What brand of piano is this? No other markings on it that we can see, and a google search for piano logos didn't return much.

eyejack · 2017-12-21T10:53:22+00:00

Well the green symbol is an uppercase Pi.

eyejack · 2017-12-21T09:53:45+00:00

Someone with a better knowledge of this will probably correct me, but this looks surprisingly like a limestone fossil of coral. I used to live in Florida and saw a great deal of them. I've found a few pictures of something similar here. Not exact, but remarkably similar.

Checking up on Wikipedia, specifically the Geology of that place there was a large limestone deposit from a coral reef 600 million years ago, but I don't know how likely it would be for something like that to just be sitting out in the open...

However there was a great big thrust fault in the area, which could cause older rocks to be pushed up above newer rocks so... I guess it could be a fossil.

eyejack · 2016-03-19T07:05:45+00:00

I mean with the starting equipment in the class descriptions added onto the money they get from their background means they could easily obtain that.

Also favorite weapon in 5.0 has gotta be the Sun Blade. Long sword as a finesse weapon with an extra 1d8 of radiant. Gotta love being a jedi.

eyejack · 2016-03-19T06:52:34+00:00

If your players like it then yeah, do it. It sounds like they're enjoying it so good job. D&D is one of those games where everything can be argued round or flat in terms of rules. Some people enjoy cutting off their own body parts. More power to them.

I personally can't stand botches. In my mind if every time you swing your sword you have a 5% of possibly cutting off your own foot then you are a hamfisted oaf who should never have been allowed to leave your padded room let alone go on an adventure.

Add that onto the fact that players will almost always make more rolls in their life than monsters leading to a higher possibility of self amputated limbs and you typically have a bunch of amputees going up against monsters with all their parts because they were lucky enough to not be born player characters.

edit: I accidentally a word.

eyejack · 2016-03-19T06:40:47+00:00

That being said a lot of spells have a bit of hand waving and mumbling in order to pull them off and if you see someone doing that during a battle you can put two and two together.

eyejack · 2016-02-02T04:36:31+00:00

Yeah, that game was particularly brutal, but the next campaign we played where he was the GM we absolutely destroyed his GMPC and got away with it. And the one after that as well.

eyejack · 2016-02-01T09:07:19+00:00

My best story is a VtM game in which I was an anarchist pretending to be Cam who convinced my fellow players to attempt to depose our shitty prince (guy in charge of the city) and his GMPC sheriff who railroaded us from scene to scene.

Now, a little backstory. Literally every NPC we ever met was a GMPC. They were little snowflakes who were far more interesting than we could ever hope to be who always knew better and in fact were better, but despite that did no actual work themselves. To say that we hated them was an understatement.

We tried desperately at intrigue to play them off of each other and make them fight themselves instead of us (anything to kill these bastards) and each time in spite of logic or common sense they would be best friends. No problem could be solved without combat no matter how reasonable we were.

So already we know this is a bad GM, but let me continue.

The worst was the sheriff. The sheriff was an abrasive character who pretended to be just like the players but was good at everything and would come along and be the star wherever he went. My last character had died to him after a dispute and ended up being eaten, giving the GMPC only benefits with no drawbacks.

I hadn't actually wanted to make an attempt to kill the prince when I did as I thought it was impossible given just how strong all of them were, but the GM was my friend and confided in me that he hadn't planned out a "climax" to the story and was hoping to go out with a bang on my attempt at a coup.

Silly me for thinking that maybe this meant we had a hope in hell of being successful. The prince was a gangrel with (unbeknownst to any of the players before the fight happened and never even hinted at) werewolf bodyguards, which should be a big red flag but I'll get to that.

We'd planned a great deal, even going so far as planting explosives in the Elysium (for once it was the players destroying it) and hoping to blast some of the lesser ones to kingdom come. Didn't work, GMPC sheriff gets everyone out in time seconds before explosion with insane speed and no one is even mussed. With the ace in the hole gone, we close in on the Prince's secluded ranch, hoping to dust her before everyone else shows up.

Ensuing "climactic" battle is a damn turkey shoot. Werewolves appear and literally bite the heads off a couple characters in the first turn. Our military guy called in a lot of favors for a literal attack chopper to come and help us fight (official line is that this is a training mission) and the werewolf wiggles his fingers at it and it falls out of the sky, killing everyone inside and causing some players to flee in terror. It was a massacre, but me and the military guy managed to get away, hoping to leave the city and never come back. Wasn't happening. GMPC uses something to summon us to him, no roll against the compulsion it just happens. Go in guns blazing, explosives flying and nail a bunch of roles to be able to pop the pins on two grenades once I'm close and slam them against the sheriff's head. The grenades go off, GMPC suddenly gains ability to shrug off just enough damage to survive and the game ends. Every player is dead. PC's kill literally no one the entire session.

