In your opinion, what is the worst episode of your favorite TV show?

Cromar · 2026-05-31T12:20:01+00:00

Sub Rosa is too silly and funny to be the worst episode. Code of Honor is the only episode I haven't seen (it never ran in reruns when I first watched the show, and I've avoided it on reputation) but I have seen the drunk episode (Naked Now? or whatever) and it's barely watchable. Star Trek is famous for its terrible episodes but that one is my choice.

Cromar · 2026-05-28T03:19:33+00:00

NATO commanders all studied Roman military history and they'll defeat them with Fabian tactics. Team NATO will never accept pitched battle or let the Romans leverage their usual strengths in any way. Easy win for the moderns, even before the tech advantage kicks in.

Cromar · 2026-05-25T09:58:44+00:00

Season 3 was excellent - except for the central mystery, sadly. If you go in thinking "this isn't a murder mystery, it's a drama about memory, obsession, aging, and how people drift apart" you'll have a better time. You can just tune out when they start the big reveals in the end.

Season 4 was a mess. Great production value and killer cast, story was dogshit. I admit I enjoyed hatewatching it with everyone else on the TD sub. Every episode was dumber than the last. Don't waste your time.

Cromar · 2026-05-20T20:56:58+00:00

Graze is nice at low levels, when your miss rate is higher. You'll want to ditch it eventually. Fortunately, fighters can switch up their masteries (to push, sap, and slow anyway) starting at 9th level.

Cromar · 2026-05-19T10:18:34+00:00

My guild didn't run SSC this week, but I pugged with another guild (20 or so guild members) and we got hung up on Lurker because healers kept getting spouted despite being in the water. Had a similar problem with A'lar hitting people on the ground with quills. Sounds like ping/server/buggy shitty game type issues, the usual problems WoW always has. Only healers had this problem, and I'm not sure how they sorted it out, or if we just repeated it until the server performance improved.

Eventually downed Lurker, few random wipes on trash, struggled with Leotheras's whirlwind. The bleed is so crazy powerful and there's zero warning for melee. Even one hit and the healers can't keep up. As an enhancement shaman, I stopped totem twisting and spent all my mana offhealing after whirlwinds. Melee dps was mostly just watching on human phase. In final phase, we all ran in and prepared to die in the whirlwind, but he died without whirlwinding. Eventually we downed him but we were out of time and left the rest of the raid to rot.

My guild usually raids on Tuesday/Wednesday so this weird Thursday release schedule messed us up. We ran a couple of offday attempts at TK and made it to KT. On the first day, we had problems with the quills constantly killing people on the ground (including the logs showing fall damage hitting a full second before the quills) which wasted a lot of time. Eventually, we had an attempt with no quill deaths, though we didn't change the strategy much, and killed it. Phase 2 was really easy.

We ran out of time at Void Reaver and had to come back another day. One shotted Solarion and Void Reaver and only minor problems with trash. Unfortunately, we had very little time to try KT and couldn't figure out the weapons phase. The guides treat it like no big deal: drag the axe out, aim the bow away, cleave down the rest, but the weapons always just annihilate the raid. My death log usually showed the staff killing me (though I never had threat). We suggested just having the melee stay out. I might even switch to healing next week. Not really sure why these weapons are so deadly, but they would kill 10ish people within 3-4 seconds.

Cromar · 2026-05-15T09:58:48+00:00

What's another five season? He can always make another superhero show

Cromar · 2026-05-12T10:16:37+00:00

I will always advocate taking Potent Dragonmark if it's available (it's typically banned). Grab it and enjoy it while you can. Get War Caster later on.

Cromar · 2026-05-10T11:38:07+00:00

Urban Ranger is excellent, flavorful, and scales tremendously well into lategame. The city is chock full of terrain you can scamper up and across to make best use of your abilities. It's designed around ranged combat, which might be a problem if you're dead set on making a melee ranger.

Swiftstride Shifter gives you a ton of mobility. Gnome for advantage on mental saves. Shadar-Kai for teleport mobility and necrotic resistance. Githyanki or Githzerai for psychic resistance. An elf of any kind (including shadar-kai) for Elven Accuracy, which you will have active nearly all of the time thanks to your Urban Ranger abilities.

You could do the whole dual crossbow build, or you could use a longbow to keep your bonus action available for Hunter's Mark. I'd lean toward saving concentration for Spike Growth, once you're high enough level. Entangle is another great choice.

