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it appears that we're all experiencing higher-than-normal incidences of 'groupfail' . . . .
EDIT: good thing i'm here!
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it appears that we're all experiencing higher-than-normal incidences of 'groupfail' . . . .
EDIT: good thing i'm here!
A couple of months ago there were numerous woeful articles about how Gen Z and Millennials were "quiet quitting" by doing only their job and not going above and beyond.
Y'know, if the only people I had to deal with in life were people who did only their job, but did it competently, I'd be ecstatic.
Where did "protect the cleric" come from, why does it exist, and can it please go away now?
Even in 1st Ed. D&D, with their high AC, decent hit dice, and self-healing abilities, clerics were supposed to stand side-by-side with fighters to form the party's front line. In the 50 years since, I haven't seen a dramatic role change for clerics: They still wear medium-to-heavy armor, they still self-heal, they still have good hit dice...
...and yet for the second campaign in a row, a player nearly destroyed our tactical positioning because, "Well, I needed to protect the cleric."
(In this case he tried to teleport me and I refused. Fortunately, even in 5e you can't teleport unwilling creatures.)
It incenses me because:
(1) Once you've formed a defensive line and both groups have engaged, having someone run out of position opens up everyone else to flanks. (Had I accepted the teleport, our fighter and ranger would have had three flanking attackers each. I was the ONLY thing protecting their backsides.)
(2) When the low-AC person who runs out of position inevitably gets torn apart by any and all enemies who can now reach them, they beg me to heal them, using up my resources. Which, of course, don't come back except on a long rest in 5e.
And even when I refuse to heal them and resist their spells and say, "Please don't protect me; a cleric's proper place is in the front line," they get really unhappy and then try to do it again the next time a goblin hits me for 5 points of damage.
It is... unfun.
(In our previous campaign I had to (in character) inform the offending PC that I never wanted her to attempt to save me for any reason, EVER, and she decided I hated her instead of the simple fact that she was ruining our tactics by constantly trying to protect me.)
Dunno, I personally haven't run into that problem.
Because especially in older versions of the game, the cleric was the ONLY one who could heal groups reliably without breaking into precious potions, and a downed cleric couldn't heal anyone/had to heal themselves first.
Because especially in older versions of the game, the cleric was the ONLY one who could heal groups reliably without breaking into precious potions, and a downed cleric couldn't heal anyone/had to heal themselves first.
Between the two of us, Shiro and I have played every edition. We discussed it, and the *only* place he saw it was when 3.0 first came out and clerics became very effective in-combat healers so GMs started targeting them to take them out. It was a small, short-lived trend to keep the cleric safe, but apparently some people never forgot it.
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Hope you're all enjoying Windy Pendants Day.I hope (without getting overtly into politics and having to dodge flaming bikes) that you are enjoying the results of this week's contest.
Sort of. Soggy Pudding is better than Gilded Gnome, but not by that great a margin.
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Between the two of us, Shiro and I have played every edition. We discussed it, and the *only* place he saw it was when 3.0 first came out and clerics became very effective in-combat healers so GMs started targeting them to take them out. It was a small, short-lived trend to keep the cleric safe, but apparently some people never forgot it.
The far longer standing axiom being 'geek the mage'.
Not to say that cutting off the party healing isn't a good plan, but that's more of a target of opportunity than a rule. And definitely got harder with cleric upgrades.
Bad tactics can take many forms. In the Iron Gods game I was in, the archery wizard and my switch hitting fighter were sticking a bunch of orcs with arrows. Meanwhile the bloodrager was mowing them down with a falchion. Then, suddenly the bloodrager decides to use his obscuring mist power. Shutting down the work that we archers were doing. Luckily the battle was almost over.
Later, when the bloodrager was near death, and needed to hide from lasers, he didn’t use the obscuring mist and ended up dead.
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Because especially in older versions of the game, the cleric was the ONLY one who could heal groups reliably without breaking into precious potions, and a downed cleric couldn't heal anyone/had to heal themselves first.Between the two of us, Shiro and I have played every edition. We discussed it, and the *only* place he saw it was when 3.0 first came out and clerics became very effective in-combat healers so GMs started targeting them to take them out. It was a small, short-lived trend to keep the cleric safe, but apparently some people never forgot it.
