@doppelgreener that is true, the second option is much better

I've never seen a coconut crab that big myself, but they do get quite large. (source: I grew up in the boonies and coconut crabs would get stuck in our garage semi-regularly)

they are definitely the biggest land crab I know of

but they aren't so big or fast that I would actually care for one as an animal companion

when I could have like, a dog or a wolf, or something like that

or a Komodo Dragon, if those guys weren't all *******

they are jerks

@trogdor -- funny thing: Wild Shape into a feline form as a druid, then Animal Friendship a dog ;)

lol

cats and dogs are not quite as irreconcilable as some people would think

though they do have different enough social structures and body language that it could present an issue in many cases

but if you raise at least one of each together they typically can at least tolerate each other

sometimes even actually be buddies

You can catch a coconut crab by strolling up and grabbing it. This is not a thing that ever happens.

XD

they are definitely not liable to swarm you

and I say again, they are slow of movement, and add temperament in there

notice that guy grabed it from the back though

you don't want to scare it enough to lose a small chunk of hand or a finger

but they are not epic animal companion materal

most damage they will do to someone is that person being dumb with them

yeah, if you're dumb enough to let 'em grab you... good luck.

yeah

not saying they can't do some damage with that claw, quite the opposite really

but that all depends on you doing the stupid thing with them

Oh, @trogdor, @doppelgreener. I know this isn't quite what we've had in mind for the spiderbots, but I thought I'd share them anyway.

well, here is the thing

I have no reason to object to different versions popping up

@BESW or some guy seeing the design and being all like "yes these inspired me, that is why I made this really awesome more streamlined thing" or some such

the spider bots were just a thing meant to be a current problem, and to foreshadow some things

and they succeeded further in both those goals than I ever imagined

so taking them in some other direction? rock on man

The illustrations are from the Dinotopia series, which has the concept of an ancient civilisation (it inspired tales of Atlantis) that used "strutters:" mechanical dinosaurs/arthropods/etc powered by magiscience crystals. They're semi-intelligent robots created to serve as vehicles, labour-saving devices, and war machines.

neat

was that civilization specifically dinosaurs? or like, humans and dinosaurs living in the same society?

Humans and dinosaurs. And, according to myth, human-dinosaur hybrids!

lol

that last part is a little squidgy

not really any more so than some D&D stuff I have seen though to be honest

like even just D&D dragons... they didn't have to breed with practically anything guys, come on now

Most people in modern Dinotopia think King Ogthar's hybrid status is a symbol of unity between the species rather than anything to be taken literally.

mm

that would make some sense, for sure

Poseidos sank so long ago that Ogthar is considered by many to be purely mythical and not a real person at all.

Certainly it seems some later societies considered him a god rather than a mortal king:

(You may recall that I named the king of Samrajya "Ogthar" in our 4e campaign.)

yes I do

seems very apt now

XD

It was a great half-orc name all on its own too, or I wouldn't have gone for the reference.

yeah

I would expect nothing less really

I am thinking of a few ideas at the moment about some more magic based sessions

so far we have had things rooted mostly in the science stuff

and I am thinking of a couple ideas about sessions I could run that go in the other direction

I am actually thinking of designing a ritual with very specific rules, that will change depending on what happens around it, and still leaving space for the PC's to decide what the ritual does, how it is done, how it will change (while filling in whatever they can't decide with my own ideas of course)

and by very specific rules I mostly only mean that those rules will be very specific when we actually have decided what they are

not that they will be like, already baked in

cause this is still Fate

of course, unless you also have to gather a bunch of things for the ritual first, doing one probably isn't a whole session by itself

Why do I think this is inspired by last night's boardgame?

but I have ideas of how it could be stretched out a bit, and other things can happen before/after said ritual too

hee

it is also inspired by something else just today as well

but I won't say that was not an inspiration too

I just watched something where a ritual was being done to accomplish a thing

said ritual was already an issue cause it woke some stuff up (it was supposed to, it just woke up bad things with everything else it did)

but then people walked in trying to stop it, they didn't succeed but the guy killing things it woke up ended up killing them too

and the very fact that they spilled blood in the ritual screwed things up, and summoned wraiths, and ended the ritual

so I have ideas now about not only doing a ritual, but crafting the template for rituals that change depending on what happens around them

or in them

Hello!

