@nitsua60, can you close that question of mine for now? I thought it was clear (so did the 3 people I read it aloud too) but the folks on the board clearly do not.
@DavidCoffron It was the mention of Law of Large Numbers that raised my eyebrow: while it'd be true if we graded PCs on career stats, in my opinion it's important to avoid that sort of thinking: every few hits the evaluation mode changes for me.
Your career stats don't mean anything if you die because you rolled low. That seemed to be part of what Tim was referring to when he mentioned the video game bit. That's why I deleted.
What I mean is I'd go for the firebolt if I were taking potshots at a 400-hp titan, because the higher average damage will actually matter. Against CR1/2 opponents the binary of dead-or-not comes up so often as to moot the 0.2 DPR average difference, in my opinion.
@DavidCoffron Yeah, I think I'm with you there. There's something pretty interesting in there. Or multiple somethings.
In 4e optimization there's a general consensus that there are three values to focus on, and that choosing to focus on one of them at the expense of the others tends to be a bad idea.
They're basically burst-damage-per-encounter, burst-damage-per-day, and sustainable-damage.
If you focus on burst damage, you dry up quickly in long fights.
But if you can't go "nova" on command when the situation calls for it, you can't control when enemies drop.
Uncontrollable nova damage, however, is the least desirable way to improve overall damage output.
@BESW In 5e I know people like paladins and casters and even sneak attack for this, but for my money I'm a big fan of the battlemaster's precise shot for that. Converting a miss to a hit is a big deal damage-wise, no matter what level one's at. (IMO)
So, eg, you only build for bursts on critical hits if you can leverage some kind of control over when you will get your criticals--like daily powers which expand your crit range or let you roll more often.
@nitsua60 Oh, absolutely. In 4e the elf is considered one of the best striker choices, hands down, in large part because once per encounter they get to re-roll an attack at their discretion.
So you can make sure that it lands when you need it to.
@nitsua60 There's a 4e class that's basically built for crit fishing. It's a divine melee striker called the Avenger.
As a minor action you can designate a target. "When you make a melee attack against the target and the target is the only enemy adjacent to you, you make two attack rolls and use either result. This effect lasts until the end of the encounter or until the target drops to 0 hit points, at which point you regain the use of this power."
@nitsua60 I usually just answer questions and ask tough ones. I'm primarily 5e right now (though I've answered a few other systems). I've been in this chat once before, related to helping someone word their question better.
@nitsua60 I'm a player in a campaign on roll20 (although we had a two-week break because of family-things with GM followed by Easter weekend). I'm thinking about starting up a PVP-arena style agme on roll20 and fishing around for in-person games (I'm in the middle of nowehere)
@DavidCoffron Interesting. I spent many years thinking I was in the middle of nowhere and finally bit the bullet to start making the 45-min drive to an AL site. And got one or two people from town to come down and try it, and started talking to more people around here about it... now we've got a dozen-person group in town that plays with regularity.
@Shalvenay I'm doing good. I'm failing at excel, because I'm bad at SUMPRODUCT functions, but I think I figured it out.
@nitsua60 Good to know. Maybe I'll look into it. There was a game shop that recently opened that is thinking about opening their doors to TBTRPG's. I might chat with the manager at some point.
> A study of the design of a computer aid to structure and the effect of a computer aided selection of the production of the design of a computer aided selection of the production in a stratified control of a stratified flow of the production of the production of the production of the structure of the production of the production of the production of the production of the control of a metallocycle control of a stratified flow of the production of the production of the production of the production of the production of the structure of the presence of a metalloporphous polymer control of a co…
Acorrding to Garret Gang's answer,"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/119633/43522" these are the class(druid, wizard ect.) level requirements for each level of spells
Level 0 spell- Level 1 class
Level 1 spell- Level 1 class
level 2 spell- level 3 class
level 3 spell- level 5 class
level 4 spell-...
@kviiri Oh, I've got a formula for that... [rummages]
If I understood the system enough to be more coherent about it, I'd use these formulas as the basis for a comment:
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@doppelpurpler I'm used to dealing with probability and its counterintuitiveness but that was a bit of a shocker to me. I'm used to using the exact same thing of "you roll another die but don't care about the result" as a clear, intuitive example of independence. But apparently even that's not intuitive.
But probability is indeed weird so it's not something to feel discouraged about, ever
I guess people are used to Monty Hall and "boy or girl paradox" style of counter-intuitive reasoning relating to probability that they become too cautious.
but it makes sense in light of something like the gambler's paradox
it would be a mode of thinkign that random results appear to have a luck charge (like the charge of a magnet) that transcends spacetime and encourages other random results to come out differently
therefore if that d6 i rolled in a box comes out with a 6 it's almost certainly going to make the other dice roll lower
He's asking about electrum in the existing game text.
