TRPG General Chat

Hey there Shalvenay

Shalvenay

how're things going? nobody tossed your space lich's phylactery down a black hole I take it?

nah; my path to lichdom was true polymorph

Q: Do the creature sense ability of ulitharids grant them partial immunity to the invisibility spell and unseen attacker penalties?

1

According to Volo's guide to monsters , The elder brain and ulitharid have the following ability, with the main difference between the two being the effective range (2 miles for the ulitharid, 5 for the elder brain): Creature Sense. The ulitharid is aware of the presence of creatures within 2 m...

@BardicWizard omg yes more people need to read those

@BESW fair? fair? I love murderbot

murderbot good

:P

1:08 AM

Murderbot is great, but it takes so long to love itself that I can totally see somebody struggling to reach that before it does.

I wonder if I can convince orcus to pay some protection money or not. Not that I need it.

@BESW I mean, it reminds me so much of myself I can't help but love it practically from the start

the unbidden exasperation at other's stupidity, the attachment to media, the not wanting to look at other people straight in the eye, the hyperfocus on points of particular interest (although some of that is also just stuff it knows because it thought it would need it)

oh and of course no touchey

no touchey

Bardic Wizard

4:15 AM

@AncientSwordRage she’s now through book 5 (the novel). Apparently “they’re so good I can’t put them down cause I wanna know what’s next” (not that this is that much faster than either of our usual reading speed)

Also unrelatedly, anyone know how to search the oeis for 1) recursive sequences, if you have an equation; and/or 2) how to search for any sequence that follows the same pattern but with only one number (not n, a constant) changed?

@trogdor murderbot is relatable for me as well

@BardicWizard perfect XD

Q: Is there any way for a player character to automatically pass a saving throw?

7:17 AM

4

Many monsters have the following ability: Legendary Resistance (x/day). If the [monster] fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead. This ability allows the monster to pass any saving throw, regardless of DC. Player characters, on the other hand, have many abilities which allow them...

dnd-5e saving-throw

Q: Where on the Ethereal Plane does a creature appear when they use Blink?

7:42 AM

1

The description for Blink: Roll a d20 at the end of each of your turns for the duration of the spell. On a roll of 11 or higher, you vanish from your current plane of existence and appear in the Ethereal Plane (the spell fails and the casting is wasted if you were already on that plane). At the ...

dnd-5e spells ethereal-plane

10:14 AM

Is this NAA? rpg.stackexchange.com/a/190987/2788

@BardicWizard I wish I new more about how to search the OEIS

@BardicWizard yeah! It's high up on my list due to BESW, Troggy and now your recommendations

It's a good read for sure

One of my all time favorite series

Q: What is the average damage dealt by a Potion of Poison?

11:50 AM

1

The potion of poison (DMG p.188) is an uncommon magic item that deals poison damage over time to anyone who drinks it. However, the way it deals damage is rather complicated, with multiple saves and reducing damage. How much damage would you expect a potion of poison to deal (that is, what is the...

dnd-5e magic-items damage poison

1:33 PM

Should RPG.SE avoid using the passive voice to make sentences easier to understand? Should edits removing the passive voice be reverted as unnecessary style edits?

@Medix2 Seems like another style edit. Is it really a fact that passive voice is harder to read? Never seemed so to me, though I noticed that English native-speakers seem to often have a thing against anyone using passive voice.

1:55 PM

I haven't found any actual research yet, but a lot of sites claim it makes it harder to determine the subject and lengthens sentences unnecessarily. Could just be attempts at defending a pointless prescriptivist rule, will continue looking for more actual research

There's a prescriptive rule against using the passive voice. There's a lot of prescriptive rules I don't care for, this being one of them

@Medix2 It's probably not even a 'prescriptive rule' if it's a structure that is taught as technically correct by approved textbooks but then explained to be one to avoid.

