TRPG General Chat

3:00 AM

4

Q: Multiclassing mid-dungeon into Wizard. Where's my spellbook? When do I prepare my spells?

In one of my campaigns I have a character that just leveled up. I've been planning for a while to multi-class into Wizard, but never really had the character RP prepare for the event, since I didn't expect to level up mid-dungeon (we're using milestone XP). I always figured we'd end the dungeon r...

Hot RPG Questions

4:19 AM

1

Q: How does the Heat Metal spell interact with a suit of armor, which could be taken off in parts?

Heat Metal may be cast on "a suit of heavy or medium metal armor". Plate Armor is a suit of heavy metal armor. It "consists of shaped, interlocking metal plates to cover the entire body. A suit of plate includes gauntlets, heavy leather boots, a visored helmet, and thick layers of padding undern...

dnd-5e spells armor objects

Bardic Wizard

5:48 AM

Quiet around here. How’s things?

I’m trying to start a fandom from scratch and getting people to read the city spies books, but I’m having a Time with that

Turns out when you’re starting a completely new Instagram account and you don’t want your close/RL friends to know about it (I will lose so much of my weird kid cred if I admit to knowing what a meme is), it’s really hard to show anyone anything you make

trogdor

knowing what a meme is makes you less weird?

BESW

6:05 AM

@trogdor We are old, trogdor.

trogdor

6:16 AM

no no you are old I refuse to be old

XD

Bardic Wizard

@trogdor I take pride in only getting references to post-ww2 pop culture that are extremely obscure or only rarely getting them, because i don’t want to hear about most pop culture things and so if I seem like I have no clue what a meme is then most of my friends won’t talk to me about them or have Expectations for me and my knowledge

trogdor

that's fair

AncientSwordRage

7:52 AM

@BESW I'm in the same boat

I mentioned Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Keenan and Kel, no body in that server knew what they were

And instead they mentioned another show that I remember my sister watching when I was at Uni and how they enjoyed it as a kid....

The Oracle

9:15 AM

1

Q: How do I build a proper answer without sounding condescending?

A small note before the question itself : I'm unsure if this kind of question fits Meta, since it could easily be interpreted as nothing more than "How do I not offend other human beings?". I decided to post it here because I specifically aim at increasing the quality of my answers in this stack,...

discussion answers

AncientSwordRage

11:16 AM

Assuming they don’t understand the basics is condescending, or at least “kinda condescending in a way? to me.” — KRyan 22 hours ago

That's not what I mean—the DM has not set up homebrew rules at all. The question claims no such thing. But in prior editions, undeath-type spells would deal a particular damage type, and that damage type would heal undead, which is a straightforward case of spells not doing merely what they say they do. This makes that header somewhat tonedeaf to the situation. They don't need to be told that the spell only does what it says, which is somewhat condescending here—they need to be told there's no side-effects of the damage type. — doppelgreener Jun 21 at 9:41

context ^

Joel Harmon

12:39 PM

@AncientSwordRage Are you aware that you commented "if you keep up with some questions on this stack" to... the highest rep user on this stack?

Thomas Markov

12:51 PM

I've flagged this answer as NAA to send it into the LQP queue. It's five years old so the VLQ flag was not available, it really should just be deleted.

Thomas Markov

1:08 PM

@TheOracle I challenge anyone to find a single paper on arXiv that doesnt do some work in introducing preliminary material before introducing the results of the paper.

Joel Harmon

1:19 PM

@ThomasMarkov I couldn't find "Counterexample to Euler's conjecture on sums of like powers" or "Can n<sup>2</sup>+1 unit equilateral triangles cover an equilateral triangle of side > n, say n + Ɛ?" on arXiv, but I'd argue they should count anyway :-)

AncientSwordRage

1:35 PM

@JoelHarmon I mean... I wrote the comment and I know that user, so yes?

high-rep ≠ in touch with new users

It's the same reason some University Professors (extremely knowledgeable individuals) might not be the best at lecturing new students

I've definitely had someone say to us, when I was studying physics, the equivalent of:

> Well, you of course know the Shiblismiv method of detangling a multi-dimensional trigonomatrix integral

Joel Harmon

I agree it can be hard as an expert to recall how much you didn't know as a newbie.

AncientSwordRage

> No? What do they teach kids these days!

