Its the customer's own personal information maintained by the customer.
Well, no, it's the customer's personal information maintained by Best Buy, because when they accepted a contract to repair her computer, they were maintaining it for the duration of the contract. If the laptop had simply been stolen in the parking lot, she wouldn't have a case. But it was stolen while in their possession, after they had accepted a contract that made them the "maintainers" of that machine.
But how many upper level college science classes have you actually participated in?
10-20, I should guess, mostly biology and biochemistry. I've worked for a couple of years in labs, too.
I've taken a few especially in astronomy and it's mostly made up malarkey.
Yeah, I suppose that's why it's commonly understood that your computer runs on phlogiston - science just confirms the same old theories regardless of the evidence, like you said.
I suspect if you had paid better attention in your science classes, instead of writing the whole thing off as "malarkey", you'd be better informed. As it is you're an astounding example of the kind of ignorance so closely associated with your ideology.
We have white dwarf stars, but the universe isn't old enough for them to exist.
This is nonsense, since it's by the age of white dwarf stars that we measure the age of the universe (and it's by the amount that they've cooled that we measure the age of white dwarfs.)
It doesn't take all that long for a star to reach white dwarf, so there's no inconsistency with the existence of white dwarf stars and a 14 billion year old universe. There are no black dwarf stars, and that is a function of the youth of our universe; that's probably where you got confused.
There are multiple examples of a such occurrences to disprove almost all science.
Funny, then, that you could only give one false example. I suspect all your other examples would be the same - things you've misunderstood or been misinformed about, not actual problems with the science. My guess is that you're simply not well-informed enough to actually understand what it is that science doesn't know, currently.
And yes there is a mathematical formula to prove the existence of God.
Example of fuzziness on the term "evolution:" does that mean pure atheistic evolution, including a theory like the Big Bang? Does it mean Darwin's theory of evolution, the current theory of evolution, or the theory of evolution back in the 1950's? Is it referring to biogenesis?
But surely that's the same "fuzziness" to be found in any scientific concept that has grown and changed in response to data. For instance, I notice you don't complain about any ambiguity in the term "gravity", despite gravity being something we could describe with Galileo's model, or Newton's, or Einstein's. Obviously, when scientists talk about "gravity" today, they're talking about gravity as explained by the current models. So too, then, with evolution.
The simple truth is that evolution isn't particularly ambiguous, it's the scientific model that explains the history and diversity of life on Earth by random mutation and natural selection.
So, then, I've been written off before I've begun. Interestingly, this is my experience. Yes, I'm religious
So why complain about getting pigeonholed as "religious" if that's an apt characterization?
It's obvious that genetic mutations do get carried on to the next generations; however, exactly how far these genetic mutations can go is what is debated.
Not really. It's understood that mutations can only take you as far as it's possible to go with DNA. On the other hand, the only difference between any two living things on Earth is the content of their DNA, so natural selection operating on mutation is known to be more than sufficient to account for the diversity of life on Earth. (This has been proven by bioinformaticians.)
This post will be a test: will this post be modded based on my religion or on the post's logical and argumentative quality/content!
Isn't it both? Since it's obvious that the cause of your extremely poor argumentation and logic is your religion.
So, as you can see, they only have to work one year out of seven at their expected $107,000 (with odds of 99.63% for), to be able to afford to pay their rent
Right, but it has to be the first year, which means we're back to the 45% chance of not being able to pay the rent.
You've got the stats down pat, to be sure, but apparently you don't know how rent works, or else you'd know that it's not very likely that your landlord is going to be especially understanding when you explain that you're not going to have the rent this month, but three years from now you'll have a pretty good chance of being able to pay him everything you owe.
The simple truth is that one given writer doesn't make 55% of $107,000 every year; in your model he either gets $107,000 in a year or he gets nothing. Even one year of no income is ruinous, particularly if its the first year. The rent has to be paid either way.
I think your problem is that you've confused the average writer with an individual writer.
The trouble is that this means that your test to see if God exists would reject the existence of God, even if God walked up to you and slapped you in the face with a wet fish.
By definition, no. If it's really God then there simply won't be any possibility that I'll mistake him for someone else. There won't be a test; I'll simply be convinced. It is God we're talking about, after all. It's hard to imagine that God would have the desire for me to believe in him and not automatically succeed in that desire.
But the simple truth is that there's no such thing as God. The alternative explanations for personal revelations, personal belief, and personal faith are all light-years more reasonable than there actually being a God. There's simply no such thing.
then one has an emotive stance, not a rational one.
Wrong again. The emotive stance is the one that unreasonably privileges personal experience over the experience of others. As a reasonable person, if it's not reasonable to be convinced by other people's reports of revelation - and it's not - then it's equally unreasonable to be convinced by my own reports of revelation. The emotive stance is "I'm a special person; I'm better than other people." And that's precisely the stance you take when you privilege your own personal experience over all other experience.
