@BESW what was that system you were havong issues with a few months ago?

@Ben You just included at least half a dozen systems

XD

It's practically a hobby finding systems to have some amount of trouble with

and @BESW seems to have that hobby from my experience

Yes, yes, I do.

Just to be clear

What kind of issues were you thinking of?

@Ben Are you remembering my Ki Khanga rants?

XD

Ki Khanga

Sheesh

(very promise. such disappoint. so mistake. rage.)

That one monster entry alone

"yes so this monster can roar to paralyze targets,... In a one mile radius with no specified length of time of effect, by the way they hunt in packs."

"what's that, I need to limit uses of this ability? Nah that's just silly"

Turns out there's a different part of the book that tries to clarify the duration... tries....

XD

@BESW no see,... Even if it succeeded,

..... Put that in the dang monster entry!!!!

Besides,... Wtf addresses the mile radius and the pack hunting?

To be fair, it does say "See Conditions" in the monster entry.

Ok,

But yeah.

Fair,... But what about the rest of it? XD

The Conditions section isn't in the table of contents (and there is no index) and the monster entry doesn't give a page number.

Anyone here have experience running a Dread game?

Besides,... Didn't we look that section up and not get a clear definition?

@trogdor Oh, it takes three hours to be completely rid of the paralyzing effects of the mbwakawi. The unclear thing is the order in which those effects are removed: "Paralyzed" is actually a combination of three effects, Defenseless, Immobilized, and Stunned. You recover from one effect per hour of rest, "starting from their most severe Condition and working back," but which condition is "most severe" seems to be left up to the group to decide.

Is it worse to be unable to take actions, or to be giving enemies a choice of "guaranteed hit" or "guaranteed crit if hit with normal attack"?

Ah there we go

Between automatic hit and automatic crit if hit, it's probably a workable math problem tbh :P

Still though, imagine a hunting party getting attacked by these, (even assume they won just for laughs) they drag any paralyzed members home only to have to wait 3 hours to talk to anyone

@HellSaint Yes, but that's not the question.

Yeah it doesn't seem like it's meant as a choice for the PC to make

It seems like a rule that should have a severity list under it

Which it of course does not have

Which brings us back to "Is this an incomplete draft that got printed by accident?"

Yeeeeaaaah

Also that art

I think the art's just first publication blues.

The art that looks so good with color and,... Comes in black and white on the page

Badly contrasted black and white.

More like grey and other grey.

@BESW which would be way more forgivable if it didn't come alongside so much other,... Weird #$###$-

@BESW yeah no argument there

And I got so caught up in Ki Khanga,... I forgot to mention that it wasn't a couple months ago

It was at least as far back as the start of the year I think

Possibly late last year even

It seems like it was made in the same manner that programmers comment their code

Lol

@Ben do programmers comment their code? what? that's new.

As in , assuming anyone reading it already knows what the basic rules are?

@HellSaint oh yeah they do

5 years working with coding and I've never seen that :o well, that explains most of our problems...

I learned that 2 years ago, give or take a few months

(both my previous comments were ironic, just to be clear hahaha)

@HellSaint well not everyone does it obviously, but some do

like, yeah, some people actually don't and that leads to huge problems

@HellSaint ok fair

Hard to read that in text

and usually when we train new people, they are like "What? I should be commenting the code? But it is obvious what I am doing here!"

3 months later they don't know what they were doing there.

@trogdor agreed, I usually use emoticons for expressing that, but here it feels awkward haha

Lol

@trogdor What's the opposite of damning with faint praise?

To praise with faint damnation

It's pretty straightforward

XD

I seen to do those things rather often

In my defense,... The world just seems to work that way

Not much seems to be capable of being purely good or purely bad

I'm just saying, if the biggest problem with a programmer's comments is that they assume anyone reading it will have a basic understanding of the system, I'd put them in the top 1% for commenting.

Not counting uni students, obviously.

And I have a habit of not picking and rambling

@Miniman As I said, my biggest problem with non-comments is that 3 months later they don't understand their own code any more.

