TRPG General Chat

BESW

02:12

Sigh. I wish we had better transparency scanning services on island.

"Hi, do you scan transparencies?"
"What?"
"Like 35mm, but bigger."
"What?"
"I know you scan 35mm slides. Can you scan things like that, but bigger?"
"...oh. Umm." [pause] "Yeah, but--" [pause] "Are they in color?"

Tweets to Campaign By presents a reckless daredevil.

Louis A. Disbrow, of New York, recently drove his motor car at the rate of 70 miles an hour for almost three continuous hours. NY1910

Tweeted by TweetsofOld on September 23, 2013 at 8:21 PM

BESW

02:35

FAE vs Core: Approaches make gradations of competence unimportant. What you can do is determined by skills in Core, but by aspects and setting in FAE., whereas how you do it is flipped: Core aspects define how you do things, while approaches fill that role in FAE.

Alex P

04:16

So, this week's (US schedule) episode of Copper is totally a Burning Wheel session.

It's right after Lincoln's assassination. The protagonists decide to track down John Wilkes Booth, which involves revisiting the Civil War battlegrounds where they first became friends.

They go on a journey with a bit of orienteering involved, but mostly tense altercations with the locals, disbanded Southern troops, &c.

When they find Booth, he's already been shot dead by some soldiers, and his co-conspirator seized. So their trip is for nothing, pretty much.

But one of the PCs' prosthetic leg has become infected from pushing himself too hard. So they're forced to go to a plantation house near the old battlefield -- a place they dare not speak about because of what happened there before -- to heal him.

And they kinda face what happened there before and then go home.

So, a string of minor failures compound into dramatic character exploration. The characters never really do get their mission, but it's irrelevant.

Magician

06:18

Current Thunderbolts comics run (which has nothing to do with any of the previous Thunderbolts runs) has a quite decent premise for a brief campaign. Several anti-heroes come together to deal with things they couldn't handle individually. They make a promise: everyone gets to choose a mission when they're drawn, and the whole team helps them do it. Done right, it's a way to explore what drives each of the characters. And characters being pro-active is in-built.

2

Shkeil

07:10

Hi everyone

Magician

Hello

BESW

Wargleblurgen.

Shkeil

I think it's the first time we talk to each other, @Magician. Usually, I'm here when you jsut leave.

Magician

We probably live on opposing sides of the globe, then.

Shkeil

If I believe your location on your profile, the answer is 'Yes'

Trajan

07:59

Hi

fredsbend

08:36

For all the 40K fans. This one really made me laugh.

BESW

@fredsbend Thank you. I'm sure they'll appreciate it.

Shkeil

I don't understand, but I think it isn't surprising if I don't really know 40K.

BESW

09:04

> due to the enormous temperatures and deadly energies that Plasma Weapons generate when fired, most such weapons are prone to overheating, destabilisation and misfire. This unfortunate quality makes the weapon potentially as deadly to the wielder as it is to the target. Yet the sheer power and deadliness of Plasma Weapons often outweigh the hazards that come with their use.

Shkeil

OK, thanks.

BESW

09:19

I'm starting to accumulate information in the spoil-lair in order to design the Pharaoh Hatshepsut and her Summer Court.

Magician

I just may have to follow this.

BESW

Lovely.

fredsbend

@Shkeil When firing a plasma gun in game play the gun explodes if you role a 1 while rolling to hit your target. I personally enjoy the game more when I personify the various models. I have even named some of mine. This was funny to me because I don't have to imagine anything; this model is positioned exactly how I am thinking every time I fire a plasma gun.

BESW

09:37

@fredsbend That's 1 on d6, right?

Shkeil

@fredsbend Thanks for explanations.

So, plasma guns aren't good for me.

BESW

But they're even worse for your enemies: "Against all forms of armoured infantry and light vehicles, the superheated bolts fired by smaller Plasma Weapons impact with the fury of a supernova, scything through steel, flesh and bone as if they were nothing."

Trajan

yeah... My necrons hated those.

Shkeil

Yeah, but when you're cursed by the dices, it's not good to have it.

BESW

They're definitely more a "wargame" weapon than an "RPG" weapon.

Shkeil

09:42

I know, but dices hate me, whatever it could be for.

Mostly in RPG I have to admit.

