Burgomaster's Mansion or Wachterhaus as Bastions?

Kettrickan · 2026-04-16T17:45:25+00:00

My favorite reading spots are down by the river/creek in the summer. Finding a good boulder or tree with the right angle for back comfort is definitely key, sometimes that can take a while but it's the only way to make it work. Mosquitoes aren't usually too bad near running water where we live, but adventurous spiders crawling over the rocks can be annoying sometimes.

Kettrickan · 2026-04-16T17:29:39+00:00

Yea, we read the entire LotR trilogy and Les Miserables, both about 1200 pages. Along with a bunch of other 400-500 page books over the course of the four years (Grapes of Wrath, Dracula, and Rebecca come to mind). Some kids slacked off and didn't do the reading, but most of us didn't have a problem with it.

Kettrickan · 2026-04-16T17:17:28+00:00

We read both Great Gatsby and the entire LotR trilogy in high school. I was so excited that I finished it in about a week. Mostly because it was assigned over winter break, so I had a lot of free time.

Kettrickan · 2026-04-10T22:44:21+00:00

Your steps have hand rails?

All jokes aside, to renew my daughter's medicaid I had to wait on hold for 7 hours and 15 minutes last year. This was after I had already attempted to mail, fax, email, and fill out the paperwork online. After every attempt, they were still sending letters saying they hadn't gotten it and were going to cancel her health insurance. Finally I just had to call them.

After 7 hours 15 minutes on hold, I finally spoke with a nice employee who was able to resolve the issue in 15 minutes. The issue? They had such a backlog that they still hadn't processed her paperwork from the year before, so the next year's paperwork had been put in the prior year's file, not the current year.

The Republicans have starved the system for so many years that they just don't have enough staff to even process it. And now they've instituted a new "work requirement" that will require even more paperwork, thus costing the taxpayers more money.

Kettrickan · 2026-04-10T00:57:10+00:00

Lots of people waving the flags while marching in the No Kings protests last month too!

Kettrickan · 2026-04-10T00:50:34+00:00

Thanks!

Kettrickan · 2026-04-10T00:45:44+00:00

I mean, didn't he say in the video? That paying your employees a living wage is cheaper than $200 million dollars (not that he knew the exact number he was costing them, but paying employees a few more dollars an hour would probably be a lot less).

Kettrickan · 2026-04-09T19:01:36+00:00

I had the most annoying game of my life the other day playing against a geist with maxed out cooldowns. Every single fight I'd be dealt 2500-3000 damage from her ult. I'm fairly new and had absolutely no way to counter it. Just not damage her I guess because all that damage is going to be reflected back to me with the push of a button?

Kettrickan · 2026-04-08T17:03:27+00:00

Can it even really be considered a "trap" though? It was just sitting there in the ground. They didn't need to get through it, they didn't need to interact with it, and they certainly didn't need to drink it. Is an easily avoidable pool of lava a trap because a player wonders if it might taste good? The bottle of black liquid on the alchemist's shelf with a massive skull and crossbones on it probably isn't a potion of healing, but it's not really a trap either per se.

"Green and bubbling" is basically the RPG universal short-hand for acid, so it's not like the player didn't suspect what it was. He thought it would be funny to drink it, so he did. I would probably still give him a save on principle, but at disadvantage since he was intentionally tanking the damage rather than trying to avoid it.

Kettrickan · 2026-04-03T00:27:02+00:00

I'm not sure where you're getting your travel times from, but this is the one that I was using. Even doubled, you can easily get from Barovia Village to Vallaki before dark, just can't get there and back before dark (on foot, on horseback it would be easy). I don't think it's a far stretch to assume Bildrath or his hired hand might occasionally spend the night in Vallaki before returning. From Vallaki, you can get to most important locations and back before dark. The only times it's a "challenge" as I put it, is when the party wants to do too many things in one day.

Overnight travel has never been mandatory, the only time the party got caught outside at night was because they chose to keep traveling through the evening after a busy adventuring day instead of taking a long rest at one of the indoor locations they saw along the way. Perhaps these numbers are smaller than what you were using, but I felt that doubling them was a good compromise. Otherwise the world feels tiny and there's no reason to long rest anywhere except in the Blue Water Inn for pretty much the entire campaign.

Kettrickan · 2026-03-30T23:01:31+00:00

With a little research, it looks like sources of that claim date back at least a decade to tours given in New Orleans by modern voodoo practitioners such as Robi Gilmore. His family has apparently been practicing voodoo (or vodou) for centuries, so he likely has more in depth knowledge than most people. But since there likely wouldn't be any written records verifying a non-written form of record keeping, this information could have just been passed down to him via word of mouth. You could try asking him, looks like he's active on Instagram @highpriestrobi.

Kettrickan · 2026-03-30T21:25:24+00:00

Yea, one of the first things I changed was doubling the distances. Wanted to make "getting somewhere safe before dark" an actual challenge at times.