@Miniman oh well as far as that goes,... I don't honestly Know just how bad code comments get

I have not had to read much of other people's code

@HellSaint Yeah, code is one of those things that seems totally simple at the time and is just completely incomprehensible when you have to revisit it.

People just out of college also usually happen to write very, very unclear codes. Many comments are unnecessary if you simply give a decent name to your variables. But when they are called x, xx and xxx, that doesn't help.

Though I will say that what I have had to read was literally intended to teach me something but was still not very instructive

So that's still not great

@HellSaint Yeah, that's something that has to be hammered in to a lot of people - it literally does not matter how long your variable/method names are, what matters is how descriptive they are.

(Me included.)

@Miniman Exactly for that reason documentation is good :P because most of the time you will revisit it, because bug happens, especially when the product is on the customer (client? not sure the eng word here) and your company is the one supposed to give support for the code :P

(IE, here's the asnwer to your question of how to do thing in code, specified to the exact problem you have now and not answering how to do it later when you have a similar issue that is even one variable different)

Coding is fun! (Rage burns my face)

@trogdor Eh. It's pretty difficult to write code that's both useful and generic. It's generally better to give a specific example and let people extrapolate the principle.

Kinda like why you should never use the system-agnostic tag XD

@Miniman but if you were trying to teach someone that principal though

.......

I don't learn by being given an off hand example with no explanation of how it works

Maybe some people do? I do not

@HellSaint exactly. I've even had that problem with my own code. 6 months later I come back, read my comments and am like "...huh??"

It's the biggest problem I have had with math as well

Wait wait wait. I'm not saying it's possible to learn purely from examples.

@Miniman I didn't think you were, I wanted to clarify that that was my issue

@trogdor Ah, gotcha. Yeah, that sucks.

Not so much lack of an example as lack of an accompanying explanation

If all I get is, "here is the piece of code that does that thing" I only learn how to copy that

Not why or how it does thing

That second part is important to my ability to learn this kind of thing

I'm actually the opposite. People say "I want it to do x"

Yes... But how?

If statement? Iteration? Recursion?

The main difference in math is, I get told I need to know yet another formula, but why I would use it or what it calculates or how many more goldang formulas I am expected to memorize after it

My experience learning math has been bad, is the short version

@Ben but see,... I can't answer that if I don't know that stuff

@Ben If you can do something using an if statement that would otherwise require iteration/recursion, that's always going to be a better choice :P

@trogdor Around here, that's one of the fundamental differences between basic and advanced maths - at a basic level, it's all about using formulae. Only advanced students get to know how a formula works or where it comes from.

@Miniman well I hate that,.... In part because I have found it endlessly tedious to memorize formulas at all

I can read plain text all day but add number formulas in there and it's suddenly torture

@trogdor exactly. Lol

@trogdor See also: GURPS.

It would help if I knew why o needed those formulas but I never seem to get that answer while being shuffled off to learn the next formula

@trogdor I once tried to calculate sine based on the outcome of my previous answers. I think that sums up my mathematical prowess

At least back when I was still in any math classes

@trogdor I mean, that one is tough. My mum's a high school maths teacher, and she's always asking me to come up with examples of how mathematical techniques are useful in real life.

The real answer is that a lot of the stuff we learn in school just isn't useful day-to-day unless you have a job that requires it

I don't object that math is somehow not useful in everyday stuff

The real answer is that a lot of the stuff we learn in school just isn't useful day-to-day unless you have a job that requires it.

@Miniman exactly

School teaches people to perform well on tests and assignments.

@Miniman But the thinking skills those techniques teach, are very useful.

@BESW not when it's rote memorization of a formula with nothing tied to it though

Well, yes. That's why we need more Square One TV.

I don't protest the existence of these formulas, I protest how they were shoveled down my brain without prior consent

@trogdor It might help if you think of school not as education for real life, but as training for real life.

Set theory may not be an obviously everyday skill, but the ability to think critically about interrelated categories in complex ways is vital to making everyday experience coherent.

And look and behold,... I forgot most of them after

Sooner or later, in the workforce, you're going to have to do stuff that's boring.

