Hello. This question of mine currently has 102 votes, but in every other list I checked (such as this one, or the "Top network posts" in my profile page on other sites) it appears with 103 votes. I thought it was a cache issue but it's been like that for at least a week, is this discrepancy normal? (I'm not worried about it, just curious)

@pregunton Is it because other lists only count upvotes whereas the question shows upvotes-downvotes?

@Bellerophon No, I just checked. This question has +15/-1 and it correctly shows 14 in both cases.

So I was watching the SpaceX falcon heavy launch that happened on Monday, and for about 2/10ths of a second they accidently cut to their Stargate...

Got to thinking, that could be an interesting fueling system for an interstellar spacecraft. You could make something fairly light carrying only a stargate and a few instruments as cargo, have a pretty small fuel tank on it with a stargate inside, and have another fuel tank on earth with a stargate inside, then just start pumping fuel into the local one, having it fill the remote one, and you get continuous thrust all the way to Kepler-186f.

Whats shakin all?

Not much...

The assassin vines were fun...but my friends accused me of getting the idea for Tuesday night's session from hentai...

lol. I really hope that it didn't go quite that far

Getting poisoned is bad enough... poisoned and molested would be a lot worse

@AndyD273 I mean...they were restrained...

missed opportunity to call them BDSM vines I guess

Where it really took a turn is when the rubber trees in the druid grove dropped a bunch of sap on the ground to make it all difficult terrain with a DC 14 STR check or be stuck in said sap.

Turns out rubber tree sap is white...so yeah.

It wasn't my intent but...uh...they kind of had a point.

What's the term for that again? Freudian slip?

LOL.

Huh, I always assumed rubber tree sap would be black or clear/opaque. It really is white...

Also, people do weird things for art

@AndyD273 Most saps are actually white-ish.

Clear/golden/white are the most common ones.

I'm pretty sure it correlates to the viscosity of the sap.

Most of the saps I've seen have been clear or golden. Not sure why I though black, other than a lot of made from rubber are black.

@pregunton Looks like a bug to me, as if some part of the system hadn't been notified when the downvote happened or something like that. The downvote is pretty old according to the timeline, so it can't be a caching problem. I checked a couple of my own and your posts and everything looks fine, taking downvotes into account.

@AndyD273 why would you imagine black? Oo

@dot_Sp0T Not sure why I though black, other than a lot things of made from rubber are black.

@AndyD273 have you ever heard the term Vulcanization? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcanization

It isnt directly the reason for stuff being black (that's due to adding further agents such as Carbon Black) but it always helped me understand that there are multiple stages to rubber

@dot_Sp0T I"ve heard of vulcanization, I've just never studied the process, or how natural rubber is refined in general.

Quick, somebody, go post a vulcanization question so Andy has an excuse to learn it.

Let's see, how to vulcanize rubber in a world with lots of sulfur in the air so it interferes with the process.

@Hosch250 uh...I don't know how to do that.

@James I mean on world building.

@Hosch250 that'd actually support the process

@dot_Sp0T It might support it too much.

@Secespitus I see. Do you think I should bring up the issue in meta? Or is it not worth it because it's such a small bug?

@pregunton It would be interesting to see what the reason for this is, though I suspect it would take quite some time for it to get answered, if it gets answered at all. To me it seems like a minor thing. It's a bit weird, but having your best question display another upvote doesn't look like something that needs to be fixed immediately. There's no harm in writing a meta bug report though, just don't expect someone to jump on it to get it fixed.

But maybe we are just overlooking something. Who knows?

@NexTerren @dot_Sp0T You guys around?

So I had them enter the druid's grove and the first lair action (the sap that makes it difficult terrain and requires a STR (Athletics) check to move) happened. Then they battle a pair of shambling mounds and 4 assassin vines. Defeating them all, while the druid stayed hidden and laughed maniacally.

The session ended with the druids voice issuing from all the trees in the grove angry that the part has killed his friends...

So the next session they will battle the druid directly and I am wondering what kind of minions to include.

Dryads, like the ones in The Colour of Magic.

And Bel'Shamaroths (sp?).

There is an incubus hanging around (he baited the teifling sorcerer party member to check out the area in the first place) and I want to give them an opportunity to find him...but I am not sure how to work that in, during the middle of a battle.

Dryads could be fun...

You could even do Huorns.

(You know, the bad trees in Tolkien.)

They don't currently know that the incubus has the druid charmed.

@Hosch250 pretty sure there are treants in the monster manual...

Alternately, your Druid could decide plants aren't good enough, and switch to animals, like Sauron's spider things.

Those are super creepy...and it is always fun to watch adventurers flail around when attacked by phase spiders.

@James no

@James minions are mostly a 4th edition concept

What vibe do you want to give your druid? And are you keeping the hags as another stage or did you drop them?

Dropped them. Thought it would be more traumatic for the party to kill a good druid who had been charmed by an incubus that was bored and tasked with delivering the party a message.

oh but if he's a good druid, then why not have his minions be all manner of woodland critters?

