TRPG General Chat

V2Blast

00:40

@Xirema To be honest, I think it just needs to be clear that the +1/2/3 magic bonus that applies to both attack and damage rolls is only true for that one kind of magic weapon (and a few others that specifically say so in their description).

You could say something like "Some magic items grant bonuses to attack rolls, damage rolls, or both (depending on the item). For example, a weapon, +1 grants a +1 bonus to both attack and damage rolls for that weapon."

@YuvrajSingh... Welcome! Glad to have you :) Let us know if you have any questions, or just feel free to hang about and chat :)

Xirema

01:07

@V2Blast Alright, I went with wording that was kind of similar to that.

KorvinStarmast

01:45

@Medix2 how to roll a d54. 3d6, each a different color.

d9 and d6 is what you ens up with.

For the d9, you roll 2d6, one tells you if you are 1-3, 4-6, or 7-9, the other one tells you if you are 1, 2, or 3 inside hose three ranges. Third die is d6: which range of 9 are you in? First, second third, etc.

Example. d9 gives you a 7 result. You roll a 1 on the third d6. Your result is 7. If you had rolled a 4 on d6, your result is 34.

(27+7)

numbers 1-54 gave equal probability

d7

d8

Dice Service

7

KorvinStarmast

heh, that's funny, what just happened there

V2Blast

03:10

@Xirema Looks good :)

Medix2

05:37

@KorvinStarmast So it's 9*(1d6-1) + d9 ?

Where I simulated a d9 as 3*((1d6-1)/2)+(1d6+1)/2 (rounding down) you've used, well, the exact same thing?

Well, I guess mine actually gets you 0, 3, or 6 and then adds 1, 2, or 3 to that result.

Though that does give me a great way to explain/conceptualize it all, thank you!

Hot RPG Questions

09:07

5

Q: Can a Flameskull's spells be Counterspelled?

Counterspell requires the following: [a reaction], which you take when you see a creature within 60 feet of you casting a spell The Flameskull's spellcasting block reads the following: [The Flameskull] requires no somatic or material components to cast its spells. If the Flameskull re...

Medix2

11:38

I've just noticed both the resistance and damage-resistance tags exist. I'm just a bit confused as to why?

vicky_molokh

13:54

@Medix2 Because Resistance Rolls and the effects of DR on damage are radically different?

Suppose a character has Resistant (Heat) +3 and Damage Resistance (Heat Only -20ish%) 3.

Such a character would:
- add 6 to resist heat-based non-Malediction Afflictions;
- add 3 to resist heat-based Malediction and otherwise DR-ignoring Afflictions;
- subtract 3 from heat-based Innate Attacks;
- add 3 to resist effects that are somehow defined as heat-based or have a heat Power Source, even if they're neither Afflictions nor IAs, but for some reason come with a Resistance roll (e.g. Magic magic, Realm magic and RPM spells).

KorvinStarmast

@Medix2 I wasn't thinking math, I was thinking dice, but I think you got that right. :)

Medix2

14:18

@vicky_molokh Just realize there are /multiple/ 5e-dnd questions tagged with one or the other and not both despite the questions all talking about the very same mechanic

@vicky_molokh Not every system is gonna have resistance rolls (I don't think most do)

Well, apparently [damage-resistance] is meant specifically for DnD so there's just a lot of incorrectly tagged questions

Here's a search result for an example

Yeah I probably should've just checked the tag descriptions since apparently [damage-resistance] is only for DnD

Though it's been used for GURPS, Pathfinder, Star Wars, and Savage Worlds... I think I'll ask about a big retagging on Meta

vicky_molokh

14:37

@Medix2 Tags are not supposed to be monopolised like that. It's ground for editing the tag description, not expelling all other systems that have as much right to the term as the dragon one.

Medix2

@vicky_molokh Yes, exactly. Hence why I'd open a Meta on what should be done. Changing tags around, changing descriptions or something else

Hot RPG Questions

14:58

4

Q: Can the Purify Food and Drink spell make ocean/sea water drinkable?

