KRNVR's page

'Twas the fight paused for Christmas,
And all through the scene,
With the grease patch betwixt us...
How to reach the b++%$-queen?

Phillip was crouched with his blade to one side,
On which edge not the few had been given last ride.
Braddon was finally right in his head, thanks to Tendal's clutch spell, he too wanted her dead.
And Snake with his curses and Gris with his staff have to dither and wonder who will have the last laugh.

Merry Christmas all!

Sentients. Anything smart enough to be worried about my defenses, to plan around them. I'm a PC badass, with a crew of badass, so anything dumb or cocky, we've got it well in hand. But if the enemy waits for our guard to drop, or wedges at the splits in the party...

It's only a ray if it says it's a ray.

It's funny like that.

"In that new age, the hue of Her avatar gloried to an endlessly deep black, pricked with stars as She desired, whether solar irises or nebulae brows. Faint few stars flickered, hinting whispers along the line of Her lips. And on the black canvas, draped streams of colors, riotous or restful, raging or romantic, as ever any was Her wish. These often suggested, or even clearly drew, on the works of mortals, though whether the goddess was robed in their reveries, or their reveries wrought by Her wont, is not a question, or surely not an answer, for mortals."

She's CN, man. :) You can't pin her down.

Show her in a closed gallery (or one rocking at midnight?), pieces on the walls echoed in her clothes, and an easel in the shot, with a piece just started that _might_ suggest inspiration flows the other way.

Emblazon the Sundered Crane (Crane Statant or Crouched, Wing Dexter or Sinister upraised, other wing decouped or struck over by Xi Sable) on your tower shield, to honor the heroes of the past and caution the gamesmen of the future.

DeathQuaker+1

One local game had my tiny plant critter (this was BTG - Before Tiny Groot) adopt three infant gremlins that had (for the moment) survived the deaths of their parents by the rest of the party. "Maple, they're maneaters!" 'Dey is babies.' "They're monsters!" 'I am a monstew, Guiwdmastew waised me fow baby...'

Raising three at-will-invisible, telepathic-among-themselves, cunning, morally complex predators was interesting. Take one out to meet the locals and socialize/normalize, and the other two tag along, invisible.

They named a pet pig 'Ham'. Took loving care of him, played with him like a sibling.

Cautioned not to stare too long at people, they now count silently to figure out how long is too long, but one of them will say aloud, 'Seven', then run away.

They'll all run through the house, chasing Ham, or him chasing them, maybe visible, maybe not, and considerately one will return to the room they've just run through, where a visitor is being entertained, to reassure, "Nothing is on fiwe."

Plus, unless society has really broken down, you can't just always shoot a dude.

A bonus to KN: Engineering is actually a moot point, it's the Ranks, not the total bonus, that are used for Sacred Geometry.

Path of Numbers spells are interesting if unreliable.

If you want to ALL THE FLUFFS!, consider Master of Pentacles, Arithmancy(So, Spell Focus: Divination first), maybe the Gnomish 'Collector' trait(?)feat?

I have a Sacred Geometer in a home game at the moment, working toward Kirin Strike, and in the meantime using Improved Unarmed Strike for the fluff of drawing magical geometries in the air as he casts.

I think the examples of Rogue-cursed Succubi are just that - narratively cursed for OMG teh angstz. Edward Scissorlips.

Write any story you want, but carefully consider that this succubus is not some mad wizard's project, or an aberrative accident of alchemical aglutination. She's (yes, assuming her gender - already damned, why not ostracized, too?) an elite AGENT, one of a class of such agents, tested over eons. Can she control her kiss? Of course she can, if it will lure her prey into deeper folly. Having a slave kiss-test your new harem is obvious, trivial, ancient, and something the Abyss worked around a long time ago, one would think.

If we go back to the folklore, with a nod to Cayce, her purpose, her narrative function, is not "Can she control her passion?", but rather, "Can we control our own?"

I know that flavor can be unimportant to the calorie-counters, and I accept that a ruling could be made to disallow the reading that this staff, sacred to the God of Magicians, allows the wielder "to cast magic missle". Yes, at 3rd level, but the weilder. Anyhow, that's the local reading, that it's possible.