@JoelHarmon exactly

Joel Harmon

I read that comment, and KRyan's reply seems to match, that you didn't think he'd been around much and/or wasn't paying attention to questions on the site, both of which are manifestly false.

AncientSwordRage

@JoelHarmon hmmm

Matthieu

@JoelHarmon I do have to admit that this message made me chuckle a bit.

AncientSwordRage

1:48 PM

I will be as political as I can, and say I think KRyan is excellent at answering a certain kind of question regardless of who is asking it

Matthieu

Not meaning that in any insulting way or such, just the situation being funny

AncientSwordRage

@Matthieu I found it amusing too

Matthieu

I do enjoy getting feedback like this though and understanding what I should improve, always better than downvotes with no explanation.

Thomas Markov

@Matthieu Personally I thought your answers were fine. I upvoted all of them.

VLAZ expresses my feelings nicely on meta:

"The main argument for that was that it implies the reader does not know the basics of the rules, and thus stating the "obvious" is an insult to whoever is reading the answer." but the reader might indeed not know the basics of the rules. I'm baffled by this complaint. Surely, if every single reader knew the ins and outs of the rules, they wouldn't need to even look at the answers at all. The very question that is answered would be obsolete. — VLAZ 3 hours ago

"I'm baffled by this complaint."

Matthieu

2:24 PM

That's good to hear. It's mostly the fact that the same wording was used twice in so little answers that made me go from "My wording might have been slightly off" to "There must be something wrong with how I make answers in general"

And especially the fact that it happened with no link between each answer whatsoever, and from different people.

Thomas Markov

@Matthieu The approach to writing answers you outlined in your meta question is very similar to how I generally approach things.

Matthieu

I thought about it a bit and realized it probably comes from the fact I've done some of my studies in science/math-related topics, which boasted this exact method of demonstrations. So nowadays I often naturally use this way of explaining when talking with people.

Thomas Markov

@Matthieu lololol hence my mentioning arXiv earlier.

Matthieu

Which actually doesn't really help with day-to-day explanation, funnily enough, since long explanations usually come out as annoyed/triggered answers lol

Thomas Markov

I'm a mathematician by training and it shows in a lot of my rules-heavy answers.

AncientSwordRage

2:46 PM

@ThomasMarkov do you have scientific evidence for that?

Thomas Markov

@AncientSwordRage I'm sure someone well trained in NLP could come up with a machine learning algorithm that could quantify the scienciness of a text which would score many of my answers very highly despite them not being science content.

@AncientSwordRage Also, I understood this reference.

AncientSwordRage

@ThomasMarkov good good

GcL

3:37 PM

@ThomasMarkov Hardly need to be well trained to write an if-then statement that provides algorithmic validation for you. I am interested in what might be considered "scienciness of a text". I think that would be an interesting survey theme.

Joel Harmon

I'd start with a word count on the hypothesis that "science words" are a common part of "scienceness". For example, most non-sciencey folks wouldn't say "hypothesis".

nitsua60

Then again, there's the quote we had posted outside the undergrad lounge in my university's physics department, to troll occasional passersby: "If your major says 'science,' it's not."

3

Joel Harmon

Now I also wonder how much sciencey words corresponds to an expansive vocabulary generally.

I also support the idea that real sciences don't contain the word "science" in the name.

nitsua60

So we'll upweight sciencey words, but downweight the actual string science =D

Joel Harmon

We might need an error correction for meticulously sticking to XKCD's ten hundred word list.

nitsua60

3:54 PM

Sooth.

Joel Harmon

4:05 PM

Hey @nitsua60, how do you know Yggdrasil has a negative discriminant? view spoiler

KorvinStarmast

4:29 PM

@AncientSwordRage I made an edit to Jack's answer (prose clean up) so you can modify your vote if you'd like to. 😊

@trogdor I kept trying that refusal trick, but it hasn't worked yet. 🤔

@AncientSwordRage that math is based on feelings. 😛

@JoelHarmon In the vernacular, that's a "wild donkeye'd guess" 😁

Yep, that's a very good bumper sticker @nitsua60 (and it's a fine way to wind people up) 😎

AncientSwordRage

4:48 PM

@KorvinStarmast oh! I had it followed (I had all of the answers followed) but thank you for making sure I saw

@KorvinStarmast that's just like, your opinion man....

GcL

@KorvinStarmast I'm surprised that question is still open.

Thomas Markov

5:19 PM

@KorvinStarmast That's a good answer.

