@ArtaSoral Hi!

@ArtaSoral hey there

@Miniman Unless they want to play Katanas & Trenchcoats, I suppose.

...or that game with the great handfuls of dice where you fight gods while trying not to become one.

@BESW What's that?

@Miniman Mythender.

@BESW Looks interesting.

I don't have enough dice to play it.

@BESW Wow, what kind of handfuls are we talking about?

@BESW which is weird, cause you certainly have a lot

More or less than Shadowrun?

They recommend about 150 d6s.

They say it's possible to play with about 125.

Wow, that's...wow. Time to use a software solution, I think.

And there's four different kinds of dice to differentiate.

Also about 170 tokens.

Correction: at least 153 dice in order to probably not need to share.

30-40 white, at least 100 black (the more the better), twelve red, and at least one extra-big die (though they recommend everyone bring their own).

Yikes.

@Miniman Magician's first impressions of Mythender.

[squints] I think I have half that many d6s, but certainly not in that many colors.

I have precisely 6 of each standard die, in an assortment of blues and colours that don't clash with blue.

Most of mine are plain white Bicycle brand d6s I got on a clearance sale back when I worked at TRU, the rest a mismatched assortment.

I have like 6 or so standard 7 polyhedral sets. Then I have a few weird things I've amassed for no particular reason, like zodiac sign dice.

And a bunch of single d6s with various animals for the 1 pip.

@Pixie I may have to try and find a d20 with a whale for the 1.

@Miniman I'd love some other animal pip dice, but alas, I've never seen any.

I have bat, cat, crab, unicorn, dragon, and beetle d6s. Maybe some others.

I have a large variety of colors, within the very very small number of dice I have XD

I have far too many dice for someone who pretty much exclusively plays online games.

d6s with a whale for the 1.

@trogdor Let's see...I have translucent sky blue, translucent deep blue, marbled blue, black, clear, and green.

I've seen them with the tail of a whale too, not sure if they're still available.

@Miniman you are very descriptive of them XD

in order to be that descriptive I would have to be looking at them right now XD

6 colours, and I was playing last night.

...well, my thumb doesn't look like it's gonna fall off, so that's good.

hey there @Pixie

@BESW That is certainly a good thing... did something happen?

@Shalvenay Hey.

@Pixie how're things going?

Area 51 question: anyone know if discussions from proposal phase are still live when a site goes to beta? Do they get migrated to beta-meta?

hey again @nitsua60

@Pixie I made a good first shot at trying to hack off the tip of my thumb while slicing onions last night.

@Shalvenay hiya

@nitsua60 how're things going?

@Shalvenay Alright. Not much going on. How are you?

@BESW Ow. D:

@Pixie better now that my package is in town

On dice: I've got a bunch of incomplete poly sets, then what's clearly got to be a full set of Axis & Allies' red and white d6s =)

@Shalvenay Actually, not feeling great =\ Nothing serious, just a tiny bummer. But it's the current worst thing in my life, so that's both annoying (to me) and pretty excellent (for me).

@nitsua60 darn. guess I should check back later this week re: scheduling?

@Shalvenay Yup. I've started dealing with lectures and homeworks in my current course, but the first programming project hasn't rolled off the line. I really want to see one of those before opening the worm-can on scheduling DW.

I'd appreciate any and all feedback on this answer - it's way out of my comfort zone.

@Miniman I'd issue a frame challenge re: CR, but that's a totally different kind of thing.

@BESW I've hinted at it in places, but it's essay material in itself.

@Miniman Think it's a really good way to look at it. I think you could front-load a little bit with "CR's meaningless because you've no way to evaluate what the fight'll be like because it's so dependent on player choices."

@Miniman Dr. Miniman or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Challenge Rating.

@nitsua60 So move the last section up to the top? Or is that not explicit enough, do you think?

I also think the best advice that OP could get would be "don't assign CR. Make this a mythical monster, off-stage for 90% of your campaign. Make learning about it a major point. Let them fail at dispatching it a few times. Make them strategize!"

@Miniman I think I would just flesh out a little bit of the "why" in your 1st sentence, then make the (current) 2nd sentence the start of para. 2.

