Ah it seems a couple people have noticed the Teen Titans reference in one of my answers lol. Maybe I should not be surprised that it was identified so quickly.
I remember playing an optimization-heavy campaign in 3.5e where everyone told me how Wizards sucked and Sorcerers were better because preparation sucked.
However: 1) Wizard does not need to prep thanks to like 100 ways he can cast non-prepped spells, 2) being half a spell level ahead of the sorc is really good, 3) spells known is a bigger impediment than preparing, 4) downtime casting beats in-combat casting every time anyway
@HellSaint I was an adult when D&D cartoon came out, and was not watching cartoons. That's on me. Was either hungover on too many mornings, or golfing ....
@HellSaint Korvin shows his age all the time, he's all "when I flew this plane jet engines hadn't been invented, so my co-pilot had to push the whole way"
@AnneAunyme I will just randomly challenge the purpose of your question - can't you just nicely ask your players to simply not erase? Is there any reason you need the tool itself to not allow them to?
@AnneAunyme Well that can be fixed in roll20 - Just put the planets and other stuff in the background layer, and let players draw in the foreground layer
Anything that works with layers should work. Assign a layer to each player and they are free to draw and erase on their layer. They might have permission to draw/erase in other layers, they just need to not be douches and simply not randomly do it, right?
@AnneAunyme It would have to be separate from the regular roll20 game. Only the DM has control over which map is visible. You could set up a secondary roll20 game for the sole purpose of the shared map, or you could use a different app entirely.
I don't log in roll20 for a year now, I might be wrong. But I could swear that after I put them into a map, they could go back to it any time they wanted. I remember changing them from a map to another and one player getting confused because he was still in the old map on his screen.
I'm not sure they can interact with the map though, but I'm almost certain they can see it.
@AnneAunyme Yeah last time I checked (which was recently), the GM has a list of maps they can view whenever, and they mark exactly one of them as visible to the players.
Yeah - roll20 GM can drag players between pages, but players don't even have a sense of what page they're on (they can't even see the page display thing)
Players can be given control of tokens to move themselves around a given map/page though (@AnneAunyme)
Rechecked. Different tool. SORRY FOR THE CONFUSION. Well, RRPG Firecast is a desktop/phone app that's pretty similar to roll20 and lets you mark more than one map as visible for the players, they can freely switch between them, although the DM has to put the character tokens in a particular map.
Another common practice is to create and save a list of characters, assign different player controls, and then when you get to a new map, just click-drag them onto the grid. It becomes a token. That way, you don't need to reassign token permissions.
@AnneAunyme The way roll20 works, you have maps, and you have images (tokens) that are anchored to the maps. Normally, the GM has full control over these tokens. You can assign a token to a player by going into the settings for that specific token (it looks like a cog shape) and setting them as the owner.
This means you can have player 1's token in map A and another copy of player 2's token in map B, and just set both of their owners to player 1.
So no matter where the exit is in map A, you can switch over to map B, and the players' tokens will be at the proper entrance (or some fixed location of your choosing), and each player can control their corresponding token.
tl;dr You don't need to drag tokens "between" the maps
But you can save groups of tokens with ownership attached to make it easy to quickly and efficiently drop players into a new map (i.e. you set them all up and then save them to your objects as a group, then you can drop copies of them anywhere and the correct player will have permissions to do things with those copies; you still control which map they are on)
@AnneAunyme Then it must be separate from the regular roll20 game. Host it however you want (separate roll20 game, google drawings, some other app, etc.).
What do you need them to see the map for? If it's just for reference and doesn't need interaction, you could make it a handout. (Handouts within roll20)
IIRC players can look at public handouts at any time
@Delioth They want note taking ability in addition to just seeing it, although yes I admit that making a separate roll20 game just for a map is a very roundabout approach
Hm. Yeah, I'm not sure if there's a good way to do that integrated in roll20. I haven't logged on to roll20 as a GM in a while; but one of the tabs is handouts. They're super useful for player journals or loot tables (so you can just show them to the players instead of telling them the stuff)
Also for stuff that's.... actually something you would hand out, like a note or a visual
Who here is annoyed enough with the restrictive functionality of Roll20's macro system that they'd be willing to pay for a system that gives you more freedom in designing macros?
Same virtual tabletop features, but you can for example (without offloading the functionality to a sheet template that you have to marry the game to) implement macros which add damage based on crit?
I don't have such a system, I'm not advertising anything, please don't delete my messages :S
If I want it to just be easy I can use the sheet templates, or I can play around in the macro system and build it myself (it takes some work and some repeated parts... but it can be done AFAIK)
@Axoren Pretty sure I've done it, but I might be misremembering as well. I know I built a convoluted mess to try and do it a couple years ago, I just don't remember if it was successful. I know I determined to just use the Pathfinder character sheet's builtin functionality afterwards
However, I'm talking about separate from the built-in sheets, the macro system is lacking.
Because, as a player, you depend on your GM to pick a good built-in sheet with the functionality you want to build into your macros.
