@linksassin so..are you familiar with the fake DMCA notice posts that pop up every now and again? where they claim that some thread is using a copyrighted photo, when there may not even be a photo present in the thread to begin with?
@linksassin I'm trying to figure out what the most correct flag for that sort of thing is ...it's trying to flog a link, so I think it's been treated as spam so far? but I'm not sure if that or rude/abusive is the more correct flag
because while not rude in the classical sense, they're definitely abusive
@Shalvenay If you can't figure it out use a custom flag and explain it. That's always easier for the mods to understand than trying to interpret why you picked a particular flag type.
The description for Luring Song in the Harpy's statblock in the Monster Manual, page 181, reads:
Luring Song. The harpy sings a magical melody. Every humanoid and giant within 300 feet of the harpy that can hear the song must succeed on a DC 11 Wisdom saving throw or be charmed until the song en...
A cave fisher from Volo's Guide to Monsters has the following trait:
Flammable Blood. If the cave fisher drops to half its hit points or fewer, it gains vulnerability to fire damage.
The trait makes it seems like the first time you reduce the cave fisher to half hit points or less, it is vulner...
One of my players asked me a interesting question today that I don't have an answer for.
He asked if it is possible to use an action to try and put a sack or bag over a creature's head to prevent that creature from casting spell, and what he would have to roll for?
One use for that would be when ...
Can't answer your question, I don't even recognise what programming language that is, though I've a feeling I've seen something like it before somewhere.
"Pfah!" The goblin snorts. "Asss if I haven't already tried, Captain. Nobody wantssss a goblin on board. The talessss are told that you are different. It ssseemss the ssstories are not to be... heeded."
I had an amusing conversation with a former co-worker yesterday. Pondering about our past employment, he wondered whether all our other friends had left the company as well
@Ben Huh, verbatim. Why not just "\\filepath" instead of @"\filepath"? The former seems more intuitive, even if it involves doubling all the \\'s in the path (I'm guessing 'filepath' actually involves multiple subdirectories).
It also might be a better general policy to use a path-combiner method instead of combining manually. For the sake of never messing up the number of path separators, and their type (but the latter is more of a cross-platform concern).
@Mithical won't they? But are you a CR 1/4 creature that molotov's the enemies and is so deadly in numbers that are below what counts as levelappropriate that you can widdled down a huge party to a few?
We're playing Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and we
I play a gnomish Artificer/Wizard and want to build my workshop
What kind of spell, non-magic or half-magic solution (ie. machines) could do the trick? I come from 3.5e. Back then there were several midlevel options to do that. Stone to mud + Mold Ea...
@Ben caffeine (as someone with ADHD) helps me focus, because it's a substitute for adrenaline/chemicals I'm missing in my brain. People definitely can process caffeine differently, and it feels like my heart is screaming when I have too much, even if I feel like I've entered bullet time.
@Mithical I used to think that too, until I made two realisations. 1) I didn't feel like sleeping, but I could if just lay down horizontally somewhere. And 2) it doesn't feel like it helps but then when I go without, I notice a lack of focus
@Mithical Fun fact about caffeine in typical brains: it doesn't clear your "I need to sleep" chemicals that have already slotted into their designated brainholes as part of your brain's countdown to sleepytown. Instead, it blocks any empty slots you still have open so that the countdown slows down or stops entirely.
That's why caffeine works best early in the morning: your sleepytime countdown slots all clear after a sleep or a nap, so taking coffee right after you wake up in the morning (or right before a quick power nap) lets the caffeine get to your countdown slots before your brain makes new sleepytime chemicals to fill the slots.
This is also why taking caffeine when you're already tired doesn't help much.
I've had a similar problem, and I've started taking 3mg of melatonin an hour or so before I want to go to bed, and it helps me get to sleep on time and sleep better so that I'm less tired in the morning.
In my party we have a ranger, a sorcerer and a monk. We recently had a fight with a Balor and I had to keep introducing things in order for the monk to feel like he was contributing in any way.
For those who don't know, the Balor has a fire aura that deals 3d6 fire damage to any creature that sta...
Re: caffeine, I have a quite big intake as a very active tea drinker, though I prefer lower-caf varieties in the evenings (eg. genmaicha which has roasted rice in addition to tea, therefore less tea, therefore less caffeine)
Really interesting to read about caffeine, especially the science drop from BESW. For me, I'm pretty sure caffeine has never done anything noticeable, I don't feel any different after having it in any dosage. But I've also never felt hunger, I cannot picture faces in my head, and my memories are predominantly in third person, so my brain is certainly some kind of something XD
Sun's Ransom's has the players place as many d6s as will fit on the sun on the cover of the manual. When you roll for an outcome, you roll all the dice on the sun and count 6s as successes against a target difficulty of 1 to 5. If you get as many or more successes as the target difficulty, remove dice from the sun equal to the difficulty number.
