@MikeQ I think there might be a disturbance in the force there.

@Duck I started with bigrams but the result was mostly word salad

Trigrams at least have plausible-sounding outputs

It is like mad libs. I used to love those!

Unfortunately I'm limited to the rules text from the roll20 site, so there's a big overfitting problem, and sometimes it just spits out actual rules text

why cant you just use a pdf of the phb?

PDF to text conversions aren't necessarily accurate

@Rubiksmoose I'll try and edit my bonus action answer when I get back. But it does severely limit the impact of shield master (but it is the logical ruling, I never understood why JC said you could use a bonus action before the trigger for it occurred.)

> Your choice grants you features at 3rd level without expending a spell slot as a Bonus Action to regain hit points equal to the height of the jump plus 1½ times your height

wat

uh... is that for any choice or a specific choice?

I don't remember. I just have the thing continuously vomiting text

Hack Jeremy Crawfords twitter and use random text vomit to make new rules and watch 5e implode. Or it will just be business as usual.

lol

I don't think anyone should be using a Twitter account for that stuff

I have thought that since the first time I saw someone reference twitter as a legitimate source for justifying a rule.

Apparently, in addition to using 20-sided dice, we should also be using maps with 20-sided squares:

> as many as twenty Medium creatures can surround a creature

With or without squeezing, and in how many dimensions?

Good point, we could alternatively use a non-euclidean map

'cause a flying creature can easily be surrounded by 26 Medium flying creatures.

Or a creature on the ground can be surrounded by nine flying creatures, eight walking creatures, and nine burrowing creatures. [grin]

lol 20 sided squares.

Oh here's a good one

> Additionally, if you are using a skill that you're proficient in Each dart makes a ranged Attack against any number of creatures that can surround another creature in the area beneath the unstable section must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw or be Charmed (if you chose awe) or Frightened (if you chose awe) or Frightened (if you chose fear) until the aura ends

is there a way to get it to avoid redundancy or cut the run on sentences a little shorter?

I could impose a maximum sentence length, and then do some sort of look-ahead when it's "getting close" to the end of a sentence

but that takes effort and I don't want to

> RAI: Rules Absent Intent. When your Overcome actions with a skill ranked +3 or greater are actively opposed, they are also considered attacks targeting the opposing creature. However, you can be compelled to cause cave-ins.

@BESW is that from a markov chain of the Fate ruleset?

No, it's a Fate translation of your "rule" above.

I really like that new definition for RAI

hey there @KorvinStarmast

@Shalvenay hey! Not seen you in a while

@KorvinStarmast how're things going?

@Shalvenay Have my daughter in town. Son grads college tomorrow. I cook lots of BBQ sunday for mother's day: my wife, mother in law, sister in law. Various and sundry family. Busy three days.

Right now chilling and listening to random tunes on youtube.

So I just noticed something that I got access to and I'm not sure what it is. What are review queues?

@Shalvenay My daughter and her best friend from HS and college were here singing for the last hour. They are both voice majors in college ... man, it was nice

@Duck answer is here rpg.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/access-review-queues

You get to help a bit in screening questions and answers.

Part of the community moderation model of SE

We all contribute to making the site work better

@Shalvenay Wonder if we need to try and coord some RP for the Port Nyanzaru stuff with nits ....

nifty

@KorvinStarmast yes, we do. (cc: @NautArch @Shalvenay @trogdor) I've been missing it. The next two weekends are, sadly, borked again on my end: helping in-laws get the house ready to move this weekend, and next weekend I've been dragooned into helping out the pit for a musical. But the 26th...?

In any case, We've got some split-party RP/investigating to do--I want to be sure to find some pickup times during this fortnight to get to those scenes.

@nitsua60 should be serviceable for me, fortunately, although the two weekends after that won't work for me

@MikeQ the Starter Set is most-definitely expecting characters to start at L1. It comes with pregens to run with and no chargen rules, even. (Each character's sheet has their specifics for leveling up noted on them.) All that's to say: if you want you can definitely edit "I think" out of your comment.

@nitsua60 Yes I reread the question and I see it's mentioned there

@nitsua60 ok, I think tomorrow I am being dragooned myself, into a lot of yard work. so it kinda works for me anyway

Any 3.0 and 3.5 4.0 familiarity in the house: was WotC consistent about using their one "D&D" logo (for each edition) through all of their materials during those editions? I.e. is it possible, if one knows the evolution of the logo, to correctly identify 3.0 vs. 3.5 vs. 4.0 just by that, looking at a book's spine or cover? (Never mind all the 3rd-party products, I'm only curious about 1st-party.)

