TRPG General Chat

1:19 AM

I spent nearly an hour writing the answer for this and although I think it's a good one I'm still paranoid that it's going to end up getting downvoted for some reason. rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/153423/…

Shalvenay

hey there @JohnClifford, how're things going?

@Shalvenay Not too bad thanks, you?

Shalvenay

@JohnClifford alright here, hoping to get back into the swing of things with a couple more games I'm in

Nice one. We had a session last night. :)

Shalvenay

nice. what game are you in/running, btw?

1:24 AM

@JohnClifford I'd mostly be concerned about "I'm answering the question in the title rather than the one in your last paragraph" because that's a practice which tends to create problems so the phrase is gonna raise some eyebrows and make some voters more skeptical/critical of the rest of the content.

Really? I would have thought answering a question not in the title would be more confusing.

I was just clarifying that my answer is "yes, you can benefit from multiple Shield spells" and not "yes, using Shield Block prevents you from casting every copy of Shield you have."

Titles are fast, pithy ways to attract eyeballs. They are not good at communicating nuanced problems.

Should I take that part out and just change it to "Yes, you can benefit from multiple copies of Shield (with some caveats)"?

@JohnClifford Try saying that more explicitly. "I'm answering" makes it sound like you're ignoring the body text entirely for your whole answer, rather than just describing exactly which sentence your lede sentence is responding to.

Yeah, I've edited it.

A: Should we be answering the question, or the question posed in the description?

1:27 AM

10

The post body is the actual question, and the other part is just the title. Questions regularly have their titles adjusted to match the real question in the body, while the reverse (changing the body to match the title) is done only in unusual circumstances. Answers should answer the question — ...

Thanks for the suggestion.

Can you think of any use case that would suggest that the "can't cast the spell again for 10 minutes" clause of Shield would apply to every copy of it you have from any source?

Unfortunately I don't have enough expertise with the systems involved to cast conscientious votes, I can only speak to broad structural/phrasal patterns I see across the RPG.SE experience.

I've provided a couple of examples that back up my interpretation so hopefully that will be sufficient.

Good luck! And remember that a single downvote just means you've got enough eyes on the post that the random noise of the system has found you.

4

I had to laugh earlier when I posted an answer that got immediately downvoted then realised it was because I was just completely and utterly wrong.

1:32 AM

@JohnClifford I'm skeptical of that argument just because the "spells" that you cast are not the "instances of spells" that can be in effect at any moment.

@MarkWells That is a fair point, but there's also nothing that says each of your prepared spells is considered the same spell if its name is identical to another one.

It seems clear that "can't cast it again for ten minutes" doesn't refer to casting the same instance of Shield.

No, but I would say it does refer to casting the same prepared copy of Shield in the particular slot you cast it from. Having it as one of your other cantrips is independent of that, I feel.

1:56 AM

@JohnClifford What if you're a sorcerer? Your cantrips don't strictly have a slot.

Not strictly, but you still have a distinct set of cantrips in your repertoire.

It's a fair point though. As I said, I was poring over the rules for an hour trying to figure it out. :P

Right, so can you cast Shield only once, or unlimited times?

Q: Is undeleting a potential duplicate acceptable?

As many times as you have Shield as a repertoire cantrip (if we're still talking about Sorcerer)

The Oracle

2:13 AM

0

This question (deleted, viewable by 10k+ rep only) is deleted within minutes after a VTC as duplicate to this question is called. It is indeed a duplicate to the suggested question. Given that duplicates are actually valuable to us as a signpost to the referenced question, with different word...

Q: What is this 1990s horror game of otherworldly PCs dealing with monsters on modern Earth?

3:01 AM

@JohnClifford Thinking about it now, on the one hand, it's really weird that you could take the same cantrip multiple times and it would actually do something.

On the other hand, taking Shield as two of your cantrips do that you can have two shields fits really well with my preferred conceptual model of cantrips.

