Might (finally) be getting a friend to join my weekly RP game though. She's been watching Outside Xbox play D&D on youtube, so I invited her to join our group and she seems keen :D
Though on the other hand, I've been inviting people to join for a while now, so I think they're getting a bit skeptical haha
Our group has got quite insular. I've tried branching out, joining other groups, but none of them are at my house! :D And the one that was at my regular pub ... the pub closed (game continued, but is now have to drive, not walk :( )
But I won "Dr Who" Fluxx yesterday, so all is good :)
Yes, I've had similar issues. Some of the games I've joined, the groups were... not very pliable. Everyone played their way, and were unwilling to allow for others. Other groups were incredibly disconnected from each other, it felt more like a lobby than an actual game, and the only other game I really enjoyed playing with, everyone moved away. :(
@BlackSpike Oh nice
Speaking of Dr Who, I recently bought a pair of Connies (Converse). And with my regular attire I look like the 10th Doctor. Haha
Nearly finalised my character for Rolemaster. Grumpy Healer who steals peoples' wounds. Also, Beastmaster, with Bonded Animal (type undecided yet). Wanders from town to town, healing people, whether they want it or not, never settling down, never making connections (people are dumb! They keep getting hurt!)
@BESW Pretty much my perspective on it. In addition, it's often a one-time choice for a long-form style of play, so no matter how exciting that one roll might be, you're stuck with those stats for maybe months or years.
@V2Blast I did have one very enjoyable "I rolled really bad" PC. Deadlands. "Carl". He had enough points to buy ONE skill. Chose Animal Handling (It's a Western, there will be horses, yes?) ... we began (and stayed) in a POW camp ... no horses for us! I thouroughly enjoyed playing a half-blind, clumsy, dumb kid ... ONCE ... not again, thanks.
Our D&D 5e actual-play podcast is doing a map-making contest, ending soon: https://twitter.com/Planeslip_EoC/status/1159102439305428994 https://twitter.com/Planeslip_EoC/status/1161270131865128962 There's still an hour to go! It ends at 11 pm CDT.
@JoelHarmon Played, once (con game. AW. Very much enjoyed it, despite my horrific hangover!). Run, once (my own hacked cyberpunk/gutterpunk) Didn't work as well as I'd like
@BlackSpike My only experience here is with Dungeon World. My normal advice is to read the rules both before and after the game. It can take a bit for everything to gel.
@Shalvenay I do have experience with online games, and they always just feel clunkier than in person. That may be contributing to your perceived issue.
@BlackSpike context for injury? I compete martial arts, prescribe weight training and was a er medic for 10 years. I got injuries galore. Let me know how they got injured and how debilitating you want it to be.
@JohnP My next PC is a Healer that takes other peoples' wounds off them, and then heals themself. It would be nice to have a "no-one ever asks me to heal that" injury ... a fetish, if you will. Something I long for ... yeah, broken arm <yawn> .. sword-cut (been there, done that ) ... looking for something .... else ...
@BlackSpike schwannoma. Hit to a nerve causes the outer layer to swell and form a very painful to touch cyst/lump. (think a second location for male anatomy is how sensitive it can be)
@BlackSpike Le fort fracture. Impact at top of head causes all facial bones to separate from skull.
(or more to the point .. the Patient has to give me a Big Long Name! if its a 'broken arm' .. .boring ... but a greenstick fracture to the outer Ulna, with cartilage damage .. that's ok)
@Shalvenay true. But he does have to deal with ... "OMG stop talking! I don't need to know that ... their organs did what? ... 14 hours? ... STOP TALKING!"
I'm not exactly sure where to ask this (directions would be much appreciated). I noticed that if you search on stack exchange without a tag there is no "Newest" option to sort by. However if you use a tag there is a "Newest" option and an "Active" option. Is there a reason there is no "Newest" option when searching without a tag?
@Rubiksmoose on your creation-answer, I'd love to have seen a bit from the DMG before your bit from XGtE. I know it's not as clearly stated in the DMG, but I think an argument from "DMG lays out how to create a magic item and it's a lot more than just one spell" feels a bit more weighty to me than XGtE's statement, since XGtE is all "optional rules" by its own admission.
Also, shark warnings abound on the Cape. [cello sounds two ominous notes]
@nitsua60 Good point! I'll add it in. Unfortunately, I don't think any evidence is good enough to fully rule against it RAW, but I like using the DMG more than XGE for this anyways.
And in the DMG case it'll be a bit of a case of "argument from example" if I'm remembering the text correctly, so it's not as nicely laid out as that XGtE quote. But I know for me a well-reasoned and reasonable argument from core text would get top billing. De gustibus non est disputandum, on the other hand =)
@Ryan Guessing is not the best word. We require OP to tell us the system they are playing. If OP doesn't explicitly tell us, then we, according to our current policy, don't add that information in, even if we think it is obvious.