Xirema

6:49 PM

Does anyone have any experience homebrewing the Exhaustion system that D&D 5e uses? I decided to key exhaustion to some survival mechanics in the new campaign I'm running, but I'm discovering that the first two levels of exhaustion are a little too brutal for the kind of effects I wanted.

Granted, this campaign is intended to be a bit more brutal than the last one: a recent exchange with one of my players began with them saying they were working on a backup character and had a question, and I responded "good idea" before they were finished asking their question.

But I do want to dial it back a little bit, because I'm discovering that Disadvantage on Ability Checks and Movement Speed Halving is too much for how frequently my players are getting that first level of exhaustion.

Thomas Markov

@Xirema Yep, even one level of exhaustion feels severely debilitating as a player.

Xirema

@Xirema For context, this is the rule I added that's causing exhaustion to come up more frequently.

Thomas Markov

The candlekeep-mysteries tag was created for this question, but I've removed it because the question has nothing to do with the adventure, it's just about a magic item that happened to be published in that book.

Xirema

I like the overall effect, in that it encourages players who are low on HP to emphasize getting to safety instead of what I've seen a lot, where players get bounced a lot between 0 hit points and a very low single-to-double-digit number of hit points. BUT, I wasn't prepared for how brutal it would be for players to have even a single level of exhaustion.

Thomas Markov

If a question asks about one of the adventures published in the book, it should have the tag, which is how we typically use adventure book tags.

CC: @GroodytheHobgoblin

@Xirema Are your players getting knocked out a lot then?

Xirema

7:02 PM

@ThomasMarkov Yeah. They are level 3 characters, so some of this will be mitigated as they level up, because HP pools tend to rise slightly faster than incoming damage does.

But I need this system to work at most levels of play, not just "alright, ignore the rule until they reach level 7"

The current solution I've been floating with one of my players is to add a buffer level of exhaustion before the first level, which reads "Disadvantage on Constitution Ability Checks (not saving throws)", and then swapping the (new) levels 2 and 3, and changing "halved movement speed" to "movement speed reduced by 5 feet".

Because Con Ability Checks are so rare as to basically not exist at any[-one else's] table.

So the new progression would go
Ex1: Disadvantage on Constitution Ability Checks
Ex2: Movement speed reduced by 5 feet
Ex3: Disadvantage on all Ability Checks
Ex4: Disadvantage on Saving Throws & Attacks
Ex5: Halved HP total
Ex6: Unable to move
Ex7: Death

Which, in most cases, means the first level doesn't do much of anything, which I'm okay with because it essentially gives each character one "freebie" that doesn't immediately screw them on a single bad roll against them.

Someone_Evil

I'm playing in a campaign that has -2 to all ability, saves and attack rolls as the first level (and disadv on those on 3rd). Though exhaustion hasn't come up that much so can't really speak too much to it

KorvinStarmast

7:29 PM

we were messing about with this mod to exhaustion a few years back: lesser restoration spell lifts one level of exhaustion. Greater clears all. During short rest, can expend a HD to roll a d20 and try to remove one level. It's a DC 15 CON save to succeed. Full night's sleep /long rest cures 1; DC 15 CON save with the Full night's sleep removes 2.
And then the campaign ended due to RL scheduling being a DC 35. It made playing the Berserker Barbarian less of a royal pain in the butt for the Barbarian player, and allowed us to use resources to mitigate the negative impacts.

Xirema

@KorvinStarmast I will consider that. I think the existing rule with Greater Restoration only reducing a single level of exhaustion probably made a lot more sense in normal play, where Exhaustion only comes up sparingly in games. But if it's something that can happen to any player (or every player, as in the case of my game), it probably makes sense to make the tools to remove it more accessible.

GcL

@KorvinStarmast That's interesting. Going to yoink that.

KorvinStarmast

Attention All Eberron loving players. I am looking at playing a half orc in an Eberron campaign in a few months, but I don't have any fictional baseline for Eberron and I know that some short stories/novellas/novels for Eberron have been written; which of those stories might help me "feel" Eberron more?

GcL

@Xirema I had a potion that I took from an old 3.5 module that was essentially coffee in small doses and speed taken all at once. So it was delay a point of exhaustion for 24 hours per cup of coffee or a potion of haste for a point of exhaustion now.

