Using science in DnD to make the DM cry

[Eldpollard]

As the DM i had the party accosted by some water elementals. Ones that were slightly too tough for them so that they would run, which was needed for the plot. But one of the PCs said that urea breaks down hydrogen bonds, so then i had a barbarian, fighter and rouge urinating on a water elemental killing it, so they then got loads of xp.
Any similar stories?

[oriong]

....What? Okay, honestly by allowing them to get away with that you deserve it. When you urinate in your toilet does the water somehow magically disolve? And how exactly did a barbarian, a fighter and a rogue know what the hell 'urea' is, let alone a hydrogen bond?

This isn't using science to make the DM cry, this is you letting the PCs get way with whatever they want.

[Dairun Cates]

Well, while I do have a couple, I think you got hoodwinked on the water elemental one. If the effects of breaking the hydrogen bonds were so strong, your toilet water would cause a chemical reaction everytime you went to the bathroom. Toilet water does not randomly turn into hydrogen gas and oxygen as far as my knowledge goes.

However, on the subject of science being used in game, I had one player with an 8 DR/- who loved to use his ability to fly to go up 60 feet in one turn, and then use the subsequent turn to fall on an enemy while attacking him. Since he did these again big enemies, it usually worked. Kinda silly in the damage range for a character his level, but for every 60 damage he did, he usually took 40 back. So, I was fine with it.

[Matthew]

Hmmn. There was once the need to calculate the weight of a character who had been turned to stone. Didn't make anyone cry, but it was a point of trouble.

[Dark]

You forgot to make them make "nervous bladder" rolls. I'd say it's at least DC 25 with three water elementals looking.

[Thomas]

That's stupid. Water elementals aren't damaged by urine. Who cares about hydrogen bonds?

Edit: After Dark's comment, I can't help but think of F.A.T.A.L., which had rules for urinating. (If you think that's juvenile or offensive or idiotic, never, ever try to find out more about the game. That's by far not the worst or dumbest thing the game had rules for.)

[Ephraim]

Hydrogen bonds aren't the bonds that hold hydrogen to oxygen. They're the weak bonds between molecules of water that cause the water to remain cohesive.

1) I don't know what this static is about urea breaking hydrogen bonds, though. It might cause water molecules to bond less to one another and more to the urea molecule, but that still doesn't really cause any harm to the water elementals. Instead of having (water)-----(water), you have (water)---(urea)---(water). No big deal.

2) Who says that water elementals are held together by hydrogen bonding? The way I understood it, they're held together by magic.

3) Just because one of your players says something doesn't mean that you have to let it work, even if it would be good science. The laws of physics in a realm containing magic are unpredictable. Use the consensual reality argument if you have to. (ie: The laws of physics as we know them don't work because not enough people in the realm believe in them.)

[Rahdjan]

The only time science has made my DM cry was when I hit him with a beaker of chemicals. He was such a wuss.

[Ikkitosen]

I used some basic traingle maths to figure out the length of rope needed to create a pendulum to have a lit torch enter a bees' nest partway up a tree. The DM let it go, thankfully for my PC.

[Iituem]

Honestly? I wouldn't have let the water elementals die, but I might have stunned them for 1d4 rounds from the sheer shock of being peed upon by three huge, heavily muscled men.

[KoDT69]

I played a dragon-kin type character in 2nd edition long ago. I used his natural flight to go over a huge salt golem from the DarkSun compendium. I procedded to take a big leak on it. The group got ravaged apparently trying to "save me" from a slow moving monster that could not reach me. DM already said the thing could barely hop, and we were in open space. I could just fly higher while peeing on it :smallyuk: Of course it did next to no damage to it, but it was fun :smallbiggrin:

[Ikkitosen]

It seems that a rather disturbing peeing fetish is being unconvered on these boards. Any psychologists around to explain the significance of people having their fantasy incarnations pee on things?

[Neek]

I doubt this would have worked in any situation. While water has its surface tension based on a hydrogen bond, the water elementals are not actually held together by this alone--they're held together by extramagicular bonds. And as well, we don't urinate pure urea.

Ituem has the right idea. Have them be stunned because, well, gosh--they elementals are receiving a golden shower! :(

[Dairun Cates]

Hydrogen bonds aren't the bonds that hold hydrogen to oxygen. They're the weak bonds between molecules of water that cause the water to remain cohesive.


Oh duh. Right. That's what I get for not taking Chemistry for 3 years. Yeah. Either way, there seems to be no indication that this should ever work, and you really shouldn't reward THAT creative of thinking or they'll do it every time.

Still, you should have REALLY messed with them. If they insist that it causes the water elementals to "melt" then let it be so. Then the party can try to fight a giant wave as they all merge into one evil, evil, malicious puddle. I don't know about you, but I'm far more scared of that than 3 water elementals.

Edit: Correction. Giant Evil Malicious Puddle made halfway of their own Urine. I certainly would run from a wave of urine.

[Neek]

They become Urine Elementals? Ew. I wouldn't want to fight a small Urine Elemental.

[rollfrenzy]

How about The opposite. My Dm had devised an inttricate dungeon designed around solving a puzzle. We were supposed to solve clues and then decipher a code. We got to the puzzle (at the beginning of the dungeon) and one party member siad "try it alphabetically". By sheer dumb luck, it worked. My Gm had randomly had the clues alphabetically. We skipped the whole adventure and made him cry. (we later payed for it though, Gm's are spiteful beings bent on revenge.)

[Dairun Cates]

They become Urine Elementals? Ew. I wouldn't want to fight a small Urine Elemental.

Exactly. Doesn't matter how tough you are. A sane man RUNS from that encounter. Objective achieved.

[mikeejimbo]

Glad to see I wasn't the only one who thought "Urine Elemental" when I read that.

Our games have a general rule: No urinating on anything. ESPECIALLY not altars of gods. And MOST ESPECIALLY not on altars of EVIL gods.

[Green Bean]

I've heard the 'using the laws of thermodynamics to suck the oxygen from a cave' one from somewhere, but would anyone care to explain the physics of it to me?

[Ephraim]

I've heard the 'using the laws of thermodynamics to suck the oxygen from a cave' one from somewhere, but would anyone care to explain the physics of it to me?

What actions did they take to create this scenario? Thermodynamics was one of my better subjects in college, so I ought to be able to help you.

[oriong]

Fire consumes oxygen as it burns, this creates a vaccum as the oxygen is consumed and thus pulls in air, since a cave system typically does not have a ready supply of fresh air this means a whole lot of oxygen can be pulled straight out of them (the same goes for a building or just about any enclosed space) with enough fire.

Most D+D fire spells wouldn't do this very well because the flame is instantaneous, in fact some seem to actively deny that they produce this effect (fireball for instance says explicitly that it produces very little concussion) and in other cases if the spell did behave this way it might end up killing the user (for instance flame shield would reasonably keep the user from breathing even if he did avoid getting burned).

Thus it seems like magical fires likely don't consume oxygen (or they consume very little). but of course this is killing catgirls.

[Ephraim]

It doesn't necessarily have to be a magical fire, though. If you use a magical means to "seal" the cave (so that the fire can not consume oxygen from outside) then lighting a fire at the entrance will begin to consume the oxygen in the cave. Depending on the geometry of the cave, the absence of oxygen near the entrance will create a concentration gradient of oxygen which, by the 2nd law of thermodynamics, will tend to cause oxygen to migrate from regions of high concentration deeper in the cave toward the low-concentration region near the entrance. Whether this consumes all of the oxygen in the cave (rapid enough migration to keep the fire going) or causes the fire to go out (migration too slow to keep the fire going) is a rather difficult exercise. In most cases, I would say that this trick works.