> +1 I really like the point about teaching the users by showing. I think we often maybe forget that there is more than one way to teach. I have been a proponent of the old policy, but I think you might actually have me reconsidering here. – Rubiksmoose♦ Sep 24 '18 at 14:54
@Ryan That a comment from me 1 year ago saying that an answer gave me pause to think. I don't enforce policy on a whim based on my thoughts at the moment. The community decides policy, not me, and not the other diamonds. And the community has upheld this as policy multiple times.
@Ryan I think you'll find it is. At the very least for me it is and I think that is backed up quite well with the guidance given to moderators from SE/SO.
Regardless of moderation styles, the community has upheld the policy. Until we have a showing of support for changing that, I intend to carry out what the community decided.
Even were I to try to unilaterally set moderation policy here (I wouldn't) "I think you might actually have me reconsidering here" would not be the way I'd do it.
@JohnClifford I still think my question is different just because it's explicitly about when shocking grasp's reaction preventing effect happens, which doesn't seem to be an agreed thing, so I wanted an answer
Ah, so rather than asking about reaction timings it's specifically about when a particular aspect of Shocking Grasp takes effect.
It's still kind of answered by the other ones, because it does depend on the reaction being used. If the reaction states that it can be applied to its triggering attack, it would happen before the reaction prevention does. Otherwise, it wouldn't.
(this is especially important with Shield, since it could potentially stop Shocking Grasp from being a hit in the first place)
@GcL That's what I thought, but then an answer has 22 upvotes and is accepted claiming that they both occur on the damage because the word "and" links them
Saying that the second thing in a list only happens because of the first thing because of the word "and" is ludicrous. That answer shouldn't have that many upvotes.
@JohnClifford Do you mind deleting your comments on that question, just so we can clean up the space there, in case someone else needs to ask for clarification?
Here's a question: do you think players should have to be informed of attack roll values against them so they know whether using Shield will prevent the attack, or would you allow them to use it when there's a chance it might still not save them?
I'm playing a 5e campaign as a Fighter, planning on becoming an Eldritch Knight.
Thus far (we're still level 1), the DM has been resolving attack rolls against us by telling us the result of the attack roll, and asking us if it hits:
DM: "The goblin takes a swing at you!" (rolls behind DM sc...
@Medix2 I generally don't find "it's up the DM" answers useful. I like answers that take a stance even if they state the rules are ambiguous in some way.
@GcL I think I agree with this. When I write answers where the RAW is ambiguous I try to emphasize that as much as possible and footnote the whole thing with "ultimately it's up to your DM", but I do try as much as possible to work out what the right answer probably is.
Yeah, I'll specify my interpretation and explain exactly why I interpreted that way, backing it up with as much common sense as I can glean from the wording.
There are a lot of questions that do come down pretty exclusively to the DM though. "How can my Wizard craft Gauntlet's Of Hill Giant's Strength?" has stuff you can point to in the DMG/XGtE w/r/t how much time and cost should be involved, but both those sources are pretty explicit in saying that they're offering guidelines, not rules.
@GcL I certainly think such answers are a bit more valuable especially when they make a compelling case for the best way to rule something even if it isn't supported by RAW.
For example I would drop a huge bounty on an answer that came up with a consistent framework for making spell targeting work that was easy to implement and shown to be effective and not have edge cases even if it involved changing the RAW.
@Rubiksmoose Yeah. Just positing "it's up to the DM" doesn't really add anything beyond the default answer provided by the rule books which is, "it's up the the DM".
@GcL Mhm. Though it still is useful from the perspective of people who don't have that mindset to begin with. Then again, inevitably the question is: so what way am I, the DM, best set to rule.
Though its difficult to do because so many times it comes down simply to play preference which is something you inherently can't make broad statements about.
Though I do think a fair number of these questions are coming from people who just aren't comfortable enough with the GM hat to truly get the fact that it really is up to them in the end.
I wish Magic Item crafting were better fleshed out. I've had multiple instances in my last few sessions where our Artificer has been thoroughly confused by the Magic Item Crafting Rules because the rules I'm using differ from what one of their DM friends is using, both of us DMing for 5e.
It's a bit of a double-edged sword really. I appreciate the paring down of the ruleset to allow more freedom, but you're right in that there's a trade-off where some people simply don't know how to decide how a thing should work because the rules don't explicitly tell you.
@Yuuki Not all capes wear heroes. <3
Like in my Curse of Strahd campaign I'm running, I'd decided to have the "Ireena" accompanying the party be Strahd in disguise. Although technically I could have just handwaved this because I'm the DM and I make the rules, I actually pored over the rulebooks for hours making sure I could justify the combination of things he was doing to pull it off (especially as the party saw "Strahd" while she was with them). I think I've satisfactorily rules-justified pretty much everything that happened.
