TRPG General Chat

Miniman

06:01

@Adeptus Wait for high levels and hit them with Power Word: Kill, then they'll regret being elves!

Lord_Gareth

@Adeptus Color Spray is another encounter-ender, as is Grease

Glitterdust will drop entire encounters to the floor thanks to the blind

Blind does awful, awful things to people

I'm not...boring people, am I?

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth negatory

BESW

Eh. I always knew how to kill my players. It was challenging a party with massively diverse op levels that was my problem.

Miniman

@Lord_Gareth Nope, although the 'Sleep, Grease, Colour Spray, Glitterdust' is pretty familiar at this point

Lord_Gareth

@BESW Indeed. Killing PCs is never really the goal, honestly. It's sometimes a side-effect of the actual goal.

You have to be able to lose if you're going to win.

A game you can't lose is just a complicated cutscene

BESW

06:05

Trogdor's monk was nigh unkillable, but also nigh unable to participate meaningfully to a battle's conclusion.

We had a sorcerer who chose his build and spells based on "ooh shiny," and a warlock whose entire build was carefully trained to rain fistfuls of impossible-to-resist dice on as many targets as possible.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW And thus do we see The First Great Lie of 3.5: "All of these characters are playing the same game, at the same level, and can participate in the same challenges."

BESW

I knew the lie before, but I'd never before had such a wide range of op in one place.

doppelgreener

Spoony comes to mind: he talks about how he wants his players to win, but he isn't going to just let them win. He'll play the NPCs straight, and PCs will die. In a first-level AD&D encounter, he had a gang of three first-level wizards drop half the party with Sleep and charm the fighter, so whilst the two remaining party members were busy with the fighter, the wizards beat the sleeping ones to death.

Arkhaic

Do you actually have a compendium of The Great Lies of 3.5?

Lord_Gareth

@Arkhaic No, totally made up the phrase for dramatic effect.

Miniman

06:08

@Arkhaic Gareth is a compendium of The Great Lies of 3.5

Arkhaic

@do

Lord_Gareth

Could do a blog post to that effect though

Arkhaic

Grr

doppelgreener

When he dropped tales of a dragon in a cave for his players, they boldly decided to fight it. The dragon left its cave, and circled in the air waiting for them. They went outside, it flew in close enough to breathe fire on them, and flew away until it was ready to do so again. It took them a few turns to realise they were boned, and ran for cover among the highly flammable trees. Most of the party died. The players learned dragons were not to be trifled with.

Arkhaic

Isn't Spoony the abrasive guy with stupid players?

BESW

06:10

No, that's @Lord_Gareth.

Miniman

Lol

Lord_Gareth

Spoony is the abrasive guy who refuses to acknowledge the evolution of bards

Not that I am bitter

BESW

Everyone knows bards are still largely reptilian in nature. Some even have vestigial fins!

3

Miniman

@Lord_Gareth As in he sticks steadfastly to the idea of the 'Spoony Bard' and refuses to admit their ridiculous utility?

Arkhaic

Pfft.

Bards are largely inferior to fleshrakers.

Lord_Gareth

06:12

@Miniman And, if built for it, raw power.

There are bard builds that are slinging full wizard casting with time-stasis music

The phrase "full wizard casting" is terror enough

BESW

Man, I wish I'd found those builds when I was in that derpy epic campaign.

Arkhaic

Dragonfire Inspiration is fun too.

Lord_Gareth

Time stasis, party buffing, and mind control without spell slots on top of that is just gravy

BESW

I was trying to make an invisible, inaudible, intangible pixie bard who the party never actually knew existed.

Arkhaic

Doesn't everyone have See Invisibility at that level?

Miniman

06:14

@BESW Inaudible bard? How does that work?

BESW

@Miniman There's a feat.

@Arkhaic At epic levels there's more options for invisibility than just invisibility.

Miniman

@BESW I get that they can still do their shiz, but there's a feat that lets them inspire others without being seen or heard?

BESW

@Miniman Yes.

Miniman

Wow.

BESW

It is called "Subsonics."

Though with a pixie, it's more likely hypersonics.

Miniman

06:15

They really did break every rule they had at some point.

Arkhaic

I think you can Iron Heart Surge the rules away.

