@GreySage i would have hard time arguing against that :) BUt it was still enjoyable. But the last battle, while fun to watch, was odd. I actdually had to go to the bathroom during it and don't feel like i missed anything.

@GreySage 2 hours of characterization that they ruined with the finale.

The whole point of the Wonder Woman prequel is that it's supposed to set up her behavior in pre-BvS. Why would an idealist good person like Diana go into hiding for decades and not do superheroics? She's supposed be disillusioned and the movie should've had a depressing ending to reflect that.

Bad ending? We can't have that in a Hollywood movie!

Wall-E should have ended about 20 minutes early IMO

Sounds about right that the one movie that needed to be grimdark in the DC cinematic universe is the one that isn't.

@SPavel I'm not a fan of "true art is angst", but in the context of the movie and the universe, it's what makes sense.

@Yuuki Most of WW was Diana learning that the world doesn't work the way she thinks it does. The last battle was pretty much unnecessary eye-candy. I agree that the movie as a whole could have done a better job giving her motivation to NOT be heroic

As it ended, it felt like she would have MORE motivation to be heroic

@SPavel WALL-E ending 20 minutes before it did would've run counter the underlying plot.

Maybe not 20 minutes, I just think he shouldn't have recovered his memories.

@Yuuki What were the last 20 minutes of WALL-E? It's been a long time since that movie

@SPavel How would that have contributed to the story?

@GreySage They go back to Earth and replace his broken parts.

The fact that he regains his memories is a sign that WALL-E has become something more than the sum of his parts. That, arguably, he's become human.

One of the underlying themes of the movie is that humans have lost touch with humanity and a robot (WALL-E) has, for all intents and porpoises, become more human than the humans.

But this way they didn't learn anything

There was no sacrifice

And he in turn helps the humans re-discover their humanity.

Yeah but he already did that

And he paid a price for it, and then whoops no he didn't

@SPavel I fail to see how WALL-E not getting his memories back would've taught "them" anything.

Agreed. It would've made the ending sad, for the sake of making the ending sad.

It doesn't provide any additional narrative. It would be the epitome of the "only angst is true art" trope that I hate.

True art is incomprehensible, not angsty :P

like Primer

True art is One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Dead Fish

Now it's 100% more grim

And 100% less rhyming.

True poetry doesn't rhyme

(that's actually one of MY pet peeves)

Yeah, it's like sand.

It's coarse and it gets everywhere.

(poems should rhyme, or at least not rhyme for a good reason, a story with a broken return key is not a poem)

Eh, depends on whether you're trying to adhere to a form or not. And I maintain that using a form does not make poetry any more or less artistic.

Does make it more or less annoying though

@Yuuki I read Fox in Socks to my daughter for the first time yesterday. It was amazing

Again, I understand that it's a matter of taste, but kvetching is healthy

There are perfectly legitimate poetic meters based on something else than the narrow sense of "rhyme", eg. rhythm or alliteration.

But yeah, now that I think about it, it's weird how the one movie in the DC universe that would be improved by dialing up the grimdark is the one movie that didn't get said dial-up.

Arguably, Man of Steel was fine although the complete destruction of Metropolis was probably unneeded, the problem was that they didn't make a second movie before BvS.

I think Wonder Woman wasn't a bad film but it didn't really make much sense either. Had too much Evil Nazis for a World War I film.

Or Evil Nazisms, I guess.

WWI always gets too WWII-ified

it's always WWII + trenches - tanks

And too many Americans

On the bright side, WW didn't have many Americans, none if I recall correctly.

On the not-so bright side, the not-Nazi Germans are shown for a scene and then swiftly killed.

The Germans were so obviously evil that Diana knew right from the start to side with the spy guy despite her having no information about either side beforehand :)

@Yuuki The British spy was american

I think it would've helped if the beginning scenes had the Allies and the Central Powers bring their fight to Themyscira rather than the Central Powers Germany chasing Chris Pine.

@GreySage Was he? I thought he was just Chris Pine refusing to do a poor British accent.

