TRPG General Chat

AncientSwordRage

12:25 AM

@BESW that's always a good go to example

@BESW not to my knowledge

@BESW that last point he used was definitely the weakest

Hot RPG Questions

12:57 AM

6

Q: Life Transference spell at 0 HP

In D&D 5e, the Life Transference spell heals an ally for twice the amount of damage it deals you. Say you are at 5 HP. You roll 10 Necrotic damage as a result of the spell, your HP goes to 0. Would the target of the spell heal for the full expected 20 HP, or only 10?

Glazius

Well hey, two Fate questions. Was that you reaching out, @doppelgreener, or did the planets just align?

AncientSwordRage

1:10 AM

@Glazius you could say it was ~~destiny~~ fate.

Thomas Markov

1:44 AM

delete vote pls

MikeQ

wat

Thomas Markov

@MikeQ thanks lol

Hot RPG Questions

4

Q: Can Aggressive Block move the enemy in any direction?

This came up in game last night: the Fighter, with Aggressive Block, Shield Blocks an attack. The Fighter and their attacker are in a narrow corridor - here is what the map looks like, where the Fighter is F, and the attacker X: | | |X| |F| | | The attacker chooses to be moved (per Aggressive Bl...

pathfinder-2e combat-maneuver

Bardic Wizard

So our rpg club had its first meeting yesterday, and it went pretty well! Hectic, and we need a better system for keeping track of things, but we had about 25 people show up and about half had played some form of rpg before

Shalvenay

@BardicWizard nice!

V2Blast

2:06 AM

@BardicWizard That's great!

BESW

2:35 AM

@BardicWizard Woo nice!

Joel Harmon

3:17 AM

@AncientSwordRage Oddly, he doesn't mention two drawbacks, either of which could be pretty big. First, you can only have guidance on one character at a time. Second, its a verbal/somatic spell, so there could be heavy RP penalties to obviously casting spells all the time, when most folks wouldn't be able to determine what spell it was.

Xirema

3:28 AM

I've been revisiting this question from a few years ago, and I've realized that in the time since, I've actually completely flipped stances from how I felt back then about the interaction between invisibility and See Invisible/Truesight―which is to say, I don't think I would houserule and negate the advantage/disadvantage effects just for being able to see an invisible creature anymore. Someone want to talk me out of changing my mind? 😛

KorvinStarmast

4:05 AM

My advice to you is to start drinking heavily. 😉 (ref is either to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the novel, or Animal House. Forget which one)

Hot RPG Questions

12

Q: How to balance FATE when some players just can't fail?

I'm GMing a long-running game in FATE core, and I've been running into a bit of a balance problem. A couple of my players have gotten (what feels to me like) too powerful. They don't really seem to struggle with any challenge I throw their way unless I crank the difficulty of the rolls way up, wh...

balance problem-players fate-core

BESW

> we basically only fail rolls when we choose to let it go

A lot of people would say this is an as-intended possibility.

It's totally legit for the table to find that mode of play frustrating, but it's not a sign that the system is broken or imbalanced.

And the solution is to crush everybody's stats back down to start-of-game and then remove the addition skill/refresh parts of milestones.

The 'problem' is exactly the same as D&D: long campaigns experience power creep that subverts the system's early-game feel. And the solution is to remove the incremental vertical advancement in favor of horizontal growth.

Hot RPG Questions

5:28 AM

2

Q: What is the purpose of the wizard's spellbook, from a mechanical standpoint?

I'm still fairly new to DMing, and the wizard's spellbook is constantly breaking my mind. While I think I finally understand how it is working, I wonder why it is in the game to begin with. And I don't mean from an in-game/lore/flavor standpoint, but from a mechanical standpoint. As far as I can ...

dnd-5e balance wizard spellcasting class

AncientSwordRage

9:47 AM

@BardicWizard woop

@JoelHarmon good points

Joel Harmon

11:55 AM

@Xirema I would lean toward arguments that the invisibility rules are restating cover/concealment/general-visibility rules there, and thus invisibility doesn't apply if you can still be seen. There's also a specific-beats-general there, but it's not very explicit.

