As it happens, d12 and I have been fortunate enough to play in a weekly dnd 3.5 game run by a talented dm for over a year now. One feature that we were discussing that we wished we had incorporated was a post game commentary. Just a tongue and cheek look at a dnd game in the over top way that sports shows do.
We had considered not doing this because, well the game is nearly over, with only a few weeks worth of games left and a lot of cool stuff (like airship battles and pirates riding dinosaurs) has already passed. But hey, screw that. SO today I will introduce you to the game.
Background: A well meaning group of heroes uncovered a plot to uncover a giant obelisk that drove the workers insane and warped their bodies into strange aberrant forms. The heroes saved the town and discovered that the person behind the even knew of the artifacts powers. They se tout to find this dastardly fellow.
As time wore on they uncovered that the head professor of divination, named Ravian, from the worlds most renowned school of magic was behind the event and that there were multiple obelisks. If all of these obelisks were brought together, it would shift the world into a terrible aberrant dimension.
The master diviner somehow always managed to be a step ahead of our heroes and is believed to currently possess all of the obelisks, however he revealed in an evil monologue that his plan was not to destroy the world, but to harness the power of the obelisks to gain ultimate magic power. In fact he claimed that with the proper knowledge he could apply any and all metamagic to any spell he cast. However, if he made a mistake it would, you know, end the world.
The heroes have had many odd side adventures in this time including fighting dinosaur riding pirates, accidently raising the worlds most feared assassin as a terrifying undead creature and meeting a really swell necromancer who just didn’t get why all those palladins kept trying to storm his castle.
As we join our heroes: They have just finished killing an evil cleric trying to raise a dark god in return for the location of Ravian.
They now face choices. They know that they may need a special metal called “phasanite” for a master crafter to build them a teleporting ship and that this metal is being wielded in the form of a sword by a vampire. They also have collected all but one piece of an ancient set of artifacts, a broadsword, forged by dwarves that when brought together and worn by one person are said to have incredible powers.
Finally, they now know of Ravian’s location and can go after him.
Current cast: Heroes have come and gone over time (rip Gward!) but this is the current line up. Average party level is 14 and 15.
Angros Furion Ragenstein (played by Dude WTF) – a very very angry half-orc barbarian whose magic loincloth allows him to grow one size larger.
Gimpy "Kaboom" Hobblestomp (played by d12) – A Halfling graduate student of magical studies currently attempting to find the thaum, a warmage.
Kestrel – a ninja and recent initiate into the arts of the cat-speaker (dm created prestige class) a group of people who understand the abberant truth behind cats and learn some of their ways.
See Ya – A human monk who recently joined the team after stepping in to help some of the groups hirelings.
Brenner – A human wizard, master conjurer, arch mage. He may not be able to evoke, but you really don’t want to mess with his glitterdust. No really.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Search engines
In the past month, a few more search engines have come online, and Google has a new toy as well. WolframAlpha and Microsoft's Bing are new ones on the scene, and Google Labs is working on something called Google Squared.
Now, it's worth noting that these are not equivalent. WolframAlpha is a "Computational Knowledge Engine." What does this mean, exactly? Well, it depends on what you're asking it. If it's something it knows about, it'll tell you all sorts of information. It has a lot of data in various scientific fields -- sociology, physics, chemistry, computer science, and of course math. It does well on integrals etc, when posed in a suitable way. It does slightly better on physical constants. For example, giving google:
makes it very sad, since it doesn't know what a Bohr radius is. Wolfram seems to have done a good job with the physical constants, and it does a nice job of comparing units. For example,
Aside from math, it'll tell you things like the top visited websites, the average death rate due to herpes per country, a list of US presidents, etc.
Note that I haven't included Bing in the above science-y stuff. That's because it doesn't do anything like that. It searches the web, and limits itself to that. Google's search results look very similar to Bing's, and it's mainly an interface difference. What I like about Bing is the ability to preview the website it found for you, right within Bing. It shows a small excerpt when you mouse-over the right side of the result. Whether this is useful or not depends on the site. It's not all that useful when searching for restaurants, which isn't Bing's fault, but that of the websites it returns.
