Modrons

You have to admit that they'd look better without those massive weird lips though.

>Especially since every other fantasy setting on the planet has already done the "plane of order is a mass of monolithic platonic solids" idea to death.

Name five.

>herp de derp what is exaggeration

I adopt one.

CUTE.

Saying every "every other fantasy setting on the planet" has done that when you can't name one is quite an exaggeration.

It's more the fact that the seeming go-to visual for "order" is smooth blank solids, or possibly crystals of some sort, and if any kind of living being is depicted, expect it to be a faceless drone, assuming it's even shaped like an organic creature in the first place.

I think of the depiction of Order in the Shivering Isles, first and foremost. I'm sure I could think of other examples if I cared to.

I appreciate Modrons for the fact that they're not wholly dedicated to that trite image. They're automatons, but they also have a bit of charm and personality to them. They feel flawed and fallible in a way that opens up opportunities for roleplay, that a legion of blank-faced slaves would not.

They are literally described as almost entirely mindless drones dedicated to absolute order in everything. They shouldn't have charm or personality. They are intended to be a legion of blank faced slaves.

Also, that doesn't even begin to preclude the fact that conveying emotion in a simple polygon is totally possible. youtube.com/watch?v=_fGujzulsas

Modrons are fine just the way they are, you cucks, your autism getting triggered isn't enough of a reason to reinvent them.

I'm fine with what they are in every way except visual.

Fool you know nothing

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The visual is a big part of their identity, not liking it is the same as saying you don't like them, they're goofy lawbots and that's fine.

Yarg

I think the clockwork/steampunk aesthetic is more trite and overused than the "smooth, blank solids" aesthetic. The current imagining of Mechanus and the modrons seems facile to me. It has the trappings of order (bolts, gears, brass, bureaucracy), but the underlying setting does not seem particularly lawful or orderly.

In any case, I think there's room for mindless polygonal slaves and more sophisticated lawful-neutral beings. In my homebrew setting, platonic solid modrons exist, but they serve a race of ascended philosophers, mathematicians and scientists who live in an ideal city of Sforzinda. Pic related.

The autistic player befriends them/becomes their lord.

>but the underlying setting does not seem particularly lawful or orderly
How do you figure, user. Way I recall, Mechanus is basically one gigantic clockwork device, with every single gear and cog moving in working order with every other thing. If one thing failed or went out-of-order, the cascade would be unimaginable.

Damn. I haven't been keeping up. Why does Order Plane these days look so... chaotic? You'd think these fuckers could at least form up in ranks or something.

Anyone have that one user's Modron redesigns? As a bunch of Dwemer-looking automatons?

Did they ever finish them?

This stuff?

Yeah last I saw I think all of them but the Pentadrone were done.

How do they deal with daily and seasonal extremes? Radiological, nuclear, chemical, biological, and mystical hazards?

Does converting from their native game system to my settings native system cause any trauma or change them in any way?

>daily and seasonal extremes
Modrons do not require air nor water and can survive extreme heat (I'd wager maybe 150°F max before taking damage off the top of my head) and cold to the point of living in the vacuum of space.
>Radiological
Assuming you mean Radiation, I can only assume they'd function as normal, however would eventually degrade to the point they need replaced.
>nuclear
See above for radiation, however any base Modron would be fucked by any nuclear blast. Higher tier Modrons could probably shield themselves with prior warning.
>chemical
Low tier Modrons are too dumb to properly clean things like salt reside off themselves without being explicitly ordered to do so, so while anything short of full-on acid would have minimal effect in the short term, they'd likely shorten the individual drone's life significantly.
>biological
Modrons are machines and thus immune to disease. They are not, however, immune to getting beat to death by gorillas or other wildlife, though high tier Modrons are pretty killy in their own right.
>mystical
Modrons are so Ordered they are immune to any mind-altering effects. Humorously enough, low-tier Modrons are not immune to Charm, you can Charm them but they'll continue stabbing you anyways until ordered not to. As far as other magic goes, low-tier Modrons are just as vulnerable to a Fireball as most other creatures.

I don't care for the current depiction of modrons, but this picture is really cute.

The current depiction of modrons is basically a retoned rendition of DiTerlizzi's original art from AD&D, though?

lomion.de/cmm/modron.php

I have em.

Yeah, I don't see the difference thematically at all. They were always goofy contradictory muppets.