The rational stance is atheism, as it's always been.
So, with a 55% chance of earning $107,000, your expected annual income is $58,850. This is an excellent income if you are young and single.
Except that it's also a 45% chance of having no income at all (at least not from writing), and that's not so great. It's pretty hard to pay the rent with a 55% chance of having money.
Oh right, so Microsoft and their employees don't pay gasoline tax, property tax, sales tax etc?
Their employees do. Sounds like Microsoft doesn't.
Hang on they do, so this corporation tax is just the state double-dipping to fund pork barrel projects.
Hardly. It's not any more "double-dipping" than it is when both you and your wife have to pay taxes. Microsoft is a separate entity from its individual employees, by definition - it's a corporation - therefore it has its own tax burden to shoulder. Sounds like it's trying to skip out on paying its fair share, or worse yet, push the burden onto its employees.
You have to remember that one in 20 studies will print complete bullshit as scientific evidence (P 0.05), which is amplified by confirmation bias and the dusty drawer effect.
And our knowledge about confirmation bias suggests that when most studies confirm ineffectiveness, but a few show some minor effectiveness, it's most reasonable to conclude ineffectiveness because the other studies are clearly the result of chance.
I'm enough of a scientist to say that it could all be in their heads, but you also have the general historic accuracy of the Bible (after you get past Genesis)
Except that you don't have any general historical accuracy of the Bible. The Bible is only accurate about those events that everybody at the time already knew about, anyway. It's never been a particularly reliable guide to archeology, for instance.
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is set in Verona, Italy. And there really is a Verona, Italy - I know, I've been there. Nonetheless, it's not reasonable to conclude that it's a true story.
The Bible is no more historically accurate than any other historic text. And it's quite wrong about a great number of things. You've simply been lied to by pro-Bible ideologues.
Here's a question: if you have a religious experience, and you believe that God has spoken to you, would that make you believe in God, or would you write it off as schizophrenia?
It's not a matter of what I would believe - the question is, what should a reasonable person believe when I make claims of having spoken to God? When my claims of God's word seem to both confirm my own pre-existing prejudices - what a coincidence, that, when everybody who "speaks to God" finds out that God wants them to basically keep hating the same people they were already hating - and contradict the "words of God" as delivered to others; yes, it's reasonable to conclude that I was most likely talking to myself. One in four Americans have some diagnosable mental illness, and of them, one in four again have a serious mental illness, on the level of schizophrenia or worse. So it's not unreasonable, when I start hearing voices, to conclude that there's an organic mental illness at work.
The idea that an unneeded, disproven creator God should not only exist in spite of all the evidence, but should find me someone worth conversing with, is light-years more unreasonable. And it's a testament to how deep into the delusion you must be that you don't see this.
Not really. I can imagine the kinds of games you're talking about, because I've had those experiences. Can you imagine the good role-playing that's happened in my games? I doubt it.
Let me give you an example. You seem to think that good role-playing is excluded by the mechanics of the game, and that it can't happen in combat or something. But you're wrong. Just the other week the party was fighting a huge bear that would get up on people and pin them down, and they had to distract or otherwise get the bear to get off party members lest they be crushed and clawed to death.
The party warblade decided she'd had enough. When the bear charged her and started a grapple, she decided she'd grapple back. And somehow she won! She wound up pinning that damn bear right to the ground.
None of us could believe it, but it was totally in-character for her woods-wise wild-elf from the Chondalwood to do some judo shit on a goddamned bear. It was a perfect instance of roll-playing - not froo-froo time-wasting nonsense about what kind of grip is on somebody's pistol or something, but the way that the mechanism of the game allowed someone to overcome the odds and look like a hero. Like a badass, like someone larger than life. Not someone smaller than it, like the egotistical nonsense you describe in your post.
We've got no less imagination around my table than they do around yours, and the proof of that is that every single person who saw her grapple that bear remembers it as an elf grappling a bear, not as rolling some dice and moving some minis.
Just because combat is happening doesn't mean roleplaying isn't, as well. See if you can use your imagination and figure out how that works.
That's the druid's advantage. He's incredibly flexible out of the box, reasonably good at practically everything, and still has room to specialize.
They're versatile, sure, but they're not better at any one particular thing than the classes that specialize at those things, which puts them at the right power level, if you ask me. I've got no problem with a versatile class and I don't think they break the game.
But, you've helped me see some of their potential. Maybe I'll give them another shot the next time I'm a player. (Or maybe a druid NPC is going to menace the party next week.) Good points, all.
One of the longstanding problems of D&D compared to other systems is that it has always had a kind of weak and foolish system for determining the results and relevance of non-combat actions.
Finding a safe and realistic place to rest is integral to the role playing experience.
