TRPG General Chat

Shalvenay

12:04 AM

@nitsua60 hahahaha

@nitsua60 how'd she end up with such a wardrobe? :P

trogdor

12:55 AM

lol

nitsua60

1:27 AM

@Shalvenay Kept her eye out for bargains =)

Actually, my Pala-hack in Curse of Strahd had an interesting day spent spamming guidance on a dressmaker in the back of a wagon being pursued by weres. I'm sensing a theme...

And it's fabulous!

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 hahaha :P

SirTechSpec

1:59 AM

Hey gang, can I get an additional set of eyes on this 5e Warlock patron? docs.google.com/document/d/…

Shalvenay

@SirTechSpec I can take a brief glance -- take it you've been swamped over there btw?

SirTechSpec

I don't have any hardcore optimizers in my group, so I'm not worried about every possible implication or multiclassing interaction, just need to know if there's anything glaringly under- or overpowered about it, and I'm not used to having to think about balance.

@Shalvenay Yeahhhhhh, you could say that. Upgraded all our labs to Win10 and packaged, what, 90 software items in the last couple weeks?

Shalvenay

the closest thing to OP I see is the Aquatic Flexibility

SirTechSpec

@Shalvenay Things should calm down in about two weeks once the semester is underway.

Shalvenay

but otherwise I'd be cool with it at my table -- I think it's a really cool concept myself

@SirTechSpec take it we can start looking at the GURPS game again then, too?

Second CHance probably should be 1/LR instead of 1/SR IMO as well

SirTechSpec

2:06 AM

@Shalvenay Indeed, though you may have to remind me. Since I disabled all browsers on my phone I've been a lot better at sleeping/eating/etc., but it does mean I'm rarely in Chat. I do pop in to RPG.SE to check notifications occasionally, though.

The Aquatic Flexibility is interesting. It seems really powerful... but the existing Level 10 Warlock Patron features mostly grant immunity to a condition plus resistance to a damage type or some other benefit, so it struck me as good but still reasonable by comparison.

Shalvenay

@SirTechSpec ah, good point

nitsua60

@SirTechSpec Yeah, "immunity to restrained" is the only thing that jumped out at me. Though I also wondered if you'd considered using any of the water-themed spells in the Elemental Evil Player's Guide.

Absorb elements feels like it could fit the theme, for instance. (The River takes it all in.)

SirTechSpec

@nitsua60 Maelstrom is from EEPG. I was looking at the PHB when designing levels 1-3, though. I'll take another look.

nitsua60

Question, requiring only a seat-of-the-pants guesstimation: what fraction of people are school-aged kids?

Mike Q

Of what sample size?

nitsua60

2:20 AM

Small (rural) town.

Mike Q

umm... Depends? Context is required. Example: If the town is very dangerous, then maybe the average life span is shorter.

nitsua60

The more I nail it down, though, the more I'm getting my answer from you.

Mike Q

Someone correct me if my statistics are wrong: If the average lifespan is shorter, then the percentage of children is... higher? Because there are relatively fewer adults?

CTWind

That and I imagine people would be reproducing more/often.

nitsua60

Yeah. And naively I'd assume that longer lifespans tend to push toward later reproduction?

Mike Q

2:23 AM

^ Yes.

nitsua60

But those same pressures/releases also have (in recent history) coincided with "delayed adult onset," too.

Mike Q

# children per family depends on a lot of factors. Income, food supply, religion, culture, environmental hazards, etc...

Is this for the purpose of worldbuilding?

nitsua60

Yup.

I've got a small, isolated village that my son's character lives in. Character's in school, and I'm curious how big the school is. (I wrote down '40' a while ago, but nothing's writ in blood.)

Mike Q

Describe the climate and general tone (happy/grim, wealthy/poor, peaceful/at risk, etc.)

Oh, are we talking JRPG-scale towns?

SirTechSpec

Applying the XKCD method here... People who live past 5 live to be about 80. On average, each of them will have 1 kid to maintain a steady population.

nitsua60

2:28 AM

Northern California coast. Happy. Plenty, but not the luxury that they might have been accustomed to before being shuttled off to the frontier. Peaceful.

@MikeQ Maybe?

