Mechanus Eye:
This 2-inch-diameter metallic orb resembles an eye, though streamlined and idealized. These eyes are purportedly salvaged from secret graveyard cogs on Mechanus, where a demolished race who once claimed the plane now lies forgotten. Anyone looking through a Mechanus eye gains a +1 competence bonus on Search Checks.
Originally posted by Cthulhu1138
Someone please tell me that the WOTC geniuses have not comitted this genocide. . .
Geniuses? That is an extremely generous view of the workers at WotC.
WotC has messed up plenty of things. If you want the Modrons to remain the Lawful Exemplar race, then so be it. The greatest thing about D&D is you can ignore all the mistakes the "designers" make.
Better? :D
They are also my best friend's favorite race and he always talks to modron npcs and tries to get people to play modrons in his planescape game.
It does seem they're being pushed to the sidelines.
Nordrom would be saddened.
Of course you could go the Guinan route. A high-level fellow hires the party, with assertions that there's SOMETHING WRONG with Mechanus, that there SHOULD be these geometrical constructs he calls "Modrons" roaming the gears, despite nobody else knowing of their existance at all. He sends the party to investigate these beings, and sooner or later they uncover a startling revelation: there has been mucking-about with the time stream to cause the slide of Menausus much sooner than it occured in the "true" timeline. The destabilization of Mechanus's unadulterated law by this slide eventually resulted in the fall and forgetting of the Modrons. The players soon find out the identity of the mage who will cause this cataclysm, and stop him before he can alter the timeline. Modrons saved, courtesy of the PCs.:D
The modrons have been mentioned (though belittled) in the MotP, appeared in the MotP web enhancement, and in the planar adventure that WotC_Mark wrote a little while back.
*mutters about stupid formians and stupid inevitables*
Originally posted by JokerZW
IIRC he already posted about this on the MotP forum.
Nah, that was Nordom the Rogue Modron. The One and the Prime is still waiting out there somewhere to be POed about this little jewel.
But I agree with the sentiment so far. Regardless of what happens to the modrons "officially", they are still going to be a large and beautifully confusing part of my campaigns for years to come, armed with my handy little printed and laminated copy of the web enhancement. . .
Originally posted by Shemeska the Marauder
Another question to ask during the PlHB chat, "Why no love for the modrons?"
...because we have L33T warforged now instead of crummy boxes?
I think the entry probably does mean the modrons are gone, likely offed by the Modron March events. They certainly were an interesting race; sorry to see them go. Don't worry; WotC will likely keep them company with the corpses of giff, dracons, and any other race they deem "not kwel"
Conclusion: the Eye of Mechanus has nothing to do with modrons. Everyone who thought otherwise should now look duly chagrined.
The text that goes along with it, the graveyard of metal creatures that once ruled the plane along with the search bonus (Great Modron March, anyone?) sells me that they mean modrons. I don't expect people to be *happy* about it, but I think that's the author was shooting for. I really doubt there'll be much more on the subject, regardless, unless there's a sudden surge in planar-related material in '05 or '06.
If the modrons really are gone, it is a great loss... not that I won't keep using them.
Originally posted by Vix Damnul
After all, aren't the inevitables the ones who are idealized, perfect representations? Those're inevitable eyes to my reckoning.
I'm pretty sure Inevitables are the constructs that enforce various laws. Most of them look like robots of some kind I believe, and many don't seem to have eyes. I could be wrong though- I don't have my books with me at the moment.
Here are modron eyes.
Non-metallic, non-streamlined, non-idealized.
Even if the description of the Mechanus Eye did resemble illustrations of modron eyes, it would still be too vague a reference to get worked up over.
Originally posted by ripvanwormer
Even if the description of the Mechanus Eye did resemble illustrations of modron eyes, it would still be too vague a reference to get worked up over.
As I said, its the text that sells it to me (because art is always subjective, and we can't assume the author ever even saw the pic you just posted). I *think* the author meant modrons; in all honesty, the only way to get a definitive answer would be: if the author(s) are having a chat/board QA session, ask them (politely!) if the entry for said magic item was a reference to modrons. Then ya or nay you'd have your answer.
As far as getting worked up, not me. I haven't bought a single WotC product in over a year, so I pretty much happily ignore anything their books say about anything. ;)
Originally posted by Mephit James
Wasn't there a race in the Planes of Law box like the inevitables that hated modrons? They were tall and floaty and wore masks over the glowing balls that served as their heads...
Yes, the Parai *gets images of the Borg queen*
Honestly I adore the Parai, but they're too small scale to honestly compete with the Modrons, at least at the moment. But it's fun that both races attack each other on sight.
I've had fun with a particular Parai in my own game.
The designers informed us that yes indeed the Modrons are all dead.
