Thanks by the way :)

bleeech. This stuff is not getting any easier to drink.

[digs for WIS-caster convo again]

I really have trouble with this concept...

Thank you.

good night

@BESW Oof :( How much longer??

@JonathanHobbs I'm about 600mL behind at the moment.

I should be starting the last of the three 450mL cans just now, but I'm not quite halfway through the second.

@BESW The sudden interjection of "Hello everyone i never your help" at the end there is kinda amusing

@JonathanHobbs It is.

@BESW Oh jeez.

I've also just bookmarked this for posterity

@BESW could you put it in something else that tastes strongly?

@waxeagle Can't be diluted.

:(

I can't eat or drink anything else while I'm taking it in.

@JackLesnie I just learned something I thought you might like to know: Starbucks had a major crash in Australia in 2008, and has struggled ever since. Turns out they expanded to 81 stores hoping Australians would fall in love with them like people in the USA did - but it totally failed. Within the past few days they've been bought by the same company that runs 7/11. Starbucks had only 24 stores left.

It turns out that Starbucks only succeeds in countries that did not already have a coffee culture. Australia had plenty of European immigrants to introduce us to cafes long ago; Starbucks was doomed.

Starbucks thrives in China and the USA specifically because it introduced them to how cafes work.

In Australia, the entire coffee scene is dominated by small independent stores that have close bonds with their customers: they have good equipment, they know how to run a coffee shop, and they know what their customers want.

(I am pretty happy to learn that last thing.)

So... you're saying Starbucks is D&D.

@BESW Thrives only where there was previously nothing like it?

Not exactly, but the "mass market with high profile vs local indie customisation" thing.

@BESW That makes sense as an analogy

Why would you want McDonalds when there is an awesome, local, low cost burger chain that fills the same needs. You don't.

And yes, the whole "Hey, isn't there more to coffee/RPGs than this generic overpriced experience?"

Starbucks generally does a lot of the stuff people in general want and they do it kinda well. But if you know exactly what you want, there's a place to go that does it fantastically.

McDonalds (and Starbucks, and other big time chains) thrive on consistent experience across restaurants. If you already have reliable providers in those sectors, you don't need them

@waxeagle Right, yeah. Exactly that.

(Thomas Friedman was required reading for us in college)

Okay, heading out to get scanned. Hope I drank enough.

ttfn

g/l!

I think that's sane

@JonathanHobbs seems sane to me. When I'm evaluating questions for this, one of my primary criteria is "does the OP have enough rep that if he really wanted an answer he'd bounty it himself"

also "am I remotely interested in this subject"

for instance, Brian has a couple of questions in the unanswered bin. I'm not going to bounty those because he could if he wanted to

Oh, yeah. This is just me handing off little bits of rep to people who've written an answer I especially like - there's just cases where it's by someone like SSD or KRyan for whom the bounty might not mean much.

yeah, they can do everything already :)

if it's for a question that should have more attention, I'd definitely go with your rule of thumb

but I'd ignore the one about whether the OP could do it themselves if they're no longer active and I want an answer dangit

@JonathanHobbs def

@waxeagle Hahahaha!

Oh man, the times I've seen that...

(thank goodness for SO)

installing TFS.... :(

took us months to figure out what the problem was

we were trying to put it on our web server and had deleted the default website when we set it up to put our sites up. didn't realize until we had wasted countless hours that this was the answer and that the only fix was a clean install of windows....

@waxeagle Oh dear... :(

wasn't a big deal, we had adequate source control for our needs, just kept us from updating visual studio for a while....

@waxeagle git ftw

i work at a company that deals primarily in Microsoft tech, and I've heard gripes about TFS

apparently the newer versions are moving to a more modern model

@JonathanHobbs yeah, this was the version from 2010ish which was supposed to be easy to install. 2012 is supposed to be a complete breeze. Not sure if we can upgrade though. We're moving to Dynamics AX soon(TM) which limits our options pretty significantly (it has internal source control, you can use VSS (blech) or use TFS (probably what we'll try to do)

noooo

maybe one day, with the way MS's attitude is changing, it'll link up to Git too.

maybe...it's a....special...piece of software. I'm getting the picture that a lot of the people developing on it aren't actually developers

Oh dear.

Dynamics AX, you mean?

yeah

we'll see how things go, we should get access to the training materials pretty soon, so that should help, but there simply isn't a ton of great resources out there like there are for other platforms

hrm. I once worked on a system that was heavily powered by it, and it seemed to work pretty well for that purpose, but it was not the newest version. My manager was showing me some of the issues with it... and then we saw in the javascript console an error about something trying to insert more body elements into the doucment.

so... somewhere inside that code, something is dumping body tags into pages, where you can only have one!

at the time we found it completely hilarious.

sigh :)

Oh boy! A new question on alignments!