@Yuuki I remember, not only for the horrendous lack of accent, but the Native guy said that his people were wiped out by the spy's people

@GreySage Oh yeah...

My impression of WW is that, as an Amazon princess, she has been conditioned from an early age to solve problems with violence without repercussions.

@GreySage To be fair, that could be equally true if he was British.

IIRC in some cartoon, she sees a girl being bullied, so she gives the girl her sword and tells her to deal with it.

So Diana stabbing a random guy that she suspects of being a spy, sure!

@SPavel Sure? But cartoons and comics should not be used as a reference for characterization in the movies, which are clearly trying to be their own universes.

If he turned out to be on her side, oops, but that's how an Amazon do.

@kviiri I don't know enough about British history to comment on that. I thought the Brits were the (more or less) native population? Or at least none of the natives from 1500 years ago survived

Yuuki - The writers are not inventing these characters anew either.

@GreySage I mean from the times the British were colonizing North America

@GreySage The British Empire have not been natives in several parts of the world where they've been wiping out natives.

Specifically, the English. Scots and Welshmen didn't have much say about that.

@kviiri Ah, I guess so yeah.

@SPavel Sure, but using a cartoon to speak about WW's character when we're ostensibly talking about the movies is like saying Dumbledore hates ghosts because he exorcised Peeves because he doesn't show up in the movies.

(I have a Welsh colleague who diligently corrects me for using "British" too liberally, and I appreciate her work)

Yuuki - that's absurd, there are plenty of ghosts in Hogwarts in the movies

There's nothing wrong with using established characterization as an explanation for a character's actions in a rebooted property

s/ghosts/poltergeists

@Yuuki On that topic, everyone in the Harry Potter universe is WAY too freaked out by stuff like magic beasts and "hauntings" when they have 100% real ghosts just chillin' in the hallways

@SPavel Talking about Peter Parker as a responsible married man with a child is patently ridiculous when he's like 14 or something in the movies.

What does that have to do with Diana?

It's the same thing as using established characterization as an explanation for a character's actions in a rebooted property.

The Commandos video game franchise was pretty good at having non-Americans in a WWII setting. The Driver's American, and there's the Green Beret who's Irish I think, The Marine has a vaguely Welsh accent (to a non-native ear), The Sapper is English, The Spy and the Thief are French. There's even a Russian woman in the team although she doesn't appear in many missions.

"Married man with child" is not an attribute of Spider-Man, nor a personality trait.

Also, Barry Allen is completely different in the movies than he is in the comics.

Movies Barry Allen is more like Wally West than Barry Allen.

Also the case with Hal Jordan.

I would wager that most viewers don't even know who Barry Allen and Hal Jordan are

Most viewers don't know who "Diana Prince" is either but they know "Wonder Woman", "Flash", and "Green Lantern".

Also, you're moving goalposts.

Except maybe if they watch the terrible CW series The Flash

But why does it matter that there are different Flashes and Green Lanterns when there is one Diana?

You're the one moving goalposts

(Not the point, but there has technically been more than one Wonder Woman)

If you want to get on my case about everything I say, we can just drop the conversation.

But I provided an example of a problem with justification using characterization from a different medium/universe (comics, movies) in Movies Barry Allen vs Comics Barry Allen.

And then you said that it doesn't count because the Flash isn't popular?

Since when did popularity have anything to do with the discussion beforehand?

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Hm.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Aha

@GreySage To be fair, a wizard's standard of weird is probably different from our standard of weird.

@Yuuki Exactly, but everyone acts like normal people (well, poorly written and cliched normal people, but still)

Like the whole thing about everyone treating Luna like she's crazy because Crumple-horned Snorkacks.

And, to be fair, Luna probably is a little bit crazy.

@GreySage I've been wondering, why do they even categorize some of those things as magical beasts? I can get dementors etc that do clearly supernatural stuff, but I don't think we'd consider something like hippogriffs as particularly weird if they had been around for millenia.

@kviiri Maybe it has to do with magical origins?

