“Is this Tom Lehrer?” Morris asked over the phone, working to hide his nervousness.
“Yes,” replied a voice some 1,000 miles away.
“The Tom Lehrer who teaches math?”
“Yes.”
“The Tom Lehrer that did some records in the '50s and '60s?”
“Yes.”
Morris apologetically explained his school assignment, worried that Lehrer wouldn’t want to speak to him and self-conscious for having interrupted his day. The retired performer listened patiently to his request.
"Rather than talk to me for very long, just make up anything you want and I won't deny it.”
In other news, thanks to a youtuber that likes to set himself challenges in Bloodborne and Dark Souls (OP at level 1) and make fun builds (How to be a helicopter), I have now become somewhat addicted to Powerwolf.
@Shalvenay random or predetermined dragons erupting out of the can of wyrms? Sounds like a quest item that is the target of a long campaign: something like "the dragons are slowly leaving the world/dying out ... we need to restore dragons or sorcerers all lose their access to the weave" .... that sort of thing.
Alternately, it's like the Ents looking for entwives: the lady or man dragons have been dying off, and one of each kind seeks a mate. OUt of the can erupt an adult dragon to match the few remaining dragons ... echoes of the Pern problem of dragon mating, but from a different angle.
@KorvinStarmast Failed/Hilarious wizard prank: Remove springy snakes from "snakes in a can". Set up summoning spell summon wyrmlings when can is opened instead.
(To new wizard apprentice during tour of the school): "Oh, and do not trust Carl. He's a prankster, and a volatile one at that. Gerald is still recovering from his last prank."
So apparently the business that got hacked yesterday was actually hit by a Conflicker Worm. It works it's way through the network and sits in the Modem, so any new devices that connect will also be infected.
I formatted one PC, and rebooted at as a "crash course" recovery, then left it there, so they could at least just re-install everything and start over. Of course they did have a few system issues - updates and such causing problems, nothing too drastic.
I had this rather computer illiterate friend (by his own choice, much to my chagrin) get infected with one of those faux antiviruses. He was totally oblivious to its true nature, even if it was painfully obvious to probably anyone else who took a good look at it.
But after talking to an over-the-phone assistant, they pointed out they had the Conflicker worm in their system. So I've stepped it up, given it a higher priority and going to make sure the whole system is clear.
Whenever he booted, he'd get a warning that his computer was infected and it wasn't safe to boot until he bought the expensive full version of the "antivirus". There were two options apart from that: "YES, prevent booting to protect my system" and "NO, don't boot to protect my system". Argh.
Luckily, that thing only autostarted in normal Windows boot. It was easy-ish to remove in safe mode.
I did a derp like that once. Bought a second hand PC. Ran a format on it just to be sure. After reboot, it needed updates for drivers etc. It was about 11pm at this stage, on a school night, so I was a little tired, and thought "ahh... ok I'll just google for an update site".
Found one that looked semi-legit, and went for it. Downloaded a trojan and a few other viruses.
That's when I remembered; duh... windows has its own update service.
I'm too used to the Linux world where installing things is just a single CLI command 90% of the time.
I do remember one time I was trying to play a derelict Angband variant I had enjoyed a lot earlier
Had to be compiled, no working instructions provided. I'm an ok programmer, and I know C but not makefiles beyond "do what the readme says". And I was getting desperate.
So I read some basics of makefiles after which I did some semi-informed pokes at the file (fun fact: such hacky changes to configuration files are referred to as "stabbing" the file in the Finnish IT slang)
Spitballing an idea here. Based on this question, would "reversed" magic circle work as a low grade version of Dimensional anchor? My idea is to cast the Magic Circle into a ring of spell storing, reverse version of it, and then cast it to a creature so that it can't get out of a magic circle ... at least, not without making a Charisma save. Does that work?
> I don't have XGtE so I can't review the spells there. This is as close to Dimensional anchor as I could come.
@Maximillian The SOS flare is really fun. My friends were on a hunt i wanted to be on but the sessions were being... rough. So they fired an SOS and i managed to paratroop in to join them and the immersion on that was really fun
I'd also like to laugh a little bit at their "PC" official page, where they advertise that its features include changing graphics settings and keyboard+mouse compatibility (which is fair since it's a console-original game, so graphics settings and keymouse aren't default... but those two things are practically required for any respectable pc game)
Yeah, that's what I was trying to remark in parens. It just feels a little humorous to see nearly-ubiquitous things as the only two advertised features
He is not particularly good at fighting, but he does bring a helpful tool along and you get other tools later. Plus they meow like crazy and are full of cat puns.
They usually help draw aggro when you're playing solo.
