TRPG General Chat

KorvinStarmast

1:15 AM

now and again, someone does something joyful. We need more of this

HELLO BROTHER - LOUIS ARMSTRONG

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SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected, potentially bad keyword in answer, toxic answer detected (161): Should I just assume that a Warlock with the *Fiendish Vigor* invocation starts every combat with 8 temporary hp? by ternexmodshotmailcouk on rpg.SE

Black Spike

1:43 AM

hi

Shalvenay

hey there @BlackSpike, how're things going?

Black Spike

@Shalvenay pretty good thanks. You?

Just finalised our game. 85 sessions!

Shalvenay

@BlackSpike nice!

and doing OK here, even if most of the stuff I'm in is on a bit of a hiatus

Black Spike

Good to have break now n then :)

@Shalvenay Threw then a curve-ball at the end :) had a run-down of where the PCs are at, plans for the future, etc ... then ... BOOM! Big Change! ... roll credits ...

So we're on 'tween-campaigns hiatus now :)

Shalvenay

XD

Black Spike

1:52 AM

I think it went down well :) and one player brought Special Food, for the Finale! :D

Shalvenay

XD

Black Spike

KorvinStarmast

2:07 AM

@BlackSpike Is it tasty, Precious?

Black Spike

XD

@KorvinStarmast It was very tasty! "Manhattan Mess". (like an Eton Mess, strawberries, cream, meringue. but "Dirty, Used and Broken" <tag-line for our campaign> hence the blue meringue)

KorvinStarmast

@BlackSpike Niiiiiiiiiiiice.

Why do I feel all peckish?

Black Spike

:)

Was fun to see the Players react to Twist. we went round the group: How are things different to Session One? What are your plans for the Future? How do you see your place in the Gang? ... oh, btw, BOOM! CHANGE! ...

PCs: oh, I want to do this ... can I sort this out ....
GM (Me) : You got a few moment while the final credits roll ...

Shalvenay

2:22 AM

@KorvinStarmast check the back room btw :)

Hot RPG Questions

5

Q: Can you put ranks into knowledge skills that aren't class skills?

Can you put ranks into knowledge skills that aren't class skills? As a sorcerer, Knowledge Engineering isn't a class skill, can I still put ranks into it so I can do Engineering checks after I level?

V2Blast

3:41 AM

@Delioth I haven't used it myself, but plenty of DMs I've worked with have spoken very highly of Dungeon Painter Studio

@BESW ...There's a Cozy Gaming channel?

user15026

3:55 AM

@trogdor Apologies, I know I tangented hard by getting excited that people might want romance-recs, because as you know, I loooooove recommending me some romances :)

user15026

Like seriously I think it's probably the closest I get to like how that dude must feel in Harry Potter helping people pick wands :P

V2Blast

4:06 AM

Even More E3 Attendee Information Has Been Compromised

> In an email sent out to E3 attendees of those years, the ESA explains that the issue was discovered while looking into the initial leak: "In the course of our investigation, we learned that media contact lists from E3 2004 and 2006 were cached on a third-party internet archive site. These were not files hosted on ESA’s servers or on the current website. We took immediate steps to have those files removed, and we received confirmation today that all files have either been taken down or are in the process of being removed from the third-party site."

trogdor

5:02 AM

@Ash lol there's literally nothing to apologise about

I just needed clarification of what you guys were talking about

Hot RPG Questions

3

Q: Is Infernal Healing actually worth it as a Wand?

Infernal Healing is a spell that gives you Fast Healing 1 for 10 rounds, healing 10 HP of damage. It can also be used right before combat to auto-stabilize in case you get dropped. Some people claim that it's the most efficient healing in the game. However, it has a material component: Unholy W...

pathfinder-1e healing

user15026

5:45 AM

@trogdor okay :)

trogdor

6:01 AM

:)

it was all on my end anyway

I had just woken up, was feeling a little icky, and couldn't muster the time and energy to figure out what the pings were talking about

BESW

6:56 AM

Kickstarter: Paper Arcade, vol. 1. An equity-based collection of four small tabletop RPGs!

V2Blast

@BESW this one seems intriguing:

> Uh-oh! Ellen's in hot water. She's in an interview. Or a date. Or in the midst of an alcohol-fueled rant to her mother. Regardless of the situation, you, as Invisible Beings Who Control Ellen's Communication Centers, must bail her out of this dire situation. Together, play cards that indicate what bits of messaging you think Ellen should say. But be careful! Whatever message one player crafts has an effect on the next message their fellow player makes. Teamwork makes the dream work, but can you save Ellen's communication woes when you yourself can't even talk?

BESW

7:14 AM

It sounds like Everyone Is John But Not Heinously Ableist.

Tiggerous

As a relatively new player and relatively new DM I killed my first PC last night. Feeling a little guilty about it.

More so, because the player in question had to leave halfway through the session, when he was on full health still, and someone else took over playing him and nat 1'd his death save. (D&D 5e)

BESW

@Tiggerous If it would make you feel better, I've got stories about killing PCs in my first campaign...

Tiggerous

I'm not an adversarial DM at all (far from it tbh), but I have been sort of hoping for a PC death to come along naturally at some point - so the stakes feel higher. I just feel bad that it ended up happening to a PC whose player wasn't actually there at the time.

BESW

The Tale of The Dwarven Cleric, or I Poke Him: 101 Stupid RP Tricks, Volume One.

Dec 26 '12 at 12:06, 7 minutes total – 36 messages, 2 users, 0 stars

Bookmarked Jun 25 '13 at 19:03 by BESW

Island explodes, everybody falls.

Jul 5 '13 at 2:43, 20 minutes total – 62 messages, 4 users, 0 stars

Bookmarked Aug 16 '15 at 9:45 by BESW

Tiggerous

Just reading...

That's a lot of nat 1's.

BESW

7:25 AM

Oh yes. A great many.

