TRPG General Chat

user15026

00:00

Okay yes this sounds fuuuuuun

Ben

Morning all

user15026

Good evening!

BESW

[wave]

trogdor

00:20

@BESW that's quite a description

nitsua60

01:42

5e people who care: where do you think Ravnica fits (if at all) in this post?

93

A: Where do I find the "official" rules for D&D 5e?

[Author's note: please know that this Q&A was compiled before I was an elected moderator--it was intended simply to be a post I could link frequently when explaining fairly basic 5e questions. It in no way constitutes any sort of site policy on "what counts" for purposes of asking/answering any q...

My gut is "Supplemental Publications" under the first bullet, possibly with a parenthesis mentioning that it also contains an adventure?

Which makes me wonder if mention of W:DH in the second bullet should have a parenthesis mentioning that it's as much of a sourcebook for Waterdeep as we're like to get?

BESW

Welcome to the intersection of food, film, and racism. This is a story of how, a day after @cysdavis's racist convention experience, @cromage and I signed up at that same con to play a role-playing game called "Fortune Cookie Kung Fu." https://jamesmendezhodes.com/blog/2019/3/26/the-fortune-cookie-incident

Tweeted by LulaVampiro on March 26, 2019 at 4:37 PM

2

nitsua60

@BESW thank you for this

BESW

@nitsua60 I strongly recommend James Mendez Hodes on general principles.

nitsua60

@BESW I'm poking around as we speak, rather than prepping tomorrow's second class.

(I'm fine with that choice, btw.)

BESW

Mar 23 at 23:45, by BESW

I'm going through his blog and finding a lot of great resources, like Best Practices for Historical Gaming.

V2Blast

01:57

@nitsua60 supplementary publications, under sourcebooks

Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron should go there too

BESW

I especially appreciate how he frames himself as a collaborator whose experiences, materials, and perspectives emerge within a community of peers.

user15026

02:10

@BESW falls down a rabbit hole, remembers why they don't like people, learns things

trogdor

02:32

Lol

V2Blast

@BESW Great read, thanks for sharing

BESW

Thanks for reading!

linksassin

04:41

@nitsua60 WGtE and GGtR should be under supplementary. Maybe as an new dot point for settings. The other books mentioned in the comments (Xanathar's Lost Notes) aren't official and shouldn't be included. Only 1st party official content.

BESW

05:19

In response to the article I linked above, some people are sharing actual SEA game creators' Patreons:

A THOUSAND THOUSAND ISLANDS: Munkao is creating South-East Asian Fantasy world building

Nosfecatu is creating Filipino-inspired RPG content

The Asians Represent! Podcast

@aznsrepresent, Toronto, Ontario

Highlighting the contributions of Asian creators to tabletop gaming & more! Hosted by @danielhkwan, Agatha Cheng, & @jaydmaty. On @OneShotNetwork. Latest ep. ⬇️

465 tweets, 746 followers, following 321 users

V2Blast

nice, will have to check those out tomorrow

(also hit me up if there are any South Asian RPG creators)

BESW

05:55

Roll Over Play Dead: A Blog About Tabletop Roleplaying Games in Malaysia

kviiri

Good morning!

BESW

[wave]

MikeQ

Hyvää huomenta

How are your adventures

kviiri

06:14

I finally got to do something that sounded super cool when I was in my teens

Sadly, breaking the infrastructure is much more classy when done against the Nazi occupiers in Commando than against my customers in the software biz

How about y'all?

MikeQ

Did you hack into the mainframe?

kviiri

Nah, just rebooted an autoscaling cluster that couldn't get back up

BESW

To be fair, "reboot the autoscaling cluster" sounds like something someone would do in Johnny Mnemonic.

kviiri

My intentions: just / but the outcome: bust

BESW

in D&D a Wizard is a person who achieves ruinous power, creates abominations against gods and nature, ruins cities, lives and entire worlds, all through the power of reading support your local library

Tweeted by SamSykesSwears on March 26, 2019 at 10:20 PM

Trad design in tabletop games confuses me. I just don't know what you could put in a 300+ page core rulebook. I just don't get it.