So, in one local campaign, when our wizard Terra (who owned the staff) lent it to Maplewing (who had a power via Super-Genius' Youxia similar to the Arcanist's 'cast at +4 levels'), Terra kind of goggled at the white, and black, and red, and green missle-snakes, and hurriedly took back her staff.

It's a fond memory. Far fonder than slamming the 'No!' door would have been. And the damage from two more Magic Missles didn't break the game.

I understand some of you are on very strict diets. But please do consider, occasionally, trying a bit of cheese.

Space 'cold' is not like normal 'cold'. Undead are immune to cold, but perhaps not to being frozen. Just declare it to be so, if you want the scenario to work. Number 1 Kelvin street is a bad neighborhood for _everybody_.

So freeze the Tarrasque solid, hit it with some impacts that break off pieces and perhaps disguise its overall form by slamputation.

It's brought aboard, of course. Won't fit through the usual cargo bay door, so there's a cool CGI of the Planetary/Orbital Dispatch boat being launched, flipped, landed ON, rather than IN the main ship, and tethered in place, by hard-faced folk in suits, with starbursts and nebulae and lots of lens flare beauty shots. Some one gets the line about quarantine protocols so someone else can have the line about just exactly how dead this thing must be. The Feyland-Garundi cor-rep has a solo scene where he's furiously texting with Corporate...

It gets warm enough that a retracted leg (it's a turtleoid, right?) spasms out, jamming the POD bay doors, just so that when Dade later tells the computer to open those doors, it can say, "I'm sorry Dade, I can't do tha-", and Dade shoots the speaker.

This mostly writes itself. You want your drama to be what flavor? Politics among the crew? Some parasite off the T, stalking the crew? Maybe the Lab Ratfolk fed some of the T to actual lab rats, and... Bad Things Happen. Whatever.

"Why can't we jettison it? If those Unusually-Sized Rodents have all dug into it, just set it adrift. We'll get an orbital reading, put a beacon on it-"

"Can't. Dade says the POD bay doors are jammed."

"BLOW the damn doors. Cut the main strut, charges on the outer hinges. Gimme an hour. Tops."

"Thermostasis. The POD bay is a big, deep hole in the ship. Without the doors, it's like a wound, open to the cold of space. Life support wouldn't keep up. Not long enough."

"So we get in the POD. It's the planned lifeboat, anyway."

"We are NOT, abandoning-"

"No! We stay _with_ the ship, we just _live_ in the POD..."

Hardest thing for me would be resisting the growing impulse to name the Feyland-Garundi ship TERASK.

...the dining room ...has a disused air, some of the chairs along the table askew as they might have been left the last time the staff got up from them and didn't push them all the way back into place. Saul's and Larur's places at the ends of the table, however, are straight and proper; Gristav remembers that Bojasc invariably pushed Saul's chair in when he arose to follow the owner out of the room after a meal...

The dining room has been cleaned several times since the last time Larur used the chair, and the cleaners leave the chairs pushed in straight. So Larur's chair is in the same position it was in the last time you saw it.

...the chairs along the table askew...

...has been cleaned several times...

...cleaners leave the chairs straight...

...the chairs along the table askew...

Proposing a forum game...

I asked of Aur, the dragon Gold, the purpose of his hoard
And Aur replied, "Who beast me'd think, see scrolls and shine
And know me noble lord."

I asked of Bael, the dragon Black, who asked what Aur had said
And Bael rejoined, "Bah, fool this Aur. Gold decorates my bed."

I asked of Claust, the dragon Red, who laughed faint curls of fire
And hissed, "A home's a home. You sweep and paint. Skulls and gems, I desire."

The Druid said dragons consume the metals and the stones, for magic and rare alchemy to turn to scale and bones.

The Heirophant recalled before Gods' thunderbolts were hurled, before hoard-lust would weight them, when dragons roamed the world.

Mr. Risner's review of his admirable record for prediction of the eventual rulings, overlaid with my regular (if mostly silent) disagreement with his opinions, have created to my eye a moire, a vision, perhaps fever dream, perhaps fingerprint.