[oriong]

Right, alchemists fire or anything like that would work just fine so long as the cave doens't have a fresh supply (and a big enough fire of course)

[Dairun Cates]

This is of course when the party finds out that the hundreds of gelatinous cubes in the cave don't need air to breathe, and having lost all food sources due to them dying have decided to move to the cave entrance for nourishment and destroy the town they're staying in the next day.

[Arceliar]

Enlarge Person and Reduce Person can provide fun. So can Giant Size

Basic Premise: Body heat produced is proportional to volume. Body heat lost is proportional to surface area.

Casting enlarge person on a person/enemy means that they have 8 times the volume and 4 times the surface area. Their body now produces heat at twice the rate it would normally lose it. One size category chance probably isn't enough to cause harm, you'd likely feel flu like and sluggish though. Giant size (especially when made into a magic item which the enemy can be tricked into using) can cause more of a problem. Increasing 4 size categories (medium to colossal) means that the creatures surface area increases 256 times while the volume increases 4096 times. Their default metabolic rate now produces 16x as much heat as their body is naturally built to lose.

Reduce person functions similarly. Their surface area decreases 4x while their volume decreases 8 times. Even in a temperate environment they need to keep moving to avoid losing sufficient heat that they succumb to hypothermia.

The fact that actual strength is proportional to the cross sectional area of a muscle while weight is proportional to volume can be interesting too. D&D accounts for this a bit already. Most equipment says it weights twice as much as the previous size category. However, in the "Enlarge Person" description: "This spell causes instant growth of a humanoid creature, doubling its height and multiplying its weight by 8. [...] All equipment worn or carried by a creature is similarly enlarged by the spell." This essentially means that a creature's objects carried now weight eight times as much while it can lift slightly more than twice as much (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/carryingCapacity.htm) after strength score adjustments.

The reverse is possible too, you can use Reduce Person to shrink items carried, yet the items decrease in weight at a much greater rate than the character's carrying capacity. But once released they return to normal size. This is where the rules for improvised weapons in the back of complete warrior come in handy.

[Seffbasilisk]

It's somewhat the complete opposite, but a DM nearly made ME cry, when he houseruled that electricity arced, and electric damage to things in water arced and also damaged everything else nearby in the water.

It was useful verse the first few lizard men (orb of shock, lesser) but when we started to get melee it was horrible not to be able to 'shocking grasp'

[Maxymiuk]

From the GM's standpoint, there's the blue dragon that converted his hoard into copper coins and covered every horizontal surface of his lair with the resultant pile of cheap, yet highly conductive metal. The party enters and trips an alarm spell...

**ZOT!**

Poor bastards. They didn't stand a chance... :smallamused:

[Mewtarthio]

This is of course when the party finds out that the hundreds of gelatinous cubes in the cave don't need air to breathe, and having lost all food sources due to them dying have decided to move to the cave entrance for nourishment and destroy the town they're staying in the next day.

Awesome! An army of Geletanious Cubes attacking a city!

...Say, do Oozes count as "corporeal" for the purpose of templates like, say, Half-Dragon?

[Artanis]

Awesome! An army of Geletanious Cubes attacking a city!

...Say, do Oozes count as "corporeal" for the purpose of templates like, say, Half-Dragon?
How would you even make a Half-Dragon gela...

Know what? Nevermind. I don't think I want to know the answer :smalleek:

[Thomas]

It seems that a rather disturbing peeing fetish is being unconvered on these boards. Any psychologists around to explain the significance of people having their fantasy incarnations pee on things?

Are you kidding?

It's the plainest manifestation of Freud's psychosexual stages (well, not the plainest; if they all had a thing about sucking the enemies or crapping on them, that'd be even clearer...), specifically the phallic stage. Case closed.

Never mind that Fraud- sorry, Freud (that was what you call a Fraudian slip... Freudian slip...) was a crackpot who had nothing to do with science and whose theories were all worthless metaphysical speculations that can mostly, by their nature, neither be confirmed nor disproved...

[mikeejimbo]

How would you even make a Half-Dragon gela...

Know what? Nevermind. I don't think I want to know the answer :smalleek:

Sorry, you implied it. Now Rule 34 has to take effect.

[Jayabalard]

Any DM stupid enough to let the players destroy a water elemental with urine deserves to cry.

As does any player that's stupid enough to try and whip it out during combat to try that.

[Woot Spitum]

Glad to see I wasn't the only one who thought "Urine Elemental" when I read that.

Our games have a general rule: No urinating on anything. ESPECIALLY not altars of gods. And MOST ESPECIALLY not on altars of EVIL gods.

Actually, as long as some sort of powerful electric charge runs through the altar...

If your PC's go on a "pee on anything that moves" frenzy, you could always hit them with giant animated urinals (immune to all urine and urine-related effects).

[Dairun Cates]

Awesome! An army of Geletanious Cubes attacking a city!

...Say, do Oozes count as "corporeal" for the purpose of templates like, say, Half-Dragon?

You know. I would almost have to say you'd need to average the penalties for incoporeality or just make a whole new monster. Either that or you could just have incorporeal slimes flying over the city and breathing fire. Either way, small work for the look on your player's faces.

Oh, and Thomas, yes, Freud's a nut, but that doesn't disvalidate everything he ever did. A lot of his theories, especially that of the id, ego, and superego, have proven to be completely valid and a valuable basis for modern psychology. While a lot of his stuff is FLAT OUT WRONG, it's really a bad idea to assume someone wrong on all accounts based on character. Otherwise, we would've stopped believing gravity since this Newton fellow was kind of a ****.

[Fhaolan]

It seems that a rather disturbing peeing fetish is being unconvered on these boards. Any psychologists around to explain the significance of people having their fantasy incarnations pee on things?

Oh, trust me, it goes far beyond these boards.

I have a player who has decided that the Dwarven ability to 'detect sloping passages' is based on Dwarves drinking lots of beer. If the pee runs off, it must be a sloping passage. He then found ways to extend this explanation to the other Dwarven abilities: Detect traps; the pee runs into the cracks of the pressure plate triggers. Detect secret doors; the pee runs under the walls. Detect new construction; it hasn't been peed on yet...

And from there he found new Dwarven abilities: Detect Undead, if the corpse gets up and attacks you after being peed on, it's Undead...

The really funny bit is this particular Dwarf is desperate to find out why none of the other races have this ability. Do they miss the ground, or something?

[Illiterate Scribe]

Another unfortunate use of science would be the use of major creation. A 10th level wizard can create 5.6 tons of plutonium with a single casting. The amount of the stuff needed to reach fissile critical mass is highly confidential, but I'm fairly sure it's less than that. And if the DM says,

'How does your character know about element 94?'

Simple answer - it would seem to be sickstone:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20021228a

[Iituem]

Ah, but how would he set off the reaction? He's going to need to find a way to fire neutrons at it.

Hold up. What about a magic missile? :smallamused:

[Fhaolan]

Another unfortunate use of science would be the use of major creation. A 10th level wizard can create 5.6 tons of plutonium with a single casting. The amount of the stuff needed to reach fissile critical mass is highly confidential, but I'm fairly sure it's less than that. And if the DM says,

'How does your character know about element 94?'

Simple answer - it would seem to be sickstone:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20021228a

Admitedly, it's been a long time since I worked as a Chemical Engineer, but last time I checked plutonium does *not* match the characteristics of sickstone. Yes, sickstone's effects appear to match radiation poisoning, but plutonium has a complex oxidation schema (that is still radioactive). It doesn't just turn to inert dust with exposure to sunlight.

Even then, you have to have the plutonium refined, and alloyed, correctly to achieve fissile material. That takes an extreme level of experimentation that can take a lifetime even if you know the end result you're working towards.

