TRPG General Chat

Simon Gill

12:01 AM

yawn time for bed and a book. See you guys later :)

BESW

@SimonGill Ta.

Cat

later

Vi

Btw, does anyone know how the theme-swapping thing works? Do you keep the powers you have already gained or replace them?

BESW

Let's see. Themes were introduced in DS...

[looks things up]

You mean retraining from one theme to another, right?

Vi

12:16 AM

@BESW Yeah, I'm thinking about themes that would go well with my character and I'm kinda stuck over utility vs power. Wild Hunt Rider gives what looks like a lot of utility, but Primordial gives him some cold blast powers, auras, and utilities that lower cold resistance.

BESW

If you have no powers or feats that use your theme as a prerequisite other than the theme’s granted power, you can retrain your theme choice when you gain a level, losing your first theme’s granted power and gaining the new one’s granted power. Ifyou have feats or powers that require your existing theme, you must first retrain those feats or powers to choices that don’t have your theme as a prerequisite. Then you can change your theme by retraining at the next opportunity.

Vi

@BESW Ah, so it's basically a streight swap, hmmm.

SomeGuy

Yeah, you can't dip a little into both if that's what you're after

Vi

I'm guessing either would be better than default Alchemist

SomeGuy

Ahh, yeah. Alchemist is not that good...

Vi

12:20 AM

@SomeGuy Apart from the ability to make some stuff that can get you out of a jam in a dungeon, I think you are right. Lockbust chalk, antivenom, and so on

BESW

And keep in mind that all the utility powers are only available at the cost of losing your class's utility power of that level. It's a swap. Only the "what you get at these levels" bits are free.

Vi

But you can buy all those and stock up so it is only handy if you run out

Oh crap, really?

Damn

Wild hunt may not be the best choice then

Yeah, there is only one utility in there I really want, tbh

Jump equal to your move score

Combine with wall walk and a wand of web....heheh

SomeGuy

Well you can always take that utility, and no others.

But of course, you'll be stuck with your theme

Vi

Yeah

Plus my class has a really cool 2nd level utility

BESW

@SomeGuy Unless you retrain out of that utility first, yeah.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

12:24 AM

@Vi, you're the one doing that odd rogue stuff, right?

Vi

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Yeah, kinda XD

Oh well, I guess I can pick up that cool summon horse ritual some other way.....

But I have to get off to bed now because it's Midnight

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@Vi what are your requirements for your character?

Vi

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I'll have to tell you in detail tomorrow, sorry, but he is basically a Fey Hexblade with fire and ice magic.

Night!

BESW

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Must be fey hexblade. Melee light-blade striker with controller sideline and rogue skills.

Custom GM-made race, doesn't qualify as any standard race for preqs.

He was hoping to use Alchemy for utility and situational controller-type debuffs.

SomeGuy

@BrianBallsun-Stanton thanks for the radiant spammer character, btw. Had a lot of fun with that before I had to leave.

BESW

12:30 AM

@SomeGuy And than YOU for providing your dice rolls. We had fun gawking.

SomeGuy

I don't understand how they come out like that, dropped into a dice tower.

Magic.

BESW

@SomeGuy houdon and voodoo.

Please continue to track your rolls. For SCIENCE.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@SomeGuy oh, my pleasure.

Leezard

3:20 AM

8d8

Dice Service

2

8

3

1

6

8

5

Leezard

3:37 AM

How goes it?

doppelgreener

Me? Just fine. :)

Leezard

Cool, good to hear :)

doppelgreener

Waiting patiently and wondering if Noctani is still busy editing...

Leezard

I'm just killing time, watching some B5 and lamenting the end of vacation.

BESW

@Leezard <*>

Leezard

3:41 AM

@BESW Howdy

@BESW Having a good day?

BESW

@Leezard Very busy. Clients, housework, etc.

However my quote list is getting some lovely additions.

Leezard

I see that :)

BESW

Heh. No, I actually have a .txt file of quotes that grows in fits and starts.