"It's impossible..." Why?

You're immediately into the full (and good) reasoning, but a top-line "here's why" would be nice, IMO.

Ah, I see what you mean. It'll have to wait until I get back to a computer, but yeah, that makes sense.

Something like "It's impossible to define a valid CR for such a creature because 2/3 of the relevant stats are based on the players' choices, which you cannot predict." as line 1.

@nitsua60 Impossible!

@BESW oh, you didn't specify it was that bad X(

@trogdor It's healing pretty well, I think. Took it very seriously.

good to hear

Will probably have to keep it bandaged for a good while though. I cut into the nail too, and that's gonna be a hazard until it grows out.

one of my brother's fingers got so badly infected once that it looked like it would explode (it was taken care of properly and exhibits no differences from the others now)

Yeah, luckily the cut was with a sharp freshly-cleaned knife.

...unluckily I was chopping onions at the time.

Starting tonight I'll swap out the disinfectant for aloe to work on the scarring.

@BESW Misreading this as "cat" rather than "cut" did interesting things to how I picture life on Guam.

We do have a feral cat problem.

@BESW Misreading this as "fecal" rather than "feral"... well that just means it's time for bed. Night, all!

Goodnight.

@nitsua60 lol

Exactly what it says on the tin.

@kviiri Have you considered asking your DM to explain his thought process? Perhaps what you see as DnD style hooks is really his representation of fronts. (I don't have enough information to say, but you could certainly look into it)

→ 5 messages moved to demon sword vajra discussion

@BESW I didn't realise exported messages are inserted into the transcript like that. Very confusing.

Yeah.

@Miniman yeah, when I first noticed that it was very confusing

it still technically is, but it's usually not at the forefront of my mind XD

@doppelgreener I've had a swooping magpie actually peck my head. Didn't draw blood, but certainly got me moving out of its territory...

I know, right.

Flag as spam!

Mental picture of Dragonborn as Big Bad Wolf - "I'll huff and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house door down! (Then I'll take a nap before the next door.)"

@Adeptus I always assumed the huff and puff business was the verbal incantation for a Gust of Wind spell.

(Well, not always. In fact, only since I thought of it just now.)

@JoelHarmon Doesn't feel that way. I mean, it feels like we lack initiative most of the time. We just react to what the GM throws in our way, instead of making our own trouble, working gigs and the like.

Trying to put that more clearly, I feel he has a lot of plot and we're playing that - not to find out what happens.

Then again, I did the exact same thing when I GM'd AW for the first time.

And it's not necessarily a bad way to kickstart a campaign.

Oh snap!

The AW2e handbook preview nerfed our Driver considerably.

He was a bit frustrated that his vehicle combat skills only kicked into play when attacking other vehicles (using Cool instead of Hard) so he took the Battlebabe move "Ice Cold" that allows rolling +Cool for all battle moves.

Now it has been nerfed to only apply to Go Aggro. Daym.

VtC dupe

@Miniman grr.... I'm sooooo close to having one of those shiny, gold dupe-hammers myself =)

@nitsua60 It's weird to me how much it rewards quantity over quality.

@Miniman Yes. To the extent that my demons were tempted to answer the dupe before close-voting it =|

(I don't know if that'd work, but just to find out....)

@Miniman The dupe-hammer? Yeah, I think the idea is that "this person offers good contributions to this tag" isn't necessary for that privilege: what's necessary is "this person has seen this tag in all its glory and shame."

@BESW I'm not sure - I wonder if it's another thing where numbers developed for SO seem weird here.

Could be.

I feel like that's a lot of downvotes for a not-horrible question =\

(I mean, I'm not going to upvote it or anything, but at a certain point it just feels like piling-on)

Alas, human psychology is weird.

Ooh, @kviiri--do I recall correctly that either you're Finnish or you live in Finland?

I kinda dislike many ways the voting system goes wrong. "Corrective" voting, like "this question's not good but it's not downvote-bad so I'll upvote" and dogpiling are both pet peeves of mine.

@nitsua60 Yep!

