TRPG General Chat

kviiri

18:01

@AncientSwordRage yup

And that's been the case for earlier editions too

Thomas Markov

18:13

Okay, Im done making JC edits for today.

Dont want to flood the front page too bad.

Medix2

There's a lot btw

Like there's all these and TIL there are some weird ways to format links

Like somehow this link works? But this would have been just fine

Someone_Evil

Weird how?

Medix2

I assume the entire appended action of "?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sageadvice.eu%2F2016%2F07%2F09%2Fcan-i-move-and-attack-with-a-readied-action%2F" just does nothing?

Someone_Evil

The former is passing on a referral link, no? Telling the website who sent you

Medix2

But then it's being put onto our site which makes it... not needed?

Thomas Markov

18:18

@Medix2 Im using this query to find chief offenders.

Medix2

I at least learned that links like that (using a referral) pop up when using the "url" parameter in the search function

Someone_Evil

Yup, I would it happens because folks follow that link and then copies it from their browser without trimming

You can occasionally see some odd forms of broken links being posted that ways, but here we are

Medix2

The real reason @ThomasMarkov acquired 50k reputation. To bounty every single Tweet-answers-only question

Thomas Markov

@Medix2 It's a decent perk, to be sure.

@Someone_Evil You cool with the parameters of my editing project?

(1) Clarify that JC tweets are unofficial rulings, (2) replace sa.eu links with direct links to tweets, (3) bounty questions that need authoritative answers

GcL

@ThomasMarkov I haven't showered since my activity today. You lead me to your chief, and I can help you offend them. /S

nitsua60

18:23

@kviiri I mean, someone coming to the hobby would likely have most-recently run across "editions" of something when their college textbook's page numbers didn't quite match, or their wrong-edition anthology was missing one or two of the works assigned. That's a pretty poor map to how some RPGs use the term "edition."

Thomas Markov

@Someone_Evil also how much is too much at one time

GcL

@ThomasMarkov 2 and 3 seem great. 1 seems like putting words in people's mouths they might not have intended. Heck, the OP in some cases might consider JC tweets better than official.

Someone_Evil

@ThomasMarkov These all seem like useful actions, and you're aware of the please don't flood idea, so seems all good

GcL

@ThomasMarkov You could wait till you get chatted at. Probably depends on the Q&A activity. Probably wait until one is out of the top 15 results.

Thomas Markov

@Someone_Evil I did 6 just a bit ago, probably leave it at that for today.

GcL

18:26

That way people likely won't be looking at more than one Thomas edit per screen/page down.

Thomas Markov

@GcL I frequently have multiple edits bumping things to the front page lol

Mithical

SFF has a no more than 5 out of the last active 15 posts on the front page policy, for reference.

Thomas Markov

@Mithical link to policy?

Mithical

scifi.meta.stackexchange.com/a/12477/33591 .

Medix2

@ThomasMarkov I've also seen people say that if you have a lot to do you should just get it all done in one feel, page-flooding swoop so... yeah...

Thomas Markov

18:30

@Mithical thanks

Mithical

np

bobble

I have a personal 3-a-day necro-edit policy, but that applies nowhere but the inside of my head

GcL

@Medix2 I find that garners complaints here. On the other hand, a script to queue up one edit per day generally goes under the radar.

Medix2

Well, making a script might be more difficult in this case; but assuming that isn't an option, the difference is in the amount of time required on the part of the editor which... if it's their own endeavor, probably doesn't matter

I've now collected related Meta questions

GcL

@Medix2 If you've got a list of posts to edit, mine was a cron job that ate one at a time and opened a link to the post. A spreadsheet or whatever people want to use would probably work as well.

Medix2

18:38

"What are the guidelines for editing many questions in a short period of time?" and "When I have a series of questions that are unrelated to one another, how much time should I let pass before asking the next/each question?" And then a bunch of answers: 1, 2, 3

4, 5. Note I just searched for "flood"

Especially that second link, as it has answers in all directions. So yeah, surprisingly absolutely nobody, there isn't a perfect consensus

GcL

What's the DC for perfect consensus? 45?