Leezard

Oh, ok...that I can't comment on.

BESW

Today's additions:

"Hammer Space: the three dimensions orthogonal to Hammer Time." - http://skin-horse.com/2013/at-a-time/#comment-12614
"Books are full of thinking." - http://blip.tv/at4w/at4w-223-kamandi-at-earth-s-end-3-6491748
"Biff Deegan wanted a taco." - Murder by the Book (1987 film)

Leezard

3:45 AM

heheh books ARE full of thinking...sometimes

BESW

I am somewhat distressed that I seem to have failed to cite "A sinister alcohol-fueled science moose."

Leezard

That is one I don't know.

BESW

It sounds like the work of Geoffrey Channing Wells.

But... that doesn't narrow the field too much. Probably either from Skin Horse or Contraptionology!, but it could be from Tales of the Starbuck Avenger! too.

Leezard

Maybe... fimfiction.net/story/14777/14/contraptionology/…

doppelgreener

ARSES

1

A: Optimizing a D&D 3.5 Monk

Assumption: All 3.0/3.5 and all 3rd party material authorized by wizards are available and the DM is going by DMG CR against the party of 4. When I speak of a monk I mean a character who utilizes its core class features as the basis for the character. No optimizing, just not being foolish. Obj...

I was about to come in here and say "Now just to wait for him to override my edit"

and then he overrides my edit.

Leezard

3:49 AM

@JonathanHobbs ouch

Do you think he understands the community edit thing?

doppelgreener

@Leezard I think he doesn't realise I am editing his post

Leezard

Could be.

BESW

[bemused]

Leezard

Ah, B5...haven't watch it in a while. Still fun to look back on it all.

SomeGuy

Err, can you even -use- TWF and FoB at the same time?

KRyan

3:59 AM

@JonathanHobbs yeah, that answer's pretty, and very-frequently completely inaccurate.

@SomeGuy no, you cannot.

well

you cannot with just unarmed strikes

you can make arguments for doing weird things with a punch as main weapon and an actual weapon as the offhand

doppelgreener

@Leezard I've deleted my comments now

KRyan

of course, the penalties would make the entire exercise completely pointless

Leezard

@JonathanHobbs cool, did the same :)

KRyan

I really don't know how to respond to that answer. It looks impressive and all, but he's simply wrong in a lot of his statements

can't comment on everything, it'd be way too big

doppelgreener

@KRyan Multiple comments?

Create a chat room, post your commentary in there, and link to it?

KRyan

4:04 AM

@JonathanHobbs that might work, but ultimately I'm 99% sure I'll never convince him

BESW

@KRyan Pretty sure that's not the point.

KRyan

@BESW it's not, but the mods look dimly on comments being used to contradict answers

doppelgreener

@KRyan You don't need to convince him. You need to provide constructive feedback, for others.

Leezard

Never tried a flurry of grapple attacks...

KRyan

you're supposed to have a separate answer for that

@Leezard it works poorly, because Monks are poor grapplers

doppelgreener

4:05 AM

@KRyan Do they? Is "-1 Many parts of this answer are actually factually incorrect. I've written [my full response here]" actually bad here?

That's sort of what the comment system is meant to be for

Answers are no way to respond like that

KRyan

@JonathanHobbs ....sigh, yes, yes it is. But... well, apparently there are some serious social tensions in the site that cause problems when stuff like this happens

there's really no good way to discuss this

basically, when I first joined, I made comments like that quite frequently, and was literally harassed by some of the higher-rep members of this site

this resulted in the Meta discussion regarding how comments are to be used, etc

so basically, I expect to be attacked if I do it

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@KRyan downvote

KRyan

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I did

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

hrmmmm

actually, a question about objectionable component could work

"It is said that monks can do such and such. Is it true?"

BESW

That seems surprisingly passive-aggressive, but if it's a common misconception I guess it could be legit...