Because they use the Magical Beast hit dice

And have 3+ Intelligence

Given how irresponsible HP wizards are, it might be that hippogriffs are not natural in origin, someone just messed up a transfiguration and was too lazy to reverse it

And it happened to breed true because.

Maybe platypuses are a magical beast that was accidentally exposed to the public and it was too late to roll back.

Two unrelated branches in git being merged

@kviiri most of the highlighted beasts have some form of magicalness to them

Are you saying that hippogriffs have midichlorians

there were some in his suitcase that we didn't see much of, but those we do can do special things

@SPavel no one will ever say that - and do not mention those things again. They do not exist in my universe :)

If you think about it, wouldn't magical creatures break the masquerade? Don't they live in the wild just like normal animals?

Did wizards decide "we're going to go into hiding and take all the good animals nyah nyah" and then magic them so the muggles can't detect them?

Well many of those are indeed invisible to muggles, aren't they?

@NautArch The explanation that midichlorians are a product of a powerful Force connection, not its cause, made sense to me with a minimum of rage

@kviiri What are you talking about, I clearly saw them when I watched the movie documentary!

Maybe that's the real reason that Obi-Wan lets Maul kill Qui-Gon

@SPavel maximum rage for me. having grown up with the originals and the belief that the story should follow the classical Hero cycle along with my own personal preferential belief that the force is in all of us, and it's up to us to connect to it - the idea that it isn't up to us, but instead dependent on some third party is a huge load of bull hockey.

"Master, I have asked you to stop saying 'midichlorians' for the last time."

@NautArch That's what I'm saying - the (possibly non canon) explanation is that midichlorians seek out powerful Force connections, not cause them. A powerful Force adept could have 0 midichlorians.

I had grown up with the belief that "balance in the Force" meant "not purely Light and not purely Dark" but Lucas also decided to throw a wrench in that.

In fact, it would explain how Yoda managed to hide for so long, he had some Bat Midichlorian Repellant Spray on his utility belt

@SPavel oh, that's interesting if that's the case. I had thought that the number of midichlorians determined your sensitivity.

not that your sensitivity was the regulator for midichlorians

@NautArch it does, but that's only because the more sensitive you are, the more of the parasites can be sustained on iy

it*

@NautArch I think that's a retcon.

It might have just been a fan theory to de-stupid the prequels though

But I like it

A retcon of a retcon, so to speak.

i think so :) otherwise, the idea of the miracle child wouldn't work?

Yeah, I never got that part - why was Anakin a miracle child?

Seems pretty random to insert immaculate conception into the mess

because Star Wars went from the classical hero cycle to the judeo-christian jesus-type story.

@SPavel yes, yes it was

@NautArch IIRC, there was some EU/Legends stuff about Palpatine's master being able to communicate and influence the midichlorians to create a child from the Force.

Also in the EU he was created by Palpatine or something

Which is just - what

Yeah that

Which was derived from some dialogue Palpatine had in the movies.

Honestly, a serious problem the EU had was interpreting everything said in the movies as solid fact.

As if people didn't lie, distort, or make mistakes.

Especially, you know, Sith

I think using the Force to create a child is just fine as a theory - it doesn't midichlorians. I just dislike the idea that the force isn't within us, it's within something else that's within us.

My girlfriend is a huge Trekkie. Until quite recently, I hadn't seen a single episode of any Star Trek installment, and used to tease her by mixing up Star Trek and Star Wars all the time.

Palpatine could have not told the truth on screen a single time

Like when Vader said that the Force was more powerful than the Death Star station.

Would have been very much within his character

I interpreted that as a metaphorical statement.

Or alternately Vader being arrogant.

@Yuuki Obi Wan told Vader that he would become more powerful than Vader could imagine as a dead guy

Now that I've actually watched some Star Trek, I actually think Star Wars might just be the less bonkers one...

I think the Jedi might actually think that way

But no, the EU interpreted that as The Truth and gave Palpatine the ability to make planet-sized black holes from the Force.

wot

But then why have a Death Star at all?

Just... why? If Palpatine could do that, why would he build the Death Star?