I need to give the party an opportunity to realize she has been charmed but I am not sure how to do that.

@James this is glorious

@dot_Sp0T ...I could create swarms of...squirrels.

@James and badgers and deer

wombats maybe. Since its a jungle.

oh teh possibilities

Oh man, they are totally going to get attacked by a group of monkey's

@dot_Sp0T Yeah, the druids death (if they kill her) will be completely unnecessary since it was a jacked up way for an incubus to get the party's attention mainly out of boredom.

@James baboooons

WILD. TAPIRS.

@James zootycoon.fandom.com/wiki/Zoo_Tycoon_2:_Endangered_Species anything from that addon

@James Fire ants

@Hosch250 ...thats strait up evil. Bwahahahaha

@James what kind of charm?

@dot_Sp0T The incubus has a spell-like ability to charm. Its their bread and butter.

don't have the MM here with me, gimme a sec to find some online source

@dot_Sp0T Ah. Doy

Geez I clearly didn't read the whole ability description.

@dot_Sp0T So he gets hit, makes his save (eventually) and then shakes his head in confusion...

if you want to go more of an ingame route, you might have him hesitate attacking the players directly - showing restraint and thus a weird behaviour. That should prompt at least some concientous (i failed at that word) players to try cast detect magic or similar

@dot_Sp0T I was trying to think of a way to give them a perception check during the battle to possibly see the incubus who is hiding in the trees above them.

...so the question is. Does attacking the adventurers count as a suicidal command...cause she gets a save on that one as well.

Or conversely I could make her super powerful and the only way they survive is to hit her and make her save against the charm.

@James questionable I guess. If the incubus knows that would be suicidal, why give the command instead of commanding the Druid to send their animal-friends?

@dot_Sp0T That is what has happened so far.

oh well

I loved @Hosch250 's Treefolk idea

@dot_Sp0T Well, plant friends at this point technically.

I am contemplating having a treant come to life in the grove and slap the players around a bit. If it is too strong I can have the druid save and NOT kill them.

The druid will make herself visible during this part of the fight so they can target her directly.

I am thinking a halfling druid

@dot_Sp0T The vast majority of the stuff they have fought have been various humanoids.

@James you could use the treant as a pacemaker. one stage of the fight. e.g. after they fought back the first wave and have the druid spotted, the druid goes apeshit magic crazy and calls a treant - or moonbeams the party

@dot_Sp0T Moonbeam is a sweet spell.

Maybe both...

variety is always fun

A bit like a videogame bossfight, with a wave of fighting culminated by a big blast. have them become confident, eradicate the minions/enemies, just to be thrown back again

The best part is I have the tiefling sorcerer strongly considering supporting her demon-lord mom...which the fighter and the cleric are vehemently against.

Even better, they are falling into the endgame trap perfectly so far.

Meanwhile the warlock is all... "Well demons are bad but chaos is a ladder"

@dot_Sp0T They've made it through wave 1 (10 assassin vines) and wave 2 (2 shambling mounds and 4 more assassin vines) So I think round three may be the end.

i understand round 1 and 2 happened last session?

how far back is that session?

when's the next?

@James I mean that you might not necessarily want to start the next session with the big third wave/stage, but isntead have some small build-up or social scene to have it hit home harder

@NexTerren @James @Hosch250 - Opinion; Looking for continuing education ideas. What is a generally useful skill/technology that I should look into?

If you know the .NET stack well, you'll probably never be out of a job.

I wouldn't get into construction, that's seasonal work unless you are willing to be on the road all the time, and that's expensive due to hotels, etc.

Middle management seems to be ubiquitous in most companies. Just don't join the car companies, because they are sensibly cutting back there.

@Hosch250 Sure, and I'm currently playing around a bit with the Azure platform. My boss is asking me if there is anything I'd like to do to freshen up my skill set.

@AndyD273 check out .net core if you haven't

@dot_Sp0T A few days ago, we play every tuesday.

@dot_Sp0T Is it different from normal .net?

@AndyD273 Philosophy.

@AndyD273 It's the future of .NET.

@AndyD273 essentially a rebuild of most of the .net framework stuff. Also more platform independent

Old .NET was for Windows only.

Got it

.NET Core has a bunch of new features, and runs on all platforms.

They are working on re-combining them, but the next version is going to be .NET 5.

And there won't be two versions at that point.

Another thing might be trying to diversify. Learn some scripting language like python

Currently, it's .NET Framework 4.7.* and .NET Core 2.*, with .NET Core 3.0 coming around September.

@dot_Sp0T I've started doing that a bit in my own time, mainly in relation to microcontrollers, but I don't have any ideas currently on ways to use python at work

@AndyD273 automation and devops is always a good bet

it's more lightweight and flexible than a full dotnet or java stack

(sorry for hijacking btw)

@dot_Sp0T probably, though we currently use .net for all automation. I could maybe think about doing something with the next automation project they give me. I'm not sure its worth it to rewrite some of the existing ones right now.

@AndyD273 don't fix what's not broken, obv