@MarkWells Well, yes. But then you have a definition of RAW that doesn't really cover anything because anyone could plausibly decide to ignore it, which makes it a rather poor definition of RAW for discussing what the rules say on a given situation.

@NautArch I spotted a changelog by a DDB staff member: dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/…

We could draw a parallel to classical skepticism here :)

Is the scenario back to "heavy things falls on hovering thing" or are we at the "creature tries to grapple hovering thing and is somehow off the ground acting like an achor"

Seems the only changes at that time were to make Mark of Finding half-orc only, and to add a spellcasting ability (Cha) and cantrip (Spare the Dying) to Mark of Healing.

@NautArch (Yes, but (1) the DM is a player, and (2) the DM does this job with the consent of the group.)

@V2Blast hah. they made one entry. :(

Yeah, because that's the only time it changed from the initial release outside of the final release

THere's definitely more (given the release of the new book and the changes thereof)

@MarkWells I guess that's one way of looking it at it (and not wrong.) I just ever saw it as Players include DM.

Are my eyes failing, or is rep increases on the top bar now blue?

@Someone_Evil Your eyes are indeed not failing. Some changes are being pushed through.

There's stories of ancient radical skepticists who reasoned that in order to know something, one has to derive it from something known. To them, there was no such thing as "just knowing" something. If you saw a stork flying overhead and claimed knowing it is there, they might retort by questioning whether your eyes were deceiving you, or whether it was just a mirage of a stork caused by something unknown, or something like that.

@kviiri and @MarkWells and @Akira_Kurusu I'm confused as to what our scenario currently is.

Of course pondering like that has a lot of value but there's a bit of a problem --- since every bit of knowledge had to be based on another thing known, without axioms, you suddenly couldn't know anything since everything could be countered by "well how do you know THAT then?" So most people realized that okay, even if we can't strictly justify our axioms, we get more useful stuff done if we have some basic assumptions.

@V2Blast Yes, at that time (the 17 September 2018), those were the only changes. But we now they've updated with the new book release. And this change log page is empty.

@kviiri I had a long discussion with one of my philosophy professors about this. He summed it up with "You're not wrong to think that way, but it's not going to help you move forward with anything."

@Rubiksmoose Ohh, the editing button on comments is now lit up in blue, also when you're not hovering. I like this discovering the changes to SE, it's like christmas two weeks early

I feel discussing RAW has the same deal: it makes certain assumptions about how the game is played --- and possibly untrue in many tables, but still at the same time giving a fairly static idea of the game that can be discussed, argued and then, when a conclusion is reached, adapted into individual tables.

@NautArch That's an excellent summary :)

@Someone_Evil oooo so it is! Good eye.

@Rubiksmoose and @V2Blast What's your thought on this. I may post on meta, but wanted tos ee if there was something obvious about that system that I just don't know.

Reminds me a bit of Zeno's Paradox, where philosophically, it's baffling that an arrow can travel at all, given that first it has to reach half its distance; and before that a quarter its distance; and before that an eighth its distance; and before that..... But while you're trying to ponder it, the arrow flies to its destination, unconcerned with your philosophical waffling.

Kinda ignores time though.

@Yuuki I mean, you just apply it again. For a second to pass, first half a second must pass, before that a quarter of a second, before that....

@NautArch I had a really close friend with whom I used to... well, go crazy with this kind of philosophical stuff

"high-school philosophy 101" stuff :P

(It's our nickname for these mind-blowing "what if nothing is really real" things that aren't really useful and especially weren't well-understood by us)

@kviiri Yup. I mean, Plato's shadows on a wall allegory is legit. Everything we experience is really just chemicals in our brain telling us stuff. There is nothing actually direct. BUt we have to assume that we experience is real, otherwise life just doesn't work.