Just drive the Emperor up to an uppity planet on his segway or whatever

@SPavel In general, audiences have a bad habit of assuming everything spoken by a character is true. Even by villains.

And start the genocide

Unless explicitly confirmed as a lie later on.

Even the Jedi lie! On screen!

"from a certain point of view" lol

In retrospect, Obi Wan may have been trolling Anakin. From your point of view the Jedi are evil? Well from my point of view, Vader killed you.

@SPavel Wasn't that an attempt to cover up an inconsistency later on in the trilogy? At that point, Vader really wasn't Anakin Skywalker.

By that I mean, at the time of filming the first Star Wars, this whole "I am your father, and Leia is your sister" plot point wasn't a thing

@Adam Yes, in the original movie there was no connection between Vader and Luke. In the 2nd one he became Luke's father (who was declared 'dead' by Obi-wan)

Wait, seriously?

Damn, I got punk'd

tangent: Why do people hate the prequels for introducing Medichlorians? They were an established part of the EU long before that.

Obi-wan even called Vader "Darth" repeatedly during their fight, because it wasn't meant to be a title. It was his actual name.

Huh.

@GreySage Most people aren't aware of the EU content in the same way.

To be fair, the prequels sort of made it work - Anakin didn't take on the title willingly, and hated serving Palpatine. Obi Wan mocking him in this way fits.

@kviiri If someone gets upset enough that medichlorians exist in the Star Wars universe, they should

@GreySage You'd be surprised by what sort of stuff people can get upset about!

Also, it's possible that people only got into EU after seeing Ep I?

The ability of a Star Wars fan to get upset about the EU is insignificant next to the power of the Force

Oh hey, the new one is coming out in under a month

Will it be exactly the same as The Empire Strikes Back? Only time will tell.

They're definitely trying to play up the gloom and doom factor in the trailers.

@SPavel My guess is a mix of Empire and Revenge of the Sith

I'd love to see the face-off between Kylo and Luke

Kylo in his Vader Wannabe hat

"Grr I am evil and scary!"

I would actually laugh if they threw out everything in the trailers and just made a shot-for-shot remake of Empire Strikes Back.

Kylo was the coolest SW villain ever... until he took off his helmet and became whiny. As much as I ragged on "TFA" for being a remake of IV, it would have been much better if Kylo remained a faceless cool villain like Vader.

@SPavel "Only a sith deals in absolutes."

(infamously pointed out by filmgoers as an absolute in itself)

@doppelspooker Obi-Wan clearly has never met a bartender.

They deal in Absolut every weekend.

@GreySage And turned down his voice modulation just a little bit. Felt sometimes like he was kind of hard to understand.

@GreySage I thought they were going for "the First Order is basically a bunch of children acting up because their parents lost the war"

@Yuuki or most other sentient life forms

@Adam Kylo trying too hard? God forbid.

@SPavel That would have been interesting too

@doppelspooker Eh, I'm not a fan of vodka.

Only a sith deals in |x|.

If they said it's canon that Kylo Ren made his mask too Vader sounding and nobody can tell what he's saying, I'd be 100% ok with it.

I always found the "only the sith deal in absolutes" thing silly, because the Jedi themselves are all about the whole light and dark side dichotomy.

But compare Vader and whatever those Admirals were named, to Kylo and that other guy

They're babies

Kylo Ren becomes an interesting character again when you think of him as less a primary antagonist and more of an antagonistic protagonist.

Maybe the next film will shed some light on this irony. Or make it even more ironic somehow...

@kviiri Yeah, if anything the Sith are more about compromise. Lose freedom but gain security? Check!

And Snoke pulls up to the school like, get in loser, we're invading Coruscant

He's not a villain at the height of his power but a main character at the beginning of his own character arc.

I mean, he's still an idiot for deciding on that character arc, but okay.

I'd be more into that narrative if he had a compelling reason to go dark side beyond "Vader was cool"

Vader was cool, but so what

@SPavel To be fair, Vader was pretty cool.

Maybe they will say that Snoke dark-sided him

@GreySage count me as one of those people then.

