TRPG General Chat

KorvinStarmast

6:00 PM

Icewind Dale module?

Axoren

Yeah, Rime of the Cool Chick

KorvinStarmast

I might look for public games on r20 for the mod, none of our group seem to want to DM that; I have it, but nobody bit and I've been DMing a bit of late.

Axoren

We've already got 8, so we're at our limit.

I'm prepared for combat, but I'm also expecting to take a bit of a backseat in combat this game.

Keep the turns turning and focus on the story.

NautArch

@RevenantBacon I still really like magic stone.

Axoren

We have a couple of new/rusty players who haven't gotten an opportunity to play in a while.

RevenantBacon

6:06 PM

@NautArch I mean, I don't dislike it, it's just very boring

NautArch

@RevenantBacon More or less boring than EB/firebolt?

RevenantBacon

@NautArch more. EB is at least dynamic in that you can modify it in minor ways, and firebolt is a bit more versatile in what can be done with it, giving it more potential than a spell just that lets you huck a rock at someone.

NautArch

@RevenantBacon but it's not just you. you can give it to others, too.

RevenantBacon

Sure, but most of those others are going to have better things to throw at someone, like javelins or arrows

NautArch

@RevenantBacon not necessarily, and javelins don't have the same range.

and they may ot be proficient with a bow that does, either.

Axoren

6:10 PM

@RevenantBacon This is why it works best for Necromancers. Their minions already suck.

RevenantBacon

It's boring because it doesn't let you do something that anyone else can do, and it doesn't really make you much better at it than you likely already were

Axoren

Honestly, if Magic Stone let them count as light weapons and allowed you to make melee attacks with them, I'd like to make a raving lunatic that brains people with Magic Stones.

NautArch

I dunno, it higher damage and more range isn't bad.

RevenantBacon

@NautArch Javelins only don't have the same range if you're using a sling, otherwise they double its range

Axoren

Same die as Shortswords

GcL

6:12 PM

Magic damage is a pretty shiny upgrade for some simple minions.

NautArch

That, too. It's magical bludgeoning.

on demand

Axoren

When magic damage matters, a caster that can cast Magic Stone has better options

NautArch

not if they aren't available (hello druids)

Axoren

What do you mean aren't available?

NautArch

i mean, if they don't get other attack cantrips, because of their class, it's not a bad option.

Axoren

6:13 PM

A Druid has Shillelagh which is strictly better than Magic Stone for magic bludgeoning damage.

RevenantBacon

@NautArch to be fair, most of the cantrip options for druids are pretty bad compared to arcane casters

Axoren

Magic Stone is ranged, but so is Produce Flame

NautArch

and a javelin is 30/120. Magic STone is 60.

fire is often resisted. magic bludgeoning is not.

Axoren

So you're looking for something resistant to Fire and not resistant to magic bludgeoning and is flying or really far away

RevenantBacon

Well, not really far away, magic stone can only go 60'

Thomas Markov

6:15 PM

@Axoren fire elemental

NautArch

right, so for the druid that doesn't want to engage, it's still a good option. Most combats I"ve found are within about that range anyway.

and many spells are 60', so if they're casting their other stuff, they're in range.

RevenantBacon

So it has to be farther away than your movespeed, but less than your movespeed +60'

NautArch

no, if you don't want to engage, it doesn't matter what your move speed is.

I think what I'm saying is it's better than you think, while you are stuck on "it's just bad."

RevenantBacon

If you don't want to engage, then you aren't casting Magic Stone

KorvinStarmast

Against a dragon, you need a bard and a long bow .... no, wait, you need Bard of Laketown and a long bow with a special arrow and a raven who talks to archers ...

Axoren

6:17 PM

@ThomasMarkov Frostbite, then.

RevenantBacon

No, it's not bad I've said that several times, but that does not mean that it is good

Axoren

Against a dragon, your spellcasters should be using Earthbind.

Earthbind is too important not to have on somebody in a party.

