TRPG General Chat

KRyan

15:08

@InbarRose I downvoted you because I think your answer is inaccurate, it's that simple. I do not think that armor prevents you from using the tentacle.

I also think the OP's DM is flat-out wrong

both factually, if he thinks that's how the rules work, and from a design standpoint I think it's bad for the game

Inbar Rose

So if I change: but your tentacle would be unusable. to If there is still a question as to whether you can use the tentacle or not.... would that be better?

I changed it to this:

This seems to me like you can still wear magical armor, but depending on your DM, your tentacle might still be unusable, in that case - here are a few ideas:

KRyan

you don't have to change it just because I disagree with you; I downvoted because I think the answer is inaccurate, but that's just my opinion. Others may agree with you and out-vote me. It's still early yet, there's only been one vote total between two answers

Inbar Rose

yeah - but your answer is pretty much the same as mine other than that

How can you think mine is wrong and yours is right?

Your direct answer to the question of "fitting" is also quoting the abilities line "The tentacle is fully under his control and cannot be concealed except with magic or bulky clothing."

KRyan

I cite the same rules

I do not have the same conclusions

Inbar Rose

Everything else in your answer is just suggestions, much like mine is.

KRyan

15:13

my conclusion is that his DM is wrong

and in any event shouldn't be houseruling things this way

Inbar Rose

I don't have a conclusion

I just have an explanation where he can use magical armor according to the rules. But the matter of using the tentacle is not covered in this

And I have suggesions if his DM is stubborn

I am really finding your downvote totally unjustified here.

KRyan

OK, let's hash it out then, though I really need to go.

1. the quoted rules don't mention armor at all, which makes them impossible to draw your statement that the tentacle may be unusable

the qualifier "depending on your DM" is almost meaningless because it always applies

and in any event the question has already indicated the DM's opinion

Inbar Rose

You are welcome to your opinion - everyone is. But saying that the reason you downvoted me is because we have different conclusions? that is just.... wrong.

KRyan

2. your suggestions don't give enough of how he's supposed to do those things, which seems to me to be the purpose of the question

"Find a craftsmen to make one for you," "Make it yourself," don't really answer the question of "What are some Pathfinder rules that will let me work around this?"

he knows he needs to either make it himself or find someone to do it for him

he wants to know what skills, money, and time he needs to do that

in other words, I downvoted you because I think part of your answer is inaccurate and I think the other part of the answer doesn't actually answer the question

the answer is pretty close to restating the question, actually

"how can I modify the armor?" "you can modify the armor!"

I gave prices and DCs

I pointed out Full Plate's rules for modifying to fit, and the rules for unusual creatures' armor

Inbar Rose

Okay - that is much more helpful.

Now I understand why you think my answer is not good. And now I have a way to improve it.

Thank you.

KRyan

15:20

sorry if I was not helpful before, but honestly, I needed to leave twenty minutes ago

Inbar Rose

Sorry, but thank you.

KRyan

mm, well, I'll check back later, work time now

leokhorn

To add to this a bit: everyone mentions magical armor. What about mundane armor that won't auto-fit?

(or is the Tentacle Discovery implcitely only available at higher level when magic armor can be the expected loot?)

Actually he says "I am creating an Alchemist", which may imply 1st level character?

Zachiel

I'm of the "it really doesn't matter, you'll want a personalized armor with the qualities you need anyways, don't bother looking at the ones that drop from random enemies" school.

leokhorn

@Zachiel As in, only magical armors dropping from important NPCs are of any interest? Or just "no looting armors"?

Zachiel

15:38

@BESW I read that more like "the gaming system is not clear enough to let people correctly guess what will really work - and if it does, it suddenly becomes the obvious and boring option - so players come up with ideas that look really good until someone (the GM) pokes the ideas with a pointy stick because it's -obvious- they must have overlooked something - creates that something, then decides to ignore it because it would ruin the plan".

Inbar Rose

@KRyan I made some serious changes, rpg.stackexchange.com/a/27723/5841

BESW

@Zachiel Except that he seems to be generalizing abotu all RPGs.

