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darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Piell posted:

Speaking of high skill checks, it's possible to make a guy that jumps so well people become fanatic followers who will give their lives to serve you.

The Jumplomancer. I think you can actually do that with any skill; persuade people to follow you based on a Hide/Move Silently/Disguise check("I don't know who that is, I can't see him or hear him, but I'll follow him anywhere"), Knowledge(Religion)("..And that's why Pelor's the best god.""No, you're the best god! All hail Dudebro!") or any of a dozen other skills. I saw one that relied on an Alphorn and the Perform skill. I think you drop the bonus for using a masterwork instrument, but it hits everybody for 1d10 miles. "I don't know who that is blatting away up on the mountain, but I'll lay down my life for him."

darthbob88 fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Feb 13, 2013

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darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS
Another one for the "3.5 is wack yo" department: The BoVD has a class called Cancer Mage whose main schtick is diseases and spreading them, and at first level they get to ignore any negative mechanical effects from any diseases they have. Normal enough, all the better to play Typhoid Mary, but there're diseases called Festering Anger and Vile Rigidity that increase strength and natural AC, at the cost of reducing I forget which stat, Int or something. This part is subject to interpretation, but: If the Mage can ignore all negative effects, does he also get the positive effects? If so, Cancer Mage + Festering Anger + Vile Rigidity + time => Nigh Infinite Strength and Natural AC.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Splicer posted:

What's that combo that lets you turn any performance into an instant friendmaker? Perform: Pop a Wheelie sound like fun.

Or a Paladin with Mount: Celestial Bicycle and a whole bunch of mounted combat feats.

The Exemplar, usually built as a Jumplomancer. Discussed on the first page, here. Or you can be a bard and tell people you are the Moon.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS
The tale of Doctor McHeadbutt.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

BinaryDoubts posted:

^^^^^^ /tg/ may be a 4chan board but it has some of the most entertaining RPG story threads I've ever seen. That image and the one with the luchador grappler character are always entertaining.

You mean this one?


Yeah, /tg/ has some excellent stories, especially since I only go through the suptg archives and get it prefiltered. There's also Boxcar Joe, the Magic Hobo, who was in all the games simultaneously, Old Man Henderson who won Call of Cthulhu, and many others.

For content, flying skeleton blenders. Skeletons have no muscle, therefore they must move by magic. Therefore, there's no limit on how quickly they can move their arms and legs. Therefore, between friction and ridiculous speed, they can move their arms and legs fast enough to act as propellers, especially if they're worn down to sharpened bones.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Little_wh0re posted:

That doesn't necessarily follow on.

I suppose it'd be more accurate to say that the speed is limited only by magic, but since most conceptions of magic assume magic is limitless, and by most I mean D&D, it still holds.

Besides, flying skeleton blenders are cool enough to justify some fudging. :colbert:

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

PublicOpinion posted:

I gotta know what spell Piss Christ is for.
Nether Trail, apparently; you break the urine-soaked holy symbol into an invisible, intangible powder that serves as bread crumbs for evil outsiders. They are compelled to follow it, even into danger, but not past the end of the trail. I expect it's intended for evil clerics who want forces of darkness following them, either as backup in an intra-party fight or to lead the armies of hell to some dramatically/strategically vital location. As ever, no good reason to make it its own spell rather than just letting it get handled as part of the story.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

GimpInBlack posted:

I think it was mentioned early in the thread. IIRC the Light spell's fluff says it's usually cast on small objects like coins or whatnot and that the target vanishes when the spell duration expires. Buuuuuuuut the rules don't actually limit the size, value, etc. of the target, so nothing stops you from destroying the One Ring by casting a cantrip at it and waiting twenty minutes.

More or less.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS
Confirmed. Other oddities:
Also twice as expensive as regular arrows: Arrows which shoot farther for less damage, though I'm not sure how much less, and whistling arrows, which I can't think of a non-RP use case for.

Arrows which don't break as easily cost 20 times as much as regular arrows. The fact that any magic they're imbued with is single-use leads me to wonder why the hell they're included, since the only advantage is one that could/should be hand-waved away.

