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Thanks everyone, I have been feeling a lot of residual guilt over the whole thing. There were a lot of tears at the table during and after. When we ended the session everyone just sat in stunned silence and I was really unsure how to read it. What you are saying tracks with what they are saying, and they are so invested now that I think it's all good. I am probably just too soft to do this too often.
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Jan 17, 2023 00:56
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If there isn't a third party rule for moving, that game won't get very far
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Jan 17, 2023 00:57
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Raenir Salazar posted:Strikes me as an interesting idea to theorycraft around. I'm sure it could be done, but why? All those third party designers designed what they did with the assumption that the table would have access to at least the Player's Handbook and DMG, and designed their product with that in mind. It might be fun for a one-off gimmick thing or even a couple weeks, but at some point you're gonna be sitting around wishing you had some of the basics and at that point, you don't have to suffer for your art, just use the first party poo poo or if you really want to "make a statement" go play one of the other really cool other TTRPG options that doesn't include some dumb bullshit limit.
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Jan 17, 2023 01:02
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Don't get tricked into playing Level Up, is my stance. The DM books are better written and more useful than the 5e DMG but anything player facing 
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Jan 17, 2023 01:07
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Azathoth posted:I'm sure it could be done, but why? All those third party designers designed what they did with the assumption that the table would have access to at least the Player's Handbook and DMG, and designed their product with that in mind. First it's not really about making a statement or anything, the inspiration isn't motivated by a deep desire to boycott wotc goods, but is just prompted by the recent events to be muse "Hrm, what would it be like to play without anything in the core books" and go from there. Not for like a "full" campaign or anything, and certainly not as a serious alternative. It's just about the theory crafting, in the same sort of vein as people who create Pun-pun sort of builds. Second, I dunno, I'm imaging something like, you don't have the base Dwarf, or base Wizard; but you might have like, Chronomancers and Wechelkind instead sort of deal. Particularly for a Caster I think the fun is working around the fact you don't have the base spells or feats. Instead of picking Fireball because well, it's fireball you're forced to consider alternative options, it might make encounters more interesting, because you're using less likely to be used abilities and spells. So it'd be potentially interesting to see how people consider and make their builds without the usual staples. And you know, I don't really see your typical player who is up for Randomizer-esque shenanigans in D&D is going to be that bothered after a mere couple of weeks. They'd probably be down and committed to at least a short one shot as a change of pace. Maybe my sense of "campaign time" is off from the kinds of campaigns I am in or running, but I don't see most people being bothered with a 5-10 week campaign not having fireball.
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Jan 17, 2023 01:21
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homeless snail posted:Don't get tricked into playing Level Up, is my stance. The DM books are better written and more useful than the 5e DMG but anything player facing What's the deal with Level Up? I've heard a lot of mixed reviews of it.
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Jan 17, 2023 01:24
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Phrosphor posted:Thanks everyone, I have been feeling a lot of residual guilt over the whole thing. There were a lot of tears at the table during and after. When we ended the session everyone just sat in stunned silence and I was really unsure how to read it. Yeah, absolutely - it's good for a big/shocking event like that, but you have the right stance about not making that kinda thing common. Congrats though, looks like it was a massive blow to everyone, in a good way! You pulled it off well, IMO - that's gonna be a gaming memory they fondly bring up years from now, I can guarantee it
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Jan 17, 2023 01:33
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The Bee posted:What's the deal with Level Up? I've heard a lot of mixed reviews of it. It's ENWorld's "Advanced 5e" and seems to have been designed with the idea that more complex is generally better. The DMG is written by experienced DMs. The Monstrous Menagerie was written by the same person who did the MM3 on a business card - and the "signs" for every monster is something well worth stealing, while the monsters themselves are decent and tuned up but both more complex and more verbose than the 5e equivalents. There's IMO too much duplication and too much to read to make it worth getting. The classes seem to be a mash-up of 5e, Pathfinder, and Pathfinder 2e and are intended for people who've played enough 5e to get bored but don't have alternatives they want to play.
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Jan 17, 2023 02:00
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neonchameleon posted:It's ENWorld's "Advanced 5e" and seems to have been designed with the idea that more complex is generally better. The DMG is written by experienced DMs. The Monstrous Menagerie was written by the same person who did the MM3 on a business card - and the "signs" for every monster is something well worth stealing, while the monsters themselves are decent and tuned up but both more complex and more verbose than the 5e equivalents. There's IMO too much duplication and too much to read to make it worth getting. The classes seem to be a mash-up of 5e, Pathfinder, and Pathfinder 2e and are intended for people who've played enough 5e to get bored but don't have alternatives they want to play. What's this mister signs bit? That sounds interesting.
