Ressurrecting a dead game from the corpse of TSR into a living one that would pay WotC’s bills was definitely one reason to change things, but they had legitimate design reasons too. There’s lots of information on the design and philosophy behind each edition’s changes, but that’s far beyond the scope of this.

hmm.. that seem a bit reversed from the truth of the matter as I remember it, WoTC butchered it after they bought it then let it languish for years under the mismanagement of their CO was the way I remember it, but we all remember things differently I suppose :)

(D&D 5E, we're doing Storm King's Thunder but I think this is far enough off-script to not be spoilery): If Storm Giants were to make a long (multiple day) trip by sea, how would they do it? Just ride whales or whatever, and "make camp" in the sea by floating around amidst seaweed or whatever? Would they use a ship of some sort? Do they just so much prefer teleportation magic that they don't really do that sort of thing often?

@PeterCooperJr. Biiiiig ship. Late in the book there're deck plans for such a vessel. (Don't have the book with me to give you the reference, sorry.)

And Merry Christmas =)

There are ships from the various humanoid factions, and a bunch for the Frost Giants, but I didn't see anything for the Storm Giants. Though it wouldn't shock me if the answer to my question was right in front of my face.

@PeterCooperJr. I'll say more in the SKT room....

The main thing the book has is the Storm Giants riding whales and rocs

Sure. Thanks

And Merry Christmas to you, too!

@Shalvenay Sorry I missed that, a ping on discord would not have made it through. (Houseful of guests). As to santa and no chimney, apartment dwellers all know he comes in through the air ducts. :)

@KorvinStarmast haha XD

@Shalvenay Hello my friend, I just got done trying to answer a question that makes me weep.

@KorvinStarmast awwwww....:/

If I ever went on line to ask people to help me with a difficulty/problem with my SO (married 30 years next month) I'd feel as though I was already at the point of failure.

@KorvinStarmast want me to ping you on Discord btw?

@Shalvenay Yes, let me activate it

@Shalvenay I am up discord now

So I put a teleportation circle in the bottom of the ocean and published its sigil sequence without saying where it went.

Evil DM for the win!

@Joshua oh dear XD

better hope the sahaugin don't get a hold of it!

I'm trying to work out whether is possible to abuse Ethereal form badly enough to put a teleportation circle on a neutron star. Technically they have solid surfaces so maybe I can inscribe with mage hand.

psah I don't think feather fall kicks in when you are capable of passing through the object.

@Joshua oh dear, LOL

teleport someone into a magnetar

instant death by magnetic spaghettification

One problem, to set up the teleportation circle, you've got to be able to stand or hover there first.

@Joshua yes

and nothing survives a magnetar

it's almost as bad as a black hole

What do you think ethereal form is for?

@Joshua hrm, that might actually work XD

But I'm pretty sure relativistic feather fall doesn't work on the ethereal plane since there's no object to collide with.

Although come to think of it, "Get that Space Lich off the magnetar" might be quite the game for level 20 players.

Heading off to lava beds.

@Joshua as long as the Space Lich doesn't find themselves adrift in Nova ;)

Happy Boxing day to wherever that is celebrated!

We are "celebrating" Saint Stephen's feast, although it's mostly a recovery day from the excesses of Christmas :-)

@kviiri Except for when we had to go to uncle Stephan's birthday party - a feast in the culinary sense.

@kviiri I am breaking up various boxes for tomorrow's recycling run? Does that count?

@KorvinStarmast Works for me. Thanks for doing your part for the environment!

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in body, no whitespace in body, no whitespace in title, repeating characters in body, repeating characters in title, +1 more (480): ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ✏️ by Pelinore on rpg.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in body, no whitespace in body, no whitespace in title, repeating characters in body, repeating characters in title, +1 more (480): oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ✏️ by Pelinore on rpg.SE

Sounds like someone's going to get post-banned.

What, is he worried that his game group is going to find his questions?

Just pitching a fit. It’s been taken care of.

Is there an item or spell in 5th Edition that would make a character invisible without making their clothes/equipment invisible, or would that just be a custom magic item?

Sidebar: I promise this question is for non-pervy reasons. =P

@Xirema I think that if you cast invisible while naked, and then clothe, the clothes will be visible. What do you think?

> A creature you touch becomes invisible until the spell ends. Anything the target is wearing or carrying is invisible as long as it is on the target's person. The spell ends for a target that attacks or casts a spell.

@KorvinStarmast The wording is ambiguous; will stuff you pick up turn invisible after you pick it up?

My instinct as a DM is to say "no, they remain visible" because that makes for more interesting interactions; but I'm not sure what the RAW is.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, messaging number in answer, pattern-matching email in answer (434): How much should NPCs charge for spells cast as services to PCs? by navian on rpg.SE

It is clear that stuff ceases being invisible if you let go of it or put it down, though.

@SmokeDetector Who the hecc is doctor Clement and why do people keep spamming with his name in long, rambly posts about how he can apparently cure anything? I did a google search and it just turned up a bunch of random doctors from across the country.

@KorvinStarmast Oh, there's apparently a post for this: rpg.stackexchange.com/a/77727/42386

New Humble Bundle of third-party content for 5e: humblebundle.com/books/5e-fantasy-dragons-dungeons-maps

stuff by Frog God Games, Troll Lord Games, Nord Games, and Total Party Kill Games

"Almost every mechanical problem becomes easy to solve if you know what a player cares about, because once the player cares you have the tools to offer meaningful choices with real costs." ('The Benefits of Caring' by Rob Donoghue)

@BESW Hm. I think within a certain radius you can assume the player cares; if you take a compendium class about being in charge of part of Imperial Wizard Academy, it can be assumed you care about Imperial Wizard Academy not halting and catching fire.

That's something the character is likely to care about.

Maybe the player just took that class because they found a cool mechanical exploit.

Sometimes players care about diegetics, but often their real motives lie in table-level things, not setting-level things.

(Maybe the character likes the Academy, but the player wants to tell a story about someone who's bent on getting revenge on whoever burned it down.)

Yeah it's definitely not great to assume you know what someone wants just from a single choice at character creation

I mean, I have made my characters do things, especially in Fate, that I knew would result in something they didn't want to happen

The player does not automatically want exactly what the character wants

At least not in every instance

I'm sure in my early days of playing only 3.5 I didn't grasp that concept even as a player

But now it seems like such an obvious thing

Though I understand not thinking of it that way.

@BESW But even in that case, the current state of IWA matters to the player, rather than not mattering.

Real-life example I've seen many times: A D&D player maxes out the Diplomacy skill, maybe even takes a feat for it. The DM assumes this means the player likes roleplaying social scenes. It is, in fact, because the player hates roleplaying social scenes and wants to just roll a skill to get them over with mechanically.