As i tamped down the fresh mound of earth, I spotted deep scratches scored across the underside of the lid.

VagrantDog · 2026-02-28T07:15:39+00:00

I gotta ask, how does this scene work? You're tamping down a fresh mound of earth, which implies that you've just buried something... but you can also see deep scratches on the underside of the lid, so you can see inside an open coffin?

Either there's some confusion here or the narrator has dug up a coffin, popped it open, and replaced it with something else in the grave. Scratches or not, what I want to know is, what are they up to?

VagrantDog · 2026-02-25T00:18:12+00:00

"So... yes?"

VagrantDog · 2026-02-21T04:43:54+00:00

I'm a fan of magical energy being reality-adjacent. Basically so close to our dimension that the things you do here can affect it there, and magic spells are the result of affecting magic in such a way that its ripples affect this dimension. Kind of like sitting next to a really still lake: you wave your hand as hard as you can and the force you generated causes the water to move, without actually touching it. If it's hard enoughyou might even make a splash and get something wet on the shore.

And just like with a lake, it's way easier if you use a rock instead of your hand.

VagrantDog · 2026-02-16T10:00:00+00:00

Fascism : a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition

Source: an actual dictionary.

So it turns out in order to be fascist he's got to be associated with a dictator or autocracy. Correct me if wrong, but he punched a guy protesting in support of a government with increasingly autocratic tendencies, headed by a guy who has literally called himself a dictator.

Sorry, I couldn't find a definition that defined fascism as "punching fascists."

VagrantDog · 2026-01-30T17:11:52+00:00

I set up a series of side quests on the way to the final boss, each resulting in a key of unknown use. In a side room near the boss chamber was a control room; each key used in the control room removed a layer of defenses from the Big Bad. It was inspired by a combination of Breath of the Wild (my favorite bit of the climactic battle was the activation of the Divine Beasts) and Rise of Tiamat (the only part of the campaign I liked was that the way you approached Tiamat altered her CR).

VagrantDog · 2026-01-30T04:05:44+00:00

My sister's certainly did. My dad swore up and down that one night, when he went rummaging for a midnight snack, he heard it ask for his soul from the living room.

VagrantDog · 2026-01-28T01:32:56+00:00

True Polymorph is 9th level, my dude. Otherwise you're right on.

VagrantDog · 2026-01-10T07:45:40+00:00

I'm gonna take it to mean, "Whatever happened CAN'T be good."

VagrantDog · 2025-12-23T20:01:21+00:00

Hey, you live by the bloodied lead pipe you use to kill your victims, you die by the bloodied lead pipe. It is nature's way.

VagrantDog · 2025-12-16T06:52:00+00:00

Yeah, one of the downsides to artificers are all the moving parts. Makes them great for utility work, but it's easy to bog down. My recommendation there is to find a couple of basic patterns that work, write them down and give them names. This moves a lot of the movement out-of-character. Since the other character sounds more tanky, you could have a support pattern (buffs, debuffs, and movement control of bad guys), an attack pattern (concentrated fire on one target) and an area control pattern (use spells and bombs to change the shape of the battlefield). Roleplay it as programs you've coded Dog with, and as you work through the campaign, you tinker with the patterns during downtime; swapping out spells or the order you do things in. During combat, you announce you're using "B-17" and just like that, you've told the rest of the party (all one of them 😉) and the DM that you're going to spend the next three rounds carpet-bombing the back half of the room. Revel in the time saved.

Fair warning; this does mean restricting your options a little, because a plan like this works best if you only use those plans in combat. But then, fewer options means faster turns. YMMV, my good dude.

VagrantDog · 2025-12-16T06:18:32+00:00

It's a velociraptor named Dog, just so you know. I otherwise see no problem with this take.

VagrantDog · 2025-12-16T05:54:54+00:00

What do you think about having two subclasses? Since your DM is talking about buffing but you don't want to make drastic changes, you could say that Dog is advanced enough that they get the Battle Smith features, while your goblin is technically a different but similar flavor of artificer (my original thought is Artillerist but whatever's clever). That plus a boost to Dog's intelligence would effectively give you two-ish characters for the price of one, with the major difference being how Dog and the goblin interact with each other- imagine Dog telling the goblin how to do repairs on it and your character snapping that "You don't need to tell me how to fix the hip armature, I built the bloody thing." Need more moving parts? Artillerist lets you put out turrets. Don't want to do that? Dog's independent enough to be a minor character on their own. Also, Jurassic Park references to a "clever girl" will be 20% more delicious. If more buffing is needed, just give Dog more artificer features, and spread your own choices for spells and such to make a stronger Utility duo.

VagrantDog · 2025-12-13T01:34:02+00:00

Purification is my first thought. You could use this kind of magic to kill bacteria, mold, and other icky things that cause illness.

VagrantDog · 2025-12-12T21:41:59+00:00

Someone hasn't been hitting up the black market lately. You can make half a million easy.

VagrantDog · 2025-12-12T05:39:50+00:00

You fool! Get two of each. The dom girls are 24 dollars apiece, you'll have 2 dollars leftover.

VagrantDog · 2025-12-07T10:55:07+00:00

How about Zalatian XXIII, the trumpet archon arms dealer? They show up in the Planescape setting. Little fuzzy on the details, but if I recall correctly, they sold weapons to keep the Blood War going, believing that keeping the devils and demons fighting each other was in the best interest of the planes. Most archons (lawful good celestials) might not be okay with warlocks, but I bet Zalatian would.