Found actual research, time to read

I've seen it taught solely to be avoided

"For both experiments, there were no significant differences in either reading speed or reading comprehension due to differences in voice."

"The results indicated that passive voice sentences when presented in an unrelated sentences format or in a list (but not when used in full paragraphs) were more difficult to comprehend than active voice sentences."

Personally, to me passive voice looks like something that is almost necessary when trying to avoid making the text look frivolous or getting unintended subjective flavour. E.g. reporting on evidence, or about paperwork, or witness statement, are the places where I'd expect to see passive voice a lot more often. But I come from east of the old curtain.

I never know how to feel about grammar "fixes"

You know perfectly well what I mean if say "A table which has three legs will not be found in my house" instead of "One will never find a table that has three legs in my house"

I majored in linguistics and education though, so I have a doubly invested active drive against such prescriptive rules...

I'm still 8 votes short of the gold badge for answers.

:'(

2:10 PM

@Medix2 Lately I have an impression that some people are missing each other's point when it comes to description vs. prescription. Both documenting what variations exist, and having a unified ruleset for situations where standardisation is useful (e.g. reverse-compatibility, disambiguation, or facilitating publication of state-wide-applicable textbooks), have their place.

I'm mostly against the people where, when I am having a casual conversation and say "Me and my friends went to the store" they will literally butt in and say "No, that's wrong, and isn't how English works". There's stuff to say about language that is formal, or written, or just plain academese and the like. I'm just infinitely glad I'm not going to teach high school English

@Medix2 you mean should passive voice be used by RPG stackexchange 😜

And I certainly don't feel SE is the place to change phrases such as "Me and my friends" "I'm full" "What are we fighting for?" And "The ball was flung into the air"

Passive voice is fine. In some cases the overuse of passive voice creates ambiguities of syntax, but otherwise it's purely a style choice and the prescriptive avoidance of passive voice tends to introduce elaborate circumlocutions that reduce readability more than even sloppy use of passive voice.

Earlier this week I was looking at some really confusing documentation, which would've been perfectly clear if it had been written in active voice. But that's no reason to avoid passive voice dogmatically.

@Medix2 That's something that is probably situational. As a silly foreigner, I benefit from corrections like this, taking small steps closer to whatever the semblance of High English is. As someone on the stack? 'Ask questions; get answers; no distractions' please; such an edit is a distraction, and is also intrusive for people engaging in authorial style choices deliberately.

2:20 PM

(Also, I find that enthusiastic removal of passive voice often generates collateral damage in the form of mangling sentences that used words commonly associated with passive voice, but which aren't actually passive constructions.)

@Medix2 What's wrong with "I'm full"?

"Full is what I have become"?

Contractions are evil /s (it's a "rule")

Mage's Contraction: Skip forward one round. Everyone positions themselves as if they had moved.

@BESW Yeah that over application happens with things like not ending sentences with prepositions too

@Axoren Mages' Contraction: Pull every spellcaster five squares closer to you.

2:25 PM

It's easier to follow a rule over aggressively than to linguistically analyze whether something really is passive or a preposition or whatever else

@BESW Mage's Contradiction: This spell fails.

And therefore, it succeeds

@Medix2 I had an English teacher in high school who told me I couldn't end a sentence with the phrasal verb "look up," because "up" is a preposition.

Mage's Contractual Obligation: Goes down first round.

I asked her for an example of how to re-phrase the sentence to meet her rules, and she couldn't, so she dropped the issue.

But I don't think she actually understood that "up" is not always a preposition.

At any rate: around here we edit for clarity. If a particular use of passive voice is clear, it doesn't need editing.

2:29 PM

I hit the ball directly up. I looked immediately up the word.

I had an English teacher that didn't understand particles and when I mentioned them, she told me "this isn't a physics class".

Is particle a British thing?

@Medix2 I looked up.