@NautArch Yeah, and another core assumption of philosophy: induction, also up for debate but alternative outcomes tend not to produce very useful outcomes :)

@KorvinStarmast I thought that was a shark with an Urkel head

(induction in the general sense, not just mathematical --- that the world will work the same way it has worked to until this point. The fundamental laws of reality don't rewrite themselves at a whim et cetera)

@kviiri the grue/bleen thing

@NautArch what if the chemicals in our brains aren't real either

@NautArch Funny I was just thinking about that today for a few. Noticed a few posts in that tag today. It seems like there might be an issue there, most of the stuff I'm seeing there could be substantiated in some way it seems. However, I, like you it seems, am completely unfamiliar with the system.

@Rubiksmoose Yeah, nearly every Q&A I looked at has no support.

Just "do this".

It's possible there is some reason for that though. It seems like there would be a lot of opportunity for quotes and citations as support in many answers though. At least most of the ones I've seen seem to revolve around lore.

I think it could be an interesting Meta post.

@MarkWells It's related, yes. In our case it was more teen than gleen :-)

@Rubiksmoose i'm trying to think of how to phrase the question. Because "how to cite support for WoD/MtA" seems like it should be a duplicate of the other how to support meta questions.

And "Does WoD/MtA inherenlty not have a set of rules that you can provide to support" seems odd, also.

I mean I guess the problem of induction is one of those problems that people re-invent randomly, especially as inquisitive high-schoolers and think they're geniuses like we did, but like we, most never got beyond the "wooow what if this happened" and made anything constructive with it

@kviiri How Can Mirrors Be Real If Our Eyes Aren't Real

Update on the beholder fight, our sorceress was just disintegrated into fine gray dust. F

@Akira_Kurusu o7

@Akira_Kurusu wait? i thought it already happened and was over. It's ongoing? my bad for the spoiler text.

I didn't see spoiler text, I think Himitsu might have though haha

@Akira_Kurusu "Relax, she's fine"

@Akira_Kurusu Just dust herself off and keep going

:'D She was our blaster, do dps just went waaaaay down

If she's dust now and therefore an object, could you cast mending on her?

@Akira_Kurusu er...have y'all actually taken any treasure?

Then you'd have a stone statue and then you can cast Stone to Flesh.

@Yuuki Or drop the statue on top of the beholder!

@NautArch No, no we have not

For the record, that whole beholder grapple spiel was because I, the beefy wizard, was enlarged and was considering misty stepping up to the beholder and grappling it xD

If you cast polymorph and turn the beholder into a hybrid fruit, would that also be considering "grappling" it?

@NautArch The way I would do it would be "What's up with these questions, they seem to be getting a lot of unsupported answers? [insert examples] Am I missing something or is there a reason they look like this? If this is an issue, what can we do to improve the situation?"

oh, grapples aren't actual hybrid fruit

:/

@Yuuki Oh come on

:D

@Yuuki Maybe it's a humanoid grape, or a "grappling"

well, my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined

@kviiri Grapeling

@NautArch I've never played it. But yeah, what the moose said.

@Akira_Kurusu Ah, gotcha. Yeah, as a DM i'd probably force it to the ground. The rules really don't cover that, but rule of cool.

And at the end, you're stuck next to a beholder. And that's unlikely to work out.

I'm a melee wizard, I'll be fine! I think..

@Akira_Kurusu Until the AMF turns on you.

@NautArch You could make a mainsite question about it if you wanted, or ask on the DDB forums or something if there's a changelog for the new updates somewhere. But repeatedly pointing out the lack of a changelog and/or your annoyance with WotC's decisions on how they implemented this release isn't something you need to keep pinging me about... I can't help you :P

@NautArch You can't antimagic plate armor and a greatsword! But booming blade won't exactly work

@V2Blast To be fair, you also keep re-engaging about it :) I just can't not answer :P

@Akira_Kurusu Aren't you being dragged toward the magnet?

@NautArch I keep re-engaging because you keep pinging me!

It's a vicious cycle

:P

@V2Blast Stop it!

<this is where you reply and say no, you stop it>

no u

no ping tho

@NautArch Not at the moment, because I'm avoiding it like the plague, I actually fled back into the hallway

WHOA we killed it

are you "livetweeting" a fight with a beholder

:D

nice!

