BlackSword

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

Wonder Woman Animated Movie - Excellent, really enjoyed the story, good animation and voice work.

I have been DVRing and watching Discovery Channel's Planet Earth. Its a nice series with excellent cinematography, and for the most part the narration is good, the only thing that annoys me is that the unprecedented narration provides a majestic use of superlatives to describe everything. Also I think I have seen all of the video clips they have used in their 5 year journey and now they are just resplicing them together in a different order.

Re: Order of the Stick

IIRC' date=' the only 0 level Necromantic spell inflicts damage on the undead. Is that Evil?[/quote']

asked and answered

In reading some of the spell-lists I think the Necromancy = Evil may have been a house rule (or a rule brought in from a variant ruleset) we used. Still' date=' the spell was pretty clearly evil.[/quote']

Is it Evil to reanimate dead Nazis/Orcs as Zombies to defend the innocent townsfolk from live Nazis/Orcs? I suppose it is if we have a rule that says "Evil is Objective and this is Evil".

And this is one example that summarizes why we went with that houserule. We have a player in our group that will seek out every exception and there are two ways to deal with it a) heartburn and misery for the GM, steelboot of GM fiat.

Re: Order of the Stick

Not when I played D&D' date=' but of course, that was 20 years ago.[/quote']

It has been made fairly clear they are playing using 3.5 ruleset.

Unless they changed it in 4th ed' date=' I do believe that Cure Light Wounds was a Necromantic spell. IIRC, in D&D Necromantic didn't mean "evil death magic", but "Magic dealing with Life/Unlife".[/quote']

Cure Light Wounds

Conjuration (Healing)

 

In reading some of the spell-lists I think the Necromancy = Evil may have been a house rule (or a rule brought in from a variant ruleset) we used. Still, the spell was pretty clearly evil.

Re: Order of the Stick

Even Invisibility to Undead

Not in the SRD, but the other invisibility spells are Illusion

and Ressurection?

Conjuration (healing)

Re: Order of the Stick

I agree what V's action would be evil in any realistic universe--I'm not arguing that *I* think it's a good thing to do. Indeed' date=' things like this point out the limitations of the "standard D&D model".[/quote']

It was a necromancy spell, and I believe all of those are Evil.

Re: What books would you recommend?

Edit: any idea how damaged the damaged items are in the online store? For 13 bucks' date=' I may get the Asian Bestiary after all.[/quote']

I bought some damaged books a while ago, I had to search to find the damage on them, they were in very good shape.

Re: Help NASA Name Node 3

OK, yeah, had to go with Serenity.

 

Really... is there any other choice?

Any other choice?

Go team Venture!

Re: GenCon 2009 Hong Kong Cinematic Superheroes

Casshern was released a few years back. Most of the movie was meh, but it had a few good fights mixed in.

Re: "Alien" life

Yes' date=' but if it can't make its own polymerase, it's not really self-sustaining. Turn the PCR machine off, and all you've got is a spicy primordial soup.[/quote']

mmm, hot and sour primordial soup....guess its chinese for lunch today.

Re: Adamantium discovered

. . . Imagine a race that has these minerals in their supporting structure' date=' rather than calcium . . .[/quote']

They would be genetically programmed to say 'bub' after at the end of every sentence.

Re: Speeding Up Combat

In games where it makes since to have opponents (or allies) group together, I typically use 'fire teams' of about 5 opponents. For each opponent past the first the group has +1 OCV, and +1 DC. This allows me to roll for five people with a single roll. Heroes and special characters operate as normal. When our group abstracts it out further to mass combat, we usually use a version of the L5R mass combat rules that we have modified.

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

I do find it interesting to hear 'Torture never works in real life' date='' when we're discussing a game where people can [i']lift a battleship. [/i]And for that matter, a world where UNTIL is effective and not overwhelmingly corrupted. The bounds of real life are long gone in Champions, guys.

 

Sample power for the 60 STR Brick: Beat it out of you: 12d6 Telepathy, Mental Power based on CON (PD applies), Requires an interrogation roll.

I think several people have mentioned the cinematic side of torture/interrogation. And while I might consider such a 'Beat it out of you power' for a Brick, said brick would not be a superhero in my games.

Ultimately it all comes back to what has been said, it depends on what tone the GM is going for. If beating people up is the best way to get information, then that is what the players are going to tend towards. If the GM doesn't want 'beating it out of people' to work, then he doesn't allow those techniques to work as effectively as the techniques he wishes to encourage.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Walk this way! Need to get that one on DVD.

I picked up the boxed set of Mel Brooks movies a year or two back. Had most of the classics and a few that I had never seen before. The only notable gap was Spaceballs. (it also didn't include either version of The Producers).

Re: Musings on Random Musings

My latest crush.