The AOO. someone canceling out the healers turn with a whack to the face if you needed healing was a problem.
Channel energy helped with that. My gnome cleric of the lantern king mooned someone to show off his holy symbol tattoo, got paralyzed in that position.. and kept channeling.
Because especially in older versions of the game, the cleric was the ONLY one who could heal groups reliably without breaking into precious potions, and a downed cleric couldn't heal anyone/had to heal themselves first.Between the two of us, Shiro and I have played every edition. We discussed it, and the *only* place he saw it was when 3.0 first came out and clerics became very effective in-combat healers so GMs started targeting them to take them out. It was a small, short-lived trend to keep the cleric safe, but apparently some people never forgot it.The AOO. someone canceling out the healers turn with a whack to the face if you needed healing was a problem.
Channel energy helped with that. My gnome cleric of the lantern king mooned someone to show off his holy symbol tattoo, got paralyzed in that position.. and kept channeling.
Ah, that finally makes sense! By 3.5/Pathfinder channeling was so much more efficient than casting that AoO's never crossed my mind.
Advanced dungeons and dragons 2e had a thing where your spell could be poofed if you were hit. My first rule dissagreement i remember with the DM was if your init had to be before them to interupt the spell, or if you could only interupt them while casting (1d10 was your initiative count, lowest first, spells added their level to the init mod, so magic missile was functionally not interruptable)
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WW has discovered his new favorite vacation pastime.
Mom and Eve have a problem with rats tunnelling under the stables and chicken coop, nesting in the hay barn, etc, so he went to the store and bought himself a pellet rifle. The rest of us play cards, he shoots rats. We swim in the pool, he shoots rats. Today he's actually going to a baseball game with the rest of us, but afterwards?
Back off, ladies, he's all mine.
Dang Texans.
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WW has discovered his new favorite vacation pastime.
Mom and Eve have a problem with rats tunnelling under the stables and chicken coop, nesting in the hay barn, etc, so he went to the store and bought himself a pellet rifle. The rest of us play cards, he shoots rats. We swim in the pool, he shoots rats. Today he's actually going to a baseball game with the rest of us, but afterwards?
Back off, ladies, he's all mine.
Dang Texans.
Wait, isn't that, like, an obligatory 1st level quest? He actually decided to become an adventurer?
Also, poor ratsies :(
Well, this should get very interesting, very fast.
The kids had a weeklong gaming retreat here this week, with their online friends flying/driving in from all over to participate in a massive, 12-person all-nighter on Thursday night.
And yep. One of the original guys who organized the whole thing was sick going in to the event, paid it no heed, gave it to Impus Major, gave it to another person, and it spread like wildfire through the group. And yep, it's COVID.
So Impus Major had it. Impus Minor has it right now. And we've finally run out of the 15-20 tests we had to GothBard is going to brave the drug store in a mask to pick up tests for the two of us.
There's no rite of passage of youth like infecting a dozen people and the hosting adults with a pandemic.
On the "bright" side, neither GothBard nor I have ever tested positive, nor are we symptomatic, so here's hoping a combination of high resistance and low exposure keeps us from getting it.
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Because especially in older versions of the game, the cleric was the ONLY one who could heal groups reliably without breaking into precious potions, and a downed cleric couldn't heal anyone/had to heal themselves first.Between the two of us, Shiro and I have played every edition. We discussed it, and the *only* place he saw it was when 3.0 first came out and clerics became very effective in-combat healers so GMs started targeting them to take them out. It was a small, short-lived trend to keep the cleric safe, but apparently some people never forgot it.
I've played every edition save first and the cleric was often targeted first.
Between the two of us, Shiro and I have played every edition. We discussed it, and the *only* place he saw it was when 3.0 first came out and clerics became very effective in-combat healers so GMs started targeting them to take them out. It was a small, short-lived trend to keep the cleric safe, but apparently some people never forgot it.The far longer standing axiom being 'geek the mage'.
Not to say that cutting off the party healing isn't a good plan, but that's more of a target of opportunity than a rule. And definitely got harder with cleric upgrades.
It's funny because geeking the mage usually leaves one open to attacks from everyone else, as the mage is often in the back.