Bet on whatever ruling claws back whatever ability you thought you had, or thought you could get. Because they can't sell you a book full of things you can't do, only things you 'can now' do. Which might be pretty similar to what you used-to-could-do, before it was clawed back.

More charitably, maybe it's the review of bad(OP?) rules that inspires and informs new(?P, but $) rules, and that review, quite apart from that inspiration, occasions claw-back rulings. Maybe.

But that doesn't change how it feels to see the runway model with the new-design leather purse, and wonder if we're imagining that faint scar in the leather, from an old beloved mount.

Not clear enough? (I do that, sometimes)

Every time any new splat cribs a power that was clawed back from an old splat, a thousand ghostly cranes raise one wing.

But, like Hamlet's dad, that should only bother the guilty.

Why not just extrapolate and expostulate things like Browterpillars, Flapping Ears, Slippery Nipples, Funnybones, Hammertoes...

Confirming not just you.

Gameplay thread and Discussion thread of Joana's 'Shadows over Riddleport', all blank. New posts increment the post count, but do not show, either.

The recruiting tab is still showing all posts.

I think the Light shield lets you hold, as in a torch or an unready weapon, but not use, as in a quill pen or a wand.

'Hold' as in 'four grocery bags already, but that hand can take a fifth'.

Try spreading peanut butter with a knife while holding a gallon of milk in that same hand, and imagine the havok of trying to use a wand.

In the chaos of my gaming room, I have a clear squarish plastic bottle (once held onion flakes or such) with four color matched pairs of d6/d10, read for high-low and digits as d20s, always in a certain order. Other dice in that bottle, as well, for easy d8s and d12s. Even if a Metamancer did gaze into this Panoptikon, they might learn only little.

But, the bottle gets lost (see 'chaos', above), and I might beg dice or dice rolls from interested or disinterested parties. All dice rolls are, by long tradition, made into star-shaped candy boxes or pool racks, to avoid dice going off the table, to be lost forever ( ^,chaos ), or at least, kill the vibe. So those rolls are open.

The Metamancers are on the job then, you can bet, but that's part of their evening's sport, and I can't begrudge them what their rules knowledge, interest, and attention to the game can earn them, not when less learned, interested, and attentive examples are too close at hand.

But I have to say, I would have to call 'shenanigans' (yes, literally - we actually say, "Shenanigans", out loud) on anything like "Hey, the math shows he has cool gear, kill him so we can take it!". If my NPCs have cool gear, it's because they have history and a place in the game world. Plunder at your peril, and be aware, the world will become aware of you.

So... Metamancy, a problem? Not my biggest problem, no. Do I hide my rolls? No, not really, but it might work out that way, or not.

I would say, focus on the fun, and the color, and let the numbers entertain the numerate, and let fools fall by their own folly. Kill a dude for his haste amulet? Such a dude must have friends. And now your Metamancer has given you a seed for the next session.

More work along the lines of your Archetype Packages. We've gotten a lot of mileage out of those locally.

Note that while the Evil descriptor entry has the rules for casting of evil spells making you evil, there are no corresponding rules for the Good descriptor. (Or for Lawful & Chaotic, for that matter.)

RAW, unless I'm missing something, it's a one way street.

The listing for Evil says:

"Though this advice talks about evil spells, it also applies to spells with other alignment descriptors."

...if the actual text matters. In a RP-driven game, the RP will decide case to case. In an RP-less game, it would appear you can wash away the taint, or at least 'taint over it' with another color.

It's a curious kind of reasoning that suggests that one point of nonlethal damage can do what two points of lethal damage cannot.

I'll be interpreting in favor of the utility of the feat to the tough characters.

Maybe channel your best Clint Eastwood, get in the face of the nearest offender, and gravel-voice, "Any particular reason we're talking about my nards?", with implied or rolled Intimidate check.

Essentially, try to establish that while the players might not take the NPCs seriously, the NPCs take themselves seriously, and the PCs either will, or the NPCs will take THAT seriously.