The new beholder doesn't get to pick which tentacle fires though. It's a d12 or something?

Haha yeah I was giving the play by play for the fight

@GcL yeah, it's random

But Himitsu and the dm can see these too

Gosh, the more I learn about the campaign I just joined, the more I realize how doomed we are. We're a party of 7 characters, and only one lone character, the Artificer, is capable of casting any kind of healing spell. 4 of us (myself included) are Neutral-Evil (and one Lawful Evil, who is the Artificer) and right now in the discord chat, all the other players are trying to persuade me to murder the artificer because she used Thunderwave in the middle of a fight and hit most of the party.

...In or out of character?

I think the party elf or got hit with a charm or sleep ray a couple of times in a row that really hosed the beholder. Should have been a deadly fight, but not being able to spam green ray of doom makes them a lot more variable.

@Xirema 5e? You don't really need that much healing in combat in 5e.

@GcL Don't elves resist sleep effects?

I think your intra-party strife is going to kill the game more quickly.

@V2Blast Out of character. It's all kind of a big joke, but still.

Nope, never mind. Oh wait, yes.

@GcL I mean, with a party of 7, you just rotate tanks until the enemy is dead.

@Yuuki Yeah. Really hosed the beholder. Not being able to put down the glass cannon opponent.

@Xirema I usually have my tanks facing whichever end has more armor toward the enemy. I think only dragons are going to appreciate your rotisserie approach.

Also, that's a lot of players to manage. Hard to keep things moving.

@Xirema Is this an virtual table top?

@GcL Ooooooh yeah. Was like 30 minutes in-between turns, DM is very green.

@GcL Yeah. Using Tabletop Simulator.

@Xirema Which probably is why they agreed to have so many players in the first place.

@Xirema Oh man, sounds like a really nice campaign. I need to catch up on my sleep and being able to take a short nap between turns sounds great.

@GcL Yeah. We're generally expecting a few players will end up dropping, but I'm also working with the DM to push things along in-combat.

Hope it turns out better than expected for everyone involved. Might want to unambiguously put down any talk about harming other party members quickly next time.

It doesn't always work out that way, but at my table, I try to make sure that enemy turns are very snappy (with Roll20, each enemy is basically only like 5-10 seconds), and I try to keep PC turns from taking no longer than a minute.

I like battles where the PCs are outnumbered like 2-3x in number, but if I really hate spending too much time describing what NPCs are doing. Same reason you want to avoid NPC↔NPC conversations in role-playing.

Every time I get to an NPC↔NPC conversation, I usually just summarize it instead of acting it out. I'll only act it out if it's maybe two or three lines.

I used a chess timer for some combats and chicken waving encounters. Seemed to work well.

Players vs the DM for who could make decisions faster overall.

@Xirema are healing potions a thing in your world?

@GcL at least not until later levels. My group definitely wouldn't have survived the last tier of play without Heal/Mass Heal, etc.

@Someone_Evil the latest warforged in WFGtE is different from what we originally got.

@Rubiksmoose Could have sworn i got a blue notification for rep, and now it's back to green.

@KorvinStarmast We know. The problem is the warforged in the original version of the book(?), which is not easily available

@NautArch I will have to find out. The first two combat sessions did not reveal any lootable potions, healing or otherwise.

@Xirema what about shops?

@Someone_Evil Right. It was blue. NOw it's green again. Like it was turned back off.

@NautArch They seem to be working through some bugs in the latest push

@NautArch I'm assuming Saltmarsh has [at least] one general store, no idea when we'll get a chance to return to it.

@Someone_Evil Only 2 dragonmarks changed between WGTE's initial release and the dragonmarks UA; nothing else changed in WGTE before then (the Eberron Races UA came out on the same day WGTE released).

@Xirema I'd just be much more likely as a DM to provide external healing options if the group didn't have much.