Even if you, the player, has the subscription, if you GM does not, they can't customize the sheets for you to implement the macro you need for only your character because of wacky edge cases not covered by the sheet.
I personally, would pay for a Roll20 competitor which just gives a better base-line Macro System so that the custom sheets play less of a role in making things work.
Most of my groups don't use the built-in sheets anyways, because Roll20's UI is wonky and doesn't play nice with large multi-monitor setups.
I probably wouldn't; mostly because I don't pay for roll20 anyways and if I did it'd be for the dynamic lighting. Might be because I play Pathfinder and the standard character sheet is super-solid
Also I haven't found any issues with roll20 with multiple monitors. Just pop things out and they work just fine
@MikeQ I get what you mean, and I use that in low-level games
Still, it would be nice if there was a functionality which let you just have one big macro that you could toggle off bits and pieces of without going through dialog windows
@Delioth Could you show me how it would work for Pathfinder's usual sheet with a Elemental Fist Monk with a fully enchanted AoMF if I get you the stats?
A Monk with a +0 Shocking, Flaming, Icy Burst AoMF with Elemental Fist for Acid damage, would only get the Acid Damage unless he spends turns turning on each of the others.
So, let's assume it's +1d6 damage for each enchantment/ability.
I mean... in any case, I'd do it such that the Flaming+Shocking+Icy Burst are implemented in just the "Extra Non-Crit Dmg" section of each attack, and Elemental Fist ought to be its own attack
They aren't added to the total in that case, they're just extra die rolls that happen (and you can ignore the ones that aren't turned on)
@Axoren Community. Can't use dice in buffs as far as I can tell, but it works great for Power Attack and other things that can toggle
Something like "[[1d6]] electric + [[1d6]] cold + [[1d6]] fire" in the Unarmed Strike attack and in the Elemental Fist attack (since they really should be separate), and Elemental Fist has another field of +[[damage-roll]] elemental (chosen at use time)
@nitsua60 Thank you. nock wasn't showing up on spellcheck so I was like "nitsua will correct me."
@Delioth You're right. I'd pay money to be able to do this kind of stuff as just part of the macro system so that I don't need to deal with a sheet like this.
@Axoren And please feel free to tell me to stuff it at any time. I feel with spelling the same anxiety most people feel when a table-mate has mustard on their nose. "Oh, God, if I tell them they're going to be embarassed... if I don't am I a jerk? Do I just wipe it off myself? I've got to leave before they realize...."
(In fact, I'm going to star your question so that if someone comes in later they'll see on the right-hand "star board" that there's a SF-specific question lingering.)
If we're gonna get technical, expletives are a form of offensive language, rather than a type. You can use offensive language without using expletives, and you can use many different kinds of offensive language as expletives.
@Yuuki Not in terms of phonetics and grammars, but things have been translated in campaign handouts that indicate what types of words and phrases are possible in those languages.
I'd speculate that if Celestial is unable to express offensive idioms, that says something unnatural about the nature of the language itself, because otherwise it would have, at the very least, loan words.
An expletive is an intensifier; you can take it out of the sentence without changing the central meaning of the phrase but reducing the intensity of the phrase's effect.
Personally, I like to think that Elven is Japanese because of that one American Dad episode where there was hirigana on a trading card and Steve said "That's Elven." and the ACTUALLY JAPANESE CHARACTER NEXT TO THEM DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING TO CONTRADICT HIM!
What's important to the setting?
Rude words are rude only because we decide they are. The word and phrases that a society feels are inappropriate say a lot about the people and culture, so you're going to need to start with a solid understanding of the values and beliefs of the society.
Conside...
I'd expect Celestial to have a lot of minced oaths.
@TheThirdMage A minced oath is what happens when a powerfully rude word or phrase is altered to get the meaning across without actually using the offending language: "gosh" instead of "God," "jeez" instead of "Jesus," "blimey" instead of "God blind me!" etc.
Very few things stay the same amount of offensive over time. As idioms get overused they either become diluted to the point of meaninglessness ("zounds!" or "God's wounds!" used to be pretty impressive) or gain in intensity (bodily functions weren't so vulgar until 19th century prudery), and minced oaths or alternative phrasings can acquire the intensity of the thing they were meant to replace or they can lose meaning altogether.
A quick Google tells me it has "few voiced consonants and lightly voiced vowels," and shares structure with Draconic which "has a throaty character and defaults to an imperative tone."
From a linguistic perspective... I might interpret "imperative" to mean that the language rarely/never lilts its final syllables, and avoids other emphasis modes that imply a questioning stance.
I'd go with more... declarative. A language that doesn't have a questioning mode.
If you want to ask a question, you can't. You have to say thing like "I am wondering."
@Axoren Well, this is purely speculative and interpretive. But Draconic defaults to imperative. Celestial... is the language of the heralds and the gods. I can see it rejecting anything non-imperative entirely.
If Celestial is automatic that would imply some kind of infant fluency, prior to learning Common, and that would influence the structures of Common that are easy for the character to use.