Goblin dice in action!

Pierre Cathé

@JohnP Merci beaucoup ! Seems like that's it!

Good morning all

Tiggerous

My player (the same who just died) had rolled max HP at every single level up (a 10 on a d10). At the last level up we joked about this before the roll and he did it again. We were all like 'what is with your insane luck?' He then missed every single attack roll that evening. And now he's become the first PC death.

Nyakouai

Morning all

Pierre Cathé

A friend just offered to run a one-shot in the 10 candles system, anyone have experience with that ?

BESW

I've vaguely heard good things about it, but it's not a game I'm likely to ever have an opportunity to play.

kviiri

7:48 AM

@Tiggerous It's never too late to declare it just a coma

Your player'll understand.

BESW

Better yet, a Colma.

Nyakouai

Wait wait wait, I need the end of the Dwarven Cleric's story

After the second dwarf got murdered, what happened?

A third duplicate dwarf? Only with a red hair beard?

Tiggerous

@kviiri I think I'm going to offer him a few alternatives - 1. death - new character, 2. tempoarary death - temporary character while party try to ingratiate themselves with someone who can res him, 3. He has a devil cursed sword - the demon offers to get his boss to restore him to life in return for 'favours', 4. He died in an ancient temple defending the shrine, so the ancient God chooses him for his own.

BESW

30

A: Dealing with players of vastly different skill levels?

Short Version: Maybe P is overwhelmed by bookkeeping and it's distracting him from situational awareness. Help him make a mechanically very simple character without fiddly bits or conditionals to keep track of, so he can focus on making good choices rather than having good bookkeeping. Invite th...

Tiggerous

@kviiri 3 and 4 could offer interesting and narratively fitting multi-classing opportunities for the player if he's interested.

BESW

7:55 AM

@Nyakouai And this conversation has a few details about the death-by-curiosity character.

Tiggerous

@BESW Where can I find a guide on how to link to specific posts in the chat archive? I wanted to share something yesterday but couldn't work it out.

BESW

Are you on mobile or desktop?

kviiri

@Tiggerous Have you asked him whether he wants his character to die in the first place? I know many people are cool with their mistakes resulting in character death, but he wasn't even there.

Nyakouai

@BESW Already shedding a tear at this one

Tiggerous

@kviiri That will be part of the discussion too.

@kviiri Desktop, mostly. I browse the site on mobile but most of my activity is when I'm on desktop.

BESW

8:01 AM

@Tiggerous Okay, the answer is different depending on whether you're in active chat or the transcript. For active chat: mouse over the chat item you want to link to, and a yellow-and-white box/arrow icon will appear on the left of the message. Click it, then right-click and copy the "permalink" hyperlink in the upper right of the resulting interface.

Paste that link into the chat entry window all by itself and hit "enter" and the link will one-box, or use the chat hypertext markdown: [hypertext goes here](https://www.example.com "optional mouseover text here")

If you're in the transcript it's much the same but the permalink is on the lefthand side of the interface box.

And if you're linking something from a chat search, just right-click and copy the link that appears as a chain-link icon on the left side of the message when you mouse over it.

Tiggerous

Can I post those links on mainsite / meta the same way or do they only work in chat?

BESW

And if you want to save a group of texts to share all at once, like I did with 101 Stupid Dwarf Tricks above, click the "room▼" text above the chat's user-icon cloud and select "create new bookmark." Then click the beginning and end of the section you wish to save and follow the directions. It will appear in the conversations tab on the info page.

@Tiggerous They won't one-box in mainsite/meta/comments, they act like ordinary hyperlinks.

The hyperlink markdown [](https:// "") works in all those spaces though.

Tiggerous

@BESW Thanks a lot.

Nyakouai

@BESW Bouncing back on the excerpt you linked... This just make me think of one of the main problematics in D&D style games: Why and how players play together?

I mean, after the party got cursed and the player still wanted to investigate, I'd have chalked it off as an heavy My Guy Syndrome and forcibly restrained him or killed him depending on the PC I'm playing

(And I'd probably be wrong, cause you know, cooperative game, fun for everyone and all that...)

But what can you do in game, when someone ruin the fun of everyone?

You're not allowed to ruin their fun. At least not IG. (You can still kick them out, but we all know it isn't the easiest thing to do, nor a rewarding one)

BESW

It only took about three D&D campaigns for me to institute a start-of-game "everybody needs to make a character that has a reason to be working with everyone else and being part of the story we're going to tell" announcement.

Nyakouai

8:16 AM

I have it in most of my campaigns, and still...

One of the current (dying) one, is three Chaotics and a first-time player Paladin

She has been warned. We've discussed it. She said it would be fine.

BESW

And I started practicing providing clear, simple guidelines for how to do that, like "You are all members of the same military black ops unit. Make characters who would be that." or "You are all trying to find a ship to go across the sea and it's cheaper to go together, I expect you to bond more on the voyage."

Nyakouai

And I'm still heavily tempted to murder her every (IG) morning

BESW

It helps that we refused to consider alignment as a moral/ethical quality to the maximum extent each system would let us.

Jun 27 '16 at 0:52, by BESW

[sigh] Vampire paladin and druid with an anti-undead vendetta, in the same party.

Pierre Cathé

I had a pretty bad game, where one of my players made a paladin to the god of violence and brutal murder (Naheulbeuk setting) and got a pretty bad case of "my guy"

Nyakouai

Naheulbeuk is a system that enforces My Guy

BESW

8:20 AM

D&D-style paladins tend to be bad for group cohesion. Even when the system fixes the problems, the narrative adhering to them remains and gums up everything.

Pierre Cathé

@Nyakouai I know, but when they keep leaving other players half-dead because they looked at them funny, it becomes disruptive

Nyakouai

@PierreCathé I can imagine

BESW

There's a sense that a paladin's diegetic "goodness" and "oathness" means they have diegetic and non-diegetic justification to expect everyone else to behave the way they expect.