So it can't be a system issue.

"...Here's what people do when they play roleplaying games [...] They conceive, and enact, very stupid plans [...]"

Alex P

@BESW I can safely say that I conceive and enact very stupid plans.

BESW

Yes, but as a general principle of design, shared with the people he wants to play in his systems? Bad PR at the best.

Zachiel

@leokhorn as in loot it, sell it, buy what you really need. It's PF: I'll never find a +3 version of the silent moves, improved swimming, 0% arcane casting failure +2 silk armor I'm currently using.

Phil

15:41

Bah, missed out on a spot in a new PbP Shadownrun 5e game :o(

Alex P

@BESW Well, the rest of the post says "You don't need to design for this. It's easy to do with any system, pretty much."

Zachiel

@BESW Look at his points. He thinks he's talking about RPGs in general, but... he isn't

leokhorn

@InbarRose Curious: how do you interpret "magic" in "The tentacle is fully under his control and cannot be concealed except with magic or bulky clothing."? It makes me think of a concealing spell personally.

Zachiel

me too

BESW

@Zachiel That's not exactly making my point less relephant.

Zachiel

15:42

{magic} or {bulky clothing}

Alex P

@Zachiel Yes, like that.

Inbar Rose

Well.. a magical armor is magic.

Alex P

Magic that conceals things.

Not any magic, just because.

Inbar Rose

I think otherwise it would say "a spell"

Alex P

Well, it could be a magic item. Maybe glammer-clothes, for instance.

Basically the parts of the game that aren't combat stuff are ridiculously vague. You can't parse them naively and hope to get a straight answer.

BESW

15:43

Some games say that armor adjusts itself (within reason, whatever that is) to its user.

4e, for example, has armor resize to fit Small and Medium creatures as needed.

leokhorn

@Zachiel Ahh. I guess I've yet to play a level where such purchases are possible :) (or I just don't think about it)

Alex P

@BESW Presumably, that wouldn't conceal the tentacle thingy unless the armor also had an illusionary component. Otherwise it accomodates the tentacle but, well, you can see it.

BESW

Aye.

Alex P

Just say it's a codpiece.

Zachiel

The problem is not being able to conceal it

BESW

15:45

@AlexP That'd protect the tentacle, but probably also make it more obvious.

leokhorn

@AlexP My point exactly :)

Zachiel

The problem there is if the armor is or is not an armor designed for unusual creatures, or if the Alchemis is an unusual creature or not once he gains the tentacle

His DM say he is one

Alex P

Where is this tentacle from?

(I missed that part of the convo.)

BESW

Appendages 'R' Us.

wax eagle

-1

A: Armor Craft Skill - modifying magical armor to fit 3 armed characters.

Well - after reading the rules about this ability one particular section seems to provide an answer (in bold): Benefit: The alchemist gains a prehensile, arm-length tentacle on his body. The tentacle is fully under his control and cannot be concealed except with magic or bulky clothing. T...

Inbar Rose

15:48

woo someone linked me :)

Zachiel

so he needs to wear different armors. The question is: can I modify an armor to fit or do I need to create an armor from scratch? If it's the first, what's the price?

leokhorn

@InbarRose What I'm saying is that I don't read "magic" in that sentence as implying wearing magic armor is a possibility. It just says "magic can conceal the tentacle".

Inbar Rose

see my answer :)

leokhorn

Not sure if it's terribly important to the answer, but thought I'd point it out.

Zachiel

And my answer, which is not good for this format is: don't even try to understand that, you'll never want to do that thing anyways

Alex P

15:50

@Zachiel Understand what?

Zachiel

@leokhorn there's another thing to consider. Magic items are renowned for their ability to adapt, completely (most items) or with size issues (armors, weapons) to the creature using them

@AlexP what he's asking

leokhorn

@Zachiel Oh I know, it's the crux of the answers so far.

Alex P

My answer would be "I don't think the description expects this ability to screw with your item usage. Just to be super-obvious. So don't interpret it to screw with your item usage mechanically."