Otherwise some of the monsters would be nigh impossible to fight effectively.
The game isn't bloody, even the act of carving up creatures results in the corpse just fading away. The series so far has never had human foes or dark plot twists. It's always about studying and keeping big beasts from wiping humans off the map.
And I love the co-op, because they've got a system where communication with others isn't necessarily needed. Every weapon type has a job and you can't harm other players. You can stun them though, so friendly fire is a slight concern, but there's not a lot of vectors for trolling.
I'm personally rather interested in games where communication is only possible through in-game actions, making it a trade-off. Eg. the classic card game Bridge, whose bidding phase is largely just you communicating your cards to your partner.
@kviiri A great travel game i picked up for about 15 dollars. You hold a hand of cards facing away from yourself and the game is based around deducing your own hand and helping the others deduce theirs (it's cooperative)
@SirCinnamon I taught and played with my high school age cousin on a card trip. It gets a bit finicky and not the super easiest to do in a car but definitely much better than most car-wise.
@Rubiksmoose Yea, Bridge is rather uncommon here too. The national paper used to have a Bridge puzzle(?) or something like that every Sunday over ten years ago, but to be honest I think they just had a single enthusiast in the press or something x)
@Rubiksmoose Yeah I can't say i've ever played in a car, but it's small, no finicky pieces, just a small deck of cards and can fit in a largeish pocket so i bring it to a lot of parties
@kviiri hahaha that is probably true. I think we even have bridge puzzles in our papers too...though the only time I see a dead-tree newspaper is when I do the crossword puzzle.
@KorvinStarmast Looks good to me! You addressed all the downsides I would have pointed out quite well in the answer itself. I think it is a good and clever answer. :)
Although that building rule has never been present in any Cassino game I've played in Finland.
And scoring has varied from table to table but never matched the one in the wikipedia article: my preferred variant awards one point for having the most cards among players, two points for the most spades, two for 10 of Diamonds, and one for each ace and the 2 of Spades.
@KorvinStarmast Also a too-silly-to-post-under-the-answer response to your comment on the druid question: "Not Bard, Druid! Why would a Druid be barding?"
Yeah way too much effort for not a lot of funny lol
@kviiri I recall this from reading the paper at my greatgrandmother's house as a little girl. Not knowing what bridge was, the descriptions always felt very mysterious. :P
The literal rules are not extremely complex, nor is the trick-taking part strategically much different from other trick-taking games... but that bidding minigame, jeez.
I dunno... to me that's like saying that playing chess with your kid isn't a good fit because they don't have the endgames memorized.... at some point you've got to play with learners, no?
Anyhoo, I'm just saying that it drives me insane when I see someone try to teach bridge and they start by handing someone 13 cards and say "jacks are worth 1 point, aces are worth 4..." THOSE AREN'T RULES OF BRIDGE!
In my experience in an evening of playing you can get someone from zero to bidding decently if you just teach the rules first.
Then, after some badly missed bids you start to talk about how to think about bids.
By the end of the night I usually have kids up to "game/no game" level of bidding-thinking which, for my money, is about enough to last you your first year of playing.
A part of my assessment is admittedly regional - it's simply hard to get into a team game that doesn't have too many players nearby. The internet is of some help, but my experience with strangers online is that they don't necessarily have the patience to teach a newcomer :<
(sorry for taking some time to reply, I was perusing that Cassino article and noted that the rules as presented there as actually rather different to how I've always been playing it)
@Maximillian I don't understand his rulings sometimes. This one is literally a "please don't hate me" ruling. Flexible casting does NOT say you can't use Warlock spell slots. And the multiclass rules make no mention of "nonwarlock" things
@Maximillian they only errata obvious mistakes. They do have an FAQ article (called sageAdvice) but it isn't the most helpful for ambiguous things (just more obvious rulings imo)
@nitsua60 Funny you should mention Talmud. I have a great (but amateurish - I am not a rabbi!) interest in the Jewish law and exegesis, and I was just reading about The Oven of Akhnai whose story has a very similar issue with single authority as our community has regarding Crawford's role.
@Maximillian Yeah they are only FAQing that that are essentially "wrong" but not things that are unclear. And even then their definition of "wrong" seems very narrow.
@ColinGross depends on the ruling. If you don't rule that there is exhaustion, it depends on how your table handles downtime. Even then, it takes a long time to get spell slots
Does the following, very cheesy character concept, violate any RAW? Please cite rules or official rulings in your answer. (Apart from RAW, I expect my DM to disallow or limit the concept, in the interest of balance. That is not part of my question.)
Elf. Multiclass: Sorcerer 2+ / Warlock 1+ / Ba...
