Re: what is it about angels?

In article <1170269771.784901.257210@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
psychohist <psychohist@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>I don't know what the letter of the CR rules are, but in principle, I
>think a risk and reward rating could legitimately rate at the same
>level a creature which is more powerful but more constrained not to
>hurt the party and a creature which is less powerful but less so
>constrained.

I don't think the angel was constrained, except that when the
PCs offered non-lethal combat and it accepted, it felt obliged to
play by the rules.  They aren't in general limited to non-lethal
combat; indeed this one has Fireball at will, a spell whose non-lethal
applications are somewhat limited.

In any case CR, if it's to be of any use at all, should measure
power, not situational limitations on power which will obviously
vary a lot from situation to situation.  One could equally argue
that the angel has an advantage in that the PCs felt obliged not
to cheat, whereas they might have cheated against a demon.

The idea for the non-lethal combat came from the Dungeon Master's
Guide description of the angelic realm of Celestia.  It has a
city devoted to the art of healing, but if you go there and ask
for something really awful to be healed, you first have to fight an 
angel in single, non-lethal combat.  This is a lovely example of
why I'm happier with considering "Good" and "Evil" as ideologies
and not as moral absolutes, because morally I can't make a lot of
sense out of this.

"I'm dying of Imperial Mummy Rot, and you're the only one who
can save me!"

"Okay, let's fight."

<cough wheeze lose die>

The PCs were in a sense trying to use the angel's unreasonableness
against it.  They would not actually have considered a win to be
moral justification, because they didn't see a strong enough connection
between winning/losing and being right/being wrong in this situation.
(Which may be overly modern of them, but they are what they are.)

Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@[EMAIL PROTECTED]