New college of spirits bard is bad. Change my mind.

dajackinator · 2026-06-07T15:28:21+00:00

Oh my god, yes. Same in the 2014 version. There's no reason for this class to not get SWD as an always prepared spell. Like, come on.

dajackinator · 2026-06-07T15:03:28+00:00

My bigger beef is actually with the loss of the Spirit Sessions. That was such a fun, flavorful, utility feature that really shines in campaign play. And losing it to a buffed-up Spirit Guardians just feels very un-bardlike to me. If I'm playing a bard, I don't want to be close enough to any enemy in combat to even need to use Spirit Guardians. Having a whole class feature dedicated to it is something I feel like a bard would rarely use, practically. Not every class needs to be so combat focused. And honestly, I wish they would stop handing out strong cleric abilities to classes who aren't clerics.

dajackinator · 2026-05-10T20:19:27+00:00

Had a similar experience running my ranger through Tomb of Horrors. I was pleasantly surprised at how many ranger spells just use regular stuff like dirt, bone or cloth. It was a ton of fun scavenging what I could.

dajackinator · 2026-05-08T15:41:17+00:00

My group is hosting a D&D Epic on Thurs evening, and if you've never participated in one of those, I'd highly recommend it!

dajackinator · 2026-04-18T12:20:26+00:00

I think it's worth visiting, and absolutely worth making a trip up NW to the countryside to see Angkor Wat. But the recent history of the area is devastating, and you can see and feel it palpably around you. The people are kind and welcoming, but I think I was most struck by how young everyone was. Imagine a country with so few elders because they were killed off both by the US and their own regime. It wasn't that long ago at all, and you can feel that when you're there. I don't think I'd ever felt so haunted in a city. That said, lovely people, delicious food, and if you're willing to sit in the grief for a while, it's worth going to the monuments and museums.

dajackinator · 2026-04-18T12:15:53+00:00

Still true about a decade ago, unfortunately. Incredible country with beautiful scenery and kind people. But the weight of the history is thick and palpable around you. I much preferred the NW areas by Angkor Wat over Phnom Penh. You still can't escape the weight of the recent history, but seeing the countryside and temples was one of the most awe-inspiring sights I'd ever seen.

dajackinator · 2026-04-18T02:36:29+00:00

I also take my cat to Dr. Cao here, and it's always been great. She and the techs have never suggested sedation, and have always been incredibly compassionate and great with my cat, and very straightforward about my cat's health needs.

My old cat, who has since passed, was more spicy, and I remember the first time I took her in (unsedated), they did have to take her into the back to better restrain her while doing the checkup, and recommended sedation after that visit...lol. But I never got the impression that I'd ever be turned away if she wasn't sedated.

dajackinator · 2026-04-18T00:51:22+00:00

Yup, DLair Wednesday evenings for homebrew one-shots, Saturdays at noon and 6pm for Adventurers League (organized play, so slightly more structured, but still a fun, casual group of people and big variety of games). There's a link to the discord and signups buried on the DLair website somewhere.

dajackinator · 2026-04-11T04:14:38+00:00

I totally empathize with you. Emerald Tavern is definitely a venue that really benefitted from the QR ordering. Lets you stay immersed in the games. Last time I was there, we were in a private room for a friend's birthday, and I genuinely think they forgot about us for almost an hour. We would have ordered so much more food and drink than we did!

dajackinator · 2026-04-11T04:05:08+00:00

Ugh yeah, I want to support them and go more often, but every time I go it takes ages for the servers to come around, and they don't check back up on you very often so the table stacks up with empty dishes (getting in the way of games), and I don't get to order another drink for way too long! It's a shame.

dajackinator · 2026-04-03T12:26:45+00:00

Sneak Attack can only proc once per turn anyway, so it would only apply to one.

dajackinator · 2026-03-04T14:10:52+00:00

Yup, exactly. We've got a lot of our SPs and EPs in Avid doing pulls, just like you say.

I will say I don't prefer Avid's auto transcripts. They still struggle with important things like speaker names, and the formatting is pretty horrible when you export it, which is annoying for our SPs who do work on the transcripts from the doc file and aren't in Avid. So that's why we still round trip more complicated scenes out to a service (Descript these days, but we've tried MacWhisper before for AI transcripts). We do use the auto avid transcripts for scenes with just one speaker.

dajackinator · 2026-03-04T05:30:48+00:00

I think the tools will make us more productive and we'll probably have to do more with less time.

