TRPG General Chat

Akixkisu

12:02 AM

@nitsua60 I added a few more words :)

I wonder if there is a regular phrasing for "exit-able."

nitsua60

Fire code compliant =D

Ben

1:07 AM

Good day period all

bobble

It would be inaccurate to call it a day period for me. The outside dark indicates that it is currently a night period.

Akixkisu

@bobble I hope it is a good period, followed by another good interval.

Ben

I did think of that, but it just sounded a bit odd to call it a "24 hour period"

:P

So I made a Snow-Tabaxi Monk, based on the White Power Ranger, and I'm deciding on which Monastic Tradition to go with. I'm thinking either Kensei or Living Weapon (from Exploring Eberron)

The main reason for Living Weapon is the "Forged Heart" Martial Discipline:

> On a failed save, the creature takes 2d6 additional damage of the same type as the unarmed strike and can be pushed up to 15 feet away from you

Can just see enemies doing the awkward stumble backwards from the show lol

The only downside is the fact that I already have claws as a tabaxi, and the Living Weapon lvl 6 feature gives me that again.

BESW

1:33 AM

In some systems/editions, getting the same natural weapon twice improves the natural weapon, like increasing the die size of the damage rolled.

Ben

1:54 AM

Yeah I can see that working. Others have said it just allows for the versatility of damage types for the unarmed strike(s)

Hot RPG Questions

2:23 AM

3

Q: How can I get "Number of dice in pool A higher than highest of pool B" in anydice?

What I'm looking for is this: pools A and B roll Xd6 and Yd6, respectively. The result is determined as follows: The highest roll among all dice is rh, and the pool it comes from is Ph. The other pool is Pt, and the highest roll from that pool is rt. The magnitude of the result, R, is equal to...

AncientSwordRage

2:45 AM

@Ben day is a complicated term

Ben

Lolol

AncientSwordRage

@AncientSwordRage alt text: two internet search results with contradictory titles. One says "a day is 24 hours long" the other days "a day is not 24 hours long"

Nychthemeron

Nychthemeron , occasionally nycthemeron or nuchthemeron, is a period of 24 consecutive hours. It is sometimes used, especially in technical literature, to avoid the ambiguity inherent in the term day. It is the period of time that a calendar normally labels with a date, although a nychthemeron simply designates a time-span that can start at any time, not just midnight. == Etymology == It is a loanword from Ancient Greek νυχθήμερον (nukhthḗmeron), which appears in the New Testament. This is a noun use of the neuter singular form of Ancient Greek: νυχθήμερος, romanized: nukhthḗmeros, lit. 'lasting...

Ben

TIL

Happy Nychthemeron

Hot RPG Questions

3:14 AM

6

Q: Can a non-spell-casting player determine if an item is magical?

I'm a DM for a Curse of Strahd game with 4 players: a rogue, barbarian, wizard, and paladin. Note the CoS is DnD5e rules. Let's say the adventurers find a magic sword. Since the rogue has fairly good perception (+5 to the skill), are they able to determine if it's magical? Assume they roll, oh, a...

dnd-5e magic-items

Hot RPG Questions

4:04 AM

7

Q: Is it true that Reckless Attack renders AC boosts less effective?

I saw someone arguing recently that A) Barbarians should always RA. and B) Assuming A) is true ... then it's a waste of time for a Barbarian to try to boost their AC. I assume that the case for B) is supposed to be "since they've got advantage ... they're so likely to hit you that the AC boost is...

dnd-5e combat statistics barbarian

Hot RPG Questions

10:48 AM

3

Q: Is there any means to improve Vehicle use *other than* Artificer 6?

