TRPG General Chat

3:16 AM

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SSD just closed this question as off-topic because it's about a video game. The question is about DNDBBS, which appears to stand for "Dungeons and Dragons Bulletin Board System." This site describes it as "An attempt to bring Dungeons and Dragons to the BBS Experience." That makes it sound mor...

Ben

5:49 AM

So I just yelled "bum" in the middle of the office, cos I basically undid an hour's worth of work accidentally.

But I may as well have just sworn cos the reaction I got was pretty much the same than if I had.

trogdor

Lol

If I did that in this office I would probably get a lecture

Miniman

Almost everyone in my office swears often enough that nobody would notice. Not necessarily particularly loudly, though.

trogdor

Any swearing here gets an immediate response

Our supervisor doesn't like it

Miniman

If you were an Aussie working overseas and people complained about swearing, you could just go with "stop oppressing my culture, you ethnocentric jerks!"

trogdor

Lol

Ben

5:55 AM

Haha yup

kviiri

8:47 AM

Morning

Sdjz

@kviiri Hello

kviiri

8:59 AM

How's it going?

Sdjz

@kviiri Very slowly, it's morning here too

kviiri

For all my love of sauna I'd prefer if the heat was confined there instead of not being all over the land

HenryWLee1066

9:12 AM

Last session, my best d20 roll was a 7. I rolled a 1 & 2 with advantage one time.

Anyone have any tips on getting better dice rolls?

😩

kviiri

Make sure your d20 has all the numbers intact :>

Secespitus

2 days ago, by nitsua60

@Pixie I'm a fan of the d30. I keep one in my dicebag for when I need a good bump to my likelihood of success but want to maintain my "I always roll in the open, no shenanigans here" image intact. Roll and read it quick enough and they usually just think it's a novelty-large d20 =)

Praying may also help ;)

kviiri

As a serious recommendation though, try to find the time and energy to look into systems where there's only bad rolls for characters, not players :>

HenryWLee1066

9:28 AM

I got some advice from some of you last week on playing a bard. It was fun hanging in the background waiting for just the right moment then dropping a major change to the battlefield. It was more satisfying than the martial I usually play. And the sleep spell didn't need a d20. ;) Thanks for the guidance.

kviiri

Sleep is really good early on

It starts to lose its oomph on later levels, but you can always retrain it.

HenryWLee1066

That's what I've heard. Could always be useful for a solo guard or something, but eventually Hyp Pattern & Wall spells will be my combat go to.

kviiri

Yeah, Sleep does gets points from me for being a decent combat and non-combat spell.

kviiri

9:46 AM

I miss the 4e approach where combat and non-combat spells are separate picks.

trogdor

the 4e ritual system was definitely nice

HenryWLee1066

10:09 AM

The DM we are playing with seems to be more focused on story and role-play than combat. I'm trying to decide between ritual Caster (wizard), Observant (+1 wis), or +2 cha. I'm concentrating on non save & buff spells. Any suggestions on how to think through that? Our party has a face, and I'm the utility / sneaky / controller guy.

Joel Harmon

11:31 AM

@kviiri I think non-combat is a bit exclusive there; I like the term 'utility'.

BESW

@JoelHarmon No, it's accurate in context.

The Masked Rebel

o/

BESW

There are utility powers; they're useful in combat OR out of combat, and they follow the same rules and slots as combat-specific powers.

The Masked Rebel

Hello?

\o/

BESW

And then there are rituals, the quickest of which takes at least five minutes to cast and are designed and balanced around giving access to really cool stuff without worrying about how it messes with combat balance.

[wave]

Sdjz

11:42 AM

@TheMaskedRebel hello

doppelgreener

Rituals are such an awesome system.

The Masked Rebel

hey everyone

What is up here

doppelgreener

... this nearby shop either served me something else instead of its chicken katsu curry, or its new way of preparing chicken katsu curry is way worse than what it was serving a couple of weeks ago.

(which is a pity because it was the best around)

(or would be)

I came across an idea someone shared about a fantasy novel which tickled me. I'm not sure how accurate it is for that novel, so I'll just share the idea in isolation:

the prime law of magic forbids using magic for murder, and you have to answer for your crimes if you break this law. However, one of the most powerful acts of magic available to a single individual is a spell that kills its target, either immediately or dooming it—but requires so much energy to cast that the wizard casting it must sacrifice their life to do it. However, this neatly dodges any chance of being taken to trial for your crime. 8)

BESW

Reminds me a little of demon magic in the Five Gods setting.

doppelgreener

What's that like? :D

@BESW By the way, I don't know if you saw already, but for the time being I have Smoke Detector posting to NAB instead of here when it detects RPG spam.