Saying sickstone is plutonium is much the same as saying mithril is titanium and adamantium is cobalt. The described fantasy properties don't actually match the real properties of those metals beyond the most vague description.

[Illiterate Scribe]

Nah ... I disapprove of your so-called 'accuracy' :smalltongue:
Anyway, to the other point, you wouldn't have to refine it - you could just say
'I major create a lump of pure plutonium'.

[oriong]

But you don't want pure plutionium, you want weapon-grade plutonium, meaning you not only have to know what plutonium is, but you have to know what an isotope is. Good luck there : P

[jono]

Yeh......

Fantasy Setting. Spellcasting Wizards. Magic Weapons. 50ft Demons. I could go on.

Reason and rationality has no place in D&D.

[Mewtarthio]

Nah ... I disapprove of your so-called 'accuracy' :smalltongue:
Anyway, to the other point, you wouldn't have to refine it - you could just say
'I major create a lump of pure plutonium'.

Except your Wizard probably can't create materials he doesn't know exist. That's like saying "I use major creation to create a bock of pure antidragon, which destroys all dragons it comes in contact with." Besides, conjuring a large mass of weapons-grade plutonium is generally considered to be a Bad Idea.

[Dark]

Actually, sickstone doesn't even match a vague description of plutonium :) Sickstone is described as being silvery-green. Plutonium is just silvery, and its oxides are yellow. Same for uranium, so that's not it either.

Sickstone reminds me a little of the Illearth Stone from the Thomas Covenant books.

Oh, and if you have a large enough mass of plutonium, you won't need anything to set it off. That's what critical mass means -- its own radioactivity causes a self-sustaining fission reaction.

Rough calculations from the wikipedia information about the Manhattan Project suggest that 5.6 tons of it would create about a 17 megaton blast, enough to level a city. Wikipedia ways that even the least efficient isotope has a critical mass of only 100 kg, so you don't have to worry about isotopes. You don't even have to worry about fallout, because of the 1 round/level duration of the spell :smallbiggrin:

But, all that said, there's no reason why a magical world should even have plutonium. You're already in trouble if you allow gunpowder to work.

[NullAshton]

"I use Major Create to create a substance that is annihilated completely upon contact with normal matter, releasing a great deal of energy."

Does that work?

[oriong]

Yes, but only if your DM is really stupid. And of course you'd be dead even if it did work : P

[Dairun Cates]

But this is about making the poor GM cry, not survival.

[Inyssius Tor]

Hell no! That would be like saying "I major create a substance which automatically gives me 20 divine ranks!"

[Iituem]

"You create the substance. It appears before you as a platter of divine ambrosia. Before you can reach it, an eagle swoops down and scarfs the lot. It then ascends to a higher plane of existence, single-handedly crushes the existing pantheon and imprisons you just to make sure nobody else tries it. It rules for a thousand years."

[kuja.girl]

okay - back to science!
I'd like to point out that I never had a full blown argument w/a DM over a science issue, only discussions. Hell, one of my DM's would even consult me ooc about stuff to make sure no one got confused. Bio minor FTW! A couple of examples:

- I argued that "cat-people" (from any book/game/etc) would seem "sexless" (unless breast feeding) to non-cat-people since cats have no external genitalia. (same thing would apply to birds except for plumage colors)

- habitat and survivability - a couple of funny instances were we discussed what survivor rate of a magical-animal outside of it's normal habitat would be and why.

- also there was one incident where a friend cast "create water" into another character's sinuses and effectively ko'd that character. While against the rules, it was damn funny and the DM let him do it since it was non-lethal.

[Voleta]

Slightly off topic but on the subject of half-dragon/g.cubes:

There was a discussion about this on another forum. At least one other person here goes there (Where else has rule 34?). But, I shall rehash my arguments:

While strictly by the most liberal interpertations of the RAW, you can have a half dragon, half gelatnous cube. However, any DM that does not play Munchkin would not allow it.

Reasons:
Cubes are oozes. They do not have reproductive organs, and reproduce either through budding (natural) or magic (durn tinkering wizards!). As such, they cannot be impregnanted by a dragon, and certainly cannot impegnate a dragon.

Even if somehow they were able to copulate, no dragon would willingly do so. If you had enough power to force one to, why wouldn't you just magically make a mix of the two, versus forcing rape and having to wait for the gestation period to have your minion?

And even then, the dragon would have to have acid immunity. Please dont make me elaborate.

There are alternatives, however:
You could create a half dragon and then apply the gelatanous template, to a creature, producing a gelatanous half dragon.

You could apply the gelatanous template to a dragon. You could take said dragon and breed it, producing a half gelatanous dragon.


I argued that "cat-people" (from any book/game/etc) would seem "sexless" (unless breast feeding) to non-cat-people since cats have no external genitalia. (same thing would apply to birds except for plumage colors)

I respectfully disagree. While it may be difficult, anyone who had spent any time with domestic cats or anthromorphic cats would be able to at least have a reasonable guess as to their gender. Male cats tend to have "jowls", and generally are either lanky and lean, or stocky and muscular. Females tend to have intermediate body types and are usually smaller. A male would likely not mind going shirtless, while a female would tend to want to cover her, pardon the phrase, "itty bitty kitty titties". You have to say that really fast, btw.

[oriong]

I don't know that it's a 'liberal' interpretation of RAW, oozes are very definitely corporeal and that's really all it takes.

Of course, as you said it makes absolutely no sane sense.

[J_Muller]

Instead of Plutonium, why not just Uranium? A simple gun-barrel bomb is easy enough to make. I'm not sure how refined the uranium has to be, though, and I doubt any DM would allow that.

[Solaris]

Yeh......

Fantasy Setting. Spellcasting Wizards. Magic Weapons. 50ft Demons. I could go on.

Reason and rationality has no place in D&D.

The world is entirely rational and reasonable in its own terms. Those terms happen to not always be our world's terms.

[Thomas]

Voleta: Rule 34 is a rule of all teh internets, not just any specific forum.


Oh, and Thomas, yes, Freud's a nut, but that doesn't disvalidate everything he ever did. A lot of his theories, especially that of the id, ego, and superego, have proven to be completely valid and a valuable basis for modern psychology..

No, those (ego, id, superego) specifically are metaphysical concepts. They sound believable and "truthy," but they can not be observed or tested at all (any more than the idea that a person can actually have two "personalities" can be). They also aren't the basis of any type of psychology I'd put stock in (if you reduce them to levels where they can't reasonably be argued against, you're just using different words for "conscience" or "cultural conditioning").

The only real signifigance Freud had was the change in attitudes, from locking "loonies" up and letting people poke them with sticks for money (I bet someone will think that's exaggeration), to listening to them and trying to understand their issues. Psychodynamic psychology after Freud may have hit on a few useful things (and actually used the scientific method), but anyone who quotes Freud in this day and age is sure to be a quack...

[Swordguy]

Another unfortunate use of science would be the use of major creation. A 10th level wizard can create 5.6 tons of plutonium with a single casting. The amount of the stuff needed to reach fissile critical mass is highly confidential, but I'm fairly sure it's less than that. And if the DM says,

'How does your character know about element 94?'

Simple answer - it would seem to be sickstone:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20021228a

Dude, look at the link in my sig.

THAT's how to make a DM cry.

[Roderick_BR]

Next time they use a freedom spell underwater, make them fall throught the ocean body till they hit the bottom, since Freedom removes all the friction :p

Or just say that urinating in it won't affect the elemental, since it has nothing to do with normal water surface tension.

Or do as they say, and turn him into a giant Hydrogen Elemental. When he explodes, he deals 1d6 points of force damage for every hit die he has (adjusted to his new size)

[Neek]

Plutonium alone wouldn't be able to cause a nuclear reaction, but because it requires a 1/3 of the amount to attain critical mass as it would uranium, it's a lot easier to get a subcritical mass. Which means it will worth some fun. As a note, 6.2 kg of plutonium was mishandled--an amoutn enough for subcritical--and the person mishandling it, well, he died within four weeks.