BESW

I make the distinction that in a wargame, individuals are unimportant and expendable because you're representing the conflict of vast armies.

Magician

New mental exercise to relieve stress: imagine an ogre that dices with a huge cleaver people who add an extra "s" to the already multiple form "dice".

2

BESW

An RPG is more concerned with the fate of individuals.

Magician

Sorry, pet peeve.

BESW

So a weapon with a 1-in-6 chance of killing an individual is much more acceptable in a game where individual fatalities are just attrition.

@Magician May I suggest instead, an ogre mage who sheeps them?

Shkeil

09:46

@Magician Sorry..

Magician

@BESW That's the reason I feel odd about playing eldar or space marines: every soldier is supposedly an irreplaceable treasure and a hero in their own right. Tyranids or orks, on the other hand...

Trajan

oooh love this one

Magician

@BESW Do not question my cunning wordplay. I can imagine an ogre dicing many kinds of people. Some of them may have been sheeped first.

BESW

@Magician It occurs to me that Fate's interest in dramatic failure might support a Warhammer mod.

Shkeil

@BESW I've already hit a fumble with a 6-in-100 000 chance of it... So I prefer avoid it.

BESW

09:58

I had a player who rolled consistently low every session for years, so I feel ya.

In 4e we actually made him a character that never rolled attacks or damage.

Shkeil

@BESW The one you called the Trollock?

BESW

No, his brother.

The trollock had no problem hitting his targets.

Shkeil

OK

BESW

But this guy... instead, we designed a build where he effectively gave his actions to others.

"As my standard action, you two can each charge and attack a target of your choice."

"The goblin provoked an attack of opportunity from me. Instead of making the attack myself, the ranger gets to shoot the goblin."

Shkeil

Amazing.

BESW

10:02

I was surprised 4e was able to make it work--3.5 couldn't do it at all--but even more so that it was really effective.

Shkeil

Impressive.

BESW

Provided the other PCs made sure they had moderately useful basic attacks, he basically whipped the party into a whirling death-frenzy.

Shkeil

It's lunch time, I'll back later

BESW

ttfn

trogdor

we did have to have those decent attacks though

but, on the flip side, if no one has decent attacks,.... then we are doing something wrong

BESW

10:05

Some of the non-Essentials classes have no use for basic attacks.

trogdor

some

but if everyone picked those classes, we would have horrible diversity

BESW

Kamola the push-fighter was sub-optimal until we re-built him; his basic attacks were a free extra mark, but little more.

@trogdor Would you like input on designing Hatshepsut and/or her Court, or would you rather I do the groundwork?

trogdor

uh

for that I would rather you did it

I like the ideas you have been having for her

BESW

Okay. Anything in particular you'd like to request I focus on or incorporate? A plot, a visual, a complication?

trogdor

not in particular atm

BESW

10:21

Aight. I'll keep my work in the spoil-lair.

....huh. Ancient Egyptians drank holy water.

They believed disease was caused by demonic influence, so prayed to the gods to bless and cleanse the water before they drank it.

trogdor

huh

BESW

Naturally, beer was the most common drink because it was safer.

trogdor

I kinda figured all water was important to them

they pretty much had one big river, and that was it

BESW

Also, even when clean water was available they didn't use it much because it was a pain to transport.

trogdor

yeah

no wheels

BESW

10:26

You go to the water, you don't bring the water to you.

trogdor

till they cribbed it off invaders, I think

could be wrong

BESW

Sounds about right.

Oh, and they liked their beer cold.

trogdor

lol

in a desert area

I am sure they LIKED it cold

BESW

(As always, this kind of information is found in legal documents: A theft report says They drew a bottle of beer which was [cooling] in water, while I was staying in my father's room.)

Shkeil

11:05

Holy beer instead of holy water? Why not after all...

Trajan

a flavorful name for a shadowrun human drug dealer ?

trogdor

HUMAN NAMED CHUCK

that is his full name

Trajan

caps lock included ?

BESW

@Trajan What manner of flavor?

trogdor

@Trajan yes

that is important

Trajan

11:15

@BESW smart, not using his own medecine (too much)

stealthy, since he'd avoid tha mafia and yakuza

trogdor

mafia and yakuza in the same place?