Is "Helsingen Venns" Finnish?

(Or any language that anyone here knows?)

No, it's not. That looks a bit like Swedish (and it's an official language here in Finland).

M'kay. Thanks =)

Did you see that in writing or hear it? "Venns" isn't Swedish as far as I know, but it would be the intuitive spelling for "väns" which mean's "a friend's".

I should up my Swedish game. Luckily here at work I have at least four friends who speak it as a native language. So I can always practice.

@kviiri I'd say it's worth talking about, but in fairness all I know about this is based on and offhand comment. Technically if he's not using fronts to build encounters and such after the first session, he's not following the rules and is therefore cheating; that's all I've got.

@JoelHarmon Well not anymore, really. AW2e ditches the fronts, which is a shame - I had just grown to like them.

But yeah, I'll make a wish, depending on how the next session goes. He might just've wanted to start the campaign with an easier adventuring part to get us on the right track.

(We've got two sessions down so far)

@kviiri My GM for Storm King's Thunder sent it along as an example of Giantish.

Heh!

well I stand corrected, then; thanks!

Well, you're still essentially right :)

well, I'm also running late, so I've gotta go. Bye.

AW2e uses a threat map in lieu of fronts. I'm a bit confused about it. It's basically a map divided into eight sectors with a circle in the middle. The middle circle is for the PCs and their resources, and the eight sectors are for threats that are in North, East, South, West, Up, Down, In or Out. Sounds too static if the players desire any degree of mobility.

But maybe it's enough as a rough location map.

Before you ask, "In" and "Out" refer to psychological and cosmic threats, if I understood correctly.

Oh, they're also divided between "close" and "far" threats. Close threats are immediately visible, further threats are looming and terrifying... and might require traveling to reach.

It's always interesting to see how different RPGs suggest we structure our settings/stories/conflicts/characters/what-have-you.

I found fronts rather baffling.

And Bubblegumshoe has driven home just how awful I am at relationship maps.

@BESW --awful at--> relationship maps <--obviously amazing at-- @Miniman

@Miniman <--oh hush you-- BESW

The one thing that I still don't get about fronts is why one needs many. I understand the need for multiple threats and issues inside a single front though.

@kviiri Long-form campaigns, I assume.

Could be. Or set across a wiiiide area.

Mmm, sandboxy.

Where some NPCs might be relevant for several sessions and then non-present for 10 sessions.

...my last D&D 3.5 campaign was deliberately designed to be a formal sandbox game after the West Marches style.

So I set it in a desert bounded on three sides by mountains and on the third by the sea.

I try to not overcomplicate stuff anymore. Always turned out less fun than I thought.

@BESW Heh.

Desert, so... a literal sandbox.

I decided to subvert the usual "dusty Mad Max" post-apocalyptic setting and set a one-off in the frozen wastes during a nuclear winter instead. Instead of bikes and cars, the players had snowmobiles and tractors, and fought against nomadic tribes living on huge nuclear warships retrofitted to plow through the snow on massive augers.

@kviiri en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw-propelled_vehicle

@eimyr Yep, that was the main inspiration. The nomads were also vaguely Slavic in terms of naming, to honor the Soviet screw vehicles. The session ended with two of the four players moving West in search of better living, one staying in their starting town waiting for near-certain death after a skirmish destroyed their heat infra, and one dueling the leader of the nomads, actually winning and becoming their new leader.

Heya

Hey!

How's it going?

Pretty good. Swamped at work at the moment, but could be worse! (and there's beer in the near future)

Browsing AW2e handbook preview on coffee breaks. :)

How about you?

Kinda tired for some reason, pretty warm at work here, otherwise fine.

Gonna finish my character tonight for a Pathfinder session this friday. Although it's a pretty broken character,

I need to play DnD with some experienced people sometime. Maybe it feels better if everyone can roll their character in advance instead of devoting the first session to char creation like usual.

@kviiri or you can turn it into a teambuilding exercise

@kviiri I've never built chars in advance, but it's never taken more than about half an hour, either.