Does @HeyICanChan not come on chat?

@IronHeart Hi!

@DuckTapeAl Nope.

I know it isn't like, a novel concept

I just figure if I can pull off what I am thinking of in the right way it would make for an awesome session

there should be one or two other things in there of course, or several parts to the one ritual, but I think it would make a good crowning moment

it's just an idea right now though

I don't even think I can decide ahead of time what the accomplishment of the ritual is supposed to be ahead of time

I am thinking we will sit down and decide as a group right beforehand, or possibly (but not necessarily, because it will be hard for our group schedule wise for example) talk about it before the day so I can actually prep around that group decision

I want to do more Fate like Gming, basically

but I still want to make up the original session idea and have some kind of prep in place

@Smurfton [wave]

Just ended like a 10 game winning streak on league because of an AFK Gangplank =\

That was disappointing

that is basically one of the reasons I have stopped playing LoL all together

well, I stopped a while ago really

but that was one of the good reasons for it

yeah, it's one of the main reasons I'm rather cool to the notion of MOBAs to begin with

I mean it wasnt that bad though

The winning streak was great while It lasted

I still have an 83% winrate with that champion in ranked na.op.gg/summoner/userName=Pepperkat

The only two losses I've had were because of an AFK guy

I don't like relying on the random people playing the game not being jerks or trolls, nor am I into running into people who just feed or go AFK or leave really early

Well people will have varying skill levels

because the game typically lasts at least 15 minutes and usually goes up to 30 or 45 minutes long with a session that is already ruined in some way

If 83% of my games are just normal games without a missing person I'm confident I can win about 80% of those games

I don't feel like most of my losses had as much to do with myself as some other factor

Thats generally a problem with MOBA games

not that I want to brag at my skills so much as I felt there were just inherent issues with the formula of the game

Most people tend to internalize their own mistakes and more easily notice the mistakes of others

Such as?

well, the MOBA community, for example

Well what things do you think are a problem in the MOBA formula

I can probably dispel your feelings in the matter

it obviously bleeds into LoL, and there are plenty of people playing LoL or DoTA and so forth that just can't keep all their freaking issues to themselves and have to use the game as an outlet to blow off steam on other people

Alright so lets say you get into a game

I guess formula is the wrong word

You have 4 people on your team and there are 5 people on the other team

the community itself is basically what is to blame

So if you offhandedly get a troll in one of your games, it happens sometimes.

But you also have to remember

You have a 40% chance to get a troll on your own team and a 50% chance for the enemy team to get that same troll on their team

It's the same with an AFK player

yeah, but I don't want a free win from a handicapped enemy team either

Well it's nearly equally as likely to happen and then you move on to the next game

They surrender at 20 minutes

I want a good clean game, and if I get that and lose? at least it was more fun than the game where I was just cleaning up

And then that's pretty much it

there's also the inability to reallocate team roles dynamically nearly as much

from what I can tell

I don't like that wasted 20 minutes though

Team builder fixes that @Shalvenay

I played FPS at a reasonably high level for quite a while

and that builds up

Sometimes you see a question in the queue and you just know it'll hit the HNQ from the title alone.

@Trogdor If you wipe in a raid on WoW because one of your guys disconnected during the fight do you feel like you wasted 20 minutes?

@Sandwich I didn't raid much in WoW

Regular instance runs are a good analog

If a guy DCs and you wipe during a fight and you have to find another person do you feel like its a waste of time?

uh, for those they usually got replaced relatively quickly

I also find that open-world stuff appeals to me more than "caged" gameplay

anymore

@Shalvenay I recommend PSO2

and if it wasn't the tank or a healer, you could still get on without them

and I was usually also tanking or healing myself XD

@trogdor -- try being every role in the holy trinity at the same time ;)

as in paladin?