BESW

11:55 AM

Yeah, it's starred right over there.

In Five Gods, magic is always some kind of interplay between the magic-user and a being of power.

trogdor

@doppelgreener this has happened to me a few times, not specifically with chicken Katsu curry though

doppelgreener

@BESW Oh right :D

BESW

Saints are conduits for the will of a god, but it's very difficult to open your heart and let a god reach through you into the world. Nobody ever intends to become a saint, and saints tend to grumble to each other about their gods.

trogdor

hehe

yeah that was a hilarious setting to read about

BESW

Shaman are hosts to a great-souled animal, the result of many generations of work in an art now almost completely lost.

And then there's sorcerers, who have become host to a sliver of pure chaos.

trogdor

12:00 PM

(god of all the other stuff) "hey saint can you eat some demons for me?" (saint of that god)"ugh ok I guess,.... but only because they are all trying to kill me anyway"

BESW

Most folks call these slivers demons, and a demon has no personality of its own but develops traits and an individual identity by stealing them from its hosts--and a demon can have many hosts, because being host to a sliver of pure chaos tends to be hard on the host body.

Demons are the easiest kind of magic to get on purpose, but usually the demon winds up controlling the sorcerer rather than the other way 'round and it's not a fun life for the host.

However! Death magic is a demon specialty and is quite easy to control because, as agents of entropy, demons are very easy to convince to kill someone.... the trick being, they'll kill the ritualist as well.

trogdor

I personally didn't like how,... demons could posses someone without a bargain happening first,... and expelling them was also hard

like that seemed,... like a little too much bad stuff for something that could happen to someone randomly

a magic thing that could happen randomly anyway

BESW

Yes, well, that's part of why Demons Are Bad.

trogdor

yeah,... but something like that, with seemingly no rules,... annoys me a little

I still really liked those books though

that was probably just about the only slightly annoying thing

doppelgreener

@trogdor you realise you're complaining that slivers of chaos aren't following rules though :P

trogdor

12:05 PM

@doppelgreener not that they aren't following rules,... that they don't have their own rules attached

doppelgreener

but that makes perfect sense to me :D

if slivers of pure chaos had rules attached, one might have to question the purity of that chaos.

trogdor

like,... magic that can devour someones soul is fine in a fantasy setting,... but when it's defualt state is "no one did anything but now you have one on you and good luck getting it off",......

@doppelgreener it's not how chaotic they are that bothers me really

it's that they also really screw over a host even if neither the host or an enemy infected them with it

and on top of that,. getting rid of them is kinda spotty

I just felt like they could have been tweaked a little is all

but just to reiterate, I actually really liked those books a lot

even the demon stuff was cool rather often

BESW

Basically, when a demon finds itself without a host, whether because it's freshly escaped from the domain of the Bastard or because its last host just died, the demon immediately leaps into a nearby living creature. There's no save, no attack roll, no possible defense beyond certain niche saintly powers, to avoid getting possessed.

trogdor

some characters actually threw in with them and deserved the stakes they got

doppelgreener

ooh, i see.

BESW

12:10 PM

(Demons are terrified of the Bastard, who wants to get them back.)

trogdor

it's just that sometimes someone kills a bear that would have mauled them and their whole travel goup and whoops demon now

doppelgreener

on the other hand, hosts getting this thrust upon them regardless of anything they or anyone else did sounds essentially perfect for how chaos might behave though. :D

BESW

And once you're possessed, well, there's only ever at most one saint in the world with the knack to get a demon out of you without killing you.

trogdor

@doppelgreener and that's fine too, but then they still have that whole "well this is really hard to get rid of" thing too

doppelgreener

so demons are OP? :D

trogdor

12:11 PM

sorta

some saints just eat them

BESW

So now you've got a malevolent entropy spirit co-habiting your body. If it's dumb (hasn't had a lot of hosts to learn from) you might be able to harness it for good... by dedicating your life to learning how from the Bastard's priests.

trogdor

but those are like,... we know of two of those ever

@BESW or themselves

Derpy

is that spirit a nine tailed fox?

trogdor

no, because nine tailed foxes have a brain of their own

XD

a big one at that

and also they don't have to steal a body either

BESW

If it's not dumb... good luck. The best you can hope for is probably a few months to years of wish-fulfillment at the expense of everyone around you before the demon takes over completely and your body is the puppet of a psychopathic hedonist and then you die of cancer.