Thistle arrows, which do bleed damage for 1d6 rounds, cost 1gp each, while bleeding arrows, which do normal impact damage + 1/round bleed until the arrow's removed, cost 360gp each.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS
I brought the issue to my dad the NRA member, and he suggests the S&W Chief's Special, preferably Airweight and with a 2 inch barrel. You can probably get one from a pawn shop for less than USD$100, if it's the Airweight frame it'll be aluminum rather than steel, and apart from one-shot zipguns I'm not sure a simpler gun exists. As for pocket-concealability, I haven't been able to find it but supposedly a demonstrator was able to conceal 18 such guns on his person, between inside and outside jacket pockets, shirt pockets, and back pockets. So yeah, it's probably doable.

On the other hand, I can't really argue with AlphaDog up there about how well these rules were thought out.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Zereth posted:

Are you supposed to smelt it by punching the ore or something? :confused:

Maybe they'll accept cold-wrought iron, but I've also heard in some places that only thunderbolt iron will do.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Heffer posted:

There was a game someone mentioned earlier where the best starting strategy was to roll and reroll characters until you got the 1 in 100 chance of someone who could afford a spaceship from the start, rather than work for an NPC corporation. Then a team mate would push you out an airlock and you'd roll your actual character. Anybody remember the name or have a link to the post?

I don't remember the game, but there's an earthbound version of that, set in a post-nuclear-apocalypse thing. Twilight 2000 maybe? You started the game with some equipment, based on the time you'd been operating in the wasteland before joining the party, and you could keep rolling and rerolling for more equipment, at the cost of spending more and more time getting irradiated in the wasteland. At the end of it, you'd have a lovingly restored tank and a character who would keel over from rad sickness immediately after giving the party his tank, and then you'd roll a new character to actually go adventuring in.

ETA: Yep, confirmed.

Also, VV Or the kids take dad's ship and have grand adventures, fighting pirates and discovering lost treasure. VV

darthbob88 fucked around with this message at 09:48 on Jan 20, 2015

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

kafziel posted:

Who are you paying the zero silver to for the raw materials, though?
Another of those never-entirely-defined questions, I think it's just "general merchants and vendors of raw materials", the same as you would for spell components. Although then the question remains, who is selling the raw materials to make a club? It's a stick of literally no value.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

President Ark posted:

i need to hear the story about this one

I believe it's using either grappling, because moving a grappled target 5 feet is a free action with a DC of 20 or whatever, so a clump of dudes grappling each other and cooperating can move at infinite speed, or the Ride skill, because dis/mounting is also a free action and can move you up to 10 feet from saddle to ground to saddle with two checks. The naked halflings, I think, are just because we've been discussing weight, for which naked halflings are a good example weight.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

darthbob88 posted:

I believe it's using either grappling, because moving a grappled target 5 feet is a free action with a DC of 20 or whatever, so a clump of dudes grappling each other and cooperating can move at infinite speed, or the Ride skill, because dis/mounting is also a free action and can move you up to 10 feet from saddle to ground to saddle with two checks. The naked halflings, I think, are just because we've been discussing weight, for which naked halflings are a good example weight.

Just looked, here's the grapple post, and the saddle one.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS
Probably more, considering the way things get weird as you approach light-speed. Also from the first page, the reason the road you're traveling on seems so untraveled is that it was only made last night.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Heffer posted:

Can a bard playing music make you better at hiding?
Philistines. :colbert:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdJg6Duzzf4

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

senrath posted:

Edit: Slightly related, has the Hulking Hurler been discussed at all? If not, I'll write up a bit about it.

Various posts on this page, but go ahead and do a proper writeup.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Maleketh posted:

Everybody would be Kung Fu fighting.
It would at least be well-documented, as their citations would be fast as lightning.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Dr. Arbitrary posted:

This is actually normal practice for people who specialize in getting into places they shouldn't be. Wearing a hard hat, a reflective vest and holding a clipboard will get you all sorts of places. So will coveralls, a nametag and cleaning cart.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

ThisIsNoZaku posted:

Want to ask these conspiracy types why all these supposed evil genius manipulators leave signs and hints of who they are and what they're doing all over the place.
The real answer is a continuous shift of rhetorical focus, so these villains are both brilliant enough to pose a threat and also dumb enough to be defeated. The answer they'd probably give is either "Stop asking inconvenient questions" or hubris, because Obama's just so proud of killing all these Christians that he wants proper credit, and he feels safe enough to do so because there aren't any/enough Good Christians to stop his villainy.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Lone Goat posted:

Similarly, Patanoir is an IF that uses similes and metaphors the same way, letting you melt a man's cool demeanour with the embers of a cigarette, etc.