Grammatical particle

In grammar, the term particle (abbreviated PTCL) has a traditional meaning, as a part of speech that cannot be inflected, and a modern meaning, as a function word associated with another word or phrase to impart meaning. Although a particle may have an intrinsic meaning, and indeed may fit into other grammatical categories, the fundamental idea of the particle is to add context to the sentence, expressing a mood or indicating a specific action. In English, for instance, the phrase 'oh well' has no purpose in speech other than to convey a mood. The word 'up' would be a particle in the phrase to...

It actually gives "up" as an example of a particle in English

Specifically in the cast BESW mentioned.

@Axoren Wait, but up can be inflected into 'upwards'?

Ah, it's part of the part of speech theory, I see

2:31 PM

Or 'upper', or surely there is a better example.

I believe it's specifically in "look up" is the sense of "research into" or "Google"

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica "look up" as the verb turned into "look upwards" wouldn't be related to the meaning of "look up"

Yeah

Though maybe if we tell people to go find something look upwards, they'll find it on Google.

Good pun

@Axoren Oh, and I could tell horror stories about science classes. Had a test in General Science for Art Majors where a question was

> The Earth is 94 million miles from the Sun, and Mars is 155 million miles from the Sun. How far is the Earth from Mars?
(a) 61 million miles
(b) 249 million miles
(c) 610 million miles
(d) 24.9 million miles

I've completely forgotten all my formal grammar lessons.

2:34 PM

@BESW Right now? Or during planetary alignment?

Exactly. (a) and (b) are both correct given the available information.

And a vast number of other answers would also be correct, if it weren't multiple choice.

The professor did not see the problem.

@BESW What a horrible question

I mean, it's still better than the first grade book which taught me the seasons are caused by the tilt of the Earth moving one hemisphere further from the sun and the other closer.

The funniest part? Earth might not even be that far from the sun at the time the test was taken.

Reading more about particles, eh... definitely not my favorite

2:37 PM

Earth is between 91 mi mis and 94.5 mi mis from the sun at any point.

Or the first grade math problems where subtracting a large number from a small number was supposed to result in 0, because they hadn't taught me negatives yet.

That was me then too

@Axoren Maybe that's what causes the seasons! /s

"The Earth is 94 million miles from the Sun." "No, it's not."

Granted, I was also once asked "What's another way to say you have two quarters, three dimes, a nickel, and two pennies" and I proceeded to write "I have 87 cents" and was marked wrong

2:39 PM

Hold on... 25*2+10*3+5*1+1*2=87

Just had to check

What did they say it was?

Or what answer did they want?

Honestly writing tests that don't ever include "guess what I'm thinking of" problems is a skill, and I don't blame teachers TOO much for not having been taught it. It's a systemic issue.

Another set of coins

@Axoren Air miles, space miles, or Roman miles?

@BESW Yeah, my issue is more when a correct answer is provided and they still won't budge

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Space Marines use Nautical Miles.

2:40 PM

@Medix2 Ah, 1.17 rupees!

And I'll always remember the time a friend flunked one of those "IQ tests" for very young people, because when asked to choose the most breakable thing from a group of objects, she chose an egg instead of a goblet.

What???

what

Because she'd never seen a goblet before in her life.

How are goblets breakable?? Are they made of eggs or something?

What the hell are they making goblets out of in your region?

2:43 PM

Like, a glass goblet.

Or maybe it was a wine glass, something like that.

Who makes goblets out of glass?

That's yeah... IQ tests are an interesting mess

The point is, she grew up in a low-income house with five kids. Cups made of glass weren't part of her world.

Goblets aren't even predominantly glass anyways. And glass cups are still less fragile than eggs.

Yay, baked-in assumptions about test takers /s

2:44 PM

The test also relied on her identifying "common animals" that not only aren't local here, they'd die here.

Did they specify the cookedness of the egg?

With the same amount of force, you can crack a glass on a table, but the egg gives birth all over it.

@BESW Sounds like a fun test...

