TRPG General Chat

Hot RPG Questions

02:28

1

Q: Do I understand the difference between the two versions of Symbol, and why would anyone ever choose the second one?

The party will soon be negotiating with an enemy; if they are smart, they will make sure that it happens at a neutral location. One of the enemy's henchmen can cast Symbol, and he would like to bring a precast one, possibly more, to the negotiation to use offensively if things go bad (one minute...

BESW

02:38

Bundle: Gender Dynamix Fundraiser hosted by kellymakesgames. On the 16th of June, the local headquarters of Gender Dynamix, a gender-diverse support group, was destroyed by a suspicious fire. We're here to help them get back on their feet, and give you a great deal on TTRPGs at the same time.

Sweaters by Hedgehog by Haunted Oak Press. A solo journaling game about a little hedgehog person trying to sell your little sweaters in your little village shop.

Hot RPG Questions

05:02

6

Q: Why does the kobold inventor in Tomb of Annihilation reference Appendix A?

The Weapon Invention action of the kobold inventor in Tomb of Annihilation references Appindex A in its weapon invention action for pot of rot grubs: Rot Grub Pot. The kobold throws a clay pot into a 5-foot-square space within 20 feet of it, and it breaks open on impact. A swarm of rot grubs (se...

dnd-5e monsters tomb-of-annihilation

SmokeDetector

08:34

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer (61): Do I understand the difference between the two versions of Symbol, and why would anyone ever choose the second one?‭ by Allen‭ on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose @ThomasMarkov @linksassin)

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad keyword in body (1): Do you still know the uses of diamond micropowder?‭ by Allen‭ on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose @ThomasMarkov @linksassin)

AncientSwordRage

09:00

Well, somebody likes diamond micropowder

BESW

09:50

@AncientSwordRage Diamond micropowder: for when you only want to resurrect a small part of your dead friend

Trish

11:56

@BESW For when you are in the business of sharpening your blade to Monofilament.

AncientSwordRage

12:23

@BESW a moderate amount of your friend

please don't crush my moderator diamond into powder

Thomas Markov

13:22

duplicate, see my comment. I couldn't hammer it because I added the 5e tag.

Hot RPG Questions

16:12

5

Q: What implications would a monstrosity as a player character entail?

Travelers of the Multiverse Unearthed Arcana lists the Thri-kreen race, and its type is monstrosity. I am wondering what playing as a monstrosity would entail. All things that come to my mind are benefits: not being a valid target for many spells like charm person or hold person etc., but for the...

dnd-5e monsters character-creation balance races

AncientSwordRage

17:11

@HotRPGQuestions why does 'monstrosity' even exist as a thing?

Someone_Evil

17:32

It's the creature type for all the things which don't fall under a different creature type

Trish

@AncientSwordRage why should we if we can resurrect a full person with it?! ;)

Thomas Markov

17:50

I'm not sure I understand this revision.

Trish

@ThomasMarkov Very Evil Black Mage. -> Big Bad Evil Person. .... uh... if anything the term is BBEG...

Thomas Markov

@Trish yeah, I can see what they did, just not sure why.

Trish

@ThomasMarkov neither...

but it doesn't seem to call for a rollback... just... seems pointless

Thomas Markov

Scrolling through the answers, this must have been before the advent of the # header.

AncientSwordRage

19:13

@Someone_Evil but they could all be slotted into better categories or new ones created instead?

dndbeyond.com/… it's a really unhelpful grab-bag of others

Someone_Evil

I'm with you really

AncientSwordRage

I'll add it to the growing pile of things I dislike about 5e

Someone_Evil

I think the counter argument is that 5e doesn't want the categorization system to be too complicated, though obviously simplifications come at a price

Trish

19:34

@AncientSwordRage You will not see a "Legendry Elf Lord" in DnD 5e.

AncientSwordRage

@Someone_Evil tags are the way forward not categories

Xirema

@AncientSwordRage IMO, the creature categorization system in 5e is one of the more benign design decisions they made, and will remain that way so long as they don't try to do the "Dual Creature Type" thing they tried to do in the Gothic Lineages Unearthed Arcana

Which, thankfully, they appear to have walked back for the proper release of that content.

AncientSwordRage

@Trish there's a hand full of legendary elves though

@Xirema thankfully

You could apply an unliving tag to some undead and some constructs etc, but not be tied down to ahvinf it apply to all of them.