Tweeted by JellyMuppet on March 25, 2019 at 8:46 AM

kviiri

06:26

@BESW list of lists of lists of course

BESW

It's an interesting thread with interesting subthreads.

kviiri

It's a weird development I think

kviiri

06:49

Sometimes I wish I still had a childlike fascination towards everything, then I realize I'm having my phone ready so I can photograph an interesting looking ladder that's along the train ride to where I work

It's a really neat ladder

BESW

Your increasingly busy life has led to you develop a fine discernment re: childlike fascination.

kviiri

I missed the ladder but I have a (bad) photo (taken in a hurry in passing) of a smug old ticket-stamping machine

trogdor

lol

kviiri

trogdor

oh my god

that is very smug

it,... knows it photobombed you

XD

kviiri

07:14

Yea ^_^

kviiri

09:58

rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/144031/… spaaam

BESW

@kviiri Thanks! Apparently the bot hasn't learned about kitchen appliances.

BESW

13:22

Remember: Respecting each other is a free action. #DnD #RPG #TTRPG

Tweeted by OneCritWonder on March 26, 2019 at 2:09 PM

Hot RPG Questions

14:24

10

Q: How can a jailer prevent the Forge Cleric's Artisan's Blessing from being used?

I'm currently DMing a game where one of the players is playing as a Forge Cleric. As part of the story and due to some of their actions, the party is likely going to be put in jail next session. I'm wondering if there's any way to prevent the Forge Domain cleric from simply using their Artisan's ...

13

Q: What are the ramifications of creating a homebrew world without an Astral Plane?

I'm currently working on a homebrew world for a campaign of mine, which is currently on hold. We played a few sessions before some of our newer players decided that D&D wasn't for them, and I figured out that I want to DM a less Forgotten-Realms-clone-like world. Overall design intent: I don...

dnd-5e homebrew planes world-building astral

7

Q: At which point does a character regain all their Hit Dice?

I have found all explanations of regaining Hit Dice after a short or long rest, but I can't seem to find at which point a character regains all their Hit Dice. Is it after a campaign? At leveling up? After some days of full rest?

dnd-5e hit-dice

12

Q: Can a monster with multiattack use this ability if they are missing a limb?

For example, could a Giant Ape with one arm still use Multiattack even though it is listed as "two fist attacks"?

dnd-5e monsters multiattack

6

Q: If you attempt to grapple an opponent that you are hidden from, do they roll at disadvantage?

Quick and to the point, I'm aware that if you make an attack (which a grapple is) against an opponent you are hidden from you gain advantage, but since a grapple also is a contest roll, does the opponent also roll at disadvantage?

dnd-5e grapple stealth advantage-and-disadvantage

Sdjz

@HotRPGQuestions whoa, welcome back mr bot

The Oracle

1

Q: Adding the twinned-spell tag to a number of old posts

As discovered by @Xirema, we have a significant number of questions about the Twinned Spell metamagic. More specifically, searching for 5e questions about "twinned spell" ([dnd-5e] is:question twinned spell) yields 50 results, while we only have 75 metamagic questions for 5e altogether (although ...

support tags editing moderators

KorvinStarmast

AngryGM ran into a similar but different problem when he had his book printed in China.

Rubiksmoose

15:43

@KorvinStarmast thankfully the publisher in the linked article was able to get a refund. Kind of terrifying though...

KorvinStarmast

@Rubiksmoose That's the real world for ya: has some nasty underbelly stuff.

Jeef

What is a raw tag chat?

Rubiksmoose

@Jeef Well we are currently having a discussion on this site about one of our tags: rules-as-written. The actionable place to put answers and such about it is this meta which will also describe the issue. People also wanted a room to chat in general about it so we sent them to our side chat room here‌.

Though that room is for any side conversations so it is not used exclusively for that.

Does that help explain things a bit?

@Jeef oh and RAW is just an acronym meaning Rules as Written if that wasn't clear.

Rubiksmoose

16:20

Paging @Xirema and other statistically minded folks: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/144039/…

Xirema

@Rubiksmoose Will look at it in a moment, trying to gently dissuade someone on SO from trying to write a terrible reengineered version of std::vector.

Rubiksmoose

XD oh goodness. Best of luck my friend.

