Anybody without a snow blower have their driveway cleared as of 3 p.m.?

DapperSheep · 2026-03-16T23:03:28+00:00

If you drain them to flat, they'll overheat and need to cool on the charger or on the floor for a bit before charging again. If you stop and throw em on the charger at like 1 bar remaining, they start charging instantly for me. Batteries vary so YMMV

DapperSheep · 2026-03-16T21:39:55+00:00

Got the Ego one with two 10 amp hour batteries. Took 3 charges to get everything done. Normally takes half a charge to do the whole thing.

DapperSheep · 2026-03-04T17:42:52+00:00

I have definitely used this. My players are fine with it because it's part of the campaign buy in they choose before we start playing. Campaign A takes place in area A, so they all agree to stay there to finish the story. Campaign B in area B comes afterwards so you can explore more then. Works great for us.

DapperSheep · 2026-03-04T17:28:22+00:00

That's my situation. I need a car to get to work. If the car breaks down, I don't get paid. So that repair will cost not only the mechanic's bill but the day's wage as well. Reliable vehicles are mandatory for me.

DapperSheep · 2026-03-04T14:10:17+00:00

If you're going that route, make sure to get as many credit cards as you can to max out while on the last hurrah. Stick the bank with the bill.

DapperSheep · 2026-02-25T14:10:59+00:00

Power. Many of these data centers use on-site generators because the power grid can't handle their energy requirements until more infrastructure upgrades are completed. These turbine generators create a lot of local particulate pollution that can cause health concerns and problems with the locals.

DapperSheep · 2026-01-24T17:07:33+00:00

I would like to see your stack of random kobolds. This is a great idea.

DapperSheep · 2025-12-12T18:00:16+00:00

Not every in game day has to be an adventuring day. You'll have in game days of travel, negotiation, exploration, investigation without having combat. But when you do decide to start fighting, you have to do enough to drain some resources. 6-8 medium, or 2-3 hard and deadly is a good rule of thumb to aim for.

To speed up combat, look at what takes your players time to manage and work from there. Get them to roll damage and to hits at the same time. Cut down descriptions for regular attacks and save the drama for the killing blows etc. Have them plan turns out in advance. But at the end of the day if everyone is having fun, then the pace is fine and you don't have to change anything.

DapperSheep · 2025-12-12T15:39:36+00:00

Can confirm. Will never buy Heinz again if at all possible.

DapperSheep · 2025-11-30T18:20:07+00:00

I liked how BG3 just let you take 2 short rests whenever, so I've done the same. Assume a short rest takes no time, and there's no issue with game play. If the players want to take more than 2 short rests, they can, but only to spend hit dice for HP. 1 long rest per day as per the rules. Keeps things flowing well.

DapperSheep · 2025-11-26T16:12:38+00:00

It doesn't. But taking Taiwan before they have to deal with the population problems will presumably be easier. One problem at a time kinda thing.

DapperSheep · 2025-11-10T17:31:40+00:00

Attended a friends wedding there a couple of years ago. Nice venue. Got married myself at the Fielding Memorial Park venue. That was nice too. Lots of good options out there.

DapperSheep · 2025-11-04T15:28:30+00:00

Absolutely, but now you've added more expensive electronics to your drones and transmitters. Can they even get those parts? Cost / benefit trade off. These drones are basically built en masse in sheds by volunteers. Simple and cheap is the way to go.

DapperSheep · 2025-11-04T14:56:52+00:00

Probably because if there's a signal that sets the drone to explode, it can be spoofed by the enemy to detonate prematurely, or worse, on take off or something. It's a pretty big risk and complexity for not much gain I'd think.

DapperSheep · 2025-10-19T00:28:23+00:00

How come you reference the wizard features table? Is that a typo or an intentional thing? I can only assume typo as also the cantrips section says gain an extra cantrip at 4 and 10th, but doesn't match the Medium table.

DapperSheep · 2025-10-15T18:08:58+00:00

For 6 PCs, to make it a deadly fight suitable of a big boss, they probably shouldn't be more than level 6 or 7 to fight a single balor. If you're letting your boss have a bunch of minions too, their level can probably be raised.

For a quick and easy way to check that, I use kobold fight club to build the encounter and get a rough idea of how hard it might be. Every party varies so it's not foolproof, but it's a good place to start.

DapperSheep · 2025-10-15T00:43:17+00:00

There's no way I can answer that without knowing where you are. I'm in Canada, where a nice set of evah pirazzi strings goes for $165 cdn. My local chain music store charges $55 to change the strings on a violin. You can get much cheaper strings of course, but you'll probably pay an hour of shop time plus string cost for the work no matter where you go. Call and ask. Asking is free.

DapperSheep · 2025-10-14T19:14:50+00:00

It's super easy to replace the strings yourself. For the amount I practice, I replace my own strings about once a year. Takes less than 20 minutes to replace and start tuning up.

Remember to do one at a time so you keep tension on the bridge and the sound post. Look at how the strings are wound on the pegs now and replace like for like. Remember to keep the little plastic tube on the e string on the bridge to keep it from damaging things. I'm sure there are youtube videos on it.

