TRPG General Chat

12:00 AM

Quick question: D&D 5e - Great Weapon fighting (allows you to re-roll 1s and 2s)

How does this work with Advantage, and the Battle master Manouvres?

I.e. the extra d8

Not advantage sorry... critical hits*

If I rolled a critical, I roll a 1. Re-roll, get a 3. Then I roll my critical damage, and get another 1. Do I get to re-roll that?

And if I roll a manoeuvre, and get a 1 on the d8, do I get to re-roll that?

Shalvenay

12:15 AM

hey @Ben, how're things going?

Ben

Yeah, not too bad. Got a bit on my plate at the moment, but I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel! How aout you?

LegendaryDude

@Ben Yes, you re-roll the crit dice too.

They are weapon damage dice so they count.

You don't re-roll the maneuver because it's not weapon damage dice.

Shalvenay

@Ben alright here. my gnoll is one XP distribution away from cleric2 so hopefully the party can survive their next encounter xD

Ben

@LegendaryDude There are some that seem like they are... the "Feeinting Attack" for example.

LegendaryDude

It's not weapon damage, its superiority damage

Ben

12:20 AM

> **Feinting Attack.** If that attack hits, add the superiority die to the
attack’s damage roll.

LegendaryDude

The source of the damage die isn't the weapon, it's the maneuver

There is a question that asked the same thing on main site

Ben

Ok, cool. Thanks for clearing that up :)

LegendaryDude

12

Q: Does Great Weapon Fighting apply to Superiority Die rolls?

Great Weapon Fighting states: When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die for an attack you make with a melee weapon that you are wielding with two hands, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll (PHB pg.72). A player in my game asked if this applies to the extra damage done with the Bat...

Ben

@Shalvenay Haha nice

LegendaryDude

Note that that answer contradicts what I just said :P

So I guess it's up to your DM what happens

Shalvenay

12:24 AM

@Ben only bad news is that it looks to be with some sort of shapeshifter (perhaps lycans even) -- good news is that improv'ed silvered weapons s/b an option (provided someone has change for a 20 gold piece or three)

Ben

@Shalvenay Oooooh... That's exciting :D

Shalvenay

@Ben the party has a witch/smith among them, so the idea would be to draw or hammer some silver pieces into wire or sheet shapes and wrap it around the ends of my char's quarterstaff

although, since my char is a monk, with sharp teeth to her own name -- that raises a question: can natural weapons hurt lycanthropes?

LegendaryDude

@Shalvenay Only if they count as magical

@Shalvenay The monk's natural attack become magical at leve 6 I believe

Shalvenay

@LegendaryDude ah. so a ways out yet. :p

Ben

@LegendaryDude Your answer makes sense in my mind though, especially since half of the manoeuvres don't actually contribute to the user's attack (sometimes it reduces damage, increases a DC, or contributes to another player's attack)

nitsua60

12:33 AM

Graah... trip overseas broke a 538-day RPGSE-visiting streak =(

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 well, you got the badger for it long ago xD

Ben

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 how goes the trip though?

nitsua60

@Shalvenay Excellent--I'm back home in the loving arms of my family. I returned with the same kids I left with, so that's a bonus. Gotta head off to bed, soon, though, because I've been up since midnight local.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 ah, cool. guess we'll talk next time re: schedule for getting the 5e folks back together?

nitsua60

12:41 AM

@Shalvenay NAB a sec?

trogdor

1:19 AM

@nitsua60 always good to return with the same kids you left with, it would be bad if you had swapped with someone

trogdor

1:50 AM

so, my father asked me today where a good place to get D&D dice is

after he guessed the right place he proceeded to ask if I have any a friend of his could borrow, and I was forced to geek out and explain all the different types of dice it needed in order to make sure he understands that I do have dice, but not any that are useful for D&D XD

BESW

Did you mention that I can loan him some?

trogdor

I think this is the first day I have consciously faced the idea that just the number and kinds of dice that D&D uses is already too much information for him

