TRPG General Chat

@Linksassin I had something I was going to mention to you

But I forgot what it was, or if I had done so already or not

@Ben I'm going to assume that you haven't mentioned it. But since you have forgotten I will give the most generic response to the thing I haven't been told.

@Ben Yeah. I can understand that.

Then I shall consider this interaction complete. Lol

user15026

12:56 AM

@BESW I really like the kapok reference

@Ash I'm also channeling a lot of The Bear Nobody Wanted, which goes into some detail about the toy-making process in early/mid 1900s Britain.

user15026

@BESW oh that's the same people who wrote the Jolly Postman books which I LOVE. (I once got a COMPLETE version of the Jolly Postman for a dollar at a thrift store, its a thing I treasure.)

@Ash I love them, they write amazing books.

Bear is a rather grimmer tale, it's about a bear who was made with an arrogant expression that means nobody wants to play with him and he's also a terrible companion for other toys.

As an unwanted toy he goes through all manner of trials and tribulations and humiliations which slowly teach him a better attitude, while also physically changing him so that his expression improves. And because it's a British novel, they set part of it during WWII so he spends a while crushed under a bombed-out London home.

The world still has whimsy and joy, but the bear doesn't get to participate in that very much. He's not a particularly sympathetic character so it winds up feeling rather morally didactic--but it's saved because the Ahlbergs are so good at portraying humanity with compassion while also being unflinching about how awful we can be.

user15026

As one does.

Interesting

user15026

1:10 AM

OMG so I am watching Call the Midwife and Sister Monica Joan is watching TV and SHE'S WATCHING DOCTOR WHO :D

It's also really interesting as a tour of the different ways humans consider and interact with toys.

@Ash I also recommend Woof! "There was once a boy who turned into a dog. The boy's name was Eric Banks; he was ten years old. The dog he turned into was a Norfolk terrier."

One of the great things about the Ahlbergs, for me, is that they write 1990s novels which feel like they were written decades earlier in all the best ways.

user15026

Yes!

@Ash Old or new Dr. Who?

user15026

@JoelHarmon Old, Call the Midwife is set in 1960's England

@Ash Ah. I'm not familiar with it.

1:13 AM

@V2Blast I was informed that this is on purpose when I joined this community. Nice to see someone realize "possible eating of seed corn ..."

@KorvinStarmast Yes, it's on purpose. It's baked into the design of the site to the extent that their proposed cosmetic changes will be insufficient to remove it, but the necessary changes will fundamentally alter the site's basic functionality.

2

Q: How much water can a ship take on before sinking?

6

My players are currently in a naval battle. The wizard used Disintegrate on the enemy warship's hull and now water is getting inside the ship. I remember reading something about that in the Ghosts of Saltmarsh book, but when I tried looking for the rule I just couldn't find it again. Are the...

Just because they're finally noticing the bad effects of their design choices doesn't mean they didn't make the choice on purpose from the start, and repeat the choice every day since.

@BESW This reminds me of trying to turn a large ship. The order to the helm is given, the wheel turns, but it takes a bit of time to overcome the momentum that big old ship has for heading in one direction.

...and the ship is in dry-dock.

1:18 AM

@BESW Amen. We just had another "with this gate keeping, I won't participate here" today.

@BESW chuckle heh, nice one. "And I keep turning the wheel, Captain, but she won't change course!"

(A ship is designed to turn, even if sometimes very slowly. The Stack is not designed to make the kind of change needed to address the problems they're finally noticing.)

user15026

@BESW mhm

@BESW We'll see how adaptable it is, but I do not expect rapid change. Check back in a year, maybe?

I get the idea that someone is beginning the think longer term ... which is the kind of view that may enable slow yet steady course corrections.

Beyond that, my predictive powers stink.

The Stack's built on an unfriendly premise: that users are fungible creators of content whose value lies only in their accumulated and quantifiable contributions rather than any quality of their individuality.
All its coding and infrastructure, the value judgements that informed their choices at every level, are rooted in that disregard for the individual and that preference for the "wisdom of crowds" and the production of content which means individuals can be discarded when they are no longer useful to the machine.

Changing the words they use won't change the actions they take.

user15026

Deeds, not words, and all that good stuff.