[prepares popcorn]

yeah...we need a custom OT close reason "questions merely intended to start arguments (for instance about alignment) are OT"

@JonathanHobbs I'm hoping our 3rd party partner on this is reasonably competent, this is their whole business and they seem to know what they're doing. But....

@waxeagle I think it's on topic and could have a reasonable answer. A reasonable answer might involve "You're not going to get a decent answer out of the alignment system because it is terrible at modelling any non-trivial real life scenario."

@JonathanHobbs yeah, and we're probably mature enough to handle it well...but it's definitely a post to watch closely with flags at the ready

@waxeagle absolutely, yes.

on that note, bedtime

hoy

Bye wax!

anyone alive, ?

Hi pet!

hi

@pet There are several billion someones being alive at the moment

i have a quick question, regarding how to resolve a situation

ye ye, but not in this chatr

but right here no; unfortunately I am not technically alive, being undead

koool, u can't die

unless u meet chuck norris

well, i'll have to plan never to do that

okies:

@pet what's the situation?

so here the folowing situation

o player is getting attacked,

the attacker scores and does damage,

o player or a player?

a

also, which system? D&D 4e?

on hit he also stunns the target

dnd 4e

also the damage the player took pushes him into bloodied

and he gains a free basic action

unfortuntely he is stunned, right?

i found a post which explaind the execution order, from top down, from left to right, in that order,

what is the thing that says he's stunned?

is it a monster power, or a regular PC power block?

but here something happens in between based on the class feat of the player who took the damage

monster stunns the target if he does damage to it

player is a warden

ok.

what is it that gives him a free action?

'bloodied outburst' class feat

is it a class feature, or an encounter/at-will/daily power of some kind?

what's that feat say?

make a melee basic attack the first time your are bloodies each encounter

bloodied

is that what it says verbatim?

thats what is printed on the carackter sheet

oh my, this is a lovely puzzling situation.

created with dnd insider character tool

i denied the player his atk, as i considered him stunned

yes, the character would be stunned, which means they can't take actions.

but then... the feat might let them do it anyway.

but i was not sure,

You should definitely take this to the main site as a proper question.

it could also mean, the player gets the damage first, so he can react, then he gest the stunn, since that is the order, first hp then stun

Write exactly what the monster power is, and write exactly what the feat is. Describe the situation: a monster attacks a warden PC who has that feat, and lands a hit.

okay

If you're GMing this situation right now and need an answer right now, I suggest you just ask your group and make a call, then still ask the site so you know how to handle this next time.

Otherwise, if it's not urgent: definitely ask the site.

no the game was sunday, it is already over

i just want to learn from the situation

Okay, sure.

Oh, also, say what the monster was that has that power, so that people can look it up if they need to. If the monster's 100% custom, mention that instead.

@pet good attitude :)

yes monster is custom

ok, i start typing :)

Unless I'm forgetting things (and I could be), you execute a power fully, before moving on to the rest. So the monster does damage and stuns the PC. The PC would attack because they're now bloodied, but they're stunned so nothing happens.

@Magician but, that's not what stun says

just means you can't take actions; the feat doesn't say you take any particular kind of action, you just do it

There's no "just do it". At best it's a free action.

but this stuff should definitely be sorted out in a main site question where

(a) we can debate this stuff properly

(b) it can be saved for posterity

(c) sweet sweet rep

yes

mainly, you or I may be right, but maybe we're completely wrong, but unless it's taken to the site we won't know and get the appropriate downvotes

Can someone de-stressed-philosopherwording my answer: rpg.stackexchange.com/a/39507/760 I suspect formalisms aren't actually the way to go here.

^^

its late

my brain is half asleep, need to reboot it

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Seems clear enough to me, despite what I think is some ontology seeping through.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Are you still bitter about those tsochar? :)

@waxeagle Not even the Green Lantern could save me.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I tinkered a little

> This kind of "don't bother this turn" is why the stunned condition produces such copious amounts of no fun at all and should never ever be part of an at-will attack.

Does anyone have an image that would be a great addition to this statement?

I'm sure there must be a "stun! stun! stun!" joke out there somewhere

likely it has deadpool in it

I kinda like the Starbucks analogy, but probably because I don't have a hatred of Starbucks like many others do.

(Which, in itself, is probably due to there not being Starbucks in Israel anymore. :))

But I think coffee culture has more disdain for Starbucks drinkers than RPG culture has to D&D players, or at least I want to think so, and don't want to encourage it where it does exist.

Like all analogies, it is only useful within a narrowly-defined domain.

Outside that, it breaks down.

