TRPG General Chat

BESW

01:27

.@madge707 I once spent three weeks on the road as an emergency replacement badger.

Tweeted by MaryRobinette on January 7, 2014 at 10:33 PM in reply to madge707

@MaryRobinette that's even better! Did you have to bring your own badger or was the badger included?

Tweeted by madge707 on January 7, 2014 at 10:34 PM in reply to MaryRobinette

@madge707 The badger was included in a teakettle.

Tweeted by MaryRobinette on January 7, 2014 at 10:35 PM in reply to madge707

Alex P

What.

Obligatory badger-costume protester picture.

(From that article about how they got into a fight with neo-Nazis once.)

RedRiderX

01:42

@AlexP What is this I don't even

BESW

@RedRiderX The British government started up a badger cull earlier this year, to help reduce the spread of livestock diseases.

There were protests.

RedRiderX

Oh wow

Alex P

02:05

So, the EDL (motto: "We want Britain to be about British") was having a march the same day. And the badger people (who are not all pretty ladies, but you know how news pictures work) got into a fight with them and chased them around.

Lord_Gareth

Blargl

Alex P

Hi.

BESW

@Lord_Gareth Sssssspshhh.

Magician

03:16

Morning!

BESW

Yo.

...Brown rice sweet potato roasted onion Triscuits are amazing.

Alex P

A useful, though incomplete, distinction: what usually happens in a game when you fail? A.) You try again. B.) You proceed onward.

BESW

C.) You find an online forum with people who take your side, print out the relephant threads, and confront your GM with them.

Alex P

That's more like A'.

BESW

03:31

No, A' is the alternate-universe setting of the fanfic you wrote in which it all turned out the way you wanted it to.

Alex P

Touche!

BESW

(The apostrophe is pronounced "boing.")

Magician

...I feel like I've missed the context of this exchange.

BESW

@Magician Context? We don't need no stinkin' context.

Alex P

Summary of conversation: Statement based on reading a thread elsewhere. Humorous but true follow-up. Claim that humorous-but-true follow-up is a subset of one of the existing options. Joke about the notation used to make that claim. Concession on the basis that the joke is pretty awesome. Reference to how fantasy literature is frustrating and stupid. You asking what we are talking about.

BESW

03:35

"The Useful Though Incomplete Distinctions" would be a good name for an experimental post-modern fusion ska-blues-bubble-gum-pop band.

Alex P

@BESW Isn't that just punk + blues?

BESW

@AlexP Only if they're post-ironic.

Alex P

Well, maybe punk - surf rock + blues.

BESW

And don't forget that they're experimental. They probably use washing-machine drums and a katzenklavier made of squeaky dog toys.

@Magician Don't you feel like you've caught up now?

Magician

@BESW Not quite sure yet. Can we try that again?

Alex P

03:42

Now my wife and I are arguing about whether one can combine blues with rock. My contention is that you can't, really, because saying a rock song is bluesy is just saying "This rock music isn't terrible like some other rock music."

BESW

@Magician I think you will find this effectively sums it up.

@AlexP I contend that musical genre distinctions are so fuzzy and confusing that I usually just shove a few terms together and hope for the best.

(Have you ever read critics trying to describe Janelle Monáe's music? Hilarious.)

Magician

@BESW I guess we'll move onward, then.

Alex P

@Magician Behold! He has chosen B!

Magician

@AlexP I will not argue about musical preferences. I will not argue about musical preferences. I will not argue about musical preferences...

@AlexP Well, A didn't work so well!

BESW

And he hasn't had time to write A' yet.

Alex P

03:47

In all seriousness, some groups/games default to trying again until you get it right. E.g. what happens when I fail to do something? I pass the dice to another player so they can take a crack.

Other games/groups tend towards "fail forward" and similar things.

BESW

D&D-style games do encourage it: after all, what is "a round of combat" except "Here, you try to take the goblin out, I didn't roll well enough to"?

Magician

It depends on the system as well. *W fails forward, D&D usually doesn't.

Alex P

In some sense the former is a lot like other games we're familiar with, especially a lot of video games (but also traditional games). While the latter is closer to the dramatic beats in fiction.

