At which point you're practically hacking together your own version of GhostView, eh?

possibly VTC system needed? But I don't recall if 1e's "two-class character" and 2e's "dual-class" were really different enough to warrant closure here.

@nitsua60 not... really? Illustrator already is the best interface for interacting with PDFs.

This is just a script

Best unless you need to do fancy signature things I guess.

@nitsua60 VtRO needed there now that the system's tagged

@Grubermensch If I had it and I was not stuck with Inkscape... well, yes, I could.

Ah well, yeah

If I were at work I'd just use Adobe Pro

annnd, done

extractpdf is the bomb

hey there @user507974

@nitsua60 -- you fraudster you!

how're things going otherwise?

"vote early, vote often!"

@Shalvenay Shock waves are propagating correctly, working on writeup right now. (That's good.) Have to drive to JFK at 4:30 tomorrow morning. (That's not good.)

@nitsua60 awww, where you headed?

Not me--dropping off exchange students. Maybe I'll put the bus in park, maybe I'll just slow-roll it =)

@nitsua60 ah :p

I got up early this morning actually -- got to go see a really nice lecture on home performance measurement, and some tradeshow stuff, and even meet an old prof of mine since he had his home on display for the home tour that was part of the event

buildingperformanceworkshop.com

^^ site for the main presenter they had there :D

hey as well @Fibericon

@nitsua60 did you catch my link?

@doppelgreener Glad you liked it.

and hey as well @JoelHarmon :)

hey @Shalvenay

@JoelHarmon how're things going?

busy winterizing

aaah

actually, I attended a very nice lecture on home performance measurement earlier today

basically, being able to actually test and diagnose problems with heat flow, air flow, and moisture instead of just shotgunning at the problems with windows, hvac, more insulation, etal

(read up for the link to the presenter's site)

out of curiosity -- what do you do to your house to winterize it?

Some is boring stuff, like swapping summer clothes for winter. The more DIY stuff is checking gutters, checking insulation, applying that clear plastic stuff to my ~80 year old windows, checking the water heater anode, calling in an HVAC guy to check the furnace.

I've got a list to work through

and I'm taking recommendations, if you've got any

@Shalvenay howdy to you partnet

partner*

what news from the mark

@JoelHarmon good on you for checking the water heater anode. I'd have someone come in and do a blower-door+thermal imaging test as a check on the insulation if you haven't done that already, and then fix anything identified there for insulation holes/divots or air leaks

not a whole lot out here btw

hmm

so @shalvenay lets say you were a tempest cleric in 5e with a sword handed to you from your god

as you levelled what cool abilities would you like to see from that sword

hrm...not really familiar with tempest clerics, so I'm probably not the best guy to ask :P

envision thunder and storm theme

lightning

the sorts

yeah, that's what comes to mind as well -- but I'd also be concerned about stepping into druid territory :p

for now this is a question of what would be cool to you

an electrified sword could make for interesting times though -- especially if it could put a few hundred kA of surge current through a target :P

(imagine exploding someone's helm off their head on contact)

(read up on arc flash if you want to know more)

anything else cool come to mind

summoning a mini-storm (microburst? ;) could be cool, especially as a counter to flight

physics major here, electricity is quite a friend of mine

kinda kicking my butt in EM atm but arc flashes are pretty cool

ive also thought itd be really cool to be able to just have your weapon fly over to you, like its magically attracted

@user507974 that'd be a nice one as well xD

magnetically not magically

derp

and channeling light bolts or the sort

lightning* bolts

how about anybody who you dont will to touch it gets shocked

Arc flashes are amazingly cool.

related

Hot.

will i get in trouble if i show an arc flash that reduces a person to a pile of ash

I had a sith in my campaign try to kill herself and the party with an arc blast by wedging her saber hilt in the corner of a ship and zapping it. The one PC with science knowledge freaked.

i hereby assert there is no blood in the following video youtu.be/4bBvmPRqfmo

though it may be NSFW

and scary as all hell

Yikes.

He's literally gone in seconds

Good thing the other guy left

Its like a video right off live leaks

maybe i should do some liveleaks binge watching to get ideas for campaign stuff, i did just pick up a copy of Nightmares of Mine which should have a gazillion pointers for injecting horror into campaigns

One of my favorite tactics is sex appeal that's not just out of place, but off in some noticeable way. It can be pretty creepy.