Thomas Markov

Yeah, Ill just let it be a slowish burn till someone gets upset.

Medix2

Wait... if somebody believes Crawford's tweets are official. And Crawford has tweeted that his tweets aren't official...

Thomas Markov

@Medix2 Oh no.

bobble

@GcL a perfect consensus is impossible, because if you start to get a large number of people agreeing with you, someone will disagree just to be contrary.

Someone_Evil

18:48

@bobble Hmm... that doesn't seem correct :p

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with a link in answer, link at end of answer (141): Is it necessary to purchase all the D&D 5th edition books to have access to all player character options? by Gob LInn on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose)

AncientSwordRage

@SmokeDetector kill it with fire

yay

Someone_Evil

Fire applied

Thomas Markov

Any kind hearted soul want to update this answer?

Medix2

A great example of why I like Community Wiki answers XD

Joel Harmon

18:56

@GcL It's 20 + 5 * the number of people

AncientSwordRage

@ThomasMarkov no thank you

Thomas Markov

It's missing ERLW, MOoT, and TCoE

Medix2

Isn't there a new book coming out soon too? And isn't Frostwind Vale something too?

Thomas Markov

@Medix2 Icewind Dale is an adventure module

Medix2

Or some name with "Frost" in the title...

Thomas Markov

18:59

There is a Ravenloft campaign setting coming out soon

@Medix2 Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden

Medix2

I feel like that somehow wasn't even it XD

AncientSwordRage

candle keep?

Medix2

Wow there are a lot of adventures I've never heard of

Thomas Markov

Candlekeep Mysteries just released last week.

Medix2

Rrakkma, Candlekeep, Icespire Peak, Thesselhydra, Frozen Sick, Infernal Machine Build... and more. Ah but what I was thinking of was the Tides of Bilgewater unofficial content so nevermind on that

Like there's a LOT of books here: dndbeyond.com/sources

Thomas Markov

19:10

@Medix2 Alot of this is digital releases.

SmokeDetector

19:29

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer, potentially bad asn for hostname in answer (62): What was the first RPG podcast? by P M. on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose)

Axoren

@AncientSwordRage That's going to make SEO very difficult during 6e's playtest if they're going to call it D&DNext again

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast Guessing you've noticed, but candlekeep is live on dndbeyond now for us.

Axoren

Also, I would love to be a part of the 6e playtest so I can stop them from making awful feats like Grappler again.

AncientSwordRage

@SmokeDetector false positive?

@Axoren there's no plan at the moment

Thomas Markov

@AncientSwordRage Looks like it.

Axoren

19:38

@AncientSwordRage No plan to make more awful feats? Or no plan for a 6e playtest? Because I know 6e's a long way away.

Thomas Markov

@Axoren Right, why would you shelve your cash cow when it is producing more milk than any other time in history

AncientSwordRage

@Axoren no plan for a 6e

I wouldn't be surprised if it slowly mutates into something else

Axoren

@ThomasMarkov There's actually an answer to this that isn't idiocy. If you see your player base becoming bi-modal, you can just pick up one group of them and move them over there, and make two parallel products that serve each better and expand market size drastically.

Right now, 5e's audience isn't homogenous, but it's not asking for something drastically different.

AncientSwordRage

@Axoren what modes?

Axoren

@AncientSwordRage Distribution modes?

AncientSwordRage

19:44

@Axoren you hinted at a bi-modal distribution, and that the audience isn't homogenous

Axoren

@AncientSwordRage No, no, no. That was a general case in which a corporation had a milkable product that met that criteria. Like Capcom and Nintendo with their Fighting Game communities.

AncientSwordRage

@Axoren I get that

Axoren

It actually becomes profitable for a company to establish new product and maintain the old product and new product in parallel.

AncientSwordRage

> Right now, 5e's audience isn't homogenous

I'm trying to understand that bit

Axoren

There's people who want 5e to double-down more on Westmarch Style of play, but the balance shift is more towards Dungeoneering as an example.