The plutonium will destroy whatever containment it has and spill radiation wherever it pleases. And our Wizard would die from radiation poisoning--it's also extremely flamable, and will react readily and quite volatile too with water and oxygen. So we have many other risks with plutonium, rather than just using it to make a Vorpal Nuclear Warhead +2.

[Collin152]

"You create the substance. It appears before you as a platter of divine ambrosia. Before you can reach it, an eagle swoops down and scarfs the lot. It then ascends to a higher plane of existence, single-handedly crushes the existing pantheon and imprisons you just to make sure nobody else tries it. It rules for a thousand years."
Wrong! The substabce gives me 20 Divine ranks, regardless of who consumes it! And Ishall rule with an Iron fist! No- a Plutonium Fist!

[mikeejimbo]

Dude, look at the link in my sig.

THAT's how to make a DM cry.

HAHAHA... I saw my name, realized who it was, and didn't even have to read the sig to get the significance.

Yeah, good times, good times.

[Artanis]

Simple solution to the players peeing on things: send a Sodium Elemental after them. When they pee on THAT, it'll catch fire and explode :smallbiggrin:

[Collin152]

Naw, the urinating soluiton is have a wizard come by, permanatly turn them all into females. Problem solved.

[martyboy74]

Belt of Gender change.

[Mewtarthio]

Simple solution to the players peeing on things: send a Sodium Elemental after them. When they pee on THAT, it'll catch fire and explode :smallbiggrin:

Anything from that column works, actually. A Caesium elemental will have a much more dramatic reaction.

[Collin152]

Urgh. I'm getting multiple elemental syndrome. Im going to stick with my classic 4, thank you very much!

[mikeejimbo]

Well, why hasn't anyone said it yet?

Plutonium and Uranium Elementals! When they get big enough, they explode.

[Ravyn]

It wasn't exactly making my GM cry, but it did surprise him: there was one time I and one of the other players had gotten back to the main location to discover everything had gone wrong at once, and I had no idea what was going on, except that the guy who had been waiting for something on the balcony was gone. So--well, all I could think of to do was detective work. Most of what I was asking seemed pretty logical to him, but at one point the other player went down to look at the footprints, and I asked how deep they were.

GM says "Not very deep."

I sigh and say, "Number, please. I'm going somewhere with this." GM gives me the benefit of the doubt, so having gotten the number, I declare that my character is using his knowledge of physics (he was, after all, the group's resident scholar) and the springiness of the ground to determine the approximate weights of the people who made the footprints.

It worked. Why it surprised him, though, I hesitate to guess.

[Talanic]

Worse. Two barely-sub-critical mass Plutonium elementals get into a fistfight. BOOM!

[Collin152]

Eh. Thats not quite as entertaining as two VOcanoes going at it.

[mikeejimbo]

Worse. Two barely-sub-critical mass Plutonium elementals get into a fistfight. BOOM!

I can see it now:

Two rival factions of Plutonium Elementals are about to go to war, and only our heroes can stop them from destroying the world!

Yeah, science doesn't come up much in my games, sadly.

[Neek]

Problem: Plutonium elements are very friendly. They prefer hugging. There's a reason you don't find too many of them.

[Mewtarthio]

Well, why hasn't anyone said it yet?

Plutonium and Uranium Elementals! When they get big enough, they explode.

Ooh! Seaborgium Elementals! With their Rapid Decay extraordinary special quality, they automatically cease to exist once per round as a free action!

[averagejoe]

Heck, I don't need to use physics in game to make my DM cry, I just need to talk about physics. I'll be like, "So, as it turns out, blah blah blah proportional to the inverse square blah blah blah relative velocity of charged particles blah blah entropy," and my DM will be in the fetal position, sobbing for his mother.

Actually, as a DM I find I make my players cry more often then not when they try to use "physics" to pull a fast one on me, and I explain to them why it doesn't work. One of them finds the wierdest uses for the grease spell...

[Mewtarthio]

Actually, as a DM I find I make my players cry more often then not when they try to use "physics" to pull a fast one on me, and I explain to them why it doesn't work. One of them finds the wierdest uses for the grease spell...

:smalleek:

[Collin152]

Heck, I don't need to use physics in game to make my DM cry, I just need to talk about physics. I'll be like, "So, as it turns out, blah blah blah proportional to the inverse square blah blah blah relative velocity of charged particles blah blah entropy," and my DM will be in the fetal position, sobbing for his mother.

Actually, as a DM I find I make my players cry more often then not when they try to use "physics" to pull a fast one on me, and I explain to them why it doesn't work. One of them finds the wierdest uses for the grease spell...
Oh, yeah, well the force between any two charges is equal to the absolute value of the multiple of the charges divided by 4 pi times the vacuum permittivity times the distance squared between the two charges.

[Yahzi]

My one science story is a computer trick - the good old binary search.

1. Get a map of the world.

2. Cast "Commune."

3. Rip the map in half. "God... is the bad guy on this half of the map?"

4. If yes, rip it in half and go to step 3. If no, throw that half way, rip the other piece in half, and go to step 3.

We calculated it at one point - you can reduce a large island to a few dozen meters in nine questions.

[Maxymiuk]

3. Rip the map in half. "God... is the bad guy on this half of the map?"


The answer to all these questions would, in fact, be "No."

Just think about it for a minute. :smallamused:

[averagejoe]

Oh, yeah, well the force between any two charges is equal to the absolute value of the multiple of the charges divided by 4 pi times the vacuum permittivity times the distance squared between the two charges.

Unless they're moving relative to one another, 'cause then you get a nifty magnetic term, and the net force is proportional to the cross product of those two forces. Incidentally, cgs units are nice because that "4 pi permittivity" term just goes to one, and you really don't need to bother remembering it's there. As long as you're in free space, but matter is just lame anyways.

Also, to the above, I didn't mean those sorts of uses for grease. Although, I can understand why you might come under that impression, seeing as how I wrote it that way. :smallamused:

[Dairun Cates]

No, those (ego, id, superego) specifically are metaphysical concepts. They sound believable and "truthy," but they can not be observed or tested at all (any more than the idea that a person can actually have two "personalities" can be). They also aren't the basis of any type of psychology I'd put stock in (if you reduce them to levels where they can't reasonably be argued against, you're just using different words for "conscience" or "cultural conditioning").


No offense, but it's psychology. You can't actually prove ANYTHING except statistics, and the statistics themselves fit under sociology, not psychology. On top of that, Psychology is, by it's vary basis, a study of the human mental state, which is an abstract concept. If you can physically hold a human psyche right in front of me, then maybe we can study it on a purely mathematical plain. MAYBE. Still, psychology is almost all theory. To say that "that's not viable because it's abstract" is like not even acknowledging that the universe itself and other people can exist because it can't be fully proven. Hell, all of science is based on fundamental assumptions that can't be proven themselves.

So, how in anyway does being metaphysical make the concepts of the id, ego, and superego useless to modern psychology? Are you saying that people don't have dark sides? Are you saying that people don't keep dark secrets? Are you saying that people don't try to act different for society? Are you trying to say that people don't struggle between sections of their identity? Are you saying that people don't let some of their darker sides occassionally bubble up? Clearly we can't prove these things through data because we can't record the exact mental thoughts of every human being. There's no certainty of the data so the margin of error is inacceptable. So clearly none of these concepts could ever be valid. We can't prove them so we should throw them out, right? No. They're theories. They're not supposed to be proven right. They're a concept of thought on which you can attempt to explain actual solid data. We can't prove relativity, but it still seems to help explain a lot. It could be proven wrong later, but it does help.