KRyan

4:10 AM

@BrianBallsun-Stanton frankly, going through his entire answer, finding all of those, asking and answering each one, etc. etc.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

Yeah

KRyan

is a lot more work than I'm willing to put into this

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

yep!

that was my response too.

KRyan

for now, I'm just going to hope his answer doesn't get too many upvotes and therefore stays where it is

because the problem is it looks legit

I hope mine does too

doppelgreener

@BrianBallsun-Stanton That is a pretty bad way to deal with it. If someone has ten absurd misconceptions, you'd have to create ten questions to respond, and that wouldn't even be related back to the answer in question. Plus, many would just have the answer "No... no, you can't do that, where did you get the idea you could do that?"

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

4:11 AM

@JonathanHobbs raise this on meta, please.

KRyan

his misconceptions aren't absurd

they are just, well, they're incorrect

the rules could work that way, reasonably, they simply don't

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

Well, then cover the major things in your answer?

Both answers "look" legit.

bleh. sorry, I need to be working

ping me about this tonight

KRyan

@BrianBallsun-Stanton fair enough

like I said, for now I'm just going to watch it

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

Also, thank you @kyran for not doing commenty things. :)

I know how tempting that must have been (not least cause I had to stomp on myself for wanting to do same thing)

BESW

I.... have problems with his use of idiom, but that's irrelephant.

"...multiply your damage several folds."

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

4:14 AM

ugh

okay, need to kill this

talk to you later.

later

@Leezard That's it!

@BESW What is?

@Leezard The link. It's where the quote's from.

Leezard

@BESW Ah, good :)

Google-Fu skill up

BESW

4:24 AM

...now I've got Zul'Gurub on the brain.

Leezard

What's that?

BESW

Old dungeon in World of Warcraft.

Leezard

Ah, ok. Didn't do much WoW.

BESW

It's an open-roofed layout with a lot of bosses in different rooms. One boss fight has a mechanic that makes death pretty cheap, but every few times someone dies the boss gets a bit stronger.

When that happens, he shouts "DING!" and the boss next door shouts back, "Grats!"

Leezard

Sounds like a big encounter. Raid?

BESW

4:27 AM

And that is now my default mental noise for levelups.

@BESW that's awesome

@Leezard Yeah.

hehe cool

Troll dungeons were generally the most playful.

Leezard

I do like that, bosses shouting "ding" and "gratz" to each other. heheh

BESW

4:28 AM

I went back at a much higher level and farmed that particular boss for a mount drop with some friends.

(It's amazing how hard I had to work to get an unusual mount that didn't cover everything in a twenty-foot radius with its butt.)

Leezard

@BESW But I'm sure everyone in a 20'r thanked you for it :)

KRyan

@BESW oh god now I'm reminded of that Craigslist thing

BESW

@KRyan Do I even want to know?

Leezard

I do

KRyan

I believe the headline was something along the lines of "buy me a mount and you get to mount me"

headline, tag line, whatever

Leezard

4:31 AM

lol

KRyan

it was an ad on the now-defunct casual encounters section, IIRC

Leezard

people are strange

BESW

[face/palm]

KRyan

and she actually did post a follow-up, and claimed that everything went as anticipated and a good time was had by all (and they were set for a second date), so I guess it didn't turn out that badly

but.

Leezard

Part of me doesn't want to believe it but part me not surprised.

KRyan

4:34 AM

she also did reserve the right to choose among any who offered, or to choose none

so it's not like she was taking the first guy who offered

but still

doppelgreener

Weird as heck but that does have a nice ending.

BESW

I met many lovely people in WoW. I also met a few oddities.

Leezard

I ran into all types playing EQ & EQ2. It was fun, most of the time.

BESW

There was a guy who couldn't handle my refusing to disclose my IRL gender.

Leezard

That is odd, what business is it of his?

KRyan

4:41 AM

@Leezard some people are really insecure

at a guess, @BESW was playing a female character, and the person in question was homophobic in the literal sense, that is, actually afraid of homosexuality

and therefore discomforted by the idea that the "hot" woman might be a man

or something

BESW

My main avatar was female, and I didn't act in a stereotypically masculine fashion, so there was occasionally "Real Girl" issues.

