XP costs can go die in a hole somewhere

4e eliminated all forms of XP loss, voluntary and involuntary. [cheering crowds]

Right.

I like negative levels, but not XP loss

I also hate 3.5e's LA system

And it lumped all spells that aren't specifically for combat use into the Ritual Magic feat, which anyone can take.

@BESW one of many reasons I liked 4e

@BESW I think certain classes got it as a class feature

Yup.

I really don't get the LA system for 3.5e, because when you read it there comes out to be literally zero coordination with actual levels

LA ends up "Don't do this cool thing because you'll be horribly behind everything else in the world"

So anyone could spend the feat but some classes got to take it but keep the feat for something else

Which was a nice way to do it in my opinion

Ritual scrolls are a mechanic I want to play around with more. I love the concept.

@Alphaeus Level adjustment felt a lot like epic spell design: an attempt to reverse-engineer a coherent logic out of a set of individual mechanics which were not created with reference to each other.

That your character can gain access to a broad set of useful magic, and go out to find more ways to use it, which they mostly get to keep permanently and share with others.

@BESW Oh GOD SAVE US don't get me started on epic spells

But yes.

Generally speaking, for ease purposes I either eliminate LA or substitute it with CR (just to keep people from screwing around with low HD/high-power creatures).

Plus D&D 4e rituals were made for the entire group in mind. The rituals weren't "you summon a magical horse that travels super fast", they were "you summon a bunch of magical horses that travel super fast." They weren't "you teleport", they were "you teleport everyone standing near you."

@Alphaeus Generally speaking, for ease purposes I haven't run a d20 System campaign in six years.

@BESW Lol, well, that does solve that. :P

Generally speaking,. For ease purposes, I only ran one once

@doppelgreener That was nice.

Fate is so much nicer to GM

Oh, that reminds me, one of my goals this year is to dive into the Fate system

Keep forgetting about it

And GSS and,... I think nothing else yet actually

You've seen the chat log campaigns here, right?

Heard about them, haven't seen them

I really should GM more

@trogdor You really should.

@Alphaeus Scroll down here.

Maybe a Great Ork God's thing or something

The "EF" conversations are a beta test campaign we ran prior to the Fate Core/Accelerated release, and then there's a handful of other games too.

I do still have that 3-4 session plan thing

You'll also find some good conversations about the system.

But we don't have Amaterasu all fixed up still

I could start working on more GSS, I really loved GMing that

It's just too bad we don't have more than 3 people on most of our good weeks

I would love to GM for more people

I'd like all of those things!

I'm gonna go pass out, see you all later. :)

@doppelgreener :)

Night

Cya @doppelgreener

so, how were your holidays @Alphaeus?

@Shalvenay Pretty good overall. Had one phase of family hijinks that kind deflated the end of Christmas Day and the next couple days, but otherwise decent.

@Alphaeus good, good. mine stayed quiet :)

@trogdor I figure you, me, and Greener shouldn't wait for anybody else to put back together Amaterasu, but I think we should wait 'til everybody's seen some Librarians and thought about various shared inspirations we want to draw on and why?

Got a light concussion yesterday after doing about 9 hours of sparring.

Otherwise yeah, good.

ow, that's no fun

Quiet is good :D

(I will show you Librarians this Saturday.)

@BESW ok fair enough

@BESW and I figured as much :P

I think we will watch the one where Bruce Campbell is Santa Claus.

Aaaaaand now internet is out at work

@BESW the one where what the what the waht the wat the wagt now?

Yes please

I would say "the one where Bruce Campbell plays Santa Claus," but it's Bruce Campbell in a role they cast because he's Bruce Campbell, so he's Bruce Campbell playing Bruce Campbell being Santa Claus.

@PhiNotPi cool ... best wishes ... hope it all works out

@Ash Most of those games are very early in our understanding of Fate, but are still quite instructional because you get to see us figuring stuff out.

@Ash It gets better every season!

They've got all three completed seasons on Hulu.

hey again @KorvinStarmast

@BESW always nice to hear

They're well into the fourth season right now, and I love how the writers aren't shy about tying the character-driven plots to the mystery plots very directly.

That's part of the Fate-y-ness of the whole thing; character aspects, especially consequences, get major screen time because they aren't just B-plot stuff.

A recent episode had a member of the main team quit unexpectedly, and everyone's bickering over why and what to do next and grieving for the loss. So the mystery of the week is in a teambuilding camp, and solving it has to do with understanding the inter-connectedness of apparently disparate parts.

