenge?
Think of it this way - if you're making a dungeon that's supposed to be full of monsters, this one demon allows you to bind a single monster and nevertheless have a fully stocked dungeon without needing to find additional creatures.
You continue to lack imagination.
I'm getting a strong sense that you're not really worth talking to. It's like you're intentionally avoiding the points being made.
You might find it fun being dumb, but it's actually very tedious dealing with you, when you can't even handle something as simple as "for every rule, there's an exception, but for every exception, there's a rule."
If you can't get past that thought, why would you imagine you have anything of any importance to say?
I'll give you another chance, but really, last one.
Ah hey, are you the noblegay.
>Again, it's not really that powerful. It creates objectively worse copies of people.
It does not, that was entirely the issue with it. The copies don't even have the mindset to quickly defeat or accomplish their goal, they act like the originals but with the intent to protect the demon. They show how clone dude copy did not destroy the golem bottle despite being the optimal strategy, because he still thinked like the original. Frieren is both implied to be way stronger than the monster and unable to defeat the copy by herself.
Hell the only one who actually defeats their copy 1v1 is the psycho girl and does so precisely by gambling.
But it's specially egregious that it can then create infinite copies of everyone but only one at a time if it's defeated.
They focused a lot on mana supply/size yet this creature seems to have an unlimited amount when we don't havce a reason to think it is anywhere stronger than Frieren.
You're unironically overthinking it and not just in a "it's just a cartoon dude" way. It's a demon with magical powers. Why it has those powers and the inherent limitations of its powers are entirely arbitrary. That much is simply within the "it's fricking demon magic" territory.
But the funny part is you're also underthinking it. As was originally described in this thread, the demon will resummon destroyed copies over time, so picking them off one-by-one isn't a guaranteed win. And also it was stated that the copies will converge near the bottom. So by the time you get to the bottom, you could be facing a mirror match against fresh opponents while you've been getting worn down traversing the dungeon. That's not an inherently bad strategy by any means. Really it's a more proactive defense mechanism than most dungeons I've ever gone through on the tabletop, where there's just traps and some monsters (both of which the dungeon in question has as well).
>Why it has those powers and the inherent limitations of its powers are entirely arbitrary.
That's not how it works.
That's not how anything works.
What are you even on? Demons don't just have random powers that only exist to satisfy some clearly meta-constructed challenge. They're not "get out of actually having to think up motivations, histories, and even just simply lines of logic" cards that turn anyone into a genius designer the moment they're waved.
>so picking them off one-by-one isn't a guaranteed win.
It's at an incredible disadvantage, especially considering that the same exact power can be used far more efficiently and intelligently with even just ten seconds of thinking. It's almost like it was clearly designed to fail, which surprise surprise, it was.
Another common failure of design is painting yourself into a corner. When a designer initially makes something too powerful, they have to figure out ways to restrict it so the players have a chance, and those added limitations very often feel extremely forced. Copy-clone scenarios are very often the victim of this, where the clones often have some stupid added/contrived weakness because otherwise an equal party would just match up with and cancel out/eliminate an equal party, and the writer needs to figure out some way for the original party to win.
When this copy demon's effects/limitations are unknown, how badly it's designed is not immediately apparent. But, as that mystery diminishes, ie. as the players do what they're expected to do and learn about the scenario so they can better form a coherent strategy, the terrible design choices become more and more apparent. That's the exact opposite of what you want to happen, and it comes when you write anything carelessly ass-backwards.
>Demons don't just have random powers that only exist to satisfy some clearly meta-constructed challenge.
Pretty sure they traditionally do have exactly that. My first, immediate thought is the Devil suddenly being a fiddle player. In fact I'm pretty sure that most monster stories consist of the monsters being utterly indefatigable except for one convenient weakness. Sauron conveniently having a tiny chink in his armor just perfect for Bard, for example.
>and intelligently
Why do you assume that this demon is even intelligent?
>Sauron
*Smaug. Mea culpa.
>My first, immediate thought is the Devil suddenly being a fiddle player.
You mean talented in just about everything. He has the skill to be a fiddle player not because he came across a fiddle player and fiddle playing just happened to be the Devil's only talent, because that would be quite stupid, it's because the Devil has no shortage of talents and abilities that combine together to make fiddle playing trivial. The frick kind of reasoning are you even trying for?
>In fact I'm pretty sure that most monster stories consist of the monsters being utterly indefatigable except for one convenient weakness.
Except, aside from you being quite wrong in general (you're even focusing on exceptions in Tolkien's works, rather than the rule), you're especially wrong when we're talking about D&D monsters. Hell, the demons of D&D are notoriously lacking in convenient weaknesses, typically requiring one hell of a fricked up and complicated chain of events to ever actually kill. And, the challenge is rarely, if ever, a "meta-constructed challenge," and instead is an at-times awkward result of the way the cosmology is set up.
>Why do you assume that this demon is even intelligent?
Please, pay attention. Regardless of the demon, whoever bound the demon had to have some measure of intelligence. If it just ends up being that everyone involved just happened to be stupid, than that's about as unsatisfying an explanation one could have. Basically Star Wars Prequel territory.
You keep calling it a stupid challenge, but it sure sounds like a more active challenge than most dungeons. Imagine going through a dungeon but periodically a full power copy of the rogue sneaks up on you and tries shanking someone. Or a copy of the wizard shows up and chucks fireballs around. Even if they're suicide attacks that you fend off, they're still gonna do some damage. If you try stopping to rest and recover, you'll just get continuously harried by the copies as they're resummoned. And at the end of it all, you'll probably end up having to fight against the copies all over again, except they're fresh and you're worn out.