I disagree; it's certainly the historic D&D experience but it's hardly the stuff heroic fantasy is made of. Sure, heroes in the dungeon find a spot to catch their breath, find some clues, and prepare some weapons, but actually go to sleep? Neither I nor any of my players have ever found a way where that makes sense, and it's only ever been by the grace of the DM that the dungeon denizens didn't simply break in and knife us all during the night.
I know it comes down to believability. And sleeping in dungeons just isn't believable for me or anybody else I've ever played with. Four encounters plus exploration is maybe two hours of in-game time. You're telling me that my heroes of high fantasy are only dangerous threats to be reckoned with between the hours of 8:00 and 10:00 am?
Any new player trying to pull the "I'm out of spells, we need to go home" act is met with scorn for not being able to handle the responsibilities of their class (okay not outwardly, but they're not invited back if it becomes a regular event).
The game is calibrated so that one encounter is supposed to consume 1/4 of the party's resources, and that includes spells. 4 encounters a day. If the spellcaster is making it to the forth encounter before running dry, then it's not bad resource management; he's managed his resources in precisely the way the game expected him to. The game demands that the party pack it in for the night. It's just bad game design, and the developers know it, which is why they're cutting back so much on the "spells per day" mechanic.
D&D does not have the same concept of "tanks" as a game like WoW does.
Well, no, of course it doesn't, and I never said that it did. And it shouldn't. But the idea of a character who forces or holds the attention of a dangerous combatant to set allies up for sneak attacks, and who is specialized in defense, that's been there from the beginning in D&D and it's certainly a part of the game. It's a part of how people think of parties. It's not a new thing, and it's not ripping off WoW, either.
I called it a "tank" for shorthand, and because someone else used that term. I'm aware that D&D is not, is not about to become, and shouldn't be a game of "aggro management".
Use them primarily in important places or in tactically important areas (but not every time) and allow the players to pick up on this pattern so they only spend the time in areas like that.
Straight from the DMG, and believe me, I tried that - the result was that the players didn't recognize the pattern and spent 10 minutes per room "searching for traps" anyway.
It didn't add anything to the game except hassle. There's no game in searching for traps, it's just a skill roll vs. a DC. There's nothing tactical about it. Same with locked doors. D&D gives me locked doors like Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. I want traps and locks like BioShock.
Too bad he failed a Reflex save and is suddenly out of combat.
Failed a Reflex save? With his levels of rogue and his huge Dex bonus? Whatever he just failed, the druid surely did, too.
I'm not even reaching there, those are core SRD monsters that are not particularly hard to come up with.
Dire Tiger has AC 16. Shambling Mound is AC 20, and I guess those are ok attacks, but 2d6+7 isn't game-breaking damage.
Or you're fighting any of the boatloads of monsters that can't do dick against a flying opponent, particularly at the low levels.
Can't do dick, what? What exactly can you do to them, flapping around as a hawk or whatever? Cast a spell? Druids have more spell damage than clerics, but they're no wizards. And you'd be restricted to either Still Spell spells or spells with no somatic components, since you're using your arms to fly. Scratch with the talons, I guess, but then you'd be in melee range of whoever you were trying to stay away from.
I don't see it as a huge advantage. It's not much different than standing in the back row shooting spells over the fighter's head or whatever. There's plenty of ways to stay out of a bad guy's melee range already.
At high levels, the fighter is the world's saddest muppet because he's not on the full-caster train, and the druid is out front will full-casting, free awesome shapeshifting, and an animal companion that can probably beat up the fighter.
Yeah, but that really says more about the power curve of fighters than it does about druids. I'm just not seeing their awesome power, I guess.
Skepticism is hard to prove to be the more logical case.
Hardly. Occam's Razor leaps to mind, but beyond that, reasonable people know that merely proposing the existence of an entity is not a reason to go around believing in it.
The studies are indeed conflicted, with some finding no evidence it works, others finding there is evidence it works....from which its reasonable to conclude that it doesn't work. Thus, it's unreasonable to act like it does work. It's not an open question at all; it's a settled issue. It doesn't work.
I think the mistake you're making is conflating some evidence for a belief with sufficient evidence for a belief.
Am I doing that? Or are you doing that, when you say that any single study, regardless of how its contradicted by the rest, that indicates that echinacea works for colds makes it reasonable to act like it works for colds?
You're the one conflating some evidence with sufficient evidence. It's the standard tactic of religion, and of Holocaust denial, and of every other obviously wrong belief.
Look, when people see "Cure Light Wounds" on your spell list, they're going to think "oh, you're the healer" and go off and roll fighter, wizard, and rogue or whatever. Sorry. That's just how it works. Nobody else is going to step up with the heals, because they're all assuming you're going to do it.
So, you're going to be the healer.