@Sandwich -- well, if PSO2 ever had this thing called an "official US release" -- and wasn't a total unknown re: mechanics

Heh. When Trogdor was running a WoW instance, often he was the tank, I was the healer, and we were doing two-man legacy runs for the raven mount.

...or we'd picked up Niaz for fish DPS to three-man heroics at our level.

@Shalvenay If you go to the PSO2 Reddit you can download AIDA's tweaker and it will actually install all the PSO2 files and such

@BESW I also did a lot of runs with the LFG system

You just need to make an account

@trogdor -- better than that. tanking, healing, kicking out DPS at range -- and add managing minions, maneuvering about an obstructed battlespace, and having to do fleet comms/management at the same time

@Shalvenay are you talking about raids then? XD

(and yeah -- my minons were on a different target than the DPS prime. because that's how things work where I'm from ;)

@Sandwich -- also, how well does it work under WINE?

@trogdor -- nah, that was actually from a PvE anomaly in EVE

@trogdor Sounds like a good hunter to me.

@Shalvenay WINE?

lol

@trogdor -- not quite as good as the time half a wave spawned off grid though

@Sandwich -- as in running it under Linux

@Shalvenay I don't know, you'd have to try it

@Sandwich Wine Is Not an Emulator.

@trogdor -- imagine a situation where a bunch of mobs spawn in a spot where they're invisible to you despite you being in the same area of space as they are, because somehow that area of space got split in half in a funny way and is now two rooms in one

@Shalvenay no thanks, lol XD

(I ran an unholy alliance of Windows, Linux, and OS X across two computers for a couple years before abandoning it as more trouble that benefit for my purposes and skills.)

basically, every instance I ran in WoW was with friends or in the LFG system

in LoL those people don't get replaced at all

(though you can still Que with friends, that is how I got into LoL in the first place)

it is not an exact exchange of experience, at least for me, between WoW and LoL

Well you can queue with friends in LoL too

they have similarities, I grant that

besides, instances are for folks who can't handle having to fight for their PvE ;)

@Sandwich yes you can, I mentioned that

I don't really have any problems with the LoL formula because it benefits you just as much as it penalizes you

Huh. I'd forgotten about WoW's ridiculous "my playstyle is better than yours" squabbling, and how much more vicious it was than what RPG communities occasionally indulge in.

The ones that get me the most are the ones that say "WoW is better than xxxxx"

I would never say that, personally

the comparison just doesn't add up for me

"People who [raid/farm/quest/PvP/twink/RP/collect/auctioneer] just do that because they're too [weak/lazy/unskilled/cowardly] to [raid/farm/quest/PvP/twink/RP/collect/auctioneer]."

the main difference between a WoW instance and a single session of LoL for my expeience was that if one DPS is missing in WoW, it doesn't stop you from progressing, and it is more likely to be a DPS missing, because there were 3 of them and I almost exclusively tanked or healed. if the one guy went missing who actually stopped progression, he could still be replaced in that same instance anyway, usually in a matter of 5 minutes at average most

I am not saying LoL is a bad game

just that in that particular comparison they are very different

in my experience

"People who [LARP/minmax/optimise/fudge/RAW/RAI/homebrew/freeform] just do that because they're too [weak/lazy/unskilled/cowardly] to [[LARP/minmax/optimise/fudge/RAW/RAI/homebrew/freeform]]."

It's the same ridiculous personal attacks based on the same mistaken belief that one person's fun is both inferior to another's and a challenge to it.