Oh yeah.

Really primed me for understanding just how much nonsense stuff like IQ and Mensa are.

Jigglypuff Seen From Above

Reminds me of this:

►

2:47 PM

The only IQ test I ever took, I wasn't even told the results

At the end of the day, the best way to measure someone's IQ is how many spells they can prepare each day.

You know, for kids

►

@Medix2 I had to take some kind of intelligence test for a school application once. I made my parents read the letter and not tell me my score.

@BESW I will say, Mensa gets one thing (and perhaps only one thing) right which is that you can ask questions and can explain your reasoning for answers that don't match what is expected to receive full points anyway

Meanwhile IQ tests generally seem to assume the test maker is always right

I took an IQ test while terrified and confused because I got pulled out of PE class and no one would tell me why.

@bobble [screams]

That's worse than only learning my SAT testing time the morning of the test, because it had been postponed by an earthquake.

2:51 PM

@bobble That happened to me, too. I didn't like doing my homework, so my grades suffered, and they thought it was because I was mentally challenged. They took me out of recess to do it and said "You can go back to recess when you're done." I ended up finishing it perfect score in a fast time and went back to recess.

And they were like "Why doesn't he do that all the time?"

Because I wanted to go to recess and you were in my way

I had... behavioral issues... and they were trying to figure out if I was neuroatypical

@Axoren Same reason you didn't do the homework: priorities.

I remember taking the concussion benchmark and there was a section that continued until you failed three times, I was stuck there for 92 minutes

(which meant I got a whole battery of confusing tests, some of which I still have no idea on what they were testing)

Oof that's awful.

2:53 PM

@bobble Same, but they were more worried about my education because I was already seeing a psychologist. I guess I was a little less terrified and confused because I was at least clued in by my psychologist why they were doing some of that.

I was very lucky to have a family friend in developmental education who was a fierce advocate for letting me develop writing skills at my own pace. Without her I probably would've gotten placed in some very inaccurate categories.

Going into that blind would have been dreadful, I'm sorry you had to deal with that

I performed too well for special-needs but couldn't conform to normal class structure.

It's weird learning that there were secret reasons for things in my life. Like my parents began me on piano lessons solely because my kinesthesia (ability to tell where my limbs are without looking) was so bad to the point of serious concern

A decent part of the counsolers' worry about my behavioral issues was that I was (and still am, to a degree) terrified of counselors' offices, so wherever I interacted with them it went badly.

@bobble oof that's a nasty cycle

2:57 PM

Was it a matter of the councilor themselves? Or the office? or the authority of the position that scared you?

If you don't mind me asking?

I was gonna say, it may not be an open topic

I associated the counselor as a person and the office as a place where people told me my feelings were invalid.

Yeah, I had to catch myself, my bad

And you couldn't leave until you agreed that yes, your feelings were invalid

That's really rough. Especially when they're supposed to be the one advocate all students get.

2:58 PM

Lovely place. Shame I hated it.

I had that happen to me when I was in Catholic School. I would get in trouble for misunderstandings the adults had about me, and when I tried to clear up the misunderstandings, I was lying and talking back.

@Axoren yeah see, but I never approached them within that context because I was already terrified of them, so I would only interact when forced... continuing this lovely cycle of doom

I once got in trouble for calling the Principal an "old lady" when I was describing a completely different person who was a 90-year-old volunteer at the school.

I did have behavioral issues outside the office, but to a lesser extent than what they probably thought

I was in 1st grade and didn't have "elderly" in my vocabulary.

I'm very glad that I left that place. I'm also really glad for a lot of my friends from there that the place also caught fire and they all had to switch primary schools

3:03 PM

I have decided to avoid any of those words after working in a restaurant and people will get mad at me for using any of them. I literally will now say "I have this 67 year old friend who..."

