Beware the AI Overlords: The Half-Elf or Semidryas

I made the mistake of fact-checking my half-elf information against an AI the other day. And the AI brought up the gem that using the word "half" was "inherently racist." This was later used by clickbait sites to paint the comment as saying "half elves are inherently racist," and down the rabbit hole we go.

I hate the Internet.

I don't mind the word half-elf, which has been in D&D for 50 years, and it is a shorthand way of saying elf-human ancestry. Granted, somebody at some time should have come up with a "Drow" style name that describes them with a neutral word, as Tolkien calls them, Peredhel (plural Peredhil).

All of us would have been better served with a lore-friendly name that adds flavor, presence, and beauty to the background. Something like Semidryas, Latin for:

Semi: Half

Dryas: Elf or Sprite.

But the AI repeated the claim, and mixed it in with the "inherently racist" clickbait claims, and I realized there are times when AI is just garbage in, garbage out. It started pulling in arguments on RPG sites, and I deleted the conversation. It was like having a virtual agent repeat the most stupid pen-and-paper flamebait from the last 5 years to me, summarized.

AI, you suck. I know what I know. I think what I think. I am not having AI tell me otherwise.

Semidryas, plural Semidryades, I put you in the public domain and pray this ends.

Like dandelion seeds to the wind, spread and make the world a more beautiful place. And remember, it takes human intelligence to come up with this stuff, not an AI.

Palladium System: Two Attacks for Living?

Palladium Fantasy Gamemaster's Pack, page 50

So I was looking through the pregenerated characters in the Palladium Fantasy Gamemaster's Pack, and I saw a 4th-level ranger with ...five melee attacks? And a rate of fire of five with his longbow?

Then a sense of panic hit me. Five? Five! Where are they getting five?!

Am I getting all the attacks I should be getting?

This is critical in any Palladium game, and this is one thing D&D 3.0 stole from the system: the notion of your attacks per turn going up, and your damage naturally increasing as you level. Granted, in Palladium, attacks can be traded for defense, so there is a balance to the mechanic, where in D&D 3.x, they are just attacks. Wizards did a lousy job at implementing the concept they borrowed, again.

So, where do these attacks come from? Let's look at Palladium Fantasy.

The first two are easy: Hand-to-Hand Combat Expert starts with two attacks per round.

The next one is also easy. Since this character is 4th level, we look up the chart, record the bonuses, and see that at 4th level we get "one additional attack per melee round."

That is three of the five accounted for. Where do these two other attacks come from? We have an explanation on the forums:

https://palladiumbooks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=170392

Later revisions of the rules and game introduced the rule "2 attacks for living," which means that without any melee combat skills, you get two attacks, and these will stack on top of the HTH combat styles in the game. This was present even in some of the older books in the Palladium fantasy line, especially in NPCs and pregenerated characters.

The Palladium Fantasy RPG book needs updating, as do many of the other books in the line.

So this is our five melee attacks, and where they come from:

• 2 attacks for living
• +2 attacks for HTH Expert
• +1 Attack for HTH Expert at level 4

For ranged, this is where they come from:

• 2 attacks for WP Archery
• +2 attacks for archery RoF
• +1 at level 2
• +1 at level 4
• +1 attack for HTH Expert at level 4

That HTH Expert extra attack at level 4 DOES apply to missile weapon fire! This may seem surprising, but multiple sources confirm it, and it aligns with the pregens.

And I have sources on the Palladium forums:

https://palladiumbooks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=79257#:~:text=Do%20the%20attacks%20from%20HTH,a%20bonus%20to%20ranged%20combat.&text=Question:Within%20the%20new%20rules,tiny%20+2%20bonus%20from%20aiming?

This is a question that Google's AI gave me both answers for; it insisted the wrong answer was correct, said I was dead wrong, and after I found the official clarifications, it went back on its original answer and admitted I was right. AI can be dead wrong and insist it is 100% right, trying to provide facts and proof, when it is clearly NOT.

AI is a very persuasive liar when it is dead wrong.

This is why we need a human soul in any decision-making process.

And why we need skeptics and those who challenge us.

Be very, very, very careful and never trust AI! It is a known liar in some cases, will lie to prove itself correct, and bases its claims on incorrect sources, trying to use this as justification for the truth. Good luck playing with an AI DM, everybody over there in D&D land. Your character will die because the AI DM goes stupid on you and tries to use someone's incorrect rule interpretation on some forum somewhere as the official rule.