It's true that Freud based his arguments in a way that you couldn't argue against him, and he was a complete fool that based his theories in bias, but to say there was nothing of value in his research is a comment based purely in personal bias itself. If you can't see even the most subjective people objectively, there's no reason to consider yourself anything more than subjective. I've seen a lot of people make arguments against Freud, and the common issue seems to be with his character and his style of argument and not his actual research itself. Of course you can't PROVE anything of his, they're theories, but not even CONSIDERING theories means you haven't explored all possibilities and makes for a poor scientist.

I apologize for the long off-topic post.

On Topic:
I'm curious if anyone else has had characters tried to use weight to inflict their falling damage on an opponent or if it's just my insane players.

Like mentioned earlier, I had a player that used flight to fly at full speed with gravity to inflict massive damage on his opponents with an attack. I usually let him because it was risky and inflicted a lot of damage on him as well. Still, it always struck me as a weird tactic to pull.

[Sardia]

Assuming the game world doesn't rotate but you maintain your velocity when teleporting:
Take one sealed, airtight, vacuum-filled cylinder with a permanent teleportation circle at the bottom, set to teleport its contents to the top of the cylinder.
Take one victim and equip him with a necklace of adaptation and ring of sustenance.
Teleport him into the cylinder.
Let him accelerate indefinitely. Several years should do the trick.
Disrupt the system to detonate. Teleporting something large into the cylinder with another teleportation circle might be the safest as it works from a distance. Kicking the cylinder over would do just as well.
Do this with a young elf, and you have a bomb that keeps growing more potent for centuries.

[Dairun Cates]

Wow... Ask and ye shall receive. That's nasty. Too bad about the elf though.

[oriong]

Nah, no one liked him anyway.

Pity about the magic items though. Better solution would be to just use a skeleton or zombie, that way your bomb isn't as expensive.

[Pvednes]

As a chemistry buff, I can tell you now--you got fed so much BS there that it serves you right. Now go back to that table and punish them with some high-level excrementals.

[Dairun Cates]

Nah, no one liked him anyway.

Pity about the magic items though. Better solution would be to just use a skeleton or zombie, that way your bomb isn't as expensive.

Wait. When this become Castlevania: Circle of the Moon with the 9999 damage skeleton bomb?

[daggaz]

I cant believe somebody (and they claimed to have 3 years of biology) made the statement here that cats have no external genitalia! They have obviously NEVER had a cat. (You would think testicles would count as external genitalia, no?) I can see the difference, from the outside, in about 2 seconds, even on a male which has been neutered.

Also, adding any acid or base (urea is a weak base) to water not only effects the hydrogen bonds between water molecules (it weakens them), it also increases the disassociation rate of the hyrdogen and hydroxide (h+, oh-) IONS (note:this is very different from actual hydrogen and oxygen atoms), which increases the reactivity of the water. As a DM, I would say the waterelementals can magically concentrate these ions, and are now equipped with an acid attack. Also, I would seriously doubt how somebody could *whip it out* while wearing armor fast enough to not take like, 2 full rounds of AoO's.

[Voleta]

(You would think testicles would count as external genitalia, no?)

I assumed he/she meant "normally visible" external genitalia. Most cultures allow males to go without shirts, but tend to require some form of groin covering in both genders. I think its safe to assume most characters wear pants, though if there is a halfling around and the cat-person-thing is wearing a kilt then, maybe said halfling would be able to instantly discern gender, though felines actually have porportionately small testicles, so perhaps not.

Rats (and I would assume that wererats, Ratongas, kenku, etc) on the other hand, have huge testicles compared to their body size. So the "easilly visible sign of gender" would likely apply to them unless they were neutered. It must surely suck to be a wererat in a mature campaign, where all creatures are not neuter like a child's doll.

I have too many pets and watch too much discovery channel/animal planet. I'm going to stop talking about this now before I creep myself out anymore.

(Also, I'd never heard rule 34 used anywhere else with all my lurking. Thanks for the correction)

[Overlard]

Are you kidding?

It's the plainest manifestation of Freud's psychosexual stages (well, not the plainest; if they all had a thing about sucking the enemies or crapping on them, that'd be even clearer...), specifically the phallic stage. Case closed.

Never mind that Fraud- sorry, Freud (that was what you call a Fraudian slip... Freudian slip...) was a crackpot who had nothing to do with science and whose theories were all worthless metaphysical speculations that can mostly, by their nature, neither be confirmed nor disproved...
You're only saying because you want to kill your father and sleep with your mother. :smallwink:

[Iituem]

Honestly, I'd have gone with turning them into Urine Elementals with an acid attack, too.

Oh, yes. Fortitude save from each attack or it gets in your eyes and you go blind.

Like I said though, 1d4 rounds of shock at what is happening, then maybe give them Rage.

[Roderick_BR]

Evil DM idea: Next time, turn the elemental into a electric elemental...

[kuja.girl]

I cant believe somebody (and they claimed to have 3 years of biology) made the statement here that cats have no external genitalia! They have obviously NEVER had a cat. (You would think testicles would count as external genitalia, no?) I can see the difference, from the outside, in about 2 seconds, even on a male which has been neutered.

I don't even want to know why daggaz looks at cat butts that much :P

As Voleta said, not all male cats have noticeable testicles - hell most people don't even know if their cat's a he or a she until they get them fixed! And they have to shave kittens down there to sex them when they do that.

I've never had a cat but I've lived with them and worked for a Vet. I was also would assume that the "cat-people" would be wearing clothes = no noticeable genitalia.

Oh and same goes for reptiles - most people don't know how to sex them either.

[Attilargh]

On Topic:
I'm curious if anyone else has had characters tried to use weight to inflict their falling damage on an opponent or if it's just my insane players.
One application is called the Mario Build (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2020480#post2020480).

[Jayabalard]

As Voleta said, not all male cats have noticeable testicles - hell most people don't even know if their cat's a he or a she until they get them fixed! And they have to shave kittens down there to sex them when they do that.Kittens more than about a month old are not hard to sex; at least, as someone with no vet or even much of a biology background I've never had much trouble.

[Shatenjager]

One DM I had came up with the best argument against science I'd ever heard for D+D. In a world where magic exists, science is clearly as backwards and wierd as people thought it was in the middle ages.

When one player tried to spread disease around town (though a single casting of contagion) the DM's response was that disease wasn't communicable, but rather brought on by impure thoughts and evil spirits.

It was great when we used to to create mice with sacks of grain.

[kuja.girl]

Kittens more than about a month old are not hard to sex; at least, as someone with no vet or even much of a biology background I've never had much trouble.

Okay - obviously the people on this board know more about cats than expected. My last comment about cats: all I know is that from my experience there seems to be a 50% chance that a (normal) person will guess a cat's sex incorrectly.

So let's move on already.

[KoDT69]

Looks up a Catgirl's skirt... This one's female... I think :smallbiggrin:

[Voleta]

It feels weird to discuss genetalia on a gaming forum. My last comment on the matter: Once a male cat is mature, it is extremely easy to tell his gender. Kittens are hard to sex because.. well, as politely as possible, their testicles have not descended yet. If a tomcat is allowed to mature before he is neutered, there will likely be fat deposits left over, giving the appearence of testicles. (Coincidentally, said fat causes no problems in cats, while it is often skin left over in dogs, and in rats any skin or fat that remains can be deadly) I have raised both 'feral' toms that were not neutered until 2+ years of age and kittens who were fixed before 4 months of age. The former are almost always bulkier, and again, do have indications of gender. As for why a lot of people guess gender incorectly in nonhumans, there are a lot of people who are simply don't know, and don't wish to know. But, except for in bizarre conversations like this, when will this ever come up?