Leezard

I played toons of both genders, it was nothing more than character concept.

KRyan

my RPG chars are about 50% female

including my only active one at the moment

Leezard

@KRyan or that they secretly wanted the "hot chick" to not be :)

BESW

When I got on voice chat with my guild they thought I was a retirement-age man.

Leezard

4:46 AM

people can to hung up on the most unimportant things.

BESW

I think it was my elocution.

Leezard

I do recall an odd argument, about B5 and bald women being attractively portrayed. He said it shouldn't be on tv, I said it had as much right as any other portrayal of beauty. That got to be a hot discussion.

KRyan

B5?

Leezard

Just like some people find bald men attractive and others don't.

babylon 5

KRyan

aaah

and this shouldn't be on TV?

I mean, I'm not sure I'd find it terribly attractive personally

but I cannot fathom why one would object to it existing

Leezard

4:53 AM

Some people look really good bald, they have the head for it. Others, not so much. The original Star Trek movie showed me that :)

cinema.theiapolis.com/movie-029K/star-trek-the-motion-picture/…

KRyan

ok, I'll grant you that one

she's very cute

reminds me of the Paragnostic Apostle in Complete Champion, heh

Leezard

What's a Paragnostic Apostle?

BESW

@Leezard From contextual clues, a bald woman.

If my memory serves, it's a 3.5 prestige class.

Leezard

@BESW hehehe I would guess so

Ah, I didn't get into 3.5 much past core stuff.

Gonna run for now, see ya later.

BESW

5:13 AM

Ta.

doppelgreener

@BESW, @KRyan (I hope I can ping multiple people at once)

In case I can't: @BESW

And also: @KRyan

BESW

@JonathanHobbs That's an affirmative

doppelgreener

0

Q: How should we respond to fundamentally incorrect/bad answers?

This question exists because of this answer, and a discussion in chat that followed it. I'll get to that later. This question is about a unique category of answers on Stack Exchange: specious answers. Specious answers are incorrect and bad, yet look legitimate and good. By an incorrect/bad ans...

This was half-splurged at some point so I hope this question makes sense.

I am sort of mentally exhausted after having so much trouble articulating what I wanted to say that my brain's writing faculties are a little broken down and on strike at the moment, and so I can't proofread and my answer may be quite lacking.

(so for the record, I welcome any editing to express the question or answer more clearly, whether with more elaboration or conciseness. Now I'm going to watch some Gurren Lagann and relax my brain for an hour.)

mxyzplk

5:32 AM

@JonathanHobbs This is plain silly. There's lots of use of comments to provide constructive criticism on the site.

8

Q: Why are site comments being deleted?

Some site users have noticed old comments being deleted. This is correct - site comments are meant to be a mostly temporary means of improving questions and answers. Here's an explanation of the process we use. Argumentative comments or extended discussion comment threads hijacking an entire q...

discussion faq comments

"Does not mean what you think it means" apparently

Comments critiquing an answer are welcome. Just not comment warring, page long threads, etc. (all the stuff it says in the question on comments).

doppelgreener

@mxyzplk Alright, thanks a lot for your response. :D

The Oracle

1

Q: How should we respond to fundamentally incorrect/bad answers?

This question exists because of this answer, and a discussion in chat that followed it. I'll get to that later. This question is about a unique category of answers on Stack Exchange: specious answers. Specious answers are incorrect and bad, yet look legitimate and good. By an incorrect/bad ans...

discussion answers

doppelgreener

Yes thankyou @TheOracle that was timely

mxyzplk

Criticisms that get incorporated into the question do get deleted for obsolescence...

Criticisms that don't get incorporated stand, as long as it's not back-and-forth argument etc.

doppelgreener

I actually did read the whole text, and it said you'd delete such a comment in time (leaving visitors as to having no idea why the answer is actually downvoted). Based on KRyan's words this seemed like it would be deleted too soon.