@Magician That's what I meant by "games," sorry. Overloaded language. :/

BESW

Hooom.

I'm thinking about the Fate game I ran the other night.

Alex P

Actual play! Share! Share!

(no pressure)

BESW

03:50

Actual Play report starts here.

Alex P

Oh, i remember.

BESW

So, the fight with the sec chief and the lab head.

As you know, in Fate both failure and unusual success increase the complexity of the scenario.

The PC and the lab head were both actively trying to influence their environments: creating net static, shooting exploding barrels, and so forth.

The sec chief, however, stood his ground and just filled the air with lead.

Not trying to create advantages or anything, just straight-up attacked the PC every round.

Everyone else in the room was changing their tactics every turn, adapting to success and failure and dynamic circumstance.

The sec chief simply did the same thing over and over and over.

I think it worked. It was a good character note for him, it gave me a bit of a rest from coming up with new things every turn, and it kept the pressure up without making it undue.

If the sec chief had created advantages and then piled them up for one attack he could've easily taken the PC out.

This way, he slowly and inexorably whittled away at the PC's endurance.

Alex P

Creating a sort of second axis for the scene, thanks to slow attrition. I like that.

Magician

@BESW Hm. Doesn't this mean that mechanically speaking, his best course of action would have been to create advantages for one big attack, then? If he were utilizing the system to the best of his interest, rather than game's?

BESW

Meanwhile the lab head was shutting down the PC's most powerful abilities and trying to summon help, so the PC couldn't shift attention toward the sec chief.

@Magician Potentially, yes.

But if you look at it from a realistic perspective, it actually does line up with game logic: he kept the air full of lead, distracting and hampering the enemy, rather than taking the time to line up a shot and giving the enemy time to get organized.

(For example, at one point the attack hit and the PC didn't have any more stress boxes to fill in, so he took the 2-value consequence Ringing ears. The sec chief got a free invoke on that.)

Magician

04:10

I think there's a useful distinction buried somewhere here, one that we've been discussing a few times before. In one playstyle, characters exercise agency by utilizing rules that support their preferred methods. In another, characters exercise agency by utilizing methods that fit the rules best. In yet another, players exercise agency by utilizing their characters to achieve the preferred narrative outcome.

Discuss! Or not. I'll be back in 30.

Alex P

04:21

"Exercise agency" kinda confuses me.

Alex P

04:46

Oh, did I mention the big lesson of our last one-on-one game? If neither of you have a clear feeling of where to go next, just stop for the session and figure it out later.

Tina said, "Hmm. I'm not sure how to make this interesting," and I didn't have an immediate reply, so we stopped. And then later we thought of why that was happening (analogous to a previous situation where one character did all the work, but this time the character doing all the work wouldn't be the protagonist) and fixed it.

1-2 hours of bad unfocused gaming averted.

Magician

05:21

@AlexP Hmm? Am I using the phrase incorrectly?

Agency is the capacity of an agent to act in a world, to quote the wikipedia. Exercising agency is therefore using this capacity, i.e. acting in a world.

Magician

05:38

Online ambient noise generator, perfect for a horror game. There are others on the website.

trogdor

06:21

@BESW yeah, I had lot more to adapt to than him too

he had no reason to change his tactics, they were working for him

mostly

right up until I got him to shoot someone other than me and think I was the lab head

Alex P

@Magician I don't think you're using the phrase incorrectly, but, for me, there's a strong connotation of "agency" as, well, not just action but choice, self-actualization, free will, &c. Like "agency (sociology)" -- I think that's more like the way the term is used in lit crit / media crit, usually.

In which case saying that one can exercise agency by adhering tightly to a predefined framework of acceptable actions is... kinda dubious, I suppose?

Ditto I couldn't really process any of your examples as "character exercising agency." I think all the approaches you're describing are more at the "player" level.

Magician

Hmmm. Lets see, then. Case 1: A character thinks goblins in a nearby cave are a problem and wants to do something about it. They believe in peaceful solutions, so they try to set up trade with them, despite playing D&D.

Case 2: A character thinks goblins are a problem, and prefers to solve problems by fighting them. That, fortunately fits D&D.

