They're using new 3rd Edition rules...it makes multiclassing much easier and more common. But yes, biggest beef was the mid-level thief doing in Damodar, although to non-DnD players, Damodar fell to his death, we were convinced that he had not taken enough damage (1-2 for the scratch, 1d4+5d6 for the backstab) such that a fall from that height would kill him. (There is a maximum amount damage that can be taken from falling, IIRC.)
The thief just made a successful bull rush to push him over the railing.
So, hurt? Definitely. Dead? Not so sure on that.
Also, the new rules are such that a round lasts 6 seconds and most spells only take an action to cast. (Since you roll a d20 for initiative, an action is roughly 3/10ths of a second)
What I thought was interesting was the fact that I wouldn't necessarily consider a minimum 5th level mage to be worthless. Well, without access to her spellbook, she would be.
I just wish someone could explain the 'magic dust' to me...it was no mere spell component because if it was, that means the "low level apprentice mage" was throwing around dimension doors like wily nilly.
So it was a multipurpose magical dust of sorts to create wormholes OR incapacitate people.
Another thing I noticed was that there were NO saves! If the spell got off, it did its thing to full effect...
Other tidbits:
BAD use of the gold dragon at the beginning. Unless it was a young dragon (which it wasn't) it would have been capable of oh, speaking...spells, a high intelligence and even perhaps a breath weapon not afraid to use? Why it did the stupid "charge like a Rankor" I just can't figure that one out...I guess it felt the need to 'further the story'
Rule #1 of virtually any mage (much less high level ones under the threat of an empress with a wand of gold dragon control): Gold dragons and red dragons are immune to fire! That also means...yep, fireball. So Profion was the only one with a clue and threw up a wall of ice. Ummm, yeah...I can buy that one.
I admit, I liked the CG beholders but they all disappeared kind of suddenly from the encounter. Why? Beholder's Union (local 223) go on strike?
How in the sam hell does a contigent of knights in shiny armor (and bright red cloaks) sneak unnoticed into a thieves' guild?
Why does a chaotic neutral thief walk in to a treasure room and only take the rod he had no intention of keeping himself? In that horde, (if he's so smart and quick thinking) why doesn't he also grab one of the other rods lying around just in case they run into Damodar on the way back so he can fake him out? I don't recall anyone knowing what the rod looks like. There was no innuendo of him coming back to clean house on that horde either.
What is the deal with the total lack of priests? Oh, I suppose somebody might cry devil worship it there was any priesthood mentioned so lets give the Time Lord, er...Elf Lord the power to heal.
Hell, for a quick 1,000gp (or a good cause) a good priesthod would have raised Snails back from the dead...so why the big hissy fit about Snail's death? An 8th level thief should be able to afford to have his best buddy, Snails, raised. He must have been working for a good cause or why else would a couple of gnomes give him a really powerful sword of defending?
"...but you'd think they'd at least want to know who was leading the country they share the longest unguarded border in the world with"
If and when Canada ever decides to amass a rather large military for the sole purpose of invading the US, then maybe Americans should be concerned.
Most Americans probably don't realize that the prime minister is actually elected and not appointed by the Queen of England.
So Jean is getting a historic 3rd term? 3/4 of Americans have no clue who Chretien is and even after you told them they'd still think he was nobody important.
I'm sorry if this is flamebait and off-topic but it is the truth.
A lot of the people in the world wouldn't care about the US if it didn't have the reputation of bombing places on its own whims.
How many countries has Jean ordered to be bombed in the last year/term?
How many countries has Jean called the attention of NATO to and spearheaded an action with Canadian military to try and force its leader out of power?
How come American tourists are urged to state that they are Canadians should foreign nationals ask what country they are from?
Who besides the US has stood behind Israel at the UN in regards to the occupation of Palestinian territory?
The sad fact is that people don't like to give front page time to good things. Especially things that are consistently good. Evil sells...people pay attention to bad things.
If Jean gets busted tomorrow as the leader of a child pr0n organization you can bet everyone will take a sudden interest in the leader of Canada and I'd bet that the US would probably be intrusive if they felt that Canada didn't deal with his punishment properly.
