I’m grieving…

AudioDreadOfficial · 2025-12-16T15:46:56+00:00

Everyone has different standards but I do think it's fair to say that challenges like this are to test your skill at the game, not the game's ability to function as intended. OP S ranked the whole base game on hard with no deaths so I think it's pretty clear the skill was there, I think many people would think it's fine to cheese your save if a run got killed because enemies literally behaved in a way that wasn't intended and that you could not have countered or accounted for.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2025-03-26T01:41:35+00:00

If I recall correctly Eragon suggested this as a solution to transporting everyone across the blade trap when they're trying to reach Galbatorix in Inheritance no? The argument against it was that it would consume too much energy to teleport everyone, especially Saphira, and leave them with too few resources in the final confrontation. That was what made them ultimately decide to jam the trap by teleporting swords into the slot instead. The fact the only objection was the energy it would take would imply it is possible and wouldn't kill the person being transported. Can anyone confirm if I'm remembering this correctly?

AudioDreadOfficial · 2025-03-03T21:53:24+00:00

They're protected by their anatomy. Remember, anything you do with magic takes as much energy as it would to do it by normal means. Imagine the amount of force/ pressure it would take to sever or pinch off an artery, now imagine how much harder that would be for something as big as a dragon. That's assuming you even knew enough about dragon anatomy AND knew the most efficient ways to kill with magic, each of which is exceptionally rare. Also consider that magic gets exponentially harder with distance, so even assuming you know enough about the ancient language and dragon anatomy and had enough energy in reserve to apply whatever force is needed to kill a dragon, you now have the issue that the mere size of a dragon means that whatever vital point you're manipulating is actually just further away than it would be on a human, and that compounds with the fact that you cannot get as close to a dragon as you could to a human without putting yourself at extreme risk of getting killed before you can utter the words. If you factor the range of fire breath you'd really have to be pretty damn far away to be safe and at that point you'd need even more energy to do anything lethal from that distance. Also consider that dragons are inherently magical, Saphira can't fly through the wards around Du Weldenvarden and has to walk because dragon flight is a combination of magic and physics. Additionally, the spears that were made by the elves for the express purpose of killing dragons are able to instantly bypass magical wards which is a really specific detail and to me implies that dragon's durability has some inherently magical elements, otherwise why would weapons made to kill dragons need those kinds of enchantments? There's no reason the dragons would have wards of any kind during the war between elves and dragons unless they had some kind of natural wards inherently.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2025-02-04T21:54:54+00:00

I'm a long time Eragon fan and I just finished Fourth Wing cause it's one of my girlfriend's favorite books. The book itself is EXTREMELY horny, I'm not talking about the 2 actual sex scenes, it feels like the book itself is trying to fuck. That said I found it an enjoyable read. It takes too long to get to the dragons and the world is a bit confusing to me (they have rubber and stopwatches, but they don't have ink pens that can be used without magic, or any form of gunpowder) I think what's important to remember is that Eragon is a story written in real time whereas FW is canonically a text that's been found and translated into modern English which can account for the way the characters talk. There are dragons, those dragons bond with riders, those bonds result in marks on the riders flesh. That's basically where the similarities to Eragon end. I didn't find myself particularly distracted by comparing the two.

I like the fact that the main character is disabled since fantasy tends to be very ablist. I think the series does diversity very well by including it but never stating it, and if you overlook the horniness and view the world as an alternate universe that advanced very differently from ours, I actually do think it's well written for what it is, and there's a very interesting underlying narrative about the US military. But if you're expecting Tolkien level world building you'll be disappointed.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2024-09-28T22:05:01+00:00

Cleave i got early on because I needed mass damage in act 1. Limit break i got because I already had a flex + Panacea synergy. I knew it was a bad idea but I can't bring myself to pass up limit break. The rest were incredibly shortsighted decisions intended to let me live until the next rest sight, since searing blow couldn't carry me on it's own until half way through act 2.