But then again, I'm an anime nerd. Yandere creeps me the hell out.

@Fibericon But Senpai...

Oh, I noticed.

@Fibericon you did?

Now imagine her fixated on one PC. The others gotta go, and you never know when she's watching. Hell, make it more creepy. PC is attracted to a different gender than the villain? Crossdressing villain.

Everything the villain does is to win over the PC... In the most screwed up way.

Hmm...

@Fibericon sorry, i had a legitimate response but i think i saw one of the most terrifying images of my life

my mind has gone kind of blank

Wonder what happened there.

electricity happened

I am now regretting my decision to have just a pot of coffee for breakfast. And skipping lunch.

and im just making dinner

hey @BESW

lets say 5e tempest cleric, you have a sword from your lightning/storms god that will gain powers as you level, what would be really abilities you'd dig for your sword to gain from this diety

Why do people keep asking me about 5e class features?

but this isnt a class feature

its literally just with a theme in mind whats cool to you

@BESW this is a rule of cool zone, what do you like

And yet, you've specified that it's a tempest cleric gaining abilities through a sword feature, so I have to know what that means or my suggestions have no context.

I liked the 3.5 Item Compendium's storm-flavoured items and their set powers, but they aren't really things I'd think a sword would do.

Am I limited to specifically sword-flavoured abilities?

I'd want my storm god to let me walk on air and hurl lightning bolts, make the earth shake and punch my enemies through mountains. None of that sounds clericky or swordy.

Heck, if we're in the rule of cool zone I don't want a sword. That's a lousy storm weapon.

I want to be able to conjure javelins of pure force, or wield a hammer made of thunderclaps.

Let me step through fog like shadow-walking, spit hail and weep frogs.

I suspect most of those would be deeply overpowered or underwhelming as a 5e class ability.

@BESW you're probably right

More generally: open-ended brainstorming tends to yield shallow results.

Constraint breeds creativity.

If you don't have a lot of room to spread out, you're forced to instead dive deep into the area you're allowed to play in.

If I'm limited very narrowly to sword-focused storm-themed abilities within a certain mechanical power tier, I'm gonna be forced to think of things I'd never think of otherwise.

For example, if I were specifically imagining powers granted by the 4e storm god, Kord, I'd be all over fear- and morale-based abilities.

Galvanising my allies and setting my enemies to shaking in their wet boots.

But an impersonal storm god wouldn't care about that at all.

Thor would be granting much different powers than Zeus.

@Fibericon I'd be wary of exploiting the monstrous female body trope. It's... got a lot of problems and I know I'd be reaching for the x-card in a hurry if it became a thing in any of my games.

Unless my group has agreed out loud in advance that unhealthy sexuality is a thing we want to explore in that particular game, I'd call foul on any attempt to make things scary because a woman is sexy in the wrong way.

If you're curious about actually digging into that sort of storytelling, it's easy enough to find articles and books on the female grotesque, the monstrous feminine, reproduction as horror, and so on. These are subjects which come with a lot of very common un-examined baggage.

Tonight's dinner is part of my ongoing quest to make Alaskan pollock interesting, this time by frying it with a paste of garlic, ginger, cayenne pepper, turmeric, lemon juice, soy sauce, and olive oil.

@BESW I misrepresented my suggestion, I think. I've never found a monstrous appearance to be that scary. Monstrous personality is way worse.

Right, but there's a distinct subcategory of monstrous personality that has a lot of problems attached to its use in media: a feminine personality which isn't conforming to expectations, especially sexually. I'm just advocating informed caution when toeing close to those tropes.

The trope of the female grotesque isn't exclusively about physical portrayals, it also touches on issues of agency and conformity.

Well, I guess that's one of many things that gets solved by talking to your group.

Indeed.

It's a fascinating subject, and one I may be exploring subversions of in an upcoming campaign--but I need to run it past my players first.

Our culture is so littered with un-examined examples, it'd be cool to actually make that a theme of a story.

Subverted how?

There's a number of ways it could be done, but two of my players are in this chat.

And at least one of them likes to be surprised.

@BESW You'd also win at arm wrestles.

