You do fucking win at D&D.

[Mr. GC]

And when I said the words "shadow demon" and then went on to describe it in terms that made it very clear it is not a Shadow Demon it is in fact you and K that are idiots.

Just like when I say "troll monster" (edit: actually "troll creature", same thing though which is an odd way to phrase it if I meant a Troll) and then follow up with describing it as something that wants to mess with the party whereas a Troll would obviously be a straightforward slug fest with no subtlety involved you're an idiot if you think I'm talking about a straightforward slug fest.

Let me guess: You'd also be offended if someone told you that they were being attacked by giants, and then you go to whereever they are and it's fucking Ogres and Trolls with no true giants in sight because they said giants and not big humanoids of the giant type?

Would you also get overly pedantic if some fluff text described a huge dragon coming your way and it was in fact Large size, or Gargantuan, and not Huge?

[Username17]

Vaguely related to discussion of DM vs. Players: anyone here remember the Iron Siege created by or based on the work of Dicefreaks. It was something like "Make an ECL 70 character, win a CR 70 Dispater who is in an impregnable tower." There were a few DM's for this challenge and it was literally the PC trying to win the DM.

It was, even if ridiculous, a very interesting take on this "winning the game" thingy.

Most of it was "I forgot he can sense anything in contact with the ground" followed by sudden painful death. A true high level display or a serious competition it generally was not.

This I can agree with. The people running it were constantly herpaderping their way through banning shit midway when it looked like someone was going to win and the people who actually bothered to play it all the way through had the distressing tendency to have like one or two half-assed tricks they read off some charop board somewhere. It was pretty sad.

We had a discussion about it here.

-Username17

[Mr. GC]

Yeah really. I mean come on. Even if you don't know Dispater has that bullshit iron sense (and if you don't, why are you even trying?) touching the ground is so 60 levels ago!

[Red Archon]

But you have to admit, it does have a pretty underlined relation to the topic at hand. If you don't succeed, you fail at D&D. If you do succeed, the DM is holding back. Right?

[Mr. GC]

But you have to admit, it does have a pretty underlined relation to the topic at hand. If you don't succeed, you fail at D&D. If you do succeed, the DM is holding back. Right?

The entire challenge is made of arbitrarium, so the only way to win is not to play. In a non basket weaver game, where the rules aren't moving targets this is not true.

[violence in the media]

Let me guess: You'd also be offended if someone told you that they were being attacked by giants, and then you go to whereever they are and it's fucking Ogres and Trolls with no true giants in sight because they said giants and not big humanoids of the giant type?

Would you also get overly pedantic if some fluff text described a huge dragon coming your way and it was in fact Large size, or Gargantuan, and not Huge?

Not offended, but definitely annoyed. There is too much specific terminology in D&D to continuously flip back and forth between game-specific and general-use meanings of words.

If you say as MC, "You spot a shadow moving in the hallway." You're going to get a number of different, and possibly inappropriate, responses to that without any further clarification on your part. Given that everyone at the table really only knows what the fuck is going on based on the strength of their MC's descriptive abilities, it is in nobody's interest to maintain artificial ambiguity.

If you describe a creature as huge--then it really does need to belong to that game-defined size category. IME, the game doesn't really get any better if you have to assume that any shadow could be one of the hostile undead and that there is no strictly visual manner to determine one from the other.

Misleading or vague creature descriptions are cute maybe once. After that, it just gets annoying.

[Fuchs]

Misleading and vague descriptions are very handy though if you're lieing about something. As are evasive answers. Mr GC's responses are almost textbook examples for answers from liars in interrogations.

[Red Archon]

MR. GC, I actually know unfortunate amounts of that challenge and it had an unusually low amount of arbitrary rulings. It may be hard to imagine, but when someone says "I use ability X" and the DM says "Doesn't work," it wasn't arbitrary, but planned beforehands in a revoltingly rigorous manner. The DMs had two independent observers making sure they don't cheat. A lot of those cases were left unclear because the DM was concealing them on purpose - people not seeing invisible monsters with True Seeing because the spell has a 120' range, not being able to hide from monsters because someone had sneakily placed a microscopic iron fragment on their person with Sleight of Hand etc. - were not revealed because of the nature of the challenge, sort of what you're doing. The difference between your scenario and that one is essentially that you, unlike those DMs, will go about spewing hateful nonsense on the participants as well as the people who don't know what the fuck happened in the scenario. I'm surprised if you don't see the parallel.

