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ActusRhesus posted:Also, I was looking for a little more than "write rogue on character sheet. Pick assassin." Skill expertise? Feat Selection? Benefits to one race vs. another? I get it, this game isn't as micro-managey as 3.5 was. But I was looking for some practical advice from people who have actually played the class, not "hey the rule book says assassin gets to use disguises so pick that." I can read. You got all of this. You're being purposefully obtuse now. People gave advice on skills and feats, and you don't need a rundown of racial benefits since they are minor and you can read. There is literally nothing else to it, because that's as far as 5E goes.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 21:34 |
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# ? May 14, 2024 01:58 |
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being purposefully obtuse? or being very new to 5.0 and still working from a 3.5 mindset where there's a lot more to it than that and picking the wrong skill or feat can really gently caress up your character? OK, got it. It's not that complicated any more. but, you know, if you want to keep insulting me, that's cool too.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 21:38 |
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And in case you do want explicit race advice, you want to avoid Halfling (though it's tempting) because there will be more times you want to disguise yourself as a Medium creature than a Small one. Drow puts stat bonuses in the right place for you but again has practicality concerns for interaction with NPCs. Wood Elf is good for more of a sneaky rogue. Half-Elf is perfect for a con artist, matched only by the feat-using variant of Human if your table is using feats (which are present, but an optional rule in 5e). EDIT: Picking a useless feat for your character can still deprive you of a lot of ability, but in 5e it's a little harder to actually do that for a couple reasons. One, the number of feats has been cut down drastically, so it's harder to miss the ones that will be good for you. Also, they have been made more powerful, so the piddly little "+1 in an obscure circumstance" stuff that matches your concept but is mechanically nothing is gone. Whether those two things will remain true as more material gets published over the edition's lifespan is anyone's guess. Feat Bloat has been a thing in every edition where feats were a thing so far. Lemniscate Blue fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Feb 3, 2015 |
# ? Feb 3, 2015 21:40 |
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BatteredFeltFedora posted:And in case you do want explicit race advice, you want to avoid Halfling (though it's tempting) because there will be more times you want to disguise yourself as a Medium creature than a Small one. Drow puts stat bonuses in the right place for you but again has practicality concerns for interaction with NPCs. Wood Elf is good for more of a sneaky rogue. Half-Elf is perfect for a con artist, matched only by the feat-using variant of Human if your table is using feats (which are present, but an optional rule in 5e). That's actually the direction I am going in (tentatively): human with observant feat which a. gives you poo poo tons of bonus to perception and investigate which fits the character I'm making (more an information thief than a money thief) and has the added benefit of offsetting some of the disadvantage for not having darkvision.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 21:43 |
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P.d0t posted:Man, if only some goon was currently testing a d20-based game where casters and non-casters ran off the same mechanics for combat and non-combat, rather than [casters just being better X times per day/non-casters being just as good but only at much higher levels.] If I can convince my group to relinquish their death-grip on D&D then I'll definitely try running this.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 21:47 |
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ActusRhesus posted:That's actually the direction I am going in (tentatively): human with observant feat which a. gives you poo poo tons of bonus to perception and investigate which fits the character I'm making (more an information thief than a money thief) and has the added benefit of offsetting some of the disadvantage for not having darkvision. Note that those bonuses are only to your passive scores - they won't help when you're actively rolling for what you're doing, only when the DM feels like there's information there for you to notice. Which may not jive with your idea of same. Actor was suggested earlier if you'll be doing the disguise thing, and that was a big part of Locke Lamora, for example. Also a +1 to Charisma for your social skills can be a big help.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 21:53 |
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BatteredFeltFedora posted:And in case you do want explicit race advice, you want to avoid Halfling (though it's tempting) because there will be more times you want to disguise yourself as a Medium creature than a Small one. Drow puts stat bonuses in the right place for you but again has practicality concerns for interaction with NPCs. Wood Elf is good for more of a sneaky rogue. Half-Elf is perfect for a con artist, matched only by the feat-using variant of Human if your table is using feats (which are present, but an optional rule in 5e). They essentially made drow unplayable in this edition so there's that.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:01 |
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How much does it cost to build roads? How many workers and how many days? I can't ripoff the Lords' Alliance and the Zhentarim if I don't know, and telling them "between 7000 to 10000 gold per mile" probably won't go over well.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:04 |
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If they're not skeleton workers I don't think we could help you
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:05 |
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eatenmyeyes posted:How much does it cost to build roads? How many workers and how many days? I can't ripoff the Lords' Alliance and the Zhentarim if I don't know, and telling them "between 7000 to 10000 gold per mile" probably won't go over well. With or without magic? Do you want good roads or just decently level tracks?