I'm going to be starting a new campaign in the new year, in which the party are crewmembers of an airship. I'm planning to have my character be the helmsman, and as such I have a tool proficiency in Vehicles (Water) via the Pirate background, which the DM is letting me refluff to be proficiency in "

dnd-5e proficiency vehicles

Akixkisu

12:59 PM

@doppelgreener If you are trying to leave constructive feedback for me, it would be unfortunate if I don't understand it.

doppelgreener

I am trying to leave constructive feedback, and I can confirm based on your last comment that you have mostly understood it: I do in fact believe there is an inherent flaw currently in the question collection meta. However, I am not saying "There is an inherent problem and therefore you should delete this."
I don't say that last part for a specific reason: you believe in this thing and even if I might not right now believe in it, I believe in *you* believing in it. Just because I see an inherent flaw and not yet a way to resolve it doesn't mean there isn't a way to resolve it. It just means…

Akixkisu

@doppelgreener Thanks, I appreciate it!

doppelgreener

Like, my girlfriend's writing fiction at the moment. I read her work and I'm sorta acting as an editor, helping her resolve issues in the storyline or discover issues that need resolution. However, the best way to handle that is to not try and provide answers to what I would do myself—that's just doing things my way, and we're both more interested in seeing her do it her way. Instead I provide provide feedback that lets her arrive at the solution she wants that'll address it her way.

Sometimes the response has been "nah that's fine, I like it like that for these reasons" and then it makes sense to me.

Like, here's the worst case I can possibly imagine out of that meta: there's an issue that requires moderator intervention, but instead of requesting moderator intervention, or because they're unhappy with the moderator outcome, someone leaves a snippy passive-aggressive question on that meta. But that (a) hasn't happened (b) can be handled if/when it does on its own (c) doesn't sink the ship. By all accounts, this worst case is fairly benign.

I'm more concerned about a possible limited maximum benefit from collecting questions early. "This is presently happening" gives us excellent grit to form a question around. It's difficult to form that when the election might be three or more years away, and by then the question if still relevant might need significant re-drafting.
I think at its best, it functions as a sort of post-it note of "NOTE: MAYBE ASK QUESTION ABOUT THIS". Maybe positioning it such that we formulate the entire election question is asking us to do work prematurely, and we should maybe encourage and enable post-it st…

We might also acquire questions about timeless minutae, but even those have been informed by present issues. I asked about what help the moderators are concerned about and might want help with in a questionnaire back in 2017, because of present issues that had that at the forefront of my mind. In 2021 that question didn't make the cut.

Akixkisu

1:24 PM

That is insightful. In my opinion, one issue inherent to how we do moderator Q&As is that moderators don't serve a term. The nature of the question is very immediate and often based on positioning on topics instead of understanding the moderator's thought process. I don't think that I currently have a persuasive argument, but perhaps this:

We have a problem with communication between main-site and meta; you can't bring people from main-site to meta when you are on meta. You can only take people from main-site to meta by showcasing meta on main-site, but people may also seek out information when they run into an issue and thus arrive at meta.

There are no (obvious) ways to solve this disconnect, but there are a few ways to improve the longer-term interaction, and that is by providing an already curated space that helps people formulate their thoughts exactly when they are relevant to them, and we can postpone the decision of whether they are relevant to the next election until it occurs.

I believe a lot of what matters to people gets lost inj the short term question period.

And I think we can change a little bit of that without having to change the system.

We will probably do a lot of the work twice, but some of it wouldn't arrive at the second stage at all, only the already established meta-users ask those short period questions.

KorvinStarmast

@Ben have him review the three basic steps. DM/Player/DM cycle from 'how to play the game"

Akixkisu

And we can pick up those issues that we perceive but aren't tied to our direct agenda and prop them up there - because they don't tie into our agenda, we would be unlikely to dig them up in the short term - as we are already preoccupied with our agenda.

KorvinStarmast

@AncientSwordRage It sounds somewhat inaccurate. AD&D and Basic/B/X were in competition with one another, although it didn't seem to hurt the sales of either at the time since it was before the Internet and critical mass among the player base had not yet been achieved.

