Anonymouswizard's Random Banter #227 and Free Cup of Tea

[Jasdoif]

I'll go a step further and point out that Warlock mechanically has NOTHING that ties to a patron other than the flavor-names of the abilities. The PF Witch has a mechanical patron; the 3.5 Warlock doesn't. It's purely a flavour thing, and as such is completely ignorable.

I still want to know who wrote the warlock's "any evil or any chaotic" and thought it even purported to resemble sense....

I'll be honest - I tend to do nothing more than skim a bit of a character class, the first time I read it, above where it says "Class Features" and the table starts. If it isn't important enough to be mentioned in the class features, it isn't important at all, especially when classes are metagame constructs. I point back to Shiuke - he tells everyone (loudly and enthusiastically) he's a ninja or a shinobi, but he's a Monk 2/Cleric 16 mechanically. His "deity" is his Shinobi Way (and since clerics don't have a particular code of conduct, it doesn't matter, since Shiuke wouldn't do anything that would cause him to lose cleric status (just like literally every other cleric anyone has ever played)).

(Faerun's gods would probably have kittens, but the game is only in the Realms because it started as a spin-off from a random comment made in another party, and the canon has been fairly brutally kicked over (most of them are probably quite dead) and largely ignored.)

Yeah...The stuff above that is setting fluff; and setting fluff is good for one thing: the setting it's fluffing. Outside of that, it can (and often should) be altered to better fit the actual setting the actual character is actually going to be in.

[SZbNAhL]

Turns out I was massively wrong about how warlocks work. I always thought they were like clerics with a different spell-set, gaining or losing their powers at the behest of their patrons. Guess this is why I post so much here and so little on the 3.5 board.

[Aotrs Commander]

Turns out I was massively wrong about how warlocks work. I always thought they were like clerics with a different spell-set, gaining or losing their powers at the behest of their patrons. Guess this is why I post so much here and so little on the 3.5 board.

Yeah, the central conceit of the 3.5 warlock is basically "I shoot things with mah lazors and don't out of not-spells" man, rather than that.

(I'm not even sure that's true of 5E warlocks, though I am only passingly familair with them through the observations of Role with Me and occasional Unexpectables one-offs. Pretty sure it's not true of 4E, since 4E was so focussed on the combat stuff to the exlcusion of everything else it would seem just out-of-character...! Otherwise, I don't know where you might have derived that understanding, I don't THINK there's another class in 3.5 that works like that, though I'm not famialir with whatevr books the essentia users and truenamer are from...)

[LaZodiac]

Yeah, the central conceit of the 3.5 warlock is basically "I shoot things with mah lazors and don't out of not-spells" man, rather than that.

(I'm not even sure that's true of 5E warlocks, though I am only passingly familair with them through the observations of Role with Me and occasional Unexpectables one-offs. Pretty sure it's not true of 4E, since 4E was so focussed on the combat stuff to the exlcusion of everything else it would seem just out-of-character...! Otherwise, I don't know where you might have derived that understanding, I don't THINK there's another class in 3.5 that works like that, though I'm not famialir with whatevr books the essentia users and truenamer are from...)

I can say definitively that Warlocks in 4e were actually meant as more controlly guys, not doing pew pew lasers and more doing "hope you've got status effect markers" type stuff, with the occasional death laser. Still massive damage dealers, but they did their damage over time instead of massive bursts. 5e Warlocks are base to utility spells that don't run out, strong but limited regular spells, and everyone's favorite pew pew laser that I really think you should just get in addition to your cantrips instead of having to choose, because you're never not choosing Eldritch Blast.

Also since it was minorly brought up; I basically hate all restrictions on classes. Evil gods should get paladins, it makes no sense at all why say, Bane, god of ritualistic combat and excellence, shouldn't get a divinely charged warrior man. And you can absolutely be lawful as a bard! It's so silly!

[Rater202]

Well, Paladin kind of makes sense in the sense that the name "Paladin" comes from an Order of Twelve Holy Knights who served under Charlemagne.

