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01:00 - 16:0016:00 - 00:00

01:17
Hello.
:(
I just noticed they undid @Rob's title
@Rob and @C.Ross Were there any actual complaints about it?
@JonathanHobbs Hahahaha I thought they changed it to can I vampiricly touch myself. HEhehehe I am so immature :)
@Aaron It was like that before :P
I feel like a bit of good creative expression has just been snubbed
Oh. hehehehehe
01:26
That is awesome.
01:44
@JonathanHobbs I debated a bit before I approved that edit...(being the awesome title advocate that I am)...But I decided that it was potentially offensive and that if even a few folks were uncomfortable with it then it should probably go
Hm, alright :(
I can understand that change then. Though I am still disappointed we edited away an awesome title c(:
@JonathanHobbs I didn't hear any. I removed the nonsense because ... this isn't a forum
@JonathanHobbs awesome is in the eye of the beholder
To what extent does this being not a forum preclude having titles like that? :P
@JonathanHobbs mod stare
I'm honestly considering NOT buying a game I've been excitedly watching for months because they happily advertised they have poo monsters and sewage golems ... :-S
@C.Ross not a mod stare
01:49
@JonathanHobbs note he only removed the parenthetical...the innuendo was removed in a suggested edit later...
Well I guess the paranthetical was what indicated "yes this is an innuendo joke"
@JonathanHobbs yeah, and was inappropriate ... keep the silliness to chat and comments ...
welcome @AlexP
@C.Ross Alright. Because it was innuendo or something else?
@JonathanHobbs The innuendo to an extent. The thing I jumped on was the parenthetical in the title
Mainly I'm inquiring because I think it's healthy to be able to be creative with titles - as long as they still very clearly convey their meaning. E.g.: "Can I kill everybody?" from that meta topic is a little silly.
01:52
Hi!
Hi @Alex!
Title shows up in Google, and may well be the first encounter someone has with our site
creative is good ... but ... it should be well polished and in good taste (with respect to the general RPG community)
@C.Ross What game is this?
@C.Ross Alright, I can respect that. (I guess I am less concerned about jokes like that than the norm, too.)
Is this the kind of game where you're supposed to jump on the baddies to kill them?
Because, umm.
I just don't think it sets a good tone when two posts on your dev/progress blog pre-release feature poo ...
@AlexP thankfully not that. swords, guns, etc.
I don't find it offensive, but it makes the game seem... juvenile.
In a way that wouldn't be fun to play for an extended period of time, I guess?
@AlexP exactly
Oh, that reminds me. I need to play the new Starsector.
They finally added something halfway resembling a "campaign mode."
02:02
I have so many games to play ...
Really looking forward to the next Kerbal Space Program update
Oh, man, KSP is on my list.
That's about it, really.
@AlexP it's totally worth it
next version should have the beginnings of campaign mode, some significant ship building improvements (saveable sub parts), and supposedly some optimizations...
@BESW I just heard the problem with 3.5e's class tiers put rather eloquently...
> The problem with 3.5 is that "Tier 5" classes need heavy DM coddling to work, and Tier 1 need heavy DM shutdowns. One player is constantly being rewarded OOC by the DM because of his class choice, the other is constantly being punished and shut down.
Yeah, that's why I hate the "A Good GM..." thing.
Because I feel like half the time the thing that comes after it is something close to treating players like dogs I am supposed to be training.
@AlexP ummm ... I think I missed something?
02:14
When people say that class disparity doesn't matter because "a good GM" will do that think @JonathanHobbs is describing.
ahhhh
Tip the scales by propping up or shutting down PCs.
yeah, I always hated that ... more the shutting down side ...
I mean, I don't mind share-the-spotlight stuff.
"Hey, Mr./Ms. GM, please make sure everyone gets their moment at the forefront" is fine. I understand that this is just a good idea for a lot of games.
I thought perhaps you meant table refereeing ... which can occasionally be a rather visceral task
02:19
@C.Ross That's true also, I suppose. I'm much happier not really "MCing" when I GM. In the sense of being, like, the host, you know?
@AlexP oh, I understand ... but it often happens
Oooh, fun thing! Wikipedia article with a neat chart.
