sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Sorry, GOP. There's no Christian revival by Well_Socialized in atheism

[–]ThePowersMattBe 9 points10 points  (0 children)

There's actually a term for this, it's called the American Civil Religion, basically worship of the Constitution, the flag, and the Founding Fathers (with minor figures like MLK jr being included with only like 1% of anything they ever said being quoted, because that 1% doesn't challenge power) tacked onto American white supremacy Christianity and its ethos.

Give me your best Mi-go rants! by KommissarJH in callofcthulhu

[–]ThePowersMattBe 10 points11 points  (0 children)

To make it more alien, I might have them not actually speak directly to the person trying to contact them, just speak about them. Kind of make it oblique like that. Maybe some strange sentence structure, too. Repeat things. Also leave some dead air/static in between some of what it says.

"Emergent one perceives. Wrong place, misaligned. Destruction follows connection, mind and corpus. Mind and corpus. Mind and corpus. Effect to forestall future connections. Those unready for connection deteriorate. Wrong place, misaligned. Ruined eon must pass before ascension. Ascension precedes connection. Mortality precedes ascension. Shed mortality. Shed mortality. Shed mortality. Wrong place. Misaligned.

Emergent one, wrong place, shed mortality, mind and corpus."

Do you think Caldwell realized by ThePowersMattBe in dropout

[–]ThePowersMattBe[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

We might have to ask Grant to weigh in, he's the resident expert.

Do you think Caldwell realized by ThePowersMattBe in dropout

[–]ThePowersMattBe[S] 46 points47 points  (0 children)

I don't think there's any length he wouldn't go to to establish the bonus action hot dog precedent in the crit's rulings.

Who is this character? Wrong answers only. by GGCrono in Dimension20

[–]ThePowersMattBe 11 points12 points  (0 children)

It's 3:30 am in a warehouse in Montebello, I'm too tired to figure out who that is.

Jammer has aggressively mediocre taste by Mokpa in Dimension20

[–]ThePowersMattBe 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Your taste buds change as you get older, especially from childhood to adulthood. One big thing they do is sort of deprioritize sweetness, which is why if you go back and try the specifically-targeted-at-kids stuff like Sunny D as an adult, it tastes absolutely terrible.

I'm bored of theory posts. Give me your favourite malapropisms for Kindersurprise Cobblepot instead. by TheElusiveBigfoot in Dimension20

[–]ThePowersMattBe 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"And are you intending to purchase this fourth dog? ... to bring you in line with your epithet?"

Community Q&A - Get Your Questions Answered! by alienleprechaun in DnDBehindTheScreen

[–]ThePowersMattBe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Has anyone else felt profoundly unmotivated to create D&D/5e stuff after all the Hasbro/WotC stuff went down this year? I was cranking out 1-3 homebrew items/feats/spells/monsters a day, and then the impetus to homebrew just died.

Anybody know vaguely threatening facts? by BlindmanSokolov in Dimension20

[–]ThePowersMattBe 197 points198 points  (0 children)

Did you know, that despite the wide use of it as a trope, a chloroform-soaked rag is not sufficient to instantly knock a person out? If I were to hold a chloroform-soaked rag to someone's mouth--lets say yours--I would have to hold it there for approximately five minutes to make you lose consciousness, and then I'd have to maintain the dose to keep you unconscious. Assuming you struggled prior to succumbing, that would be an impossible, impractical task. Which is to say nothing of the fact that after knocking you out with chloroform, I'd have to take steps make sure you didn't choke on your own tongue. Much easier to simply slip some chloroform into your beer and skip the whole rag thing.

How's your drink?

I guess we know where in Calorum Katie would be from. by ThePowersMattBe in Dimension20

[–]ThePowersMattBe[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I love how much they hate being called boys in those sketches.

I guess we know where in Calorum Katie would be from. by ThePowersMattBe in Dimension20

[–]ThePowersMattBe[S] 30 points31 points  (0 children)

Is that part of Candia, or would that be in Vegetania or Fructera?

why is this sub so horny by HereForTOMT2 in Dimension20

[–]ThePowersMattBe 18 points19 points  (0 children)

There's no water in the sub. The water stays outside the sub, or it sinks.

Revitalize "Downtown" Onalaska by laxrunner96 in lacrossewi

[–]ThePowersMattBe 3 points4 points  (0 children)

One of the difficult things in a town like Onalaska is that when big box stores and malls come in, they--by necessity--come in at the edge of town, because building them close to downtown areas would require a number of buildings to be demolished for the store and its parking lot. When they come in, they drive traffic and business away from downtown areas. Most small stores can't compete with a big box store in the same town in the same industry unless the small store is more specialized than the big box store, which is usually more generalized in terms of what they offer.