Please, pay attention. The challenge was described as lazy, and it is. It's incredibly lazy design. The stupid part comes later, when it's clear that the limitations are strategically inept and made not to use the abilities of the demon to anywhere near its real potential as a guardian. Doing something obviously stupid is adding that asterisk of "This challenge was deliberately weakened."
>Imagine
Imagine facing an exact party line up, altogether, rather than one by one. There's a reason why most parties tend to employ that same strategy.
It's ultimately explained with "It's just a test," ie. it was all just a lazily explained meta-construct with no more meaning behind it than "a wizard did it."
>The challenge was described as lazy, and it is
No, it's not. You've made the claim but you've failed to convincingly argue the point. You've instead only demonstrated an inability to distinguish between things you personally dislike, and things that are actually bad.
>but you've failed to convincingly argue the point.
No, I have, the problem is simply you're a dullard.
I've already explained how it's lazy. It's a pretty unoriginal trope used hundreds of times, and explained away with "A demon did it" because it's all a test and the stakes and challenge are artificial to begin with.
You personally don't think it's lazy. That's because you actually think "Your argument is an opinion, and even though you've supported it, I can say you haven't because I disagree with your opinion" is actually an argument.
>dullard
This be not Oxford, ye mountebank. No extra points shall ye receive for arcane vernacular.
>I've already explained how it's lazy.
I said "convincingly". You've explained, but clearly not to anyone's satisfaction (protip: I am not the only one you've been arguing with). At this point an intelligent man would stop to consider if perhaps he's in the wrong.
>It's a pretty unoriginal trope used hundreds of times
Originality doesn't come from what tropes you use, it comes from how you use them, and how well you've done so is dependent on the larger story that they're used in. Tropes are tools. None of them are inherently good or bad in and of themselves, no matter how common or rare they are. A good writer knows this, so, we've now established that you're not.
>the stakes and challenge are artificial to begin with
Artificial in what sense? Because they're part of a test? That doesn't make them invalid stakes. Within the context of the story, passing or not passing the test is what will determine if the elf-mage and her entourage can continue on the way they want to go in a timely and reasonable fashion, or if they'll instead have to take a long, arduous, inconvenient, and expensive side route. Within the dungeon itself, if they fail to deal with the problems the demon is throwing their way, then they'll die in the worst case; or forfeit the test in the best case, and have to spend time waiting to take the test again, which I'm assuming would take a significant time.
Those are meaningful stakes. The demon and the challenge it creates is a genuine impediment to the party's goals. You dullard.
>Artificial in what sense?
With artificial limitations constructed by man? Deliberately underutilized below its optimal capacity, for reasons that are independent of the principle actors involved? Y'know, something that would make any question of how strong or weak something or what it's actual limitations are meaningless because it's being deliberately capped?
We don't actually know what the demon can or cannot do, what's the reasoning behind the limitations, because that can all just be chalked up with "It's a test." No one is trying to figure out the maximum potential or capacity of the Demon because the stakes are not that high (the worst result is people passing) and they're not actually attempting to violently murder everyone with no chance of anyone succeeding.
>Originality doesn't come from what tropes you use, it comes from how you use them
And lazily using it as a test explained away by a demon is a terrible use. Uninspired. Lazy.
Look, I know it's your favorite show or whatever, but frick me, you don't seem capable of appreciating bad writing even as you commit it. I'm genuinely struggling to get through your laborious, dull posts with no intelligence or insight or even rudimentary basic semblance of thought.
Here's the bottom line.
The "demon" is nothing more than a transparently obvious plot device with only the laziest bits of fluff scattered around it, artificial in every sense of the word. It's lazy writing. Maybe not the laziest writing ever conceived, but not everyone spends their life surrounded by whatever you happen to be producing.
> And lazily using it as a test
But it’s not “lazy”. It serves a valid purpose in-story.
You're really trying hard to ignore people attempting to correct you're faulty assumptions. It's making it difficult to take you seriously when you build pillars on sand and claim they're absolutely sturdy.
>No one is trying to figure out the maximum potential or capacity of the Demon because the stakes are not that high (the worst result is people passing) and they're not actually attempting to violently murder everyone with no chance of anyone succeeding.
The stakes are deadly. Almost everyone who'd ventured into the dungeon before had been slaughtered. The only reason people aren't dying during the exam is because the proctor handed out the escape golem bottles. I suppose you might be assuming those are some kind of common magic item, but they're not. They're basically an experiment by another top mage which the proctor appropriated because she didn't want too many people dying like they did in the previous test. The demon's copies aren't playing around either. They're going for blood. One of them even manages to snatch someone's golem bottle so he couldn't use it, though he's saved by another examinee.
You know I could've clarified these things if you'd asked some questions instead of just assuming shit left and right.
You're tossing a pretty big heap of bad writing at me.
>it's a test
>BUT IT'S DEADLY TEST, SO TAKE IT SERIOUSLY
>but, okay, it can't be TOO deadly, here's some golem bottles
>BUT THEY'RE SUPER RARE, OKAY?!
>Though, everyone still gets one so it doesn't change that they make the test less deadly
>YOU CAN HAVE YOUR BOTTLE STOLEN, SUPER SERIOUS
It's like first-thought writing from some wimpy amateur stumbling into his first pitfalls, one after the other, without ever looking back or learning any lessons.
The previous test actually had gotten people killed, which the second proctor rightly thought was a waste of human life, so she brought countermeasures to minimize the loss of life in her own test. And yes, being able to have your bottle stolen does demonstrate that the test is still very dangerous. You can call the author a chicken for not letting the guy die, but a story doesn't need to constantly keep killing people off in order to communicate stakes.
I like the story and specially the character interactions, but the second test is definetly flawed from a story and setting perspective.
We're told the dungeon is old and still not properly mapped out, with the exact lcoation of the innermost chamber being a mistery. They're aware of the copy demon inside, but also that they don't have the proper means to deal with it (past parties were all wiped).
