In all honesty, it was my own doing. Lol. I realized there was a much easier way to do it, so I started cleaning up, then realized what was actually going on.
It was kinda like "Eh, it works. Oh, wait... huh... oh... oh, no... oh heck... ok... I got this... I think"
I have been looking at Xanathar's Guide to Everything, and I have a question about how the Zealot Barbarian's Warrior of the Gods feature works with Twinned Spell for a Divine Soul Sorcerer. The Warrior of the Gods feature says:
If a spell, such as raise dead, has the sole effect of restoring yo...
Ok, so I have a situation I need to think about, regarding an incident that occurred in our last D&D game.
Basically, after trying to stay under the radar, and quite well I might add, for several sessions, all hell broke loose. Our bribes slipped up, our trail was caught, and it all ended up with a brawl with the police in the middle of the street.
The rest of the party was only invested so far as to break free from the police, but then the rogue (assassin) stepped in, and started slicing throats, which, needless to say, took us all by surprise.
The session ended there, with one PC captured, the rest of us heading back to safety, and one PC not sure if he wants to stick around (being the only "good" character in the party)
Have you tried asking the Omnissiah for guidance discussing with the other players out-of-game to better synchronize playstyles and expectations, and discussing with the GM about possible ways forward with the campaign?
Hear out the player who's doubting whether his character is still a good fit for the campaign. That can be a frustrating place to be and a source of continuous tension. Maybe discuss possible options for adapting that character (e.g. compromising his morals to fit the group's actions, or admonishing his peers about acting more heroic) or replacing them entirely.
It's also possible that some of the players didn't want the encounter to play out that way, so y'all can also discuss different options for handling those sort of situations. Ask the GM how they expected the party to handle the encounter, in case there were better ways out that the players just didn't see.
@MikeQ In this situation I don't think that's necessary, or at least that's what we're going to sort out in the intervention. We're enjoying the in-game reactions to tense situations.
My big concern would be that I've seen campaigns' tone and story type change dramatically as a result of one character doing something that changes the landscape. If your setting is the sort of place where "murdering a bunch of cops" means systematic retaliation and the party is topping the state's Most Wanted list, that might make it hard to keep playing whatever kind of game you were playing before.
A big question I'd need to ask the group is whether this means the campaign is now a five-star Grand Theft Auto run with no cooldown mechanic, and if so is that okay.
2
And I'd want to come into that conversation with ideas about what we might do if the answer to the second question is "no."
@Shalvenay Busy. A bunch of things at work are ramping up in parallel and I'm having to tell people I really don't have time to do both. Which is a new thing. Usually I'm not that loaded.
My manager left a few weeks ago and a lot of his project acquisition work fell to me ontop of my normal workload.
@Shalvenay At least you have a test system. I work somewhere that genuinely believes automated test systems are cutting edge breakthrough technology. Well not quite but very few projects have implemented them. And we regularly hear about projects breaking due to badly tested features making it to develop.
@linksassin eheheh. we're not nearly where we ought to be with automated testing at $work over here, but that's largely due to an architectural issue. come to think of it, mind if I bounce it off you in Discord PM?
Why not perform tests on production? Performing test and production in the same place means getting two for the price of one. And if something goes wrong, then it builds character.
Also, you should change project requirements on a daily basis. It keeps developers on their toes.
If I'm playing as a Warlock and I take the pact of the blade feature and the thirsting blade invocation (which allows me to make two melee attacks with my pact weapon), can I cast vampiric touch on myself to grant both of my melee attacks the extra 3d6 necrotic damage, or did I misunderstood the ...
Ove the past number of years I've noticed an uptick in questions being closed for being "opinion based" and calls for questions to be closed for that reason. My understanding was that opinion based questions were on-topic for this stack (though they may fall foul of other rules which make them of...
I recently proposed the following edit suggestion:
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/74128
It was unanimously rejected and I think that might have been wrong. I replaced the spell Bolt, which is wrong, with the spell Healing, which is a correct possibility.
As stated in Chat, t...
@TheOracle I feel like we've been through this, Oracle. Opinion-based answers are the real problem.
That candlekeep question is pretty interesting, but I'm not sure it's stackable. Unless we can become a review site, but those seem opinion-y. Or could we be the cliffs notes for published modules? Or does that step on the modules paywalls?
The only sort of response that gets close to good subjective is a summary of your experience playing through the module, but then the question is just discussion of what happened when you played it.