@NautArch Yeah, they just made a design-related change and are working out the kinks, it seems

@V2Blast there a changelog for it? :P

@NautArch Lol. Not yet. I think the change literally just happened within the last hour or two

@NautArch Yeah. So far we're slowly bulldozing over every combat encounter the DM has thrown at us, so difficulty hasn't been a real thing yet.

@Xirema Don't need healing if you kill the enemies quickly.

The best defense is a good offense.

Wait, didn't the armor class calculation change from original WGTE and the update that matches with E:RTLW?

Original: proficiency included, after; flat +1.

warforged

@NautArch That's been our logic so far.

@Xirema Always worked for me, too.

My logic as a Barbarian has been "Don't need healing if you never take any damage". Which worked pretty well until one of the lizardfolk smacked me with a Guiding Bolt to the face for 2/3rds of my hit points.

yowch

Was still alive, but still. Ow.

@Xirema yeah, I got clubbed by a cyclops last night for about 20 out of my 49.

@Xirema Ditto when I jumped into a gelatinous cube last session (to drag out another PC). No DR on digestive juices, it turns out... =(

@nitsua60 Yeah. I really wanted to take Totem Warrior to get that Damage Resistance from Bear, but Zealot seemed like too much fun, and it's especially fun to regularly hit for 15-20 damage per hit at level 3.

@nitsua60 Had a party that did that. It was pretty epic. The warlock stayed in to dish out damage to the point he nearly died, but saved the group. Fighter eschewed their own safety to wade into the cube to drag him out.

@Xirema Does your barbarian literally yell "rage" when they're raging?

@GcL No, she whispers to her enemies how much fun she's having and how she's so glad they've agreed to be her friends.

While slashing them with a Greataxe reflavored as a Scythe.

So rename the feature to "whispers of irony" ?

^ XD

Now, just remap all the other color variables to green and the site will be perfect!

lol

@Rubiksmoose Huh, didn't know the concept of grue was implemented in CSS

@Someone_Evil One rarely sees a grue coming.

I am grue.

@Rubiksmoose Stop eating all the things!

Who's got a dusty stick?

@GcL Funny, that's what my doctor tells me too!

@Rubiksmoose Did they have a torch? or even a headlamp?

Not even a small candle.

Doctor was eaten by a grue.

RIP

So, our DM has been doing some weirdness with how he handles our characters dying. We have a few character pools. One unique to each player and a shared pool. He let us swap out characters to a random one from the lists during a long rest. He has it set where you roll a dX where X is the number of characters between the two pools (in this case 10) and with the shared pool being higher on the list the first few numbers represent it

So I swapped one of my characters out and it took from the shared pool. This placed the character I was using in its place

One of our characters controlled by Akira_Kurusu died (not the beefy wizard but the other one) during the beholder fight

So she had to be replaced with a random one from the list

And just my luck he rolls and takes my character

but our original characters' consciousness stays in whatever body they happen to be inhabiting

So now my character's consciousness is in one body looking at her original body being inhabited by someone else

I'm not sure if it could get any more confusing if it tried

This is interesting to hear... as I'm literally building up character pools right now for Saturday night's epic we're running.

Advice: Either don't make a shared pool or don't make your characters consciousness persist in a new body after death or swap

Seems like there might some problem with character ownership, which is one of these things we don't often acknowledge

Sounds like an excellent gimmick to focus a campaign on, but not so great as an oh-by-the-way ludonarrative cluckleh*ck.

> ludonarrative cluckleh*ck.

:D

"Ludonarrative Cluckleh*ck" would be a good name for a character in a Muppet story.

Ludo Bagman is a character in Harry Potter so we're almost there.

Ludo is also already a Muppet character.

I've just noticed the balance tag uses the phrasing, "For questions about balance or perceived inequities between characters, [etc...]" and I'm honestly unsure what the word "inequities" is meaning there. Isn't inequity a lack of fairness like in a trial? Whereas inequality is a lack of, er, equality

Both words have a lot of different meanings packed into them.

@BESW indeed they do. the way I tend to think of inequity is that it says there's something specific that's being done or not done that's causing the unfairness