Finally, there's Google Squared, which is hidden in the Google Labs section. It is similar to Wolfram Alpha in that it tries to compile your search results into a table with relevant data. Sometimes this is great, but most of the time it's limited by the website return.
Finally, for some fun, note that Bing spells "But It's Not Google"
When you're done playing with Wolfram Alpha's examples, ask it if it's Skynet.
Now, it's worth noting that these are not equivalent. WolframAlpha is a "Computational Knowledge Engine." What does this mean, exactly? Well, it depends on what you're asking it. If it's something it knows about, it'll tell you all sorts of information. It has a lot of data in various scientific fields -- sociology, physics, chemistry, computer science, and of course math. It does well on integrals etc, when posed in a suitable way. It does slightly better on physical constants. For example, giving google:
(electron charge)^2 / (bohr radius * electron mass)
makes it very sad, since it doesn't know what a Bohr radius is. Wolfram seems to have done a good job with the physical constants, and it does a nice job of comparing units. For example,
coulomb constant * (electron charge)^2/ (bohr radius)will tell me that it is an energy, and give the answer in joules, therms, electronvolts, BTUs, hartrees, rydbergs, and for some reason watts per hertz.
Aside from math, it'll tell you things like the top visited websites, the average death rate due to herpes per country, a list of US presidents, etc.
Note that I haven't included Bing in the above science-y stuff. That's because it doesn't do anything like that. It searches the web, and limits itself to that. Google's search results look very similar to Bing's, and it's mainly an interface difference. What I like about Bing is the ability to preview the website it found for you, right within Bing. It shows a small excerpt when you mouse-over the right side of the result. Whether this is useful or not depends on the site. It's not all that useful when searching for restaurants, which isn't Bing's fault, but that of the websites it returns.
Finally, there's Google Squared, which is hidden in the Google Labs section. It is similar to Wolfram Alpha in that it tries to compile your search results into a table with relevant data. Sometimes this is great, but most of the time it's limited by the website return.
Finally, for some fun, note that Bing spells "But It's Not Google"
When you're done playing with Wolfram Alpha's examples, ask it if it's Skynet.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Apologies
not that we have any readers yet, but d12 and I feel bad about the lack of postings. We are currently trying to work on some technical difficulties with our layout and establish a posting calendar.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
DND 3.5 Math - 2Hander or Dual wield?
The Questions:
First we start with a baseline. A fighter of level 15, with a strength of 22. To keep it somewhat realistic, we assume that the 2-handed fighter can afford a +3 weapon, while the dual wielder can only afford 2 +2 weapons. In addition, I used similar weapons, a great sword, a long sword and a short sword. To keep damage simple, I assume every swing did average damage.
Second I assumed 3 attackers and 3 scenarios. The three attackers include a 2-hander, a 2-hander who is power attacking for 3 (to give him the same to hit as a dual wielder) and a dual wielder. In the first scenario the attackers are attacking something with 30 AC, in the next 25 AC and in the final one 25 AC with DR10.
Terms: PA 3 means power attacking for 3, att means attack, ave is average.
The following is the table I used to figure out each attack, its not going to make a lot of sense. check the next group of tables.
OK, that gobelty gook. Here's what it all comes down to though. During a full round where each characters gets to make a full attack.
The answer is pretty clear. A two-hander power attacking for 3 beats everything else in damage. This becomes especially true if the creature has DR.
I will also add that at this point the dual wielder needs 3 feats, the 2-hander only needs 1.
This doesn't mean you shouldn't dual wield, there are lots of other scenarios where dual wielding is better. This just means that for a high-str character, if you want to max your damage, you should two-hand and power attack.