There are pockets within the community that want something that D&D has trouble providing as part of their blanket experience.

In many cases, people add their own rules on top of 5e to support these playstyles, or they just use other engines.

AncientSwordRage

19:48

@Axoren I've never seen a good example of how those two styles of play actually effect the game mechanics? I understand how they work roughly though

@Axoren this I didn't know

Axoren

The homebrew community is often looked at with a lot of spite because many people start tinkering with the engine before they understand it. But in many cases, there are parts of D&D that lack rulings for mediating certain conflicts. For example: Mental Combat still hasn't been brought back in.

No Psychic battles yet.

Before Salt Marsh, people had their own boating rules for ship combat. Then D&D added ship combat rules to a module that barely even used them.

So 5e can eventually wrangle in its whole audience, but it's doing it bit by bit at a time.

Another thing that was brought up a while ago is that D&D is an engine for adventures that solve problems with violence. It's very hard to build a character that can solve general problems without reducing some hit points and without impeding their party members from solving those same problems with their toolkits. Campaigns where the goal is not the kill evil but to defeat them in other ways, they really need some other kind of system.

@AncientSwordRage As for this point, which I kind of skipped over because the other was easier to respond to, one big aspect of it is that Exploration sort of suffers in D&D as a whole. Not everyone plays from modules and without a place that already exists and has been designed and established, characters that want to excel in this field (I know my way all around insert valley here) will get shafted as those parts of play are either randomly generated or neglected entirely.

RevenantBacon

@Axoren The "Three Pillars" of 5e are (supposedly) Exploration, Combat, and Social Interactions, but one of those three pillars is bigger than the other two combined.

Axoren

We notice at our table, we have to make an effort to make exploration rewarding and meaningful, but we ended up making up an entire framework that best serves as the basis for our own engine!

Thomas Markov

@RevenantBacon That's a playstyle thing.

RevenantBacon

@ThomasMarkov It's not just playstyle though. The portions of every single book that are dedicated to detailing how to do combat are vastly larger than the proportions of either how to handle exploration or social interactions

Axoren

19:58

Exploration very much feels like a tack-on to those pillars, but it doesn't feel like it was supposed to be so neglected.

doppelgreener

@Axoren My personal thoughts are that the (reasonably adept) members of the D&D 5e (and 3e) homebrew community do no worse than published contractors, only the published contractors get their work put in first-party volumes. Both groups are working with almost no guidelines and flying by the seat of their pants!

Axoren

@doppelgreener That's a horrifying way to fly.

Carcer

better than flying by the pants of your seat

doppelgreener

I agree, it's not ergonomic

Being published in and of itself lends legitimacy of "ah, yes, these people have it figured out." We see similar in Magic custom card design sometimes. Someone produces a card with an unusual effect: "you can't do that, that's nuts!" Then Wizards produces a card with a similar but even more nuts effect: "yes, see, magic can do this, this is reasonable."

Someone_Evil

@Carcer Or seating by the fly of your pants

Axoren

20:02

The Ranger is one class that seems to have suffered the most from the weakness of the Exploration Pillar. They seemed to fit a role that few-else were even designed to fill.

Now, that kit which is exclusively available to them only matters when the DM decides not to hand-wave travel between areas.

NautArch

I haven't played at a table that leans into the exploration, but I've tried and found it not very fun in 5e rules. Heck, even mundane tracking of food, water, ammo, etc I don't find adds to the game.

Unless you do a lot to make it meaningful.

RevenantBacon

@doppelgreener I agree. The only reason homebrew has such a bad reputation is because we as a species tend to judge things by either the best or the worst examples. Which of those two gets picked for any given thing does seem a bit arbitrary though.

NautArch

But that's a lot of homebrew to make that work.

RevenantBacon

And homebrew tends to fall to the latter option

I think in the case of D&D homebrew though, "basically core but reflavored" is seen as the best type of homebrew, but also tends to generate the least attention, while flagrantly broken stuff, like getting to cast a level-9 spell for free starting at Wizard level 1 gets more attention

Axoren

@NautArch Tracking food and water is something we wanted to do for RotFM, but it was less than one session before we gave it the big-ol' FI.

