Kinda both. They're in the process of trying to win what seems to be an unwinnable battle. And they were approached by a cult who have been worshiping some old scrolls they found. The cult said that they believed that the incantations were just the help they needed.
While they deliberated on the issue, the mage was contacted by an demonic entity he's had a falling out with(Used some magic stuff he wasn't supposed to get his hands on). This demon wanted to make a deal. Don't cast the spell and destroy the scrolls. In exchange he'll ensure victory in the battle they're preparing for.
It's a short story, you can find it online, but the gist is: A bunch of Tibetan monks believe that once all nine billion names of God are written down, the universe will serve its purpose and come to an end, so they decide to hire a computer company to compute and print the names, because it will go faster that way
They immediately took this as proof that whatever the incantation does, it can only be a good thing.
However, a day later their cleric was contacted by his deity(while in the drunktank). The deity gave him instructions to destroy the scrolls at all costs.
Now the idea with the scrolls was to be some kind of world ending thing. And I honestly thought they wouldn't consider casting it. But they played very well into different character traits and personalities and made the deduction that the demon must be afraid. And I like rewarding them for what they come up with if it's interesting.
I might just tone down what the scroll does in some way. Fail forward as BESW would suggest.
Ending the game has to be memorable I think.
And maybe this is the story of how the heroes ended the world.
Doesn't have to be a good ending. Just has to be memorable.
I like that. That's definitely a memorable ending. It's fitting since they're expecting an attack from a mix of undeads and fire mages. I imagine with all the planes severed, they'll see all the magic fizzle out.
@WilliamMariager If you have time to drop in a crazy guy with a "the end is nigh" sign before they start the ritual, make sure that he has a chance to flip it to "I told you so"
Anyone who knows how the bots work: AngryGM has recently rebuilt their site and I believe today's new article didn't come through the ticker. Wanna poke at the feeds and the site and see if something obvious is going on? Thanks.
I also don't see a new article, and the newest thing on their feed is <title>Let’s Build a F$&%ing Dungeon Adventure (Part 1)</title> <pubDate>Thu, 08 Mar 2018 12:00:25 +0000</pubDate>
So i dont think its on your bots end, if there's any issue its their end
@nitsua60 Cool. Well, it's his website not doing something. If this was a newspaper, the printing press never shipped the papers. It's nothing to do with us not receiving them correctly.
@NautArch In this case both are asking "Can I grapple while grappled"
I would say intent shouldn't matter, unless it actually leads to trying to resolve something new. If there were different rules for grappling-with-intent-to-stop-dragging, then they wouldn't be dupes
@NautArch the measure is whether it's the same question that will get the same answers. If the intent materially changes the answers then it's not a dupe. It sounds like they should instead be asking "I want to do this very specific thing in order to achieve this very specific outcome. Does that work?" — but that's only if the dupe target doesn't give them a clear answer already.
FWIW I agree that the grapple question is a dupe - it doesn't matter why you want to reduce the opponents speed. Grappling reduces the speed, you can grapple, the end
@GreySage I mean I did ask the person and they said that was their intent.
@doppelgreener But we don't mark question as duplicates only if they will have the same answer though right? The questions themselves have to be virtually the same.
They explain somewhere something about it being difficult to say? I can't find it atm though. (and it also doesn't really explain where that letter goes)
Is there a fundamental difference between "Can a grapplee grapple the grappler" and "Can a grapplee grapple the grappler in order to prevent being moved?"
@Rubiksmoose I think @Katie was having a bit of an X/Y problem, she thought the module was too hard and so asked why it was, when the real problem is that she thought the module was harder than it actually is.
@GreySage Yup. I figured that was how the question would actually get answered, but it needed to be clear at least what she thought she wanted so as to limit any potential "why" guesses as answers.
@NautArch Yeah marking duplicates seems like a bit of an ever shifting artform honestly. Part intuition and part policy.
@doppelgreener may I ask what the decision was about the fireproof question? It is now reopened, in its original form and it still has an answer that doesn't seem to actually answer the question. So it doesn't seem that anything has actually been done to it (besides the community reopening it).
@Rubiksmoose “What damage does a sword do? I intend to have my fighter hit some goblins with one.” vs “What damage does a sword do? I intend to have some goblins stab my party's fighter in the back with one.” -- Functionally the same question, functionally the same answers.
The question post is different, just not in a way we care about for Q&A purposes.
@Rubiksmoose Thanks for letting me know. I'm going to confer with the other mods. Chances are Lino's answer will be deleted, unfortunately for them. In the meta Q the community is reaffirming a strong desire for designer reasons inquiries to be backed up by citation. No citation = not an answer. Lino's answer declines citation, but I feel it would be incorrect to allow an answer like that: it means we allow “here's my wild guess” so long as it also asserts “they haven't said anything” somewhere.
