@AugnarRoinstoff You're going to be starting at level one, and are going to play for 5-6 of RL hours? but those 5-6 RL hours are equivalent to 4-5 in-game days? How heavily is combat sprinkled on during those days? Because, by my experience, you should get to level 2 after 1 in-game day of adventure or roughly 3-4 hours of play. It would be safe to assume your PCs will reach 2nd-level to face the final boss.
@Papayaman1000 It hasn't been subject to rigorous clinical testing, but it's reasonable to believe unpasteurized honey acts like a kind of live-culture vaccine against allergies to the plants the bees visited to make the honey. So local honey from free-ranging bees offers resistance to a variety of local allergens.
Local honey tends to be rather expensive though, even for honey, so I don't use it for all my honey needs.
We got some local honey recently, I might have to eat more of it. (bought a jar from the beekeepers association at a market day). There's also an off-the-shelf brand that I think is produced locally.
To be fair, there's also reasonable arguments against local honey as an anti-allergen, but from what I've read it's mostly a matter of scope and debunking it as a "magic cure" rather than a mild boost to specific resistances.
It's obviously not a very controlled dosage, which can have its own problems.
It also depends on what you're allergic to; some common allergies are to plants that bees probably don't visit. But I can't argue too hard with anything that convinces me to support local beekeeping.
(Seriously, support local beekeeping. It's literally an apocalypse-aversion measure.)
@AugnarRoinstoff cont... there are some cool demons you can throw at a presumably 2nd-level party. Personally, I would go for a Shadow Demon (MM 64). It's in the deadly range for the PCs, but that's a good thing because it gives you something to work towards: letting the PCs find out its weakness, get an item that can help them (or be creative themselves), like a scroll of daylight or a Gem of Brightness (DMG 171), to even the odds.
It rewards the PCs for thinking and trying to find a weakness in an otherwise too-difficult-to-handle encounter.
@Shalvenay ohai! Am going in and out with posting a link to my discord channel where stackfolk can join in playing in my modified west marches game
@BESW, I find that most old-wives tales have nuggets of truth in them that were more useful before Scientific Medicine overwhelmed the field with more broadly and potently useful techniques.
Which is to say, dig into them, as the ones that are right are often better prevention tools than what science has given us so far because science has been laser-focused on cures, rather than prevention.
@BESW Our school's started up a colony this year; my kids and I have some small responsibility of seeing them safely through the summer unti lour apiary students come back =\
Translating traditional medicine into modern medicine does, however, often wind up leaving us reliant on responsive, rather than proactive, health practices.
We haven't figured out yet how to balance it all out.
@nitsua60 Awesome.
(I know someone who knows ginger tea is better at settling his stomach than calcium carbonate tablets, and that calcium carbonate interferes with processing his other medication, but he still prefers to pop the pills because psychologically it feels more like medicine.)
@daze413 It's a 90s marketing gimmick, not a description of how they were made. And I was reminded of them because they'd do very nicely as a placebo pill.
I also found a hilarious rumor about their discontinuation which furthers the false etymology of the Lifesaver candy.
donut holes, I have learned to be not actual donut holes at an embarrassingly advanced age, thinking: "If there are that many donut holes, then there should be an equal amount of donuts!" (which there weren't.
OK, I'm finally getting enough courage to let more people into my modified-west marches game of Darkest Dungeons and Dragons 5e, playable through play-by-voicechat in Discord. Here's the chat-message limit elevator pitch:
_The PCs are mercenaries hired by a mysterious well-paying nobleman to clear out his ancient family's estate, which has been overrun by eldritch horrors, cultists, brigands, abominations, and monstrosities. They must delve into the darkest regions of this noble's huge property, find the source of all this evil, and destroy it, if they can._
The schedule is flexible, but will most likely be between 10:00 to 16:00 GMT+0 on weekdays, and more flexible on weekends. The game will focus on (in decreasing order): combat, exploration, and roleplaying. Since this is Westmarches, anyone can come and go as they please, with up to 6 of players able to play in one session, which will span from 3 to 5 hours. To join, enter this discord server: discord.gg/pRvXY8 . And wait around for more instructions for char creation :) See you!
it doesn't help that the stack doesnt keep its own time, as I understand. If it did, I could just say "X:00 stack server time, then we can have something in common to look at.
"AEDST" is what everywhere else use. Since America got confused when we were still using "EST", we had to step up to "AEST", and because Queensland says that Daylight Savings is dumb, they stepped up to AEDST
It starts with a galactic-sized version of Alien, latching itself to the Hull of the US Enterprise. After 20 daunting minutes of crashing into asteroids to try and shake it off, they finally managed to dislodge it. It was all very cinematic.
