@BESW Incidentally, I believe there was (of course!) a magic item to make sneak attack work on undead in 3.5, but you had to both know about it and afford it, so...
There were at least three ways to make sneak attack work vs undead, but they were all gated in ways that prevented them from being attained as early as it was possible to be rendered ineffective, and they tended to require a lot of sunk costs.
The Weapon Crystal I was thinking of apparently costs 5000 gp, plus an 18000 gp weapon to put it on, making it only remotely feasible by level 8 or so, and only if you violate "don't spend more than half your wealth on one thing".
I had thought that "no more than half" was a rule, but I can't seem to find it in 3.5 DMG or PHB.
I tended not to do that, once I figured out the Christmas Tree magic item philosophy. That is, three +1 items that stack cost much less than one +3 item.
Basically the title. Just wondering what a good amount would be if a creature with a Ring of Water Walking ran across a stream of lava? They don't sink into it and they get completely across so they don't end their turn on top of it.
What abilities can hex target on a white adult dragon? Which would you target?
Is Dragon Breath Ability?
You place a curse on a creature that you can see within range. Until
the spell ends, you deal an extra 1d6 necrotic damage to the target
whenever you hit it with an attack. Also, choo...
@JoelHarmon I also had that in my head as a rule but can't find it in 3.5 or PF. Closest is DMG 199 suggests when creating characters above first level you could restrict them to spending no more than a quarter of their wealth on one item
PF's guidance for chars above first level has a percentage breakdown of recommended spend on various categories of item
@Carcer PF guidance chart also state that you should just spend the remaining money of each category on any category you want... So you might as well do as you like with such wording
(To mitigate - I don't know the exact wording in english, but the french version is baaad )
I know it’s a stupid question, but allow me to explain. I’m a DM with a group of players who all learned how to play at the same time about a year ago, (me included). We got off to a rough start and still don’t know all the rules, but it’s D&D 5e by the way. And we’ve always played in the way tha...
I guess, yeah, but I found it so underwhelming... Like, the technical performance is amazing, the songs are good, I liked the humor... But plot-wise...
Okay, I'm getting older and grumpier, but still...
I really enjoyed it, but after viewing, I didn't find it that good for a Disney
A focus on wayfinding as a praxis for ka mura, ka muri, would've made for a much more compelling character arc, I think. And less of the coconuts and making Māui a dumb jock, please. That wasn't cool.
(No problem! Not everyone has English as their first language, and translation is hard anyway. Try throwing stuff into something like Google Translate, then taking the result and re-translating it back.)
The themes of Moana are largely Disney and NOT Polynesian or Pasifika. Moana's personal journey is very Disney Princess; the depiction of a volcano as evil or bad or corrupted is downright offensive; Māui's portrayal is... well, Māui can be found in the stories and faiths of many different cultures and he's always a bit different, but it's hard to see the film's version in any of them. He's usually physically unimpressive but extremely clever, almost a trickster character.
The visuals are mostly right, though not always treated with appropriate respect (eg Moana's grandmother would probably not have chosen her manta ray malu; in most cultures it would have been bestowed on her by an elder after years of forming a relationship). Also I don't care how nasty your coconut is, only someone like Māui or Gadao could crack it open so casually.
It could branch out into other subjects like the ways Moana doesn't understand the Pasifika relationship with the landscape, but the core conclusion is that the film is about identity and it completely fails to understand that indigenous identities often don't start with the self.
Like, straight up Moana is not a Polynesian story because it's resting on Hero's Journey tropes, and Polynesian stories don't buy into the epistemological assumptions about community and individuals which the Hero's Journey presupposes.
I will say, I've never before seen an animated film where I felt like I knew the environment. Those scenes on the beaches of Moana's home island? The terrain was shockingly familiar.
...There was an unfortunate obesession with coconuts though. That's kind of a stereotype; coconut is important in the Pacific, but taro would realistically be the crop they were most worried about losing.
Oh, and that thing with the ocean. I don't even know where to start with that. Let's just say it's at least both lazy and dumb, and potentially one of the most racist things in the whole film.
