Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 2:19 pm

I'm trying to make a D&D 3.5 character. A wizard, specializing either in illusions or necromancy (the part without raising the dead).

Problems:
-I've never played 3.5 before
-3.5 has a loooooot of books

Where should I be looking? Are there some good builds I can check? Is illusionist or necromancer a good idea?

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 3:05 pm

Longes wrote:I'm trying to make a D&D 3.5 character. A wizard, specializing either in illusions or necromancy (the part without raising the dead).

Problems:
-I've never played 3.5 before
-3.5 has a loooooot of books

Where should I be looking? Are there some good builds I can check? Is illusionist or necromancer a good idea?

You can potentially make a pretty good illusionist just from the PHB. The thing about DnD illusions is that people get will saves when they "interact" with an illusion, which is vaguely defined. Depending on your DM, people looking at an illusion might get no save, one save, or one per round.

Sam · Post by **Sam** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 3:13 pm

Just take 20 levels of Beguiler instead. It's an illusion/enchantment wizard except better and super beginner friendly. You don't have to worry about picking the right spell, because you have automatic access to your entire spell list at all times. No dumpster diving needed, the class just has everything out of the box.

Class is from the players handbook II.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 3:40 pm

What level are you, Longes? You can pretty much play a straight illusionist at the low levels, but there are a few hiccups with the whole 'specializing in illusions' thing.

As name_here mentioned, the power of illusions varies wildly. I've seen it become completely useless and I've seen it completely trivialize encounters. Often at the same session.
Illusions don't scale very well conceptually. Silent image does almost all of the things you want out of Major Image. Nearly every other specialty scales pretty smoothly so that there's a reason to keep investing. The exception is the Shadow subschool, with the problems discussed in the next bullet point.
The Shadow subschool has to be the most brokeity broke thing that people allow into their games ever. It's so fucking broken that various exploits that raise the percent real chance above 100% are less idiotic and game-breaking than keeping it below 100%. I feel dirty the few times I used it for anything other than melee damage. The weird thing is that shadow magic seems to be one of the few occasions where rule negative two is persistently waived; which is stupid, because if there's one rule effect that deserves to be rule negative two'd, it's this one. Nonetheless, its power varies wildly at individual tables.

Personally, I love playing illusionists but it's one of those things that I'd never ever play or recommend for a group I don't know the dynamics of. If I was flying blind and I had to drop a school of magic that wasn't abjuration or evocation, it'd be illusion.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 5:49 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:The Shadow subschool has to be the most brokeity broke thing that people allow into their games ever. It's so fucking broken that various exploits that raise the percent real chance above 100% are less idiotic and game-breaking than keeping it below 100%. I feel dirty the few times I used it for anything other than melee damage. The weird thing is that shadow magic seems to be one of the few occasions where rule negative two is persistently waived; which is stupid, because if there's one rule effect that deserves to be rule negative two'd, it's this one. Nonetheless, its power varies wildly at individual tables.

Please, do elaborate.

No level. I'm just making a character, and thinking if I have the time to joing a roll20 game.

radthemad4 · Post by **radthemad4** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 6:30 pm

Longes wrote:I'm trying to make a D&D 3.5 character. A wizard, specializing either in illusions or necromancy (the part without raising the dead).

Problems:
-I've never played 3.5 before
-3.5 has a loooooot of books

Where should I be looking? Are there some good builds I can check? Is illusionist or necromancer a good idea?

In general, a good source for any 3.5 class is minmaxboards.com's list of handbooks. I enjoy reading them as they outline the pros and cons of each class and suggested builds pretty well. I'll second the beguiler as it's pretty good out of the box. The beguiler's handbook is here. If you don't feel like book diving, just use dndtools.eu (just google 'class/spell/feat name' + dndtools and you'll probably get it if it's not on the srd).

Also, I think this should be in IMHO.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 7:28 pm

radthemad4 wrote:Also, I think this should be in IMHO.

It definitely should be. I thought it was...

What's the name of IMHO questions thread?

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 8:22 pm

Longes wrote:
radthemad4 wrote:Also, I think this should be in IMHO.
It definitely should be. I thought it was... What's the name of IMHO questions thread?

Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered, currently on IMHO page 2.

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 8:03 am

Who is the richest / most famous businessperson who's admired for what they did to get rich, rather than what they spent the money on when they got rich? Like, if I needed to make the best case for Libertarianism, who should I point at to say "See, this is why private enterprise should be allowed to run the country" and have the smallest chance to burst into laughter there and then?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 9:29 am

Elon Musk, maybe? I don't know much about him, but it seems you'd want to look at tech nerds who are, hilariously, actually liberals and progressives usually, I think.

Like I said, I don't know, just spitballing.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 11:02 am

When people talk about the heritability of certain conditions such as IQ, do they strictly mean genetics or is stuff like environment and parenting standings folded into the definition?

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 2:23 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:When people talk about the heritability of certain conditions such as IQ, do they strictly mean genetics or is stuff like environment and parenting standings folded into the definition?

The mathematician's answer is this: Typically, when people talk about heritability, even they don't know what they mean.

When I was gearing up for an argument, I referred to this as a source:

[Heritability] is the ratio of genetically caused variation to total variation (including both environmental and genetic variation).