@trogdor +1 "dragooned"

@BESW lol

strangely enough, I first learned the word from a video game, one that technically never used to word but had dragoon in the name

heck technically two games, cause another had a unit in it called dragoon

so at some point I looked the word up

@nitsua60 Trying to dig up my old 4e pdfs to show you the differences...

@DavidCoffron You mean differences within 4e?

Yeah. It changed a bit IIRC

Or maybe not; I just grabbed the physical books from my library and they are all the same

(for 4e)

between 3, 4 , and 5 there kinda is

enough of a difference you could probably tell

but like,.... you do kinda have to study it

Oh, absolutely. And so far 5e's been rock-solid on using the same logo all the way through. But I didn't know if 4's had ever evolved, or if 3.0 and 3.5 were distinct?

3.0 and 3,5 are the same

seeing as I have actual experience with all those editions, at least enough in each to have seen the covers for each, yeah you can do it but that doesn't necessarily make it easy

@nits Can we do that via email? (Maybe a discussion for the back room ....)

@nitsua60 oh I think 4's logo was consistent within itself

@KorvinStarmast Yeah--I'll pull together my schedule for the next few weeks and email it out to everyone. We can nail down next session(s) and maybe find an hour or two with each twosome for some discord-time in Port? (cc: @NautArch @Shalvenay @trogdor)

mk

@DavidCoffron Right--I recognize those as "the" logos (since I have approximately one book from each of those three editions!); I hope to verify that they were consistently used by WotC during those runs?

@nitsua60 if you just look up one of the books on amazon and look at all the related titles, you can easily tell how similar all the logos are.

amazon.de/Dungeons-Dragons-Players-Handbook-Rulebooks/dp/…

Wait why is that German*...

w/e, works the same

You're right

I was thinkin Denmark but that's DK

However, they did sometimes dramatically alter the rest of the cover style.

@BESW What sorts of changes are you thinking of?

@nitsua60 I mean in 5e we have the collectible cover arts (that's a recent example)

Like, the core 3.5 books each used a unique trompe l'oeil photographic design to look like heavily decorated tomes, while the 3.5 expansion books slapped some of the book's interior art as an inset graphic on a generic trompe l'oeil-esque background.

@BESW Like the re-releases of the 2e coreset?

@DavidCoffron Ugh, yeah, there're those =\

@nitsua60 I wouldn't know?

[rummages for artwork]

@nitsua60 (I hate them too) literally bought a new book and sold that one on ebay... lol

@BESW amazon.com/Premium-Advanced-Dungeons-Handbook-Rulebook/dp/…

Is a re-release of amazon.com/Advanced-Dungeons-Dragons-Players-Handbook/dp/…

Ah, here we go: the core 3.5 books:

And everything else:

Thanks!

@BESW LR: can't believe that guy still hasn't gotten the gem outta that eye-socket!

See how it's all the same background graphic with an occasional color shift?

@nitsua60 He's using the wrong tool. :)

@BESW Yeah.

And hinges come and go.

And then sometimes they'd come up with a new design for a limited run, like the "[plural nouns] of [noun]" series.

@BESW And these are all WotC proper?

Yup.

And sometimes they'd say "Screw it, we just like this picture."

Consistency? In our branding?

(Today I learned there is nothing about D&D 3.5 incapable of inspiring bitter contempt in me.)

(But this time it's professional.)

Also notice they've got at least three different typefaces for titles.

absolutely nothing

XD

2018's 200-Word RPG Contest starts in one week!

...okay, there's two things I unequivocally like that come out of D&D 3.5: mustevals and shulassakar.

Unfortunately for them, both work better in non-D&D contexts.

I don't like my program's house rules

It also implies that the GM is evil by nature

> The GM can also decide that circumstances influence a roll in one direction or the other and grant advantage or impose disadvantage as a result of their infernal descent.