BESW

@Miniman And sometimes, the rules cause fun. But that's okay, because we have rules to stop the fun!

4

doppelgreener

@Arkhaic Spoony is a guy who runs a video blog called Counter Monkey. Unrelated to The Spooniest on here.

@Lord_Gareth Are we talking about the same Spoony?

Arkhaic

@doppelgreener Yeah, I've watched some of it. He tends to come off as abrasive and approaches the game with the mindset of teaching players as lesson

Lord_Gareth

@doppelgreener No idea but I just posted my sloppy design blog post

Considering doing The Great Lies of 3.5

Miniman

06:21

@Lord_Gareth If you do, you should follow it up with The Great Lies of Pathfinder

(runs away)

doppelgreener

@Arkhaic i have not watched a large amount of his videos myself, and most of the ones I have seen were ones where he was a player.

Miniman

Actually, literally runs away, it's time I went home

Lord_Gareth

@Miniman They're mostly the same, except with an added dose of "The developers' opinions are relevant to your table"

Miniman

@Lord_Gareth I meant things like 'We balanced some of the more outrageous things from 3.5'

doppelgreener

E.g. Tandem the Bard, or the bounty hunter in the Star Wars game where everyone else was a Jedi and treated him like he was outclassed.

BESW

06:23

@Lord_Gareth I'm trying to imagine legalistic rules in RFS.

doppelgreener

@Miniman "We fixed the bad parts"

@BESW NO

Lord_Gareth

[Got to use his Favorite Image Ever, feels so happy]

Arkhaic

Heh.

I've noticed that thing appearing a lot.

BESW

@doppelgreener Did you ever upload the fudge dice and typing scripts?

Lord_Gareth

As always taking critique and/or debate on blog post. This one was...pretty opinion-based?

BESW

06:27

Minor typos.

doppelgreener

@BESW nope

BESW

Otherwise not very controversial. "Try to do a good job, know your concept and be true to it, and if you mess up apologise and try to do better next time."

Lord_Gareth

@BESW Personal experience suggests that this is in fact super controversial

Since you can't seem to criticize WW or Paizo to their face without getting jumped

Though perhaps that has something to do with the initial accusation being that they did a poor job.

It's hard to hear that.

Arkhaic

They likely agree with you in theory and then protest everything in practice when it's about them

Aside: The biggest non-rpg equivalent of the Paizo boards seems to be the Twilight fandom.

2

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth Yeah, even I would umbrage for a few seconds with someone saying "Evil Hat did a really bad job with {feature} in Fate Core." A couple of weeks ago I got pretty frustrated with someone for comparing one of its core pieces of advice to an awful part of D&D's advice, based on a misunderstanding on their part (the comparison was not valid). Just that usually I can hit my well-practiced mental brakes and be introspective for a moment. And I don't have inclination to attack people either.

meanwhile there are people with that inclination and without those mental breaks

Lord_Gareth

06:38

@doppelgreener Indeed. And then they get placed in PR positions, because our hobby is still full of horrible people who mostly set the tone of major design houses.

Arkhaic

Which ones have gotten placed into official PR positions?

Lord_Gareth

@Arkhaic SKR was the mouthpiece for Paizo's dev team during his presence therein.

Arkhaic

He...officially? I thought he was just yelling at people because he wanted to.

Lord_Gareth

@Arkhaic What's the word for "Acknowledged out loud but not actually on his resume"?

Arkhaic

Embarrassing secret?

Lord_Gareth

06:45

No because it wasn't secret

It's just not on his official job title

BESW

@Lord_Gareth de facto

Lord_Gareth

Thank you

Arkhaic

Back.

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth There's also a load of correlations here (and I am about to make a lot of generalisations that I know are just that): RPG companies are created by the designers, RPGs are designed by creative types, creative types study creative stuff not business, creative types might actively detest the concepts of PR and marketing as part of the psychotic corporate machine they refuse to associate with but still find they need to do it.

therefore RPG companies are often created by people who have no idea how to run a business and actively detest several vital business practices including PR and marketing, and may cease to involve themselves with people actually professionally trained in doing those things for that reason.