I was under the impression that we can revist topics on the meta, and as a result the concept of "duplicate" question isn't really applicable to the meta
see all of the don't guess the system policy questions on meta
@AncientSwordRage The problem with FTL arises when you take account that there is not only one preferred reference frame for the universe. Relativity tells us that we cannot tell the difference between being stationary in an accelerating frame of reference and being constantly accelerated (due to some force like gravity) in a static frame of reference.
This lack of a universal frame of reference means when we compare events between different frames of reference (for example a spaceship travelling at some constant fraction of c and the "stationary" people on Earth), if we allow faster than light travel, the order of events will be different between the different reference frames for things that occurred using that FTL. Hence causality breaking.
hrmm... that Candlekeep question strikes me as okaaaayish, but also something I'd have no interest in actually answering, myself. (Even though I've got the product and have played many of the eponymous mysteries.) If you're taking 10-20 pp. adventures and characterizing them--not even their plot-points, but their themes/structures--I believe we're well into fair-use territory. (Though IANAL.) As for it being **P**OB, I wouldn't be too worried about that: what's going to differ from one potential characterization to another is whether the social "encounters" are labeled as minor or major--th…
Are we going to slip down a slope of becoming D&DReviews.SE? I would hope not, but I'm also a bigger fan of tackling a problem as it emerges, rather than imagining it will.
I was just wondering, for items in Pathfinder 1e that provide saves bonuses (like a Cloak of Resistance), they seem to only go up to +5, but in the Magic Item Creation rules, it looks like you could go much higher, all you'd need to do would be to calculate the different cost (and have that much ...
@NautArch The question that prompted what I was aiming as a revist question on meta was certainly the candlekeep question, but it's not just about that question, but how we handle opinion based questions (or questions that may generate opinion based answers)
It's not just that one question though...that question is just the latest in what I've (anecdotally) observed as an increase in "close because not an objectively answerable question" behaviour. My anecdotal experience may be wrong, in which case great, we don't need a revist.
I honestly think that issue has gotten MUCH better over the years.
And I"m actually trying to only answer questions now with experience instead of rules.
The more of us that do that, the more we show it can be done - and how. Which may end up bringing smaller RPGs to the site as we showcase experience-based answers.
@NautArch The only game with which I have enough experience to do that with at the moment is D&D 5e, and those types of experience based questions are few and far between for 5e, most are "am I interpreting this rule correctly"
I wouldn't (and didn't) look at the new meta as a revisit. It's somewhere between discussion and support from a close voter PoV, not the asker PoV of the FAQ. Those may be useful to eachother, but differ in how they should explain things
@nitsua60 The candlekeep question can be answered, yes, if someone chooses to take all 20 adventures and summarize them with 20 spoiler blocks. But as I look at the scope on that, my under question comment arrives at "please do my homework for me" questions which usually get slammed on other SEs. FWIW. When I was more active on HistorySE, I helped close quite a few of those.
@KorvinStarmast The problem, with viewing this specific question as a "do my homework" question is the requirement in the question for different DMs, within the same group, to run different sub-adventures (which necessarily requires that one DM doesn't read all of the mini-adventures so as to preserve some sense of mystery for them as a player for the adventures they aren't running)
@ThomasMarkov I don't necessarily think that that's an accurate statement from whoever said it. I don't think that we're RAW first, it's just a coincidence that most questions are looking for RAW answers
@kviiri Your assignment tonight is to make a level 7 Wizard build that doesn't have Fireball as a known spell.
They've brought up a good point though: "How does this stack feel about community wiki answers? e.g. I post my example above for Mystery 1, then individual users who have played Mystery X can edit in their inputs for that single Mystery"
But 1. it means people wouldn't get reputation for their contribution 2. the question of what happens when two people would actually summarize a Mystery in significantly different ways such that they can't be meshed together (but there's probably a good chance that's never the case)
@Medix2 they tend to be rare circumstances where community wiki answers are suitable on this stack, but this type of question is one I think it would be precisely suitable for
It might be better to start a community wiki answer after a few individual answers on specific mysteries have been received
I know I have tried starting CW answers on questions answered by lists and this is answered by a list, hmmmmm. Just a list where each "item" requires more effort than just naming something
that way we encourage people to post individual summaries for a mystery, and the "most suitable" ones for the question can be added to the community wiki answer
That would require those answerers to actually agree to have their summaries moved into a community wiki (well, not technically, but I would want that at least). I don't think there's any real harm in just starting a CW answer; if people want to post theirs outside of it, they can just do so
Or well... I guess the question is whether we think we would get that and the risk-reward analysis of just leaving the question open and waiting vs closing it assuming something we can't actually know 100% (like all things)
@ThomasMarkov While I mostly agree with your answer about the Warlock Invocations, I think the strength of allowing other classes to take them is a bit over stated (except Agonizing Blast, hard agree). I think the bigger issue is that allowing any class access to those features significantly cuts into the Warlocks class identity
@G.Moylan Off topic is off topic, age and having an accepted answer dont change that. It's okay if you disagree with the closure because you think it is actually on topic, but there is an abundance of guidance on meta that says we should close off topic questions without regard for how old they are.