And beer pong.

Fair enough. I can hardly wait for my players to find out that the world revolves around wealth quite literally.

@BESW Kord would feel reflexively compelled to grant his disciple divine protection whenever that disciple utters "hey guys, watch this!" (But they'd better do something pretty impressive right after.)

I dunno, he'd be against anything that prevents awesome scars.

However, he'd be all over protective wards on flagons being held by a buddy.

To cast purify food and drink you probably have to drop it on the floor and invoke the three-second rule.

@BESW For the drink you check with a companion whether anyone spat in it, then nod approvingly and take a sip.

I tried to do shooting in the vtm game my buddy is running today. Botched, dropped the gun, threw a fit about how loud it was.

I think I'll stick to being the social character.

@doppelgreener There's also hold my beer, a spell which prevents a drink from being spilled.

@BESW Do you think the Holy Robe would involve multiple popped collars?

Nah, it's probably just a Team Kord t-shirt and a baseball cap.

nice.

with a giant foam hand for special occasions, of couse.

@doppelgreener Now I'm thinking of "hey guys, watch this!" as a divine and sacred prayer. It's pretty amusing

hey there @JoelHarmon

@JoelHarmon That's exactly how the best prayers to Kord go.

My group decided that when you die, Kord greets you with a beer and you join him on the couch to watch instant replays of the awesomest things you've ever done.

@BESW [theorises] The cost of gemstones for resurrection is completely unnecessary, but gods set that cost so that the party will have to go off and find one, giving their recently-dead patrons time for chitchat, and possibly beer and instant replays, before they head back to the land of the living.

Kord would, of course, add those gemstones to the Adventuring Ring he presents to you after the Rite of the Instant Replays.

presumably, a follower of Kord would only die in awesome ways

they could die in un-awesome ways too probably (like a carrot gone bad in the stew) but Kord would sigh in understanding and give them a pat on the back. "Don't worry, we don't all get to go out in style."

hey there @DuckTapeAl

@Shalvenay Hey.

@DuckTapeAl how're things going?

Non-awesome, but not as bad as they could be.

Still unemployed, and I'm frankly terrified about election day coming up.

@DuckTapeAl yeah, election day gives me a few heebie-jeebies as well. I take it you're planning to vote, at least?

And my wife's workplace gave everyone permission to take all the time they needed to get their votes in, so we don't need to worry about how long the lines are.

@DuckTapeAl good on them :D

hey guys, who else feels like its really stupid that 5e bothered making tight rules for stowing 1 weapon at a time

do we have a question about how to find your FLGS on this Stack?

never even heard of the flgs acronym before now

@user507974 ah. Friendly Local Game Store

@Shalvenay I don't think we do, if I recall right. A couple searches haven't turned up anything to contradict my memory.

@SevenSidedDie yeah, a few questions have touched on it tangentially, but don't really address my problem, namely that I something that I suspect is a FLGS is nearby, but I don't know anything more about them, and the yellow pages don't seem to list anything re: game shops -- I might try going back and seeing if they got lumped in with the comics folks

@Shalvenay Is the Yellow Pages reliable there? I find it pretty obsolete, since businesses have to buy their spot and so many businesses in this Internet age don't bother, at least around here.

@SevenSidedDie not 100% but it's at least worth a shot

In the past when I've tried to track down a suspected FLGS, I've used Google or Google Maps, searching for hobby or board games. (Comics sometimes too, but the comic+RPG store is now a thing of the past around here.)

Oh, and also magic the gathering or card shop. MtG and board games are FLGS's major money makers. RPGs are mostly stocked out of love, rather than profits.

ah, Google Maps was the ticket

@Shalvenay Found the place you were thinking of?

@SevenSidedDie yeah.

it was a case of "I know precisely where it is, but I wasn't 100% sure what it is"

@Shalvenay Oh yeah, Maps is great for that. Being able to zoom in and scout a block of businesses and then follow up with any official websites they have, from my kitchen table, is something that makes me feel like we're living in the future.

@SevenSidedDie It was really weird to be able to do that on Guam, three years after everyone else was treating it like a normal thing.

Also, have you seen Map of the Dead? I remember when findagrave felt bleeding-edge.

