TRPG General Chat

@JoelHarmon Hiya--how's the (not so little any more) little one?

Are we pushing 2 years?

@nitsua60 Still tiny and adorable.

And your various munchkins?

@JoelHarmon The Elven Accuracy feat, exclusive to elves and half-elves, allows you to roll one additional die whenever you roll advantage, and replace one of the dice (at your choosing) with that die. If you only want the maximal roll, then it's mathematically equivalent to "roll 3 dice, pick the highest".

@JoelHarmon Munching. Spouse and I had to dash around to three sets of teacher conferences today, a meeting with the principal (good things), and dodge the kindergarten teachers who're imploring us to send more their way.

@Xirema But also gives you a good option if you for some reason can't keep the actual highest. Wow. What's the source on that one?

1:15 AM

@JoelHarmon Xanathar's Guide to everything, page 74.

@JoelHarmon Xanathar's Guide to Racial Stereotyping

@nitsua60 That last one seems weird and rude to me.

@Xirema Ah, XGE. I should pick that up some day. And purchase it, rather than thumb through some of the pages and put it back on the FLGS shelf.

@JoelHarmon It was in a nice way; it'd be overly-personal coming from a stranger, but someone who's taught three of my kids and I've taught their two kids and work with her husband... it's Smalltown, Jake.

@nitsua60 I suppose, but I tend to think back to a conversation I once had with a woman who had three children and seven miscarriages. I have since tried to stop asking people about that because often you Just Don't Know.

@JoelHarmon Ah, yes. Absolutely. Which is why I'll often answer a question like that in an intentionally awkward-inducing sort of way. "When are you going to have another?" "We tried. Three times." tends to shut it down when I'm feeling grouchy about it.

1:23 AM

On a happier note, I can advise you to try making it out to the National Museum of Play / Toy Hall of Fame. I managed to bring the wife and kiddo there over the summer, and it was a blast.

@JoelHarmon Where is that?

Hmm. Now I feel torn over trying to nudge the topic away. I've come to the conclusion that it's a very under-discussed topic, given the statistics around it. On the other hand, I don't think rpg chat is the place for it.

@JoelHarmon Ditto. Miscarriage and suicide are both things that I feel (a) should be less taboo to discuss and (b) hesitant to bring up.

@nitsua60 here according to their website

That is, western half of New York State.

300+ miles away from New York City, apparently.

Hmm... that's a 5-hr drive for me. There are a lot of other things within 5 hours of me =\

1:46 AM

@nitsua60 heh, Boston was less than a 5 hour drive from where I lived in CT, but I surely hated to drive there. (this was during "The Big Dig" about 20 years ago)

@JoelHarmon I dated a gal back in the late 70's who was one of two children (she and an older broter). Her mom had 9 miscarriages (!!!) ... that was one of those "I am not sure I wanted to know that" at the time, but as I got older I admired her mom for her persistence.

Ben

7:16 AM

Question about Intimidation/persuasion/rallying etc without the necessary skills... If a player comes up with a good speech or tactic to achieve their goal, but have a low/missing skill or stat on their sheet, how would you handle it?

7:51 AM

@Ben DnD 5e, they roll. Success means they actually manage to deliver it.

I'm not very happy of "do it however you please, you're the GM!" attitude 5e has because I don't think I'm a very good 5e GM nor do I think even good GMs make consistently good calls regarding these kinds of things

V2Blast

8:17 AM

The DMG has some useful guidance

The authors of the Art and Arcana book did an AMA in /r/dnd: reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/9r3909/…

The swashbuckler rogue's level 13 feature is very limited in use:
"Starting at 13th level, you can use a bonus action on your turn to gain advantage on the next Dexterity (Acrobatics) or Strength (Athletics) check you make during the same turn."

It seems useful out of combat for basically having advantage on any Acrobatics/Athletics check you know you'll have to make.
in combat it basically only seems useful for grappling (or escaping grapples, as a rogue), unless you're climbing stuff in combat.

Mearls experimenting with 2 different alternate implementations of two-weapon fighting: (click through to see full threads):
https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/1054975769586421761
https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/1055138434321342469

@V2Blast I think it'd be better in the player facing rules

(then again I think so about a lot of things)

BESW

8:53 AM

@Ben One technique I've found works is, the player suggests the strategy to the group at the table and they work out which of their characters it makes sense to have that idea in-game.

Separate player idea from character idea and making the table experience more collaborative in order to better model characters who are better than their players at certain things, by crowd-sourcing the character's competence.