@JohnClifford Absolutely. Making decisions on your own and knowing your table are not easy tasks. It is nice to have RAW to lean against if you are unsure or unwilling to make bunches of decisions, but in the end I think a lot of Q&As would certainly never be asked if people felt comfortable making those decisions on their own.
Like, all the rules say is "spend 5*10^X gold pieces value of crafting materials, spend 2*10^(X-1) days to craft an item of Y rarity", but nobody in their right mind actually adjudicates that as "alright, subtract 5000 gold pieces from your inventory, and in 200 days using your Jewelry Kit Proficiency, you'll have your Ring of Protection"
I enjoy making sure I can back up the things I'm deciding, yeah. :) I'm the one in our group who, when we start a new board game, reads the entire rulebook start to finish multiple times. I loooove reading rulebooks. I've read books for games I've never even seen a physical copy of, let alone owned.
The players are really enjoying the campaign as a whole. I don't think my extra research made it any more fun but I enjoyed it regardless.
At least XGtE ties some of that to specific "Rare Crafting Materials" rules, but it's still too open-ended, and that's a problem because if you play with one table and then move to a different table, you're completely at a loss to what options you have (if any!), even though you're supposedly playing the same game.
Basically what I came up with is that he's using a combination of Disguise Self and Alter Self (so that the visual illusion is not only an actual physical change but backed up by the illusion of Ireena's actual outfit). He would have had to reapply the effect every hour, but that's pretty easily justifiable during "bathroom breaks" or hanging behind the party to do it on the fly while they're looking ahead. And obviously Nystul's Magic Aura so he reads humanoid.
I tend to raise my eyebrows at the "D&D is a War Game, stop trying to force it into a narrative/social storytelling framework" argument, but even if we stop treating "War Game" like a pejorative, it would help if D&D were better at.... that.
@Xirema Is table to table portability a thing people expect? I have issues with a couple of players that desire a more video game like experience. The table to table portability seems like something they'd request.
The introduction of Theater of the Mind style combat makes it clear that WotC intends for D&D to move in a more narratively-focused direction rather than being strictly about wargames and grids.
Which I'm a fan of.
I do use a grid in my game but I'm fairly loose with the interpretation of it vis-a-vis positioning and whatnot.
I've been trying to get away from a grid when I can. Trying to find when it's overkill that just slows the action vs when it's satisfying for the players to use tactical positioning
@GcL Well to give a satisfying example from Sunday's game, the party was fighting a group of Vampire Spawn and the dragonborn fighter lined himself up to bull rush one of them and knock it into the ones behind it.
@GcL I mean, I'm presently DMing for a bunch of people whose RPG experience comes almost exclusively from video games, so there's definitely a need to at least emphasize some degree of mechanical rigidity.
@Medix2 Yes. Mainly because the cases where not doing so is important is super super rare and thus it inherently programs players to think of them as one unit. I tend to rule in a way that upholds that expectation.
It's kind of like if you're playing Magic: the Gathering. If you're playing strictly rules-as-written you have to stop for priority passes after every action and keep track of what's on the stack, but most players just skip the fiddly parts of the phases for speed.
(That's not a pithy response, that's intended to be a specific philosophical perspective: "Hits and damage occur at the same time, unless there is a specific mechanic, like the Shield spell, where them not being simultaneous might matter")
Like you don't say "I'm placing Wall of Fog on the stack and passing priority to you." you just say you're summoning a Wall of Fog and your opponents will tell you if they have a response to it or let it happen.
Huh, I always thought of damage as happening after you got hit (certainly with things like shield) but also with things like reactions that trigger "when you are hit" but in no way affect the outcome of the roll.
I guess the follow-up question is if a reaction triggered "when you are hit" (and it's not exceptional like shield) and the damage would reduce you to 0HP, is the reaction not an option because you have 0HP?
@Xirema I find the need for mechanical rigidity chafing. If players want computational precision and completely deterministic results, go play a video game and have a CPU process stuff for them.
@Medix2 A reaction doesn't trigger; you're able to use it in response to its trigger. If you're reduced to 0HP you're unconscious so you can't act any more.
Found a way to summarize my idea: Some reactions trigger "after you are hit by an attack" and some trigger "after you take damage" so I had assumed they were different timings
I'm playing a 5e campaign as a Fighter, planning on becoming an Eldritch Knight.
Thus far (we're still level 1), the DM has been resolving attack rolls against us by telling us the result of the attack roll, and asking us if it hits:
DM: "The goblin takes a swing at you!" (rolls behind DM sc...