Cut to my parents backyard, where this thing lands. It immediately runs off into the bush to recover, and sends in waves of Aliens to try and kill us. Using the weirdest set of rapid-fire-staple-gun-Uzis I have ever seen, we managed to stem the flow of the horde.
By now, the Brood Mother returns. Only, it decided to shed its skin, reveling it's true self: A Texas-Chainsaw-Massacre version of David Hasselhoff.
He refused to die. After running out of stapler bullets, we had to beat him to death, impaling him, seemingly forcing every single drop of blood from his body, and only then did he stop moving.
@Ben Aw. I bet those translucent rainbow dice would be amazing in sunlight. But those solid ones are very tempting, despite converting from British Imperial Paperweights to anemic Canadian plastic bills.
All in all though I don't think it would really make that much of a difference. He's using it to demonstrate his point, rather than pointing out something specific within the conversation.
And even then, he's identified that each person has said one thing or another, so if he does refer to a specific line, we can still follow the discussion.
Also something wrong with the question: The first scene did present demogorgon as their enemy, so presumably he was a full health. But! They didn't actually kill demogorgon in one hit, IIRC, they killed the thessalhydra in one hit and only at the end of the season.
dangit, we need to do that TV series watching chat event! cc: @Miniman
@daze413 They didn't kill “the demogorgon” in one hit at the beginning, but they were talking about how they could but only if he rolled very well, and they were arguing about whether he should risk it or cast a different spell that would save them all. (And then the die rolled off the table and Nightmare Fuel leaked into their world before they got a chance to return to their game.) The idea being that the risk-aggression/safety-saving-friends dilemma is foreshadowing later events.
@daze413 IIRC you recall right. :) Though it does in the last episode, and I think they imply it in the first? So it's just as well to assume that's what they mean in the first.
@Ben I think levels of madness would be appropriate. Which, btw, the characters really showed well, I think. How Nancy changes from Miss-bends-the-rules-slightly-acting-out-teen, to break-a-lock-with-no-hesitation
@SevenSidedDie ok, but now the target is different. Im not sure how much HP the thessalhydra has, but should be lower than a demon prince :)
@daze413 No, I mean both the first and last episode they confront “the demogorgon”, and they're just re-doing the same fight/scene. IIRC the death of the thessalhydra is just setup for the trogs and “the demogorgon”.
@daze413 I'm on a family vacation next week, but was thinking of trying to set up a time for the watch-party when I get back. (I don't want to be the only person hosting things, because that ties things to my schedule, but I also don't want to not host things that interest me.)
[modeled on this well-posed and highly ranked meta over at WB.SE]
We've got some answers that've really gone above-and-beyond in answering rigorously and completely some superlative questions. And by "superlative" I don't mean that the questions are excellent, I just mean that they contain sup...
@Ben if you think it's cheesy, I'd say go ahead and put it up there. And drop a line or two about what makes it cheese. Perhaps, through assembling this list, we'll end up at some closer-to-common understanding of what people mean by the term =)
@Ben There's a limit of one submission per user. So if I ever post an answer, it means any better, stinkier, cheese I find or remember I'm stuck not posting.
@Miniman @nitsua60 can we put comments on (whoa, deja vu) the question, on candidates of cheeses we found/remember, then maybe another user can pick among them? Or is that a bad idea?
@Miniman off-topic, I was having some serious issues with the watchers last night, so I'm wondering if I should just re-start the game, and focus my build a little better, or just re-spec
@Ben By the time I had gotten partway through SotFS, given up, and played through DS2, I was too fed up to think about DLC, and honestly I just didn't enjoy 2 enough to go back and play all the way through to try out the DLC.
toughest fight in the trio, for me, is the smelter demon - in DS2. Maybe it was the choice of weapons and build as a mace cleric, but that fight was HARD.
but, there is evidence, if you watch closely (I forget exactly where), that Artorias is LEFT handed, so he's basically fighting you with his off-hand, at a serious disadvantage
@Ben So, this really exemplifies the difference between DS1 bosses and DS3 bosses. Kalameet and Manus are both brutal. But their moves are big, and there's only a few of them, and they do have different telegraphs once you know what to look for. But Pontiff and the Nameless King both have lots of small, fast, subtly different moves, with weird timing.
So, personally, I find that I can learn DS1 bosses, and if I get hit by a move it's because my execution was off.