So the Mage society, or Sense decides to make the test about well, finishing this dungeon.
But what makes no fricking sense to me is why in the everlasting frick did Sense enter the dungeon? Not only did she knew that would spawn one clone of her, but she had no way to know if she (Sense) would get out with her and Frieren's clone there. The golems were a good idea but I really wish one would've gotten crushed or broken because msot major injuries the character suffered were plot convenient and not mortal. Way more should've died not because of realism but because this wasn't an exam, it was a suicide mission where the main culprit was mage society themselves.
There is also no fricking way that sociopath girl was let go nonchalantly after killing a first grade mage. You telling me she oneshots the 1st rank guy known for being invulnerable and all she gets is a slap on the wrist and "try again next exam"?
People would be all over her, trying to figure out her magic and probably offering jobs or easy acces to stuff, if not thrown in jail for being such a menace to society.
Who the frick sees a random dude knock out Mike tyson with a single jab and goes "well it's not an official match so it doesn't count"
>There is also no fricking way that sociopath girl was let go nonchalantly after killing a first grade mage. You telling me she oneshots the 1st rank guy known for being invulnerable and all she gets is a slap on the wrist and "try again next exam"?
In fairness here, it's pretty hard for them to punish her. She was specifically and directly told to attack the guy, with everyone figuring the dude would be perfectly fine given his specialty. Hard to accuse her of anything untoward when she only did specifically what she was told. That and most of the mages there figured that Serie would be actually interested in her, given Serie is who she is.
>People would be all over her, trying to figure out her magic and probably offering jobs or easy acces to stuff, if not thrown in jail for being such a menace to society.
They know exactly how her magic works. The entire point of her is that magic has a huge component of belief: if you believe something can happen, magic will make it happen.
The issue here is that belief's a lot harder than just saying it. That's the whole point of how the exam went wrong: she knows a spell that can cut anything so long as the user believes it can be cut. The mage she was attacking was wearing a cloak, and she grew up the daughter of a seamstress, because she'd seen her mother cut cloth all the time, she believed she could cut the cloak. The issue here is anyone else would realize that the mage had layered that cloak with so much defensive magic that you could never cut it, but to her, that didn't matter: it was cloth, and it could be cut.
Her magic isn't what's strange, it's her mentality and perception of the world that allows her to believe things that everyone else would think impossible.
> I know it's your favorite show or whatever
Babylon 5 is my favorite show. Freiren isn’t even my favorite anime (I’m not even sure I have one), it’s just one I’m watching.
> I'm genuinely struggling to get through your laborious, dull posts
I believe you’re struggling, but not for the reasons you suggest here.
> but not everyone spends their life surrounded by whatever you happen to be producing.
I mean, if we’re whipping out our dicks now? Then on the fanfiction website i’ve been most active on, over the course of the ten years I wrote 1.1 million words across 35 stories. My most viewed story on that site has over 270,000 views and over 1.2k comments, while my highest-ranked story is currently 398th out of over 150,000 stories on the site, and it’s one of three that are all in the site’s top 1,000 stories. I also on that site ran a collaborative universe that had over two dozen authors and more than 150 stories all part of the same shared, cohesive universe.
Now, yes, fan fiction, though I have plenty of original fiction too. And of course for all I know you’ve got some similar numbers from AO3 or something under your belt. But I think it’s pretty obvious that I’ve got a solid grasp on how to write engaging, appealing stories. I am not just whistling Dixie; I have practical experience in entertaining people with the written word. I know what I’m talking about. You are not talking to a rank amateur - though based on your responses I strongly suspect that I am.
Here's some free help.
>Then on the fanfiction website
Here's where I gave up reading the rest of your post.
> Here's where I gave up reading the rest of your post.
The part where I established practical experience in something you barely have schooling in? Yeah. That’s pretty on-brand for you based on your posts throughout this thread.
>The part where I established practical experience
Where?
I went back, struggled through your post, and I found nothing that looked practical. If anything, I only found evidence to the contrary.
I'll be kind to you. I'll tell you a brief part of my own story, a fairly early part, so you'll understand why I'm not even mildly impressed by what you dropped down.
Back in my college days, I thought my own internet stats were pretty impressive. I cared about how well my own writing did on various online platforms, and I even obsessively tracked the numbers like you do now. I wasn't so dumb as to care about how many words I wrote, but I did pay attention to views and rankings, and some of my stories have enjoyed millions of views, high rankings, and other things I thought might have mattered once. Hell, even my stories posted here have done quite well, and I just checked to find a good number of them on the first page of suptg, bless its little heart.
I'm doing you a kindness by telling you that your stats, aside from being quite underwhelming as far as being something to brag about, don't mean much when you stop to take a look around. Go ahead and read the 400 stories ranked higher than your own on that fanfiction site, and see how shit they are all going to be.
I thankfully have friends who are also writers, and we manage to keep our egos in check by keeping things in perspective. At the end of the day, even looking back at my most popular stories that spread in various forms throughout the internet and have gotten millions of views, I can objectively say they're trash. Fun trash, trash that some people have literally commented to say that it's their favorite story every told, but still trash.
I can actually thank a good friend of mine, because he hit me with a great one-two blow several years ago. He discovered that someone had taken an old story I wrote, made an audiobook out of it, and published it on youtube and gotten several hundred thousand views on it. And, just when I was about to feel some measure of pride about that, he reminded me that the story was still terrible. There was a moment where I was actually going to argue with him, to try and use youtube stats to say the story wasn't half bad, but then I had a beautiful epiphany and remembered that he was the one who was ultimately right.