Now, we have a Cleric, Druid, and Druid that are supplying us with plenty because these problems feel better solved at the cost of spell slots than playtime.

Oh, you want to track arrows? Well, I'll just fill the cart with more arrows than I'll use this entire campaign because they're cheap and take up very little space.

NautArch

20:10

@Axoren Yep, and even then it seems a bit silly for me. It's also weird to make a weapon choice decide whether or not you have a resource to manage.

@Axoren Yep, and with really very few rules about carrying things...it's not a problem.

Carcer

@NautArch but my emulsions

Thomas Markov

In our Rime campaign we have zero healers.

Axoren

Shadow of the Demon Lord had a REALLY good approach to this. If you fumble, that's when you track arrows.

NautArch

@ThomasMarkov I do have to balance that a bit, but it's not a big deal.

Axoren

In so much as that's when you learn your quiver is empty

And it's VERY thematic

None of this "I can't participate in combat until we get to town and I find a fletcher" it's "I have to refill my quiver at our supplies or switch to another weapon temporarily"

And if you fumble after shooting fewer than 6 arrows? You still have at least as many as would be left in your quiver if you started with 6.

NautArch

20:13

@Axoren Still hard with the 5e system of, more expertise->more attacks->more chance of fumble issue.

Akixkisu

@BESW I experience difficulties in processing that article - is the essential point about framing action (Like platforming voices instead of no-platforming voices as if voices are entitled to be amplified?)

Axoren

@NautArch 5e lacks very specific kind of defenses. There's only two real source of subtractive damage reduction (Deflect missiles, Heavy Armor Master). There's only a couple forms of hit reduction (Mirror Image, can't think of any others). As a result, There's very few things that penalize going for lots of small hits.

This makes things like Summoners and Fighters far stronger than normal. This has been a problem historically in D&D. More attacks, more better.

kviiri

@nitsua60 Yes. The idea of some game just... changing wildly over time felt strange to me when ai first heard about it

Thomas Markov

@Axoren Barbarian rage is a notable example.

Axoren

@ThomasMarkov That's proportional damage reduction. It has the same proportional effect to damage at all tiers. Whereas reducing damage by 10 could make a fighter's total damage for a round amount to less than 6 damage.

kviiri

20:21

I guess people who start now might be more used to it as digital games are patched more and more openly than before, providing some sort of precedent

Carcer

motion to replace "edition" with "sequel"

Thomas Markov

We can delete this answer

(needs a downvote first though)

NVM OP figured it out

kviiri

@Carcer Interestingly, I was also very weirded out to learn that there's a plot that tries to explain the edition changes. That still feels unintuitive to me, though admittedly that's influenced by my general lens of viewing fiction

Carcer

@kviiri honestly the way that the Forgotten Realms has some massive magical catastrophe for every edition change is fascinating to me

it amuses and annoys me in equal measure, I think

kviiri

Are you angrmused by it?

Carcer

20:25

ammoyed

Dungeons & Dragons
2 Dungeon 2 Dragon
Dungeons & Dragons: Waterdeep Drift
Dungeon & Dragon
Dungeon 5

Axoren

Paul Walkers of Salt Marsh

RevenantBacon

You stop that

You stop that right meow

kviiri

How to tame your Dungeon

RevenantBacon

Dungeonheart

kviiri

One of these days I'm making an RPG about sitting on the toilet for too long, I'll call it Dung-eons and Drag-ons

Carcer

20:32

50 Editions of Dungeon

Double Dungeon!

RevenantBacon

DungeonLance

kviiri

But yeah anyway, I've never really felt comfortable with needing the fiction to match perfectly with the mechanics (and therefore, with the need to justify changes in mechanics by the fiction)

RevenantBacon

Apparently, level 12 spells used to be a thing, then some guy ruined it for everyone by trying to become a god

NautArch

@RevenantBacon MGS?

kviiri

A spell to surpass Metal Gear

RevenantBacon

20:38

We know the Mythals, such as the one in Myth Dranor, were created by level 11 spells, and that's why they cannot be repaired or created anew

Also there were such spells as Iolaums Longevity, and Mavin's Create Volcano

And Breach/Seal Crystal Sphere or WorldWeave

Apparently, Karsus's Avatar, the spell that got Mystra riled up enough tp put a ban on magic higher than level 9, required Tarrasque blood, the gizzard of a gold dragon, and 12-headed hydra bile as some of the ingredients required to enchant just one of the material components.

