Yeah, I'd just like to be as RAW as possible so I don't have to worry about whether a character concept will fall apart because a DM rules differently.
If you're trying to do something that's super outside RAW like using a shield as an EK bonded thrown weapon, there's no way to build it that won't fall afoul of some DM.
You're building something that isn't supported by the rules except in implication.
Sorry, I edited to clarify. You can totally throw a shield, you can't bond it as an EK bonded weapon.
And all improvised weapons that don't just mimic an existing weapon do 1d4 damage.
The 1d6 per 10 pounds thing was, IIRC, object falling damage from the 3.5 Complete Warrior.
@Yuuki: Frame challenge: Why not just reflavor some of your spells as "throwing your shield", rather than trying to make the shield-throwing work like a thrown weapon?
Like, when you cast the Fire Bolt cantrip, you reflavor it as throwing a flaming shield that comes back after the attack.
@Miniman Yeah, I was trying to decide between Fighter and Paladin. The biggest reason why I went with Eldritch Knight was so I could try that weapon bond to a shield.
@mxyzplk @SevenSidedDie given the nominations begin in 16 hours, what's the timeline on the "how many positions to fill" question? Does that need to be settled before nominations start? Or can the election be changed to be for 2 spots rather than 1 (if that's the decision) during the election itself?
I would say "the deadline's in 16 hours" then - I don't think we want to be wiggling the number during the election because that would cause concerns about impropriety (bumping the number up or down during the event itself is sure to affect votes/vote spread in unplanned ways). I don't see any strong feelings on that meta for more than 3 currently, so I'd say the 3's have it, though I reckon in the end its up to our CM overlords
He disagreed with what he thought Ted Chiang was saying in Story of Your Life, so he changed the ending to say what he wanted it to...
...but because he completely failed to realise not just the specifics of Chiang's message, but the KIND of message Chiang was talking about, the movie kinda falls apart.
It's a little hard to explain... to my mind, it's about cultural contact zones and the way that people who have absorbed multiple cultural epistemologies can feel like they don't belong to either/any.
The script-writer read it as being very literal, about accepting predestination.
@BESW and was that the real source of her Louise's 'divorce' from her husband and somewhat from life as well? In addition - was she basically already 'understanding' non-linear language before the incident? I didn't really understand that part.
Okay, so. The short story is narrated by Dr. Banks from her perspective after... maybe we should take this to the Not A Bar and hang a spoiler warning on the door.
Eh, there are some great answers I haven't accepted because I haven't actually had a chance to use them yet, so I can't say yet that they actually solved my problem.
> Un-witting. When you defend against a Clever attack and succeed with style, you inflict 2 stress on the attacker.
Seriously though, "accept" is a totally different mechanic from "upvote" and the two shouldn't be conflated.
"Upvote" means random people think it's a good answer; "accept" means it's the answer that was actively helpful to the person originally asking the question.
the plan when picking Bard was Lore so I'm pretty sure that's the route I'll go. I picked Minor Illusion, Vicious Mockery, Bane, Faerie Fire, and Thunderwave as my current cantrips and spells
@Ryan Nice! in game without flanking, faerie fire is very much your friend. No Dissonant Whispers, though? If you've got melee fighters, that's a must-have at next level.
@NautArch BArd/Warlock multiclasses are fun. I currently have a Bard 5/ Warlock 1, I'm planning on getting Warlock 3 for Pact of the Tome, then continuing with Bard (I'm pretty sure we aren't going to go to 20 with these characters so I'm not too worried about losing access to Wish)
@diego I wasn't really planning on it, but the DM did a random treasure roll and an Instrument of the Bards came up (Cli Lyre.) It's powerful as all get-out, and I liked the fluff of actually playing it for my spells. Since it takes 2 hands, I needed to go a route that would still give me an attack since pulling out my rapier while holding the lyre just didn't make sense to me.
and around that same itme, our War Cleric turned undead on an entire encounter and my character (who wants power and to be famous) made a deal with his god for power :)
I've caught glimpses of arguments over whether Amonkhet's Egyptian elements are appropriate and good mood-setting, or whether they're cultural appropriation and bad, and whether it even counts as "cultural appropriation" when you're dealing with a long-gone ancient civilisation.
