TRPG General Chat

Ben

12:04 AM

Morning all

BESW

[wave]

Ben

How goes the days?

BESW

Lots to do, very little energy.

Ben

I think I have the opposite problem. I just have obligations so all the things I want to do, I can't

nitsua60

@BESW [wave]

(hoping it transmits some energy your way)

Ben

12:32 AM

@nitsua60 [...of energy]

That's a good idea. I've got all the energy to do the things I need to do, and want to do, but no time to do it, so you can have mine too :D

BESW

Ben

Side note; just thought about LLKoM the Card Game. Unless @BESW's latest attempts to improve the game says otherwise, the cards aren't exactly the issue - so they can be printed as a deck, yeah?

BESW

Not sure what you mean?

Ben

Well, you said you had been attempting to work on it, correct? But the issue was that your brain would simply run out of control and lose focus.

BESW

Sort of, yeah.

I have trouble really keeping a firm grip on what I want the game to be, which is silly and unpredictable but not frustratingly random.

And the best way I can figure out to walk that "unpredictable but not frustrating" line is with cards, but that introduces (a) levels of design complexity, and (b) levels of player-side setup effort, which I don't want.

Ben

12:41 AM

What I was thinking is that we could at least print the cards as a deck legit I've done is print the front and backs on paper, then put them in card sleeves with a normal 52-card deck, so that I can play it. Which works. But I was thinking, the cards are straightforward, and my belief is that the system at this point simply needs tweaking. So I'm thinking I'd be willing to print the cards as a proper deck, like @nitsua60 suggested a while ago.

The reason being is that this game, I feel, would be great for both adults and kids. And one thing we are trying to do is find games to keep the kids entertained. LLKoM would be great for that. Simple and replayable

I recently got into a relationship with a mother of 2; an 8yo and a 5yo,

They're both into pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh, but they don't really have the focus or attention span to learn properly how it works. They just love the shows.

LLKoM is a card game with a similar concept, but far simpler

BESW

Hrmm. I'll see if I can get into the right headspace for it.

Ben

The game as I know it is good, I'm simply interested in it's development since I'm invested in the game 😁

BESW

I'd love to finish it, it's just very daunting right now.

Ben

Understandable. I had the issue with drawing. I'd start it, then if I thought it looked really good, I'd never finish it haha

With programming I have the opposite problem lol.

BESW

A lot of my challenge is that I've got so little experience with card-based games that I don't have schema to draw on.

I feel like I could make it even more approachably simple with some deck design techniques.

Ben

12:56 AM

@BESW Deck design? Like the look of the cards?

BESW

The look, and the kinds of mechanics that work with decks which don't work with more "traditional" TRPGs.

And a big part of the look is that design can distill relatively complex rules into quickly understood shorthand.

Ben

@BESW do feel free to share your thoughts! Ime it had helped me with my ideas. My plans went from overly simple, to overly complex, back to a workable concept.

@BESW I have an artist friend I could approach?

BESW

I don't wanna ask for free labor, and I have no budget.

I can do the physical art-and-layout stuff myself, I just don't have the same set of experience-based tools that I do for something like Goblin Court or Puppy Day, where I've got a mass of TRPG game mechanics and principles floating around in my head that I can easily draw on.

Ben

@BESW I'm willing to cover costs, she's a friend of mine that is trying to promote herself as an artist. I'm always interested in projects that would help her expand her resumé :D

BESW

That'd be cool. But I have to have a game first.

With TRPGs I have a solid sense of how changing a number changes the experience at the table, and I've seen lots of different ways to communicate ideas and rules. With card games... I've played M:tG, Hearthstone, and Tea Dragon Society, and one game each of Bang!, Sheriff of Nottingham, and Coup.

And I've never studied them like I've studied TRPGs, especially not from a design POV.

I'll give it some thought, I'm reaching out in my developer spaces to see if anyone has training resources they recommend.