Nyakouai

@BESW We had a great thread about "Not playing a stick in the mud" and I'm dying to see a good RP of a Paladin in play. I think there is a lot of potential to it. But experience turned it into my least favorite classe, because every paladin player I met was awful IC.

BESW

@Nyakouai I recommend Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine by T Kingfisher. It's a wonderful depiction of D&D paladins, dissecting why they're just... bad religion.

The trope of the fallen paladin reflects a fundamental failure to understand how successful religions function.

Pierre Cathé

8:24 AM

Honestly DnD paladins are a mess. There are entire classes built on breaking laws or making dark pacts, and on the other hand paladins are designed to be fascist "everyone be a good boy" enforcers

Nyakouai

Well, I guess that particular formulation could work in a group of LG characters. But not much in anything else.

We had a running gag with the other Chaotic players of the group that one day, we would just all roll paladins to show our pro-paladin GM how unbearable it is

(Except, we know better than trying to beat the GM at his own game, sadly)

BESW

Once again, 4e came closest to making a D&D concept actually work, by simply decoupling the narrative from the mechanics and opening up the story potential while de-fanging the intraparty authority implications.

kviiri

They aren't even a Leader class :--)

*(per my usual convention, the use of a "nose" in the emoticon indicates a degree of jest)

trogdor

they can do a little bit of leadery stuff, but yeah they are defenders

:P

Nyakouai

To be fair to the Paladins, they aren't the only class with a built-in rampant My Guy Syndrome

We once had a druid that refused that we cut any tree, otherwise she would turn on us... in a Kingmaker campaign.

kviiri

8:38 AM

I think DnD 4e did a smart thing when it started to "dual-role" classes from PHB2 onward. Eg. Druids are "Controller, but leans toward Striker or Leader depending on your picks" or somesuch. I think it's mainly a question of lingo, not class mechanics themselves, but using that kinds of wordings would've probably lessened the knee-jerk reaction of "there's just four different flavored classes in 4e".

Nyakouai

4... Eligibles? :P

Not as fun as Eccentricities

BESW

4🐘

Nyakouai

Joke aside, I've never tried 4e. When I got into RPG, everybody just told me "4e is bad, really bad, extremely bad, don't play it or your insides will rot and you'll sell your soul to Stan"

(More or less)

BESW

Yeah, we've seen that. 4e is a very specific kind of game (tactical combat) and it does that particular kind of game very VERY well, at the expense of not even pretending to try to mechanize much else in terms of other play experiences.

It's probably one of the best complex tactical combat RPGs ever, and it's a ton of fun if that's the kind of game you want to play. And because it's not trying to over-reach itself and mechanize other kinds of play, you've got lots of room to free-form or bring in your own preferred mechanics to fill in the non-combat spaces.

Nyakouai

Put like that, seems like a really good system to play with a group that just like free form RP punctuated by fights.

BESW

8:49 AM

But for a lot of people, a big part of their investment in D&D prior to 4e was the franchise's attempt to mechanize all possible forms of play. So 4e's focus on combat was understandably upsetting.

It also had a few mechanical mis-steps in the beginning which were easy to focus on if you wanted a reason to reject it.

@Nyakouai I know people who've used 4e for combat, and Fate for everything else.

I ran a D&D 4e campaign for about a year and a half, for three to six hours almost every week. It was an intense bookkeeping experience; the system's design gave me a LOT of awesome opportunity to make creative encounters within a bounded system that helped me predict how the encounters would actually play.

But the prep was time-consuming and the play was narratively very slow. When I started running Fate, I was shocked to discover that I could do a month's worth of 4e story in a single three-hour session.

vicky_molokh

@Nyakouai Aaand we found the candidate who will write the new 4e RPG.

Nyakouai

@BESW So half a fight?

BESW

In 4e, three hours was usually enough time to run a short RP scene and one combat scene. Sometimes a single fight took four hours.

(I had four or five players most nights, and they were proficient with their characters and the rules, and stayed on task. It was just... a LOT of fiddly bits.)

Nyakouai

@vicky_molokh Aha, I fear that I have nowhere near the mindset to design a P&P game. Strangely, I like gaming design for other medias, but I find it very different.

kviiri

@Nyakouai 4e got a lot of that treatment, for mostly the wrong reasons. I feel it was largely a memetic hate wave people latched on.

BESW

8:58 AM

I burnt out on D&D at the end of that campaign, and while 4e's fiddly bits did tire me out, it was the clarity and precision of the D&D 4e system (compared to 3.5) that helped me see that what was really burning me out were the D&D elements common to the entire franchise, rather than anything about any particular mechanics.

kviiri

I can kinda understand the idea that many of the 4e haters came from 3e and found 4e had a very clear idea of the game it wanted to be, which was off-putting to those who had a different idea. But that point is kinda moot now that DnD 5e has brought on lots of new players with less baggage to the scene.

BESW

The big problem with 4e now (compared to other D&Ds, setting aside the problems inherent to the entire franchise) is that you can't get a subscription to the online tools, and the bookkeeping without those tools is heinous.

Miniman

@kviiri Well, except for the part where it's giving them the baggage they didn't have when they arrived.

BESW

...also they never fixed their Skill Challenge math.

Also "bookkeeping" is one of the only English words with three double letters in a row and that pleases me.

Miniman

"Balloonning" is so close.

Nyakouai

9:07 AM

@kviiri I have a hard time with 5e, mostly because my zone of comfort settled on Pathfinder. I like my bazzilion of archetypes and feats overlapping and interacting and contradicting each other. People showed me Mutants and Masterminds 3e and I loved the concept, dying to play that gas factory. 5e, in comparison... Seems really bland to me. Not enough options to sate me.

kviiri

@Miniman Kinda, but I feel 5e doesn't put that exact kind of baggage on the players as much as playing for years does.