It seems that in the wake of the Great Modron March, when Tenebrous stepped down from the position of Primus, the Secundus who took his place as the new Primus went insane. He leaped off the edge of his cog, and all the remaining Modrons followed their leader like lemmings, throwing themselves from their cogs to their certain deaths.
Sad to say the Modrons are no more, victims of their own blind adherence to authority. ;)
wotc_andy says, "Modrons, modrons, modrons...the D&D team decided early on in 3E design & development that modrons didn't reflect the direction that we wanted the game to be heading in."
wotc_andy says, "While there are no doubt plenty of ways to portray modrons as something other than goofy-looking polyhedrons, that's a very hard sell."
shemeska says, "..."
wotc_bruce says, "We decided to give more time and development to formorians--those who enjoy modrons have an incredible number of sources to draw upon in regard to them."
wotc_andy says, "The vast majority of players and DMs who see modrons think, "oh, a sentient six-sided die with legs, that's just silly." Fair or not, it's certainly the perception we've gotten from the customers. /ga"
shemeska says, "..... /ga"
wotc_bruce says, "ga"
grayrichardson says, "On page 77 the description of the Mechanus Eye says it is salvaged from an extinct planar race that used to control the plane. Is this a wink towards the Modrons, are they all dead now? Or another race?"
wotc_andy says, "; )"
wotc_andy says, "/ga"
grayrichardson says, "heh heh"
wotc_gwendolyn says, ""Purportedly" It gives a DM lots of wiggle room./ga"
wotc_bruce says, "The reace is referred to as "demolished" not extinct. That might be overstating things, if indeed this is a reference to modrons :-)."
grayrichardson says, "Care to share any speculations as to what happened with them?"
wotc_andy says, "I don't know that any such speculations have occurred. In fact, maybe it didn't happen at all. /ga"
wotc_gwendolyn says, "No comment./ga"
wizo_unicorn says, "Shem, your comment?"
wotc_andy says, "Although you could probably cast some blame on the uber-deities JoT, MoCo, and SkWill. : ) /ga"
You say, "I didn't expect it to recreate the Planescape setting, but when it deviates from the material that forms the basis for it, I get curious for a reason. Even if it's just 'so and so didn't like it so...' Some little bones to speculate upon as in game reasons to work with"
on: D&D is slowly being destroyed by the "designers" (if they qualify for that title, and they don't IMO) writing the new material. It starts with little things: FR's cosmology, Her Serenity's alignment, the Modrons. Don't get me wrong, the 3.5e rules are better than 2e, but the fluff, the good stuff, is seriously lacking and in some cases apalling. "Modrons are silly sentient d6s", what a crock of 
. Formians? Formians are supposed to be LG ant-taurs in Arcadia, not the LN exemplar race! What's next? Elves and Orcs are really the best of friends, and it was just a little disagreement about bellbottoms vs. slacks all those millenia?I would keep going, but my capacity for rational and civil thought is slowly diminishing. The sad thing is I keep hoping for the "designers" to not screw things up, and they keep disappointing me. I guess I'll just have to lower my standards and expectations enough to swallow the tripe they keep shoveling out.
off.:hoppingma :headexplo
I think my reaction to all this can be rather succinctly summed up by a percent sign, an at sign, a pound sign, an exclamation point and an asterisk.
Either way, I think my respect for WOTC has plummeted several slots. Modrons live and there is nothing they can do about it. . .
:headexplo
Well I posted the raw chat transcript up on Enworld without comment.
casts alter self, into an Arcane...
"PITCHFORKS! GET YOUR PITCHFORKS HERE!! ONLY 10 GP!! YOU CAN'T STORM THE GATES OF WIZARDS WITHOUT YOUR PITCHFORKS!! PITCHFORKS!!"
Gotta make some gold somehow...:D
You could search for the missing Modrons, seek their fate, find out what happened. Are they dead? If so who or what killed them? Are they just sleeping? Are they off exploring the planes? Did someone entrap them? Did they all just move to Minessotta to join a hippie commune? Are they coming back?
You can't complain relentlessly about fluff and then get all angry about it when they give it to you.
I take that back, this group has proven able to complain about anything...
Besides, I don't think the death of the modrons is going to figure into anything, ever. They just threw it in to be cheeky and tweak the Planescape fans.
Wait! You guys complain about lack of fluff, but killing off the Modrons IS fluff, not crunch. And very interesting fluff at that. It leaves you all sorts of room to speculate and explore in your campaign.
Well, I guess I have to agree with Grey here, but grudgingly. As much as I'd rather just have modrons back, this does open interesting story lines. For instance, what of the Source? I assume it is still out there somewhere in the center of Regulus, but now it's completely full of Modron-stuff. Maybe all it takes is for a strongly Lawful being to find it and jump-start Modron production as the new Primus. . .
