TRPG General Chat

3:00 PM

I've been tricked on the early access games before. I'll wait for the 1.0 version.

Ah, it takes work to find that it's playtest material

Very not-obvious by looking at it, mentioned almost off-hand in a product spec (not mentioned anywhere in the article that announced it as far as I can see)

Rubiksmoose

@Xirema Alternate title: Stupor Trooper

nitsua60

@Carcer Not Poul Anderson's Holger Whatshisname books? (Gotta go back and look tonight.)

Colin Gross

@Rubiksmoose That's the damned cursed trilby that keeps getting called a fedora, right?

Carcer

3:15 PM

@nitsua60 my memory says more to do with Elric, but that era of swords and sorcery literature is a bit of a tangled web

Rubiksmoose

@ColinGross Maybe? I think I missed this joke went over my head lol

Carcer

if you're thinking of Three Hearts and Three Lions then apparently that's mentioned in the acknowledgements of the first Elric novel

I have read Three Hearts and Three Lions but it was a real long time ago. I don't remember much apart from he kills a dragon with physics

Colin Gross

@Rubiksmoose reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/9g2rzz/…

Carcer

oh, wikipedia says forces of order vs. chaos definitely very much in effect in that book

Moorcock used similar themes in Elric. I possibly remember Moorcock better because Warhammer is VERY Elric

Yuuki

Rubiksmoose

3:21 PM

@ColinGross ahhh ok

Carcer

!

It's "nothing personnel, kid"

what is this nonsense

Rubiksmoose

As much as I think this is a bad question, is there any reason this should be/stay closed?

-4

Q: What is the best save to target?

I'm curious which saves are the best to target (as a player). As in, if I have a spell that forces the enemy to make a dex save and another spell that forces a con save, which am I better off using? This question came to mind due to the Lore Mastery Wizard's Spell Secrets ability which allows t...

Given this I would say not:

9

A: Is asking about the distribution of saving throws across all books too broad for this site?

[largely-reproducing my comments on the question itself] It is not too broad. At most, it generates discussion of saves across six attributes. Even if one took OP at their fullest and did an analysis of monsters' spells, that would only add a paragraph or two describing that result. It's just ...

cc @NautArch

Sir Cinnamon

We had the same question for resistances

NautArch

@Rubiksmoose why you cc me? I think as it is written it is too broad - but it's a simple fix to make this a list question. BUt then I think it's a duplicate of this

Carcer

it's absolutely not that question

Sir Cinnamon

3:36 PM

@NautArch Isnt it asking about the distribution of saving throw modifiers? Not which spells use which?

NautArch

@SirCinnamon ah, good point. Same answer, different question.

Carcer

it's not the same answer, though

NautArch

or at least the reverse of it - but that's the data to answer it

Delioth

Kinda? The two questions are inverses of each other

Carcer

no that's absolutely not the data

what abilities monsters target is irrelevant to the question

it's about how good the monster's defences are

NautArch

3:37 PM

Oh, you're right.

my bad, but i am voting to reopen

it's a downvote question for lack of effort, but stackable

in my opinion

Carcer

yeah, you can work out an answer (with a lot of tedious effort)

nitsua60

3:52 PM

Personally, I think the whole "let's take a survey of the MM and assume it'll be useful for my character" approach is so wildly off-base as to be useless. Any analysis that assumes all monsters are equally likely is facially useless; any analysis that says "but you won't see XX nearly as often as YY" is opinion-based since we're not their GM.

NautArch

@nitsua60 Agreed, but if the former is what they're asking for, it's still an answerable question. Not necessarily a good question, but an answerable one.

unless we come up with a Closed because answer is useless criteria.

nitsua60

No, I'm with you on the first part. Answerable, not my cuppa.