I just noticed that it could be construed from my comments that's I'm not a coffee snob. But I am, I am. Just wanted to make it clear. :)

@lisardggY [trades cold brew tips and looks down nose at white sugar with]

Does brown sugar taste a little like port, or is it just me?

@JonathanHobbs I wouldn't know. [grin]

@BESW Oh right ;)

@JonathanHobbs Not that I've noticed, but that's just me.

Also, I don't drink my coffee with sugar. *coffeesnob*.

The wikipedia entry for "turkish coffee" is in the "Israeli Cuisine" category, but Israel isn't mentioned anywhere in the text. I wonder if that's a relic of previous edit wars.

@lisardggY Me neither, just on the topic of sugar, I've noticed that brown sugar on its own seems to carry that flavour...

When I started having coffees in my first weeks of University, I used to have cappuccino with a shot of caramel syrup, but once I walked to my University with my brother and we ordered coffees together. He had a short black with no sugar or syrup, saying he didn't want it to hide the taste of the coffee... so I tried the cappuccino without next time.

I have not gone back \o/

(except for once when I ordered a mocha with mint syrup, because mint chocolate is an amazing combination.)

(except in coffees, where it amounted to being far too sweet.)

I used to drink cappuccinos with sugar. Then I dropped the sugar. Then I dropped the milk. Eventually narrowed it down to an espresso or turkish coffee, unsweetened.

@JonathanHobbs Have you ever had molasses? Like, straight up?

@BESW I think once I have, but I don't remember what it tastes like

Molasses is a byproduct of the process of making white sugar.

Brown sugar is what you get when you stop partway through.

Huh, okay.

You may connote it with port because one of the distinguishing features of port is that they halt the fermentation process partway--which means there's more sugar left unconverted into alcohol.

I am suddenly reminded of a book called Sweet Poison. The author says he'll refer to 'artificial sweeteners' as 'substitute sweeteners' instead, because the name 'artificial sweetener' implies that sugar itself is not artificial: it is very artificial, and he says go bite into a sugar cane if you think it isn't. (He further says that sugar itself is in fact a substitute sweetener - for honey - but won't worry about that bit.)

@JonathanHobbs I have, in fact, eaten sugar cane cut fresh from the bank of a river.

@BESW What was that like?

It's nice. I had that in Ecuador - they sell them on street corners.

...pulpy. But yes, it was recognisably sugar-sweet, just less intense.

The one I ate was wild and untended, so probably very unlike what they use in the actual sugar-making process--and probably also not much like what @lisardggY had.

@BESW But it wasn't full of, like, sugar crystals, right?

They have to be manufactured from the cane, right?

Right.

Ok. Rad.

Also I love that the black four-pointed star D&D 4e uses is a standard unicode character: ✦ / ✦

Adding it to power quotes makes them suddenly look fantastic.

@JonathanHobbs You mash it up and juice it, then boil the juice and evaporate it repeatedly until it's so concentrated that sugar crystals can be easily precipitated out of the solution.

The solution left behind after precipitation is molasses.

@JonathanHobbs Indeed.

(The more sugar you force out of the solution, the stronger and darker the molasses gets. Most people like their molasses golden --sweet-- but I prefer it blackstrap: about as strong as it gets.)

@BESW So the juice boiling and evaporating repeatedly eventually produces a molasses/sugar mix?

Or is the boiling process itself what helps separate the molasses and sugar?

Well, it creates a super-concentrated super-sweet liquid that you can force sugar out of by "seeding" it with sugar crystals.

(Cane sugar then has to be further refined through a totally different process before it looks like what we're used to.)

(Beet sugar goes through a somewhat similar starting process, but doesn't need further refinement.)

I have been unsuccessful at finding an image of a sugar beet wearing Beats headphones. My google-fu is weak this morning.

I was able to find an eBay listing of a postcard of a sugar beet refinery, so I'm good.

That really does seem like the kind of thing the Internet would have on offer.

@BESW I know, right?

I did find Beat headphones with the logo replaced with a picture of beets.

And this.

@BESW Good enough for me.

But even this one suffers from the fact that sugar beets aren't red.

(Sugar beets are white.)

Several pages down the search result I have seen a picture of Mikhail Gorbachov, a macaron with an "Opera" sign and a photo of three owl statuettes. I love it when Google starts getting desperate.

@lisardggY Ooh, link me the owl statues?

Awesome.

I have an honorary little brother who likes owls.

See no owl, hear no owl, speak no owl.

And then I found something mildly amusing out of its own context.

@Metool I love the sheer number of adjectives that this IHOP church gets on Wikipedia. Evangelical, charismatic, pentecostal, post-tribulationist and historic pre-millenialist.

Meanwhile, my friend misreads it as International House of Pancakes.