 

[/url]

Mr. Clean?

Oh, McLean....

Re: A Thread for Random Musings

Last night at the gym they had Glen Beck on one of the TVs, and right next to him was Woody Paige. I felt my IQ drop through the entire workout.

Re: Order of the Stick

Still' date=' it would be cool to see V's mate whip out a can of kick ass in any form[/quote']

"I thought I put my dragon killing days behind me, but I guess there is space for one more head above the mantle."

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

An important question for the GM is "what kind of tone is he setting for the game?"

There is obviously a spectrum of opinions on the morality of using torture, but for the particular game being run the GM has to set the tone for what is acceptable for the heroes in regards to questioning suspects, and what crosses the line as unacceptable. The second responsibility the GM has is to ensure the information can be gotten in a way that does not require the players to cross the line*.

For the original post it sounds like people may need to sit down and discuss that the character is going in a direction they don't want to go and how to proceed forward.

*unless the game is specifically, what are the lines, and how are you going to react if your only choice is to cross them. But for such a game the GM should be more upfront about the game.

Re: Order of the Stick

And is V the father or mother?

 

 

I noticed in panel 11 that

 

 

the forcecage is back, intact. Was it not removed by the Anti-Magic Field*?

 

*Which is magic too, right?

 

If it is back, I wonder if the Dragon is going to use it somehow to restrain V -- using V's own magic against him.

I believe anti-magic field only suppresses magic in its area of effect, it doesn't dispell magic.

Re: Order of the Stick

While she's not "part of the group"' date=' Celia can't be there -- no afterlife for her IIRC.[/quote']

Maybe that's how they plan to get rid of the GM's annoying younger sibling.

 

"Sorry all the character's are dead and in the afterlife, and your character can't go to the afterlife."

"MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM"

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

I have been watching Ranma 1/2 and Batman: The Animated Series.

Re: Mars has gas!

I always assumed that McDonald's would be the first fast food chain to open on Mars, but it appears that Taco Bell has beaten them to space.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it...

Over the break I read Phantom by Terry Goodkind, mainly because a friend lied to me and told me it was the last book in the series. The first half of the book was terrible. I actually started skimming paragraphs because it was so poorly written. He had two or three chapters dedicated to how evil the Imperial Order was, and just to drive the point home, after he finished the summary of how bad they were, he had two more chapters retelling the same story from a slightly different perspective. A recap:

Chapters 1 - 15:

Richard: Ah Zedd and all you other older wizards who have spent your entire lives studying magic, let me explain how I, with no formal training and no ability to actually use magic effectively, understand it much better than you.

Zedd: Richard, I think you are exaggerating.

Richard: Now let me demonstrate my brilliance.

Zedd: Okay, you're right Richard, you are smart, smarter than all of us put together.

Women of the novels: Oh Richard, you're so great, please let us have your baby.

Chapters 16 - 237

Richard: Tell me, what did they do to the city?

Characters from 117 novels ago: They killed every male, then raped all the women, then had the old people go to work in the fields, and brainwashed the kids, then had the brainwashed kids kill more men and rape the women, all in the name of socialism.

Zedd: bags Richard, they are evil, which we have established in the past 450 chapters, but wanted to reiterate.

Richard: Zedd, of course they are evil, but not one-dimensionally evil, tell us more.

Random Character: They raped the village

Richard: Yes we know, you told us that.

Random Character: No, you don't understand, the Emporer ordered the battering rams to be used on every door or entry into the houses, they actually raped buildings.

Zedd: Bags Richards.

Richard: Still not evil enough, we know you're holding back.

RC: Oh yeah, and when the supplies ran low they started bringing corpses to the kitchen for us to prepare

Richard: Finally, they are really, truely evil.

Chapter 238 - 239

Goodkind: Crap, I spend so long talking about the evils of a Socialism-like fantasy state I entirely forgot to move the plot forward at all. Umm, summarize, summarize, summarize, and publish.

Re: First extra-solar planet with CO2

They also may have found extraterristrial sugar. No where in the universe is safe for diabetics.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28141876/

Re: Anyone actually playing anything?

I'm not actually playing at this time' date=' but I still work on campaigns as a mental exercise. I at least have an outlet for my imagination that way, and maybe someone else will find something he can use in his campaign.[/quote']

And its much appreciated that you do post your ideas on-line. You've had some great ideas that I look forward to borrowing.

Re: Civilians Miniatures?

Guss: Do you make your own tokens? Out of what? Are they just blank "Joe Citizen" "Jane Citizen" "Child" tokens?

Our group typically uses glass beads. The beads tend to have a flat side so that they can be flipped over to show when an NPC is in a non-normal state. Also you can use multiple colors to denote different groups. And they tend to be dirt cheap.