1:25 AM

But changing the actions means re-writing the site from the ground up with a fundamentally different understanding of the value of individual users, and an ability to look past the industry's collectively blindness to anything except "content generation" as the defining purpose of an online community.

@BESW SevenSidedDie described SE to me early on as a flesh based algorithm.

user15026

They can make these posts all they like, but right now it just feels like more words and less doing and just going "we are trying we are trying we are trying"

@Ash They are, indeed, very trying.

@BESW Mind you, with a profit motive in mind, content as a way to attract traffice is a factor that cannot be ignored.

user15026

@BESW Very much so

1:26 AM

but style counts

Well yes. Content = profit and we live in a society that considers profit the ultimate justification.

user15026

I hate that the world is seemingly massively widely okay with humans as profit generators and that being the best kind of contributing

user15026

This is a microcosm that is running flat into the problem.

@BESW Ultimate justification or not it does pay the bills and keep the lights on for a site of this kind. Nothing is really free except sunshine

and gravity

So I don't think the Stack Overlords are personally evil or anything like that; they're swept up in a particularly nasty industry attitude in an economy with a generally nasty epistemology.

They didn't have the whatever-it-takes to swim against that tide when they first created the site, and the longer the site exists the more inertia it generates to perpetuate those principles... so that although they now see the problems, it's almost impossible to imagine the radical changes necessary to address them.

I don't think the Stack Exchange is going to fix these problems. I think that whoever makes the next Q&A sites will have learned from the Stack Exchange and have an opportunity to do better.

1:30 AM

@BESW Do you have specific suggestions as to what those changes might be? I'm just not sure where you're going with that.

@BESW You may be right about that. To me the initial attraction was the favorable signal to noise ratio as compared to the rest of the internet. (More particularly at christianity.se than at this se)

Which is a low bar to leap over

@KorvinStarmast Given the vast numbers of low quality sites out there, I'm not so sure this is true.

@JoelHarmon OK, I can also see that.

@JoelHarmon I'm not a website designer, I don't have the technical or social training to make specific recommendations. But we can see many of the structural problems in that article itself: we've bought into quantified valuation of quality to such an extent that things like voting seem necessary because we live in a world that can't imagine other ways to sort things.

That is, presumably there are so many sites out there that something must be more difficult than it seems if they're mostly all low quality sites.

1:35 AM

@JoelHarmon One really glaring quality is that the Stack is designed specifically to avoid building communities. In the name of "signal to noise," nuanced human interaction is shoved into back channels that are unsuited for the purpose and which many users will never know exist at all.

Sep 6 '18 at 20:59, by BESW

The Stack Exchange devoted years to developing an interface and infrastructure to enforce an epistemology that values pithy independent responses to clear, precise problems. This interface and its accompanying infrastructure actively discourages discussion, ambiguity, and accompaniment.

Sep 6 '18 at 20:59, by BESW

Then they applied that interface to their space for discussing policies, identifying ambiguities, and accompanying each other.

Sep 6 '18 at 21:01, by BESW

It's very telling that the Stack Exchange, having defined itself by its ability to hone an interface that creates a community, has put literally no effort into crafting the interface for that community's backroom.

Sep 6 '18 at 21:04, by BESW

Also, check out how the official response to "it's really hard to learn how to use the site" is "well if you're not going to put in the effort then you're not the kind of person we want using the site."

Relatedly, the pearls not sand philosophy means that hostility is a feature, not a bug: it automatically expels any potential user who isn't willing/able to figure out the system with minimal human interaction.

Our policies are scattered across dozens or hundreds of posts in multiple sites, and the only collation of them is done by users who take it on themselves.

The visual user interface doesn't sufficiently communicate the unique nature of the site to its new users, or we wouldn't be constantly having to explain that answers aren't for any kind of response and that comments aren't discussion threads.

(Or maybe, the fact that people need to get the desire to talk to each other beaten out of them... means it's something the Stack shouldn't have thrown out so readily in the early design phase.)

I don't know what these sorts of changes would look like, I'm a print designer with training in curating physical community spaces.

But that's a handful of the problems the Stack is struggling with that are baked into the fundamental structure of the thing and its foundational assumptions about the nature of information and people.

Oh, and moderation. The whole elected-mod system is flaming pants on a stick.

1:57 AM

@BESW 👀

user15026

@BESW emphatic nods

haha

@V2Blast No slight intended to any actual elected moderator. The system is awful, and it's worst for the moderators inside it.

