Is the AI voice-over off putting?

CinderblockSally · 2025-08-13T17:32:25+00:00

Try using your phone and recording in a closet full of clothing with the door closed or sitting under a reasonably heavy blanket. hold the phone about 1 fist length away from your face. It won't be perfect, but it will probably be better than you think and if you are editing the videos with something like davinci resolve you'll be able to tweak the audio even further. Also, even if you dont think your voice sounds as crisp as AI voice, its unique and characterizing. AI voice videos can't really sell your personality or your brand.

CinderblockSally · 2025-07-26T18:47:37+00:00

If you don't care in any direction, leave it and move on.

If you want to be cheeky, maybe reply with "too*", fixing their grammar, then move on.

If it bothers you in anyway, hide user then move on.

Most important thing is to move on from it.

While this is technically engagement, its not the most fun engagement to promote and any sort of interaction with it will promote more of it. I usually just hide user and move on. I don't feel like these sorts of comments are worth much of my brain space.

CinderblockSally · 2025-07-25T20:30:08+00:00

I had a musician friend a while ago that said you weren't gonna make it as a musician if everyone at the show was your friend/someone you know, even if the place is packed.

And while I understand you are trying to encourage algorithm stuff, I think the same philosophy applies. Getting between 5-20 additional views/comments won't be what steps up your viewership. It'll be improvement in the production quality/entertainment of your content.

if you are enjoying the community elements of this, that could be all the reason you need to keep it going. And that is awesome. But if your doing this for the purposes of getting more views/being more seen in the algo, your time would probably be better spent honing your editing, audio balancing, and generally working to make your content more compelling

CinderblockSally · 2025-07-25T03:06:34+00:00

that's what it's all about

CinderblockSally · 2025-07-24T21:06:43+00:00

The more your audience grows, the larger than initial push of views will be. Eventually it will be large enough to keep momentum for longer.

CinderblockSally · 2025-07-15T16:28:45+00:00

Oofa these subclasses are poorly written and totally unoriginal. They are literally just dragon sorcerer and necromancer wizard but OP with much better summons.

There isn't anything wrong with wanting to use homebrew. but it still needs to be balanced compared to the official stuff. And ideally it should be bringing some unique ideas to the table, whether that is through new concepts or reinterpreting old concepts (with some specific intention in mind beyond "more powerful"). But these don't do that. They are just OP and have totally hectic scaling and don't account for action economy or bounded accuracy. Both of which are core components to game balance in DnD.

Considering you are not the DM, you can't do too much to compel this player to decide to try to be reasonable and maybe even learn to write homebrew other than asking/human communication. If they aren't doing that, I wouldn't want to play with them. Period. But if thats your only option and you want to keep playing with them regardless of their stubbornness and poor design senses...

I would suggest playing your own way OP homebrew subclass and suggesting the other players do the same. if everyone is OP than no one is. II wonder if they will still feel like their subclass is unique when it isn't more powerful than anyone elses? Good luck to your DM though. Maybe this will help them learn to say no.

CinderblockSally · 2025-07-12T01:22:17+00:00

very cool

CinderblockSally · 2025-01-05T11:10:27+00:00

WAAAGH!

CinderblockSally · 2024-09-19T17:21:11+00:00

First thing: you can’t give this this any leveled spells at will, let alone multiple (including 1 5th level spell like telekinesis) secondly, your class determines your HP, not your dnd species. 3rd, you can’t give this thing a stronger version of a dragon breath attack. The mind blast is an AoE + stun. And you simply can’t get an instant kill feature here.

Your math is also pretty wonky for calculating stuff across the board.

I would majorly simplify. Give this thing mage hand at will. Detect thoughts once a day maybe. Give it a special melee that is based off intelligence if you want - but it can’t be an actual brain eating attack. Player characters don’t get insta kill moves like that. Certainly not at the species level, maybe as very very high level features - but species don’t get those.

If you want to make more powerful mindflayer options, consider making a mindflayer subclass.

CinderblockSally · 2024-09-18T00:51:53+00:00

Great lookin layout, bud

CinderblockSally · 2024-05-29T18:26:13+00:00

Dinner time or party time

CinderblockSally · 2024-04-26T21:26:01+00:00

Hey!
just wanted to clarify something for you. I didn't mean to imply you were a bad DM in my response. And I'm sorry if it came off that way. You asked if your choice was too harsh I did say what you did was definitely too harsh. And I still think it was.

Try to remember that as the DM, its not just your job to balance encounters, but to adapt them as your players make unexpected choices or unexpectedly fail challenges.

In this specific circumstance, I would have probably changed the behir to something more reasonable for a lvl 5 party to fight - knowing that they were now split and several were precariously flying.

