TRPG General Chat

1:55 AM

I just realized something about 5e that I really dislike

PHB, p197 says:

> Resistance and then vulnerability are applied after all other modifiers to damage.

nitsua60

:steeples fingers, looks expectantly:

Let's say you throw a fireball at a creature vulnerable to fire and roll 31 damage. This means that if it saves, it takes 31/2 == 15 damage, doubled back to 30

nitsua60

Yup. Rounding + odd numbers isn't great in 5e D&D.

I don't mind rounding down on half damage most of the time, it just is really stupid when you're also doubling things

MikeQ

It's a 1 damage difference. You could easily houserule it to use the original value.

1:59 AM

Yeah, I probably will

MikeQ

In 3.5, the flat damage modifiers, not dice, were multiplied on a crit. If a character had a negative flat modifier (e.g. tiny faerie rogue), they would do less damage on a crit.

Q: My DM wouldn't let my character use Acrobatics to escape an Ankheg's grapple, even after it was asleep. Can my DM do this, or am I overreacting?

Wild

nitsua60

Your ineffective blow becomes critically ineffective?

I can dig it.

"I'll take 10 on the attack." <record scratch> "I don't want to run the risk of critting."

5 hours later…

Hot RPG Questions

6:48 AM

Now, I know this sounds like something small, but it did annoy me. We were fighting an Ankheg. We killed one, and after combat ended the DM had another one come up from the ground and grapple me with no checks to find it (we even have a player character with a passive Perception of 21). It had...

dnd-5e monsters house-rules grapple problem-gm

4 hours later…

Hot RPG Questions

10:59 AM

Q: Is adjusting damage type an appropriate power level for bestow curse?

A rather creative cleric in my game's party has presented with a new curse they want to use. The new curse is: All damage the target creature takes is treated as the damage type to which the creature is most vulnerable This curse basically removes any sort of damage reduction from the game, plu...

spells dnd-3.5e balance curses

2 hours later…

12:41 PM

A paragraph was added to the question about racial slurs. I’ve suggested it should be posted as a new question. And I’m gonna be honest, I don’t have it in me to give a good-faith answer.

2 hours later…

2:12 PM

Yeeah, rpg.se has not yet been willing to face the fact that its bread-and-butter subjects are deeply steeped in colonial attitudes, and that the company it's giving free technical support is a haven for some Very Bad Behavior. Much less talk about what action that might necessitate on the part of the Stack and its users. But [gestures above] is not the place to have that discussion.

2:30 PM

I thought about putting up a Mxy-style straight forward answer, but I don't think I need to engage.

but it also seems like staying silent is not a good option

I feel like Markov's answer is fine. The querant doesn't seem to be looking for a conversation, and Markov's response is a solid principle-based solution to something that shouldn't have a "policy" because it's the kind of thing where principles let us make context-based decisions while one-size-fits-all rules would invite loopholes and technicalities.

@NautArch that sort of answer may be more appropriate if he actually posts the question posed in the new paragraph as a new question. I used up all my good faith in that answer, and dealing with this further is above my pay grade. But I agree, further engagement is probably warranted.

Just having a hard time not saying something. And I'm out of nice things to say.

2:45 PM

I think leaving it be is probably the best course for now. Obvious distractions like "I was quoting something I made no reference to" don't really need a response. They aren't relephant to how rpg.se handles the subject.

I think the upvotes were giving the querent the benefit ofthe doubt, but it is clear that's not right.

Markov said "We don't do that here" and that's really all that needs to be said at the moment.

It's not a useful conversation. Whether or not "goblin" should be treated the same doesn't make this word less worthy of this treatment. "I see you are not yet perfect, so why are you trying at all" isn't an argument worth addressing, as Markov noted.

It's a very bad and disingenuous argument

It looks defensive. And defensive feelings don't go away with rational arguments, that just makes the defensiveness feel more valid.

Defensive is the kindest lens

2:55 PM

It may be other things as well, I'm not gonna speculate.

Those things tend to come with defensiveness, and be reinforced by it.

So regardless, I think that any attempt to explain wrongness isn't a really useful effort. "We don't do that here" is what's needed, and it's been said.

Upcoming Kickstarter: Questlings - A Children's book series and RPG Adventure! by Dan Letzring. Questlings is an RPG-inspired children's book series and RPG game system about finding your inner character.

Not a TRPG thing but I thought this was really great: Shivan Bhatt wrote a twitter thread about Santoshi Ma, one of the coolest things to happen in modern hindu culture, and in modern religious studies--the birth of a brand new religious tradition.

Medix2

3:45 PM

@ThomasMarkov I'm confused why the "answer" isn't just "Make non-evil Goblins"

But also, read the above discussion and have now removed my comment that said roughly that ^

There's a lot to unpack in the false equivalency drawn by that comparison, starting with the idea that real-world people and fictional people are exactly the same, going on down the line to the idea that "goblin" is a slur, and stopping somewhere around the local variation of "You complain about capitalism yet have a job."

And of course, the whole thing is being framed as "offense."

in Not a bar, but plays one on TV, Jun 12 '19 at 14:04, by BESW

Being offended is a tertiary concern while being safe is still so uncertain, but reframing concerns about safety as "being offended" makes them easier to apply civility figleaves.

Goblins are not the point of that meta conversation and it'd be bad to let them become the point.

2 hours later…

user15026

6:13 PM

@BESW I really liked that thread.

SmokeDetector

6:34 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected (78): How can you tell the distances by road between the settlements of Ten-Towns in Icewind Dale? by Nimbral on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose)

7:17 PM

Answer wasn’t offensive.

Just wasn’t an answer.

@Medix2 I'm not following which question it is...?

If it's better left unlinked then that's also cool

7:42 PM

@AncientSwordRage check revision history of the meta question.

1 hour later…

9:12 PM

@ThomasMarkov I'll go look for it

Woah. Ok.

Q: Does Truesight allow you to see through or behind solid objects?

9:45 PM

I think I'll leave my comments about it out of chat

Hot RPG Questions

From what I understand in the references in the MM and PHB to Truesight, it seems that a creature with this sense can see into the Ethereal Plane and see invisible things/creatures. However, does this allow the creature to see through solid rock, e.g. if a PC was out of typical line of sight, wit...

dnd-5e vision-and-light objects special-senses

@ThomasMarkov Feel free to correct my comment on that post

2 hours later…