Nyakouai

@BESW Never noticed that. If you like double letters, I suggest French, we nailed the concept I'd dare to say

Miniman

@kviiri Kinda, but I feel 5e doesn't put that exact kind of baggage on the players as much as playing D&D for years does.

kviiri

@Miniman ;)

BESW

Zing!

kviiri

9:11 AM

@Nyakouai I studied French in comprehensive school, and I must ask: did you get a discount on all the letters by promising you only pronounce half of them? :)

(on a similar note: "queue" is pronounced just as "q" because the other letters are waiting for their turn to be pronounced)

BESW

@kviiri That was one of my favorite moments in the first season of The Crystal Maze!

Nyakouai

@kviiri We don't think it as not pronouncing some letters, more as "it reads as a whole, it's just a bunch of combinations"... Wait a second...

I'm noticing a pattern here :P

kviiri

@BESW :I've never seen it but apparently my SO has because I got that joke from her :)

@Nyakouai I really like having a separate affirmative answer to negative and positive questions though

BESW

It's an old riddle, but there's a hilarious moment with it in The Crystal Maze. [rummages]

Nyakouai

@kviiri This is the point where my english just stall, and I don't get the sentence. Could you rephrase, possibly? I'm slightly confused here ^^'

BESW

9:17 AM

@Nyakouai If you say "Yeah, right" sarcastically, you mean "Not at all."

Two words that mean yes, which are commonly understood to mean no.

vicky_molokh

@kviiri Maybe it's more that French were the first to invent paying scribes by the letter . . .

Nyakouai

@BESW Well, your example also work in English, doesn't it?

kviiri

@Nyakouai I mean, in English if someone asks you something like "You don't want to come?" an answer of "Yes" might imply either way --- "Yes, I want to come" or "Yes that's correct, I don't want to come"

Similarly for other negative statements --- in French you have oui and si for positive and negative statements respectively

Nyakouai

@kviiri Ah, true. It always bugs me to answer "Yes" in the "Si" case.

BESW

Mumsie! | Compilation | The Crystal Maze

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Just watch about a minute and ten/fifteen seconds from the time stamp I put into the link.

Early Crystal Maze episodes are remarkable to me as it seems to have been designed by people who have a lot of talent in set design and atmosphere but aren't actually sure how to make a game show. It's delightfully awkward. After the first episode the host Richard O'Brien --yes, that Richard O'Brien-- starts carrying a harmonica just to fill awkward silences in puzzles that aren't fun to watch being solved.

BESW

9:49 AM

> Spychologist. You can use Stealth instead of Empathy or Provoke to create advantages against mission targets, and you get +2 to do so.

kviiri

@BESW hah, this sounds interesting

BESW

@kviiri The first six series are free to watch on YouTube via Retrouktv2, though a few are "blocked in my country."

There are also a handful of full episodes on the official Crystal Maze channel.

The Oracle

2

Q: Answer that requires posting non-open content - allowed?

Can I answer What is the price of a printing press? given that I know what the price is, but I also know it is not an open content and adding price would pretty much reveal all there is to know about a printing press? Especially with all the details of what about printing press can get costly, it...

support specific-question

Hot RPG Questions

7

Q: Can the spell Sunbeam harm the same creature multiple times?

Sunbeam's text reads: A beam of brilliant light flashes out from your hand in a 5-foot-wide, 60-foot-long line. Each creature in the line must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, a creature takes 6d8 radiant damage and is blinded until your next turn. On a successful save, it ...

dnd-5e spells saving-throw blind

kviiri

10:22 AM

@BESW I would were I not at work :) RPG chat is luckily inconscpicuous and not too distracting

BESW

@kviiri Now there's a tagline for you.

> RPG Chat: inconspicuous and not too distracting!

3

kviiri

11:23 AM

Hehe :P

Pierre Cathé

Has anyone here ever tried to play a permanently blind character ? A player just asked me if they could but I'm not sure I should let them (planning a very deadly Curse of Strahd campaign, dnd-5e)

I'm thinking it will be such a PITA for them that I should somehow dissuade them

kviiri

11:40 AM

@PierreCathé I considered that for Deadlands:Reloaded where it's actually a pre-defined major hindrance. Decided it'd be too much of a hassle, and I think it would be even worse in DnD 5e where a lot of things key off a character seeing.

vicky_molokh

@PierreCathé I've had permanently blind party NPCs, but they all had partial mitigation of one kind or another (still would be legally blind in your jurisdiction, I bet). They were all very definitely not combat-oriented characters though, so probably not a good example to compare to D&D.

Nyakouai

@PierreCathé Tried to make it work for Pathfinder, I'd not recommend it. All casters are off the table, since they don't have line of sight. All pure martial characters will be severely handicapped. Skill monkeys could manage, but no stealth since... you know... Unable to see the darn guards

vicky_molokh

@PierreCathé I've had permanently blind party NPCs, but they all had partial mitigation of one kind or another (still would be legally blind in your jurisdiction, I bet). They were all very definitely not combat-oriented characters though, so probably not a good example to compare to D&D.

Nyakouai

You can play a blind character, but D&D is bad for it. Best I got is the bad case of glaucoma of the oracle that leave them blind over 18m. Blind favored, but not totally

vicky_molokh

@Nyakouai Isn't there an Oracle class in PF whose curse is partial blindness? (A friend likes PF and talks about it a lot.)

Nyakouai

11:51 AM

Yes, exactly

BESW

I'd be suuuper careful about blindness in a game that mechanizes everything, most D&D-like games treat it (and all disabilities, honestly) really badly.

kviiri

Yeah, that^ is also true

vicky_molokh

A blind famous cello player is one of the concepts I kept wanting to play at least since my early RPG days, back in the time when we all played GURPS 3e and blind characters got a discount on Acute Hearing/Smell/etc.