Experts on the text's entries on special materials will be able to answer the question being asked.
Experts on homebrew... will not, because he's not asking about how to make homebrew or how to balance it or how it interacts with the existing text--he's not making homebrew, though his GM might be, and he doesn't know any details to add which would make homebrew knowledge useful in answering the question.
The question is about electrum in the text. It's being asked because of homebrew, but it's not a question about homebrew.
Per the description of the homebrew tag, i see that's not relevant. But house-rules states "House rules are small fan created additions and replacements to core rules in a rules set" The creation of an electrum weapon by a table and the questioner being unclear how it would work seems like that's an additoin/replacement.
They're asking "Is there any Rules as Written or Rules as Interpreted evidence [that] electrum share[s] any of the properties of silver that do damage to the werewolves, werebears, and so on?"
That is not a homebrew issue. It's a game text issue.
@NautArch You can certainly include that in your answer--after you've answered the question being asked. And a legitimate subject for a frame challenge doesn't make the question any more taggable as being about that subject.
@BESW I'm just unclear as to when to add the house-rule tag. But I guess just because a question is about a houserule/homebrewed item does not mean it requires the tag.
What you've asked the chat here is whether the question should be tagged homebrew. That's very different from whether it's appropriate for answers to include that context in their response.
@NautArch That is the way I see it as well. But I would not suspect that an electrum or electrum plated weapon behaves any differently than any other weapon made out of special metals. Definitely homebrew, but really not necessary to address the core question
Same smell. It's not asking for help with the houserule. It's asking for existing text about electrum, not whether a particular GM's version of electrum defies the text.
I just thought it would be clearer for respondents to understand that the subject of the question (an electrum weapon) is not an actual weapon in the current rules.
@NautArch That's not the job of tags, and the job of respondents is to know what they're talking about. Respondents who should be answering that question won't need that clarified to them, they'll know. The ones who shouldn't and have no idea... probably are not going to give very good answers.
Tags are for nothing but categorising the question by the question's content so that it can be found, and to put them in front of people who are experts willing to answer those sorts of questions (tag favorites / subscriptions).
Yes, also that: if it is not mentioned in the question, tags are not there to say it instead of the question. Tags exclusively describe what is already being described in the question itself. System tags break this rule, but that's an exception that shouldn't set an example for anything else.
There's no houserule being explained or asked about. There's a sword made of a metal that exists in the setting and a question about whether the rules say anything about how that metal interacts with a particular existing mechanic.
It'd be functionally the exact same question if the sword were made of copper; the fact that electrum weapons aren't mentioned in the books is the answer, and we don't use tags to describe answers. We use them to sort questions.
It's a little unusual and I can see you picking up on "there is homebrew in this question so we should tag it homebrew" but it's not really about the homebrew at all
But let's step back a second. YOu're saying even though the question's subject, an electrum weapon, is a houseruled weapon it shouldn't be on the tag because the question isn't about the weapon itself but how it would interact with actual rules. Correct?
(i'm open to the possibility i'm temporarily going unhinged here and it's really suitable for adding house-rules, but right now adding the [special-materials] tag is enough)
No, it can't make soda pop. This question is frankly bizarre in even contemplating the overlap of medieval fantasy with soda pop. But it's asking how the rules handle this spell meeting soda pop.
@BESW And I'm saying that there are no rules on how electrum weapons work because they aren't in the rulebooks. I can answer with how RAW applies, but how RAW applies may not be applicable because it's a houserule.
@BESW And I think it's inherently part of the question. I've made up X, I'm now asking you to explain how X interacts with known Y, but you don't know everything about X because I just made it up.
@SouthpawHare Most commonly the comments are no longer useful (like the post got edited with the suggestions they were prompting), or were particularly rude, or weren't helping anything and just getting too chatty..
@SouthpawHare Then it's likely the querent flagged them as no longer useful, meaning they took the suggestions on board and have acted or not acted on them as they see fit.
Remember, comments aren't intended to stick around. They exist to help improve questions and answers, and can be expected to go away some time after they've achieved that purpose, or failed to.
I wiped out a handful of comments on a particular question because they were all actioned except for one, which was opining -- but comments aren't for "here's my discussion response to your situation".
Most comments go away because someone flagged them for a mod's attention, to help keep the site focused on solutions to problems rather than lengthy discussions (there are many other places on the Internet which do that well already).
Mostly if I'm busy doing cleaning up on something & there's comments present which aren't currently pending action or somehow adding value or highly upvoted, they're going to get removed.
If it was the comment on the electrum sword question saying "ask your GM because that's homebrew," I flagged that one as something that should be an answer so it can get voted on and found in searches and edited to get even better.