But do remember, I've got a lot to do and very little energy. Doing this means scrapping something else and I don't know if I can do that.

nitsua60

1:21 AM

@BESW [wave] (hoping it sends energy like a gently drifting wave, not the Marvel wave from earlier =)

BESW

1:43 AM

@nitsua60 Thank you.

→ 1 message moved to Coronavirus Chat Zone

Hot RPG Questions

5

Q: What's so broken about Leadership?

The Leadership feat is so widely accepted as game-breaking that I feel no need to even source it. However, upon rereading the feat's description in the SRD, it's not immediately obvious to me that it's a game-breaker. It's clearly powerful if optimized around, but it doesn't seem obviously broken...

BESW

1:59 AM

@HotRPGQuestions I mean, for my games it was game-breaking not because it was "overpowered" but because it literally made the game lag and crash.

But, also:

Oct 7 '13 at 13:45, by BESW

@Tridus I am a vampire cleric with Leadership and Undead Leadership and at-will dominate and rebuke undead. I turn all my followers into vampires who also take the Leadership and Undead Leadership feats and have at-will dominate. If possible, I initiate them into my religion as priests too.

I once saw a not-completely-optimized PC with something like 125HD of NPC followers at level 12.

Which, well, most of them were 1HD so they weren't especially useful in combat, but have we mentioned the lag?

Hot RPG Questions

4

Q: How does the size of the Gold Dragonborn fire breath weapon work?

I know that the gold dragonborn in D&D 5e have a 15ft cone as breath weapon, but is that 15ft radius cone or 15ft diameter cone?

dnd-5e racial-traits dragonborn

Adeptus

2:38 AM

I've been looking at VTTs. Astral, Roll20, both have some advantages over the other (at the free level). MapTool seems to be less user-friendly, I need to spend longer with it to work it out. I haven't found one that has all the features I'd like. eg, movement-per-turn restriction (or at least, movement measurement on by default), variable lighting, ...

DnDBeyond integration would be great too... which only Roll20 does (via a 3rd-party Chrome plugin), as far as I'm aware

KorvinStarmast

5:23 AM

@BESW Not sure how the comics have evolved, but that looks like Black Canary and Green Arrow from a comic I read almost 50 years ago. Neat pic.

Hot RPG Questions

6:20 AM

2

Q: Gelatinous Cube Engulf Action

Let's imagine a scenario: 10 ft wide hallway. Cube uses it's Engulf Action, moves 5 ft and enters another creatures space. Creature then makes a DEX save, rolls a success and pushed 5 ft back. Does Cube keep moving repeating the process until his 15 ft of movement ends? Or it just stops?

dnd-5e

Ben

9:01 AM

Just finished work -_-' sorry for bailing on the conversation @BESW

Who'd have thought a Scope of Work would take 3 weeks to develop

V2Blast

10:16 AM

WotC is offering free D&D content (mainly Adventurers League) every weekday to play or use from home.

4

Only half of Monday's products are actually new deals, since the AL documents are free on DMsGuild anyway. But for a limited time, you can grab the Defiance in Phlan AL adventure and the Adventures with Muk coloring book for free.

AncientSwordRage

11:11 AM

@HotRPGQuestions I've definitely suffered at the hands of a Gelatinous Cube in 4E

:(

SmokeDetector

12:47 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with email in body (57): Online D&D Module Purchase: Roll20, D&D Beyond or Both by kevinfjbecker on rpg.SE

Someone_Evil

1:02 PM

@SmokeDetector Misfire?

AncientSwordRage

1:22 PM

@Someone_Evil caused by "compendium."?

Someone_Evil

> Bad keyword with email in body - Keyword sell with email looked at Roll20.net

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@Someone_Evil Ha. All those people using ' at ' to fool bots into not seeing emails. And then the new robots being taught to recognise ' at '. What was done. End of an era . . .

V2Blast

lol

nitsua60

1:42 PM

@Ben Your direct supervisor, hopefully?

=)

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 We are now wearing fact masks at work. That boosts my RL charisma by 2. 8^p

@V2Blast cool, I can get those when I return home.