When you say "the thing with the ocean", I remember the ocean's tendril putting Moana back on the boat
@JoelHarmon The true stories are way too dark to be sold to children :P
From the top of my head, she feels like walking on blades and needles every step she makes, the prince ditch her for another, her sisters sacrifice their hairs to obtain a knife with which she has to slice the prince's throat and pour his blood on her legs to revert back to mermaid. But since she still loves him, she refuses and dies of despair, dissolving into sea-foam
Yeeeah. They glanced at thousands of years of Pasifika oceanfaring technology and science... and then just shrugged and did the Pocahontas "If you listen with your heart" thing. Replacing knowledge and skill with mystical-connection-to-nature nonsense.
Of course, the whole "accuracy and respect within the fiction" thing is secondary to the real-life problems with an American corporation looking at groups of people America has stolen sovereignty from, suppressed the language and culture of, conducted lethal multi-generational medical experiments on, etc... and pretended that getting a handful of academics to sign off on it and throwing out a couple of scholarships made it okay to copyright and commodify their culture, arts, and faiths.
(No offense meant, I also find it distasteful - I wouldn't consider myself at "offended" on this point - but it seems particularly important to you)
This explains that
user15026
@BESW nods it's one of those things I like because I like Disney style music a lot but it's also very, very broken and it makes me tired that it is broken still. (It's like when preteen me figured out the actual Pocohontas story.)
I'm pretty passionate about any Indigenous exploitation, but the Pacific is my home. Disney is talking over the voices of my friends and family with Moana.
Moana represents Polynesia --and realistically all Pasifika because that distinction is not made in pop culture-- to the world, louder and more effectively than any Polynesian or Pasifika voices.
I don't care much about their accuracy to the source material for the sake of the story, I care about how their choices in making stories change the world.
Changing the ending of the little mermaid or what have you (that's just the easiest example) doesn't talk over an entire culture and make the stories told by not-them about them into the entirety of their rhetoric for anyone from not-there.
user15026
But giant piles of people are going to assume that Moana talks with authority about the people it presents.
Changing the ending to The Little Mermaid did not have an appreciable effect on any vulnerable communities. It's a famous short story by a Danish author. The original story is well known and easily accessible and actual Danish voices are commonly heard in media. It also does not make any claims to authentically represent Danish culture.
user15026
(and they leaned hard in the marketing in their claims that they listened to and researched the cultures they stole from, and that's extra a problem.)
Pasifika voices are rarely heard and easily talked over in popular media, and Moana was specifically and deliberately marketed as representative of Polynesian cultures.
Look up Polynesian dialogues on the "Oceanic Trust" some time, but brace yourself for heated arguments.
True. I was considering the fact that most of the European tales had such ending for the sake of the morale of the story (and it was supposed to be "pedagogic" ) so twisting the ending is twisting the content in itsef. But yeah, since I'm not part of any misrepresented minority, it's hard to actually (and accurately) understand the problem by myself without getting any feedback from someone who actually lives the problem
(Basically, Disney paid a handful of Polynesian academics to do superficial culture consultation on the story --mostly aesthetics-- and uses that to justify their use of a vulnerable culture as "authentic" and approved.)
@Nyakouai It's also important to remember that Polynesians are not monolithic. There's a lot of dialogue about the best praxis for engaging with exploitation. It's a conversation that every vulnerable community, especially Indigenous ones, is having, and a lot of the time it's a big argument.
user15026
@BESW :that's one of the best bits but the whole thing is just so.....*emphatic handflapping*
(And yes, it's very easy to get defensive of criticism of the few characters of any given under-represented group who are present in fiction, but stereotypical, demeaning, or otherising depictions of low-profile peoples are arguably about as harmful as a lack of portrayal.)
I'm not a member of any such group so it'd be awkward for me to try to speak for them, but if you're interested in such debates I might suggest looking at the lively debates around Native American roles in film which the Lone Ranger film rekindled within that demographic. There are some very eloquent folks taking a variety of stances.
@Nyakouai To address this point more specifically: I think it's really good to adapt and revise old stories, to challenge them, to modify them for new media or new social contexts or new audiences. But some stories aren't just anyone's to do that with--or to do anything at all with. Not everyone can tell every story.
I know, it's a difficult concept for a lot of people to wrap their brains around because we've been fed a very narrow paradigm about what "free speech" and "permission" can mean.