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Jan 17, 2023 03:12
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The Bee posted:What's the deal with Level Up? I've heard a lot of mixed reviews of it. I guess my is a little strong, its Fine if you want to play D&D 5e specifically without giving WOTC any money but also I think there's better and more interesting ways to do that. Its a whole rear end multiple hardcover book game system by people too scared to branch out from D&D 5e in its narrowest possible interpretation, for people that are too scared to branch out from D&D 5e, basically.
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Jan 17, 2023 04:39
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I think the problem with saying there's "better" of XYZ is that it isn't easy to find those things and be certain that they are in fact better (I'm certainly in no position to judge, I see a treasure table and all I got is my own best judgement and most of the time that's going to be "Okay looks good"). A5e has the advantage of providing a bunch of content all in one spot to use as to start with. Like for social rules for example that's been a search and a half to find ideas and has mostly brought up ideas from other systems which requires work to port them over in a way that balances effort with the return; a book that has new social rules already written up for specifically 5e along with a bunch of extra stuff is convenient to say the least.
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Jan 17, 2023 05:03
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I don't know, all these books are talked about and sold in the same spaces and are mostly interchangeable. Everyone on the internet will gladly tell you about/sell a pdf of their system for handling, whatever corner of the game that's underdeveloped in core 5e. Don't think that A5e is necessarily any easier to find or better known as anything else, or that its more virtuous in putting all those rules in a 600 page $60 glossy hardback full of other stuff you probably don't want.
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Jan 17, 2023 05:12
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one of the things it does for classes is make them all warlock-like, in the sense that they all get a list of perks they can choose from. In theory I think that's great--the Warlock invocations are in theory good design. When I was trying to build a ranger, however, I saw a bunch of options that just seemed either convoluted or like traps. quote:Build Shelter This perk is really mystifying to me. At baseline, I would say that if a character passed a Survival check, they would be able to spend 8 hours setting up a basic shelter that was suitable to count as a 'haven' (homebrew-speak for a place where you can take a Long Rest). This option introduces the idea that only your ranger can accomplish such a feat. Even worse though, what happens if a bandit attacks your camp and wrecks it? What if a tree falls on your shelter? You become incapable of rebuilding a shelter for a whole dang week! What a class fantasy that is--I guess your gritty survivalist Ranger gets depressed or lazy and doesn't have the grit to push through and build a new shelter after the first one collapses. And because it implies only a ranger with Build Shelter can make a camp of high enough quality to be a Haven, your other party members can't do poo poo. 3E was full of options like that, where there's a Feat that presents itself as a solution to a problem that didn't previously exist. quote:Read the Room This, to me, seems like a wholly unnecessary feature. It takes something as simple as "I would like to roll an Insight check to suss out the vibe of this saloon" and makes it into a 10 minute, 30 feet, Action-taking thing that can actually limit the scope of your success. In my mind, a DM reading this might think "okay, you rolled a 30, but the most you get are surface thoughts" whereas a critical success on just a regular Insight check might get you things better than just what's on the surface. They also have a system called "Destinies" which are like Ideals and Bonds, but have mechanical impact on your character. So there's Chaos, Coming of Age, Devotion, Dominion, Excellence, Knowledge, Metamorphosis, Revenge, Underdog, and Wealth. These might seem, on the surface, to cover a lot of the big archetypes. But the problem IMO is that they're very limiting. quote:Coming of Age My character concept, for instance, is a wanderer who came into her own during her solo travels, and could live a quiet life as a ranger, working jobs for people. When she gets a vision of an impending natural disaster, she casts aside her bad feelings for the tribe she grew up with and returns to them to avert the disaster, finally faced with a situation where she has to bring out everything that she's capable of. The closest fit I could find is "Coming of Age," which is basically being the Frodo or Luke Skywalker of the party--you're green and full of untapped potential. It's not a good fit, but from a mechanical perspective, you must choose one. It's like, by attempting to marry gameplay and narrative, they accidentally stifled creativity. Like, maybe it's fine that my character's motivation is nuanced enough to not fit neatly into one of 10 alphabetized categories. It doesn't need a gameplay element at all! The gameplay element is that I'm playing her as a character and her story is informing my decisions.