Sure, if you're determined to poke someone with a spear, you're not going to do that very well, but "the most damaging weapon you can wield" is teeth the size of railroad spikes.
Maybe your DM is doing it wrong, but Wild Shape limits you to animals, plants, and elementals. The creatures you're talking about are, at best, magical beasts. Strength 30? What animal of Large or smaller size are you talking about? You don't get Huge Wild Shape until level 15 and by then the fighter has Str of 30 just from magic items.
Need to charge? Need to pounce? Need to grapple? Need to fly WAY before everyone else in the game can? You can do that.
Flight isn't that great except for loser DM's who think that a huge chasm with no bridge constitutes the height of dungeoneering, and the rest of those are hardly game-breaking abilities.
The tripmaster fighter is, like practically every fighter, a one-trick pony.
Yeah, you're right! I mean, he only shines against creatures that have legs, after all; for everybody else he's two-handed Power Attacking several times per round and making a bazillion attacks of opportunity. Compared to 1d6+3 bite damage, or whatever? I'm still not impressed. But maybe I just don't get it. Does anybody really own with druids playing the game? Because otherwise it's pretty much only theoretical ownage.
Clever players know how to conduct resource management, and unless you're running the world's largest dungeon, shouldn't have any issues dealing with the standard 3 fights a day guideline.
Well, but that's what I mean. 3 fights a day? Unless you're running the world's shortest dungeons, there's way more than 3 good fights before you're done.
And what does your wizard do every fight if he's saving his spells? Trying to hit a 22+ AC monster with his crossbow? With 1/2 BAB progression?
And I'll be honest with you - my players aren't all that clever. They were nearly TPK'd in the first round by a juvenile blue dragon, even though they were in the desert and were smelling ozone and finding electrically-burned bodies all over the place. Nobody thought "oh, ozone; maybe there's some kind of electrical monster around here, and I should prepare some kind of resistance to that damage."
But the game has to be fun even if they're dumb. A little bit of resource management is fun, yes, but the way the game is now, you're always doing it, and if you don't do it perfectly you're dead even with perfect CR balance for the party level.
Do you ever wear two pairs of shoes at the same time? Can you explain why you don't? Sure, you could explain that there's no way you could fit two pairs of running shoes on the same pair of feet, or you could abstract the whole thing and simply explain that your "feet" are a slot for one pair of shoes, and that same explanation helps explain why you can't really wear two suits of full plate at the same time, either.
"Slots" showed up in MMO games because it's a good concept. It's an easy way to explain why you can't have the protection of three suits of armor and six shields all at once, even though you can write all that down on your character sheet.
Ah well. I've played homebrew rules before. I can do it again.
Well, what are you going to homebrew, exactly? Characters with six suits of armor on at the same time? Or are you just doing to use a different word for "slot"? I'm not understanding what you're objecting to, here.
You seem to be operating under the delusion that everyone enjoys the same things as you and acts in the same manner as you.
Look, I have a hard time believing that when the wizard and cleric tell the party "we're out of spells and healing, we need to go back to town to rest" that's fun for people. I have a hard time believing that because I've been in games where that happened over and over again, and it wasn't any fun for anybody.
Is there someone that's fun for? Is that fun for you? I'd love to hear about your games, seriously.
I would be hard pressed to agree with a single thing you said
So tell me how it is for you, in your games. What does your party do when the wizard is out of spells and the cleric can't cast anything but Cure Minor Wounds? Mine either goes home or spikes a door and tries to get some sleep, but I figure that four encounters plus exploration in a dungeon takes about 2 hours in in-game time, which means that the party is trying to go back to sleep at 10:00 am in the morning or something. And what are the orcs in the dungeon doing that whole time? What would you do if someone broke into your house, locked themselves in the bathroom and went to sleep?
you also made some serious factual errors leading me to believe you play the game in a fashion that would be entirely unrecognizable to a player from my area.
Maybe that's true. How do you play?
But hey, thanks for telling me what parts of the game are fun. I appreciated that.
Tell me how it's fun for you. Are you talking about role-playing? Sure, that part's fun too, but it doesn't have anything to do with mechanics - it depends on DM and players making the fun for themselves - so it wasn't relevant to my post.
But tell me how the game is fun for you, if it's so different. I'm really genuinely curious, and maybe you've hit on something I can add in my games. If you have some way to make traps fun, especially, I'd love to hear about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Under the law they don't have to maintain the data to be liable; they simply have to maintain the machine.
And they were maintaining it. That's implicit in the contract to repair it.
While the system was in their custody, to be repaired by them, it was a system maintained by Best Buy.
Its the customer's own personal information maintained by the customer.
Well, no, it's the customer's personal information maintained by Best Buy, because when they accepted a contract to repair her computer, they were maintaining it for the duration of the contract. If the laptop had simply been stolen in the parking lot, she wouldn't have a case. But it was stolen while in their possession, after they had accepted a contract that made them the "maintainers" of that machine.