@Miniman Maybe we just suck :P

But on the other hand, we had a party of six and only one in addition to the GM had any experience with DnD when I last created a DnD char. And the GM was a tad rusty too.

One PHB to go around with.

@kviiri That's the biggest sticking point.

@Miniman We also had digital copies (yarr harr), but it's slow to browse if one doesn't know exactly what they're looking for.

I'm planning to play the Lost Mine of Phandelver with a few people who've never played before. What are some pitfalls I should watch out for? I've been a DM only once before in an own made one-shot.

@Riley It does a pretty good job of walking you through it.

My first DnD character was Eric the Cleric, who was an ordained minister of Avandra, the god of change. We decided to interpret "change" as in "the money one receives back after paying with large denominations", but I somehow managed to play that concept reasonably straight anyway.

@Miniman That's nice.

Is there a way I can add my DEX modifier to my bow dmg?

@Riley That happens automatically.

@Miniman It does? Seems like I overlooked something then, thanks!

@Riley Do you have the PHB, or just the rulebook from the box?

@Miniman I have a .excel document for Pathfinder where I make my character. I don't have an actual player handbook unfortunately.

@Riley Wait wait wait. What system are you playing?

@Riley That's fun, I tend to do those magic sheets myself as well :)

Because Lost Mine of Phandelver is D&D 5e, not Pathfinder.

@Miniman The Pathfinder character and Mine of Phandelver are unrelated.

I'm planning to buy the box and be a DM for a bunch of friends who've never played before..

Pathfinder, or any RPG?

@Riley Then, assuming you were talking about Pathfinder here, as far as I'm aware there's no way to add Dex to bow damage.

@Miniman Aww man

I can't believe my DM allowed this.

They probably figured if you wanted to spend your entire WBL on a single shot, that was your choice.

@Miniman WBL?

@Riley Wealth by Level.

Essentially, the concept that you probably can't get a Portable Hole and a Bag of Holding at level 1, but by level 10 it shouldn't be an issue.

@Miniman Ah, yeah. We're at level 11 currently.

@Riley Ah, so it's only 1/4 of your WBL for a single shot.

Still a tremendous waste, of course.

@Miniman Yes, but it will be glorious

@Riley [shrug] If you say so.

I feel compelled to point out that it doesn't actually kill anything, just dumps it on the Astral Plane. And at level 11, most major threats can probably get back from there without much difficulty.

Iirc in Pathfinder there are no written rules for it.

We rotate DM's every session. And another guy didn't something like this but with 2 large Bags of Holding

> If a bag of holding is placed within a portable hole, a rift to the Astral Plane is torn in that place. Both the bag and the cloth are sucked into the void and forever lost. If a portable hole is placed within a bag of holding, it opens a gate to the Astral Plane. The hole, the bag, and any creatures within a 10-foot radius are drawn there, the portable hole and bag of holding being destroyed in the process.

d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/m-p/…

Aw dangit

But I did make it a house rule that it created a massive explosion based on the size of the Bags of Holding

So I'm kinda assuming the next DM do the same

1 am here - I gotta go sleep and stuff. Cya!

Goodnight

@kviiri Totally missed this sorry, any RPG.

New role-players! Always exciting!

Yes! And I've DM'd only once so it's exiting for me as well.

Everyhting died when I was DM... Except for the players.

How do you like Pathfinder in general?

I've never tried it myself, but it sounds like a good take on the general concept of DnD.

It's pretty fun, I've had like 4 sessions now.

And I've had 3 sessions of DnD 3.5

But the group I'm doing Pathfinder with isn't really serious. So all our characters are Mix maxed and have dumb shit.

Like I'm playing a 2 headed orge with a friend of mine

It's amazing

Most of my DnD experience comes from 4e, it was ok fun but I've never really wanted to go back to DnD after trying out other systems.

@kviiri What's your favourite system?

@Riley Apocalypse World

@kviiri Never heard of that one

@Riley It's a fairly simple rules-light, narrative-heavy game set in a world ruined by some undetermined cataclysmic event. The core mechanic is very simple: the player describes what their character is doing. If this matches a "move", the rules pertaining to that move are followed.