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Jan 17, 2023 05:24
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Yeah drat, those are all very odd, to have as specific feats/abilities. Especially the 'Read the Room' one! Vibe-checks are very close to my heart (same for the rest of my group), so that seems particularly bizarre to me. Ten minutes, too! I mean drat, how slow are the developers at this kind of thing, for them to require ten minutes! (Maybe they're the ones who need to pick up this feat, but IRL  I can't imagine anyone liking this nonsense)
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Jan 17, 2023 05:53
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Everything out of combat in A5e takes some multiple of 10 minutes, kinda throwing back to 10 minute dungeon turns from older editions. That's true in regular 5e also for a lot of stuff they just don't try to apply it to social encounters cause its weird as hell. Mechanically its "spend a turn to figure out what's going on in this room". Not sure why that needs to be systemized instead of the DM going "gently caress it roll insight" but that's their thinking, and kind of the thinking of A5e in general. Dungeon turns own though tbh, best thing you can steal from BX/BECMI. homeless snail fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Jan 17, 2023 |
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Jan 17, 2023 06:04
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Ah ha! Finally remembered the scene I was struggling to think of earlier, with the "read the room" power. Homer playing poker with the guys taking forever to figure things out, like realising Carl called him slow. ...Now I kinda want to play a lovable incompetent guy who is also very annoying with a short attention span (like how Homer has a new side-hustle/pastime in every episode) who somehow bumbles his way through major events in his life, on a daily basis  (Preferably with a Frank Grimes-typed character in his life. "You went to the Underdark? You??" "Suuuure, you've never been?")
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Jan 17, 2023 06:13
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Raenir Salazar posted:And you know, I don't really see your typical player who is up for Randomizer-esque shenanigans in D&D is going to be that bothered after a mere couple of weeks. They'd probably be down and committed to at least a short one shot as a change of pace. Maybe my sense of "campaign time" is off from the kinds of campaigns I am in or running, but I don't see most people being bothered with a 5-10 week campaign not having fireball.  D&D randomizer you say...Here try this as your challenge, this book of AI generated nonsense spells and feats. It has random tables so you can roll dice to pick random ones! Rutibex posted:I've been working on this on/off for most of the holidays and now Wizards of the Coast is apparently pulling the D&D license from 3rd party creators. So gently caress it, I'm just gonna release it for free creative commons. Now if WotC ever publishes any spells like mine they are violating creative commons. Its still a little rough, but I'm tired of working on it and its usable enough for a free book
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Jan 17, 2023 08:32
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Soylent Pudding posted:What's this mister signs bit? That sounds interesting. Basically each monster gets a small numbered list of things that might be clues that might happen when they are around that can add atmosphere and clue players to their presence. So for example the wraith gets:
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Jan 17, 2023 12:17
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Raenir Salazar posted:The OGL controversy just gave me an idea for a possible "D&D Challenge Run" sort of campaign, and I wonder how it'd work out in practice. I mean, sure, if you think this is a fun thing to do. Given that the OGL thing exposed that WotC was essentially providing a conditional open license where those publishing under it were actually MORE restricted than they would otherwise have been, in exchange for the presumption that WotC/Hasbro wouldn't sue them, I'm unsure whether avoiding rules and systems which cannot be copyrighted and which WotC doesn't "own" doesn't play into the mindset that their OGL revision just busted. Maybe the question is which third-party content, especially adventure content, seems most compatible with other third-party content? Personally, I'd be more curious which 3rd party adventures for the 5E system are really good. The design flaws in the WotC-releases have become painfully evident by this point, including really dubious editing choices (spending lots of pages in Descent Into Avernus on Baldur's Gate setting stuff, for example), but are there exemplary 3rd party books out there?
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Jan 17, 2023 19:54
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Bold of someone to launch a 5E kickstarter but Jess does really solid work and this looks cool as hell. An England/Vikings/Northman type setting. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1651697370/the-fury-of-the-northmen
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Jan 17, 2023 20:34
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The Tyranny of Dragons Rerelease came. It has cool cover art. Though the cover and ton of concept art is the primary difference from the old version. I will check if there are any others. Edit: Dragon Concepts are fun 
Yusin fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Jan 18, 2023 |
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Jan 18, 2023 05:50
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Quick question - I'm playing an Artificer but hate the Alchemist spec so my DM let me reroll as an Armorer instead. I picked up the Shield Master feat which lets me add my shield's AC to Dex Saves. Do I get the armor bonus from the Enhanced Defense infusion I added to my shield? Or do I only get the "base item" AC?
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Jan 18, 2023 17:22
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Seems fair to argue a +1 shield adds 3 to your Dex saves.
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Jan 18, 2023 17:51
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If your shield is how you're avoiding damage from a dex save, it stands to reason a better shield does a better job of it
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Jan 18, 2023 18:46
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Yusin posted:The Tyranny of Dragons Rerelease came. It has cool cover art. There does not appear to be any notable differences in the adventure, other than the start being easier. In other news I was refunded the shipping costs of my Dragonlance Bundle, as they decided to make Canada free shipping retroactively. So it appears Wizards are in the good will mood to try and win people back.
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Jan 18, 2023 18:59
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Yusin posted:In other news I was refunded the shipping costs of my Dragonlance Bundle, as they decided to make Canada free shipping retroactively. So it appears Wizards are in the good will mood to try and win people back. I had a super old support ticket on DDB. I got an update to it last week.
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Jan 18, 2023 19:35
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I read somewhere that they had somewhere north of 10k support tickets from people cancelling or complaining or whatever about the change. Seems like they used the furor as a way to clear out the entire backlog.