NautArch

12:29 PM

@Xirema Are you saying that a creature with truesight would attack at disadvantage?

AncientSwordRage

12:39 PM

Community-Bot bumping my body-types question has reminded me to self answer

> This question has answers that may be good or bad; the system has marked it active so that they can be reviewed.

Medix2

If I don't want to hammer something closed as a dupe, do I have any course of action available?

AncientSwordRage

@Medix2 mention it in chat when @ThomasMarkov isn't around to do the hammering for you?

Medix2

I'm staring at my dupe suggestion for this question, which I feel is a dupe, but I have reservations about how others would react to the hammer, especially this late, so I'm unsure what to do

AncientSwordRage

Or put a comment on the question

Medix2

I wonder if flagging as a dupe adds it to the review queue

Thomas Markov

12:44 PM

I’ll fall on that grenade.

AncientSwordRage

@Medix2 I know for Mods, we can flag some stuff and not others, to get it to the review queue without insta-closing it

Thomas Markov

I knew we had a question about that but my brief search did not yield it and then I was on an airplane.

Medix2

@ThomasMarkov I searched for a while, I just unfortunately used the hit-points tag

Thomas Markov

1:24 PM

@Medix2 I was reading the second answer and was like “hey this is a good answer”, and then I tried to upvote it and it was mine. I do not remember writing this answer.

doppelgreener

1:44 PM

@Glazius i can't guarantee my summoning ritual worked so i'll just attribute it to cosmic planetary alignment

bobble

1:54 PM

72

Q: How Do I Opt Out of Privileges?

According to multiple mods, gold badge holders can now unilaterally close questions as duplicates. I hold seven gold badges for tags on SO, which means I can, on my own, close questions as duplicates for those tagged questions. Simply put: DO NOT WANT. However, I do not see any ability in SO (t...

support vote-to-close privileges tag-badges dupehammer

16

Q: Do moderators not have a way to just push a post into the close queue?

This is not a duplicate of Add a way for moderators to cast a normal, non binding close/open vote as that asks for the ability for moderators to cast a non-binding vote. This, on the other hand, asks for the ability to simply add things to community review, without casting a vote. I like my hamm...

feature-request review vote-to-close moderator-tools moderation

Or see those question's linked Qs/duplicates

Once you have 3k rep, any close flags you cast are automatically turned into votes:

9

Q: Flag Question Link After 3k Rep

I noticed from a question about flagging vs closing (forgive me, I cannot find the link, please post it if you know it), that flags are CONVERTED into close votes for questions automatically. Can somebody confirm this? If confirmed, I was wondering why the link (again, for questions only) is sim...

discussion flags vote-to-close

Feeds

3:01 PM

Needles & Nilbogs: A random list of rpg-related ideas

posted on September 30, 2021 by Bardic Wizard

So I was up late last night (we went to see the musical Hamilton [!!!], which is playing around here) and don’t have anything to talk about really, and I’m just going to dump a whole list of ideas I had a while ago for role playing games (both actual game-games and story ideas or campaigns, also characters), because I’m running on not enough sleep and I just don’t have the will to write anythi…

Hot RPG Questions

3:17 PM

1

Q: Does the Book of Exalted Deeds' Enlightened Magic benefit apply to cantrips?

The artifact Book of Exalted Deeds (DMG, p. 222) has the following attribute: Enlightened Magic. Once you've read and studied the book, any spell slot you expend to cast a cleric or paladin spell counts as a spell slot of one level higher. How does this work for cantrips, since there is no real...

dnd-5e spells magic-items cantrips artifacts

Xirema

3:42 PM

I'm actually thinking I'd probably have different rules for different spells:

* Faerie Fire: explicitly says it cancels the benefits of invisibility, so the creature doesn't receive advantage, attackers don't get disadvantage
* See Invisibility: allows the attacker to see the target (so no "you attacked thin air and hit nothing"), but target is still difficult to see, so advantage to creature, disadvantage to attacker
* Truesight: It's a sixth level spell, so it does what See Invisibility doesn't. No Advantage/Disadvantage

It's probably easy to just say "the rules aren't written correctly, just do what logically makes sense", but most invisibility effects are harder to sustain than See Invisibility is, so I'm okay with them being slightly more powerful than their counter.

