@Xirema yeah that kind of thing is one of many reasons D&D is just not on our group radar anymore, our whole RPG group got sick of the many compounding problems like that that seem to live in every edition of the game
@trogdor To be fair, if you do manage to work out the details, the stealth mechanics are a lot of fun! Thinking through the permutations of player choices and DM responses to handling stealth is a joy. I just don't want to have to point to 5 scattered paragraphs in 4 sections of 3 chapters of a book to prove that all those decisions are following the rules.
@Xirema ah well I don't mean to say it isn't fun once you have the mechanics at your fingertips,... But the problem is you always have to hunt them down
In practice, once you got the rules under your belt, it was pretty easy to make a grapple-based character which effectively said "I win unless the GM uses freedom of movement, in which case I lose."
Yeah, I think the core of the concept was the Justicar PrC.
Nonlethal attacks that deal Strength damage, can treat handcuffs as flails.
If you're holding rope or manacles when you pin someone in a grapple, you can hogtie them instead of pinning them--and at higher levels, you can do it without the pin.
With a few grapple-specific features, you make a melee touch attack and then a Use Rope attack as part of the same attack, and get a hogtied opponent.
If you have multiple attacks per round, you can do it once per attack.
I used anti-magic handcuffs, which suppressed casting and magic items, and any attempt to escape would have to beat my Use Rope check. Which I pumped up to nonsensical levels.
So I'd just walk up to a group and suddenly they're helpless on the ground.
I think there's still a limit to the relative size of creature you can even attempt to grapple, but there's ways to fudge that--first and foremost, polymorph into something bigger.
Please note that this isnt one of the many questions on this site asking "why was my question closed" I'm just wondering if its right to mark a question that is an earlier iteration such as my first question on my runecaster feat as a dupe of a later iteration such as the second iteration of my q...
@doppelspooker Yeah, Skinner is an adjective modifying box in the original noun phrase. As an aside, if people choose to be willfully ignorant of what goes on in meta, how does one discuss issues like the RAW tag with them?
@KorvinStarmast Point them to the meta. If they refuse to comply with community established policy and are being disruptive, point the diamond moderators to them (with a flag explaining the situation).
@nitsua60 Yeah, and I apologize for resurrecting that little bit of SE hell ...
@ColinGross I (although I am not Helwar) feel that he's dead. One of his bio blurbs on the back of one of the books we wrote was "and I'll stop writing when they nail my coffin shut." or something like that. And yeah, that's about what happened.
@doppelspooker OK, I'll keep that one in mind since it seems to hold in it a lot of our eventual consensus.
@ColinGross And he did what Tolkien did in FOTR: he got lost and began to wander as he wrote the story. Waste of Time was a very pithy parody on his series title. I consider the series extension a symptom of two things; cynical money grubbing (fair enough, a lot of writers are poorly paid) and getting distracted by secondary characters (aka getting PWNED by his muse)
@ColinGross I hung in there until the seventh or 8th book, and then decided that the amount of repetition and plot diversion no longer deserved my time. Maybe I can dig up some sanderson books at used book store and see the end of the story.
@ColinGross I don't feel about him, I just heard a tiny fraction of his first book. Need to actually READ it and pay attention... FOr the moment it felt rather generic and I didn't like very much the characters var the protag...
@Helwar I began the series based on a recommendation from a friend in re world building. First three books I loved muchly. (I also really enjoyed a few of the "prequel" short stories he issued for an anthology about ten years ago, the one about Lan and Moiraine being particularly good).
I just kept hearing about the Wheel of Time. Long time ago while I was reading Dragonlance a couple of my friends where nagging me with it, but I didn't have the money to buy all the dragonlance things I wanted and my local library didn't have the wheel of time so I set it aside
I just took interest into it when I learned Sanderson finished the story
I realize that I should have edited the duplicate target instead of reopening and reclosing to the newest version. Can anyone with 5e gold badge or a mod close it for me (it says I already voted to close).
This homebrew has been iterated and the newest version can be found in the question marked as a duplicate.
This feat is intended to allow characters to store a spell in a rune (like you see in many dungeons) with activation conditions. It is intended to scale with the party as the party gets bet...
Quite simply (and similarly to my other questions about previous versions of this feat 1 and 2) I want to know if this feat is balanced and if not then what should be done to improve it? Since the last iteration I have changed the wording as per David Coffron's answer, increased the time and mone...