Though admittedly, your scenario seems easier and a lot more sensible.

[Mr. GC]

Let me guess: You'd also be offended if someone told you that they were being attacked by giants, and then you go to whereever they are and it's fucking Ogres and Trolls with no true giants in sight because they said giants and not big humanoids of the giant type?

Would you also get overly pedantic if some fluff text described a huge dragon coming your way and it was in fact Large size, or Gargantuan, and not Huge?

Not offended, but definitely annoyed. There is too much specific terminology in D&D to continuously flip back and forth between game-specific and general-use meanings of words.

And do you expect a dumbass NPC to know everything about every enemy they encounter? Why no, so they'd use giant to refer to a large humanoid creature which is what Ogres and Trolls are (and are also the giant type) but they aren't Hill, Frost, Fire... Giants.

Not to mention if you're using a map (and if you're playing 3.5, you are) it'd be obvious what the dragon's size category is because you say incoming dragon, and then you put down whatever you're using to represent it on the grid.

If you say as MC, "You spot a shadow moving in the hallway." You're going to get a number of different, and possibly inappropriate, responses to that without any further clarification on your part. Given that everyone at the table really only knows what the fuck is going on based on the strength of their MC's descriptive abilities, it is in nobody's interest to maintain artificial ambiguity.

So the player should automatically know the difference between a shadow that is the specific undead creature shadow and a shadow that belongs to some sort of hidden creature? Because that sounds like a case where the ambiguity actually makes sense.

If they could clearly tell then you'd say disembodied shadow. Or "a shadow with red eyes". I don't think there's any confusion there, but I've overestimated the intelligence of the other side more than once already.

If you describe a creature as huge--then it really does need to belong to that game-defined size category. IME, the game doesn't really get any better if you have to assume that any shadow could be one of the hostile undead and that there is no strictly visual manner to determine one from the other.

Misleading or vague creature descriptions are cute maybe once. After that, it just gets annoying.

I checked.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/MM35_ ... PG222a.jpg

Looks fairly distinctive to me. That said, as the sort of creature that would hide in your shadow to eat your soul, why wouldn't you be at least a little confused with them around? That is unless you use Detect Evil, Detect Undead...

Point is misleading or vague descriptions are going to happen if for whatever reason the party cannot see their opponent clearly or they are given vague names by people that don't know better, and in the absence of better information the party just goes with it.

And that Iron Siege was a giant exercise in 1: You must be this tall to play *line on wall*. 2: If you are taller than this *line a foot lower* we kick you down. There were some things planned, but the moment a player started to succeed the nerfs started coming.

[K]

Though admittedly, your scenario seems easier and a lot more sensible.

That's a lie.

He hasn't told us anything about his scenario that would allow you make that judgment. In fact, his current story is that even what he has told us is not what he told us (like shadow demon doesn't mean shadow demon, but instead means something where he doesn't look stupid).

What he has told us makes him look incompetent. For example, he hasn't defended the terrible spells in his Spell Storing example because they are terrible and his defense doesn't make sense (a single Mass Resist Energy is not going to help if you use multiple energy types like Creeping Cold AND Acid Arrow or untyped like Belker's Claws.)

It gets even more embarrassing when you realize what spells he didn't put in those spell storing arrows and how he thinks that "30 damage a round" is big noise damage after getting hit with what has to be 3-4 spells(7 a round from Creeping Cold, 7 from Acid Arrow, 14 from Belker's Claws looks like the best possible combo). Here's a hint: there are direct damage, no save, spells in both the SRD and Spell Compendium that will do more damage and are not DoTs and so will not allow PCs to negate some of their effect midway through or after the battle. Read a book some time.

Based on the facts, every specific example has been a humiliating embarrassment. Hell, even most of his general examples are self-demeaning embarrassments since he seems incapable of using his big boy words and he relies on some of the worst Moving Goalposts arguments to ever grace the Den.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Vaguely related to discussion of DM vs. Players: anyone here remember the Iron Siege created by or based on the work of Dicefreaks. It was something like "Make an ECL 70 character, win a CR 70 Dispater who is in an impregnable tower." There were a few DM's for this challenge and it was literally the PC trying to win the DM.

It was, even if ridiculous, a very interesting take on this "winning the game" thingy.

I presented a team based around using Epic Spellcasting to create an exponentially growing army of epic-level ghost sorcerers with the special purpose of "annoy hell until they decide to execute Dispater, then follow through." Nobody responded

[Mr. GC]

Though admittedly, your scenario seems easier and a lot more sensible.