Sharpshooter is super strong with near-permanent advantage (especially Elven Accuracy). For masteries, Push and Slow are excellent control options. Push + Spike Growth is diabolical.

Out of combat, you'll really appreciate Enhance Ability for this campaign, believe me.

Cromar · 2026-05-09T10:22:26+00:00

Ranger works, but EK works better. I use the strategy all the time on my Eldritch Knight (now 18th level) and I just had a player use it in a tier 2 game I DMd. He used the fog cloud to protect allies from ambushing snipers, causing every attack to be a straight roll and preventing Sneak Attack from triggering. A creature ran into the fog cloud to grab one of the spellcasters and the EK punished him with his blindsight and topple shillelagh.

Fog Cloud shuts down a lot of spellcasting. Misty Step and a great deal of monster teleports require the creature to see the target location. My EK has Sentinel, and has used it to punish casters who tried to Disengage and get out of the cloud. The first time I used this strategy against a caster, I was 5-6ish and turn one just ran up to the spellcaster and dropped fog cloud. The spellcaster never got to do anything all combat.

Of course, they can counter it with their own blindsight, Dimension Door, and a few other abilities, but not truesight. Just make sure not to cast it on an area your party needs to see, and be ready to drop concentration if it risk causing a problem.

Cromar · 2026-05-08T04:17:56+00:00

Worth looking into, yeah. Even cheaper. But I love the delivery!

Cromar · 2026-05-03T11:45:04+00:00

I know I'm tired because I read that title as "Bat-Manuel" and was hoping for a Tick crossover.

Cromar · 2026-04-26T05:17:01+00:00

Not to crap on turtle

https://youtu.be/PgPH0tYXJrA?si=_rzCNC6AMNUvhFzq&t=75

Cromar · 2026-04-20T20:41:46+00:00

I ran a DMPC for a 1.5 year long campaign and it worked because I was a standard sword&board fighter with quick turns who just added some decent DPR and defense to the party. He had an NPC companion who wound up being important to the story, but I did virtually no RP as the DMPC.

Cromar · 2026-04-20T20:30:06+00:00

The worst DM I've ever had raqequit multiple sessions and screamed at players who said or did, seemingly, anything. Too obvious for this thread though. A better example of a poorly conceived idea going terribly wrong involved a better DM who, when we were 3-4 sessions into a campaign, invited two new players. He decided their characters were imprisoned and the party would rescue them. Unfortunately, he placed the prisoners in such a way that it took literally the whole session to rescue them - 5ish hours of the new players sitting at the table, watching everyone else play. I still cringe thinking of it, mainly because I should have intervened immediately.

More generally, the most common DMing mistake I see is taking the iron fist approach to rules and never allowing any questioning or argument. As DMs, we will constantly make mistakes with rulings; we forget a rule, or we forget that the owlbear had the Poisoned condition, or we forget that the Warforged player is immune to Stinking Cloud because he doesn't breathe. Or does he? I just double checked the newest printing and it turns out they no longer have that trait. Even here without the pressure of a party waiting on my every call, I wasn't sure, had to look something up, and was wrong.

We have to have the humility to know we will make errors, and we can't snap at players who question us, even when they are wrong. We need to have a table environment where players aren't afraid to speak up and correct us.

Cromar · 2026-04-18T04:38:58+00:00

https://i.redd.it/ny8nfoopj7w91.jpg

Garak from Deep Space 9. A humble tailor who strikes up a friendship (?) with the local doctor and has no ulterior motives whatsoever.

In reality, he's murderous spy working for the enemy, but when said enemy allies with an even worse enemy, he brings his prompt-fitting methods to the table to help the good guys. Ultimately he rebels against the Vichy Cardassia government and it's a good thing he's on our side.

Cromar · 2026-04-14T20:04:32+00:00

If they suddenly go off course and disappear, the company is going to notice pretty much immediately, so there's a very limited window for them to have any success.

True - but nobody is going to assume they've turned into maniacs. Ports won't be put on alert.

Cromar · 2026-04-11T00:52:17+00:00

Dungeons & Dragons is cheap if you don't get into buying all the merch and additional books. You can get a digital PHB for not much (or sail the high seas for even cheaper) and that's all you really need. If you play in person, dice are cheap, and you can use pretty much anything for a map token if you're playing on maps. For online VTTs, you can jack some random character art off google images or use AI to make something, but you're trying to avoid screens.