But that's kind of lame

@GreySage I think it's the other way around - being a member of a two-person cult where the only way to progress is to kill one's senior is not a very secure way of living. The Jedi, on the other hand (pre-original trilogy) live a relatively safe and politically secure existence, but are also expected to adhere to strict lifestyle limitations.

Who amongst us hasn't wanted to learn how to choke people with our minds?

Mind Trick seems more useful

@kviiri I was more refering to the forming of the Empire, giving up democracy kind of thing

You could mind trick people to choke themselves

If I have to kill a case of Yeunglings to learn how, then so be it.

@Yuuki I already did that. Then again, I have learned most of the things I've learned with my mind.

People didn't really give up democracy for any reason though

It wasn't like declaring the Empire got them anything

There was no vote to abolish the Republic

Well I dunno, maybe Palpatine founded new schools in the fringe systems or somethin'.

Elected officials granted Palpatine extraordinary powers, the people had no say.

"Anakin killing Yeunglings" is perhaps the dumbest joke I've belly-laughed at.

I really like political fiction. Maybe they'll make a movie about Palpatine's reign someday.

But hopefully without Lucas

@SPavel Arguably that's how any democracy republic these days works. There's simply too many people for direct democracy to function.

Right, but saying that the people wanted security is inaccurate

doing a referendum during war time would have been a terrible idea

But to be fair, there's no reason to assume that such a referendum wouldn't have gone through

Palpatine wasn't Force-nuking people on the streets

I maintain that Force storms are the dumbest EU thing I've seen. Next to the Jedi droid.

Force storms?

The Force-made planet-sized black holes.

Oh wait, they were "hyperspace wormholes". Even dumber, whoo!

Can you have non hyperspace wormholes?

This thing.

@SPavel Sure, I see them all the time after it rains.

@Yuuki Do you know who served Palpatine drinks? ... Darth Waiter.

Although the one thing I miss from Legends is Tython.

Specifically, pre-TOR Tython.

> Dark Lord Darth Rivan

I had to stop reading.

The idea of a planet that reacts to imbalances in the Force was pretty cool.

The earliest Sith Lord (or latest, if you buy into that "long, long ago" thing) is the guy that kept tagging along with those three musketeers - Darth Agnan.

And that it was where the Jedi originated but they had to leave because killing all the Dark Side users induced massive hurricanes and maelstroms on the planet.

Didn't the Dark Side users kill themselves?

I thought that was a feature

Given that it took only one dude to destroy the Jedi Order, I feel like that's a feature of the Force in general.

And that one dude from Rogue One who didn't take sides - that didn't work out so well either

So maybe yeah, being Force Sensitive is a one way ticket on the express train to git ded city

Well, in Yoda's case, it wasn't exactly "express".

Yoda fled in disgrace and lives out the end of his days alone in a swamp eating dirt

Maybe if he had stayed in the city, he would have lived another 600 years

With government health care and such

I think Kingdom Hearts is one of those franchises that manages to work quite well with Dark and Light being not-quite-equal to Evil and Good. Too bad it's otherwise quite... bonkers.

Splitting a storyline among five-plus different platforms is definitely grounds for bonkers.

Release 4/5 parts on all platforms, and the last one exclusively on the Nokia n-gage

Will make people almost as mad as ME3

@kviiri A friend linked me a full summary of the entire KH plotline to date yesterday:

I am concerned that it makes an awful lot of sense whilst making no sense.

@kviiri In the first age of Middle Earth, there was only one Jedi who lived to the east of Gondolin in the Taur Nu Fuin. He was called Darth Onion, and faded from the story when The Black Helm(Turin) became the alpha warrior in north of Melian's Girdle ...

@doppelspooker KH started going to pot right around when the franchise original characters started taking the spotlight. Which is basically when KH2 came out.

@doppelspooker 18 minutes... Jeez. This is worse than Metal Gear.

@Yuuki so, anyone other than Sora and Kairi and Riku?

@kviiri ... are you implying that this is a series to surpass Metal Gear?

metal gear...!!