Gaaaah, if I have a torch in one hand and a hand crossbow in the other, and I have the Crossbow Expert Feat, do I still get the bonus action attack with the hand crossbow without having a free hand?
@BaconyRevanant Aha, still need a free hand ... From SAC ... The upshot is that you can fire it more than once if you have a feature like Extra Attack. You’re still limited, however, by the fact that the weapon has the ammunition property (PH, 146). The latter property requires you to have a bolt to fire from the hand crossbow, and the hand crossbow isn’t going to load itself (unless it’s magical or a gnomish invention). You need to load each bolt into the weapon, and doing so requires a hand.
Ah, hi guys. I hadn't realised that @KorvinStarmast meant the general-chat. I was looking for a "this discussion has been moved to a dedicated chat room". :)
So, it looks from the above like you'd be on-board with a CW answer if we had a suitable resolution to "what happens if there are conflicting answers offered"?
I don't know that much about CW answers. I've seen them intermittently, but I don't recall whether I've ever contributed to one. Are they actually mechanically different to normal answers just with a special "owner" who has no rep and auto-accepts all edits?
that was going to be my original suggestion, but for some reason i thought "holding a flame close to your face" was going to be more objectionable than "abuse the simulationist nature of D&D"
If so then an edit reviewer can deal with the edit to ensure that one of the following happen:
* the new edits get gracefully combined with the old notes (i.e. its just adding detail.) e.g. it's mostly A, with a bit of B. * The CW is allowed to have "depending on your p.o.v. it's either .... style A description ... or it's .... style B description."
or (most complexly)
* If anyone wants to add a conflicting summary, then the 2 descriptions get split off into "competing" answers, and the standard voting system determines which one is better.
TBH, I feel like descriptions that are actively in conflict seem somewhat low probability? But I'm relatively new here, so if others disagree that's fine :D
I mean, I don't know a bunch about Icewind Dale, for example, and if I know I could just post here and say "hey summarize this for me so I don't have to read it", I think I would. Why wouldn't you?
@Brondahl Yes, because wqe can actually test and practice good player management and talk from experience. We can't do that with a quick summary. What might be detailed enough for you might not be for another person, or vice versa.
> And I don't know about candlekeep, but there is quite a bit of content that a specific table won't play in Icewind Dale.
I don't know about the later Mysteries, but certainly the first one is small enough scope that you're definitely going to experience everything necessary to accurately describe the Style of the Mystery.
I'm also really unsure if we are set up to be a review/abstractl source for modules.
I don't think there's risk of paywall breaking as lots of sites out there review, but I think those sites and people are much better suited to this than us.
We're here for questions once youve dug in, not for general info about things.
@NautArch Sure, but that doesn't mean the good answers aren't valid. I've seen us link to other QAs all the time as reference material, so I'm confused by the proposition that that is wholecloth incorrect
@NautArch, Do I correctly understand that you're describing a scenario in which lots of the SE users all said that an Answer was "Good" because they liked it, but that the ... experienced ... users on the stack know that actually they're all wrong and the answer was in fact "Not Good".
That scenario arises with joke-answers, and also with answers that do not support their claims in any way whatsoever, but where people agree with those claims anyway
@G.Moylan Nah, G.Moylan is right here. DM interpretation supported by your experience with that interpretation is exactly what we want.
But if it isn't, then we should be downvoting
@KorvinStarmast My hunch is that WoTC is heading toward a 'build your own character' thing where you can pull from anything and there really aren't classes or races.
@NautArch I'm currently working on "blank" character templates that are just a class at a level with ability scores, and you can pick what race you want and you get the racial abilities but none of the stat changes, the theory being that those are already baked into the class such that you picked what was most advantageous anyway, going by Tasha rules. It doesn't eliminate race but it makes it easy to grab two sheets of paper and not have to think about it for one-shots
@G.Moylan My difficult choice should be in picking my sublass and my spells, infusions, etc. Not in whether I should be a minotaur because I want to or if I should pick something else because i'ts "better"
@NautArch But that's pigeonholing my experience to "you get to play a minotaur but you're going to be worse at X because they just suck at it." Why is every member of a race bad at X? that doesn't make sense to me. There are always differences
@NautArch I don't think moving or removing things like stat allocation from races really changes the difficult decision part of character creation, just changes the focus of where those difficult decisions need to be made.