That's a lie.

He hasn't told us anything about his scenario that would allow you make that judgment. In fact, his current story is that even what he has told us is not what he told us (like shadow demon doesn't mean shadow demon, but instead means something where he doesn't look stupid).

Oh right, because when someone says shadow demon, has never heard of the Shadow Demon people keep retard sperging about before this thread, but describes the shadow demon in terms that make it VERY FUCKING CLEAR IT IT NOT A FUCKING Shadow Demon YOU FUCKING FUCKER surely it must be a Shadow Demon right?

Stormbringer and Sacrosanct called. They want to know if you're still down for that threesome.

What he has told us makes him look incompetent. For example, he hasn't defended the terrible spells in his Spell Storing example because they are terrible and his defense doesn't make sense (a single Mass Resist Energy is not going to help if you use multiple energy types like Creeping Cold AND Acid Arrow or untyped like Belker's Claws.)

You still haven't displayed any critical thinking skills whatsoever. Allow me to spell it out for you. See, when you are taking ongoing damage, you must make a check of 10 + spell level + half damage to cast anything. So getting that damage down to a manageable level both makes it easier to heal through it and also makes it possible to heal through it. Otherwise you take too much damage and fucking die.

It gets even more embarrassing when you realize what spells he didn't put in those spell storing arrows and how he thinks that "30 damage a round" is big noise damage after getting hit with what has to be 3-4 spells(7 a round from Creeping Cold, 7 from Acid Arrow, 14 from Belker's Claws looks like the best possible combo). Here's a hint: there are direct damage, no save, spells in both the SRD and Spell Compendium that will do more damage and are not DoTs and so will not allow PCs to negate some of their effect midway through or after the battle. Read a book some time.

And what actually happens if you cast those is you do 30 (maybe), and that's it, instead of 30 a round for 10 fucking rounds. Thereby proving again that you are a fucking moron.

So that means either the enemies do 30 and run away and the party fucking shrugs and gets on with their lives, instead of doing 30/30/30/30/30/30/30/30/30/30 and the party has to hold the fuck up or die "very soon".

If you were going to do instant damage you'd fucking hit them with 70-90 per unit in an area and then escape. That might actually do something. And by something I mean put a smoking crater where the party once was. If you wanted to advocate instant damage, you'd do that. A level 10 encounter would give you 4 such units. That doesn't include the escape clause but when the party is taking minimum 140 that probably doesn't matter.

Based on the facts, every specific example has been a humiliating embarrassment. Hell, even most of his general examples are self-demeaning embarrassments since he seems incapable of using his big boy words and he relies on some of the worst Moving Goalposts arguments to ever grace the Den.

You keep winning like Charlie Sheen K.

[Avoraciopoctules]

So that means either the enemies do 30 and run away and the party fucking shrugs and gets on with their lives, instead of doing 30/30/30/30/30/30/30/30/30/30 and the party has to hold the fuck up or die "very soon".

If you were going to do instant damage you'd fucking hit them with 70-90 per unit in an area and then escape. That might actually do something. And by something I mean put a smoking crater where the party once was. If you wanted to advocate instant damage, you'd do that. A level 10 encounter would give you 4 such units. That doesn't include the escape clause but when the party is taking minimum 140 that probably doesn't matter.

So are you saying that when you designed an encounter, you chose to deal counterable damage over time instead of a bunch of damage at once that would leave the party a smoking crater?

That you held back from an attack that would instakill the party?

[K]

So that means either the enemies do 30 and run away and the party fucking shrugs and gets on with their lives, instead of doing 30/30/30/30/30/30/30/30/30/30 and the party has to hold the fuck up or die "very soon".

If you were going to do instant damage you'd fucking hit them with 70-90 per unit in an area and then escape. That might actually do something. And by something I mean put a smoking crater where the party once was. If you wanted to advocate instant damage, you'd do that. A level 10 encounter would give you 4 such units. That doesn't include the escape clause but when the party is taking minimum 140 that probably doesn't matter.

So are you saying that when you designed an encounter, you chose to deal counterable damage over time instead of a bunch of damage at once that would leave the party a smoking crater?

That you held back from an attack that would instakill the party?

Yes, he just admitted that he nerfs encounters for PCs and is a filthy basketweaver. He's basically this guy.

Thanks GC. You totally just invalidated everything you said in the entire thread and saved me the time of pointing out all the obvious and humiliating mechanics mistakes in your post.