Mike Q

Video game towns tend to have < 50% children, if not < 25%

SirTechSpec

I think if you assume everyone has the same lifespan, it actually doesn't matter what age people have kids at. The percentage of school-aged kids will be the same as the percentage of one's lifespan that you spend at "school age".

So, 12/80~=15%.

nitsua60

Bingo--there's ^^ the "keep it simple, nitsua" thought I needed.

Thanks.

Mike Q

...But tabletop RPGs aren't subject to hardware limits, so I'm going on a tangent...

nitsua60

@MikeQ No, but the wetware needs serious maintenance =)

It's an elven mining town.

(You read that right.)

Mike Q

2:30 AM

(est. schoolchildren in US)/(est. US population) is also about 15%

SirTechSpec

@nitsua60 NP, anytime!

nitsua60

None of the adults are terribly happy about it.

Mike Q

Okay. So races that live shorter lives, they tend to have more offspring, since it improves chances of survival.

Then for long-lasting races, they wouldn't be as urgent to have offspring. So they'd have a lower (than "average") percentage of children.

You know what? Ignore everything else I said before that.

SirTechSpec

@MikeQ But only if there's a significant risk of not reproducing. If people mostly live long enough to have kids, there's no theoretical impetus to have more if everybody dies at 30 or 100.

In practice, people tend to have more kids more or less instinctively, proportional to the amount of stress/danger/poor health in their communities.

(Which is why fears of overpopulation if we reduce poverty are unwarranted; raising the standard of living actually reduces the population growth rate.)

(But I, too, digress.)

nitsua60

@SirTechSpec In my experience I've had more kids when my SO told me we were having more kids =)

Mike Q

2:35 AM

And high stress/danger would imply a shorter lifespan, right? Okay, so maybe I assumed a causal effect, but there's still some correlation there.

nitsua60

@SirTechSpec Who fears overpopulation as a result of poverty abatement? Is that really a thing? People think that "we'd be overwhelmed by the poor if they didn't die off quickly enough"!?

(I'm not yelling at you, just befuddled at my species.)

Mike Q

@nitsua60 Welcome to humankind

SirTechSpec

@MikeQ I think it's one of those instinctual heuristics, yes. High stress/danger leads the body to assume more children are necessary to maintain the population. But you were talking about different species having different drives; I think the variance only applies relative to the "calibration" of a given species, not between species.

Mike Q

@SirTechSpec Well sure. Suppose you have a town of elves in... a volcano, for some reason. Even if elven biology could allow for 1000+ year lifespans, the actual lifespan is much shorter due to high danger.

i.e., the biological lifespan is a much more significant factor if you already assume low danger

SirTechSpec

@nitsua60 No one I respect, but having heard the argument I laid out above, I now usually perceive a certain classism/racism underlying many of the expressions of concern about overpopulation I hear.

Mike Q

2:42 AM

@nitsua60 (Admittedly I don't consider this level of detail when designing towns for tabletop games. Don't take everything I said as absolute fact.)

nitsua60

@MikeQ I've got time to kill. =)

SirTechSpec

@MikeQ Well, but I think my point is that in the absence of serious environmental pressure, my heuristic holds regardless of natural lifespan. If elves all live to be about 1000 and then die, in a community that's existed for a while and is holding steady, the distribution of ages will still be basically even across that 1000-year lifespan.

nitsua60

46 mins ago, by SirTechSpec

Hey gang, can I get an additional set of eyes on this 5e Warlock patron? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wutyrRLJtsvAwgxl8FcBLa7Td17a9a-CtV9J61zxWI0/‌edit

@SirTechSpec: @Miniman would probably have good feedback on that ^^, if they've got the time.

SirTechSpec

Indeed, I was thinking of asking them directly but feeling a little too shy this evening ^__^;

CTWind

Oh, speaking of homebrew, I've been thinking ( more - https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/93283/does-this-sorcerer-homebrew-feature-have-more-efficient-than-intended-uses ) about a Sorcerer subclass homebrew (D&D5e) and I'm debating a level 6 feature:

"You learn the Daylight and Moonbeam spells, and they count as Sorcerer spells for you, though they do not count against the number of sorcerer spells you know. They are modified in the following ways:
- When you cast Daylight, you may spend 1(?) sorcery point to have the light count as sunlight.