-Dude
- If I am playing a high-strength melee character, will I do more damage wielding 1 large weapon with both hands or dual wield
- Without any doubt in this situation is best to use 1 weapon. While it is true that dual wielding seems better becuase it allows more attacks, the damage does not compare to the effect of adding 1.5Xstrength
First we start with a baseline. A fighter of level 15, with a strength of 22. To keep it somewhat realistic, we assume that the 2-handed fighter can afford a +3 weapon, while the dual wielder can only afford 2 +2 weapons. In addition, I used similar weapons, a great sword, a long sword and a short sword. To keep damage simple, I assume every swing did average damage.
Second I assumed 3 attackers and 3 scenarios. The three attackers include a 2-hander, a 2-hander who is power attacking for 3 (to give him the same to hit as a dual wielder) and a dual wielder. In the first scenario the attackers are attacking something with 30 AC, in the next 25 AC and in the final one 25 AC with DR10.
Terms: PA 3 means power attacking for 3, att means attack, ave is average.
The following is the table I used to figure out each attack, its not going to make a lot of sense. check the next group of tables.
| Magic | Bab | strmod | feats | Weapon | ||
| 2-Hander | 3 | 15 | 6 | 1 | 7 | |
| Magic | Bab | strmod | feats | wep 1 | wep 2 | |
| Dual-wield | 2 | 15 | 6 | 3 | 4.5 | 3.5 |
| Main 1 | Main 2 | Main 3 | ||||
| 2hand att bonus | 24 | 19 | 14 | |||
| ave dam | 19 | 19 | 19 | |||
| Dam ac 30 | 16.15 | 11.4 | 6.65 | |||
| dam ac 25 | 19.95 | 15.2 | 10.45 | |||
| Dam ac 25 dr10 | 9.95 | 5.2 | 0.45 | |||
| Main 1 | Main 2 | Main 3 | ||||
| 2h PA 3 att bonus | 21 | 16 | 11 | |||
| ave dam | 25 | 25 | 25 | |||
| dam ac 30 | 17.5 | 11.25 | 5 | |||
| dam ac 25 | 23.75 | 17.5 | 11.25 | |||
| Dam ac 25 dr10 | 13.75 | 7.5 | 1.25 | |||
| Main 1 | Off 1 | Main 2 | Off 2 | Main 3 | Off 3 | |
| dual wield attack bonus | 21 | 21 | 16 | 16 | 11 | 11 |
| Ave dam | 12.5 | 8.5 | 12.5 | 8.5 | 12.5 | 8.5 |
| dam ac 30 | 8.75 | 5.95 | 5.625 | 3.825 | 2.5 | 1.7 |
| dam ac 25 | 11.875 | 8.075 | 8.75 | 5.95 | 5.625 | 3.825 |
| Dam ac 25 dr10 | 1.875 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
OK, that gobelty gook. Here's what it all comes down to though. During a full round where each characters gets to make a full attack.
| Damage Dealt | |||
| 2hand | 2hand PA3 | Dual wield | |
| AC30 | 34.2 | 33.75 | 28.35 |
| AC25 | 45.6 | 52.5 | 44.1 |
| AC25 - DR10 | 15.6 | 22.5 | 1.875 |
The answer is pretty clear. A two-hander power attacking for 3 beats everything else in damage. This becomes especially true if the creature has DR.
I will also add that at this point the dual wielder needs 3 feats, the 2-hander only needs 1.
This doesn't mean you shouldn't dual wield, there are lots of other scenarios where dual wielding is better. This just means that for a high-str character, if you want to max your damage, you should two-hand and power attack.
-Dude
Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Plot: The story of Wolverine. His child hood, his years in the army. Scratch that, lots of armies and how he came to be involved in the Weapon X program and loses his memory.
Dude WTF
Core Scale: .4
Wolverine bounces between cheesily fun and cheesily boring. It misses the fun mark by getting bogged down in attempting to have a plot with serious emotions. On the bright side there are lots of exposions, over the top fights with mutants and a scene where he kills a helicopter with his claws . . . while it's at least one hundred feet in the air.