Sdjz

@vicky_molokh Yes, it's blindness beyond a certain radius, like 30 ft iirc

vicky_molokh

I didn't get such an opportunity so far.

Also, I wouldn't think mechanisation is a bad thing per se - the FATE Accessibility Toolkit (surprisingly!) mechanises many things, and so did GURPS decades before it.

BESW

11:56 AM

The Fate Accessibility Toolkit is written by disabled people who wrote mechanics representing their experiences because they wanted those things, in a system where "balance" concerns don't get in the way of sensitive portrayals.

Most other games are more worried about balance than compassion and are not written by people who know what they're talking about anyway.

vicky_molokh

Balance isn't a bad thing either.

If I am to play a PC who shares my issues with reading social cues, I damn well better get a fair compensation in terms of points for it.

BESW

Hence my saying "be careful." You're responding as if I said "never ever."

vicky_molokh

Read too much into scare quotes and the italic suuper. I apologise.

BESW

And I didn't say balance is bad either. I implied that balance concerns tend to get prioritized over table-level help/harm impacts.

I've seen it go really bad really often and I advise extreme caution. If I meant "never ever" I'd say that.

Even a game like Kids on Bikes, which is trying to handle these sorts of things carefully and don't really have to worry about balance, winds up perpetuating media falsehoods about disabilities (like lip-reading being a common and easy talent among Deaf people) in an well-meaning attempt to provide balance.

vicky_molokh

12:17 PM

I think in a way, balance concerns give (or at lest strive to give) one thing that is much harder to obtain in life: equal opportunities. Point-buy (as opposed to roll-your-attributes) chargen gives that to the degree to which the options are balanced. Is it realistic? Nah. But it's nice not to feel overly punished by the system for your choice, even if in real life the 'cost' of Psychology/Body Language skills to compensate for Clueless or Low Empathy is way higher than the trait cost.

(Or the cost of learning a decent level of Lip Reading to compensate for the drawbacks of taking Deafness.)

Of course, one can spend those points on something else.

Would this produce media stereotypes, like the Accountant? Sure, sometimes.

BESW

@PierreCathé I'd first think about what kind of story I'm telling and why the blindness is important, and continue from there. I'd make sure they've got character notes beyond "blind," for one. Then mechanically... am I making a character whose blindness is largely narrative (Daredevil, Toph) and they're functionally comparable to sighted people without any significant accommodation? Or am I making a character who has curated a set of accommodation tools? Or...?

vicky_molokh

But they're fun and competent ones. They [such character types] are persistent because they're enjoyable.

BESW

There are some good guides to abled people playing characters with disabilities in harm-reducing ways.

This would then inform mechanics--a blind character who doesn't need accommodation doesn't really need blindness mechanics in a D&D-like game, just make it narrative. I once saw a D&D character who had no arms, and a narrative-only magical scarf that functioned as a prosthetic for both arms.

Pierre Cathé

Thanks all for sharing. Considering your advice the player has agreed to downgrade his blindness to "very myopic" and all he will be suffering is to be able to see everything but not identify them (because they're blurry)

So narrative consequences, not mechanical ones

BESW

See also: Geordi La Forge on Star Trek.

Pierre Cathé

12:26 PM

And it will be on the player to roleplay it well, not on me (GM)

vicky_molokh

@PierreCathé I would say that being unable to identify things is an example of a mechanical consequence, not just narrative one.

BESW

Yeah, it's also useful to remember that blind doesn't mean "cannot see anything at all ever."

Pierre Cathé

@vicky_molokh Yeah but they will very rarely be alone, so it won't matter, others will identify it for them

Carcer

will note quickly that in the RAW for 5e at least there are a lot of spells which which require targeting something "you can see" which would be strictly nonfunctional for a totally blind character

vicky_molokh

@PierreCathé Not quite what I meant. I mean that being unable to e.g. distinguish faces visually is an explicit example of a mechanical drawback of some disadvantages in some systems (can't comment on D&D5e).

BESW

12:29 PM

A few years ago several of us in this chat helped a visually impaired person figure out how to play RPGs online, using text-to-speech and voice chat. She could see large movements and vague shapes, but it hurt to use her eyes for extended periods.

Carcer

it would also strike me that a character with vision so bad that they can't really tell people apart would probably have a pretty difficult time telling friend from foe in the chaos of a melee

Pierre Cathé

@Carcer Yeah they would, but at that point the realism would just be hurting the game, so not happening

Carcer

sure

BESW

"Why do you all wear neon pink vests?"
"So the barbarian doesn't Great Cleave into us."

[scribbles notes for Sundown character]

goodguy5

I don't get the joke...

nevermind, I get it

BESW

12:42 PM

Sundown is an RPG that's by and for and about people with abnormal bodies and minds, set in a world where dramatic body modification is possible but makes you even more outcast from "normal" society.

Yuuki

@BESW Related, if the character with the disability is a player character, does the player want mechanical consequences?

BESW

@Yuuki Exactly! That's why we start with why we're doing it in the first place.

Yuuki

I imagine that it would feel really bad if you're blind and wanted to play a blind wizard and the DM decides "well, you have a -20 on all your Fireballs" when all you wanted was to feel more connected to your character.

BESW

Yeeah.

Someone_Evil

@Yuuki That's maybe more an argument for why you should always speak with your DM/GM/whole table about characters before you make them/during a session 0 (or equivalent)

BESW

12:48 PM

And I've found that people who haven't spent a lot of time around blind people, really tend to over-exaggerate obvious limitations of blindness while completely missing more common obstacles.

goodguy5

I just realized how cool the "spellbook" (rune tiles, whatever) of a blind wizard would be.

MAYBE THEY HAVE A CERTAIN SMELL

BESW

Talking knots would be cool.

StackLloyd

How does a blind wizard read their spellbook?

goodguy5

That depends entirely upon the spellbook.