@BESW I understood what you meant. :)

user15026

@BESW As someone who moderated a very large site for a long while...yes.

2:14 AM

I thought I was done yelling, but one last thing that might be important context: while I will celebrate whatever substantive improvements the Stack Exchange makes in its treatment of humans, I don't have any investment in this particular company rehabilitating itself instead of another company replacing it; either would be great, I suspect the latter would be better.

I want to see humanity's ability to treat other well improve, and that means everybody needs to learn from mistakes like the Stack Exchange has made and apply it to whatever communities we find ourselves a part of.

Q: When is the Circle of Dreams druid's Walker in Dreams feature used?

3

The Druid Circle of Dreams gives, at 14th level, the Walker in Dreams feature (XGtE, p. 23). I'm unsure about when it is used. It states, "when you finish a short rest" and "once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest". The game allows for two or three short r...

dnd-5e class-feature druid rests

trogdor

2:35 AM

totally inappropriate jazz hands

Good name for a band!

Like, cop pulls you over, asks for license, you pat your pocket and realize you've forgotten your wallet...
"Sorry, officer. I think it's on my kitchen counter." <jazz hands>
"Sir, those jazz hands were totally inappropriate. I'm just giving you a warning this time, but don't do that again."

trogdor

XD

@HotRPGQuestions Walker, Texas Druid is my favorite show

trogdor

Lol

2:56 AM

This question mentions gygax and 5e but not D&D specifically. It would still be guessing to add it correct?

@nitsua60 An edit war between a mod and ex-mod is probably not a good look. I'm going to step back and let you handle that one.

"Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part II: They're Not Human," by James Mendez Hodes, now updated with an audio/video version.

That question is kind of eeeesh right now.

3:12 AM

@Axoren It's probably going to get reopened because mxy edited the tag in. I believe they are correct but it is still violating our don't guess policy.

I'm on the fence about it, but I think they're not just right about the system, but right about the author indicating the system clearly enough.

All that was missing was the system tag.

It's down to semantics at this point: what counts as "clearly indicated by the author?"

I previously said in this meta that 5e alone is not enough. And I think the same applies here.

We've had essentially this exact case (mentioning "5e" and a thing that has appeared in D&D, but not stating D&D 5e) before, back in March:

D&D is not the only game with a 5e. And the nowhere did the user say they were playing D&D. Yes this is one of the case where the policy looks a bit ridiculous but either we enforce it all the time or not at all.

2

Q: What qualifies as guessing on a system?

13

Two questions in quick succession, Do Hexblade warlocks choose their spells from the Hexblade spell list or the warlock spell list? and What’s the right calculation for the Homunculus’s hit points for the 2019 UA Alchemist Artificer? Were both posted without a system tag. Guessing on a system ...

discussion tags game-systems

3:16 AM

@V2Blast That's the meta answer I linked.

yeah, I was mid-typing when you replied :P

So anything less than the querent tagging the system themselves with an actual tag is de facto not clear? I'm willing to accept that as policy if it's clear cut like that.

But it's definitely actually obvious when you stack up those 99.95% coincidences like you mentioned in the post

Part of the purpose of the policy is to help the user get used to tagging their own questions rather than training them that others will do it for them.

The querent needs to explicitly confirm, whether in a comment or in the post or simply by adding the tag, that that is the RPG system and edition being asked about. It's precisely to avoid these sorts of arguments (among other reasons) that the community has taken such a hard-line stance against any sort of guessing.

But if they've communicated the system perfectly, just not in the right slot (like putting "D&D 5e" in the title or body), we're okay to move the information to the right slot for them.

3:20 AM

@BESW Yep

Unfortunately, they were 50% there, but not fully

@BESW Agreed.

Eeeesh maximus

@V2Blast Linking tiggerous's answer was a good idea. I love the way they put it. It's not about whats better but what is clearer and easier to enforce.

4:13 AM

@linksassin I love that answer as well. It isn't worth anything to make policies that aren't enforceable or that create more problems than they solve. That answer says it much better than I could :)

4:40 AM

Current problem: got assistance with the dev team to build a plugin for their program. They provided an API, but little more than a few comments in the initializer.

And hell if they'll tell me what any of it does.

