He couldn’t handle the strongest potions.

I actually love playing low Intelligence high Wisdom characters because of this. Wisdom dictates your Perception, but Intelligence dictates how smart you are. As a low Int high Wis barbarian, I have often noticed things way before the rest of the party. And if I’m trying to role play that (especially if my Charisma is low,) I may not be able to eloquently explain what I have noticed. So it leads to a lot of “I get tired of listening to the party ramble about what we should do next, and smash my way through the hidden door cuz that seems like the obvious next thing to explore” moments.

There’s nothing quite like the party wizard initially being horrified that you took your axe to a random bookcase, only to be pleasantly surprised afterwards when he notices the passage behind the splinters and wreckage.

That said, even with -1 I regularly get through conversations because my DM rewards good roleplaying by not making us roll for everything.

And that’s something to be applauded. Many tables seem to forget that checks are called by the DM, not the player. There’s a huge difference between role play and roll play. Lots of players will try to take the Observant perk, min-max their Perception, walk into a room, and immediately go “I want to make a Perception check!”

Okay… What specifically are you looking at with that check? Because if the answer is just “I look around the room” then that doesn’t require a check; That’s just using your passive Perception, and if you had waited just a moment I was going to describe the room to you anyways.

If you want to look under the bed, I may call for a check to see if you notice the trap door under the rug, while you’re on the ground looking under the bed. Or if you want to search the wardrobe, I may call for a check to see if you notice the false back with a hidden compartment. But if you just want to glance around the room, my only description is going to be the obvious things that you notice around the room with your passive Perception. I won’t mention the slightly askew candelabrum (it’s a lever for a hidden door), the scratch marks on the floor (where the door rubs it when it opens), or the slight draft from the seam around the door unless your passive Perception is high enough, or you’re specifically looking at something near one of those things where you would be able to notice it.

I used Perception as an example, but many players try to do the same with Charisma skills like Deception or Persuasion. Sure, there may be times where you’ll need to lie to some NPC. But don’t just say you want to make a Deception check. Lie to me (as the NPC) and if the NPC’s passive Insight is high enough (or the lie is bold enough) I’ll call for a Deception check. But if it’s a small lie that would be reasonably believed, I usually won’t even bother calling for a check, because you as the player made it believable. Same with Persuasion or Intimidation. If you as the player drop some sort of stone cold line to intimidate a character, I likely won’t even bother calling for an Intimidation roll. Or if I do, (maybe it’s an intimidating line, but the NPC isn’t easily intimidated), I’ll be sure to at least give the player advantage.

I have also done things like allowing a barbarian to add their strength modifier to an Intimidation check, because they were trying to use their strength to intimidate. Intimidation is classed as a Charisma skill (which Barbarians usually dump) but sometimes it makes sense for people to be intimidated by things other than words. If a barbarian single-handedly takes out six goblins in one turn, I may have that barbarian roll Intimidation against the rest of the group to see if any turn and flee after seeing it happen. Because I want to be sure to reward good role play, not just leave players at the mercy of RNGesus.

The numbers being nearly equal across MtF and FtM is surprising to me, but I’m sure that’s mostly due to visibility bias; Trans men tend to pass as cis much easier after transitioning, (especially if they have had a double-mastectomy, or started hormone blockers before they developed breasts) so I likely wouldn’t notice them. Like I personally know about a dozen (open) trans women, but only know of one (open) trans man. So seeing the nearly identical percentages was interesting.

Yup, this is my guess. Whether or not it’s official policy doesn’t matter; The bigot behind the clerk’s desk is confiscating paperwork regardless. It’s possible their superiors don’t even know about it, and they’re just quietly shredding the IDs without telling anyone else in the office.

But the important point is that the bigot feels empowered to do so, because they don’t believe they’ll face any repercussions for it. We need to make bigots afraid again…

The Photoshop of map makers; Amazing if you know how to use it, but absolutely useless if you don’t.

Because the DM needs to know if the spell succeeds before they can narrate anything.

I mean… If you showed this to a medieval peasant and told them it was dragon hide, they might actually believe you.

In fact, some stuff like hair removal is actually better to start early and do long term. Cuz there’s always the chance that rapid treatments don’t get everything, but you won’t know right away until things have time to heal and start growing again. So if you do it too quickly, it’s possible that you miss follicles that can still grow hair. And when discussing bottom surgery, missed follicles are the stuff of nightmares. So start the hair removal early, let it have time to heal, and give yourself time to identify any missed follicles and return for further treatment.

Glad to hear it!

