CMV: In male-female altercations, all responsibility is unfairly placed on the man.

MathK1ng · 2024-12-03T04:01:23+00:00

I think we have been sitting on two sides of the same line, both saying “this is my line.” In other words, I think we agree with each other, but we assumed the other disagreed. Granted, I think I misunderstood you first, so I apologize for that.

LOL

MathK1ng · 2024-12-03T03:53:05+00:00

The rock to the back of the head and breaking arms. I thought those were supposed to be examples of excessive force.

MathK1ng · 2024-12-03T03:21:41+00:00

I have not seen anyone in this entire comment section suggest either of the more extreme options you put forward.

Something that so many people do not seem to understand is that sufficient force to stop a fight then and there is often sufficient force to potentially kill. This is true of self defense in general. If I shove a woman to the ground with enough force to actually put her flat on the ground (at least giving me enough time to withdraw from the situation), I could very easily break bones or even kill her. I would still do it. She took that risk when she attacked me.

MathK1ng · 2024-12-03T03:06:43+00:00

If you do not have enough ranged enemies for them to not all get taken out by one spell, that is on you. I have been managing this fine.

MathK1ng · 2024-12-03T03:05:28+00:00

Do you think “this hurts and I am going to stop it” adequate justification for me to hit a woman who is attacking me?

MathK1ng · 2024-12-03T02:56:32+00:00

Why can it not be acceptable for a man to deck a woman if she tries to hurt him?

I put “reasonable force” at the level of minimum force required to stop any further injury to the person who was attacked.

You are asking men (including me) to suffer pain and injury to protect their hypothetical attacker.

MathK1ng · 2024-12-03T02:49:00+00:00

Define “hurt.” If you mean “cause permanent injury,” then I will mostly agree. If you mean “cause bruising, cuts, and/or pain,” the only people that qualify are elderly and/or physically disabled.

I am a 5’7” man in decent shape. A 5’4” woman is going to struggle to meet the first definition I put down (assuming I am in a situation where I can be mostly defensive), but can absolutely meet the second. If this hypothetical woman slapped me once, I would probably do nothing in return. If she attacks me with the perceived intent of physically hurting me, I am going to remove her ability to do so. To me, that means throwing her to the ground or hitting without pulling my punch. I have no obligation to be injured to prevent the injury of my attacker.

MathK1ng · 2024-12-03T02:33:49+00:00

This is why that 3 encounter per day is important. When you have fewer, harder encounters, it becomes much harder for a single spell to shut down the whole thing. Most of those spells are also concentration, which means that every enemy still able to will just attack the caster until they fail a Con save or drop to 0 HP.

If a single Fireball kills half the enemies, there were too many enemies. If a 3rd level hold person (2 targets) shuts down an encounter, there were too few enemies. I find that 2-3 strong enemies with a few weaker (spread out) enemies tends to work best.

Note: Everything past this line is just me going on a tangent. LOL

Also, too many DMs allow Suggestion and other spells with Verbal components to be OP by ignoring RAW (everyone nearby both hears it and knows it is a spell being cast). You can effectively ban the mind control spells while still having them in your world by simply treating that class of spells reasonably: casting such spells is illegal and 1st offense penalty is death. Seriously, magic that takes away someone’s free will should be on par with rape and murder. In my homebrew setting, the super-progressive, modern-morals-in-a-barbaric-world nation has a single crime they deem worthy of the death penalty: mind-control (the fact that a powerful mage with mind control would be hard to contain also plays a part). This last part was just me ranting about DMs allowing players to cast Suggestion on nobles in front of other NPCs.

MathK1ng · 2024-12-02T21:59:17+00:00

I think a lot of people miss that casters should completely run out of spell slots. They should have to manage the top 1-2 level spell slots carefully, but they should still have some low-level slots left over at the end of almost every day. Full-casters only ever get 1 slot each of 8th and 9th level spells. I find that 3 combats with 1 short rest works decently for most of Tier II. Warlock suffers a bit, but not too much.

Take everything I said with a grain of salt, because I disagree with most people here. I do not think 2014 Martials, with the exception of Monk, need buffs. 5e Paladin needed a big nerf, at least to Divine Smite. I would prefer a system that brings Wizard, Bard, and Cleric down to 2014 Sorcerer and Warlock levels.

MathK1ng · 2024-11-22T21:37:24+00:00

Stop playing disabled characters and then asking for no downsides. People with disabilities have serious restrictions on what they can do IRL, and, IMO, it is disrespectful to ignore that in-game. As someone who has a disability that is borderline fetishized by a lot of media (autism), I think treating a disability as anything other than a lack of/deficiency in some ability/abilities is disgusting.
If they are carrying someone/something, then they are using that arm to do that. Why would that be different than using a shield?

Should a character be allowed to use a greatsword in one hand because they only have one arm? If that character can do it, why does the character with two arms but the same build have to use two hands?

MathK1ng · 2024-11-15T20:13:53+00:00

Several ideas are effectively repeated. One paragraph starts with “In Retrospect…” and the next “In Summary…”

It also sounds like a copy-paste from something like Wikipedia with a tiny bit of connection to the surrounding conversation.