Who could have guessed? XD

@Miniman oh I've learned that

@Miniman I have yet to deal with a client who is more difficult than some of my college roommates.

But at least at work I can score some actual,... Efforts to teach me the principals behind what I do

@trogdor I didn't suspect for a moment that you hadn't. But not everyone makes the connection between school (sit still for 6 hours even if you don't want to) and work (sit still for 8 hours even if you don't want to).

I can kill boring if I am given a peek behind the dang curtains

@Miniman lol

Yeah

@BESW I don't know whether to congratulate or commiserate that sentiment.

If school taught me one thing well it was that

@Miniman one issue with that though,... Our school system believes it is the first and not the second thing

@Miniman ...yes.

It's like being in a religious school that teaches the Bible in science class

How do I know this? Because I experienced it in high school

XD

@trogdor In the way that water to wine was done via some form of chemical reaction, or In that if you believe enough, you can break the laws of physics

@Ben no, XD

Like how dinosaurs are fake and the world is 6000 years old

And carbon dating is some horrible sham

You know, normal everyday learning right?

Same as how @miniman and I are errors to cover up the massacre of English convicts?

I am actually glad for that though because it taught me early in life to be a skeptic

@Ben yeah sure, we will go with that

@Ben Well, maybe you are :P muttermuttermutter bloody Queenslanders muttermuttermutter

@Ben I have to Know, were you being taught that in school or,.....?

@trogdor Yeah, day 1 of kindergarten in Australia is the "none of us really exist" lesson.

It makes sense that the Australian state philosophy would be nihilism.

@Miniman I mean, I did just get done explaining that I was taught some outlandish things right? :P

@BESW I really want to make a joke about the USA and nation-level solipsism here, but it feels a little too on the nose.

@trogdor Somehow I missed that period of time. We were taught actual science, outside of any religious belief. I finished school before that became a thing again

@Miniman Day 1 of kindergarten, Elves learn the Elfabet

In all honesty, my favourite flat-earth explanation was to explain flooding. They poured water over a lemon, then on a plate. "The water flows off the lemon, but stays on the plate... Coincidence??"

actors not errors

That sounds like an activists protest chant

@BESW Why thank you!

@Miniman I mean, at least Australia has an excuse for making maps that show its nation without any borders or neighbors, just floating on a nondescript oceanic gradient.

@Ben Ben, you saved a lot of money. Goodonya!

@Miniman I mean, I feel like that Is wrong only because we definitely know others exist, we just hate them,.... A lot

Like, very alot

We would love to believe they don't exist but some of them keep moving here and that makes us mad

I would but a funny face on the end of this but it's not really a joke unfortunately

I knew I would get an alot

I made space for it right over here

No one should hate alot.

I agree but I can't convince the rest of the council of America on that one

Not in entirety anyway

@trogdor The cool thing about engineering is that math is a tool that lets you get some neat things done. It doesn't matter how painful it was to learn some math; what matter is 'can it help me solve my problem so I can make this work?'

@KorvinStarmast I definitely disagree with it not mattering how painful it was to learn

I again agree that math is still useful though

That which does not kill you makes you stronger. Go to math class, stop complaining. :)

I had a German girlfriend for a few years who told me that "actually, that line from Nietzche isn't quite like that in German." Heck, I know a little German, but philosophical German is beyond me.

These days, my limit on German philosophy is

catawiki.com/catalog/matchcovers/brands/schultheiss-bier/…

Billboard I saw as a kid in Germany

@KorvinStarmast Which link was this?

Question to the 5e GMs/players in the room: what's your favorite/go-to spell for contingency?

@KorvinStarmast I misread that.

@nitsua60 In 5e? Because it used to be Plane Shift to the Positive Energy Plane.

@nitsua60 would wild shape count?

@nitsua60 keeping in mind I only know first level paladin spells? Command

I still have not used it but it has a wide range of possible used

I've had it prepared for a while in our game but never saw a contingency to use it for till last session

And technically even then I couldn't get into range

(I was going to tell that guy to either stop running or throw away his crossbow)

@nitsua60 In 3.5 I had an NPC who stacked contingency spells so that when he died, he'd be teleported to a friendly paladin stronghold and automatically resurrected.