-
-_||_
The geometric ones will live again!
And Gray, you are joking about that death of the Modrons, right? Cause I see plot holes a mile wide in that particular idea.
Originally posted by Ohtar Turinson
Well, guess I was wrong and they straight out decided that they wanted to kill the modrons. I'm still going to treat that graveyard as belonging to some other group.
And Gray, you are joking about that death of the Modrons, right? Cause I see plot holes a mile wide in that particular idea.
Just want to say that your idea about a modron-precursor race is more interesting...
Anyways, I believe Gray is joking around. The chatlog makes no mention of how the beloved boxes died, and he's given two completely different stories on two different forums.
Originally posted by Ohtar Turinson
Well, guess I was wrong and they straight out decided that they wanted to kill the modrons.
You weren't wrong. They can't kill the modrons, because that would require them to mention them. We knew they weren't willing to do that since the 3e Monster Manual first came out.
Edit: Of course they do mention them, in the Manual of the Planes. By name, even. So the last definite mention of the modrons has them very much alive.
As for the Mechanus Eye, the designers were very clear that its origins are completely unclear. It belongs to an unknown race that may or may not be extinct. It's left for the DM to decide the facts, as it should be.
That it happens as a blatantly metagame reason to remove them without any in game reason or frankly -respect- for continuity is what makes me annoyed about it all. There was no attempt to rationalize it, just arrogance and waffling on reasons.
Someone's to blame for it certainly, but I won't toss vitriol till I know anything more than I do. *simmer*
Originally posted by Gray Richardson
Wait! You guys complain about lack of fluff, but killing off the Modrons IS fluff, not crunch. And very interesting fluff at that. It leaves you all sorts of room to speculate and explore in your campaign.
You can't complain relentlessly about fluff and then get all angry about it when they give it to you.
I take that back, this group has proven able to complain about anything...
The modron thing fluff by default, the lack of crunch makes it so. And it barely qualifies as fluff since the modrons are conspicuous in their absence.
I can complain about everything WotC puts out if they don't meet the standards I expect. And WotC hasn't met my standards, in regards to fluff, in quite a while. If you don't demand quality, you will get
.Oh, I love the modrons as much as anyone else, I even have to somehow limit the availability of rogue modrons as a character race or I'd get a party of over 5 rogue modrons, always.
But killing them, if done right, like in a great adventure that would throw in a lot a ideas and great opportunities seems good to me.
A bit like Faction war: It tore down an establishment of the setting, but for a reason, and in a great adventure.
Just saying that they're all dead, and their remains are a magical object, with nothing more, is just wrong, however you look at it.
Originally posted by ripvanwormer
Edit: Of course they do mention them, in the Manual of the Planes. By name, even. So the last definite mention of the modrons has them very much alive.
I agree with that and Sildatoraks post.
The quote from the Planar Handbook cannot mean the Modrons because it would contradict 2E PS Material after Modron March, the MotP web enhancement and itself, because it states the race "now lies forgotten" there. How can an epic occurence that supposedly happened only a few years before be forgotten?
Cannot be, must be some other race.
Kilamar
Originally posted by Kilamar
How can an epic occurence that supposedly happened only a few years before be forgotten?
Parai Queen: Dear, something just occured to me. Didn't you have a race somewhere?
Primus, the One and Prime (on the left side of the bed, dragging on a cigarette): A what?
Parai Queen: A species, personifications of the plane? Looked like various geometric shapes?
Primus: Now that you mention it, I think I remember something like that. What with our marriage and all, I plumb forgot. I wonder what happened to them?
Parai Queen: I'm sure they'll turn up. What are they going to do, stand around forever waiting for orders?
Primus: That's what I love about you, Parai Queen. Your amazing sense of humor.
Parai Queen: I thought it was my boobs.
Primus: I'm actually genderless. I've been meaning to bring that up.
I'm starting to see why some of the folks on the OOP boards refer to 3e as "somebody's personal houserules".
The worst thing is, as marketing works, the company is more likely to punish PS fans for refusing to purchase their planar products by simply nixing the line or making it unrecognizable than to fix things or even make a sensible story behind things.
I'll definately have to start grabbing up some more old PS PDFs.
Next they'll discover a massive iron mine in the Tyr Region...
The good news: Planewalker's going to have no competition whatsoever at this rate.
Originally posted by Incenjucar
Next they'll discover a massive iron mine in the Tyr Region...
Well, they kinda did. When Dungeon revisited DS a few months ago, appearantly there was a lot of 1st level warriors (the NPC class, I think) running around with iron stuff. Of course, I don't own that issue nor did I even give it a good look-over, so my info is 2nd hand.