@kviiri yeah, that tends to elicit a "Then why should I pay you $100 for these books?" response from me.

10:12 AM

@BESW That's genius

@kviiri honestly I think most groups do it all the time in the specific circumstance of combat

they will have extended tactical discussions and give advice that they could not possibly be communicating in character in the circumstances

@Carcer True, although our group has kinda shied away from that except for "rule reminders"

"Don't forget your multiattack" or "you can get that enemy too if you align your AoE like this"

varies by table I suppose

Yeah

We're not exactly on the same page regarding combat I think

with my group, I mean

BESW

10:33 AM

@kviiri I know, right, it seemed completely radical when we first started doing it and I think that's indicative of a problem with the table culture we started with--even if we didn't want to separate player ideas from characters that way, it seems weird that it took years for us to entertain the possibility of such a thing.

10:47 AM

@BESW it doesn't seem surprising given that in many if not at least the most popular systems, your character's own thoughts and actions are the only thing you as a player do have control over. It leads you to being resistant to allow others influence over the bit that's actually yours

BESW

Yeah, it seems like a common blind spot. I'm not surprised. Just... you know, I think that's not a good blind spot to be so common.

also what with the atmosphere of things that are metagaming being unacceptable

that too

Yeah, I get sad when I see "metagaming" tossed around as a term of derision that obviously needs no further justification

on the flipside, "metagaming pigeon" is my favourite critical role character

11:28 AM

@kviiri metagaming seems to me a variable, not a fixed quantity. But I'll wax eloquent on that perhaps later; I don't think one can completely divorce the player from the character ....

1:33 PM

@Carcer lol, that's a thing?

that sounds great

goodguy5

funny thing

Wizard: so how long did you have to practice that spell before you could cast it Sorcerer: practice? No i just cast it Wizard: but how did you get the ability to cast it Sorcerer: i am pretty Wizard: THAT'S NOT HOW MAGIC WORKS Bard: makes sense to me #dnd

Tweeted by dr5bludgeoning on October 23, 2018 at 8:23 PM

@goodguy5 hahaha

Warlock: Don't ask. Uh, be right back. I think someone is asking for me.

@goodguy5 lol, beautiful

good logic

goodguy5

Warlock: "uh..... yea.... I meann.... totally the same amount of time as you"

@doppelspooker it's become a running joke in the second campaign whenever one of them starts talking/advising in a scene where their character isn't actually present, after one time where they joked about a very talkative passing pigeon

now they just keep doing it but they make pigeon noises

1:40 PM

@Carcer that's a coo concept

@doppelspooker just noticed my autocorrect typo in this comment. Can you fix Gmail to DM?

@NautArch [fixes it to hotmail] done

@doppelspooker Worst DM ever.

and thank you!

1:57 PM

you're welcome :D

Trish

@doppelspooker would you mind a little reminder?

David Coffron

@Carcer That's my favorite. I love little inside running jokes that come out of campaigns. It's one of my favorite things about the hobby

@Trish oh! yes, thank you. i keep remembering about that but at all the times i can't do anything about it.

Trish

:sneaked in some small revisions into the actual post...

David Coffron

Especially when the friend circle includes a couple people who don't play and then you make those jokes and they feel left out and decide to give it a try and then get suckered into playing...

2:10 PM

@Trish this might have to wait another 24 or 48 hours before i can do much, but i'll get to it

Trish

@doppelspooker no poroblem, I try to work the changes to the work-environment.

@doppelspooker worked it in

was just a tiny thing or two...

2:47 PM

@doppelspooker do comments get removed when a question is marked as a dupe? Slagmoth and I both posted related questions that I think are still useful.

but i also see how they're not really necessary with the true dupe.

so whatevs :P

@Sdjz Thanks for the cleanup :)

@NautArch yes, some of those got removed automatically

@doppelspooker Can't believe i never noticed that before.

Howdy. Would somebody recommend a simple system for a comedy/horror oneshot game for halloween?

TIL as well. I think it's because they said possible duplicate

@doppelspooker oh ha! I mostly said that because it was borderline for me and I didn't want to bring the hammer, but offer it to others.

Sdjz

2:53 PM

@Momonga-sama I hear Dread is good for this (never played myself)

The problem is that I want to play it online :p

@NautArch mostly I feel we get too sensitive to what might be an answer in comments, and borderline to me means probably isn't

That's personal though

@Momonga-sama looking for RPG, or is a card game acceptable?