But how many upper level college science classes have you actually participated in?
10-20, I should guess, mostly biology and biochemistry. I've worked for a couple of years in labs, too.
I've taken a few especially in astronomy and it's mostly made up malarkey.
Yeah, I suppose that's why it's commonly understood that your computer runs on phlogiston - science just confirms the same old theories regardless of the evidence, like you said.
I suspect if you had paid better attention in your science classes, instead of writing the whole thing off as "malarkey", you'd be better informed. As it is you're an astounding example of the kind of ignorance so closely associated with your ideology.
We have white dwarf stars, but the universe isn't old enough for them to exist.
This is nonsense, since it's by the age of white dwarf stars that we measure the age of the universe (and it's by the amount that they've cooled that we measure the age of white dwarfs.)
It doesn't take all that long for a star to reach white dwarf, so there's no inconsistency with the existence of white dwarf stars and a 14 billion year old universe. There are no black dwarf stars, and that is a function of the youth of our universe; that's probably where you got confused.
There are multiple examples of a such occurrences to disprove almost all science.
Funny, then, that you could only give one false example. I suspect all your other examples would be the same - things you've misunderstood or been misinformed about, not actual problems with the science. My guess is that you're simply not well-informed enough to actually understand what it is that science doesn't know, currently.
And yes there is a mathematical formula to prove the existence of God.
No, there's not.
And yes I'm a conservative, right-wing, radical christian.
I guess that explains why you don't know anything about science.
Example of fuzziness on the term "evolution:" does that mean pure atheistic evolution, including a theory like the Big Bang? Does it mean Darwin's theory of evolution, the current theory of evolution, or the theory of evolution back in the 1950's? Is it referring to biogenesis?
But surely that's the same "fuzziness" to be found in any scientific concept that has grown and changed in response to data. For instance, I notice you don't complain about any ambiguity in the term "gravity", despite gravity being something we could describe with Galileo's model, or Newton's, or Einstein's. Obviously, when scientists talk about "gravity" today, they're talking about gravity as explained by the current models. So too, then, with evolution.
The simple truth is that evolution isn't particularly ambiguous, it's the scientific model that explains the history and diversity of life on Earth by random mutation and natural selection.
So, then, I've been written off before I've begun. Interestingly, this is my experience. Yes, I'm religious
So why complain about getting pigeonholed as "religious" if that's an apt characterization?
It's obvious that genetic mutations do get carried on to the next generations; however, exactly how far these genetic mutations can go is what is debated.
Not really. It's understood that mutations can only take you as far as it's possible to go with DNA. On the other hand, the only difference between any two living things on Earth is the content of their DNA, so natural selection operating on mutation is known to be more than sufficient to account for the diversity of life on Earth. (This has been proven by bioinformaticians.)
This post will be a test: will this post be modded based on my religion or on the post's logical and argumentative quality/content!
Isn't it both? Since it's obvious that the cause of your extremely poor argumentation and logic is your religion.
Ah, but like out of work actors, writers wait tables when they don't have steady work.
I've always wondered if out-of-work waiters go into writing.
So, as you can see, they only have to work one year out of seven at their expected $107,000 (with odds of 99.63% for), to be able to afford to pay their rent
Right, but it has to be the first year, which means we're back to the 45% chance of not being able to pay the rent.
You've got the stats down pat, to be sure, but apparently you don't know how rent works, or else you'd know that it's not very likely that your landlord is going to be especially understanding when you explain that you're not going to have the rent this month, but three years from now you'll have a pretty good chance of being able to pay him everything you owe.
The simple truth is that one given writer doesn't make 55% of $107,000 every year; in your model he either gets $107,000 in a year or he gets nothing. Even one year of no income is ruinous, particularly if its the first year. The rent has to be paid either way.
I think your problem is that you've confused the average writer with an individual writer.
The trouble is that this means that your test to see if God exists would reject the existence of God, even if God walked up to you and slapped you in the face with a wet fish.
By definition, no. If it's really God then there simply won't be any possibility that I'll mistake him for someone else. There won't be a test; I'll simply be convinced. It is God we're talking about, after all. It's hard to imagine that God would have the desire for me to believe in him and not automatically succeed in that desire.
But the simple truth is that there's no such thing as God. The alternative explanations for personal revelations, personal belief, and personal faith are all light-years more reasonable than there actually being a God. There's simply no such thing.
then one has an emotive stance, not a rational one.
Wrong again. The emotive stance is the one that unreasonably privileges personal experience over the experience of others. As a reasonable person, if it's not reasonable to be convinced by other people's reports of revelation - and it's not - then it's equally unreasonable to be convinced by my own reports of revelation. The emotive stance is "I'm a special person; I'm better than other people." And that's precisely the stance you take when you privilege your own personal experience over all other experience.