BESW: [walks into therapist's office] I'm here because of executive function issues I've struggled with since my teens, which are now getting in the way of being able to take care of my ailing father.
Therapist: So, tell me more about this conflict with your father.
BESW: ...can I get someone who's read a theory *other* than Freud, please?

@BESW Yeah, I found I had a lot of shopping to do for therapists

It took a LONG while before they stopped medicating me and just got me started on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

My English teacher in 10th and 12th grade was obsessed with analyzing books under a Freudian lense, though he would thankfully work to restrict himself to only talking about that for a single book a class.

Withdrawal from some of those drugs was awful.

3:06 PM

BESW: [walks into new therapist's office] So, here's my faith context since I think it'll be important to understand where I'm coming from on this.
Therapist: So, let me tell you about how combining Buddhism and existentialism will give you a new problem-solving perspective.
BESW: ...That's not what I asked for. It's also neither Buddhism *nor* existentialism.

This is why I like people who listen

Therapist: As it says in "The Tao of Pooh"...
BESW: Check, please.

@bobble Freud is both the most important to and the worst thing to happen to psychology imo.

It is rather ironic, or perhaps twisted, that some of the worst listeners ive dealt with (and I work at a restaurant, I've dealt with TONS of such people) have been therapists, psychologists, and counselors

People who take the wrong takeaways from Freuds work (like psychoanalysis itself) tend not to be really deep thinkers about psychology.

3:08 PM

Or perhaps my confirmation bias is speaking and the sample size is too small, but I still certainly feel like it is appalling

@Medix2 A big part of my struggle with finding a therapist is that everybody I've tried so far has this idea that whatever I wind up talking about most, must be the thing I need to unpack. Even if I tell them point-blank that things I can easily vocalize, are things I've already worked through; it's the stuff I struggle to find words for, the stuff my brain shies away from formulating, that is as-yet-unpacked.

I can't imagine putting up for that for 2 years of high school after having gone through psychological limbo for a good chunk of your life.

@BESW this, so much. I can perfectly well explain the problems that I've identified, so can we please move on to finding the probably-deeper ones that I haven't?

@bobble Exactly!

@BESW two million percent this

3:11 PM

Good "listening" is an active, interactive action, not a passive existing. And a big part of it is hearing the silences and avoidances.

I think a lot of therapists get trained on "most of the time your patient just needs to vent and express themself in a low-pressure environment" and... maybe a lot of people do but I've got friends for that.

Might be an authority bias. "I have the degree, so my initial gut feelings are the right ones."

Notating linguistically, pauses, breaths, words, syllable structure and all, made me realize two things. First, that listening truly cannot be mechanized or turned into a mathematical thing; humans are not machines, both in terms of what they say and in terms of hearing what they say. And second, that there is a lot more to what people say than just the words

I think Therapists should go through hostage negotiation training. Because everything you just described is stuff the FBI Hostage Negotiators learn to pick up under high stress situations.

All those little things in how people talk to the therapist could be getting filtered out as noise to most therapists.

I'm not sure hostage negotiator is the best mental space for a therapist XD

I know that's not how you meant it, of course

Well, you're right. We might want to skip the parts where they have to say "Let the hostages go"

3:16 PM

Mmm. Maybe just some good immersive multicultural experiences, that quickly gets you away from "words are the only way we communicate."

Might not be helpful in a clinical setting.

I appreciated the discussion here, and have gained valuable insights and things to mull over, so thank you. I think I'll depart now though, life is indeed calling

ttfn

Peace

3:47 PM

@BESW I think my wife is working through something similar

@BESW yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense

4:41 PM

oh @AncientSwordRage we finished s1 last night :) (bobble says, assuming that the ferret cares)

4:57 PM

@bobble very very much so!

I assume this is ATLA?

I'm doing a small ferrety dance of excitement

yep!

Yay

It's this your first watch through as well?

Yes, but I know some plot outline from mentions on the general SF&F blogs/news sites I follow

Don't know that many details, and the details are delightful. But I know general stuff like plot and character arcs.

