TRPG General Chat

2:00 PM

Yes, if you need ~+7, 2d6 is better than 1d12

But do you get to pick dice in arbitrary group sizes?

no, you would have traits with specific dice attached to them - if you made them narratively relevant, you'd roll and add/subtract them from the total

Yuuki

@doppelgreener I would love to get something like the Alien Sword of Taverns rather than just "oh, a +1 keen scimitar. that's totally what i need to make this build overpowered". I mean, all I'm going to do with that scimitar is hit things.

But with the Alien Sword of Taverns, I can go pub crawling with the voice in my head!

doppelgreener

@Yuuki I'm totally sure the "alien intelligence" inside is super drunk all the time and that's the only reason for its insane mutterings.

godskook

Well, what I'm saying is this. If the choice is +1d6 or +1d12 and I need ~+10, the 1d12 is the better choice.

eimyr

Yes.

but it's also worse than 4d4

doppelgreener

2:02 PM

@godskook Also, if you need +10, 1d12 is better than 2d6.

@eimyr I think this is what godskook is getting at: you're mixing variables; you just pulled out a value that definitionally can also get higher results.

That's what is making it better, not that it's smaller dice or more of them.

godskook

That's....not as clear to me, but I'm not in position to do the statistics on it.

eimyr

OK, so if you're a weak wizard using violence, you want to back it up with beefy d10 traits.

godskook

But this does expose another question of something I'm not aware of: Can traits have more htan 1 die?

doppelgreener

In different circumstances, different dice sizes and different bell curves are going to be advantageous. When you just need a big number, any big dice or group of dice is going to do fine, and one big die is going to do better than a dice pool with an upper bound of the same value (because that dice pool will almost never give you the upper bound, but the big die has a good chance of giving you it).

godskook

Like....a fighter using "violence" has +2d6 for being "trained"?

eimyr

2:05 PM

if you're a barbarian and just trying to stay within your optimal zone, you would prefer multiple smaller dice

doppelgreener

If you need a small number or you're very close to the sweet spot, a dice pool with a bell curve that peaks around the number you need is always going to be desirable.

eimyr

@godskook I think you'd need to go to the beginning of the conversation, where we established those things.

doppelgreener

So I agree "small dice are better than big dice" is not consistently true.

Nor is "dice pools are better than one big die".

eimyr

@godskook I'd imagine a Soldier using Violence would start right around the success zone and try to stay there. The same Soldier using Magic would start waaay into failure zone and have to catch up. Meanwhile, his Wizard enemy using Magic would probably start in the "overkill" zone and try to limit himself

Yuuki

@doppelgreener It is a scientific fact that dice pools are better than one big die. Proof: you get to roll a bunch of dice.

Thyzer

2:08 PM

@doppelgreener My meta question is not only specifically for that one question. I saw multiple times questions marked as duplicates where I found that while some answers might be applicable the majority/the top answer were not, because a DM receives other answers than a PC. A PC almost always has a special case in his question and sometimes those are not reflected in an general answer for a DM

godskook

@eimyr, this chat is a very long place. Is it really more convenient for me to go searching than for you to figure out if its a yes/no?

Thyzer

7sideddie edited my "request for a 'this answer of this question helps you' feature". Where you could specificaly link to a helping answer and not to the most-voted one

eimyr

4 mins ago, by eimyr

@godskook I'd imagine a Soldier using Violence would start right around the success zone and try to stay there. The same Soldier using Magic would start waaay into failure zone and have to catch up. Meanwhile, his Wizard enemy using Magic would probably start in the "overkill" zone and try to limit himself

does that not answer your question?

Anne Aunyme

@eimyr Do you know about Time&Temp?

godskook

Not in the slightest

eimyr

2:12 PM

then I don't understand your question, I'm afraid

Anne Aunyme

it's a parodic RPG, but it has a system that looks a bit like what you are describing

eimyr

@AnneAunyme nope! Tell me about it, please!

Anne Aunyme

basically when rolling you roll 3 dice

and then you choose one of them

doppelgreener

@Yuuki Well you got me there.

Anne Aunyme

if you choose the bigger result, it's a success

godskook

2:13 PM

Ok, so there are traits, that give different dice you can bid with.