The rational stance is atheism, as it's always been.
So, with a 55% chance of earning $107,000, your expected annual income is $58,850. This is an excellent income if you are young and single.
Except that it's also a 45% chance of having no income at all (at least not from writing), and that's not so great. It's pretty hard to pay the rent with a 55% chance of having money.
Oh right, so Microsoft and their employees don't pay gasoline tax, property tax, sales tax etc?
Their employees do. Sounds like Microsoft doesn't.
Hang on they do, so this corporation tax is just the state double-dipping to fund pork barrel projects.
Hardly. It's not any more "double-dipping" than it is when both you and your wife have to pay taxes. Microsoft is a separate entity from its individual employees, by definition - it's a corporation - therefore it has its own tax burden to shoulder. Sounds like it's trying to skip out on paying its fair share, or worse yet, push the burden onto its employees.
You have to remember that one in 20 studies will print complete bullshit as scientific evidence (P 0.05), which is amplified by confirmation bias and the dusty drawer effect.
And our knowledge about confirmation bias suggests that when most studies confirm ineffectiveness, but a few show some minor effectiveness, it's most reasonable to conclude ineffectiveness because the other studies are clearly the result of chance.
I'm enough of a scientist to say that it could all be in their heads, but you also have the general historic accuracy of the Bible (after you get past Genesis)
Except that you don't have any general historical accuracy of the Bible. The Bible is only accurate about those events that everybody at the time already knew about, anyway. It's never been a particularly reliable guide to archeology, for instance.
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is set in Verona, Italy. And there really is a Verona, Italy - I know, I've been there. Nonetheless, it's not reasonable to conclude that it's a true story.
The Bible is no more historically accurate than any other historic text. And it's quite wrong about a great number of things. You've simply been lied to by pro-Bible ideologues.
Here's a question: if you have a religious experience, and you believe that God has spoken to you, would that make you believe in God, or would you write it off as schizophrenia?
It's not a matter of what I would believe - the question is, what should a reasonable person believe when I make claims of having spoken to God? When my claims of God's word seem to both confirm my own pre-existing prejudices - what a coincidence, that, when everybody who "speaks to God" finds out that God wants them to basically keep hating the same people they were already hating - and contradict the "words of God" as delivered to others; yes, it's reasonable to conclude that I was most likely talking to myself. One in four Americans have some diagnosable mental illness, and of them, one in four again have a serious mental illness, on the level of schizophrenia or worse. So it's not unreasonable, when I start hearing voices, to conclude that there's an organic mental illness at work.
The idea that an unneeded, disproven creator God should not only exist in spite of all the evidence, but should find me someone worth conversing with, is light-years more unreasonable. And it's a testament to how deep into the delusion you must be that you don't see this.
As Laws or Wicke or any designer worth their salt would say "If your group is having fun then you're playing it the right way"
I think that's the most important thing.
What a complete lack of imagination.
Not really. I can imagine the kinds of games you're talking about, because I've had those experiences. Can you imagine the good role-playing that's happened in my games? I doubt it.
Let me give you an example. You seem to think that good role-playing is excluded by the mechanics of the game, and that it can't happen in combat or something. But you're wrong. Just the other week the party was fighting a huge bear that would get up on people and pin them down, and they had to distract or otherwise get the bear to get off party members lest they be crushed and clawed to death.
The party warblade decided she'd had enough. When the bear charged her and started a grapple, she decided she'd grapple back. And somehow she won! She wound up pinning that damn bear right to the ground.
None of us could believe it, but it was totally in-character for her woods-wise wild-elf from the Chondalwood to do some judo shit on a goddamned bear. It was a perfect instance of roll-playing - not froo-froo time-wasting nonsense about what kind of grip is on somebody's pistol or something, but the way that the mechanism of the game allowed someone to overcome the odds and look like a hero. Like a badass, like someone larger than life. Not someone smaller than it, like the egotistical nonsense you describe in your post.
We've got no less imagination around my table than they do around yours, and the proof of that is that every single person who saw her grapple that bear remembers it as an elf grappling a bear, not as rolling some dice and moving some minis.
Just because combat is happening doesn't mean roleplaying isn't, as well. See if you can use your imagination and figure out how that works.
If you really think so, switch to something other than D&D that's more suited to your needs.
I plan to. In particular I plant to switch to 4th Edition D&D, which by all indications won't have these problems.
That's the druid's advantage. He's incredibly flexible out of the box, reasonably good at practically everything, and still has room to specialize.
They're versatile, sure, but they're not better at any one particular thing than the classes that specialize at those things, which puts them at the right power level, if you ask me. I've got no problem with a versatile class and I don't think they break the game.
