Moments when a piece of entertainment completely rocked you.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Sep 07, 2015 10:39 pm

A Walk in the Woods the film was okay. Nowhere near as good as the book, of course, but Emma Thompson and Nick Nolte were great.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 12:24 am

erik wrote:
Or just wait to do so after another coworker does first?

Damn right I'd watch someone else eat it first

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 2:08 am

Preferably Kim Davis, if she weren't in prison right now.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 5:42 am

So, another player in the meatspace game I'm in and I got to talking about the D&D sex books (because my character fucked a cornugon and she thought one of the books had xp for sex in it, which I'd love for my level 5 character to get) and I mentioned the Phallic enhancement for wands in one of them, which basically allows you to recharge wands with (specifically) female orgasms. One orgasm gets you one charge.

She figured that was horribly broken and I said "eh, if it's double cost, it's just fluff" and went and looked it up. I found that it's four times normal cost and has the drawback of giving you an "embarrassing fetish," nymphomania, a Sympathy effect targeting you and concerning the wand, or triggering a retributive strike if you over"charge" it (ie, use it when it's fully charged. You don't actually get uses beyond 50, these are virtual charges). So, completely unworth it, since an actual unlimited wand would just cost double and not have a recharge ritual that takes 15 minutes at best with the possibility of hitting you for 800 points of damage in the crotch.

Queue her saying that "unlimited costs double" is broken, and my explaining how that works. I explain that "50 charges" is actually a discount, rather than "unlimited use" being an upgrade. She thinks its horribly broken for some reason because it means that you can have an unlimited wand of Polymorph for 42000 gp. I explain this isn't true, and if she thinks that's broken, she'd hate my artificer (the group is split, same game but two parties) since I could make that same wand for less than 1500gp (skill req, alignment req, cost reduction feats, half to create).

She then explains that it's horribly broken, because "ok, fine, same cost for inflict serious wounds. that's not balanced, and here's why. you're effectively gaining a spell like ability an unlimited number of times a day, and the VAST majority of spell like ablities i can remember are level 2 spells AT BEST. inflict serious wounds is a 4th level spell. so anyone can spend 42k and get a spell like ability. awesome. ok, so now part of the archmage prestige class, and the heirophant prestige class, are useless and utterly outclassed by some gold. woo..."

I explain that a wand is not the same as a spell like, quite different, and there are a lot of spell likes above 2nd level.

And...

"ok whatever i'm done, this is stupid and you're clearly just meta gaming"

...
metagaming.

Knowing the rules, and understanding them, and being cognizant of the fact that "if I hold this expensive stick, I can use this spell" isn't even in the same ballpark as "I can just use this spell in a totally not spell-like way and you can't disarm me of it" is now metagaming.

Count Arioch the 28th · Tue Sep 08, 2015 6:32 am

I recommending giving her a flying drop kick the the uterus. Then crap on her floor and leave.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 6:38 am

I've chosen to just be really glad that she is physically about 400 miles away and her and her boyfriend have split from the rest of the party in game and have their own session with the GM, so I don't have to listen to her call my artificing broken metagaming.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 9:16 am

But did you tell her;
* those are not the rules for determining the value of magic items, but only for estimating their value
* even wotc stated that those estimations don't work, at all
* cost reductions are great for crafting, but the full item value counts vs your wbl, thus you're greatly reducing the amount of treasure you should find
* anyone who brings up alignment restrictions to reduce the gold value of items you're crafting for yourself is a stupid asshole

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 12:55 pm

ishy wrote:* anyone who brings up alignment restrictions to reduce the gold value of items you're crafting for yourself is a stupid asshole

This. Your friend is a stupid fuck who doesn't know how to articulate a real position.

But you are a double stupid fuck for actually contending that making it so only you can use the items you craft cuts their prices to 1/10th the cost and allows you to break WBL.

If I had to choose which one of you I wanted to punch in the face more, it would be you.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 7:41 pm

Kaelik, you always want to punch me in the face. And it cuts the prices by one-tenth.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 7:51 pm

Kaelik wrote:
If I had to choose which one of you I wanted to punch in the face....

...then you wouldn't be Kaelik.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 8:00 pm

So when do we get a Let's Play thread for Vagrant's Lovelife?

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Thu Sep 10, 2015 7:30 pm

Ex Machina was visually stunning, although it doesn't quite make up for script problems.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sun Sep 13, 2015 10:23 pm

http://nerdist.com/witness-the-insanity ... d-trailer/

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Sep 13, 2015 10:55 pm

I thought the chrome armored semi was the climax of awesomeness, but then they saved the best for last.