Maybe it's in braille

StackLloyd

Is there an equivalent of the Braille alphabet?

goodguy5

12:56 PM

That's up to you and your DM

Yuuki

@StackLloyd If they're a divination wizard, it'd probably have to be snowing.

BESW

Quipu

Quipu (also spelled khipu), or talking knots, are recording devices fashioned from strings historically used by a number of cultures in the region of Andean South America. Knotted strings were used by many other cultures such as the ancient Chinese and native Hawaiians, but such practices should not be confused with the quipu, which refers only to the Andean device. A quipu usually consisted of cotton or camelid fiber strings. The Inca people used them for collecting data and keeping records, monitoring tax obligations, properly collecting census records, calendrical information, and for military...

StackLloyd

Interesting!

Yuuki

Hmm... not sure how contrived that joke is.

BESW

You could have a crow familiar that functions as a text-to-speech accommodation.

3

Even if your own spellbook doesn't require TTS, copying spells probably would!

Pierre Cathé

12:58 PM

You guys are a gold mine for ideas, I'm taking notes

goodguy5

@BESW fascinating!

I'm definitely making some Braille notes for my PCs to find as encoded messages in the future, though.

StackLloyd

If my memory doesn't fool me, the spell Understand Language allows to basically read with touch

BESW

@StackLloyd If we're going that route, "detect" spells can be interpreted to grant limited forms of vision to the blind.

StackLloyd

While it is intended for languages you don't know, it's a valuable source of inspiration. Maybe, if you already know the language, the spell can be cast as a Cantrip

goodguy5

"You also understand any written language that you see, but you must be touching the surface on which the words are written. It takes about 1 minute to read one page of text."

Says that you can see, but I'd allow it

StackLloyd

1:02 PM

@BESW Absolutely! Some sort of "third-eye" perception.

BESW

@goodguy5 Yeah, D&D spell text tends to be casually ableist like that, I'd be inclined to ignore those sorts of details entirely.

goodguy5

precisely

I mean, I'd probably still enforce it for the wizard who's eyes work.

BESW

@StackLloyd I once had a wizard who used detect magic as a kind of X-ray vision. "A bunch of high-level magic items are moving east down the adjacent corridor."

@goodguy5 Yeah, I'd take it as "interface with the material in the way you're accustomed."

goodguy5

Which makes the character playing a giant animated tongue kind of weird, but I'll take it.

StackLloyd

@BESW I think it's a good roleplaying motif. I feel like a blind wizard should be able to work around his eyesight limit - without actually regaining it - through magic, I mean... It's a wizard!

goodguy5

1:08 PM

I also just realized that I'm trolling my players next game.

A bunch of NPCs are going to be overheard talking about "the wizard" and how impressive he is. He's a master. etc.

Then for the party to find out that he's a pinball wizard.

BESW

BTW, a brief overview of the history of text for the blind in Europe and North America.

goodguy5

deaf dumb and blind, but sure plays a mean pinball.

BESW

I'd be inclined to have a talking stick spellbook, myself.

G. Moylan

"it's fun, fast, and simple, like a clown on roller skates that's been hit in the face with a shovel"

StackLloyd

@goodguy5 Deaf, dumb and blind, you just keep on pretending...

BESW

1:12 PM

A talking stick is a common tool for non-verbal communication in many Indigenous cultures, and its specific implementation varies a lot, but the r🐘 part for this conversation is that it's carved so that you can get information by feeling the carvings without looking at it.

It can be used as a mnemonic device, or for non-verbal communication.

For example, a courting stick lets you flirt with someone, kind of like Victorian flower languages.

StackLloyd

That's quite weird tbh

Yuuki

@BESW That reminds of this story, the name of which currently escapes me, that had a wizard with a very intricately-carved staff and they'd cast their spells by feeling different engravings in the staff.

Pierre Cathé

A talking stick is a common tool for non-verbal communication where I will hit you with it until you remember your spells

BESW

@Yuuki Aye, a wizard's staff would be almost like a portable whare whakairo, carrying the mana of his Whakapapa with him.

Or a Bambara wizard wouldn't have a spellbook at all, he would be a craftsman who carves or weaves or forges or casts useful tools which he imbues with supernatural usefulness.

GcL

@BESW Surprisingly daisy's are among the most foul mouthed botanicals. /S

BESW

1:21 PM

Bambara magic isn't concerned with words, it sees magic not in oratory or written records but in the ability to craft tools that make tasks easier.

G. Moylan

@GcL and Black-Eyed Susans have a penchant for violence

vicky_molokh

(I'm not sure if the chat died or if there was a connectivity issue somewhere in-between. )

kviiri

Traditional Finnish folk magic is based on poetry, but the magic I believe is indeed the magic of the engineer.

BESW

In the movie Yeelen a magician craves a giant log and invokes its power to break down barriers on his quest to find someone. Cut to his servants using the log as a battering ram.

vicky_molokh

@Yuuki That's an interesting question. I suppose some people do prefer to have an Informed Attribute, including Informed Flaws, but in my personal experience that stance is unusual. Conversely, I have repeatedly ran into people who go to great lengths to assemble just the right mechanical meta-trait to model a real-world peculiarity (including ones they're very well acquainted with) and apply it to an RPG character.

KorvinStarmast

1:29 PM

@BESW FWIW, 5e's Paladin and alignment tweaks fixed some of that. (But not all of it)

@PierreCathé "Fascist"is a bit over the top since the original basis was "sets a good example" in a context where there is an existential tension between Law and Chaos. The original template was being on the side of law since there were only two sides ... at the time.... each of whom could court neutrals and try to get them to come to their side. As the editions increased the complexity of "what is a side to be on?" got murkier, puting the Paladin inso a smaller corner than originally.