Joel Harmon

@Xirema But invisibility debuffs everyone else; invisibility counters only buff one character.

NautArch

4:00 PM

@Xirema I'm very much on the "if you can see them, they're not invisible and don't get the benefits" train.

Xirema

@NautArch I definitely would not argue with any DM who rules that way at their table.

TylerH

4:12 PM

Hot dog, Critical Role campaign 3 starts October 21st, that's super quick turnaround after finishing campaign 2

NautArch

@Xirema I'd grumble, and then try and pick up invisibility for myself :)

Xirema

4:33 PM

At my table, the only character who picked up the Invisibility spell is our Bardbarian, and her +1 Dex(Stealth) modifier. 😂

So that could be influencing my perspective, i.e. "well, she barely succeeds at hiding anyways, so her invisibility is barely doing her any good to start with"

But at the same time, I've noticed that an invisible creature that the party is unable to locate is itself a tremendous hill to get over, and being able to see that creature, in and of itself, is already a really powerful boon.

NautArch

I tend to be really bad about invisibility and hiding

I'll try and follow narration more than mechanics to give the feel I want.

Am I being too critical here with closure?

GcL

5:35 PM

@NautArch Your justification for closing the question is the answers?

NautArch

@GcL yes.

GcL

That seems peculiar. The question is answerable. There are mechanics for doing what the player wanted, and doing it with a shield isn't one of them. Disliking the kinds of answers that are there seems like an odd justification for assuming the question is bad.

NautArch

We've closed questions often in the past when it draws opinion based answers only.

GcL

If closing a question because it only has bad answers, is correct, then the previous decisions to do so were correct. If closing a question because it has bad answers is a mistake, then this would be justifying a mistake with previous mistakes.

Hot RPG Questions

6

Q: What is a decent dice rolling strategy for partial/half advantage?

I understand that 5e is all about advantage and cancelling, etc. I understand advantage well, and the statistics. I was hoping there would be a commonly known dice rolling strategy with similar strategic distribution as regular advantage, just less so. Something perfectly between a regular 1d20 r...

dnd-5e house-rules dice anydice

NautArch

5:45 PM

@GcL wut

GcL

I've run into situations where players try to get the grappler feat for free with clever antics or descriptions of how they think the world works.

@NautArch Just because it was done previously doesn't mean it was the right move.

NautArch

@GcL ah, well I agree it's the right move. If we can't handle a question well, we can't keep it open.

GcL

@NautArch Sure we can. Just don't close it, and it will remain open.

Actually, the accepted answer is the right one. There are feats for doing this, don't give players the benefits of those feats without the character taking the feat.

NautArch

Why is prone the only option?

GcL

@NautArch It's the result of a shove action with a shield. I think the accepted answer is in the reverse order. The ending paragraph should be first and then shield shove to prone probably should be the tail of that.

@NautArch It's not the only option. Questions don't have to have one correct answer. Plenty of "my player is an a-hole" questions that have multiple legitimate methods of dealing with it.

NautArch

6:24 PM

I can think of a few different ways to present this. What makes one answer better?

Thomas Markov

Any ideas on where these down votes are coming from? rpg.stackexchange.com/a/191864/62294

TylerH

From people who disagree with the usefulness of the answer, I suspect *shrug*

Actually looking at the list itself, they're all beast languages I think

So your answer is definitely not useful, since it essentially says "you must pick one from that list" and OP is asking which one from the list makes sense

I agree w/ your recent comment; that makes it POB

I'd recommend self-deleting the answer in the meantime

Akixkisu

7:31 PM

@ThomasMarkov a lot of people will downvote questions/answers that they think should be closed.

Thomas Markov

@TylerH yeah, it looked like they were just assuming you could pick any language you wanted, but there are lots of unique beast type creatures with languages, which is kind of a loop hole if you ask me.

@Akixkisu yeah, I thought it was a rules misunderstanding at first, but it was just soliciting opinions.

GcL

9:50 PM

@ThomasMarkov What do you need me to downvote? I've got a couple sitting here that were earmarked for something else, but you can have them if you need em.

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