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Jan 18, 2023 21:59
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I did not make a ticket however. Free shipping to Canada was not on it when I ordered, they just contacted me and said they were refunding me the shipping cause they decided to make Canada a free shipping area.
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Jan 19, 2023 00:11
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Anyone seen this? https://www.thegamer.com/d-d-beyond-hasbr-wotc-price-hike-leak/ I hope to God this rumor isn't true. Especially restricting free accounts from using Homebrew. That would devastate my current campaign. I can only hope that all the canceled subscriptions get them to curb these horrible ideas.
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Jan 19, 2023 00:36
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James Woods posted:Anyone seen this? The community is very divided if that is a reputable leak or not. Treat that one as click bait for now I would say.
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Jan 19, 2023 00:39
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James Woods posted:Anyone seen this? This rumour has been debunked Dexo posted:lmao gently caress me
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Jan 19, 2023 03:37
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I do have to admit the idea of an "AI dm" has some interest, in the same vein of playing a more single player experience like the Baldur's Gate games are, but more wonky. A mix of the sort of experience you get from Dwarf Fortress/Crusader Kings III mixed with D&D sounds like something would be fun once in a while; not something to replace having a player DM, but I'm not like inherently against the AI. Some people have really hard time joining groups or want something different without commitment.
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Jan 19, 2023 03:58
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I played, a lot of solo Ironsworn: Starforged last year and that might as well be an AI DM. You have to use your own creativity to fill in the blanks but the oracles get you most of the way there to the point that a lot of the time it just seems kind of obvious what happens next. There's some decent 5e compatible solo systems too but it takes a bit more effort to make D&D work. Don't think it would be too much of a stretch that someone's gonna release a questionable AI DM that operates along the same lines in the near future, though. I mean there's already questionable AI apps where you can make Anne Frank talk to Heinrich Himmler, so the AI DM just seems inevitable.
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Jan 19, 2023 05:11
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Raenir Salazar posted:I do have to admit the idea of an "AI dm" has some interest, in the same vein of playing a more single player experience like the Baldur's Gate games are, but more wonky. A mix of the sort of experience you get from Dwarf Fortress/Crusader Kings III mixed with D&D sounds like something would be fun once in a while; not something to replace having a player DM, but I'm not like inherently against the AI. Some people have really hard time joining groups or want something different without commitment. Let's start with building something that can give me balanced random encounters and go from there, because CR is extremely lmao. Or, if we're talking stretch goals "give me a dungeon/tower/ruin for my players to explore with X events" and have it generate a bunch of maps and encounters and puzzles and traps. When an AI can do that reliably, I'll buy into the possibility of an AI DM.
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Jan 19, 2023 13:34
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AI DMs come out, player characters start mysteriously crashing into child NPCs
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Jan 19, 2023 15:12
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Verisimilidude posted:AI DMs come out, player characters start mysteriously crashing into child NPCs My group is safe then, we,ve completely ignored a kidnapped child long enough that he's probably a dessicated corpse by now.
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Jan 19, 2023 15:39
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My spelljammer table has an Artificer who wants to do cool poo poo in downtime. Anyone know of a good 3rd party product or something that has some rules for this? I'd like to have her be able to work on improving the party's weapons or items once every couple of levels or some other thing that makes the party really love her, but I don't really have time to homebrew it myself. Also, anyone have a 3rd party magic item buy/sell/trade system that they actually like?
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Jan 19, 2023 16:17
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Its not 3rd party but DMG outlines crafting magic items but its easy to find gotcha loopholes. My DM asked me to find something simpler so this page was always my starting point regarding cost and time for making requests. General rule of thumb was to have at least two items as your base. For example, I used Right Tool to make cobblers tools to convert boots + spider silk into Boots of Spiderclimb. Still had to meet the material cost and time to craft (minus Artificer discounts) but there was no rolling or anything. Spell scrolls also get the cost and time benefits for Artificers, and it's fair to say they could infuse an inkwell to be able to scribe properly. I would occasionally craft up a scroll of Cure Wounds if we had a long travel.
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Jan 19, 2023 18:29
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Yusin posted:This rumour has been debunked no I think I'll believe the twitter account with 3500 followers whose ragebait tweets generate 200x more engagement than they've ever seen before, tyvm
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Jan 19, 2023 19:42
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https://twitter.com/DnDBeyond/status/1615879308832022528 Yeah this one seemed obvious. DMs buy the most books. They aren't going to try to eliminate their best customers. They might make more tools to automate some things for DMs and players, the way DnDBeyond or Roll20 "automate" your damage rolls to include all your poo poo so you don't have to manually do the math every hit. But that's no more an AI DM than Tesla has an AI autopilot.
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Jan 19, 2023 20:09
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