More Threads that make us Laugh, Cry, or Both

[ckafrica]

what was the wish and the word btw?

[Maxus]

Thank you for sharing that with us. It certainly provides some insight into how WotC is going downhill.

And, for the record, any time you want to share more dirt, feel free. We like dirt, especially about figures associated with the roleplaying game industry.

(...Weird and off-topic. I just realized I've heard stuff about Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, but I've never seen anything much on R.A. Salvatore--apart from killing Chewbacca and being the ultimate grandfather of a whole legion of CG twin-scimitar-wielding drow.)

[Leress]

what was the wish and the word btw?

Here...
http://forums.gleemax.com/wotc_archive/ ... p/t-344843

[Maxus]

what was the wish and the word btw?

http://forums.gleemax.com/wotc_archive/ ... p/t-332012

Frank and K entered a ChapOp contest with a couple of casters who could kill anything in a couple of rounds at the most.

The CharOp boards did not take kindly to having an outsider show them up.

[SphereOfFeetMan]

The CharOp boards did not take kindly to having an outsider show them up.

My understanding:

I don't think that was the main issue. From what I can gather, the Wish and the Word were simultaneously the most powerful and the most ugly builds. The characters showcase some of the ugliest rules in dnd, and were possibly made for that purpose. (?)

I think the Wish and the Word were the logical end point of all the Character Optimization using ill written rules. As such it is a mockery of all the ugly builds, and the rules that are used. Not solely because the Wish and Word were more powerful, but because it showed that building characters in such a rubric is meaningless and stupid.

[Maxus]

You're right. There was an element of demonstration/education in the Wish and the Word.

Of course, it didn't help that anyone even slightly affiliated with Wizards of the Coast doesn't like the suggestion that WotC don't know what crap they're writing and they do it without considering how it affects other crap or even itself.

[Username17]

Then he decided all of the boards would go away and would be replaced by new, shiny boards. He asked for feedback, I surveyed the areas and provided and he ignored it and posted his own plan and with no more conversation, implemented it. Regardless of past feelings, I think people here can at least recognize that combining Character Optimization and Character Development into one board is borderline retarded.

And this is where you and I differ. I'm guessing this is the primary bone of contention between you and Mike.

I will grant you that if you wanted to keep the old CharOp boards that these actions are completely insane. But imagine if that wasn't your goal? Imagine for the moment that your goal was to destroy that community and later build a new CharOp board out of 4e loyalists. Wouldn't it make sense to take the hardcore RP and CharOp people and throw them together into an incomprehensible super board for a bit and turn over all the face staff? Heck, at that point you can wait for things to settle down and a new crop of people come in for 4e. When you have a new set of people getting on each other's last nerves you can split the boards again like the 3rd edition days and have the people thank you for it.

Take a step back and look at the shit storm you are causing right now. Imagine if that had happened around the release of 4e or shortly thereafter. That would be a disaster, right? The fact is that this is how the CharOp board responds to things it doesn't like. Its group opinion moves quickly and its judgments are severe. Like it or not, you guys existing as an autonomous clique was a threat to 4th edition. It wasn't necessarily going to go south, but it easily could have come to a head just like this if the CharOp consensus turned against 4e or even worse - split 50/50.

If you make the assumption that Mike isn't a raving idiot and actually does have a plan, the set of actions makes sense. He decides that the CharOp board is a potential threat, so he makes a plan to destroy it as a threat. He asks you what you think will happen if the plan goes through. You tell him that the plan will weaken if not destroy the CharOp community. Since this is his actual goal, he goes forward with the plan. You, being emotionally and personally invested in the CharOp community begin to start the gears of CharOp protest - demonstrating that the CharOp board (and by extension you) are indeed the kind of threat that Mike predicted you might be. Thus, when he takes his report to the higher ups, he is able to report success. Threat discovered and preempted, the way forward for 4e is now more secure on the boards.

The CharOp protests right now prove Gamer Zero right. I honestly don't see anything you can do there. Sticking around will get you hit with the ban stick, leaving will have you remembered as a principled martyr for a while, but eventually you will be forgotten there as new blood comes in and a new consensus is built upon the precepts of 4e. It's painful to get crushed under the wheels of forum history moving forward, but it happens.

-Username17

[NoDot]

From GitP Forums: The Floundering of Sir Giacomo!