KorvinStarmast

Cantrip least likely to be chosen for the Rime of the Frostmaiden adventure: Ray of Frost. (Ya think?)

Axoren

@KorvinStarmast Frost Fingers is a new spell :D

KorvinStarmast

@Axoren Web will restrain them for one round, then webs goes away. So cast web on them they are restrained (Dragons don't have great dex saves) and their speed = 0 so they fall. But the next turn, web wears off and you either have to cast it again or say "well, that was nice"

And duck

@Axoren Frost Fingers? Did I miss a memo?

RevenantBacon

6:20 PM

@KorvinStarmast If the dragon fell far enough, then you might not have to cast it again

Axoren

@KorvinStarmast If you knock a dragon prone, it falls 500 ft. immediately.

Cast Enlarge on a Barbarian with Winged Boots and you can punch a dragon to the ground.

KorvinStarmast

20d6 won't usually kill a dragon and I don't think you have 500' range on web. ;-) But we did hit a young blue dragon with it and that really shortened the fight.

Not on an anceint, but on a Huge or Large, yeah.

(By punch do you mean Grapple?)

Axoren

Don't think anyone's big enough to shove an Ancient to the ground without True Polymorph

I mean Shove.

Rubiksmoose

@Axoren I think that would be a SHOVE actually

KorvinStarmast

@Axoren Agree. Oh, I see, the 'knock prone' thing...

Axoren

6:22 PM

@Rubiksmoose Because it's all caps?

SHOVE
-

Rubiksmoose

yeah :P

KorvinStarmast

Caps for sale, 50 cents a cap ...

Rubiksmoose

:)

KorvinStarmast

@Rubiksmoose One of my favorite books to read with my kids when they were small. The other favorite one was "If you give a mouse a cookie ..."

Rubiksmoose

I loved both of those when I was a kid!

KorvinStarmast

6:30 PM

My aunt was a librarian, she sent that (mouse/cookie) to us when our daughter was two or three. I still have it; we intend to read it to our grand daughter as she gets more verbally able ....

user15026

I still reference if you give a mouse a cookie a lot

user15026

I liked the other ones in the series (if you give a pig a pancake, if you give a moose a muffin, etc) but the original is still best.

KorvinStarmast

Concur, all good, the first was best

Rubiksmoose

@Ash me too!

user15026

This reminds me I should read another story to the internet. (I periodically pick something from my collection of kids books and read it on video and post it to Facebook for my friends.)

KorvinStarmast

6:35 PM

@Ash Fox in Sox ... we once made a drinking game out of that book ...

RevenantBacon

@KorvinStarmast speaking of caps, I don't understand the 20d6 cap on falling damage.

user15026

@KorvinStarmast I don't know if I own that one!

GcL

@RevenantBacon Terminal dice-ocity

KorvinStarmast

@RevenantBacon It's in the books; they picked it for whatever reason they picked it. I won't try to guess at the balance between logic, verisimilitude, and realism that they were going for.

30d6 would have been as valid

RevenantBacon

@KorvinStarmast Well, logic and realism took a back seat here, that's for sure. I wonder if JC would give insight on it if someone tweeted at him

KorvinStarmast

6:45 PM

At this point, I doubt it. All one has to do to put some teeth into the falling damage is apply the DMG optional rule on massive damage; any time you take over 50 HP damage in 1 hit you are dead or at 0 HP ... (can't access DMG at the moment) 20d6 averages out to 70

Mark Wells

@Axoren I'm not saying the rules say it. I'm saying that the symbolic resonance of "the restless dead are unable to rest" is strong enough to be a satisfying world element. It's fairy-tale logic for a fairy-tale world.

Axoren

@MarkWells Then it should take longer than an hour for adventurers to recover from losing 99% of their blood at level 1 since medieval medicine was so awful back then.

GcL

@MarkWells The magic is actually just whispering that one embarrassing thing they did so their soul dwells on that instead of moving on.

