TRPG General Chat

Xirema

20:00

@NautArch Evidence for me would be something to the effect of "player characters cannot benefit from this feature" or "PotC does not permit the variant features of Pseudodragons, Imps, Quasits, etc." or something else like that. Crawford's Tweet does do that, but tweets aren't rules. ;)

CoughCoughDragonsBreathCoughCough

@NautArch I am willing to concede it is a DM's call, on the basis that a DM can decide whether Pseudodragons even have that feature in their setting at all, hence being a "variant".

GcL

Rules are rules. If you don't like em or want different ones, " Ask your DM " is an answer that shows up often on this stack.

NautArch

Ok, we've said our piece. If the variant is working for you and your table, that all is good.

But again, the DM can with the variant remove it permanently from you.

GcL

What kind of variant table? If it's actually a mimic, I don't like it.

3

Xirema

@NautArch Which are consequences I'm willing to accept.

GcL

You laugh. The DM laughs. The table laughs. Everyone rolls initiative.

Consequences shmonsequences. Just don't buy dice made out of precious materials and the table mimic won't eat them!

NautArch

20:03

@Xirema Does your DM understand that?

Yuuki

Why is everyone's first move to attack the mimic table? You've already been sitting at it for a few hours, it's clearly not aggressive.

Xirema

@NautArch (Although technically the Find Familiar spell does allow you to permanently dismiss a familiar, and the "changing forms" part only applies if you already have a familiar when you cast the spell)

GcL

Plot twist. Xirema is the DM and he's losing an arguement with himself dun dunnn dunnnn!

NautArch

@Xirema The variant is more specific. It can remove it's bond at any time on it's own.

Xirema

@GcL I am Player and DM at two separate tables...

NautArch

20:04

And if I'm your DM and you're trying to get all the benefits without the downsides, I wouldn't be as favorable.

Xirema

@NautArch Right, but then you'd just summon a completely different spirit.

GcL

@Xirema You've got two roles at two tables? That's like... four roles! That's like 8 times the number of rolls!

NautArch

@Xirema See above. There are trade-offs. This is the trade-off with the variant.

Xirema

(I only noticed that part like two minutes ago)

GcL

@NautArch You know,.... you never hear much about "trade-ons". I think we should spend some time considering those.

Xirema

20:06

@NautArch Yep. Any Pseudodragon you summon with that feature could end its service on its own terms. That could be really bad if it happens in the middle of an important fight.

@GcL The way the table I'm DMing at is going, there's pretty good odds the entire party ends up with Familiars at one point or another.

Yuuki

~We all need something to cast-Find-Familiar on~

hmm doesn't quite roll off the tongue

Xirema

The paladin wants to go the same route I took in my other group of eventually taking a few warlock levels. Been hypothesizing ways to integrate that into the long-term campaign plans.

Oh. Speaking of.

Yuuki

Paladin-warlock is one of those multiclasses that I feel was by design. It works really well both mechanically and narratively.

Hot RPG Questions

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Q: True Polymorph, Dragon Change Shape, and True Sight interaction

So what happens if one of my PC's casts True Polymorph to turn into an adult gold dragon, concentrates on the spell for the full hour to make it permanent, then uses the the dragons Change Shape feature to turn into some random humanoid. Would True Sight see only the original form of the PC, only...

Xirema

The Artificer at my DM!Table has an ability I homebrewed for her that allows her to create an "Alchemical Surge" potion once a day, which when consumed (or hurled at an enemy with extreme prejudice) produces a random alchemical effect. To generate the table I just borrowed the Wild Magic Surge table, but I've been having to swap out some of the entries because some of them are Sorcerer-specific and don't work when applied as a Potion Effect.

Anyone got any good Wild Magic effects that they wish were on the Wild Magic Surge table?

Yuuki

20:14

Sep 10 at 17:40, by Yuuki

> <Weapon> of the Dice-pocalypse. On a hit, roll 1d20. Roll this many damage dice. Discard the result.

> On a ~~hit~~ Wild Surge, roll 1d20. Roll this many ~~damage dice~~ d20s. Roll this many d12s. Roll this many d10s. Roll this many d8s. Roll this many d6s. Roll this many d4s. Flip this many coins. Discard the result.