BESW

Heheh.

trogdor

@BESW I mentioned you have some, I did not presume to say for you that you could loan them to anyone

Miniman

@nitsua60 I would've hit a thousand if I hadn't gone on a cruise :(

BESW

1:54 AM

It's not like we're using them for anything else.

trogdor

I can mention that to him

BESW

Ask if his friend needs dice for himself, or for a whole group.

trogdor

so far the only detail I have been able to get out of him is that she needs them by Friday

he has not mentioned how many people she needs the dice for

and that she needs them for a couple weeks

he might still be trying to obtain these details himself

BESW

I mean, she can buy sets at Box Seats.

trogdor

yeah, I am kinda assuming that that idea was tossed out for some reason

BESW

2:05 AM

I have... technically enough for nine "traditional sets" of D&D dice (1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 2d10, 1d12, 1d20), with the d4s being the limit on going higher.

At last count: 9d4, 69d6, 24dF, 22d8, 44d10, 11d12, 17d20

Ben

@BESW dF?

trogdor

Fudge Dice?

cause I sorta explained to him that those are not exactly great for D&D

seeing as they have pluses and minuses instead of the numbers you would want

BESW

Yup, Fudge (fate) dice.

trogdor

ah, she and her husband both teach at the same school and have a couple kids, they don't exactly have a lot of money to blow on a ton of D&D dice apparently

I am asking him again more directly how many people the dice are needed for, because that seems like an important piece of information

Ben

2:31 AM

@BESW Ohhhh OK. What would you use that for?

Shalvenay

@Ben Fate should be a hint

the entire Fate system is built on the 4dF roll

Ben

2:49 AM

Oh. So it's used primarily for the Fate system.

Shalvenay

@Ben exactly

BESW

They're increasingly used for other things too, but yeah.

Fudge dice (the Fate system is built on the Fudge engine) give a result between -4 and +4, with a strong bell curve toward 0.

That makes them ideal for games that want a small modifier to make a large difference.

@trogdor That sounds easy enough to cover with my dice sets.

trogdor

ok

I don't 100% know if those are all the people who are going to use em, but that could be part of what he was saying

he just wasn't exceptionally clear on that point

BESW

Like, it'd be good to have a specific number. But it sounds like I can sponsor their D&Dery.

(For explaining dice to your dad... maybe a cardgame analogy? D&D dice are kinda like a 52-card deck; if you don't have all the right cards it's gonna be hard to play. And Fudge dice are kinda like trying to play poker with an Uno deck.)

5

trogdor

3:11 AM

good comparison

BESW

(And other games might use the RPG equivalent of a pinochle deck by picking and choosing from D&D-style dice.)

(But that's probably more than he needs.)

(And we won't mention that some RPGs use card decks.)

trogdor

lol

he checked out at my original explanation so yeah, we don't need to add all that XD

trogdor

3:42 AM

@BESW ok,... he says "Just one set to use for the class. (friends name here) will roll them and the kids will act on her rolls.

BESW

Cool.

trogdor

as long as you understand what exactly that seems to mean, to be fair I am still a little sick

BESW

It's a fairly common old-school practice, and also useful if you've got a limited number of dice.

You just have the GM roll everything, even if players normally would.

That way you don't need duplicates of dice for everybody.

trogdor

oooh

BESW

(And the GM can fudge more easily.)

Shalvenay

3:55 AM

there's also the "pass the dice around the table" option

trogdor

so that means the number of players doesn't matter as far as the dice are concerned

BESW

Yup.

BESW

4:54 AM

0

Q: Atlantropa: How bad could it be?

Atlantropa is an awful idea for a great MANY reasons. Ignoring all the pesky social and political problems with the concept, what's the worst possible environmental outcome of a successful Atlantropa project? Many articles mention that the project would raise the sea level around the world with ...

engineering extreme-terrain

trogdor

coming from a person who lives on an island, I am terrified that a project such as that would basically either wipe us out or at least severely harm us (us being everyone living on any island small enough to be extremely effected by a huge displacement of water like that)

that water still has to freaking go somewhere

BESW

Yup. Popular Mechanics estimated a global three-foot rise in sea level.