AncientSwordRage

I would also suggest not mentioning things like wizards, magic, etc. Just focus on your physical question about water cooling — Aaron Stevens 3 mins ago

😒

Ben

2:03 PM

@nitsua60 unfortunately, he's me haha

KorvinStarmast

@AncientSwordRage Gee, they are no fun. :(

FWIW, there is a table somewhere in my old heat transfer book on the rate of cooling for a fluid (water) to a gas (gas mixture, air) which would include both radiant and convective heat loss. The falling of the water through the air induces a flow around the water blob, which would create "an amount" of convective heat transfer

Your instincts are right: the boiling water would be a bit cooler at impact, but now much cooler will depend on the time of flight, and the on how much the water disperses on the way down. The farther in falls, the more the "blob" of water breaks up.

So that means that, for your problem set up, you have at least three equations to deal with. Radiant heat transfer, convective heat transfer, and the necessary change in the shape of the water blob (in terms of dimensions) so that the nominal heat properties (and surface area) of the water that hits the wizard can be estimated

Given the time, I'd offer that radiant heat transfer will be almost negligible; the convectivce may be substantial.

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast This is the sort of thing that strikes me as so complicated that, rather, I should just find the people who've already solved it: those HVAC engineers who use external, decorative water fountains/displays as part of their buildings' heat exchangers.

Or whoever designed the cooling towers in nuclear plants.

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 It would be a great problem for the prof to pose to a class of students in a heat transfer class, I think. ;)

But you are also right.

The HVAC folks probably have all of the tables needed for this.

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast I think it'd be a great problem to pose, and then to bring in one of those engineers to say "nah, here's the answer. Here's how I know. As for why... have fun."

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 Oh yeah, that would be even better.

This conversation reminds me of my physics prof, whose masters thesis included a project on how to calculate the spin rate on a bowling ball and when that spin would "bite" and cause the ball to curve ... and he had four lanes with different wax coefficients to use as a test case ...

Calculated with fromulae and a slide rule. IIRC, he used a high speed camera to identify the "bite" point ...

Someone_Evil

2:20 PM

@nitsua60 As for why... start heating up buckets of water

AncientSwordRage

2:37 PM

@KorvinStarmast yeah I know. I may just ask on worldbuilding. Phrase it as actually throwing hot water on invaders.

@KorvinStarmast I agree with that conclusion

@KorvinStarmast I've definitely taken those classes.... 10 years ago

Well not heat transfer, but similar 'problem solving' classes

V2Blast

lol

Someone_Evil

2:53 PM

Is the hot meta posts list on the sidebar on main limited to one entry for anyone else? Pretty sure it used to be three unless there was a lot of featured posts

KorvinStarmast

@Someone_Evil the hot meta posts ... did they get boiling water poured on them?

V2Blast

57

A: What criteria are used to select the links that appear in the community bulletin sidebar block?

The rules are as follows: If there is a community moderator election, a link to it appears in the bulletin. Events can be created with a start date and time, an end date and time, a simple title, and a link to something somewhere on the network. Current or upcoming events are listed, with those...

> On sites other than Stack Overflow and sites without per-site metas, if there are still under four items, the rest of the space is filled with hot discussion questions not marked status-completed, scoring at least 3 and posted within the past two weeks. These are picked semi-randomly. (Note that the timing, score and tags can be adjusted per-site to suit the needs of each community).

Himitsu_no_Yami

3:52 PM

I've figured out what my next character is gonna be. I'm gonna play a small race barbarian and have the party throw me at the enemies

Someone_Evil

4:24 PM

@Himitsu_no_Yami Make sure to work out what the toss-another-character-mechanics are with your DM

Himitsu_no_Yami

I figure I'll be treated as an improvised weapon

based on this answer

Someone_Evil

Your DM might not quite agree with that, and you'd probably want to land on your feet and not take damage, which isn't normally a concern for a improvised weapon

Himitsu_no_Yami

fair enough

V2Blast

4:43 PM

@Himitsu_no_Yami WotC finally made it so shrinking that character wouldn't remove your disadvantage on attacking with heavy weapons :P

Mark Wells

4:57 PM

@KorvinStarmast No, we had the druid cast heat meta.

