PLaying D&D 5th edition, on a Wreck-Free Sunday

The RPG group has moved into the world of D&D 5th edition from 3.5 (there was no 4th edition, in spite of the books of some other RPG saying they were D&D 4th, and anyone who says otherwise is a tool of the mass misinformation machine). To give the new version the best possible test we all played either the same type of character, or the closest thing to the same kind of character in 5th that we played in 3.5, so I played a warlock, again. We had a druid, a paladin, a barbarian, and my warlock.

Notes on warlock building in 5th. There are 9 variations of the build, with three different sources of power and 3 different paths to that power within the source. There is one source and path that results in a moderately powerful combat magic user, who also has access to healing spells. This seems to be the best-rounded form to kick butt in battle and then fix broken butts after combat has ceased. This is also something I wanted for at least the last couple of years as we have had sessions without a healer, and they don’t end well, so I want to make sure every party I adventure with has a healer of some kind even if I have to be that healer.

All we had with our first session was a first-level party which like any other first-level party was pretty weak. There was some dice karma involved, but basically we liked the play action of 5th edition. Combat was streamlined with the use of “advantage” and “disadvantage” instead of having multiple adjustments to AC based on cover and concealment as in 3.5. So the way that works is when your target is obscured or behind cover you are disadvantaged, and you make two attack rolls with the lowest one counting as your actual attack. If you are working from surprise or a sneak attack then you take the higher of the two attack rolls for your actual attack. Again this works much better than the complicated tables of adjustments to AC for when the person making the attack has advantages over the attacked.

One of the problems we had with our party in yesterday’s session was the person playing our paladin playing “lawful good” as “lawful stupid” and killing the lawful evil NPC who was spying on the target of our mission for several days before we got there and more than happy to show off and tell us everything he had discovered had the paladin not killed him first.

And again tonight I am going to end that public spell to return the intentions of the guy that tried to kill me by focussing a reflection spell with my hat. The guy died back in 2002, so the spell has been just churning out energy to no effect ever since then. I will be starting a new spell by dedicating a new hat to the creation of real, high quality (CROW Manual) bicycle infrastructure here in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell. Pictures to follow.

We had the hats soaked in lamp oil before placing them on the fire.

A few minutes after placing them on the fire.

After the rest of service was done, energy safely dispersed.

And that’s all I got today.

PSA, Opus the Poet

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Playing another kind of warlock in a new RPG, on a Wreck-Free Sunday

I started playing a new character in a new (to me) kind of fantasy RPG based on Palladium’s system. Our DM uses a different kind of character generation for games like this, where we role-play our character’s childhoods to determine our stats. The warlock class is completely different in Palladium in that their warlocks use elemental energy from one of the four aristotelian elements, and the character has to choose which “sphere” of energy he or she is going to use to cast their spells from. If your character chooses a single sphere they get three spells per level, but you can choose 2 spheres and get only 2 spells per level but have a wider variety of spells to choose from. I chose earth and air spheres because I had the best selection of healing spells with those, and because the warlock class was a pretty decent fighter without the use of magic.

I mentioned that we have a T-gurl living at the house, who moved in so that she wouldn’t have to sleep in her car in the church parking lot. Well we had a minor crisis at church tonight. Membership had gone through the name tags and updated them for all the new members we had gotten recently and the old tags were taken from the holders and put in a little file holder made for business cards so that there were enough tags for all the new and current people. The T-gurl was not a “current” member, so the tag holder we had altered to cover her old name with her feminine name was cleaned up and used for someone new and the old tag with the masculine name was put in the file. This caused a minor crisis for the T-gurl because it made her feel like her new identity was being denied in favor of her old masculine identity, which was something that was happening to her at her parent’s place. As you can imagine this was emotionally devastating for her, but we managed to find a way to repair most of the damages before everybody went home, in a way that affirmed her feminine identity as valid. Oh, and one of my old GF who was on disability for being bipolar and dyslexic and more than a bubble off kilter was there too as she had recovered enough to be allowed to drive again (I have never known her when she wasn’t on disability, I seem to attract people like that until they get back on their feet emotionally or at least get stable enough to function at some level in society).

Coming up on the 18th of this month I will finally be doing that ritual to end the spell to reflect the intentions of the guy who tried to kill me back in 2001 and who died back in 2002 after I started the spell to reflect his intentions back on him, but as I didn’t know he had died I kept the spell going through a second publically dedicated tool and that tool (hat) wore out and fell to pieces like the first. Well come the 18th I will burn those hats in a public ritual and dispell that public magic, and dedicate a new hat to creating good, safe bicycle infrastructure for the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell. Just because I can’t ride at the moment doesn’t eliminated the need for infrastructure. I am not the only person riding a bicycle in this city. Expect to see some pictures from that ritual that night or the next day.