[/MASSIVE AND UNFAIR GENERALISATIONS]

There are exceptions, and there you find the places people are doing things right. Possibly everything right. (Candidates: Evil Hat, Rule of Cool)

Lord_Gareth

RoC isn't turning a profit so there's things they're not doing right.

doppelgreener

06:59

And then there are the places where all generalisations converge as actual fact GUESS WHICH COMPANY I AM THINKING OF

Arkhaic

Paizo.

doppelgreener

@Arkhaic [pins a medal]

Arkhaic

I will wear it with pride.

doppelgreener

That'll do

@Lord_Gareth That is a pity :(

BESW

Our culture often has trouble reconciling creativity with careers.

Illusions like the "starving artist" romance don't help.

doppelgreener

07:12

@BESW yeah that's true

and there's this thing where a lot of careers really are creative in disguise: Virgin's CEO can be creative, it's part of why they have the position they do.

BESW

Aye.

We have a narrow idea about creativity and many unhealthy and contradictory notions about the status and role of those who fall within that narrow group.

lisardggY

Morning.

BESW

[wave]

Arkhaic

Guten morgen

Lord_Gareth

Hail unto thee

lisardggY

07:21

I'm glad the Feng Shui kickstarter is getting a lot of love.

It's one of my favorite bought-and-read-but-never-played RPGs.

Lord_Gareth

How does it compare to Nobilis, the Best RPG That No One Has Ever Played?

lisardggY

I don't think it's even in the same category.

I have several friends who played Nobilis and loved it. I asked about their game. I still don't know what the hell they did in there.

I don't like the overly metaphorical/philosophical genre.

Feng Shui, though, is fun.

Non-stop violent action through the streets of Hong Kong fun.

I actually have a copy of Nobilis at home. I have no idea how it got there. Neither me nor my wife have any recollection of buying or borrowing or stealing it at any point. Haven't read it.

Lord_Gareth

In any event, I'll have to check it out sometime.

Amusingly, Legend's currently-aborted module is/was/will be based on wuxia

doppelgreener

07:37

What is wuxia!? Is this just that group of tales featuring martial artists, samurai, ninja and so on, plus mystical magicalness, minus historical accuracy?

Lord_Gareth

[NAME OBSCURED] WHAT IS IT WITH YOU AND HALF-BREEDS
Lord_Gareth I HAD MY DNA SPLICED AS A CHILD
Lord_Gareth NOW I AM A JELLYFISH

Internal Dev at DSP is highly professional.

BESW

@doppelgreener Pretty much. It's specifically Chinese Fantasy Imperial-Era Martial-Arts/Political-Thriller/Tragic-Romance Fusion.

Think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; House of Flying Daggers; Detective Dee; even Kung Fu Panda.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW You may eat.

BESW

D&D monks try to be wuxia.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW They may not eat.

BESW

07:53

@lisardggY These "Feng Shui Dice." Are they just fancy-to-look-at d6s, or are they actually Different Dice, like Fate dice?

BESW

08:07

[sigh] I kinda want to back FS2, but that means sweet-talking my bank into temporarily lifting their ban on KS.

Zachiel

@BESW In a game where everyone else is sticking to their position trying to full attack, it's hard to be the guy that has roof chases, roof-to-ground mundane jumps and flashy moves as his own specialty.

And that's the same reason why fisticuff builds are underpowered. The game cares too little about being able to portray cool things and way too much about mantaining a feeling of realism ("punches are worse than blades, of course they're less effective").

On a side note, I can't believe the description for gmpc was missing.

@Lord_Gareth it's 6 AM at me. WHY? WHYYYYYY?

Lord_Gareth

@Zachiel Just to make you suffer

Zachiel

08:24

Which is probably the hour I'd need to wake up from next week if I get this job. 45 minutes with no traffic to get there (with a stop at the gas station), starts at 8:30...

I need to shift my sleeptime 5 hours earlier

And then people ask me why I don't like getting a job...

BESW

I'm failing miserably to shift my sleeptime forward three hours.

lisardggY

@BESW No clue. The system was changed enough for any of my vague memories to be useless.

I think they're just D6s.

BESW

That's what it looks like.

lisardggY

@BESW Which is probably why I never liked them, because I approach D&D and its spinoff with a European-medieval-fantasy mindset.