I hope this helps explain a little why no American seems to care about the news flash that "Canadian people decide (for the second time in a row) that there will be no change in their government."
If we went my majority rule, it would make it that much harder for the minority to have any protections.
I know, it not like we should protect pagans, atheists or gays anyway but if we don't set up a few rules to give minorities a little more freedom what will stop a majority of people coming after me when I become a minority?
(Disclaimer: There is more definition to minority than I may have implied.)
The electoral college was set up so that the entire country wasn't controlled by small area of people (highly dense and like minded).
Its a protection against majority rule. If we did follow majority rule, we could have a situation were 50.0001% of the population thought was bad and the remaining portion of people would just have accept whatever laws that majority chose.
Not everyone believes that we should look out for the little guy, the minority.
There is not much difference between ignorance and hate.
If I witness a murder and have the ability to save the person but make the choice not to (thereby ignoring the whole thing) would that be bad?
To stand idly by while someone else commits an act of hate, can I claim ignorance as a defense?
I guess if ignorance was really a good (or even neutral) thing, there would be nothing backing the phrase, "Ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law."
"Give the man a two-hour lecture on what Wicca is and let's see if he can stay awake."
Say I agree with 70% of what Browne has to say, 40% of what Nader has to say, 10% of what Gore has to say and think Bush only has looks going for him.:)
Obviously, there is no candidate that agrees 100% with what I have to say so according to you I should, what? Not vote? Write in my own name and hope to get elected?
My best bet is Browne but I'd like my vote to reflect in some way that I would prefer Nader over Gore who I would prefer over Bush, who I don't consider worth being president and thereby getting none of my 'vote'.
If I wanted the best looking person to be president, I'd run myself.
:D
I think he means that he wants to make damn sure that writers are getting ripped off before taking any actions against the corporations that are allegedly ripping them off.
A decent solution would be to utilize a weighted vote by ranking each candidate in the order that you would like to seem them in office. (You are still entitled to rank as many as you feel at a rank of 0.)
So, for simplicity, say we have these candidates:
Bush, Gore, Browne, Nader, "Constitution Guy", Buchanan & Ventura (hey, I never said this was accurate!):
Using a scale of 1-10 (10 highest)
9 Ventura
8 Browne
4 Nader
2 Gore
1 Constitution Guy
0 Bush
0 Buchanan
0 "write-in"
This way, you can prioritize them as you see fit and the whole "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" BS is thrown out the window.
Fuzzy logic can be collectively counted from the people and the new president determined this way.
If you're worried about a person seemingly able to vote more than once, it can easily be normalized for a more relational number with respect to the US voting population.
Thanks to the speed at which we can communicate these days, doing something like this is actually feasible, as opposed to trying this 200 years ago.
What should be done, especially in places that doesn't allow a "None of the Above" option is to create a new political party and get it on the ballot in all 50 states and have a candidate named "Nonov DeObov" as your presidential candidate.
Maybe then CmdrTaco would have someone on the ballot he feels he could vote for with pride.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm, let's see...we have 4 artists and two programmers (me being the full-time one)
and we just released "I Was An Atomic Mutant."
Of course, opinions may vary but it is making the shelves.
SGI also did a plug in the new "Lost in Space" movie as well, IIRC. Of course, that one was a bit more obvious to being an advert.
That's where I picked it up in '94. Of course, it'll take a bit of searching for it. I believe the binary was named 'fsn'.
-Vel
Actually, she was referring to the SGI Indigo box that she was on, not the Mac beside it.
IIRC, that was the fusion directory surfer app that she was using.
-Vel
I believe they referred to it as a 'hold person' in the movie.
They're using new 3rd Edition rules...it makes multiclassing much easier and more common. But yes, biggest beef was the mid-level thief doing in Damodar, although to non-DnD players, Damodar fell to his death, we were convinced that he had not taken enough damage (1-2 for the scratch, 1d4+5d6 for the backstab) such that a fall from that height would kill him. (There is a maximum amount damage that can be taken from falling, IIRC.)
The thief just made a successful bull rush to push him over the railing.
So, hurt? Definitely. Dead? Not so sure on that.