@G.Moylan SO many things in D&D just don't make sense when you think about them. Almost all of the racial features aren't biological, and even looking solely at ones that are, they just... I could tirade for a while about the problems in all this stuff
@Brondahl Which is part of why I don't roll anymore. The variance makes for super awesome or super weak characters and I've found that that's frequently at the expence of my PCs' fun
(in the same way in real life, doctors are self-selected to be those who are significantly better at memorisation than the average person, due to the sheer volume of knowledge they need to be able to access at any given time)
@Brondahl What I'm saying is that I disagree that I should feel pigeonholed into playing "suboptimaly" if I want to make a minotaur sorcerer. I should get to play a character who is just as effective as the halfling rogue, regardless of what race I want to play
I think the rule in Tasha's about putting points where you want opens the door for playing optimally or suboptimally as you want, since you can put the points anywhere and still get to choose your race
it'd be kinda interesting to add a point-buy system for "racial" features though
essentially, that sort of mechanic would turn your race choice into a sort of vestigial visual shorthand. it wouldn't have any mechanical implications, but it'd function as a way to signal other players what your character generally looks like
kinda like alignment, really. also has fewer and fewer mechanical implications with every edition, but more of a general descriptor for how a character would behave in very general strokes
@Medix2 no, i meant that in the latter way. what i said was that such a mechanic would remove all mechanical implications from your race choice so then whichever race you choose to be would function primarily as a visual shorthand
Well the theory of relativity is broken if FTL is allowed precisely because causality would be broken, but we know relativity works very well in all the cases we can observe, because it's one of our two best performing scientific theories
@NautArch If there is something AT can do that makes a substantial damage difference, I can role play the difference if I need to. Magic is just so useful in D&D, and our party is a little bit low magic as built ... hence my indecision.
(back on Candlekeep) a thing is, though: an answer to that question isn't a review of the product. The more I think on it the more I see a decently-scoped problem being described ("we have a group with 4 people who will GM, we have a book with 18 modules, we don't want to self-spoil"). The only thing I take exception with, I think, is that there's a bit of XY going on: OP has decided that a stylistic summary of each is the way to solve the problem.
Then how do we approach answering this? Too much detail will be spoilery, too little detail won't be helpful. There are summaries in the book, just prior to each adventure. Why is the onus on us to carfeully craft/curate summaries to these adventures?
I don't know that summaries are the (only) way to answer, is what I'm saying. The really good answer I want to see is someone saying "I have a group, we once decided to rotate GMs, we played published work, here's how we prevented spoilage."
That answer may say "we asked a friend to summarize and picked from there," or it may say something I can't imagine, because I haven't dealt with the situation.
@illustro I totally hear what y'all are saying, I just don't agree for myself. So I think it's helpful to have as an option for those, but not to change the system to dramatically for those that like the decision-making process.
Because why be suboptimal when you can get what you want AND be optimal?
Everyone ends up being optimal, it seems...which as I type it out isn't bad.
@illustro While being good at test-taking is relevant, what makes one good at test-taking contributes more - a lot of that comes down to available capital, whether social, economic, cultural, or symbolic.
heh, just noticed this: Can a rogue use Evasion if they are surprised?if you are surprised, you can’t move or take an action. A surprised rogue can use Evasion, since that feature doesn’t require the rogue to take an action or move This came up for our AT in our last battle, will discuss with our DM.
Evasion is a class feature gained by Rogues and Monks at level 7:
At 7th level, your instinctive agility lets you dodge out of the way of certain area effects, such as a blue dragon’s lightning breath or a Fireball spell. When you are subjected to an effect that allows you to make a Dexterity...
@BaconyRevanant I had always wanted to play a human rogue with the thief subclass and the feat that allows to use med kits for healing.... Sounds interesting as F but I dunno where to go from there to not be a gimmick only :P
@Helwar Thief is a good all-rounder archetype, but I find that Arcane Tricksters are the most fun. Mage Hand Ledgermain is on of the most entertaining class abilities ever written :p
@Helwar Only 1 in this case: 2 auto fails only occurs on critical hits, which are themselves only automatic against targets within 5 feet of the attacker.
That answer is actually very good in pointing out that, mechanically, evasion has no effect on unconscious characters except in really niche circumstances.
Evasion is a class feature gained by Rogues and Monks at level 7:
At 7th level, your instinctive agility lets you dodge out of the way of certain area effects, such as a blue dragon’s lightning breath or a Fireball spell. When you are subjected to an effect that allows you to make a Dexterity...
