Subject: That "Not News" art makes me want to design...
Author:
Posted on: 2019-01-18 20:54:00 UTC
A class that uses DEX as its spellcasting die.
An amazingly elegant dancer-type character using only her enchanted blades as armour; a sneaky halfling using her magic to cross gaps and stay out of both sight and mind of the treasury's guards; a fine archer using his connection to the arcane to make unbelievable shots.
That sort of thing.
Once more unto the forum, my friends...
Fandom News
US Trailer | International Trailer
Trailer time! We got our first trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home this week, and it looks good! I'm continually baffled that Disney, of all people, have managed to mostly-consistently turn out good comic book movies, but... there you are.
Old News
On January 16th in 27 BC, Octavian was granted the title Augustus by the Senate of Rome, inaugrating the Roman Empire. Also on January 16th, this time in 1707, the Parliament of Scotland passed the Union with England act, uniting England and Scotland under the Scottish-descended Queen Anne, as the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
Meanwhile...
New News
Brexit deal rejected by huge margin
On January 15th this year, the Parliament of the United Kingdom (formed from the English and Scottish parliaments back in 1707) handed the government its biggest defeat in history. By voting down Theresa May's Brexit deal, parliament baaaaasically set the stage for a catastrophic shambles two months down the line. There's no majority in parliament for a) staying in the EU, b) leaving under this deal (which the EU says is the best they'll offer), or c) leaving with no deal, but no-one is willing to d) just stay in the EU.
In an ironic turn of phrasing, on January 16th the government defeated a vote of no confidence, indicating that Parliament does have confidence in Theresa May's leadership. Apparently.
PPC News
Reports of a bleeprin shortage have been greatly exaggerated. By which we mean there is categorically no bleeprin shortage; rumours that FicPsych has been restricting supplies come only from a few agents who were far exceeding safe limits. There is no shortage. Everything is fine.
Please take your placards and go back to your RCs.
Not News
The Holy Order of the Bumblebee - Doorways (DeviantArt)
Well, it didn't raise any objections last time... further adventures of the Party of Four Clerics, this time trying to get past a guard. Their signifiers are what they'd have to roll a check against; a CON check for out-waiting someone amuses me quite a bit.
Obviously no Cleric would ever rely on STR to get in. And none of the Order are terribly dextrous.
hS
Graham Linehan, who you may remember as the sack of depressed luncheon meat who wrote parts of a good show called Father Ted twenty years ago, is a ghastly TERFy moron. In the run-up to Christmas, he heard about how the charity Mermaids (a support organization for trans youth) was getting a grant from the Big Lottery Fund and got a bunch of equally TERFy morons on MumsNet (because of course) to bombard the Big Lottery Fund with thousands of badly-spelled form letters expressing dubious and non-specific "concern" until the Fund put the grant under review.
This, the astute among you might have realized, is not good news.
Harry Brewis, known better around the internet as HBomberguy, is a leftist YouTuber who streams sometimes. During an episode on why speedrunning is awesome, he said that he'd stream Donkey Kong 64 and beat it 100%, with a donation button for charity (yet to be chosen when the video was recorded) running while the stream was up. After seeing Graham Linehan's latest bit of manufactured outrage, he elected to give the proceeds of the stream to Mermaids.
I should mention here that Donkey Kong 64 is a collectathon made by Rare, and that therefore attempting a 100% completion run (actually 101%, because even Rare knew their games were complete BS sometimes) is, to put it mildly, an act of outright self-harm. One of the listed requirements for a player to submit their 101% complete speedrun to speedrun.com is that they must literally hate themselves. Harris took it further. You see, you don't actually have to get all the collectibles to get a 101% completion run in DK64. Harris set out to collect literally everything - all the bananas, all the battle crowns, all the ancillary guff you can think of, in an almost non-stop stream. His initial donation goal was $500. He thought that'd be a pretty good goal, given how his streams tend to be very small affairs. He did not get $500.
After appearances from people like Chelsea Manning, Owen Jones, John Romero, Mara Wilson, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and with the stream retweeted by everyone from Lindsay Ellis to Cher, Harris finally finished his 57-hour ordeal this morning.
The final donation count, raised by an unbelievable number of people, was...
Well, it's best if I just show you:-
Can I please ask where the 'of course' comes from with regards to MumsNet? The way you've phrased it, and I'm sure this is unintentional, comes across like you're painting a very large website with a very broad brush.
hS
Like, this is not new information; the whole forum's full of posts "debating" trans rights, most of which are an excuse for handwringing about how they're the ones who are really being oppressed by trans women doing unspeakable things, such ask them not to be exclusionary towards trans people, or exist. The MumsNet mods have also banned "cis" and "TERF" as slurs.
For more information, read this article from The Outline, which covers a lot of points about transphobia in British media in general and from ostensible feminists in particular.
Did you know there's at least one PPCer who frequents Mumsnet? You might want to consider how responding to 'looks like you're accidentally using a broad brush' with 'no, it's full of that' is going to feel for them.