Trajan

HUMAN NAMED CHUCK quite doesn't fit, sorry @trogdor

Zachiel

@BESW interesting. Especially the enhancing part. I'm also wawing back to you in this room.

trogdor

@Trajan aww that's too bad

Trajan

@trogdor well, Renton is a tough place to be, apparently.

BESW

11:17

@Trajan "Steady <Name>."

Trajan

Steady Chuck. Awright

Thanks

BESW

"Steady" means his hands don't shake (not a user), he doesn't flinch, and he keeps in line.

trogdor

lol

ok

Chuck is still an ok name

even without the racial explaination

(one person in our D&D group had a character who was some kind of fish man, and he called himself HUMAN NAMED CHUCK,... no one was fooled, but he believed he was very sneaky)

BESW

I believe he was actually HOOMAHN NAMED CHUK.

Trajan

pretty smart of him.

trogdor

11:22

well

whatever

in the end it's still just as awesome

Zachiel

So, @Trogdor, @Besw and any other D&D 4e player, one of my new players links me to the text for a mage feature that adds 1 damage per tier to fire damage and tells you to ignore fires resistance and asks me if it's not OverPowered. What do I tell him?

The name is Pyromancy Apprentice

trogdor

uh

fire ressit is about the most common one

but,... ignoring resist to it isn't broken as long as the DM isn't using too many fire resistant things

and anything immune to fire is still gonna ignore fire damage

and getting one more damage per tier is like a heroic feat

at least in my opinion, this isn't too broken by itself

but if you build someone to max fire damage as much as possible, it might turn out to be a little more broke than it should be

Zachiel

Part of the problem is many many feats boosting fire damage exist. While Sorcerer ignores a fixed amount of resistance, this ignores it all

trogdor

I would say, if this guy rolls a tiefling, it has potential to be pretty broken, depending on what your definition or scale of it is

yeah tiefling racial feats

Zachiel

for tiefling racial feats?

trogdor

11:35

for some reason my reply showed up above your question ><

no other race has quite the amount or quality of racial fire damage feats

and regardless of class, there is likely a weapon, or implement, or some kind of item, that makes all your damage fire damage

Zachiel

Ah he believed it also ignored immunity.

trogdor

it does not

resistance and immunity are specifically seperate

Zachiel

I told him

trogdor

one fire feat lets you treat immunity as 25 resist

I believe that one is also a tiefling racial feat

the name escapes me, but it might have been in the tiefling race's players handbook

doppelgreener

0

Q: Monsters & dungeon recommendation

In our current FR campaign, my players are strolling through the wastelands in the Old Coramsan area near calimshan -Area info- and I am looking to create an encounter for them. I have really ran out of ideas. I like my encounters on the wild to be like skyrim. Imagine something of a large sandbo...

Is this question too broad?

It appears to be asking for: a desert dungeon with guards.

(I don't know about the modules available for 3.5e, but that sounds like there could be a lot of possibilities)

Zachiel

11:44

@trogdor Burn Everything. The player just likned me that

trogdor

mm

Zachiel

Both feats are from Dragon Magazines

trogdor

ah ok

I knew of it from the character builder

Zachiel

@JonathanHobbs I think it's too narrow. It's about what his group is facing, but it could be reworded to ask about desertic adventures

trogdor

which I no longer have access to, nor do I have any reason to beyond answering 4E questions more easily

doppelgreener

11:45

@Zachiel How is it too narrow?

Or in particular, I don't think too narrow is a thing.

Zachiel

It's asking specifically what he can use to face his group. Too Narrow is not a problem, though.

doppelgreener

The Too Localized close reason was destroyed because the occasions it was properly used were nearly mythical.

Zachiel

But it's quite not too broad to me

trogdor

If I recall correctly though

that feat was Epic tier

Zachiel

Heroic

trogdor

11:48

though it my have been Paragon

wow really?

that seems wrong

then again, a few things in 4E were wrong

Zachiel

Heroic, Wizard only. But mage isn't wizard, right?

trogdor

mage is in wizard

and are you talking about the feat? or the feature?

anyway

Zachiel

the feat

trogdor

a mage is a wizard the same way a slayer is a fighter

they can pick up the feats that say "wizard only"

and the Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies

wax eagle

@Zachiel there are like 5 different wizards the two main strains are mage (early essentials) and arcanist (phb1)

all of them have access to the wizard feat list

even the shi'ar

and the witch

Zachiel

11:55

ok

so at level one one can ignore vulnerabilities to fire. Which is kinda ok to me since they don't have a damage increase, not quite that ok because they can choose not to diversify their power selection

wax eagle

@Zachiel just a note, we want specific question, but this in a way doesn't have any shade of a right answer

@Zachiel tbh that's not a great L1 feat selection...it just doesn't come up often enough...

