Hey look what's in the bundle: Hex Kit by Cone of Negative Energy is a multi-platform desktop application for building hex maps to be used with table top role playing games.
(the Code section that says how tightly you can bend the NM cables that are used for the wiring in your walls these days bases the bend radius limit on the cable's diameter, without accounting for the fact that many NM cables these days are flat, and that's been true for some time now)
@nitsua60 I think this may be the first time that such a thing has ever come up, even
@nitsua60 is there some precedent from another Stack you can point me at?
Right. And since nobody's goind to bend across the flat, the bend radius really should be indexed off the thinner dimension? (Gotta run, btw. Have a good night.)
@Shalvenay On the other hand, I'm most familiar with norms around here, but I'm out of touch enough that I didn't jump on either of the two recent DW questions, so....
Divine Favor (from a level 1 spell slot) lasts for up to 10 rounds, and on a hit does 1d4 radiant damage.
On a critical hit it adds 2d4 radiant damage.
Divine Smite (from a level 1 spell slot) is good for 1 hit, but does 2d8 radiant damage.
If the hit was critical it does 4d8 radiant damage.
...
I am playing a rogue who chose the archetype Arcane Trickster, which means I can cast spells.
Can I make a normal-range or close-range attack for my main action, and as a bonus action cast a spell that requires 1 action (e.g. chill touch or fire bolt)?
Booming Blade is a fascinating cantrip. Between somewhat murky language and unclear use-cases, there's a lot of confusion among the 5e community about how exactly you're supposed to use the Asmodeus-blasted spell.
Booming Blade's description reads as follows:
As part of the action used to ca...
@Medix2 Pretty sure it is a dupe in this case because that second question is in fact about Booming Blade, even though it uses generic language in the title.
"what counts as willing movement for booming blade?" is a direct subset of "what counts as willing movement for spells" with no compelling reason that booming blade should be any different
@MarkWells Shouldn't an answer to the general then point out it will depend on X part of the spell, or the question should clarify that X might matter to single it out from the general (the general also includes that cantrip as one of its examples so it should address it)
@MarkWells I feel like at that level, we've got to trust that if an answerer comes along thinking "no, BB is different because of X" they'll comment or flag or drop into chat or post a meta to put eyes on it. We can't worry too much about what might happen, just make sure that if it does happen the structures in place will help facilitate improvement.
Unrelated but now I'm staring at magic initiate... Can you use a focus when casting spells from it? This has probably been asked but I couldn't find it
a strict reading says no, because the equipment description for focuses specifies that they can be used by certain classes, and knowing spells from magic initiate does not make you that class
@Someone_Evil While we're concatenating tags, if someone wants to ask an [adventurers-league][weapons][character-creation][skills][gm-techniques] question for me to answer, I could knock off five tag-badges in one swell foop =)
@Medix2 It's a tough one to wrap one's head around. "How do I manage my new AL player's desire to make a weaponsmithing character not stealing spotlight from their tablemates?"
@Someone_Evil There's one of those thousand unfindable links in the mod-side somewhere that shows a reverse-chrono listing of tag-renames, IIRC. So you could spelunk to see if it'd ever changed. I think.
As part of some treasure the party I am in found, we found a puzzle box. I am a wizard, and I wanted to use the spell Knock to open it. Knock says:
Choose an object that you can see within range. The object can be a door, a box, a chest, a set of Manacles, a padlock, or another object
that ...
If anyone want some statics to wrap their head around, post feedback is apparently part of the 10k tools and I'm not quite sure what the page is saying
@AncientSwordRage Meanwhile, hand my party a puzzle box they will almost certainly brute-force it (Both meaning to shatter the box and to try every single possible way of opening it)
@AncientSwordRage I'm not sure how it would, in this case. It's a physical puzzle. Unless they're handing you an actual puzzle box at the table, you're going to solve it by saying "my character tries to open the box".
@Someone_Evil It's saying that one subset of our votes break down 65.59% up vs. 34.41% down, the remainder of our votes break down 89.15% up vs. 10.85% down, and in total our votes are 95% up and 5% down.
@AncientSwordRage Though this is an interesting angle--in a setting where there are wizards with lock-opening magic, it would make sense for there to be puzzle boxes with countermeasures against it.
@Medix2 I would imagine an artificer's setup could involve musical parts. I would expect something more along an accordion or synthesizer with lots of buttons and moving parts.
artificer casting off musical instrument is doable RAW - Pipes of Haunting are an infusion option and any item you've infused can be used as a spellcasting focus
@Medix2 I have just the right combination of tendency to remember names and tendency to hang with the kind of people who mention Ada Lovelace as often as possible to keep him in mind ;-)
Background: I am about to start running a virtual D&D5e game over Zoom (I don't have a choice of platform) through the local library. I have invited four of my friends to join, and only one has ever played before. None of them have the 5e books or even know the basics of generating characters.
...
I want to ask this OP ^^ whether it's important to even create characters (cf. starter set pregens, for example), but I can't figure out how to do so without verging into answer-in-comment.
in a bunch of minor ways that add up to it being worth asking if there's a better way - I know I'd be happier with a text-chat approach for this sort of thing, because I get fatigued by long zoom calls in ways that don't apply to text
I can see a few iterations of possible approach - group or individual zoom calls, group or individual text chat, good ways to get the ideas flowing when you can't use your offline social habits - that mean experience in doing this sort of thing is valuable
@LizWeir Ah that's a fair point a sort of "What has gone well and not well in trying to gen character without being able to meet in-person; how were issues you encountered solved/fixed"
@LizWeir We use discord, google sheets, and rolz.org to run our table top remotely these days. It works pretty well.