~
Thank you for the article; I think it:
1/ Suffers a bit from trying to group a lot of loosely-connected details into a single narrative stream. The timeframe under discussion jumps around quite a lot, though by a weird coincidence three of the four actual years named are '2000'.
2/ Does a strangely lackluster job of discussing harassment and assault against trans people, which I know from other sources can only be describes as a vile flood of abuse right now. I think it only mentions 'who are themselves disproportionately vulnerable to violence' once, whereas there are repeated mentions of the idea of trans women as a source of violence. My guess is I'm either misreading the purpose of the article slightly, or The Outline works from the assumption that said vulnerability is going to be at the top of its readers' minds anyway.
3/ Highlights well, though through a strange mix of naming names, naming groups, and vaguely pointing at loose assemblages, that horribly large numbers of people behave awfully to and about people who don't slot neatly into the old-fashioned sex-gender binary. That's a terribly indictment on society and I wish it would go away.
4/ Seems to presuppose acceptance of the idea that sex is subordinate to gender. The phrase 'gender segregated hospital wards' is clanging quite hard against my skull: due to the way legal terminology has been changed, it's probably true at the moment, but they were pretty clearly originally sex-segregated (if a 1950s nurse had discovered that their patient was what would now be recognised as a trans woman, I'm positive they'd have transferred them to a different ward).
'Gender segregated hospital wards' is an idea that makes absolutely no sense to me; 'sex segregated hospital wards', given some of the stories Kaitlyn has told me about elderly patients, I can see some logic in.
5/ Is a showcase of hyperbole from both the article - it compares Mumsnet to 4Chan, which is laughable whatever you're comparing to 4Chan - but far more so from the people it's discussing. Claiming to 'debunk' what's basically someone's personality - or saying that you can get 'rigorous testing by someone in a lab coat' for it - is utterly ludicrous, and pretending that society doesn't (stupidly) treat men and women differently is not just wrong, it shows a dangerous disregard for experiences outside your (not your-your, obviously) own.
hS
Today when I popped over to the wiki, I noticed a banner at the top of the page announcing that they're migrating us over to fandom.com as part of their rebranding process, which began last year. This shouldn't affect us very much, if at all—wikia.com links will redirect to fandom.com, so nothing will break, and if anything, Fandom expects a general uptick in activity due to how Google works. However, those of us with websites and whatnot to maintain should be prepared to edit any wiki links we have, and of course the Nameless Admin will need to correct the links at the top of the Board.
I'm not sure what the Renaming of the Gods is going to do to the religion of Wechi, but I'm sure it will sort itself out. {= )
More information about the migration here.
~Neshomeh
Shouldn't be too much of an issue... hopefully!
hS
...an issue meaning that they might not want the Cyclopaedia to be moved for content reasons?
Hmm. Better, cough, murder the Lord of Darkness, I mean delete his page, cough, anyway. It and he are both an eyesore.
And update Twyla's heraldry.
Please? Thank you. :D
-Twistey
P.S. I have a pic I drew of Twyla, is there any way I could get that integrated into the Cyclopaedia?
What a triumph!
-Twistey
The only exceptions are for wikis that aren't about pop culture media topics, so wouldn't fit under the Fandom heading. But we certainly do!
~Neshomeh
A class that uses DEX as its spellcasting die.
An amazingly elegant dancer-type character using only her enchanted blades as armour; a sneaky halfling using her magic to cross gaps and stay out of both sight and mind of the treasury's guards; a fine archer using his connection to the arcane to make unbelievable shots.
That sort of thing.
... I really do like the sense of limitless bizarre possibilities. Like this, and Phobos' response: the fact that you can not only come up with them, but that there are rules in place to play them. :)
So yeah, Dexterity Cleric is now in the works. I've got her design and personality sorted, I just need to figure out what to do with the DEX other than tying bandages.
I know, 'jump on things'. But it seems a bit out of character. What else is DEX good for, you D&D types?
hS
I have a Google doc full of free-to-use D&D characters, and they include:
- A tiefling who was found and raised as an elf by a desperate noble to try and give him a claim to an empty throne. While she was accepted as the rightful ruler at first, the plan eventually failed, and now she's on the run from people who want to kill her.
- A half-elf who is actually a cat, turned by magic into the daughter of an elven-and-human couple who desperately wanted a child but couldn't seem to ever successfully have one. If she dies, she'll reincarnate somewhere (because nine lives), but she still has to grow up before she can be in her previous state again. (I haven't yet checked that ability against the game and what's reasonable, though.)
- My OC leader of the Talons of Tiamat, who is a scary little halfling woman. Wow, unexpectedness.
I'm also working on an attempt at a homebrew campaign, with the help of my more experienced friends. It has a few NPCs in it that are kind of similar "this'd require some figuring out how it works, but it's entirely plausible so yay" in terms of abilities.
-Twistey
How so? Well, let's use clerics as an example:-
The young elf boy watches in awe as the beat begins, elders of his faith moving and swaying in time with the instruments. The air thrums with the power of their god, and before he knows it - and before his father can stop him - he hurls himself headlong into the dance, flowing like wind in branches to the glory of the divine. And as he dances, the whole forest dances with him, pulsing with divine magic and the blessing of a benevolent summer.