Himitsu_no_Yami

@MarkWells *deep sigh*

Hot RPG Questions

5

Q: Can the reaction attack from the third benefit of the Sentinel feat be triggered by a shove or grapple?

The third benefit of the Sentinel feat says (PHB, p. 169-170; emphasis mine): When a creature within 5 feet of you makes an attack against a target other than you (and that target doesn't have this feat), you can use your reaction to make a melee weapon attack against the attacking creatur...

dnd-5e feats attack grapple reactions

The Oracle

0

Q: Should I narrow this particular question down, or leave it as broad as it is?

Here's the question — What is the reason it's necessary to have opportunity attacks in tactical games? It virtually asks "why games need opportunity attacks and what happens if we remove them". It was asked in context of D&D 5e, thus attracted answers and comments about OA-based game features in...

discussion specific-question

KorvinStarmast

5:56 PM

@MarkWells heh, and you didn't even bring up the RAW tag ... wait, too soon?

Mark Wells

6:21 PM

@KorvinStarmast I'm the absolute last person who should talk about the RAW tag :)

kviiri

6:32 PM

@BESW This is me whenever summoning is a thing without proper limitations in TTRPGs.

Mark Wells

@kviiri Doe not call up Any that shall make thy turn take longer than five minutes.

kviiri

@MarkWells "Longer than five" is already quite long

Ugh, bad wording on my part. It's late here. I mean you can get quite long without going longer than five.

Mark Wells

Depends on the system, but yes, at five minutes I guarantee everyone else in my group has lost interest and half of them may well have started creating characters for a different game.

kviiri

One of the things I like in 13th Age is how it has these things that commonly pose problems in DnD, and actually gives solutions for them

Mark Wells

How do they solve this issue?

kviiri

6:47 PM

You can only have one summoning spell active at a time, and spells that summon multiple creatures summon mooks that are mechanically simpler than proper monsters

Summoned creatures also share the summoner's initiative, taking their turn immediately after the summoner, and can act immediately after being called. Haven't tried this yet but sounds like it's also good for the tempo.

The mooks play into it quite heavily overall, it's one of those things I've been missing. It's like 4e minions but even better!

A group of mooks shares a turn, each attacks separately but deals fixed damage (fixed damage is par for all 13th Age monsters) and have a single pool of hit points with a single mook falling whenever that much HP has been depleted

(this means even single-target attacks can down several mooks, which fits the heroic fantasy imagery quite well)

Mark Wells

OK, they're like a swarm in D&D?

Having them share a turn makes sense, you definitely don't want them scattered throughout the turn order

kviiri

7:07 PM

@MarkWells Some similarities, yeah. But they're actually separate monsters in terms of location (which is more fuzzy than in DnD, because 13th Age isn't grid based or absolute location based) and in terms of attacks

Mark Wells

And are they directly under the summoner's control?

kviiri

Hm, that's a good question. I've usually let my players control their summons when it's not ludicrous (and so far it's never been) but I don't see any explicit confirmation about this in the rules.

Mark Wells

7:22 PM

I ask because it seems like one of the less-fun things about summons is having them effectively be NPCs that fight other NPCs, and I'm thinking about how to get the flavor of "these are independent creatures, not just extensions of yourself" without having the GM take control of them

kviiri

@MarkWells Yep, I agree there. It feels wrong to me that things like animal companions or summons are "taken away" like that, that's why I let my players control their underlings too. (My GMs agree, although I think it's more of a convenience thing for many)

As for reinforcing their role as independent creatures, I think it depends a bit. Something like the ranger's animal companion, or a leopard spirit that walks beside the party druid are definitely something that deserve a bit of characterization. But fiction also has its share of conjuring bats or rats or spiders, or zombies or packs of other nasties. In the most egregious cases you're just hitting your foe with a magic bolt except it's made of animals (or similar).