NautArch

and thanks for the followup comment :)

on the sorcadin question

nitsua60

@NautArch Actually, I've changed my mind a little bit:

I'm going to weigh in and say I think this is primarily opinion-based. The other two questions you link are factual ones: "what's the frequency of XX in the [spell list|monster manual]?" This is asking something slightly different, which resistance is best, and is loading onto answerers the assumption that frequency/distribution will have something to do with it. I think if you were asking for the frequency of resistances there'd be no question of topicality (though perhaps downvotes, as described in Rubik's comment above (quoting me, by way of full disclosure)). But the moment you ask... — nitsua60 ♦ 1 min ago

...which is better or worse you open a whole can of worms about which are even going to be seen in your (unknown) campaign, which are more/less impactful, which overlap with whatever magic items may or may not exist, whether speed-debilities really matter or not, how much access to the ethereal plane you'll have.... I haven't voted either way; since you asked, there's my opinion on the comparison. — nitsua60 ♦ 42 secs ago

NautArch

@nitsua60 i'm starting to agree with you upon closer inspection of their answer criteria

there are just too many levers

nitsua60

4:07 PM

5 close votes, @Rubiksmoose's comment, 3 reopen votes, my comment... it'll be interesting to see what happens =)

(But it looks like those 5 close votes were competing with 2 or 3 "leave open" votes in review. Man, it's thorny.)

@NautArch np

That sorcadin one looks like the sort where there's enough detail to make for a good question that might spark some really informative well-written answer(s), if we can help OP present it the right way.

Xirema

@NautArch I'm not entirely sure I understand what your comments mean on the answers that Illustro and I provided to my Mage Hand question.

NautArch

@Xirema You both are assuming that movement is the same thing as being moved. The rules say you can break up your movement, but the mage hand doesn't have movement. It is moved.

@nitsua60 interesting, you can't undo a reopen vote.

@nitsua60 almost seems like it could be good for a meta to help others write similar questions

nitsua60

@NautArch Only if it's edited, or within the 5-minute grace period, I think?

Carcer

yeah, the system kind of assumes on whatever voting action you do that you'll fix it in five minutes or less if it was a mistake, otherwise there's no reason you could possibly want to change your mind

it's a bit annoying sometimes

GreySage

4:26 PM

@Carcer "But why would someone want to correct their actions based on new information?", said the SO devs.

Carcer

@GreySage new information is only ever provided in the body of the thing you were voting on, obviously.

nitsua60

20 questions to go...

nitsua60

4:45 PM

[shameless pandering coming]

0

A: Who cut the cheese?

Over at RPGSE we maintain a cheese hall of fame. This is a curated list of the cheesiest answers seen on site, including: catnapping for an arbitrary number of spell slots maximum attainable beard thickness, and Chuck E. Cheese, D&D3.5's fastest character. (Superluminal, at that.) This commun...

This ^^ needs some upvotes, people.

7

Not bad. We're in 28th right now, if I count right.

David Coffron

5:04 PM

Now were tied for 25th

Rubiksmoose

@NautArch Oops for some reason I thought we had talked about this last night, but I misremembered. My bad!

@nitsua60 Interestingly I just had the thought that by including the "best" requirement in this question it actually may be invoking some expertise here. Not only do we have to tabulate every saving throw of every monster but then apply some sort of analysis saying which one is best. But then your point kicks in and that requirement pushes it towards being POB since we can't answer what is best for them without know the details of their campaign.

nitsua60

5:30 PM

Yeah, so it lives somewhere in the neighborhood(s) of POB/unclear, I think.

Rubiksmoose

@nitsua60 Well I just made and got approved an edit to the question. It now explicitly is only focused on the statistical distribution. I think it is now stackable.

nitsua60

done.

Mike Q

6:26 PM

@doppelspooker [spooky wave]

David Coffron

6:44 PM

Only 16 more questions!

doppelspooker

@MikeQ [spooky doots echoing eerily through the hallways]

Carcer

what the heck are you guys on about with the question count

Mike Q

@Carcer Until we reach 30,000 questions

when that happens, the SLUMBERING ONE will awaken to fulfill the prophecy

Carcer

Z̢̨͎͈̮͔̦̰̍̌̃̄̇͊̈́̓̕͘Ā̡̤̳̘͎̬͑́̍̍͛̿͜L̴̨̢̯͓͎̿̏͛̌̿̍͆͊͘̚G̵̨̢̰̭̦̤͛̄̈̚͜͞͝Ớ̢̧̨͖̬̼̋͢͝͡͡‌̤̘?̵͍̹͍̮͐̎̽́͂̍̕̚͞ͅ

user15026

@MikeQ Is the prophesy that we all get cookies? I like cookies.

nitsua60

6:51 PM

@Ash I'll send you a cookie. My kids made cookies with the babysitter last night. (I assume you like badly burnt, misshapen, stale from shipping across transnational borders cookies?)