I imagine that people would have been reluctant to allow an evil person, even a fictional one, to use the name of a semi-famous order of Christian Knights... Especially in a franchise that's been dodging accusations of encouraging worship of Satan.

And that's where I'll drop that tangent before we cross a line.

Fourth Edition and Fifth Edition seem to have dropped the Alignment restriction from Paladin, but I'd argue that replacing Paladins with a Generic "Divine Knight" instead of using the loaded name would have been better.

[Aotrs Commander]

I've had anitpaladins of one stripe or another around since 3.0 (I think the AD&D campaign tghat dropped into 3.0 never got far enough to encounter them). 3.Aotrs v1.0 only had them as a WiP (but blackguards also existed), but with v2.0 and PF having antipaladin, they've made a return to proper base class.

I even once got to play an antipaladin, Throstnor (he was an were-raptor) once. He had a theme song that was to the theme of He-Man and everything.

I see the value of paladin and antipaladin as the paragons of Good and Evil respectively (Law and Chaos just don't warrent it to the same extent, I always feel they are very much secondary alignments anyway), but alignment beyond that for other classes is just an arbitary restriction, a legacy of AD&D that didn't suit 3.x's single greatest strength - it's ability to be a set of LEGO bricks to build characters with. (The 3.x multiclassing system was a revalation - so simple and obvious i was like "why did no-one think of this before?")



(Shiuke, monk levels and all, is CG, I think, because he is both a pastiche of all Naruto ninja and of the titular character himself. The name is, if you had no surmised from Shikamaru and Sasuke - the latter because I was shamelessly using the Divine Trinity (Divine Favour/Divine Power/Righteous Might) as dragon-spirit transformation spells and shiniguishi eye as a not-quite sharingarn knock-off for various spells and stuff.)



I felt tha same about the multiclassing restrictions (both the XP penalty and the "you can't class out of monk and paladin!"), which I immediately took a disliking to (in the same way I'd already house-ruled out AD&D's class/race restrictions and flat allowed any race to multiclass or dual-class and not have race-based level restrictions!) I remember one of the early thing I did was make a Buffy-inspired character that was Paladin/Monk and went "yep, those restrictions are just dumb."

[Bartmanhomer]

It’s an anime. About tennis.
Whoever gets this reference, I’ll be proud to call my friend.

Cool. I might watch that anime.

[LaZodiac]

I've had anitpaladins of one stripe or another around since 3.0 (I think the AD&D campaign tghat dropped into 3.0 never got far enough to encounter them). 3.Aotrs v1.0 only had them as a WiP (but blackguards also existed), but with v2.0 and PF having antipaladin, they've made a return to proper base class.

I even once got to play an antipaladin, Throstnor (he was an were-raptor) once. He had a theme song that was to the theme of He-Man and everything.

I see the value of paladin and antipaladin as the paragons of Good and Evil respectively (Law and Chaos just don't warrent it to the same extent, I always feel they are very much secondary alignments anyway), but alignment beyond that for other classes is just an arbitary restriction, a legacy of AD&D that didn't suit 3.x's single greatest strength - it's ability to be a set of LEGO bricks to build characters with. (The 3.x multiclassing system was a revalation - so simple and obvious i was like "why did no-one think of this before?")

(Shiuke, monk levels and all, is CG, I think, because he is both a pastiche of all Naruto ninja and of the titular character himself. The name is, if you had no surmised from Shikamaru and Sasuke - the latter because I was shamelessly using the Divine Trinity (Divine Favour/Divine Power/Righteous Might) as dragon-spirit transformation spells and shiniguishi eye as a not-quite sharingarn knock-off for various spells and stuff.)

I felt tha same about the multiclassing restrictions (both the XP penalty and the "you can't class out of monk and paladin!"), which I immediately took a disliking to (in the same way I'd already house-ruled out AD&D's class/race restrictions and flat allowed any race to multiclass or dual-class and not have race-based level restrictions!) I remember one of the early thing I did was make a Buffy-inspired character that was Paladin/Monk and went "yep, those restrictions are just dumb."