Zachiel

@leokhorn what I mean is that it's not the "magic conceals the tentacle" that's bringing up the magic armor solution

@AlexP But his DM has houseruled otherwise. So the question is either too specific or answerable by telling what the rules say or what you would houserule to transform a centaur armor into a dwarf armor.

leokhorn

@Zachiel Ah, well, it seemed to be used as a preamble to mentioning magical clothing, so I assumed... I'm confused by this whole thing :)

Zachiel

15:54

Telling him "oh, I don't think it works that way" is, IMHO, something someone can say, once, in the comments to the question.

@leokhorn I think someone actually used that as a preamble, but it's a ninja argument.

leokhorn

Fair enough

Zachiel

strawman, maybe

leokhorn

Animated Scarecrow argument maybe? :)

Zachiel

tentacle sockpuppet argument, I'd say XD

leokhorn

Works too

Alex P

15:57

This reminds me of a thread. "Where should I put my second brain?"

Zachiel

In a jar. I'm pretty sure I saw someone doing that quite successfully.

Alex P

Why does an alchemist grow a tentacle, anyway?

BESW

@AlexP For help opening jars.

Alex P

The flavor-fascist in me is just going, "That's not even alchemy! Stop making all the words for magic mean the same thing!"

BESW

@AlexP [psst] "Eldritch."

[steps back quickly]

Alex P

16:06

@BESW :D Now I'm cracking up, man.

So, David Tennant: how is he outside of Doctor Who? He's in some new detective show. I think with the guy who played Rory.

I remember watching some mini-series of his and finding it awful, though. (Spies of Warsaw?)

BESW

He does okay in what I've seen him in, but he's not very consistent even in the same role.

His Hamlet kept turning into the Doctor when he got excited.

With a firm director I think he's pretty good. He'll be GREAT in ten or twenty years.

If he's left to do his own thing without firm direction, he'll be all over the place.

But then, I don't think his Doctor was very consistent and was often rather mediocre, which puts me in a firm minority opinion.

(And a lot of people thought his Hamlet was awesome, along with Stewart's Claudius. I kept laughing at both of them.)

Alex P

16:27

@BESW Hmm. Would I have seen Stewart's Claudius? Was it on TV or on stage?

I saw Stewart's Sejanus with Derek Jacobi's Claudius.

BESW

Patrick Stewart played Claudius opposite Tennant's Hamlet in a BBC production of Hamlet a few years ago, concurrent with their performing it for the theatre. That play is the reason Tennant's last season was just a few longer stories instead of a proper multi-episode season.

Alex P

Oh, the Claudius in Hamlet.

The Oracle

16:48

1

Q: Does the [attack] tag have a purpose?

I have recently seen some uses of the tag attack. I believe this tag doesn't bring about any benefits, which, from what I understand, is a thing we want to avoid. First of all, tags serve to help experts in a given are recognise questions that require their expertise. This, of course, cannot be ...

Alex P

17:04

Aww crap. I was typing an AP write-up and didn't save it. :/

BESW

Attack Power? Action Point? Advanced Placement? Associated Press?

Alex P

Actual play.

BESW

I've invited the guy with the autistic and dyslexic players to come into chat to workshop the question, since he hasn't yet been specific about the challenges he's facing.

wax eagle

@BESW sounds good. We've got a really good question somewhere about helping out a blind player

BESW

This guy seems to have a bedridden player who can't get up from prone, an autistic player, a dyslexic player, and players with young children who need to be cared for.

wax eagle

17:19

@BESW that's intense

BESW

...I am re-evaluating the lengths I go to for my group.

Alex P

I played with a paraplegic player for about, oh, a year and a half?

Made me really, really appreciate the easy availability of illegal PDFs in the 3.5 era.

BESW

Heh.

Alex P

Because at least he could reasonably read all the books on his own time outside the session.

BESW

I've played with people with minor (and in one or two cases, I suspect undiagnosed not-so-minor) social disfunctions, some whose health issues just limited their ability to attend, and one person with a fairly major reading disability. But those were all relatively easy to adjust for.