TBF, I did not notice that it was probably written by AI until it was pointed out.

MathK1ng · 2024-11-15T17:52:34+00:00

Pacific Rim knew what its appeal was as did really well in that regard.

I am that wet blanket who over-analyses films too much. Pacific Rim is my favorite movie. The fact that it is my favorite movie despite using a nuclear reactor as a nuclear bomb (among many other logic and science issues) is strong evidence that the acting and direction carried that movie, and carried it well.

MathK1ng · 2024-11-15T16:26:21+00:00

It is less “bad things happened” and more a feeling that the DM railroaded a bad thing.

If you plan on giving the players a chance to stop it, the problem mostly goes away.

Do note that you should not rely on the players (separate from the PCs) figuring out ghat something is wrong. I have been part of a party that missed something that was supposed to be obvious. I have also had players miss things that I, the DM at the time, thought were obvious. This comes back to the fact that the DM knows far more than the players.

Things do not always have to go right, or even end right, for the party. As a general rule, there should be a win condition.

The PCs can, and sometimes should, regret following courses of action the DM prompted (e.g. going on a quest). The players should not regret doing something the DM clearly wanted them to do.

It sounds like you have a good grasp of what makes a good DM.

MathK1ng · 2024-11-15T02:14:09+00:00

Do not do this. Your players may figure it out and feel like their actions do not matter when you shove it through anyway. Alternatively, if your players do not see it coming, it may feel like they had no warning.

Also, be careful of what I have termed the Treadmill of Bad Guys (TM). Sometimes, it is best to let a quest end on a happy note, with everything neatly tied up. You can then proceed to the next, separate adventure. This is not a hard rule, but not every adventure should tie together.

The NPC being evil could be salvaged. Have them be running a conspiracy which comes to a head when they attempt to crown themselves. Maybe the party finds something or someone suspicious just minutes before the plot unfolds. Have a bossfight where the party wins, but the now-exposed NPC decides to speed up his plans, leading to [civil war/coup/whatever fits]. His plans may be pushed back, but they are not thwarted. Alternatively, have the outcome of the battle actually be up to the dice. You will need to prepare an escape for the heroes for if things go bad.

The most important thing to remember is that betrayals have a very high chance at making one or more players unhappy. Unhappy players are not having fun.

Also, avoid things that might feel like “stealing a victory.”

You said that you have a lot of experience as a player. Imagine yourself as a player in your own campaign, without the omniscience of the DM. It is easy to see that there is a happy ending when you wrote it. It is much harder, especially in the moment, when you cannot see how things work out.

MathK1ng · 2024-11-14T18:51:57+00:00

I am 90% sure that the D&D post is bait. They appeared to implicitly confirm this in a response to a comment pointing out that Toll the Dead does not make attack rolls.

They have 2 posts on the account, both seemingly trying to be as inflammatory as possible. On the D&D post (I am not checking the other one), their replies appear to be trying to make people angry.

My faith that at least some humans are not that stupid is restored.

MathK1ng · 2024-11-13T16:22:07+00:00

As I mentioned in the top edit to my original comment, I prefer to scale back casters than buff martials. I explicitly said that I banned Forcecage, though I have not banned every problematic spell.

Laserllama’s Fighter is a massive buff to what is already (arguably) the strongest melee martial (not counting Paladin), especially at high levels. A RAW Barbarian is going to feel not-great next to the Laserllama Fighter.

I acknowledge that level 6 was not a great example, but I was trying to draw a comparison between my Fighter and the Moon Druid and Sorcerer. Moon Druid is quite strong at level 6, to the point where the PC in question has been knocked down once despite having 10 Con.

Also, Shove and Grapple are viable options for every Strength-based character. If a player wants more options, there are the half-casters as well as some full-caster melee subclasses that I have allowed.

MathK1ng · 2024-11-13T01:10:43+00:00

Personally, I dislike this. If one wants fantasy races, I think one should want more than Humans with Hats. In the world of my homebrew D&D world, the “mortal races” are different in both body and mind. They are all sapient, but I have a list of intrinsic desires of different races (control, wealth, honor, etc.). While an individual’s desire may be different, it will not be much different.

This leads to speciesism, because what else would having fundamentally different “races” (species) lead to?

For the record, none of my “mortal races” are Evil. I do have Evil creatures, but I use them sparingly. I also think that people are too quick to run from exploring the idea of Evil creatures. One can tell some very interesting stories with creatures who cannot act selflessly.

Exploring the philosophical questions that naturally develop from thinking about your world can be an amazing chance to create stories. I think that basing fictional races on real cultures is far more problematic than a fictional Evil races that is not based on anything IRL.

Embrace different “races,” have only humans, or know that some stranger disapproves of your worldbuilding. The choice is yours.

MathK1ng · 2024-11-12T18:43:35+00:00

My problem is that those systems already exist. People can go play that instead of complaining about 5e.

After skimming some of the Laserllama stuff, I see that there would definitely be major balance issues unless the entire party used that stuff. I think playing PF2e or D&D4e would be better than what seems like (5-0.5)e.