@PierreCathé the 5e ancients paladin is utterly not a fascist, the Conquest paladin is very much the fascist, and I'd say "oath of the crown" can be depending on the setting.

user15026

@BESW like that blindness doesn't always mean complete lack of sight, able to use/read Braille, etc

BESW

@Ash Yeah! And I've noticed that a lot of the biggest challenges my disabled friends face are a lack of social accommodations, not physical ones. People without direct experience tend to miss that entirely.

Pierre Cathé

@KorvinStarmast Yeah honestly that was more a rant than anything, don't read too much into it. Although I really do like the Ancients paladin, I played one, roleplaying very druid-like and it was very fun

David Coffron

@BESW Could also do something like enhance ability to be able to feel the ink... oh wait, that's not a wizard spell. Neverming

KorvinStarmast

@BESW Didn't we have a question here about Quipu spell books in D&D, or was that a GitP conversation I am recalling?

user15026

1:40 PM

@BESW yes, so much so. I have so many examples of that, it's not jst stick Braille on things or make noisy crosswalks, it's all sorts of subtle social isolations

GcL

@PierreCathé The way the 5e paladins are written does make it easier to play a paladin. The previous editions didn't require the goody two shoes approach, but how common that was lends evidence how poorly they were written. Like, "ugh... we've got a paladin in the group" and thinking that's going to be a pain in the butt.

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri I believe that the "magic based on poetry" informed Tolkien's "magic of the elves" for his universe. Can't recall where I read that, perhaps Shippey's books.

goodguy5

we're all just going to ignore the title "One shot - how important is a happy ending?"

right?

despite any evidence to the contrary, I am, in fact, a fully grown man and not a 13 year old boy.

KorvinStarmast

@PierreCathé It's the only one I want to play, unless I am in a group of players where an Oath of Devtion fits. Vengeance I've seen and played alongside. A friend of mine has played two of them. It's a good kit for kicking butt and taking names, if that is what you want out of your paladin.

GcL

@Ash An informative exercise for a month is to use a screen reader to navigate your favorite sites. Either close your eyes or turn off your monitor.

kviiri

1:43 PM

@KorvinStarmast Yeah, Tolkien was keenly into Finnish mythology (among a wide variety of others, of course)

user15026

@GcL oh that would be an unmitigated disaster most places, I can tell you that now

Pierre Cathé

@GcL My favourite sites are webcomics :'(

kviiri

@goodguy5 haha

GcL

@Ash It worked wonders for some front end devs that would hear but not really internalize the edicts of the local accessibility tzar.

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri I recently got a book with is commentary and translation of the Kalevala. As I like to look at words, his decision to call is "powers in the world" the "Valar" looks to have been derivative of that Finnish 19 century work ... particularly when we look at the early part of Silmarilion and "The music of Ainur" ..

kviiri

1:45 PM

@KorvinStarmast Oh, that's really cool!

KorvinStarmast

@goodguy5 I believe you. (How's the baby, by the way?)

user15026

@GcL and I bet there are things that even the accessibility humans didn't consider because there always are

kviiri

Our literature teacher used to remind us that brave folks like Tolkien read it and translated it, if we think the language is too incomprehensibly archaic to understand Kalevala, we're just not being persistent enough :)

goodguy5

He's great! almost 20 pounds and over 27 inches!

He can roll front to back and back to front.

and he's learning to finely grasp things. I'm so proud of him.

user15026

@goodguy5 that's super awesome. How many is he?

goodguy5

1:48 PM

But he's doing this weird thing where he's micro napping and going to bed early. If modern printed knowledge didn't have an opinion on it, I wouldn't know anything was "wrong", but that's not how they're supposed to behave.

@Ash 5 months

user15026

Aww yay

GcL

@Ash So many little things.

Using a screen reader for a while for the sites you like to visit usually makes the glaringly poor and good practices relatable.

goodguy5

babies are "supposed" to take 2 big naps and maybe a cat nap in the afternoon. And then want to go to bed in the evening. And also be harder to settle at night if you mess up their naps.

But instead, goodbaby5 is like "nah guys. I'm good with two 20 minute naps and I'll go to bed no problem around 6:30; 7:00

I am NOT complaining, but it's not average

Mark Wells

@goodguy5 "supposed to", lol.

user15026

Hey, if it works, it works!

kviiri

1:51 PM

@KorvinStarmast The one really prominent thing that jumps out to Finnish ears is Tolkien's chief deity Iluvatar (Eru) whose name is deriver from Ilmatar, roughly meaning "Lady Air". It was hard to resist the association of Eru as a woman because of that (the -tar suffix is usually used only for female things, similar to the English "-ess" eg as in "stewardess" or "waitress")

Yuuki

@goodguy5 They are, in fact, a goodbaby... 5.

user15026

Babies are like any other human, there is so much "supposed to" that is just "eh we decided this is normal based on random whatever"

goodguy5

Well, it's based on the "average" case

KorvinStarmast

@goodguy5 Then your next present for him is a Vorpal Sword .. wait, no, it isn't. :)

goodguy5

usually and theoretically.

Mark Wells

1:52 PM

I admire goodbaby5's disdain for the Rules As Written.

kviiri

@goodguy5 You should have goodbaby5 type us something

user15026

@goodguy5 yes but I tend to question the funding of average

goodguy5

@kviiri remind me when I'm at home

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri That's cool, I wonder if Tolkien intended that as one of his many subtle plays on words?

GcL

@KorvinStarmast Wasn't he a linguist?

KorvinStarmast

1:53 PM

@GcL Yes, and a philologist. PHilology looks at language in story, song, poetry, and culture as well as raw linguistics.

GcL

Don't know that one.

NautArch

@goodguy5 There is no "supposed to" is what I"ve learned :)

goodguy5

@NautArch Well, he was awake for 6 consecutive hours yesterday, which is supposed to be outside of their mental faculties.

KorvinStarmast

@GcL It's worth looking up. The first time I encountered the word, I want "what?" but without philology, I don't think Joseph Campbell's well regarded work on stories, "Hero with a thousand faces" could have happened.

kviiri

@KorvinStarmast He knew exactly what he was doing, I believe :) although whether the suffix preserves its meaning in his work is a whole other matter.... it might or might not have a deeper meaning.