Sir Cinnamon

Something about writing your own cryptography

GreySage

16:43

@SirCinnamon "But if noone else knows how it was implemented, it HAS to be more secure, right?"

Xirema

The question probably needs a bit of workshopping, since it's not yet clear how their check is meant to be resolved. I think it's supposed to be

- Roll 6d10
- If the resulting rolls contain both a [9] and an odd number that is not [9], the check succeeds
- If not, then the check fails

Which I can run stats on, though I have no idea if it constitutes a binomial distribution or not.

Rubiksmoose

@Xirema yeah I was kind of confused by that as well, but statistics was never something I was terribly great at and that was years ago.

I would really like to get better at them and back into it because I think having a good rigid handle on it would definitely help make some of my work analysis more rigid.

Xirema

@Rubiksmoose A lot of the functionality of my probability calculator would be irrelevant/unnecessary/redundant if I had a really solid grasp on the Theory of Statistics. A lot of what my approach does is like trying to simulate Fluid Dynamics on the restriction that you cannot use anything other than rudimentary Arithmetic (+, - , x, ÷). Like.... You can. There's no physical limitation on doing so. But it'll be slow and arduous.

Rubiksmoose

17:11

huh, well you definitely have a better grasp than me regardless for sure. I've retained embarrassingly little...

@Xirema I'm not sure if you saw the twinned spell meta, but I'd sure like your thoughts on it since you seem to have had very strong feelings for creating the tag.

Yuuki

@GreySage How can my enemy know what I'm doing if I don't know what I'm doing?

Sdjz

@Xirema Question got updated (that statistics one with the 6d10 dice)

Hot RPG Questions

17:37

2

Q: Balance Issues for a Custom Sorcerer Variant

I recently started reading through the Shanarra books by Terry Brooks, and it got me thinking about how the notion of the wishsong would translate into a system like D&D. My (very) rough idea right now is a sub-class of sorcerer who can learn spells from any school or class as long as that spell ...

dnd-5e homebrew balance sorcerer

Rubiksmoose

@HotRPGQuestions nice to see you back buddy. [scratches bot under chin] good boy.

Xirema

18:08

@Rubiksmoose Alright, I've posted my take.

Rubiksmoose

18:21

A compelling take for sure.

Twinned is definitely a can of worms morso than the other metamagics.

GcL

18:44

@Rubiksmoose Any other feats that end up being a can of worms? or at least receive as much attention?

Or is there a particular eldrich invocation that gets a lot of attention?

Rubiksmoose

I'm sure there are probably feats that get equal to or more attention. Not sure about invocation though

GreySage

@Rubiksmoose Great Weapon Master vs Dual Wielder, possibly.

Rubiksmoose

yeah those are both big

GcL

19:00

If a tag gets created for twinned spell, should those also have their own tags?

Rubiksmoose

well, I don't believe in slippery sloap arguments here. Just because we let in one doesn't necesarily mean we have to let in other features. Now, if the other features happen to fit all the same criteria and have the same (or no) issues then it might make sense to make that comparison. But without looking into them, I can't say right now if they would be let in by the same arguments.

GcL

Book of ancient secrets gets a lot of questions

@Rubiksmoose Not slippery slope. Looking for other specific features that would make valid tags if the criteria is "there's a lot of questions about them"

Rubiksmoose

@GcL yeah I mean if that is the only criteria then a lot of things would make valid tags so agreed there.

And generally I don't think that we need a bunch of tags for specific features.

GcL

Which isn't a bad use for a tag though. A bunch of things lumped together with a common theme.

Rubiksmoose

We do have some specific ones already out there. Wish for example.

GcL

19:05

Good example.

Rubiksmoose

But then again, lots of questions about it is not our only criteria for a tag.

At the very least it has to be useful (for some nebulous definition of the term). It also can't be a meta tag (which has a specific definition and doesn't really apply here). We also take into consideration issues it might cause, so it can't create problems morso then it adds value.

GcL

Who is "we" ?

Rubiksmoose

I'm using we in this case to mean "the RPG.se community"

So I mean I'm speaking about generally agreed upon things.

(to the best of my understanding of course)

Xirema

19:28

I'm generally of two opinions:

- It's not bad to have specific tags for specific features
- We probably need the ability to put more than five tags on a question if we responsibly believe that it deserves more than five.