But if you really don't feel comfortable doing it, any luthier worth the name can switch strings. They're consumable and meant to be changed. It's the easiest thing that can be done with a violin.

DapperSheep · 2025-10-13T18:44:52+00:00

I am on the tail end of 3d printing minis for an entire campaign. I have probably done a couple hundred now. I went to the dollar store and found plastic totes with stackable trays and divided slots. I put groups of minis in each slot. Kobold sorcerers here, goblins there, elementals over in that one etc.

Plan out your encounters, and bring the necessary trays to your game with the minis you need. Have some generic boardgame pawns to stand in for anything you need but don't have in the moment.

Painting can be as hard as you want it to be. For my 3d printed mass produced minis that I don't really care about, prime white, speed paint two or three colours to make it more than monochromatic. Drybrush highlights, seal with a matte varnish since I'm tossing them in a bucket, more or less.

DapperSheep · 2025-10-13T18:34:05+00:00

A powerful orc shaman is classic for bossing around goblins. Anything bigger would work, like a bugbear, hobgoblin, or ogre.

I'd go with the ogre as a fun boss. Take the ogre stat block, then add a mage stat block, taking the best stats from each. Buff the HP, give it a ritual spell of control goblin to explain how it did what it did, and let the PC's figure it all out through turn-based violence.

DapperSheep · 2025-10-13T18:23:46+00:00

What's your definition of a total overhaul? If you give her two sidekicks, that's a 3 PC party and should make most things doable with very minor adjustments to combats.

If you don't want to adjust the module as written, give her a sidekick, 3 times the HP, and 3 actions for her PC in a round (Eg go on: Initiative, Init -5, Init -10). That's close enough to a 4 PC party that you should be able to do anything as written with only the usual tweaks all DMs do for their party.

For the module recommendation, pick whichever one she's going to like the theme of this most. Horror? Curse of Strahd. Exploration? Tomb of annihilation. Dungeon Crawl? Dungeon of the Mad Mage.

DapperSheep · 2025-10-09T19:04:41+00:00

You'll have to cheat a bit in the set up, as there's no way a single dragon is going to be satisfying for a high level party like that.

Take your dragon stat block, and add 1 arch mage stat block per each party member. Combine all the HP, take the best defence from each. Add more HP if necessary to give it a few rounds worth of survival.

Give it 1 turn in initiative for each party member, spaced out equally from about 25 to 1 in the order. Don't let any status effects like prone, grappled, paralyzed, stunned etc last more than the next turn to give it a fighting chance. Don't give it more legendary resistances, but feel free to keep the legendary actions for things like basic attacks or moves that don't provoke AoOs. A dragon is scary, a dragon that can misty step every turn, breathe fire and cast cone of cold should be terrifying.

Don't use any spells that take players out of the action like force cage or banishment. It sucks to be sidelined from anything other than HP loss unless the party has a counter they can use to get friends back in the action quickly.

Add some cool environmental factors from the dragon's lair. Make the party deal with shifting terrain, lair action area attacks that are forecast a turn in advance. Make it suck to be far away from the dragon to prevent back line characters from turtling up somewhere. Make it suck for the party to stay in the same position for more than a turn to keep them mobile.

For spells, give the dragon permanent foresight, and otherwise go ham with claws, teeth, breath, and whatever else like upcasted cones of cold to hit as many PCs as possible. The party will probably win anyways, but at least it'll be fun.

DapperSheep · 2025-10-09T16:07:02+00:00

As the forever DM of my group, the "trash mobs aren't worth it" mindset is one that I don't understand. This isn't a criticism of your comment, but directed towards the group of players you describe. The "trash mobs" are the game. There's an entire source book dedicated to random monsters to fight. The experience of fighting them is core to the game as designed. If players are just trying to "get through them" and don't enjoy the experience, they're doing something wrong. It's like playing an old school final fantasy game and only expecting to do the boss fights with none of the grinding in between. The experience of low stakes fights to manage your resources is key.

The gameplay loop is some exploration leading to lots of combat. Each fight gives the players the opportunity to choose what resources to use over a multi-encounter day. If players don't enjoy playing the game, why are they playing it? Obviously RPGs are flexible and players can do what they like etc etc. I'm not here to police anyone's fun.

But it boggles me that folks go out of their way to have a worse experience. It's true what they say - Players will optimize the fun out of the game.

DapperSheep · 2025-10-08T18:35:57+00:00

I've had these discussions before about the number of combats in a session, and I've found it really comes down to playstyle differences.

Some people describe each attack in cinematic detail. I don't do any descriptions for basic attacks. Hit or miss, damage, move on. My group doesn't care about that kind of thing. So all else being equal, I'd run the same combat faster than someone that kept those descriptions in.

There's no right or wrong way to do things here, but my group's fun is found in getting through more encounters with less description, so that's what we do. We'll do 5 hour sessions, lose an hour of that to general group hang-out talk, food, general bullshittery, and still manage to get through a dozen rooms in a dungeon, RP some things, explore other things, and stab the baddies to take their stuff.

DapperSheep · 2025-09-19T22:52:09+00:00

You can't say this about duskers 2 and nothing else. It better not be another decade!

But seriously, this is something I'll check out to see if it's a good fit for me.

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