But in DS3, I'm generally improvising everything, and I get hit a lot. But individual moves do a lot less damage, so a combination of luck and estus gets me through.
@Miniman I think my current problem is that this is still my first run-through. My first build is usually always way off-base. I know what I want, but I don't know what I can use, so I just work with what I do know, and end up just bloating my stats, using the wrong gear, and I just end up being... clunky
@Ben If you find you're stuck, I do have some suggestions - there's at least one build I know of which gets massive damage for basically no stat investment.
@Miniman Well I was thinking of re-speccing. But the fact that I've been running around hollowed for the first half of the game, and just creating this bloated character, I just feel like I've done it wrong. (Not that it's technically possible to, but you know what I mean). I had an Idea of what I wanted to do, but with no idea of what the game had to offer, I missed so much.
So I think it's probably better to just re-start and focus on doing my build properly.
@daze413 Have you seen the alternate boss fight scene for Sif if you fight Artorias first?
Well A) cos it doesn't match up with the actual in-game trigger, and B) I dunno, I always thought that he recognised Artorias' scent on you, hence his reaction.
If Sif recognised the Undead's scent, I dunno, he'd probably still be like "oh it's you. Ah well"
@Ben When I see some particularly egregious starring, I'll often wait an hour or three and then quietly cancel all but the most representative or most starred line in a conversation.
(Especially if the stars I'm cancelling are on my own lines.)
@Ben I put in an order! …and got another set for a friend whose birthday is coming up, plus a few one-off dice that would make neat/cute gifts… and a type of d7 I don't have yet… 💸
@Ben Well, I mean. This is the only chat I've ever seen that didn't treat stars as a thumbs-up button. So obviously it's doesn't (usually?) trigger a catastrophic failure of the system.
But we seem to (generally) prefer keeping stars as a Special Sometimes Treat rather than devaluing them with overuse.
@MadTux another thing you should know: if @BESW ever achieves total dominance of the starred comments sidebar, he'll ascend to deityhood and consume us all with glorious fire in the process.
I think in truth for me it's sort of a half/half, sort of. Sometimes it's a "like" reaction, but mostly it's a "interesting" reaction. I think actually maybe the comment invite system also confuses it a little? You would probably state that the intention for the comment invites is the sane thing, but people often use it for funny things as well.
Honestly though when I'm on my phone, the auto-correct fails I do have are far less severe than what usually happens. My phone like to jump to conclusions and starts go NY g no roundabouts America if spoon rewards
@NautArch Gotta be honest - if it ws me, I'd've restricted the question to attacks against a single target. No point in hundreds of attacks if you can't use them against the BBEG.
@NautArch I find your answer to be the most useful. Especially considering the context of the question. The others are neat as far as thought experiments go.
@Miniman, I feel like the use-case precludes taking an infinite amount of time to prepare for a given combat. And as a side point, do 5e hydra extra-heads fall off over time like in 3.5?
@godskook Regular old polymorph only lets you turn into a beast, but a hydra is a monstrosity. I think you would need true polymorph if you wanted to be a hydra.
@Adam, in 3.5, I'll be honest, I forget what 4th+ Polymorph spells do specifically after determining that they're all too busted to allow in a real game as-is. I'm sloppy, and just say "polymorph" to refer to all of them.
@godskook If you had 20 con (+5 to saves), +6 proficiency bonus, and proficiency in Con Saves, you could never fail that check. The DC is 12 for 25 damage, so with +11 you could never fail
The recent See Invisibility question got me thinking of a concept: a dungeon you can only safely navigate by having one person who can See Invisible and another who cannot. There are hidden walls and bridges and walkways, but being able to see through those (because they're still invisible to you) lets you see other important things, like instructions and signals.
@doppelgreener I've done that. The dungeon was made of mirrors -- floor, wall, ceilings, all smooth mirrors. But when you use See Invisibility, you see eldritch clues scrawled on these mirrors which tell you how to get out (also you see the ghosts of all those who've failed, just wandering the halls).
It's not an exact incarnation of your idea though. The guys without See Invisibility couldn't really do much.
Or there's an invisible wall, and on the other side are signals as to when or how it's safe to move through a room. You can only see the signals if you can't see the invisible wall. The guy with See Invisibility sees the wall in the way and would never realise they're there.
[modeled on this well-posed and highly ranked meta over at WB.SE]
We've got some answers that've really gone above-and-beyond in answering rigorously and completely some superlative questions. And by "superlative" I don't mean that the questions are excellent, I just mean that they contain sup...