GcL

Five tags seems like a lot of tagging to me.

Xirema

Also, sidebar: this is why I think we need "Tag Groups", i.e. twinned-spell, subtle-spell, empowered-spell would all be part of the metamagic group.

GcL

Tags ontology!

Xirema

We kind of have this with tag synonyms, but it's not the same thing.

Searching for twinned-spell shouldn't pull questions that are tagged subtle-spell or questions tagged with the whole group metamagic, but searching metamagic should pull questions with twinned-spell, subtle-spell even if the literal metamagic has not been put on the question.

GcL

Oooo... lets keep it to is_a relationships so it's only single inheritance and we can use Aristotelian definitions to keep sibling tags distinct.

Rubiksmoose

19:35

@Xirema a tag hierarchy system would be very good and would solve some of these issues. Alas, that is something only SO can do and I doubt they see enough problems/need to make this happen.

@Xirema I agree specific tags aren't inherently bad. In fact, a lot of our tags are specific (for some definition thereof). However, I do think they have to add value.

GcL

It would be nice. And if you're going to make a heirarchy of terms might as well go full ontology.

Rubiksmoose

indeed!

I'll bet something like this has been proposed on Meta before actually.

Xirema

@Rubiksmoose Also, I'm quite certain if we raised this question with them, they'd come back and tell us that "actually, it's good that the system is broken and it shouldn't be improved." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

GcL

If it works, don't fix it?

Xirema

Let no one dispute my capacity to carry a grudge. ;)

GcL

19:44

Or the bugs are intentional features, and we like our warts.

Rubiksmoose

@Xirema hahaha. Though surprisingly accurate. (and yeah, it still bugs me too)

GcL

@Xirema What about your push, pull, or drag grudge capacity?

Xirema

@GcL Roughly twice as high, since I have no special features for it otherwise.

Rubiksmoose

@GcL (not to put you on the spot, but huzzah for a fellow michigander)

I know there are at least a few of us here.

GcL

Yes. Enjoying our month of spring.

Rubiksmoose

19:47

hah. The time between the blizzards and the heat

I just hope we are actually done with snow at this point (note: not that hopeful)

I stop expecting snow when it hits June basically lol

GcL

I'm just happy to not have to shovel any more of the stuff

Xirema

20:06

I do live in the midwest, and we usually get one last major snowfall in like late April/early May before it stops for good.

GreySage

@Xirema Here in western Canada we had a huge snow dump in mid-March, which was really weird, then set a record for high temps a week later. This has been a strange year so far for weather.

Rubiksmoose

@Xirema now write me some code where I roll 60d10 and my players have to group dice in prime number sets. Also the color of the dice must match and there are 18 different dice colors.

;)

Xirema

@Rubiksmoose I mean, that code is not meaningfully more complex than what I wrote, it's just that executing it would probably take longer than the lifespan of the universe. XD

(summing up 60d10 is not computationally difficult, but if you have to track the individual die rolls, you quickly hit computational limits)

Rubiksmoose

hah! well my attempt to introduce complexity failed lol. But I'll take increasing runtime I guess.

GreySage

@Rubiksmoose it works for e-commerce

GcL

20:25

@Xirema You mean the set of all possible outcome sets?

or just 60 dice?

rolled once.

in a bowl

on the moon

Xirema

@GcL The set of all possible outcome sets.

i.e. You're trying to calculate the probability of each possible outcome.

6d10 isn't so bad: it's 1 Million possible outcomes, which is basically a blink of an eye in Comp-Sci terms.

(A lot less than that if you only need unique outcomes)

10d10 took 5.6 seconds in my program, which constitutes 10 billion possible outcomes.

Just to put some numbers to that.

11d10 was 15.7 seconds.

So the memoization is keeping the time from growing at a strictly x10 rate, but it's still looking like a time factor of 3^X for Xd10.

Rubiksmoose

20:48

VtD

Though, I must say I don't disagree with their points on the whole.

Sir Cinnamon

Some good arguments made in an overly aggressive way, and also lacking an actual answer

Rubiksmoose

Though to be fair, the answer to which he is responding to was aggressive in the way that that user generally comes across. Which isn't to say that two wrongs make a right.

