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How badly did they break loot in 5e?
NobodysHome : Shiro keeps pointing out all the treasure we've missed, but I really don't care. There's nothing worth owning in 5e.
GothBard:
Impus Major : Yeah.
EDIT: Nothing worth owning. Nothing.
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So, Tomb of Annihilation really does seem written by a GM frustrated by "special snowflake" player behavior. "Oh? You took a flying race? Well, for the entire AP if you try to fly over 10' in the air or past any of the traps you die." (No spoiler on that one because the GM is supposed to make it painfully obvious that flying will get you killed from the very start.)
Then Problem Player lost his shadar-kai last night in a rather GM-ruthless manner:
...except the serpent was very explicitly written to hate teleporters beyond all else. So in a hilarious (for me) twist, the shadar-kai went first and teleported away, leaving us all to our fates. The other party members split and ran in different directions. And I was standing there, awaiting my doom...
...and the feathered serpent ran right past me (in spite of its name it had legs) and ate the shadar-kai while the rest of us got away.
More and more, the AP seems to be written as, "Are you a GM who hates players who bypass your carefully-placed mazes, traps, and roadblocks using movement powers like flight and Misty Step? Well, here's an AP where you can get your revenge...
So, Tomb of Annihilation really does seem written by a GM frustrated by "special snowflake" player behavior. "Oh? You took a flying race? Well, for the entire AP if you try to fly over 10' in the air or past any of the traps you die." (No spoiler on that one because the GM is supposed to make it painfully obvious that flying will get you killed from the very start.)
Then Problem Player lost his shadar-kai last night in a rather GM-ruthless manner:
** spoiler omitted **
More and more, the AP seems to be written as, "Are you a GM who hates players who bypass your carefully-placed mazes, traps, and roadblocks using movement powers like flight and Misty Step? Well, here's an AP where you can get your revenge...
That is factually correct as to original author intent.
I swear. I work for a Global Megacorporation that sells software to other businesses. I know how lengthy and complex the implementation process is, and how much testing you're supposed to put in before you go live.
So when I encounter a corporate web site that has basic, fundamental, stupid errors I get irrationally irritated.
State Farm: It's time to update the mileage on your vehicles. Please click this link to do so.
NobodysHome: Nope.
State Farm: Thank you for updating your odometer readings!
State Farm: You haven't updated your odometer readings in over 12 months. Please update them in order to renew your policies.
So yeah. They have a full kludgy web interface where you enter the odometer readings for all of your cars...
...and it fails to save the data.
So at some point I'm going to have to get a human being involved to manually enter my odometer data, because whoever implemented the page couldn't be bothered to check that it actually performed its basic function of saving the data.
Grr...
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I love the historical fable project so much. The s*&% I get to overhear.
The Industrial Revolution as aliens or robots (or alien robots) taking over the world.
The Vietnam War as rival lemonade stands.
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I think my favorite part of the week between games after a character death is hypothesizing just how Problem Player is going to manage to bring in yet another OP race/class combo that is somehow utterly useless to our group.
He refuses to play prepared spellcasters, so the wizard that we need is off the table. He's going to want some kind of non-teleporty escape mechanism, and he's seen my judiciously-used flight work quite well for me, so I'm thinking a sorcerer from a flying race with darkvision. Setting those requirements and looking at the 5e species, I'm guessing an owlin sorcerer. -OR- he'll just bring his barbarian back because he doesn't care about satisfying the party's desperate need for knowledge skills.
We'll know in a week...
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That is factually correct as to original author intent.So, Tomb of Annihilation really does seem written by a GM frustrated by "special snowflake" player behavior. "Oh? You took a flying race? Well, for the entire AP if you try to fly over 10' in the air or past any of the traps you die." (No spoiler on that one because the GM is supposed to make it painfully obvious that flying will get you killed from the very start.)
Then Problem Player lost his shadar-kai last night in a rather GM-ruthless manner:
** spoiler omitted **
More and more, the AP seems to be written as, "Are you a GM who hates players who bypass your carefully-placed mazes, traps, and roadblocks using movement powers like flight and Misty Step? Well, here's an AP where you can get your revenge...
Hating players? Well, that figures.
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Kids. I swear.
"Ms. Scint, I don't know what fable to do for my project."
"Have you researched your event yet?"
"No."
"Don't you think it will be easier to know how to adapt the story if you know what you're adapting?"
"I guess?"
"So what should you be doing?"
"...looking it up?"
On the one hand, great, I don’t have to think about balancing treasure!