@BESW It still feels pretty recent to me that Streetview was even available in Vancouver, Canada. But then, part of that seems to be the mental time warp of having a kid; she was still a baby when I spotted a Streetview camera car mapping my local main street. But that was… seven years ago? ^^;

@BESW I have not…

hey there @Emrakul

[wave]

@SevenSidedDie that Streetview car goes the darndest places

how're things going?

@BESW Oh, that's fantastic. This would be perfect for the next time we bring out Zombie Cinema.

@Shalvenay Was that to me or to Emrakul? :)

@SevenSidedDie both I suppose :)

@Shalvenay Well then, not too bad. I'm procrastinating on an accounting class assignment that I know will be easy, so that's good and bad. ;) My partner is out for a walk and talk with a good friend who's figuring out his head, and my daughter is chewing through a book she got for her birthday. And there is cake, and tea, and tomorrow is Game Night to look forward to. And I slept so awesome last night, which I needed after a week of burning the candle at both ends. You?

@SevenSidedDie What book is she reading?

@SevenSidedDie got a game night to look forward to tomorrow night as well

@BESW It's the latest Diary of a Wimpy Kid. (It's just preteen brain candy, but fortunately not the only thing she reads. And better than some popular series for her age.)

Cool.

that reminds me, I should get some Doug Self in when it comes to reading material

@Shalvenay Nice. Monday nights seemed like a weird night for gaming, but it has settled as our most reliable evening by far over the past two years.

I've been recommending the Dragonbreath series for that demographic lately.

that, and I might see about checking out Understanding Air France 447 from the library...

@BESW Ursula Vernon is wonderful. I haven't got her reading Dragonbreath yet, but last I poked it at her she was probably still a bit young.

And for slightly older kids, the Hamster Princess series is awesome.

@Shalvenay Oh god, the pitot tubes. Just the Wikipedia page for AF 447 gives me chills.

that, and drop by the main branch library to see about consulting with a librarian there about finding suitable fiction. hopefully I won't do to them what I've been known to do to librarians in the past, which is leave them and I banging our collective heads on the walls"

Must dash, ttfn

@BESW Later!

@SevenSidedDie not just that -- the crew -- their VSI and pitch angle should have told them "holy crap, those wings are NOT working!"

@BESW And cheers on the Meta post. That is a wealth of empathy and also links and resources.

@Shalvenay The conclusion I remember being drawn from that is that too few junior pilots (the captain was asleep at the time) get any experience flying outside of the, what do they call it? normal world settings? That doesn't sound right. But the general idea that the instruments function in a context-sensitive way, and you have to know if you're in typical mode or a compromised instrument mode.

Ah, “normal law” and “alternate law”, among others.

@SevenSidedDie well, control laws are one thing, but there was a 727 crew that pancaked into the ground in a very similar chain of events -- the main problem was recognizing and reacting properly to the unreliable airspeed, or the ensuing stall for that matter.

@Shalvenay Yeah. The idea I recall reading, reinforced by some unrelated articles I read some years later, was that we are facing a frightening drop-off in pilot experience with marginally-emergency situations — ironically because flight is becoming so much safer. As a result, we have fewer pilot-hours of experience with marginal situations, and minor problems can become major due to lack of recognising the problem and reacting properly.

@SevenSidedDie yeah -- upset recovery is something that used to be sort of "assumed" by the airlines from pilots' prior experience and training -- but that's no longer something one can do. so the airlines are investing in actually teaching it

@Shalvenay That is reassuring. So perhaps we're coming out of the low caused by the transition period, where experience was still being assumed but it was in reality becoming concentrated in only the most senior pilots.

@SevenSidedDie I think so -- it'll be a while yet for things to sink in worldwide, though

(some places are better off than others. the US is actually fairly well off. S.Korea though, where it's basically illegal to own your own plane, and nobody will rent you a plane for the weekend...)

Yeah. If only we had a global air safety regime (and, that we had the political infrastructure to make a global air safety regime even possible…)

(S.Korea has a serious problem with VFR giving them the heebie-jeebies)

@Shalvenay I wonder why South Korea has that so regimented. I can only guess that being geographically small and technically still in a state of war makes putting airplanes in private hands a security issue.

@SevenSidedDie yeah -- it's that annoying neighbor to the north