But because in WoW every playstyle is subject to the same design sandbox, there's more immediate panic that a change to support one playstyle will actively hinder another--and so the illusion that someone else's playstyle is an attack on your own becomes much more personal.

if a game of LoL went well, it was very fun, I just resented the lack of being able to replace someone who was ruining it ( which is something that would not work for LoL I think)

if someone in an LFG instance was literally making everyone else mad, we would all vote him out and replace him

(Whereas I could find 4e entirely unpalatable but still be able to play 3.5 however much I liked, so the illusion of the personal affront of one group's preferences to another is lessened.)

in LoL you leave or deal with it

again, I have nothing really against LoL, I just don't think I can play it anymore, and it isn't even, per se, RIOT's fault, or the fault even of the majority of LoL players

but the bad players ruin the game for me

not bad as in not good at it either

I just mean the rotten eggs who troll or yell at everyone for not being good enough

and the odd AFKer or feeder is annoying too, but I don't blame those people typically because that stuff has happened to me, and there could be any number of legit reasons for leaving or AFKing or just being pretty new to the game

but even not blaming those people doesn't mean that they don't at least occasionally spoil my experience for that session

and to be fair, plenty of online games will have similar problems, I am just citing my own personal experience with specific games basically

but I do think Mobas tend to have these issues in spades

my guess is that the community that plays DoTA and League and such are all looking at other similar games

and some of those people happen to have certain issues

@trogdor I left LoL after a couple of years for the same reasons.

(And I know this is going to sound, but...)

I've barely, if ever, had those issues in DotA.

I had those issues, but to be fair, my days of DotA were all when it was still a mod in Warcraft 3

and I hear from several friends that is still has that issue to some degree

Ah, yeah, I meant DotA 2.

out of personal experience I cannot say how bad it is

LoL is definitely a more fun game for me.

DotA is hard, and I'm a pretty terrible player.

But the LoL community is entirely toxic to poor players, where the DotA community seems a lot more easygoing.

Ars Technica published a related article earlier: How Heroes of the Storm's objectives, less toxic games refreshed the MOBA. (tagline being - Impressions: Blizzard may have finally found the MOBA formula for unsure newbies.)

I haven't read it myself but some here might be interested.

@doppelgreener It's definitely the most accessible MoBA I've played (and I think I've played all the major ones).

@doppelgreener -- not totally surprising that Blizzard would be the one to do such a thing

Moba being...?

it is a type of game where there are usually 2 teams of people, each person controling a hero

you push with allied minions against the other teams base and try to destroy it, and typically gank each other and such

and you get gold and exp or equivalents for defeating enemies and use one to get gear and the other to upgrade abilities

@trogdor so kind of a tower defence with offence?

sort of

there usually are three lanes, though sometimes less or so

and each lane has a tower

So what does Moba stand for?

I forget

multiplayer online battle arena

which is usually kind of misleading, because it isn't so much an arena as 2 bases that are closer to each other than any hostile bases probably should be without one already being destroyed

And this heros of the storm is more casual?

uh, it is more,.. accessible to casual players I think

partly because it is new, and more so because it is quite possibly better designed for it

it has clear side objectives that a team can probably more easily coordinate for

it still does have a professional element though

Also, you don't have to worry about last hitting, denying, zoning, freezing, or pretty much any of the MOBA-specific mechanics that have developed.

It's much less technical than other MOBAs.

true

LoL is also missing denying too

not specifically a bad thing to be missing

Yep, it's one of the things that makes it easier than DotA.

there is an element of skill to denying but wtv

For me, easier = more fun, but I'm aware that that's not for everyone.

I have played DoTA and LoL, and I wouldn't personally say one was better than the other really

I'm not in a position to make judgements about "better", but I found LoL more fun.

they both have certain things the other doesn't, in certain ways, and they both play slightly differently

@Miniman agreed

I just mean by it that I am not one of those people who would really get into that kind of debate, and I had fun playing both really, for different reasons

there are some people who feel a need to pick one and say "this is better" for some reason

often in really aggressive ways

often times probably trolling

that being said I mean, I have nothing against saying you had more fun with LoL

I just mean the people who feel some compulsion to put one game down in favor of another

[grumbles]

Is it just me or is search nonfunctional?

chat.stackexchange.com/… (compare to...)

huh

odd

Yeah, search died for me earlier today.