BESW

@trogdor [poke]

@lisardggY Makes sense. I mean, D&D throws in stuff from all over the world but it vehemently Westernises all of its source material.

lisardggY

08:38

@Zachiel For many playstyles, this is the right choice.

For instance, I played a campaign of d20 BESM, an anime-inspired system. It had a core mechanic of Special Attack, which is a signature attack your character can make with his main weapon, or unarmed, and its damage was calculated based on your feats or other stats, regardless of what the actual weapon was.

Zachiel

@BESW I like the middle eastern variety of monsters and classes. Djinns, City of Brass, Dervishes, deadly dancers who kill you while you're distracted by them. - Not really since the DC is Ability + your PrC level...

lisardggY

In effect, a special attack (which was an at-will power) would do the same damage whether it's a punch, dagger, gigantic two handed sword or laser cannon.

Which is fine for its anime-inspired style, but terrible for the sort of classic fantasy D&D game, where a dagger and two-handed sword being equivalent can be a terrible SOD-breaker.

Zachiel

@lisardggY and some players don't like that.

I mean, oD&D had all the weapons deal the same damage

lisardggY

@Zachiel Yeah, but that quickly shifted away in AD&D, with its huge polearm table. In 1e upto and including 4e, weapons matter. A lot.

A bit less in 4e, but the [W] is still important.

This is because AD&D wanted this sort of pseudo-historical verisimilitude.

BESW

See also: wargame roots.

Zachiel

08:49

@lisardggY In 4e as long as it has a +3 competence bonus it's ok, unless you need a polearm or a mace for some feat.

BESW

@Zachiel I did once see a scythe used to great advantage by piling on re-roll and bonus-[W] features until he was rolling something like 8d4 and re-rolling every die that came up 2 or 1.

It only raised his average damage by +8, but it also raised his minimum damage by 16.

Zachiel

09:07

Ah, yeah, brutal.

I forgot about brutal.

BESW

Actually, I think he eventually managed to find a way to make his d4s brutal 3.

Zachiel

@BESW hahahahahaha

doppelgreener

@BESW What's brutal 3 mean?

Zachiel

reroll any result that is 3 or less.

Basically, d4 becomes 3+d1

BESW

@doppelgreener It's a weapon quality which means that you re-roll any weapon damage dice which come up 3 or less, until they roll higher than 3.

doppelgreener

09:10

oh snap XD

always max damage scythe?

BESW

Yes.

Zachiel

yeah

Lord_Gareth

HOLD THE PHONE PEOPLE, I'm about to be recruiting a freelancer from DSP into our community

BESW

Now put that on a Fighter (Slayer), a class which is designed around adding more [W] to your damage rolls.

Lord_Gareth

He will have questions about RPG design

BESW

09:12

And remember that for the scythe, [W] = 2d4.

Zachiel

@doppelgreener Of course, the difference between 2d4 and 1d8 is not the same that between 2d4 brutal 3 and 1d8 brutal 3

@Lord_Gareth We shall have some answers. I don't guarantee they will be the right ones if they come from me, but I have strong, impossible to actually turn into coherent rules, opinions.

@BESW And one with a great to hit bonus already

BESW

@Zachiel Yes.

Zachiel

Basically, Slayers can afford to use weapons with non-optimal competence bonuses and still come out on top of the to-hit charts, because they're the "I don't have nova potential, but I hit every turn" class.

BESW

...and then he went one step further.

He said, "Hm. This isn't enough damage. This PC should be a bugbear."

Lord_Gareth

@doppelgreener rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/48040/… <-This question is a thing of beauty and grace

Upvote it just for giving proper information

Zachiel

09:16

@BESW was it the group with the lazy shaman|warlord?

Lord_Gareth

Then make a meta post about how all future character advice questions should look like that divine gift

BESW

@Zachiel Yes, but well after that character retired and the player left island. Thank Celestia.

Zachiel

@Lord_Gareth I feel like it's too many questions rolled into one. Otherwise, it's very good.

@BESW Amen.

BESW

@AlexanderLeonClatworthy Hi! You'll need at least 20 rep on any one Stack Exchange site before you can type in chat rooms, but you're welcome to hang out until then.