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Advanced dungeons and dragons 2e had a thing where your spell could be poofed if you were hit. My first rule dissagreement i remember with the DM was if your init had to be before them to interupt the spell, or if you could only interupt them while casting (1d10 was your initiative count, lowest first, spells added their level to the init mod, so magic missile was functionally not interruptable)
Yeah smacking a spellcaster is pretty common.
WW has discovered his new favorite vacation pastime.
Mom and Eve have a problem with rats tunnelling under the stables and chicken coop, nesting in the hay barn, etc, so he went to the store and bought himself a pellet rifle. The rest of us play cards, he shoots rats. We swim in the pool, he shoots rats. Today he's actually going to a baseball game with the rest of us, but afterwards?
Back off, ladies, he's all mine.
Dang Texans.
Hahahahahhahaa
Well, this should get very interesting, very fast.
The kids had a weeklong gaming retreat here this week, with their online friends flying/driving in from all over to participate in a massive, 12-person all-nighter on Thursday night.
And yep. One of the original guys who organized the whole thing was sick going in to the event, paid it no heed, gave it to Impus Major, gave it to another person, and it spread like wildfire through the group. And yep, it's COVID.
So Impus Major had it. Impus Minor has it right now. And we've finally run out of the 15-20 tests we had to GothBard is going to brave the drug store in a mask to pick up tests for the two of us.
There's no rite of passage of youth like infecting a dozen people and the hosting adults with a pandemic.
On the "bright" side, neither GothBard nor I have ever tested positive, nor are we symptomatic, so here's hoping a combination of high resistance and low exposure keeps us from getting it.
Please, Please be careful. I can't abascond with an ill wife, nor can I justifiably defeat an ill husband in pitched melee battle. Please heal up the kids and stay well yourselves.
Please, Please be careful. I can't abascond with an ill wife, nor can I justifiably defeat an ill husband in pitched melee battle. Please heal up the kids and stay well yourselves.Well, this should get very interesting, very fast.
The kids had a weeklong gaming retreat here this week, with their online friends flying/driving in from all over to participate in a massive, 12-person all-nighter on Thursday night.
And yep. One of the original guys who organized the whole thing was sick going in to the event, paid it no heed, gave it to Impus Major, gave it to another person, and it spread like wildfire through the group. And yep, it's COVID.
So Impus Major had it. Impus Minor has it right now. And we've finally run out of the 15-20 tests we had to GothBard is going to brave the drug store in a mask to pick up tests for the two of us.
There's no rite of passage of youth like infecting a dozen people and the hosting adults with a pandemic.
On the "bright" side, neither GothBard nor I have ever tested positive, nor are we symptomatic, so here's hoping a combination of high resistance and low exposure keeps us from getting it.
Well, so far the worst case has been a runny nose and the sniffles, no worse than moderate allergies. My issue with COVID is that it's a Russian Roulette virus: It's incredibly contagious and if you happen to meet that 1-in-1000 vulnerable person you just killed them.
So it's not bothering us, but I'm unwilling to let any of us risk anyone else so lockdown city. Good thing Dawntrail came out last week...
EDIT: By the numbers, of the 14 people I know who have been exposed, 2 have tested positive and 4 are showing identical symptoms but have yet to test themselves. So I think we're going to get up to at least half the group getting it. Which to me is an amazingly virulent virus. Go figure.
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I've never had it, or more likely I did and didn't have any symptoms, besides the ones I wouldn't notice anyway like a lack of smell or taste.
I've never had it, or more likely I did and didn't have any symptoms, besides the ones I wouldn't notice anyway like a lack of smell or taste.
That's why I always say, "I've never tested positive." I've been exposed at least a dozen times, including when I took care of Impus Major after his hospitalization, but I've never shown symptoms. But I always dutifully test myself, so I've probably taken 20+ tests and never had one come back positive. Or I'm just crappy at taking tests.
I've never been tested.
I've never had it, or more likely I did and didn't have any symptoms, besides the ones I wouldn't notice anyway like a lack of smell or taste.
My dad was too stubborn to go to the hospital so I had to throw his arm over my shoulder and almost carry him around the house for a week so... obscene exposure levels. Between the covid and only snatching a few hours of sleep here and there I could not stand up. I've never been that tired and I had malaria. I tried to shovel the driveway because, emergency, and passed out in a snowbank.