Cool thanks, though I thought there was one with a Quadrone and Pentadrone floating about somewhere.

This is the aesthetic that all faceless lawful-lawful entities should strive for.

These are pretty badass.

Here's the updated one, with an undecided Pentadrone.

I'll likely redo the Quadrone and Duodrone to fit the scheme of the rest of them more.

And here's the other Pentadrone idea, tank mode instead of hydra robot. I think I prefer this one, it also includes the Pentadrone's signature Paralysis Gas cannon.

They're pretty even right now. Probably best to get the whole line done and see what works best with the rest

They're not about number of sides.
They're about whatever crap the table had on hand when the minis ran out.

>DiTerlizzi's original art
Those are 2e modrons. AD&D modrons were worse.

This is useful, better than googling each Modron type when I start drawing it anyways.

These all look boring and terrible. They're exactly the kind of cliche Order-drones I described here:

>They're exactly the kind of cliche Order-drones I described
That's because Modrons ARE cliche Order-Drones. It's almost as if the entire goal is to make them appear more like that, because their goofy cartoon blobs aren't fitting for them.

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I was actually going to base Heirarch Modrons on a mix of those and Cravers, but with a shiny Brass and Ivory color scheme.

Who's a lawful boy?

Yes you are.

>Things themed around order are given an ordered theme
Are you going to complain Demons look Chaotic next?

Sure, let's strip away anything distinct and interesting about the Modrons, and make them into yet more boring, characterless robots. This is an improvement.

For fuck's sake.

In the development videos for the Shivering Isles, Bethesda's devs talk about one of the earlier designs for the realm of madness. In it, every NPC was a manic loon, who just gibbered incoherently. While this fit the theme of the setting, it was not interesting for players. These characters were just fountains of word salad, with no distinct personalities or ideas for the player to interact with.

In the end, the devs dialled the "madness" waaay back, and instead gave every named character a more distinct, unique delusion, often playing off the dichotomy between Mania and Dementia. There's still a character who spouts word-salad, but he's a single, unique individual, and is surrounded by claustrophobes, meat fetishists, suicides and paranoids. It's a far more subtle, interesting and characterful approach to the theme of madness, and gives players room to engage with the setting on a human level.

My point is, just because Modrons are native to a plane of order doesn't mean they should be completely orderly and characterless. It is far more interesting for them to be goofy, janky and fallible, as this gives the players room to interact with them in interesting ways.

You're making the mistake of equating the different flavors of madness to something that isn't a flavor of order.
Being deluded and the like is just as mad as being stark raviging insane; being a goofy, klutzy little toy is not the embodiment of absolute law.

Radiological threats generally include radiation, yes.

They survive maybe a month or so unless they're dropped into a defensible and clean position.

Modrons live in a vast hierarchical society helmed by a literal god-king. The very lowest Modrons are less independent than worker ants, and each successive tier is increasingly more intelligent, but no less dedicated to the god-king's goals. How is that not a good representation of order?

Moreover, the entire reason there are even different kinds of Modrons in the first place is because they are sapient creatures, and are capable of making mistakes, disobeying orders and going rogue. If they can't, what the fuck is the point of a Pentadrone, whose function is to "police" the lower tiers of drones? Why do any of the higher "judge" Modrons exist?

But they already exist in my setting. I feel kind of obliged to since they're one of my table's favourite monsters.

Are you saying that if goofy meatballs can be perfect Order machines brass machine men can't also have their own distinct chatm to them?

Battle Droids from Star Wars are a perfect example of "featureless robot with amusing charm".

>Are you saying that if goofy meatballs can be perfect Order machines brass machine men can't also have their own distinct chatm to them?

No, I'm not saying that, you moron. I'm saying that those "goofy meatballs" are vastly more distinct and memorable than yet more faceless robots.

>If they can't, what the fuck is the point of a Pentadrone, whose function is to "police" the lower tiers of drones? Why do any of the higher "judge" Modrons exist?

Order for the sake of order, user. Police and judges are part of a lawful society, even if they aren't needed.

Your picture looks ugly as sin.

PON
PON
PATA PON

What the fuck are these things? They look like fucking queer militant homosex Minions.

That's ridiculous. A orderly and lawful society wouldn't have redundancies like that.