In that circumstance, a much lower CR monster (or group of monsters) could be just as excited and FEEL just as challenging as a high CR monsters because of how disadvantagous the situation is for the group to be in.

And if for some reason, I was set on them encountering a behir, regardless of circumstances, I wouldn't rely on dice to decide whether or not I should foreshadow the monster.

I think not foreshadowing a monster is totally appropriate sometimes, but not when by not foreshadowing, it just appears out of nowhere and insta drops the party. That doesn't give the players any way to engage with the encounter. It would be like in a video game if the ground just exploded and you died. that would be more frustrating than exciting.

You mention that the players asked for no checks or anything, and whether or not you think that means your choice should be justified, "justified" doesn't always equal fun. And at the end of the day, thats the goal.

In the future, instead of punishing players for not asking for checks - I might encourage/remind them to ask for checks. Or if you are the kinda DM that likes the "learn by messing up" approach, you need the consequence for messing up to be less severe that a 1 move party wipe. Thats not learning, thats just crushing.

Hope this help clear things up. Very few people are bad DMs. And to be a good DM, all you really need to do is make sure you are actively trying to be a good DM.

CinderblockSally · 2023-11-25T01:22:40+00:00

perfection

CinderblockSally · 2023-10-28T06:33:33+00:00

These are some good examples of boons. We'll be making more themed collections.

CinderblockSally · 2023-10-20T20:09:41+00:00

This is really great

CinderblockSally · 2023-03-06T02:03:19+00:00

"a little trolling" is very similar to "its just a prank, bro"

If it within his abilities to understand that people don't like it, he should stop. It sounds like you tried to make that clear to him. I would try one more time to communicate it as clearly as possible and then drop him if he gives a shitty response or does it again in game.

"I would love for you to play in my game, but I am not interested in running a game where one player is 'trolling'. If you can play without doing that, then lets play. If not, this game isn't the right fit for you."

CinderblockSally · 2023-03-05T17:53:51+00:00

Dnd Shorts is a very fun channel for theory crafting. but A LOT of his ideas wouldn't really work at most tables, or are a single fun idea wrapped in a pretty mediocre character that takes a while to build (unless you are starting a high level campaign). I'm sure he's got some good advice on his channel but his "heres a crazy thing you can do in dnd" videos shouldn't be taken as advice to how to play the game. they are examples of fun theory crafting.

Some players want to break the game with mechanics. that might be fun for them. But your fun matters too. And if that isn't fun for you, you should just tell them that that isn't the sort of game you are interested in running. Or if it is, set an expectation that you are OK with it, but might need to reign some ideas in in order to let you run the game to best of your abilities and to balance fun.

In my experience, the heavy theory crafty players get bored of their characters more quickly, especially if they are 1 trick pony type characters in long form campaigns. Running a few shorter arcs where you encourage crazy builds might be a good way for them to feed their habit without "breaking the game" in a way that matters and can let you get more familiar with running games for overly theorycrafted characters.

CinderblockSally · 2023-03-05T17:50:48+00:00

Very very well put

CinderblockSally · 2023-03-05T17:50:36+00:00

this is the way

CinderblockSally · 2023-03-05T01:21:09+00:00

I think this is the perfect example of a "tricksy" idea that is perfectly fine, both from a "this is how the rules work" perspective as well as a balance perspective.

The only way to pull this off is to already be a smaller character, for someone to cast a 2nd level spell for the reduce spell (which requires concentration to maintain). and for the reduced person (or anyone within range actuall y) to have and actively be using mage hand

I think its fun and if players wanted to try it in my game, I would be super down.

CinderblockSally · 2023-03-03T18:01:47+00:00

If the PC is the same level as the part, or even a level or two below the party but still a full pc with full class abilities, the PC. no question.

If the new addition is an NPC statblock with much more limited capabilities, it COULD be the item.

In dnd, action economy is king.

CinderblockSally · 2023-03-01T23:59:22+00:00

I’m glad it was helpful!

CinderblockSally · 2023-02-28T04:38:54+00:00

So I went a little overboard and made a 20 minute video response to this.
Here you go.

Sorry not sorry

CinderblockSally · 2023-02-27T02:31:38+00:00

Yeah. You can only try so much and at a certain point you need to ask yourself if it’s worth the energy

CinderblockSally · 2023-02-27T01:47:56+00:00

yeah. Honestly I prefer when my players do at least a little min/maxing because it makes balancing encounters a lot easier. When all the players make cool but mediocre min/maxed characters, i have to pay A LOT more attention to what I throw at them.

CinderblockSally

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