I also read the quote from Rob Cartiano, which you quoted to explain why this is a more widespread SE practice, and it said:

mxyzplk

5:46 AM

a) that's not what it says, feel free and point out where so we can improve the post,

doppelgreener

> Comments help facilitate that wiki-style editing by allowing us to ask for a bit of clarification or otherwise help improve that post. That's what comments are for. Period.

mxyzplk

that's "otherwise help improve"

BESW

@mxyzplk Do you have a suggestion for strategies to employ when criticisms must expand beyond a comment's size constraints in order to be effective?

doppelgreener

Alright, great. I wasn't sure about that.

@mxyzplk Also mine was a misinterpretation of what you said, simply.

mxyzplk

@BESW I don't believe that's ever the case. If you want to explain to the person at length, use chat. If you want to post your own answer, post an answer. SE is not about "point by point rebuttal" ever.

Otherwise, "-1 this answer is fundamentally flawed because fighter blee blee monk blee blee" is good enough

doppelgreener

5:49 AM

"I don't touch those until initial activity on the question has dropped off and it's clearly become part of the long tail of questions" does not really express a when that I can grasp, and based on my impression I interpreted it badly. It also means such comments aren't preserved for more than maybe a few days.

"Then, I'll delete a comment like that when happened upon. When an old question pops up or I'm going to it, I'll delete comments that fit this criterion. (Needless to say, this is what voting is the persistent implementation of.)" - so I understand you delete them when you come across them and when old questions pop up full of them. Having no clear idea of when they cease to be untouchable, I filled in a bad blank.

mxyzplk

Look around and see when it generally happens?

SomeGuy

I don't see why, when we're discussing the balance of a monk, we compare it to the fighter.

BESW

@mxyzplk That implies watching a particular thread to see when it gains in absences. Which is a little awkward, if not somewhat ridiculous, to expect someone to do.

@SomeGuy Because the OP compared monks and fighters re: grapple.

SomeGuy

@BESW Ahh, that makes sense.

doppelgreener

@mxyzplk I actually brought up creating a chatroom for it and linking it. KRyan said that'd still be negative feedback, Brian responded with "create a question." Ultimately we didn't exactly get any response saying "No that's fine" from him :(

mxyzplk

5:52 AM

@BESW So you're saying you don't see understand when comments are getting cleaned just from your own organic use of the site? Have any of your comments disappeared prematurely?

BESW

@mxyzplk I... it never occurred to me to go back and re-read my own comments.

doppelgreener

@mxyzplk I've noticed mine getting cleared away every now and then, but understand that from my side of things, my comments simply disappear after a little while. I have no perception of a mod having seen my comment and allowed it to exist for a little while longer whilst the issue's still carrying on.

mxyzplk

@JonathanHobbs We had a separate discussion with KRyan about commenting earlier on and he's still upset about it. Don't let him draw you into that. And yes, I'll discuss that with Brian, he was busy and just said "go to meta."

@BESW If they're not disappearing so soon that you notice it during your participation in a question, then it's probably OK, right?

doppelgreener

@mxyzplk Alright. ;o Still, I guess now he can go ahead and explain his beef with that answer.

BESW

@mxyzplk Sure, and I'm not complaining. Just trying to pin where in that "what comments are for" post Hobbs was getting bogged down.

doppelgreener

5:58 AM

Pin as in understand or pin as in articulate it?

BESW

@JonathanHobbs Yes.

mxyzplk

@BESW I have this litmus test called "has it happened." If you have had critical comments deleted unfairly or whatever, bring it up... It's hard to answer "What if it did?" And in general, I think you can assume the mods are acting in a generally reasonable way.

And also feel free and comment on the comment question with suggestions for improving the verbiage!