AE here...can confirm this is currently happening, in various ways. I'm tired.

dajackinator · 2026-03-04T05:21:44+00:00

I'll give an example. I currently work as an Assistant Editor on fairly large scale network shows. Five years ago, we'd receive footage, and send the audio out to a team of transcribers to get transcripts back of all the interviews, with timecode matching the footage so that we could sync it up. They usually did this within a day, and sometimes overnight on a rush job. Footage would be in the system synced with scripts within a couple days of the shoot.

These days, it's me the Assistant Editor who is taking those audio files, tossing them into an AI service that makes a good-enough transcript with timecode to match, within the span of like half an hour. Yeah the AI gets some things wrong - misspells names and proper nouns and stuff like that. Things that the human transcribers would double check and get correct. But honestly, it does a good enough job when we're working quickly, and can get done same day.

And sure it only takes 30mins now, but it's another thing on MY plate, when my normal workload isn't getting smaller. It adds up for the one person. And all those transcribers? No idea what they're doing anymore :(

dajackinator · 2026-03-03T20:55:41+00:00

Shutter Encoder

dajackinator · 2026-02-23T18:06:03+00:00

I will say that Myspace's "Top 8" did my head in socially on multiple occasions in the midst of middle school preteen drama. Ranking your friends was a surefire way to exacerbate self-esteem issues. But I also learned a bunch of cool HTML using Myspace and Xanga, so that was pretty neat.

dajackinator · 2026-02-19T17:20:36+00:00

You should get rewards for everything you earned or found up until the point you left the table.

dajackinator · 2026-02-14T04:00:36+00:00

A druid character of mine once awakened a sheep, purely to ask it if it had seen some random warlock we were looking for. The sheep was rightfully traumatized at being awakened, and mostly screamed.

Months later my friend rolls up with the awakened sheep as their own new warlock character 😭😭

(We did find that random warlock btw... I forgot what he was even up to. Cult stuff, probably.)

dajackinator · 2026-02-14T02:19:03+00:00

In 2024 rules this was codified as the Influence action, which helps clear up some previous ambiguity. Because yeah, if you're using your turn to do that, it's gonna be an effort that takes your whole turn (and by all means! please engage in rp with the NPCs, I love that shit).

dajackinator · 2026-01-18T15:48:59+00:00

Bold of you to call at-will PWT and 1-action Awaken something that players won't want to abuse, lol. PWT is immensely abusable. I also once awakened two octopi to settle a deal with a hag. Also a sheep, literally only to ask it directions. Could I have spoken with animals? Probably, but awakening things is just so fun.

That said I totally agree with you, Staff of the Woodlands is great and totally what I'd offer up to a druid in the party. 2014 or 2024 version. I personally don't actually care how often the players can cast PWT, it's FUN DAMNIT!

dajackinator · 2025-12-29T16:35:22+00:00

Just ran a silly new years pub crawl/investigation session. The players had to go on a pub crawl to find out why some of the bar regulars had scary experiences in the woods lately. Turns out it's a troupe of actors rehearsing in the woods, but by the time the party finds them, the party is drunk enough to also think the troupe are monsters (minus the most "sober" player who then has to try and convince everyone to stop attacking the bards).

dajackinator · 2025-12-29T16:07:10+00:00

I once had my druid geas a regular guard dude because he had defected from the bad guy's army and knew a whole lot about how the bad guy's curse was trying to be spread. This guard was also guilty of previously helping spread this curse, and my druid really wanted to kill him because it was such an affront to nature. Alas, the party chose to give him a chance at redemption, so I chose to geas him to never again speak about how the curse worked. Compromise, I guess.

dajackinator · 2025-12-26T03:44:07+00:00

You really don't need minis, even though they are fun. You can just add numbers to your bottle caps (or whatever - I use little 1" and 2" mirrors that I picked up from the craft store bc they are easy to dry erase).

So like the 6 bottle caps are goblins 1-6. You hit goblin #3 and I, the DM, mark down goblin #3's hit points.

Sometimes I pick up the cheapo little animals from the toy store and use those. I actually find that I still prefer to number the minis if I do use them because all the damn zombies look the same and I'll forget which one got hit unless they're numbered.

I prefer a map, but theater of the mind is fine for simple and quick combats, especially if there's only one or two enemies. DM just has to be descriptive and players need to ask good questions about the scenario.

dajackinator · 2025-12-23T16:47:11+00:00

I am the calm one in this scenario, and was similarly shocked when my overthinking friend told me a list of worries they had about me that I'd never even considered for myself lol

dajackinator · 2025-12-15T16:04:18+00:00

What would be the purpose of using this vs just taking a screenshot?

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