Case 3: A player thinks it'd be fun to go do something with goblins, be it fight or trade. They use their character to enable this experience.

Alex P

Case 1 and 2: We start with a fictional statement and consult the rules to see what the consequences are. Roughly, fiction -> rules -> fiction.

Case 3: We start with a player goal and make a fictional statement to make it happen. Roughly, people -> fiction or people -> fiction -> rules -> fiction.

"Do the rules say YES! or SCREW YOU!" seems to be a different axis from "Why are you consulting the rules," to me.

Magician

@AlexP Not talking about success or failure here.

Alex P

Are you familiar with "stance" in old Forge speak?

Magician

06:35

@AlexP There's a crucial difference there, though. Case 1 is fiction (character's free will) -> fiction (character's methods) -> rules (handling thereof) -> fiction (result). Case 2 is fiction (character's free well) -> rules (best way to achieve the goal) -> fiction (justification of the corresponding method) -> fiction (result)

@AlexP Somewhat, yeah.

Alex P

@Magician Err, I think you're more making the statement that case 2 is rules (constraints that create the decision) -> us -> fiction (character's decision) -> ...

@Magician Okay, so to me you're just describing "actor stance" in case 1 and 2, and "author stance" (or maybe "pawn" stance, possibly, if you squint) in case 3.

Magician

@AlexP To some extent, yeah. It's just a slightly different way of looking at the classifications.

Alex P

I think the rules say "YES!" or "SCREW YOU!" before you get to resolution. They say it at the point of initiating an action -- figuring out how you'd even do it.

Or earlier than that, in the sense that they shape players' preexisting expectations, goals, and intent.

Does this relate back to "fail forward" vs. "try again," or is this a different matter?

BESW

What's the subject of this conversation, again?

Magician

@AlexP I think I see the confusion. No, this was brought on by @BESW's description of security chief's actions: doing something that's better for the game rather than for his goals.

Alex P

06:41

@Magician Ahhh. In the case of an NPC, that's kind of a classic "director stance" move.

Magician

Yes, it's somewhat expected of DMs. But PCs do that too, sometimes.

Alex P

BESW has many components to arrange and he arranges them to create a palatable scene, which includes expressing individual character but isn't centered on it.

Magician

And ideally, there wouldn't be this incongruity between character motives and actions they take.

Alex P

Well, us + rules + fiction are a massive blob. All kinds of decision arrows all over the place.

Magician

As in, security chief wants to stop intruders, uses his abilities to their utmost and fails organically while providing players with an interesting experience.

Alex P

06:43

@Magician So, I think this goes to the biggest bugbear I have with immersion (since that's an approach that privileges character motives and actions very highly): conventions of genre and form.

Magician

Not "GM wants to provide players with interesting experience, so he has the security chief fail while imitating best efforts".

Alex P

@BESW's approach for the chief may not be the most effective mechanically (according to his own statement, at least), but it is a way of presenting the character. The guy comes off as direct, set-in-his-ways, maybe even a bit uncreative. So the action seems to be in line with his characterization even if it's not optimal mechanically.

BESW

@AlexP Exactly.

Magician

(which is not a criticism of @BESW by any means, and has little to do with the actual game anyway)

Alex P

So, here's the other thing: genre conventions pretty much say that the hacker protagonist is more creative than all the corporate types. Especially the ones who are middle-management figures rather than evil geniuses.

BESW

06:48

As an ex-military professional with aspects like I shit bigger than you (gotta love premades) and a stunt that made it nearly impossible for the target to leave the room... and a character description which included two enormous inlaid pistols... filling the room with lead seemed quite in character.

Alex P

At which point it kinda becomes moot whether making the security chief uncreative is a matter of individual characterization or overarching directorial I-want-a-scene-like-this, I think.

Those are different principles guiding the decision, but I think they turn out the same in play. It's just a question of whether you sculpt characterization in the moment to reflect thematic goals or whether characterization follows genre assumptions about the world, which naturally have thematic stuff baked in.

Magician

Gah, sorry, I've got to run. Would like to continue this conversation later.