@Axoren Those were the old school rules. I recall characters being laid up in Greyhawk healing a whopping 1hp/day.

Axoren

At the end of the day, the system defies setting logic for the sake of play not being primarily spreadsheet accounting.

And you're going to have to draw the line somewhere. Drawing the line here is VERY arbitrary, as is drawing it anywhere.

GcL

I prefer drawing lines in such a way that the subject is easier to perceive. That super abstract stuff is fine, but really difficult for me to get at first glance.

Axoren

6:51 PM

Making it so that zombies can't attune cannot be justified by fantasy physics because of all the other things that fly in the face of it. It would be more fair to have a gameplay reason for the decision to stop zombies from attuning.

KorvinStarmast

Does a trickery cleric get major image as a domain spell at level 5 (3rd level spell) I am doing some world building and just had an idea ...

Axoren

@KorvinStarmast Blink and Dispel (not Major Image)

KorvinStarmast

Darnit, so that idea isn't gonna work. So it goes.

Axoren

@KorvinStarmast Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard, Arcane Trickster, and Eldritch Knight get Major Image

GcL

@Axoren Ahhh yes. The zombie rest conjecture: the zombie at unrest will remain at unrest until acted upon by a sufficient force and they fail their saving throw.

2

Axoren

6:53 PM

@KorvinStarmast and Mark of Shadow Elves from Eberon

nitsua60

derp. cantrip. long week....

KorvinStarmast

@Axoren I needed a cleric to cast it at level 6, but now I'll have to resort to another caster. A warlock will suffice ... except that their levels cap at 5 ... and I don't do Eberron (other than the artificer one of my PCs has)

Right now, I don't have a good reason for a wizard to do it (very few wizards in my world get that high in level) but maybe a coven of hags could?

I think a covern's spell list goes up to level 6 or 7 ... hmmmm....

@Axoren hmm, can't DDB at the mo, does a coven (three) hags have major image on the list? I would expect so, illusion is one of their strong points, hags that is ...

@GcL Hmm, 5e lore, how associated to the Negative Material plane are undead? In older editions, IIRC specters and Wraiths had a direct link to negative material plane. Is that gone now?

Mark Wells

@Axoren The D&D combat paradigm is that you haven't necessarily lost any blood when you're at 1 HP. Actually losing blood (like to a vampire bite) causes maximum HP loss.

GcL

@KorvinStarmast I'm glad wights don't do level drain anymore. That made them one of the scariest monsters in the OG

KorvinStarmast

@GcL yes, but if you had clerics in ODD, they could turn dead, or try to, every turn. That helped somewhat.

GcL

6:59 PM

@KorvinStarmast Oh yeah, and there was a table for that. Some entries had a D where you just turned the undead to dust.

KorvinStarmast

@GcL yep, the term was "disrupted" and then there was that cool magic item called the Mace of Disruption ...

Axoren

@KorvinStarmast Don't think Covens get it

GcL

@KorvinStarmast I think some undead are still like that, shadows? Not all of them though.

KorvinStarmast

@Axoren I'd have to shoehorn it in ...

Axoren

Don't know how I'd search covens

KorvinStarmast

7:00 PM

Search under hags

In DDB there is a coven section for hags IIRC

GcL

@KorvinStarmast We called it "dusted" because... i guess that's because we thought it meant and narrated it as.

Axoren

I see Death Covens, Nature Covens, and Prophecy Covens, none of the above have it

KorvinStarmast

@GcL close enough. @Axoren thanks for the help! ;)

@GcL My Memory Was Way Wrong. T = Monster turned away, up to two dice in number.
D = Dispelled/dissolved, up to two dice in number. N = No Effect.

Men and Magic p. 22

@GcL But I did remember Mace of Disruption correctly; but that was in Greyhawk.

GcL

I recall paladins getting a holy avenger +5 sword at some point and a nice war horse. The sword was somehow doubly useful vs most undead.