Upper_Case

I am really pulling downvotes today

Xirema

Just to give context, I already added "mile-radius Anti-Magic Field" to the table, because that absence from the Wild Magic table is easily WotC's most egregious mistake in 5e.

Powerdork

@Xirema What? Mile-radius antimagic field is an egregious mistake in itself.

Xirema

@Powerdork For cowards!

Look, as a DM, if you can't handle your entire campaign plans being upended by a random 1% chance you had no ability to control, you really have only yourself to blame.

@Yuuki I do like the idea of spamming a bunch of die rolls onto the roll20 app, and then explaining nothing about why I made them or what their effect is....

ACuriousMind

DMs just rolling dice, then smiling smugly at the players without saying anything is something of a trope already, isn't it? You don't need Wild Magic for that!

V2Blast

20:22

@Xirema lol

trogdor

@Yuuki or a bit of chlorine XD either way

even though that would be an extremely bad idea if it weren't a video game

Xirema

(I am probably going to dial it back from 1 mile. The original text reads "An Antimagic Field with a radius of one mile appears at your location. The radius shrinks by 1 foot every round". Which I love as a Wild Magic Effect, but as a potion effect feels a bit off. I guess I could just have it follow the player around, but....)

Yuuki

@trogdor I don't think Chlorine creates Sterile Atmosphere.

You get rid of any germs but your food will still decay.

Whereas you can store all your food in unpowered ration boxes in a CO2 pit and it'll never rot.

trogdor

oh interesting

Yuuki

Yeah, I have one placed right below my storage right now at the bottom of my base as a pantry of sorts.

Xirema

20:26

@Yuuki Well, until the anaerobic bacteria get a hold of it...

But it does take way longer than normal bacteria.

Yuuki

All the CO2 produced should drift down into the pantry and I have a carbon skimmer set up in the kitchen to prevent overflow.

trogdor

cool

Yuuki

I'm working on getting a coal generator room set up next to the pantry as well for more CO2 production.

trogdor

I'm apparntly wasting power on those two refrigerators then xD

Upper_Case

@Yuuki How passive is the whole setup, once you have it up and running?

Yuuki

20:27

Also, look into ranching to get access to small amounts of refined metal and plastic without investing a lot of time into building refinery setups and cooling.

@Upper_Case The only dupe interaction it uses right now is providing coal for the generators and retrieving ingredients from the pantry.

I'm sure I can automate coal supply for the generators although I haven't looked very far into it.

trogdor

oh I know how to get refined metal from it but plastic would be nice

Yuuki

@trogdor Tame some dreckos, put farm tiles in the drecko room and plant mealwood.

They'll eventually produce glossy drecko eggs.

Make sure you have a good amount of hydrogen in the room as well.

trogdor

ah

Upper_Case

@Yuuki That's pretty interesting! I won't pester you after this, but what concentration of CO2 are you aiming for in the chamber, and what is the leakage/required replenishment rate like?

trogdor

that will be a slight pain but it also still sounds better than getting oil right now

Yuuki

20:32

@Upper_Case Concentration doesn't really matter as long as CO2 is the only gas in the pantry.

trogdor

which it probably will be too

Yuuki

Gas management is literally just me putting an airflow tile on the roof of the pantry.

trogdor

as long as you don't drop chlorine in there

Yuuki

@trogdor You can get oil from ranching too.

trogdor

yeah but all I want oil for is plastic

at least right now

Yuuki

20:33

Crude and petroleum are pretty good heat transfer mediums, IIRC.

I'm looking to harness a natural gas geyser to produce power and crude oil.

Just need to reach it and analyze it so I can run the numbers on how much stuff I need.

Upper_Case

@Yuuki True, but straight-up production of CO2 can be tricky, so I wondered if there were more considerations. But apparently not! Cool project, good luck on the next phases

Yuuki

Pipe the natural gas to a generator, it produces polluted water and CO2. I can run the polluted water to pincha pepper plants (since it comes out hot and the peppers like hot water) and the CO2 to a slickster ranch.