I know 3 things:
1. It has over 100 methods. Half do nothing, the other half simply return a value
2. If I delete any of them, the API does not function.
3. 20 of them contain keywords that relate to what I want to do with it, but the method names are ambiguous and provide no direction.

@Ben Sounds about right for most APIs. I think we have about 3 project in the pipeline currently waiting on API definitions from other teams.

Yeah. The main frustration is that they've quoted for a period of time to assist with the development, but every time I try and set up a meeting (coordinating with the US) I get palmed off to someone else.

MikeQ

@Ben Document the conversations and email trail

Sounds like witchcraft and/or wizardry

@Ben I put up with that for exactly 1 week before escalating. 1 email, wait 5 days, follow-up email, wait two days, follow up email with higher level on CC.

4:54 AM

@MikeQ Yeah. Everything has been over email so I chained it all together with an email basically saying "I want my support"

@linksassin That was today. So hopefully they get in gear

@Ben I've had to go all the way up to the regional president (3 levels above me) to talk to their president to get stuff done before because they were so slow.

I do have a foot in the door, because I have a personal rapport with the VP of sales, and this single plugin is a huge opportunity for them.

4 hours of collaboration is a fair tradeoff for an opportunity to partner with military tech. Just IMO.

@V2Blast I am not at liberty to confirm, nor deny this association.

5:18 AM

Q: Can firbolgs cast their racial Detect Magic spell as a ritual?

7

Firbolgs get the Firbolg Magic trait (VGtM, p. 107), which lets them cast Detect Magic. Normally, Detect Magic is able to be cast as a ritual. Can this version be cast by a Druid as a ritual, or can it only be cast normally as a free once-a-day spell?

dnd-5e spells racial-traits rituals firbolg

In good old fashioned ben-style-continuity

@Ben I'll take that as a strong "maybe"

Q: Is Tales of Old an official bard ability?

10:20 AM

1

It’s my second time playing D&D and I’m playing a bard this time around, so I’ve been doing some research on the class. I don't have the Player’s Handbook yet, so I do all of my research on websites and I always double check to make sure it’s a 5e cite. I came across something called “tales of o...

dnd-5e bard content-identification

10:49 AM

@V2Blast a little late as a reply, but is funny to see how we keep jumping from "the community is not the problem, they aren't monster" to "the ones who downvoted this should be ashamed of themselves and are horrible persons"

11:55 AM

My first experience with SE when I just arrived was (and largely still is) that an overwhelming majority of negative impressions was a result of the human factor, not of the design. Some examples:
- Humans very quickly closing questions they can't answer, *even if another person comments about having an answer ready*.
- People who won't articulate what they found downvote-worthy. (Note: This *isn't* solvable by *mandating* comments.)
- People wanting to put words into another's mouth, changing the regional styles, and showing other disregard for moral rights.

There's only two serious backend flaws I think still bother me: (1) that there is no mechanism for sending private messages to someone to exchange less-public contact info (not an issue for me) and (2) that there is no mechanism for counteracting close votes until the closure happens, producing 'quantumisation' at 5 votes in either direction.

12:11 PM

@linksassin Yes, I agree it's not a good look. About the same time you pinged me here I went ahead and pointed the other mods to it and stepped away for the night. Thanks for your original, welcoming message, and for speaking up in here, though: I'm always happy to have someone say to me "eh, this looks off."

@vicky_molokh about the downvote thing, I know that too well. Sadly, it is a fact that Stack Exchange implicitly accept that downvotes does not need a reason in the first place.

more accurately downvotes do not require you to justify them

@Derpy The Stack (backend) may accept that, but I'm talking about the human factor. There are all sorts of things that are done or not done in spite of what a backend supports, such as people using URLs for spoilers even though it wasn't intended on a backend implementation level, or people not killing each other in the street even though the 'backend' of human bodies supports it.

And it's of course understandable that anonymity has upsides.

you're supposed to downvote for good reasons - and downvoting for bad reasons is something punishable and correctable (i.e. I hate this user, I'm gonna downvote all their posts!)

But the more downvotes there are without a comment, the more puzzling it looks.

12:14 PM

@linksassin I'm not sure we "enforce it all the time or not at all," though. I'm comfortable with the notion of "we have a policy and that gets enforced in a fuzzy-like-fuzzy-logic way based on who happens to be the point of contact for that policy in any particular case." But for me the existence of meta guidance means that when someone takes an action that's indicated by meta and my instinct is in the other direction I shouldn't just overrule on mainsite, but rather should discuss on meta.