It sounds like a really cool show

It's not, like, stay-with-you-all-week-thinking-about-the-implications thoughtful or anything. It's fun, lighthearted, goofy.

You guys are talking about the Librarians meaning the TV series?

Aye. Spun off from the Librarian films.

I want to show it to my group because it reminds me a lot of our games and I think it'll be a good touchstone for reviving a campaign that got a bit unwieldy.

I've seen the movies and the first season.

I kinda want to rewatch the movies because I think I remember (at least one of them) being pretty good, but that was quite a while ago. IIRC I didn't think the first season of the show was particularly good.

@BESW I didn't assume it was, just that it had some neat things going on there

WOW HAVE YOU ALL SEEN THIS?

280+ monsters as playable characters

dmsguild.com/m/product/230312

Any idea how balanced it is?

From the article I read and the comments.... vert balanced.

Beholder is leveled to a basilisk is leveled to a human

Haven't bought it yet. Was just reading some more. For $2.99 pdf can't go wrong

One review says fair warning some creatures don't speak common and others don't have arms so you'd have to really have a reason to play some of them. But thats what makes it fun.

@Acts7Seven Can you throw out the name? That link quickly redirects (for me) to the main DMGuild splash-page.

"Monstrous Races"

Thanks.

hey there @Acts7Seven

hey there @nitsua60

Any 5e folks currently around?

I'm having trouble digging up meta questions on Sage Advice and its use in answers

I think I have an opposite case of this meta in my answer to the shield spell + barkskin question, where Sage Advice shouldn't even enter into it because the rules themselves are pretty clear.

And perhaps I'm likely stubborn about someone being wrong on the internet, and I'd appreciate feedback about my overall behavior if I've been out of line at any point in there.

Well, everybody is on the internet so it's hard to resist

@trogdor Everyone?

eeeeveryyyonnnnneee

Your fantasy animals are not... you know the drill.

[gestures above] We have these on Guam.

oh cute.

They're filter-feeding bristle worms that burrow into coral and then stick out these brightly-colored feeding/breathing things. If anything moves suddenly nearby they suck the structures into the hole faster than you can see.

Each of the "trees" is about an inch or an inch and a half long.

wow!

so they just chill out there forever and get by on whatever drifts into their tree thingy?

Yup! The frilly bits catch whatever drifts past and pass it down to their mouth inside.

They reproduce by the traditional "cast your gametes to the currents" method.

the frilly bits catch the drifty bits and pass them to their nommy bits

(have i used the correct scientific terminology there?)

I believe so.

for peoples' real-world campaign purposes ^

@doppelgreener I'm pretty sure this argument holds for Hawaii too.

@BESW probably tons of people have already sold it weed

but nobody believes them because they're talking about selling weed to a big hairy man

which is the exact kind of thing a stoned person would find remarkable

(Aside: I would like to mention for the record that the Internet has a really hard time providing videos of sea hares that are half as adorable as actual sea hares are in person.)

To be fair, sea hares tend to be designed to look like the physical embodiment of boring.

Observation: when I run a contemporary campaign with all local participants, we tend to assume it takes place locally. When I run a contemporary campaign with participants from other places, we tend to assume it takes place in a vaguely American town or city.

@BESW For my part, I don't know what Guam life is like, but I have seen enough American media to know what Generic Vaguely American Town And/Or City is like.

@doppelgreener Yeah, I figure that's at least part of it.

And since y'all generally have too, it's a common set of tropes and experiences we can draw upon.

I'm curious if other groups in other places have similar experiences.

Do folks tend to set games in their own localities?

I do that quite a lot. It felt a bit difficult at first though because nothing fantastic or thrilling ever happens here :)

@Szega Your answer that cantrips can be upcast made me smile (and think of munchkiny ways to exploit it).

@kviiri there are some features that depend on using a slot, but I am not sure there is any that could be exploited this way

@Szega rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/112838/… I actually agree with this answer that has a crawford tweet that implies you cannot actually cast cantrips with spells. Thoughts?

@Rubiksmoose Upvote it?

@Miniman I did lol. I was just 1) bringing it to Szega's attention and 2) seeing if others agreed with that interpretation

@Rubiksmoose Personally, I'm not a fan of Crawford ruling against the rules he wrote.

argh, i upvoted all three..

but I think Sora's answer fulfills the question, but @Szega goes further with the even if you could, it wouldn't do anything because no cantrip has "cast at a higher level" functionality.