The slickers will breathe in the CO2 and produce crude oil.

trogdor

I've got a natural gas geyser already but I have it hooked up for power atm

if I can produce crude from it that would actually be pretty useful too

I didn't realize you could do that either XD

Yuuki

Mine's inside of a slime biome so I need to do some careful mining to make sure I don't get slimelung everywhere.

trogdor

yep

always have trouble with that

but I've gotten pretty good at cleaning that stuff up too

Yuuki

20:37

I also have a cold slush geyser that I'm currently using for base cooling although once I get my natural gas geyser setup going, I think I'm going to convert it to a sleet wheat production farm.

trogdor

oh I wish it had cool slush this time

Yuuki

Sleet wheat + pincha pepper = yum yum pepper bread

trogdor

so far I've found 3 different sources of water but they all produce a lot of heat

Yuuki

There's a couple ways to deal with those. I'm trying to decide between oxygen production or recouping some power from refining via steam turbine.

You can delete some of the heat from cool steam events by piping the water into an electrolyzer and then pumping the hot hydrogen in a hydrogen generator.

trogdor

there is a cool steam vent close that I didn't tap

Yuuki

20:41

As for the oxygen, I'm currently using it for atmo suits, because I think oxygen temps doesn't matter for atmo suits, and storing the excess until I can either send it to liquid oxygen production or vent it to space.

trogdor

heat is definitely the thing I have the most trouble managing

Yuuki

That's how you know you're in the mid-game.

Before that, you're managing food/water/oxygen production.

Mid/late-game is all about heat management.

trogdor

yep

heat indirectly killed all my bases so far except for the current one

Yuuki

Right now, my refinery is sitting inside of a slime biome that I cleared right below a frozen biome. Using the frozen biome for cooling but that's a temporary solution that I'm going to need to fix fast.

trogdor

Seems useful

Yuuki

20:47

I have to decide whether to dig up to space to get access to space materials or dig down to magma to get access to easier power for fuel heat deletion machines.

ugh now i just remember that the slime biome that i spent so much time carefully clearing by placing a bridge of mesh tiles to drop the polluted water into one big pool has now been contaminated by food poisoning because some stupid dupes dug in dumb ways and they peed into the pool

trogdor

Ugh

I hate when they trap themselves and do that

Yuuki

Now I need to figure out how to clean that water without heating it a lot. I suppose I could build a second big reservoir and pipe the water through a chlorine room.

trogdor

It slows down my planning a lot when I have to fix it

Or one of them dies, which happened to my current base

A pretty promising dupe too :/

Yuuki

I actually killed one of my dupes on purpose. I got them originally because I spent ten printing pod cycles or something looking for a suitable ranching dupe and I settled for one with narcolepsy because I was getting annoyed. Of course, the next printing pod cycle provided me with a much better ranching dupe.

So I sent the poor bugger into a caustic biome to dig some stuff and turned off his door permissions behind him.

I've since learned not to put my water supply at the bottom of my base.

trogdor

Yeah

I don't do that anymore either

Yuuki

20:58

> Entombed (6)

trogdor

ugh

Yuuki

Six dupes stuck their heads in one block.

trogdor

it's too real

Xirema

21:47

I thought that art style looked familiar, it's the same people who made Don't Starve.

trogdor

yes

Yuuki

And Guacamelee.

trogdor

and Shank and a bunch of other games

Yuuki

Did they do Mark of the Ninja?

I want to say that's also Klei.

Xirema

Don't Starve is the only one I knew about. XD

trogdor

21:51

I think they did

I've not played it but I think I've seen it in a Klei sale

Don't Starve might be their most well known game

besides maybe Guacamelee

Yuuki

For a brief period, it was Mark of the Ninja because it was just a fantastic stealth side-scroller.

Probably the best I've played in years.

V2Blast

22:20

@Xirema I had to scroll back a bit. Is this game called Oxygen Not Included?

Yuuki

@V2Blast Yes.

V2Blast

cool cool, will have to check it out :)

NautArch

@V2Blast might want to check out the comments on the harpoon question. Getting a little heated.

V2Blast

will take a look

Ryan

yeah well I'm tired of dealing with trolls in every part of SE when all I try to do is help people

NautArch

22:30

@Ryan For what it's worth, I wasn't trying to troll and you added the detail I was asking for.

