Was wondering if a target effected by the deafen condition can be effected by Tasha's Hideous Laughter?
The spell states creature of your choice, so was just wondering if they needed to be able to hear or not. Thank you all
The section "A Clear Path to the Target", on page 205 of the PHB states "To target something, you must have a clear path to it, so it can’t be behind total cover."
The spell Scrying, contains the following text:
"You can see and hear a particular creature you choose that is on the same plane of ...
Hey all, if i wanted to give a Hydra a breath weapon, how could that work mechanically?
for instance, how large of a cone? how much damage? should i take the breath weapon stats from a similar creature (say a young dragon) or have some in game wizard cast the dragons breath spell?
But most importantly, would every head have a breath weapon?
But you'll have to consider the hydra's existing action economy. It makes a lot of attacks per round. Giving it multiple breath attacks could get messy.
I think the most common errors in thought among my peers are that religious law is always universal moral law, and that even in polytheistic settings people must devote themselves to a single god and at very least try to politely one-up the believers of others
Divisible souls are cool too, I wonder why it's not more popular in media when it could easily tie in to the id/ego/superego trope that is quite prevalent
IIRC the old-school model around here was that a person's soul was composed of three parts: the spirit that makes one actually alive, the nature that would infuse the person with strength of character and creativity, and the self which defines one's personality. A person might lose any of these for a while or permanently: loss of spirit would mean dying, loss of nature would render one dull or weak-willed, loss of self would make one eg. depressed or otherwise miserable.
I should put that in a game some time, and see what cool stuff people could spin out of that :>
@kviiri I've got a background project for an Egyptian political thriller fantasy campaign set in the 1450s BC, which uses Bubblegumshoe relationship mechanics to model connections to the gods because that seems more accurate to their actual belief systems.
I managed to get my group through the end of the introductory adventure in Curse of Strahd this weekend ! But the balance in this adventure is terrible, I had to nerf it down and generally help my players through it, and they were still hanging by their fingernails at the end
I had to outright disable about half the traps too
@PierreCathé I think the introductionary adventure is generally quite terribly designed, and yeah. Our group hardly survived it; of our four characters, two were unconscious upon exit, and two others had a single hit point remaining, and even that was largely the result of me applying liberal amount of cheese through my not-too-seriously picked Healer feat.
When I played it, basically all but one member of our group went down to 0 HP by the time we got back to the door. The bard basically had to wait there for an hour or two while the rest of us got back up to 1 HP after stabilizing
We basically dove out the front door and prayed for success
Yeah that was about it for me too, but that was before escaping from the angry house, so they still had to get through the toxic smoke and the rats
So I made the smoke non-toxic because the alternative was a tpk
But the ambiance really is well-done, I think everyone could feel the vibe of treading through the haunted house
Also now they have seen Strahd's name on a letter, and a mysterious black carriage hurriedly left the village as they exited the house, so they're pretty hyped for the rest of the adventure
Aasimar (at least Scourge and Protector) get an ability that allows them to add their level in radiant damage to any damage roll they make, and the Celestial Warlock gets to add their Charisma modifier to any radiant damage they do.
Additionally, if that warlock has Agonizing Blast, that also ma...
On the same note as Pierre, we finished the 1st book of the Dead Suns AP for Starfinder with my group of rookies (they're adorable).
2 encounter, fearing the TPK, highly believing the mob harassing us is the boss when the GM looks us deadpan in the eyes and say "You think this is the boss? Kiddos... You've seen nothing "
In the end, we had gathered enough informations on the boss to be ready, so the final fight went super smoothly while the two warm-up encounter nearly downed us all
I'm a DM setting up a oneshot. I have an idea to spice up combat a bit by giving a hydra a breath weapon. So far, the least homebrew option I've thought of is to have an enemy spellcaster cast dragon's breath on it. However, a Hydra is stated to start out with 5 heads; does this mean every head ...
I am not asking if a Centaur can be used as a mount, such is in this question, I am asking if a Centaur can utilize a mount of its own, as in riding/mounting its own creature.
This may sound counter-intuitive, and I can conjure as many arguments anyone else can in favor of or against it as well...
@PierreCathé Not that outlandish, given how many programming classes start off by enumerating the chosen language's data types, then all control statements, then all types of loops it supports. I think it was quite standard at one point.
4e has recommended first level picks. Although it has somewhat less options at L1 for caster classes
They do in the PHB as well, and for the overwhelmed newbie they do have a list of "recommended" spells for 1st level chars
Though I will agree the PHB solution isn't great, I'm not sure how you could solve it better in book form (as opposed to spell cards and/or digital solutions).