---
Torches flicker overhead as the moaning of wounded shield-dwarves fills the makeshift field hospital in the tunnels. The old dwarf, whose beard is so long it's tied to his belt like a bullwhip, scuttles to and fro, fingers dancing as he sutures wounds and lays on gentle hands. Suddenly, a noise from the hallway. The goblin horde is coming. The old dwarf uncurls his beard and hefts it in his hand, the weighted end heavy with spikes. Let them come.
---
The guards never suspected a thing. Clambering up the walls, she hops over them and clings to the curtain wall of the black fortress. It's taken her days to find this place, and she can't blow her chance now. The rest of her abbey has been taken by a horror from beyond death, and Avandra guides her every step. Sheer walls, locked doors, undead guards, none halt her progress. At last she breaks into the vampire's chamber, draws her old school fencing rapier, and charges.
Closest, that is, to something I can justify as a version of Kaitlyn.
My theory is that she's weaponised being unobtrusive, kind of like a prettier-looking Igor. She's very helpful, very quiet - and when you need her, she's just there, without seeming to move between places. A sort of combination nimble fingers, rapid movement, and intuitive stealth (at least until she fails her roll...!).
That fits with the costume and personality, so I think she's set! It remains to be seen whether the Order will accept her...
hS
Even if she does have an artfully-placed scar on her forehead...
...
omigosh
hS
That ought to keep you safe. =]
>Balancing on a narrow plank
>Avoiding or minimizing fall damage
>Attack/damage for ranged weapons (bows, javelins, etc)
>Add to armor class depending on the armor (so you'd have a lightly-armored Dex-based cleric)
>Sneaking
>Sleight of hand
>Pick locks
>Dexterity saves (avoid the fireball!)
...So what I'm seeing is a rather Rogue-ish Cleric (maybe a cleric of Avandra or Tymora (deities of luck and good fortune). Seems to fit with a sort of easygoing, cocky character who'd flip around the battlefield and whack people with their holy weapon while firing off quippy one-liners.
At least, that's the sort of character I'd make. :P
So, it turns out there is a Feat in DnD 3rd Edition, in some obscure supplemental book, that allows you to change your characters spellcasting stat at character creation. Any magical class can use it, and you can make any stat into your new spellcasting stat. The idea is that your character comes from a non-traditional spellcasting tradition.
Knowing that, I made up some interesting spellcasters.
Ograth, Half-Orc Bard (Str-caster). Ograth casts spells by hitting things really hard. If you see him on the battlefield, he's got a war drum slung over his shoulder. If you meet him in a bar, he might make due pounding tankards against a table. Either way, his drumming stokes a fire in the belly.
Verith, Elf Druid (Dex-caster). The song of nature is so powerfully beautiful that Verith can't help but move along with it. She dances through the forest and the forest dances along with her. Trees sway, deer cavort, birds wheel and dip. On the rare occasion that she gets angry, her whirling and leaping summons storms to enact nature's vengeance.
Shale Earthblood, Dwarf Sorceror (Con-caster). Shale could always feel the magic inside him. It coursed through his veins from a young age, and all he had to do was find a way to let it out. His village didn't take kindly to blood magic, and he was exiled. Now he wanders the tunnels; white scars gleaming nearly as much as his silver knife. (For this character, every spell requires 1 hit point of intentional damage per spell level to cast.)
In the worlds of fiction, some of these already exist. The Clave from The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant use blood magic similar to Shale's. In the Deathgate Cycle, the Sartan use dance as a major component of their spellcasting.
-Phobos
I definitely think that it has some potential for creating unique characters like the ones you made (not sure how well Shale would work though. That's a lot of damage for an already low hitpoint class). But it also would allow for some kinda ridiculous combinations, like a fighter who multiclasses to wizard and casts with strength.
You want him?
But I'll take him only if neither of you want it.
-Twistey
I came across this idea on 1d4chan, and I have an image and a link.
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/MuscleWizard#Psion
<a href="https://1d4chan.org/wiki/File:Musclewizard.jpg">https://1d4chan.org/wiki/File:Muscle_wizard.jpg
Lost Tradition from Bastards and Bloodlines is the Feat I was talking about and they use it for Muscle Wizard.
-Phobos
I'd take the psion option for preference. It seems slightly simpler. Though I must point out that I don't know whether psions are any good in 3.0.
I'll be sure to send this to Willis, he might find it interesting. Is there a way that one could adapt it into 5e?
-Twistey
I think that this feat would allow for some ridiculous combinations, like a fighter who multiclasses to a casting class and uses strength as their casting stat. We don't want to feed the munchkins!!
Could be some universal-but-not-official rule where it's like "This feat only works if you're primarily a caster." Or something.
Meanwhile, in the process of making my own Order of the Bumblebee parody, I'm finding this quite useful because my caster selves' cast stats represent what I at the time felt was my greatest/most useful trait out of all the D&D ability scores.
-Twistey