Well yeah. The goal is to humanize the person they just killed, to make the players potentially regret their murderhobo ways for a brief moment. And one of the fastest ways to make a character (at least shallowly) altruistic is to have them pet the dog. Do something kind for something/someone innocent. It’s often used to show that an antagonist isn’t entirely evil, and is acting against the party due to a specific goal (rather than simply being evil for evil’s sake).

It’s the inverse of the “kick the dog” trope, where a character does something obviously evil for no narrative purpose other than proving that they are evil.

I’m a mod over at !outofcontextdnd@lemmy.world and would love to see some activity! I started it to keep track of some of my own group’s quotes, but the group has been on a two week break for the past four or five months now.

Honestly, at 10 years, it takes such a long time to get there that I give up half the time

Ah yes, the true female experience /s

Not OP, but my buddy built a table with a recessed TV. On the DM’s side, there’s an HDMI splitter; One split goes to the TV, and the other goes to a portable monitor mounted next to the DM. So the DM can see what is on the TV, without worrying about rotating everything 180° to face the players.

The advantage of dual screens is that you can run multiple instances of Foundry on a single PC. So the DM’s main laptop screen (which the players can’t see) is the DM side, then a second instance (displayed on the TV and external monitor) can be the players’ view. It allows the DM to sequester the players’ view just like an online game.

It’s Always Sunny in Faerie Faeladelphia

FTFY

Know how you get onto the runway, then they gun it for takeoff? As soon as the engines spun up and we started moving, the entire plane lost power. So it was very obvious there was a maintenance issue. We taxi’ed back to the gate, and that’s when the 4 hour wait started.

Happened to me coming out of Hawaii too. Four hour delay for maintenance. We had working blowers, but no AC; The air from the blowers was warm and humid after probably ~15 minutes. And just like you said, no food or water service from the attendants until we’re in the air.

Then we get through the maintenance, and the pilot comes on and (sounding very annoyed) goes “so I’ve just been notified that I have to do a fat stack of paperwork before we can leave. Looking at this packet, it’ll probably take me about an hour. We’re just going to deboard the plane for now so we can all get some fresh air. Go ahead and leave your luggage stowed since we’ll be right back on as soon as I finish this. Go hit the Chilis while you wait for me to finish this maintenance packet.”

When a 10 is your average stat and the wizard dumped Strength and Dexterity at 8, you can bet your ass they’d struggle to get up a rope. Think about how strong and nimble the average person is, and how much they would struggle. That’s a 10.

The irony is that America isn’t even in the top 3 most litigious countries. That stereotype was a myth that was spread by McDonalds, in the wake of the (now infamous) hot coffee lawsuit.

Basically, a woman was horribly burned by coffee that was way too hot (the coffee was hot enough to melt her labia and fuse it to her thigh) and only wanted McD to pay for her medical bills. It was something like $20k total, once all the skin grafts, reconstructive surgery, rehab, etc was accounted for. McD told her to pound sand. So she sued for the medical bills, because her insurance company required it as a condition of her coverage. Basically, her health insurance didn’t want to pay for it, so they said they’d only cover things after she lost a lawsuit.

In the lawsuit, it was discovered that she wasn’t even the first person to have been injured; McD had been warned numerous times that their coffee was being served too hot (it was near boiling) and that it had horribly injured several people prior to this. But they kept the coffee hot to discourage free refills; People had to wait for their coffee to cool before they drank it, and all that waiting meant fewer refills. So McD repeatedly refused to lower the serving temp of their coffee, because they didn’t want to potentially give people an extra refill.

In the lawsuit, the jury was so horrified that they awarded the woman the large judgement. Again, she was only suing for the medical bills, but they awarded her millions instead, to send a lesson to McD and hopefully get them to reduce the temp of their coffee.

Instead, McD hired an advertising company to run an astroturfing campaign against the woman. They spread the myth that she was a money hungry vulture looking for an easy payday. They dragged her through the mud, and she ended up having a mental breakdown from all of the constant harassment. Simultaneously, they spread the stereotype that Americans are all super litigious and will sue at the smallest inconvenience. Again, to discourage future lawsuits by making people think their (completely legitimate) claims were frivolous.

It’s widely considered to be one of the most successful astroturfing campaigns in history, and comments like yours are proof of that. The stereotype still exists to this day, all because McDonalds didn’t want to give free refills.

[Insert “Lawful doesn’t mean they follow the law. It means they follow a set of rules and refer to those rules for guidance when uncertain about how to proceed. Chaotic means they make it up as they go” argument here.]

You can have a lawful evil assassin who breaks the law by murdering people. As long as they have a strict code of conduct (like maybe they never kill kids, always kill to make a statement, never kill for free, etc,) then they are lawful. Because the law of the land may change, but the character’s code won’t. That code is what makes them lawful; Not following the law of the land.