Icelandic magical staves (sigils) are symbols credited with magical effect preserved in various grimoires dating from the 17th century and later. According to the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, the effects credited to most of the staves were very relevant to the average Icelanders of the time, who were mostly subsistence farmers and had to deal with harsh climatic conditions. Table of magical staves {| class="wikitable" style="padding: 0.5ex; text-align: center" ! Icelandic name and English translation !! Manuscript description !! Image |- | Að fá stúlku || Love from a woman ...
2
we've experimented with having "party leaders" who keep things in line (as much OoC as IC) and that works well, but obviously you have to have the right personalities for it and buy in ...
Good resource if you want wizard-y symbols for things but your standard alchemical stuff is too "clean" or "modern" or "Roman" for your wizards.
I need some sleep, night y'all
02:28
Night!
 
2 hours later…
04:39
@AlexP I'm impressed by the voodoo feeling of these symbols.
@Trajan To my eye, some of them are clearly intended to be fairly big.
As opposed to, say, alchemical symbols, which are trying to be text.
@AlexP the article doesn't mention where to carve these.
Except the no-leaking one
@Trajan Some of them are mentioned as going into shoes or your hat.
I'm not sure how much I trust the sources.
Wikipedia's Norse stuff is kinda all over the place, as far as I can tell.
It's drawing on relatively few sources and the articles don't necessarily mesh together well.
Which is different from saying "it's not true," of course.
My point was it disturbingly looks like these : web.archive.org/web/20071204122036/http://altreligion.about.com/…
@Trajan I really like the geometric ones there.
I definitely see the resemblance.
The little asterisk-like projections on the endpoints of lines, for instance.
05:07
My friend says that Ægishjálmur is just like (some variation of?) a Vévé symbol.
05:30
@Zachiel That is the issue with a party of full casters.
 
3 hours later…
08:34
Looks like @Trogdor and I won't be doing anything tonight due to weather and his not even being online.
Maybe I'll go see a late showing of Riddick.
08:50
I wasn't on because I was at work
and before that I was sleeping at my actual house
rather than the one I am sitting, which has my computer
then I made to mistake of going home and telling my dad I was in no hurry
anyway, I will head out now
See you soon.
 
3 hours later…
11:47
So. Anybody here can help me stat a lvl 20/20 character so it's hard for full casters but not impossible to beat?
D&D 3.0e
12:34
@BESW So Riddick was averted? Hurray!
13:05
Mh mh mh mh I have one day to build a level 21 character for D&D 3.0...
Any hints on what could help me?
13:47
@Zachiel steal something from someone else?
14:11
@AlexP We went and saw it together, then watched an episode of Kolchak; he hadn't seen that show before.
@waxeagle found Kiaransalee's 3.0 stats. Maybe I don't need to stat up her cleric if I drop an avatar in the fight
@BESW How was the Riddick?
Better than Chronicles, not as tight as Pitch Black.
I enjoyed it, but it's not going to be a guilty pleasure like Pitch Black is.
Pitch Black had nothing... extra. Every set piece, every prop, every character had a purpose in the plot and the themes.
Riddick was sloppier. It had a number of extra bits that didn't really add anything, not even "ooh, MANLY." Which, in this film, would have been sufficient.
Ursula Vernon's review is pretty much spot-on.
> It’s somewhat [...] erratic. At times you are conscious of watching a bad movie (a very manly bad movie) but there are a few parts that are downright brilliant (the scene with the storage locker is hysterically well done) and also it’s a Riddick movie and thus a lot of badass fun with quite good CGI aliens ala Pitch Black
It is... manly.
> You remember those 1950′s pulp magazines called, like, “MAN’S DIGEST” which had a cover of some shirtless guy punching a jaguar in the face with a snake? Manly like that. Replace “shirtless guy” with “shirtless Vin Diesel” and “jaguar” with “alien scorpion snapping turtle” and you’ve about got it.
I'm pretty sure it's literally Weasels Ripped My Flesh.
So I Ate the Weasels and Spat Their Teeth at My Enemies.
14:20
Except it's Vin Diesel, so he's making a manlier face. And they're Space Weasels.
+20 to hit once per day?