As the title says, can the spell purify food and drink make ocean water clean and drinkable? The spell says: All nonmagical food and drink within a 5-foot-radius sphere centered on a point of your choice within range is purified and rendered free of poison and disease. Some in my group say...

dnd-5e spells food-and-drink

Yuvraj Singh...

How do I improve my chess skills, I learned chess recently.

I learned chess myself only.

J. Wagner

not sure why that question is in the RPG SE lol, but just keep playing against other people/computers and try different methods of attack/defense out until you understand the game. You will lose a lot at first learning new methods

Medix2

The hardest thing to improve is depth (the number of turns ahead you think). It improves with time, but has greayly varying difficulty for different people

J. Wagner

Yep, you will lose a lot before you figure that out

having to think about if your guy moves here, they can do these several moves in response, then you think in those terms for 4 or 5 moves ahead within one turn. Its mentally exhausting sometimes lol

Yuvraj Singh...

Thanks.

Can we discuss general thing here.

kviiri

15:16

Well, this is the RPG chat, and while we're generally not strict about being on-topic for short conversations, you might have more interested company over in a chat room devoted to chess.

Happy solstice, by the way!

I can practically feel Springtime creeping unto me

J. Wagner

So for an alchemist subclass called Mad Scientist i am thinking it, i want it to be similar to a spellcaster class, maybe Eldritch Knight, but your "prepared spells" are instead created potions/draughts. For instance there could be a potion of fireball, and you throw the bottle to cast the spell

How would you handle the spell casting mechanic

as in if i throw the bottle to an area, would it just cast the spell at that location only and whatever is in the AOE is hit? Or if its targeted, it hits the closest creature to it? I am having trouble figuring that out

trying to make it unique to throwing bottles with made magical spells inside (think lightning in a bottle)

Someone_Evil

15:32

How large is splat? Single creature and attack is viable. Beyond that you're looking at saves

kviiri

Hmm, I recall thinking about alchemy stuff before. We're talking about DnD 5e, I assume?

J. Wagner

yes

5e

what is "splat" in this context?

Someone_Evil

What is the radius of the effect eminiating from the bottle (once broken)?

J. Wagner

it would depend on the spell, snollics (however you spell it) snowball is a 5' radius, so the bottle breaking would cast it in that radius

Someone_Evil

Have you looked at the Alchemist subclass for the Artificer?

J. Wagner

15:34

i have not, let me pull it up real quick

i dont think that quite fits this, that is still a variation of the Artificer and has mostly elements around that with Alchemy flavor

i have 4 subclasses for Alchemist in mind, this one was the most complicated mechanics one

kviiri

My first instinct, since balancing stuff can be a real pain for DnD, would be for potions to be the "trappings" while the spells themselves work as before. If that doesn't work for you, I think it's still a good place to start thinking what exactly needs to be different for that to feel different enough.

J. Wagner

trappings

?

kviiri

@J.Wagner Heh, sorry... it's a Savage Worlds thing. (I don't even like SW, haha)

Basically Savage Worlds has a bunch of different spellcaster types. Religious, arcane, magitech, etc. The powers are composed of the base power which is the same for all kinds of spellcasters or "spellcasters" and "trappings" are the visuals that accompany it

Carcer

@kviiri english idiomatic, a "trapping" is an ornamental covering or harness for a horse

kviiri

Eg. in this case, the trappings of a Fireball could be a hurled magical blast of fire for a Sorcerer, and a thrown explosive flask for an Alchemist, but it'd work mechanically the same for both.

@Carcer I wasn't aware of the second meaning :P

But yeah, I can assume it's a word non-native English speakers don't know that often

I think I learned it from SW

J. Wagner

15:40

i know the mechanic i want is to throw a bottle and the spell is cast from that bottle. I guess I could just do the obvious and you throw to hit as a ranged attack, if its single target it acts as normal, if you throw an AOE spell you aim at a block near someone

Someone_Evil

If the bottle is going to explode with a 30ft radius, you don't need to hit your target very accuratly

J. Wagner

i like that trappings idea, my only hesitation is distance lol. Imagine throwing a bottle 120' accurately