Unrelated, but I remember vaguely reading about a fantasy setting where if you killed someone, their ghost would haunt you and scream at your forever, so all executions were performed by starving someone. Not sure where else to ask, but does anyone have a clue about this?
Reign. Also has a belief that sitting astride a horse will make a man sterile, so all cavalry are women and eunuchs, and a note that they've achieved something like gender equality from the simple fact that Ralph is less likely to send Alice to the moon if Alice can hurl lightning at him. It's great.

ETA: P 302 of the PDF.

quote:

In the lands of Heluso and Milonda, people believe in ghosts and they believe in mercy. Those who believe most firmly in the first tend to also pay attention to the second, because the two are intimately connected.

Ghosts look the way they did when living, with one notable exception: You can see through them, like a partial reflection on a window. They do not age, they’re dressed as they were when they met their fate, and any wounds they received are clearly visible.

Ghosts cannot move physical objects, nor can physical objects harm them. They can stand upon the ground, and they can pass through solids or not as they choose. They can walk on water as easily as they can cross a bridge. Any attempt to physically harm them is doomed to failure, since there’s nothing physical to harm, and they’re already dead.
Unliving spirits do not sleep or get weary. When they speak, they do so at normal volume, from a whisper to a bellow. They have an instinctive sense for items and persons relevant to whatever passion brought them forth from the grave. They are immune to boredom.

Even with those advantages, it might seem that a ghostly existence is pretty pointless, especially for those driven by vengeance (which is by far the most common type of revenant). But an impervious spirit that never sleeps and which cannot be stayed by gate or wall makes an insidious foe, especially since ghosts are often loud.

Let us imagine that Tobruk, a victim of Gruak Fiveslayer, haunts his killer. As soon as the sun dims after his death, Tobruk springs forth from his body and, with unerring accuracy, can sense where Gruak is. So he sets off running, tirelessly. Even if Gruak is fleeing, outrunning a spirit is no easy task – any pause could be the pause where the shade catches up.

Once Tobruk finds him, he can’t strangle or kick Gruak, but he can yell. He can yell right in Gruak’s ear, all day long. All night, too. If the people around Gruak understand Tobruk’s language, he probably tells them of Gruak’s ill deeds, starting with his own murder and working back through anything else he knows, or feels like making up.
He never stops. Like all ghosts, he is perfectly relentless.

darthbob88 fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Nov 22, 2016

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

ZeroCount posted:

what you want to do is to use a lot of the alchemical items at once because while spells and abilities usually come with built-in damage limits there's no real limit to how many 'mundane' explosives you can detonate at once.
True, but this would still get very expensive very quickly, and be almost completely ineffective against higher-level enemies. I expect you'd be better off just hiring half a dozen junior wizards to provide your alpha strike.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Rigged Death Trap posted:

Granted they win initiative. Which low level wizards usually have poo poo-all for. Also if Magic/elemental resistance did not exist.
You just need to load up on explosives and initiative feats and you are the demolition man.
Actually having checked, it looks like you're correct in 3e. For 150gp you can get a 5th level wizard to cast Fireball for you, doing 5d6 damage. Or, you can actually get 7 vials of alchemist's fire, doing 7d6 damage continuing in the next round. Although you might run into trouble just taking arbitrarily many actions to throw arbitrarily many vials of fire.

In 5e, I'm not sure. I don't have the books and the best I can find online for the hiring rules are 2gp per day for skilled followers such as well-trained mercenaries, though that's obviously too low for masters of the arcane. Extrapolating from the 50ish GP for 2nd level spells, 150 seems reasonable for a 3rd level spell like Fireball, which would do 8d6 save halves. Or, for the same price, you can get 3 vials of alchemist's fire, doing 3d4 save negates. On initiative, as Kwyndig said, surprise rounds, plus readied actions "As soon as I see a dragon, I fireball that sucker". If you're dropping 150gp per wizard on an artillery battery, you're going to plan ahead, position them wisely, etc. Or you can just put them wherever, let them go after the orcs, and pay any survivors, which would probably still be cheaper than buying enough alchemist's fire to match that damage.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Glagha posted:

Wasn't there a bit in D&D 4e where you could be a Half-vampire vampire werewolf vampire? I think it was because there was a race that were vampires in all but name, a feat that made you a half vampire and gave you similar powers, a vampire class, and I think another feat that gave you werewolf powers.

