our group follows this pattern: 1. level up without interference until a couple of people are reaching level 8. 2. the people at level 8 start getting some interference when it's opportune. 3. when someone enters combat at level 9, people throw them opposition because otherwise they'll lose, and that player responds with buffs because otherwise that palyer will lose. everyone piles on until everyone runs out of stuff. the player probably fails the combat. 4. the next player who enters combat at level 9 wins.
well "our group follows" more like "my past group did and also so did most other groups i sat down with"
Right, exactly. We got into that pattern too. But I think BESW has basically the right idea: you all need to blow your resources instead of hoarding them.
And yeah, if you choose your targets based on the player at the table rather than their current position in the game, that's another way to significantly change how the game works (though I don't think it's necessarily better.)
@BESW also like, i don't see the purpose of interfering with someone's level 3->4 combat. there's no stakes in that which i'm worried about. and everyone else evaluates it the same way. and since we're not messing with them, they probably don't need to use more than one item. why would i spend my limited resources this way? i'd rather save it for whoever becomes an actual threat, which tends to be when someone's at level 8 or 9.
The game's designed so that using obstructive cards early on feels less impactful than using them later. You don't have to have any interest in winning, to want the things you're doing to change the landscape of the game in noticeable ways.
i mean, "playing to win" appears to describe something exceptional, and as though winning is my all-consuming goal or some unusual preoccupation. i am, in fact, just trying to play the game, using the resources and tools it gave me, to do the things it's asking me to do. obviously part of that is someone wins, and obviously i'm supposed to try to be that person because that's precisely what it told me.
at each step, i am doing the things that seem to make sense in the framework the game has given me.
"target people because you don't like the color of their shirt" isn't "not playing to win", it's "doing something entirely outside of the framework the game has given me"
i just want to get away from this "the solution is to not play to win" and "that's playing to win" thing because that feels pretty reductive of what's going on
and not accurate
(because, as said, i don't think what i'm doing is "playing to win" so much as literally "playing the game")
I also noticed something... most of the people I play with... "play nice". We mostly avoid maliciously giving someone a Curse or whatever, until it comes down to win-or-lose. We played with one guy at a party, who played mean. He'd curse people as soon as he picked one up, mess up people's lower-level combats, etc. And he ended up winning by a fairly large margin. That may be a more effective play style... but it was less fun for everyone else.
(Unless you're playing with friends, and everyone is on-board with cutthroat play)
@BardicWizard I'm in a bit of an odd place. I have lots of stuff to do, but it's all just waiting on other people. I've got a job to do tomorrow (which was confused with today), but I haven't received the information I need for the job, I need to book an appointment for sometime in the near future but I need to know what my availability is, since there's a lot of other jobs that will be happening... "soon", so I can't double book myself
I'm also moving in with my partner this weekend but I haven't really been able to do anything about that just yet since of everything else going on, but once that's done that'll be a big job checked off the list
So I'm currently at work, writing a program in the "Urgent, Not Important" pile rather than working on the "Important, Not Urgent" pile that's been sitting there for 2 years now, at 95% completion. Lol
@Adeptus I've really only ever played that game as a cooperative event or with strange and unusual rules everyone had to follow; always found those more fun
Is a player able to spend a fate point, to declare it a full moon? For instance, if they have a lycanthrope character who gains more power in the full moon.
I know a fate point can be spent to declare an arrival/having an item and such like that, which is unrelated to an aspect and more setting r...
The Evocation Wizard's Sculpt Spell ability allows the wizard to protect some creatures from their own evocation spells:
When you cast an Evocation spell that affects other creatures that you can see, you can choose a number of them equal to 1 + the spell’s level. The chosen creatures automatica...
@HotRPGQuestions this is a question I didn’t know existed and now I realize I just skipped that section since I’ve only played 1-2 wizards and none were evocation focused
@HotRPGQuestions I mean, even if you want to be a strict originalist you can achieve the effect just by picking a couple nearby ants to protect with your extra slots.
@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Oh yeah, it might be simpler than I thought. Though whether or not the multiple attack rolls constitute one attack is unclear, well... Hmmm maybe the spell says attack and not attack roll
Oh yay "Make a melee spell attack against each target", and it doesn't say they're simultaneous so they aren't. Awesome!
> If there's ever any question whether something you're doing counts as an attack, the rule is simple: if you're making an attack roll, you're making an attack.
The Hunter ranger's 11th-level Multiattack feature has two options. One of them is Volley:
You can use your action to make a ranged attack against any number of creatures within 10 feet of a point you can see within your weapon’s range. You must have ammunition for each target, as normal, and...
And also the eldritch blast question I linked a few messages up
Unrelated: I know that tags are supposed to be some sort of "emergent folksonomy", and I've more or less given up on them having rules/policies over just what is done / practices, but, this question has three tags unique to that question.