[Koumei]

Hmm, the Wish and the Word are pretty cool. It's a shame those bugs exist which can cause things to collapse, though I'm thankful they don't seem to be that common - only enough to be the odd annoyance (occasionally someone trying an infinite wishes trick until the DM decides to use Wish economy and fix a number of problems at once, the occasional "I'm not letting the monster use Blasphemy with that caster level at that CR, that's a TPK in one standard action" etc.)

Although you two showed them to the Internet, which provides the equivalent of net-decking in card games, or looking up perfect teams for Pokemon.

[Maxus]

From GitP Forums: The Floundering of Sir Giacomo!

Amazing how he said Monks could be the least MAD class, and didn't consider that simple survival in i means a successful Monk owes it to rolling his stats like he gives blowjobs to the God of Fortune.

Melee=Str and Con
Stealthy scout=Dex and Wisdom helps
AC=He'd better have bloody amazing Wisdom and Dexterity scores.

[Meg]

And this is where you and I differ. I'm guessing this is the primary bone of contention between you and Mike.

The primary bone was actually deleting 10 boards when he made clear that everything on the boards now needed a place to go, and even after pointing out his reorg made it so these 10 boards had nowhere to go, he has yet to respond to that point.

But you know, I almost wish you were right about CharOp and 4e. At least it would make sense.

But through my interactions with Mike and the fact that a group of CharOp'ers were asked to review 4e and Mike proved he had no idea what was going on and no connection to anyone in R&D proves to me that you are giving him far too much credit.

Through quite a few interactions with folks in the office, it's clear to me that they've set themselves up with a messy little hierarchy where the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. I think of it like a college- even the best colleges can be a pain to wade through because everyone insists you only talk to the right person, but then can't tell you who the right person is. And then they all go into an office to have meetings about their next meeting.

What Mike does on the boards isn't part of some grand scheme. Again, that's just giving him a lot of credit. He's making decisions without figuring out what the established system is (which he admitted to me in person) because in his words, "I don't care." He thinks he knows what is best and will beat it in regardless of the protests and having people show him that he's just wrong.

This situation with the d20 boards is just the icing on the cake. The rest of that thread show there were about 3 other times he did almost the exact same thing.

Separate though, I've talked with a few people in R&D and they love the CharOp boards. They wish they could have everything passed through that crew before it goes to print, and we were able to read and rip apart the 4e PhB, at the excitement of Andy Collins and others.

[Calibron]

Well, Meg, regardless of whether he's an evil genius or a heavy handed idiot the best way to fight what's happened is to propagate the story that all of this was done for business. Not much galvanizes the masses as well as stories of the big evil corporation stepping all over the little people so that they can raise their profit margin by another three or four percent.

Anyway, I'm sorry you had to go through all that crap and that your community was broken. I used to visit the CharOp boards regularly, and its a shame to see them go.

[Talisman]

From GitP Forums: The Floundering of Sir Giacomo!

I like this line:

The monk can have WIS of 8, or, for that matter, an 8 IN ALL STATS and still use all his class abilities to his heart’s content. You get the idea...

I guess, if you don't care about...y'know...being a viable character...or contributing in combat...

[Maxus]

From GitP Forums: The Floundering of Sir Giacomo!

I like this line:

The monk can have WIS of 8, or, for that matter, an 8 IN ALL STATS and still use all his class abilities to his heart’s content. You get the idea...

I guess, if you don't care about...y'know...being a viable character...or contributing in combat...

I kinda liked how he claimed twice the monk's level in HP recovery, once a day, means you don't need healing.

[Koumei]

I can only assume the reasoning was "No ability specifically fails to work or is denied if any given stat is too low.", whereas a fighter with 12 Intelligence can't take Combat Expertise, and a Sorcerer with Charisma 13 cannot cast 4th level spells.

So the monk can add its -1 (minimum of +0, I assume?) Wis mod to AC, sure, and no abilities have ability score requirements. You just need good ability scores in order to not completely suck, merely underperform substantially.

[Username17]

In general I find that assuming that people on the other side of the internet from you are stupid is dangerous. Especially if that person is your opponent. Overestimating someone is less of a fiasco than underestimating them. If someone does things which consistently have a similar effect, it is usually better to assume that the effect they are achieving is in fact their goal, rather than to assume that all of their actions have failed spectacularly and have heretofore happened to fail in the same way.