Mike Q

There is no such thing as a misshapen cookie!

All cookies are cookie-shaped

CTWind

Would a question on the topic of a style guide for writing about D&D be on topic as a stack question? I.E., I know when writing about D&D spells, their names are supposed to be italicized. Races and classes don't get capitalized. I don't know about how you'd treat class feature names, or where to look that up, or if there's already a repository of style guides like this.

Mike Q

@CTWind It might work on the RPG.SE meta

user15026

@nitsua60 Hm....I might have to rethink my statement...

Rubiksmoose

@CTWind I would be interested in that, though I think people would be hesitant to force people to use one single way of stylizing it would be interesting to have a cohesive style.

Mike Q

6:55 PM

@Rubiksmoose Understandable, although if you consider the edits that people make on old questions just to italicize/capitalize the names of certain spells and feats... it may be a good idea

Rubiksmoose

@CTWind I do think meta would be the place to start there though. Unless you are phrasing it as asking about what WotC's styles are. In which case.

CTWind

@Rubiksmoose Oh yeah, I wouldn't want it for the sake of forcing it, just for my own ability to be consistent with elsewhere when writing stuff about D&D. I have an 11 page paper covering basic character optimization, and I'm unsure about some of my style choices within.

@MikeQ It's an interesting line, because meta works since we're all writing about D&D here, but the particular case I'm asking about is due to just writing stuff as part of the D&D community rather than on the stack, so I'm not sure if that means it's just outright 'on-topic'.

doppelspooker

so on the notion of a style guide:
- on mainsite, it's just asking how people would conventionally format things when writing about the game. that's legit and fine.
- on meta, it would be read as a policy about how *we* would format things. that's naturally going to run up into some friction, especially if you don't care about establishing or having site standards on this issue.

CTWind

@doppelspooker Yeah, the former. Ok, I may put that up in a few, then.

Rubiksmoose

@CTWind mhm I have wondered as well while typing answers what is the consistent way to do this or that, and I am bad at keeping consistent in how I do format things.

@doppelspooker For mainsite it would have to be phrased in such a way that it is not an opinion poll of how each person does it of course. Would you think asking about how WotC does it in the books be the best approach maybe? @CTWind

doppelspooker

6:59 PM

@Rubiksmoose "Is there a conventional approach by publishers or in the community for how to format names of things?"

If WOTC provides such a convention that'll come up as part of one of the best answers, ideally.

Rubiksmoose

I wonder if that is specific enough though. Surely not every publisher has the specific categories that would be relevant right? Not every one has spells and classes and subclasses for example.

Writing it like that would seem to imply that I would need to then also look up how Magpie treats Moves and Playbooks and abilites as well as all the D&D-specific stuff. Not to mention how things have changed over time with D&D editions. I guess I kind of think that aiming it specifically at WotC/5e might be a good idea here. Might be completely wrong of course.

doppelspooker

It's what CTWind wants to know. Consider if there's no WOTC convention but there is a general convention.

Ask first, refine if the community closes it and doesn't reopen it.

Rubiksmoose

Fair enough. Just sptiballing. I kind of assumed @CTWind was mainly interested wrt 5e anyways, but that may have been a poor assumption on my part as well.

doppelspooker

@Rubiksmoose If it's inconsistent or varies or there is no real convention, that would be part of a good answer.

Sure, if they're interested in only one edition it'd be fair to constrain to just that one.

Rubiksmoose

We'll just see how it plays out then. :)

CTWind

7:12 PM

Went with this: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/133453/… though I'm open to workshopping it if it's a bit too broad.

Rubiksmoose

@CTWind I think it looks good to me.

@CTWind It might be good to list out the elements that you want. race, class, subclass, class features, spells, monster names, etc.

Or we could just trust an answer to go more comprehensive if you wanted

CTWind

Hoping more comprehensive, but I'll list out my specific pain points just in case that's all we get so at least mine are covered. (Ideally, I'd like to have a full answer for other people who get confused about stuff I might know)

One sec on the edit.

Rubiksmoose

@CTWind Exactly my thought as well.