When my ex-wife and the kids first got it it was right after it started, Tiny T-Rex's best friend spent most of Christmas break in Wuhan and then spent a bunch of time at our place and then everyone got sick a week later and then a week after that it started spreading across the news about the outbreak in Edmonds. The ex-wife almost died, Tiny T-Rex got it pretty bad, Crookshanks had a mild case and I had a scratchy throat for an evening. But other than that first week when I was keeping everyone alive I was at work because we got a foot and a half of snow in the week after that, so I was literally working, keeping up with housework and shopping and sleeping.
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Drejk, what is this fellow about?
I like it, but I don't really understand. If you have to be Plolish to really get what's going on, so be it.
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I failed again. I'm beginning to think that COVID doesn't love me.
Drejk, what is this fellow about?
I like it, but I don't really understand. If you have to be Plolish to really get what's going on, so be it.
As far as I can tell, it supposed to be stylized to look and sound like Polish rock videos from 80s.
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I failed again. I'm beginning to think that COVID doesn't love me.
Maybe it loves you too much to hurt you?
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I failed again. I'm beginning to think that COVID doesn't love me.
Study harder!
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You gotta stab the q-tip really far up the nose. Get some brain tissue on there.
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You gotta stab the q-tip really far up the nose. Get some brain tissue on there.
Swab like an Egyptian....
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Fantasy Monster: Scintillating Bubbles.
Don't confuse those for giant soap bubbles, it won't end well.
While I don't out-and-out ban sodas in my house, if a parent asked, "Should I give my 12-year-old a beer or a soda?", I'd tell them to opt for the beer.
So it's rather disappointing to see our recycling bin filled to the limit with 10-15 empty 2-liter bottles from the kids' two days of gaming here. After watching a friend die at 53 of the classic "excessive intake of diet soda may or may not cause heart disease", am not a fan.
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While I don't out-and-out ban sodas in my house, if a parent asked, "Should I give my 12-year-old a beer or a soda?", I'd tell them to opt for the beer.
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While I don't out-and-out ban sodas in my house, if a parent asked, "Should I give my 12-year-old a beer or a soda?", I'd tell them to opt for the beer.
"Do the least harm". Given the current medical research, giving a 12-year-old one beer a day for the rest of their lives is significantly healthier than giving them one soda a day, whether regular or diet, for the rest of their lives.
So I stand by my statement.
I haven't banned soda but I don't stock it or drink it.
Edit: now that I think about it Crookshanks and her friends only drink energy drinks if they drink anything other than water and they aren't hard-core drinkers so at the most I've had 3 cans in my apartment after they came over.
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Dare I ask what goes into most soda and/or doesn't into beer?
Setting aside the question of just what mechanism(s) make diet soda so terrible for one, per NobodysHome's link, in terms of unhealthy amounts of sugars, how do your common-or-garden beers stack up against soft drinks again?
*Gestures vaguely to dimly-recalled factoids about the caloric values of old-timey brews in the ages of mass malnutrition.* Based on all the jokes I've heard about American beer, I gather the song is due a new verse or two about John Barleycorn being drowned, poor fellow?**
I'm not a fan of either, by and large. I've had two beers in my life, and see no likelihood of that number increasing, and for bubbly things I'll mostly go through maybe a bottle or two of mineral water enlivened by some cordial or home-made fruit syrup in a year.
I guess I'm a watery tart through and through, though I don't have swords to chuck at the people I might choose to lead various countries. :)
**N.b.: Not that there's anything wrong with that, necessarily. As a philhellene, I will sometimes water my wine - I'm not that much of a barbarian, not to.
Dare I ask what goes into most soda and/or doesn't into beer?
Setting aside the question of just what mechanism(s) make diet soda so terrible for one, per NobodysHome's link, in terms of unhealthy amounts of sugars, how do your common-or-garden beers stack up against soft drinks again?
It's essentially that in a nutshell: The sugars. A 12-ounce beer contains no sugars at all. A 12-ounce soda contains 36 grams. And as always, what we're learning through extensive nutrition research is that the simpler the carbohydrate, the worse it is for you. So plain sugar is worse than unrefined sugar is worse than white rice is worse than brown rice. By the time you get to brown rice, research shows it's good for you, though my last readings on that topic were 10-15 years ago.