NautArch

1:56 PM

@goodguy5 bah. Normal is what your kid does. As longas they're healthy, it's normal and fine.

goodguy5

exactly.

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri Yeah, I keep tripping over some of his internal tricks as various scholars unpack his letters and notes. My most recent read was called Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Toliern's World It digs into his meta themes very thoroughly.

goodguy5

I do often tell my wife "The two leading world experts on caring for our child are both in this house.".

But still, one tries to read various baby books and it's confusing when a baby is like "no, that's all wrong."

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri There is a great Q&A at SFF.SE about Shelob that has some answers referring to some of that deeper stuff behind the scenes, and the influence of some other thinkers and philsophers ...

goodguy5

waitwaitwait

kviiri

1:58 PM

@KorvinStarmast Oh hey I recall reading something about that

goodguy5

what's shelob

I saw that on a vanity plate this morning and couldn't figure it out

kviiri

I occasionally go to SF.SE just to pass some time with Tolkien questions

@goodguy5 A Tolkien mythos character, huge spider that lives in caves bordering Mordor.

Enjoys gorging herself with the flesh of sapient creatures in some relatively complex mixture of animal instinct and malice.

NautArch

@goodguy5 stay away from the books is the best advice i can give.

I personally highly recommend taking away pacifiers on their first birthday, though :)

kviiri

brb mes amis

Yuuki

@kviiri The existence of Ungoliant confuses me.

If evil comes Morgoth/Melkor singing in disharmony at the creation of the universe but Ungoliant is emphatically not a creation of Morgoth/Melkor, what is Ungoliant?

KorvinStarmast

2:03 PM

@NautArch I could swear that there is a rule that says "you can't double your ability score modifiers" (like the +3 for a 16 Strength can't be doubled with any roll) but for the life of me I can't find where it is in the book. (Or is that in sage advice?)

Mark Wells

The existence of Ungoliant confuses everyone. She just Is. Which in her case is more of an Isn't.

KorvinStarmast

@Yuuki A strand of the original song of creation that sat around middle earth until she woke up.

David Coffron

@KorvinStarmast There's a rule like that for proficiency bonuses

KorvinStarmast

@DavidCoffron But you can double a proficiency bonus with expertise.

GcL

@Yuuki That's Shelob's mom, no? I don't remember much of the silmarilongeststoryever, but that's the spider that lives in the big cracks of Middle Earth but isn't a part of it.

David Coffron

2:05 PM

8

Q: Do features that allow you to add twice your proficiency bonus, under some other name, stack with Expertise?

Do features that allow you to add twice your proficiency bonus, under some other name, stack with Expertise? For instance, dwarves' racial Stonecunning trait, with bards' Expertise as applied to History checks, to identify the origin of stonework. The text of Stonecunning is reproduced below: ...

dnd-5e class-feature proficiency stacking

goodguy5

@NautArch oh yea?

David Coffron

21

Q: Why is allowing players to stack their skill proficiency bonus overpowered?

I am the DM for a campaign and play with the following house rules: When gaining proficiency in any skill (during character creation, taking the Skilled feat, etc.), you may choose a skill more than once. Your proficiency bonus for that skill is the number of times that skill has been chos...

dnd-5e balance house-rules proficiency

KorvinStarmast

@DavidCoffron I am gonna check Sage Advice... I know I have seen this somewhere.

David Coffron

@KorvinStarmast Expertise double the prof bonus itself; you can't add your prof bonus twice to a single roll

Someone_Evil

@KorvinStarmast I don't think there is a rule that says so. But I don't think there is any rule/feature that lets you double it, so it may have been an answer like that you have seen.

Mark Wells

2:09 PM

@GcL She's somehow an ancestor of Shelob. The details are murky. In Tolkien's world, mysterious horrors stay largely mysterious.

GcL

@MarkWells Well those shrouds tend to stay in vogue far longer than the secrecy veils.

KorvinStarmast

@Someone_Evil I will check the DMG when I get home. I have not do date found an instance of doubling an ability modifier anywhere in the rules. (And maybe this was something discussed in a pre release article somewhere ...)

@DavidCoffron Beauty, got that, I was hoping to see a similar thing about Ability Score Modifier. (Though somewhere a class ability seems to be able to stack Charisma mod for an exception? A bard or sorcerer sub class?)

Maybe I am remembering a GitP thread

Someone_Evil

@KorvinStarmast Paladins' Aura of Protection stack a bonus equal to their Charisma modifier to saving throws, including their own Charisma saves.

Is that what you were thinking of?

David Coffron

@KorvinStarmast Draconic bloodline sorcerers can add their charisma modifier to damage rolls of a particular damage-type's spells, some of which already include charisma modifier (like green flame blade)

nitsua60

2:26 PM

@goodguy5 Don't worry. If my (3) experience is any guide, the routine will have to be completely reinvented within two weeks. So enjoy it now =)

The Oracle

3:16 PM

0

Q: Do we really need a [skill-points] tag?

We apparently have a skill-points tag. Is this tag providing us some benefit that the skills tag does not? Do we want to keep it?

discussion tags

David Coffron

How did I forget about Overchannel CC: @goodguy5

noisebelt still has the medal, but that was a silly oversight xD

NautArch

3:40 PM

@goodguy5 For us it was because the real 'need' for the pacifier was as a baby to help them sleep/calm down. By 1, that phase was generally past and they're still non-verbal so no fighting about not having it anymore :)

@nitsua60 This. Very much this. Whatever is routine will be alter.

@KorvinStarmast I'm not sure /shrug.

The Tale of The Dwarven Cleric, or I Poke Him: 101 Stupid RP Tricks, Volume One.

Island explodes, everybody falls.

Transcript for