Also, the new rules are such that a round lasts 6 seconds and most spells only take an action to cast. (Since you roll a d20 for initiative, an action is roughly 3/10ths of a second)
What I thought was interesting was the fact that I wouldn't necessarily consider a minimum 5th level mage to be worthless. Well, without access to her spellbook, she would be.
I just wish someone could explain the 'magic dust' to me...it was no mere spell component because if it was, that means the "low level apprentice mage" was throwing around dimension doors like wily nilly.
So it was a multipurpose magical dust of sorts to create wormholes OR incapacitate people.
Another thing I noticed was that there were NO saves! If the spell got off, it did its thing to full effect...
Other tidbits:
BAD use of the gold dragon at the beginning. Unless it was a young dragon (which it wasn't) it would have been capable of oh, speaking...spells, a high intelligence and even perhaps a breath weapon not afraid to use? Why it did the stupid "charge like a Rankor" I just can't figure that one out...I guess it felt the need to 'further the story'
Rule #1 of virtually any mage (much less high level ones under the threat of an empress with a wand of gold dragon control): Gold dragons and red dragons are immune to fire! That also means...yep, fireball. So Profion was the only one with a clue and threw up a wall of ice. Ummm, yeah...I can buy that one.
I admit, I liked the CG beholders but they all disappeared kind of suddenly from the encounter. Why? Beholder's Union (local 223) go on strike?
How in the sam hell does a contigent of knights in shiny armor (and bright red cloaks) sneak unnoticed into a thieves' guild?
Why does a chaotic neutral thief walk in to a treasure room and only take the rod he had no intention of keeping himself? In that horde, (if he's so smart and quick thinking) why doesn't he also grab one of the other rods lying around just in case they run into Damodar on the way back so he can fake him out? I don't recall anyone knowing what the rod looks like. There was no innuendo of him coming back to clean house on that horde either.
What is the deal with the total lack of priests? Oh, I suppose somebody might cry devil worship it there was any priesthood mentioned so lets give the Time Lord, er...Elf Lord the power to heal.
Hell, for a quick 1,000gp (or a good cause) a good priesthod would have raised Snails back from the dead...so why the big hissy fit about Snail's death? An 8th level thief should be able to afford to have his best buddy, Snails, raised. He must have been working for a good cause or why else would a couple of gnomes give him a really powerful sword of defending?
At least it has great MST3K potential.
Cool! Thanks for the info...have you heard the version of the war by Jimmy Horton?
;)
"...but you'd think they'd at least want to know who was leading the country they share the longest unguarded border in the world with"
If and when Canada ever decides to amass a rather large military for the sole purpose of invading the US, then maybe Americans should be concerned.
Most Americans probably don't realize that the prime minister is actually elected and not appointed by the Queen of England.
So Jean is getting a historic 3rd term? 3/4 of Americans have no clue who Chretien is and even after you told them they'd still think he was nobody important.
I'm sorry if this is flamebait and off-topic but it is the truth.
A lot of the people in the world wouldn't care about the US if it didn't have the reputation of bombing places on its own whims.
How many countries has Jean ordered to be bombed in the last year/term?
How many countries has Jean called the attention of NATO to and spearheaded an action with Canadian military to try and force its leader out of power?
How come American tourists are urged to state that they are Canadians should foreign nationals ask what country they are from?
Who besides the US has stood behind Israel at the UN in regards to the occupation of Palestinian territory?
The sad fact is that people don't like to give front page time to good things. Especially things that are consistently good. Evil sells...people pay attention to bad things.
If Jean gets busted tomorrow as the leader of a child pr0n organization you can bet everyone will take a sudden interest in the leader of Canada and I'd bet that the US would probably be intrusive if they felt that Canada didn't deal with his punishment properly.
I hope this helps explain a little why no American seems to care about the news flash that "Canadian people decide (for the second time in a row) that there will be no change in their government."
I believe Mesopotamia built rather large Ziggurats there are none in nearly as good a condition as the pyramids.
"My own theory is that it could have been a warning and/or navigational beacon..."
Wouldn't this be a hypothesis and not a theory?
If we went my majority rule, it would make it that much harder for the minority to have any protections.
I know, it not like we should protect pagans, atheists or gays anyway but if we don't set up a few rules to give minorities a little more freedom what will stop a majority of people coming after me when I become a minority?