So the fact that Mike did many different actions which each damaged the community means that regardless of whether he was intentionally attempting to destroy it, it is better to treat him as if it was intentional and that was the goal. After all, even if that was not his plan, the fact is that treating him as if it was causes you to lose nothing and gives you the best chance of being able to successfully predict future actions.

That being said, if I were in charge of destroying the CharOp board as a credible threat to the 4e Marketing engine, I would have done it like this:

First step is, of course, to reorganize the entire d20 boards in a manner that would break the CharOp hegemony. Mike selected to lump everything into a pile in the hopes of diluting things, but personally I would have simply divied things up in a new and arbitrary fashion to force people to form new cliques built around the new edition. So enter Creativity Corner. It's a replacement for the old d20 stuff and it's divided into complete different set of boards:

• Controllers
  Discuss characters who fill the role of controller here!
• Defenders
  Discuss characters who fill the role of defender here!
• Future/Modern Gaming
  A board for discussing gaming in a modern or futuristic setting.
• Equipment
  A board for discussing the creation and use of equipment in D&D.
• Leaders
  Discuss characters who fill the role of leader here!
• Monsters
  A board for discussing the creation and playing of monsters in D&D.
• Strikers
  Discuss characters who fill the role of striker here!

Then you take people like Autumn and put them in charge of just a small section of it. Like the Leaders forum. And then, no one really has a place to talk about their Thri-Kreen Sword Sage or whatever, because while it's not explicitly all 4e, there's really just no place for any of the old stuff. You put out a press release about how the CharOp boards had too much traffic and you wanted to carve it up so that things were more even, and you possibly even get a bunch of people to believe that's what you are doing.

But that would take time and dedication. I understand why someone might want to just get everything over and done with in a big fight.

-Username17

[Maxus]

I can only assume the reasoning was "No ability specifically fails to work or is denied if any given stat is too low.", whereas a fighter with 12 Intelligence can't take Combat Expertise, and a Sorcerer with Charisma 13 cannot cast 4th level spells.

So the monk can add its -1 (minimum of +0, I assume?) Wis mod to AC, sure, and no abilities have ability score requirements. You just need good ability scores in order to not completely suck, merely underperform substantially.

Well, let's see...

He claims the monk can serve as a back-up skillmonkey, caster-harasser, and rapidly moving initial-strike skirmisher, and stealthy scout. As I recall, roles and their attribute dependencies went like:

Melee: You'd better have good Str and Con.

Stealthy scout: Dex and Wis had better be good.

AC: You'd better have bloody amazing Dex and Wisdom bonuses if you want to keep in the same neighborhood as full plate. The score requirements are upgraded to "batshit insane" when you take into account enhanced full plate and shields.

Skills: Int is really useful for that.

Abuse Magic Device, which seems to be a cornerstone of his builds: You don't need it, but Charisma would help.

It seems for his ideal monk to do all the things he say it can with any sort of effectiveness, the player must roll stats like he gives blowjobs to the God of Fortune.
-----------------------------------------------
Personally, I have to wonder what his reaction to the Dungeonomicon Monk would be. Or, again, the Grapple Wizard.

[Jacob_Orlove]

My favorite bit of silliness from his "guide" is how he'll buy single-charged wands of Divine Power, for both a 40% discount over a scroll, and a UMD check that's a full 4 points easier (with lower consequences for failure, too).

He uses that "trick" for all his spells, actually. Even at level 2, where activating his 5-charged wand of Enlarge Person is not anywhere near reliable. Potions? Too expensive!

Maxus: he makes fun of the grapple wizard in there somewhere. Apparently the monk is "faster".

[Talisman]

Pure mechanics aside, I'd be curious to hear any player explain how their "monk" with sub-average Strength, Wisdom and/or Dexterity even completed their monastic training!

Sifu: "You've been studying here for seven months...time to show what you've learned. Find your center."

"Monk": Uh...is it under here? (lifts dojo pad).

Sifu: (sigh) "Never mind...assume the Crane stance."

"Monk": (several minutes of staggering, wobbling, falling)

Sifu: "All right...look, just break this piece of balsa wood."

"Monk": "Hi-YAH!" [thud] "Oww! My fingers!"

Sifu: "Get out of here."