Sir Cinnamon

Ah, I didn't read the answer he was referring to, I suppose that makes sense though as you say that doesnt really matter

Xirema

Yeah, I'm not sure I'm sold on the arguments being made in the accepted answer either, but answers aren't meant to be used just to respond to other answers.

If they have a different perspective, that's what their answer should be.

Rubiksmoose

he deleted right as I was about to post a comment response :-/

To further explain.

It is really hard to educate new users when they delete posts and get them deleted unless you are a mod who can comment after the fact.

And that is really frusterating sometimes to me.

Sir Cinnamon

21:02

Yeah the accepted answer is flawed - advising ignoring player rolls is... dangerous to say the least

"It turns out Old Lady McKettle fooled you and was the witch the whole time!!!" "But I crit my insight check when I asked her that exact question and she denied it."

Rubiksmoose

@SirCinnamon yeah I really don't dig that.

I really think that communication and honesty is key for a good DM-player relationship.

Sir Cinnamon

Yeah.. I mean as the DM i've lied and i've fudged rolls in the aim of making the game more fun

I think it takes a delicate hand to do that right (not saying that even I do it right)

Rubiksmoose

Generally I'm pretty open about the fact that I will (or won't) fudge rolls at the beginning of the game and make sure players are ok with that.

I don't tell them when I do specifically, but I make sure they are aware and approving of the fact that I said I would.

Sir Cinnamon

I've talked to my players about it.. at least some of them.. I suppose I should make sure some of the newer folks know that's "a thing"

My players at first assumed that meant I was always cheating in my own favour but i explained that I just as often fudge rolls for them as I do against them

Rubiksmoose

I flagged the answer for a mod. Maybe one of them will find it useful to drop a comment in there to help the new person out. I mean I don't disagree with their objections to the answer and it was well-expressed.

@SirCinnamon oh yeah that is important thing as well. Making sure you express that you intend to act in ways to increase the fun of everyone at the table.

Because yeah, a jerk DM could easily wreck PCs by fudging rolls. Of course, they could do that in so, so many ways.

Sir Cinnamon

21:12

Yeah - The DM vs player mindset is.. silly. If the dm wanted to "beat" the players and "win" make them fight a balgura at level one and let them go home and find a better DM to play with

Rubiksmoose

hahaha yup. It is so easy. So many unfair traps and monsters that you can tweak to be immune to your PCs. A lot of the work of a DM is trying not killing your players actually.

Sir Cinnamon

How much can I make them fear death without killing them

Rubiksmoose

yup. the DM tightrope.

BESW

@Rubiksmoose 3.5 Vow of Poverty used to be controversial enough that mentioning it was banned in this chat for a year.

Rubiksmoose

@BESW oh wow.

BESW

21:18

It wasn't strictly enforced, but attempts to argue about the feat got shot down fast.

Apr 2 '13 at 2:56, by Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@BESW I suggest an annual Don't mention Monks, Vow of Poverty, or physics... year.

Rubiksmoose

RIP physics lol

Sir Cinnamon

I think Vow of Poverty is great and anyone who disagrees is a yutz

JK i dont know what it is

Rubiksmoose

hahaha. I'm not sure I know either. I know it was a thing in PF a monk subclass I thought.

Sir Cinnamon

Top result: a locked question from this stack with an accepted answer at -3

BESW

Pathfinder borrowed the concept from D&D 3.5's Book of Exalted Deeds, where it was a feat.

Xirema

21:20

Our DM has kind of an interesting problem, where he basically has no ability to determine how much prep-work needs to go into planning a session—and he has this problem in *both* directions.

Like, in one session, he went through the work of coming up with background info, personalities, names, relationships for all of like 13 different NPC Diplomats for a single scene, none of whom (or their countries of origin!) were mentioned again after that scene.

Then, in a different session, he apparently had to make up every single encounter on the fly because he apparently "couldn't predict the PC…

BESW

In exchange for extreme restrictions on material possessions including no magic items ever (consumables were only okay if given as charity and used immediately), you'd get a variety of extraordinary, supernatural, and spell-like effects that were supposed to replace the effects of a usual adventurer's collection of magic items.