When that message has been delivered, consider trying to burn off the pressure... "Three minutes for nut jokes, GO!"

Er... not to be dim, but... why would arrows be any better than daggers? (Other than getting in a bludgeoning weapon for skeletons, I assume...)

Cheap metals? Nearly cheap enough to leave them as signature items. "Who was that masked midget?" "I don't know, but she left this adamantine arrowhead embedded in the Alcalde..."

Willing himself toward faith- in his fellows, first, then Fortune...

Stealth+2: 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (16) + 2 = 18

Nice. Fold in an Aid Another from someone with actual ranks?

Gristav was so pleased with the silence of his exeunt-scene, he nearly exclaimed in delight. Nearly.

Latest houserule is "When the campaign is rolling for stats, at 2nd level 2 point-buy pts are given to each character, with an additional 1 pt given each lever thereafter. These are spent as if used at creation, before adjustments for race and level."

This lets a very unlucky roller dig himself out of a bad roll, while not funding munchkinery until much later levels, when it's not _so_ bad.

So there was an existing warrant? So they could have gone to the guy's home, and got him. Instead, during their stopping of people for no good reason, they happened upon him. And, being used to stopping people for no good reason, and thinking they had no exposure to cover, they arrested the guy because that's what you do when there is a warrant. And during that arrest, found evidence of further crime.

If all that's true, I'd have to say, this guy does not get to skate on the technicality.

I would ALSO have to say, were I in the chair that says such things, that stopping random people needs to stop.

I did say I'd go with the earlier ruling... But the grognard geek in me wants to point out that the mold was first 'discovered' in a set of physics that had no time unit smaller than one minute. To assume that it can instantly chill what was described as happening in a minute is perhaps losing sight of the historical source of the mold as a concept.

I still want my lava-boats, though. :)

For the sake of playability*, I'd like to present an alternate interpretation of the encounter with a pool of lava. Assuming a pool large enough and deep enough that we need only consider the mold's effects, and taking the ruling in Avoron's post where the mold makes an island...

The island begins to sink. Lava laps around the edges, enters the field of the mold, and is chilled to solidity, forming a lip of stone at the edge of the island. If not yet a buoyant unit, the island sinks further, the lip chills again, and again, until the island is a boat. The traditional bubbling of the lava wobbles things a bit, the lip builds a bit more, and we can either take on cargo/ballast/crew (slowly) or chuck it out to adjust our waterline.

Aside from propulsion, we're set to sail the Lava Sea. With more islands, we might build a catamaran. Perhaps powered by a heat exchange engine.

*Not in the 'every party should have three of these' sense, but in the 'SOME party should do this at least once', sense.

Orcs are proficient in tORCh...?

So your argument is... "I play this way at home, so that means its the rule for everyone"?

That is NOT how things work. The rule IS the rule. The GM can CHANGE the rule. But that doesn't...

No, my argument is "The rule for everyone is 'we are here to have fun' and 'do not be a dick'."

So if a guy comes to the table wanting to fight with torches and ignite them with a cantrip, we look for a path toward 'yes', rather than a position from which to shout 'no'.

It's obvious to all of us at the table, mages have a way to light their cigarettes. So any other reading seems willfully uncharitable. We'd be surprised at the desire to limit the new guy's cool idea. We'd rather cool than optimized.

But let's say this is all just the learned caution of the lifeguard, no running near the pool, no towels left out near paths. I DO agree, there are redoubts from which you can shout 'no'. We're just playing over here, instead.

If the OP is still listening, put tindertwigs on your torches, and keep them in scabbards lined with whatever's rough enough to scratch the twig when they are drawn.

as stone is removed, to sculpt a statue
so possibilities removed, to sculpt a system
the sculptor, is praised for the beauty
the writer, is paid by the word
which is most likely, to carve too deep?

Of course a magician can light a purpose-built flame-dependant object. To mirror an earlier post, if anyone can do it with flint and steel, why deny it to the mage? Because a later text includes a stronger argument? What about earlier texts that include pipes lit with the first draw on them, or candlewicks whispered white with wyrd words?