Unless contingency is a spell that casts another spell? In which case I got nothing

This.... sorta backfired.... when the PCs confronted him while he was visiting the friendly paladin stronghold.

Lol

That must have been hilarious

Wait was that us? If so how was that a backfire?

I thought that left him the only one who didn't die and he came back later and rezzed his buddies

Yeah, that version worked out better.

(What? I re-use all my good ideas.)

Ok

Multiple occurance

There was an earlier one where he got killed, and resurrected in the middle of the afterparty.

You told us at the time it was re used

Lol

I had a lot of fun with that campaign

Playing an undead fighter was cool, and it technically helped compensate for not being a caster

The immunities to certain things and the abilities you couldn't take otherwise

I am a bit of a newbie to this site. Can someone tell me why people's icons on the RHS of this chat page are sometimes faded and sometimes normal?

@KieranMullen the faded ones are people who have not been active recently

You'll notice maybe also that after I spoke my icon moved to the left

Whoever is farthest to the left spoke last

And whoever is faded hasn't said anything for a little while

And if you log out or close the tab with this chat, your icon/avatar will also leave eventually

But if you are lurking it will just remain faded

(actually if you just entered the chat again, that will also move you to the left, I forgot about that part)

can twinned spell be used on Spiritual Weapon? It does not have range of self, but IMO it can target more than one creature, so it does not satisfy that requirement.

@Vylix: sageadvice.eu/2017/11/28/…

"The spiritual weapon spell doesn't target a creature. The weapon does once it's created. The spell isn't eligible for Twinned Spell."

the Craw has spoken

@trogdor Thanks for the answer!

@KieranMullen no problem

@trogdor The "Faded Ones" seems the name of an old race of demi-gods that are slowly disappearing and being forgotten

oh for a second I didn't know what you were talking about XD

^ Btw, I don't think it only considers "who has spoken last". Look at the picture - you was the last one, but Sdjz was the first in the user list.

It's "most recent noticeable activity," whether that's joining the chat or entering/editing a message into the chat.

Yep, and I think there are some more exception.

(I say "noticeable" because it only sorts by "entered" for people who enter the chat while you're also logged in.)

I'll try and see if I can find the source again.

@BESW yeah

@BESW oh ok

any of you familiar with the 5e Apparatus of Kwalish?

@Javelin I am not, but what is your question?

Im just wondering if youve ever considered an animated one, as a monster, for a combat encounter

That'd be amusing.

....possibly underwhelming mechanically unless you made a custom stat block for it, but amusing.

Its a legendary wondrous item on its own, and me and my pal figured its around CR5 if its animated and can move around without levers

given 2 claw attacks, it has a good chance to hit, low damage, but 20 AC and 200 HP make it very durable

Maybe CR4, rather than 5

I don't know much about 5e, but high AC and HP values have never made fights fun in my experience. Just tedious.

Ive actually had problems with players being too strong, which is my fault, and have had to max enemy HP

The Apparatus in other editions has always been interesting because it's an adaptable piece of tech the PCs can use to do cool things.

I'd want the Apparatus as an enemy to reflect that adaptability and improvisational empowerment somehow.

One of its attack options is using a claw to grapple, and the apparatus can swim and descend.....you can see where that goes

It's kinda like a submersible tank, with claws

i think im gonna make a land-based one, that has a climb speed and a retractable ballista

just thought id share my idea about it in case anybody was interested

btw, welcome to the RPG.SE lair @Javelin :)

also, hey there @AVeryLargeBear

@Shalvenay I swear I've been here before :x but thank you

lol

sometimes it's a little hard to keep track of everyone who comes and goes here XD

It's very seldom, I am a quiet person, but I do have things I like to share at times.

it's cool either way, no one says you have to be here all the time to be here

@Shalvenay Howdy :)

Wow, that's a big bear

Hi! o/

so the apparatus resembles a giant lobster, and it has the appropriate tail, claws, swim speed, etc. if i have something with a crossbow-type thing, and maybe a bite attack, instead of claws....what would that resemble?

also hello @doppelgreener

@Derpy one of them is if you've just joined then it is sorted by most recent messages

@Javelin a lobster that's ready to lead a rebellion against the surface dwellers?

this one I am designing has a climb speed, instead of a swim speed

@doppelgreener i am too unfamiliar with wildlife to come up with a creature :c

So if it climbs up cliff walls that sounds like....

