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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • Dreamworks just produces mediocre slop with the occasional banger, the Shrek effect got nothing to do with it. They also gave us Kung Fu Panda, How to Train your Dragon, and The Last Wish over the years, which are all great. I’m also a fan of Wild Robot, although I think the third act doesn’t really flow as nicely as the previous ones.

    I’ve seen it said that Japanese Animation is so popular because they treated it as an art form and took it seriously for both children’s and adult media, and it’s definitely another window into what the world would be like if the industry in the US stayed on that course from the early 00s

    Most of the anime production of the last two decades is generic shonen slop, the fact that it became popular has nothing to do with taking it seriously and it’s not a metric of quality. There’s some good stuff in there amid the bad, but that’s the same for western animation.


  • Funnily enough, I don’t think even True Resurrection would save you in that case.

    The spell resurrects anyone except people who have died of old age, and dying by negative hit points would count as old age IMO. Even if you go ahead and cast it, the spell doesn’t alter your HP in any way, so you’d be resurrected with negative HP and die anyway.






  • Haha yeah, that’s definitely the right way to go, but the problem is not wrong expectations. He already DM’d a campaign for me a few years back and I knew what I was getting into. It’s just not his style. I crave for gritty old-school dungeon crawling, while he loves narrative-heavy games where dialogue takes priority and backstories tie heavily with in-game events.

    It’s not all bad though, we still have fun, and my group takes turns at DMing - we all get to play what we like eventually, and offers variety in the long run. I would not play tabletop with any other group.



  • I think that the best thing about tabletop games is that you are not bound by someone else’s rules and can decide on the spot what works and what doesn’t. It makes for more interesting plays that just adhere to the words written on the page.

    A few years ago, me and my party were stuck in the sewers with giant invisible spiders stalking us. When they attacked us, the Paladin threw some water around so that the water hitting the invisible bodies would make them visible. There’s no specific rule for that, but it made for a cool moment.

    At the same time, even if Firebolt explicitly states that it sets objects on fire and Investiture of Flame doesn’t, if the Sorcerer wants to burn stuff with it, I’ll allow it.

    From experience, the only way to somewhat balance martials and casters is to either give the martials broken stuff, or play homebrew classes that actually care about giving them interesting features to play with.
    Allowing the players to interact with the environment using their tools (as long as they don’t specifically infringe on established rules) doesn’t change the power dynamics between casters and non-casters. Sure, it technically increases the utility of casters a bit more, but chances are that they have countless tools for the job anyway. The martials are still eating dirt miles behind them.