Hot RPG Questions

3:15 AM

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In the 1990s I once played a horror RPG. I'd like to track it down again but I'm unable to figure out what it was. As best I can remember: The PCs are powerful, almost alien beings. Players had a great deal of freedom in what their PCs looked like. The PCs normally reside in another universe o...

product-identification horror

V2Blast

7:29 AM

@BESW I think the issue there is actually that "what solutions are available?" depends entirely on what your goal is (as now noted in mxy's answer to Someone_Evil's meta). Which is why "should" questions often get downvoted/VTCed

@MarkWells I felt the same way, but the fact is that there's nothing stopping you from doing so and nothing in the rules that says having multiple copies of a spell prepared links them together in any way.

7:45 AM

G'morning...

7:55 AM

@KorvinStarmast I've spotted a comment where you mention writing a composition then picking a title. Interesting. Around here, there's usually an offer of 3-6 titles (or, in looser cases, themes) and you need to write a composition based on the one you've chosen, not the other way around. Or at least that was the way it was when I was a pupil.

9:16 AM

"PbtA designers, please stop using +/- x modifiers in your games," a "demystifying math" Twitter thread by ammourazz.

10:47 AM

@vicky_molokh You appear to be mixing up topic and title. Topics as writing prompts are a common way to exercise the ability to write about a topic. A title chosen after writing an essay or theme paper allows for a letting the process of writing complete a series of connected and organized thoughts, and then using the result the inform the precise shape of the title. The same piece can have a variety of titles that "fit well enough" but getting "the right fit" is another matter.

What I learned in high school, in terms of fitting a title to any given piece of writing on a topic was to focus on the topic, and let how I treated it inform the title. (Heck, may have learned that in junior high.). I still find that the best way to select a title regardless of the topic.

(And I've had plenty of help here in getting my titles right when I don't go through that process).

Headline writing is somewhat similar, but with a slightly different purpose.

@KorvinStarmast As far as I recall, most of the time they would de facto be the same. E.g. 'Depiction of serfdom in Shevchenko's poetry', with no additional label applied. They would differ in e.g. tasks involving writing a short story, but not compositions. (Unless I've hit a language barrier and what I think a composition is is something else.)

I've seen both techniques used.

@vicky_molokh Composition fits what I was describing well enough. But what you are describing to me is the topic. Can they be the same? Yes.

There are a great many compositional praxes in the world.

@vicky_molokh That said, five of us can get the same writing prompt - Depiction of serfdom in Shevchenko's poetry - and treat it somewhat differently, and even focus on different aspects of the topic in the final composition. Having the title fit what was finally written and/or concluded would often mean that none of the five retain the topic as title. @BESW Indeed, there are.

(And of course coming up with a title for a book or a short story is often an iterative process as an author follows their muse ...)

What I have found in technical writing work I've been involved with is an imperative to get titles to fit the content; it seems to be more important than in creative writing.

@vicky_molokh speaking of which, did you ever finish the two page 5E game we talked about a while back? :)

10:59 AM

@KorvinStarmast Uh, I published it, it got about ten stars, and I made some sub-edition patches.

@vicky_molokh Link? I was out of town for a few days, and I think linksassin or someone evil also did something similar.

Or was that the same one? I made a comment on one of the google docs ...

gaaaaaaaaaah. RL calls, visit with you later.

@KorvinStarmast Mine and Evil's.

11:17 AM

@BESW I'm torn between "these are interesting ideas, and the mathematics checks out" vs. my "twitter is a microblogging platform, not a blogging platform" pet peeve.

2

@JoelHarmon Eh, I'm a fan of applying resolviendo to digital media tools.

(That's an epistemology of technological disobedience.)

Ah.

@vicky_molokh aaah, thank you. :) everyone knows what HP is Of course, it is Healing Potion. :)

@KorvinStarmast Wait, I thought it was Homeostatic Physiology!

@JoelHarmon Ernesto Oroza coined "technological disobedience" to describe the modern application of the resolviendo attitude codified in Con Nuestros Propios Esfuerzos during Castro's "Special Period in Times of Peace." A piece of technology is created for a specific purpose, and resolviendo requires disobeying that intent: looking at a piece of technology and seeing it not as an object with a particular purpose but as component parts temporarily combined to accomplish a current need.

11:31 AM

@JoelHarmon The maths check out, but somehow I don't feel that rerolls serve well to demystify the math. If anything, I think they make it less transparent.

