linksassin

@Shalvenay Message me anytime. My responses may be a bit async but always happy to chat.

@Shalvenay Pretty good now. Life was hectic for a while which made some big changes to my free time. But mostly back to normal now.

Otherwise we can take it to meta. But I really think that's making a too big a deal out of it. It's a perfectly fine question with decent answers, no need to close it. We can all move on.

@Alan Only a vote by a non-mod or non-gold badge user would put it to a vote. Unfortunately most users that have a interest in dupe for 5e also have the ability to dupe-hammer single handedly.

@ThomasMarkov You've closed both versions of this specific question as dupe single handedly. I don't think it should be a dupe, I've explained why I think it's not a dupe. Our dupe advice says that both the question need to "obviously" overlap and the answer to A needs to be "obvious" in B. I'm saying that neither of those things are "obvious" unless you already know the answer.

It calls for the specific question to be left open. It's already got some decent answers that not exactly the same as the ones on the general case. There's no need to do anything else.

@Alan That's really not the point. The general question gets general answers that doesn't cover the specific question asked by OP. Asking a more specific variant when the general case doesn't precisely answer it is encouraged and explicitly not a dupe.

@ThomasMarkov Question asks specifically about willing, you want to dupe it to a question where the word "willing" doesn't appear in a single answer. It's not a dupe.

No part of your answer mentions the word willing. You (and ever answer to the general question) require the reader to intuit that "willing" falls under the section mentioned and doesn't get some special case. Which is clearly correct but if someone has that specific question I don't think any of them adequately address the question as asked by OP.

If the question opened with "I've read <General Question> but I'm still confused." then there would be no question of a dupe. Asking another more specific question when a semi-duplicate doesn't completely cover the topic.

@ThomasMarkov Not really. You still don't mention "willing", a target being "willing" or not is a distinct enough requirement to justify addressing it specifically. The answers to the general question, while good for the general case leave some holes for specifics and I think this question deserves to stand alone.

It's still not enough to make it a duplicate question. If I came to the site looking for the answer to "Does wish allow me to cast a spell on an unwilling creature?" I would need to know that being willing counts a targetting restriction and then find that one part of one answer that conteniously answers it with no real support. I'm not saying the questions aren't heavily related, just not a duplicate.

@Alan Yes but not a single answer mentions "willing".

@ThomasMarkov I'm not sure that Wish question is actually a dupe. While the questions are similar, none of the answers actually address "willing" or not.

There's nothing wrong with your answer from a style or support perspective, it's a perfectly valid answer to how you have solved the issue at your table. However some users feel that it isn't a good solution to OPs question and therefore downvoted it. And TBH I agree with them. I feel your solution doesn't solve the crux of the issue and also results in un-even less fun gameplay in a way that's at best no better than the original issue and at worse a bigger problem.

@Alan The community is open to answers with relevant anecdotes. Nobody is suggesting your answer isn't an appropriate answer post or even a low quality one. Downvotes can (and regularly do) simply indicate that users don't think it is a good solution to the problem.

Well this is a first for me. I've just downvoted every single answer on this Edge of the Empire question. Not one of them makes any attempt to indicate even passing familiarity with the game system in question. All just relying on general Star Wars canon and assuming it applies to the RPG.

@SuperNine09 Cya! If you want help picking a class / building a character feel free to ping me. But there are also many others that can help your here if I'm not around. Good luck!

Warlocks are somewhere between 1/2 and full casters. Really they are a full caster but they get their spells differently to other casters and therefore play very differently.

1/3 Casters are the subclasses that grant spells to otherwise non-casting classes. Arcane Trickster rogue, Eldritch Knight Fighter, etc..

1/2 casters are the classes that get spellcasting but only up to 5th level. Palaidin, Ranger, Artificer.

Ok sure. Full casters are classes that are spellcasting focused and get spells all the way up to 9th level spells. Bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer and Wizard. For most of these classes casting spells will be the main thing you do.

Ok cool so you know most of the basics. Do you understand what I mean by Full, 1/2 and 1/3 casters?