I debated whether or not I would give you any response, largely because your post wasn't any sort of argument and had no point to it, but in the end, I think a measure of pity won out in the end. You still haven't had that great epiphany yet, where you can look at even your highest rated stories and realized just how much more work you need to do as a writer. Here's hoping in some time, you'll find be able to actually listen to someone tell you write like trash and you'll be able to take that to heart and grow from it.
Also, you write like trash.
Nta, but good heavens you're one smug c**t.
I mean, yeah. It's kind of hard not to feel smug when someone brags about something you stopped caring about ages ago, and this guy never even reached your level.
I genuinely want him to also grow past the phase where he thinks those "stats" are special or even "intimidating." If I want to be brutally honest, I'm getting second-hand cringe at remembering how proud I was when one of my stories hit over a million views. I didn't brag about it online like this kid is doing, but I did momentarily start thinking that I was the next Dumas, and not just a dumbass.
See that? That's the kind of line I have enough self-awareness to groan at. You don't develop that kind of awareness when you're still stuck counting views and using each one to pad your ego.
I want you to understand that I think that other anon is a loser for throwing out his numbers and being proud about fanfiction. Having said that, a loser is better than a former loser who's become a c**t. If you have even an ounce of the self-awareness that you claim to have, I hope you're able to reflect on that.
I'm glad you found some way of feeling superior, but it's kind of weird you imagine your high ground can be built out of immediate hypocrisy, That's a pretty weak foundation.
I actually don't think that anon is a loser so much as he might just be in an embryonic stage. There's a chance he can grow past the instinct to look at an argument, and instead of facing it head-on, to try and pull rank using internet numbers. I might never have been quite that bad, but I can sympathize, because internet numbers did use to mean something to me.
Anon, my friend, consider what you've posted so far. You saw someone trying to brag about his dick size and then went into a spiel about how dick measuring contest are silly and immature, while insisting your dick was bigger the whole time. Really think about it for a second. What do you think you've demonstrated to him? To anyone?
But now I have to concede defeat because I need to sleep and thus you'll get the last word.
>What do you think you've demonstrated to him? To anyone?
...Don't wave your dick? I mean, what?
What's the proper reaction to someone dropping their pants and showing off their teeny weenie? Running in fear? That just leads to them dropping their pants more often.
I shared a bit of my past here, not to show off the size of my genitals, but to reaffirm that dick measuring contests are dumb and a good way to get slapped in the face.
By a big meaty dick.
Hell, I spared everyone any of my actual writing credentials; all I did was mention what I did back in college. All I've done so far is say "Internet shit is weak, tuck that shit back in."
>when someone brags
Again, wasn't bragging since as I said for all I know you have similar stats. Was establishing more than a decade of experience in writing to entertain people to make it clear that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to entertaining people with writing, to establish clearly that you sound like someone saying "you're not funny!" to a, say, stand-up comedian who might never have made it big but can in fact regularly get a crowd at bars to laugh.
>and being proud about fanfiction
I'm not proud about fanfiction in and of itself. I'm proud that even in only in some small way, I've entertained people and told stories they enjoyed. Not just with fanfiction, either, I do have original works.
>to try and pull rank using internet numbers
Dude, the only reason why I "tried to pull rank" was because YOU kept trying to do the same by trying to place yourself on a pedestal above everyone else in this thread and, by implication of your arguments, above the writers of the TV show that you admit you've never even seen. You've been smugly "pulling rank" this entire thread without a single thing to back up doing so since you self-evidently don't have a clue what you're going on about when you talk about story structure, meta-narrative, purpose for including this and that in a story, etc.
And AS A REMINDER, the only reason we're on this line of discussion at all is over the idea of using a copy of the anime's monster in a game, that you play with friends, where originality takes the back of the buss next to engaging the players with a memorable and fun encounter. Literally everything you've tried to bring up about the idea of meta-narrative is meaningless because all hat matters is if the players were entertained for however long it takes to traverse the dungeon and face the demon and its minions. Originality isn't important in this context.
>I went back, struggled through your post, and I found nothing that looked practical.
Ten years of writing stories that people have apparently loved to read isn't practical experience? What is, then?
>I thought my own internet stats were pretty impressive
I don't think they're impressive though. You missed the point entirely. I wasn't putting numbers to my name to say "and therefore I'm better than you", I don't know you and like I pointed out myself, for all I know you've got similar numbers from AO3. I brought them up to point out that I know what the frick I'm talking about because I've been writing engaging stories for more than a decade.
>and see how shit they are all going to be.
I have, and they're not. Even if not all of them are necessarily things that I personally enjoy, I can still recognize the reason why they are where they are, I can appreciate that other people enjoy them. Which, as I've said a few times, is the main point of a story, to be entertaining, or rather engaging (since you strike me as someone who hears "entertaining" and thinks "fart jokes and explosions" when that is not what I mean at all). All the writing talent and deep and meaningful messages in the world don't mean shit if you can't put butts in seats and get your story read.
>he reminded me that the story was still terrible
Couldn't have been that terrible if it got hundreds of thousands of views. Your friend sounds like an ass. It's one thing to point out flaws or areas where improvement is needed, it's another thing to take something that people obviously engaged with and enjoyed and call it terrible. That's just objectively wrong, and you strike me as someone who's just taking out his trauma over the experience on other people.
The demon isn't there because of the test the test is just set to take place in a dungeon that existed prior. Try to keep up
>It's incredibly lazy design.
Far less lazy than the average dungeon if you think about it for a bit.
>The stupid part comes later, when it's clear that the limitations are strategically inept and made not to use the abilities of the demon to anywhere near its real potential as a guardian.
>Imagine facing an exact party line up, altogether, rather than one by one. There's a reason why most parties tend to employ that same strategy.