Following from that, I think it's fine if they come off as clearly minion-ish in their role in such cases.

but now it's my bedtime

Au revoir o/

Mark Wells

see ya

V2Blast

The official D&D website page I linked earlier isn't updated yet, but it looks like Infernal Machine Rebuild is also pay-what-you-want on DMsGuild right now: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/294711/Infernal-Machine-Rebuild-5e
Per D&D Beyond's latest Twitter post, the LMOP adventure is also currently currently freely accessible until May 5th: https://twitter.com/DnDBeyond/status/1247581521348661249

nitsua60

7:58 PM

Alright, everyone: I've come completely around to susperstition and mythology.

Yesterday I ran across a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "if you give me four hours to cut down a tree, I'll spend the first three sharpening my axe."

So I spend an hour sharpening my axe before setting out to fell my first two-footer.

And in doing so, I barely bumped the edge with my pinky, and sure 'nuff, I cut myself.

GcL

That's not his best quote.

> "Don't believe everything you read on the internet." ~Abraham Lincon

nitsua60

I swear: that thing was thirsty for blood. I could feel it. And once it was slaked, boy did it bite into that tree.

I'm a convert. Whatever back-woods spit-in-the-moonlight superstition is out there, I get it now.

GcL

Is this a story about sharp edge safety? or a work gloves advertisement?

Either way, I need to see the story board that goes with this vignette or commercial.

Someone_Evil

Can I borrow someone who can see deleted comments to briefly check my sanity? I could have sworn I posted a comment on this answer regarding the errata, but it doesn't appear to be there

Himitsu_no_Yami

9:05 PM

@Someone_Evil what sanity?

Rubiksmoose

9:55 PM

@Someone_Evil do you promise to give me back after? ;-)

Joking aside, you did, and it was flagged as no longer needed. When checking into the flag I misread the answer as having already been edited in so I validated the flag. I see now that it hasn't so I undeleted it.

So, thanks for checking and my apologies for the mistake.

Someone_Evil

No worries. You've been useful, you can have you back

Himitsu_no_Yami

I'm so bored. There's nothing to do at work. Not even work

All schools are closed so nobody is calling us. I spent 5 hours straight waiting for a call to come in and never got one. Ended up falling asleep for a while

Hot RPG Questions

10:28 PM

2

Q: When using a smite spell cast on a previous turn, can you use your bonus action to apply another smite spell to the same attack?

Essentially this comes down to an order of operations question when it comes to concentration, in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition. Say you have a smite spell cast on the previous turn, and you are concentrating on it. If you cast another spell that requires concentration right now, the smite spel...

dnd-5e spells spellcasting concentration

nitsua60

10:44 PM

@Himitsu_no_Yami That's the worst. I think the last time I was in that situation I went hog-wild designing my dream house. Like, all the way down to wiring diagrams....

@Himitsu_no_Yami You're Pearson, right?

Himitsu_no_Yami

@nitsua60 yep

nitsua60

So are you in the Albany area, or are you distant?

Himitsu_no_Yami

I have no clue where Albany is

nitsua60

Oh, nvm. I thought Pearson was out of upstate NY.

Hot RPG Questions

4

Q: How to handle friendly NPC treasure

I'm a relatively new DM - I ran some games back in the early 80's, basic dungeon crawls and we had a great time. Today, I'm starting with some of the intro 5e campaigns. I'd like to get an opinion on this scenario: My party is doing well with talking to NPC's using persuasion and intimidate ...

dnd-5e gm-techniques npc treasure

Himitsu_no_Yami

10:47 PM

ok so technically I work for Startek, a call center here in VA. But the client is Pearson

nitsua60

@Himitsu_no_Yami Aaaaaahhhh.... Makes sense.

Himitsu_no_Yami

Also, technically I'm only a small subset of Pearson. I handle the state assessments (VA SOLs, AZ AIMS and AZELLA, MD MCAP, etc.) There's also the National side which is ACCUPLACER and National Board, the latter of which seems to be getting a fairly decent amount of calls

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