To try and steer myself on topic, would you folk count using flour to find invisible creatures using science, or just being clever?

[OOTS_Rules.]

I would always have an invisible beast fight with a water elemental. "Great job! You covered the invisible creature with flour! However, he runs through the water elemental and becomes clean. Better luck next time!"

[oriong]

The flour thing was often questioned but at this point it's been made an official part of the rules on invisibility.

But even then it's not so much 'science' as it is an 'idea'. Science tends to involve specialized and advanced knowledge, the flour trick just requires you to know that A) flour is white and B) it sticks to things.

[Maerok]

That's stupid. Water elementals aren't damaged by urine. Who cares about hydrogen bonds?

Edit: After Dark's comment, I can't help but think of F.A.T.A.L., which had rules for urinating. (If you think that's juvenile or offensive or idiotic, never, ever try to find out more about the game. That's by far not the worst or dumbest thing the game had rules for.)

I wiki'ed FATAL.
I read the review.
I read the rebuttal.
I've lost the will to live, and any faith in humanity.

[daggaz]

why would a water elemental be anything but pissed (no pun intended, OR was there dun dun dun!) if you urinated on it? Stunned? why?! Angrier than usual? Maybe.. or maybe it would just take advantage of you actually struggling to free your groin from a suit of heavy armor in the midst of a heavy battle...

Also, how many of you can pee in under six seconds, fully, without any negative consequences afterwards? And im talking whip it out, urinate till you are empty, and put it back correctly. dripping is ok, but remember you are probably wearing armor. (even in pants, hey!) Its at the LEAST a full round action, more like two or more in most circumstances (armor). As a DM i would SERIOUSLY stomp the crap out of anybody dumb enough to even mention this, unless they were standing at the top of a castle wall or something.

As for the cat thing... I thought she was talking about real cats, and yeah, they are real easy to sex for anybody who knows much about cats (or mammals for that matter).

The flour thing, its actually been incorporated into wizards... cant remember where I read it... but it makes sense according to raw... (which does allow for simple common sense, if not physics). The flour isnt invisible. It will stick to you, you will be outlined, much like if you are hit with faerie fire, or stand in a small waterfall.

[Thomas]

I wiki'ed FATAL.
I read the review.
I read the rebuttal.
I've lost the will to live, and any faith in humanity.

There's a rebuttal? From the author, I presume?

The review is hilarious, but it's also horrible, simply because it has to delve into some detail about that twisted abortion of a game.

[Matthew]

Yeah, there's a rebuttal: http://forever_fatal.tripod.com/review.htm

I got a good laugh out of the review.

[Thomas]

I tried reading the rebuttal, but it's too awful. They don't even try to defend most of the grossest, most terrible elements of the game mentioned in the review.

[darkelf]

Hugging Your Friends Lets You Move Faster (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20127)

[Woot Spitum]

I don't know if this counts as science, but making molotov cocktails would probably make a DM cry, especially in a Frostburn campaign. Come to think of it, any sort of improvised explosive device would probably make a DM cry if the game didn't have specific rules for it.

[oriong]

...why? It's not as though it's a particularly innovative idea, after all you've got Alchemist's fire which is basically a molotov coctail but better, making one just creates an 'improvised' flask of alchemists fire that does less damage and is less likely to work.

[Woot Spitum]

I believe a molotov cocktail would do a lot more damage, part of it slashing (from the shattered glass). And surely having shards of glass stuck in you would incur penalties of some sort. Not to mention further damage (or con damage) from the bleeding.

[Stormcrow]

I played in a campaign where the party were chasing some kobolds down a corridor and we entered the room and sprung a trap. A Flour Trap. The entire room was now filled with a cloud of flour whos entire intent was to reduce visibility.

Now the one character remaining outside the room is played by a friend of mine who's a genius, in the litteral sense hes in like... some organisation for Geniuses or something. Anyhow, he refuses to enter the room because he has the party's torch and following the theory that the flours volume is now greater than its mass he's convinced that the room will explode if he enters.

We told him it wouldnt. The DM told him it wouldnt. But he refused. And we got ganked in combat that day :P.

[Fhaolan]

I believe a molotov cocktail would do a lot more damage, part of it slashing (from the shattered glass). And surely having shards of glass stuck in you would incur penalties of some sort. Not to mention further damage (or con damage) from the bleeding.

I'm puzzled. Why would a molotov cocktail's bottle do more damage than an alchemist's fire's bottle? They're both bottles. Sure, one is normally described as being glass and the other pottery, but that's not guarenteed. I've made pottery molotov cocktails, and there's nothing stopping people from using glass bottles for alchemist's fire.

[Raum]

Now the one character remaining outside the room is played by a friend of mine who's a genius, in the litteral sense hes in like... some organisation for Geniuses or something. Anyhow, he refuses to enter the room because he has the party's torch and following the theory that the flours volume is now greater than its mass he's convinced that the room will explode if he enters.As long as we're talking RL physics, flour dust is extremely flammable. Here's a simple experiment (http://sci_wiz.tripod.com/Exploding_Flour_Tin.htm) you can try if you need to see it in action. Just make sure you follow all safety precautions.

[Iituem]

Pretty much. I'd have ruled instantaneous 4d6 damage to anything within the flour's area, but it's a flash fire - only easily flammable things would still be burning thereafter.

[Gralamin]

I played in a campaign where the party were chasing some kobolds down a corridor and we entered the room and sprung a trap. A Flour Trap. The entire room was now filled with a cloud of flour whos entire intent was to reduce visibility.

Now the one character remaining outside the room is played by a friend of mine who's a genius, in the litteral sense hes in like... some organisation for Geniuses or something. Anyhow, he refuses to enter the room because he has the party's torch and following the theory that the flours volume is now greater than its mass he's convinced that the room will explode if he enters.

We told him it wouldnt. The DM told him it wouldnt. But he refused. And we got ganked in combat that day :P.

High IQ societies have little to do with being a genius.

I don't have any science facts yet.

[J_Muller]

I wiki'ed FATAL.
I read the review.
I read the rebuttal.
I've lost the will to live, and any faith in humanity.

Curse you for making me become curious about this abomination of a game and follow in your footsteps to find out what it is! Curse you I say!

...If not for the hilarity of the review, I would be now without faith in humanity.

[Collin152]

Unless they're moving relative to one another, 'cause then you get a nifty magnetic term, and the net force is proportional to the cross product of those two forces. Incidentally, cgs units are nice because that "4 pi permittivity" term just goes to one, and you really don't need to bother remembering it's there. As long as you're in free space, but matter is just lame anyways.

Also, to the above, I didn't mean those sorts of uses for grease. Although, I can understand why you might come under that impression, seeing as how I wrote it that way. :smallamused:
Ah, but once again you forget to factor in the sub-expositionary plot-inducers. They work wonders on physics, and are catalyzed by a DM"s will. Then the whole thing goes downhill, man.

[Sardia]

Conservation of mass could be a problem, too. Leaving aside spells (heh), if you lop off a troll's arm, do you wind up with a slightly smaller troll when it regrows? Assuming you have no fire or acid, you could simply make the troll arbitrarily small and do something with the arm-pile.

[daggaz]

are you kidding sardia? in time, those arms will regrow into equally ravenous yet smaller trolls.

[Collin152]

Arms? Psh! Set up a sort of death trap that constantly disintegrates the poor fellow by many overlapping permanebt Blade Barriers. Before very long, you have yourself an ever growing pile of troll-dust (Warning: Consumption of Troll-Dust may result in a live troll bursting forth from your spleen. Ouch)

[Sardia]

Arms? Psh! Set up a sort of death trap that constantly disintegrates the poor fellow by many overlapping permanebt Blade Barriers. Before very long, you have yourself an ever growing pile of troll-dust (Warning: Consumption of Troll-Dust may result in a live troll bursting forth from your spleen. Ouch)

So first you catapult sacks full of troll-dust over the enemy city wall...