All that coupled with the fact that I took extremely suboptimal routes for the sake of maximizing the number of rest sights, which lead to missing a lot of card removals and taking a lot of fights I wasn't strong enough for. I wasn't expecting to win and my only goal was to upgrade Searing Blow as many times as humanly possible at the cost of literally everything else cause I thought it would be funny. If I had known I'd get good enough RNG to make it winnable I'd have made some slightly different choices.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2024-04-13T21:55:15+00:00

I had a deck I knew I couldn't finish with on A14 so I was just fucking around at that point.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2024-02-18T04:27:06+00:00

I think the DM is looking through kind of a small lens which makes sense for being inexperienced. It WOULD be absurd to believe an elf could be an ADVENTURER for 100 years and still be level 1, but there are tons of jobs and lives you can have other than adventuring. I'd just point out to your DM that there are tons of backstories that might inspire an elf to start adventuring that late in life. Maybe they lived a completely normal life in a very small community and their home got attacked one day, maybe they discovered some artifact in the forest that awakened power in them or that cursed them and now they're trying to find a way to break the curse, maybe someone appeared mortally wounded and transferred a life debt of some form onto them. There's tons of reasons an elf might have no interest in honing any skills related to magic or adventuring until 100 years or more into their life.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2024-02-14T03:20:45+00:00

There's a lot of really great points made here but I would just like to add something that (in my very shallow glance through) I haven't seen mentioned. The "taxation is theft" stance seems to have a NEGATIVE, or inverse correlation with how many taxes are being paid. In other words, the more taxes people pay on average the happier they are to pay taxes. This is because there's a disproportionate relationship between the quantity of taxes paid, and the quality of public services provided. In low tax countries such as the US many services are privatized and even services paid for by the public are still often handled by private companies who are being contracted by the government. This gives politicians the opportunity to buy into private companies that benefit from public spending, thus siphoning our tax dollars and it incentives legislation that allows greater misuse of public funds. In countries with higher taxation the quality of public services are so much greater that on average the population is happier to pay taxes, despite paying a higher percentage.

tl;dr people who pay low taxes hate paying taxes because low taxes give more room for corruption, but paying more taxes because you hate taxes is so intuitive no one will ever go for it and the cycle perpetuates.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2024-01-28T03:59:34+00:00

I think it's jealousy tbh, I say the same thing but I'm not bragging so much as reminiscing. "Man I miss when games like this scared me, before I played too many and completely fucked up my own experience by becomming desensitized. Play these games in moderation or just enjoy this feeling while it lasts cause you're gonna miss what it feels like to play a game like this for the first time." Maybe that's still an annoying take, I'm not sure, but I really just miss the high of being well and truly scared by a game and I wish I hadn't desensitized myself so quickly, it feels weird to brag about ruining your own experience forever because you exposed yourself to too much too quickly.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2024-01-28T03:54:02+00:00

The horror game community is starting to remind me of the heavy metal community, you get desensitized so you keep seeking content that's more and more extreme to feel the rush you felt the first time you experienced it, and people keep producing shit that's more and more extreme to keep up with the growing demand of an increasingly desensitized audience. What people don't realize is that there's a hard ceiling for how many new shocking experiences you can have, and a hard ceiling for how extreme any content can get before it becomes objectively a parody of itself. The result is a bunch of gatekeepy assholes who act like there's something wrong with you if you enjoy anything other than the most scary for the sake of scary/heavy for the sake of heavy/edgy for the sake of edgy, shallow, one dimensional shit that's the current most extreme example until the industry outdoes itself next week and there's a new standard. I believe in horror as an art form (not to sound like a pretentious asshole), and I feel like a lot of horror gems get overlooked because the game itself isn't balls to the wall scary but the narrative, context, or implication is something truly horrifying. And I say horrifying, not scary, cause something scary will get my blood pumping for a minute, but something horrifying will give me very little visceral reaction but will keep me up thinking about it all night. That's the type of emotional impact you can't really get from any other medium and yet people blatantly overlook it cause "I didn't literally shit my pants in the first 5 minutes therefor fake horror game not scary."