Do we just let new tags exist for a while (a year?) and see how much use they get? Do we add them to older questions that should have them? Do we just remove them (this seems an impossible option since it implies no tags would ever exist)? Something else entirely (such as: there is no clear answer)?
I'm also unsure whether those links are to sites that pirate / go around paywalls
I think it works as a main site question in that it's something that an expert in RPGs would conceivably have particular knowledge of
the OGL was a big deal after all
we've also fielded questions about what content people can legally use in self-published works etc. on the mainsite, so I don't think it's inappropriate
This is a site about Role-Playing Games. We are experts on Role-Playing Games. There is a sickening number of questions about law, that are only tangentially related to games, and they are being treated as on topic. This is highly problematic:
The questions are almost always far too broad. ...
@Medix2 I wish I'd have thought to look around the twitter verse for a JC tweet when I was forming my answer; glad you did. Thanks. Also, I like your question on the PF2 site, but I can't be sure it isn't better on meta than on main. My gut is on main since it would be more useful to more people seeing it there ...
@ThomasMarkov Nope. I looked at the damage analysis Blue Moon did and he left out one important bit: you have to roll to hit. It's only OP if you give advantage on all of the attacks (which JC says isn't how it works).
Now a bard at level 10 with it; heh, nice use of magical secrets. And your stated edge case is five targets, which won't always be the case. You reduce the number of targets and the aggregate damage goes down ...
It's a niche spell, not an 'always use' spell.
@ThomasMarkov Using your structure there, a fireball against 10 orcs does how much damage? .😁
I know this. And if the wizard ends the attack Right Next To an enemy at the end of their turn, the can't use another spell to move away until next turn. It's a great big "kick me" sign for wizard. (Or you could call it "high risk, high reward")
But at least I now see your point on the AC 15/Tier 2 analysis.
My white room analysis case included a Fighter 2 Bard 10 and used action surge. 😎
An extension of this other meta question;
Paizo has taken down their own PRD and officially licensed the Archives of Nethys page as their reference document. Archives of Nethys provides a community driven resource for all Pathfinder (and Starfinder) content, including setting-specific rule conte...
Meta Stack Exchange (which emerged from Meta Stack Overflow after the Stack Exchange network was spawned) is great; it gives you a chance to talk about the Stack Exchange network in a disconnected forum so that you don't have to break the fight club rules of talking about Stack Exchange sites on ...
This is a bit of sticky question because it concerns the scenario where it's unclear if a site is a pirated site or not.
We clearly need to only link to non-pirated content, but when someone has a question about if a site is legal or not, what should we do?
The concern is that if it's illegal, we...
@Medix2 SSD's answer to stance on piracy I think is relevant "It's a bad look to openly talk about using pirated materials here, and so easily avoided. As a poster, one should studiously avoid it. As stewards of the site we should actively discourage it."
So I think your decision to delete the question was correct.
@Someone_Evil Why don't you think it's a policy question?
Also, I really really think it'd be a good idea for when active high-rep users interact with other active high-level users by overriding tags/dupes/etc, to leave a comment.
I don't think it's useful to treat that question as "what's our policy?" which the tag implies since we don't have a previous policy on the matter (do we? now I'm unsure)
Hmm, I suppose it is treated as policy (and I've referred to it such in the past). It's just the canonical meta is poorly labeled for that purpose
The policy meta tag seems to be a mess. There's questions explicitly about an exisiting policy (changes, about parts of etc,), question which are a querent trying to get a policy for a problem (some of these have rather low scores), and then some about how policies work in general. Not sure if we need some spring cleaning on that
First, within D&D 5e, what magic, items, or special abilities would allow player characters to detect a doppelgänger?
Second, and perhaps not easily answerable, what types of clues or cue might give away a doppelgänger without the use of magic? Or how as a DM might I give players a chance to noti...
if a user has a different comment on a post that is unrelated to the discussion that's been moved, I think it's entirely valid to post that as a comment
@Someone_Evil If it's a policy, I suggest taking the relevant content from whatever meta post you consider canon, and putting the content up under rpg.stackexchange.com/help/referencing
@NautArch I think it's just natural that most people want to interact with SE in ways that SE specifically tries to avoid. It's meant to be a canonical Q&A site and not so much a social or interactive space, but many people sort of expect and want that kind of interaction and operate in that mode
It's sort of like a chromatic dragon in D&D trying to be Good: it can happen, but it will involve struggles and setbacks, and most probably won't put much effort into the project; it's so contrary to natural inclinations that many probably never quite get the point of the endeavor in the first place
@JohnP Just as "strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government" unlicensed or non-cannon third party sources are no basis for a system's lore.
@JohnP mention whether there's any coverage in 5e and you'll probably be fine. No mention of taggit oil there? Cool, we fall back to earlier editions. It's a due diligence sort of thing.