I changed it. People can edit it if they think they have a better one. If I can't find the post using really obvious keywords then it definitely had a discoverability issue. That should improve its SEO at the very least lol
I thought that had come up with wizard/sorc combinations before and sorc/cleric
Either way, with max cheeze at Warlock5 Sorc2 that's 240 points a day = 120 L1 spells.... kinda meh since you're risking exhaustion for it.
Warlock 3 Sorc 4 gets access to 2nd level spells... so straight casting 80 of those which is a little better, but poor economy for what a party of L7 characters is likely to be facing.
"You determine your available spell slots by adding together all your levels in the bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, and wizard classes, and half your levels (rounded down) in the paladin and ranger classes. Use this total to determine your spell slots by consulting the Multiclass Spellcaster table."
The PHB says a short rest is a minimum of 1 hour but doesn't say anything about a maximum duration. My players argue that because it only takes one hour, they can short rest every hour. This worries me because a fighter can heal up using Second Wind, short rest, use Second Wind again, and short r...
Yeah the short rest being "at least 1 hour" leaving the upper bound open.... the characters short rests for 8 hours and gets one short rest while the rest of the part gets 1 long rest in the same time.
I think coffeelock is a pretty narrow corner case and not an issue nor game breaking for most tables.
@Rubiksmoose Yeah, they could break it up and do something strenuous or different for an hour inbetween to get 12/day... which is a lot less attractive
@Rubiksmoose Gotcha... so that one is locked to the spell list.
I don't see that as being a problem. The damage per round doesn't increase that much, and the risk of death or movement 0 from exhaustion is pretty significant.
Our table just flat out gives a level of exhaustion for a day without a long rest.
If you ask me, adding strenuous activity shouldn't make a rest more effective under any circumstances. Doesn't mean the rest rules and coffeelock aren't rife with issues though.
Coffeelock keeps reminding me of my Sims characters... I was afraid something bad'd happen to them if they slept (next-level paranoia!) so I just kept them awake with a steady flow of coffee and intermittent bathroom breaks.
like, the worst things that can happen in The Sims are... burglars, who Sims can't do anything about anyway, and fires that won't start spontaneously.
@kviiri Not to make the rest more effective, but to provide a mechanism for breaking it up. Rest for an hour. Then do something else like help run the market, write code... errr arcane texts, or whatever that isn't resting. Rest after.
Provide a narrative non-resting activity between rests so you could point to the end of one rest and the start of the next... it's 1/2 strength cheese
@ColinGross Yes, but what I'm saying is that wouldn't fly at my table. I'm usually a RAW first kind of person, but I'm also zealous against rules that subvert the kind of game I'm trying to run - including trickery with rests.
@kviiri At that point, there's a narrative to the sequence and I'm fine with that. I would definitely make the player come up with a narrative for the sequence. Also, 12 short rests don't really net them enough sorcery points to make the risk and consequence of exhaustion worth the investment.
Rests benefit you because you are resting. One rest gives you one benefit. It does not make sense to gain more benefits for breaking up a rest than it would for resting for a longer period of time consecutively.
@Rubiksmoose It is better for work. Working for 4 hours straight, break, then picking it back up again generally yields better results than pushing through for 7 or 9 straight.
Napping for an hour here and there is generally more refreshing than napping all at once for three.
The fact that the rules state that short rests can last longer than 1 hour means that the benefit was intended to extend for a consecutive period of resting.
For me the important distinction is whether the second part of the short rest is intended to recover for whatever happened between it and the first part.
Ah for an hour, maybe not. But then again I wouldn't be having this discussion with my players because I am very generous with the rules, but if you try exploiting loopholes then I come down hard against.
It also seems really ridiculous both narratively and flavor-wise though. And it just doesn't make sense in-world. Like really, the coffeelock is Taking 1 nap, jogging for 5 minutes, taking another one etc. for 7 short rests? Why is your character doing that?
I'm not against it because it is game-breaking (though I still think there are a lot more imbalances that come from this than you think) it is because it is a very super obvious exploit of a rules loophole that seems extremely against intent and very strained narratively.
@ColinGross I beg to differ. I make very interesting min max characters. Like I just built the best weapon wielding sorcerer I could come up with and it just so happened to be a gith Draconic bloodline dude which led to super cool backstory based on the red dragon riders in the Githyanki
@ColinGross What would it teach them? I can justify literally anything narratively but that doesn't mean it makes my character interesting or helps them develop at all.
Watch this: my character has restless leg syndrome and has to get up every hour otherwise the pain in his legs becomes unbearable. Short rest cheese now justified. Has this added literally anything to my character?