Anne Aunyme

if you choose the smaller one, it's a failure, and there is a complication

godskook

Can a trait exist that gives a 2d6 instead of a d8?

Such that when you bid that trait, you add the full 2d6?

Anne Aunyme

if you choose the middle one, you get either the failure or the complication

And then you have to note the number in a grid

there are rules for how you can write your numbers, but basically at the end if you always take the success you are stuck

and when you are stuck the space-time continuum explodes, or something like that

you can also achieve special figures with the numbers on the grid, to trigger special effects, so sometimes you want to roll for random stuff just to get a missing number on the right case

nitsua60

@eimyr You should know @Anne's leaving out the best part of Time&Temps: the conceit. Time travel is possible, but the more-important a person it is who travels, the more likely to create paradoxes. So you, the character, work for a company that employs complete yorbles to travel through time and do really big/important things.

eimyr

@nitsua60 OMG, that's amazing

doppelgreener

2:19 PM

@Thyzer Just saw your comments - I've responded.

Anne Aunyme

our DM never actually explained why we were employed for these missions, so I didn't knew about the "the more you travel, the more you create paradoxes" stuff

nitsua60

17

A: Identify this time-traveling RPG

Is it Time & Temp (2009)? Most time-travel RPGs are more-or-less serious takes on the idea, with the PCs being heroes or daring Time Agents and similar, but Time & Temp PCs are definitely under-appreciated and sub-heroic: Employed by Marigold Staffing and working at Browne Chronometric Engine...

Thyzer

@doppelgreener currently editing my question to more fit this question in perticular and open another feature-request question after that.

doppelgreener

@Thyzer ok, cool.

nitsua60

@AnneAunyme I don't remember it as being the more you travel, but rather if you send Joe Schmoe back they go largely unnoticed by the Universe and they might be able to achieve big changes. But if you send Tom Brady back, well everyone's going to notice and it causes all sortsa problems. (But I only played it once, many years ago.)

Anne Aunyme

2:28 PM

well, for our scenario they sent a bunch of noobies and it resulted in Hitler being killed by a car jumping from some kind of ramp while his velociraptor pet was making weird noises, powerless. Since then there is cactus everywhere.

Thyzer

9

Q: This question about a problem from a player's perspective is not answered by the linked duplicate question from a DM's perspective

Can you make a single roll multiple times? was marked as duplicate and at first "I failed to open a lock. Now what?" was the only linked 'duplicate' question. Taking a look at its answers I found that most of them, while still talking about the same issue, would not be helpful for the questioner...

eimyr

@godskook There isn't any rule about that yet. I'd say it's perfectly happy to allow that, but I'm mindful about giving the players too much control. So at the moment it's "yes, but I'll need a reason not to remove it"

doppelgreener

@Thyzer Looks great. Thanks for working with me on that.

@Yuuki Me too! Flavorful magic is awesome compared to just bigger numbers. This stuff's even giving me ideas for stuff entirely unrelated to D&D.

godskook

Well, I'm just trying to get a feel for your system.

nitsua60

@AnneAunyme Perhaps you've heard of the International Association of Time Travelers Subforum: Europe - 20th Century - World War II

godskook

2:39 PM

So.....my Soldier makes an attack, I got a +16 on a 21 target. I bid Trained, +2d6. DM bids Overconfident, +1d10, I bid Humble, -1d12, he bids Risky, +1d4.

That sound about right?

Joshua Aslan Smith

morning

nitsua60

@JoshuaAslanSmith Mid of the morn' to ya!

eimyr

@godskook Just about. Only you roll after every bid (or maybe not? not sure) and I haven't figured out when exactly the process ends

Joshua Aslan Smith

@nitsua60 yeah its 10:45 am my time

nitsua60

@JoshuaAslanSmith Ditto.

Thyzer

2:49 PM

Am I the only one who thinks it is weird that you can link questions marked as [duplicate] as [duplicate]? When it is more fitting than another not-duplicate question it implies that it is not a real duplicate.

Joshua Aslan Smith

heh

ACuriousMind

@Thyzer You're not

nitsua60

@Thyzer So I did that recently, and it did strike me as strange. The only mitigating thought I had was that there's some question, when the newest post comes in, of which in the group really has "primacy." Which can be resolved at one's leisure, doesn't need to be perfect in the first instance.

