Things I May No Longer Do While Playing XI: I May Not Postpone Naming My Thread

[Braininthejar2]

* We may not bypass the entire dungeon by polymorphing into flies and just flying past all the guards and traps to the room where the Macguffin is.

That's... very mythological, actually. That's a kind of thing Loki would pull.

[TeChameleon]

* While it technically fits the definition of a distraction, as it is very unlikely that anyone will be paying the slightest attention to what the rest of the party is doing while it's going on, a planetary-scale extinction event involving dimensional collapse and massive quantities of gamma radiation might be overkill.
** If the death of all life on your pre-spaceflight world is a side effect of your distraction, it is definitely overkill.
*** While it is vaguely commendable that I am no longer erasing all life, if a pitched battle between multiple divine hosts and their respective deities ends up somewhere between 'background noise' and 'chaff' compared to my distraction, it might be time to tone it down a little.

[Anonymouswizard]

* If I'm playing a front-liner I am expected to have more than 8 CON.
** Especially if I'm playing a caster class.
*** A cool concept does not make up for not fulfilling my role correctly.

[sengmeng]

*** A cool concept does not make up for not fulfilling my role correctly.

I don't know; one of my favorite moments in D&D was when the party leader told me to open a door since I was a rogue, and I pulled out a portable battering ram.

[Anonymouswizard]

I don't know; one of my favorite moments in D&D was when the party leader told me to open a door since I was a rogue, and I pulled out a portable battering ram.

Oh certainly. Despite being suboptimal the character isn't actually that bad at her job (which is being an archfey's agent in the world). She's just a caster who's really bad at being a caster, level 2 will bring me up to a permenant AC 16 if I want. Squishy relies on Hex to deal decent damage, but makes up for it by also having social skills and thieves' tools proficiency. Despite not having thieves' tools, because who needs to start with any tool sets? Certainly not anybody with the Urchin background.

* Fey are not lawful.
** Even if they live in an organised society with an explicit ranking structure.
*** Not even if they pass power between the courts with the seasons, and have done for thousands of years.

[DeTess]

* Fey are not lawful.
** Even if they live in an organised society with an explicit ranking structure.
*** Not even if they pass power between the courts with the seasons, and have done for thousands of years.

Depending on the source material, fae can be very lawful. Their particular set if laws is weird and seems illogical, but if you know them, they can be used against them.

[Anonymouswizard]

Depending on the source material, fae can be very lawful. Their particular set if laws is weird and seems illogical, but if you know them, they can be used against them.

Yeah, actually a lot of interpretations of fey/fae/however you spell it lean highly towards lawful. I find it weird that people use them as an example of chaos, because they tend to have all these weird rules they follow that just don't quite make sense to humans.

Part of the idea for my character is that as she spent a couple of years being trained on and off by a member of the summer court in order to be a better agent she follows some of their laws. The big one, of course, being that she won't willingly tell a direct lie (high Deception score because of course that's what partial truths run off of), but there's also stuff like not acting against the forces of winter during their time in power, smiling and frowning are as much a way to show station as emotion, and other slightly weird things. She's also lawful neutral, as her archfey patron partially represents the turn of the seasons and the orderly aspects of nature.

[Lord Raziere]

Depending on the source material, fae can be very lawful. Their particular set if laws is weird and seems illogical, but if you know them, they can be used against them.

You are sillies. Fae are chaotic because they're not about being boring. Guideline One of Chaos: Don't be boring! Honestly if the laws don't make sense, then its more lawful to not follow them, see?

[Reltzik]

* "Okay, so the guards aren't paying very close attention to us?" As someone playing a rogue, I am no longer allowed to ask this question.

[Anonymouswizard]

* Do You Hear The People Sing was bad enough. I am not allowed to look for an excuse to sing Stars.

* There is no such creature as a Ceaser Slaad.

[Personification]

* Do You Hear The People Sing was bad enough. I am not allowed to look for an excuse to sing Stars.

There, out in the darkness
A fugitive running
Fallen from Primus
Fallen from Grace.
Gods be my witness
I never shall yield
Till we come face to face
Till we come face to face

He knows his way in the dark
Mine is the way of the Law
Those who follow the path of the Primus
Shall have their reward
And if they fall
As Zariel fell
The flames
The sword!
...

[Spore]

You are sillies. Fae are chaotic because they're not about being boring. Guideline One of Chaos: Don't be boring! Honestly if the laws don't make sense, then its more lawful to not follow them, see?