@BESW Ah, right, I recall hearing about that before, just in a totally different context. Stuff like "washing machines have a totally serviceable electric motor. What if you took it out to use it for something else?"

Right. A washing machine with a broken drum is still a motor you can put on a bicycle.

@vicky_molokh Less transparent, sure, but more engaging for the player. Particularly the tactile "fist full of dice" players.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive body detected (44): Corroded Meta vs Magical Armor, should it melt it? by Meowid on rpg.SE

I like seeing that kind of "but what constructive use can I make of this?" attitude applied to technologies that corporations are trying to overcurate.

@JoelHarmon Yeah, and making the feeling of "I'm more likely to do better" accurate is more important than easily understanding the maths involved in why that feeling is accurate.

11:35 AM

@BESW Which reminds me of the "if you can't take it apart, you don't really own it" philosophy

@JoelHarmon This would be part of why I'm moving from Adobe to Serif.

@JoelHarmon Hmmm. I wonder if I'm having a confirmation bias, or if die-tactile-oriented players and designers tend to also be the ones that mystify the maths the most. E.g. World of Darkness and . . . Weapons of the Gods was it? . . . seem to want a quirky feeling of rolling differently, but also happen some of the most mystifying and obfuscating maths.

Funny you are speaking about dice and obscure maths... I spent half an hour yesterday trying to figure what was the point buy equivalent of "Roll 4d6 and drop the lowest"

@Nyakouai Already used anydice for it?

@vicky_molokh Probably because tweaking the available dice pool does weird things to the probability curves, mathematically speaking.

11:39 AM

@vicky_molokh Nope, I don't know that much tools for RPG. Thankfully, I had my good old excel

@Nyakouai 4d6k3 is slightly better than the basic stat distribution recommended in D&D.

@Nyakouai A handy tool. Here's an example: anydice.com/program/16dff

@JoelHarmon Slightly better than a 20 point build yeah... But by how much and why were the questions that were tickling me.

Had to figure the exact difference

Oops - I need to run. Later, all!

See ya

11:40 AM

ttfn

And I'm quite sure most DM who use this method don't know how this choice affect the player character sheet

On the other hand, keeping dices simple and arranging distributions is somewhat hard

When I started in D&D, my friends really liked the randomness of rolling for stats. By the time I quit D&D we'd come around to much preferring point buys, because people rolling badly made us feel worse than people rolling well made us feel good.

These days if a game offers the option to roll for ability-stat-like things, we only take that option if it's a silly light-hearted and very short game.

I agree. Random might be fun for a short game, where you know you aren't stuck forever with a character that has a 6 in a characteristic. But on the long run, I find point buy system more rewarding

But we very rarely play that sort of system anymore anyway.

Everyone start with the same budget, and what you become is entirely up to your choices along the game

11:50 AM

I guess Fate and Gumshoe would be the closest?

(Also, very nice thread about the +/- X modifiers. Didn't know advantage mechanism was almost equivalent to +2/-2)

...I was going to try to work on my Fate/Bubblegumshoe/Kids On Bikes mashup system today but the whole day was eaten by Unexpected Things.

Never played any of those, sadly, but I hear a lot about them. Almost never heard any complaint about Fate

Fate's a great toolkit, but not quite a game system until you get to specific iterations like Atomic Robo.

So you expand on Fate to create a system that fit your setting?

(Or use? Not sure of the proper terminology)

11:53 AM

Very cool stuff, though, it's our default choice for any game where we don't have a system specifically for the kind of story we're wanting to tell.

Yeah, Fate's a bunch of gaming tools that loosely fit together into a system but rely heavily on the people playing to have a shared understanding of the setting/story/themes they're wanting to work with.

Unlike some game systems, which use the mechanics to push for a specific kind of story/theme setup even if the players aren't all understanding that.

If everybody agrees on what kind of story you want to play but you want help playing it, Fate's awesome. But if, say, you want to play a space opera game but one of your friends has never seen Star Wars or Flash Gordon... try a system like Lady Blackbird because it'll give more guidance for playing that kind of story.