I meant an rpg system :p

@Momonga-sama I figured ,but thought I'd ask :)

2:59 PM

If the mechanics use cards, it isn't a problem.

@Momonga-sama Why RPG? I'm sure you could get the same amount of horror and comedy hijinks out of chasing your players around with a Panzerfaust.

What's Panzerfaust?

It's a single shot, recoilless WWII German anti-tank weapon.

Oh, it took me a while to get the joke :D

The joke here being that RPG is also short for Ruchnoy Protivotankoviy Granatomyot, or a model of Russian portable unguided anti-tank weapon.

3:04 PM

I figured it out just a couple of seconds ago :D

Lightweight comedy sounds like roll for shoes to me, and lightweight horror sounds like cthulhu dark, but I don't know what to do for both

Cthulhu Dark but played with a really wacky scenario like Scooby Doo: Disturbance at the Candy Factory?

Actually I was thinking about the players playing monsters, idk.

@Momonga-sama Is there a system you and your players already use and are comfortable with?

Not really, but a simple system would do the best. The ones that allow players to be partially narrative could be interesting.

Personally I love dungeon world.

if you like AW-derivatives then maybe Monster of the Week? (have not played, no real idea what it's like beyond that the target genre is stuff like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural, which can do comedy horror

3:14 PM

Thanks @Carcer Will definitely check this out.

evilhat.com/home/monster-of-the-week

Can anyone confirm that these stats look correct for Great-Weapon-Fighting with a Greatsword (2d6)?

Stats for Roll [2d6GWF]
2: 4 ( 0.3086%) Odds to Pass: 100.0000%
3: 8 ( 0.6173%) Odds to Pass: 99.6914%
4: 36 ( 2.7778%) Odds to Pass: 99.0741%
5: 64 ( 4.9383%) Odds to Pass: 96.2963%
6: 128 ( 9.8765%) Odds to Pass: 91.3580%
7: 192 ( 14.8148%) Odds to Pass: 81.4815%
8: 224 ( 17.2840%) Odds to Pass: 66.6667%
9: 256 ( 19.7531%) Odds to Pass: 49.3827%
10: 192 ( 14.8148%) Odds to Pass: 29.6296%

my understanding of GWF is that you reroll 1s once but not endlessly

off top of head

might be wrong though

@Carcer 1s and 2s, yes.

oh, 1s and 2s

but still

oh

I've misparsed your results, sorry

nevermind me

3:18 PM

@Carcer Yeah, I'm still trying to work out the best format to present those results, but that's secondary at the moment.

The Mean value is probably most important, since there's probably a "canonical" version someone has already calculated that I can compare that against?

matches with my quick anydice to simulate the same: anydice.com/program/12010

What's important are the rolls [2-12], the calculated odds of rolling each number (0.3%, 0.6%, ...) and the calculated odds of rolling at least each number (100%, 99.7%, 99.1%, ...)

@Carcer Alright, cool. I wish my firewall weren't blocking that site. XD

oh, that's unlucky.

but yes the odds shown in your analysis match (at least to as many sig figs as anydice displays)

Then it's probably safe to say it's correct.

(script for reference: "output 2d{1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,4,4,4,4,4,5,5,5,5,5,5,6,6,6,6,6,6}")

3:23 PM

Wild Magic is tripping me up. However many dice you roll, you're only allowed to reroll one of them. Trying to figure out how to express that in my program design.

bit difficult to say without knowing anything about your program

I know how I'd write that in anydice, probably

Also, I feel I should confess: when I wrote this program, I voluntarily chose to implement it as an "Object←ObjectFactory" model.

I feel so dirty.

would it be fair to

get out

(In my defense, it's because rolls are being Memoized, so the factory is responsible for retaining the memoized results)

is this a calculating expected output type problem or dice roller type problem

3:27 PM

@Carcer It actually does both! It expresses the odds of rolling any specific outcome, but also can actually perform the rolls by hand if requested.

okay

what's the tricky bit exactly

Well, the way I've implemented things like "roll 8d6" is that it decomposes into "roll 4d6 and 4d6, add them together", which are each "roll 2d6 and 2d6, add them" which are each "roll 1d6 and 1d6, add them"

oh

yeah

It's like a binary tree.

Where no child roll has knowledge of its siblings/cousins/uncles rolls.

So somehow I need to connect them.

see what you've done is you've made it unnecessarily complex

3:30 PM

Well, it's designed to handle weird combos. Like if you take an advantage roll of 1d20 and then add a bless roll and a flat modifier to it.

That becomes Composite(Composite(d20, d20, ADV), Composite(d4, MOD7, ADD), ADD).