[Mr. GC]

So that means either the enemies do 30 and run away and the party fucking shrugs and gets on with their lives, instead of doing 30/30/30/30/30/30/30/30/30/30 and the party has to hold the fuck up or die "very soon".

If you were going to do instant damage you'd fucking hit them with 70-90 per unit in an area and then escape. That might actually do something. And by something I mean put a smoking crater where the party once was. If you wanted to advocate instant damage, you'd do that. A level 10 encounter would give you 4 such units. That doesn't include the escape clause but when the party is taking minimum 140 that probably doesn't matter.

So are you saying that when you designed an encounter, you chose to deal counterable damage over time instead of a bunch of damage at once that would leave the party a smoking crater?

That you held back from an attack that would instakill the party?

I didn't come up with the instant damage encounter until just now. Instant damage encounter wise... the party has dealt with worse. So no sorry, you're still morons.

[Avoraciopoctules]

You hold back from quitting your job and spending your entire life working on ways to make elfgames more challenging.

You lack commitment.

You monster.

[DSMatticus]

Stormbringer and Sacrosanct called. They want to know if you're still down for that threesome.

Namedropping 'bad people' as a response is still not funny or clever, and repeated efforts are not making it any funnier or cleverer. Adding SEX JOKE completely failed to help. For the love of god and your dignity (funny story, neither is real) stop stop stop. But hey, while we're at it, Hitler called. He and Mao are arguing over who gets first shot. I told them that given the incredible asspulls you've demonstrated in this thread, you should have no problem accomodating them both.

Hey, that wasn't bad. Maybe I'd make a better GC than GC. Cough cough. D&D is a superhard game and people who are not superawesome at it should go play Hugs & Rainbows while real D&D'ers go about voltroning three spells together to result in 30 DoT against a single target instead of using three fucking spells it's three fucking god damn spells what the fuck to outright kill someone or someones. What's wrong, basket-weavers? Never seen a real optimizer before?

[nockermensch]

The Gaming Den: Repercussions of Basketweaving

GC waited. The threads before him blinked and sparked out of the forum. There were basket-weavers and sandbaggers in The Den. He didn't see them, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to Frank Trollman were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway.
GC was a winner at D&D for fourteen years. When he was young he watched the games and he said to dad "I want to be on the games daddy."
Dad said "No! You will BECOME BASKETWEAVERS"
There was a time when he believed him. Then as he got oldered he stopped. But now in The Gaming Den he knew there were basketweavers.
"This is Mistborn" the radio crackered. "You must fight the basketweavers!"
So GC gotted his for tiered games and made a thread about winning on D&D.
"HE GOING TO TROLL US" said the basketweavers and sandbaggers
"I will show him" said the basketweaver and he typed angrily. GC showed them how his merciless monsters casted a bunch of DoT spells instead of killing the party at once with direct damage. But then the entire thread fell oh him and they were stunned and not able to type.
"No! I must troll the basketweavers" he shouted
The radio said "No, GC. You are the basketweavers"
And then GC was a sandbagger.


With apologies to Peter Chimaera.

[Mistborn]

Damn it nocker, stop being funny. If you keep posting stuff like that I might stop hating you and from your previous posts you deserve all of my hate.

[Mr. GC]

Let me know when you're done going full retard so I can start paying attention again.

[Mistborn]

If you're landing that many spells via Spell Storing the prudent course is to slap on a spell that fucking kills people like Combust which is going to do more damage that any of your lame ass DOTs at every level. Hopefully you packed Protection Form Fire or some really good protections from archery otherwise your ass is toast in one round, literally.

Not it could be that I'm missing something so why don't you explain how 3-4 shitty DOTs is more dangerous that 3-4 castings of Combust.

[Mr. GC]

If you're landing that many spells via Spell Storing the prudent course is to slap on a spell that fucking kills people like Combust which is going to do more damage that any of your lame ass DOTs at every level. Hopefully you packed Protection Form Fire or some really good protections from archery otherwise your ass is toast in one round, literally.

Not it could be that I'm missing something so why don't you explain how 3-4 shitty DOTs is more dangerous that 3-4 castings of Combust.

I have a better idea. Why don't you stop trying to suck up to the Den to try and get on their good side by coming at me? Then I might actually give you the time of day. As is, you are just as worthless a player as the rest of them, perhaps more, and my only regret is that I thought otherwise for a while and believes you were something other than a mindless follower in desperate search of someone to follow.