BESW

ttfn

Alex P

See ya.

@BESW So in this case you actually looked at the sheet and thought "The character sheet tells me this guy's personality is like this, and I'll express that mechanically this way?"

(With a generous side helping of "How do I make a good scene narratively / mechanically?" I assume.)

BESW

That character brief looks to me like a man who shoots first and interrogates his underlings later about why they weren't shooting harder.

trogdor

06:54

lol

Alex P

I think he needs a skul gun

BESW

The context of the particular fight was that he'd been forced to commit a murder, and the PC's sudden arrival threatened to expose that crime; he pretended to cooperate with the PC just long enough to get a squad of hand-picked men ready to ambush the PC in a place where he controlled the security cameras.

...a squad of hand-picked men whom the PC cleverly tricked Hans into slicing to bits with his own laser-cutter trap.

Alex P

Try "Try again" factor of shooting repeatedly is actually a good little tidbit of characterization, I think.

BESW

At that point Hans just pulled out both guns and opened fire while his accomplice phoned for backup.

Alex P

You're describing a guy who feels the situation has run away from him. So he's probably a bit allergic to more change at this point, beyond the one desired state of "that guy is dead so I can take a breather to figure out how to fix everything."

BESW

06:59

Yup.

Behind the scenes, I was glad for one turn in each round where I knew exactly what I was going to do. Trogdor was keeping me on my toes.

trogdor

hehehehe

lisardggY

07:41

Good morning to all.

trogdor

mornin

BESW

Yo.

doppelgreener

@BESW that was pretty funny :)

BESW

Thank you.

The man's security measures include streetside armoured security posts with automated machine guns.

I think his white noise machine is programmed with the sound of napalm drops.

doppelgreener

How did @trogdor trick the guy into slicing his own men to bits?

BESW

07:53

His infiltrator had a holograph projector.

It only works once on any given person before they see through it, but....

doppelgreener

@BESW ... and he projected holograms of man's enemies over man's friends?

BESW

No, it can only project an image of himself.

So he suddenly split in two and ran two ways. Let him defend with Deceive, and he got so much style that instead of a boost I let him force the squad to need to roll defence against the chief's original attack against the PC.

Effectively, it was the old "shoot through the circle to hit your own men on the other side," but with lasers and holograms.

doppelgreener

@BESW that is fantastic

Inbar Rose

Good Morning Everyone.

BESW

Then Trogdor used a mental virus attack on the squad leader through the man's wireless tech, and took him out with a single hit.

At which point the lab head decided to fill the room with net static that blocked all wireless comms... sadly including the remote-controlled laser grid.

@InbarRose Hi.

Then the chief and Trogdor pulled guns and the lead started flying; the chief making attacks, and Trogdor using gunfire to distract the lab head from calling for backup.

trogdor

08:02

lol

doppelgreener

@BESW [reaches for phone] [everything in a metre radius of it obtains new airing holes] [retracts hand quickly]

BESW

@JonathanHobbs And when he proved especially stubborn, Trogdor shot the fuel tanks nearby.

The lab head's response was to activate the halon gas fire suppression system.

doppelgreener

@BESW always a good option when more... relatively conventional diplomacy fails

BESW

At the end of that round the halon gas rolled to put out the fires and create an advantage on everyone: Dizzy.

It succeeded nicely.

Inbar Rose

08:27

This has me racking my brain

doppelgreener

@InbarRose That's not a campaign setting though you're describing, just a story setting

Inbar Rose

@JonathanHobbs I am not describing anything. I am trying to figure out where I remember that from.

doppelgreener

@InbarRose Well I mean the sci-fi show you mentioned in your comment isn't a campaign setting like the guy's looking for, though it is a setting

Inbar Rose

Indeed - that is why it's a comment, and not an answer.

But maybe that will help him in what he is doing.

doppelgreener

Alright.

Incidentally something similar is the case in Blazblue, though it isn't so much a surface obscured by cloud as it is a surface covered in thick, high fog.

Inbar Rose

08:41

Maybe that will help the OP.

I am unfamiliar with what you speak of.

doppelgreener

Blazblue's a fighter game on a few platforms.