@Yuuki I can't believe I walked right into that.

ＭＥＴＡＬ ＧＥＡＲ...!!

@miniman I was just thinking of a new way to help our bard get rid of a Night Hag problem, should that group ever start back up again. Inverted Magic circle over the glyph of warding when he goes to sleep ... will talk it over with the group.

That is thanks to your answer earlier today.

My big brother once asked me to explain the plot of the Metal Gear series. We were in a sauna. He ran out of heat endurance before I was halfway done reciting.

I thought the plot was that someone built a nuclear launcher that, for some reason, is also a bipedal robot

And then something about genetically modified soldiers

@SPavel Pretty much, but the complicated part is WHY

To nuke stuff?

@SPavel Broadly, yes

Seems simple

@SPavel Yes, but some people want to nuke stuff to make money, others want to nuke stuff to honor dead soldiers, other want to nuke stuff because their country doesn't like the country where that stuff is, and OTHERS want to nuke stuff because it is fun

@SPavel That's an adequate summary for several games in the series, but there's also a rather tangled plot revolving around a huge pile of treasure, a secret conspiracy running the world and nanomachines.

Does someone want to nuke the nanomachines?

@kviiri And 'nanomachines' is the in-game version of magic. They can do literally anything

@SPavel Almost! They want to nuke a supercomputer controlling those... or most of them.

@GreySage It's the in-game version of half of the magic. The other half is just magic. And the third half is parasites (thanks Phanton Pain!)

@KorvinStarmast that's a great use for Glyph!

>third half

I see.

@SPavel Yes, it's that weird.

I think the best part of the Metal Gear series is that while the series grew from a stealth action game with an excuse plot to its better-known style of battlefield melodrama, they retained the naming conventions of the former. The prime example being "Big Boss".

If I were him I'd call myself Big Boss too

@SPavel Yes

Or something equally absurd like Papa Large

Because let's face it, he can get away with it

But he's Big Boss to differentiate himself from the very similar "The Boss"

So it goes Big Boss > The Boss > Small Boss?

Very intuitive hierarchy

I thought The Boss was better and that she basically threw the fight at the end of Snake Eater?

And it took a long time before he actually accepted the name.

@SPavel Yes, but it's even funnier because in-universe, he didn't choose the name himself. The fricken US President awarded it to him.

@kviiri To be fair, I could totally see the President calling someone "Big Boss" today.

This US president... is he by any chance named Michael Wilson?

The best president from the best game

Snake Eater is set in 1964, so... Lyndon B. Johnson?

@kviiri That makes sense, considering what he called "Jumbo".

Lyndon "Balls, balls, my massive balls are too big for my pants" Johnson sounds like the kind of person to do that.

So far, makes perfect sense

I really liked the newest installment of Metal Gear Solid, Phantom Pain. It creates more plot holes than it fixes, in my opinion, but excluding the forced multiplayer aspects, it's a superb sneaky game.

It sounds like adding more plot holes is a feature.

Contrasting to other installments of MGS in particular, because I feel they haven't ever really been able to outshine their competition in the stealth action genre gameplay-wise.

@KorvinStarmast Nice!

Plot holes are nature's way of making material for expanded universe content to explain away.

Oh hey, Xanathar's tomorrow?

So I've heard.

Yup

Still feel like they should revise Pact of the Blade rather than make bladelocks take Hexblade.

Yeah, it's a bit of a mess at this time.

I think if I run a campaign, I'm going to pick and choose Hexblade bonuses to bake into the blade pact.

Proficiency and charisma weapons maybe.

And have the Hexblade patron center around the "draw power from dead spirits" theme instead.

I'm not really sure how I'd implement bladelocks myself...

or druids

@Yuuki Don't take this the wrong way, but I think charisma weapons is the single worst thing about hexblade.

I would argue that's something that should never have been added to the game in any form.

Well, there needs to be something to mitigate MADness.

@Yuuki They already mitigated MADness to the point where it's barely in the game anymore.

Charisma weapons is probably a gut reaction and better solutions are there to be found.