I get that modifying european lore is most probably a lot less harmful than appropriating Polynesian culture, as one has been vastly more represented than the other, so the impact will be vastly different
And I totally agree than doing so for the purpose of sweet heaps of entertainment money for the shareholders is completely wrong
But it does sound a bit absolute, and I always think you should weight the intent
Do I have been stealing your pie for three hundred years? Am I blocking you from (sorry, do not know the expression, but pretty sure I get the meaning)?
But more specifically, The Little Mermaid is one guy's story. Māui, and the Long Pause, and wayfinding... these aren't just stories. They're knowledge and faith that are preserved through rituals of telling.
What I don't like with the statement "Not everyone can tell every story", is that while it does prevent megacorporations (that, on a side-note, I find basically wrong to reduce to the culture they sprouted from in general) to just reap everything they see even in the neighbours garden...
..., it also seems to say "Hey, this person took a genuine interest in X's culture and wants to learn more, and share their enthousiasm around, but basically, they can not do so because they weren't born from the right ethnicity"
Back on "...this is at the level of cultures interacting with each other", Disney is not every westerner, nor even a western culture in itself. You just have to look at the backlash they're getting around China recently, or other related matters
There are systems to preserve and pass on knowledge and prevent harm. Because those systems look like "telling stories" to Western eyes, and our ideas about stories are very informal, we tend to ignore or devalue or entirely miss those structures.
That's great, and it's totally okay to say on social media "I helped somebody today" or "I saw a really cute couple." But very often they'll post pictures, and provide personal details, about the other people involved.
Now they're telling somebody else's story that was not theirs to tell.
They were part of the story, but they cannot publicly share everything about it without violating peoples' privacy and putting them at risk.
Not everyone can tell every story even if you participated in it.
Often I'm part of stories that aren't mine to tell. How much moreso when those stories are the property of a people that haven't welcomed me? And how much more than that when the people who do welcome me have been engaged in systematically attempting to destroy those stories for centuries?
One of the most celebrated local artists here is a mainlander who didn't come to Guam until she was an adult. But she's done the work and is welcomed by the Indigenous community and they are happy for her to incorporate their sacred concepts into her work.
I would not feel comfortable using those sacred concepts in my art unless invited to by an Indigenous client because I don't feel like it's my place to say whether I've done the work yet.
Now, I totally understand that. I won't nitpick on your example (as the nitpick woudn't be relevant to the main subject and we could write books about all the nuances and scenarios). When I read your first statement, "Not everyone can tell every story" it does sounded like sharing it
From what you say, I (think I) understand you were more referring to "Sharing it and claiming you have authority in the matter"
I could just tell you the scenario of "Little bobby shared the bedtime story he reads to his classmates" and you would comeback with "Disney made a shitton of money by ripping of bit of culture from the Pacific islands people"
Just saying your first statement sounded to me as absolute and a bit over-generalizing, and that's from where the misunderstanding comes from
Stories are really important, and the way we tell them and the way we share them should never be taken lightly. I think everybody in this room understands that on some level: we're here because collaborative storytelling is a shared hobby.
On the other hand, one of my friends wept happy tears in Moana because it was the first time she'd ever seen her homeland depicted with care in a big budget film, the taro and pōhaku and the way the kahakai undercuts the grass where the coconut tree holds the soil.
Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern is a collection of small games for groups of three or more players. Each game lets you, a retired adventurer, play out different parts of running a tavern and settling down in a town together with your old adventuring party.
@GcL . My goal was for those not wanting to look at subjective answers through the existing lens of support methodology to propose an alternate methodology.
But that alternate methodology appears to be primarily opinion-based currently (and not really voiced.)
Yeah, I would agree with your observation that there see some sort of hesitancy to discuss this on Meta which I don't fully understand. I get that people don't want to codify a hard rule around that, but that's not the primary purpose of Meta.
@Rubiksmoose Nor have I been asking for a hard rule. Just that we do have existing description of how to back up and that there is currently pushback on it, but nothing is being added as to what to add to it. Just that it shouldn't have to be followed.
@NautArch An alternate solution. That's a different question. I can't tell you how to bake a great cake, but I can tell you when a cake tastes bad. I do not like challenges along the lines of, "well come up with something better." Especially when the question is, "how does this taste?"
@NautArch I assume most answers are backed by the writers experiences and knowledge.
@GcL And I'm not comfortable with assuming that. I can also assume rules answers are supported by rules even when they aren't listed. But that would probably be wrong or at least something we wouldn't want.