I doubt it'll lead them back to the D&D thing though; it doesn't have any association with WOTC

BESW

Wednesday. You board the train. There are no seats. Someone has taken them all. Why? What fiendish plan is this? We cannot say. Wednesday.

Tweeted by TlfTravelAlerts on January 8, 2014 at 8:32 AM

doppelgreener

@BESW the people on that twitter are very creative xD

lisardggY

Couldn't really find anything similar here.

Inbar Rose

09:08

@lisardggY Did you visit the sub-pages? not much detail on the main page.

It is a mystery! And I love mysteries!

lisardggY

@InbarRose Not really, no. There might be more of a match there.

And it's also possible that what the OP described in a minor point in the setting that happened to get stuck in his head.

Though skyships is a rather distinct feature.

Inbar Rose

I found this RPG manual and this supplement that might be useful.

found it !

lisardggY

Awesome.

Inbar Rose

And gave him an answer.

lisardggY

...and upvoted.

Inbar Rose

09:22

Thank you sir.

BESW

Nice work.

I am reminded of my abortive Valley of Light and Darkness setting.

(Inspired by equal parts The Magic Flute and The Phantom Tollbooth.)

doppelgreener

@InbarRose Nice work ;)

Inbar Rose

I keep finding more and more material on it :)

BESW

10:42

in The Frying Pan, 4 mins ago, by rumtscho

I've had tag badges before, but this one tickled my geek humor sense for reasons I can't explain.

BESW

10:58

I think I just gave the saddest Doctor Who answer ever.

1

A: What happens between the end of the last series and the 50th anniversary special?

We have no idea. Sorry, but it's that simple. You haven't missed anything. They obviously got out of the Doctor's timeline somehow, but we have been given nothing to go on. There's just a great big gap between the "But not in the name of the Doctor!" climax of The Name of the Doctor and Clara's ...

lisardggY

@BESW "Because Moffat".

Actually, that particular omission never really bothered me.

BESW

It irked me just because the ending was so exceptionally egregious.

lisardggY

It's understood that the Doctor has many more adventures, with and without his companions, than are shown onscreen.

Yes, this was a particularly strange environment and a meaningful cliffhanger, but the unspoken "I didn't want to talk to [him|me], so we ran back and got the hell out" works for me.

BESW

Except that it was said, repeatedly and with great flailing, that anyone who entered the Doctor's timeline would die, and that the Doctor entering his own timeline could be universe-ending.

And then, yanno. They did, and it was so unimportant that we weren't even given a throw-away line to explain how it worked out.

Inbar Rose

11:14

plot-device! :P

BESW

It's not even that, really.

They didn't have to make it such a dire thing for the plot to work.

They just worked it up for no purpose.

Inbar Rose

11:43

Guys. rpg.stackexchange.com/a/31309/5841 - Is this answer really not good?

BESW

Yes.

> I know it is easily house ruled, but if something like this is already in the rules and I haven't found it, I would like to know.

I wouldn't say the other answer is any better, though.

Professor Loki Caprion

I suppose the typical Fate "narrative first" rules don't apply to every system?

BESW

Hahahahahah no.

Professor Loki Caprion

Bothersome!

And I did find the gap between Name of the Doctor and the 50th (why did they have to name them all so similarly) to be disconcerting. I fully expected the 50th to have some kind of tossing us in to the Doctor and Clara's amazing escape from the time stream.

BESW

I was okay with the 50th not wanting to be picking up from a series cliffhanger, but the Christmas Special could've done it.

Inbar Rose

11:55

Ha! I found an actual ruling about it!

BESW

You're on a roll tonight.

Inbar Rose

It seems so :)

Professor Loki Caprion

Awesome!

Though I prefer the "because that's how this particular guy does things" rule.

Zachiel

12:13

0

Q: which version of Werewolf do you prefer and why?

I've been running Werewolf the Apocalypse for just over a decade and decided about two years ago to start a Werewolf the Forsaken chronicle that still plays regularly to this day. Some of my players are still playing Apocalypse in a different chronicle and naturally comparisons are always drawn, ...

clearly opinion based, go cast your VTC if you can

Professor Loki Caprion

Curses! Finally a WoD question, but not one I'm qualified to answer.