They have Testosterone Venom. Only Diesel is immune.
The question is: is that man planning to individually water-slap the weasels to death, one at a time, or is he going to use the weasel he is holding to sweep the others away with some kind of arcing attack?
Also, I think it's time to pull out XXXXtreme Street Luge again.
14:23
All hail TAOgames
Good morning.
Hey.
There's some Manly Sexist content that really didn't have to be there, but out of the three obvious interpretations of one of the last scenes, only one of them is really offensive... and based on previous outings like Pitch Black I think it's the least likely intended.
But still, could've done without it entirely.
thanks for the edits @besw. Only clipped one thing from it, but otherwise it's cool
Mostly it just needed expanding and re-ordering to put the rule first and the interpretation second.
mmmmh can anyone tell me which are the best protection from energy -like spells in D&D 3.0? I want to have an NPC last some more rounds without shutting the wizard down
14:31
We give priority to what comes first, and a simple re-order does wonders.
Nothing in it currently lessens it.
And you did clarify my grammar on it - which I am thankful for
Hey @Zachiel Are we starting the game this weekend or next?
I tried to keep to your words as much as possible, and use your style when I had to add. If it'd been my answer, for example, I would've talked about "my hit points" instead of "your hit points."
Seems less in-your-face that way, and re-emphasizes that I'm speaking from my own table.
my only bone was with "I think" :P it's just a pet peeve of mine
my on-campus entrepreneur teacher uses it all the time
after he instructed us the first day to not use it
Can I summon undead and still be good?
14:34
"Consider" works too, because it demonstrates that the idea to follow is not a rule to be followed.
It's kindof a grey area for a lot.
@aaron I don't recall those summon spells having the (evil) descriptor
But "I think" is, in that case, absolutely accurate.
Sweet.
I shall raise an undead army... For the good guys!!!
@Zachiel Must it be spells, and what level do you have available?
14:35
Not really.
@Aaron Next I think. Leokhorn still needs a character. And I need to prepare the final boss of my P&P campaign in one day
Ok.
Consider did keep it in line with "my experience/opinion" without having to qualify anything
@BESW clr17/hie3
@Zachiel which hie abilities?
14:36
@Zachiel Do you have spell resistance already/do you expect the energy damage to be susceptible to SR?
The wizard has a +21 to his SR check IIRC, the SR is 31
and that doesn't go away with a disjunction, luckily
Level 5 BoED cleric spell resonating resonance forces two SR checks, take the worst.
Must it be spells?
my will save is +19, wizard DCs are up to 37 (10+int+spelllevel+feats, right?)
@BESW possibly, not set in stone
@LitheOhm divine reach, spell power +2, blast infidel
I'm reading the statblock and deducing from there
If some aren't hierophant things I'll take a deeper look
Sorry, BoVD, not BoED. Mistyped.
Armor of the Dread Emperor: +1 full plate for 14,650g. BoVD 111. Has four chains, each five feet long, attached to it with neck manacles on the ends.
Are the fearun deities the same as the ones listed in the players handbook?
14:43
Put humanoids in the neck manacles, and any time you take damage you divide half of it beween them instead of dealing it to yourself.
@Aaron Nope.
Ok. I am just looking at the domains right now. Are they listed in the players guide?
@Aaron Not sure, I'm not too familiar with actually using Faerun.
Armor of the Dread Emperor goes well with the Belt of the Dread Emperor (attach someone to its chain and drain their hp to regain spell slots) and the Ring of the Dread Emperor (every day you kill a humanoid of at least 10th level, you take no penalties from wearing armor--including the increased penalties for having those five humanoids chained to you).
Of course, it also makes you a jerk for forcing your players to consider hostages.
I hate books that don't have an index.
@BESW I'm letting them use disjunction what else do they want from me? XD
@Zachiel That's not a very healthy relationship right there.
14:52
@Aaron in the FR campaign setting book they're after the spells, right.... near to the portals
@BESW They just hit level 17 for the first time in their life. They saw new toys. I can't, can't, can't take them away.
I look at them and I see their faces turning into puppy eye faces in my mind
Yes, but if you think of it as a "letting them do this, so they won't complain about that," dynamic...