BESW

@mxyzplk Gotcha. Like I said, I'm not complaining.

doppelgreener

@BESW KRyan's situation and Brian's lack of saying "no, you can do that" and instead saying "try these other things?" had me understanding things were done a certain way. That understanding had me primed to read that meta question in a certain way, which had me fill in the more ambiguous spots according to Wiio's second law:

> If a message can be interpreted in several ways, it will be interpreted in a manner that maximizes the damage

BESW

You suggested that a careful reading of Why are site comments being deleted? would give Hobbs a better understanding of the issue, and his misunderstanding seems to lie in, as he said, "filling in a bad blank."

So I'm thinking maybe there's a minor edit that could be made to help avoid bad blanks in the future. Clarity For All and so forth. But I'm not sure what that might be, given the mods' understandable desire to not set forth unnecessary rulings without context.

mxyzplk

6:04 AM

"A while. It's more than a moment, shorter than a long time."

Have edited the guidance some

doppelgreener

This would have done valuably: adding that comments generally won't be cleaned out whilst a situation is still being resolved or they're becoming a problematically large discussion, and that this is the case:

> Criticisms that get incorporated into the question do get deleted for obsolescence...

> Criticisms that don't get incorporated stand, as long as it's not back-and-forth argument etc.

I actually think I have seen comments providing valid criticism of an answer get wiped out later when they do turn into a bit of a back-and-forth, whilst clearing out the entire back-and-forth. Due to the fact they've been wiped out, though, I can't exactly provide evidence for that.

Is it possible you and Brian have a different moderation style, and you'll leave unincorporated feedback there and he won't?

mxyzplk

No, we all do it.

And yes, sometimes if a whole comment thread has degenerated, the baby gets thrown out with the bath water.

doppelgreener

(I am open to the idea that this might just be my imagination, also.)

mxyzplk

"So don't do it"

If you get into a back and forth argument, then yes some of the time your "initial valid critique" will get tarred with the same brush and get deleted

doppelgreener

That's problematic though. If the fighter build is broken because so-and-so, preserving a comment pointing that out is important so as to make it clear why a specious answer has downvotes like it does.

mxyzplk

6:11 AM

However, as again mentioned in the post, comment votes count. If there's a ten comment back and forth but the first one has 6 upvotes, it's likely to rise above the waterline and remin

doppelgreener

This is assuming the answer is bad, that the criticism is valid, but debated.

I can understand, however, maybe wanting to throw out a comment that is probably prone to causing arguments over and over.

mxyzplk

@JonathanHobbs Then don't turn it into a comment war. Arguments take two people. If one person posts a criticism and then one person posts four comments arguing, it's those four that are gonna go. If each person posts five back and forth, they're all gonna go.

This is how people learn.

In the end, we keep valueful comments and delete low value ones. However since comments are second class citizens, we don't spend hours agonizing over it, so we will delete them all and let God sort it out if people are misbehaving.

doppelgreener

@mxyzplk Alright. But in the process, the specious answer is returned to a state where there's no clear reason why it's bad and downvoted (assuming it did get downvoted heavily). Something pretty important is lost. At the very least, shouldn't the person who made the initial response be notified? Apparently, they're fine as long as they don't get into an argument about it, so they should be allowed to restate their comment and this time avoid an argument.

BESW

@JonathanHobbs Ultimately, mods aren't able to micromanage like that.

mxyzplk

Yeah, feel free and pay us a salary and we'll be happy to carry water for everyone all day.

LitheOhm

6:16 AM

@mxyzplk lol

doppelgreener

Hm. :/ Darn, alright.

mxyzplk

And the site has a rich set of notification stuff. You are not in a comment war and don't know it and don't get a bunch of little red circles popping up.

"I commented and moved on" is not when problems happen.

"I am busy grammar flaming comment rebuttal #6" is.

doppelgreener

I need to go grocery shopping before the shops shut, also.

mxyzplk

It's bedtime for me, peace out all!

doppelgreener

Thanks for talking with me @mxyzplk. Goodnight!

BESW

6:21 AM

ttfn

LitheOhm