TRPG General Chat

BESW

01:17

VTC as unclear, plox.

Metool

It's not unclear!

It's just... natural armor is a bonus type.

BESW

Read my comment.

The weasel familiar isn't found where he says it is, and it doesn't give a natural armor bonus at all.

Metool

Ah, how curious.

I was going to say that: "Natural armor" is its own bonus type, which has its own stacking rules. If a bonus doesn't have a type to go with it, assume it's untyped.

Then include a quote on natural armor bonus.

BESW

I saw the answer you gave, and it's over-simplified because many sources of natural armor have other bonus types attached to them, like the amulet of natural weapons which gives "an enhancement bonus" to the wearer's natural armor bonus.

Metool

True enough.

God, d20 is a mess.

4

BESW

01:26

I'm really tempted to pin that.

Alex P

@BESW I'll back you up if you do. Let's take it to the moon!

Metool

I'm not complaining.

Alex P

Whenever I find myself hating d20 too much I just google "My hate of d02 know no limit" and it abates for a while.

4

Metool

Hedgehog, what.

Resolved?

Oh no, ATM machines...

BESW

Yeah, I'm voting to re-open.

Metool

01:39

blast, post edited

BESW

It's a much more complete and useful answer than the other one.

Though now that the OP has clarified the confusion in the question I'd un-down-vote it if I could.

Metool

This is why I don't vote until I see nothing in the question that is more likely to change than the average [whatever].

BESW

I'm generally okay with voting immediately; an answer is responding to the question as written, and can be voted as such.

But that's just a temperament thing.

I'm especially likely to downvote answers that look like they're trying to jump in before an inevitably-closed question is closed.

Not just for that, of course, but if they're too brief or assume too much or the like.

MC_Hambone

greetings denizens of chat

BESW

Yo.

Metool

01:54

[bounce]

MC_Hambone

how are you guys tonight?

BESW

Under the weather.

MC_Hambone

@BESW that's unfortunate! Flu?

BESW

Not sure. Maybe just allergies, it's that time of year, but it's not fun.

MC_Hambone

I know what you mean, I am bad with pollens

@BESW I recently got Janelle Monae's albums and have been listening to them on repeat for like the past few days

currently listening to Dance Apocalyptic

BESW

02:06

Yey!

Oxinabox

02:34

I feel the need to highlight what a fantasic community member @SevenSidedDie is.
He has a great attidute.

Metool

Oh?

MC_Hambone

he has always been pretty friendly when answering/commenting on my stuff

BESW

03:30

Today's Weird Wiki Talk Page entry is asking about the infuence of Sympbolism.

Metool

03:43

ohhhh boy

doppelgreener

07:05

@BESW I just remembered you teach people about Office. I have a Super User question about Word you may (I hope!!) know the answer to. I hope I don't recall the old war wound. Or develop any of my own at the expense of this thing:

0

Q: How can I keep my Trust Center settings from resetting on every document?

I work in an environment where I edit a lot of different Word documents using Office 2010 in Windows Vista. Most documents I will edit have Track Changes enabled. That makes this checkbox the bane of my work, since it seems that for every document I open or create anew, it will reset to being ch...

If you wish to stay entirely clear of this, I will understand completely.

lisardggY

07:19

G'morning.

*glances at star list*

doppelgreener

@lisardggY It's got a really nice one right at the top.

lisardggY

d20 is a mess, yes, but that never actually bothered me.

Maybe it's because I play less tactical than others, but it always felt like broken rules could be glossed over, overpowered combos brought down by common consent.

Well, at least the d20 complaints finally pushed my not-that-funny comments off the starlist.

doppelgreener

@lisardggY Never! They're here forever! Muahahaha!

@lisardggY I'm gonna quote an analogy of what's wrong with d20 here

> I can’t even say what’s wrong with D&D 3.5e, because— okay. Imagine you have uh, a toolbox. A set of tools. Looks okay, standard stuff in there.

You pull out a screwdriver, and you see it’s one of those weird tri-headed things. Okay, well, that’s not very useful to you, but you guess it comes in handy sometimes.

You pull out the hammer, but to your dismay, it has the claw part on both sides. Still serviceable though, I mean, you can hit nails with the middle of the head holding it sideways.

(from a rant about PHP, with the instances of 'PHP' replaced with 'D&D 3.5e')

lisardggY

I've heard similar analogies. Both for PHP and for D&D. I think they're flawed, at least as far as D&D is concerned. Often they'll also invoke the sunk cost fallacy, which is also only partially applicable.

doppelgreener

@lisardggY This analogy is just about how almost every part of the PHP language is kinda broken and weird, except that it's still workable enough you can still do stuff with it.