[Artanis]

*tries to read the FATAL review rebuttal*

Good God, it's like watching a train wreck. Two reviewers with no concept of logic whatsoever being ripped into by the creator of a game that sounds as absolutely godawful as is humanly possible.

[Matthew]

I tried reading the rebuttal, but it's too awful. They don't even try to defend most of the grossest, most terrible elements of the game mentioned in the review.

I read it all. I suffered. Best of all, though, I found this: FATAL (http://www.donatebytes.com/fatal.pdf)

[Raum]

Gah, I think you have to be a masochist to make through that "review/rebuttal".

[Matthew]

Nah, I just wanted to see if Byron was totally clueless or not or what. Now reading the entirety of his rulebook (above linked) or attempting to play the game, that might constitute evidence of masochism.

[Mewtarthio]

So first you catapult sacks full of troll-dust over the enemy city wall...

No, you sprinkle it on food as seasoning. It's not technically a poison, so no form of magic will detect it, and the Royal Taster won't instantly take damage either.

[Yahzi]

The answer to all these questions would, in fact, be "No."

Just think about it for a minute. :smallamused:
I coulda phrased it better... but then it wouldn't have been funny.

:smallbiggrin:

My favorite story along those lines:

Idiot character gets himself lost in the desert. GM (me) takes pity on him and has a magic gnome appear.

Gnome: "Sell me half your soul, and I'll give you a wish!"

Player: "Um.... ok. I wish I had some water. No - wait! I wish I had a barrel of wine. Wait - I wish I was standing in a lake of wine!"

Gnome: (agog with the stupidity of it) "Ok... poof!"

So now the character is knee-deep in wine. He drinks his fill and starts walking again. (Never mind that the fumes would kill you). After eight hours, I'm like, "Dude, you're getting tired."

There's nowhere to sleep. He's knee-dee in an endless lake of wine.

Gnome: (reappears) "Ok... for the other half of your soul, I'll give you one more wish."

Player: "Um... ok. I wish I had a rowboat. No, wait, a ship! A man-of-war!"

Gnome: (speechless)

Poof! There's a man-of-war. In the middle of a lake of wine that is knee-deep.

GM: "So... how do you climb the very high sides of the man-o-war?"

In the end, I told him the gnome was just a hallucination, and he was rescued by travellers.

I guess this doesn't really count, because I didn't have to twist his words. He kept doing it for me. :smallbiggrin:

[Yahzi]

I'm curious if anyone else has had characters tried to use weight to inflict their falling damage on an opponent or if it's just my insane players.
I had some goofy psionic power where I could change my density.

So I would make myself like air, float about the enemy ships, and make myself like lead. Punching holes in their decks.

I have no idea why the DM didn't have the damage kill me. I think he felt sorry for my lame psionic power (this was the days when you rolled for them).

[Viscount Einstrauss]

I remember the horrifying story of a PC that managed to use the conjure seed in epic spellcasting to invent the spell Nuclear Win-Ter by correctly deducing, in game, nuclear physics and universal law and thus discovering the exact material he'd need for the most massive damage spell ever created- enriched uranium, of course. He unleashed it only twice- once on a BBEG, and once on a large village of "dissidents". After that point they only ever fought gods who were given special immunities to that spell.

[Roderick_BR]

Okay - obviously the people on this board know more about cats than expected. My last comment about cats: all I know is that from my experience there seems to be a 50% chance that a (normal) person will guess a cat's sex incorrectly.

So let's move on already.
Correct. For 2 months, I thought that my two kittens were female, but they are male... ^^;;

[Roderick_BR]

I remember the horrifying story of a PC that managed to use the conjure seed in epic spellcasting to invent the spell Nuclear Win-Ter by correctly deducing, in game, nuclear physics and universal law and thus discovering the exact material he'd need for the most massive damage spell ever created- enriched uranium, of course. He unleashed it only twice- once on a BBEG, and once on a large village of "dissidents". After that point they only ever fought gods who were given special immunities to that spell.
Then the whole country died with radiation poisoning. Too extreme? As a DM, I would have done it. My argument is that maybe he didn't think about asking for lasting effects like radiation. Killing the whole country wouldn't make him "cool", but hatter turn him into some horrible BBEG himself. I would describle all the horrible deaths by poisoning to him too. Heck, I'd watch a documentary just to know what would happen.

[Dark]

I read it all. I suffered. Best of all, though, I found this: FATAL (http://www.donatebytes.com/fatal.pdf)
Wow! The front cover says it all :) But despite that, I couldn't resist reading on.

I'm at page 30 now and I've seen 5 penises and 7 pairs of breasts. 3 out of 8 women were depicted in some form of slavery. So, you know, it's not as bad as the review said...

Favorite quote so far: "As their name implies, kobolds are bold."

[Beleriphon]

And surely having shards of glass stuck in you would incur penalties of some sort. N

You mean more so then the sword in your kidney?

[Calsan]

The best thing with these sience questions is to ask the players if they know the sience required to do those things. Let them make int checks or a skill check related to it, if they have that.

A lot of these sience things sounds like pure metagaming. But a few crazy ideas might work, if it's fun enuff to do ;)

[Renegade Paladin]

As the DM i had the party accosted by some water elementals. Ones that were slightly too tough for them so that they would run, which was needed for the plot. But one of the PCs said that urea breaks down hydrogen bonds, so then i had a barbarian, fighter and rouge urinating on a water elemental killing it, so they then got loads of xp.
Any similar stories?
He lied to you. There is no way that three people could produce enough urea to even get an appreciable reaction out of a body of water the size of an elemental, and if they did it would not destroy the water. The stuff is water-soluble. It disrupts noncovalent bonds in some proteins, not water.

[Thomas]

I believe a molotov cocktail would do a lot more damage, part of it slashing (from the shattered glass). And surely having shards of glass stuck in you would incur penalties of some sort. Not to mention further damage (or con damage) from the bleeding.

Being hit with a spiked club is going to hurt a lot more than having a bottle thrown at you. (Mind you, some bottles wouldn't break if they hit a person. The things were meant to be thrown at Russian tanks.)

And why would it do more damage than alchemist's fire? It's the exact same thing. A flaming rag and some liquid that will catch on fire.


I'm at page 30 now and I've seen 5 penises and 7 pairs of breasts. 3 out of 8 women were depicted in some form of slavery. So, you know, it's not as bad as the review said...

You know, as amazing as that may be, those slavery statistics are still better than those for Gothic 3. 4 out of 5 female models I've seen in the game (including the only two women with names!) have been slaves (the fifth is the Female Rebel, and they never have names or lines or do anything...).

And aw, gee. It's no longer "Fantasy Adventure to Adult Lechery" ?

[Ping_T._Squirrel]

I read it all. I suffered. Best of all, though, I found this: FATAL (http://www.donatebytes.com/fatal.pdf)

I peeked and gave up when I saw the heading "Nipple Length"...

[Attilargh]

Just for the record, molotov cocktails already have quite official rules (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm#oil).

[Voleta]

I read it all. I suffered. Best of all, though, I found this: FATAL (http://www.donatebytes.com/fatal.pdf)


Not to be a party pooper or anything, but should one really be linking to something like that?

As for the contents: I had never heard of FATAL. I am going to set up a game with some.. close friends. Its HILARIOUS. I mean, seriously, "oftentimes cambion children show no sign of life until 7 years of age"? So what, they grow and just act like crappy politicians till they are seven? Do people bury them and then they burst from their grave in seven years like zombies? This game is so awesome and horrible that I simply cannot put it into words other than "I would never show this to my mother".

