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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 28th, 2023

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  • To each their own, but I think removing the differing life spans makes the races more flat and indistinct.

    Personally I think they’re twice as flat and indistinct when they all live to be 450 years at minimum. From Half-elves to Dwarves to fucking fish people, everything seems to live ten times as long as humans do in fantasy. I agree differing lifespans is interesting, but humans shouldn’t be dying at less than a quarter of the lifespan of everything else.


  • High School Tech Theatre Teacher. Many of the teachers in the theatre department at that school had somewhat of a reputation. This one, I felt at first, might’ve been unearned. She seemed genuinely good at her job, besides the occasional slip-up. During one class period, she explained to the class that she expects us to set up our big giant table and the chairs for it(It was a rather unfinished building specifically for the theatre department with no actual classrooms, so our classroom was actually just a square nook in a hallway.) before class began so we could get through lessons faster. Reasonable request, that’s fine, we were getting rather…nothing done for awhile because of how janky it was to have a classroom setting like that. That’s not necessarily her fault.
    One class, though, there were some band students moving their instruments - talking cellos, saxophones, tubas, entire drumsets, and other big and/or fragile instruments and class materials - to the auditorium nextdoor through said classroom which was…just a hallway. Y’know, using the hallway as it’s supposed to be used, rather than as a classroom. We, as people with common sense, didn’t start moving around our heavy class materials likely to cause injuries just to make the path even narrower than it already was. Once class started, teacher RAILED at us for about a minute. She was clearly SEETHING as she ranted about how when she says to do something we do it. One student tried to explain our reasoning for the delay, even saying “There were other students moving heavy stuff through here. Why would we form a big block?” Her response?

    “Why would you not?” I am not fucking joking, those were her exact words. She then interrupted him before he could respond and told him he was saying he didn’t care what she had to say and he was being disobedient. When he tried again to explain himself she threatened to send him to the principal.
    This was not the only thing she did that proved to me she was a power-tripping removed who saw us students as her inferiors, but it was the one thing I just can’t get out of my mind because of just how absurd it was in the moment. The only funny part was that she didn’t even realize she was taking up MORE class time than we took setting up as she raved about such a petty issue because we apparently questioned her authority.






  • This is actually a very fine analogy…for utility magic. But when we’re talking about combat and healing magic and whatnot, I don’t really think it works. Even melee weapons wear down over time. Ranged weapons require ammunition. Yes, you may be using the same gun your entire career as a soldier, but you sure as hell aren’t recovering the same handful of bullets to be reused all the time. The same logic applies here - you may be using fireball to solve all your problems, but you can’t use the same wand or sulfur as ammunition FOREVER. At least, not without some serious upkeep to that wand.


  • I totally agree! I think it would be a net benefit for the game if we just remove cantrips entirely - magic is too cheap. I get that that would make a lot of players mad. Maybe a compromise would be reduce the damage of attack cantrips…by a LOT. And then make pretty much most non-attack cantrips level 1 spells. Yes, including prestidigitation.
    Either way, all these comments mentioning how AD&D and 2e and whatnot does it makes me want to play them. I’ve already looked into playing 3.5e and 4e, but honestly I’m just slowly realizing that 5e is…kind of bad? So maybe that’s unrelated…


  • I vaguely recall one handbook or another even saying somewhere that a commoner’s stats usually sit around 8 or something, so even a level 1 adventurer is a cut above.

    I already knew all of the stuff you mention in this, and this part is just actually wrong outright. I’ve never heard of any of the rules saying commoners would have such low traits, and have always heard it as - 10 is the average amount for a human/commoner. 7-9 is slightly below average, anything below is remarkably low, 1-2 is near death. Now, yes, even a level 1 adventurer is uncommon and more powerful on a base-line than a commoner, but IMO that shouldn’t mean magic should be cheap for them. I suppose I do say uncommon at least, though. Common would probably work too, but requiring attunement would make sense considering it’s supposed to be a sort of conduit for an individual’s magic, and magic is usually considered very personal as far as fantasy tends to portray it.