If it's no longer about citing support, then we're just a forum that votes on answers by popularity. Which I guess is fine, but that seems different than how I'd seen the stack.
@Gwideon I was very cautious about homebrew in my D&D days, but now I use systems where every person at the table is expected to be helping each other make up cool new mechanics, and the system helps make that easy and effective.
@NautArch I definitely hear that. I think there is some hesitance around the fact that people worry that guidance on Meta will be "weaponized" so to speak. And I can actually see that concern (though I don't think it should prevent us from talking about stuff).
@NautArch What would you estimate the rate of writers that have responded to your prompting by explicitly adding attestation of experience into their answer?
@GcL I want to say it's fairly good, but I really have no metric. I can say that there have been times where it's been added and I htink the answer has improved because of it and I"ve left a comment thanking.
@NautArch Given that experience, more often than not the writer does have experience to back up the answer even if they didn't put it in the first place. I think that aligns with my assumption that most do have experience and knowledge to back it up.
@NautArch Are you sure that it's anger they're feeling. I know it's not anger I feel when it happens to me.
Either way, my belief was that this wasn't a site that just presented opinions for folks to vote on. That we had a higher standard here. Maybe we don't, and that's okay. But if that's the case, it seems like the previous meta discussions on good subjective support or unnecessary and misleading.
Generally you can gauge homebrew by asking these questions: - What is it trying to achieve? - How does it try to achieve that? - What's the cost, in terms of complexity and to the degree it could break other parts of the game?
@GcL So what is a way to make a good subjective answer without doing so? Just presenting the idea and hoping that others understand that you're coming from experience and not just generating an idea?
People like to upvote good ideas regardless of anything else. That doesn't mean it was actually a good answer for the stack (or does it?)
But that does mean we are an idea generation site and the votes help determine what ideas seem good.
okay so I made a ring called the ring of the sun walker. It had a curse of binding on it meaning it couldn't be removed. it kinda turned the user into a semi vampire. They gained +5 strength and a life stealing bite attack that did 1d4 damage.
ANd I think that's okay, it's just not what I thought we required.
@MikeQ Sure! I've never said anecdotal is the only way to support. But most of the time an idea is presented without any support, there also isn't a series of logical arguments to back it up. It's just an idea.
In the consulting world, it's never enough to say "I've got lots of experience, so you should do X". There's always testing to prove it.
@GcL And i've said those answers are totally unsupported. Not even by logic. Yeah, they're fun and useful - but I don't think it's a 'good answer' by our standards as I understand them.
I did not support them with logic or anything else.
But yeah, they're good and fun. But they lie 100% in the realm of idea generation.
@NautArch I don't think that is the case. I think that you have a collection of experience and knowledge that you draw upon implicitly. It's better than a random walk.
@NautArch I'm saying supporting answers in GSBS fashion is a way to write a good answer. I don't think answers that aren't explicitly supported in that way are unsupported.
@Gwideon What sort of urges/lashing out? Is the party okay with feeding on blood? Is society?
@GcL Then how are they supported? It seems like you're saying that we can and should always make the assumption that an idea presented is supported. But then how do you differentiate between idea generation and that? Just whether or not you happen to like the idea?
@Gwideon That's tough to do. Urges and lashing out might be reducing the agency of the player running the character. The player should still choose... are there consequences for not lashing out?
@NautArch I assume that writers are drawing from their knowledge and experiences. How to tell if an answer is as useful as spaghetti on the wall is a different question. One approach might be to identify the hallmarks of spit balling.
They know the party member and were friends before they received the item. Also I leave the roleplay aspects of the item mostly to the player. also um they become really obvious to any creature with enhanced senses and vampires and will generally be in a dis favorable position if some one notices the physical aspects of her transformation.
@MikeQ I definitely didn't explain why things should work in my make combat more cinematically interesting answer :) I just presented a bunch of ideas.
@GcL I spitballed that answer ^
Being eloquent about an idea doesn't make it a supported idea.
@NautArch That is your perception of it, but that is not mine based on the answer. An experienced lab tech might see themselves as "throwing an answer out there", but more often than not, it's going to save a lot of time and wasted material.