@DForck42 The rules on OAs says "You also don’t provoke an opportunity attack when you Teleport or when someone or something moves you without using your Movement, action, or reaction. "
Since Dissonant Whispers makes them use their reaction to move it doesn't qualify for this exception
@BESW Your hunch is correct. I saw one person who said they were Egyptian, and they also said everything Amonkhet was doing was awesome. Not in those words, but I don't remember their words -- only that they fully approved.
@NautArch I would really only use it when my character was focused on crushing his enemies versus helping his allies. Basically, unless I'm playing a war cleric, death cleric, or a brutally violent paladin, I would use bless. Bane could work well in a caster heavy party to reduce the enemy saves, but the extra d4 to your own party's saves and spell attacks with bless is also pretty good.
@Ryan How has your inspiration die usage gone? One of my favorite things about the bard - although once Cutting WOrds came online at 3, that was much more commonly used than handing them to other players.
of course a new player came and was playing a Sorcerer and wanted to do the negotiations for our reward money so I gave him Inspiration as well before going in... he rolled a 5 and still lost miserably. I should've done the negotiations myself
hmm I think I got my spell list wrong. Talking from memory. I know 100% I have Sleep, Thunderwave, Cure Wounds and Faerie Fire. I kept wanting to use Sleep but the melee guys just wanted to run in on mobs and my initiative rolls weren't great so I was always going near the end of the line
@Ryan don't forget if you are level 2 you also get half proficiency to Initiative. At low levels it isn't a big difference, but it should help a little
@diego yeah I noticed that at the end of playing, its something i absolutely forgot about during gameplay :( ah well I'll try to remember it for next time
we also had a maybe 7 year old girl playing with us that was making up her own rules and the DM was just kinda allowing it but whispering to the rest of us to not follow her lead
@NautArch yeah, if someone or the party in general deals damage out equally then you can sleep a lot more and either leave them asleep or get that advantage vs them
@Ryan I definitely get wanting that 7 year old to feel comfortable, but given it's Adventurers League that seems annoying. If you want to play, play by the rules, kid.
So I'm a new GM and am running my first campaign.
I'm by no means running a terribly complicated game with Elizabethan parlor intrigue, but I do have a few twists that I'm excited to throw at my players.
Now in my experience a good plot twist has to be subtly hinted at beforehand and paid-off a w...
@nitsua60 How did that go with so many PCs? My group is running through SKT now and we have 6 and most of the fights seem far too easy (and the ones that don't usually KO at least 1 PC), and I would expect that to get worse with more PCs.
@Yuuki Those People Form A Class Action Lawsuit Against Rocks And Wizards; Rock People Launch A Discrimination Counter-Suit; Rocks Fall On The Courtroom Ironically And Everybody Dies
Considering running Tomb of Horrors for my group to make them think again. Combat has been "hit bad man with big stick; make big stick-man feel magic feel-good" as of late.
@diego Yeah, there's encounter-adjustment. I also think most (AL) GMs seem to be very reluctant to actually play monsters well/intelligently/hard-mode. (I don't mean the GM's not intelligent, just that they play the monster as not-intelligent.)
I noticed that the regular Tiger received Darkvision, though the Lion does not (which was perhaps a balancing factor considering the many other abilities the Lion has, like Pack Tactics and improved jumping), so the question arises---should the Saber Toothed Tiger actually have Darkvision? It doe...
@nitsua60 was reading a similar issue on another site about someone complaining becuase Polymorph is too powerful. Well, maybe your DM shouldn't use creatures that aren't resistance to mundane attacks, maybe your other players don't want to always be in beast mode, maybe those in beast mode should play more as the besat they are rather than as the equivalent of a wildshaped druid, etc. etc. The problem isn't hte spell, the problem is your encounters and your group.
@NautArch so, as a counter, it's hard to do strategic moves and stuff if there's nothing in the dungeon/encounter that allows that. for example, we tend to be just in big rooms without a lot of cover, so combat is very clumpy
there's no incentive to get creative if we get punished by trying to maneuver, because we're throwing away attacks for what's probably not going to be much advantageous gain
@nitsua60 We aren't playing in AL, and I don't think he is not playing the monsters well. It just seems the monsters we encounter don't have the most interesting tactics available to them (there seems to be a lot of melee monster that can't do much except hit things as hard as they can)
@Yuuki Yes, I think creating a world/scenario where they want more is necessary. Our main DM doesn't ever do anything besides kill, and the few times he has hinted not to and we didn't, it came back to bite us.