I don't like the term anti-paladin, and I think the more flowerly Blackguard name is also a little... weird. I think it totally tracks that you can be an evil paladin. You are a holy/divine knight of an evil god. It's the same weird thing as "evil clerics can't heal because negative energy" it's like, man that's duuumb.

Cool. I might watch that anime.

Prince of Tennis is infamously bad for having an invincible protagonist who learns basically nothing.

[Aotrs Commander]

Dammit, Netflix, hurry up and get the last season of Miraculous! That's really hitting it's stride!

(Also, sya what you like about Chloe Bubais (I think that's how you spell it), she's a natural at the transformation sequence.)

...

Whelp, time to round out my "I-have-done-nothing-useufl-at-all-not-even-games" day by starting to re-watch The Critic.

(It doesn't stink.)

[Bartmanhomer]

I don't like the term anti-paladin, and I think the more flowery Blackguard name is also a little... weird. I think it totally tracks that you can be an evil paladin. You are a holy/divine knight of an evil god. It's the same weird thing as "evil clerics can't heal because negative energy" it's like, man that's dumb.



Prince of Tennis is infamously bad for having an invincible protagonist who learns basically nothing.

Wow. Then I'm not going to watch it at all.

[Aotrs Commander]

Huh. When you realise you're now older than Jay Sherman.

That's a stilghly disturbing sensation...

[The Fury]

Huh. When you realise you're now older than Jay Sherman.

That's a stilghly disturbing sensation...

Would you say... It stinks?

[Peelee]

Huh. When you realise you're now older than Jay Sherman.

That's a stilghly disturbing sensation...

Would you say... It stinks?

Spoiler: My initial reaction

Show

"Attention, L.A. street gangs: why kill each other when there are more deserving movie executives just miles from your home? Their addresses are-"

(smash cut to a pink card with a "Viewer Advisory" scroll on it)

[Announcer]: "Viewer Advisory: The rest of this review contains incitements to violence, foul language, rubber novelty pop, and brief nudity."

(cut back to the set, where Jay is now clad in only a towel as two police officers escort him off the stage)

"Good night, everybody. Join me in thirty days with my review of our overcrowded penal system!"

[Rater202]

Huh. When you realise you're now older than Jay Sherman.

That's a stilghly disturbing sensation...

If you were Bart Simpson's age in the early seasons of the Simpsons, you are currently older than Homer and Marge.

[Jasdoif]

It's 22 celcius and my fan broke. I'm melting x_x

I feel your pain....I mean, that's normal temperature for me; but it's currently 95F (35C) and for some reason the power has been out for the past hour, so no fan or air conditioner....

[factotum]

It's the same weird thing as "evil clerics can't heal because negative energy" it's like, man that's duuumb

That would be dumb, yes, so it's a good thing it doesn't work like that? The only limitation an evil cleric has with regard to healing is that they can't spontaneously convert another spell into a cure or heal like a good cleric can--they can still stock up on healing spells as part of their normal daily allocation of spells, though.

[LaZodiac]

That would be dumb, yes, so it's a good thing it doesn't work like that? The only limitation an evil cleric has with regard to healing is that they can't spontaneously convert another spell into a cure or heal like a good cleric can--they can still stock up on healing spells as part of their normal daily allocation of spells, though.

I was under the impression evil clerics were unable to make use of positive energy for healing spells. I suppose that's on me then, at least.

[Aotrs Commander]

I was under the impression evil clerics were unable to make use of positive energy for healing spells. I suppose that's on me then, at least.

They can't Turn Undead/Channel Positiive energy (3.5/PF depending), which in turn means they can't spontaneously cast Cure spells (and Good clerics cannot Rebuke Undead/channel Negative Energy and thus spontaneously cast Inflict spells) - which you might be thinking of - but there's not been a restrictrion of loading healing (or inflict) spells since at least 3.0, even if there was one in AD&D and earlier.



Edit: WOW. Accoditn to my UbiSoft account, there have been no less than three failed log in attempts in the past couple of months, from Vietnam, Iran and Indonesia. (Only the last one triggered a "you tried to change you password" warning. That's... Apparently a thing.

[Mith]

I was under the impression evil clerics were unable to make use of positive energy for healing spells. I suppose that's on me then, at least.

