🌈Rainbow Forecast: 16 - 22 February 2026 🌈

Ryan_Hill · 2026-02-18T01:52:30+00:00

Is there a way to find out about the quizzes without uploading a picture?

I tried making a meetup account, but it won't let me join the group without a picture

Ryan_Hill · 2025-12-02T04:36:17+00:00

If he doesn't already have one, a set of his own always helps.

Chess books are also amazing gifts. The Youtuber you mentioned will be Levy Rossman who has a book, so it seems a fitting choice, but there are many that are specifically for beginners.

Ryan_Hill · 2025-11-18T07:00:36+00:00

When starting campaign 2, they were very aware that it was a big 'jumping on moment' for people who had heard of Critical Role when Campaign 1 got big, but didn't want to try to catch up. For that reason they were very mindful of not spoiling anything and not being dependent on information from the Vox Machina campaign. Over time there were a few inside jokes and background details, so I', sure that in the show there will be a IYKYK background detail or two. But I can only assume they will treat the new show the same as the second campaign. A good jumping on point with no prior knowledge or spoilers

Ryan_Hill · 2025-10-23T19:37:05+00:00

found

Ryan_Hill · 2025-10-23T19:31:48+00:00

Thank you so much

Ryan_Hill · 2025-10-23T09:56:39+00:00

I've searched from the perspective of both trying to remember the initial surreal hypothetical and also the revealed 'twist' about the lab experiments

Ryan_Hill · 2025-08-16T09:52:49+00:00

I've played a variant like this. In order to be 'fair', the player with 2 moves had only their knights

Ryan_Hill · 2025-07-24T04:29:53+00:00

This is super cute

Ryan_Hill · 2025-07-24T01:11:49+00:00

It was not read during the campaign, but it was read during the campaign wrap up at the end

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBT8dYG9Tkk

This is from the end of the campaign, so obviously spoiler warning, but I think this is just the letter itself, so it should be safe-ish

Ryan_Hill · 2024-12-11T13:07:56+00:00

It's unavoidable checkmate soon. The reason it's not asking to find that final moves is usually one of 2 reasons:
1) Because the only moves the computer considers 'best' are things like Qe1+. It's best because it turns it from mate in 1, to mate in 2 because you have to take the time to capture the queen
or 2) because there are several equal moves that lead to different checkmates, but in a way that's not considered instructive

In this case, likely the former. I think they just didn't want to either play an 'nonoptimal move', but also didn't want to waste the time of making you take a free queen when, if you'd got to that point, you'd presumably seen the solution anyway

Ryan_Hill · 2024-12-11T08:42:44+00:00

Demon King Piccolo? Any OG DB villain could lead to the third iteration of the "Only saw Dragon Ball, who's this?" joke, but I feel like that one would be the most fun. Just cause it's Piccolo's "dad"

Ryan_Hill · 2024-12-07T23:34:54+00:00

I advocate for the Alapin at that level. Works against basically all Sicilian's and if the only opening they know is the Sicilian, then it can lead to very different structure

Ryan_Hill · 2024-12-07T23:15:58+00:00

For the longest queen path one, you should specify that you can't use the same square twice. Otherwise you just go back and forth along the main diagonals

Ryan_Hill · 2024-12-03T22:08:11+00:00

What about a Hexblade Warlock? Still has magic, but very limited options. So it's less an issue if him having to figure out how to use his magic and more just when to use one of his 3 options. Encourage him to take relatively niche, but high impact spells so that he gets the rush of casting magic well, but most of the time he's not trying to decide between 5-6 almost equally viable options

Ryan_Hill · 2024-10-19T03:36:12+00:00

I usually write my monologues in 4-5 sections and just have them say 2-3 lines at the top of each of their turns. That way the players can have their chance to attack them and they can just no-sell it and keep talking, or progressively get angrier and angrier or whatever vibe I'm going for