Please note that this isnt one of the many questions on this site asking "why was my question closed" I'm just wondering if its right to mark a question that is an earlier iteration such as my first question on my runecaster feat as a dupe of a later iteration such as the second iteration of my q...
I'm still torn on how I think that ought to go; I understand doppel's POV that it redirects anonymous traffic to the newest version... but it also feels like the older versions are the "obsolete" versions of a question - once a new revision is out, the old one doesn't need answers
At the very least I'm tempted to say that non-new versions should probably be closed... though they don't quite fit the "dupe" marker and they aren't off-topic or similar
And maybe a rule for a 24-hour period between revisions?
maybe it shouldn't be closed. Maybe it should just be enough that the top of the question is edited to point to the new version and we trust that people will read it (and if they do still want to post an answer on an earlier iteration, maybe that's not such a bad thing either, as it could offer a particularly good bit of insight about a particular mechanic which may not be relevant to a new version but could matter a lot to someone else, later
In an ideal system, I'd say that whatever we do 1) needs to have a clear way to link from one iteration to the next (to help with knowledge base and thought process) 2) needs to clearly show if you're on an old version or a new one
although it feels like this might be answer to a more general question about how we do best practice for iterative questions rather than specifically the question "should we use dupes this way"
Though I still do think it should be closed, we just don't have a good "reason" - maybe just Locking the question would be enough (since old versions don't really need new answers)
Full disclosure: I'm not sure if Locking is more or less work, or if we can have custom close-reasons that aren't on any other stacks ("Superseded by Iteration" or something)
TIL a little silliness about the stack system (might be a bug): I see that if an answer is Community-wiki'd, a user's name is not updated when they change it (or it may always use a specific name or something, I don't have all the answers). See this meta where doppel is still listed under their answer as "doppelgreener": rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8121/…
I've been watching one of our players repeatedly cast Toll the Dead, across seven sessions, and a dozen different combat encounters, and the DM has never once allowed her to do any damage with the cantrip. She has a DC 16 save, yet our DM always "mysteriously" rolls the saving throw.
Obviously,...
@KorvinStarmast The party I playtested Mad Mage with had a rogue, two battlemasters, and a bard. It was basically just the three of us throwing the rogue ways to do insaaaaane amounts of damage =)
@KorvinStarmast dont' think it matters that immensely, but it does change the damage calculation. But as Nits said...sneak attack gonna beat it pretty much no matter what.
@NautArch Eh... a GWM or Sharpshooter can rack up damage pretty fast: that +10 to damage and the -5 to hit being offset by +d8 to hit (precision maneuver) gets you up to 20 expected dmg pretty fast. Rogue's got to be, what, L7 before they start to pass?
are we required to Be Nice to 3rd parties? Surely we just advise the asker i.e. Ask your dm if he's doing that and ask him to not, leave if it seems to be an issue
As the comments ask, there are a lot of unknown factors that can influence the outcomes.
I'm not saying I'm not concerned about the DM (and I personally dislike hidden rolls for this very reason), but if an answer assumes the DM is acting in bad faith that seems potentially Not Nice.
@NautArch The issue here is that by the very nature of the question, someone is acting in bad faith. It could be the OP, exaggerating the failure rate of their fellow player, or it could be the DM fudging rolls or giving creatures unreasonable stats.
@NautArch Nah, i get that vibe - DMs do things for a million reasons and raw math will make funny things happen sometimes. DM = bad guy is a common mindset. but given the information we have, all we can really say is something is probably going on other than dice rolls
@NautArch We can't prove which one it is without demanding that the DM show up and give an account of their campaign, and even if they do that, all we'll have is a "he said, they said" problem.
@kviiri I plan to update my answer if the OP gives more detailed stats about their combat encounters. 12 combat encounters with 0 hits is a pretty damning claim though.
At a certain point, saying "be nice to the 3rd party DM" brushes up against basically saying "sorry OP, we don't believe you."
@kviiri I guess what i'm most concerned about is @Xirema's lead title of "Your DM is probably cheating" That's not helpful and it doesn't really help the asker how to deal with the issue.
@kviiri That does require a lot of creatures with necrotic immunity; something not given out commonly even to many actual undead/fiend creatures.