I know there's the Quintuple Undead Triple Vampire, posted in this thread.

unseenlibrarian posted:

The best D&D 4E Army of One Undead dude is, presently, IIRC:


Race: Revenant. Select Vryloka as your race in life. Right then and there, you're undead and alive, -twice-.

Take Vampiric Heritage as your starting feat. So yes, you are a living dead vampire with vampire ancestors.


Take Vampire as your class. As of right now, you are a -triple vampire-, and quadruple undead.

Take an arcane multiclass feat. Any arcane class will do. Basically this doesn't really do much for you at all except when you hit epic level. When you hit epic level, you can become an archlich.

You are thus Quintuple Undead and Triple Vampire.

I'm sure this has been topped since I last looked into it, but really, you're like an entire Ravenloft adventure by yourself as is.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

crime fighting hog posted:

This reminds me, I believe it was from the Eberron setting too, you could get a item that acted as another limb, it let you make extra attacks and everything at a small penalty. It cost about 2,000 gp if I recall.

Thing was, it didn't take up an item slot.

So there was a build where someone made a Monk (for improved unarmed attack) and spent 90 percent of their gold on getting extra limbs - at 20th level this came out to having something like 800 tentacle arms hidden beneath an overcoat.

The mental image is frightening enough.
Dunno about Monks, but the Nasty Gentleman managed to get 7600 tentacles, each of which can cast their own spells, doing 8 million+ damage, before we start seriously optimizing. I also remember one build that had to use Knuth's up-arrow notation to describe how much damage it could do.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Doresh posted:

That's the idea. Medium sized dudes that people just don't notice.

Better yet, make it so that they usually just go behind someone else.
I think you've just explained the Hide-behind.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Bertrand Hustle posted:

Skeleton computing and "on a clear night, you can't see the moon" are the best things to have come out of this thread.

You're forgetting Toot toot motherfucker.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS
Or a white pickup with a utility box; park anywhere you like and most people will assume you're there on Utility Company business.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Firstborn posted:

Maybe not a Murphy in the purest sense, but when I played Pathfinder I always asked to play Cavalier first. It's a knight, and you get to pick some cool Warhammery sounding Order to belong to which some special traits. It made full use of the rules for mounted combat because you got a cool horse. I think DMs hated running them because you could do some terrible, terrible damage with a mounted charge and stuff and a lot of DMs want their campaigns to take place in spooky caverns and stuff.

I memorized the mounted combat rules, made sure I always had like rope and tackle to lift my horse up sheer cliffs, and made sure to take the "Narrow Frame" trait for the horse while others would take something more combat oriented. With Narrow Frame, you don't take AC or Attack penalties for "squeezing through", an action you could take to squeeze through something HALF YOUR SIZE.

I would be mounted on a horse in a cave and squeeze through a crack some people would have to turn sideways to get through.

Cavalier is my favorite paizo class.
LightWarden talked about animal silliness earlier in the thread; apparently you don't even need the blocks and tackle, since there's no rule that a horse can't make Climb checks. Given a horse's strength, odds are good it's better at climbing a rope than the wizard.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Caphi posted:

The "higher CR = less well known" thing is one of my favorite Murphy's. Frankly, I feel like I know more about mythical dragons than most real life small wildlife.
And what about gods? How many people actually know anything about the absurdly-high-CR gods they worship? Or do they get an exception because they're well-known entities, unlike bears and Smaug the Destroyer?

E: I think this was also brought up in this thread, and something about how peasants know so little about the world they live in that you can tell one that he's an elf, and have a better than even chance of him believing you.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

senrath posted:

So I couldn't find the actual build because Wizards killed their forums and I couldn't find an archive for the thread, but the record (without infinite sources) managed enough strength by ECL20 to do 19,330,723,855,637,920,503,551,754d6+172 damage with a thrown "weapon."