On the other, how do I reward the party?
Yeah, I think I mentioned it, but it's pretty pathetic. We got a dragon hoard worth tens of thousands of gold pieces along with a bunch of adamantine ingots that could be crafted into armor in a few months' time.
And we couldn't even be bothered to go back to town to try to spend the money because we knew there wasn't going to be anything there worth buying, nor did we try to get someone to work forging the adamantine ingots because the AP will be over before the items would be done.
When a dragon's hoard and adamantine ingots are, "Meh. Throw them on the ship. Not like we can use them," items, you know you have a loot problem.
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No-Context Theatre presents...
Please do not use my class to plan insurance fraud and wide-scale larceny.
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And, cue more impotent rage...
Impus Minor told his professor he'd be out of town for the third midterm in early November and the instructor sent back and email saying, "That's fine. I'll give you a make-up once you're back.
Impus Minor showed up to take his make-up miderm and the professor said, "I never said that."
Cue Impus Minor showing the professor his own email.
Caught in his lie, the professor said, "OK, I'll get a make-up midterm to the tutoring center. Expect an email from them."
I told him not to wait. I told him to badger his professor about it every single week.
Instead he waited for the email that never came and now it's finals week and he will not be making up that midterm, making it iffy whether or not he's going to pass the class. And of course everything except the original, "I'll give you a make-up miderm," email was in-person, so there's not even a solid paper trail for a good formal complaint. (Though if he doesn't pass we're going to file one anyway.)
Never. Expect. People. To. Do. Their. Da**ed. Jobs. You have to self-advocate.
Grrrr....
Well, that's different.
The whole family just got tsunami warnings -- on our phones *and* our computers -- an impressive bit of showing off how far early warning technology has advanced.
"Un"fortunately, we're inside the coastal range; unless the tsunami breaks 1000' it's going to be limited to coming through the Golden Gate, so for those of us on the bay proper it's pretty much, "Don't be directly on the 'beach', as it were."
I'm very glad they issued the warning -- people on the coast side face real danger. But both the difficulty in getting to a map of endangered regions and the ludicrous extent of those regions will lead people to ignore the warnings. (The map shows the waves flooding Tilden Park at well over 1000' above sea level.)
Emergency warning systems are a delicate balance, but technology is advanced enough that you'd think they could set the cutoff closer to 100' above sea level rather than 1500'. I think they used a wee bit TOO much of a cushion...
Well, that's different.
The whole family just got tsunami warnings -- on our phones *and* our computers -- an impressive bit of showing off how far early warning technology has advanced.
"Un"fortunately, we're inside the coastal range; unless the tsunami breaks 1000' it's going to be limited to coming through the Golden Gate, so for those of us on the bay proper it's pretty much, "Don't be directly on the 'beach', as it were."
I'm very glad they issued the warning -- people on the coast side face real danger. But both the difficulty in getting to a map of endangered regions and the ludicrous extent of those regions will lead people to ignore the warnings. (The map shows the waves flooding Tilden Park at well over 1000' above sea level.)
Emergency warning systems are a delicate balance, but technology is advanced enough that you'd think they could set the cutoff closer to 100' above sea level rather than 1500'. I think they used a wee bit TOO much of a cushion...
Judging from your complaints about commuting to and from SF area, I would guess that a lot of folks in your region are often much closer to the Ocean than their residential address shows - assuming that they actual check the specific address instead of simply sending the warning either to all the phones that are registered in a very general area of all carriers.
...Judging from your complaints about commuting to and from SF area, I would guess that a lot of folks in your region are often much closer to the Ocean than their residential address shows - assuming that they actual check the specific address instead of simply sending the warning either to all the phones that are registered in a very general area of all carriers.
Oh, warning everyone in all the local counties makes total sense. Showing a map with inundation levels hitting 1000' doesn't.
And there you have it: 'Merikuns.
Mother-in-law was grocery shopping when the tsunami warning hit. Yep. People panicked, grabbed whatever was near them on the shelves, and fled.
As she put it, "I have no idea where they thought they were going."
I'm sure the stores will now be out of toilet paper for weeks.
Oh, and Impus Minor's story gets just as stupid. The professor is exonerated in that he sent the exam to the make-up testing center. So they set a date and time for the make-up exam.
Unfortunately, they failed to notify Impus Minor of this.
So when he didn't show up, they reported him as a no-show to the professor and shredded his exam.
EDIT: I'm still mad at the professor because if I'd had a student and I didn't see the exam after a week I'd've followed up, but then, I actually paid attention to my students...