Reminds me of this

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Mon Sep 21, 2015 2:44 am

Shrapnel wrote:The Den before the Den. Waaaaay before.

An ancient discussion between Sidney Nolan, Yoko Ono, Jim Henson, and Ayn Rand on ARPANET. The interactions between Henson and Rand are priceless.

I was very sad to find out that this was made up.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Mon Sep 21, 2015 4:21 pm

Sadness.

Ah, well, it's still in the right place.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Fri Sep 25, 2015 1:55 am

Timeline of penis slang

Hiram McDaniels · Post by **Hiram McDaniels** » Fri Oct 16, 2015 7:06 pm

Too Many Cooks

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 3:33 am

So there's a Nanoha spinoff manga called Innocent where all the characters live on Earth and mostly don't have magic (though Yuuno is a talking Ferret and the familiars are still shapeshifters) and play a VR magical fighting game, and the english translation of the second phase InnocentS, which introduces the StrikerS characters. Courtesy of Fun With Pronouns, Teana thinks Subaru is a boy with a crush on her.

For those who aren't aware, of all the lesbians in Nanoha, Subaru is the most lesbian.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Thu Oct 29, 2015 6:14 am

I'm a Tales fan since Symphonia came out. Since then, I've played Abyss, Vesperia, Phantasia, and Xillia 1.

Zestiria is, funny enough, damn good, even if I don't dig the characters as much as I do Jade or Alvin.

The story is this: There's platonic evil, called malevolence, that wells and infects the world, turning people, animals and seraphs (in this case: elemental spirit people who...are invisible and unhearable by non-sensitive humans. But they're pretty much funny-colored human with magic) into monsters, aka hellions. When this is going people, humans and seraphs can both make malevolence by being crazy. You play as a young man raised by seraphs and you gain the power to purify evil directly--quell hellions by defeating them, but it doesn't kill them (mostly).

On paper, it sounds corny as hell. In practice, there's a lot of nuance in there. Malevolence can screw with people, but it can also be generated by ill-will, hating the world.But people can do bad without having malevolence oozing out of them. Case in point, the odd detail changed to keep it from being exact spoilers: A sidequest to track down a serial killer, he turns out to be someone who believes he's doing the right thing, saving people from the world by killing them.

Likewise, the hero can't always purify someone. There's at least one case where a hellion hated the hero specifically, and couldn't be purified because of that--their grudge was the source of their malevolence, and being beaten up by the hero just made it worse.

Normally Tales sidequests are doing some good in the world, but they likewise run to tragedy as often as not.

Combat's got some nice nuance, too. Enemies have both elemental weaknesses and their types--and moves have the same deal. A particular attack can be both fire-element and good against dragons and thus do bonus damage to that fire dragon. Once you get bonus damage on a combo, the rest of those hits do it as well, so combat is mostly about trying to get that combo going as long as you can. Also, the game is 2-player and this would likely be very useful.

And last, it's got references. There's a doge reference in there, and once, after coming out of a cave, a character goes, "I'm glad to be out of there...PRAISE THE SUN!" and does the sunbro pose.

If there's a downside, there's some bits that aren't well-explained--like a plot mission to clear clouds of malevolence out of town by throwing fire (an overworld action) at them. I may have missed it, but for some reason I had not a clue what to do and had to look up what the hell I was supposed to be doing online.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 10:34 pm

So I've been watching Golden Time in Anime Club, and there was this episode where two of the girls were picking swimsuits for the beach, with the main girl looking for something her boyfriend would like, and I abruptly realized none of the characters had ever happened to tell the main girl that the other one is bisexual.

I don't know about the male lead, but apparently the other girl likes school swimsuits. There was a video camera. It was priceless.

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 2:41 am

http://www.twitch.tv/bobross

There is stream of Bob Ross's The Joy of Painting in celebration of his birthday by showing every episode.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Tue Nov 03, 2015 9:18 pm

I'm really enjoying Adam Ruins Everything. If anyone has seen the CollegeHumor skits, it's the same guy, but on TV. I don't know how much of the shows are subjects he's already covered, but I like the way they cover different facets of a theme.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Tue Nov 03, 2015 9:52 pm

Lois McMaster Bujold's new book made me YOMANK twice, which is pretty good for any media product. Highly recommend, would purchase again.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Nov 03, 2015 10:36 pm

https://www.etsy.com/listing/214649340/ ... x-for-late