Stuff that requires everything to be pretty generic, to handle common scenarios.

hm

The implementation is complicated, but the interface is really clean and easy to use.

seems excessive to me but then you're deliberately using factories so

@Carcer From what I see monster of the week is about monster hunters, I was more looking forward to playing as actual monsters in a comedy/horror game.

we are out past the boundaries of my comp sci skills

@Momonga-sama Monster Hearts? buriedwithoutceremony.com/monsterhearts

specifically that's very much about teenage angst/romance etc. though, I don't think it's meant to be very funny

3:34 PM

@Carcer lol, everytime I write "X x = xFactory.create()", I find a mirror and stare into it, wondering what I've become.

Isn't Monster Hearts more about romance?

on paper I guess. Again, never played, just a suggestion for something that might be in the right ballpark with a system you like

Mithoron

3:46 PM

Hullo

@Mithoron howdy!

Bonjour

Mithoron

And here I thought if someone replies ;)

Quite a bit of people here!

@NautArch Howizat going?

@Mithoron not bad, wasting time here and trying to concentrate on work. The usual :P

Mithoron

:p

I've got cat invasion at home ;)

These wacky animals :D

4:07 PM

I think I will go for Dragon World.

What's that?

A comedy/pulp hack for Apocalypse World

Example of a class: "Angsty Shadow Warrior
“I was born in the world of shadows, and it yet marks me. All is suffering, pain, and darkness. I’m so depressed.”

@NautArch a friend of mine has to wear compression shirts. I looked at the label and wasn't sure if it was the kind that you make. (But it did say made in China)

@Momonga-sama "Sometimes I go to the mall to look through things at Hot Topic but I never buy anything."

4:23 PM

@Momonga-sama it's about growing up, coming of age, going through all the stuff teenagers go through, queer content and lgbt discovery, the confrontation that can come with all of this -- definitely probably a bit heavy for comedy

OH!

Katanas & Trenchcoats!

Hmm, looks like it's just K&T and Car Wizards

drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/3883/Ryan-Macklin/subcategory/…

Ooh. And Celestial Boogaloo, which adds angels and demons.

There's probably room for monster play in there.

Katanas & Trenchcoats is a parody game making fun of 90s action flicks like Blade, where you're all playing edgy immortals with badass swords and heartbreaking backstories. Katanas & Trenchcoats: Car Wizards expands the parody to Fast & Furious and similar: you are an immortal, and cannot ever die as long as your car keeps moving. (But if your car stops all bets are off.)

@Momonga-sama Shoehorning horror elements into Katanas & Trenchcoats (optionally the Celestial Boogaloo expansion) might be just what you need.

4:39 PM

@KorvinStarmast we don't do shirts at this time. We've gotten requests and it may be something i develop in the future, but not yet.

4:51 PM

Noticing an interesting trend in 5e questions asking about removing existing rules and the mechanical effects it would create. Sort of like pre-houserule.

@NautArch possibly driven by our response to “why did the devs do it this way?” questions

@doppelspooker and who doesn't love a good workaround?

but i'm not quite sure that's it

but could be

didn't think of that

Well that does take an unanswerable question to a more answerable one

very much so. and it's basically a question of "how will this houserule effect my table?"

@NautArch yeah it's probably not the whole story but is probably at least some small part of it

Q: When you run out of climbing speed, can you still climb with your normal speed at a penalty?

6:33 PM

Could we give this question enough votes to get it reopened? I agree that there's some degree of intersection between it and the linked question, but the actual question being asked by the OP ("If I run out of climbing speed, am I allowed to use half my remaining walking speed to keep climbing") isn't addressed by the linked question.

0

Let's say you're a 40 speed, 15 climbing speed creature. There's an initial ledge at 20 feet, but you're trying to reach the top at 25 feet. From the Player's Handbook, page 182: While climbing or swimming, each foot of movement costs 1 extra foot (2 extra feet in difficult terrain), unles...

CTWind

Got my vote.

7:02 PM

@Xirema That doesn't make sense. A 40 speed creature is by default a 20 climbing speed creature, isn't it?

@KorvinStarmast A creature with 40' walking speed can move 20' while climbing, but I'm not aware that they receive a "formal" climbing speed of 20'.

If you want, you could reframe the question as "40' walking speed, 30' climbing speed".

So they climb 30', have 10' movement speed left; are they allowed to climb 5' using 2:1 of their remaining walking speed, letting them climb 35' total?