KorvinStarmast

The only OD&D Paladin I remember playing with had one, but he preferred his Holy Sword; IIRC< it allowed him to "Order undead hence" or something like that

Axoren

7:06 PM

In 3.5 and Pathfinder, Paladins got access to Holy Sword which was a "By the Power of Greyskull" way of getting a Holy Avenger

KorvinStarmast

@GcL but that might be me remembering AD&D 1e

Axoren

Alternatively, they could just have a sword they really liked and they could just have a Holy Avenger-lite

KorvinStarmast

@GcL No, here it is, from Greyhawk ... "Paladins of 8th level and above dispel evil (spells, undead, evil enchanted monsters, and the like) simply by ordering it hence, and they detect all evil at a range of ...

This sentence, right here, about the original Paladin - They will associate only with lawful characters - and its successive versions of the same in other editions, has caused no end of trouble ... glad 5e stopped doing this

goodguy5

7:27 PM

ugh, My grandmother got targeted another "Grandparent" scam. "grandma it's me, <insert trouble>. Please don't tell mom. I need <insert money amount> for bail or whatever."

Yuuki

@goodguy5 "grandma, it's me, i got framed for running a grandparent scamming operation. please don't tell mom. i need $300 to buy a bale of hay"

Mark Wells

@KorvinStarmast On the other hand, I miss paladins having actual oaths that bind them in any way at all.

Yuuki

jokes aside, that this sort of banal evil has become so commonplace is both disgusting and scary

goodguy5

at least she didn't give them any information this time.

I told her to just call me if that happens. If I pick up the phone, bewildered, then it was a scam

@Yuuki grifters have always existed. technology just makes it easier

user15026

@Yuuki Yeah, agreed

Yuuki

7:35 PM

@goodguy5 i meant the grandparent scam specifically, that's something a bit more recent, i think. likely because we're at an inflection point in technological progress

user15026

I get a lot of support calls at work from older people who go "I got this email that is threatening me/someone I care about is it legit" and I am like nooooo don't click it don't call anyone don't do anything delete it.

goodguy5

if possible call the police and give them the information

user15026

It just makes me angry that people prey on people likethat.

goodguy5

There were people scamming about Corona Virus tests results.

user15026

Yeah, that was nasty, I saw some of those hit our filters.

Yuuki

7:36 PM

@ThomasMarkov Unicorn = cornfield - most of the corn.

goodguy5

like "We have the results of your recent test. to verify your identity please enter a valid credit card - it will not be charged (wink)"

There's a weird threshold for grifting that's extra scummy. I don't know the exact line in the sand, but it's somewhere around "panic and despair"

Yuuki

I mean, I never thought I'd be rating scams but at least the stereotypical Nigerian prince scam promised to get you some money.

goodguy5

Oh, you got tricked by a snakeoil salesman? That sucks. better luck next time.

Oh, a snakeoil salesman found out a sliver of information about you and used it to wage emotional warfare so that you would give them your money. Let's get the pitchforks

Thomas Markov

Atomic Shrimp on youtube has some great scam baiting videos.

goodguy5

my current goto is to answer in spanish.

kviiri

7:41 PM

"Atomic Shrimp" sounds like a TNO thing

goodguy5

"Hola, este Buen Chico Cinco"

Thomas Markov

Here's his playlist: youtube link

goodguy5

It's innocuous enough that a real person isn't going to be upset (barring certain groups that I don't want to talk to anyway). but weeds out bots and cronies looking for english speakers

kviiri

In The New Order: Last Days of Europe (a really grim-dark alt-history cold war mod for HoI IV) there is a Japanese shrimp boat whose seizure by the United States, due to malconfigured AI weights for event outcomes, would frequently cause nuclear exchanges due to rampant escalation.

