@Zachiel Trying to find a good adjustment to them. It looks like I'd need to subtract the stats of the longsword from the mercurial longsword just to find out the mod, and the price would be a guess. Also, I was looking into making a Mercurial Dragonsplit, and wasn't sure of pricing there either, or whether it can be used on a shorter weapon like that
Theme was "Humanity barely survives a technovirus." Starting period "A prosperous empire unites the world."
One of the first middle periods put down was "Dragons discovered."
...followed immediately by someone else placing a period just before it: "Dragons forgotten."
Two turns later we discover that the prosperous empire is a dragon empire.
In another part of the timeline, we discovered that the technovirus was released by a combination of clumsiness, pranking, and an attempt to get someone fired.
The scientist in charge put a small bug in the contamination protocol program to get his clumsy assistant fired. When the janitor made it appear there had already been a breach in security, the bug complicated things and in their panic someone fell through the glass and actually did breach the containment.
Our palette is rather amazing: the "Yes" side says dragons, while the "No" side says magic and naturally clean water.
The technovirus was released some time between the empire and the forgetting, but humans are immune to it until around the time the dragons are rediscovered.
Prior to that, it's been turning animals into aggressive cyborg-chimeras.
We speculate--though it hasn't been established yet--that humans becoming vulnerable to the virus is actually what saves them from being wiped out by murderous cyborg animals.
@BESW re: Australia, there was a point where I suddenly got exposed to this whole "Australia is where everything wants to kill you" meme on the internet. For a long while, I was amused but befuddled by it. Australia isn't that bad! The wildlife is fine! It doesn't try to kill us at all. And then I thought more deeply on it: my positive interactions with wildlife are a lack of interaction. On the beach, in the bush, wildlife generally is something to be very carefully avoided.
We have no rabbits, no prey animals like deer who might be violent or might be quite nice to us.
I think part of it is the effortlessly casual fashion in which they'll kill you.
I mean, when I go hiking early in the morning I have to be careful not to startle wild pigs and I wouldn't take a nap in the hills for the same reason--getting eaten by pigs--but they have to decide to kill me and then exert some effort to do so.
There are people who'll, y'know, approach a wombat or a kangaroo. It's especially easy when that person is in a fenced property, leaves food around their fence, and makes nice with the kangaroos - usually over the fence.
@BESW I very much like how Douglas and Douglas' story turned out by the way
@JonathanHobbs So, I usually try to do some kind of post-mortem on my games with my players. What worked, what didn't, what to do the same or what to change in the future.
I think it worked pretty well overall - I am also very pleased that we managed to make two characters with the same name for a joke, then have a totally legit Lovecraftian adventure which was, if anything, all the better for that joke.
Though, I know this is also about that specific game and how you ran it and etc.
There were a couple of points toward the end - like shortly after we discovered Vince's body - that I got the sense that there was something you were waiting for us to do, like some story-critical plot-move-forward button you were waiting patiently for us to find. (It was the 'go upstairs for massive plot reveal' button!) But you also did make sure we found it eventually.
So I was self-conscious that maybe there were actions I was performing that were effectively superfluous in that regard
Um! I think overall though it was a pretty smooth ride.
I was pleased with how you handled us and our characters.
@JonathanHobbs Ah, yeah. That was where I was trying to figure out what to do with "Vince" and whether to force the escalation or let you guys escalate it at your own pace.
@JonathanHobbs I had similar concerns when I first started trying to do scary games, but all the material on running horror themes says that humour is necessary.
Both for characters and players, sustaining tension is nigh impossible for extended periods of time. We just burn out and stop feeling it. That's why films and books have quiet moments and humorous moments, to give us a chance to recover so we can be scared again.
@JonathanHobbs Yup. So long as my players are also treating things seriously when it's appropriate, I'm glad when you throw in humour. To a certain extent it means the group is actually a little trepidatious.
It's a generalisation, but if you're preparing Serious Characters To Get Scared With, you're not nervous enough about what's coming.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around how to articulate the difference between the way you and Daniel role-played your fear vs how my IRL group does it.
That was the bit which threw me, 'cause I'd only ever done horror with those four and they each had a pretty uniform type of response which felt more proactive rather than reactive.
@GMNoob not interested in arguing about this much, man
games with different power differences are going to have a different quantity of tiers, games with different ways of determining what makes you powerful are going to pick their tiers differently. as a totally out of the way example: smash brothers, albeit a video game, has a tier list where the top character is not the top character because he can do everything better than everyone else, he's awful at certain things, he just does what he needs to be able to do to be incredibly good in match-ups
go find some other RPGs' tier lists, and they're not gonna look the same as 3.5e's
that's my reasoning, but if you disagree i'm not going to care to argue it very far
Mmm. It's not enough that the definitions don't use 3.5-specific terms; it has to be shown that the underlying concepts/assumptions about the nature of balance and power translate to the new system.