A better analogy than "god king" is to think of Modrons as a single entity, where Primus is the brain and monodrones are just individual cells. Your own body isn't going to start rebelling in the same way that Modrons wont- those "judges" and "police" are there to stop foreign bodies (bacteria, adventurers), viruses (defective Modrons), and cancerous growths (rogue modrons, as a rogue modron isnt a respawning dead one and thus puts strain on the organism that is Modron).

Let's put it to a vote, yeah?

strawpoll.com/8bck7bk9

The name of the plane which Modrons come from is the clockwork nirvana of mechanus, your question makes no sense.

You know what I mean, you pedantic cunt. vs.

I think the question is if edgy robots are better than eyeball goofbots, not 1e vs 2e.

They're not even proper robots, given how fleshy they are. More like cyborgs.

Those look tight af

The low-tech post-apoc setting where metals corrode and disintegrate almost instantly? Hope you didn't let some of that shit back into Mechanus.

orderly does not necessarily equal efficient.

In fact I think they make it a point that a lot of things are unintentionally inefficient because of the language gap between castes, especially when humans are dealing with them.

Why are 5E modrons basically Minions?

They are great. My group is about to encounter some.

Gr8b8

It seems that you're forgetting that this is not just some lawful and orderly society but the metaphysical embodiment of all law and order.

You seem generally ignorant of the canon and just pushing your personal head canon based in ignorance and opinions that reference video games more than the actual game being discussed.

>Hope you didn't let some of that shit back into Mechanus.
Some of what shit? Your rusting virus/radiation? Anyway, modrons are magical outsiders, there's nothing about them being vulnerable to any rusting/deteriorating effect that targets metal which would be worth mentioning since it's a thing in the game.

Well that shit is probably more popular than d&d

Not really. I even like the new design.

Yo, what are these from? This aesthetic gets my dick diamonds.

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Top is Riftborn from Endless Space, middle and bottom are likely either Persona or Bayonetta if I had to guess.

If all citizens were perfectly rational, there would be no need of explicit law.

How can there be a plane of law if it does not have Law? There may be order, but there must also be explicit enforcement of that order via Law, even if no can or would break the Law.

Top is Riftborn from Endless Space 2; they're extradimensional thoughtforms from a platonic realm of forms, and they've been forced into real space because an exploding warp drive caused their dimension to collapse/distort, so they have to wear robotic shells.

They regard organic life / realspace with emotions ranging from "genocidal disgust" to "intense revulsion", and even frigid, barren ice worlds are too chaotic for them to live peacefully on.

They're pretty cool.

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So, octons are just one of these, right?

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Are Decatons meant to be taller than higher tier Modrons? Because most art I see has them absolutely dwarfing Monodrones, to the point they should be like 15 feet tall.

Aren't Modrons weak as shit and Neutral? Can't imagine they'd do much damage.

Individual monodrones are, it's when they attack in extremely organized swarms that it becomes an issue.

High tier Modrons are level 20+ Divine Casters in addition to being heavy beatsticks in their own right.

This is something most people don't seem to get with Modrons- they're not a force of "Order", they're a force of Law. All the Order stuff is more of a coincidence than outright effort on their part.

Primus=Law
Jygglag=Order. There is a difference.

My Entire game universe is centered around an all vital, universe contingent (but only THIS plane, not every plane like Sigil, which it is -almost- a dark aspect of)
Great City (tm)
which is a 'lawful/evil/stagnant' hell, of a scale so apocalyptically large as to take inspiration from 40k

Its a 4th wall breaking hell, to a degree, and the 'dullness' of it is supposed to leak onto the gaming table whenever encountered.
(A petty, mundane, modernistic world, where rules are observed and enforced)
The 'flavor' side of it is that Eeeeeeveryone is vampires, or at least common enough that all excitement about being a vampire is almost trivialised, as they work themselves into something aproaching a perpetual boredom hell.

The 'reason' at the heart of it all is that the city itself is a representation of the 'unliving' undead corpse of a modron 'primordial',
once a mechanical city-being of order, now infected with negative energy, and, though technically inanimate and immobile, still infected with the same 'thirst' and hatred for life as any other undead being.

Theres a vampire god-king at the center of the whole deal, and his existence is the result of a twisted granting of a childs request to be like king Arthur.

The sword he wields is actually an aspect of demogorgon in this dimension, and the childs slaying of the modron god ('a sword into a stone') created the descent into grimdark that makes my universe so tryhard spooky.

What do you think?
I think other modrons would avoid this universe like the plague, but...