Goodbye, Florida.

trogdor

5:10 AM

ah, so wiped out is not the case, but that is the edge of all of our land on this island gone for sure

which is a lot more than it sounds like, especially considering we don't have too much to begin with

and on land that isn't lost but that does get flooded a lot,... have fun, cause we only care about Europe here XD

just a dig at the Europe-centric thought process that apparently went into the idea

BESW

Oh, yeah. It's deeply problematic on every possible level.

For one thing, the whole point of it is to placate European ennui at the end of colonial expansion.

trogdor

I can sort of understand that they didn't intend horrible consequences from the proposal of a project like this, but when doing something on a huge geograpic level like this, you really ought to consider ALL global impact

@BESW yeah, I mean, I am not thrilled by that either

BESW

"Why are you guys fighting each other?"
"Because we ran out of low-tech cultures to invade and occupy."
"Oh, how about some totally empty land to occupy instead?"

trogdor

see, that last part is ok with me, but there is a serious problem that it springs from the first two things

not to mention the fact that they apparently thought they could just create land with no consequences

which has been done at least once that I know of, killing off a huge swath of reefs right off of China

Trogdors note to the planet: "guys, we kinda need reefs, maybe stop just killing them with your pure bottled apathy? pretty please?"

Adeptus

@trogdor Tell the Australian government. They're trying to approve a massive coalmine in Queensland, that many think will be disastrous for not only the farmland nearby, but also the Great Barrier Reef

Their arguments are creation of jobs and revenue. Except that there's far more jobs that will be at risk of being lost if the reef dies (mostly tourism), and the mining company is foreign-owned & will be paying next to no tax.

trogdor

5:29 AM

well, unfortunately I have no pull with the Australian government

even less so, I would think, than an actual Australian citizen

Adeptus

5:42 AM

See, I knew there was a flaw in my otherwise perfect plan!

trogdor

I would love to see them come to their senses on that apparent disaster plan, but I don't actually think I can do much myself

daze413

6:04 AM

@DMPatman Your new question might get closed and I don't feel it's appropriate to link this in comments but I will gladly take any opportunity to link this to anyone. That, I have asked that question to TheAngryGM. This is his reply

BESW

6:44 AM

urrrgh. Is there a meta about requests to copy-paste the book into a question so people who haven't read it can give piecemeal answers that assume all RPGs are the same?

the dark wanderer

7:04 AM

@BESW I hate it when that happens @_@ And you know if you don't copy paste it they'll close the question for one reason or another.

BESW

Eh, that's not a problem.

The Oracle

8:46 AM

0

Q: Is the accusation that smallcaps significantly hurts my question's software compatibility well founded?

An edit was suggested to my recent Polaris question. The edit reason was: replace the weird font tricks with regular characters, for search engine and translation software compatibility I rejected the edit because smallcaps are used in the Polaris rules to denote key conflict phrases and t...

discussion questions formatting

Miniman

@BESW Which question?

BESW

12

Q: What happens when I have zero Cool?

Bubblegumshoe 68, "Effects of Cool Damage," has entries labelled like this: Cool 5 to 0: [mechanical effects] Cool 0 to -5: [mechanical effects] Cool -6 to -10: [mechanical effects] Cool worse than -10: [mechanical effects] The first two entries seem to overlap; which effects do I ...

bubblegumshoe

@TheOracle @doppelgreener I think this is for you.

I'm kind of a believer in "If you don't have the document, be chary to answer questions about it."

Miniman

9:39 AM

@BESW Yo.

BESW

9:50 AM

@Miniman Sweet.