Lord_Gareth

@Zachiel Nah, he asked one question with a pair of secondary bonus questions relating back to it

Zachiel

09:18

@Lord_Gareth I'd post the bonus questions as separate questions, linking back to the first one - I'd possibly do that after getting an answer to my main question.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW That gentleman would be my freelancer.

..."My"

I believe I mean "my fellow"

Zachiel

XD

Lord_Gareth

Though it's possible that I've lost what's left of my mind and am now slowly becoming convinced that I run a company

Zachiel

@BESW can we try to get him access to the chat by moderator or room owner powers? Last time you tried I recall you telling us it didn't really work.

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth It does look impressive but I'm not sure what I'd say. Pick out the build, goals, situation, and questions, use this template?

Zachiel

09:20

@Lord_Gareth Until it turnss out you're into slavery and you legally own him ;)

Lord_Gareth

@doppelgreener The key part here is that he provided all relevant information to his question

"These are my capabilities, how do I finish fleshing out this role?"

BESW

@Zachiel I think @waxeagle might be able to, but I can't.

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth yes, that is a beautiful thing that he did

Zachiel

So, while we're wqiting for our omnipotent eagle to show up, would @Lord_Gareth either lend him his keyboard, speak for him or just bring him to gain that friggin' 20 rep?

Mourdos

Morning VTC: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/48040/… ?

Lord_Gareth

09:24

Since I'm going to bed, no

@Mourdos You may want to scroll up

And see where I linked that question to note its glory

Zachiel

[kayboard fails] - the irony is that I unwillingly made another typo, saw it and left it there on purpose.

Mourdos

I agree the intent is noble @Lord_Gareth but this is a) Not a character building board and b) he asks far too many things, some of which are inherently too broad.

Lord_Gareth

The question's not too broad or too vague

Mourdos

" Give me a full analysis of all spells and metamagic " is too broad.

It is the subject of entire guides.

Lord_Gareth

@Mourdos Character op questions are topical. And he's not asking for a full analysis of either of those things.

He is asking to know what spells and metamagic will help him with control and support.

That list is much, much, much shorter

Mourdos

09:26

Thus, an analysis of all spells to see if they fit.

Lord_Gareth

No.

Zachiel

His last bullet point, OTOH, is quite discussion-inviting

Lord_Gareth

If it's not answered by the time I get outta bed, I'll answer it

Aight?

doppelgreener

@Zachiel jabbing at character options in existing builds is the norm

Lord_Gareth

It's a lot simpler than you think it is, @Mourdos. The published answer is going to be pretty short.

Zachiel

09:28

@doppelgreener I'd phrase it this way "I'm open to accept criticism on the choices I've already make, if this is relevant to my situation"

Lord_Gareth

Frankly it'll be much shorter than the repeated dissertations on why monks are bad and their designers should feel bad

Mourdos

I just feel that most of it should have been answered by reading guides.

doppelgreener

@Zachiel it's fine either way though

Mourdos

@Lord_Gareth I'm playing a PF monk at the moment. Admittedly, its a Zen Archer, and we modified Flurry so that you can do it as a standard action. So I guess its not really a normal monk.

Zachiel

@BESW can mxy do the chat rep prereq thing as well? He's logged in.

Lord_Gareth

09:29

Guides are a resource that can and possibly should be incorporated into an answer. They are not a replacement for the Stack that we throw people at instead of answering their questions. People are supposed to be able to come to us.

BESW

I expect he can, but I'm disinclined to ask because Wax has specifically offered us his services as a chat mod while Mxy has not.

Lord_Gareth

Now I sleep

Zachiel

@BESW I'm more of the "he can always say no, right?" school, but I see your point. Mxy has a story of being overwhelmed by things he wants to do for this site and adding to that could be just unpolite.

@Lord_Gareth Goodnight

BESW

Mhm.

(Also, although he's logged in, I doubt he's actually around; Mxy's not usually active on the site until a few hours from now.)

Zachiel

On the other hand, we're having Alexander on the Music on Hold...