No obligate staring at each other's mugs while gaming. Looking at faces is mentally taxing.
It would be nice if there were an option in video conference to "look at a person" and have the technological implementation more closely match the in person effects.
My DM gave me a magic knife that does 3d6 damage and has +1 on attack rolls. Does that mean I would roll 3d6 and then add 1 to the final result, or would I add 1 for each d6 roll?
@MarkWells Ha! The peak of 1997 technology. "this system measures skin resistance level by placing " conrtrnt current across two electrodes andmeasuring the resistance encountered by the current at a rate of two samples per second..."
I used to love that paranormal experimentation stuff. As studies go, that one wasn't that bad. Definitely would have benefited from a larger sample. I wonder if they have any of the original raw and processed data still archived. It was well before the push for reproducible research, but some people held onto that stuff.
It would not be a hard study to repeat, especially with current technology. Build the sensor as a Bluetooth device that pairs to a smartphone, mail it out, and the subject never needs to leave their house.
(Though, given the results of the original study, that might not count as a valid replication.)
Reading the analysis of the experiment it was inconclusive at best. Characterizing it as evidence of ESP is a reach. They summed the EDA measurements for stare vs non-stare.... which is a peculiar. They were getting 15 reads per trial and doing 8 trails per subject with a decent randomization. They had enough data to do a more robust analysis, but they didn't.
Eh... all of this is better placed in the Elemental Plane of Math. Needs teleportation.
The description of the mental prison spell reads:
you make the area immediately around the target’s space appear dangerous in some way. (XGtE, pg. 161)
And the spell’s 10d10 damage triggers when,
the target is moved out of the illusion...or reaches any part of its body through it.
It...
The guidance cantrip is bothering me - not because it makes ability checks easier but because it does not have a relevant opportunity cost and because it disrupts the flow of the game. Any time a skill check is required that can be foreseen players can just use the cantrip. I find this very annoy...
@HotRPGQuestions I think what that DM is missing is asking, "are beating those skill checks fun for the players?" Do they get a feeling of success from it and does the caster with guidance feel like they're providing value?
Because it reads like "boo hoo. The players are wining too much."
@MarkWells Which is an actual problem. The game is boring to the players not "I find this very annoying"
There's a bunch of things my players like that I don't. Luckily, as DM, there's a whole bunch of other stuff for me to do and enjoy... having a few pet peeves present that the players actually like is a pretty good trade.
At least two of them have to suffer through not having an absolute morality/alignment available for the universe... so probably fair trades?
It was a subtle joke for the DM when I was a young player to mess with us around alignment. E.g. discovering the motivations of "evil" creatures the PCs were sent to destroy, or discovering the "enemies" were just occupying some land the "good guys" wanted.
Two of my players still point out "but they're evil... right?" now and again. The other three kind of look side eyed at them now days.
Background: I am about to start running a virtual D&D5e game over Zoom (I don't have a choice of platform) through the local library. I have invited four of my friends to join, and only one has ever played before. None of them have the 5e books or even know the basics of generating characters.
...
The word of recall spell (PHB, p. 289) says:
You must designate a sanctuary by casting this spell within a location, such as a temple, dedicated to or strongly linked to your deity. If you attempt to cast the spell in this manner in an area that isn't dedicated to your deity, the spell has no...
spirit guardians, ceremony, glyph of warding (or any spell that you can have activate when a Good creature walks by or similar); I guess also conjure celestial, conjure fey, modify memory, and Nystul's magic aura
@NautArch Some of the stories that emerge have no non-evil, from someone's point of view, courses of action. I am usually highly entertained by the inventiveness and resources my players put forth to minimize deleterious impact.
@Medix2 What I'd be interested to see is for those spells to interact with Ideals or Bonds, instead. Like, now that there's a place on your character sheet to write "Avenge the death of Obi-Wan Kenobi" as a thing that drives you, can you summon spirit guardians that take the form of Obi-Wan?
Divine Favor (from a level 1 spell slot) lasts for up to 10 rounds, and on a hit does 1d4 radiant damage.
On a critical hit it adds 2d4 radiant damage.
Divine Smite (from a level 1 spell slot) is good for 1 hit, but does 2d8 radiant damage.
If the hit was critical it does 4d8 radiant damage.
...
I am playing a rogue who chose the archetype Arcane Trickster, which means I can cast spells.
Can I make a normal-range or close-range attack for my main action, and as a bonus action cast a spell that requires 1 action (e.g. chill touch or fire bolt)?
Booming Blade is a fascinating cantrip. Between somewhat murky language and unclear use-cases, there's a lot of confusion among the 5e community about how exactly you're supposed to use the Asmodeus-blasted spell.
Booming Blade's description reads as follows:
As part of the action used to ca...
As part of some treasure the party I am in found, we found a puzzle box. I am a wizard, and I wanted to use the spell Knock to open it. Knock says:
Choose an object that you can see within range. The object can be a door, a box, a chest, a set of Manacles, a padlock, or another object
that ...
My DM gave me a magic knife that does 3d6 damage and has +1 on attack rolls. Does that mean I would roll 3d6 and then add 1 to the final result, or would I add 1 for each d6 roll?
The description of the mental prison spell reads:
you make the area immediately around the target’s space appear dangerous in some way. (XGtE, pg. 161)
And the spell’s 10d10 damage triggers when,
the target is moved out of the illusion...or reaches any part of its body through it.
It...
The word of recall spell (PHB, p. 289) says:
You must designate a sanctuary by casting this spell within a location, such as a temple, dedicated to or strongly linked to your deity. If you attempt to cast the spell in this manner in an area that isn't dedicated to your deity, the spell has no...