@MarkWells I feel like that's a slippery slope because there are a lot of 3rd party sources that are intended for use with a significant amount of lube. I'd rather not have those fan fics included. Drizzt Do'Urden Does Dallas is not something I'd like showing up as lore.
@NautArch What's the difference between something from WOTC and something I just made up on my own? A few years ago I would have said "playtesting" but these days there's an implied "(lol)" on that.
@MarkWells HeyICanChan linked to an answer on another question which strongly implies that taggit is totally undefined, which (if true for D&D 5e) causes a significant problem: the official, 1st party lore specifically leaves it undefined in all capacities other than that it exists in fully-refined form and has specific effects
I'm also pretty sure that if the answer said "there is no explanation of what a taggit is in official D&D material, but this popular third party 3e book posited it's just a kind of plant" it'd be okay
I think you have to justify that there's no answer in the first-party material before you fall back to referencing third party is all
Oh, OK. Now that I reread—it's because the answer isn't actually saying what a taggit is or how we get taggit oil. At least, it's not cutting to the chase: it has a weak start by saying what taggit oil does. But when it does answer it's using 3pp where people are probably expecting an authoritative (i.e. wizards) source. 3pp is making it up as much as me saying "a taggit is a miniature woodland buffalo and the oil comes from its fur."
@Carcer Even then I feel like we might have some issues, though maybe they're edge cases, and it may matter what the querent wants the lore for. If some self-published D&D adventure fully defines what the Dark Powers (of Barovia fame) are, I'm not sure that's worth anything.
@Carcer I agree, but I think that that's the entire answer. Someone looking for lore and going to literally anything anyone ever posted in a public forum to get it is basically idea generation
@KorvinStarmast that new answer on sculpt spell doesnt work, I dont think.
The first three examples have a continuous space of outcomes, sculpt spell is a discrete space. The intermediate value theorem applies in the first three cases, but not in the case of sculpt spell.
@doppelgreener That approach seems sensible. "There's nothing in the DMG or other WOTC-published materials about it. Here's how other writers have developed the idea, though."
I feel that such a standard makes it impossible to assess answers against one another. If Blue Devil Games says it's X, and Red Angel Games says it's Y, I'm not sure how votes "should" be distributed among them, which seems to me to be contrary to the SE ethos
If questions have a specific application of the lore they want, that's a different story
@Upper_Case While I get your point about the need for a specific application (I'm the one always yelling at people about use cases), assessing answers against one another is a tool for producing useful answers, not an end in itself.
@MarkWells I don't think I'm in a position to push strongly for one approach over another. But I do feel confident in properly understanding that duplicate answers are to be avoided, and the actual, stackable answer to the instances we're talking about is "there is no official lore".
Adding that "more than 0 people have thought this approach worth writing down" doesn't add much, begins to resemble idea-generation and shopping-list questions, and creates the possibility of hard-to-curate answer avalanches. Though I suppose that outcome would probably only affect a handful of answers across the stack, and so may not really be a problem in practical terms
"if it was defined, it would be defined in these places. I looked there and didn't find it. I conclude it probably isn't defined." is a reasonable logical sequence for answers to use when proving a negative.
@doppelgreener I'll put my best man on it! 🤦♂️ Wait, that's my brother (he was my best man at our wedding) and I think his lack of interest is measurable with large calipers ...) Sorry.
Taggit is clearly a corruption of git tag, a command used in source code control. A Git tag is a durable label attached to a specific revision; unlike a branch pointer, which moves as commits are added, a tag stays where it was placed. Similarly, oil of taggit causes you to stop moving and stay where the oil was placed.
I don't know the linguistic term for it (paging @Medix2 ?) but there's a transformation where a (verb + qualifier) phrase gets flipped into (qualifier-verb) so that it can function as either a single verb or a related noun. The example that comes to mind is "set off" -> "offset" meaning the distance by which something is set off.
@ThomasMarkov what I do is first check and see if I have a coupon, and then ask if my wife wants something from Arby's. She always says no. Saves me a lot of d20 rolling. .😎
@MarkWells which is not quite the same as "he set off the charge" when doing explosive ordnance disposal. 😎
@MarkWells Actually, I think the term is 'danger close' but I may be confusing my old field artillery and naval gunfire spotting jargon with EOD jargon. Been too many years, and they may have updated the field manual
@KorvinStarmast As someone whose knowledge of explosives mostly comes from the film Tremors 2, I would expect there to be some precise term for "it's gonna be big, really big, keep running".
@Someone_Evil Yeah probably just compounding since it's not incorporation or anything similar. I guess you could tack on a "nominalization" if you wanted
@Axoren Oh yeah, I've read that thing it's... inconsistent sometimes XD But yeah, these are just terms we have questions (and answers) to regarding pronunciation; I'm just wondering if D&D Beyond actually matches what our answers have stated/claimed