17th level. disjunction. oh gods. that is one of the worst spells/mechanics of 3.5, imo. vitally necessary, which makes it even worse.
The Ring of the Dread Emperor, by the way, is a minor artifact.
@Zachiel so it is not in the players guide to FR?
@Aaron I'm not sure they've been updated, let me check
@BESW oh no I was jokin abuot that :p
14:58
@Zachiel I am not finding it. I have a list of the deities I want though.
I wanted the domains Craft and Metal and these are the deities that have both
Dumathoin, Flandal Steelskin, Gond, Laduguer
@Magician I hated it because it existed only to render my work pointless.
...that, and make the first couple turns of combat take ten minutes apiece.
If we're just going to strip the enemies down, why not start that way?
Instead of playing disenchant roulette.
10 minutes? you must have been incredibly efficient
@Magician I was incredibly not playing that game.
I've had one attempt at running high-level 3.5. eventually we gave up. the party could take 2 disjunctions without suffering any ill effects.
@BESW I'll make rolling a fast thing. Praparing a list, pre-rolling (with his ok) some crucial items like the artifacts
@Magician how?
15:01
The instant my players started throwing disjunction around, I added all the necessary fiddly bits next to each spell effect on my sheets and made sure to keep them minimal in the first place.
And I never threw disjunction at them. I weaseled around it.
mmmh so my idea of having kiaransalee show up, I discarded that.
@Zachiel ring of greater counterspelling, and one of the PCs was a disciple of sevenfold veil (if that's the right name), and so always had a prismatic something-or-other effect around him, and one of the layers protected from disjunction
My greatest GM vs Players moment was probably when the level 27 fighter failed a Will save vs first-level command, and had to hand over his sword to the Witch Queen. Who then disintegrated it as a free action.
Isn't command a one-word-only command?
"Gimme."
15:03
@BESW yup. Either the PCs steamroll everything with 20 precast spells, or you go through them, one at a time. and then items. one at a time. figuring out caster levels of each. and if you do break them, congratulations, you've broken the essential dynamic of the game, and your PCs are now crippled
@BESW I wouldn't allow that. it's "give me"
"Give" would have been either the sword, or surrendering.
So in the end it's the same thing.
@BESW I would have given the finger
And if you want to get picky, just about every one-word command is implying a subject.
After all, "Sleep" is "You go to sleep."
And PCs still use it, because that's just how you break through high-level spells. and of course they then run the risk of going through the exact same process, and watching their loot disintegrate. it's just a lose-lose-lose situation.
15:05
Intransitive verbs
So there's precedent for implied subjects, like accompanying "give" with a gesture toward the sword.
The problem with Italian is that "commit suicide" is a single word, subject included.
"Surrender" isn't intransitive.
@Zachiel what are these deities like?
Dumathoin, Flandal Steelskin, Gond, Laduguer
This is a list of Forgotten Realms deities. They are all deities that appear in the fictional Forgotten Realms campaign setting of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Forgotten Realms vs. core D&D The deities of other Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings, including those of the default (or "core") setting for the Dungeons & Dragons game, are not generally a part of Forgotten Realms. However, there is some overlap, especially among the deities of nonhuman races. Lolth, the principal deity of the drow in the Forgotten Realms, is specifically described as being the same deity as Lolth ...
15:09
@Aaron I suggest you google for a wikia called portal:deities
So, the PCs go in. I suppose they win initiative. The wizard is asked a knowledge (religion) roll and might recognize the holy artifacts of Kiaransalee's cult. He either casts disjunction on all the rest of the people in the room or tries casting it on the priestess too and has 17% chance to stop being a wizard right after that, twice.
At a certain point, the heavy casters are just playing who-goes-first.
If the wizard is smart he casts stop time, then several sonic delayed fireballs, then disjunction on his last hasted timestopped round
(And there's a spell for that.)
At epic levels I was fond of auto-quickened nonlethal sonic delayed blast "fire"balls, at a rate of about four per round, on maximized empowered auto-quickened timestops.
that should be enough to kill everybody in the room alone. Then the cleric casts stop time, portals in an elder elemental, buff him and proceeds to cast stone walls
(Nonlethal means most of the loot's still fine, even if it was vulnerable to sonic. I was a librarian and didn't want to damage any Weird Books the cultists might be carrying around.)