Derpy

12:15 PM

This reminds me of Dragonage and the Fade

trogdor

mm

I didn't play past the first part of Dragonage because the Templars seemed like they were just huge #%&#$'s and the game wasn't apparently aware of that

and they were supposedly the "good guys"

Derpy

The Templar VS Mages thing in Dragonage is indeed a mess.

trogdor

12:31 PM

well,.. it's like,... "we will oppress you now, also you are the bad guy, so suck it up, stupid mage"

to be fair, I did try to play a mage first,... but upon picking my class I shouldn't have to run the risk of being persecuted, victim blamed and gas lit should I?

it's just a game but jeez

and because that was the class I felt like playing, but I didn't feel like putting up with that for,... however long it would take to play the game,... I just dropped it like a hot potato

if there was some indication that the people who made the game realized how actually horribly the Templar were treating mages for no immediately determinable reason,.... then maybe it would have been less of a turn off

oh and the blood mage they were using to apparently justify it was,... cartoonishly evil

he actually didn't even seem to have a coherent character

it was a weird experience for me

in all honesty, if I had continued playing past the first part of the game I probably would have gone full blood mage just to really cheese off every Templar

Derpy

@trogdor that actually does become a little more evident. After the intro.

trogdor

ah fair enough

Derpy

I suppose that they were trying to give the idea that in the game world the treatment mages get is considered NORMAL

trogdor

I would have loved to see any of that indicated from the start

@Derpy ah

Derpy

@trogdor ^ see above. I assume they were indeed trying to build up the dissonance

trogdor

12:41 PM

@Derpy I think they did too good a job of that on my account then

Derpy

it is the same with the whole concept of the "Tranquil"

trogdor

my brother really liked Dragon Age

to be fair though he was like, a dwarf fighter or something

Derpy

@trogdor I can understand how you felt. It must be very similar to how the FF7 "plot twist" worked on me

trogdor

@Derpy which one do you mean?

I feel like it had a couple different strange plot twists

Derpy

@trogdor The "oh, so you liked playing as Zack and you liked Aerith? Well, know what? Forget your player agency... you were playing a different character for about half of the game! Now enjoy playing the rest of the story knowing that all your apparent choices mattered NOTHING"

trogdor

12:44 PM

ah

so a bit of a combo of a couple different ones then

I did actually like the section you play as Zack

I feel like they wanted you to be happy about Cloud again,... but the execution was a little off

Derpy

I wouldn't say so. In the end the whole "Cloud personality was swapped" plot twist is all about that.

Aerith is confirmed to be the original girlfriend the real Zack mentions in a game cutscene.

trogdor

@Derpy I know some people liked that, but my brother and I felt, at the time, like that was a bit of a cop out

Derpy

so, even if you did "choose" Aerith instead of Tifa, the game basically goes like "you know, even that part was just Zack personality"

trogdor

@Derpy that's like the carnival thing right?

Derpy

for example, yep.

trogdor

12:49 PM

it's been a long time

I only played it the once

the thing I remember the most vividly to this day is how much I hated Yuffie Kisaragi

or however her name goes

I don't like my stuff getting stolen

and it seemed like she did that several times

also how long some of those boss fights were

Derpy

she stoles your materia just one time, and at least she gets the free story bonus of "if you do the quest you get them back and discover my tragic background too"

trogdor

you sure she doesn't do that more than once?

Derpy

That said, she also wins the Nami award: "If you have a problem, please ask me for help before running away alone"

trogdor

I can understand that

though I can sorta sympathize with the idea that she might have figured you didn't know her well enough to help

especially with the whole "you stole my stuff at least one time" thing

anyway, is time for sleepingses

Derpy

1:12 PM

@trogdor Have fun at the sleepover party in R'lyeh

KorvinStarmast

1:30 PM

I like this question, but think it might be too broad. Opinions?

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast erik's answer seems to cover it, no?

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch I think so, but as an example of a "homebrew" or "balance" question I don't think it meets the constraints we have in the meta. Or maybe I'm being a bit too harsh this morning.

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast Hmm, possibly - but they aren't providing a specific homebrew balance but a general question about class list spellcasting options which does have a specific answer in the DMG.

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch OK, that works for me.

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast and that's coming from a guy who is generally pretty harsh :)

NautArch

2:07 PM

@DavidCoffron On this question, I'm not sure we can answer how something is supposed to work. It very much reads like "how does this work, how does it interact with other abilities" And we don't really know that because it's homebrew and written by someone else (maybe.) I guess we could read it exactly as-is, but that's potentially making a lot of assumptions.

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