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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

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Other (feel free to post about it)

[Kagus]

"God save us!"

*stabs hand*

"God be saved!"


EDIT: Moving beyond that horridness...

So, a person killed by a shadow's life drain attack will have their own shadow animate a few hours after death, leaving the body without a shadow.

This brings up some curious questions, seeing as a mundane shadow is simply a dark patch caused by a relevant light source getting blocked. Which means that, in this case, the body is therefore no longer blocking light.

Ignoring the obvious fuckery of it still appearing as an opaque object, if you were to hold such a body up to the sun, would you get blinded through the corpse?

[Jimmy]

My only contribution to the christianity in RPG genre is that I love how the Pathfinder Inquisitor class archetype character wears a costume that nobody ever expects.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Kagus]

...is that a foot loop AND a winch on that crossbow? There's a lot going on with that picture.

The ear-tip holes are a cute touch.

[scriver]

The best part of the ear tip holes is that they hold the hat in place so that it never moves away from its mysterious face-enshadowing tilt. Stylish AND practical.

[Grim Portent]

Are those ear tip holes? They don't really line up with where the ears are pointing.

[scriver]

Oh. That's probably right.

[IcyTea31]

No, I think the holes are for the chin strap. Another angle:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Grim Portent]

Was looking through the MM and found myself thinking about how wildly dysfunctional some of the sapient beings are.

Ogres and Hill Giants in particular are ridiculously stupid, in 5e they have just one point of INT more than a raptor, and one point less than an ape. They can't write, they can't read, they can barely speak in comprehensible sentences. Ogres are wildly antisocial and Hill Giants don't understand that eating rotten or poisonous food makes you sick. Somehow both are often portrayed as forming mostly functional tribes, wearing crude clothing, wielding weapons and forming alliances with other races.

These are supposedly sapient, ensouled beings who are less intelligent than the average gorilla. And also probably the below-average gorillas.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

5e is somewhat inconsistent with intelligence scores. 3 is supposed to be the barrier for sapience, with 2 for advanced animals, 1 for simple animals, and 0 or Null for anything lesser. But at the same time, you could play a Kobold or Orc who gets -2 intelligence and go all the way down to 1. This also brings up weird questions about what it might mean to have 1 INT and 20 WIS (the aliens from Blindsight, imo).

So for a Hill Giant, having 5 INT is well above the barrier and probably does decently represent their society, but yet have less INT than apes. And at this point is also edging into actual philosophical and scientific discussion of what intelligence even means. Take feral human children, for example. They demonstrate massively reduced mental capacity compared to other humans. Are Hill Giants just a feral society, then? If you gift the Hill Giant leader a Headband of Intellect, will the next generation of Hill Giants massively jump up in INT because their educator had 19 INT instead of 5?

Or perhaps is it possible to be less intelligent than a non-sapient animal, and sapience is a special checkmark that you can have or not? My brain can't do 3d movement like a falcon's can, is that an intellectual failing? I can't do math like a computer can, is that an intellectual failing?

[Superdorf]

Keep in mind... what D&D calls "Intelligence" these days is little more than a number that affects other numbers. I don't think 5e actually has a "sapience barrier", and I know it doesn't have Intelligence barriers for language and reading and whatnot.

I like to take Investigation proficiency and a decent Wisdom score on my Int-dump characters, when I can. Gives them a nice "street-smart" feel.

[MrRoboto75]

I know in 2nd ed having an Int of 1 gives you 0 known languages, with an asterisk specifying this means a character can only speak with "grunts and gestures".  I guess like a low int character in Fallout 1 or 2.  However, as apparently half-orcs aren't in the 2nd ed players handbook, one could only achieve 1 int via curse or spell.

I believe 3rd establishes 3 as smarter than the average bear animal.  But I don't know if later editions bother.

[scriver]

Hill giants aren't dumb, they just too big for their brain

[Cthulhu]

Sometimes the intelligence score indicates useful things about a monster, sometimes I'll ignore or change it.  Ogres are like five int which is beyond stupid, and I just wouldn't permit a 1 int PC even if it comes out that way in the rules.

Other times it suggests tactics and capabilities.  Goblins have 10 int and I think 12 wis, which makes them much more dangerous than they're usually written.  They can come up with any tactics an average human might, set up ambushes and chokepoints, identify the most visibly dangerous enemies (probably can't identify the power level of a wizard, but can tell a guy in full plate with a greatsword is more dangerous than a guy in rags with a knife, which a 5 int ogre will not), pick their battles

Which is completely contrary to how they're usually written, which is why I mostly hate goblins and never use them as written.  The first encounter many new D&D players have is the four goblins in lost mines of phandelver, who stand in the middle of the road and then rush into melee with a group of obviously well-equipped adventurers who possibly outnumber them.  It's stupid and it's not playing to the goblins' strengths, which they're absolutely smart enough to understand and use.  The correct way to play that encounter, if we assume they have to fight and can't get reinforcements, would be to have them hide in the bushes and fire arrows, stick and move, and go for the softest targets first.  They can hide as a bonus action so in the undergrowth they'll be a huge bitch to flush out.

Of course, if you played them like that, there's a solid chance they'd TPK your party.  Goblin slayer sucks, but goblins are certainly orders of magnitude more dangerous than most adventures treat them.

Also, note that thing about identifying targets.  Would a gorilla know that a guy wearing metal armor is tougher than one who isn't?  Probably not, and an ape is smarter than an ogre.  So am I supposed to conclude that an ogre doesn't know what metal is?

5e has a big problem with mechanics that don't jive with the world they're intended to describe.  It's not as bad as 4e for that (bloody path maybe the most egregious example) but there's a lot of shit like that where a rule is written for a game purpose and doesn't make sense when you try to translate it into the Actual Existing World the game's rules are meant to represent.

[scriver]

Does a gorilla know that a nut is harder to crack than a berry, but is food none the less? So does an ogre know that the armoured man has a hard shell to keep all the squishy goodies inside in place

[MetalSlimeHunt]

a guy in full plate with a greatsword is more dangerous than a guy in rags with a knife

Anybody who's witnessed a single Sneak Attack will know this isn't true. Fun fact that I found out the hard way: A crit Sneak Attack will one-shot most player classes if they are the same level as the attacking rogue.