@Miniman Same here

@NautArch Good comment btw. Thaumaturgy was a terrible example for this

debating if that makes me downvote the question...feeling ornery this morning :)

Even though it seems the question came out of a misunderstanding of how upcasting works, I think it turns out to be much more interesting.

yeah, although I don't really agree with Crawford's tweet on it. It seems an answer more like Szega's would have been more reasonable. Unless the SPell Level 0 is more important and has wider reaching meaning.

@NautArch I think the real problem is that they wanted cantrips to count as spells for some things, but not others, so they've created this weird inconsistency.

@NautArch I think Szega's answer is more useful to OP, but Sora's answer is probably more useful to the rest of us. In a case like this is it appropriate to comment on either or both of the answers suggesting that they incorporate the material from the other?

@Rubiksmoose that's a really good question for meta :)

@Miniman Yeah, and I think being more explicit about the expectations about each category would help too.

DnD 5e's rules are not a masterpiece of clarity (cf. lowercase attack vs uppercase Attack)

@kviiri Yeah I cannot believe that the a/Attack thing got through playtesting and basic editing. Merls recently said he regretted not fixing language issues like that.

@Rubiksmoose Haha, nice :D

I'm amused but also happy that they're learning lessons.

@Miniman You had me at "Crawford."

@NautArch I think it's probably already addressed. I'll have to check. But I just posted a meta post so I'll let that percolate first regardless lol

@nitsua60 We're learning, like D&D clerics, that having a god that constantly talks to you is a double edged sword.

@Miniman yeah, when they use cantrips as Level 0 spells and then use it again to say they aren't part of the same system is weird.

why not just say cantrips aren't spells.

The problem I see with sora's answer is that it's based off a tweet that isn't clearly addressing the same situation. The twitter-querent asks if the cantrip can be upcast and implies that such upcasting would increase damage. JC answers "no," but it's not clear whether he's saying "no, that wouldn't increase damage, because all spells are explicit about how damage scales and sacred flame doesn't say higher-level slots increase damage" vs. "no, cantrips can't be cast with higher level slots."

Rather, it is clear that JC is saying the second, but he's wrong (IMEO), and should have said the first.

but I mean when he says "cantrips don't use spell slots" that seems like a general enough statement to cut off any argument about upcasting

@nitsua60 that's exactly it. He's wrong, but he's JC. He should have used Szega's answer :)

To me, saying they don't use spell slots is a pretty meaningful distinction from at-will casting

but not using spells slots and being a level 0 spell aren't the same thing. (are they?)

I seem to recall a previous edition of the PHB referring to cantrips as level 0 spells, but the fact that there's no explicit statement on upcasting them seems to imply they can't be upcast

Might have been 4e? Either case, there could probably be a house rule on it, if the GM feels like upcasting cantrips should be a thing

@Rubiksmoose When the PHB says a cantrip is a level 0 spell, and also says that all spells can be cast at higher levels, that seems like a general enough statement to cut off any argument, too =)

@nitsua60 I'm not saying the ruling is a good one. Just that I don't think the wiggle room we would like to be there is actually there :)

"Every spell has a level from 0 to 9...Cantrips -- simple but powerful spells that characters can cast almost by rote -- are level 0." then later in the special section on cantrips "A cantrip is a spell that can be cast at will, without using a spell slot and without being prepared in advance... A cantrip's spell level is 0.

@Bagahnoodles They're up-casting is PC level based

@nitsua60 I'd agree with that as well. Because that's what it says :) Darn you, JC!

Just because JC never considered that someone might want to cast a cantrip with a higher-level slot doesn't mean that the rules say it can't happen.

Now, to put a little bit of a downer on the vigor of the argument: can anyone think of a benefit to be gained from using a slot on a cantrip? Trying to trigger a WM surge, perhaps?

It says in the text that they can be cast at will. The comma denotes clarification that it is without use of spell slot and without advance preparation. Also, JC has had a couple years to reflect on this: if it needed changed, we'd have received an errata.

@SoraTamashii D&D, as much as most of us love it, is not perfect and neither are the rules. There are plenty of open issues, edge cases, and conflicts that have yet to be erratad and probably never will.

"Can be cast without spell slot" is indeed different from "must be cast without a spell slot".