Not saying it can't be done--just that it should be supported as part of the argument rather than taken as an implied premise on which the argument can be based.
@JonathanHobbs I'll agree with that. The tier system for 3.5 to me is asking a non-intuitive question, which I think it's reasonable for people to ask about other systems.
The main question being. "Is the profession I'm picking actually good at the profession I assume they would be good at, or is there another unrelated profession which is actually better?"
And it's much easier to refer to 3.5 tiers which have defined that question more clearly, than to try to recreate the question for every game system.
(It would be facetious to say the tier concept applies universally to all systems, so when it's applied to a system other than the one it was conceived in, justifying the reasonableness of applying it to that new system should be non-trivial.)
Which is a fancy way of saying, "Sure, use the 3.5 tier system, but show your work on why it's a good idea to use it in the given situation."
As in, If I pick the Chopper in AW, I want to know that the chopper is actually better at foraging items or perhaps it's a tier 5 class, and there are other options I should look at instead of that character.
@GMNoob you should probably understand the context of the problem being asked about. if you understand what someone's referring to when they say "linear fighter, quadratic wizard", you should be able to answer whether that problem exists in 5e. If you have no idea what they mean, you probably shouldn't be answering a question about whether that problem exists in 5e.
so, if you understand the problem being asked about, the question's clear and you're peachy as far as being qualified to answer it goes
as for your answer, if you want to refer to tiers, that's your prerogative. i was just leaving you a comment to let you know i'd made a significant change to the question.
@JonathanHobbs Well, if you compare your comment on my answer to your comment on the other answer, that isn't so clear. But perhaps I'm being too academic about this, I'm about to ask a question on the site.
@GMNoob that's because i wrote it twice manually, and didn't feel like writing the same sentence a second time, though i can see why you might've thought i was criticising your answer, i was just explaining my edit and tired
@GMNoob no, that's like I was tired and was not going to put a huge amount of effort into a comment letting you know about a question change because I did not expect it to turn into a big conversation like this
i just expected you to see it and go "oh okay" and make whatever adjustments you felt like making on account of the change to the question, then flag it as obsolete
though accidentally made it also look like criticism on your answer, it was just criticism on the general situation of talking about 3.5e tiers as if it should just be trivially assumed it makes sense to use those in 5e
and thus justifying my changing the question
to not talk about those and trivially assume those
like, to me it read: "Hey, I've changed the question to not talk about tiers, because it doesn't make sense for it to talk about those"
@JonathanHobbs And now it's going to take 5 people to bother looking at the question, deciding if they want to get invovled in it's open status, and having enough site points to do so. It's a ban hammer.
There's a current case of an infrequent problem: Why is Donjon offline?
Dakeyras's answer was a response to a question that was once there. It was made in good faith, and is a helpful answer.
The part of the question it was responding to no longer exists, and if the question were asked in this ...
When a question's problem is "I'm curious" and the answer is "yes" or "no," that's not a very good question. Users will give the benefit of the doubt that it's a question about a problem which wants solutions--rather than a curiosity question asking for trivia--and will comment accordingly.
That's why I suggested it as a meta question; it seems to have come up in the context of strategies for answering site questions, which is a context for which solutions--rather than yes/no trivia--are possible.
@JonathanHobbs The question is not about being "Better", it's a question of "role". i.e. if you want to sneak through a dungeon and unlock everything, you are better off as a wizard with invisiblity and knock than a Rogue.
@BESW I'm not sure how to phrase it as a meta question though, such that you get an answer more meaningful than "in Word of Darkness, werewolves suck blood better than vampires."
@GMNoob As a meta question it would be a practical question about how to use the tier system in questions and answers, not a hypothetical about whether the tier system could ever be useful.
And you've got an example of a question-and-answer set which does exactly that already!
@BESW Ok, but that isn't my question. :( Maybe I need to word the question as a system recomendation, and word it as saying that I want to play a class that is better at another classes role than the stereotypical class in that system.
So... this question is basically an open-ended version of this one? (They're both asking about 3.5-style class disparity in non-3.5 systems, but the older one specifies what non-3.5 system it's interested in.)
@BESW The older question is asking about a possibly disparity between two classes in a system. My question is asking about systems, and if other systems create a situation that the tier system addresses.
You could re-word my question to be " I want to play a class that is exceptionally good at something you would not expect that class to be good at and there is another class which does that thing, but isn't so good at it, but I don't want to play 3.5 or pathfinder. Which game should I play?"
So why isn't it worded that way? That's a problem we can give solutions to. It might still be too broad without more details about the system, but your current question isn't like that at ALL: it's pure theory and its answer is "yes."
@GMNoob oh, so it's a matter of: there's a class that's meant to do a thing, and another class that isn't made for doing that thing at all, but the other class is way better at the class that's meant to be good at it?