Someone_Evil

@Xirema Was the problem the dual type part or the way they wanted healing to work?

AncientSwordRage

And say this tag means "No need to sleep and can't be exhausted etc etc..."

Xirema

19:39

I've written before.... somewhere... about the NEWTYPE foibles my DM ran into when he tried to introduce a new creature type to the game, which quickly ran into big problems with game design.

@Someone_Evil I mean, the healing part was the red flag of it all.

Not even the mechanics they were trying to enforce, but just the semantics of how they wrote them.

AncientSwordRage

@Xirema I felt like they learnt to hard into "Be vague and let DMs fill in the gaps"

Xirema

TL;DR: with a few notable exceptions, healing spells read "cannot be used on Undead or Constructs", and when they introduced Dhampir in that UA as "Both Humanoid and Undead", they also wrote "this means that effects that target either creature type can target them".

There's a difference between "Specific beats General" and "this isn't actually a specific rule, this is a [wrong, IMO] interpretation of the General rule!"

If WotC want to say "we want to introduce Undead Player Characters, but we don't want to hamper them so much with the normal rules around undead not being healable by their party", then just write that: "Despite being undead, this race can still be targeted by effects, like healing spells, that normally would not have any effect on undead, because they are also humanoid"

Either way you're writing a weird hack, but at least the latter isn't trying to gaslight your DMs.

2

But thankfully, as I said, they did walk that back. There's a few racial options they did introduce which have non-humanoid types, but they didn't try to do the "both Humanoid and X" thing anymore, and the ones they used don't have as many obscure rules around them.

Like, having Fey as a playable race gives some edge-case advantages, but it doesn't break basic party composition, and Elves already have most of the features you get from being Fey anyways.

AncientSwordRage

> this means that effects that target either creature type can target them

is such a wonky sentiment

Xirema

I think this was published around the time a few regulars here were pretty vocal about their perceived lack of thought/effort that was going on in these releases.

A sentiment to which I find it difficult to disagree. 😛

I get that this is meant to be playtest material, but playtest material should be written with an expectation that the people writing it sound like they're familiar with how the game is written, and to be able to disambiguate that from the colloquial understanding of the game so many players (and DMs!) have.

Because that's clearly written based on the latter, not the former.

Which isn't worthless, but weird semantic ambiguities like this are killer in a system that's supposed to be built on more simplified, "Rulings not Rules" systems.

AncientSwordRage

20:01

It's sort of phrased like "obviously this is how it works", not "here's a new rule"

Joshua

Somebody else came up with a really good bomb rpg.stackexchange.com/a/199279/22420

Xirema

Yeah.

@Joshua I would contest the use of the term "bomb" in this context (10lbs worth of released radiation isn't likely to produce substantial kinetic force) but it is probably the fantasy equivalent of the Demon Core. 😨

Or else they've created the equivalent of the spell Sickening Radiance, I suppose.

Joshua

Uhh that's the entire 10 lbs of mass converted to radiation energy

Xirema

Yeah, that's probably an instantly lethal dose of radiation.

But when someone says "bomb" I kind of expect an Earth-shattering kaboom.

Joshua

Assuming I haven't thrown a number somewhere, it's about 4.5 gigatons

Xirema

20:14

Might create a fireball. What I'm not familiar with is how quickly that radiation would be absorbed by the air, terrain, people, etc.

If the radiation is too high energy, it might just pass through things without really interacting with it:

What happens if you put your head in a particle accelerator?

►

Joshua

It's mostly really low frequency photons; think power mains rather than radio waves; but it would have high energy components.

Xirema

Okay, that might produce an actual boom then, maybe. 😛

AncientSwordRage

21:00

@Xirema at 10ft this is the rough estimate of the radiation pressure you feel: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%2810lbs*c%5E2%2F%283*pi*10ft%5E3%29%29*%281%2F4%29

Xirema

@AncientSwordRage That sounds right for the energy output, but the question I was interrogating was how much of that you feel as actual pressure (i.e. kinetic energy) as opposed to radiation.

AncientSwordRage

@Xirema I'm assume it's all pressure 🤔

Good question though

AncientSwordRage

21:18

vttoth.com/CMS/physics-notes/311-hawking-radiation-calculator handy page

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