Ah, I think I finally see the problem here. Okay, so I think the demon's "strategy" wasn't properly conveyed and you're thinking that the demon always scatters the copies randomly until it decides to converge them. And that notion has been supported by the talk of sporadic suicide attacks and such. No, as far as I recall the copies aren't obliged to be scattered at the start. They're spread out in the story because there's multiple groups entering the dungeon, but the copies can and do group up and can even coordinate as a team. One of the groups runs into their exact mirror match early on and they're stuck fighting it for a long time.
Now perhaps you're imagining it would be better if all the copies grouped together immediately and went around steamrolling the groups one at a time would be more efficient, but the efficiency of that depends on how the groups are spread out through the dungeon. And either way it'll just end in a mirror match with the survivors. Likewise, having all of the copies just staying at the end guarding the door in one big group is just a mirror match as well.
There's also risk in forcing a full mirror match at the wrong time. If the group wins the mirror match and then rushes through the rest of the dungeon fast enough, there may not be time to resummon the destroyed copies and the demon is fricked.
That said, I'm sure having to face multiple full mirror matches is precisely why the dungeon hadn't been conquered up to the point.
>The frick kind of reasoning are you even trying for?
So he has all these limitless skills and yet nevertheless can be "in a bind 'cause he's way behind"? Who, exactly, is breathing down the Devil's neck reminding him about soul quotas, Ganker refugee?
>Except, aside from you being quite wrong in general
Almost every single monster in Greek myth says "hi".
>typically requiring one hell of a fricked up and complicated chain of events to ever actually kill
Not really? You just have to go to its home plane. By the time you're high enough level to care whether the demons you're fighting are dead or merely discorporated, you'll have access to Plane Shift. Hell if you really want you can go to the Abyss even earlier through a few different means - you can pay someone of sufficient level to cast Plane Shift on your behalf for just 515 gp in 5e.
>whoever bound the demon had to have some measure of intelligence
Binding one monster to ensure a perpetually stocked dungeon isn't intelligent?
>Almost every single monster in Greek myth says "hi".
Oh wow, you're actually stupid.
I'll give you a big hint: Just because a monster died in one fashion doesn't mean it only had a single convenient weakness.
Next thing I know you're going to tell me JFK's only weakness was bullets.
Anon, answer the question I've asked twice now: how is binding one monster to ensure a perpetually stocked dungeon not intelligent?
That question is pretty irrelevant. Binding a demon to make them create minions to defend a dungeon isn't dumb, but the manner in which this particular demon is being used is quite dumb, and deliberately so.
Just about every limitation is awkward and arbitrary if it was actually intended for defending something. Even just a small change in strategy would make it considerably more effective. It's the sort of thing that an intelligent mage would look at, and at the very least go "Yeah, no, let's see if I can get the demon to spawn the clones together, that would actually probably be easier for it anyway."
If we're talking about the mage being unable to control any of the limitations, we're talking about a very, very odd array of limitations that seem pretty deliberately geared towards being functionally useless as a real deterrent because it's comically always at a severe disadvantage, regardless of what party enters.
A smart mage would just be all "look, it can copy anything? Let's just figure out its maximum capacity and just have it copy that, maybe throw in a little variety. I don't know, anything other than this 'copy a party but make it so they're easy to pick off' business."
nta, but I knew it. You're assuming the demon is more locked into a particular strategy than it is. To be clear, it's not your fault since you're working off of limited information. That said, you are being a bit of a jackass about it and simply assuming the worst instead of asking for clarification.
>but the manner in which this particular demon is being used is quite dumb
It seems quite intelligent to me.
>we're talking about a very, very odd array of limitations
Anon it seems to have just three limitations: the clones it creates are not intelligent and instead just mindlessly either defend the demon or attack intruders; it doesn't work outside of the dungeon; and it can only create one clone per person at a time.
The first just means its creating ants with perks. It's the queen of a colony. The behavior of the clones it makes is exactly that of ants defending a colony from attack. If you wouldn't have a problem with ants defending their queen then you shouldn't have a problem here.
The second is easily explained by a binding spell. The idea that you can trap something inside of an are with the right ingredients and magic words is an intrinsic part of fantasy and mythology.
The third is a necessary answer to the question, "why doesn't it just make infinite clones? Why has the world not collapsed into a clone singularity?" Magic is ALWAYS bound by some kind of rule like that. You might as well demand to know why vampires prefer human blood when there really shouldn't be much of a difference between that and animal blood. You can come up with some arbitrary explanation like "souls" or whatever but it's no less arbitrary than the demon's own.
>Let's just figure out its maximum capacity
They did. It was one copy of any given thing at a time. You just aren't accepting that for some nonsensical reason. You're also going on about meta-narrative when, again, it's painfully obvious that you've never written anything that wasn't for a school project. I dunno, MAYBE a campaign or two for anyone unfortunate enough to have you as a DM, but I can only imagine it was a terrible experience for everyone.
>Magic is ALWAYS bound by some kind of rule like that.
No, it's rarely bound by rules that are only convenient for constructing a meta-narrative and have no semblance of in-world logic. That's incredibly lazy writing.
I think I understand what your problem is. You're thinking in terms of fairy tales. The third prince will always succeed after the first two have failed and the dragon can only be killed by a silver spoon wetted by a maiden's tears. You're not actually thinking of mythology, which you're clearly no expert of, and your only exposure to fantasy seems to be fairly weak at best if you're stuck thinking that fairy tale logic is any kind of actual logic.
>No, it's rarely bound by rules that are only convenient for constructing a meta-narrative
It is ALWAYS bound by rules that are convenient for constructing a meta-narrative. Literally every single time it has ever been used in every story that has ever featured magic, ever.
Go on, I'll prove it. Name a time magic was used in any reasonably well-known story. I say reasonably well-known because there's only so many hours in the day so obviously I haven't read all of them.
But, for example, as a start: Why can the genie only grant his master 3 wishes? Why can't he kill anyone, make anyone fall in love, or bring people back from the dead?