Thyzer

I think it should automatically open a "reopen vote", it that gets accepted it's fine, if it gets declined the linked duplicates parent-duplicate (I am not a native speaker and I have no idea how I can tell you what I mean) should be linked... as the duplicate... (such a messy sentence)

A is a dupe of B, which is a dupe of C ... community checks whether B is realy a dupe of C, if yes, then A is dupe of C

ACuriousMind

They did recently add the ability for moderators and gold badge holders to edit the list of duplicates to address that and list all the duplicate question in the banner at the top instead of just one

Thyzer

2:58 PM

Wait, I have a golden badge... how can I do that?

ACuriousMind

You need a gold badge in a tag that's applied to the question

I.e. if you can dupehammer the question (close as duplicate with only your vote), you can also edit the list of duplicates

Thyzer

ah, not any golden badge

ACuriousMind

Yeah, you wouldn't want to grant privileges to people just for upvoting 600 posts (electorate badge)

Or just visiting the site 100 times in a row (fanatic badge), for that matter

Thyzer

@ACuriousMind thats the one i have ;)

MadMAxJr

Five... Great question and 4x Famous question

Adam

3:13 PM

@ACuriousMind I always end up forgetting to hop on over the weekend and that always messes me up on that one

Thyzer

my account is like 10 months old and I was only missing about 14 days

Having the app on daily bus rides helps :P

MadMAxJr

Most parties would be thrilled to find a crystal ball. My party seems to want a crystal ball with 4G LTE and Wikipedia access.

doppelgreener

3:35 PM

I've just made a meta post that is the culmination of days of work, whoof.

nitsua60

@Thyzer I had a streak of over 580 days visited going, then missed checking in one day of a trip to England. I blame @doppelgreener, who I'm sure somehow sabotaged it =)

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 [shifty eyes]

NautArch

@Thyzer I was working on a response to your meta question - but is it better to discuss in here?

nitsua60

@SevenSidedDie on the city-improv question, do you think it's worth asking OP to provide some description of the trouble they've had and the skills they feel sure of? (I mention it to you, 'cause I'm trying to back out of the comment-work and avoid help-piling =)

SevenSidedDie

@nitsua60 Honestly I think the question on its face is already describing the problem. Maybe not everyone experiences it, and that means people are looking for a deeper issue that isn't there? I've been there — coming up “boring” instead of blank for what to put in front of PCs on a city street — so it doesn't seem like an odd or incomplete question to me.

nitsua60

3:50 PM

In any case, it should be interesting. We could get some amazing 100-vote-worthy answers, and we could also get a long tail of... not.

Thyzer

@NautArch I am away for a few hours, so if you want to wait until then...

NautArch

4:08 PM

@Thyzer i'm cool with waiting. I don't think it's a rush and it's an interesting issue.

@SevenSidedDie The city-improv does need to get narrowed down. I think it falls into the duplicate issue/reroll question a bit, but a lot of the answers are going to depend on what the OP actually is trying to do.

RIght now, it feels like a 'help me build my world"question

and honestly, it's got some related value to the rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/98534/… question

MadMAxJr

4:28 PM

@doppelgreener Good god. If this were any longer it'd need to open with 'Thousands of years ago' and a fog machine at your feet.

It does cover a lot of the last few years of site history and tension points.

doppelgreener

@MadMAxJr Well that's not to say it can't...

Thousands of years ago... [billowing, mysterious fog and the whir of fog machines]

MadMAxJr

"Mods have done things people don't like." "In many ways, the mods have acted because the community made them this way."

"We are all responsible for this site, not just the mods. Neither side has been fully positive toward making this a good site"

That's the summary gist I get from your post.

Also reading your posts as Space Ghost really isn't helping me.

doppelgreener

@MadMAxJr Just going to ping @BESW so he can read that himself. I'm not sure what gist would've come out of the post without him poking at it to get it clearly expressing that.

(It took us a long time to get everything pointing in a helpful direction.)

MadMAxJr

You cite a hell of a lot of specific instances.

