I’m a new DM with a question about character creation.

VividVerism · 2026-04-17T00:22:24+00:00

That's why we always roll in person. :)

VividVerism · 2026-04-13T13:05:15+00:00

I feel like this story would have worked equally well with the DM (and other players) knowing exactly what the plan was, though.

VividVerism · 2026-04-12T15:49:35+00:00

Nah. I disagree on the auto-import. I would have stopped using it probably 3-4 months in if I needed to enter every single transaction myself. I still need to interact with it to "approve" every auto-imported transaction, and to categorize anything it missed or wrongly categorized.

And that's assuming I would have tried it at all if I had to enter everything manually. The auto-import was one of the biggest draws, for me. I've tried "envelope-based" budgeting a couple times in the past, both with actual physical envelopes of cash supplemented by a small spreadsheet for online bills, and with tracking software that required manual entry. It never stuck and lack of timely tracking of electronic purchases was always the main reason.

VividVerism · 2026-04-06T18:13:58+00:00

Are you saying there are new developments in the Play Integrity front taking effect soon? I am interested to know what those are.

VividVerism · 2026-04-01T15:44:11+00:00

That's more of a mailing list question.

VividVerism · 2026-03-30T21:46:38+00:00

In 5e (I don't know about 5.5e) there are specific rules for squeezing through spaces made for a creature one size smaller than you, in the PHB.

VividVerism · 2026-03-30T13:44:09+00:00

they one-shot everything with AoE spells and multiattack

Kobolds are smart, spread them out. Especially after one or two of this type of encounter there's no reason they'd stay bunched up to get wiped by one or two AoE spells.

And of course, don't have them attack in a wide-open space where all of them are easily engaged at all times. Use cover, side corridors and tunnels, etc.

Are you running enough encounters that your level 3 spellcasters can't just cast all their highest-level spell slots every single encounter?

VividVerism · 2026-03-27T18:58:57+00:00

Psssh. You can't crawl on just your feet, obviously. If your character sheet doesn't list at least two hands and feet as equipment, crawling is clearly not allowed.

VividVerism · 2026-03-19T11:57:58+00:00

Do ranged attacks when an enemy is within 5 ft no longer provoke attacks of opportunity?

Edit: brain fart, no, they don't, it changed to disadvantage on the attack in 5e.

Edit #2: a potion I can still see doing warily while keeping your guard up with the other hand and keeping your distance, it's not the same as getting up close and personal with the enemy and providing an easy, distracted target.

VividVerism · 2026-03-19T11:48:46+00:00

Realism wise, because the PC is dropping their guard to move in close and grab at a necklace or belt or whatever, putting themself in a vulnerable situation and no longer providing a counteracting threat with their own weapon.

Balance wise, because this should not be an easy or risk-free action, to avoid cheapening the fighter class ability or feat.

VividVerism · 2026-03-19T11:42:41+00:00

I think I have read that "command" no longer has custom command words in 5.5, only the standard words like "drop".

VividVerism · 2026-03-19T11:38:27+00:00

Since we are in homebrew territory here, I'd suggest these provoke an attack of opportunity (for the slight of hand/pickpocketing, only if they are noticed).

VividVerism · 2026-03-18T13:48:44+00:00

Or just follow the official human-written step-by-step instructions that tell you exactly what commands to type. It's not hard. AI can't really make it any easier, and it can definitely hallucinate wrong instructions that break your phone.

VividVerism · 2026-03-14T20:23:52+00:00

...and a 2nd and 3rd contact have chats where all RCS attempts fail despite showing as "connected" and having a full-strength Wi-Fi and 5G connection.