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Weekly babynerds session begins with four 13-year-olds entering the classroom, pumping their fists and chanting, "Kill the pig! Slit his throat! Spill his blood!"
I'm not really known to drink, but...
Did you join in the chant?
And there you have it: 'Merikuns.
Mother-in-law was grocery shopping when the tsunami warning hit. Yep. People panicked, grabbed whatever was near them on the shelves, and fled.
As she put it, "I have no idea where they thought they were going."
I'm sure the stores will now be out of toilet paper for weeks.
Hey! Imagine what would happen if they didn't valiantly save all that toilet paper from ocean water sweeping all over!
Wet paper everywhere!
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I've had a long-standing loathing of hypocrisy that goes back to my earliest awareness of politics and the despicable behavior of most politicians.
Unfortunately, the return-to-office mandate has proven that corporate management types are just as bad.
Executive: It is my belief that in-person collaboration is the only way to be truly productive, so I am mandating that everyone be in the office at least 3 days a week.
And then week after week, month after month, you watch as all the executives continue to work from home and show up remotely to all meetings. When your VP, SVP, and EVP all work from home almost exclusively, you just don't feel bad about taking your own exemption from said policy.
And today starts off with such a spectacular example of why people hate the holiday season.
We know the kids have friends and social lives, so for December we have only three family events: Buying a tree (flexible), the Dickens Faire (fixed), and Christmas morning (fixed).
So we worked with the kids in October to schedule the Dickens Faire after finals and on a weekend both kids were free.
And yes, of course, last week Impus Major's choir director announced that they'd been invited to a special post-semester holiday performance... on exactly the same day as the Dickens Faire.
And we already know that this is going to snowball into the utterly stupid as everyone who's ever known us and who's still in the area is suddenly going to try to invite us to events on the last 3 weekends of the year, and they'll get upset that we somehow can't fit 15 events into 6 days...
Maybe, just maybe, if you want to get together, try scheduling it in a month other than December!!
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The kids are explaining the concept of a "hear me out cake" to me.
I'm so tired.
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I've cut my last paver of the season.
Which means winter has officially unofficially started!
Now, it's boulder carving season!
The kids are explaining the concept of a "hear me out cake" to me.
I'm so tired.
The mere fact that cake is involved makes me tune out.
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I am tickled. I was almost right: Problem player chose to play a dragonborn sorcerer. My predictions:
(1) Darkvision. Check.
(2) Flight. Check. I missed that dragonborn get flight at 5th level.
(3) Sorcerer. Check.
(4) Extra cheese. Dragonborn get a breath weapon and resistance to that damage type. Check.
On the bright side, he took the Sage background so he's going to have the skills we need, and if he takes INT as a secondary characteristic he'll actually be exactly what we need in the party.
So woo hoo!
I've cut my last paver of the season.
Which means winter has officially unofficially started!
Now, it's boulder carving season!
I will also be cutting pavers, but those are winter pavers.
What always strikes me when I play with players of the "race is a fundamental power play" variety is that we have literally decades of research and play-testing of "build your own race" games, with staggering amounts of balancing data.
You could easily start off with 5e with 3-point abilities (flight, teleportation, blindsight, an AoE breath weapon), 2-point abilities (darkvision, claws), and 1-point abilities (longevity, a +1 bonus to a skill). And then the rule would be, "Every race has 12 points, with at most one 3-point ability and two 2-point abilities."
Suddenly, races would feel much more balanced. Because right now after his selection of a useful PC, I'm building a second backup character, which will be a human paladin because there's an entire fort of human paladins near where we are so it makes perfect sense from a roleplay standpoint. But the difference in out-the-gate power between a human and a dragonborn in 5e is out-and-out embarrassing.
I'm an idiot for playing a human. But I believe more in immersion than power gaming, so it is what it is. And if I ever play him I'm sure he'll die because of it...
Hmm... apparently I wasn't the only one with this complaint.
2014 5e Player's Handbook: "So, you want to be a human, eh? OK. Take +1 to all attributes instead of the normal +2 to one."
Sounds like a fantastic deal; you're getting +6 to your attributes instead of the normal +2...
...except...
...distributing them across ALL attributes is almost worse than the +2. You likely have at least 2-3 attributes that are nigh-useless to you (STR, WIS, and CHA for a wizard, for example), and you'll be worse off in your main stat (INT) than you would be as another race. It's not a "bad" bonus, but it sure isn't a "great" bonus.