I'd take it at 10 or 11

and I'd take a fire at-will and a non-fire at-will

Joshua Aslan Smith

@waxeagle thanks for editing that troll's answer

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith np, no need to entertain assholes. he can be wrong, he doesn't need to be wrong and a jerk

doppelgreener

@JoshuaAslanSmith which edit? the Tank answer?

Aaron

Goodmorning.

wax eagle

12:10

@Aaron g'day

Aaron

g'day mate

Shkeil

Good morning @Aaron

Nice pic

Joshua Aslan Smith

@JonathanHobbs yeah that one

good morning aaron

I did not realize until yesterday that a good amount of HTML is supported in markdown and that SE allows a fair bit of whats supported

Aaron

Thanks.

Aaron

12:33

It is quiet this morning.

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith Jeff is a hardcore markdown advocate

BESW

13:07

M'rr. I'm having trouble coming up with a good Trouble for Hatshepsut, God-king of Upper and Lower Egypt.

@javafueled Hi!

javafueled

@be

@BESW hello

wax eagle

@BESW conflict in the harem

BESW

@waxeagle Hatshepsut doesn't really... have... a harem. In fact her daughter does on the duties usually taken on by the Pharaoh's queen, since Hatshepsut doesn't have a queen.

Phil

divided council (or whatever her advisors are called)?

BESW

Being the first female ruler of Egypt to get officially named king is complicated.

wax eagle

13:16

@BESW ah didn't realize...hmmm

Phil

Conspiracies in the shadows

BESW

I wrote some stuff in the Spoil-Lair, trying to get a handle on her.

wax eagle

@BESW I'd make her trouble be related to that complication. She's seen as a potential puppet by her advisors...

BESW

(@trogdor is my player in this campaign, and he wants me to surprise him with the Pharaoh and her Court, so I had @waxeagle unfreeze the Spoil-Lair.)

wax eagle

reading what you've written now

BESW

13:20

@Phil We do have at least one secret temple cult. Again, Trogdor gave me the basic gist and asked me to surprise him with the details.

Zachiel

@javafueled You can edit your messages if you make some mistakes. You have a 2 minutes editing window IIRC.

To edit a message, hover the mouse over it and click on the pointing-down triangle on the left.

BESW

Or press the "up" arrow on your keyboard.

@Phil these are my thoughts on the "conspiracy" so far

Phil

If you want to focus on her links to her family, how about 'Blood is thicker than water'?

BESW

BESW's Spoil-Lair

CAUTION: High chance of plot. Not for BESW's players.

Joshua Aslan Smith

13:34

SPOILERS

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith doesn't work as well if you're not a sassy busty blond with a time paradox looming behind those words

javafueled

@Zachiel re: edits. yes I recall the edit capability, but don't frequent to have mastered the utility. :)

Joshua Aslan Smith

Both of the adjectives are up for debate

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith fair enough

Joshua Aslan Smith

Also I think I stopped watching Dr Who specifically because I found river song annoying

among other things, but that was a big factor

BESW

13:38

@JoshuaAslanSmith I didn't stop, but... yes.

wax eagle

@BESW no link, good explanation, I see no issue

BESW

@waxeagle Both of the posts he's made today are about the same system, though.

wax eagle

yeah, just noting that

BESW

IE, the only posts he's ever made.

wax eagle

hmmm

BESW

13:43

I'm thinking a friendly comment linking to the self-promotion policy is in order.

Phil

@BESW agreed

wax eagle

@BESW On it

BESW

@waxeagle Cool, thanks.

doppelgreener

14:13

@waxeagle Apparently Sword's Path Glory is from 1982 - maybe that poster's just a big fan?

wax eagle

@JonathanHobbs that's what I expect as well. But the self-promo addresses astro-turfing which is akin to what he's doing

doppelgreener

er whoops, I said that in the wrong room somehow.

wax eagle

I can move it if you'd like :)

BESW

← 1 message moved from BESW's Spoil-Lair

doppelgreener

@BESW Thanks

wax eagle

14:17

oh hey, that's a room owner trick :)

BESW

Bwahahahah.