15:12
@BESW Um. What level were you, to maximize, empower, and somehow auto-quicken tiemstops?
I see no way in which this encounter doesn't end in a carnage.
at round one
@Magician Epic. 31ish.
unless I get the NPC to level 21 and get the feat that lets me act during other people's time stops, bull rushing into the wizard's place as soon as he casts the last time-stopped spell
(The "ish" comes from the way that group didn't really understand level adjustments.)
I was a demilich.
Epic metamagic feat Automatic Quicken Spell lets you automatically quicken spells up to a level equal to [the number of times you take the feat] x3, without increasing their level, max level 9.
Ummm. Do demiliches get in-built casting? I remember most of the supposedly "arcane" races being terrible character choices, as their LA would make their spellcasting absolutely disgraceful.
15:17
And I tracked down something amusing that let me cast quickened spells multiple times per round by taking the feat over and over.
@Magician That's where the 31"ish" comes in.
Demiliches do not have level adjustments.
They have a challenge rating (lich +6), and "advancement by character class."
Because you're not supposed to play one! Which is almost as if it was 0.
They also have an XP/gp entrance fee.
So I took my lich level adjustment (+4) and wandered on my merry way.
...of course.
15:20
so, what was the DM reaction to you casting all that?
I had no qualms about this, because this group I was playing in ignored racial HD when calculating level adjustments.
@Zachiel "Huh."
And shortly thereafter, "Spell reflection."
Spell reflection doesn't work against most spells
I twinned chained disintegrates on an army, and took out a good 3/4 of them... but also myself.
eh ok chained target spells
you kinda called for it
But this is where demiliches show their true merit.
15:22
they come back
More than that.
Liches "come back."
Demiliches have at-will astral projection.
So I sat in my popped bag of holding with all my loot, and if I was killed I was two standard actions (astral projection and an Int check on my Amulet of the Planes) away from being back exactly where I wanted to be.
(Amulet of the Planes, if you succeed on the DC 15 Int check, has pinpoint accuracy that plane shift doesn't.)
And if someone took a silver sword of my astral cord and actually killed me... well, that's where the 1d10 days come in.
Any time I wanted to add loot to my bag, my astral projected self would buy a new bag. For less than a round I'd be out of my sanctuary and vulnerable in the real world while I switched bags.
golfclap
So suppose my BBEG uses astral projection and the players only kill the projection... they like go out thinking they won and one month later I conquer the world with my epic spell?
3.x is stupid this way.
Or do the bodies dissolve, forcing a spellcraft check, leading them to understand something's wrong and needing to face the enemies again this time for true?
(after consumption of some of their better spells)
15:29
Oh, and my GM had previously established that in his campaign setting, all extradimensional spaces of indefinite article "an extradimensional space" went to a single dimension, and each one was a cell in an infinite honeycomb.
Because this was seriously tempting to interdimensional thieves, ALL the gods made a pact to keep it sacrosanct, and placed a demigod to guard the plane.
@Zachiel Astral projection bodies vanish on "death," snapping back to the previous plane they traveled from.
@BESW this allowing for a spellcraft check to recognize the effects of a spell. Nice
So I basically forced a demigod to be my bodyguard, and if anyone took it out, he'd have the entire pantheon of gods honor-bound to hunt him down.
@BESW I'd have told the demigod to "look somewhere else while we get rid of that exploiter"
@Zachiel Ah, but the whole point of the demigod is that the extradimensional spaces were sacrosanct. Neutral ground.
If anyone got away with saying "not a fair use of this space," then everyone else would start clamouring for THEIR enemy to get banned from using bags of holding, magical mansions, and so forth.
Mmmh what about a pledge to the gods to modify their pact, all togheter? Since the pact was made to prevent exploits and this was a new, unforeshadowed exploit...
so one was extremely safe just by living in a magical mansion, too?
15:35
[grin] By that time, I'd made too many friends.
@Zachiel Only if someone tried to get into it through the membrane separating it from the other cells in the honeycomb.