But, you've helped me see some of their potential. Maybe I'll give them another shot the next time I'm a player. (Or maybe a druid NPC is going to menace the party next week.) Good points, all.
One of the longstanding problems of D&D compared to other systems is that it has always had a kind of weak and foolish system for determining the results and relevance of non-combat actions.
Then surely you'll be interested in this.
Finding a safe and realistic place to rest is integral to the role playing experience.
I disagree; it's certainly the historic D&D experience but it's hardly the stuff heroic fantasy is made of. Sure, heroes in the dungeon find a spot to catch their breath, find some clues, and prepare some weapons, but actually go to sleep? Neither I nor any of my players have ever found a way where that makes sense, and it's only ever been by the grace of the DM that the dungeon denizens didn't simply break in and knife us all during the night.
I know it comes down to believability. And sleeping in dungeons just isn't believable for me or anybody else I've ever played with. Four encounters plus exploration is maybe two hours of in-game time. You're telling me that my heroes of high fantasy are only dangerous threats to be reckoned with between the hours of 8:00 and 10:00 am?
Any new player trying to pull the "I'm out of spells, we need to go home" act is met with scorn for not being able to handle the responsibilities of their class (okay not outwardly, but they're not invited back if it becomes a regular event).
The game is calibrated so that one encounter is supposed to consume 1/4 of the party's resources, and that includes spells. 4 encounters a day. If the spellcaster is making it to the forth encounter before running dry, then it's not bad resource management; he's managed his resources in precisely the way the game expected him to. The game demands that the party pack it in for the night. It's just bad game design, and the developers know it, which is why they're cutting back so much on the "spells per day" mechanic.
D&D does not have the same concept of "tanks" as a game like WoW does.
Well, no, of course it doesn't, and I never said that it did. And it shouldn't. But the idea of a character who forces or holds the attention of a dangerous combatant to set allies up for sneak attacks, and who is specialized in defense, that's been there from the beginning in D&D and it's certainly a part of the game. It's a part of how people think of parties. It's not a new thing, and it's not ripping off WoW, either.
I called it a "tank" for shorthand, and because someone else used that term. I'm aware that D&D is not, is not about to become, and shouldn't be a game of "aggro management".
Use them primarily in important places or in tactically important areas (but not every time) and allow the players to pick up on this pattern so they only spend the time in areas like that.
Straight from the DMG, and believe me, I tried that - the result was that the players didn't recognize the pattern and spent 10 minutes per room "searching for traps" anyway.
It didn't add anything to the game except hassle. There's no game in searching for traps, it's just a skill roll vs. a DC. There's nothing tactical about it. Same with locked doors. D&D gives me locked doors like Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. I want traps and locks like BioShock.
Too bad he failed a Reflex save and is suddenly out of combat.
Failed a Reflex save? With his levels of rogue and his huge Dex bonus? Whatever he just failed, the druid surely did, too.
I'm not even reaching there, those are core SRD monsters that are not particularly hard to come up with.
Dire Tiger has AC 16. Shambling Mound is AC 20, and I guess those are ok attacks, but 2d6+7 isn't game-breaking damage.
Or you're fighting any of the boatloads of monsters that can't do dick against a flying opponent, particularly at the low levels.
Can't do dick, what? What exactly can you do to them, flapping around as a hawk or whatever? Cast a spell? Druids have more spell damage than clerics, but they're no wizards. And you'd be restricted to either Still Spell spells or spells with no somatic components, since you're using your arms to fly. Scratch with the talons, I guess, but then you'd be in melee range of whoever you were trying to stay away from.
I don't see it as a huge advantage. It's not much different than standing in the back row shooting spells over the fighter's head or whatever. There's plenty of ways to stay out of a bad guy's melee range already.
At high levels, the fighter is the world's saddest muppet because he's not on the full-caster train, and the druid is out front will full-casting, free awesome shapeshifting, and an animal companion that can probably beat up the fighter.
Yeah, but that really says more about the power curve of fighters than it does about druids. I'm just not seeing their awesome power, I guess.
Skepticism is hard to prove to be the more logical case.
...from which its reasonable to conclude that it doesn't work. Thus, it's unreasonable to act like it does work. It's not an open question at all; it's a settled issue. It doesn't work.
Hardly. Occam's Razor leaps to mind, but beyond that, reasonable people know that merely proposing the existence of an entity is not a reason to go around believing in it.
The studies are indeed conflicted, with some finding no evidence it works, others finding there is evidence it works.
I think the mistake you're making is conflating some evidence for a belief with sufficient evidence for a belief.
Am I doing that? Or are you doing that, when you say that any single study, regardless of how its contradicted by the rest, that indicates that echinacea works for colds makes it reasonable to act like it works for colds?
You're the one conflating some evidence with sufficient evidence. It's the standard tactic of religion, and of Holocaust denial, and of every other obviously wrong belief.