It's actually a trick for the owner of the room the message is from.

doppelgreener

@waxeagle that is true I suppose! (I have learned a new word)

BESW

15:11

@PearsonArtPhoto Hey.

Trajan

15:27

Do one of you have any experience with any fan made campaign setting for D&D / PF taking place in a MtG plane ? (bonus point for Ravnica)

Joshua Aslan Smith

one sec

@trajan

dreadgazebo.net/you-got-your-mtg-in-my-dnd

wax eagle

Jerry!

Joshua Aslan Smith

@waxeagle hes such a great guy, I just wish he could publish more on his blog

which I say as my own bar and restaurant blog lists without a post for months

wax eagle

heh :) The only blog I've actively been a part of is on indefinite hiatus...

(and I didn't even really write for it)

I should start one soon. Maybe when I get my baseball project started

Joshua Aslan Smith

15:42

my wife and I started a review blog for Philly when we both got new jobs and had enough income to spend going out to eat frequently

wax eagle

nice

Trajan

@JoshuaAslanSmith Thanks. I'm thinking about writing my own tabletop rpg adaptation of Ravnica, but I guess I'm not the first one, so I'm looking for inspiration and/or existing systems.

Joshua Aslan Smith

systems?

@trajan honestly I would work completely within the core systems presented in pathfinder or your chosen D&D edition

Just use the MtG cards as fluff inspiration and a basis for custom monster/adversaries/items.

BESW

Hmmm.

I can see an interesting re-build of 4e power sources based on M:tG.

Huh. I am suspicious of EN World's "top secret algorithm."

Joshua Aslan Smith

Any ranking system like this is doomed

DOOMED I SAY

BESW

15:58

Without knowing what it's using as data, it means nothing to me.

Joshua Aslan Smith

thats the big deal with metacritic right now

they wont release the cabalistic system of balancing various sources for weight and thus you have an end result that you're like, "huh?"

started a new Cookie Clicker game. Just buying 1 of each tier of cookie productions as soon as possible

than going back to fillin extra and buy upgrades

(this based on as few physical clicks as possible)

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith heh, I've got the 15 click shadow achievement in all of my games so far I think.

James J. Regan IV

@JoshuaAslanSmith Golden cookies are a big part of that if I understand things properly. (or are you counting those as "physical clicks"

wax eagle

I've reset all 3 of them. One of them I got 44 heavenly chips :)

BESW

Spam to flag, please.

Joshua Aslan Smith

16:02

I dont know what golden cookies are

please tell me your wisdom

BESW

(I haven't seen Winx Club spam before.)

Joshua Aslan Smith

flagged

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith there is a small gold cookie that appears randomly on the screen. Click it for fun things happening

Joshua Aslan Smith

in the cookie cascade?

wax eagle

there are 4 possibilities by default. x7 production for 7 seconds, 1/7 if you current cookies, x77 on cookie clicks for 7 seconds and a very small odds of triggering a cookie chain

@JoshuaAslanSmith can be anywhere on the screen

Joshua Aslan Smith

16:04

im freaking out now you just took a passive game and made it incredibly tense and proactive

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith cookieclicker.wikia.com/wiki/Golden_Cookie more here

Trajan

@JoshuaAslanSmith I'm trying to decide on custom guild-related classes or regular poorly-adapted classes

James J. Regan IV

@JoshuaAslanSmith Yea, and that's why I stopped playing...it got too much...so I just cheated to get all of the achievements...I think I ended up something like 2*10^55 cookies.

Joshua Aslan Smith

hah I think I will just ignore the special cookis

and go for passive cookie rate increases only

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith for the most part just click them when you see them. They start out pretty rare. When you click 7 of them there is an upgrade you can buy to make them appear a bit more often

BESW

16:28

Here's a Fate fractal hack I want to explore some time: running a four-character team as a single fractal controlled by one player, instead of a single player character.

But for now, bed.

Alex P

16:51

So, umm, I learned something today.