[Tor the Fallen]

I peeked and gave up when I saw the heading "Nipple Length"...

Don't forget "Areola Diameter", and the various, ah... depths.
God, that is one perverse document.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

It's really, really hard to take FATAL seriously.

[KoDT69]

Dementia needs a home too...

[averagejoe]

On the subject of FATAL. I read the review, and the rebuttal, and it seemed to be just four guys of questionable intelligence shouting at each other. Although the reviewers did have their funny moments, the whole ranting about how bad FATAL is got a bit old. Then I keep reading, and see some of the statistics. It was like, okay that's a little wierd, granted, but that doesn't seem as bad as they said. Then, at some point (I think it was about when they mentioned the armor that turns you jewish/black/asian) it just sinks in and stops being even amusing, and I realise the game really IS as bad as they said it was. There was definitely some sort of line crossed in that book.

[Voleta]

On the subject of FATAL. I read the review, and the rebuttal, and it seemed to be just four guys of questionable intelligence shouting at each other. Although the reviewers did have their funny moments, the whole ranting about how bad FATAL is got a bit old. Then I keep reading, and see some of the statistics. It was like, okay that's a little wierd, granted, but that doesn't seem as bad as they said. Then, at some point (I think it was about when they mentioned the armor that turns you jewish/black/asian) it just sinks in and stops being even amusing, and I realise the game really IS as bad as they said it was. There was definitely some sort of line crossed in that book.


Agreed completely. All four of them seemed like.. well, I dont know. I think its kinda sad.

But I find the game completely hilarious in an entirely morbid-humour way. Its like a joke about the holocaust, you know it and secretly find it funny, but never admit it to anyone of jewish heritage. Well, unless you're me, who is german jew, so I can say things like that and no one gets mad for some bizarre reason. Anyway, my point is that its terrible but still amusing if you are strange. Though they did have one thing in the 'review' that I liked: Comparing it to Battlefield Earth (movie, not the book). I LOVE Battlefield Earth!

[Yahzi]

On the subject of FATAL.... There was definitely some sort of line crossed in that book.
They didn't just cross the line. They beat it to death, buried it, dug up the corpse, and beat it some more.

Check out Synnibar or Hybrid for games written by raving lunatics who studied at Time Cube University. But FATAL is just... ew.

The funniest part is reading the author's response to the reviews, wherein he - completely unwittingly - validates every single complaint they made.

Like when the author starts talking about how many women he's slept with who didn't... never mind. I'll spare you the details. Suffice to say the details are not complimentary to the author, and what kind of sick freak talks about the women he's slept with like they're a statistic anyway? To win an internet argument, no less!

Just... ew.

[Muz]

I don't know if this counts as science, but making molotov cocktails would probably make a DM cry, especially in a Frostburn campaign. Come to think of it, any sort of improvised explosive device would probably make a DM cry if the game didn't have specific rules for it.

I'm currently trying to figure out how to deal with a PC plan to have three invisible brass dragons each drop a large barrel with Greek fire (this is a 2nd ed. game- I'm guessing that got changed to alchemist's fire in 3rd?) onto a another dragon. Then they're planning to set the stuff off with a fireball.

So I get to figure out just how much damage THAT'S going to do, how much of it will run off of the dragon before it's lit, what sort of damage a full barrel smashing into it would do (or even if it would)... Not to mention whether or not a brass dragon's heat breath would ignite the stuff...

And, while this isn't really science, then I get to run a combat between a fighter/mage, a bard, a priest, and four dragons. :smalleek:


From the GM's standpoint, there's the blue dragon that converted his hoard into copper coins and covered every horizontal surface of his lair with the resultant pile of cheap, yet highly conductive metal. The party enters and trips an alarm spell...

**ZOT!**

Poor bastards. They didn't stand a chance... :smallamused:


Cooooooooool. (The dragon they're fighting above is a blue. But they're attacking him at one of his favored watch-posts rather than his lair.)


The only time science has made my DM cry was when I hit him with a beaker of chemicals. He was such a wuss.

So, you blinded him with science? :smallbiggrin: (Okay, that was bad, but I don't care.)

[Argent]

My favorite thus far:

Party was crossing a bridge spanning a very (200' deep) gorge. Halfway across, we got attacked by mephits. Our erstwhile cleric tossed a Sound Burst their way, and two of them failed and were therefore stunned. We noted that a stunned character, unable to move, would end up falling -- and in the one round of stunning, would definitely hit the bottom of the gorge. One-half gravity multiplied by time squared equaled SPLAT. Best use of a first-level spell I've ever seen.

[Ping_T._Squirrel]

My favorite thus far:

Party was crossing a bridge spanning a very (200' deep) gorge. Halfway across, we got attacked by mephits. Our erstwhile cleric tossed a Sound Burst their way, and two of them failed and were therefore stunned. We noted that a stunned character, unable to move, would end up falling -- and in the one round of stunning, would definitely hit the bottom of the gorge. One-half gravity multiplied by time squared equaled SPLAT. Best use of a first-level spell I've ever seen.


At least that one is not blatent catgirl roasting. It is an effect that is in game with simple math applied to it. Well done.

[Thoughtbot360]

Hydrogen bonds aren't the bonds that hold hydrogen to oxygen. They're the weak bonds between molecules of water that cause the water to remain cohesive.

1) I don't know what this static is about urea breaking hydrogen bonds, though. It might cause water molecules to bond less to one another and more to the urea molecule, but that still doesn't really cause any harm to the water elementals. Instead of having (water)-----(water), you have (water)---(urea)---(water). No big deal.

2) Who says that water elementals are held together by hydrogen bonding? The way I understood it, they're held together by magic.

3) Just because one of your players says something doesn't mean that you have to let it work, even if it would be good science. The laws of physics in a realm containing magic are unpredictable. Use the consensual reality argument if you have to. (ie: The laws of physics as we know them don't work because not enough people in the realm believe in them.)

Agreed. I would do it like this if I were DMing:

DM: A big Water Elemental rises from the pool. What do you do?
PC: Hey, urea breaks up hydrogen bonds, urinate on it!
DM: It is now a yellow water elemental. And quite foul smelling.
Other PCs: Way to go, genius. :smallannoyed: YOU'VE CREATED A PISS ELEMENTAL!

[Shadow of the Sun]

So goddamn awesome.

[Woot Spitum]

I think introducing chemistry in general is a bad idea. Letting your players obtain pure sodium can unhinge the game all by itself. If you let them cast spells involving it, things only get worse.

On a unrelated note, if acid can deal lethal damage to trolls, what about a very basic substance, like bleach? (I don't think the SRD covers the ph of substances, and the combat applications stemming from these properties).

[oriong]

Well, since the fantasy acid works a whole lot differently than any sort of real acid I don't think ph ever enters into it. Reasonably a 'fantasy base' would probably not operate that differently.

[Demented]

There is no such thing as a base in fiction. There is only acid, a mysterious brightly-colored liquid substance that seems to eat (not just corrode or dissolve) everything aside from a few arbitrarily-selected solids, and is often found boiling in very large vats.

[Collin152]

And furthermore, things are not acidic unless they are Green Dragon breath; they are just Acid, green or orange, take your pick.

[ExHunterEmerald]

Maybe not exactly action science, but...
We're fighting a troll and a halfling, right?
I've managed to light the halfling on fire (playing a kineticist), and the cleric is up, lacking a source of fire damage.
Halfling on fire. Decent Strength score.
Hmmm...
One awesome series of rolls later, we've "shattered" the halfling by throwing him at the troll. Both took falling-equivalent damage plus fire.

And that is the story of the molotov halfling.