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

[Harpier]

*Finding a way to weasel out of an oath to not tell my commander about the Paladin making a deal for power with a demon is within my character. Proceeding to lead the now murderously enraged paladin on a wild goose chase around our home base for half a day using lots of stealth cheese and summoned creatures is just rubbing it in.
** That same character cannot distract a couple of guards armed to the teeth by acting cute while Wild Shaped into a kitten. Especially if what they're guarding is a prison in Fantasy Siberia.
*** If you want to play an impulsive and brash trickster so badly, cannot keep being unable to roll above a 5 on saves against Fear. Especially if I'm proficient in that save with high Wisdom, and have a decent time rolling Wisdom saves otherwise.
(RIP Zanna of the Moon, 2017-2018. She was fun.)

[TheTeaMustFlow]

* While it may be a monstrosity, may not wild shape into Trump Tower.

[Shulk]

An oath to the crown assumes you're enforcing local laws, not the law of your homeland wherever you go.
*An oath to the crown as paladin does not automatically make you inspector javert
** You are not allowed to sing every line you say as an oath of the crown paladin, unless you multiclass bard
*** You are not allowed to have been born inside a jail if you're oath of the crown
**** Yes, your oath demands you chase down bread thieves until you catch them. Why are you asking
***** NO MORE JAVERT JOKES.

[sengmeng]

*Not allowed to create the only DMPC a party has ever liked, then kill him.
**No matter how noble of a sacrifice it was.
***Yes, they would have literally rather saved him instead of the world.

[Spore]

** That same character cannot distract a couple of guards armed to the teeth by acting cute while Wild Shaped into a kitten. Especially if what they're guarding is a prison in Fantasy Siberia.

*** You cannot, CANNOT start grappling guards as a tiny kitten wildshaped monk.
**** YES I KNOW THERE ARE NO SIZE RESTRICTIONS! I KNOW YOU RETAIN YOUR STRENGTH OF *reads* 22. This is silly.
***** The tiny kitten cannot have the burly bouncer in a headlock.
******THAT'S IT! That is the last time I'll allow you to pick an archetype that combines wildshape with monks.
******* No you cannot play a summoner of a diminuitive protean worm with constrict. I know what you plan to do.

[John Campbell]

* 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.
** This does not make the party a swarm of Fine creatures and therefore make us immune to single-target effects like, e.g., flyswatters.

[noob]

* 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.
** This does not make the party a swarm of Fine creatures and therefore make us immune to single-target effects like, e.g., flyswatters.

May not argue it is just because you forgot size limitations on polymorph and should have used shape change.

[Anonymouswizard]

* My AI character can't be a spam bot.

[Rater202]

Cannot play a pacifist in a setting based on martial arts anime.

[John Campbell]

May not argue it is just because you forgot size limitations on polymorph and should have used shape change.

Nah, Fine vermin are totally within the bounds of polymorph's capabilities, at least in 3.5.

[Spore]

Cannot play a pacifist in a setting based on martial arts anime.

*Similarly a wilderness campaign will not need a socialite.
** You cannot persuade wildlife to fight for you.
*** Yes, you did roll an impressive result. Random small dog breeds, squirrels and deer does not qualify as a fighting force.
**** 6 squirrels don't count as a swarm.

[Anonymouswizard]

**** 6 squirrels don't count as a swarm.

***** Or a vehicle, no matter what rules exploits I can come up with.

[John Campbell]

*Similarly a wilderness campaign will not need a socialite.
** You cannot persuade wildlife to fight for you.
*** Yes, you did roll an impressive result. Random small dog breeds, squirrels and deer does not qualify as a fighting force.
**** 6 squirrels don't count as a swarm.

Small dogs, squirrels, and deer may not qualify as a fighting force, but I've had good results using beavers as combat engineers.

[TheYell]

*May not start play with no ranks in Perform and a set of bagpipes.
** May not RP a 9 Charisma by being annoying any other way either
*** May not RP an 18 Charisma with a Jimmy Stewart impression

[Spore]

Small dogs, squirrels, and deer may not qualify as a fighting force, but I've had good results using beavers as combat engineers.

No, a squirrel powered Riksha or Sedan chair is right out.

[noob]

Nah, Fine vermin are totally within the bounds of polymorph's capabilities, at least in 3.5.