BESW

And commented.

Welcome to rpg.se! Please take a look at the tour and the help; they're a useful introduction to the site. Unfortunately, SE isn't like typical forums and we aren't designed to handle questions where every answer is equally valid. If a question about objective comparisons of specific elements in each edition would be useful to you, we could help you with that. And once you have 20+ rep, feel free to join the chat! — BESW 1 min ago

@Zachiel Personally, I prefer Big Wolf on Campus.

Inbar Rose

Ha!

That's my GM!

I have been trying to convince him to join rpg.se for a while

I don't think he gets it.

Give him some upvotes so he can join the chat?

BESW

Maybe you could help him ask this bit again: "Also it could provide me with great input and inspiration as to the difference between the two games beyond the five opinions I hear around my game table to intergrate into my game."

Inbar Rose

Yes, I gave him a link to this question which is sort of an "opinionated question" but actually works for the site.

BESW

12:28

Oops.

Inbar Rose

oops what?

Professor Loki Caprion

There's also the Great Divide between OWoD and NWoD players.

Inbar Rose

:)

@Zachiel Can 2 more people upvate him so he can join chat? (I know its not strictly by-the-rules to just upvote upon request. But I personally know him, he is my GM, and the 20 min rep thing is to protect from spammers.

Professor Loki Caprion

I just helped a bit.

Zachiel

@BESW Thank you, I had to go cooking

BESW

12:36

@ProfessorLokiCaprion Did you ask this for any particular reason?

Professor Loki Caprion

@BESW Oh, it was in direct reference to the "shapeshifters keeping people alive" question.

BESW

Ah.

Professor Loki Caprion

Where I think a perfectly good answer would be "because he wants to."

(Or she. Or indeterminately gendered being.)

I think I've finally shaken off the shackles of worrying about rules before narrative in RPGs.

Inbar Rose

@ProfessorLokiCaprion Does it really matter?

BESW

My doppelganger PC was namd Scham, and defaulted to female...

Unfortunately, in many systems the primary reason to do a thing is because it's mechanically advantageous.

Professor Loki Caprion

12:39

@InbarRose Oh, nice! I'm completely devoid of 4e Knowledge, but I don't think any D&D system had any reproductive rules.

Inbar Rose

@ProfessorLokiCaprion I wish it didn't

Professor Loki Caprion

Like when I first started playing at a very, very, very young age, my uncle was saying "you can be a half elf." My first question was "what's the other half?"

BESW

Both players and GMs fall into the notion that clever characters do the thing which is best for them mechanically.

Professor Loki Caprion

@BESW Which I always kind of ran counter to. I'm glad the Pathfinder group I fell in with didn't harass me for my race/class combination because I may have been mechanically inhibiting myself.

(Side note: I'm not sure if I am mechanically inhibiting myself, because I just chose what sounded most neat from a narrative perspective.)

BESW

Professor Loki Caprion

12:41

@BESW Hah! XD

BESW

@ProfessorLokiCaprion Oh, man.

I had a friend who wanted to play D&D, but didn't want to join mid-campaign, so I arranged to do a twosies with him.

This was in 3.5.

lisardggY

@ProfessorLokiCaprion Half elf, half anything that fancies elves. (inspired by twitter.com/ThatsLiff/status/296674414802657280)

Professor Loki Caprion

@lisardggY Half-elf, half-githyanki!

BESW

He was an actor, and knew next to nothing about RPGs or D&D.

lisardggY

@BESW I have a friend that looks for opportunities to run games for non-roleplayers (adults) who heard about it and want to try it out. He says the experience gives a lot of perspective.

BESW

12:43

So he spun me this backstory about a Lawful Good dragon which was kidnapped and raped by Chaotic Evil minotaurs; it gave birth to twin half-dragon minotaurs, one Lawful Evil and one Chaotic Good.

Inbar Rose

We had a joke among our friends after playing the game munchkin (which lets you have racial templates and combine them with "half") The joke was when you used the half card, and had the race halfling twice, you were then "A Half-half-halfling-half-halfling, Half-half-halfling-half-halfling"

2

BESW

The Chaotic Good twin was exiled from the tribe for being a wuss, and his sister became the tribe's leader.