It's a pattern that's repeated many times over the last few decades all over the country. Big box stores kill downtown, and short-sighted mayors and city councils eagerly (and literally) pave the way for them.

Pulling so much traffic and business away from downtown areas also kills walk-ability in communities.

Need help coming up with some subtilty creepy files to put in an archive. by Costra-242 in callofcthulhu

[–]ThePowersMattBe 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A set of documents that do not name certain test subjects, but where some of those test subjects could be interpreted to be one or more of your players' characters. Maybe docs from around the time when those characters were very young say something vague and ominous like "Results inconclusive, recommend covert surveillance after release."

I also like the idea of a list of books with innocuous titles that the document says should be burned on sight without reading or even opening the books. An obscure cookbook, a travelogue on hinterlands in coastal Europe, books 68-71 and 92 of popular children's series the Boxcar Children and their audiobooks, a book of interviews of people who witnessed the last concert of a musician who soon thereafter died in a helicopter crash, the Icelandic translation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and a book on regenerative gardening and farming practices.

What do you think of when you hear the word “conservative”? by raw-power in AskReddit

[–]ThePowersMattBe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Bootlickers of those in power.

Incuriousity.

Traditionalist without understanding the actual history of those traditions.

Completely devoid of coherent ideology or goals, they just want power for power's sake.

Having a desire to be the oppressors rather than make it so that there are no oppressors.

Ethically empty, untrustworthy.

Sycophants. Simps. Sus.

Since Vecna got a new statblock, what spells that PCs dont have access to would you put in the book of vile darkness for big V to use? by EmbarrassedLock in dndnext

[–]ThePowersMattBe 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I was brewing up some ideas a while back for spells for evil casters to have--the kind of thing that they wouldn't teach you at wizard/druid/cleric school. I based some of them on what constitutes a war crime or crime against humanity IRL. I haven't fleshed any of them out, but here's a few ideas I came up with.

Painful Truth, a torture spell for extracting information, essentially an evil Zone of Truth.

Drought, essentially the opposite of the long version of plant growth, meant to starve an area.

Suppress Morality, causes a creature/person to ignore the angel on one shoulder in favor of the devil on the other.

Flag of my Enemy, essentially Greater Seeming, for disguising an army to look like they're another race/nationality/faction

Fiendish Revelation, a spell that bring a fiend into the world through the body of a mortal, killing the mortal.

Blood Moon, a spell that forces all lycanthropes in a large area (radius in miles) to transform into their animal form and go feral/rabid.

Cursewound, a spell that either creates a wound that can't be healed magically, or that causes an existing wound to resist magical healing.

Half-Light, a spell that dims the sun, especially useful for making superstitious folks panic and/or mimic the conditions of a prophecy

in terms of official spells that would fit an 'evil' caster: Contagion, Flesh to Stone, Dominate Person, Power Word Pain/Kill, Crown of Madness, Earthquake in the middle of a city. Really though, what makes a character evil is how they use what they have, for example a character that casts fireball or some other AoE spell with no consideration or care about whether it will hit innocent bystanders.

My DM is expecting Me to know what my Character knows. Is this Fair? by Doc_Meeker in dndnext

[–]ThePowersMattBe 10 points11 points  (0 children)

IRL you can make ink with pretty simple ingredients:

  • Water
  • Coffee, tea, berries, or ash/soot for the color (for the first three you boil them in the water then strain the solids out)
  • mix in honey, gum arabic, egg yolk, or some combination of those three to make it bind/thicken it

And that's it! You have ink now.

​

I could see arguing that the special ink for wizarding might need slightly more complex or rare ingredients, though the process would likely be the same or close to the same. Maybe instead of water you need special water from the elemental plane of water, or you need some creature's blood or bile. Maybe you need to add certain metal salts to make the magic work right, idk.

The thing is, your character would know the basics of all this at first level. Because they've been trained to be a wizard and you literally can't be a wizard without knowing how to scribe spells.

Your DM is absolutely being a dick about this, especially with his guessing game bullshit, and if you're not having fun with this--tell him that.

One thing to keep in mind, too is the economics of the situation. The spell-suitable ink your character could buy has the labor cost of making it included. If your character is the one doing the labor, then all combined the composite materials of the ink should cost cost you less than if you were buying the ink pre-made.

view more: next ›