Because you get to figure out dynamics ahead of time, you don't end up with people being like "He always looked up to me when we were in the academy" and then realizing the other guy is better than you in every way and he actually doesn't.
@SPavel Choose a type of favored enemy: aberrations, beasts, celestials, constructs, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, giants, monstrosities, oozes, plants, or undead. Alternatively, you can select two races of humanoid (such as gnolls and orcs) as favored enemies From the rules.
@Yuuki I always do sample encounters to give everyone a feel for each others gameplay style (1 combat encounter, 1 skill challenge, and 1 social encounter, although we didn't quite get to the social in this past one, gonna pick it up at the start of session 1)
My groups generally use either cookie cutter starts like "You're all friends of Dr. Moriarty who died at last night's party. That's why you're here at his funeral."
Or they use the "You guys are adults, figure it out."
But I really like the "No backstory until you've played once" the best.
@SPavel I somehow remember that many years ago, somehow in the age of the 3rd edition I think, far before Sharknado was a thing one of my friend came up with the spell "Brayorm"
@Axoren Somehow I could just figure that being a thing in some obscure anime. Just imagine a world where spells are made up by combining runes... I could totally picture some wizzard thinking "I wonder what would happen if I mixed the runes for Creation, Wall and Donkey"
Round 3: The Spectral Donkeys all glare at 6 enemies of your choice dealing 10d6 phsychic damage on a failed CHarisma save (or half on a successful one)
@Axoren Change the 20' sphere to a 20/30/40 foot wide wall of stampeding buffalo. Damge to bludgenoning, movement to 3040 ... concentration reduce to 1 min. That's a start.
Question, answer, and accept all within a short timeframe. (<1hr, often)
This often happens with new/inexperienced users. This may discourage later answers from coming along. This may discourage voting, as voters my see diminished utility if their vote isn't helping to inform OP.
The comment I ...
@DavidCoffron Tattu is a corruption of 竜 tatsu (dragon), which is part of the common name of a seahorse in Japanese: 竜の落し子 tatsu-no-otoshigo ("illegitimate child of a dragon")
I was about to say that is a darned good memory if you pulled that out of your head.
と, in hiragana, or ト in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. Both represent the sound [to], and when written with dakuten represent the sound [do]. In the Ainu language, the katakana ト can be written with a handakuten (which can be entered in a computer as either one character (ト゚) or two combined characters (ト゜) to represent the sound [tu], and is interchangeable with the katakana ツ゚.
the long oo in hiragana is not written too とお, とう
== Stroke order ==
The Katakana ト is made from two strokes:
A vertical stroke on in the center;
A line pointing downwa...
@DavidCoffron ahhh I see. I'm pretty sure it just comes from the multiple ways that kanji can be written as hiragana. Sometimes they can pull one of the hiragana out if there are multiple ways to prnounce the kanji.
the tl;dr is that it is pronounced the same, but just a different way to write it.
Pokemon names can be fun for Japanese learners even. Like in the most recent gen the fire starter is called Nyabi in Japanese which is a portmanteau of Nya (the sound a cat makes) and a modified form of fire (hi -> bi)
タツノオトシゴ means Sea Horse, literally. 竜 means dragon 子 is the character for child, so nouns with it generally refer to a child 落とし is weird, but from what I picked up, it's like falling or something
Yes, the final evolution isn't a Fire/Fighting type but you can't look at that design and tell me straight-faced that your first guess wouldn't be Fire/Fighting.
@Axoren apparently it reads as "illegitimate child" according to Bulbapedia. However, it may be shocking to learn that this is not a term I have been taught in class.
@DavidCoffron Yup they are in every way equivalent. A good example might be the way color can be written as such or as colour.
I always wish that they would make the starter final evolutions have two cycles of weaknesses. Like how the Water starter would be super-effective against the Fire-type but the Fire starter gets a sub-type that's super-effective against the Water's sub-type.