A +5/-1 without comment is fine. After a +5/-4 one starts longing for an explanation how to correct an answer (or improve a question). A +0/-3 or worse? That looks like an answer in dire need of guidance at a minimum.

@Carcer nope, I actually meant what I wrote. There is the belief that one could actually go and downwote random posts just because they decided that today they fell like to give random votes. And that is fine basically, or at least tollerated. Or at least, that is what keeps being repeated in every main Meta discussion on the topic. "I am entitled to downvote anything I want just because I had a bad day and I don't own you any explanation" is an actual argument I had to read. Multiple times.

okay, I guess my specific example is a case of using the downvote mechanism to enable harassment which is bad because it's harassment, not because it's downvotes

@Axoren They might have been even more there. It was 5e in the title, and they mention playing since the 70's Gygax's materials. I, in fact, had already clicked 'edit tags' to put 5e there when @linksassin's welcoming comment came in asking them to specify system. So I took a beat, looked up the meta, and was still on the fence until I read (wait for the irony) mxy's good answer about not just making sure it's right, but allowing the user to do a bit of the lifting themself.

why not read my answer instead

12:18 PM

So then instead I left my comment and voted to close. (During the composition of which comment the first, one-line answer came in.)

@vicky_molokh let me search a bit... just a second....

@Derpy I know that it's acceptable. I understand why it shouldn't be changed. I'm just saying that the way people use that right is a major source of unfriendly impressions IME, not some sort of unfriendly UI design.

@vicky_molokh OH, Maybe it was a little unclear then.... I totally agree with you

now they have switched to "It is the UI fault"

but to me that is just part of the problem. We have a lot of unfriendly user behaviors too

@Derpy It's just that I keep running into blaming the design in chat all the time. So it doesn't look new to me (in the timeline of me being on a stack). And in fact I don't get blaming the design when it's (almost exclusively) all about people's agency and how they use it.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted website in body (99): More than five from 3 letters crossword puzzles USA today by batrikjasten on rpg.SE

12:25 PM

oh, btw I think I have found what I was looking for. It was in an answer that I had deleted.

> Leaving my two cents here. Sorry if the question is old, but it is the only one I found still open.

When reading about downvotes and change request, even without reading the full question people will usually think of two possibility:

- it is an user crying because he has been downvoted. Let's kick him (downvote him more) so he won't cry anymore.
- it is someone victim of a serial downvote or similar. Let's end the conversation by pointing him at the Historia Of Downvoting Solutions (Aka "Tim lost his keys").

you will notice that here I said that I though downvotes were also intended to

> - provide people a way to understand what they are doing wrong and fix it.

well, apparently..... That's not a thing.

RedRiderX

@BESW I'm only halfway through part 1 so far but connecting the roots of Tolkien's orcs to those particular er "cultural artifacts" seems obvious in retrospect yet it never occurred to me before now.

Oh, okay, I do have a third issue that is arguably backend-related:
The way people in different games (that have a different flow rate of questions) compete for the same rewards, so an meh expert on D&D can quickly get to 10K, but an expert on, say, GURPS, or on [tag:rpg-theory], will have to wait years and be at the mercy of D&D experts when it comes to stuff like closures-and-openings etc. IOW I would like privileges to be linked to tag-badges more.

See this recent comment on the matter

> We vote on posts to tell the world whether the post is useful or not. That it functions as a signal to the poster is merely a side effect.

RedRiderX

But when it comes to a couple specifics of the article I feel like I need to get out my citation needed stamp.

. . . how do I tag in chat again?

12:30 PM

(and it is better if I stop here, sorry for interrupting.)

@vicky_molokh specifically tag badges, or all badges?

test

Tag-badges.

gotcha.

yep - it is [ tag:name-of-the-tag ]

without the spaces

12:33 PM

like [tag:vow-of-alignment] renders to vow-of-alignment

So for example:
- only experts on [tag:gurps] get to edit or close [tag:gurps] tags.
- only [tag:rpg-theory] experts get to reopen [tag:rpg-theory] questions etc.
- only [tag:gm-technques] experts get to, you get the idea.