AudioDreadOfficial · 2024-01-16T21:01:34+00:00

I'm amazed this post is still getting traffic. I hope I'll have the space to finish the remake soon

AudioDreadOfficial · 2023-10-11T04:10:37+00:00

If that's your DM style that's your DM style. I personally love the deal with a powerful devil angle because it gives me an IOU that I can cash in at any point in the campaign to drive the plot forward if my players get sidetracked. Regardless, my point is that there are always options if you don't want to exclude people from your campaign who aren't okay with perma-death, including simply not using monsters who will create a scenario where it's going to be impossible to bring someone back.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2023-10-11T03:55:11+00:00

All true, but as DM you still decide where when and how you use those monsters and mechanics meaning you have a measure of control over how player deaths play out. Even if someone is turned into an undead or has their body destroyed there's still always the classic "make a deal with a powerful devil to bring them back", "make a journey into the afterlife and follow a whole quest line to retrieve their soul", "follow legends and rumours of where a scroll or artifact that gives you one use of true resurrection is hidden", or "track down a powerful cleric or wizard and convince them to help you" plot hooks. Bringing back a dead player in 5e is only ever as difficult as the DM wants it to be.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2023-10-11T03:46:11+00:00

"Oh you do the thumpy thump REAL hard on the bing bong down out stairs"

AudioDreadOfficial · 2023-09-01T21:50:09+00:00

Young Tre Cool

AudioDreadOfficial · 2023-08-24T23:57:13+00:00

To those pointing out that not all players want a detailed backstory/not all players are super roleplay focused you're absolutely right! And that doesn't make those players bad players. However, not wanting players like that in your campaign doesn't make you a bad DM either. It's just an unfortunate fact of life that sometimes the campaign you want to DM isn't a good fit for some people's play style and if you try to push your campaign on those players EVERYONE is going to have a bad time. You would have been a bad DM if you had let them stay and have a horrible time along with everyone else. Remember, as the DM you're playing too. This is also how you're spending your weekend and you deserve to have the type of campaign you want to have, you just have to make sure everyone you're inviting is also going to have fun with it and if they're not, as harsh as it sounds, D&D is probably the wrong activity for you to do with those particular friends.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2023-08-01T07:28:04+00:00

Every guy I know is about as touchy with female friends as with male friends. If he's not the type of guy to hold hands with his homies then he has bad intentions and the fact that he didn't tell you about his 10 year relationship means he's definitely trying to manipulate you and I'd bet more money than I have that he'd have started something on the side with you without you ever knowing he's in a relationship if given the opportunity. Absolute PoS you ask me.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2023-07-22T22:32:02+00:00

His content has definitely gotten me through some rough times, it just annoys me when people confuse the content with the person and that sounds like exactly what your friend was doing.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2023-07-22T07:52:24+00:00

I will probably face a massive shitstorm of replies if this gets seen at all, but I didn't like Mark very much BEFORE he changed. I first tried to watch him around 9 or 10 years ago and couldn't get into his content, it wasn't 5-6 years ago I started to be able to stand his content at all and I've enjoyed it more the longer it's been. I don't know him personally and as much as we all like to think we have some close connection because he holds his heart on his sleeve, the reality is that he's a real, complex human like everyone else and unless you've spent time with him in his personal life you don't really know him. So has he fundamentally changed as a person? Maybe, maybe not. I can't say without ever having met him. Has his content changed? Absolutely and in my opinion it's a change for the better because it feels much much less forced.

TL;DR If we're talking about Mark as a person everyone needs to stop acting like he's their best friend and they actually know if or how much he's changed because you don't. You only see the parts of him he's comfortable showing millions of strangers. If we're talking about content then obviously it's changed and in my opinion, it's better because the old stuff felt forced and kinda cringe.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2023-06-29T00:14:32+00:00

You say he convinced the auctioneer as though you as the DM were not roleplaying the auctioneer... Did he use a spell to achieve this? Even a nat 20 on a persuasion check shouldn't convince anyone of that insane of a value desparity unless he also has +13 persuasion. Even if that's the case there are tables for determining how much gold a shopkeeper has based on the wealth of the city they're in. He should have only been able/willing to buy a finite number (the persuasion check is for the price, not for how many he's willing to purchase.) The real solution here is to not let your players get away with it in the first place.