Also, they put a lot of work into making these AI systems sound super confident, which also helps sell the lie and justifies the billions of dollars they are pouring into it all.

In Rifts Ultimate Edition, which is the master rules update for all Palladium games from 2017 onward, the HTH tables were updated to the correct "4 attacks per melee round" value, and the unwritten "2 attacks for living" rule was done away with.

Also, the language for the level 4 bonus in HTH Combat Expert was changed in Rifts Ultimate. In Palladium Fantasy, it is:

• Level 4: One additional attack per melee.

In Rifts Ultimate, it is:

• Level 4: +1 additional attack/action per melee round.

This makes it clear that it is an "attack/action" per melee round, which DOES include missile weapon fire. Missile weapons fire as many times as the character has melee attacks, but some skills do have their own rate of fire rules that these HTH attack bonuses do modify.

So, by Rifts Ultimate, our melee attacks are:

• 4 attacks for HTH Expert
• +1 Attack for HTH Expert at level 4

And for our ranged attacks, by Rifts Ultimate, this is unchanged:

• 2 attacks for WP Archery
• +2 attacks for archery RoF
• +1 at level 2
• +1 at level 4
• +1 attack for HTH Expert at level 4

As far as I am concerned, Rifts Ultimate is the master Palladium rules update, and it should be used with all Palladium games, including Heroes Unlimited, Ninjas & Superspies, Palladium Fantasy, and every other game.

ADAD House Rules: Grok 3 Character Classes

Over on the ADAD House Rules Page, I added a simple tutorial for using Grok 3 to create ADAD/OSRIC/AD&D first-edition character classes using AI.

I am still not using AI art on this site since it takes jobs and artist talent from our communities.

But seeing and experimenting with AI-created character classes is something I have never seen before, and it produces some interesting results for just about any character class idea. I have gotten great results for barroom brawler, barmaid, torch bearer, dragon handler, axe master (fighter subclass), magic school teacher, and many others.

Also, I don't recommend doing this and then "selling it on DriveThru" since that is cheap and low-effort. However, this is fine for personal use if you only use it yourself. If I see someone doing that, they are getting a one-star review!

The characters are simple enough to pull this off with the first edition. Having AI design an entire 5E class with subclass choices that level up would take a lot of work since 5E puts a lot of "design effort" into subclasses. AD&D does this just fine, and the generation and prompts are quick.

Seeing first-edition characters going from level 1 to 10, getting abilities as they level, and having those reflect whatever you want is mind-expanding fun. If you wish to see a one-off class for a "Mermaid Trident Warrior," you can have that instantly. The class won't likely be balanced, but that is where your human mind comes in to tweak and fix the design.

This may diminish the skill and effort of game designers who put a lot of careful work and testing into a class and open the door for tons of junk to enter the hobby. This is a better use as an idea generator and something to create a new framework to begin work on. I will stress personal use only and use these as a recipe to "bake new ideas" with.

My Torch Bearer had this power at the 6th level:

Beacon of Hope

At the 6th level, the Torch Bearer can rally allies with their light. Once per day, they can hold their light source aloft for 1 round, granting all allies within its radius a +1 bonus to attack rolls and saving throws for 1 turn (10 minutes). At the 10th level, this becomes +2 and lasts 2 turns.

It is an interesting power, and I would increase the daily use limit, but I have never seen anything like it. And I have never seen a torch-bearer class designed with 10 levels of powers, an XP chart, hit die, minimum stats, and all the other trimmings.

If you see something you like, put it in a Word document and save your work! You can always return to a query, but having these in a personal idea stash is smart.

Again, please use this ethically and for personal use only. AI use has responsibilities attached, just like driving, gun ownership, a hunting license, or any other human right that society gives us that can hurt or negatively impact others.

This is also very scary, and it warps my mind about what pen-and-paper gaming will be like in five or ten years. Will entire role-playing experiences be AI-created, with the AI understanding dungeon mastering and every player living in a world of their own creation—with custom classes, races, peoples, NPCs, and every other aspect a DM usually comes up with? Will we even have traditional books with lists of character classes, monsters, races, and other content?

Will we even have "gaming as books," or will it be "gaming as an AI platform?"

At that point, how will the rules change? Will we even have rules, or just a set of descriptors for our character, like Cypher System?

It is a scary new world in which we live.

But also one that may have infinite possibilities.