@Miniman Well, then there needs to be something to keep a bladelock's MADness in line with everyone else.

(And personally, I think they don't need to create a situation where spellcasters can be just as good at fighting as martial classes. Because you can bet they'll never create the reverse situation and let martial classes be as good at spellcasting as spellcasters.)

@Yuuki It already is, though. They need to invest in a physical stat and a mental stat, just like Paladins, Eldritch Knights, Valor Bards, and so on.

They don't need to be "as good as", they just need to be "not terrible".

Do Paladins really need to invest that much in CHA? I put a point in it because I want to, but I don't recall needing anything more than 13.

And that's just for multiclassing.

@Yuuki They don't need to, but they get a lot of cool stuff if they do. More fundamentally, if they don't, they're not very good at spellcasting.

Maybe instead of charisma weapons, they need something to boost their defenses.

hey there @Yuuki

Since the big problem with bladelocks isn't the "can I hit things with Mr. Stabby" but rather "I double over if someone sneezes at me".

Which is the core issue for me - everyone else has to invest in one stat to get better at spellcasting, and another stat to get better at fighting. If you let hexblades (and by extension, every other Cha-based spellcaster) get better at fighting without investing in a second stat, it's a giant middle finger to everyone who doesn't have that option.

@Yuuki Agreed! I'd be totally on board with them getting heavy armor, or some other defensive bonus.

Hp boost, temp hp...there's a lot of options there.

+CHA to something defensive?

Hmm, we want something that'll encourage melee combat though. So you don't get Eldritch Blasters going Blade pact just so they have more health or defenses.

@Yuuki See, that comes back to the reason the blade pact is so lacklustre in the first place. None of the pacts really give you significant bonuses, so if bladelock gets something good, almost every warlock will be a bladelock just to get it.

Yeah, anything that makes something like a squishy Warlock tough enough to withstand melee combat (particularly able to do so from level 1) is going to be much better than the other pact bonuses.

Yeah, I don't have a solution. But that won't stop me complaining about anyone else's! XD

@Shalvenay Gain Cha mod temp HP when you summon the weapon?

@GreySage that'd work

Or maybe Cha mod + half warlock level, I don't know how well it would scale

What's to stop me from using a dinky dagger and casting spells with my other hand from range?

@GreySage It'd need to be pretty big to be worth using in combat.

Ooooh - an invocation to gain temp hp whenever you hit something with the pact weapon could work.

It doesn't stack, so it wouldn't get out of control, but it'd really encourage them to mix it up in melee.

@Miniman that'd work, but it's also pressure on invocation slots. it does have the benefit of being nicely thematic, though :D

It would probably be an auto-pick in terms of invocations, but there are lots of those as it is.

@GreySage Yeah, that's an unfortunate consequence of how the warlock's been balanced.

It steps on the battlerager's toes a bit, but the battlerager doesn't get a lot of attention.

It does mean that a prospective bladelocks has less reason to take one of the Eldritch Blast invocations though.

Which is also a plus, I guess.

Can you switch Invocation when you level?

@GreySage Yep!

@Yuuki Yeah, I'm a fan of specialization being rewarding.

So you can switch 1 of your 2 to that at level 3, when you get Pact of the Blade, and then get the extra attack at level 5

@Miniman I assume this isn't 4e even though that sounds a lot like a warlock build I almost made in 4e

@trogdor Not 4e, no. Get your "we already had all the good ideas for tactical combat" nonsense out of here :P

Ye found me out ye scurvy dog arrr

I don't know why I just had to be a pirate for that one

I should hope other people are allowed to make a temp HP warlock even if I had done it first, which I did not

Especially in an entirely new system :P

@trogdor Sometimes I really wish I hadn't missed 4e.

Hmm... given that D&D tends to do combat well but sucks at other stuff, has anyone tried running a multi-system campaign?

Where combat is handled through D&D, non-combat is handled through another system, and you have some kind of homebrew system to help the two work together?

@Yuuki -- ask BESW and co. about that one, AIUI