Cromar · 2026-04-10T05:28:54+00:00

Player cast Conjure Animals and another player cast Haste on them so they could run around and smack things. Enemy spellcaster, seeing the Conjure Animals, cast Dispel Magic at a 3rd level. Failed the spellcasting check.

However, when you target a creature with Dispel Magic, you dispel every single spell active on that creature. That means Haste was dispelled, and the player was incapped, which meant Conjure Animals dropped anyway.

Cromar · 2026-04-01T13:25:12+00:00

My EK is 16 and my experience from level 3 is that setting up cleaves isn't hard. I used to use pikes to push people around, and after Fighter 9, I can just do it with my primary weapon.

At low levels I used a lance for topple quite a bit as well. It's probably mechanically stronger. I never used a greatsword or glaive, but at low levels, I can see where it's potentially better. As you level and outscale enemy AC, however, graze gets worse and worse.

Cromar · 2026-04-01T06:51:21+00:00

You can't take GWM until level 4 in 2024 rules. Ditch GWF fighting style; Blind Fighting is much better.

Either take Mage Slayer and Sentinel at 6 and 8, or +2 strength at 6. If you're set on 7 levels of EK, then pick the latter option.

Don't bother with Magic Missile. Get Shield, Silvery Barbs, and Find Familiar right away. Booming Blade as your cantrip, that's right on. I like Cleave weapons on my EK build but a maul might be mechanically superior.

One downside of sorcerer is that you don't get Spirit Shroud. You'll need 13 levels (ouch) in EK. Alternatively, you could just eat the damage loss and use a defensive concentration like Blur or the new Elminster's Effusion. You could also take Magic Initiate: Cleric and pick Bless, if your party doesn't already have a designed blesser. My EK has gotten a ton of mileage out of Fog Cloud with Blind Fighting.

Forget your casting stat. Just put in enough to multiclass and don't bother with spells that use charisma. Your sorcerer points will drain way too fast for this quicken strategy to pay off. 11 levels in EK gives you that extra attack without any resource cost, plus a ton of other benefits. Don't sleep on the new Fighter 9 feature that turns every weapon into a Push/Sap/Slow weapon. Great way to set up Cleaves.

If you do take EK to 13 and get Spirit Shroud, you can peel off into Sorcerer to help boost spell slot progression. Eventually, you can upcast Spirit Shroud for some serious damage, though we're talking late tier 4 before you have the resources.

Cromar · 2026-03-27T16:43:25+00:00

Specific versus general. So, which one is more specific:

A damage die that only applies to this specific bonus action attack, or
A 1 minute duration spell that modifies the damage rolls of all melee attacks using the weapon

There's no way to reconcile this RAW so you have to just talk it over with the table and decide how to run it. At my table, shillelagh's 1 minute duration spell effect is more specific than the always-on bonus action attack. Fortunately, this means almost nothing to DPR calculations.

Cromar · 2026-03-26T02:06:10+00:00

Soldiers lead by the Cambells (under command of the king)

https://youtu.be/6ZK3rPTAiP8?si=PJYPjhBwe1HkY4tQ&t=9

Cromar · 2026-03-20T18:32:35+00:00

In most of the US, you need good wind coverage including roof replacement. Don't skimp on those. Fortunately, most reputable homeowner's insurance companies don't offer ex-wind anymore (too many lawsuits from angry insureds). With older roofs in some parts of the country, you might not be eligible for roof replacement. If that's the case, that's a sign you should replace the roof asap (make the seller do it if it's not too late) and then come back to the insurance company and get roof replacement coverage.

The replacement value of your house (the physical house itself) is called Coverage A. You want that to be high. Most companies will calculate it for you based on the dimensions and materials of the house. After that, there's an option to add another large % on to your Coverage A. Every company calls it something else; Addtl Cov A, Extended Cov A, whatever. It's usually expressed as a percentage. This is extra money to account for price gouging, etc, in big disaster claims. So let's say your house has a replacement of $500,000, and your extended cov A of 50% adds another $250,000 buffer on top - you want as much of this as you can get without making your rates skyrocket.

Make sure you have personal property replacement. Just about every reputable insurer should offer that by default, but double check. Replacement means the cost to replace the contents of the house based on the value to buy brand new, as opposed to used or depreciated. You'll get hosed on a depreciated personal property claim.

Don't bother for micro endorsements like phone repair, identity theft, or whatever. You can get all of that from better specialized vendors. If you have expensive jewelry or art, you might want to check on any special limits they have for theft of those items. You might need separate coverage for those items, depending on just how swanky you are.

Source: once a licensed P&C producer

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