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:06 |
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BatteredFeltFedora posted:Note that those bonuses are only to your passive scores - they won't help when you're actively rolling for what you're doing, only when the DM feels like there's information there for you to notice. Which may not jive with your idea of same. DMing, I have to say, the passive bonus to Investigate is tough to figure out how to adjudicate. Have a Rogue in the group who has it, and with his specialization and all, his passive Investigate is 21. Most of the time, when he's in the group there's no need to roll for any investigative thing, and when there is, he's worse at it than the Warlock and Cleric (though that often comes down to bad dice rolls). Its a case of wanting him to use his feat and be challenging about it at the same time, and the passive part just screws with that as it tends to come down to noticing everything, or noticing nothing, rather than leading to teamwork and wild PC speculation.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:07 |
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ActusRhesus posted:our 3.5 Ranger player was a monster once she realized how to play her class. I haven't looked at the 5.0 ranger rules, but is it really that bad? Mechanically it appears to have less going for it than a Champion Fighter, which is kind of an eye-opener when you think about it. It's actual Ranger mechanics feel more like fluff than abilities, since they describe a benefit for something that is generally happening in narrative time. Maybe there are groups that go into great in depth detail about their journey from A->B, and how they got lost for 1.4 days less than they would have because of the groups Ranger. (I am assuming that the DMG describes how a party can get lost via magical and mundane means.) I cannot multiclass into a Bard fast enough as the combat this edition* is dull as hell. At least as I will have a reason to not bother engaging with it if I am a not playing a front line fighting man. * tbh, I suspect I would have a similar reaction if I sat at a 3.5 table again too.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:10 |
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BatteredFeltFedora posted:Note that those bonuses are only to your passive scores - they won't help when you're actively rolling for what you're doing, only when the DM feels like there's information there for you to notice. Which may not jive with your idea of same. I have no idea how you "passively investigate." that seems like pretty awful writing.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:11 |
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ActusRhesus posted:hmm...in our 3.5 game we played around with feats and such that gave her a butt ton of extra arrows, plus some stuff that let her send her animal to bite people in the crotch in the same turn. (And I cheated somewhat and gently steered her towards choosing "preferred foes" that I knew she'd be seeing a lot of.) Honestly, the most underwhelming player in our group was the sorcerer because she had no idea how to play her class and was expecting to be able to do 500 points of damage as a level 2. When I first looked at it, I was pleasantly surprised to see that they weren't putting as much emphasis on favoured enemies as they did in 3.5. I never really cared for the "hey DM please give me one fight against orcs per day so I can use my class features" business (or what usually ended up happening, "hey ranger player please choose from this list of favoured enemies because this module doesn't have any loving aboleths why would you think it does God drat"), and I figured that removing the attack and damage bonuses would give WotC room to add more to the rangers since they didn''t have so much of their power tied up in a finicky attack power. But... then they didn't. They have such fantastic abilities as "burn your spells to know if potentially hostile or friendly or ambivalent (you don't really know which) creatures of unknown quantity exist in your general area". Or "+10 to stealth while sitting perfectly still for a minute" at the same level their robe-wearing buddy is mind controlling people and teleporting the party around the world. Their epic capstone is, once again, a lovely version of the favoured enemy attack/damage bonus that I was briefly happy to see didn't show up at level 1. They have two archetypes, one focused on animal companions and one on weapon use. If you're a beastmaster, you have to use your attacks to get your animal to attack, which means you can't actually attack on the same turn as your animal until level 5 when you're merely burning half of your attacks to get it to fight. Weapon-focused hunters have it a bit better, so long as they avoid trap options like Giant Killer, but none of it really impresses except for level 11's Volley. So that leaves... spells. Which, hey, spells are handy, and you get them at level 2. They're kinda weird about forcing concentration onto one-shot powers for no reason other than making drat sure you don't ever take both hunter's mark and hail of thorns, but at least they're nice enough to give you something to do with your bonus actions. There are some nice picks in there but then there's also "you can teleport ten levels after the wizard started dimension dooring" so it's kind of a mish-mash. The Crotch fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Feb 3, 2015 |
# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:14 |
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ActusRhesus posted:I have no idea how you "passively investigate." that seems like pretty awful writing. The basic setup for investigating/looking for hidden things prior to 3E was that the GM makes you roll on command. A passive Perception/Insight score was set up in 4E so that the GM could have monsters roll Stealth/Bluff without telling you and actually surprise you, and cut down on his own rolling when you make your own Stealth/Bluff checks.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:15 |
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:The basic setup for investigating/looking for hidden things prior to 3E was that the GM makes you roll on command. A passive Perception/Insight score was set up in 4E so that the GM could have monsters roll Stealth/Bluff without telling you and actually surprise you, and cut down on his own rolling when you make your own Stealth/Bluff checks. right. I get how it works for perception...perceiving is somewhat passive by nature. But investigation seems to require more conscious effort. How do you "passively investigate?"
