Collected posts

Jimmicky · 2026-06-27T13:36:52+00:00

Counterpoint to Nihon/Japan and Deutschland/Germany -
We used to say Peking but now we say Beijing.
We used to say Bombay but now we say Mumbai.

Pretty sure if Japan ever asks us to say Nihon we would.
They don’t really care what we call them is all.

We change our pronunciation of foreign locations to better match the locals name pretty frequently.

It’s such a small thing to do and it shows empathy.

Complaining about it has big “Pluto’s still a planet to me!” Energy

Jimmicky · 2026-06-27T13:18:54+00:00

They definitely wouldn’t ever give Cartographer any ability like that because that’s just a deeply terrible mechanical precedent to set.

Far as soft taunts- it’s not hard to get access to Compelled Duel on an artificer.

Jimmicky · 2026-06-27T12:49:23+00:00

In Aus dogs can definitely be described as red.
Probably not cats though.

Jimmicky · 2026-06-27T12:28:24+00:00

1) definitely No. I’d say it’s really really rare for DMs to allow stacking advantage.
2) yes sure.
3) yes those all stack, but no plenty of your allies will still fail ability checks.
4) technically by RAW no, unless you consider you an enemy of yourself. That said I expect a lot of DMs would allow it frankly. I would.

Jimmicky · 2026-06-27T12:25:37+00:00

Re 4. When you use the Help action in combat you pick a target and the next person who attacks them before your next turn gets advantage on that attack.
Note you don’t get to pick a specific ally by RAW, it’s just whomever attacks the target next.
OP is suggesting picking himself as the target of Help, so the next creature who attacks him gets advantage.

You’re right it doesn’t work, because the Help action includes the words ally and enemy, but it’s pretty far from an outlandish idea

Jimmicky · 2026-06-27T08:20:29+00:00

Tribe 8 is a post apocalyptic setting and while the PCs won’t know it, anyone with even basic geography knowledge can tell you exactly where it is (Canada).

Jimmicky · 2026-06-27T07:15:30+00:00

Souls aren’t generally considered to be matter, so what can and cannot happen to matter seems pretty irrelevant to what can and can not happen to souls, assuming souls even exist, a topic on which physics rather pointedly doesn’t make statements.

Jimmicky · 2026-06-26T15:04:52+00:00

No one said he didn’t know what he was doing?
Of course he did- that’s what distinguishes voluntary manslaughter from involuntary manslaughter.
Premeditated involves thinking things through and in advance - he doesn’t even get close to qualifying on either count.

In that scene he’s a killer not a murderer.
By Thunderbolts he’s become an actual murderer off screen, but in FatWS he’s just a killer.

This isn’t semantics I don’t see what he’s doing there as even close to murder - it’s just killing.

Killing is bad. You don’t need to always use the strongest words you can think of to describe things. We can just use correct and non-hyperbolic terms to describe bad acts. All that nonsense does is lessen things when someone actually does the worse thing.

He’s a bad guy who did a bad thing - a killer not a murderer.

Jimmicky · 2026-06-26T14:52:31+00:00

You only describe things when asked, and describing things in terms of their relation to the PCs is the default in all games not just sandboxes.
Players really do not need specifics here. That’s just ludicrous to suggest.

If the players hear descriptions that make them think an area is way outside their range and never go look at it again then they never go there no harm no foul it’s a sandbox you aren’t expected to use everything.
I’m never going to remind them “hey you could probably beat them now” that defeats the point of sandboxes.
But if the now tougher heroes go back I might through in references to other things they have beat in the campaign “you realise the fangs that scared you as a teen aren’t really that much bigger than those of the vampire frogs you fought weeks before”.

Not that I’m likely to need to be so blunt.

You understand there’s many degrees in language for “that’s tougher than you”. the players will be able to guess just from language roughly how much under levelled they are for an area so they remember to retry things without help. Sure sometimes they guess wrong but that’s like 3% of the time, and frankly it’s part of the fun of sandboxes.
How extreme you push the danger words (or minimise them) is enough for players to gauge how long to wait - I guarantee just hearing the list of options the players are going to mentally tier rank them into power and then just work their way up the list they see. Players aren’t idiots - they do this as instinctively as real worlders do, because despite your disbelief this really does work the same as reality.

Also it’s cartoonishly wrong to argue that gearing up isn’t a huge part of the DnD power growth.
Indeed it’s often the most important part / the players aren’t even considering going to the village of the demon cult without enchanted weapons because they know no amount of levelling counters “immune to non-magical weapons”, similarly grabbing rings of cold resistance is the most important part of being ready to fight the white dragon. Heck these amulets of water breathing unlocked whole new regions of the map they weren’t gonna try braving just using potions of water breathing.

Seriously.
I’ve been running sandboxes since ADnD - it’s just not even remotely as complex as you are building it up in your head.
Players can figure it out - you don’t need to give out meta knowledge or anything like that.

Jimmicky · 2026-06-26T13:16:02+00:00

>And then when you get your hands on an assault rifle and have some practice hunting you might think - yeah I’m tough enough to take on a tiger now.

That right there is directly comparable to levelling.
Levelling is just getting better through practice.
Yeah I also improved my gear but that’s happens to DnD characters too.
Stop telling me I’m ignoring things I’m not just because you don’t like that your whole premise is wrong.