*Rumpelstilzchen ripping itself apart in response to the princess guessing its name is not both chaotic and lawful
** You may not create the subject of 'Fey Philosophies 101' on your wizard's magic academy
*** Reciting an interesting treatise about the sociomagically implications of fey abiding or ignoring laws maybe be interesting to your character, reading it out loud to your table is considered disruptive
**** May not advise Fey to embrace neutrality because your studies have proven that extremism in both ways reduces their socioeconomic status
***** Your character probably deserved to be attacked by angry fey for that

[Sgt. Cookie]

*Taking loot from an encounter is expected. Taking the encounter AS loot is less so.

[Spore]

*Taking loot from an encounter is expected. Taking the encounter AS loot is less so.

* Being happy for a fun boss fight as a reward for good play is good.
** Trying to murder some NPC because you liked him as a villain is frowned upon.
*** The city guard doesn't take the fact that he had a goatee as a valid reason for his 'obvious nefarious schemes'.

[Sgt. Cookie]

Nah, I mean we literally took the encounter to negatives, in this case a couple of Deep Dogs, tied them up and then sold them to a breeder.

[dspeyer]

* Taking *part* of an encounter as loot is worse
** Just the skin is downright creepy
*** "I have spare money and extradimensional storage space" is not sufficient reason to carry a taxidermy kit
**** Nor is Jack-of-all-trades plus Guidance the same as being a qualified taxidermist, even if the numeric bonus is similar
***** Proclaiming "I am a perfect taxidermist" doesn't help, no matter how high my Deception mod.

(All from my current campaign. I wound up with a devourer-skin headband, which I still wear on occasion.)

Also from the current campaign, and inspired by the law/chaos posts above:

* It is true that 5e has far less mechanical significance to alignment
** And "I look after *my* people; the rest of the world can burn" is a perfectly valid character philosophy that's hard to describe in traditional alignment terms
*** This does not make my alignment "Hufflepuff"
**** And it definitely does not cause the Spirit Guardians spell to summon badgers

A few more from this campaign:

* Proficiency at perform(flute) is not proficiency at Music Theory
** Nor at ethnomusicology
*** So I cannot employ those skills to deduce the cultural background of an artifact that can play music
* I cannot have a pet plothole
* Just because I conquered a city while wearing a fancy dress does not make me its princess
** And appointing one of my adventuring companions Minister of Actually Being Kind of Responsible Sometimes does not qualify as good government.
* The correct response to a building fire about to spread to a fireworks store is not to shout "Quick, everybody loot the fireworks!" at a giant mob
* Desecrating an enemy's corpse is bad form, but acceptable if he was horrible enough
** Modifying the Animate Dead spell so that his mummy can bark like a dog is going too far
*** Especially if you've *already* condemned his soul to utter oblivion so thorough the gods themselves could not raise him
* Just because Lolth owes us a favor is no reason to ask for a flask of everflowing spiders
** Or steal one from her kitchen
*** Even if we previously rejected a Staff of Insect Swarms because it required attunement and this doesn't.

[John Campbell]

Nah, I mean we literally took the encounter to negatives, in this case a couple of Deep Dogs, tied them up and then sold them to a breeder.

** When you're hired to eliminate some dangerous Awakened critters, and, in order to get paid twice, catch breeding pairs and sell them to a company that provides magical security for corporations, you are not allowed to complain when you start encountering them as corporate security animals on later runs.

The character my avatar here is based on had a habit of parting out critters and using them as materials for crafting magic items. In particular, the haft of his +5 keen frost surge icy burst greataxe is made from the femur of a white dragon we killed. The white fur cloak he wears was made from a winter wolf hide, and has, among other things, endure elements on it, which made people look at him funny when he insisted on wearing his fur cloak in the desert. I had a displacer beast hide I was going to make a cloak of displacement out of, but then the DM figured out that he could not let me have downtime.

* If I have any sort of feat or ability that lets me craft stuff, I may not have downtime. Ever.

[Braininthejar2]

* No matter how solid my reputation as a champion of nature and balance has been for the last 20+ levels, using 12-headed hydra shapechange with morphic reach and bite of a werebear will require some explaining to the witnesses.

[LordCdrMilitant]

I had a party that considered anything loot.

In addition to laying claim to enemy wargear, they loaded up their enemy's corpses and hauled them off to find buyers, disassembled traps to sell for parts, and ripped out even mundane fixtures and furniture to sell.

It was kind of silly.

[Anonymouswizard]

I had a party that considered anything loot.

In addition to laying claim to enemy wargear, they loaded up their enemy's corpses and hauled them off to find buyers, disassembled traps to sell for parts, and ripped out even mundane fixtures and furniture to sell.

It was kind of silly.

Incredibly silly. Normally loot is defined as 'everything not nailed down after the fire has burnt itself out'.

[Spore]

I had a party that considered anything loot.

Don't you mean "an adventuring party compromised entirely of economists"? Have you actually SEEN the opportunity cost adventuring takes? Might as well compensate for some of that loss. Being an NPC magic item creator is the most lucrative thing in D&D always. Without the risk of premature death.