Bardic Wizard

@KorvinStarmast i made a Druid entertainer-background once that wild shaped into a fox. F. I. Socks was very good at talking fast and only spoke in rhyme so that the party threw things at him/me for it

KorvinStarmast

7:48 PM

@MarkWells The outline tenets of their oath in 5e is a good starting point; a more detailed oath can certainly be worked out between DM and Player to fit their game world and context.

@BardicWizard snort

@Yuuki My mother in law fell for one last month, it took my son a couple of days of working what he knows about computer security and what my sister in law knows about banking, to minimize the damage.

@kviiri I find that somewhat funny. There was an educational game, a role playing game of a sort, that we used to play in high school government/history/social studies class called Dangerous Parallels - it was in the 1970's when nuclear war was a daily threat. One of the outcomes the referee (the teacher) could report to us was, if we really messed up the dimplomacy, was "OK, and you've just started World War III" -

It was related to some of those "model UN role playing games" and seminars ... I think those are still popular in some educational circles.

IIRC, it kind of modeled the problems caused by the UN / Korean War juxtaposition

kviiri

@KorvinStarmast To be more specific, TNO is about a world where the three superpowers of the 1960's are the United States, Japan, and... Nazi Germany. (guess who won WWII in this timeline)

And there's a sinister influence in the German sphere of influence trying to push the world closer and closer to nuclear war, motivated by ideological reasons that are so bizarrely perverse even the Nazis squint at it.

@KorvinStarmast I was always jealous of those, having seen them a few times in American TV shows. The closest we had was a mock political discussion about expanding nuclear power we had on the ninth grade, where I was assigned to represent the Swedish People's Party... that has no hard stance on nuclear power.

When it was my turn to argue, I said something along the lines of "We don't really have a problem with this, but this approval shouldn't be taken as an endorsement of expanding the nuclear sector beyond this" except I jumbled all the words and it sounded extremely clumsy

KorvinStarmast

8:12 PM

@kviiri except I jumbled all the words and it sounded extremely clumsy so the teacher said "you have a future in politics, yes you do!" right? 😁🤣

kviiri

8:29 PM

@KorvinStarmast Ah no no, a true politician's answer would've been closer to "Every reactor gets measured on its own merits. This is not a matter of policy to us"

KorvinStarmast

True enough ...

kviiri

OTOH, the Swedish People's Party is for Swedish-speaking Finns, who occasionally don't speak fluent Finnish... maybe I was just accidentally in-character?

KorvinStarmast

8:41 PM

Could be, and that adds some fun to it.

Bardic Wizard

8:53 PM

Hey if theres a mod around I flagged an answer as low quality cause its only a sentence long, from the first posts queue

I’m between classes so i only have a couple min

Someone_Evil

9:18 PM

LQ flags feed the LQ review queue for users to look at (and give feedback and/or vote to delete) so often doesn't need mod attention specifically. Flagging it as LQ was entirely correct

KorvinStarmast

@BardicWizard I think it's deleted now ... the ask ur dm was a flag for me ...

I think I cast the last delete vote

Someone_Evil

Should that question be updated with the Wildemount setting? (I believe the dragonborn of that setting have tails)

KorvinStarmast

@Someone_Evil No, I don't think the question ought to be updated.

Someone_Evil

Well, an answer to it (derp)

KorvinStarmast

@Someone_Evil This is the q I dropped the del vote on

@Someone_Evil Oh, I suppose someone can offer that as a "since you asked this a new book came out" as we have quite a few answers like that.

Bardic Wizard

9:36 PM

@Someone_Evil okay I didn’t originally understand that, thanks.

Someone_Evil

No worries. I don't think the site really explains that at any point

Bardic Wizard

The problem with it is that as of like 2 weeks ago I’ve had enough rep to do LQ reviews. I should probably learn what exactly causes them

Someone_Evil

MSE: What are the review queues, and how do they work? if you're interested

Bardic Wizard

That was a useful 5 minute read; more useful than the 5 minutes it took to read my history homework

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@Someone_Evil What question are we talking about?

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