(Also, creatures that don't have a formal climbing speed may be required to pass athletics checks to successfully climb a surface; may be a factor to consider)

7:38 PM

> While climbing or swimming, each foot of movement costs 1 extra foot (2 extra feet in difficult terrain), unless a creature has a climbing or swimming speed.

What happens when a creature has a climbing speed, but has merely exhausted it?

Because that wording implies that the movement penalty never applies, even if they've exhausted that specific movement type.

Has this ever been errata'd?

7:53 PM

sounds like they can only climb using climbing speed

@SirCinnamon That's not quite what it says. It says "each foot of movement costs 1 extra foot unless they have a climbing speed". Your reading would require it to say something like "you may spend 2 feet of movement per foot of movement you make, unless you have a climbing speed".

Oh interesting

so you use move speed at full efficiency if youre climbing?

slightly odd....

@SirCinnamon Well, I'm not sure. Is "You have exhausted your supply of climbing movement speed" mechanically identical to "You do not have a climbing movement speed"?

@Xirema I'd need the full wording in front of me

> While climbing or swimming, each foot of movement costs 1 extra foot (2 extra feet in difficult terrain), unless a creature has a climbing or swimming speed. At the DM's option, climbing a slippery vertical surface or one with few handholds requires a successful Strength (Athletics) check. Similarly, gaining any distance in rough water might require a successful Strength (Athletics) check.

That's the beginning and end of how that section appears in the Player's Handbook.

8:02 PM

So where does "You have exhausted your supply of climbing movement speed" come from?

CTWind

I get the feeling that's supposed to be "unless a creature is using a climbing or swimming speed".

(or some better phrasing along those lines.)

@SirCinnamon It's from the question I linked. The OP proposed a creature that had 15' of climbing speed and 40' of regular movement speed. Starting at the base of a cliff, they climb 15', and have used their entire climbing speed, but still have 25' of regular movement speed remaining.

@Xirema Oh i see what youre saying

CTWind

Because otherwise, having a 40 ground speed and 30 climb speed is mechanically identical to having 40 of each if just having a climb speed at all is enough to not halve your climb speed in any case.

They then posed the question "are they still permitted to move 12.5' (25/2) by using their normal movement speed at a penalty?".

8:04 PM

It sounds like RAW they can move full speed actually

@SirCinnamon Yeah, that's what I'm trying to suss out.

Because at least the way it's phrased, that seems to be how it would work.

I don't think that can be RAI though, because a creature like a Black Bear is listed as having a Movement speed of 40', Climbing Speed of 30'. There would be no effect to making those values different if that was how different movement speeds were intended to behave.

Or, more precisely: there's no effect to making the climbing speed lower than the regular speed.

Making it higher would definitely matter.

GreySage

@SirCinnamon RAW in 5e is fundamentally broken. The rules are meant to be understood in context, not to have every sentence globally applied.

@GreySage that's kind of a cop out though

GreySage

@SirCinnamon More than saying "Having a climb speed of 1 lets you use all your 30ft speed to climb"?

@GreySage If the game is written such that that is the intention thats not necessarily broken

and in any case, determining what the book is saying and deciding if that's broken is the first step to fixing it regardless

Q: What are RPG.SE's goals for Hot Network Questions?

8:18 PM

@GreySage I have a general principle that before I houserule anything, I want to ensure that I understand both the practical applications and intended effects of a rule. That's easy when a rule is correctly written, less so when it's failing to take even common circumstances into account.

The Oracle

0

Some recent controversy surrounding a decision involving Hot Network Questions has become a big featured question on MSE. This seems like it's eventually going to work towards a "better" version of Hot Network Questions, but what exactly is "better" is a bit up in the air. I thought that we could...

discussion

Over on Reddit, someone got issued a +9 bow (described originally in the post as +11) in their 5e campaign. I had a bit of fun pointing out the relative value and power level of such an item in the standard 5e setting. reddit.com/r/DnDGreentext/comments/9rc430/…

6

TL;DR: The DM (theoretically) induced a 0.75 Henderson on their own campaign.

I usually try to reserve judgement on DMs, every game is unique and all but I dont know what kind of game you would run where thats not an awful idea

@SirCinnamon A new DM whose only 5e experience was in a similarly broken game that didn't firmly establish what the power curve of the game is intended to look like, + a bad estimate on how difficult it would be to haggle down from a 100gp cost on said bow.

@Xirema 100.... gold

8:33 PM

@SirCinnamon =P

you slip on a banana peel and fall into a hundred gold in 5e