It's a fascinating area of research because we honestly can't figure out what the heck is going on, we just see the results. The whole "high fructose corn syrup" issue doesn't seem to be the amount of sugar at all, but rather that they've artificially manipulated the ratios between the various sugars from something the body expects (for example, the sugar from a strawberry) into something is doesn't ("Why does this have so much fructose in comparison to other sugars?")
There's a terrifying study where they switched rats to a "typical" American diet with plenty of added sugar, they gained weight as expected, but then even after they returned the rats to their normal food they didn't drop the weight. And yes, they can't figure out why.
The mechanism by which sugar is killing us remains a mystery. The evidence is mounting significantly. I'm especially concerned that similar to the tobacco industry, after learning that sugar was remarkably unhealthy, the sugar industry actively turned fat into their scapegoat, so the research has all been done in the last 10-15 years. And let's be honest, modern research is horrifyingly rife with corruption and politicization.
Dare I ask what goes into most soda and/or doesn't into beer?
Setting aside the question of just what mechanism(s) make diet soda so terrible for one, per NobodysHome's link, in terms of unhealthy amounts of sugars, how do your common-or-garden beers stack up against soft drinks again?
*Gestures vaguely to dimly-recalled factoids about the caloric values of old-timey brews in the ages of mass malnutrition.* Based on all the jokes I've heard about American beer, I gather the song is due a new verse or two about John Barleycorn being drowned, poor fellow?**
I'm not a fan of either, by and large. I've had two beers in my life, and see no likelihood of that number increasing, and for bubbly things I'll mostly go through maybe a bottle or two of mineral water enlivened by some cordial or home-made fruit syrup in a year.
I guess I'm a watery tart through and through, though I don't have swords to chuck at the people I might choose to lead various countries. :)
**N.b.: Not that there's anything wrong with that, necessarily. As a philhellene, I will sometimes water my wine - I'm not that much of a barbarian, not to.
Corn syrup and sugar! And lots of it to boot!
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We have to be getting to some kind of record here. We just got a piece of junk mail addressed to my father, but completely apropos (it's for hearing aides). So:
(1) My father passed away in 2007.
(2) My father never lived at this address.
So some kind of impressively wrong data agglomeration is occurring. Looking forward to what else I get.
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While I don't out-and-out ban sodas in my house, if a parent asked, "Should I give my 12-year-old a beer or a soda?", I'd tell them to opt for the beer.
Plenty of ultra-low or zero % alcohol beers around these days, too (though most are IPAs, which I don't personally care for)
Artificial sweeteners are alleged to cause a lot of problems too.
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Things I learned yesterday:
(1) My 8 months of, "Well, nothing better to do, I should clear out all the raids in FFXIV," hasn't just made me "better", it's made me very good. We did 1-person, 4-person, and 8-person instances yesterday and in every case I didn't find them particularly hard. What surprised me was that for the 8-person instance we joined a group of long-term veterans and I managed out outperform all except one or two of them. I have apparently unknowingly become a technically "good" player. Not something I'm used to. When I watched a, "What does your FFXIV race and gender say about you?", I thought it hit me spot on: "Female au ra are the sweetest, nicest players in the game. I've never met a mean, or even rude female au ra. But go into any raid and the first thing you'll notice is all the dead female au ras littering the floor..."
Apparently not so much. More and more often I'm the sole survivor of a wipe...
(2) Also without my noticing, some of the veterans remarked that they were happy that Dawntrail significantly upped the difficulty of the instances. When you don't notice a difficulty spike, it says something about your competence. It's either very high or very low.
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Artificial sweeteners are alleged to cause a lot of problems too.
I'm amazed they don't have a smoking gun yet. I knew several gamers who had a 2-liter-a-day habit or more. Every last one of them had heart issues by the time they were in their 50s. And yet correlation ≠ causation, so the jury still says, "Well, yeah, but... they all led sedentary lifestyles with poor diets, so we can't 100% pin the blame on the sweeteners."
But one correlation is exactly that: A correlation and no more. Once you get up to five and a 100% rate, you start thinking, "Hey... maybe this is something more..."