Zachiel

09:53

Unless I get asked to do something else like play on one of those horrible play by chat games I'm really fond of, I could open and IRC chat with @AlexanderLeonClatworthy and "retweet" his questions here while we wait for waxeagle. Supposing he can freely access IRC at the moment. I have nothing better to do anyway. (Or we could join the IRC channel as well)

wax eagle

just woke up, you have someone in need of explicit write access in chat?

Tim B

Or he could just post a decent reply somewhere, get 2 upvotes and chat away :)

Zachiel

Nuff said.

BESW

@waxeagle @AlexanderLeonClatworthy is a coworker of Lord Gareth.

Zachiel

@TimB Or we could go to his existing question on SO and have three more upvotes, but I don't like breaking the system

wax eagle

09:55

I generally prefer to provide explicit write access in side rooms rather than main.

Zachiel

is the Not A Bar sidey enough?

wax eagle

yes

BESW

Not a bar, but plays one on TV

I'm not a place to unwind after work, but I play one on TV.

Mourdos

let me know when its added to the schedule :P

Zachiel

@Mourdos uh? What?

wax eagle

09:57

He's in

Mourdos

event schedule. For a room?

BESW

@AlexanderLeonClatworthy You're now able to type in the Not A Bar chat room.

Mourdos

So. I have no idea how to DM/ST and I want to learn how to do so; any suggestions on where to start?

BESW

No. [pushes into deep end of GM pool]

Zachiel

@Mourdos DM/ST which game?

Mourdos

10:12

Not sure yet. I have most experience with 3.5/PF, but I've played a large number of other games.

I'm tempted by Fate or FAE.

@BESW talked about the Aeon Flux Fate module at one point.

I think it might have been called that.

BESW

Aeon Wave is seriously good, if you need a premade.

(Aeon Flux is a series of animated shorts for MTV, and a really awful film.)

Mourdos

10:28

Now I just need to find some people to run it for.

Zachiel

Mhhh. I need to ready a skill challenge but my previous experience with skill challenges has been not-really-good. Will the chat help me shaping this thing? I'll take notes and get reusable procedures, I swear.

Metool

Good morning!

BESW

@Zachiel [wave] Which system are you using?

Zachiel

Stalker0's alternate core skill challenge 1.8

@Metool Good morning, little plasma-shooting helmet-clad dark-skinned creature.

BESW

10:45

@Zachiel Good choice!

Zachiel

In the past, I've been stuck by things such as "wait, I should tell them the subset of abilities they can choose?" and trying to adapt adventure book skill challenges to the new system even if they were supposed to work differently.

Zachiel

11:01

The party is in an underground merchantile enclave. They secretly work for the mages that manage the place but the people in the hall should not discover it. They retrieved a relic that's only valuable for some specific people. It's of drow manifacture and when they bring it to the drow merchant he tells them he recognizes the item and tells them the whole story.
A client asked him, he organized an expedition, the expedition was attacked by the very same duergars that the PCs defeated. So he tells them the item is worthless and offers them 300gp, but the players would like to haggle for som…

Zachiel

11:22

So it will be something about diplomacy.

trogdor

@BESW sorry. what did you need?

BESW

No big rush, but--did you want your own physical copy of Atomic Robo, or do you just want the group to have access to one? I'ma order it soon, and I definitely want my own dead tree copy.

trogdor

I think I would like one

how much is it?

Zachiel

I'd say diplomacy, insight (to understand the final client is the couple of drow that are sitting next room, who the party saw before the doors were closed to ask for a private council), what else? There's an NPC in town that would hate them for dealing with the underdark races. Also, the PCs just freed a chain of slaves and they've told everyone in town about the heroes.

BESW

@trogdor With shipping, your half would come out to $42 for the book and a pdf.

trogdor

11:34

mk

BESW

(It's a 320 page book that looks really juicy.)

You don't have to make the decision now, of course, but let me know when you're sure.

trogdor

mk

BESW

Normally I'd be all, "eh, we only really need one physical copy, I'll just borrow Troggy's," but Atomic Robo looks amazingly useful even without actually running an Atomic Robo game.

trogdor

yeah,.. but even if we just had the one copy for me,... I would still have to pay for it,... cause it would be mine

Mourdos

12:04

Someone just told me not to worry about my English skills over on the worldbuilding chat... I am entirely confused...