You put your phylactery somewhere nice and safe like a popped bag of holding, and you use astral projection for all your interactions with the outside world. If your projection is destroyed, you just snap back into the bag and can project back out again immediately. If your astral cord is cut, you regenerate inside the bag as few days later as normal.
An inaccessible and unnamed extradimensional space is probably the best possible place for a demilich to hole up, as it renders him effectively immortal and most attempts to kill him will only delay him for two or three rounds.
@diego But I don't understand why a monster with no other tactic available to it than to run up and hit something would do so--or continue to do so--when it's overmatched? That, to me, screams of not playing a monster's objectives.
@BESW I had a headcanon realisation earlier: in an Atomic Robo-verse, Leonardo da Vinci could've been an extraterrestrial living in the equivalent of the countryside.
He was already familiar with awesome sciences, and was curious figuring out how to recreate them with wood and paper and other simple instruments.
[sigh] The worst thing about taxes is that Guam has modified forms which tax software doesn't know about, so I have to copy everything onto the real forms by hand.
Which means re-calculating everything because the numbers get shifted around.
So I use the tax software and it gives me what an ordinary federal form would look like for my numbers, then I use that info to fill out the local versions of the federal forms, and the "state" forms.
@BESW the only thing that makes this worse than my project to build a D&D 3.5e character value caculator is that I can delay my project as much as I want.
@DForck42 Yeah, Guamanians pay federal taxes but it doesn't all go to the same places as state residents. So there's a lot of "don't apply this deduction here, apply it over there instead" fiddly bits on the modified forms.
[yawn] I have the printed forms now, so I'll get a little sleep before I start the number-shifting. ttfn
@Yuuki other than not wanting to break the magic number 50, I don't really understand why they aren't just officially part of the US (I know some of it is those NOT wanting to be a part of the US)
@DForck42 Probably because Puerto Rico is still “ahead in line” in the queue for “wait, explain again why we aren't full members yet”, and that situation has a lot of unresolved angst around it. If Guam were the next obvious unresolved candidate for statehood, there would probably be more motion around it.
I don't recall exactly, but I think the US territories tend to lean liberal/Democratic and so a lot of the opposition to statehood is the belief that they would upset party balance.
@JoshuaAslanSmith Which is made even more raw once you realize that there's an uninhabited bird sanctuary island that is a US territory and anyone born on that island is a US citizen.
@JoshuaAslanSmith Isn't WA also fighting off insolvency? I can see not wanting to pull in a territory that's in financial straits, but it's a bit ironic too.
@JoshuaAslanSmith Yeah, that's the part that makes sense. Financially, it makes sense. In terms of cosmic justice, it's less sensical. “You're ours, now and forever, but not when we don't want the responsibility” is the hard sell in terms of justice.
@Yuuki Is it WI too? I was pretty sure a wet coast state was in financial trouble, and it wasn't California, so either OR or WA. But maybe that's out of date and over with.
@Yuuki Hm, the only articles on a WA budget crisis that I can find date to 2009 and 2010. I am clearly Mr Current Events. (It seems like they had a crisis, and are still managing the fallout today, but avoided actual insolvency.)
Just some clarification - there is no necessary rush to determine the slot count exactly now, so discussion is free to continue. The number of slots to be appointed can be changed at any time during the election, though preferably it is best done before the voting phase begins. A runner up can also be appointed some time after the election if the need is called for, assuming that there was enough support and competition during the election. No matter the slot count, everyone always gets to split their vote among 3 candidates, so considering using those to support a potential runner up as well. — Grace Note ♦19 mins ago
@NautArch It's not subjective, but it is potentially unanswerable. the only proper answer will be a designer statement either confirming that there was a mistake, or confirming that there wasn't one
@JoshuaAslanSmith Yes, but that doesn't mean that you can't break it down maybe, or go into it in more detail. but if somebody said "The rules are found on page ## of book ABC" and you say "As this other answer says: the rules are on page ## of book ABC" That would be a duplicate answer.
Which at the very least is bad form
@NautArch I don't think it would be bad form, you're just trying to make the best answer possible.