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:17 |
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goatface posted:With or without magic? Do you want good roads or just decently level tracks? I calculated it using Move Earth and it was pretty pricy. Is there a better spell? I read some materials about Roman road building (paved) and some guides from the department of agriculture (for dirt roads) and the 7k to 10k estimate was for dirt.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:18 |
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eatenmyeyes posted:How much does it cost to build roads? How many workers and how many days? I can't ripoff the Lords' Alliance and the Zhentarim if I don't know, and telling them "between 7000 to 10000 gold per mile" probably won't go over well. Romans (supposedly) did a yard and a bit per man per day, lets round that to a yard. Building a mile thus costs 1760 man-days. A skilled labourer, which you are obviously using if you're building that fast, costs 2 gp a day. So 3520 gp per mile in wages. Add in costs for material and your profit on the top, you could probably argue it as 7-10 kgp/mile.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:22 |
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The last four pages have been such a nostalgic blast from the past. 2005 here we come!
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:24 |
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ActusRhesus posted:right. I get how it works for perception...perceiving is somewhat passive by nature. But investigation seems to require more conscious effort. How do you "passively investigate?" If you ask the D&D devs the answer you will get is honestly "DM's call".
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:24 |
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ProfessorCirno posted:The last four pages have been such a nostalgic blast from the past. 2005 here we come! Isn't most of the thread like that?
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:25 |
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Andrast posted:Isn't most of the thread like that? This has been the most solidly 3.x I've seen the discussions around here get.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:30 |
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goatface posted:Romans (supposedly) did a yard and a bit per man per day, lets round that to a yard. Building a mile thus costs 1760 man-days. A skilled labourer, which you are obviously using if you're building that fast, costs 2 gp a day. So 3520 gp per mile in wages. Add in costs for material and your profit on the top, you could probably argue it as 7-10 kgp/mile. Or you could cast Build Road and obviate all these skilled laborer shenanigans. Wait how much to just have a bunch of skeletons lay down and serve as a road that can also get up to be an army later.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:30 |
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theironjef posted:Or you could cast Build Road and obviate all these skilled laborer shenanigans. Employing the one piss-wizard for the few days it would take would probably cost more.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:34 |
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Hire a normal labour force, kill them, pay the wizard in skeleton material.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:37 |
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Dear Legal Advice, If you animate a skeleton, and it turns out that skeleton was from a murdered dude, does that count as receiving stolen goods? I'm already on my second strike for theft. Yours in g-d, The Dark Lord Jeff
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:44 |
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ActusRhesus posted:right. I get how it works for perception...perceiving is somewhat passive by nature. But investigation seems to require more conscious effort. How do you "passively investigate?" "passive" is kind of the new "take 10"? Which, yes, doesn't make a lot of sense for Investigation, since Search was more of a "take 20" skill .
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:47 |
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goatface posted:Dear Legal Advice, The lawyer said you're probably cool, but his barrister wig did clip right through his briefcase, so move forward accordingly.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:47 |
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ActusRhesus posted:right. I get how it works for perception...perceiving is somewhat passive by nature. But investigation seems to require more conscious effort. How do you "passively investigate?" I think the idea is that it's how much the guard notices by the default of being a guard and doing guard-type things, as opposed to a high stress situation where a guard is on high alert and actively looking for things, to the benefit or detriment of his or her results. For instance, a guard at a checkpoint on a normal day will behave very differently than a guard at a checkpoint when the king is visiting or when an attack is immenent. They're both investigating and examining people passing through the checkpoint, but one is doing so actively while the other is doing it routinely.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:50 |
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ActusRhesus posted:How do you "passively investigate?" Actually, Fantasy Jason King is such a brilliant concept I might create him anyway. What class would be best for a louche alcoholic playboy who always wins fights despite being hopeless at fighting?
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:53 |
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I may be giving more credit than deserved... It is likely an added concept to have to party notice the critical plot item when they didn't think to mention that they searched that rubbish pile over there.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:55 |
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Payndz posted:always wins fights despite being hopeless at fighting?