BESW

Suspiciously specific denial?

doppelgreener

12:28

So there is a YTMND I just rediscovered that I'd lost for over a year

I'm gonna share it with y'all: michaeltyson.ytmnd.com

Aaron

Morning

doppelgreener

Good morning!

Aaron

It might be. Depends on the answer to an email I sent out yesterday.

doppelgreener

@Aaron I am reminded of Bilbo's conversation with Gandalf, and assert that it is a good one regardless

(and also that it is a morning to be good on)

doppelgreener

12:49

@Aaron I hope you get a good answer though! Best of luck

Aaron

Thanks.

Mourdos

Duplicate:
http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/48053/does-jack-of-all-trades-contribute-to-initiative

BESW

@Mourdos BAM.

Mourdos

Hehe

Just kill it with fire?

BESW

Self-immolation.

Aaron

12:53

Author deleted it because they agreed it was a dup I assume

Mourdos

And now its in the rss feed :P

Yep

Zachiel

@Mourdos lightning fast

Mourdos

I loath javascript with a passion.

Go and get a real way of dealing with errors rather than silently sticking the middle finger up.

I apologise to javascript on this occasion. It was the hot code swap not working properly.

Zachiel

13:11

@Mourdos too lightning fast

Mourdos

My middle finger comment reamins. I would have realised what was happening if it didn't silently fail.

Aaron

I didn't have a big issue with javascript. My biggest issue when I started coding was Null Pointer Exceptions.

Mourdos

See, I understand pointers and nulls, object initialisation and such. And the output when you have such an error makes it easy to at least find out where the line that tried to access the null object is. My issue is a combination of text based value (which are so easy to typo), combined with silent failure. They are quite hard to find.

I don't mind getting things wrong, I mind not being told even the general area the error is occurring, to give me a point to find it from.

rockbeatspaper

13:28

I have a hard time writing good javascript.

I had fun writing an irc bot with nodejs

doppelgreener

@Mourdos Is there much silent failure?

(I haven't yet had my JS experiences take me into cases where that's occurred.)

Mourdos

A function in a .js file had an incorrect .is method and then the rest of it just failed. Resulting in a further script not running

doppelgreener

oh nuts :(

Mourdos

I do not like web development >.> I was tricked with this project.

doppelgreener

13:47

I do! :)

JavaScript is a problematic programming language though, so I try to avoid it in favour of using proxy languages like coffeescript

(ones that compile into JS, so I don't have to deal with the syntax itself)

lisardggY

I need to think of a cool short-term PF character concept.

A couple of friends are running a marathon 12-hour PF game to be broadcast live as part of a fund drive for their podcast. I'm going to be a guest player for one hour with a 2nd level PF character.

Zachiel

@lisardggY Terminally ill rough guy wants to do somenting meaningful before meeting his god

Phil

@lisardggY A guy/gal with a deathwish linked closely to whatever the adventure is

A summoned creature that is going to disappear back to where they came from after a set time

lisardggY

@Phil Cool idea, but probably too much of a hassle to build, stat-wise.

Phil

Can you not use something existing as a template?

Could be a summoned human

or other humanoid

Maybe it's someone who has died and been turned back from the gates of whatever afterlife they believe in, and have to complete a short quest to prove their worth

lisardggY

13:57

The guideline is "20 points for stats, two traits, and any class/race, Paizo or 3rd Party". However, I probably don't want to take anything too complicated. Anything with mechanics more than a bard/sorcerer and I tend to get bored. :)

Phil

see my last idea

Mourdos

Master summoner, yeah!

lisardggY

I like it.

Mourdos

All the summons.

lisardggY

(Not the Master Summoner, no. :))

Zachiel

13:58

@Mourdos one turn, 40 minutes XD

lisardggY

Too much to keep track of.

Phil

heh

Mourdos

Pfft. I use maptools, so I have macros for all my minions.

lisardggY

@Phil I like it. Maybe there's a "revenant" template somewhere or something. :)

Phil

not familiar enough with PF to understand the practicalities of any of these ideas mind

Mourdos

13:58

Generally its called Power Slam, and my earth elementals use it

Not a bar, but plays one on TV

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