You can’t cause a subject to assume a form smaller than Fine

So fine is fine but nothing smaller than fine is fine.
But fine is the smallest size.
Polymorph size restriction does not makes sense: since there is nothing smaller than fine saying "You can’t cause a subject to assume a form smaller than Fine" is redundant with the fact sizes smaller than fine does not exists.
But it also means I can take the shape of a bug so it is okay.

[Anonymouswizard]

* Homeopathy and the elemental plane of water do not mix.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

* I am not to trigger demarcation disputes by summoning other party's final bosses away.

* I am not to play The Last Post every time one of the summoned expendable mooks die.

[Socratov]

* Homeopathy and the elemental plane of water do not mix.

Nope, not even the elemental plane of water has enough to dilute to such a degree.

[Anonymouswizard]

Nope, not even the elemental plane of water has enough to dilute to such a degree.

Bit moot, the elemental plane of pancea plan has got me banned from alternative medicine in general. Hadn't even worked out a way to shake the plane to get the stuff mixing as well!

* If I don't believe in it I can't convince the GM to let me have it.
** It doesn't matter if I've done so before.
*** Yes, it was very bad that I actually managed to convince a GM that you can make a good rechargeable battery out of inductors and capacitors. It was not fair revenge for him banning me from engineering theoretical electrical devices.

* For that matter, I'm banned from using Fabricate to create doped silicon.
** It doesn't matter if I've planned out a post scarcity economy that would free up enough people to go from D&D standard technology to the modern era in a century or so, I cannot try to increase the local technology level.
*** There is no way I can set up a space program with D&D magic.
**** Nailed to the Sky is not for getting satellites into orbit!

[John Campbell]

*** There is no way I can set up a space program with D&D magic.

Spelljammer would beg to differ.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

**** Nailed to the Sky is not for getting satellites into orbit!

Naturally not - it only gets you about 500km up tops, which is barely LEO, and can only affect 1000lb, which is pretty light for a satellite. And it costs 1000xp a pop, which isn't exactly chicken feed. You'd be much better off just using conventional teleportation.

[DeTess]

Naturally not - it only gets you about 500km up tops, which is barely LEO, and can only affect 1000lb, which is pretty light for a satellite. And it costs 1000xp a pop, which isn't exactly chicken feed. You'd be much better off just using conventional teleportation.

Well actually, satellites are currently being designed to be ever smaller and lighter, with a preference for multiple smaller satellites over 1 large one. 500km is also a quite respectable orbit (the ISS, for example, orbit at around 430 km).

*May not go 'Well actually...' whenever someone else at the table brings up something aerospace-related.
**Yes, we know you studied this.
***No, it's not fine if it's in-character.
****Your 8 INT half-orc paladin can not have ranks in knowledge: Aerospace engineering

[Tohron]

****Your 8 INT half-orc paladin can not have ranks in knowledge: Aerospace engineering

*****My referencing of low INT and combat class as limiting factors should in no way be construed as allowing a 22 INT Archivist to have ranks in Knowledge: Aerospace Engineering.

[John Campbell]

* My illiterate half-orc barbarian cannot determine which hemisphere of a strange world we've been gated to just by looking at the sky.
** Not even if I can explain the exact techniques he's using to do this.
*** Not even if these are techniques his plains-nomad tribe would routinely use for overland navigation.
**** Not even if his Survival skill is... wait, his Survival skill is what? Okay, I guess he can.

[Anonymouswizard]

Naturally not - it only gets you about 500km up tops, which is barely LEO, and can only affect 1000lb, which is pretty light for a satellite. And it costs 1000xp a pop, which isn't exactly chicken feed. You'd be much better off just using conventional teleportation.

True, and we don't want to wait until Epic Magic Congress online anyway.

As you've said, chaining conventional teleports is probably much more efficient for achieving a high altitude, but to get into orbit we also need a lot of sideways velocity. By my reckoning we need a low damage, wide AoE spell to apply explosive spell to, and then fire a bunch of them off behind us to accelerate. Now if we want to achieve manned exploration of side we just need a way to hold the atmosphere in and a way to steer...

[LordCdrMilitant]

*** There is no way I can set up a space program with D&D magic.

We did.

First, there was a discussion about whether Greater Teleport or Interplanetary Teleport would impart you with the v required to stay in orbit. We determined that, because it drops you stationary relative to the reference point, it does impart you with the necessary v to stay there,so you can use it to jump to orbit. You can mathematically determine your orbit, and thus the r and v you need at a given time, and verify with a telescope the point, which establishes the familiarity requirement for teleport.