Putting answers--even partial answers--in comments bypasses the site's whole sorting system which makes us a useful resource in the first place: we aren't just answering for the person who asked, but for everyone else who's going to come later with a similar problem.
Also, on that Electrum thing: I can see a case for tagging homebrew on the basis it can read as "here is this thing that everyone knows can only be homebrew, how are the rules working with it?". (Permit me saying homebrew there instead of house rules: for me, custom content is the former; the latter is custom mechanics.)
But the asker doesn't know it's homebrew, and special-materials is already a bunch of "here's this really unusual thing that can only exist because of homebrew. How's it work?" questions anyway.
On that basis my gut says tagging it homebrew (or house rules) wouldn't be fitting.
So ultimately, the houserule/homebrew tags are about creating those items. Questions about existing types of items/rules do not qualify for the tag when they're asking about how they interact with the standard ruleset.
@doppelpurpler I'm sorry I'm not understanding this. So when IS it used for? The description for homebrew seems to say that "For questions about homebrewing new rules content for an existing system"
This is a super borderline question. It's 55/45 for me. A major part of the 55 against for me is the asker has no idea it's pure homebrew, but a major part of the 45 for is it does materially contain homebrew and your intuition as a new user is struggling with the premise it might not -- which makes me think I'm overcomplicating things.
Does this deserve a meta question? Or am I being too pedantic/not understanding the tag system?
This question also confuses me based onthe same reasons. Shouldn't this have been closed as off topic for this board and directed them to a metallurgy stack?
I think we should try to steer clear of actual physics questions, but "gold is too soft to make a good pointy thing of" is rather controversial and the gold rapier question is not solely about real-world mechanics.
@NautArch well we're bikeshedding over a specific tag, so we're definitely being a bit pedantic. i think you're understanding the tag system, and BESW and I are understanding the tag system, but our understandings don't line up over this.
@goodguy5 One thing I've started considering with this kind of "fantasy physics" question is the setting. What makes a lycanthrope? If it's a mutation of the rabies virus, then maybe silver alloys might work because there's something chemical in the silver that gets transferred into the alloy.
But if werewolves exist because they were cursed by a moon deity, then silver only works because it's a representation of the moon that controls them and that symbolism doesn't necessarily transfer over to an alloy.
Depends on the setting. If the anti-werewolf effect is psychosomatic on the part of the werewolf, then it might work if the werewolf believes it's real silver.
But if the effect is a magical curse, then I don't think counterfeit silver would work.
We were playing Clue with my big brother and our respective SO's. The last time I played it we were children. It had gotten on a whole new meta layer during these years.
I won the game because everyone rushed to guess the murderer and they all got it wrong because everyone was misleading everyone else.
Kid sharpens a silver coin to kill a werewolf and the werewolf reverts to human form upon dying and it turns out to be his brother or his best friend or his dad or something.
@goodguy5 When I was in my early teens I was really into ADOM the roguelike, and the Merchant character class (one of the more tricky options to start with) had a bonus to using thrown coins as weapons.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a series of three children's books written by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell. The titles of the books are Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1981), More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1984), and Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones (1991).
== Overview ==
Schwartz drew heavily from folklore and urban legends as the topic of his stories, researching extensively and spending more than a year on writing each book. The first volume was published in 1981, and the books have subsequently been collected in both a box set and a single...
I'm really liking Paris by Edward Rutherfurd, so far
This novel is structured differently than other Rutherfurd novels. Usually Rutherfurd's novels have a linear timeline progressing from the distant past towards the present, but so far Paris has had a couple of prominent stories in the 1870's and 1880's with a couple of flashbacks to the city's earlier history.
Based on this question I have an unclear understanding of when and how to use the Houserule and Homebrew tags.
Homebrew tag has some clearer guidance:
For questions about homebrewing new rules content for an existing system
That seems to be imply the tag is for when you are creating, or ho...
@goodguy5 It's very wide-ranging. Lots of discussion of various video games, they did a whole episode on PF2.0, TV shows and movies. I'd say it's more about design of games than running games, though there's discussion of running games, too.
@goodguy5 Well, if you're not enjoying it now it's not likely to change. Too much good content out there for you to spend time on somthing you don't like =)
Well, that's why I was asking. If there's "more to it" so to speak and/or the podcast morphs into something else than the first two episodes.... then it might have been worth it.
@Yuuki Ooh, I loved those. Should pick them up for the house. Let the kids stumble across them some day =)
@goodguy5 Nah, the only real evolution is that the audio quality gets a little better when they both give themselves some new pieces of equipment for Christmas.
(Not that I felt like it was bad to start, but it feels... closer now?)
@MikeQ Basically, the system seems rather well-designed for a narrative sandboxy playstyle. However, I haven't really been able to squeeze out what my players actually want yet.
Not that there's any rush. We haven't even scheduled session 0 yet.