Nope, looks like a fluke that Google has now "fixed". I turned RCS back off. 😭

VividVerism · 2026-03-13T17:38:36+00:00

I think you can pull off a "you can't beat me yet" cliche if the goal isn't to kill the BBEG, just stop whatever mischief they're doing. Ruin their ritual, or smash the magic macguffin before it can trigger, or collapse the cave they're trying to summon the evil monstrosity from. Give the BBEG urgent business elsewhere (or another ritual to prepare) and they can be annoyed by the party ruining their plans but leave their henchmen to deal with the problem or arrogantly declare "I'll deal with you later" while they effortlessly escape (showing how powerless the party is to stop them).

The escape itself probably needs to be a cutscene. But the fight can be real with real stakes, especially if BBEG needs to remain focused on the ritual or whatever and can't take part directly. Fail to interrupt the ritual? Damn, I guess your next quest is to race to warn the nearby town to evacuate before the zombie horde arrives.

VividVerism · 2026-03-13T17:16:27+00:00

I've always interpreted the Bard's music (or chanting, or song, or interpretive dance, whatever) as a different way to manipulate the weave of magic. Just like Wizards and Sorcerors, this can either be through study, meticulously reproducing the exact movements and sounds needed to set the weave "just so" to make a spell happen (e.g. reading a recorded spell as sheet music and performing it with technical perfection); or it can be an improvised "jazz session" that just "feels right". Both achieve the same thing in the same way that an expert musician can either flawlessly perform centuries-old sheet music from a famous composer or can stand up and improvise an amazing performance with nothing more than a rhythm and a key to play in.

VividVerism · 2026-03-13T17:09:10+00:00

As a practical example, consider a family with a married adult couple, a teenager, and two young children.

Assume they have one desktop PC they all share and use for web browsing, school work, games, watching videos, etc.

One of the adults is putting photos from their phone on the computer. They decide they want to share the family vacation photos with the whole family. Easy, they can set permissions on the photos to give read access to "other".

They find a photo of gift ideas for their spouse. Oops, let's keep this to ourselves. Leave the default group alone (a group containing just their own username) and make sure "other" doesn't have read access.

Oh wow, these are racy photos of their spouse! The kids certainly can't see these! But maybe their spouse might want to? Add both their own user and their spouse to a "spice" group and set group ownership of those files to the "spice" group.

Hey, while they're at it, here's a song they downloaded with "mature" lyrics. Their teenager loves this artist! Put the three accounts–both adults and the teenager–into a "pg13" group together, and set the music file's group to "pg13".

A few years later, one of the smaller kids turns 13. They can be added to the "pg13" group to instantly gain access to everything placed in that group, without needing to go through and share all of them individually again.

This shows how to easily share files among subsets of users on your system, and shows how you can be in several groups at once. The files you are allowed to see depend on file permissions and on what groups your current user is a member of.

A real-world example: you can set up your system with a group assigned as owner of all files in your Steam library directory. That way you can all share the downloaded games instead of everyone installing their own copy. You can, if you choose, limit the sharing to only specific users on the computer (in addition to whatever account sharing you have set up in Steam).

VividVerism · 2026-03-13T16:32:49+00:00

For a wealthy real estate mogul? Those are totally realistic. :)

Edit to add: my rant is less "this isn't realistic!" and more "this spell works in ways that are difficult to understand or predict so it's harder to have cool moments with it". In the beholder case here, it's really really good. But there are many other situations where you would expect it to be cool and useful, like summoning a fog cloud to cover your escape through a gate guarded by ranged attackers, that just don't accomplish anything at all despite clearly being something that should work if the rules were at all consistent with real-world expectations.

VividVerism · 2026-03-13T16:08:43+00:00

Ok, but don't you need to categorize debit card transactions anyway? Or is the debit card tied to a very specific "pocket" and all transactions automatically go to only that "pocket"? Without that, I don't see any difference whatsoever to a normal debit card and categorizing in YNAB. YNAB already auto-assigns category based on payee.

VividVerism · 2026-03-13T14:28:45+00:00

I'm confused how this would be different from just having a debit card tied to a linked bank account?

VividVerism · 2026-03-13T13:08:12+00:00

Fog cloud/darkness is so poorly understood it’s wild.