@Metool That's the more common interpretation. And I have to say, as someone who only ate at an IHOP once, it was pretty terrifying.

I think the spray-on butter-foam was my breaking point.

Friend setting up an account:

@Metool That's impressive

Considering that earlier in the "Wisconsin", Wisconsin was suggested, it is impressive.

test: dread

Aha, friend asked a question.

@SirTimble [wave]

Hi!

He's still a couple of votes away from being able to chat here :'(

soon, though, soooon...

> At 7th level, the dread gains immunity to fear (psionic or otherwise). This ability functions whether the dread is conscious or unconscious, but not when she is dead.

Wait what?

Can you even be subjected to fear if you're dead?

I don't even know.

@JonathanHobbs I recall it being established that corpses are objects, and thus should be immune to fear.

[disappoint]

He has the rep, but can't join us yet because of... checking intervals?

@Metool He can't chat until 20 rep.

He has 21!

I am very curious if this has a decent answer of 'yes'.

What happens when you die, in Pathfinder?

... I was shocked for a few seconds, until I realised I'd set bounties.

@Metool I think you become dead.

And then the rules fall totally silent, because they figure you know what happens when people are dead. (Or what doesn't happen.)

Of course, given this is Pathfinder, the authors should totally not be assuming we have any idea what happens at that point.

Dead is a condition...

(I remember someone pointing out that technically, nothing in the 3.5e or Pathfinder rules prevent you from still taking actions when you're dead, but not even the most hardcore of optimisers actually attempt to exploit that loophole.)

Actually, I want to play Karthus now...

@Metool Now that he's voiced by Jorn Lande, I want to play him again.

Oh, right, cosmetic update.

And now we're talking faux philosophical in Skype.

@Metool Actually, that makes sense in the twisted world of auto-complete.

They operate on the assumption that if they suggest a word and you keep typing on your own, their suggestion was wrong.

@JonathanHobbs 4e, on the other hand, has a couple high-level builds which explicitly grant such abilities.

@SirTimble Hi!

> (While creatures have no concept of level or HD as such, the value of the gem needed to trap an individual can be researched.)

Soul bind is silly.

@Metool Yeah, see. Stuff like that is why I say stuff like this.

HD, XP, a dedicated research team could probably even figure out classes and multiclassing penalties.

@BESW I remember these, yeah.

> I went to a hot-dog stands and asked for one with nothing‌​.

@Metool hehehe.

Hmm, curiously enough, there is no rule about overwhelming magical auras actually overwhelming a low-level magic-user casting detect magic, even though such a rule exists for detect [alignment].

I don't think I'm going to have anybody over for Geek Night this Saturday. So... X-Men or Maleficent?

Says the hair demon of Rule of Cool, Maleficent is an insult.

I like the smell of WRONG in the morning.

@Metool Fro?

@Zachiel Indeed.

Anyway, I was talking about a post by SKR on his blog

Oh?

He compares high crit range, low damage dice weapons with better damage, less crit range

seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/rants/keenimprovedcritstacking.html

So, in order not to compare two characters with different strength score, he downright removes strength from the equations

> If Keen and Improved Critical Don't Stack, The Terrorists Will Have Won, a rant by Sean K Reynolds

And who cares if the weapon dice is like 8 damage on the whopping 60 I'm dealing each round, and it all gets multiplied if I crit.

@Metool Hyperbole and straw men, two great Internet Debate tactics that go great together!

I found this wonderful god called Nobanion that has a very nice dogma I can totally play

Now I just need to find out a way to smack the Merchantile Background on him, because mechanical advantage

ç.ç

@Zachiel His doctrine is based on the notion that no one should ever be suspended from a website no matter what they do?

@BESW hahahahahaha no ಠ_ಠ

morning

Being a dragonblooded dragon with draconic heritage isn't enough. How do I increase my dragon-ness?

@Metool Draconic grafts

Be a dragonfire adept

(That class is what makes me dragonblooded.)

Roar (the verb)

@metool can you fly right now?

if not, find a way to fly

Roar and hoarde

also can you breath fire?

if not find a way to breath fire

@JoshuaAslanSmith dragonfire adepts can. It's pretty much everything useful they do in the attack compartment.

Find a way not to be a dragon for awhile. Get ten levels in the Draconic Disciple PrC.

yeah then some kind of roar thing like zachiel said

hmmm a gaze attack/power

Could you somehow get a dragonmark?

A buddy of mine had a campaign where one of the major big bad factions was trying to breed a dragonmarked dragon.

@JoshuaAslanSmith There was some way to get fearsome presence IIRC

I do have that invocation, used as a swift action after the breath weapon.

get your hands on polymorph, then

and be a dracolexi or some other Draconomicon PrC

I don't think it gets more dracon-y than that

Good Morning