If you choose to go see this movie, and lets face it, if your reading this blog then your the type of person that HAS to see it, you might want to consider bringing some comics along to look through while the movie attempts to have long emotional scenes. | D12
Core Scale: 0.3
When Dude WTF and I originally saw this preview, we sat in the theater going "Meh." Until one point: at the very end of the trailer, Wolverine flies through the air at a helicopter, claws first. That made it worth it. And so, that's what made the movie worth it. Crazy action, Hugh Jackman chewing on a cigar through several wars, and a bunch of mutants. Unfortunately, Gambit is only in it for a little bit, I enjoyed his character. Otherwise, it's a bit predictable, and as mentioned, there are some drawn-out scenes. But, if you like crazy mutant battles, then it'll be worth your while. |
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Builds that don't suck - Radiant Servant
Class: Radiant Servant of Pelor (dnd 3.5)
Flavor – The ultimate example of a righteous, undead blasting, heal-casting sun-god loving son of a bitch
Books needed – Core + Complete Divine
Cheese meter – Medium unless your in a heavy undead game, then high– the class basically makes you slightly better at stereotypical cleric duties. You heal, turn and use light spells slightly better. It’s overbalanced, but not broken. In an undead heavy game, it edges towards the broken side.
Best Variant – None: get into the class ASAP then go back to cleric. Could easily fit under any sun-god concept
Role – Healer and undead smasher.
Pros – More powerful heals when cast from the domain slot, better light spells, improved turning
Cons – None really. Have to worship pelor.
The skinny – This class is effectively “A good aligned cleric, but better” if you are planning to do much party healing or undead bashing there’s really no reason not to take this route. While that may seem a bit cheesey, any regular cleric players can attest that 1. Normal turning is fail at high levels and 2. in hard high-level campaigns getting 9 improved healing spells a day is practically a necessity.
As a radiant servant all of your light spells are lightier, any healing spell you cast from the domain slot gets free metamagic feats attached to it and on top of all this you get bonus greater turnings a day. The increased healing kicks butt and on top of that, the healing, the turning and the light spells make you into a real undead-destroyer. Even a blaster wizard has to pull out all the stops to top your undead damage.
Concept - Pelor hates undead, hates the dark and likes to help people. His servants do the same. If you want to be the super cleric, this is the class for you.
Break down – You have to be neutral good, be a level 6 cleric and worship pelor. The other requirements, extra turning and skill ranks in heal and knowledge: religion aren’t that big of a deal and fit the concept well.
As I have said, the class is basically just a supped-up cleric. You get full casting and turning. In addition you gain cha mod + 3 greater turns a day (blow up undead instead of scaring them). As the class progresses any healing spell you cast from a domain slot becomes meporwered, then maximized and eventually empowered and maximized. Light spells have a double radius and you get an extra domain! You become immune to magic and non-magic disease and you get a +2 will save aura.
Finally you get the ability to spend 2 turns to do a 1d6 per class level undead-damaging explosion of 100 foot radius. Yeah. Boom.
Build – Cleric until level 6, then radiant servant 7 – 16, followed by cleric. It’s pretty straight forward. I also can’t stress the awesomeness of the glory domain, especially if you want to even further increase your ability to kill undead.
Variant builds – At level 16 you’re a pretty kick ass cleric. If you don’t want to go back to cleric I recommend picking a prestige class that offers full spell casting and stacks turning.
Feats – Because you gain the ability to do so many greater turnings in a day, taking feats that improve the power for you turns is still a viable option.
Divine metamagic: yeah it’s a bit cheesey, so try not to over do it. As a personal rule of thumb I try not to allow any of my clerics to do it more than 3 times per day and I never stack it with other metamagic effects like using a metamagic rod.
Check out the healing feats in the complete champion, some of them are pretty sweet.