Ah, but not in multiline messages =(

does not work on multiple lines

Ah, I forgot that.

Thanks.

nothing works on multiple lines

kviiri

12:34 PM

@vicky_molokh I agree with this. DnD expertise gives one disproportionate reputation for its use

@kviiri It's not even a problem of people gaining rep fast, but of being given the privilege only to use them in areas which they are not experts about while the experts of those areas have to wait long to start managing their own area.

1:18 PM

people inappropriately VTCing questions they don't understand when they're probably perfectly clear if you're actually familiar with the subject/system the question is about is a frustration I've seen sometimes, yes

@Carcer I don't think I've done that. I try to just live in the tags that I'm familiar with.

But I'm fairly fast and loose with my votes. Times where i've explained downvotes have gone well, but other times all it did was start an argument. For my own sanity, I don't explain as much.

1:30 PM

@NautArch That begs the question of where you are starting on the sanity sliding scale...

@JohnP :D

@NautArch - But I get what you are saying. I've almost given up on trying to explain scores when judging, or the equally dreaded "What did you see in my form that could improve?" question.

@JohnP Kata?

@vicky_molokh We call them poomsae, but yes, kata (both open hand and weapon, along with the self choreographed XMA versions)

1:54 PM

@JohnP That's an interesting dilemma. Feedback can be hard, but improvement without feedback is also very hard . . . then again, a competitor's judge is not the same competitor's trainer, so hopefully there's someone else whose job it is to answer what to improve . . . but the criticism of the two may differ! All sorts of reasons for and against commenting on scores and the like.

@vicky_molokh That's a lot of what this meta covers.

It should be a thing to help, but is more often than not devolves. Because humans.

@NautArch Yeah, I remember either that one or a similar one.

@vicky_molokh Plus, you have personal bias with each judge. Some judges prefer power and perceived effectiveness of a technique over exact placement and flow, etc.

The worst is judging a ring of 9-10 year old 1st degree black belt (aka the clone division), where you have 15 kids that all look alike and come up to you after the ring is done (Which goes form, weapon form, combat stick sparring, regular sparring, so ~ 1.5-2 hours later) and say "What did you see in my form?"

... Uh ....

@JohnP Definitely there's also that. And such personal biases can be a source of mistrust to the judges.

@JohnP And here we get into the topic of what happens when a judgement is asked but not all judges may be able to make an objective judgement due to the small differences in performance.

Or the differences being in areas which lack strict objective criteria.

Or something like that.

@vicky_molokh Yes, unfortunately. The older, and/or more experienced competitors know it's the nature of the game we play, and it all evens out in the end. Newer competitors can get discouraged.

What I do, esp as a center judge (different judging responsibility), is apply the same criteria overall, but I have certain sequences in each black belt form that I watch for comparisons, as they are generally a "key" segment.

It really is much like a new user on a Stack exchange. They ask a question, the audience judges it, and if they don't really understand the judging criteria, any criticism feels like an attack or a failure on their part.

2:03 PM

@JohnP My experience with actual MA competitions is minimal, and I don't have first-hand experience with what happens from the MA judges' PoV, but from some other sports I have an impression that it doesn't necessarily even out (e.g. in gymnastics).

And honestly, I've got different reasons for downvoting and I apply them as I see them.

@vicky_molokh Yeah, gymnastics, diving, ice skating are really different animals. What I mean by evening out though, is that at tournament X you get some judges that don't really like your style of form, and you don't do that great, where another tournament they think you walk on water.

@JohnP Regarding animals, would you say that, MA has less biases of individual judges for or against specific competitors than, say, gymnastics?

@JohnP I feel like walking on water would be counterproductive for diving and pretty run-of-the-mill for ice skating.

@vicky_molokh Mmm...that's a really hard question to answer, probably? I know of some judges that favor certain schools or regions over others, but they are few and far between.

@Yuuki rofl!

2:10 PM

@JohnP Are you rolling on the floor or on water?

If they do have a bias, it's much easier to nudge a vote in our system, as there are only three judges per ring and all scores count. Diving/Gymnastics/etc have many more judges, and they generally throw out the highest and lowest scores.

@JohnP Fair enough.

There are some revamps I wouldn't mind making to our judging system, but unfortunately it would really make our tournaments drag out, and I'm not quite senior enough (yet) to be listened to.