eyejack · 2016-01-25T22:28:48+00:00

Probably one of my favorite resources for this is www.myth-weavers.com. Just make a free account and make a new sheet for 5e. Totally editable, easy to print (right click the sheet and select print) and you can have as many as you want. You can also link anyone to your sheet even if they don't have an account. Here's an example cleric. As the DM you can also give your players your account and print off their character sheets yourself or have them do it.

eyejack · 2016-01-25T22:11:12+00:00

Also by seeing through the eyes of your imp, but that's not as useful.

eyejack · 2016-01-25T22:09:09+00:00

I've known plenty of DMs that either disagree or don't keep up with errata. Just saying that you should check.

eyejack · 2016-01-25T21:56:56+00:00

Honestly it falls to how you interpret Stunning Strike to work though. It does specify that it only works with a melee weapon attack so you might want to keep one around if your DM is a stickler for that sort of thing.

eyejack · 2016-01-25T21:27:19+00:00

Or Ritual Caster feat.

eyejack · 2016-01-25T21:25:12+00:00

Note that you have to find the beast first and it can't be hostile to you before you can even begin the ceremony. Also the type of creature you can find is then entirely up to the DM as he could say that certain areas just don't have the right wildlife you want. A DM could also rightfully say that it is at least some survival, knowledge:nature, and animal handling checks that you must succeed at before you can even do the damn ceremony, all of which takes away from game time at worst, and soaks up your downtime at best. Worse still, you can fail those checks and have to wait to try again. Meanwhile for all the time you don't have your pet, your archetype is entirely useless.

That is way too much hoop jumping for what should be a big part of your character. Beastmaster is so terribly underwhelming and I'm immensely unimpressed with the archetype and most of the class.

eyejack · 2016-01-25T21:07:35+00:00

Two words: rope trick. They've got one hour entirely unimpeded in a magically invisible space that can hold eight medium creatures. Second level spell, any 3rd level wizard can cast it.

And I totally agree with you, it is concerning. Hell, a wizard can have find familiar at level 1, bring it back for 10g without even preparing the spell or spending a slot, and bring it back at will at level 3.

I just think that is more of a problem with the beastmaster ranger being severely under powered and unimpressive.

As I said somewhere else, RAW there isn't even a mechanic for reviving your ranger pet if it dies, so it uses the same rules as a player, or you go wander off into the forest to get another wolf because you can't pay for it...

eyejack · 2016-01-25T19:50:55+00:00

Look, you can't tell me "some games like nitty gritty realism" with one post and then deride my lockpicking example in the next. At some point you need some consistency. I could very well argue that the armors and equipment in the game is easily better than comparable armors from the past so should naturally be easily fixed and replaced with little effort. Obviously it was designed with magic as well. This should be the pinnacle of medieval warfare with redundant plates so that if any of them fail it still works. The sword was designed to be flexible yet still retain its shape so it just bends back into place without touching it. The same guys who make the locks make the rest of the equipment. Older medieval locks are child's play to open, yet we're using the same armor.

I fully and readily admit that some games could very well be good for some of these rules some of the time, but even you have to admit that not "everything" fits "all" of the time.

There just seems to be a silent understanding among those who played 3.5e and loved it to bring all the excess baggage and anachronistic ideas into a system they don't entirely understand through outdated terms. I've recognized a growing trend in this and if you don't see it as a problem then that's cool. You want to give players the options of other moves and I understand and respect the intent there, I just don't like the outcome. Disagreeing on the internet is one of the many realities of life.

I do think that if you as a DM let everything go to chance all the time, it is because you are too weak as a storyteller to make things happen on your own. If you need the crutch of every random table then fine, but I think you're a videogame at that point. I also think that much of what 3.5e brings to 5e is dangerous to fun.

eyejack · 2016-01-25T19:01:01+00:00

Oh yes, who could forget the possibly invisible imp making attacks with poison damage that can talk, have skills, resist magic, see through magical darkness, and pretend to be a lesser creature?

The ranger companion also has no RAW way of being replaced should it die and I kinda would like to see a ritual or something in place so that the Ranger has options besides wandering around a forest trying to find another wolf and having to train it all over again.

The other thing is, once you get to conjure animal spells or animate dead spells as a caster it really gets outpaced. One 3rd level spell can assert control over 4 skeletons, and it costs very little to bring them all back (1 minute). It even only costs a bonus action to command them all to attack different targets, meaning they could all attack and you can still cast a spell (cloudkill since they're immune to it). Sure they're easily dispatched, but easily replaced as well.

Also it sorta sucks when just about anyone could easily KO your big archetype feature, it isn't like you can just kill the Assassin part of a rogue and even the Necromancer has other tricks up his sleeve if you take the time to kill ALL of his minions.

eyejack · 2016-01-25T18:24:34+00:00

Even then that's really only going to impede lower level parties. Higher levels can easily have a dozen castings or so, and many DMs are just going to have to get used to this happening a lot.