No, the evidence is there, it's possible. The question is, cantrip or spell? And if it's one step up from flint-and-steel, that's a cantrip, and presti is the catch-all.

The Rattlerent: In the rare occasion when an entire corpse of a sentient undead is consumed by snails, and only snails, and those snails are denied other food, until they, too, pass from the state of life, the hunger of the snails, and the malice and cunning of the sentience might form, from the snails, a Rattlerent. Such a creature is not well-equipped to cause harm, instead working to trick and lure onto other hazards. A rattlerent presents much as a crawling swarm, aware enough to present the emptied shells toward attackers as if shields, while the whole mass retreats, leading prey onto other hazards nearby. Clever rattlerents might wait at the top of a stairs, shells raised as if pebbled stone, hoping to collapse under the weight of an interloper...

Substance: spitoon contents

I am currently a player in the campaign, but I was previously the GM.

...part of the issue is that the other players tend to not pay attention to tactics at all. Have you ever heard of a wizard who refused to use any of their 1st level spells? There's just such a large gap between Bill and the other players. Not necessarily a gap in experience, but more of a gap in effort.

Bill is in a no-win situation. He's shown up with a sweet bored-out Indian motorcycle, and your other players have a ten-speed, a mountain bike, and a Big Wheel.

It's fairer to everybody to say to Bill, "These other players are going to derp about building and playing. And they have that right. If I had four of you and one of them, that guy would be the odd man out. But in this set, you are. I don't know how to solve this problem, and keep everybody at the table."

Make something up.

The Flask of Regret

This clear flask radiates enchantment magic only when filled with the regrets of a person who died while in contact with it. When empty, there is nothing to show it as anything more than a normal, if perhaps finely-made, crystal tube such as might be used for perfumes or alchemies.

The regrets of a dying person are rendered by the magic of the flask into a sort of syrup, light or dark, thick or thin, and colored evocatively of the regret. Thus, a dark, blood-hued syrup might be formed from regretted untaken violent revenge, while a rose-hued syrup the thickness of tears might form for unrequited love.

A filled Flask of Regret cannot be unstoppered accidentally, nor can it be broken into bestowing the regret. However, the first person opening the flask, even if unaware of the enchantment or contents, will find themselves possessed of the memories of the deceased, on all matters related to the stored regret.

Hey, you know who gets to make the call of what's cool to discuss here on this free forum run by a game company?

Not you.

Please do not interfere with staff as they operate this vehicle.

It's too bad if you were just about to cure cancer or solve terrorism. But if you're THAT GOOD at what you're doing, if your words are so important you have to oppose Liz doing her job, you need to go say them somewhere else. This is not the place for such thoughts.

It's just a game forum.

Is it an OWLbear an OWL?

Is an owlbEAR an EAR?

A tORCh is an ORC weapon...

It's a Sleep spell. It has a sort of 'common law' precedent from back when Invisibility was forever and Haste aged your friends. From back before the concept of 'conditions'.

It was the one shot the one-hp mage had, and it had a better-than-average chance of overpowering the available enemy targets and hitting the player characters, and yes, it made all affected unaware, prone, disarmed, blind, and helpless. And it would take a whole minute to wake up a friend, or kill an enemy.

A lot has changed. But I don't think the Conditions scaffold that was added to my Temple of Elemental Evil is supposed to obscure the stained glass of Saint Evilmancer Slumbering the White Knights.

I see how nowadays Sleep's peanut butter has been spread thin, all the way to at-will Hexes. And you'd perhaps like to water it down.

But it always bothers me when the feats of the great heroes of old (sometimes, of yesterday) become impossible, because the rules change.

If it were a 'Dire Daze' spell, you could do as you like. But it's Sleep. Would you really have the tightrope-walker remain balanced during it? The foe on the stairs? The one climbing the wall? The rope ladder? You're driving well past the median on the road to Interpretation, you've taken a left turn onto Wannanerf.

Don't Crane Wing my Sleep spell.

If you buy an umbrella, it should not rain any less.

If you use an umbrella, it should not wind any more.

Sometimes, the story will be about how you had to chase your umbrella when the wind took it away.