Carcer

@J.Wagner bottle rockets

pshooo

J. Wagner

but i guess that would just fall into the "hey its a game" situation

Someone_Evil

I'm sure one can imagine some sort of arcanomechanical bottle-launching device

kviiri

15:43

Mar 1 at 14:48, by kviiri

@Anaphory I based an Alchemist playbook for a AW-DW hybrid I was making, ages ago, on the Hoarder playbook in AW1e extended. I think it fit the concept kinda well

Found my earlier alchemy musing but it was for a PbtA style game :>

J. Wagner

oh that would be really cool Someone_Evil! That subclass gets a launcher mechanical gun or backpack attachment or something

MikeQ

18:12

Howdy folks

nitsua60

18:43

Heading out to bring the boy to see Star Wars with my two college roommates and one of their dad and brothers. It's become a bit of a tradition =)

Hot RPG Questions

19:06

3

Q: Is a spell's duration tied to it's effect or the time experienced by it's caster?

Consider Time Stop and summoning an ally during this spell. Does that ally's duration start counting once Time Stop's effect ends or does it start counting down the moment it is summoned minus any "extra rounds" you used within the effect of Time Stop?

pathfinder-1e dnd-3.5e

Shalvenay

19:27

D&D 3.5e Q: how would you go about modeling a Witcher in 3.5e using WOTC classes (save for Tome of Battle)? right now, the leading option seems to be Fighter/BG, but that raises questions due to the alignment reqs on the latter...

Hot RPG Questions

20:08

4

Q: If a NPC is successful in a saving throw against a type it’s vulnerable against, does it just take what I rolled for damage or would it be halved?

During a dnd campaign, we were fighting a Mummy Lord and it’s vulnerable to fire, so I used Scorching Ray against it and he succeed the saving throw to half the damage, so would he just take whatever I rolled, or would what I rolled he halved?

dnd-5e saving-throw vulnerability

Shalvenay

20:53

hey there @Someone_Evil, how're things going?

Someone_Evil

Pretty good. Home for the holidays, which manages to be both relaxing and stressful in roughly equal amounts

Shalvenay

@Someone_Evil ah. yeah, holidays can be a bit discombobulating for me too

Hot RPG Questions

21:10

6

Q: Is it nessesary to have archetypes for a homebrew class?

I'm trying my hand in homebrew. I'm making a class but can't think of any archetypes. So, it took me to that question. For those of you wondering, I'm doing an Alchemist class. Do I need to build sub classes into this Alchemist class? Just a heads up I can't contact anyone by comments. My p...

dnd-5e homebrew class archetype

Miniman

21:37

@Shalvenay What do you want it to do? You can model whatever you want by playing a wizard and picking the right spells, but somehow I think that's not what you're after.

Shalvenay

@Miniman basically, the idea is something that's a fighter first, with some light casting and something to model the Witcher alchemical talents...hence, Blackguard, with full BAB, half-casting, and Use Poison

(oh, and D10 hit dice)

Miniman

@Shalvenay Hmmm. I'd probably run with Duskblade, take the Master of Poisons feat (it's the easiest and best way to get Poison Use), and max out Craft (alchemy) for the alchemical stuff, it's a surprisingly useful skill anyway.

Shalvenay

@Miniman yeah, I was wondering if there was a way to get Use Poison as a feat, good to know that there is

Miniman

@Shalvenay It also lets you apply poison as a swift action.

Shalvenay

@Miniman nice. could that be made to work with say Ranger as well? the player in question doesn't want to play Duskblade for two consecutive chars

(and also finds Duskblade rather OP for their tastes)

Miniman

21:45

@Shalvenay It has no pre-reqs whatsoever.

Shalvenay

@Miniman are there any other classes besides Duskblade, Blackguard, or Ranger that could be made to work for this?

V2Blast

23:19

@Medix2 I'd definitely recommend opening a meta on it (or checking if there is one already). I've had similar confusion around those tags: resistance, damage-resistance, spell-resistance, and damage-reduction. I actually mentioned some of that in chat before:

Nov 8 at 9:55, by V2Blast

It occurs to me that both damage-resistance and damage-reduction claim to be about (different) D&D-specific concepts... though the idea of damage reduction in some form surely exists in plenty of other systems.