Q: Does 5e follow the Primary Source rule?

3

In D&D 3.5, there exists a hierarchy of sources as a rules concept so that if something in one text contradicts a passage in another one of the sources may officially take precedence. An important benefit of this often lampooned publication paradigm is that the Core Rules-- the PHB, MM, and DMG-...

dnd-5e dnd-3.5e edition-comparison errata

Nzall

2:42 PM

HaveIBeenPwned has now loaded the Roll20 breach from December into their free breach notification service

4

Q: What are the best ways and methods to get the player to accept and should they stop trying to withdraw the business first?

3:03 PM

@Nzall At some point, HaveIBeenPwned is just going to redirect to shouldiblamecaching.com

Sdjz

0

What are the best ways and methods to get the player to accept and should they stop trying to withdraw the business first? To explain the issue, one of the players in my game wants to assassinate a high-ranking government official. I have mentioned several times the government official is surroun...

dnd-5e problem-players player-communication

I can't be sure of this but it looks like extremely subtle spam

looks copied from another question, considering it is answering non existent comments

You dont trust mark?

I concur. Is spam

ohai mark

plus I seem to recall this profile description from other spam earlier today

3:49 PM

@Sdjz Good memory! Very useful information thank you :)

user61230

4:26 PM

Slightly late to the punch there, looks like that info was posted

5:23 PM

Ah that latest edit from QuadraticWizard brought up my favorite bad (and deleted) answer on the site. Legitimately made me chuckle (I'm very mature, I know).

3

5:33 PM

@Rubiksmoose thanks for the feedback on my answer.

5:46 PM

@BlackSpike you're welcome! I'm happy you found it useful and glad you were receptive to it :)

6:19 PM

Now I want to see this answer T_T

Cursed 10k rep privilege req

2

6:32 PM

This is when I get sympathy pictures of the answer by a 10k rep user - Subtle Cough

GcL

@williamporter "CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG"

@GcL Much sympathy felt, I appreciate that

the comment is good too

"You may be right, but supporting that answer with D&D lore is called for in the question. – KorvinStarmast"

6:54 PM

> To do this, you make a ranged attack, treating the object as an improvised weapon (which normally does damage equal to 1d4 + Dexterity modifier).

I thought improvised weapons were 1d4+STR?

Yeah, you'd get str as the bonus damage, the ranged attack roll is dex based, but the damage would add str

@Yuuki 5e? Yes (at least of the top of my head)

Note that throwing with 2-hands still gives +str, not +1.5 str

though you can take 2-handed hurler for + 1.5 str

G. Moylan

@Rubiksmoose I'm saving that to go back to when I hit my rep marker

@williamporter This is for 3.e and/or PF I assume?

6:59 PM

My answer, yes.

PF

IDK about the question specifically though.

Well, I'm gonna have to VTC as Unclear until Yuuki comes back with what system/edition they are asking about :p

Indeed

Vote Yuuki off the island

(Or into the island if it's a volcano)

Anycase, lunch calls

Q: Do thrown breakable items (like oil flasks) do damage when they hit?

9

Some items, specifically acid vials, alchemist's fire, holy water, and oil flasks, allow you to throw them at enemies for various effects. To do this, you make a ranged attack, treating the object as an improvised weapon (which normally does damage equal to 1d4 + Dexterity modifier). However, th...

dnd-5e damage equipment improvised-weaponry throwing-things

So 5e, I guess.

This is also 5e:

> As an action, you can splash the contents of this flask onto a creature within 5 feet of you or throw it up to 20 feet, shattering it on impact. In either case, make a ranged attack against a target creature, treating the holy water as an improvised weapon. If the target is a fiend or undead, it takes 2d6 radiant damage.

Does this mean fiends and undead take 2d6 radiant damage regardless of whether the ranged attack hits?

I have to say the improvised-weaponry tag has some entertaining entries

And of course this one

G. Moylan

7:15 PM

lol

@Yuuki That's my gut feeling too, but I think that should be put on the stack, as it were

What would I tag that with other than dnd-5e?

throwing-things?

Nah

Questions don't really need a bunch of tags. Sometimes only one fits

Today's annoyance with 5e: The rules for which ability ranged and melee weapons use, is not in the rules for weapons, nor in the rules for making attacks. They are in the Section for "Using Each Ability". (It's on PHB 175-176, for those who need it.)