@BESW I do like that I got introduced to some interesting creature types from D&D

course, they could have also shown me a much better game

[gnashes teeth at Roll20 macros]

It works in the other one.

yeeeeaaaah

see I never wanted to screw with those

I got really good at some of the other stuff, but macros scared me

in all honesty

@trogdor Do not fear the macros. They will save you lots of time, and will make the chat log more readable.

yes, but messing with making them in the first place though

I've actually had an (evolving) javascript program to generate text for a template with macros in it

I had a melee+maneuver druid, and retyping the rolls became very tedious and took up a lot of space

mm

if I only had to do it once,.....

but from all apearances it wouldn't work that way as DM

@trogdor That's what I'm working on.

yeah

For attacks that don't have riders, I can do it.

well, I could always read the riders out myself

You put in the weapon info on the character sheet, and the monster's basic stats, and I can write a macro that calls on those to make a basic attack.

I'm looking for a way to include riders.

I mean, for like, inflicting status effects and such we kinda have to tell each other and mark them out anyway right?

@trogdor Last I checked, yes, since macros can be used to get information from sheets, but not to affect another sheet

@BESW What system template are you using?

We're playing 4e, so we're using the associated sheet.

@MikeQ yeah I mean, what's stopping people from rolling stuff for actions when dazed anyway

But what I was gnashing about was a weird initiative error.

@BESW Ah ok. Maybe that one has something for conditional rolls? I couldn't figure it out in my games.

@trogdor However, I can put "are there bonuses or penalties?" prompts on all the actions so it's harder to forget.

cool

@MikeQ There are some conditional features but I'm not a coder so it's all very slow and confusing for me.

hello anyone alive?

@ravery ask away?

ok, I'm new to 5e, I have a character in my campaign, that take an unarmed attack with his off hand saying that his attack action with a light weapon allows this

previously this was not allowed without the two weapon fighting skill

is your concern rules-as-written? balance? or...?

RAW

ah

nominally, the baseline TWF rules in 5e allow you to make an offhand attack with a light melee weapon

so this boils down to "are unarmed strikes weapons at your table?"

yes, I'd count a punch as a weapon

though by RAW, I could make him take unarmed fighting to use a punch, yes?

...there's nothing to take, everyone has an unarmed strike of some sort

and the benifit of monk's unarmed strike ... more damage?

@ravery yeah, the monk version is better all-around AIUI than the default

thank you

@Shalvenay Not quite

I mean, it also has to be a light melee weapon.

And unarmed strike isn't light

@ravery ^

(see PHB page 149)

Gameplay-wise, i'd advise against changing that since rolling an extra attack that resolves to at most 1 damage has a rather bad table time / fun ratio.

hey there @Helwar

@DavidCoffron My way to find parts of the game that I enjoy is not taking part to the adventures... and envying those who are self-confident enough to go. Taking part means having to prepare, risking the character and always being anxious about every action. Looking at other people questing looks awesome and rewarding. I'm looking for a way to rewire my brain XD And now there's this Dragon-Ball style PVP tournament (with death prevented) where I absolutely need to take a chance at winning :(

hey

@Shalvenay I wasn't in front of my PC sorry!

@Helwar np, how're things going?

Good, I'm DM-ing in an hour. Knowing my players, 2 hours till everyone is there, 1 hour more till everyone is done catching up and ready to play

@Helwar heheh. still prepping stuff, or are you all ready to go, just add players?

preparing stuff, I had 2 weeks to prepare a bunch of NPCs and I haven't done it

T_T

ahh, catch ya another time then

speaking of witch, is there a good source online to make quick character sheets? I hoped to use OrcPub2 but it seems it is defunct for some reason T_T

What do you mean defunct? The website loads just fine to me.

@YannickMG well yes but it only works with what's released for free and before you could do things with all the content from all the books :S

Ah right one moment

reddit.com/r/orcpub/comments/7b3xwp/…

oh

that's great thanks

in the meantime I found this: fastcharacter.com

you can't choose almost anything but it works for what I wanted, quick NPCs :)

thanks anyway!

Yup looks like that'll do it too

I was so excited for my first GMing game in almost a year (starting up next week) and then my fourth party member drops out... after half a month of prep... sigh

:(

That's always a shame

It is a shame but its mostly too bad for them! You guys can still have plenty of fun.

3-way answer collision here

Quick Question Question

I think it'd have been a better collision if all the answers weren't aligned :)

I want to ask if Mage Hand can extinguish light sources, specifically candles and torches. I'm not sure if I need to make a question for extinguishing candles and one for torches or if I can get an answer to both in the same one.

@kviiri And yeah that would've been a sight.

Hm, well... I think if there's no particular reason to believe the two differ, then it's a single question.