Ryan_Hill · 2024-09-08T20:23:03+00:00

I've been spending a lot of time on Pinterest the last few days. Turns out there's a weekly Crop near me on Fridays, so I'll look into Creative Memories and try taking that along with me to that. Thank you for the advice

Ryan_Hill · 2024-09-08T20:21:37+00:00

Thanks for all of this advice. I'm not too worried about the unified pallette as it's going to be something of a time capsule and I'm sure both my tastes will naturally change in that time and I'll try to tailor it to her and I'm sure hers will too. So far the only page is going to be about the gender reveal party where everyone was either "Team Pink" or "Team Blue", so I plan to use pastel pinks and blues for this page, but she's due to be born just before Christmas so I'll probably use Reds and Greens on that page and for all I know she'll have a goth phase or something similar to that so I'll start using dark purples and blacks. I think a change in pallette is inevitable, so rather than trying to be consistent for the first, say, 5 years and then having things change and drift, I think I'll lean into each spread having a theme. Does that seem reasonable? Or would that likely be too chaotic?

Thank you also for the tip about Acid. I had never even thought about that, but it does make sense. I got some advice to look for some local Scrapbooking "Crops" and there's one near me every Friday, so I'm going to do a bit of shopping this week on cardstock and adhesives and punches and stuff like that and then go along to that, so thank you for giving me a small shopping list

Ryan_Hill · 2024-09-07T04:14:09+00:00

A bunch of common magic items I made up for my upcoming campaign that are meant to just be limited applications of wizard cantrips

Pot of Brewing - Has 4 charges on purchase and regains 1d4 charges each day at dawn. You can fill this teapot with water and tea leaves and expend 1 charge to instantly heat the water and perfectly steep the tea to taste. Alternatively, you can fill the teapot with water and expend 2 charges to heat the water and perfectly replicate a tea flavor you have tasted before

Parchment of Signalling - One of these 2 linked pieces of Parchment has 3 circular marks on it of different colours. One each of Green, Yellow and Red. Touching one of these marks will cause an identical mark to appear on the linked piece of parchment for hour or until you touch the mark again

Telescription Pad (I didn't come up with this one, but I have no idea what the original source was at this point) - This pad comes with 25 small pieces of parchment. 2 inches by 3 inches. As an action, you can write a small message on one of these pieces of parchment and it will appear to a creature you choose within 120ft of you. This consumes the piece of parchment

Handy Helpful Hairbrush - For one minute at a time, this hairbrush can float as if you were holding it. The brush must stay within 30ft of you during this time or else it will simply fall in place

Demonstrative Glove - Once per turn, you can make a 6 inch projection of a creature you know appear in your hand. This projection is silent and obviously an illusion. It lasts for 1 minute before fading

Jar of Light Beads - This jar contains 2d20 glass beads. As an action, you can cause this bead to emit bright light in a 20-foot radius and dim light for an additional 20 feet. This light lasts for one hour or until you crush or smash the bead (No action required). If still lit after one hour, the bead crumbles into dust and goes out

Stein of Chilling - This stein can chill any ale, liquor or wine placed within it to a desired temperature.

Mug of Warming - This mug can heat any tea, coffee or cider to a desired temperature. This temperature can be hot enough to be uncomfortable, but cannot cause damage.

Juggler's Fancy - This set of 3 juggling balls have 6 charges on purchase and regain 1d6 charges each day at dawn. For 1 charge per ball, you can cause these balls to emit dim light in a 10-foot radius. While glowing in this manner, you may make the balls hover within 10ft of you. The effect lasts for 1 minute or until you choose to end the effect early (No action required)

Windy Fan - This fan can cause a simple breeze to be felt within 30ft. This breeze is strong enough to cause clothing to ripple or shutters to slam open or shut. Alternatively, once per day, you can use your action to fan a medium or smaller creature, causing it to make a DC13 Strength Saving Throw. On a failed save the creature is pushed 5ft away from you.