V2Blast

@Ryan None of that seemed to be trolling, though Oblivious Sage's reply didn't really clarify the issue. Knowing which "harpoons" you're talking about is indeed helpful to answer the question, and I appreciate that you edited the detail in.

NautArch

Haven't read that module, but is it just NPCs that use them normally?

Ryan

Its PCs that use them

NautArch

Hmm, are they like siege weapons?

Or is it a machine mounted merrow harpoon?

Ryan

there are 10 harpoons and a place to fling them

each war machine requires a crew. One on each crew is Harpoon Flinger. 10 harpoons, 3/4 cover

V2Blast

22:36

@Ryan hope you don't mind, I edited in an example into your post

NautArch

@Ryan Hmm, so are harpoons the ammunition and the flinger the weapon?

Ryan

does it make any difference to my question?

the answer seems to be no and none of this changes that

NautArch

Okay, I'll back off. I was just interested and trying to understand.

Ryan

thats fine, just say that

theres a difference between curiosity and required information for a question

to answer you - i have no idea it just says what i told you more or less

i cant give verbatim because thats not allowed for copyright here

V2Blast

22:58

@Ryan Generally short quotes seem fine, as long as you're only quoting what's needed/helpful and not whole passages of text.

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23:36

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Ryan

@V2Blast your wording is not accurate. Im editing it to be correct

V2Blast

go for it :)

Ryan

er actually i guess it is

V2Blast

lol

Ryan

:)

pretty sure instead of doing a GOO Warlock I'm going to do a Ranger. Its another class I've been wanting to play and think this is a great setting to actually use their abilities

NautArch

23:40

@Ryan are there stats for the flingers (HP/AC?) Or just that it takes a crew to use?

Ryan

shooting things across the wasteland

@NautArch RAW the vehicles have damage thresholds and mishap thresholds. The mishap thresholds can cause a weapon malfunction among other things

but as far as targeting the weapons - no there is nothing for that

NautArch

@Ryan weird. does it define 'crew'?

Ryan

I think Crew is already defined in the DMG which I dont have

I know my DM deliberately did some boat on boat combat the last few games to practice

Whats really scary is the fuel to use the infernal war machines

its GGPO to Paladins

it uses Soul Coins and any soul used is gone forever while "their screams of anguish audible out to a range of 60 feet"

NautArch

@Ryan I think it's defined in Avernus: dndbeyond.com/marketplace/source/…

DMG doesn't cover it (I don't think)

Ryan

I have the book in front of me

NautArch

23:45

not sure where it is, just have the link dndbeyond link :(

Ryan

i dont think it is. It would be in the Infernal War Machines section and theres nothing really defining Crew

all it really says is "An infernal war machine doesn't have actions of its own. It relies on crew to occupy stations and use their actions to operate the vehicle's various functions."

which I believe is the same as boats

but here's another crazy weapon for you

NautArch

GIven that it takes a crew to use, I think it's pretty clear a single character's mechanics wouldn't influence it.

Ryan

Chomper: A target reduced to 0 hit points by this damage is ground to bits and spit out through pipes on both sides. Any nonmagical items the target was wearing or carrying is also destroyed

NautArch

but there should be a section on action stations and crew

Ryan

Harpoon Flinger's crew is 1 not like 3 people

NautArch

23:49

@Ryan oh! I was reading that as 1 crew, not crew of 1!

Ryan

ah I see how that could be taken. I think its Crew of 1 basically

NautArch

that would make sense, especially given it's damage.

Ryan

so I think Sharpshooter would definitely get the first 2 abilities was just trying to see if there's a way to get the -5/+10 part

debating between Wood Elf or Variant Human

NautArch

wood elf is always a winner for rangers

but feats are the bees knees

Ryan

pretty much comes down to do I want Sharpshooter at level 1 or level 4

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NautArch

and is darkvision important in your campaign?

Xirema

@V2Blast Yes, and reading them talking about it makes me really want to play it.

Ryan

@NautArch this for me? like Elven Darkvision?

eh I guess, i never really worry about that

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