Now once you've done that, you'll know that the response to a party taking 10d8 a few times is to fucking shake that shit off. Because that's only like 36, and you've already fought things that smack you that hard or harder 6 times a round every round so why the fucking fuck would you care about 3-4, total?

[Mistborn]

I have a better idea. Why don't you stop trying to suck up to the Den to try and get on their good side by coming at me? Then I might actually give you the time of day. As is, you are just as worthless a player as the rest of them, perhaps more, and my only regret is that I thought otherwise for a while and believes you were something other than a mindless follower in desperate search of someone to follow.

Now once you've done that, you'll know that the response to a party taking 10d8 a few times is to fucking shake that shit off. Because that's only like 36, and you've already fought things that smack you that hard or harder 6 times a round every round so why the fucking fuck would you care about 3-4, total?

Stop wanking. You're “I'm the optimizer king of D&D and I'm so superior I don't need to post stat blocks or theorycraft to back up my points” has lost you an ton of credibility with me. When you talk optimization over the internet people are going to expect to see your claims backed up with numbers and facts so stop wanking

Also 10d8 damage averages to 45 let's be generous and say your DOTs came out of a 12th level caster Belkar Claws will deal 55 average damage over it's lifespan so congrats you did find a spell that out damages Combust except you can heal through it and it's unlikely to kill anyone within a timeframe that matters. Acid arrow does 20 damage over it's lifespan and is shut down by any form of energy resistance. Creeping Cold is a 21 points of damage over it's lifespan but extended creeping cold is 73.5 damage over it's lifespan so once again that means something. So assuming you get 3 arrows on a PC that's 148 damage better by a narrow margin than three castings of Combust which is 135 both of those numbers a still near guaranteed death to to PCs below 10th level that don't have energy protection. the difference is that any sort of energy resistance renders your much vaunted DOTs virtually ineffective and the party has a good chance to heal through it. Whereas combusts can still probably fucking kill PCs through fire resistance 5-15.

So yeah those are the fucking numbers and they say three castings of Combust are more likely to kill people. No if you think my analysis is wrong then please explain motherfucker show me how and why my analysis is wrong. Otherwise stop wanking.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Tempted to start a "DND HARRRD MODE CHALLENGE" thread In The Trenches. There would bell towers. There would "a thing that might be some kind of shadowy demon", which of course would be a Shadow Demon. There would even be a dragon that flies by the party and misses with every attack, and then goes home to cry and eat ice cream.

[Mr. GC]

Stop wanking. You're “I'm the optimizer king of D&D and I'm so superior I don't need to post stat blocks or theorycraft to back up my points” has lost you an ton of credibility with me. When you talk optimization over the internet people are going to expect to see your claims backed up with numbers and facts so stop wanking

You're awfully fixated with jacking off. And my nuts. Is there something you'd like to tell us?

Also 10d8 damage averages to 45 let's be generous and say your dot's came out of a 12th level caster Belkar Claws will deal 55 average damage over it's lifespan so congrats you did find a spell that out damages Combust except you can heal through it and it's unlikely to kill anyone within a timeframe that matters. Acid arrow does 20 damage over it's lifespan and is shut down by any form of energy resistance. Creeping Cold is a 21 points of damage over it's lifespan but extended creeping cold is 73.5 damage over it's lifespan so once again that means something. So assuming you get 3 arrows on a PC that's 148 damage better by a narrow margin than three castings of Combust which is 135 both of those numbers a still near guaranteed death to to PCs below 10th level that don't have energy protection. the difference is that any sort of energy resistance renders your much vaunted DOTs virtually ineffective and the party has a good chance to heal through it. Whereas combusts can still probably fucking kill PCs through fire resistance 5-15.

Oh, 45. Ok, so that's about oh... 5% (possibly) over what enemies have been hitting you for already many more times a round? So again, why do you care?

Also, if you were remotely competent, and not just looking for someone to follow you'd know that DoTs = prime Extend bait, so bad liar. Stop lying.

So yeah those are the fucking numbers and they say three castings of Combust are more likely to kill people. No if you think my analysis is wrong then pleas explain motherfucker show me how and why my analysis is wrong. Otherwise stop wanking.

Your uber encounter is half a full attack from something the party beat two levels ago. Watch no one care. Except those losers that are like "Holy shit, our all Rogue party has to fight a Sorcerer with Lightning Bolt! What do we do?"

I guess they're such bad Rogues they can't even dodge Lightning Bolts? Because I considered that to be about the only thing they can do... it just isn't a useful thing as only a moron would cast that spell.