@BESW RIP search

Do monster types give default bonuses to creatures in DD5e?

If so I can't find it.

After much searching, I don't think they do. But I'm sure some items/magic/etc effects types differently

Just trying to weigh up if it would matter that a familiar was an aberration instead of fiend/celestial/fey ?

@Pureferret At the moment about all there is that is affected by it is Detect Evil, Protection from Evil and Good, Magic Circle, etc.

@Miniman I thought get might be immune to charm/sleep

What about changing creature sizes?

@Pureferret Size has some effects

Takes up more space

Doubles damage dice

@IronHeart I think search is back.

How the hell can I be a good D&D player when other people go against demons and cast essay resistance + exile (both twinned by wand) and I would just have attacked them in melee?

What edition?

3.5e

What class are you playing?

What good is it to be able to deal lost of damage when other people just remove enemies from the field?

Self-buff cleric

So you're using Divine Metamagic and persist spell then

Yes, even if I just have 1 persist per day.

And you're using that on Divine power then

And I mean, I could change spells every day and buy a wand too but my Wis isn't that high (I favor Con), I think spells with a save are weak and I just don't think anything else than let's deal damage with my weapon

Divine power, and Righteous Wrath of the Faithful 8 hours before resting when we can adventure each other day.

(I'm level 10)

I don't know of a spell called Exile

Do you mean Banishment?

Or perhaps Dismissal?

the one that's accessible to level 7 clerics

Thats Dismissal

between those two. Stupid translations.

Well, two hezrous less.

Seems like a rather specific thing to have

Essay Spell resistance and Dismissal wands

Well they were going to parlay with a balor

of course they have the right spells

Not really the wisest of decisions at 10th level, but I can see how those would be useful

But I mean, if I had to go against demons, I'd never prepare a spell with a save, not even knowing we have a fatespinner in our party.

But they probably couldn't banish a Balor

Balors have a Will save of +19

You'd need the spell level of Banishment to work on a Balor

Not dismissal

Well, that's for the higher level PCs that are with them. I think he started with moment of prescience boosted initiative, then swift doubled Ribbons, then extended maximized stop time.

I'm afraid you lost me. Are there two groups or something?

No, it's a group with characters of wildly varying levels, as usual in the games I play online.

There's some mutual agreement that the BBEG is for the high level characters and the others will just spar with the minions.

Sometimes an high level PC just fireballs everything and people frown and look them bad.

Anyway, with a +19 to the CL roll, the low level cleric just did what I could spend several turns grinding through, just because I don't use such tactics for I fear missing the rolls.

How'd he get +19 CL?

I know the Assay resistance spell gives you a bonus to caster level checks to overcome spell resistance

7 from class, 2 from items, 10 from essay resistance

Is it assay?

Pretty sure its Assay

And you said He twinned a 4th level spell

Which means he's at least level 15

@Miniman but where is that? I checked the books...

@Sandwich there's a twin spell metamagic rod I think

Hmmmm

@Miniman trying to scale up a crab

Oh god

You're trying to make That damn crab even STRONGER?

You're a MADMAN

@Sandwich hahahahaha

@Pureferret give him some extra HD, but not enough to let him reach next CR.

@Sandwich no no, the base crab is tiny...just trying to make it accurate to the crab that shall not be photographed

Okay, you had me worried there for a second

Was afraid you were about to TPK some level 3 party members

@Sandwich no no

I want one as a pet/familiar for my dragonborn paladin/warlock

And an axebeak as a steed

All these far, split ray, empowered, maximized shivering touches make me wish I played a wizard.

Do you know by rules as written with the improved familiar feat you could probably get That damn crab as a familiar because of its low CR?

Doesn't improved familiar come with a pre-defined list?