Or if you want to go back to the original Arabian Nights version of Aladdin, why did the hitherto absolutely loyal and obedient Genie of the Lamp, who had never displayed any kind of personal whim or ego, suddenly throw a fit and say Aladdin and his wife deserved to be burn to ashes for asking for a roc's egg, and then disappear forever?
The People of the Black Circle, my favorite Conan story, as another example.
The Master of Yimsha is able to, with a gesture, rip out Kerim Shah’s heart from across a room. Why didn’t he then do this to Conan?
>Conan was protected by Khemsa’s belt
The belt didn’t manage to protect Khemsa himself from three lesser sorcerers from Yimsha, and the Master of Yimsha is presented as much more powerful than the three combined.
For that matter, when he Master of Yimsha tried to kill the Devi at the end of the story he does so transformed into a bird. Why not just use magic to rip *her* heart out? Or fly overhead as a bird but then transform into a rhinoceros?
Man, Robert E. Howard was a hack.
No he wasn’t, obviously
Conan was actually protected by being a foreigner as well. He literally had magic resistance from not understanding their magic, which actually had a psychological component. The more you believed and feared the magic, the more effective it was.
It's almost like the magic has in-world considerations and depth to it. Huh.
> The more you believed and feared the magic, the more effective it was.
Then why not just use something that’s a gerunteed win? Fly over Conan and then transform into a whale. There is no psychological component to forty tons of blubber landing on top of you.
There’s also the obvious question of “why” does the Master of Yimsha’s magic have a psychological component when no other magic in Howard’s Conan corpus is show to work that way? That’s very convenient for Conan, isn’t it? Almost like the narrative had been set up by the author to give him an advantage he logically shouldn’t have based on how precious magic had functioned.
>Then why not just use something that’s a gerunteed win?
Because he wasn't aware of just how resistant Conan could be. Conan was a foreigner with incredibly strong will and an anti-magic belt, that's not something even the Master would encounter often.
>There’s also the obvious question of “why” does the Master of Yimsha’s magic have a psychological component when no other magic in Howard’s Conan corpus is show to work that way?
It does. Plenty of magic depends upon it, with examples of hypnotism and illusion being the most common, and Conan's will being able to help him get through those on a few occasions.
It's actually kind of sad that People of the Black Circle was your favorite Conan story, and you didn't even understand some basic things about it.
Oh frick me, Aladdin?
My mistake for saying fairy tale just for you to open up with a folk tale. Jesus christ I knew I had your problem mapped out, you've never progressed beyond that point.
>Literally every single time it has ever been used in every story that has ever featured magic, ever.
No, sometimes, people have magic and use magic because that's who the character is, not what the story needs from them in order to progress in a fashion that only makes sense as a meta-construct. When Gandalf makes the tip of his staff glow, it's not because it's the only way to get through the Mines, it's because it's more convenient than using torches or a lantern, and as a master of light and fire at bare minimum he should be able to do that.
> people have magic and use magic because that's who the character is
Yeah, because that’s who the story needed them to be.
> When Gandalf makes the tip of his staff glow, it's not because it's the only way to get through the Mines
Ah, cool, Tolkien. Good choice on your part.
The Nine can expressly not be harmed by any mortal weapon. How, then, was Aragorn able to drive off five of them at Weathertop with nothing more than gumption and a flaming brand?
Why did Smaug have a chink in his armor? And why was it not mentioned earlier? It isn’t brought up until the bird tells Bard about it, literally all of a paragraph before Bard kills Smaug. Speaking of, the fact that certain Men can talk to birds comes up for the first time in the same paragraph. As does Bard himself but that’s not magic so we won’t worry about it. Seems like Tolkien had written twelce dwarves and a midget arriving at a mountain to face a dragon and only belatedly realizing that based on their previous performance there’s no way they’d be able to kill Smaug.
O how convenient for Bilbo to just stumble across a helpful troglodyte with a magic ring that he’s willing to give up! Tolkien himself realized the problem here and retconned it.
Hey speaking of the Ring and the Nine, why can the Ringwraiths see through its invisibility? It had previously been established as *just* being invisibility, but. Is something about actually entering the spirit world?
Tom. Bombadil.
>How, then, was Aragorn
You mean one of the most powerful humans to ever exist? The kingliest king to ever king in the history of kinging? THAT Aragorn, against a bunch of the Nine who CAN be hurt by fire, were far from Mordor, and not anywhere near their full strength thanks to it being tied to Sauron's power, which was still growing at the time?
Wow, it's like... thought. Like thought was put into it.
> And why was it not mentioned earlier?
You mean, when Bilbo, the only guy who ever had a chance to get a good long look at Smaug, noticed it? And him telling the dwarves was when the bird overhears that little fact?
The frick is wrong with you? I'm all for pointing out plot holes and what not, but you're just demonstrating that you're actually pretty dumb.
>Yeah, because that’s who the story needed them to be.
No, see, that would be bad writing. If something is too convenient or convoluted, it's bad writing.
A bird overhearing Bilbo tell the dwarves about the missing scale so that there's something that can deliver that information to Bard? Is anyone going to argue that's good writing? No, it's way too convenient, way too convoluted.
But, when characters feel natural, and the story seems like its following them make intelligent decisions and understanding the world and solving problems and so on, we start to see good writing emerge. Y'know, with magic that exists like Lembas bread, with the Hobbits carefully considering just how magical it was before going off to Mordor with it, and not just assuming it would last them forever because the plot needed them to survive. Hell, they even ran out of that Lembas bread. Even though that happens because Tolkien wanted the hobbits to really suffer in Mordor, it feels natural and makes the world feel more real, not less.
Man, this just sounds like "The stuff I like is well written, the stuff I hate is badly written."