Someone_Evil

The mod Q&As get featured. From previous observation, that draws more eyeballs than time-on-meta and more attention from established meta users. And continuous meta processes don't work well in my experience, they simply don't get any attention after the normal lifecycle

doppelgreener

@Akixkisu I don't 100% follow the disconnect you reference, but I do see an advantage in being able to look out over the longer term to see what might be more broadly relevant than the immediate issues we face. But the immediate issues we face are the ones we'll be plunging the new moderators into: it also makes sense they dominate the questionnaire!

KorvinStarmast

1:38 PM

@doppelgreener Thank you, I am glad I am not the only one who feels that way.

Akixkisu

@doppelgreener They should naturally make it into the formal questionnaire and are likely to dominate it, but we miss out on perspective when we only have these short productive periods. As I see it, the relationship is supporting (The disconnect of user-bases).

KorvinStarmast

@Axoren The mystery here is why a grizzly bear would play dead. They run faster than people, by a lot. It could just run off, so I'd love to understand why it would do that. Anxiety attack? Bad advice from its therapist?

@doppelgreener That's very much in the spirit of giving; will keep that in mind.

Akixkisu

@Someone_Evil I think there are broadly two user bases. We have rare opportunities to have them interact on these bigger projects by featuring something. The user-base that does long term maintenance of a small project can extend it in a small circle beyond the volatile lifespan and bring perspectives that we lack in the short term.

KorvinStarmast

@AncientSwordRage to three significant digits, a day is 24 hours long. Oh, for the days when we used slide rules...

Akixkisu

But it is also natural for us to focus on our agenda when we don't work on such a process, and thus we are prone to block out the long-term as well.

Someone_Evil

1:47 PM

But you don't want long term support by a small group here do you? You want input from the larger community over time

Akixkisu

I want maintenance by a small group, collecting input from the larger community.

Someone_Evil

And how is it supposed to collect?

Akixkisu

By perceiving the day to day of the site and noting down what we perceive. When people who strongly feel about a subject address it, we can take it there, as well, if they don't find the place (or choose to bring it there).

KorvinStarmast

Comment from my wife: "it was an odd choice that we began our diet / weight loss regimen two weeks before Thanksgiving, wasn't it?" My reply "No time like the present, and weirdly, even with two cheat days (Thur/Fri) I dropped two pounds in the past week." That earned me a glare

(The diet/eating plan we are on is so awesome: I can still have bacon and lose weight!)

A friend at work has been on the same/similar thing, and he has warned me "expect a plateau at about 20 pounds of loss; don't get discouraged"

Someone_Evil

@Akixkisu So it'd be a sort of string of possibly-mod-candidate related topics picked from other meta questions (or I suppose chat?)?

Akixkisu

1:55 PM

@Someone_Evil Yes, to a degree similar to the year in review meta, but with a different base-intention

doppelgreener

@KorvinStarmast oh, that's awesome. :)

Someone_Evil

Because at least for the one question you've put on there, I'm sorta missing the meta discussion (I'm not gonna say that it needs to happen in this specific case), but I'd like to ward against a push for questions to be put there rather than discussed in full

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast Amen to your "no time like the present." There's always a reason to start next week, or next month, or next never. It never gets any easier, so we might as well get it underway =)

doppelgreener

@KorvinStarmast I hadn't heard of that, but boy did i hit exactly that plateau recently.

(I got discouraged but I'm still working on it)

nitsua60

@doppelgreener Ditto. Almost to the pound.

Someone_Evil

1:56 PM

@Akixkisu Do you mean check-in? Otherwise I'm not following you

Akixkisu

@Someone_Evil Yes, community check-in is the name proper :)

nitsua60

I'm currently trying to reverse the "rebound". I.e., it feels like I hit that plateau after a fall from height =)

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 "boing"?

nitsua60

@doppelgreener Yup. Like when Alicia Keys did that episode of Backyardigans.

Someone_Evil

@Akixkisu Right, 'cept the point of that is to help bring up things (good and bad) that wouldn't otherwise. It specifically is a now-we're-doing this, which is very similar to how the normal mod Q&A works, because it's for stuff that isn't caught by the continous "ask a meta question" process

Transcript for