Those are great suggestions, thanks!
If the druid is the party healer, he's failing.
Look, when people see "Cure Light Wounds" on your spell list, they're going to think "oh, you're the healer" and go off and roll fighter, wizard, and rogue or whatever. Sorry. That's just how it works. Nobody else is going to step up with the heals, because they're all assuming you're going to do it.
So, you're going to be the healer.
Sure, if you're determined to poke someone with a spear, you're not going to do that very well, but "the most damaging weapon you can wield" is teeth the size of railroad spikes.
Maybe your DM is doing it wrong, but Wild Shape limits you to animals, plants, and elementals. The creatures you're talking about are, at best, magical beasts. Strength 30? What animal of Large or smaller size are you talking about? You don't get Huge Wild Shape until level 15 and by then the fighter has Str of 30 just from magic items.
Need to charge? Need to pounce? Need to grapple? Need to fly WAY before everyone else in the game can? You can do that.
Flight isn't that great except for loser DM's who think that a huge chasm with no bridge constitutes the height of dungeoneering, and the rest of those are hardly game-breaking abilities.
The tripmaster fighter is, like practically every fighter, a one-trick pony.
Yeah, you're right! I mean, he only shines against creatures that have legs, after all; for everybody else he's two-handed Power Attacking several times per round and making a bazillion attacks of opportunity. Compared to 1d6+3 bite damage, or whatever? I'm still not impressed. But maybe I just don't get it. Does anybody really own with druids playing the game? Because otherwise it's pretty much only theoretical ownage.
Clever players know how to conduct resource management, and unless you're running the world's largest dungeon, shouldn't have any issues dealing with the standard 3 fights a day guideline.
Well, but that's what I mean. 3 fights a day? Unless you're running the world's shortest dungeons, there's way more than 3 good fights before you're done.
And what does your wizard do every fight if he's saving his spells? Trying to hit a 22+ AC monster with his crossbow? With 1/2 BAB progression?
And I'll be honest with you - my players aren't all that clever. They were nearly TPK'd in the first round by a juvenile blue dragon, even though they were in the desert and were smelling ozone and finding electrically-burned bodies all over the place. Nobody thought "oh, ozone; maybe there's some kind of electrical monster around here, and I should prepare some kind of resistance to that damage."
But the game has to be fun even if they're dumb. A little bit of resource management is fun, yes, but the way the game is now, you're always doing it, and if you don't do it perfectly you're dead even with perfect CR balance for the party level.
I just can't see roleplaying a "slot".
Do you ever wear two pairs of shoes at the same time? Can you explain why you don't? Sure, you could explain that there's no way you could fit two pairs of running shoes on the same pair of feet, or you could abstract the whole thing and simply explain that your "feet" are a slot for one pair of shoes, and that same explanation helps explain why you can't really wear two suits of full plate at the same time, either.
"Slots" showed up in MMO games because it's a good concept. It's an easy way to explain why you can't have the protection of three suits of armor and six shields all at once, even though you can write all that down on your character sheet.
Ah well. I've played homebrew rules before. I can do it again.
Well, what are you going to homebrew, exactly? Characters with six suits of armor on at the same time? Or are you just doing to use a different word for "slot"? I'm not understanding what you're objecting to, here.
You seem to be operating under the delusion that everyone enjoys the same things as you and acts in the same manner as you.
Look, I have a hard time believing that when the wizard and cleric tell the party "we're out of spells and healing, we need to go back to town to rest" that's fun for people. I have a hard time believing that because I've been in games where that happened over and over again, and it wasn't any fun for anybody.
Is there someone that's fun for? Is that fun for you? I'd love to hear about your games, seriously.
I would be hard pressed to agree with a single thing you said
So tell me how it is for you, in your games. What does your party do when the wizard is out of spells and the cleric can't cast anything but Cure Minor Wounds? Mine either goes home or spikes a door and tries to get some sleep, but I figure that four encounters plus exploration in a dungeon takes about 2 hours in in-game time, which means that the party is trying to go back to sleep at 10:00 am in the morning or something. And what are the orcs in the dungeon doing that whole time? What would you do if someone broke into your house, locked themselves in the bathroom and went to sleep?
you also made some serious factual errors leading me to believe you play the game in a fashion that would be entirely unrecognizable to a player from my area.
Maybe that's true. How do you play?
But hey, thanks for telling me what parts of the game are fun. I appreciated that.
Tell me how it's fun for you. Are you talking about role-playing? Sure, that part's fun too, but it doesn't have anything to do with mechanics - it depends on DM and players making the fun for themselves - so it wasn't relevant to my post.
But tell me how the game is fun for you, if it's so different. I'm really genuinely curious, and maybe you've hit on something I can add in my games. If you have some way to make traps fun, especially, I'd love to hear about it.