The CG half-dragon minotaur was the PC.

Professor Loki Caprion

Half-dragon minotaur. o.o

BESW

He had no idea that half-dragon minotaur barbarians are monstrous beasts mechanically.

Professor Loki Caprion

Wait, that can happen? These are a thing that can exist?

BESW

12:45

> "Half-dragon" is an inherited template that can be added to any living, corporeal creature (referred to hereafter as the base creature).

Professor Loki Caprion

@BESW Holy crapsnacks.

BESW

Read: Dragons can and will screw anything that they can hold down.

3

Professor Loki Caprion

That has to be unpleasant for gnomes.

BESW

@InbarRose I once had a halfling get permanent reduce person, for the Hide/Move Silently benefits. We called him a quarterling.

Minotaurs start with a racial +8 to Str.

Half-dragons add +8 to Str.

Professor Loki Caprion

Reminded of a line Betty White said in the Golden Girls: "That's why the brown bear and the field mouse can share their love and live together in harmony. Of course, they can't mate or the mouse would explode."

+16 Strength?!

Inbar Rose

12:47

I once played a Half-Minotaur Half-Mindflayer (Because I was young and it sounded cool and able to convince my DM)

BESW

@ProfessorLokiCaprion With a minimum highest stat of 14, and a +4 for barbarian rage, and another +4 from magic item bonus.

@Gameboon Hi!

Gameboon

YO

That didn't come out well, I ofcourse meant: Yo!

Professor Loki Caprion

@Gameboon Hallo!

BESW

@ProfessorLokiCaprion Some dragons have innate shapeshifting abilities, and most have spellcasting which lets them do it.

Whether or not they choose to leverage these options when they're on the pull...

I imagine D&D 3.5 dragons as being rather like a race of Zeuses.

Professor Loki Caprion

@BESW I never trust swans, anymore.

BESW

12:50

@ProfessorLokiCaprion There never was anything to trust about swans.

Gameboon

I've been looking around at the answered questions about natural attacks combining with other forms of attack (manufactured, monk), and it seems to me I can get two totally different answers that both seem well supported.

BESW

@Gameboon D&D 3.5? Yeah, that sounds about right.

Gameboon

Yeah 3.5.

BESW

The rules are poorly written.

Gameboon

In that case, I'll just let the DM rule whatever he thinks is appropriate. (Namely a lizardfolk monk thing).

Zachiel

12:51

@ProfessorLokiCaprion Swans are EVIL INCARNATE

BESW

@Gameboon Ooh, which kind of lizardfolk?

Inbar Rose

Just googled "swans are evil"

2

Now that is awesome

Gameboon

@BESW I'm not sure if it has a name, but it isn't the large-sized one, nor the small-sized one, just a medium-sized lizardfolk. Hasn't really got anything special.

Zachiel

In other words, it's the lizardfolk

BESW

@ProfessorLokiCaprion Also on the "half-dragon minotaur combo platter": wings, two claw attacks, a bite attack, and a gore attack, a breath weapon, +9 natural armour, +6 Con, darkvision, scent, 6d10 racial HD with 6+Int skill points per HD, and a +5 LA.

Gameboon

12:54

@Zachiel yes, the standard lizardfolk.

BESW

@Gameboon Nice. I wish I'd used them more.

The one campaign in which I was going to really feature them, fell apart just as we were getting to the good bits.

Gameboon

Ah, that's a shame.

Things here tend to break up during the summer when people go on vacations and such.

Zachiel

@BESW +6 Con is like the only thing that makes up for that +5 LA

BESW

@Gameboon Yes, well, I should have expected a gaming group made up of 2/3 actors to have scheduling problems.

@Zachiel Don't forget +16 Str.

Gameboon

@BESW Ah, scheduling is a bitch. I always ask people if there might be a specific day in the week/month that they can keep open for sessions, but with some people it just doesn't work.

BESW

12:59

Over the last two years my gaming group has vassilated between ten and one players.

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