@ColinGross again. I've made many cheese builds that have other things interesting about them. @Rubiksmoose you might be selling your cheese makers short
@ColinGross The goal should be to enable fun with any character. I wouldn't want any player to end up with a character that isn't fun for any reason. That is why I would address this head-on.
@Rubiksmoose An interesting quirk about not being able to sit still... would definitely have some sort of adventure that requires being hidden for an extended period of time as a possible solution... or a dinner party with seating etiquette
Some people consider the Thief alchemists fire interaction to be cheese but that character was super fun to play for me. A unique fighting style and I got to actually make an Alchemist backstory (something hard to do in 5e)
@Rubiksmoose I have found it difficult to explain to players why the build they think will be fun likely won't be even with having challenges designed for the strengths of the character.
@ColinGross my brother made a character (mutant bloodhunter) based on a druggy. It got old fast and we ended up multiclassing warlock celestial (his rehab) to make things more fun for him
@ColinGross the fact that you can use it with fast hands since it is a Use an Object action
The question on trial:
What creature(s) can a Moon Druid transform into that would benefit from humanoid armor?
TL, DR: When druids shapeshift, is there a valid form that benefits from their armor?
It was closed as too broad, likely due to the armor only applying if the DM says it seems reasona...
Currently jabbering with my GM about the state of the game we're trying to keep afloat. Six players, mostly US, one UK.... Half the group is shift workers, so now coordination of play times is next to impossible.
At 3rd level, the Thief archetype for rogues grants a feature called Fast Hands that allows:
the bonus action granted by your Cunning Action to make a Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check, use your thieves' tools to disarm a trap or open a lock, or take the Use an Object action.
Player's Ha...
@ColinGross And why I just tell my players to come to me with their crazy ideas and cheese first. 90% of time I'll allow it and bend the rules to make it work. Usually it enhances the fun/story. However, in rare cases I will say no if I feel it is un-fun.
(sorry got called away in the middle of typing that response.)
Also a reason why I think it's better to be amenable towards absences -- having to take care of a baby results in unpredictable absences anyway. Waiting for two months just to get one session where everyone is present, only for the baby to get sick on that precise day, is frustrating as heck.
mobile.twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/… is in response to the question: "given the fact that throwing Alchemist's Fire is "Use an Object" action, on hit it adds DEX modifier to damage?"
@ColinGross no. Those objects don't cost an action to use. You just happen to be able to use them with the attack action.
It's just "is it an object (that's not a magic item) that has a use that says "use your action [to do X]?" If yes, it's Use an Object. If no, it's something else
@ColinGross no. Throwing something is not an established action. It's an improvised action. I'll probably use an athletics check or an attack roll (depending on how precise you need to be)
@ColinGross If an object has "use your action to throw this" attached to it, then throwing it is a Use Object action. If it doesn't, then it has to be something else.
ammended item description: "tiny. leather. stitched. covered in glowing symbols. attaches to spine and possess those who attempt to Use this with an Action."
@DavidCoffron Tinderbox says "using it to light a torch ... takes an action. Lighting any other fire takes 1 minute". So TinderBox does have a Use Object usage.
I've seen this question asked about 4e, and I think I've found the passage in the 5e PHB that answers the question, but I'd like to make sure I understand this correctly before I impose it on my game.
The question is can sheathing one weapon and drawing another be part of the same "free action",...
@DavidCoffron I just want it abundantly clear: I have the highest respect and admiration for RPG fromagers, I just often decline to sell their wares at my game tables :)
As to Use and Object, if we read the Basic Rules(p. 70) we look at a little green box and it says "Interacting with Objects Around You" ... and a few pages previous we see "interacting" as a paragraph heading (p. 60).
The rules say this: You can also interact with one object or feature of the environment for free, during either your move or your action. For example, you could open a door during your move as you stride toward a foe, or you could draw your weapon as part of the same action you use to attack. **If you want to *interact with a second object*, you need to use your action**
Back to your discussion about drinking anti toxins and throwing the alien technology called baseball.
The question on trial:
What creature(s) can a Moon Druid transform into that would benefit from humanoid armor?
TL, DR: When druids shapeshift, is there a valid form that benefits from their armor?
It was closed as too broad, likely due to the armor only applying if the DM says it seems reasona...
At 3rd level, the Thief archetype for rogues grants a feature called Fast Hands that allows:
the bonus action granted by your Cunning Action to make a Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check, use your thieves' tools to disarm a trap or open a lock, or take the Use an Object action.
Player's Ha...
I ran into a couple of questions while playing D&D 5th:
Does drawing a weapon take an action?
Does picking up a weapon from the ground take an action?