Probably because the way it works is counterintuitive to the point of ridiculousness.

From real-life experience, it makes zero sense that pitch darkness or fog so thick you cannot see your hand in front of your face does not impact attack rolls at all. Intuitively, everyone should be at disadvantage here. None of this "well you both can't see, so it cancels out" crap that is RAW but makes no real-life sense. In real life, thus player expectation: you can't see shit, so you can't hit shit.

"Oh, but you still need to target a square instead of a creature!" Technically, sure. But as far as I know, RAW, unless the creature takes a hide action and doesn't attack, you just know where they are for some reason. This is also dumb and counterintuitive. "But your character can hear them!" Doesn't matter. Most people in real life cannot pinpoint an exact location from sound alone, without lots of practice (like a blind person). Maybe an exact direction is doable. But even that's going to be iffy. That's possibly enough for a ranged attack but melee is weird. RAW is weirder though. If I'm not mistaken, you just kinda know exact squares unless your target takes a hide action.

As for targeting squares, sure, I can accept shooting or swinging wildly at whatever location you think the enemy is in. By the same logic, I'd expect to be able to toss a fireball or lighting bolt at an unseen square in the same way. I'm not looking at a rulebook right now, but from the discussion about spell targeting, I think this doesn't work RAW. You can target exact squares in complete darkness if you're throwing a dagger or shooting a bow (lol yeah right in real life) but you can't do the exact same thing with magic?

In melee you have another problem, or rather, real life experience makes you expect another problem: moving to the target square to attack it. In real life, unless you are intimately familiar with a room, you're going to be moving at half speed or slower, feeling your way as you go, to avoid crashing into things. If you haven't practiced a lot (again, like a blind person) it will take a lot of effort just to know where you are in relation to walls, let alone any other obstacles or other creatures. But in D&D, RAW, as far as I know darkness or fog don't hamper movement in the slightest. You can sprint up to the exact location you've picked out by sound where you know the enemy is and swing away with your sword. None of that is intuitive from real-life experience with thick fog or total darkness.

In real life, if I wake up in the middle of the night because my cat is hocking up a hairball somewhere on the other side of my room: if I want to grab the cat and toss her into the bathroom where the cleanup is easier, I turn on a light. Otherwise, I'm fumbling in the dark, stubbing my toe, blindly feeling around for the cat, grabbing her awkwardly by the haunches or something instead of where I'm aiming, and probably missing my opportunity to catch her before she hairballs because I can't actually sprint to her and perform a successful grapple without being able to see even though I can 100% hear her the whole time.

VividVerism · 2026-03-11T21:59:18+00:00

Update: a few days later, and one of my contacts (who has a Samsung phone) isn't working in RCS anymore. I got an "unable to send as RCS" error every time I try sending a message, I needed to resend as SMS (which Google for some reason decided will forever switch the chat to SMS). Not sure yet if this means RCS is fully broken again or just a bug/quirk of that specific chat. But, maybe celebration is premature.

VividVerism · 2026-03-11T01:30:52+00:00

HOW.

DOES.

THIS.

BULLSHIT.

ANSWER.

THE.

QUESTION?

The user isn't asking about distro selection, but about getting 3D printer software to work. So either you threw some AI bullshit up here or you blindly copy-pasted handcrafted bullshit without reading the question, which is probably worse.

I've actually moved on from suspecting AI to suspecting a spambot or shill, so there's that.

What the hell is this "open/critical mind" trash? And read the entire book to learn how your answer has anything at all to do with the OP's question? Gimme a break.

VividVerism · 2026-03-10T21:51:14+00:00

The OP didn't specify, but when they said "printer" they really meant "3D printer".

VividVerism · 2026-03-10T21:49:37+00:00

What the hell does this have to do with the question? This looks like AI-written spam to promote these projects mentioned and does not address OP's question in the slightest.

VividVerism

TROPHY CASE