Flavor – The ultimate example of a righteous, undead blasting, heal-casting sun-god loving son of a bitch
Books needed – Core + Complete Divine
Cheese meter – Medium unless your in a heavy undead game, then high– the class basically makes you slightly better at stereotypical cleric duties. You heal, turn and use light spells slightly better. It’s overbalanced, but not broken. In an undead heavy game, it edges towards the broken side.
Best Variant – None: get into the class ASAP then go back to cleric. Could easily fit under any sun-god concept
Role – Healer and undead smasher.
Pros – More powerful heals when cast from the domain slot, better light spells, improved turning
Cons – None really. Have to worship pelor.
The skinny – This class is effectively “A good aligned cleric, but better” if you are planning to do much party healing or undead bashing there’s really no reason not to take this route. While that may seem a bit cheesey, any regular cleric players can attest that 1. Normal turning is fail at high levels and 2. in hard high-level campaigns getting 9 improved healing spells a day is practically a necessity.
As a radiant servant all of your light spells are lightier, any healing spell you cast from the domain slot gets free metamagic feats attached to it and on top of all this you get bonus greater turnings a day. The increased healing kicks butt and on top of that, the healing, the turning and the light spells make you into a real undead-destroyer. Even a blaster wizard has to pull out all the stops to top your undead damage.
Concept - Pelor hates undead, hates the dark and likes to help people. His servants do the same. If you want to be the super cleric, this is the class for you.
Break down – You have to be neutral good, be a level 6 cleric and worship pelor. The other requirements, extra turning and skill ranks in heal and knowledge: religion aren’t that big of a deal and fit the concept well.
As I have said, the class is basically just a supped-up cleric. You get full casting and turning. In addition you gain cha mod + 3 greater turns a day (blow up undead instead of scaring them). As the class progresses any healing spell you cast from a domain slot becomes meporwered, then maximized and eventually empowered and maximized. Light spells have a double radius and you get an extra domain! You become immune to magic and non-magic disease and you get a +2 will save aura.
Finally you get the ability to spend 2 turns to do a 1d6 per class level undead-damaging explosion of 100 foot radius. Yeah. Boom.
Build – Cleric until level 6, then radiant servant 7 – 16, followed by cleric. It’s pretty straight forward. I also can’t stress the awesomeness of the glory domain, especially if you want to even further increase your ability to kill undead.
Variant builds – At level 16 you’re a pretty kick ass cleric. If you don’t want to go back to cleric I recommend picking a prestige class that offers full spell casting and stacks turning.
Feats – Because you gain the ability to do so many greater turnings in a day, taking feats that improve the power for you turns is still a viable option.
Divine metamagic: yeah it’s a bit cheesey, so try not to over do it. As a personal rule of thumb I try not to allow any of my clerics to do it more than 3 times per day and I never stack it with other metamagic effects like using a metamagic rod.
Check out the healing feats in the complete champion, some of them are pretty sweet.
Review: The Core
The Core (2003)
Plot: The core of the earth has stopped spinning, oh noes, and chaos ensues. The earth is heading for disaster and only a special team of scientists and military personnel can save us. Join the world’s first terranauts as they drill to the center of the earth to blow up some nukes to jump start the earth. Nukes, what can’t they do.
|
Dude WTF
Core Scale: 1.0 The plot is terrible, the dialogue is so bad its funny and the science is so bad that it makes your head hurt. Somehow though, it all comes together in the perfect way. We can only hope that this was what they were hoping for.
If you haven’t seen this before, go rent it, buy it or Netflix it. I recommend watching it with friends and a few alcoholic drinks.
Best bits, spoiler free:
| d12
Core Scale: 1.0
1.0 you say? Well yeah! This movie is what makes people who like bad science movies go "whoa." It is what little bad science movies aspire to grow up to be ("Mommy, can I have nukes too?"). It has everything -- plot, nukes, impossible materials, impossible science, hilariously bad dialogue, and some decent acting too (Oscar-winner, anyone?) The characters are standard, the hotshot pilot, the cool captian, the crazy copilot, the mad-with-popularity scientist and his pissed-off former partner, and the Rat. Also, you can't beat Tchéky Karyo for a crazy French guy. The only thing that could have made this movie better is people melting in lava... oh wait is has that too. Final point: Watch this movie. Now. |
Monday, May 18, 2009
The Core Scale: an explanation
The Core Scale is a rating system that d12 and I use to rate movies. However, it is specifically used for rating how great a terrible movie is.