I'd say paying 5k gold for a ress spell is actually worse than death for some economists.

[/shade]

[Reltzik]

Don't you mean "an adventuring party compromised entirely of economists"? Have you actually SEEN the opportunity cost adventuring takes? Might as well compensate for some of that loss. Being an NPC magic item creator is the most lucrative thing in D&D always. Without the risk of premature death.

I'd say paying 5k gold for a ress spell is actually worse than death for some economists.

[/shade]

Paying 5k for a res is fine.

Permanently removing 5k of currency from the money supply every time you need to get back up on your feet to fuel your repeated charges back into the face of certain death is economic terrorism.

[braveheart]

Paying 5k for a res is fine.

Permanently removing 5k of currency from the money supply every time you need to get back up on your feet to fuel your repeated charges back into the face of certain death is economic terrorism.

5k gold worth of diamonds is fewer diamonds each time, because the supply continually decreases so the price/volume would as well. Even though it eventually requires the smallest increments of diamond, it will always be less than the total supply.

*may not charge 1 copper per pound of diamonds to make a rez worth of diamonds weigh 500,000 lbs

[Anonymouswizard]

I don't know, in a high magic setting the elemental plane of earth gives way access to a large number of high quality gemstones. Massive it all evens out and you only need one as large as your head, not a house.

New suggestion for the next thread title:
Things I May No longer Do Whole Playing XII: Economics is now Dark Magic

[noob]

New suggestion for the next thread title:
Things I May No longer Do Whole Playing XII: Economics is now Dark Magic

Wait.
You are suggesting there was a moment where economics were not dark magic?

[Anonymouswizard]

Wait.
You are suggesting there was a moment where economics were not dark magic?

You'll be surprised at how gullible stone GMs are...

[Reltzik]

5k gold worth of diamonds is fewer diamonds each time, because the supply continually decreases so the price/volume would as well. Even though it eventually requires the smallest increments of diamond, it will always be less than the total supply.

*may not charge 1 copper per pound of diamonds to make a rez worth of diamonds weigh 500,000 lbs

Yes, but the amount of currency at large enables economic transactions. If there were only a thousand dollar bills in existence, those dollars would be incredibly valuable.... and none of us could afford them, making it very, very hard for us to do grocery shopping. This was one of the huge reasons why we no longer have gold backing currencies: there wasn't enough gold to create enough currency for all the buying and selling that people needed to do. Destroying money from the money supply can grind an economy to a halt, even if the value represented by the money remains intact.

** No longer allowed to grind a game session to a halt by talking about how the economics of the money supply can grind economies to a halt.

[braveheart]

Yes, but the amount of currency at large enables economic transactions. If there were only a thousand dollar bills in existence, those dollars would be incredibly valuable.... and none of us could afford them, making it very, very hard for us to do grocery shopping. This was one of the huge reasons why we no longer have gold backing currencies: there wasn't enough gold to create enough currency for all the buying and selling that people needed to do. Destroying money from the money supply can grind an economy to a halt, even if the value represented by the money remains intact.

** No longer allowed to grind a game session to a halt by talking about how the economics of the money supply can grind economies to a halt.

Yes, but diamonds are not currency, they are a commodity, their value affects an aspect of the economy, but does not drive the economy as a whole, to mess with the economy like that you need to have the spell consume gold/silver/platinum/copper coins not diamonds.
I will give you that it'd do some weird things to the economy, but it won't destroy it.

***may not ruin my cpaigms economy by allowing casters to use the gold value of material components instead of the components themselves

[Lord Torath]

Yes, but diamonds are not currency, they are a commodity, their value affects an aspect of the economy, but does not drive the economy as a whole, to mess with the economy like that you need to have the spell consume gold/silver/platinum/copper coins not diamonds.
I will give you that it'd do some weird things to the economy, but it won't destroy it.

***may not ruin my cpaigms economy by allowing casters to use the gold value of material components instead of the components themselves

**** May not cast Protection from Heat followed by Metamorphose Liquids to wreck the campaign economy with hyper-inflation (convert 1 cubic foot per level of one liquid into the type of liquid dropped on the tongue during casting - molten gold is a liquid, and so is molten platinum).

[Aquillion]

5k gold worth of diamonds is fewer diamonds each time, because the supply continually decreases so the price/volume would as well. Even though it eventually requires the smallest increments of diamond, it will always be less than the total supply.

*may not charge 1 copper per pound of diamonds to make a rez worth of diamonds weigh 500,000 lbs

* I will not question the DMG's insistence that all prices are fixed to flat values worldwide.

* I will not refer to the Dungeons and Dragons world as a "command economy" because of this.