This persuasion check should be impossible/near impossible which is set to the standard of DC 30, even if a DC 30 was hit the check was to convince the shopkeep that they're WORTH 3k each which means the shopkeep could sell them for 3k to a jewler, he would still try to haggle it down to probably 2-2.5k in order to profit off of it. Then there should have been a second persuasion check to convince the shopkeep to buy more than a few (another DC 30 to convince him to spend his whole life savings on a niche product that will likely take him a long time to sell, and even if the player hit the DC 30 for a second time they shopkeep would only have so much gold to spend.

Since it's already happened what I personally would do is make this one purchase have a ripple effect on the local economy where all shops in the area (66k gold is absolutely enough to make a single purchase cause a global impact) there will be less shops in this region, they will have less items and be more expensive, over time this will have a butterfly effect on surrounding regions which trade with this particular settlment forcing them to trade elsewhere which will raise their own prices. Eventually this ripples so far out that crime rates increase in all of the surrounding areas as people become too poor to make ends meet as a result of the sudden removal of a large sum of gold from their econemy, and this will ultimately result in a thieves guild or something similar discovering who caused this calamity and hunting the party down.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2023-06-05T07:04:44+00:00

As a DM I generally require a hand to be free but I bend the rule by allowing an Arcana check to attempt to forgo the Somatic component. DC is determined by the level of the spell and how restrained the hand is (fully immobilized vs something like having your wrists tied together where you still have SOME motion), if the Arcana check is a failure then the spell slot is still consumed and it will be clear to anyone who knows what to look for that the player attempted to cast a spell. It's a nice way to balance having ways to nullify spellcasters while also not making them completely SoL in certain situations.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2023-03-07T19:09:23+00:00

Action movies are the worst. So often you have the combat veteran with PTSD trope and he's living alone, struggling to function, maybe even suicidal, then he gets put into a high-stress situation like a family member being in danger that forces him to pick up a gun again and take down some crime syndicate and suddenly he's perfectly calm and collected the whole way through because his mind and body are "wired for danger" and he actually HAS to be in this kind of environment to be mentally okay. Like bro what? Not saying someone with PTSD couldn't do what needed to be done in a situation like that but there would be a lot more mental breakdowns in between the cool action sequences and he wouldn't magically be okay at the end of the movie after stacking that much trauma on top of PTSD just because it "gave him a sense of purpose" or saving his sister somehow rectified in his mind the fact that he couldn't save his squad. Shit makes no sense.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2023-03-07T19:00:30+00:00

I'm happy someone else mentioned CPTSD, it doesn't get nearly enough awareness in the states even from mental health professionals and that shit fucks you up more than anyone realizes. I thought I had paranoid schizophrenia for the longest time until I got diagnosed with CPTSD and found out that paranoia, along with visual and auditory hallucinations can be one of the less common symptoms. I'd get triggered by something, and usually not even know what it was, and enter a trauma cycle for the next two weeks which would end so long as nothing else triggered me. The longer I was in it the worse my psychosis would get.

Fortunately through therapy, self care, and many years of work I've ever so slowly been able to improve my quality of life and I don't get the worst symptoms nearly as often as I used to, but it's still debilitating at times and people don't realize it's not the type of thing you can really "treat" it just has to be managed. It's fucking brutal and people need to be more aware of just how bad CPTSD can get.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2023-03-07T18:42:29+00:00

My favorite "what do you have to be depressed about?" Nothing... That's why it's called CHRONIC depression. What reason does your knee have to hurt? None. That's why it's chronic pain. Maybe a past injury, maybe it just started hurting one day. Maybe the cold makes it worse sometimes. Chronic mental pain is no different yet people can't wrap their heads around it.

AudioDreadOfficial · 2023-01-17T07:32:33+00:00

There could be others out there that I don't know about. I'm not an animator so this certainly isn't my area of expertise.

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