@kviiri Interesting

Usually said rules involve a roll. All rolls use the same mechanic - 2d6 + bonus, with bonus usually ranging from -3 to +3. Ten or higher is a hard hit - a very successfully executed move. Seven to nine means the move is a "soft hit" - a reasonably successful move, with a possible drawback or only partial effect.

The real fun happens at six or less, which is a miss - a failure, or on occasion, a very costly success.

@Riley They're releasing a second edition soon, and they made the first edition (which isn't very different) free of charge to celebrate. If you're interested you can get it for free at apocalypse-world.com, but you need to sign up with your email. They haven't spammed me at all, but use some throwaway address if you like - there's no confirmation codes or anything.

@kviiri I'll have to take a look at that when I'm home, thanks for the info

@kviiri That's a good description of the mechanic--I never thought to put it that way. [Jots down inside front cover of DW.]

@nitsua60 Yeah, as the book puts it: "To do it, do it - and if you do it, you do it."

(that's a bit opaque out of context, though!)

@kviiri Sooth.

Costly Successes are really interesting for low rolls. Sounds like a fun mechanic.

@kviiri Should have thought of this earlier, but Google Translate auto-detects is as Norweigan... and as translating to "sincerely friendly." Which, I suppose, is a rather nicer salutation than "hello" or its equivalents =)

@nitsua60 Heh :) I wasn't too far of when I thought of "vän" then

I feel badly that I have absolutely no idea how related Danish, Finnish, Swedish, Norweigan, Icelandic, &c. are. All one family? Some Germanic and some Slavic? Nowhere-near-that-simple...?

@nitsua60 The Germanic languages are all similar to each other, you can even add Dutch and German to that list

@nitsua60 Finnish is Fenno-Ugric, and not related at all (although loanwords from Swedish are very common, particularly in Helsinki Slang). Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic are all Germanic in origin, and I think Icelandic has remained closest to their common ancestor.

Cool--thanks =)

As an example of a move, there's Chopper's (a character role) move "Pack Alpha". Chopper's defining trait is that they are in charge of a biker gang of their own (you get to customize your gang, of course). Pack Alpha is used whenever the Chopper tries to impose their will on their gang - so gives an order that clearly contradicts the gang's nature or interests. Like trying to impose discipline on a particularly savage gang.

The Chopper rolls Hard (one of their stats, at +2 or +3 for most Choppers) when doing this. On 10 or more, their gang does what instructed, doesn't fight back over it, and the Chopper doesn't have to make an example out of them.

On seven to nine, the Chopper gets to choose one of those: they do what the Chopper wants, they don't fight back over it, or the Chopper doesn't have to make an example out of one of them. Serious!

Six or lower, one of the Chopper's underlings takes it at an opportunity to become the Alpha themselves. What happens? Up to the Chopper to see through!

That's a neat system

I'm going home, good night

Yeah, I absolutely fell in love with it at the first sight.

@Riley Good night o/

I'm absolutely pumped that someone asked me about AW. I feel like that LOOM guy in Secret of Monkey Island!

Hi @NickolayPestsov--you'll need 20 reputation points to chat, but here's one thought I had on your question:

I think you should check out either Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds, two online "virtual tabletops" that each support 5e.

It wouldn't be quite the me-vs.-computer that I think you're going for, but I know in Roll20 it'd be easy to set up a game and ask for single-player short (half-hour?) sessions.

Something like "new DM looking to run a single encounter for a Warlock"

Then if you get a bite you can look over warlock rules, go through the player's spell list and refresh yourself on those spells, &c.

Anyway,I'm off to lunch--good luck!

And welcome!

@NickolayPestsov (Just saw your comment in mainsite--getting it all in your head is just a matter of practice and repetition, in my experience.)

Reading some code I wrote during the last Summer. I wish I had a time machine so I could travel back in time and, uhm, set myself on fire or something.

It's 8PM here. I decided I wouldn't leave work until the feature was done. Finally starting to get somewhere.

Such is life

Yep.

The prospect of post-coding beer is still strong!

Oh, wow, I'm still showing up as user*? I need to change that

Yeah.