So, I had a character teleport to orbit and leave a marker there so that it could be teleported back to. Then, I teleported some of my minions, my cohort, and some construction supplies to build a space station. Everybody involved was undead or a construct, thus overcoming the issue with being in vacuum.

Movement was accomplished with the Fly spell, which we determined didn't require being in the atmosphere since it made no reference to wings or air-dependent propulsion. Once there was a framework, cables and magnets allowed the minions to move adequately.

For attitude control, the spell Telekinesis can exert 25lbf of force. It's not a lot, but it is a controllable source of force. If something went wrong and we started tumbling or lost control, we'd be in trouble, but since we were alone in space, the plan was for things not to go wrong.

Well actually, satellites are currently being designed to be ever smaller and lighter, with a preference for multiple smaller satellites over 1 large one. 500km is also a quite respectable orbit (the ISS, for example, orbit at around 430 km).

*May not go 'Well actually...' whenever someone else at the table brings up something aerospace-related.
**Yes, we know you studied this.
***No, it's not fine if it's in-character.
****Your 8 INT half-orc paladin can not have ranks in knowledge: Aerospace engineering

*Katherine the Human TTRPG Player has ranks in Knowledge: (Aerospace Engineering). This does not confer to Annelie the Vampire Sorceress any ranks in Knowledge: (Aerospace Engineering).
**Yes, Annelie the Vampire Sorceress has ranks in Knowledge (Engineering), which is an actual skill and would cover aerospace engineering, and an absurdly high INT, that still doesn't allow her to design and control spacecraft. The particular application for it has yet to be conceived.
***No, she is not conceiving of the idea of using her ranks in Knowledge (Engineering) to design and control spacecraft right now.

I've found that AE is a field that doesn't lend itself well to its elements being incorporated into RPG's, despite the wealth of Sci-Fi RPG's. In fact, I almost exclusively run Sci-Fi games with spaceships and I basically never get to incorporate my technical knowledge into what I run. Fundamentally, for the purposes of an RPG, it doesn't matter how the spacecraft goes from planet A to planet B [unless you're playing as the navigation and control team at JPL, which I believe it is safe to say that you aren't], only that it does. Likewise, there's basically no situation that would call upon the players to design an atmospheric flying machine, or at least consider the technicals of doing so. And, if it even comes up, it's taken care of as a single skill roll.

*Players do not require real life ranks in Navigate (Stellar) for their characters to have ranks in Navigate (Stellar).
**If you need to have passed AE402 to play in my game, I should rethink the contents of my game.

[Spore]

We did.

*Katherine the Human TTRPG Player has ranks in Knowledge: (Aerospace Engineering). This does not confer to Annelie the Vampire Sorceress any ranks in Knowledge: (Aerospace Engineering).
**Yes, Annelie the Vampire Sorceress has ranks in Knowledge (Engineering), which is an actual skill and would cover aerospace engineering, and an absurdly high INT, that still doesn't allow her to design and control spacecraft. The particular application for it has yet to be conceived.
***No, she is not conceiving of the idea of using her ranks in Knowledge (Engineering) to design and control spacecraft right now.

****Annelie the Vampire would implode on the paradox that from a certain distance away from earth, the sun is always shining AND space is also known as the "endless night".

[Personification]

[Entire Aerospace Engineering Discussion]

*"Aerospace Engineering related college-level lectures" and "Rock Gnome lullabies" are not synonymous
**The answer to "What does a Rock Gnome parent make when the fridge is empty?" is not "a Saturn V rocket"
***Elon Musk is not a Rock Gnome in disuise
****GNO GNOMES AT GNASA

[LordCdrMilitant]

****Annelie the Vampire would implode on the paradox that from a certain distance away from earth, the sun is always shining AND space is also known as the "endless night".

It is "night" in a object's inner shadow, and beyond the heliopause [where the solar wind is drowned out by the interstellar wind]. It is "day" within the star's sphere of influence where direct line-of-sight can be traced to any part of the sun.

There's no new paradox created by a vampire going to space that didn't already exist. It's obvious that it's direct sunlight that causes the damage, since going inside stops the damage and moonlight doesn't cause damage. It's also apparent that the sun's power has a range at which is becomes a non-problem, since distant stars at night don't cause damage. Staying in the planetary shadow is the same as being in the night by the definition of night, so that's fine, so the only open question is a question of at what range does the starlight cease to be damaging.