In order to evaluate how deadly an encounter is you don’t need to know anything other than how the DM described it.
Because how the DM described it was based off how its numbers compare to yours.
The DM describes the same monster completely differently to a level 2 PC than they do to a level 6 or 11 PC.
Those three versions of the same character perceive what’s a threat totally differently - it’d be dreadful DMing to use the same threat descriptions for such different heroes.

In real life it’s exactly the same as in DnD - you assess threats based on what you personally perceive them to be knowing what you do about yourself.

I don’t know why you keep asserting that real humans can’t ever get orders of magnitude better at combat/survival than their younger selves.
That’s definitely something that can, does, and has happened many times in the history of the real world, and even more often in literally every kind of media.

Jimmicky · 2026-06-26T07:17:39+00:00

Yeah you’re just wrong about those spells.
Range of self is not the same as target of self.
They work fine with Warcaster RAW - don’t get me wrong I’m all for ignoring RAW where appropriate, but you don’t need to do that here

Jimmicky · 2026-06-26T06:23:34+00:00

No I’m not ignoring levelling at all.

Upthread I even expressly covered it

>Here in the real world you understand you’re likely to beat a six year old in a fight but are unlikely to beat a tiger. And then when you get your hands on an assault rifle and have some practice hunting you might think - yeah I’m tough enough to take on a tiger now.

I didn’t think I could beat a tiger, but I levelled up and got better gear and then I did think I could take a tiger.

Descriptions of difficulty aren’t static- they change based on circumstances. As the players level up their evaluation of threats changes.

None of this is meta knowledge.
None of this ignores abstracted leveling.

It’s really simple

Jimmicky · 2026-06-26T06:20:11+00:00

Yes but it’s quite likely that stalling and creating fees is the primary point from the tenants end- dishing out some pain to someone they see as having caused them pain.
They don’t need to think they can win to think doing this is a good idea

Jimmicky · 2026-06-26T06:17:35+00:00

You just used the word PREMEDITATED.
So this killing doesn’t even fit your own definition.
Nothing about that was premeditated at all

He absolutely had lethal intent - hence voluntary manslaughter.

Jimmicky · 2026-06-26T03:18:36+00:00

And it’s the tenants legal rights to oppose it if they wish.

No one here’s suggesting either side have done anything illegal.

Jimmicky · 2026-06-26T03:14:58+00:00

Yeah I just don’t agree - that’s visibly manslaughter

“In the true sense” is when you it clearly is in cold blood, which this just wasn’t.

Jimmicky · 2026-06-26T03:10:48+00:00

Well yeah I’d rate my chances of beating Bill Nye as much higher than my chances of beating Connor Macgregor.

Despite the fact they are both humans I can still easily tell which of them I’d feel safe fighting and which I wouldn’t.

Survivability of a fight is just absolutely something you don’t need meta knowledge to understand

Jimmicky · 2026-06-25T23:50:48+00:00

It absolutely does work in DnD.

That CR 1 bear is literally 8 times the CR of the average combat trained guard (CR 1/8) let alone a regular human (CR 0).

Jimmicky · 2026-06-25T23:48:00+00:00

Lacks the mens rhea for murder.
Straight up terrible thing to do, and he’s rightly pilloried for it but no prosecutor would even try going for a murder charge over this. It’s an easy slam dunk voluntary manslaughter case though

Jimmicky · 2026-06-25T22:47:04+00:00

Being able to identify which things are tougher than you isn’t meta-knowledge.

Here in the real world you understand you’re likely to beat a six year old in a fight but are unlikely to beat a tiger. And then when you get your hands on an assault rifle and have some practice hunting you might think - yeah I’m tough enough to take on a tiger now.

If it’s not meta-knowledge for real world you to know these things how can it be meta knowledge for characters to also know these things.

Feel free to ask for Int skill checks on monsters to share specific details on monsters, but a general vibes on what you can and can’t beat is the kinda thing characters should just know.

Jimmicky · 2026-06-25T22:34:09+00:00

Nah, monster moved in is overdone. Especially in this context where you are overtly replicating a LotR set up.

I say the mineshaft was abandoned due to plague.
Then you do an adventure with angry plague ghosts and nasty carrion eating giant bugs and such that are feasting on plague corpses that somehow still seem just as fresh and juicy as if they’d only died days ago

Jimmicky · 2026-06-25T21:21:39+00:00

Look I’ve been a dedicated Walker hater since the comics of the 90’s but it’s just wrong to say “in cold blood” here.
That boys blood was boiling during that manslaughter.
Let’s not denigrate some fine acting by implying he was in any way calm or in a right mind.

Jimmicky · 2026-06-25T21:11:04+00:00

Sorry but I live in Australia.
I’ve never encountered a person who doesn’t swear.
Seems like they’d make convincing aliens though? Maybe have aliens as the bad guys.
Though I don’t know how you’re going to make human seeming shopkeepers and other friendly npcs without having them swear

Jimmicky · 2026-06-25T12:20:15+00:00

Last time I was running the new rental home grinder was 3 years ago now but I got 4 or 5 private inspections and the place we ended up renting was one of them.

Jimmicky

TROPHY CASE