For example, the number of fingers on a human hand or toes on a human foot is genetically determined: the genes code for five fingers and toes in almost everyone, and five fingers and toes develop in any normal environment. But the heritability of number of fingers and toes in humans is almost certainly very low. That's because most of the variation in numbers of toes is environmentally caused, often by problems in fetal development. For example, when pregnant women took thalidomide some years ago, many babies had fewer than five fingers and toes. And if we look at numbers of fingers and toes in adults, we find many missing digits as a result of accidents. But genetic coding for six toes is rare in humans (though apparently not in cats). So genetically caused variation appears to be small compared to environmentally caused variation. If someone asks, then, whether numbers of toes is genetic or not, the right answer is: "it depends what you mean by genetic." The number of toes is genetically determined, but heritability is low because genes are not responsible for much of the variation.

Conversely, a characteristic can be highly heritable even if it is not genetically determined. Some years ago when only women wore earrings, the heritability of having an earring was high because differences in whether a person had an earring were "due" to a genetic (chromosomal) difference. Now that earrings are less gender-specific, the heritability of having an earring has no doubt decreased. But neither then nor now was having earrings genetically determined in anything like the manner of having five fingers. The heritability literature is full of cases like this: high measured heritabilities for characteristics whose genetic determination is doubtful. For example, the same methodology that yields 60 percent heritability for IQ also yields 50 percent heritability of academic performance and 40 percent heritability of occupational status. Obviously, occupational status is not genetically determined: genes do not code for working in a printed circuit factory.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 2:30 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:When people talk about the heritability of certain conditions such as IQ, do they strictly mean genetics or is stuff like environment and parenting standings folded into the definition?

What people? You'd probably have to ask any given person making the claim. I mean, it's fairly well understood that all of those things impact IQ, so it's really a matter of how the person uses the word "heritability".

My gut would be "no", but I can't speak for other people.

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 6:48 pm

Starmaker wrote:Who is the richest / most famous businessperson who's admired for what they did to get rich, rather than what they spent the money on when they got rich? Like, if I needed to make the best case for Libertarianism, who should I point at to say "See, this is why private enterprise should be allowed to run the country" and have the smallest chance to burst into laughter there and then?

Steve Wosniak maybe? While Steve Jobs is much more famous, Woz is the guy who actually built the original Apple computers, and unlike Jobs, wasn't a massive asshole while doing it. He was just a guy who liked computers, thought there was a better way of doing things, so made his own.

Alternatively, Barack Obama.

On the other hand, Libertarianism is utterly horrible, so don't make that argument and you'd be better off.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 8:38 pm

There's also Jeff Bezos, who invented Amazon dot com and made online shopping an actual mainstream thing.

And Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who created Google.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 8:40 pm

I would not give Google as a positive example for how private enterprise is good.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 8:52 pm

The guys who made youtube / whatsapp?
ID-Tech/John Romero(or was that carmack? i always get them mixed up)/Oculus Rift?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 5:20 am

John Romero is the creator of John Romero's Daikatana, at which point you need to start laughing. "John Romero will make you his bitch!" The long-haired guy who got fired by the very company he formed because the game he made basically acted as a prophecy of Duke Nukem Forever.

John Carmack (not to be confused with the delicious Caramac bars) is the one you're thinking of, starting out with some friends in a shed, producing Doom as "a game we'd like to play, and maybe some other people would too?" and the rest is very much history.

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 5:43 am

That's a slightly strange way to describe the difference between them, since John Romero was one of the friends in that shed.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 8:18 am

Yes, but Carmack went on to be successful, and Romero went on to be a legendary joke in gaming history. Had he not done so, people would talk about "the success of both Johns, who went and formed Id Software". Even though they did in fact both go and form Id Software.

But when history speaks of Romero, it shall only mention the Doom II ending and Daikatana.

(It was either that or admitting that I forgot Romero was part of the original team.)

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 8:21 am

Don't feel bad, I always get John Romero and George Romero mixed up.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Oct 20, 2014 5:36 pm

Is the story about Tories cheering when Nazis bombed British ships in Spain purely apocryphal, have some degree of truth in it, or true?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 3:01 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Don't feel bad, I always get John Romero and George Romero mixed up.

On a similar note, I keep mixing up James Cameron and David Cameron. Not that either one is exactly loved and celebrated.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 5:48 am

I mix Gibsons all the time. The cyberpunk writer and the crazy actor.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 1:49 pm

Dean Kamon is probably the best example.
He originally got rich designing/making insulin pumps. He got famous for the Segway (which is 1/2 of the actual project: a wheelchair that raises users to normal eye level and also climbs stairs). He spent a while building an actually decent prosthetic hand, but recently afaik has been making tiny amounts of money bringing electricity to Africa.
(I think that he's been funding that with the every-flavor soda machines that popped up in every fast food place recently, but that's based on my reading between the lines in a lot of places, and may be just wrong)

Of course, Edison and Ford have strong arguments for them as well, but that may involve more argument. I've also heard of e.g. someone who gives free utilities to poor households, and uses them as loads to sell wave-shaping to the power companies, but that's pretty arcane and obscure. Kamon's stuff is pretty unequivocally good, and people may have heard of him.