@GraemeRock I could, but I've already included the specific wording I'm concerned about and providing more of the text will encourage people to answer despite being unfamiliar with the system. — BESW 17 secs ago

Oh nice Creative Commons image search https://ccsearch.creativecommons.org/ - includes Met, NYPL and Rijksmuseum collections (via… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/829246257298305025

Tweeted by jfwinters on February 8, 2017 at 8:31 AM

doppelgreener

10:33 AM

0

A: Is the accusation that smallcaps significantly hurts my question's software compatibility well founded?

Yes, the small caps you're using are bad for machines. They also may have issues with people. The web does offer a good way to do small caps — write regular text like this, then use CSS styling to transform it into small caps. This works perfectly fine, and is legible to machines, because they'd...

Boom, researched and answered. Thanks.

trogdor

lol

doppelgreener

@BESW good response

BESW

10:49 AM

@doppelgreener Nice.

@doppelgreener Thank you.

doppelgreener

11:13 AM

@BESW thanks, that was satisfying to explore and write about, and I learned things.

BESW

I was pretty sure his unicode work-around would play silly buggers with... everything... but you've got the background to do the research and testing more quickly and thoroughly.

> It goes without saying. You can use Rapport instead of Drive when controlling this vehicle, but the engine dies immediately if anyone in the vehicle speaks.

trogdor

wat

certainly not a stunt I want

unless I can actually spin it to force people to stop talking when I drive,.......

Urist McDorf

Damn puns

doppelgreener

11:35 AM

@BESW i was confused and then i burst into laughter

BESW

> "How are you going to make it move? It doesn't have a – "
"Be very quiet," advised the duke, "for it goes without saying."
And, sure enough, as soon as they were all quite still, it began to move quickly through the streets, and in a very short time they arrived at the royal palace.
- The Phantom Tollbooth

I can't recommend The Phantom Tollbooth enough.

It's very funny and clever, but it's also incisive and wise.

doppelgreener

> [The Phantom Tollbooth] tells the story of a bored young boy named Milo who unexpectedly receives a magic tollbooth one afternoon and, having nothing better to do, drives through it in his toy car, transporting him to the Kingdom of Wisdom, once prosperous but now troubled.

... this is sounding like the start of a Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe parody.

BESW

It's definitely of the "ordinary child's travels in extraordinary land" genre, but it's more in the fantastical travelogue style.

And it's one of the few novels which is both fully allegorical and fully entertaining.

doppelgreener

Lovely

@BESW "it is playing silly buggers with everything" is a good way to summarise. :D

BESW

The Kingdom of Wisdom is ruled by brothers, the Mathemagician and the Azaz the Unabridged. Whenever they couldn't come to an agreement they'd consult their younger sisters Reason and Rhyme. But when the brothers quarreled over whether letters or numbers were more important, the sisters refused to pick either over the other. The brothers exiled their sisters to the Castle in the Air, at the edge of the Mountains of Ignorance. Ever since Wisdom has known neither Rhyme nor Reason.

trogdor

11:48 AM

@BESW oh,.. that is fantastic XD

BESW

On his travels Milo visits places like Expectations ("the place you must always go to before you get to where you’re going") and Conclusions (a place you reach by jumping, and can only leave by swimming through the Sea of Knowledge--though some can swim in it all day and never get wet).

trogdor

lol

I would totally just stay there, as long as it had books in it XD

BESW

12:43 PM

> Behemoth with a Heart of Gold. Immune to all physical attacks, but vulnerable to love.

6

Magician

The funny part is, that's totally legit, rules-wise.

BESW

@Magician This is why Fate has earned an everlasting place in my heart.

Urist McDorf

1:26 PM

I wonder how to translate "Paragon" (the 4e tier) into Russian.

There's no clear equivalent AFAIK.

Can anybody help?

Miniman

Is there a word for "champion"?

Urist McDorf

It's "чемпион" and it's used almost exclusively in the "[competition type] winner" meaning

But I'll see about synonyms

Thanks

Miniman

Hmmm. The best way I can think of would be to read a Russian translation of Arthurian tales and see what words they use to describe Sir Galahad.