[Jacob_Orlove]

Ooh, found an even better quote:

If a party [wizard] casts enlarge on the [monk], [the monk] will defeat (as I showed answering Reel on, Love's post) all monsters up to CR 3, with no save.

His logic there is that the monk will have a +13 grapple, and a bunch of those monster have "only" a +12. Instant win!

[Prak]

So, Meg, I take it you're Autumn?

Well, first I do want to apologize for some of the trouble I caused, and actual attacks I leveled at you on the mature forums, and over the topic thereof, as Prak, the Mad, and Dam-Eht_Karp and MadPrak_Mark2, they were all over a misunderstanding of your position on the boards.

I've been wondering how you felt about the deletion of the mature boards, and G0's decision that mature topics can be discussed in the areas they other wise fit into so long as some ephemeral line isn't crossed.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

In all seriousness, if you have 1 good score, be a caster! A druid can use wildshape to not suck, a cleric can use full plate and a variety of spells (temp hp, AC, saves, whatever is needed), and a wizard is really supposed to die in 1 hit anyways so teammates will frequently adopt a "defend the wizard" strategy in the early levels where self-defense is difficult.

If you have ~2 good scores, a scouting character is good, but the 1st highest to Dex and the 2nd to Cha/Int and you can skill monkey your way past many enemies and Sneak Touch Ranged Attack away your terrible BAB and Strength. Remain hidden to protect that low Con while actual ranks in Spot and Sense Motive make that -1 Wisdom modifier disappear.

If you have SEVERAL good scores, you are cut out for a front-liner. You'll need that strength for hitting, the Con for taking beatings that the wizard or rogue should be getting, Dex for that critical extra AC and fighting flying/ranged attacking enemies, and your Wisdom for resisting magic user spells. Put those 8s in Int and Cha because you are dumb and ugly.

If you have ALL good scores, you can be a monk. You need high strength for the fact that your Flurry of Blows misses so often and is the primary source of damage because you don't want to take Power Attack like a real fighter and can't pick up a 1d10 x3 weapon like a dwarven barbarian (which has full BAB). Your Con gives you the hitpoints, your Dex makes your AC not completely useless when you aren't wearing armor. Your Wisdom can help in that aspect but it had better be damned high because a +1 AC at level 5 isn't enough to save you and the two stat mods added together had better equal AT LEAST 6 because that is what a rogue with a 14 in Dex is getting with a Chain Shirt . Also, if you take the Stunning Fist route (don't), you need that Wis for fueling your attacks in addition to strength. Your Int keeps your skill level high enough to identify a monster every once in a while like a pretend skill monkey. Look on the bright side, you can still be ugly.

Wizards punish your time for playing them, but demand very little in the way of stats and reward your effort with real power. Fighters and Skill monkeys are fun as a base role. Monks are simply the most demanding from stats and give you only punishment for playing them.

[Surgo]

Hey, at least everyone else in that Monk thread on giantitp are recognizing how stupid the OP is. That's one big step up for the giantitp forums.

Also I totally missed the Den advertisements in that thread o_O


edit: Here's something from a forum you don't see usually. I'd have posted it in MPSIMS, but I'd basically be copy/pasting the thread. Not so much stupidity that's making me laugh or cry but...yeah:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40764

[Meg]

So, Meg, I take it you're Autumn?

Well, first I do want to apologize for some of the trouble I caused, and actual attacks I leveled at you on the mature forums, and over the topic thereof, as Prak, the Mad, and Dam-Eht_Karp and MadPrak_Mark2, they were all over a misunderstanding of your position on the boards.

I've been wondering how you felt about the deletion of the mature boards, and G0's decision that mature topics can be discussed in the areas they other wise fit into so long as some ephemeral line isn't crossed.

Was Autumn, yes.

Honestly? I thought you were fairly awesome. You made some good points. Many of the rules on the Mature boards were retarded but I had to enforce them as part of the job so I could never say otherwise then. I didn't take anything you said personally because I knew it just came from lack of information that I wasn't able to provide.

The closing of the mature boards was retarded too. Oh well, I made some on my boards that don't have any silly no-nudity rules. I can be a lot more free to get rid of the immature junk too without having to roll epic diplomacy every time.

[Prak]

So what is your forum, meg? I might have to check that out(and feel much better now that you said you thought I was fairly awesome.)

Yeah, I didn't fully realize what was going on with it. Was it such a feeling for cat?