It would have allowed the caster (the aforementioned Karsus) to temporarily merge themselves with any deity of their choosing, allowing them unfettered access to that deities powers for the duration of the spell. One can see why this would upset Mystra

Huh, Aumvor's Soul Shatter is a neat spell

Hot RPG Questions

20:55

14

Q: How do I move forward when an impending doom was stopped by accident?

I'm having an issue in a campaign I am running where an impending doom that was part of a front was stopped by the players pretty much by dumb luck. In order to both prevent any of my nosy players from getting behind the front info, and to make this simpler I will use a made up example of the sam...

RevenantBacon

It takes the targets soul and body, separates them, and sends the soul to the afterlife while the body continues to live

Medix2

@Axoren We have a question on this

NautArch

@HotRPGQuestions One step at a time. Left foot, right foot.

bobble

@NautArch what if one has only one foot?

NautArch

@bobble Hop to it!

Axoren

21:01

@Medix2 Subtractive damage reduction is really strong so it's good to know there's a list of more stuff

I had to bench my Full-plate Rogue/Barbarian because (x/2 - 3) was too strong of an incoming damage function for most encounters.

Medix2

@Axoren Well, an outdated and incomplete list, but yes, a list

Axoren

With an extra Uncanny Dodge for an extra /2

Medix2

Well, it would be (x-3)/2 not (x/2) - 3

Since resistance is last

Axoren

There was a ruling somewhere that flat damage reduction was deducted first

Medix2

Yeah, that's what I just said

But you had it as dividing first

Axoren

21:04

Wait, did I say that wrong?

bobble

> (x/2 - 3)

Axoren

Let me first find the ruling I was talking about and bring it up because brain is sore

bobble

is brain ever not sore?

Medix2

25

Q: Damage reduction and damage resistance: how to calculate?

Assume a character has both damage reduction and damage resistance vs an incoming attack. One example of damage reduction is the Heavy Armor Master feat: While you are wearing heavy armor, bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage that you take from non magical weapons is reduced by 3. On...

dnd-5e damage-resistance damage-reduction

Axoren

YES, you're right. It's -3 first.

I keep getting the formula wrong, but I know intuitively it's the one that's worse for the defender.

I hard it right, but edited it because I thought I had it wrong.

I should have just left it and been wrong if I was wrong, because I was right and became wrong. This is the worst way to be wrong.

bobble

21:08

There are worse ways to be wrong

Medix2

Oh that's a great way to phrase it "worse for the defender"

Since it affects vulnerability in the same way

Hot RPG Questions

22:10

5

Q: Aura of the Guardian and Damage order of operations

The Oath of Redemption Paladin subclass gets the following feature at 7th level (XGtE, 39): you can shield your allies from harm at the cost of your own health. When a creature within 10 feet of you takes damage, you can use your reaction to magically take that damage, instead of that creature t...

dnd-5e class-feature damage damage-reduction

Glazius

22:35

Yay, rep cap!

KorvinStarmast

23:23

@Medix2 I received the new book, and it is 17 adventures, one for each level of PC ... I'll be trying out the 6th level adventure on Wednesday and hoping for the best

@NautArch that I have. :) I have it in roll20 since that is where our group (my brother's world) plays ...

@Carcer it would annoy me if I gave a fart about the FR, which I do not. (The novels, a good many of which I read when I was at sea or otherwise deployed are in general ... low grade. A few good ones here and there) ... but the amount of "lore" and half baked world building that the 'official canon' does badly is impressive. 😜

Shalvenay

23:58

@KorvinStarmast no kidding on the half-baked worldbuilding.

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