Urist McDorf

I'll look into that.

But maybe some other Russian in this chat has already solved the problem for me :)

nitsua60

2:15 PM

VtC unclear.

Miniman

@nitsua60 It seems clear enough to me. Impossible to answer beyond "make it up yourself", but that doesn't make it unclear.

Opinion-based, maybe.

Also, flags required: rpg.stackexchange.com/a/94490/15469

nitsua60

@Miniman Yeah, I wasn't super-sure on the reason, but it didn't pass my smell-test for answerability.

doppelgreener

@Miniman <-- @SevenSidedDie @mxyzplk for some reason I can't flag for moderator attention after also flagging as rude/abusive. But I also want to point out: offensive username.

Patta

2:31 PM

I am still amazed as to how much effort people waste with trolling on the Internet. I would have been to lazy to even create a new Account.

doppelgreener

@Patta it's an unregistered account in this case, which means they just typed in a name and their message and hit post.

Miniman

@nitsua60 I had a similar problem - I wanted to see it closed, but couldn't come up with an excuse.

The answers it's gotten make me feel a lot more confident about closing it.

Anaphory

@BESW LOLFIGS. And then they laughed, as well.

*LOLFIGSL. Sorry.

Magician

2:51 PM

@UristMcDorf Game terms don't translate very well in general. We've always just transliterated.

Anaphory

Where do I get an introduction into Lvl 4 5th-ed characters? Can I do it from freely available stuff?

The Oracle

0

Q: I can't use other flag options after raising one, and I don't know why

I just now flagged a particular post as Rude/Abusive. I then had a further detail to report about the post (the username is offensive), but when I went to use the flag dialog, I found that despite being visibly enabled, I could not actually select the last option for "in need of moderator interve...

bug flagging

Urist McDorf

@Magician They don't but I'm reasonably happy with the terminology I've made so far. It's a bit clunky but it works and doesn't make me sneer at the blatant transliteration (always disliked if not outright hated that).

Paragon's the only one I'm really stuck with so far. Even healing surge I'm happy with (прилив сил).

Magician

That works. Do you have a better translation for "epic" than "эпический персонаж"?

Urist McDorf

Not yet but I'm fairly sure I had an idea which I happened to forget. Just need to remember it :)

Patta

2:59 PM

@ doppelgreener oh, right, I forgot that you could do that.

LegendaryDude

@Anaphory What do you mean, exactly?

Urist McDorf

@Magician I'm more likely to use "легендарный", actually

Since it's a stronger connotation in our language

And the noun is more used

Anaphory

@LegendaryDude I'll probably play a short game of 5E over the next few weeks. Different from what I'm used to, it starts with people making separate characters and bringing them, and they are supposed to be L4. I want to read some of the race/class/advancement options to get my brain going before I ask for concrete help on how to build my character.

Miniman

@Anaphory I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but one word of advice - trying to create a character at a higher level than 1 invariably leads to confusion. Characters are created at level 1 and then levelled up, and trying to skip that process just doesn't quite work.

Anyway, I gotta sleep.

LegendaryDude

@Miniman Sound advice.

Anaphory

3:10 PM

@Miniman Do you mean “There is no shortcut” (fine) or “Don't create Lvl 1 and then level up without story behind it” (sounds like that's precisely what I need to do)?

LegendaryDude

@Anaphory Ah, okay. Well, there are pregen characters from 1st all the way on up to 20 on the Wizards site.

@Anaphory He means don't just make a level 4 character.

Make a level 1 character, then level it up to level 2.

Then level it up to 3, then 4.

Anaphory

Kay.

LegendaryDude

If you start by trying to plug all your stats and abilities in as if you were starting as a level 4 character then it's easy to miss things.

Anaphory

Is some part of the PHB available online, for the actual rules beyond sample chars?

LegendaryDude