Alex P

17:23

In play it was mostly a matter of having someone else roll dice for him ("action points" are nice because even if you're not touching the dice yourself you get to feel involved in the process a bit, thanks to the extra decision-making), and making a point to make sure we didn't get so loud that we ended up drowning him out.

BESW

I've also run into some interesting cultural issues.

The game with the rich Tennessee boy and the farm boy from Ainer was kind fun to watch.

Alex P

To be honest I'm not sure how much he enjoyed the game overall, because he was kind of a problem player in the sense that he really enjoyed doing things that would make the other PCs' or the GM's life harder. I don't think it had anything to do with his disability, though. If I had to do it all over again I would probably do it differently, but that's just on account of our group dynamics sucking a bit in general.

BESW

Aye.

A lot of the things I'd do differently about old groups, I wouldn't know to do differently if I hadn't had the experience in the first place.

Alex P

I mean, classic young-adults-playing-D&D thing: he did crazy stuff that annoyed the other players and my main response to it was to deprotagonize his character. :/

BESW

Heh.

Yup. The main reason I didn't try D&D in highschool is that I didn't know anyone who played it that I wanted to play with.

Alex P

17:34

I totes played cargo-cult D&D as a kid. Mostly, like, Spelljammer.

BESW

I didn't get into RPGs until a friend in college declared that I would make a wonderful GM, and arranged a game around this.

Alex P

I GMed a bunch in college because everyone else did overly-comical one-shots.

And I thought I could do better.

And I did, I think.

BESW

I GMed because... I did good dramatic readings from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, apparently.

[yawn] G'night.

wax eagle

17:50

@BESW good night

user61230

18:01

Is anyone else having trouble with StackExchange's login service?

wax eagle

@Emrakul what kind of trouble and which OID provider?

user61230

I'm getting a message saying "No referer was present - this may be due to a browser setting"; using Google's. The full question, and what I've tried, is here.

user61230

I'm curious if anyone else has had this?

called2voyage

18:34

@waxeagle On this question (rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/15148/…), SevenSidedDie removed my accessibility tag. I definitely think this question relates directly to accessibility. How do you think I should address this problem? Should I post a meta question about it?

wax eagle

@called2voyage generally accessibility is about helping someone overcome a disability, not sure how that's the case here

(and yeah I approved the initial edit, but I'm thinking I was wrong at this point)

called2voyage

According to the wikipedia definition which I paraphrased in the excerpt for the tag, accessibility is about accomodating all people, especially those with diabilities. I think that is the case here. Also, one answerer specifically points out that he has had these issues with people with learning disabilities.

wax eagle

@called2voyage then yeah, head to meta to make your case. Link the meta post on the question and you should be able to ping SSD when you do it. Definitely don't revert the edit without a meta discussion as that doesn't end well

called2voyage

@waxeagle right, I figured that would be the best course of action. I don't like to start revert wars.

wax eagle

@called2voyage they aren't productive...ever

called2voyage

18:40

@waxeagle agreed

called2voyage

18:54

@waxeagle Here's the meta question.

wax eagle

(you cant ping people in questions or answers...just fyi, just comments (if they are already a part of the post) and chat (if they've been there recently or you're a mod))

called2voyage

@waxeagle I've pinged SevenSidedDie in the comments of the post in question.

wax eagle

@called2voyage good deal, he should get that as he's an editor

leokhorn

19:28

@called2voyage I get the feeling the misunderstanding stems from the fact "accessibility" can mean a lot in general, but as a tag here is focused on disabilities.

wax eagle

@leokhorn well, it was created today, so it's still in the definition phase

called2voyage

@leokhorn Please drop in on the meta discussion and contribute your thoughts if you have any! Thanks.

leokhorn

@waxeagle Oh, I didn't know that. I would have if I hadn't skipped the actual question -sigh-... Sorry about that.

wax eagle

@leokhorn that's ok. called2 is just being proactive, which is great

The Oracle

1

Q: What should the scope of the [accessibility] tag be?