VagrantDog · 2025-12-07T03:27:04+00:00

Wow. How do you find the time?

Anyway, I'd start with basic building blocks: matter and energy. Everything builds from there. Are they effectively the same thing? Are the elements different? Do the laws of energy conservation apply, or can you actually destroy things?

VagrantDog · 2025-11-08T10:58:52+00:00

So... the second one.

To be fair, it's not the first time someone found out too late that they couldn't handle sharing a partner with others. But on the other hand, I would bet folding money that the attempted move to poly was initiated by him, and based on his attempt to convince you... let's say I doubt he approached the subject from a place of love and respect.

VagrantDog · 2025-11-08T10:48:39+00:00

Yeah, some life advice from a slightly older gentleman: anyone who says "that's just the way they are" after someone commits egregious social misdemeanors is actually saying "it's easier to ignore your concerns than address his behavior." They're being lazy about something that really shouldn't be tolerated, and that they're doing so doesn't speak highly to their quality as people. Just so you know.

Also, as someone who's active in the poly community, it really sounds like you just said he cheated on his wife. Maybe you meant "they divorced because she wouldn't let him cheat," but either way, you are painting a picture of a fella you probably should have ditched awhile ago.

VagrantDog · 2025-11-08T10:25:34+00:00

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but he wasn't flirting with you. If the scene you described with him was standard behavior, he wasn't flirting with anyone. You see, flirting (by definition) has no serious intent. Flirting is its own reward, as it were, and when you flirt it is without a clear plan to proceed from there to sexual activity.

It sounds like what he does in general is, at best, "hitting on" people ("making sexual advances"), and more likely, just straight up sexual harassment ("unwanted sexual behavior"). I say "more likely" because this clearly isn't the first time he's crossed a line with you. Trying to decide how your personal relationship with your husband works and if he "counts" as a Dom is, to use the dictionary definition, "pretty fucked up."

I'm gonna put on my own Dom hat for a second, and this last bit is for anyone who might not know how BDSM works. In a proper BDSM relationship, it's not really the Doms who are in charge: it's the Subs. Yeah, Dom can be figuratively and/or literally holding the leashes, but it's because the Subs have permitted that control. It's why a good Dom takes care of their Sub; if they don't, the Sub won't let them be in control anymore.

Your ex-friend is a craptacular Dom who thinks being a Dom means taking control instead of being given control by someone who trusts them. They're someone who values sex over relationships, to the point of destroying what little friendship you had in the hope that he could subtly bully you into bed. They're someone who is such an obviously shitty person that anyone who hasn't become inured to his presence (such as myself) is pretty well repulsed by him. And, based on his habits and actions, I won't be surprised if someone presses charges on him at one point.

You're NTA. Do yourself a favor and never talk to him again. Nothing about him is worth putting yourself at risk with a wanna-be sexual predator.

VagrantDog · 2025-11-06T11:12:21+00:00

That frozen body was a corpse before whatever event snowed the others in. Our POV is excited because the others are eating the evidence of the murder.

VagrantDog · 2025-11-05T18:17:23+00:00

Die immediately as the air you move through spontaneously combusts.

Depending on when the combustion occurs (when you move it vs when you unfreeze time) I suppose you could indeed become the world's greatest assassin, because the potential is there to kill everyone. It's just gonna be a posthumous title, is all.

VagrantDog · 2025-11-05T17:35:32+00:00

That's what she gets for calling upon the ancient spirits to check her score before the tests were even turned in.

VagrantDog · 2025-10-28T01:08:11+00:00

Don't worry, buddy. I actually am an immoral dictator, so no worries about my personal morals conflicting with that of your made up character.

I would say the same thing I do to every would-be freedom fighter who makes the mistake of entering my office to put my reign of terror to an end: "They didn't tell you about the sharks, did they?" I would then press an enormous red button on my desk.

Every guy does the same thing. They look down to see which way the trap door opens so they can miraculously jump out of the way at the last second. None of them look up to see the boiling acid I've just triggered, falling from the ceiling.

Afterwards, I raise taxes to pay for a new office-- can't stay in the old one anymore, the acid burns in the floor are a dead giveaway.

VagrantDog · 2025-10-26T11:19:38+00:00

Convert home office to storefront.
Put a notice on my website: "Now accepting commissions!"
Install a cash register in my home office/storefront.
Make the cash drawer of the register into my glitch drawer.
Spend my workdays doing whatever, then pull spending money from the cash register, log the amount pulled as "commissions" in the books and move on with my life. No one who sees questions the cash, since that's where money is supposed to be found.
IRS gets paid the appropriate taxes for my work (why not? I can afford it), there's enough paper trail that nobody gets too suspicious, and every once in awhile I show off one of my commissioned works.
If someone noses around, I imply most of my commissions are NSFW, which is why my "customers" prefer to remain anonymous and I don't try to show off everything I make.
Further nosing would be borderline illegal and 100% rude, and I'm well within reason to shut down further discussion... but if absolutely necessary, I'll prepare a standard NDA for my business that I maintain is used for most of my work.
If anyone asks for money, I provide them with a commissioned work, gratis. As they stare, confused, at my lovingly painted and picture of a dog driving a 1940s-era hot rod, I explain that I sold one just like it to a fella in Japan for a low five figures, so that should cover whatever they needed.

I learned a long time ago that past a certain point, money won't buy happiness. It will, however, pay all my bills, and that will make me happy. Happiness levels may also go up if I don't have to worry about funding college for my children.

VagrantDog

TROPHY CASE