@Sandwich this is 5e

Is that aa thing in 5e?

Oh no

3.5 is where That damn crab came from

archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20040221a

Scroll like halfway down that page

CR3 with 66 HP

@Sandwich slightly too large for a familiar...

@Sandwich is that a lot?

Well Wizards would just be getting 2nd level spells

Sorcerers would still have 1st level spells

A fighter at that level might have around 25-30 hit points

With a +19 to grapple that crab would win a grapple check against an 18 strength fighter about 80% of the time

It has a +10 to hit with its claw so it hits about half the time

So 1d8+9 damage if the claw hits, 1d8+9 in additional constrict damage

26 average damage a round

That would instantly kill any non-fighter or barbarian

Hahaha, a Glabrezu tried dispelling a guy who killed Pazuzu. The guy drops his arms and asks "Seriously?", then blasts him away with a swift and a doubled meteor rain, and the poor demon dies shrugging. Because, really, what else could he try?

@Sandwich Just enough to fly up and blast from above.

Killing Pazuzu is a pretty hard feat

The wizard incantator is level 24

has a level 20 arcane blade cohort

and a party with a level 20 sorcerer/incantatrix/fatespinner debuffer

Meanwhile I'm level 15 and struggling with character consistence, proactivity, build and equipment, spending more time thinking about what to do than actually playing.

Incantrix is probably one of the strongest classes

Artificer and Initiate of the Sevenfold veil are pretty great too

Yeah, but when I made this character I didn't know if I could be one. So to get divine power I made a cleric instead.

I later realized druids don't need iteratives to deal lots of damage in melee. I could have been an arcane hyerophant

No, wait, I did not ralize anything. Someone had me notice I was playing my cleric as if it were a druid, with obviously worse results.

The worst my group did was overbuffing a barbarian and casting save or dies, they never once used metamagic and they still kicked basses (and guitars!) - I'm not used to real D&D tactics.

Overbuffing a BDF Is a great use of time though

They do loads of damage

In 3e, you could cast Tenser's Transformation on a noncaster through a spellstoring ioun stone. It added BAB equal to half your HD.

@Zachiel lol

Well, in 3e polymorph (polimorph others at the time) only had size requirements and max HD based on the spell, not the receiver's HD. So at one point everybody was fire giants. Then the wizard players went abroad and the new wizard stopped using polymorph.

3.5 was broken in many ways

@Pureferret -- no doubt

Still shocked there's no template section in the MM for 5e, and no size variants or guidelines on familiars of unusual size

@Pureferret the less extra rules they publish, minor the chance of messing this edition up again.

Its time.. to ROLL FOR SHOOOOEs

2d6

orz

@DiceService you have 5 shoes

An I don't this right?

@Zachiel but I love me some crunch

With a roll like that I probably don't have any shoes

And likely some child pickpocket is currently turning a corner on the same street

Holding a pair of Nikes

@Pureferret Convert to 3.5e!

@Sandwich OTL

@Pureferret CONVERT TO HARNMASTER!

@Zachiel I'm never regress editions....

Seems legit.

@Zachiel 5e it's a real cool guy, doesn't afraid it's anything

5e is a pretty cool guy, eh tries to balance and doesnt afraid of anything

Only things I have against 5e is "my friends don't play it, I don't want to swap from a familiar system I still want to understand better)

@Zachiel you mean, "the only you have against my friends"

@Pureferret I think I didn't get the meme

Or grammar has suddenly undergone some heavy change while I was not looking.

@Pureferret The rules on creature size and space are in the PHB, and the rules on creature size and weapon damage are in the DMG. Although we have questions about both on the site

@Zachiel I butchered the meme but I was going for this knowyourmeme.com/memes/pretty-cool-guy

@Miniman that's cool but I'm looking for things like "if you're going from tiny to small add some str"

Or only tiny familiars are allowed by default

o/ @Miniman and @Pureferret

Very Dangerous Array is very ominous sounding @BESW