Today I created the accessibility tag for our now-growing category of posts dealing with issues such as blind players, prone players, dyslexic players, autistic players, etc. I also tagged one post (How can I help my PCs remember clues that they found?) as accessibility as well. This is why I am...

discussion specific-tag

leokhorn

19:42

@called2voyage After reading the whole thing properly this time, I have to say it falls down to preferences it seems :/. I would agree with SevenSidedDie overall, but you also make a good point. I'd say there would be no debate if the tag was "disabilities" instead. As such, it's semantically more encompassing.

That said, I may still agree that "accessibility", with its broader meaning, may be a bit too encompassing as a tag? I'm no expert on tags and categorization on this site though, so... take that as an amateur's view :)

wax eagle

@leokhorn they should both be specific and general...which is terrible for trying to explain things to people :)

called2voyage

@leokhorn My main problem with limiting the tag to "disabilities" is that it tends to exclude cases such as special needs like where someone may have a difficult family situation, a newborn child, be hospitalized, et.c

wax eagle

in a sense all of our tags suck because a tag is supposed to by itself be able to be solely applied to a question. But that's just simply not the case here.

almost every question on this site needs a system tag because we serve so many different interests

called2voyage

Ultimately I am fine with narrowing the scope, I just don't think it should be as narrow as merely "disabilities". If someone could propose an appropriate scope, that would be great.

wax eagle

@called2voyage let me think on it. I might come up with something.

leokhorn

19:47

@called2voyage Hmm... could these situations somehow fall under a different word? Would it be a good thing to put them together? If tags are for searching... would someone with disabilities be interested by issues of dealing with children while playing... and vice versa?

called2voyage

@leokhorn The problem with separating them that extremely, though, is that our own post history shows that disabilities alone is too small a category.

leokhorn

Ah... and tags do need a substantial amount of questions related to them, right :/

called2voyage

Also, the question I linked to relating to someone who is prone might not intuitively be thought of as a disability.

leokhorn

Are there exceptions to this though? When a tag remains important enough as a distinction in spite of its rarity?

called2voyage

Whereas accessibility is abundantly more clear in such cases.

wax eagle

19:49

blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/tag-folksonomy-and-tag-synonyms let's all get on the same page with what tags are about.

leokhorn

Hmm... Tough tough tough :/

@waxeagle I'm sorry to say that all I learned was that tags were decided by the community and how tag synonyms work. Still not sure what tags are all about :)

Alex P

@leokhorn Yeah, ditto.

leokhorn

Oh mysterious tags...

called2voyage

This may be one of those cases where we may just have to define point-by-point what occassions fall into the category.

Alex P

I really don't know what to do with tags beyond just games and a few conceptual ones.

"Accessibility" seems like a great tag to have.

leokhorn

19:57

@called2voyage By the way, kinda torn on this, indeed. While "she needs to be lying in a hospital bed" makes it an obviously non-trivial issue, far from just "comfort", I couldn't call it a disability... and yet it seems to fall under the same type of issue.

Alex P

@leokhorn It's effectively a temporary disability.

leokhorn

@AlexP Whatever its final form may be, it is definitely a great tag.

called2voyage

@leokhorn Exactly why I have trouble narrowing this to mere "disability".

@AlexP Exactly, but not very intuitive.

Alex P

I mean, if I get foot surgery, they give me a handicapped placard to use for a few months.

wax eagle

@leokhorn that ok, and every community is different, which means that parts of that blog may not even apply to us, but it's still the main guidance for how SE uses tags

called2voyage

19:58

@AlexP But if you are hospitalized due to an illness, you may not think of yourself as having a disability--even if that is effectively the case.

leokhorn

Hm. I guess "disability" feels like too strong a word, but maybe that's just baggage. Maybe it is rather appropriate?

Alex P

And I'm not labeled "disabled" in common parlance but if I want to do research about how to get around &c. I really do just want to look up disability and accessibility info.

"Accessibility" is inherently a softer term than "disability" already.

Transcript for