Aug 7 '18 at 20:02, by doppelgreener

At least for this chat, going by its history, the most off-topic thing anyone's probably asked in here was a tabletop RPG question.

:D

vicky_molokh

@V2Blast Don't know about D&D, but they're definitely very different things in GURPS.

V2Blast

@vicky_molokh I see you recently edited the tag info/wiki for damage-resistance to at least address part of the issue there. Good work :)

vicky_molokh

Thanks.

Medix2

@V2Blast Yeah and different RPGs will use various terms for dividing and subtracting from damage, or have multiple terms for subtractions depending on timing and... Yeah, I can why there's a lot of tags, how to use them though, mostly no idea.

Miniman

@Shalvenay Depends on how much casting you want. Hexblade, Assassin, could do something with Paladin maybe, mmmmmaybe Psychic Warrior.

Actually Psychic Warrior is good for a poison build, since you can use Psionic Minor Creation.

Medix2

23:30

There are only 10 non-5e-dnd questions tagged with [resistance]... Hmmmm

Shalvenay

@Miniman hm...what are the HD, BAB, and top-end spell circle on Hexblade?

Miniman

@Shalvenay d10, full, 4th.

Shalvenay

@Miniman that sounds like an excellent candidate

V2Blast

@Medix2 Yeah... That's why, in general, it seems to make more sense to me to have tags focused on a concept (e.g. reducing damage, or maybe reducing damage in a certain way) rather than having a different tag for each RPG that refers to that same concept in a different way.

It also doesn't make sense to me to have a single tag used for questions about entirely different concepts just because they share the same name (e.g. "astral").

Medix2

At least as far as I've been told, tags are to help experts in some topic/field/thing find those types of questions

Granted, you probably aren't gonna be an expert in [attacks] but [system_goes_here] [attacks]; definitely possible

Like there are tags that are DnD specific (at least currently)

Ben

23:41

Morning all

Merry Pre-Christmas eve, from the future!

Shalvenay

hey there @Ben, how're things going?

Ben

It's the monday before christmas, and I'm at work. Lol

@Shalvenay I got your message on Discord, btw. Apologies for my latency there

Shalvenay

@Ben ah

no worries

Ben

Did you sort it out? Or still figuring it out?

Shalvenay

@Ben the paladinish stuff? still chewing on that. the puzzle idea? yeah, got that sorted though

Ben

23:49

1 down, 1 to go

Medix2

@V2Blast Like, I've seen multiple people say "we don't do game-specific tags" and them things like [immediate-interrupt], [immobilized], and [hexblade] all exist

Ben

AS in all things that are handled by the public, there are going to be commonly agreed on rules that are going to be broken, simply because ultimately, the site is run and moderated by a collective of users from all over the planet. Not everyone is going to follow the rules, and not everyone is going to agree on the same rules

Medix2

Ya know... That's fair. Just makes me wonder whether asking questions about tags is worth it then, not like people will suddenly follow any changes from that either

Ben

I, for one, see no need in tags like "attacking" etc, since they are both generic and specific. And in the same situation, the tag is made redundant since it is most likely specifically about attacking anyway

Medix2

What do you mean "both generic and specific"? How is it made redundant? (Just not sure what your train of thought was)

Ben

23:56

The tags are a group identifier, the way i see it. For example, I know nothing about 4e, I know a little about PF, and I know a lot about 5e. But if I were to follow a tag called "attacking", there's no real way to identify whether or not I could answer the question, without first cross-referencing it with the system tag

Medix2

Yeah, but if you know a lot about specifically attacking in, say, 5e. Then you search for questions with both tags

I mean, let's be honest, the system tag will almost always come first and is needed before you know if you can answer the question

Ben

@Medix2 or you could simply say "[dnd-5e] attack"

Medix2

But that's searching for the word itself, and gives quite different results

Ben

Don't quote me on this but I daresay if you use [dnd-5e] [attack] there may start to build some confusion

Medix2

12,672 results, actually link

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