@YannickMG I'd suggest "can I use mage hand to put out a burning, exposed light, specifically a candle or torch?"

Some answers may treat them the same, if someone sees... daylight between the two that'll come out, also.

I'm just thinking that the way in which you would put out both might differ, since you might be able to pinch a candle but not a torch

But fair enough yes, thanks :)

Yeah, but addressing that is, in my opinion, within a tight scope enough to make for good answers :)

Alright then I'll leave my theories on the "how" out of my question

@YannickMG afterthought: does it matter if the light source is exposed or not? I.e. candle, torch vs. lantern?

Well that would make the answer into "it depends on what the light source is"

I'm asking if it matters to you.

I wasn't thinking of them, no

I mean, when I think about light sources and how I might stifle them I categorize as point- or extended-source; mundane vs. magical; then maybe exposed vs. covered.

It would probably matter to someone

Alright I'll redefined the question

@YannickMG Then I'd suggest throwing the word "exposed" into the Q somewhere.

and limit it to exposed flames

Sounds good to me yes

@nitsua60 By limiting to exposed flame light sources I'll also go further and give campfires as an example, sounds good?

Looks fine to me. In my experience if you're specific about what you had in mind, well-articulated answers will help you figure out how to think about further cases. (A lantern, or that pebble someone's holding with light cast on it.) If the question's artificially broad then it's answers often neither help figure out the original situation nor the broader concept.

I'm glad to see from that likely spoiler that Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes will have at least some player content (from the feed enworld.org/forum/…)

Yeah, don't Monster Manual -like additions usually feature player options of the more monstrous kind?

Speaking of which, I've said this before but holey moley original DnD 4e monster math was off for high level baddies.

The big guy Orcus himself has over 1500 hp. His attack deals something like 2d12+12 iirc.

He has a touch of death too, that's a recharging save or zero-hp effect that deals severe necrotic damage on miss too.

Anyone watching Eurovision tonight?

meh

Nope, I very deliberately declined an invitation to a get-together where it would have been watched :P

not close to my style of music

I might take a peek although I think it's usually rather stale in terms of style.

seems to me it's more about politics or a funny gimmick than the actual songs

Oh it's definitely not about the music.

But that first song had a coffin that was also a piano and fire. Vintage Eurovision.

I kinda like watching old Eurovision songs from the time when there was a rule that songs had to be in the native language of the represented country. I like hearing languages

I don't know anyone that watches it because they actually enjoy the music. It's all about the ridiculous spectacle.

Finland had a very slight competitive advantage in that we could legally submit Swedish songs too. And we even did, once!

Anyway, it's a nice distraction from simply refreshing SE and crying about how poorly received my last answer was. :P

Yea

Wait, the Estonian team is singing in Italian? That's a bit unexpected

Yeah, a little odd. Impressive dress though.

I think Finland had a rather good entry a few years back, this folk music style group...

Kuunkuiskaajat! (roughly "Moon whisperers")

Alas, like most Eurovision stars, they faded into obscurity pretty fast.

We missed the whole thing last year because my wife was giving birth.

I guess that's a good reason to miss it

I think the only Finnish entry I can remember clearly is Lordi (apologies for spelling).

You got it right :)

Oh, well it was a fluke. Here we go UK. Always someone I've never heard of, always really bland. I expect our usual low table obscurity.

There was a bit of controversy surrounding the Finnish candidate this year because for the last few years the Finnish public broadcasting company Yle had picked the contestant through UMK (the New Music Competition) which specifically atrracted artists who hadn't broken big yet

Oh did someone intrude the stage!

Dra-maaa!

Couldn't work out if that was planned or not...

At least the Finnish commentator seems to think it wasn't

well anyway then Yle picked an established singer, Saara Aalto, rather upsetting the UMK contestants who thought they had a chance at Eurovision.

Clearly a sign of going munchkin instead of the relatively casual "let some new artist have a chance" line they had before

(look at me being an expert on Eurovision lol)

Ah, Saara Aalto. She was on a British tv talent programme a few years ago.

I rewatched the British song, I think it was ok but the interruption was rather unfortunate. I don't think it was planned at all

I couldn't make up a word of what the guy was yelling

Hmm Germany seems like a rip off of Ed Sheeran.

Yea

Haha, my SO (who's visiting another town) just messaged me that Finland is leading Canada 5-1 in today's hockey game. "Good life", she says

I've never been too big on this hockey thing but I really love how much the sport engages her whenever there's a world championship

That sounds like a good result - Canada are pretty good at ice hockey aren't they?