@SoraTamashii Welcome, by the way =)

@SoraTamashii That being said, JC effectively is the rules, so saying he's wrong is meaningless really. Especially since specific beats general.

DnD is the game where I argue about rules on the internet for maybe 40 hours weekly and then spend four hours per month with my friends pretending to be heroes.

@kviiri I can definitely identify with this sentiment :P

@Rubiksmoose I agree it has its flaws. The rule for negative Constitution before the errata being one (not that I remember what it was since I essentially was house ruling the errata already...)

@SoraTamashii Wait, it has been errata'd?

@Rubiksmoose I argue strongly against that here:

@kviiri I'm curious about that as well.

@Rubiksmoose Rule 0 is very much a thing too; if the GM thinks JC is right/wrong/a literal potato, then he is, for the sake of that campaign

Jeremy's twitter statements might be official, but none as of yet have said they are. Many of them are later contradicted by more twitter statements of his, by SA articles, or by errata.

WotC does say "One exception: the game’s rules manager, Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford), can make official rulings and usually does so in Sage Advice and on Twitter."

@kviiri Yes, but it's not saying "can be cast without a spell slot." The Grammar was chosen quite specifically. The meaning is changed because of that.

Trusting Jeremy's twitter feed is like trusting my child to set anchors when we're climbing.

@nitsua60 Trusting Twitter at all, more like

@kviiri The errata being the whole "You can go with the dice roll or the average" thing. I don't remember the average option being in RAW originally.

@SoraTamashii In my opinion it says exactly that

But I'm not really in the mood for arguing edge cases now

So we could agree to disagree on that one :)

@kviiri That is fair. :)

Truth be told, I don't really play DnD anymore. Our ongoing campaign is frozen and I'd rather play something else.

@nitsua60 I've definitely read that several times. And I'm sympathetic, but I think you are fighting a losing battle. Just the way he talks and rules on twitter look and feel like authoritative rulings for the most part. I'm not a huge fan of the situation, but it is what it is IMO.

@SoraTamashii During short rest or when leveling?

I'm actually making my first homebrew. It's a pain, but I hope it will be worth it.

@kviiri Levelling, at least that is what I saw it in relation too. Can't remember if it included rests or not.

@SoraTamashii Negative constitution while leveling you say? rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/111586/… :3

@Rubiksmoose Oh, sure, but I also fight for the sanity of the game, too. It cannot be the case that in order to understand the rules one has to follow all of his tweets, then suss out which ones he later said aren't correct btw, and assemble all of that into a coherent whole.

@SoraTamashii Okay, at least my copy of PHB does explicitly say the average value is allowed too.

@Rubiksmoose Yup.

@Rubiksmoose Really, I threw that screed out there to have a place to point people when they're confusing Sage Advice with Sage Advice.

@nitsua60 Too many people confuse Sage Advice with sage advice.

@nitsua60 It is one hell of a screed and well done I might add.

@Yuuki both, of course, subsets of seasoned advice:

Gah, beat me to the spice/herb joke.

About thyme someone made the reference.

I think it's somewhat telling of DnD or the culture surrounding it that a very large portion of all questions on this site are about DnD rules.

@kviiri Is that not normal in a relatively rules heavy RPG? I don't play or frequent any non D&D things right now.

@nitsua60 As far as I can see, the spellcasting/pact magic section of each class specifically says that the spell slots can be used "to cast your spells of 1st level and higher" Which would, in my mind, overrule the general "can be cast without a slot" language of the cantrip definition

It might be better if they did what Fate and Apocalypse World did, and had reserved more room for the intent behind the rules.

@kviiri Well, 1) D&D is arguably the most popular system and 2) it's a rules-heavy system.

@kviiri I think most of that just comes from the fact that D&D is the most recognizable RPG system on the market. D&D tags are the most used by a pretty large margin

@Yuuki I think 1 isn't even arguable, sadly :P

Well, isn't it also safe to say that DnD rulings can be the most likely rulings to carryover into other games? Not that all will, but you won't be looked at cross-eyed if you're playing a new RPG using DnD logic to guide you through at first.

But I have a strong gut feeling DnD gets proportionally more rules clarification questions than other systems.

@Adam Ooh, that's an interesting refent. I may have to rethink this. [ponders]

@SoraTamashii I've understood trying to play non-DnD systems like they were DnD is a rather common mistake.

I suggest you add an answer to the question that kicked this all off: "no, because slots can only be used on level 1 or higher spells." I'd upvote it =)

@Adam Wow, that's gold!