Edit: From page 9 of this thread: " That's throwing 3.8661448x10^27 pounds, or about twice the weight of Jupiter. "

This is, of course, 3.5, so if you allow infinite loops you can get enough strength to throw literally everything at once. As an example there is the Cancer Mage class. Its claim to fame is immunity to the negative effects of diseases, but no the positive ones. Festering Anger is a disease that normally does con damage, but gives you a stacking +2 to strength. So give a Cancer Mage enough time and they'll be strong enough to throw reality at something, given a place to grip it.
While I was checking the Cancer Mage stuff, I came across a possibly legit build for the Muscle Mage. The Illumian race can, through their Illumian Words ability, use Strength to determine their bonus spells for any given class, rather than the usual Int/Cha/Wis/Whatever. Combine that with various persisted +Str spells and effects, and they get spells for days. Effects like "being a Cancer Mage who's contracted Festering Anger". I don't think this is a real Murphy or optimization, but it's a nice way to actually build a Muscle Wizard.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Zandar posted:

...if all your inspirations are that low, doesn't it mean that you can actually die? Seems like it's a tradeoff, at least.

I think that was explicitly called out in the review; somebody with a high inspiration is going to be immortal, while somebody with several low inspirations is going to get so much screen time.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Madurai posted:

Point of order: puce isn't any shade of green.

Actually, puce green is a thing. A wrong thing, but a thing nonetheless.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Mors Rattus posted:

A theoretical combination of Charms in Exalted 2e that allowed you to deal arbitrary amounts of damage to anyone you could see simultaneously, extended your sight out to any point not blocked by physical objects, and was then performed from on top of the tallest mountain in the world at the center of Creation, therefore allowing you to see (and kill) 99% of the world.
On top of that, IIRC you can combine it with Sidereal charms to attack/transform people as concepts, or something. So you can, simultaneously and instantaneously, turn the entire population of Creation into ducks.
E: Correction; you're already using Pattern Spider Touch to utterly unmake your various targets, but you can also use it to transform them into whatever beast or material you feel like.

darthbob88 fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Aug 6, 2018

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Zereth posted:

I AM THE MOON
HE IS THE MOON.

And yeah, I remember this coming up either here or in grogs.txt of old, that it's easier to convince the local bigwig to send some dudes to clear out animals if you lie about there being owlbears than if you tell the truth about wolves.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Brofessor Slayton posted:

I'm reasonably sure that was it, but it's probably a few dozen pages back. The lead-in was about how a starting character can just barely afford to have some dirt on the emperor.

Yeah, IIRC it's that anybody can get Blackmail on any other character, for (target's level) character points, down to level 1 commoners. Scorpions get a 1 point discount on that, so they would pay 0 points each to blackmail all the commoners in the kingdom. Or, for 9 points, you can get dirt on The Emperor.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

The Lone Badger posted:

You know a secret of dire import. Now that you know it, you can dedicate your existence to making sure it never gets out and silencing anyone that might suspect it. Sort of a reverse-blackmailer.
Blackmail is useful only as long as it stays secret. If it becomes known that the Emperor has a fondness for gaijin woodcuts :pervert:, you lose all your leverage.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Mors Rattus posted:

My favorite stupid internet centaur thing is the equitaur, invented by furries. It’s a horse furry that is also a centaur.
https://twitter.com/jplur_/status/1039592541656633344?lang=en

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darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

MadDogMike posted:

Wasn’t there a funny example for the dragon DC info thing, where somebody looked at the baby dragon and said “Oh my! This is a red dragon wyrmling that’s descended from Abraxus the Terrible, who is notoriously defensive of their spawn!” “What’s that in the sky?” “Hmm, some kind of big red flappy thing? I’m not sure what-“ *party burns*.

neonchameleon posted:

It's more amusing than that.

"I thought this cave was deserted. What's that?"
"A baby red dragon. From the ridge markings and the position of the horn it's the child of the legendary Arcaladrax, Mother of Dragons, despoiler of the Kingdom of Thernos. We should hurry."
"And what's that outside the cave?"
"I don't know. It's a huge red flappy thing that's coming this way. It looks pissed at something."
"But what is it? It looks a bit like the baby here but much bigger."
"I don't know. It's not like anything I've seen before."

And the red dragon incinerates the PCs.

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