@NautArch I don't have a problem with that. Yes. Your perception of what you did might not match mine. To you, it might have been easy and come so naturally you don't assign much value to it. On the other hand, I might see it as something that I could only aspire to do.
@Gwideon The thing about vampirism/lycanthropy is that it's very attractive for a player and group. It's a lot of bonuses. But they really do need to be heavily balanced by the roleplay consequences both in party and out. Just because you knew someone was good, doesn't mean you still think they after they do something awful (and continue to do it.)
The rules on unseen attackers and targets state:
If you are hidden — both unseen and unheard — when you make an attack, you give away your location when the attack hits or misses.
Does this mean enemies attacking the hidden creature no longer have disadvantage, as described in the preceding...
On the other hand, a well researches and supported answer of a neophyte might have all the work and good intentions invested in it... and still be a terrible suggestion.
@GcL I think that's difference here. Either we advocate for idea generation of good ideas, or we advocate for supporting our ideas. I guess it can be both, but that seems be at odds with what I thought was a goal for clearly supported answers.
they were a half elf bard and they needed a more consistent source of healing (as the cleric was sometimes a bit of a jerk) and she needed some help with hitting her melee weapon attacks and with damage in general
@NautArch I'd keep GSBS around as a guide for writing good answers. There are obviously other ways of getting good answers and I would find it interesting to see more guides on some of those other ways. Or maybe just identifying the hallmarks of other good answers.
My current favorite is prime dice's "I've been playing for X years, and I wouldn't try this"
@Gwideon I mean, it's your table and if everyone is happy, then it works. But +5 STR is HUGE. Recovering HP on attacks is HUGE. Those are big benefits without any downside. It's definitely a Legendary level item.
@GcL FWIW, GSBS as a principle is not in danger of going away. It is that core concept that allows us to exist as an SE site. And it's a site-wide principle, not even something we could rightly ignore if we wanted.
How that principle is interpreted and applied, of course, is more than fair game.
@GcL Identifying the hallmarks of other good answers is exactly what I'm asking about. If the current GSBS principles aren't always applicable, it would be very helpful to our community to understand the other options. But that's what is being refused.
@Rubiksmoose Can you clarify if those are guidelines, policy, or something else?
Because I think that determination matters in this context.
@NautArch I don't make assumptions about what meta is actually for. I think if you're asking the question, "what are some ways aside from GSBS that create good answers?" is a tall order.
@Gwideon It's a powerful item. If you want that, ok. Party level aside, there are questions of how the item can be exploited, and how it can backfire (on the game)
@goodguy5 I run those situations as the character doesn't know if they attacked the wrong spot or just missed. Do it on the other side too... have NPCs with the same problems when the players are invisible or hidden.
@Gwideon It's also a great storytelling item. I would strongly recommend utilizing more in RP opportunities where it puts the party at a disadvantage (or even foments distrust amongst the party)
@PierreCathé @goodguy5 Very true, but in this case with the creature actively hidden, the description of the weapon/spell not impacting makes more sense. THere's a lot of power in being hiddinvisible.
@GcL And honestly, it made me take a harder stance that I normally would have.
Because that seemed to be what the community and moderators at the time were directing.
@NautArch My personal thought is that GSBS is policy if I had to put a label on it (and I'm not entirely sure it is helpful to do so), and that GSBS would encourage us to back up subjective posts. I think a lot of the disagreement here is what degree of explicitness/type of support counts to satisfy that.
@goodguy5 Then it's up to you. If you want to indicate that attacking the unseen creature is a good idea, then you could describe that maybe they hear something shuffling around and dodging in that space. Other DM styles may simply say that the fighter observes nothing. Both approaches are valid.
@Rubiksmoose Well, it seems like there is a vocal group that doesn't believe you need to explicitly support subjective answers. That thes upport is implicit from experience.
@goodguy5 This is also why AOE attacks are good against invisibility. Onthe other hand, you do kinda want to help a character who guessed right from all the possible locations :)
Basically the title. Just wondering what a good amount would be if a creature with a Ring of Water Walking ran across a stream of lava? They don't sink into it and they get completely across so they don't end their turn on top of it.
The rules on unseen attackers and targets state:
If you are hidden — both unseen and unheard — when you make an attack, you give away your location when the attack hits or misses.
Does this mean enemies attacking the hidden creature no longer have disadvantage, as described in the preceding...