This is all good

I should rewatch it at some point

5:21 PM

@AncientSwordRage Yeah, it's not an answer.

5:33 PM

@NautArch I flagged it

Sometimes rambly answers can be trimmed down

I guess not here

My flag was disputed, alas.

Downvotes as well

Q: What is an acceptable form for a "no" answer to a question of the form "Does X exist in the lore?"

It's an answer trying to show a negative, right?

It's not great, in part because it doesn't seem to cover the whole range, nor actually be clear about which parts it is covering

9

This question asks whether there is an "in-universe" explanation for a particular piece of lore in a particular setting. Note that there is already a meta question about the question's topicality. The appropriateness of the question aside, how does one provide an acceptable answer to such a quest...

discussion answers

@Someone_Evil sort of I guess? It's a little rambly to just say no, and it's not clear if that is the intent of the last paragraph saying "it's ok to define your own rules about how your character's physical stature adjusts things"

@Someone_Evil chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/11?m=58934693#58934693

5:51 PM

Being wrong doesn't make it NAA

3

That's true

Though maybe I'm having a hard time around what you're actually looking for in an answer

@Someone_Evil I didn't get a no from that, I got a rule zero and screed about just do your own thing.

It's not wrong, but it's not an answer.

2nd paragraph is a no, right?

Or at least it just an answer you could put on every question on the site

5:54 PM

But maybe "I don't recall from over 30 years ago" isn't quite the level of support we want to see

Bingo

@Someone_Evil sort of but not a strong enough no I think?

@Someone_Evil well put

@bobble eww

I have had to be re-evaluated for autism spectrum,... I think like 4 different times by 3 different office's

And that isn't counting the original diagnosis or the evaluation of my mental capacity or the like two doctors visits in the States my mother felt forced to take me to after a complete quack doctor decided to say the words "Brain Cancer" when I was like 5 or something

It's kinda left me with a little less respect for medical professionals (especially ones dealing most specifically with the brain) then I might have otherwise had

6:12 PM

I pretty much like the neurologist I have, because she gave me medicine that worked wonders and was nice, but a) I'm losing her, because she only does pediatric cases and b) she admitted last visit that she has no idea for long-term treatment/prognosis, which wasn't great.

Oof

I'm beginning to suspect that "atypical presentation" translates to "we have no idea what we're doing here"

Yeah

Welcome to that very specific club

There are at least two members and I am certainly sure the number is higher than that

I haven't met them all but I'm still very sure

XD

7:06 PM

I'd love to claim membership to that club but I've not really got the creds...

My mum is ex-nurse so basically fought for me to get proper help growing up, which I'm finding is much much rarer than I'd have hoped

It's not the best club

The last few horror stories about therapists here have had be going ooof, yikes and 😬

Membership is kinda involuntary

@trogdor true

On the one hand ... I can relate... On the other hand I've not been through anywhere near as much as club members have so 🤔

This is the point where I should probably shut up and let people talk

7:25 PM

your experiences are just as valid as mine

Trish

7:40 PM

@BESW The Dark Exe does that right: you get one mother language from your culture and at least one other. You also might get some from your job, and with the right setup of profession and culture, you end with as much as 10 different languages before you spend the skill points you get from your intelligence.

7:58 PM

@trogdor thank you for saying that

It's just the truth, but you're welcome anyway

Q: How do I handle the wizard's familiar invalidating exploration, outshining the rogue, at low to no cost?

8:58 PM

2

I am having some issues trying to find a balance in what seems to me to be an overpowered spell considering its low level. I will state first that I have always considered the familiar as a very attractive archetype of fantasy literature and I’d love to have it in my games. But I think the way it...

dnd-5e gm-techniques balance familiars lost-mine-of-phandelver

10:33 PM

@HotRPGQuestions that's really good answer by Matthieu M.