"Shenigans," you cry! "WTF do you mean 'how great a terrible movie is?'"
We all know that there are movies out there that we love despite being terrible. The core is perhaps the ultimate version of that for d12 and I. It is a movie that is so rife with bad acting, terrible plot holes, cheesey dialogue and horrid horrid science that one would expect that it would be nothing but excrement, human or otherwise. Yet out of this metaphoric crap a single rose of awesomeness has bloomed.
The Core scale is a decimal scale with 0 being the lowest and 1 being the theoretical highest. A rating of 1 means that the movie is both terrible and awesome for its terribleness.
-Dude WTF
"Shenigans," you cry! "WTF do you mean 'how great a terrible movie is?'"
We all know that there are movies out there that we love despite being terrible. The core is perhaps the ultimate version of that for d12 and I. It is a movie that is so rife with bad acting, terrible plot holes, cheesey dialogue and horrid horrid science that one would expect that it would be nothing but excrement, human or otherwise. Yet out of this metaphoric crap a single rose of awesomeness has bloomed.
The Core scale is a decimal scale with 0 being the lowest and 1 being the theoretical highest. A rating of 1 means that the movie is both terrible and awesome for its terribleness.
-Dude WTF
Physics in videogames
Jormungandr83 from gameFAQs has a fun list of things in physics that video games ignore. Among those:
Convection and heat. Yup, standing next to lava WOULD in fact hurt you. But then again, the lava is somehow being contained in a bath of some sort. Last time I checked, lava melted shit :-)
Inertia. Don't even get me started on this one. Some games attempt, but usually miss the mark. Although it was funny being able to cheese-bounce the flag around in Halo to get it to the other members of your team
Things that weren't on the list but should be:
Aggro radii that don't include sound ("Was that a rocket? Nah... just follow our preset path, it'll be alright")
Fences I can't jump over, even though I can jump roughly 5 billion feet into the air
Miraculous powers of landing (at least Portal addressed those)
Platforms that raise/lower without any power
Being lifted in the air by a big fan
On the other hand, what kind fun would video games be if I couldn't behead things with an arrow? :-)
-d12
Convection and heat. Yup, standing next to lava WOULD in fact hurt you. But then again, the lava is somehow being contained in a bath of some sort. Last time I checked, lava melted shit :-)
Inertia. Don't even get me started on this one. Some games attempt, but usually miss the mark. Although it was funny being able to cheese-bounce the flag around in Halo to get it to the other members of your team
Things that weren't on the list but should be:
Aggro radii that don't include sound ("Was that a rocket? Nah... just follow our preset path, it'll be alright")
Fences I can't jump over, even though I can jump roughly 5 billion feet into the air
Miraculous powers of landing (at least Portal addressed those)
Platforms that raise/lower without any power
Being lifted in the air by a big fan
On the other hand, what kind fun would video games be if I couldn't behead things with an arrow? :-)
-d12
Table test
HAHA NOOB
WTF dude text fjdksgdgdfgjdfgjkjksdfkgshdfjkghsjklfhjklghsdfjklgwdfg shrgueryhguwitglvuthiugbwnrtg wthguwhtugwil45ugy27t58912u5trgbjiofber89nhtcp3 | d12 text gjsigkj4890t1mu348888xnigjgkjg;sldkfgjs;dflkgjsdf;gkljasdfgl;kdfjg fjgocrjieo gkju4i5ugiojrxiogmtuioeuxgioeruxgmioerugioxueri HAHAHA fjrijfgorjpgoe |
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