Oh yeah, muh feature works.

Woot!

Oh hey, a fellow Finn?

Nah, just a Finn fan

American, but Finnish heritage

Cool. From the Great Lakes area?

speak a bit but years out of practice any only grazed 'conversational' anyways

Twin Cities, MN

so

sort of?

Yeah, there's a quite sizeable ethnic Finn population there, right?

Reasonable. I think most Finnish-Americans are a bit further north.

The metro area seems to favor Swedish-Americans a bit more

I see :)

Whereabouts are you from?

@kviiri What have you created?

@UrhoKarila Helsinki, Finland.

@Riley It's a boring work project - parses patient data for research. Just implemented a small fix/feature request.

Ah

I've visited Helsinki, once

Seems like a nice city

hello, it's my first time here.

@UrhoKarila It is, although I think the best parts are where one doesn't necessarily know to look. Like the nature preserve near Pitkäkoski.

@AbrahamRay hiya!

hiya @kviiri

has anyone ever used the pellet bow in dnd? probably not as not many have heard about it.

on a related note, has anyone ever used silk armor in dnd?

@kviiri That looks gorgeous! I wasn't there for too long, so only got the opportunity to wander about the city itself.

@AbrahamRay Which edition are you talking about?

3.5 or higher @UrhoKarila

if it helps I'm from auburn Washington myself

homebrew @UrhoKarila

@AbrahamRay Was about to link you to a question I remembered from a few days back about pellet bows

Then saw that you were the one to ask it

I've also come up with the double whip which is a 2 sided whip seperated by a 6-inch bar. I'm just not sure what the stats for that weapon would be, let alone wheither it should be a exotic weapon or not.

@UrhoKarila I used to live like 20 minutes' walk away :)

@AbrahamRay Is the double whip based on a historical weapon?

Sounds like it'd be exotic, though

@kviiri That's what I envy about you Finns -- so close to nature

My family's summer cabin is a 4-hour drive north

@UrhoKarila not, really. it's a weapon that I can up with just off the top of my head. I figure that it's about 1d6/1d6 though.

not sure what the price would be though.

@AbrahamRay Sounds pretty strong -- I think the 5e whip is something like 1d4 non-lethal

oh, then 1d4/1d4 then, does that sound better as damage for a double whip?

1d4 slashing, reach, Finesse for the whip. Just checked

thanks @UrhoKarila

np

what sort's of food do the various races in dnd eat when on the trail/adventure?

so d4/d4 - are you thinking of letting the user make 2 attacks/turn with it? or 2/action, whatever the wording is?

what sort of trail rations do they eat?

2 attacks/turn @UrhoKarila

History wouldn't be a bad place to compare against. Hardtack, jerky, nuts...

tailored to race

orcs/goblins/kobolds might go for a meat-heavier diet

Elves might lean more towards nuts & berries

yes, the trail rations would probably be tailored to race at that @UrhoKarila

Rangers would be more able to get some fresher food with mushrooms, veggies, and fresh meat added in

would evil rangers turn canablistic?

I'd guess not.

There's not a lot of good reasons to turn cannibalisic

true dat

Not the most efficient food source, it'll fight back more than most, brings a lot of trouble if it gets noticed, greater chance of disease transmission...

@AbrahamRay in 3.5, weapons are exotic if they're slightly better than martial - often not enough to encourage you to spend a feat on them, with some notable exceptions. If this was pathfinder, if would be exotic if not tied to european middle-ages culture, even if it was the worst weapon ever. Different design priorities.

Btw @AbrahamRay, 5e has no concept of exotic weapons. Exotic languages are really the only mechanical use of the word. (There're exotic woods in some treasure tables, exotic saddles for flying mounts, the Sorcerer class's three-para. lead-in descriptions mention exotic bloodlines, but that's all "flavor" text.)

@nitsua60 Seriously, "exotic bloodlines"?

@besw This question seems like a great opportunity for you to jump in with "or you could just tell them": rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/87402/…

I'll let someone more familiar with the details of Pathfinder's GMing assumptions take on that task.

@BESW And look how that turned out...