Yea

I think they're generally considered to be the best hockey country, period

The UK is terrible, so ice hockey only crosses my radar at the Winter Olympics

Well Canada is kinda sorta almost your compatriots :)

I thought USA and Russia were up there too.

I think their matches were a big deal during the cold war.

I only learned this stuff quite recently myself because I used to be really averse to watching any sort of sport on the TV and hockey in particular felt very inane to me because it's a very, err... violent sport.

And fans seem to thrive on that violent aspect, which always felt odd to me.

AFAIK it was a big deal more so due to being the cold war superpowers, not because of their superb renown in hockey.

Anyway, there's a "big six" of hockey countries: Canada, US, Russia, Finland, Sweden and Czechia, and they tend to dominate any team outside the lot.

And yeah Hockey is fun but I don't understand why they chose to make purposeless violence a regular part of it

That's fair.

Finland has a particular competition thing with Sweden because... well, tradition. I've come to understand there's a similar friendly rivalry between Britain and Australia.

(also, Finland scored its first IIHF world championship in 1995 in a final against Sweden, which made the "at least better than the Swedish" aspects even stronger)

Wow, the Danish intro shots are pretty neat.

@YannickMG Proxy tribal warfare :P

Tormund Giantsbane singing for Denmark. He cleaned up nicely.

@ACuriousMind I guess so... Doesn't mean I have to like it. :)

@ACuriousMind Neat

Probably accurate too!

There's at least a persistent legend that the Meso-American ballgame was like that, but I'm not really sure whether that's true.

C'mon Saara

Here we go Finland...

Wow, I had no idea she was going to rotate

How do you even sing while upside-down?

Space Prussian dancers

I wish the contest rules had allowed Finland to resubmit Vesku Loiri with Huilumies until the audiences found it the best work of music mankind had ever crafted or he died of old age.

What year was that one?

1980 iirc

Ok this show clearly has some hocus pocus in it

Moldova were fun...

They had a neat gimmick

Not so sure about this Swedish number.

Feels like Blade Runner crossed with Grease.

Feels very 1980's, yep

80's is in but still not sold.

Linkin Park for Hungary

@kviiri There are Pasifika dances which are kind of.... inarguably literal... on that front. Especially some of the stick dances.

That's actually something to explore in RPGs /me writes down

Also, it's a pretty common theme in fantasy fiction that our world/Prime Material/whatever is just that, for higher order beings.

Gods have a dispute but duking it out in the Heavens could destroy the entire Multiverse --> take it to the Material Plane and see who survives.

Not sure I'll make it through the scores before sleep claims me. Need to be fully awake tomorrow for daughter's first Birthday.

That's nice :)

I have a stag party tomorrow, but it's far more likely to involve literal stags than usual

The groom is a Laestadian so the traditional alcohol-fueled sports are off-limits, much to my relief too.

So we go out to the forest of Nuuksio and enjoy a hot Summer day there

@kviiri Thanks for that, I learn something new. Laestadian. :)

@KorvinStarmast Yea, they're a fairly regional thing :)

I'll google that one. Night all. Have a good Stag.

Thanks!

The annual Laestadian get-together Summer seminar is still, I think, the largest annual event in Finland by number of attendees by far. No music festival has a remote chance of usurping that place

Cool.

rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/122446/… I wish they kept Invoker in 5e

It's a cooler concept than I gave them credit for, at first.

I guess lore-wise the closest match is now a Celestial Warlock?

Yeeeah, I switched out my invoker because he was too awesome.

"Too awesome" was my initial complaint against the class too. I felt their whole "personal contact with <god>" deal outshadowed the cleric in particular

Not mechanically, but lore-wise.

I think, lore-wise, the cleric has institutional backup while the invoker is more of a vigilante and/or freelancer.

I view Invokers as a sort of "pre-religious" divine class. Their way of dealing with their god was born out of the necessity of defending the world against the primordials and doesn't concern itself much with morals and ethics, but continuing this mission. Clerics are the ones who really get to making the world more like the particular would like to see it.

Interesting.

the particular god, I mean

omitting words when typing in chat is a clear sign I've postponed my bedtime for long enough. Good night everyone

ttfn

@Tiggerous I absorb Eurovision via Sydney Padua tweeting her sketches of the performances.