2

(Actually 176-177, but I'm too late to correct that...)

7:33 PM

@Someone_Evil Ability Modifier. The ability modifier used for a melee weapon attack is Strength, and the ability modifier used for a ranged weapon attack is Dexterity. Weapons that have the finesse or thrown property break this rule.

(or same in the basic rules)

Well now I feel stupid, I must have read that 5 times without catching that somehow... I think I have a comment to delete

LLamablaster

dang it now i have to undo my edit too haha

@Someone_Evil Reminds me of

Or... which ability is it for improved thrown weapons? (I won't claim we haven't got a Q on it, but couldn't find it)

LLamablaster

i think that the vials would be thrown weapons, not ranged weapons, right? so it should be strength, not dex?

or are improvised weapons not any kind of weapon except improvised

7:42 PM

Looks like chat is spawning a lot of questions today

8:10 PM

@Rubiksmoose That's funny. I'd not seen that one before =)

@Someone_Evil Sounds like you'll have to retreat to a previous annoyance with 5e. Can I suggest "two-weapon fighting/dual wielder/fighting with two weapons"?

@LLamablaster I think this is technically the answer, weird though it might seem. So they use Dex, because they're not classed as weapons and don't have the thrown property but you're making a ranged attack with them

@V2Blast You feeling up to writing up a full answer to that? shameless plug

@Someone_Evil Haha. Maybe later, I'm in the middle of something right now :P

8:47 PM

@Someone_Evil looks like someone beat me to it :P

I feel like I shouldn't have to ask why a weapon that does 2d6 radiant damage to ghosts, is reusable, and is accessible from 1st-level is a problem.

@Yuuki Reusable?

@Someone_Evil As in holy water but doesn't consume the holy water.

@Yuuki How would it not be consumed?

@V2Blast Put it in a metal flask, swing it at the ghost, the ghost passes through the metal flask and therefore passes through the holy water.

The flask doesn't break and therefore the holy water isn't splashed on the ground and consumed.

8:52 PM

lol

Unfortunately, that's immediately following the sentences "As an action, you can splash the contents of this flask onto a creature within 5 feet of you or throw it up to 20 feet, shattering it on impact. In either case, make a ranged attack against a target creature, treating the holy water as an improvised weapon."

It doesn't say you do damage to stuff that passes through the flask :P

Though the DM could certainly house-rule that way

And when I quote that, I'm "being too restricting" and now players are unwilling to "do something drastic or fantastical".

9:04 PM

Not sure if there's much narrative value in tying rope to a flask and swinging it like a flail.

@V2Blast It's among those things that I'd allow on the first go because it sounds funny the first time but I'd tell the table that I wouldn't allow again because it completely trivializes low-level incorporeals.

yeah, you could easily justify the restriction narratively as well

I'd allow it and just rule that the holiness of the holy water is ruined once it's successfully hit a ghost.

by saying something like that the holy water needs to be exposed to open air to take effect

also that

cause they cancel out, or whatever.

you'd get the benefit that if you don't hit anything it doesn't waste your dose of holy water, you can just try again.

Or apparently an INT check is fine (suggested balance). You have to be really smart to think up "tie some rope to a metal flask of holy water and use it as a flail".

9:27 PM

Complete Tangent: Can anyone recommend a place I can chat to people about java/Android? I'm starting to write (RPG-based) apps, and getting into a muddle with it all ...

@BlackSpike There's a chatroom somewhere here called ~~Android Hell~~ Android Enthusiasts that might help.

"Enthusiasts" seems to be end-users, rather than devs

Well, there's also an Android room.

Although their room description says they're a chatroom, not a helpdesk, so I'd advise against opening up with a question.

@Yuuki ok thanks. Yeah, I'm struggling with some overall concepts, rather than code implementations (although they are obviously linked)

10:17 PM

Limbo is free on the Epic Games Store, if you get it between July 18 and 25: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/limbo/home
(After that, Moonlighter and This War of Mine will be free for one week, starting July 25)

RedRiderX

10:29 PM

@V2BlastOh I didn't know they stepped up to offering two free games at a time.

Those both seem like pretty good Indie Darlings as well.

I still haven't finished Moonlighter.

10:46 PM

@Yuuki I've never played it!

Shalvenay

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