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Since we don't want “here's my wild guess” it means we're also not looking for “they haven't said anything, so here's my wild guess”.
As much as I think Lino's answer is likely correct, I agree as well. FOr designer intent questions, the only available options should be ones citing designers.
I don't see why it's necessarily opinion based. What if it wasn't a net? I reckon you could you answer this in terms of "Can a magical <WEAPON NAME> be repaired and keep its magical properties"
Okay, so we have an item that is both destructible and a magic weapon (nigh-indestructible). It's an ambiguous situation, but I wouldn't say it's opinion-based.
@MikeQ And that answer cites that due to the properites of nets, a Magical net would likely be a homebrew.
Note that these are just the baseline rules - all of this is up to your DM to determine, especially since a magical net is probably, although not necessarily, a homebrew item.
That answer is really just about "magic items can be destroyed" and not specifically about the net. When Miniman gets specific, he added that huge caveat.
@NautArch thank you sir :) I'm still a bit unsure about it, but there just aren't really general rules for this kind of thing in 5e. Definitely an edge case, but I think the reading of the effect is convincing enough to make a ruling on it.
Sneak Attack causes the weapon it uses to deal more damage. The intent is that an unusual weapon like the net that deals no damage doesn't magically start dealing damage with Sneak Attack. But a DM is free to override that intent. The RAW certainly isn't entirely clear here. #DnD https://twitter.com/dcoffron/status/956911512282648576
Better they come back, put in some work and get a good answer back after willingly doing what we needed to provide one, than we give them an altogether wrong answer they didn't want based on things that aren't true which they may feel too awkward about to correct
Though if you see an obvious way to edit it based on information they've given us that makes it reopenable and solves the things they're asking for (or one of them, if they're asking for too many different things) feel free to try editing.
@MikeQ We can handle them when they're very specifically "I want to achieve X character build and need pointers to start this kind of thing" and "I have 99% done this build and need advice on achieving the final piece to achieve X outcome", everything between seems to not work
Also "how would I build Gandalf in this game" is generally POB too, same for other fictional characters. Everyone has a Personal Gandalf they will tell you how to build. Some are bards, some are wizards, some are fighters with a dip in cleric, etc.
@doppelgreener Ah, right. Also, everyone knows that the "real" Gandalf build is artificer. Let us not forget the expanded universe detail that Gandalf's staff is actually a well-disguised rifle, and the expanded expanded universe detail that reveals that Shadowfax is actually a robot.
Lenin was a mushroom (Russian: Ленин — гриб) was a highly influential televised hoax by Soviet musician Sergey Kuryokhin and reporter Sergey Sholokhov. It was first broadcast on 17 May 1991 on Leningrad Television.
The hoax took the form of an interview on the television program Pyatoe Koleso (The Fifth Wheel). In the interview, Kuryokhin, impersonating a historian, narrated his findings that Vladimir Lenin consumed large quantities of psychedelic mushrooms and eventually became a mushroom himself. Kuryokhin arrived at his conclusion through a long series of logical fallacies and appeals to the...
A +5 sword is a mighty weapon but the fighter probably doesn't know it's +5
The wizard that enchanted it might say that he used "Archmage Bernard's process" which costs as much as a +5 weapon and improves the weapon as much as one can without getting into rare mythical magic.
@MikeQ I'd think PCs and NPCs would have knowledge of those things relative to their experience.
Alignments are trickier, but they're hard enough in 5e for players.But I think if you had an ability/spell that told ou their alignment it's the same as knowing "this is a lawless, bad man"
@NautArch Right, ok, let's leave alignments alone for now. That's an entirely different rabbit hole. I meant more like... does a druid know they are a druid? Is there something inherently druid-y about them, that distinguishes them from a nature cleric or woodland bard? Do they have a druiding license?
@NautArch Are you a fighter? How many times have you fought over the past week? On a scale of 1-5, how much do you agree with the following statements: I like swords...
I still think that trying to address the game mechanics within the narrative is awkward. Like how one wizard can spend decades studying and researching and get nowhere, but another wizard can kill some goblins and suddenly they're more advanced.
I personally know loads of very smart people who went out into the world after years of academic study, and wiped out applying any of the skills they learned.
Plus, given that things like arcane somatic components are a thing, magic does require precision and coordination.
I really cannot love more that the San Diego Girl Scouts have a
Tabletop Role-Playing Games Patch. More info here on the Dungeon Scouts: http://www.dungeonscouts.com/ #dnd #rpg #tabletop
Thankfully 4e didn't have gendered stats, but the sexual dimorphism in the art sometimes reached Warcraft levels of messed up (tieflings, I'm looking at you).
I mean, the [ranger] class is literally predicated on the "I'd like to go off and do my own thing in the woods" notion. Turns out (IMO) it's actually decent at just that =)
@doppelgreener probably not, but perhaps instead he had a mentor that accidentally turned someone into a mushroom and never got around to switching them back