I'd established my own demiplane library with portals to it in every major city in the multiverse. It wasn't infinite, but it was on the way to being infinite.
But I mean anyone entering your bag of holding from the intended "door" could have legitimately slain you
@Zachiel Yes.
ah ok not as safe as I was expecting
Or if they cleverly managed to use plane shift to get from a definite-article plane to an indefinite-article plane.
(Which is... not easy. When it's possible at all.)
I'd go for tricking you into bringing another bag of holding in somehow, hiding it in the loot.
15:38
not a bag of holding: a portable hole
Given that plane shift can be MILES off at the best of times, hitting that target without winding up in a bag of holding full of angry demons would be tricky.
In other news, I've just preordered 13th Age Bestiary. I'm now flipping through the playtest pdf and giggling. Even though I'm a player right now. So giggling in terror. It has a list of things one can find inside a bullette's stomach. And headers like "Chuuls Are Smart and They Hate You!"
hey peeps
Hey.
i am aware i cant reproduce a char, faithfully in a rigid system like dnd
but I wanna roleplay riddick's style
15:44
Aye.
Chat, he's talking about this question:
0
Q: How do I build Riddick from The Chronicles of Riddick, in Pathfinder?

DiscipolJust came back from Riddck 3 and I loved it. Less than Riddick 2, I am afraid, but enjoyable still. I would like a 20 build for him, as a survivalist, adapter to any situation, a mix of rogue and close-range combatant. He would go well as a ninja but I want to empathize on intelligence, tactics...

So, if we go to my Gandalf question, you need to come up with a short phrase that describes Riddick and his "style."
Because he's more things at once than PF can handle: he's a trapmaster, a tracker, an ambush hunter, a brawler, a clever provocateur, a man who can read humans and animals alike.
a ranger with ranks in diplomacy?
PF can't have him do all that equally well.
In Fate terms, his social skills are more like Empathy and Provoke.
brawler is gonna be the thing that will hurt the others more or be hurt more from the others
3.5 never managed trapmasters very well. I doubt PF made many advances.
And then there's this: RPG characters fail. Inevitably.
The dice go badly, the GM stacks things a bit too much, and you fail.
I've seen many PCs based on film or TV or book characters, and nearly all of them have this one problem: they aren't intended to randomly fail for no good reason, like the d20 System expects you to.
Riddick just doesn't roll 1s.
the goddamn lvl 20 priestess' powered up statistics (after she's cast all she got) include a whopping 24 AC.
15:51
So as you create a Riddick-based character, you have to remember: he's not Riddick simply because he's going to fail, randomly and for no good reason that anyone in the story can see.
riddick was a level 1 character once, too
this would be riddick at age 16 :P
@BESW I so hate RPGs. Even more than I do looking at my previous sentence.
@Zachiel This is, again, something I like about Fate. It gives narrative reasons to failure, and makes failure produce interesting results instead of simply turning into a wall.
If failure wouldn't be interesting, Fate doesn't allow you to fail.
@BESW is it only good to tell stories of heroes that had to endure something hard and face failure?
In other words, is there not a "Walker Texas Ranger: the RPG"?
@Zachiel It's pretty flexible. It's best when describing "competent, dramatic, proactive" characters, but we've been experimenting with changing what the character is competent at. What do you have in mind?
(For example, in a Lovecraftian game, the character might simply be competent at surviving and not going mad. That's pretty big in that setting!)
If you want a super-competent character, that's fine too--but he's going to face obstacles in getting his goals, or his stories won't be interesting.
You've seen the Superman example, right?
15:57
@BESW Maybe it's D&D throwing punches under the belt at me and my will to get a better treatment. I'd like a competent character showing how cool it is. The opposition shouldn't be weak but it should be easy for me to think of a way to win.
@Zachiel In many cases in Fate, even if you fail the die roll, you can choose to succeed at cost.
@BESW Superman had lots of problems and moments where he felt so weak. Or couldn't protect what he cared for
So you get what you were rolling for, but something happens to complicate things.
@BESW And that's a good way to make sure you don't fail at critical points
Like, last session with Trogdor, his character was building the Pharaoh's birthday gift and trying to keep it a secret.
15:59
I know how it's gone
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