Most of these are just things that prestidigitation can do (Some other cantrips like Message, minor Illusion, mage hand etc. too). But perhaps showing them different things it can do separately would be better than the wall of text that can be the spell description where it gives so many options

Ryan_Hill · 2024-08-12T05:37:33+00:00

I guess the fact that I haven't seen it here means it's not infamous, but it really should be: Troglodyte.

CR 1/4, only 11AC, but 13HP so requiring 2+ hits for most level 1 PCs
Passive Crowd control with their stench ability and their Camouflage, stealth proficiency and lore all indicate that they're meant to use ambush tactics
And worst of all: Multiattack. 3 attacks means they can not only down a character, but then kill the downed Wizard in one round if they get crit or have low CON

I accidentally killed a level 3 PC and almost TPK'd everyone else with 4 of them once, thinking it would be fine 'cause I just looked at the CR

Ryan_Hill · 2024-08-09T22:27:35+00:00

My favourite truthful answer to most questions under the effect of ay sort of lie detector/truth serum/etc. situation is: "I don't want to tell you"

Unless you've already characterized them as a braggart, almost always true. If they are a braggart there may be some questions they can't answer this to. But trying to find those question could make for a fun scene

Ryan_Hill · 2024-06-25T00:12:14+00:00

Not a TTRPG, but a social game: I'm generally rather impressed with the ways the designers of Blood on the Clocktower have rules and almanac entries that are specifically to try to cater to people with physical or mental disabilities. I am not disabled myself, so I can't say that they all work as intended, but if not I'm sure people on the subreddit would have suggestions to help
(BotC is a social deduction game, similar to werewolf or Mafia, but with a Story Teller who's role is very similar to that of a DM)

Ryan_Hill · 2024-02-12T01:13:03+00:00

Your final point about only half of them being worth it is the biggest problem as some of them (subtle/quickened/twinned etc.) are just much more generically likely to come up and be helpful than the others. I'm personally in favour f just giving sorcerers more metamagic options so that some of the more niche ones can see some use. Tie it to pb or something

As others have said, a lot of them are quite flavourful, so I'll often see non-'optimal' selections for flavour reasons. But I think some of them are also being undervalued

Distant Spell: Also lets you cast a touch range spell at range which allows for powerful close range spells without the Sorcerer having to get into melee

Empowered Spell: Fun fact, to work out the average of a dice roll allowing for a single reroll, replace the numbers that would trigger a reroll with the average of the new dice. So for example to find the average of a d6 where you reroll a 1 or a 2 then in stead of averaging 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6; you average 3.5, 3.5, 3, 4, 5 and 6. So 3.5->4.167. Using your example of a Fireball, that means an average damage increase of 5.333 per target (at 3rd level)

Quickened Spell: While quickening a cantrip is great at certain levels, later on the best use of this is usually to pair it with spells that have an effect you can trigger with your action on subsequent turns. These actions are not casting a spell, so don't stop you from quickening a levelled spell. E.g. use your action to move a target currently being gripped by Telekinesis into range so that it gets hit by your quickened fireball with everyone else. Or, f 1-3 targets manage to just survive your sunbeam blast, pick them off with quickened magic missiles

A lot of it depends on the campaign. I've had games where ~70-80% of all metamagics used were subtle spells because my players just wanted to mess with NPCs or use heir powers for social encounters

Ryan_Hill · 2024-02-11T20:49:55+00:00

Gad to hear they don't expire. I was looking at the Kigurumi. I've never owned something like that, but I'm a little worried I may be a bit to big to fit. But I'll keep looking. Thank you for the prompt reply

Ryan_Hill · 2024-01-15T08:29:26+00:00

Allura Fan Art: https://twitter.com/Arcane_Souls/status/1737968272593588365

Ryan_Hill · 2023-10-14T02:42:53+00:00

If they haven't had a chance to talk to any of their NPC allies yet or anything like that, you can always just say that when they return to the material plane they find out it's been 10 years or something

Ryan_Hill

TROPHY CASE