Max Rebo Band

The Max Rebo Band is a fictional alien pop music band that appeared in the 1983 film Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi as in-house performers for crime lord Jabba the Hutt. The original lineup consisted of the blue-skinned Ortolan keyboardist Max Rebo, a plump Kitonak woodwind player named Droopy McCool, and the spindly-legged Pa'lowick lead singer Sy Snootles. Their role in the Star Wars canon is elaborated upon in several Expanded Universe short stories and comics. The group are classified as jizz-wailers, which, according to the Star Wars Encyclopedia, refers to a "musician ...

> In the 2000 Dark Horse release A Hot Time in the Cold Town Tonite!, Jabba sends the puzzled trio to the frozen planet Hoth to play for a rival crime lord, Bingo Mehndra, who threatens to feed the band to his pet Wampa if he suspected any kind of trickery. The group soon discovers that Jabba is actually using them as pawns in an assassination attempt against Bingo after they discover explosives hidden inside their speakers.

> They make their getaway by superimposing holograms of themselves from a past performance onto the stage, which Bingo realizes just as the explosives detonate. Though Jabba had blatantly endangered their lives, the band nonetheless chooses to avoid his wrath by returning to Tatooine

That is all rather silly.

wax eagle

17:24

my birthday's coming up so I'll just leave this here: thinkgeek.com/product/134b/?cpg=fb

Joshua Aslan Smith

thats pretty good actually

theres tons of stuff on thinkgeek that I would enjoy getting but fall short of me asking people to get for me

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith yeah

Joshua Aslan Smith

because theres a backlog of boardgames, videogames, books, and films that I think id rather have if given an either or choice

wax eagle

I've placed a couple of orders...but there's more stuff there that I sort of want but wouldn't spend money on.

Joshua Aslan Smith

I used to order regularly when I consumed way too much caffeine (monthly order for a case of bawls at least if not anything else)

wax eagle

17:30

makes sense, I never did try bawls and I'm too old for that stuff now

Joshua Aslan Smith

haha

so I got into bawls because they had a sugar free version

that also has 50% more cafeeine

so win-win

this was the dark days of my senior year as an undergraduate where I would drink an energy drink in the car on the way to work and then drink like 6 cups of free coffee during the day at my student job

wax eagle

yowsers. I was drinking a lot of energy drinks sophomore year. I was playing baseball, dating and had to keep my grades up. During spring baseball would practice starting at 6am 3 days a week, and I was picking up my girlfriend from her job 3 nights a week and it ended at midnight.

we got married that summer though and I quit playing baseball. That was pretty much the end of that level of caffeine addiction. I drink several cups of coffee a day and have a diet soda now...

Joshua Aslan Smith

17:48

Free coffee is a terrible thing

especially when its brewed in big ol pots that are 5 feet from where you sit

I drank it because it was there to be drunk

and ended up addicted to caffeine in a real sense (but not life damaging) where if I really needed it to stay up to work on a script Id take a 4 hour monster shot and drink a regular monster at the same time

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith yeah. I've got a giant darth vader mug that I consume between two and three of during the course of a morning. I try not to drink any in the afternoon or I'm too hyper when I get home

fredsbend

18:02

@BESW Yes, a d6. 40K is dominated by d6 rolls. There are rare d4 rolls that I have seen, but it is almost exclusively d6.

wax eagle

yikes....that's some pretty good odds to get blown to pieces...16%?

fredsbend

Yes, but its got pretty good odds to destroy its target (assuming you also don't roll a 2 or 3 because that would mean you missed).

So you got a 50% chance of hitting your target, and as high as 84% for destroying it, and 16% that you kill yourself in the process.

Alex P

@fredsbend When I read this I just knew I would scroll up and see that picture. ;)

fredsbend

18:24

Cool. I like it enough that I think I might try to make one myself. Need a spare plasma rifle though.

The Oracle

19:33

0

Q: Is there a way we can remind people of unaswered questions?

Lately, it seems to me that the amount of questions with no upvoted answers is increasing, and what more, some of the older questions seem to be getting themselves forgotten. Now it may be that the question IS obscure, and we have no experts on the topic, but I think many of these could be answ...

discussion unanswered-questions

Zachiel

20:12

@Trajan I should have Akroma statted as a 23 HD paladin solar somewhere...