> Side observation: I loooove Python. I will also happily talk your ear off complaining about it, if you really want me to. I don’t claim it’s perfect; I’ve just weighed its benefits against its problems and concluded it’s the best fit for things I want to do.

And I have never met a PHP developer who can do the same with PHP. But I’ve bumped into plenty who are quick to apologize for anything and everything PHP does. That mindset is terrifying.

lisardggY

07:31

Just like PHP might be a suboptimal tool from a technical or language-design viewpoint, but it might be the right tool because you have an existing PHP infrastructure, or existing PHP knowledge. Rewriting your codebase just because PHP is a clunky language doesn't make sense.

That side observation is a classic case of selection bias. I've talked to plenty of PHP developers who can say they like PHP, and they can point out its benefits in relation to its strengths.

doppelgreener

@lisardggY Sure, and Facebook would have to invest a lot to move to some other platform, but that's outside the scope of this analysis.

This isn't a question of "should you use PHP?", it's a question of analysing PHP's quality.

An existing code base matters in the former inquiry, but is irrelevant to the latter.

lisardggY

PHP's problem is similar to Visual Basic's back in the 90's. Its main strength is the low barrier of entry, how easy it is to get things done. This is a huge benefit and advantage, but isn't usually listed by the people who most benefit from it, because they're of the "get things done" attitude who don't usually get into discussions about programming langauges. :)

doppelgreener

I don't mean to put you on a defensive position about PHP here.

lisardggY

Oh, I'm not a PHP coder and dislike the language for many reasons.

I just think it's a bad case to make.

doppelgreener

@lisardggY What case? The fact it's wonky in almost every way?

lisardggY

07:35

Ranting about what a mess d20 is great - it IS a mess, and that affects us.

What I dlslike is the various "X is unplayable" or "Starting a new game? DON'T USE D&D!" sort of arguments.

Just like someone with PHP experience absolutely should use PHP if he wants to get something done, so a D&D party shouldn't feel bad about playing D&D instead of spending their time learning a new system.

Learning a new system is good. I love learning new systems, and I believe it makes for better players. But there's a lot of condescension towards people who choose to stay in their comfort zone - with programming, as in roleplaying.

doppelgreener

@lisardggY Like I said though, this is entirely irrelevant to an analysis of the case of whether d20 is wonky.

And, well, no, I would argue the opposite: nobody should use D&D just because they need to get something done. Nobody should resort to the language they know just because they need to get something done. Unless they need it, like, tomorrow.

D&D players don't need to play their game tomorrow.

lisardggY

D&D players want to play. To have fun. If learning new rules isn't fun, the promise of more fun tomorrow doesn't really carry much weight.

doppelgreener

Ok. I'm... not sure where this is getting us.

lisardggY

And the wonkiness of PHP or D&D is relevant when comparing systems or analyzing what's the best tool for a job, but those comparisons tend to emphasize disadvantages, which is fine for a theoretical checklist, but you won't convince me that running the a game in D&D will be signficantly worse than running it in, say, Savage Worlds.

All I was complaining about is that some people tend to take D&D's problems and disadvantages and treat them as catastrophic failures, when in fact they're closer to annoying quirks.

doppelgreener

I'm speaking as someone whose entire group is moving from Fate to D&D because we want to get stuff done. We want to play the kinds of games we want to play. D&D is not going to support us doing that. So we're moving. Sticking with D&D because we knew it would be terrible for us.

And I am having to repeat myself that this is not within the scope of an analysis of the quality of the game.

Whether it's good or not is a different question from whether you should use it.

I think we're talking past each other and I don't really want to continue this.

lisardggY

07:42

Yeah, I think we're talking about two very similar things, but not exactly the same. :)\

doppelgreener

@lisardggY You mistook me for trying to convince you of anything!

I was just sharing a quote I found amusing and wanting to discuss this issue, not argue a point.

lisardggY

And I disagreed with the quote. I might have been arguing with the originator of the quote and not you, but since he wasn't around, you were the proxy.

doppelgreener

I find your statements valid, from one perspective, but the quote is coming from a different perspective

i.e. you're conflating the analysis of whether it's good or not, and whether people should use it, as one thing to be argued about together, when they're totally separate

e.g. whether PHP is a hunk of crap has nothing to do with whether Facebook should move, or what they should program their next thing in.

I need to go home and do some shopping though, so I'm gonna depart for now.

doppelgreener