Got to go :X

Bye

Q: Can you end your own spell prematurely?

ttfn

@Nyakouai You know how in Powered by the Apocalypse games, all your moves and character features are basically tropes and story moments from the kind of genre that particular game's inspired by? Fate's more about giving each player, and the group as a whole, the tools for making their own set of those tropes and story moments they want to have happen a lot in their game.

Then also during play, it puts a lot more power in the hands of the players, to decide when things are going to go badly and when things will go well for their characters, and to add world details as we play.

nitsua60

12:26 PM

@KorvinStarmast I like that, but I dislike the bit (in 5e RAW) about every magic item in the world needing an hour of get-to-know-you-time to know all its secrets.

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Let’s say a ranger casts spike growth (up to 10 minutes), then realizes it is useless since the enemy is able to fly. Can they end the spell prematurely?

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Q: If you walk into an otherwise invisible creature, may you attack it?

12:48 PM

@nitsua60 Are you referring to "short rest = identify" in the DMG? Not a fan.

@Nyakouai 29. We have a post on that somewhere here.

@Nyakouai Depends on the target number. We have a good Q&A on that, I"ll get you a link

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A: Is there a way to duplicate the range & power of rolling stats with a homebrew point buy?

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Extending the current system There are two parts to this answer. The first is fairly simple - to homebrew the point-buy system to extend the range, simply use the formula already implicitly used in the book. Specifically: If the score is less than or equal to 13, the point value = score - 8 If...

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Q: How does rolling two dice and taking the higher affect the average outcome?

D&D 5E has an "advantage" concept where instead of rolling 1d20, you roll 2d20 and take the higher. Likewise, disadvantage means rolling 2d20 and taking the lower. How does this affect the expected average outcome of the roll?

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@Nyakouai I find those two posts to be interesting exploration of those two applications of dice.

GcL

1:04 PM

@nitsua60 Also not a fan of that.

nitsua60

1:31 PM

@KorvinStarmast Yeah. I miss read magic and identify and quests to figure out all the things this does. I know I can make that up as a GM (and I do), but without the coreset including examples of that, I worry about it dying off.

@nitsua60 With so many different flavors of magic user now in the game, and some of them having spell slot limitations, I think the devs didn't want to create a party where nobody could figure out what these magical items did. I'd rather they came up with a different way to do that so that Identify would retain its value. (And I'd like to see a similar spell for divine casters ...)

GcL

@nitsua60 I do something similar usually. If it's a simple magic item, fine.. one hour and you find the button. If it has interesting always on effects, I wait until they apply obviously or someone casts identify. E.g. had a magic clockwork shortsword. Does +1 damage per successive round it was used for an attack up to +3 max. The description for the short rest was that, "it feels like it whirs and moves inside"

@nitsua60 quests to figure out all the things this does not to mention Arcana and Histlry checks (with hard DCs, 15- 20 and beyond depending on rarity) where using guidance or help could be a way to use the skill system to do it ...

Here is where I once again wish that Warlock were Int caster ... and if we apply this approach, then the Int score takes on a new importance.

GcL

@KorvinStarmast Definitely make a series of skill checks. Easy one to find the trail head so to speak and then successively more difficult ones at forks in the ~~road~~ quest. Success means easier path or bonus loot along the way.

yoink This is why I always carry a notebook around.

1:56 PM

I very narrowly avoided ending up in a situation where I had a Curse of Strahd party with no good-aligned characters in it. XD I wasn't looking forward to figuring out what to do with a Sunsword nobody could attune to.

Yuuki

@JohnClifford How about a Starsword? Requires neutral alignment?

That's a pretty good idea, though it would make the radiant damage component make slightly less sense. XD

@JohnClifford Heh, a neat problem to have.

Yuuki

Force or some other damage type?

Half radiant, half necrotic?

Wouldn't prevent Strahd's regeneration, so less useful as an item. Though I could easily fudge that.

They ended up adding a couple of paladins to the party though so it's a moot point.

Yuuki

1:58 PM

Actually, half radiant and half force maybe?

Seems thematic for "stars".

I'll certainly keep that in mind if I run it in the future though.