Mike Q

2:47 AM

@SirTechSpec ...Right. That is a good point that I completely overlooked. I've been dealing with animals too much so I tend to think in terms of animal behavior :P

CTWind

Hrm. What am I sccrewing up in that URL?

nitsua60

@CTWind In a multiline message markdown breaks.

CTWind

Oh.

nitsua60

(Except when rendered in the starboard.)

How do I telegraph "faithful-guardian undead" vs. "evil life-hating undead" at a distance?

Mike Q

@CTWind At higher levels, when the sorcerer can cast at higher spell slots and apply metamagic, that moonbeam becomes a laser satellite of doom

SirTechSpec

2:50 AM

Aaaand I am reminded that, despite the convenience of the setup in my office that has kept me here homebrewing for the past 4 hours, I should really leave it to go home, grab a quick bite, and sleep :P

CTWind

@MikeQ That's somewhat the fantasy :-P Yeah, it's a worry, though I don't know how to judge the potential that an enemy could be kept in the AOE anyways.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 that is a really good question

Mike Q

@nitsua60 Could you elaborate? What do those mean?

SirTechSpec

@nitsua60 Stationary in armor or otherwise large/imposing vs. wandering, slavering monsters (CE) or ominously marching ranks (LE)

CTWind

@MikeQ I could also do something like "You may spend sorcery points equal to the spell's level divided by two (rounded down) to move it up to 60 feet as a bonus action."

Miniman

2:53 AM

@SirTechSpec I'd remove the save from the 1st level feature - it's use-limited and only gives disadvantage, it doesn't need to be luck-based.

nitsua60

@MikeQ Meaning on the one hand we've got those undead who are raised for Reasons, and who aim to extinguish all life they encounter. For their own Reasons. But on the other hand I've got some undead who are there because they were so dutiful in life that in death they have not left their station unmanned.

Mike Q

@CTWind Maybe a bit too costly. Why not keep it a constant, like 1 or 2 points?

SirTechSpec

You could also take the easy/traditional route and make the evil ones nasty rotting corpses and the good/neutral ones well-preserved for whatever reason.

Miniman

@CTWind Cool, but very niche.

CTWind

@Miniman I'm mostly OK with that evaluation, as I have a very niche love for Moonbeam. :-P

Mike Q

2:55 AM

@nitsua60 Is "undead raised by a necromancer" versus "vengeful ghost" sufficient or am I missing something?

nitsua60

@MikeQ Right... but in-game?

SirTechSpec

@Miniman OK, makes sense. I was trying to compare it to the Cleric feature Warding Flare (self only, 1/LR, guaranteed disadvantage) and Vicious Mockery (save for disadvantage and a standard action, but unlimited use and also does nominal damage)

Mike Q

@nitsua60 Visibly rotting corpses, maybe with glowing eyes, that just says "ughgh....."; versus ethereal ghost who speaks warnings and other spooky stuff

nitsua60

(Hold that thought--mainsite Q coming.)

Mike Q

@CTWind Actually, what might work is your original idea (moonbeam once per long rest), but reduce the duration from "1 min Concentration" to "instant". So instead of a death ray that lasts for most/all of a battle, it is instead a one-time emergency damage blast.

(or if not Instant, then some other duration less than 1 minute)

CTWind

3:00 AM

@MikeQ I didn't intend it for 1/rest, I intended it to be just a new regular spell in their spell list. Still costs a spell slot, they just have the ability to spend sorc points to move it around as a bonus in contrast to the usual full action.

Mike Q

@CTWind Right, sorry. Once per however long the sorcerer has until they need to reload their spells. In other words, an extra known spell.

SirTechSpec

@Miniman Part of the awkwardness is that the class concept only makes sense within the very specific context of my current campaign; warlocks usually don't heal. With that in mind, I have several heal-ish spells and abilities (Restoration etc.) but no actual HP healing - I thought it might throw off game balance too much to introduce short rest healing.

nitsua60

@MikeQ Boom.

(cc: @Shalvenay)

Mike Q

@nitsua60 Glowy eye color. Color 1 is necromancy, color 2 is the spiritual thing.

It's campy but much less subtle than my earlier suggestion.