Well, they kinda did. When Dungeon revisited DS a few months ago, appearantly there was a lot of 1st level warriors (the NPC class, I think) running around with iron stuff. Of course, I don't own that issue nor did I even give it a good look-over, so my info is 2nd hand.
You'd be correct. Every NPC either had a bronze or iron weapon. I had to make changes through out the entire Adventure. I stripped it down to there only being 2 iron weapons in it as opposed to the 30 something they originally had.
I have my own gripes about what Paizo has been putting out recently, mostly in Dragon, but the same thing is getting to be a regular occurance in some ways across the board with anything WotC has touched.
Originally posted by Shemeska the Marauder
As I recall the author of the DS revival article actually distanced himself from what appeared in print, claiming in more words "That's not what I wrote, they destroyed it".
As I recall, the author didn't use those terms, and supported Pazio's right to edit. He did mention that the removal of heat rules made many things that made print rather pointless, and that what he turned in was a different beast than what was printed.
I have my own gripes about what Paizo has been putting out recently, mostly in Dragon, but the same thing is getting to be a regular occurance in some ways across the board with anything WotC has touched.
Heh, no comment...
Originally posted by Sysane
It really seems that all that WoTC is worried about maintaining the integrity of is the Forgotten Realms.
Even that is a matter of who you ask. They made changes to the FR planes, infravision/dark vision, drow equipment, and even redrew the map to make it look kinda odd; all creating their own conflicts with previous FR material. I've seen some rather heated (heated? Heck, it made the sun look cool...) debates on every one of the subjects for FR I just listed.
Naw, WotC/Pazio has managed to tick off fans of almost every setting
Originally posted by Nightdruid
Even that is a matter of who you ask. They made changes to the FR planes, infravision/dark vision, drow equipment, and even redrew the map to make it look kinda odd; all creating their own conflicts with previous FR material. I've seen some rather heated (heated? Heck, it made the sun look cool...) debates on every one of the subjects for FR I just listed.
Naw, WotC/Pazio has managed to tick off fans of almost every setting
This I think sums up what we're afraid of, and what has come to pass:
wotc_andy says, "Adherence to continuity is important, but we made a decision way back when we were writing FR for 3E that we couldn't be slaves to what had come before. We aim to get as much right as we can, but we can't require authors to read through a library of books just so they can write on a topic."
wotc_andy says, "It's really a case of diminishing returns: spend an extra week reading background material to glean one more tiny detail, but give up the 10,000 words you'd have written in that time? Just can't do it. /ga"
For the record, Eberron looks promising IMO.
Originally posted by Ryltar Swordsong
It occurs to me that the only setting WotC hasn't royally screwed up is Eberron. But then again, maybe they did.
For the record, Eberron looks promising IMO.
I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt actually, though I'm not likely to actually buy the core book for another year at the least because I'm not dropping a campaign after two years in the latter 1/3 of the overall plot arc to run a new campaign in a new setting. When I get a hold of a setting and run it, I don't run a one month game, start in years
So far the book has gotten good reviews (except for the printing errors) so I might snag it on amazon if I find myself with extra money (though much of my spending cash is going to be devoured by gencon and paying for an art comission or two of NPCs in my game).
Originally posted by Gray Richardson
It seems that in the wake of the Great Modron March, when Tenebrous stepped down from the position of Primus, the Secundus who took his place as the new Primus went insane. He leaped off the edge of his cog, and all the remaining Modrons followed their leader like lemmings, throwing themselves from their cogs to their certain deaths.
Sad to say the Modrons are no more, victims of their own blind adherence to authority. ;)
Correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't your movement on the plane(mechanis) turned completely off if you are chaotic? The new Primus goes insane(CN)...and can't move. No leaping off his cog.
Of course i could be wrong and probably am. It's been about 6 months since i've played planescape, so i dumped all the rules out of my head so i could have room for SWRPG rules(and what a mess that is!).
I also read someone quoting a wizard's employee about continuity. I certainly hope that isn't so. I like to think the authors of game books know all the rules and everything that has come before. If only so they don't accidentally print the same thing twice.
As for this whole arguement that Wizards is messing up d&d, i find that to be very subjective. I personally think they messed up MTG(blue is the best color???) and D&D(Prc takes place of role playing). A kid who starts playing today probably won't think that way.
Now, my modrons are staying put. If need be, i'll revert back to 2nd edition. Heck...all my planescape books are 2nd edition anyways.
Originally posted by J-Pop Jedi
I also read someone quoting a wizard's employee about continuity. I certainly hope that isn't so. I like to think the authors of game books know all the rules and everything that has come before. If only so they don't accidentally print the same thing twice.
That quote was legit sorry to say. Judge as you see fit and agree/disagree with their sentiment and reasoning as you feel appropriate.
Originally posted by Mephit James
Who built the City of Brass?
Efreet. That's our city.