2024 5e Player's Handbook: "So, you want to be a human, eh? OK. Take +1 origin feat, proficiency in an additional skill, and a GM Inspiration point after every long rest," which is basically an extra reroll a day, worth 1/3 of a feat. (There's a luck feat that gives you 3 rerolls.). All of a sudden being human starts looking attractive again...
Unfortunately, the return-to-office mandate has proven that corporate management types are just as bad.
It's one of those things that many of us have always known, but is now justifiably proven to the majority of people who were previously unaware.
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That was one of my few complaints with 4th D&D. It seemed like human was one of the worst, if not the worst choices.
In other news the leaves are falling. I remember a time, not so long ago, when the trees were bare by now. Strange, strange times.
That was one of my few complaints with 4th D&D. It seemed like human was one of the worst, if not the worst choices.
In other news the leaves are falling. I remember a time, not so long ago, when the trees were bare by now. Strange, strange times.
In Wisconsin we've been below freezing for a couple of weeks now, and it's already snowed on multiple occasions.
Oh it's been terrible here with lows in like the 40s.
Lol. Same. And two of my coworkers are still wearing sandals to school.
I'm happy because I can wear my Oscar the Grouch hat.
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No snow that's stuck more than a day, but subfreezing for a couple of weeks.
Same as Vany. Numerous days below freezing and temps hover around the 30s and 40s for highs (though 60s this weekend!) and teens or single digits for lows. Only one day of snow thus far though, and it was completely gone within two days after.
Expecting more of the same - including some days in the 60s and one even in the 70s! - throughout December, and no further snow until at least January, if then.
Here, it's swung from unseasonably cold (we never normally used to have snow in November), to regular autumn, to relatively warm (last weekend, for example). Storm Darragh is presently kicking our collective bottoms, out west, at least - we have the Pennines in the way, luckily, but it's blowing one heck of a gale outside nonetheless.
There's almost no such thing as "unseasonable" here, so it is what it is. We had one night hit 38°F. That was admittedly unusual. Otherwise everything from the low 40s to high 70s is par for the course, so there you go.
Why are there fireworks going off in my neighborhood?
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Here, it's swung from unseasonably cold (we never normally used to have snow in November), to regular autumn, to relatively warm (last weekend, for example). Storm Darragh is presently kicking our collective bottoms, out west, at least - we have the Pennines in the way, luckily, but it's blowing one heck of a gale outside nonetheless.
I don’t have any such luck in my part of the UK, Norfolk - East Anglia, the winds are howling like mad here.
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Why are there fireworks going off in my neighborhood?
WOOOOOO!!!!
Trying to organize our storage shed is an abject lesson in, "Do not buy anything until you've already set up everything else so much that it's ready to be installed."
Way back in 2007 when we were planning on doing a bunch of home renovations, we bought a solid wood door for going from the closet to WhimseyShire, solid wood folding closet doors for the door into WhimseyShire, and an ornate back door we were going to build into a new wall at the back of WhimseyShire. Several thousand dollars' worth of doorage.
So of course my father passed away, all construction plans ceased, there was a housing shuffle, an incompetent handyman messing up everything we asked him to install so we fired him, and the doors have been getting hauled from house to house ever since.
I finally gave up on the door from the closet into WhimseyShire because it would have required cutting a stud, meaning I'd've had to open up the walls and build a supporting frame, all within the confines of a 3'x3' closet. So that door got put outside and promptly rotted. I think that was $800 down the drain.
This summer I finally got around to putting up the folding doors. They're really nice, but I hadn't thought things through so when they're open they block one of the bedroom doors. And of course Heaven forfend anyone actually pay attention to whether or not a door is blocked, so on a daily basis someone comes plowing out of the bedroom, slams the bedroom door into the open closet doors, and I expect the hardware to break because of this constant battering within a year.
And this morning I'm dealing YET AGAIN with trying to manhandle the 250-pound solid wood back door and frame into some kind of storage where it's not constantly in our way.
The nightmare of unused construction supplies in a house with little-to-no storage is neverending. And yet throwing out a stupid-expensive solid-wood door because I can't manage to store it would be quite painful.
So instead I gripe, learn from my mistakes, and warn others of them.
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Fantasy NPC: Sir Genserik, the Queen's Guard
He did not save the queen.
Its not cold enough.
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It is absolutely cold enough.
I know nothing.
We can neither confirm nor deny that it may or may not be cold enough.
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Teensy Valeros just combined Die Hard with Schoolhouse Rock and exclaimed, "Yippee Kiyay, Mother Neccesity!"
My kid is weird.