The actual problem you guys are trying to get at is arguing in bad faith. The wannabe Ganker anon has been arguing in bad faith from the start, consistently showing more interest in talking shit than actually knowing what he's talking shit about. You can see how he dodges around attempts to correct his misunderstandings while honing in on specific details to nitpick.
> against a bunch of the Nine who CAN be hurt by fire
They are invisible noncorporeal ghosts. Why can they be hurt by fire? Also, is there any actual instance of them being worried by fire except here? Also, if fire is all that’s needed, how could it be possible that the Witch-King can’t be killed by a Man’s hand?
> You mean, when Bilbo, the only guy who ever had a chance to get a good long look at Smaug, noticed it?
You know what, you’re actually right for a change - I just re-read the chapter and Bilbo does in fact notice it. However that doesn’t change the fact that the one to take it out Smaug is a man who can talk to birds who is first introduced not three paragraphs before he actually does it with no warning or setup for him or his ability to talk to birds.
> And him telling the dwarves was when the bird overhears that little fact?
I didn’t question how the bird learned it, Anon, I questioned why Smaug was killed by a guy who is literally introduced only three paragraphs before he does the deed, who has a hitherto unknown bird-talking power. Good thing he happened to live nearby!
> it feels natural
No, it feels like a plot device inserted for a purpose. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, mind, because that’s what literally every action in every story in history is. It’s just that you, personally, are willing to overlook it because you, personally, like it or at least don’t mind it.
> It does
It does not. Not once in any other Howard-written Conan story does the idea that Conan wasn’t raised in a culture of mesmerism and so therefore it doesn’t work as well on him come up.
> and you didn't even understand some basic things about it.
I understood it perfectly well, which is the reason that I know that it’s concept of “the magic doesn’t work as well on people who weren’t raised to it” never comes up in another Conan story and hadn’t come up in a previous one.
>You're not actually thinking of mythology
Chiefly I'm thinking of Dungeons & Dragons and what's actually fun to both run and play in, yes, seeing as that's presumably at the crux of OP's question (i.e., why he wants a CR for the demon at all). "Fun" is, after all, the overriding goal of any game, the thing that is of paramount importance.
You pretty much figured out the limits from anime. I'd add that the copies have another, peculiar weakness - they act based on demon's ability to copy the mind of their original, which means that they have all the quirks of the original. For example, clone of pacifist had habit of opening with attacks that weren't immediately lethal and clone of sadist took its sweet time.
It's literal demon magic. What exactly are you looking for, the demon's personal explanation for why it's magic works the way it does? It's not gonna explain shit to anyone, the people who bound it are long dead, and everyone else only knows what's been observed of it.
>It's literal demon magic
Yes. Even if you wanted to try and provide the explanation that it's just pure chaos, that actually works against you because it's incredibly unlikely and convenient for the limitations to just so happen to correctly align with what's clearly a meta-constructed challenge.
Everyone who observes it enough to understand it is going to go "huh, those specific limitations are pretty inconvenient in a very specific way, that only really makes sense if... OH GOD, WE'RE MERELY CHARACTERS IN A CONSTRUCTED NARRATIVE?!"
I get the feeling you're projecting a great deal of genre awareness onto the characters. Regardless, I'm still not clear what you actually want from the story. What would they have to say to make it not "clearly a meta-constructed challenge"?
>Demons don't just have random powers that only exist to satisfy some clearly meta-constructed challenge.
Yes they do moron, have you ever read actual myths or folklore? They aren't Naruto villains with a "power level".
They actually explain it evolved / came about similar to a different monster, which was psychic carnivorous plant that would construct illusions of people to lure them to their deaths and eat them. The reason why it's strange and arbitrary is it evolved that way because doing that was successful enough.
I thought they just drew the comparison to highlight that the Spiegel's copies were physical, rather than illusory like the other demon's. Though I'll admit I might not be remembering the dialogue fully.
At any rate, I'm pretty sure it's worthless trying to explain it to him. He's already made up his mind.
I'll give you another free lesson.
You can explain away anything. Anything. No matter how terrible a decision you make might be, you can invent justifications for it. With that being true, whether something has a justification or not is no longer the bar to clear, because everything can jump that bar.
How convoluted something is becomes a more important standard. How much exposition you need to go through, how many crossed lines of logic you need to untangle, all become vastly more important than the mere presence of an explanation.
And, more importantly, any explanation you provide will be competing with the most obvious explanation of all; It was convenient to write it that way. If you've got something that's clearly a meta-construct, you're going to have to do some heavy lifting to convince people it isn't, and done poorly you'll end up looking like a liar on the defensive, which is essentially what you are.
This isn't even me commenting about the carnivorous plant or whatever. A good chunk of this thread has been me trying to convey the simple idea that an explanation by itself is not enough; it needs to be satisfying. I could actually say quite a bit about whether the plant business makes things better or worse, but I think the important thing is to remember that potentially yes, it does make things worse.
Go back to Ganker already, jesus. If you actually do play games, I pity the poor souls who have to put up with this drivel in real life.
>A 5th level party entering this dungeon is going to face...another 5th level party, plus some assorted other monsters that may be in the dungeon left over from previous people who entered it.
A mirror match, almost by definition, should be a coin flip. Being worn down by the other monsters in the dungeon should then put the odds against you. Add on that the demon will eventually start resummoning destroyed replicas if you take too long, then it's a pretty nasty encounter.
While it seems to be a coin flip, the copies are suggested to be perfect replicas, but seem to lack either the judgement of the originals. One of the copies willingly engages an opponent the original notes they have absolutely zero chance at defeating, for example, and the human specifically strategize to match themselves up against the opponents they'd be weakest against while the copies seem to wander almost randomly, and even move towards the deepest part of the dungeon in a staggered fashion rather than grouping up.