I'll upvote it if you do it.

@Adam Darn I was looking for that kind of language too! But it wasn't in the general spellcasting section. Nice! I'd upvote as well. Maybe add JC for an extra dash of authority?

@doppelgreener It's like Vancouver.

@SoraTamashii For example, here's a Dungeon World question about a GM who is doing quite heavy DnD-isms :)

Which is Canadian!

@kviiri Oh, no, I'm not saying you should expect a 1 for 1 translation. You should play with that game's rules in mind first, but if you need a quick understanding of something, often basic logic carries to some degree. (I'm digging a hole. lol)

@kviiri That sounds terrifyingly cringe actually. I wasn't meaning replace the rules for DnD! T-T

@SoraTamashii Yeah :)

@nitsua60 Oh I already edited that into my answer, since that was basically mine's point.

Some people stick to paradigms easily, it's no big deal if they have someone else to guide them along.

@SoraTamashii As of now, all systems are now D&D variants. But without the variants part. Glad we figured this out guys.

@Rubiksmoose pouts

@Rubiksmoose Good talk guys, break for coffee?

:P

@Bagahnoodles Yeah I'm spent. Maybe after lunch we can jump over to the physics SE and whip up a quick Theory of Everything?

@SoraTamashii I'd suggest you either quote or cite the source for the first sentence of that answer. As you can see form the last half-hour's transcript here, it's not immediately clear where one finds that rule =)

@Rubiksmoose aw yiss

@SoraTamashii Definitely add a citation in there please!

@SoraTamashii I also deleted my comments--it's not nearly as cut-and-dry as I'd thought, it turns out.... (Because, of course, if you want to know how to figure out an edge case about casting cantrips it's not the chapter "Spellcasting" that'll settle it, but rather the class description.)

@nitsua60 I already had that tweet linked. I was the original poster of that answer that sparked all this. lol

@SoraTamashii I think we were referring to this: "Slots can only be used on Level 1+ spells" if there is a place in the book that says that, which it was implied by @Adam there is, then adding it would greatly improve your answer.

"The Bard table shows how many spell slots you have to cast your spells of 1st level and higher. " looks like @Adam was correct

So, I just read the DM who is playing DW like DnD thread... My soul is in pain... I'm sorry, I know the guy was being made out to be a good DM at first, but that just feels so pedantic. I'm in no way merciful when DM-ing, but even I wouldn't be like that.

@Rubiksmoose Will check and add.

I found and added the quote, but it looks off-topic... I marked it as "Further Support" and not as "Main Information".

@Rubiksmoose done

@Adam Beautiful! upvoted.

@SoraTamashii Yeah, sorry. I was talking about the PHB quote. You've got it.

Hello, responsive door to the outside world!

@SoraTamashii Honestly, I don't think it is off topic at all. I always think that answers that have more than one peice of evidence as support are much stronger than ones with only a single piece. And that goes doubly for ones that rely only on a designer tweet that might be contentious. So, I would actually say that is is actually quite integral to your answer. I think maybe if you wrote out a connecting sentence to elaborate on them you'd find that it flows much better.

@Rubiksmoose I have done more Rule-Lawyering today than I usually do in a session... If I remember, I might do so later. Anyways, brb

@nitsua60 that seems to be the only reasonable possibility.

@BESW related observation: When playing a contemporary campaign with any participants, we pick a place that's not local to any of the players or place of GM's origin.

Harry Potter’s greatest enemy: the Wiimote.

Wait, did the chat virtually stop once I left? Or is it just lagging on me?

@SoraTamashii you are the keystone.

we can talk again now

lol that is too much responsibility for me. Can I be like a really fancy pillar instead? :P

@SoraTamashii Nope you definitely killed it :P

and then came back and cast Spare the Dying

Whoops, and here I am letting it slip back to Unconsciousness.

Can someone help chat do a Death Saving Throw?

rolls a d20 16!

I forget our dice service

@Adam yeah I've seen other people use it but never have. Anybody know how it works?

let me try something...

/roll d20

/d20

/roll20

I got nothing.

d20

there we go

d20

that's two! as long as we don't take damage and @SoraTamashii doesn't leave us again we're alive

I wonder how fancy we can make these dice...

d6

d100

darn...

The roller supports: d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20. You can roll up to four sets of XdY using one of those dice, where X is up to 9. X defaults to 1, Y defaults to 6.

1d