(this may also prevent someone from thinking this is broad for not specifying what counts and what doesn't even though IMO it isn't.)

@CTWind Oh one more suggestion if you don't mind.

CTWind

@Rubiksmoose Shoot.

Delioth

[[Bang!]]

Rubiksmoose

7:23 PM

Your title is asking "Is there a style guide?" But that isn't really the question you want answered. Unless there actually is a specific style guide out there you are looking to find I think something like "what is the proper way to style D&D game elemtents" might be better and a better fit for your body.

CTWind

Yeah, that sounds good.

Delioth

((Yeah, asking for a style guide would probably fall under "shopping questions", which this really isn't))

Rubiksmoose

(you wouldn't have to change that same question in the body since I think it is a fine thing to look for)

CTWind

Edits in.

Rubiksmoose

@CTWind Looks great. The only minor quibble might be that I think it would be good to ask about spells and feats as well, though I'm not sure how to categorize them. I think it would be important for an answer to have those in for completion.

(sorry for pestering you so much about this, I just really dig the question)

CTWind

7:30 PM

Ooh, feats.

I forgot, I was confused about those as well.

Good reminder.

Rubiksmoose

My suggestion to clean things up: take out your guesses from the question. I don;t think they add anything here except take away from the focus of the question and lead answerers.

Except for the abbreviation one which is not a guess but an explanation about your confusion.

CTWind

Done.

Rubiksmoose

7:48 PM

@CTWind Looks perfect to me. :)

Trish

and Fianna done...

Miniman

9:09 PM

@nitsua60 The funniest part is that he's playing a Lore Wizard, literally the one spellcaster in the game for whom this information is completely worthless. Everyone else has to worry about picking generally applicable spells, but he can tailor which save he targets to which monster he's fighting.

Sir Cinnamon

@Miniman Only if he knows what that monster is weakest at

which depending on the specific situation is some pretty hardcore metagaming

Miniman

@SirCinnamon Yeah, there's no way a wizard with genius-level IQ could figure out that ogres are tough but not very smart.

Sorry, that came out tetchy.

Sir Cinnamon

@Miniman Like I said, it depends on the situation. Also they can do that once per short rest right?

Miniman

@SirCinnamon Huh. Been so long since I've read it, I completely forgot that they had any limitations on their abilities.

Ah, it's the damage type that they can just change whenever they want.

Sir Cinnamon

@Miniman Which is probably a far more useful thing to do anyway

Miniman

9:16 PM

@SirCinnamon Yeah...

But, you know, I'm proud of the internet. We all came together and accomplished something great, and the Lore Wizard hardly gets mentioned anymore.

Sir Cinnamon

maybe not far more. But certainly quite impactful - a radiant fireball vs a bunch of zombies

Miniman

Well, except as an example of what "overpowered" means.

Sir Cinnamon

im just thinking of how strong magic missile is when you can map it to a type the enemy is vulnerable to

Xirema

@SirCinnamon Lore Mastery Wizard at level 18, with Magic Missile chosen as one of its "Mastered" spells. O_O

Sir Cinnamon

@Xirema Honestly, any level 18 wizard with a master spell is gonna be a nightmare, but thats definitely bad

Xirema

9:26 PM

Oh, that reminds me. A Sorc/Lock that takes the Eldritch Spear invocation and the Spell Sniper Feat can fire Eldritch Blasts up to a quarter of a mile away. Knowing that, I want to build an "Artillery Mage" in 5e, but there's not as many interactions around that concept as I thought there would be.

CTWind

I mean, the most abusive part was doing something like, say, changing hold person to a Dex or Str save, which you auto-fail when paralyzed, such as you are by spells like, say, hold person.

Sir Cinnamon

@CTWind oh yikes

Xirema

@CTWind Oof.

Although I ended up advising on that very exploit with the Rod of Lordly Might a few months ago.

TL;DR: Regardless of the RAW, that really shouldn't be an appropriate ruling on the interaction between Paralysis and its own saving throw.

Delioth

@Xirema Hyper-long-range is always a tricky thing in games, especially TTRPGs with a firm base in dungeon delving

Same idea as scry-and-fry, but less usability (instead of "literally anywhere on this plane", range is "quarter mile")

Transcript for