To make it even more noticeable, maybe the undead's entire body emits a faint colored light as well.

diego

@nitsua60 Magic just had a set that had essentially both types of zombies, you could try looking at the Plane Shift: Amonkhet article and see if that gives any ideas (I haven't really looked through it so I don't know how in depth it goes with the different types of zombies)

nitsua60

3:06 AM

@diego Fallen Empires is where my relationship with M:tG ends =)

Or Ice Age, maybe?

Forget the order.

@SirTechSpec that's a fair answer =)

diego

I'm pretty sure Ice Age was later

SirTechSpec

@MikeQ I dig that idea.

diego

Here is the pdf if you want to look: media.wizards.com/2017/downloads/magic/plane-shift_amonkhet.pdf

SirTechSpec

@nitsua60 Thanks :)

Ok, I'm out for realz now. Night all!

nitsua60

@diego Thanks--will look!

@SirTechSpec Be well!

Mike Q

3:10 AM

@nitsua60 More seriously though, I thought that necromancy typically prioritizes reusing the body, and the necromancy spell is the glowy stuff. By comparison, undead with "unfinished business" appeared as haunts, ghosts, and visions, because it's more about the mind than body.

nitsua60

@MikeQ That's sensible.

SirTechSpec

@MikeQ Not in the base DND realm; IIRC Wights and Revenants are both corporeal unfinished-business types.

CTWind

@MikeQ Hah, I unintentionally asked along those lines in the comments of Nitsua's question :-P

nitsua60

Maybe animated armor (narratively, not necessarily Animated Armor mechanically) as the "mind" still gets up and gets dressed every day, even as skin crumbles, flesh decays, bones tumble apart....

Shalvenay

@SirTechSpec but still quite evil

nitsua60

3:14 AM

Yeah. The faithful-guardian types would probably be LN, if we were so crazy as to talk alignments.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 makes sense

SirTechSpec

@Shalvenay I thought Revenants weren't necessarily evil.

Shalvenay

@SirTechSpec maybe not for revenants, I'd have to check my MM

nitsua60

And there's the revenant template/type from CoS material (UA, maybe?) that could be applied to anyone.

SirTechSpec

@nitsua60 Of course, even that doesn't positively identify them as not being magically created. :P youtube.com/watch?v=Z0rRPU_cvGg

nitsua60

3:17 AM

@SirTechSpec Go to bed!

=D

nitsua60

3:47 AM

For your amusement: d50 Epic characters

godskook

4:58 AM

@nitsua60 would giving your undead mundanely-visible auras work for your purposes? Like Saiyans?

Zachiel

12:09 PM

> My attempts at fine [japanese] calligraphy mostly resembled excited chickens prancing over paper, their feet soaked in ink.

NautArch

@nitsua60 95-96

nitsua60

7:08 PM

@NautArch you can make a whole movie out of that random encounter.

imdb.com/title/tt0212338

(hmm... no oneboxing for IMDB. Shame.)

This question makes me think a canonical "wat are the classes?" question, akin to wat are the races? may be in order. Or maybe I'll finish GoT.

BESW

9:09 PM

narrative folks: I have now obtained a new earliest known gamebook/choose your own adventure—it was written by thes… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/904043273022349312

Tweeted by xfoml on September 2, 2017 at 6:08 PM

trogdor

nice

I used to read choose your own adventure books

but they tend to have,.... really stupid ideas about how far to take one decision, and what the consequences should be

XD

SmokeDetector

9:49 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, pattern-matching email in answer: Given powerful low-level Clerical healing, how can sick, crippled or otherwise unhealthy people exist? by ose j Awelo on rpg.SE

trogdor

10:00 PM

wow the things that pop up on this

nitsua60

10:35 PM

I'm not sure I want a doctor who will "en-devour" me?

trogdor

lol

BESW

11:28 PM

@nitsua60 Most people don't know, but it's completely different from being em-devoured.

The Oracle

11:53 PM

2

Q: Should questions about the 2017 version of Paranoia be tagged differently than older versions?

The 2017 version of Paranoia is a pretty big departure from older versions. Instead of a single d20, perversity points, and communists, we have a pool of d6s, XP points, and terrorists. In other words, there are pretty big changes to the game mechanics and setting and a question relevant for an o...

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