Everything suggests that while they're perfect copies, they're also entirely reactive in how they function.
>Add on that the demon will eventually start resummoning destroyed replicas if you take too long, then it's a pretty nasty encounter.
Sure, but ultimately I'm one guy and the players are four (actually five in my particular group's case but the game's math assumes four). I cannot possibly out-think or out-strategize them even when playing with all the same resources. I'm speaking from experience here. Twice, actually, I've run two mirror matches, once in a Kingdom Hearts game and once in D&D when I sent my players through literally the Water Temple from OoT.
>this thing is a nonsensical, meta idea because... because i don't know how else to win the argument, ok?
This post helps to prove that people who say 'have you tried not playing DnD?' are doing the world a service, because they are, in fact, too fricking stupid to play DnD.
Alright, since this conversation seems to be steering more towards story than dungeon design, I'll do my best to summarize.
Core premise:
>Story follows an elf wizard following in the footsteps of her old adventuring party's 10 year long journey to defeating the BBEG 70 years prior
>The focus is primarily on her reflecting on her experiences and how a mere decade in the midst of her centuries long life changed her
>Along the way one of her now elderly party members on his deathbed bids her to take his ward, an orphan girl with a talent for magic, as an apprentice
>The end goal of the journey is a place that the Elf's long dead master had visited once, where the spirits of the dead can be spoken to, located at the northernmost point of the continent, not too far off from where the BBEG's old castle was
I'll skip through the travels up to what leads them to the dungeon:
>Eventually, the route northward takes them through a region that's been cordoned off because of a sharp rise in demon and monster activity
>Only people accompanied by a first class magician are allowed through
>Though she's one of the most powerful wizards in the world, the Elf can't be bothered to keep up with the ever changing status of human regulatory bodies, so her credentials are hopelessly outdated
>The immediate alternatives are hiring a wizard with proper certifications or taking a ship around, which are both prohibitively expensive
>Her apprentice implores her to just go take the upcoming certification exam, since it should be easy for her and it'll save them time and money
>The Elf reluctantly agrees but she forces her apprentice to take the exam too
>Turns out the exams are run by cold-blooded bastards for cold-blooded bastards and the first test is deadly, but both the Elf and her apprentice pass
>The second test is to reach the bottom of the dungeon being discussed in this thread
cont...
>The dungeon is an ancient tomb complex hailing from a time when the whole continent was united under a magic empire
>It is defended by traps and monsters as usual, but in the bottom, innermost chamber is the OP pic, a water-mirror demon bound there by the magicians of the era
>Its capabilities are described here
>The examinees (around a dozen or so at this stage) are each provided with a sort of "escape rope" in the form of a golem jar, which will pop out a sturdy golem that will haul the examinee out to safety when the jar is broken, though using it obviously means failing the exam
>Many of the examinees are still wary of one another due to the previous exam and enter in separate groups
>The proctor, a very powerful magician in her own right, also enters the dungeon nominally to verify that the examinees made it to the bottom (thus the demon makes a copy of her as well), but she refuses to assist any of the examinees in any regard
>She ends up following the Elf and her apprentice, who take a very circuitous route because the Elf mainly just wants to reminisce about dungeon delving with her old party
>Several examinees are forced to retreat due to the hazards of the dungeon and just plain bad luck (one group runs into the proctor's copy and find out the hard way that the copies are immune to mental charms)
>The demon's lair is protected by the copy of the Elf, who hopelessly outclasses everyone else present
>The groups who made it to the bottom come together and decide to cooperate like they should've from the start
>The strategy is that the Elf and her apprentice will take on the Elf-copy and then the demon while the rest of the examinees hold off the rest of the copies converging on the inner chamber
>To make it brief, the plan works and the Elf is able to destroy her copy and destroy the demon just as the mages outside were being overwhelmed by copies (several forced to use their escape golems)
Hey whaddya know, a ritual, trial, or challenge. Called it. Also dammit spoilers. Oh well, that anime is very much about the journey and not the destination.
Eh, sorry for the spoilers. I tried to focus on the practical details to minimize that damage. It's a character focused story after all.
>CR is a vague measure of an enemy suited around the average level of the party
>enemy exclusively defends itself through exact copies of the party
>"guys what would be the CR of this encounter"
>I like well written stuff and hate badly written stuff
And now I'm going to pretend this is a bad stance to take so I don't lose an anonymous internet argument
NTA btw
Funnily, a duplicate of your party is a fight in Shining Force CD, and despite being a perfect replica of your party it's considered one of the hardest fights in the game, assuming you don't cheese it by unequipping everyone's weapons.
One thing about summoners is that summoned monsters don't give XP, and that their summons are considered part of their CR. Depending on how this thing is encountered, you'd have to either handwave that rule altogether or give it something like party's CR +2.
Size/Type: Large Magical Beast
Hit Dice: 5d10+25 (52 hp)
Initiative: +1
Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares)
Armor Class: 15 (-1 size, +1 Dex, +5 natural), touch 10, flat-footed 14
Base Attack/Grapple: +5/+14
Attack: Claw +9 melee (1d6+5)
Full Attack: 2 claws +9 melee (1d6+5) and bite +4 melee (1d8+2)
Space/Reach: 10 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Improved grab
Special Qualities: Scent
Saves: Fort +9, Ref +5, Will +2
Abilities: Str 21, Dex 12, Con 21, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 10
Skills: Listen +8, Spot +8
Feats: Alertness, Track
Environment: Temperate forests
Organization: Solitary, pair, or pack (3-8)
Challenge Rating: 4
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always neutral
Advancement: 6-8 HD (Large); 9-15 HD (Huge)
Level Adjustment: —
Null. Mechanically it's not an enemy, it's just the gimmick of the dungeon.