The game is over when the sun is fully uncovered.
Assuming 16mm dice, I think it's about twenty dice give or take a few either way, but I can't print it yet to be sure.
@NautArch cackle yeah, I saw a "big bag of dice" on amazon a while back and ordered it. "You chose poorly, Korvin" said my wife, when they were delivered.
The rules state that group checks only fail when more than half the group fails, and you're saying that group checks should be used when one member failing would mean that the group has failed
Yeah, I just think that's... something that could be better stated and isn't particularly clear
But oh well, I'm one person, and I guessed at the part you meant, so that's good enough. upvoted
@AncientSwordRage she is of the opinion that I don't need more dice, and eyes with disapproval my occasional impulsel buy of D&D stuff, and got grumpy when my 13th Age books came in. Not a fan of the game, unfortunately.
@AncientSwordRage I think that you mean diamonds, not dice. 😁 And I already did that (engagement ring). (Got her some tanzanite earrings a couple of years ago, and a ring to match, 30th anniversary; goes with the blue of her eyes)
@KorvinStarmast I was recently tempted by an oversized d20 with the eye of Sauron in it and the script on the ring in gold foil around the inside. It was beautiful and huge. Then I saw the price was $65+
I could maybe justify that for a whole set of dice, but not for just one.
@AncientSwordRage I have had some real angry moments with kickstarter stuf, I will never do one again. lots of not delivered material, and right now I can't even get into my acct and KS will not reply to email.
@G.Moylan Matt's been good, AngryGM delivered the book to me on time, and the folks who published Flotsam were as good as their word. For the rest {comments censored}
@KorvinStarmast Come to think of it I also sponsored Agon and another book somewhere along the way. I got everything, fortunately. I refuse to do board games, though. Too many horror stories and honestly too much bloat. Kickstarter board games seem too caught up in "look at all this bonus crap" and less with actually designing a good game
@G.Moylan Heck, that's sadly true to many types of games in general
Some board games actually have good expansions, others have good expansions but only because they deliberately left stuff out to put them in the expansions... and others just pile on more after more after more.
@kviiri To be fair, there have been some great games to come out of KS in recent years, but far too many of them are just bogged down by junk. My favorite is when they ship with expansions. Like, do you know your game needs a patch already or are you just being hopeful?
@kviiri yeah I strongly dislike that second one. The last one can be fine, but it's highly game dependant
@G.Moylan Spirit Island is one of my favorite board games and came from Kickstarter. Its latest update seems very much like they just wanted to pile on a ton of content.
Sometimes I feel lik eht publisher/designer sees a runaway hit and thinks "how can we make more money on that?" and don't always consider whether or not they should mess with the game in teh firs tplace
I have down voted and flagged two answers as "not an answer." Doing so reduced my reputation by 2 (1 for each down vote). It seemed both of my flags were helpful and both answers were deleted.
As requested, flag screenshot:
As far as I can remember, when a down voted answer got deleted, we go...
And are you someone that likes to build purely 'fun' characters and aren't concerned about efficacy as much or do you like to build 'optimized' characters @DevilsbestfriendisLunar
I've tried to leave comments on the answers that are no longer applicable, but the horse has left the stable.
I just don't think list questions with no criteria other than 'the list' for what makes things best is stackable. Especially when it's for a specific goal and not just an aggregation of things.
If they had just asked for How can I move stone? Then we can potentially add constraints for the options, or just have a list of all. And I really really dislike "i want all, but an answer with just one is perfectly fine"
@Akixkisu 1: they should give us the options they've found and discarded so we aren't reinventing the wheel (and that shows their own research), there are always constraints for something in-game. Now that we have them, the question is better for limiting options, but there still isn't a method for "best answer". And I don't think "most options" is best answer, that's not a qualification.
There are a good number of questions, especially from users new to the site, that get closed as too broad or opinion-based. This is a post we can link them to for more guidance than what comments can reasonably provide, and more focused than "read the help center". Feel free and add answers/tips ...
@Akixkisu okay, then i think we're just on opposite ends here. But having a clear method for a 'best' answer is a criteria we have.
@DevilsbestfriendisLunar I would consider starting off going to the gaming store. YOu'll get to experience a variety of DMs, get to meet people, and maybe that leads to a local option.