How well do you know the classes? Is this your first time player D&D 5e?

Given your DM has asked you to play a spellcaster, I'd probably lean toward the full and 1/2 caster classes, maybe the 1/3 casters rather than a fighter that just technically has 1 spell.

Probably a good call. This sort of thing really works better in a less structured setting like chat.

@SuperNine09 Not a problem. That's what most of us are here for.

FYI The restriction to be able to cast at least 1 spell to qualify as a "spellcaster" isn't really that onerous. Basically every class can meet that criteria by level 3. Therefore its really more of a question of what kind of character you want to play.

@SuperNine09 Welcome to chat! This is a good place to ask for advice that doesn't really fit our Q&A format on main site.

@ThomasMarkov Not likely to see a lot of traction on an answer from 2014. And the expectations were different then but I guess so.

@ThomasMarkov They are all attempts to answer the question. Therefore there would be no ground for deletion. Are they great answers? Not really. But they do answer the question. I see no benefit in deleting them.

Thankyou, that's useful encouragement.

@AncientSwordRage That's a reason summation of part of my concern yes.

@ThomasMarkov One of my players cut me down a bit last session. One of the PCs has a follower who he rollplays with a Russian accent. That player was missing so I tried to play the part of his follower for a bit and was met with "Who's that?" "Davorsk" "Oh, I couldn't tell because that wasn't a russian accent".

What I'm looking for is "Here's a good way to roleplay that the character is speaking sign language that is both inoffensive to actual sign language users and effective at conveying the distinction of communicating through signs at the table"

None of my group is Bilingual AFAIK so the translation convention isn't really feasible. At best we do "this accent correlates to this origin". I kind get what you're saying but I don't really understand how that relates to being respectful of a marginalised group by not representing them purely for entertainment value.

This isn't a conlang question, it's a roleplay one. If the answer is "People who sign would prefer that non-signers don't pretend they can sign." then I might rethink this worldbuilding element. But I'm hoping the answer is more like "As a sign user I find X and Y offensive so avoid doing that, but you can represent is by doing Z". Or something to that effect.

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica That's not quite what I'm concerned about. I use accents to represent the various groups when I roleplay them. But I try not to make the combination of accent and character seem like I am making fun of some real world group.

@ThomasMarkov Quite possibly. My current solution is to learn a couple of key phrases. I've never been great at learning languages though.

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Does your definition of roleplay not include the depiction part? I'm not really sure how that isn't what my question is asking.

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica This is exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for as an answer.

I'm not saying the fictional sign language is an exact replica of a real world one. But I know how to respectfully role play other spoken languages (e.g. don't use offensive stereotypes or accents). What I don't know is if a parallel exists for sign language. Hence the reason for the question.

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Yes. In this case it is the language of the Forestfolk. Perhaps "Folkian" I haven't really come up with a in-universe name for it yet.

Minorities and marginalised groups (such as sign language users) are often included in media or pop culture in a way that reduces them to a token, stereotype or humorous entertainment. I don't want to contribute to that culture. Therefore when I want to include something that I don't know a lot about I want to learn how to do it respectfully.

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica I don't know how to explain to you why it matters to me to get the input of people who use/know sign language before trying to use it in my game.

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Largely because I want to be sensitive to the very real people that rely on it. I don't want to include it just for entertainment value or just another worldbuilding point but to present a diverse world where all kinds of people are represented in a way they find respectful.

@NautArch Yeah they are basically asking "How do I do X? but you can't use any of the mechanics that are designed to do that."

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica TBH "treat it like other languages" would probably be a fine answer if sufficiently supported. It did occur to me that trying to treat it differently might be exactly the wrong solution.

@NautArch Fully agree with that perspective. I don't think any of my players would deliberately make a joke out of it. But I'm admitting to naivety here and believe its better to at least try to educate myself first to avoid missteps out of ignorance.

@Laurel Seems reasonable to me. Probably need the tag wikis to reference each other.