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 22:56 |
Is passive Investigation actually a thing? I don't have my book handy, but I'm like 95% sure Observant gives passive Insight, which makes a ton more sense. Or is there some other feature/feat we're talking about? Also, Observant on a rogue is kinda fluffy but seems kinda meh unless your Wis is odd to start with. In which case it might be worth the stat point, since you're still ending up with +1 to those important perception rolls. But at the same time you're not doing anything for the skills/abilities that actually let you accomplish things (Dex and I guess Cha if you're serious about the con artist thing). And if your DM is anything like mine, it's perception checks all the way down. I don't think he pays any attention to passive perception.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 23:13 |
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ProfessorCirno posted:This has been the most solidly 3.x I've seen the discussions around here get. Oh man that reminds me of some excellent Adventure Advice this guy had for running a D&D Next campaign: September 2014 http://projectmultiplexer.com/2014/09/07/on-the-unloading-a-pair-of-magic-boots-and-troubles-therein/ 3.X As gently caress posted:While killing an ogre for the local Baron for a quick pickup of 100gp, the party offs the ogre’s buddy, a nasty little goblin. This guy was a real jerk. Once he was good and dead – the fighter stabbed the goblin extra for good measure – the party did what adventuring parties do. They rolled the bodies. Among the handfuls of copper pieces, a few unusable weapons and a convenient cache of crossbow bolts, the party discovers the goblin was wearing a pair of Boots of Striding and Springing. Also: ActusRhesus posted:Also, I was looking for a little more than "write rogue on character sheet. Pick assassin." Skill expertise? Feat Selection? Benefits to one race vs. another? I get it, this game isn't as micro-managey as 3.5 was. But I was looking for some practical advice from people who have actually played the class, not "hey the rule book says assassin gets to use disguises so pick that." I can read. OK here is the second result I got on google, it looks like its got exactly what you want: http://www.dungeonsampdragons.com/bounded-advantage/2014/07/13/how-to-build-a-rogue/ I have read all of this post and verified the math the dude-man is using. the explanation of tactics, equipment, skills and races is on point. The practical advice we were trying to give you is that rogue, in play, doesn't feel right. You find yourself being overshadowed with skills by a Bard; you find yourself being overshadowed in combat by any class that gets multiple attacks. Its just not that great. I liked the Playtest rogue more. Simply put I just don't find the current rogue that compelling and everything it does, some other class can do better. If you want to write "Rogue" on your character sheet, and want advice on how to do that while playing the concept of the rogue, its a class based game. You made the largest and most important choice, class, already. The rest is window dressing. Take DEX CHA. Take skills you like. Make sure to put Expertise in stuff you want to have a higher roll with. Keep in mind that rolling high has little meaning because skills don't do more stuff with higher rolls. Laphroaig fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Feb 3, 2015 |
# ? Feb 3, 2015 23:17 |
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ImpactVector posted:Is passive Investigation actually a thing? I don't have my book handy, but I'm like 95% sure Observant gives passive Insight, which makes a ton more sense. Or is there some other feature/feat we're talking about? It says passive Investigation.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 23:21 |
goatface posted:It says passive Investigation. I still stand by the rest of what I wrote though. I only took it on my Druid because my Wis was 17, it was my only odd stat, and it's the only +1 Wis feat in the book.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 23:29 |
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ImpactVector posted:Welp. My bad then. Also that's really dumb. Maybe, but I think it makes sense in terms of flavor - being observant doesn't generally mean you're better at sensing a bluff. It is pretty weak mechanically - I don't think I've ever head of anyone rolling passive Investigation, and the example the book gives isn't particularly helpful (repeatedly searching for something, which feels more like a take 20 to me).
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 23:38 |
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Laphroaig posted:Oh man that reminds me of some excellent Adventure Advice this guy had for running a D&D Next campaign: I wonder if this dude gets huffy if someone says "Alright, gently caress it. I'll just stick the boots in the bottom of my duffel bag until we reach a chasm or something, Jerry, god."
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 23:53 |
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Laphroaig posted:Oh man that reminds me of some excellent Adventure Advice this guy had for running a D&D Next campaign: They should have traded the boots for some mustard.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 23:58 |
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# ? May 14, 2024 01:58 |
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I'd guess passive investigation is like when Sherlock Holme just takes one glance at a man and then tells Watson how it's obvious that the fella is an ex merchant navy seaman who has recently come into hard times so has started selling opium but still takes the time to visit his hospitalised grandmother at least once a week.
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# ? Feb 3, 2015 23:59 |