@BESW DW is listed as D&D product. LoL

javafueled

20:27

Would a question about the Pantone colors (if they could be matched) of the BECMI boxes be completely off base?

Basic (red), Expert (blue), Companion (cyan), Master (black) and Immortal (gold).

I get that "black" is "black" but I'm interested in the colors of the others.

In the world of Pantone, red is not just red, it's "Pantone Red 032 U"

i try PS with this image...

BESW

21:11

@javafueled I'm unclear what exactly the question would be.

Are you asking exactly what spot colors each cover should be?

javafueled

@BESW the spot or process colors

i'm guessing coated

BESW

I'm not sure if it'd be more suited to rpg.se or gd.se.

Both could work, and I think it depends on which site would require less explanation of the other site's specialty knowledge.

javafueled

someone with the boxes might be able to get the spot colors, if the register was in box itself. You see this sometimes today.

agreed.

you know I'll post there.

BESW

That'd mean gd.se is a better fit because you need to explain less about RPGs than about color processing.

javafueled

that's a good idea. I seeded on my G+ RPG circles too. I have a number of Graphics friends there. I'm fair to middling myself, but I don't do it for a living.

BESW

21:30

It would be trivial to hold a swatch set up to the covers IRL... if a person could find covers that were for-sure not faded.

If I were going to do it fast and cheap, I'd just find about 20 different high-quality photos of the covers on the Internet and average the results.

@shatterspike1 Having spent five years trying to do this and finding the best solution was "close your eyes and wish really hard," I'm looking forward to the answers you get.

shatterspike1

@BESW I'm surprised no-one asked the question before. My personal thoughts on it are somewhat like how Legend handles the Paladin; it has to do with personal moral code and how well others align to it.

BESW

@shatterspike1 I've held forth on the subject before: 3.5 alignment is inherently objective, and as you've noticed its objectivity is rooted deep in the game's mechanics.

Making alignment subjective takes the teeth out of the mechanics and renders an entire subset of the game's features... wibbly, at best.

For example, what if a cleric of Feeding Cheese to Small Animals casts holy word?

shatterspike1

@BESW Then those opposed to the feeding of cheese to small animals will be affected as if evil. Those with no opinion will be affected as if neutral.

Silly, I know.

BESW

@shatterspike1 But that's intent. D&D alignment is act-based.

shatterspike1

It does seem to result in an awful lot of DM calls, at least a few of which may be disputed.

BESW

21:44

Remember, D&D alignment is demonstrably objective.

shatterspike1

@BESW BUT MY CHARACTER IS TOTALLY FOR FEEDING CHEESE TO SQUIRRELS! He just hates opossums is all.

BESW

Detect evil cannot determine the difference between someone who kicks puppies because he believes Pelor wishes it, and someone who kicks puppies because they make a funny noise.

shatterspike1

@BESW And yet the whole distinction is the reason in the first place for removing the alignment system.

BESW

The alignments create realms, grant spells, and are objective spell-trigger criteria. I have yet to be able to pry them out of the system without just pretending they still exist when I run into a mechanic that needs them.

shatterspike1

@BESW I think the question is difficult to answer, but not impossible. The rework may be substantial though; it definitely changes a lot of setting-specific assumptions.

BESW

22:01

I suspect that if you want to preserve the functional result of alignment-based effects in the murder-hobo environment, you just turn all alignment checks into "Will I agree with this guy?" vs "Will I feel guilty about killing this guy?"

Because that's what alignment is, when you get down to exactly how it informs player choices.

Alex P

Shrug, that's just one of those cases where trying to preserve the exact mechanics is a waste of time, I think.

So what if Holy Word only works against demons now?

I'd argue that this isn't as much of a balance problem as just deciding to go from 25-point standard array to 32-point point-buy.

shatterspike1

@AlexP Given that Holy Word is a very powerful spell, I'd say it matters at least a little.

Hmm...

Alex P

It's a powerful spell for clerics. So, exactly.

shatterspike1

I do like the Smite evil suggestion though

BESW

23:13

@AlexP It's not framed as a balance question, though.

It's framed as how to retain those mechanics which assume alignment, as close to their original form as possible, without actually using alignment.

BESW's Spoil-Lair

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