@Someone_Evil Huh, you're right aren't you... I somehow thought about it but concluded I must've been thinking about 4e all this time. (4e has it too, but not exclusively as we see here)
That creates the problem that if you need to find a spell you need to know what level it is. Arguably a better solution for beginners, but slightly less useful for looking things up
@PierreCathé I criticize WotC as much as the next sheep, but let's be honest: they thought the best way to introduce newbies to spells was to give them a pregen wizard and a pregen cleric, each statted only out to L4, and to put just the L1 and L2 spells they had into the booklet. They thought the best way to provide a reference text for spells was to alphabetize them all.
@Carcer It also affects creatures' ability to fit in an area (many dungeons are designed with 5-foot-wide tunnels, and a rare few might even require a Medium creature to squeeze), as well as the area covered by an aura.
I wonder why there's a sense centaurs need to be awkwardly oversized in the first place? Is it the "realism" bugbear? Do people just have a deep heartfelt fantasy about riding a horse that's also built like Dwayne Johnson? If modern art depicted Class B centaurs more frequently would we be more inclined to scale the horse part to the human instead of the human part to the horse?
They are also fantasy creatures which can be any size we want, and horses are not all big. We don't insist that naga all have halfling-sized torsos because snakes don't really get that big, and yet ponies exist.
and the human part is not, as far as I am culturally contextualised, meant to be out of proportion or particularly large compared to a normal human person
@BESW i mean, I think some people definitely are into riding a Centaur built like Dwayne Johnson, maybe even specifically one that is him? who are we to judge (but yes I don't think they are a majority, probably, so they wouldn't completely drive this weird thing)
I feel like you're mixing up things if you're going to ask questions like "is it the realism bugbear?" because I'm not sure why anyone would consider class a more realistic than class b
Class A: a horse with a person's torso/arms/head where the horse's head would be. Class B: A person with a horse's torso and hind legs coming out of their butt. Class C: Class B, but with horse's hooves on the front feet too.
@Carcer I mean... that's why realism is a bugbear? It doesn't actually hold up when analyzed. Realism in fantasy and scifi tends to be a justification for something more subjective or emotional which we want to frame as rational and objective.
Especially in contexts where it'd make things easier to change it--like fitting centaur into dungeons that measure things in five-foot increments.
When we cling to something despite it being inconvenient, and complain when it's changed to be more convenient, that tells me there's something interesting going on.
I mean, sometimes that familiarity is just a self-perpetuating cycle
I don't know why type A necessarily became more popular than the other depictions from the art of that time but having done so I don't think anything special needs to be going on for it to remain the popular version and for people to be resistant to change
it probably helps that that's the version most obviously rideable by a human being, a proportional type b/c is a bit lacklustre beach donkey
So centaurs are like vampires? They lost their original diversity in the pop culture consciousness and now pop culture inertia freaks out if they deviate from the "norm" that never existed?
It's not something that I've ever been particularly interested in either, but Grecian mythology is inescapable so I've picked up a lot.
And now I'm curious how much Class A's prevalence in modern collections of Antiquity art reflects Antiquity, vs how much it reflects the curation choices of the collectors.
user15026
10:43 PM
@BESW I'm picturing like christmas sweaters and other such fanciness
@BESW But... are they fantasy creatures born of various cultures' intermittent contact with Eurasian steppe peoples? If so, the strong gravity of "warrior-bodied adult human + horse bred to support that" might be inescapable?
(a) Every culture has animal/human hybrids, why do we need to justify centaurs in particular as some kind of inability to understand horse technology? (b) That in turn imposes a form of literalism to mythic traditions which just reeks of paternalistic scientism.
(That is, the "explanation for horse-riders" origin for centaurs derives from the condescending idea that all supernatural phenomena are the result of insufficiently advanced attempts to explain natural phenomena, rather than admitting such things have value as social tools and ways of interacting with non-tangible elements of human existence; it reduces faith to pseudo-science, which is a fundamental failure to understand the nature of faith and its role in society.)
user15026
Faith isn't just the thing we do when we can't science our way out of a thing.
I am not asking if a Centaur can be used as a mount, such is in this question, I am asking if a Centaur can utilize a mount of its own, as in riding/mounting its own creature.
This may sound counter-intuitive, and I can conjure as many arguments anyone else can in favor of or against it as well...
