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  1. Charlaquin

    D&D General The Beautiful Mess of 5e

    Huh… weird. I don’t understand how it’s even possible for him to have been wrong about that, since IIRC the original claim was that they had a formula for how much damage a spell of a given level should do, and then for a few iconic damage spells they wanted to feel extra powerful, they went a...
  2. Charlaquin

    D&D General The Beautiful Mess of 5e

    That’s surprising, I’m pretty sure it was him who originally made the claim that it was.
  3. Charlaquin

    Critical Role Reveals Soldiers' Table and Motivations

    I mean, they obviously know which of the three groups they’re all going to be in, and that they need to be split up into those three groups by the end of episode four. If that’s too much pre-planning for your tastes, I don’t know what to tell you. There’s really no other way they could have done...
  4. Charlaquin

    Critical Role Reveals Soldiers' Table and Motivations

    I seriously wasn’t comparing the campaign to Game of Thrones in any significant way, I was just saying I expected the Schemers’ episodes to take place in Dol’Makjar and involve lots of politicking, like how in Game of Thrones the episodes focused on King’s Landing involved lots of politicking… I...
  5. Charlaquin

    D&D General Settings of Hope vs Settings of Despair

    Not to get too political, but a lot of us are very literally having our human rights taken away right now. If you’re not feeling the doom and gloom, you’re one of the lucky few. Me, I naively made the decision around this time last year to wait until after tax season to get my legal name...
  6. Charlaquin

    D&D General Settings of Hope vs Settings of Despair

    Ah, ok, this context helps clarify your question a lot! Given these definitions, I have a rather strong preference for what you’d call a despairing world. I can certainly understand wanting your D&D to be more of an escape from the despair of our real world and therefore favoring a hopeful...
  7. Charlaquin

    D&D General Settings of Hope vs Settings of Despair

    I think both pure hopeful and pure despairing are too limited. Analyzing human interaction using game theory (also a limited lens, but sometimes a useful one) reveals that whether selfish or selfless strategies in classic scenarios like the prisoner’s dilemma are more effective is highly...
  8. Charlaquin

    RPG Evolution: Inspiration from Pikes Peak

    Pike’s Peak is a hell of a hike. I did it with my dad when I was 13; took us two days, and the last leg was insane. We were stopping to catch our breath like every few yards because of the altitude. And we live in Colorado, so we’re more acclimatized to high altitude than most.
  9. Charlaquin

    D&D General Making Spellcasters feel Caster-y without actually Casting?

    Oh, I meant re-flavoring skills as a thing you can do now as a way to make casters feel more magical without messing with their balance. If you’re planning to take away spell slots, yeah, you’d need a much more significant redesign.
  10. Charlaquin

    D&D General Making Spellcasters feel Caster-y without actually Casting?

    One thing I really liked about the D&D Next Playtest version of the warlock was that instead of spell slots that just worked weird, it had unique abilities (IIRC they were called “minor boons” or something) that they could cast a small number of times between short tests, “lesser boons” that...
  11. Charlaquin

    D&D General Making Spellcasters feel Caster-y without actually Casting?

    This would be my preferred alternative. Infuse magic into the mundane actions of spellcasters. Maybe when your wizard with Stealth proficiency sneaks around, he’s not just hiding but using his petty magic to place a veil of shadows around himself, or to make his clothes change color to...
  12. Charlaquin

    Critical Role Reveals Soldiers' Table and Motivations

    I mean, “go away, you bother me” and “why are you talking to me, speck” don’t usually translate to, “I am about to kill you.” That’s what I mean about the escalation being very fast. Which is fine, that teaches us something interesting and valuable about the character, that he can and will kill...
  13. Charlaquin

    Critical Role Reveals Soldiers' Table and Motivations

    I thought he just said that Primus wasn’t performing any spellcasting components but not necessarily that he wasn’t the one casting. But I could also be the one misremembering. I do remember that the implication seemed to be that it wasn’t from Primus, and my assumption was actually that he had...
  14. Charlaquin

    Critical Role Reveals Soldiers' Table and Motivations

    Was that confirmed in the Cooldown?
  15. Charlaquin

    Critical Role Reveals Soldiers' Table and Motivations

    Well, I mean, she did listen. And she walked away from that interaction alive, and thanks to a lucky saving throw, unharmed. Which I think you and I are at least in agreement was awesome! I was even fine with him saying “if you keep talking to me, I’ll kill you where you stand.” That was a very...
  16. Charlaquin

    Critical Role Reveals Soldiers' Table and Motivations

    All well and good, except that this was said super-powerful NPC’s very first scene, and it went from 0 to 100 immediately, which left the players no opportunity to learn this was not a character to be messed with. I understand “mess around, find out” but there was no mess around phase here. It...
  17. Charlaquin

    Critical Role Reveals Soldiers' Table and Motivations

    I believe so, yeah. They were sponsored by D&D Beyond back when it first came out. Sam Regiel made up a commercial jingle for them, which later got an animation to go with it they would play every episode during the break in Campaign one. I’d assume they all started using it then and never...
  18. Charlaquin

    Critical Role Reveals Soldiers' Table and Motivations

    I mean, it’s not that an early character death would be a bad thing per se. But, in that specific scene, it would have come across as arbitrary and unavoidable. Marisha had zero control over the situation, this character no one playing the game had ever seen before let alone interacted with just...
  19. Charlaquin

    Critical Role Reveals Soldiers' Table and Motivations

    Again, doesn’t really matter anyway since the character isn’t dead.
  20. Charlaquin

    Critical Role Reveals Soldiers' Table and Motivations

    I had something pretty similar happen in Curse of Strahd. That spectre in Death House is brutal.
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