We had a local game that began in the ruins of a magical school...

Anyway, part of the backstory we built for the PCs (all survivors of the schoolpocalypse) was that we had all played 'lasertag' with Disrupt Undead.

One INT-challenged sorceress PC never did actually use the 'lasertag' spell against the undead we faced. When coached to do so, she'd look confused, and ask, 'why?'.

"Was that iron-bound book very valuable?"

"Did you know there's an apprentice's union?"

"I was practicing my Old High Draconic declensions while dusting in the Special Library. I'd never noticed the echo, before..."

"HELP! HEL-!"

<in another voice> "I'm FREE!"

In times past, some bowed in the direction of Redmond.

I was not among them. For while I welcomed their wisdoms and their arts, I was not blind to their foolishness.

The heroes of the past were capable of deeds, that seem to us, impossible. Impossible, because the rules have changed.

Would Heracles allow that his club be ruled a light weapon, and then never place his off hand on it?

Thank them, for the common framework and language, to describe our heroes and their enemies. But don't... obey them. They're trying to fence in, to herd, lost sheep.

If you weren't lost, don't be herded.

Despite my avatar, I am in no way employed by or allied with Dryads singly or in any plurality.

But what I know of humanity suggests to me, that on the occasions when a man returned from their company, that man would be badgered into confirming sexual congress. And any denials of such would be taken as lies.

So OF COURSE the reputation of Dryads is salacious. Humanity is very ready to believe of itself that it is universally desirable. Even by plants.

TL;DR: Four words. Out of your league.

Y'know what's disturbing? All these guys wanting this account, PMing me, have like 1 post each. I almost have to wonder who they are.

Because I had to create the GW account to get the list of swag, is it now that I have to sell that account (with my name on it) to an unhistoried unknown?

I might rather keep it, than have a 'Thornborn' GW account doing something nefarious.

I recall somebody's shrink item+permanency'd teepee worn as the traditional wizard's conical hat, so any AMF would enlarge the teepee, and thus block line of effect to the wizard, who could then teleport away...

The only people who really care about your backstory are looking for hooks to hang plots on.

Sometimes, you have too much baggage to ride a railroad.

Tonight is game night.

I put a jar of Ragu and the dregs of another into the crock pot, set to high.

I fried two pounds of frozen sausages until they could be separated from each other, let them keep browning while I took them out of the skillet one at a time to cut into smaller chunks, tossing the chunks back in the skillet. When all the sausage was cut up and brown, it went into the sauce in the crock.

I poured almost all the sausage fat off, then diced an onion up and caramelized it in the same pan. That went in the sauce. Sitr sitr sitr. (Heh. Sitr must be the Nordic minor god of kitchen chores, in this case, stirring.)

I got a pan of water boiling, and surveyed the arriving players, how many for pasta, sausage, and sauce? Ziti is smarter than spaghetti, no whipping strands to add bloodstains on your character sheet.

Leftovers not a problem, when they occur.

Mourn the lost mage, Rtilliu
(Hurloff his first name)

Who wanted to be half-ogre
(Just 'big' was not the same)

The GM said, "Your eyes don't glow"
"Your teeth are normal, too"

But Hurloff had his self-image
'The demon-mage Rtilliu'

I recount so you'll be assured
None of these weighed a wit

And all was fair and above board
When Hurloff, while stirge-bit

Did cast his lonely magic spell
And Mage Armor did form

Around Hurloff, and the stirge too!
(Which kept both snuggly warm)

Mourn the lost mage, Rtilliu
(Hurloff his first name)

Who wanted to be half-ogre
(just 'big' was not the same)

City of Heroes had redcaps as fey grunts. They were at war with reindeer-folk, which were basically the werewolf mob with an antlered skin.

Fey might have an army of ants morphed into ant-folk, with spears and daggers broken off a morphed thorn-hedge.

Packs of wolves?

It may not say it gives a bonus to disguise, but if the assassins (or the palace guards, if you're the assassin) are looking for gender XX, and you're now an XY?

"Stop that woman! She looks like this wanted poster, if you shave off the beard and pluck the brows a bit..."