(Disclaimer: There is more definition to minority than I may have implied.)
The electoral college was set up so that the entire country wasn't controlled by small area of people (highly dense and like minded).
Its a protection against majority rule. If we did follow majority rule, we could have a situation were 50.0001% of the population thought was bad and the remaining portion of people would just have accept whatever laws that majority chose.
Not everyone believes that we should look out for the little guy, the minority.
-Vel
And the World Series should go to the team that scores the most runs overall out of seven games...regardless of how many games they win.
(Note: "votes" == "runs" & "states" == "games")
-Vel
There is not much difference between ignorance and hate.
If I witness a murder and have the ability to save the person but make the choice not to (thereby ignoring the whole thing) would that be bad?
To stand idly by while someone else commits an act of hate, can I claim ignorance as a defense?
I guess if ignorance was really a good (or even neutral) thing, there would be nothing backing the phrase, "Ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law."
"Give the man a two-hour lecture on what Wicca is and let's see if he can stay awake."
I believe it was stated that pregnancy could be viewed either way. Some would look forward to it, some would not.
-Vel
I cannot vouch for the first paragraph but the second is right from the Constitution Party platform!
-Vel
How about registering that domain name?
;)
(assuming its not registered yet)
Instead of the standard 'www' have so all someone needs to type in:
guinness.beer-really-sucks.com
Can WIPO look at the domain name and suggest that there is a strong and confusing similarity between guinness.com and beer-really-sucks.com?
If the answer is 'yes,' what does that imply about Guinness beer?
-Vel
Well, if there is enough support, we could have a full length feature film of "Knights of the Dinner Table" by the end of 2001.
-Vel
Well, let's see.
:)
Say I agree with 70% of what Browne has to say, 40% of what Nader has to say, 10% of what Gore has to say and think Bush only has looks going for him.
Obviously, there is no candidate that agrees 100% with what I have to say so according to you I should, what? Not vote? Write in my own name and hope to get elected?
My best bet is Browne but I'd like my vote to reflect in some way that I would prefer Nader over Gore who I would prefer over Bush, who I don't consider worth being president and thereby getting none of my 'vote'.
If I wanted the best looking person to be president, I'd run myself.
:D
-Vel
And on that site /. linked to, my closest match with any candidate was Browne, whom I had a 55% matching with.
Apparently, I'm a liberal libertarian...
;)
I think he means that he wants to make damn sure that writers are getting ripped off before taking any actions against the corporations that are allegedly ripping them off.
Perhaps he should have a chat with Courtney Love.
-Vel
A decent solution would be to utilize a weighted vote by ranking each candidate in the order that you would like to seem them in office. (You are still entitled to rank as many as you feel at a rank of 0.)
So, for simplicity, say we have these candidates:
Bush, Gore, Browne, Nader, "Constitution Guy", Buchanan & Ventura (hey, I never said this was accurate!):
Using a scale of 1-10 (10 highest)
9 Ventura
8 Browne
4 Nader
2 Gore
1 Constitution Guy
0 Bush
0 Buchanan
0 "write-in"
This way, you can prioritize them as you see fit and the whole "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" BS is thrown out the window.
Fuzzy logic can be collectively counted from the people and the new president determined this way.
If you're worried about a person seemingly able to vote more than once, it can easily be normalized for a more relational number with respect to the US voting population.
Thanks to the speed at which we can communicate these days, doing something like this is actually feasible, as opposed to trying this 200 years ago.
-Vel
Welcome to Darkwind
50/50> viking Christtrekker
You turn Christtrekker into a little viking!
50/50>
>;) Couldn't resist...
What should be done, especially in places that doesn't allow a "None of the Above" option is to create a new political party and get it on the ballot in all 50 states and have a candidate named "Nonov DeObov" as your presidential candidate.
Maybe then CmdrTaco would have someone on the ballot he feels he could vote for with pride.
:)
-Vel
Just what, exactly is "/-r4d 31337" supposed to mean? I've seen the 31337 enough times to know its translation is 'eleet'.
Presumably you have some reason asides from the fact that Hacker-speak is harder on the eyes?