More on point than theoretical rock lobsters, are you married to it looking like a lobster or are you just looking for a climbing biting creature that shoots?

Well played.

The second one, something that climbs and shoots, biting is optional. I am totally okay with it having a different melee option.

Off the top of my head, a howler that's learned to shoot its quills.

But a quick search tells me D&D 5e calls something very different a howler.

@BESW I believe that came in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. It's some sort of fiendish quadruped I believe.

@doppelgreener yeeesssssss (favorite B52's song)

@BESW 3.x Howler?

5e Howler^

3.x howler is more slender and spiny with spines to shoot, clearly the rock dwelling subspecies you're looking for

I've been poking through my Tome of Foes, and Volo's, as well as the back of the MM. I think Kruthiks might be what I am looking for. Hive building monstrosities.

Oh and they have a burrow and climb speed!

Noice

Side note from the tome: "Imagine a hive of ants the size of horses, but the ants are wearing armor. Then exterminate them."

@nitsua60 Haste with the trigger "When I draw my Special Magic Weapon that I normally not use" is what I am thinking about for an overconfident NPC. Or Dimension Door with a trigger like "When evil PC hits me with a spell" for the Overlord that knows what kind of fight he had to prepare for. Or Revivify upon "My death".

@Secespitus I like^

4e Howler:

Personally I prefer krenshar for my hound-like monstrosities.

Though, again, the 3.5 art is better.

If I need hound-y monsters, I might just throw out some Hyenas that "suddenly" stand upright, you know, like a Gnoll.

(3.5's art direction was a lot spottier; 4e's is more consistent but has fewer extreme highs and lows.)

I think my new apparatus (I am calling it Nerva) will have 12 levers

Meanwhile I'm making a 4e monster and desperately searching for ways to simplify what it can do.

@BESW If I knew 4e I would offer to help, but I haven't touched it. Friend of mine deposited some of his 4e books on me, even...

What's it do?

Some of the players frequent this chat, so I'd need to get the Spoil-Lair re-opened.

Ooooh, okay

I'm helping Troggy with design on a boss encounter.

I can say that it's tricky because there's a skill challenge earlier in the adventure, and I want the success/fail outcomes of the challenge to meaningfully impact the fight that comes later.

Are you factoring that into the design of the monster, or the design of the encounter? Or something else entirely?

Both.

Fun!

@BESW i done unfrozen it

(and avoided looking at anything left of the menu)

@doppelgreener Thank you!

@doppelgreener Thank you. Now shoo.

i'm outta there :D

lol

hey,... I can go in there this time XD

And I can't - that's a first.

The times they are a-changing

lol

XD

@doppelgreener The times they are a changeling

@nitsua60 It came up on the banner here in chat, I think it's his recent blob post about how to put together an XP budget for easier encounter making.

@Secespitus I like haste--it's my new go-to, because then there's just so much in the way of options =)

@nitsua60 One of my players cleared most of a dungeon under the effect of a single Haste spell. By himself.

@nitsua60 Haste is a great spell.

Dimension door's not a viable contender, as far as I can tell, because it doesn't/can't target the caster. (Unlike, say, misty step. Dimension door targets a point w/in 500'.)

@nitsua60 Contingency has a bunch of nice choices to pair it with, but we have not played enough high level fights for that to have come up often enough. Haste is, indeed, a very nice utility spell.

@nitsua60 Doesn#t it target you for the teleport and you then just specify a point?

@Secespitus Nope. (I was looking at it yesterday prepping an NPC!)

Well, actually... it's perhaps a bit unclear.

@nitsua60 Interesting, this question made it look like would work

Misty step, for comparison, has a range of "Self."

Revivify is "Touch" and spell specifies that you target a creature.

"Misty Step" still sounds like an MLP name to me.