Otherwise, I guess it's try out different Roll20 games until you find a DM you like. Trial and error is really the method here.
@Akixkisu At minimum it's unclear. We don't know what methods are viable for this character. We don't know what level they are, what resources they have ready access to.
@G.Moylan We now know and have some of that. 3rd level spells at max, no money, no manual labor. The constraints are there now, but not necessarily a method to determine which of them is 'best'.
@NautArch Oh.. uhm, my bad. I didn't look too closely at that and moved because the thread had moved rather off topic and the q was reopened (which normally means the close reasons aren't vital to keep)
@KorvinStarmast Yep. It was originally a regular answer due to lack of constraints on the question, but since the question update, now it's just a frame challenge. It's basically saying "You don't need magic to do this, just a bunch of random laborers".
@ThomasMarkov When declining post flags we're presented with a few default reasons or the option to write specific feedback. Giving the specific reason isn't a super high priority, and there's no undo
@Someone_Evil that’s what I thought, I just wanted to be sure y’all weren’t actually telling me VLQ and NAA are only for posts requiring mod attention.
Yeah, I suspect there's a bit of artifice there. Those review queues (in particular) are built on flagging for mod attention, but they're still in our queue with the option of being declined
@KorvinStarmast Querent has said they don't want manual digging. Ithought?
@RevanantBacon I don't know if it's a frame challenge when it ignores a constraint. If it is, then building your answer on why that constraint isn't necessary would be better.
A frame challenge should actually challenge the frame, not just ignore the requested constraints.
Speaking of "finding what you enjoy", I'm very interested in having my next RPG be a science fiction one. But I'm flummoxed by the variety of choices available, and many of them have multiple editions that are still active. I'm interested in something more on the hard sci-fi end of the spectrum (so no Starfinder, for example)
I suppose. Normally I would be more open, but I can't quite browse at a game store right now (and for another couple of months, probably), and I don't have enough spare cash each month to justify buying a core book just to check it out
I obviously encourage that you purchase your RPG items, but there are ways to read about them before you buy, if you're determined to do so. That's no replacement for actually playing a game, though
@G.Moylan Yeah, I've moved away from that approach ever since a certain... creatively acquired book bricked my PC. I did buy the content I checked out otherwise, though
In the type of question, in the style, in what answers are expected to do, in the criteria required for a site member to determine which answer is best
I think with new games I often try to create characters first and use that as a tool to understand mechanics as I go back and forth between those sections.
@NautArch I've found it to ahve its place. I ran a one-shot recently and very much wanted everything to be pick-up-and-play, so I put in a lot of time to make swappable race and class sheets that they could mix however they wanted, add a name, and play
or I have a halloween game that I want to do that with, too, since people seem to have lots of scheduling issues with that one, I wanted it to be as easy as possible for people to come and play and not have to worry about anything beforehand.
BUT, I do prefer to let players make their own stuff when time allows
Looking at some of these comments/questions/answers on ability checks. Do y'all generally limit which party members get to do a check based on their class/background?
@ThomasMarkov I'll need to do some thinking on this.
But I also get frustrated by having good info gated by a check. And not having the info really diminishes the play experience, so I'll often just give info out because it rounds out what's happening.
But it makes sense that the characters who have scholarly backgrounds can possibly know some historical trivia, and the hermitous cow man who knows nothing of the broader history of the world wouldnt possibly know that info
But its motivated by "if theres no chance of success, dont roll". For some of the characters, knowing or recalling that information just isn't feasible because of their back story.
But that's the only thing I can think of that he limits like that.
I like to give out info as "you've live here, you'd know X or Y" but if they want more details they have to explain to me how they might know, then I let them roll
The point of making them explain is to make them think about it. It's almost always a "good enough" reason
yeah, even if it's a little thing like "my character's dad knew a guy who talked about that all the time" it's still additional involvement. plus, I get free things to build plots from
Also a good strategy, if you like rolling as player engagement. If failure isn't an option, then instead of success/failure, they roll for how well they succeed.
@NautArch I do like to give free information when it corresponds to backgrounds. In one of my games I have a Wizard (Battlemage) with Tactical Wit. So he gets special insights into tactics sometimes, and NPCs recognize his skills and are freer with military info
@Upper_Case I operate much the same way. Frequently start with "As a fighter, <char> recognizes..." and then go on to give them the detail "... the guards greet each other with the Brelish army's informal salute"
Following the same pattern over and over gives the players a cue that the information that follows is essentially info from a free success of what otherwise would have been a skill check.