Aside from the mentioned spontaneous cure/inflict wounds, you may also be thinking of alignment restrictions of Good cannot cast Inflict Wounds (which may have been a house rule at my BECMI table).

ION, my supervisor figures I might be able to aim and get my thesis completed by the end of the year. It's too early for super celebrations, but it's kind of exciting! Then I'll look at feasibility of some intern work before my PhD to get an end result of finishing with a P.Eng designation and a PhD.

[LaZodiac]

Aside from the mentioned spontaneous cure/inflict wounds, you may also be thinking of alignment restrictions of Good cannot cast Inflict Wounds (which may have been a house rule at my BECMI table).

ION, my supervisor figures I might be able to aim and get my thesis completed by the end of the year. It's too early for super celebrations, but it's kind of exciting! Then I'll look at feasibility of some intern work before my PhD to get an end result of finishing with a P.Eng designation and a PhD.

Aah, maybe.

Also congrats! That sounds super impressive!

[Anonymouswizard]

To be fair , in a lot of systems priest magic is sharply limited (and better for it). If you want healing spells you'd better make sure that they're relevant to your god.

[Rater202]

Sometimes I wish I had a symbiote(like from Spider-Man) and the ability to travel to fictional universes and then I could just spend an eternity using the symbiotes' infinite ability to store information, DNA, and physical objects and adapt to their circumstances to learn things and improve myself.

[DuaneOlaugh019]

Hello, gays, I am new here.

[Anonymouswizard]

Hello, gays, I am new here.

Us bisexuals do not like being ignored

[el minster]

Hello, gays, I am new here.

It might be a spelling error.

[Fyraltari]

Hello, gays, I am new here.

I think this is the place you are looking for.

[Mith]

Aah, maybe.

Also congrats! That sounds super impressive!

Thanks! It might be impressive, but I cannot shake the feeling that I am ~6 months behind where I could be. Ah well, learning curves take their cut.

The P.Eng (Professional Engineer Designation) and PhD at the same time is more to cover any career paths that require both.

[LaZodiac]

Thanks! It might be impressive, but I cannot shake the feeling that I am ~6 months behind where I could be. Ah well, learning curves take their cut.

The P.Eng (Professional Engineer Designation) and PhD at the same time is more to cover any career paths that require both.

Six months behind of where you could be means only that you are now where you're supposed to be. It took a bit but you made it so now you've made it and nothing else matters.

[2D8HP]

So work finally has regular plague testing.

In other news, my nose feels weird.

Oh jeez, i wouldn't wish that test on anyone.

Apart from the nasal assault and a mild headache? I'm fine, thanks for worrying.

In a few hours I'm going in for my third Covid-19 test this year, my cough is less than it was but I still have the sore throat I've had since March 15th, an x-ray last month should that I had pneumonia, but the previous two Covid-19 tests came back negative.

It's weird, back in April my crew of City and County of [Lankhmar] workers were given the task of making sure the morgue abandoned a couple of years ago could be quickly used again in case the bodies piled up and overwhelmed the new one.

During the last decade I've had to do repairs in there (and a couple at the new one), which was never pleasant. Right now (if it comes to that) they're probably going to use refrigeration trucks (like New York has), but (thankfully!) so far it looks like we're being spared what Italy and New York have experienced.
Most days I go up to the Jail to do repairs, and now my temperature is read each time. I'm asked "Do you have any symptoms?", and I (truthfully) tell them "Since October" (since everyone else with experience repairing the jail fixtures is retired or on disability there really isn't anyone to replace me who actually knows how to do the usual repairs anyway).
In the last several weeks the jail has been emptied out, cells that used to hold a dozen men now hold one to four. Otherwise in [Lankhmar] the streets are nowhere as empty as they were in late March but masks are ubiquitous now, and finally last week bookstores have been reopening!

[Peelee]

In a few hours I'm going in for my third Covid-19 test this year, my cough is less than it was but I still have the sore throat I've had since March 15th, an x-ray last month should that I had pneumonia, but the previous two Covid-19 tests came back negative.

Here's hoping for a hat trick!