@GMNoob You mean the question with a comment discussion specifically saying "This isn't in line with our normal guidelines but it's so cool and useful we'll give it a special one-time-only non-precedent-setting pass" and still has acquired four close votes?
I must have lost track of the topic of conversation. How does who closed a question (9:5 citizen votes is not a small thing) change its suitability for the site?
(b) questions that very definitely need to be closed for one reason or another - such as the question is very clearly not clear - are the exception, and we need those questions closed quickly
@JonathanHobbs I've been noticing that questions are getting closed by single mod votes, sometimes even after a question was open for 3 weeks with lots of up votes. I'm seeing questions that are closed with easy possible edits. I've been told it's not the job of mods to edit questions just close them, and I've been told that mods should close questions even if the community out votes them because sometime the community is wrong, and "the community can choose to have it open"
it's very confusing, and rather disheartening. There is much too much drama about which questions get closed and which ones do not. Mainly I think, because of a lack of consistency.
The basic concept has a certain elegance simplicity and reassuring formula.
Unfortunately live action suits it horribly.
I've yet to see one that didn't fail pretty miserably on most counts, though part of it is that the formula is also best done in short time frames rather than movie-length.
Film-length animated Scooby Doo doesn't hold up especially well either; it gets too thin, or too convoluted, or fills in the extra run time with stupid B plots--usually romance.
This one keeps trying to throw in cartoon visual tropes like bug eyes and dust-cloud fighting, but it doesn't have enough to make it a consistent element.
The guy playing Shaggy is trying really hard, but the others just sort of jog away from the monsters and tend to deliver their lines pretty limply.
The world of Gloom is a sad and benighted place. The sky is gray, the tea is cold, and a new tragedy lies around every corner. Debt, disease, heartache, and packs of rabid flesh-eating mice—just when it seems like things can't get any worse, they do. But some say that one's reward in the afterlife is based on the misery endured in life. If so, there may yet be hope—if not in this world, then in the peace that lies beyond.
In the Gloom card game, you assume control of the fate of an eccentric family of misfits and misanthropes. The goal of the game is sad, but simple: you want your characte…
"Remember that time we both got 3rd degree burns fighting that dragon? Good times."
"I remember it was you who got 3rd degree burns, I got all my body hair and clothing burnt to ashes, and my sword melted to my foot! I couldn't run for weeks!"
"Oh yeah? Well my backpack got toasted, I had to carry all my gear in a tied up shirt!"
I wanted to bring in my contribution to the tiers in other systems usefulness discussion, but I don't really want to start the conversation again. It'd be nice if you helped me by not stating those things again.
Anyway, I do think the tiers are applicable to every game that has classes - I don't think it's a useful paradigm to evaluate the presence of possible problems. There can be games where a character who's able to do everything and a character that's able to do one thing well are equally fun and can bot contribute to the max. I don't believe the game which has two dedicated chatrooms is one of these games.
@Zachiel Sorry, the double negatives are confusing me. GTSNBN is is not a game which you can have two chars both be good, or is not a game where the paradigm is applicable?
@BESW No. We had this outdoor party that lasted from about 6PM through the whole night. Today's the "sleepy head day", and according to an old superstition those who sleep late on the sleepy head day morning are lazy and tired for the whole year.
@GMNoob mmmh not a proper one, but several colections of feats (all of which are pirated) have a "all the feats that have this one as a prereq" in their entry
The guys I usually hang out with (TGIUHOW from now on) went dining at me yesterday and then we watched a movie on my laptop, for lack of a larger screen in my gaming bunker. We choose a movie we all already watched but hey, Snatch is always good.
@kviiri My laptop is at minimal brightness. And I always hate it when I decided to wear something -what's the opposite of dark in this context?- and I see my reflection on the screen instead of Dark Souls enemies coming at me.
@kviiri Also, no matter if I set max brightness, my mp3 player won't let me read the song titles if I'm in the sun.
They crop up semi-regularly, almost always in that style, but we smack 'em down hard and fast.
Most commonly it's "I'm a normal American woman with bad grammar whose romance and finances were awful until Doctor Generic African Name (sketchy email here) cast a spell for reasonable prices!" With terrible implications that her husband is now a brainwashed zombi.
I think the spam bots see our posts about spells and assume we're credulous.
We have an old question about trivia questions that we wrestled with, without a real consensus emerging:
How do 'Trivia' Questions meet the requirements for posting?
I went searching out that question due to recent wrangling over various questions, but it's too out-of-date to be a good resour...
There's a current case of an infrequent problem: Why is Donjon offline?
Dakeyras's answer was a response to a question that was once there. It was made in good faith, and is a helpful answer.
The part of the question it was responding to no longer exists, and if the question were asked in this ...
We have an old question about trivia questions that we wrestled with, without a real consensus emerging:
How do 'Trivia' Questions meet the requirements for posting?
I went searching out that question due to recent wrangling over various questions, but it's too out-of-date to be a good resour...