Yuuki

@MadMAxJr Space Ghost? He doesn't look anything like Space Ghost! That's clearly Spice Ghost.

godskook

4:34 PM

Well, I threw an answer on that improv question, if you guys wanna roast another of my answers.

MadMAxJr

I won't say our diamonds have done everything right, but I know they're not acting out of spite. Though a few of the listed cases, problematic users clearly got under their skin, which colored the tone of discussions after the point of debate.

Adam

TFS - For Thousands Of Years I Laid Dormant

►

The Oracle

0

Q: When a linked duplicate question has dozens of answers we should be able to link to a specific one

When we mark a question as a duplicate and they are only 75% similar, there is a chance that the answers to the linked questions are not always applicable and thus useless for the questioner. Especially when there are 15 answers each about 300-500 words and all but one are too general/specific ...

feature-request closed-questions duplicates

0

Q: What stops users from putting their locations in their profiles?

An interesting aspect of the site (to me anyway—you might find my threshold for interesting a little low) is that viewers of a user's profile can learn where the user is… if the user fills out his or her profile's Location field. Yet many users leave their profile's Location field empty. I like...

discussion profile-page

doppelgreener

@godskook 🔥🔥🍖🔥🔥🚒

MadMAxJr

When I come by here I usually just want to ask a Pathfinder question due to a situation at my table and I'm interested in a RAW if possible, because I usually side with designers intent when it can be found. The act of asking for RAW seeking answers appears to suddenly cause orks in my realm to start sniffing the breeze, turn towards me, don their war paint, raise their axes, then politely knock on my door and ask me to stop that nonsense.

The fact I host and play Pathfinder has also caused many upsets and has been widely regarded as a bad idea.

Which points at one of the big site factors. People have very different play environments and play expectations. This isn't always apparent when someone comes here with a question.

Yuuki

4:38 PM

Wait, people comment on your system of choice on your questions?

MadMAxJr

I've been bashed in chat over the years for mentioning d20 or Pathfinder.

I just brush it off, because I've been hearing that kind of stuff since 3.0

Yuuki

Chat is one thing, but questions on the site is another.

That's like me going into a no-mans-sky question and complaining about Sean Murray. It provides nothing of substance.

MadMAxJr

Questions on the site, I got vote bombed for trying to say a particular game was an indie game, but that was ages ago and I just don't care.

Anyway. At the end of the day, I am usually just looking for a way to move past a sketchy rules situation my table came up with. The act of asking seems to challenge others, due to preference or experience, in a manner displeasing to them. This isn't to say that all I see is conflict here, it's just that it happens, it isn't going away.

doppelgreener

Whoa, all of that sounds pretty bad.

We recently arrived at some new policies around RAW, have you noticed any improvement recently?

Erik

That's one hell of a post, @doppelgreener

3

doppelgreener

4:47 PM

The idea was basically: when someone's asking a question and it's tagged RAW, it should be clear in the post itself that they're asking for RAW; if it's not clear, ask them if RAW is really what they're going for and if they are, ask them to make that clear in the text.

@Erik It is, isn't it. There were nights I couldn't get some sleep because my mind was abuzz with writing it, and @BESW put considerable energy into helping me revise it.

MadMAxJr

To be fair, my actual q/a activity here is once every few months. My regular activity is sweeping the review queues.

I do expect you to solve at least one problem with energy beams though.

doppelgreener

@MadMAxJr So you're the reason I haven't gotten the marshall badge yet!! Hahahaha

[MIGHTY FIST SHAKE]

(I'm actually okay not having that badge. It's fine.)

MadMAxJr

I've been with this site for seven years. I don't have a super high rep. I mostly keep to myself and stay out of the debate because I honestly just don't care that much to haggle over the finer points. I just need to be able to ask, "What happens if a PF alchemist fires an explosive arrow and it misses? Does it scatter?"

Meanwhile I scratch my head and see bitter, angry posts over seemingly small points. (That and some users who just seem to want to argue on the internet at length.)

So I guess I just want to say, please don't let this site turn into a dumpster fire. It's not perfect, but I need this so I don't have to wade into stuff like the Paizo forums.

Because the idea here is you ask a question and you get an answer. Paizo forums? Ask a question, get a debate.

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