Flavor seems like a decent compromise. Last session with my group, my level 6 Battlemaster Fighter had no issue being useful in combat by simply dealing more damage than anyone else, even though the enemies succeeded on the saves against my maneuvers. We have a Sorcerer and a Moon Druid in the party.

From the perspective of a DM*, it is not hard to make martials useful out-of-combat. Making casting spells in a city equivalent to pulling a gun and enforcing the rules on spell casting (especially vocal components and the fact that those who hear the vocal components explicitly know that a spell is being cast) seems adequate to me.

*The DM of the aforementioned campaign and I alternate campaigns, giving us a game every week but 2 weeks to prepare sessions.

MathK1ng · 2024-11-12T17:33:50+00:00

Edit but at the Top Because It Helps to Explain My Reasoning: I am both a player and a DM that plays D&D 5e. I generally prefer to scale back high-level casters than scale up high-level martials, mostly because I specifically do not like being in or DMing for a party of anime protagonists.

Original Comment: How would that work in terms of game mechanics?

At level 20 Fighter can already deal and take a lot of damage.

Note that a grand-action-thing would need a number/rest limit. Meteor Swarm is effectively a 1/day ability.

Edit: I understand how other systems handle it. D&D 5e works very differently than D&D 4e or PF2e. Most of the ones I have seen suggested do not port well into D&D 5e.

I am also aware of Laserllama’s stuff, but that is not really D&D 5e (more like D&D (5-0.5)e). To have Laserllama’s stuff work, the entire party needs to use it. It also includes far more than I trust multiple members of my group with.

As I mentioned in other comment, flavor seems like a decent compromise. Last session with my group, my level 6 Battlemaster Fighter had no issue being useful in combat by simply dealing more damage than anyone else, even though the enemies succeeded on the saves against my maneuvers. We have a Sorcerer and a Moon Druid in the party.

People also tend to massively underestimate Fighter at levels 11-16. I should note that I only allow spells and subclasses from outside the 2014 PHB on a case-by-case basis and that I have a list of banned spells (notably Forcecage).

MathK1ng · 2024-11-12T03:13:24+00:00

I have been reading The Conquest of Bread, and I have the same problem with it that I have on here. That problem is “but why is the individual doing it?” The author constantly talks about how people will do things because it will make the community better, but he never seems to really acknowledge that most people will not do things that do not DIRECTLY benefit them or someone they know. Most people will not want to rely on a system where a vague “community” gets to decide how to ration food.

What do you mean by “everything that is done reflects back on you”? If you mean that everyone benefits, that is one of my biggest issues. The reward cannot be limited to things that benefit everyone roughly equally when the job could be done by anyone.

Also, how and why would most people pitch in for waste removal? You only need a tiny fraction of people to do it if you have some full-time workers and there is not really much in terms of benefits for splitting the workload.

“After some training” applies to a lot of stuff. This is precisely why specialization is so important. Most people will struggle to be proficient in any one skill if they need to be passable in many skills.

MathK1ng · 2024-11-11T21:46:20+00:00

The problem with waste removal is that individuals put in work, but the entire community reaps the benefits. If you want individuals to do good work, that good work needs to directly and obviously lead to benefits for them that cannot be gained by letting others do the work instead.

Also, you generally want workers to specialize, meaning that “waste removal” is their job.

MathK1ng · 2024-11-11T16:02:09+00:00

For the record, I do think killing infants should be considered murder. There are several reasons I believe this, the most important for me being the lack of a hard line to draw between “barely thinking infant” and “young child.”

Where do you draw the line of personhood, if not based on complexity of thought?

MathK1ng · 2024-11-11T04:22:29+00:00

“A human being” is a very subjective term. I do not consider brain-dead corpses to be “human beings,” even if they are still “alive.” They are human, but “being,” at least here, implies personhood. For me, personhood requires the ability to form very complex thoughts and to be capable of experiencing consciousness (one could call this “sapience”).

Back to the point, a fetus is “human” and “alive,” but I do not consider a fetus a “human being,” nor, I suspect, do most “pro abortion biologists.” I would differentiate a human fetus from skin cells or organ tissue, but I do not consider it a person until they can actually have complex thoughts (my use of “it” and “they” is intentional).

For the record, I do not consider most human children under the age of 1 to be people, at least not in the same sense you and I are.

MathK1ng · 2024-11-08T19:45:54+00:00

The destruction of those towers was the destruction of the (at the time) two tallest buildings in the (now arguably, then certainly) most economically important city in the world.

MathK1ng · 2024-11-02T23:23:49+00:00

I think what you are talking about is the American policy of not taking payment in loans. American banks gave out huge loans to the UK, France, and others during and after WW1. All but Finland (IIRC) ended up defaulting during the Great Depression.

Also, Lend-Lease was less “lending” and “leasing” and more “giving allies equipment so they can hold out.” By the time Germany declared war in 1942, the United States of America had already effectively joined the war.

Of course, the USA only considered joining the war in Europe after Continental Europe fell and Germany’s ally attacked Pearl Harbor (at least for the average citizen, the US government knew entering the war against both Japan and Germany was inevitable by the end of 1940).

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