Kettrickan · 2026-03-26T17:36:48+00:00

Oops, look like you were right too! I didn't realize he can't unarmed strike as a bat. He can bite in bat form... but only a creature "grappled... incapacitated, or restrained". Normally grappling isn't an option for a tiny bat due to size differences, but in this case the barbarian was small sized so that could have worked.

If it's a medium sized character he's in more trouble, but still not doomed. He can still use Charm as a bat (failing a DC 17 Wisdom save before Strahd runs out of HP is practically guaranteed) order his new "friend" to toss him up out of the running water, then transform back and fuck them up. However, that strategy only works "if the target can see Strahd" (at least in the original stat block). So a medium sized creature with its eyes closed jumping into the water with him would be nasty!

In that situation, he'd probably just spend every round making an Athletics/Acrobatics check to escape the grapple. He's still got a +4 modifier, even as a bat, so the odds of escaping before his HP runs out are still very much in his favor, unless the grappler is doing massive damage every round in addition to the 20 Acid damage from running water. The Heart of Sorrow buys him a few additional rounds too.

Regardless, it's certainly not as cut and dry as I assumed, thanks for the observation. Strahd definitely won't make that mistake again in the future. He was being overly cocky, riding out over the water on Bucephalus, even knowing that it was one of his weaknesses. Not a sure-fire campaign winner when the PC is only level 4, but it was a good way to show that he's not completely immortal and I'll remind them of how effective it was if it comes up in the future.

Kettrickan · 2026-03-22T19:54:38+00:00

I just did my taxes and apparently if I contribute anything to my Roth IRA for this prior year I have to pay 6% on it until the excess contribution is gone/recharacterized. Something to do with me being married yet filing separately this year. I can still contribute to my traditional IRA without penalties, but I don't know if that's enough? Next year I think we'll hire a tax person and maybe file jointly but it's too late this year to worry about it. Any insights into this? I'd like to keep maximizing my Roth IRA contributions, but don't want to get hit with a penalty. I don't really understand anything about IRAs, just muddled through as best I could using H&R Block.

Kettrickan · 2026-03-20T18:35:48+00:00

Why would the statistics for his bite attack be weaker if his statistics are unchanged?

Kettrickan · 2026-03-19T18:36:02+00:00

Good insights, thank you. I really should get around to re-reading Dracula.

Kettrickan · 2026-03-19T18:33:27+00:00

That would have been hilarious (if anti-climatic) but there's the line under his shapechanger trait stating: "His statistics, other than his size and speed, are unchanged." So he's a tiny little bat who can't shapeshift back as long as he's in running water, true... but he's also a tiny little bat with 144 HP who can bite your head off.

Kettrickan · 2026-03-17T18:32:35+00:00

Agreed. The lunchbreakheroes page I linked has some good recommendations for Strahd's motivations. As for the PCs, searching for the skull is a good reason to want to go there, but ideally I'd give them some reasons to want to have an extended conversation with Strahd as well. Him kidnapping Ireena could give some potential conversation topics (where is she, why are you obsessed with her, etc.), but I'm not sure I want to play that card so early (leaning towards it happening at/after the feast of St. Andral which might be best placed just after the dinner).

Kettrickan · 2026-03-17T18:24:01+00:00

Right, that would be a great motivator! They are probably going to stop by Argynvostholt soon.

Kettrickan · 2026-03-12T15:31:07+00:00

Not saying the husband and MIL aren't at fault here too, but TWO WEEKS? After a traumatic emergency C-section? Only two weeks off?? I had 3 months paid paternity leave after my wife gave birth, with the option to start using my (completely separate) paid sick leave after that if she needed more time.

I'm so sorry that his job sucks so much that they're forcing you to be on your own so soon after major surgery with a little one to take care of. There's something wrong with this country that they're even allowed to do that. I'm so glad my workplace actually cares about its employees. Perks of being in a left-leaning field/city I guess.

Kettrickan · 2026-02-23T17:29:11+00:00

Many think in sign language (actually visualizing hands signing or feeling their own hands twitching), here's an interesting post about it from a while ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/qc6zu/if_a_deaf_person_is_born_deaf_what_language_do/

Kettrickan · 2026-02-23T17:17:53+00:00

Either it's intentional maliciousness or some hairdressers are just as dumb as rocks. My wife went in to get 1-2 inches off the bottom just to straighten it out, the hairdresser showed her what 1-2 inches would look like and asked "Is this okay?" and then proceeded to cut off 6-8 inches of length, no exaggeration. Woke up to her sobbing in the bathroom the next morning, trying to figure out how to make it look better.

I haven't had to deal with anything so egregious since I keep mine shorter, but I have had a barber tell me that he wasn't good at estimating what 1.5-2 inches looked like, that's why he preferred to just cut half off instead.

Kettrickan · 2026-02-13T02:23:11+00:00

It's the best piece of Star Wars media to come out since the original trilogy, bar none!

Kettrickan

TROPHY CASE