I mean, here's the issue: if I take the OP's claim at face value "They've been in 12 combat sessions and not once dealt damage with Toll the Dead", it would be disingenuous to respond with "well, I guess the creatures are all getting lucky!"
The asker already thinks their DM is fudging, or cheating or something and what they want to know is how to fix it. having evidence and backup to show something is funny with the numbers helps the askers argument but they want to know how to do that debate
Regardless of if the DM is cheating/fudging/making a mistake - the way to approach it should be pretty non-confrontational
"Hey, are you sure that none of these spells should be landing? It seems kind of unlikely, can you roll the saves in the open? its roll+wisdom mod and it has be greater than or equal t o16"
@goodguy5 That awkward moment when you, an intelligent wizards apprentice with high int make a deal with an elder being for power, only to find out you aren't charismatic enough to cast his magic right
Have you ever wondered if you could cast a spell without hitting your friend? Or if you could hit both those enemies even if theyre so far apart? No need to bust out some clunky plastic (that wont even calculate your % coverage) - just go to spelltemplates.com and try it out!
I've seen users remark that it is not a violation of the Be Nice policy to insult people who are not SE users -- i.e. that users are only required to "be nice" to other SE users. Usually this is stated in order to excuse insults made toward public figures (like politicians). Is that true? Does th...
Maybe someone with a near-complete absence of humane warmth and emotion, and not in a villainously cool way but just being devoid of noticeable personality.
Still relevant but does it actually apply to a described potentially villainous person? Obviously the spirit of it does, meanness is not really ever a necessary part of an answer. but should we assume good intent of a "problem-player" who an asker here is describing as say, a harasser?
I.e. asker comes here about a disagreement with another player (who is not on SE), does assuming good intent of the 3rd party violate being nice/assuming good intent of the first?
second?
I'm not arguing that we shouldn't try to be respectful in all cases, just that the Be Nice policy specifically is about fellow users
@Carcer oh yea. I was misreading the part. The "lacks twohanded" part only applies to using your charisma instead.... but since I'm thinking of a burlock, not an issue.
@SirCinnamon As a general principle, I don't think we're required to "be nice" to a potential harasser, but we probably do have an obligation to at least met out judgement proportionally to how much detail (and how specific that detail is) we've been given about someone.
@nitsua60 @NautArch Our party's barbarian has two attacks and uses a GWM with a Maul. When my BM passes the reaction attack to him, the damage potential is muchbetter since my BM does not have GWM. He is sword and board. not to mention his rage damage boost also.
@NautArch Maybe in the title put "call them out" in quotes to indicate that you'll still be solving the problem but "calling out" is the wrong mindset?
@kviiri Alternately, instead of not having any personality, not having a presence.
I'm reminded of Kellam from Fire Emblem, who has the (un)fortunate ability to go completely unrecognized by his friends and allies.
If we ignore gameplay and story segregation, his enemies spot him perfectly fine but his friends often never notice him even when he's right next to them.
@SirCinnamon Right. (Naturally, since the question was about a prominent figure. IIRC it came out of some stuff on Politics.SE.) But I think the reasoning applies: Be Nice doesn't say anything about the target being a stackizen; just to Be Nice.
It doesn't say "you should think about whether your GM's [a good fit for you|doing something you don't like|got different goals (their own fun?) than you]" isn't appropriate. It says "your GM's a jerk" is inappropriate.
Generally, I find that talking/writing about actions rarely strays into Not Nice. Deciding to label a person, on the other hand--a "jerk" or "abusive" or "not a good ___"--tends to be unnecessary.
@KorvinStarmast Yeah--similar to how I would definitely Command a strike from a Sharpshooter if they were available.
Meta is the part of the site where we figure out what's going on with the other, "main" part of the site. From an individual question's closure to electing a new moderator to figuring out how to help homebrewers ask about their creations, a lot goes on here.
Roughly 0.3% of mainsite users come h...
@KorvinStarmast We came up against an enemy in Pathfinder that was using "Blur". (Roll percentile, if you get under 25 - negate incoming attack). It was 100% effective. They negated 8 incoming attacks from 3 different players; and subsequently caused a TPK
@KorvinStarmast: My mastermind rogue/battlemaster fighter has riposte, among other maneuvers. But I am rarely missed by an attack in a position where I am able to get sneak attack (e.g. an adjacent ally), so it happens quite rarely.