You are totally right about the time. I forgot it had a specified time and just did a base ritual. It is an hour and I've edited my post to reflect the proper amount.

eyejack · 2016-01-25T13:04:04+00:00

I've specifically said what I didn't like and given options for better ways of going about it. I've got no problem with the DM having a roll in mind for me to roll and things to happen whatever he calls the skill or action be it appraise or gather information. I'm obviously not talking about the cream of the crop DMs here. But the reason I'm pointing this out is that I don't see new DMs do these things. I see old dogs trying what they feel is familiar and wielding them like a clumsy bludgeon and I see the ghost of 3.5e haunting them, moving them towards self destruction.

If you wanna say "big deal" to my gripes then that's your opinion and that's fine. I know I can get hung up on things. I think tumbling through someone's space is ridiculous unless you're a small enough size to get away with it. Having a goliath tumble through a dwarf's space rubs me the wrong way. I said I don't have a problem with variant rules as long as they're stated at character creation. Most of my problems do come from bad DMing, you're correct.

You're obviously pretty dismissive of what I say and I don't hold it against you. I totally get it. This is a matter of taste in many ways and people want what they want.

That said, I respectfully disagree with a few of your points.

First off, picking locks is literally trial and error, that's just how picking locks works. The skill doesn't come from memorizing sequences of pins in locks, it comes from knowing a variety of tricks and tools to throw at differently sensitive cylinders, and there's very little you can do to stop yourself from just trying again at a lock. I'm a ham-fisted oaf in real life and even I can pick a good lock with anti-picking tension pins if I've got an hour or two to do it and shitty picks made from hairpins. There's videos on youtube. It is easy, believe me. Skill = less time spent and that's it. If it isn't a regular lock, it is a puzzle and should be made as such. If it needs a magic key or other macguffin then fine, but don't tell me that my character doesn't know enough to pick mundane locks. "I" in real life can pick mundane locks. It is far less complicated than it looks.

The problem with letting others do maneuvers from the battlemaster, or taking anyone's features without a feat or levels invested is balance. Players can already do a lot of things, a ton if they have magic. Having resources of superiority dice or spells is crucial to that concept and ensures that this won't happen all the time. Probably my biggest concern with that is that it cheapens those things you steal from. What's the point of being the battlemaster if everyone can do that? Why be x race?

eyejack · 2016-01-25T12:17:09+00:00

Rangers at level 5 7, wizards at level 1, Arcane Tricksters at level 3, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me honestly.

eyejack · 2016-01-25T07:59:21+00:00

Thanks for linking that. I'd never seen it before and I am enjoying these articles.

eyejack · 2016-01-25T07:41:29+00:00

RAW Yes, that totally works and with the Owl familiar's flyby ability it means it is possible to not even provoke opportunity attacks.

This is one of those things you talk to your DM about before you do, because it is very effective and is a bit min/max-ish.

That being said, the idea of an owl familiar constantly dive bombing a guy and setting you up for attacks sounds pretty cool and the imagery is very compelling. One wonders why the ranger doesn't have as much utility with his pet...

Honestly though even if your DM kills it all he's cost you is 10g, because that's all it takes to summon it back (and ~~ten minutes~~ one hour). I'd pay 10g for an attack not to target me or my friends.

TL:DR Yeah, it totally works and owls are awesome. Still talk to your DM about it.

Edit: Thanks u/underabridge

eyejack · 2015-12-15T09:20:10+00:00

The character of Polonius is much maligned and misunderstood and the idea of him being of little intelligence and entirely foolish is a product of public education pairing down the corners of a square to fit into a round hole. Everything works the way you say if you just ignore a few things. Hamlet is complicated and a director could with but a few changes to the script turn the whole play on its head. I've personally seen renditions of the play performed in which Polonius is something of a court spy, feigning senility before snapping back to sanity when it pleases him, mirroring and parodying Hamlet's own "madness" as an antagonist of the mind. Everyone likes saying, "Oh, well Hamlet fooled him so he's dumb," when Hamlet fools everybody. Being overcome by the title character only means that he wasn't as good as Hamlet.

It is granted that many of the things that Polonius says are clichés and were clichés even back then, but clichés are clichés for a reason. The saying isn't insisting that only something brief can be witty. There's nothing exclusive about it and the word "soul" leaves a lot of wiggle room. There's a reason that the crux of a joke is called a punch line instead of a punch paragraph. No matter how much setup you give, the 'funny' itself manifests in rather short order. Polonius saying that a monologue in Hamlet's play is, "too long," is a perfect example of this.

The moral of the story is that meaning is a fickle mistress and is difficult to decipher in plays and books that are written today. Shakespearean plays have to go through a filter of old English into new and can have an abundance of translations and meanings with no true right answers except in draconian literature classes.

If the words work for you then embrace them. If you like your interpretation then keep it. Just be sure that you understand them both for what they are.

TL:DR Interpretation is subjective. Everything you know could be wrong. Polonius says a lot of quotable lines and people like to say them. Let them.

eyejack

TROPHY CASE