The spell just has to be able to target you like with Haste

@nitsua60 How about Banishment, for when you are plane-shifted off of your home plane?

Dimension door's range is 500', and the description doesn't say anything about targeting a creature.

Or maybe I just have to re-read Contingency. It's been a while

@Secespitus You're right on Contingency. It's just that I read DD as targeting the endpoint in space, not a creature.

@Javelin I once saw a PC who was falling to his death banish himself straight out of the game instead.

(Because anyone can move through it--you're not teleporting a creature, you're creating a wormhole.)

brb

@BESW I mean, if it works.

@nitsua60 Isn't it something like "you and one willing creature"?

Just that Contingency mentions that the spell only targets you even if it could potentially target more

@Secespitus The thing is that DDoor doesn't exactly "target" you, or any creature for that matter.

I'll just accept the reading of you guys for now and check when I am home. My personal preference is Haste on Magical Weapon anyway. That's far more fun for an encounter.

There're all kinds of fun options, especially for movement/positioning.

@BESW This was a good read. Thanks for sharing!

Glad you liked it. That was partway through my very first RPG ever.

@Secespitus Interesting... I think the answer's right on the question of when DD's terminus is chosen, but is wrong in accepting the querent's assumption that DD is valid for contingency. I'll write up a competing answer later today =)

@nitsua60 Great! I love setting up people against each other, looking at the fallout from a safe hiding place. That's why I am the DM my group.

Looking forward to your answer.

@BESW I enjoyed reading that again very much.

I just learned about Hounds of Tindalos........and now I want to make a statistics block for them.

That's one of the big problems with a lot of "traditional" style cosmic panic games; the systems work on the idea that everything gets a stat block, but once you've given something stats it's defined and confined and loses the very qualities which create cosmic panic.

Can I ask you to explain cosmic panic to me, @BESW

Yeah... once you attach a HP bar to the thing, the thing is in the category of things which have knowable weaknesses and ways to defeat them, and in the category of obstacles that can be overcome.

The reason creatures in the Lovecraft mythos are scary is because we do not know what they are or how to defeat them nor can we classify them as something we can personally overcome.

I see.

An encounter with Nyarlathotep is not a situation you can violence your way out of because violence is not an answer to Nyarlathotep.

That's one of the reasons why I think the "overtime" of Arkham Horror is a very bad feature.

In a game like D&D the mechanics of combat are, for the players, the "fixed laws of Nature," and cosmic fear draws on "that most terrible conception of the human brain—a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space."

Which means that if the horror follows the rules, it's just a beast.

Compare Cthulhu Dark, in which there are no rules for the horrors confronted: the only rules in the game describe the player characters themselves and the actions they take.

Or Lovecraftesque, where the rules are for the players.

I am okay with downgrading it to a mere creature o-o and I apologize for tearing away the black fabric of it for the sake of it having a form

That's not to say that you can't do horror with a statblock!

There are enough different forms of horror that as a descriptor it's largely useless.

Just--very hard to do cosmic fear that way.

It quickly turns pulpy, which is its own kind of fun.

Oh I wasn't intending for cosmic fear, I just want more things to suddenly appear behind my players

Personally I like to do cosmic fear by taking Doctor Who stories and replacing the Doctor and his companion(s) with the player characters so nobody's around who can explain what's going on.

Deadlands has a similar thing, fans kept asking for stat blocks for various things like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and so, and when those blocks were provided they kept finding them rather easy to kill.

@kviiri Definitely

@kviiri Inconceivable!

@Javelin Manly Wade Wellman wrote about the Behinder.

@BESW Finished reading your story, by the way. Love it.

@Javelin Glad you like it. You can find it and others in the conversations tab.

(Quotes above are from "The Desrick on Yandro" by Manly Wade Wellman, collected in John the Balladeer.)

(And yes, his name is Manly Wade Wellman. No he didn't change it from something more boring.)

That is a very compelling name.

@J.E Hi!

Is this google sheet shareable or is that considered pirated content? Note: i didn't make it.

hai :wave:

@goodguy5 howdy howdy to all!

also.... kinda relevant.