KorvinStarmast

@Xirema Yes. We had a DM forcing us to make three exhaustion resisting rolls per day in a jungle trek aspect of a campaign, using the rules and at level 3 you simply will not get lesser restoration. It was an utter cluster.

GcL

7:33 PM

Entirely brought in to allow fighting through two day dungeons without long rest.

Hot RPG Questions

8:12 PM

1

Q: Are there updated rules for Wizards learning new cantrips?

I have come across similar questions like Can I swap my cantrips known for new ones from scrolls?, and Can a spellbook contain cantrips?, but I noticed that the questions predate Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, and only one answer makes a reference to the optional 3rd level rule. For reference (P...

dnd-5e wizard cantrips

Phoenices

8:52 PM

@trogdor Yes, but you become more weird if you know what "memetic" means.

@JoelHarmon And since it connects to all planes, climbing down the roots leads to the....

Joel Harmon

9:21 PM

@Phoenices The mathematics puns are manifold today.

Phoenices

Nope, not even close to comprehending that one :D. From 30-second research, I'm guessing that it also fits in another planes joke.

AncientSwordRage

9:35 PM

I got a downvote on this question (rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/171964/…) and it made me realise how overpowered it was!

TheDragonOfFlame

Does anyone know a site that can be used to make and save maps, with moveable tokens, and can be shared to others online? Preferably mobile friendly?

I might just use roll20

Feeds

Needles & Nilbogs: Book review: Civil War Ladies

posted on June 30, 2022 by Bardic Wizard

I’ve been reading a lot about antique/vintage crochet lately, so I’m going to review one of the books I’ve been using as reference. The book is Civil War Ladies: Fashions and Needle-Arts of the Early 1860’s, and it’s a collection of articles from Peterson’s Magazine, coming mostly from 1861 and 1864. I got it from a friend of my grandfather’s, who was also very fond of older patterns and craft …

Phoenices

When I look over it, I'm doubtful that it is, since using sleep beam is manditory. It effectively outlaws use of EB, except against people with 10ish health or less. If it let you not use that power, then it would be instead "When you attack a creature with health 5 more than the average damage of your weapon, deal 5 more damage, " which I think is a perfectly reasonable fighter or barbarian class feature. If it stacked, yeah, overpowered, but it doesn't.

AncientSwordRage

@Phoenices the argument was you can send everything to sleep and then coup de grace them

Because it's double the 'damage' you can potentially put 20hp of creature to sleep, then kill it rather than kill 20hp worth

Phoenices

9:52 PM

...yeah, but that still only adds 1d10 damage to your final shot against a creature, if that (since it has a failure risk, while normal EB still does damage even if it doesn't kill). Yeah, that's good against goblins, but some rangers (Hunter, was it?) have some even more ridiculous bow powers against goblins.
In return for 1d10 damage on your final shot against each target, you lose the ability to ever use EB elsewhere, chance of failure if you roll badly, and more ability for those creatures to be returned to the fight (a lot of easy ways to finish off an unconscious enemy before anyone c…

@TheDragonOfFlame While I have not fully investigated it, Owlbear Rodeo looks very promising if you don't want very fancy maps and assets. I make no claims that it does what you want, but it might.

AncientSwordRage

@Phoenices the idea was you could choose sleep or non-sleep versions of EB

Phoenices

Yeah, if that was what you were thinking it's probably about an average invocation; bonus damage equal to the Agonizing Blast bonus, but only on your last hit, and giving an element of risk. If everyone agrees that Agonizing Blast is overpowered, then this can hardly be more overpowered.

trogdor

10:20 PM

@KorvinStarmast I'm not old at all, I don't know what any of you are talking about, I still play video games I can't be old XD

AncientSwordRage

10:36 PM

@Phoenices what do you mean 'last hit'?

TheDragonOfFlame

10:58 PM

@Phoenices I’m looking at it. Intrigued so far.

Phoenices

11:42 PM

@AncientSwordRage I mean that it only works as a "final blow" sort of attack, since it can't possibly work on people with more than 20 hp and it's risky on people with 10-20 hp.

Since the beams don't stack on one target

actually, I'm being silly - it's not even good against one big monster, unless you're level 4, since at level 5 you could just fire 2 beams at it for 1d10 each

so it's for a last hit against, say, 3 enemy warriors at once.

AncientSwordRage

@Phoenices feel free to answer that on the question then

Transcript for