You also got extra feat slots that could only be filled by special feats from the Book of Exalted Deeds.

It was an interesting idea, but in practice it was trying to replace the customization of picking your own gear with a pre-determined set of effects, with the idea that the two could be balanced. And 3.5 was bad at balancing "equivalent" mechanics at the best of times.

GreySage

@Xirema What self-respecting PC would pass up a free party?

Rubiksmoose

@BESW huh that is an interesting idea, but man reading through the answers I can see a bit of why it might have been a heated topic

@Xirema heck yeah, vamparty

BESW

Throw in that the favorite combo was Vow of Poverty on a monk and the 3.5 monk's effectiveness was basically up to the GM so experience-based answers about the monk were all over the place.

Rubiksmoose

ohhhh yeah, that would really screw with things

BESW

21:30

I enjoyed VoP because it significantly reduced the bookkeeping load for characters.

One of my go-to character builds was a druid with the UA variant replacing wild shape with monk movement utility, and Vow of Poverty.

Rubiksmoose

@BESW I'm on board with this. I hate keeping track of things.

BESW

Unfortunately, for D&D in general and 3.5 in particular, access to options is one of the most significant forms of power and agency the system provides.

Jan 17 '18 at 11:00, by BESW

@eimyr "Spend many hours writing pages and pages of notes on setting, characters, and plots. Throw them out 30 minutes into the game because the players have gone completely off the grid."

Dec 7 '12 at 21:39, by BESW

I had ten pages of notes and halfway through the first page, the PCs walked away from my plot to save people from burning buildings and urinate on the mayor's doorstep.

And no, that is not an exaggeration.

user15026

....oh boy

trogdor

21:50

I wasn't there for that one but it isn't too surprising

also I have heard the story before too so there is that

XD

user15026

@BESW hahaha oh boy what a mess :P

user15026

I liked how valiantly you tried for it to...not be that

BESW

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Jul 5 '13 at 2:43, 20 minutes total – 62 messages, 4 users, 0 stars

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Hot RPG Questions

22:07

7

Q: Do sorcerers' subtle spells require a skill check to be unseen?

I have a guest player who is being a secretly evil plant inside the party causing trouble. He's a sorcerer who wants to use subtle spell metamagic to stop the party from delving into his master's old lair, and he has a custom ring item that works as a hands-free arcane focus. He and I agreed that...

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Hot RPG Questions

23:05

3

Q: Do the temporary hit points from Reckless Abandon stack if I make multiple attacks on my turn?

If I'm a Battlerager barbarian (from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide) and make 3 attacks on my turn while using Reckless Attack and raging, do I get 5 temporary HP total, or 5 temp HP per attack (15 HP total)? The latter seems a bit high to be able to get per round combined with resistances.

dnd-5e barbarian stacking temporary-hit-points

Shalvenay

23:17

hey there @ThomasMundane, welcome to the RPG.SE lair :)

Thomas Mundane

Howdy Howdy! Thank you for the welcome, @Shalvenay

I was told this is where to come in order to have a home-brew class peer review ^_^

Shalvenay

@ThomasMundane ah, yes

Thomas Mundane

Oh yay. I'm glad to hear it. :-) @Shalvenay, how do I got about uploading it? the upload button seems to be for pictures only?

Shalvenay

@ThomasMundane what format do you have it in right now? notes in a text file, or...?

Thomas Mundane

@Shalvenay i have it formatted in a .docx file but I could convert it to whatever format works :-)

Shalvenay

23:26

@ThomasMundane if you could convert it into Markdown, basically, you can just pastebin that and slap a pastebin link here, or use the Homebrewery to get something a bit nicer

Thomas Mundane

@Shalvenay thank you for the advice, I'll look into that ^_^

Oh that Homebrew stuff is pretty darn cool O.o I can certainly dig it

The Oracle

23:48

0

Q: Should questions about Pathfinder now link to Archives of Nethys over d20pfsrd?

An extension of this other meta question; Paizo has taken down their own PRD and officially licensed the Archives of Nethys page as their reference document. Archives of Nethys provides a community driven resource for all Pathfinder (and Starfinder) content, including setting-specific rule conte...

discussion answers

Island explodes, everybody falls.

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