When we changed our cable package to include HD we also got a lot more channels that were HD only, which means I have that many more channels to ignore for lack of anything new or interesting to watch, except there are a few that sometimes have decent motorsports programming even this time of year. One of those channels will be covering Formula E racing, a spec series of all-electric racing. Personally for something like this technology I would prefer a spec motor with a maximum weight and volume for the battery and any controller, so that battery and controller technology would be pushed hard to develop as those are the parts of the e-vehicle matrix that are the stumbling blocks to widespread acceptance of EV in the mainstream. For commuting the infrastructure problem has been solved as there is always a place to charge when you’re at home, and there are more and more quick-charge stations popping up across the country for filling up for point-to-point driving that is outside the round-trip from home range of your vehicle. But anyway, this means I will be watching more Formula E, which means watching any Formula E because I did not have access to a channel before.

And I have yammered enough. I need to get to bed.

PSA, Opus

The annual Yule fight has begun, on Wreck-Free Sunday

One of the byproducts of the over-commercialization of Christmas has been the pushback of the acceptable decoration dates for both the first and last “acceptable” decorations going up. And as the “last” date moves closer to September the intensity of the annual fight over putting up the Yule decorations in Casa de El Poeta also increases, because my date hasn’t changed from what it has always been (12/20). I have been accused of many things because of this with “Grinch” being one of the kinder things. I’m sorry, but I’m firmly of the opinion that the “specialness” of a holiday gets less so as the dates of the holiday get moved further apart, and for me “Yule” starts 12/21 and ends 1/1 the next year. So, the decorations go up 12/20 and come down 1/2 AFAIAC. If that makes me a Grinch, then I’m a Grinch. Grinch, grinch, grinch, I’m being all grinchy. I still haven’t gotten the hang of being green and covered with fur like Oscar the Grouch, but I am embracing my grinchyness. When does Festivus begin?…

I really should be promoting my new hat some more. Not just because I really like it but because I have come to the realization that the magicks I placed on the first hat need to be stopped. I publicly declared the first hat as a double bird flipped at the guy that hit me and a “return to sender” of his intentions, and within a few months of making this public, the guy was dead by his own hand. Thing is I didn’t know that, so I subconsciously kept the spell going until the hat wore out completely, then bought another one that was almost identical and kept it until it wore out declaring it as “the replacement” for the first hat, which literally transferred the spell to it. So I have this spell working like mad with no target left alive, which is not good. So, very soon I will do a public ceremony where I burn the old hats and declare that spell at an end, and declare a new spell for the public good. The new spell will target the powers-that-be to generate some real (Dutch CROW manual) bicycle infrastructure for the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell.

New hat.

Old hat.

There is a debate (of sorts) on the use of HiViz by cyclists. What do you think? Encouraging high-vis gear I think this is one step removed from victim blaming, but what do you think?

Today is one of those days that I have a concept running around in my head, but no words to attach to that concept. This is one of the facets of aphasia, the worst of them. Most of the time I just have a word or two that I have to track down inside my head and eventually I do that and finish the sentence and then the rest of the blog post. This time I lost the whole shooting match, a whole paragraph or more. And if you don’t think that’s frustrating, then you have never written for a living…

So, to save what is left of my dignity and sanity, I will cut it off right here rather than continue to beat my head against the biggest writer’s block in the world.

PSA, Opus the unkillable badass Poet

Running light on links, and the Feed

First of all, I have good news. That hat I bought online has finally made it to the house. My Steezyworkz.com custom creation finally showed up this afternoon.

They also threw in a T-shirt visible in the background laying on the bed, because the order took so long to fill. I am so happy that this is finally here. I have been waiting on this since mid-September, and it has been running around USPS since Thanksgiving. It was sent 2nd day air, that took 4 days to get out of NJ and another 2 days to get out of the DFW sorting office (can you tell I take package tracking seriously?). I’m still trying to figure out what “steezy” means, but I’m very happy with how my new hat looks.

First up is a report from the town next to the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell. Pics And Recap Of Participating In Richardson’s 42nd Annual Christmas Parade Some seriously cool bikes there.

From Down South comes another article on Houston’s crappy-but-improving bicycle infrastructure. BICYCLISTS RIDE IN REMEMBRANCE OF CYCLIST KILLED Seriously, someone needs to go to jail over this mess. Things are getting better, but seriously, painted bike lanes on TX are like painting racing stripes on a prosthetic leg as our statutory lowest legal speed limit is 5 MPH faster than legal under the Dutch CROW manual for painted bike lanes.

Looks like the “reason” given for why Bono’s wreck didn’t show up in social media was a joke, leaving us again with no explanation of how there was nothing showing of how or where he wrecked in social media. No, Bono was not dressed as a Hasidic Jew during bike crash So, where are the pictures? Even if Bono was in disguise this wreck was the kind of gruesome mess that draws ghouls like flies to honey, so where are the pictures and the tweets?

A little infrastructure news from Cheeseland. Fatal Crashes Down in 2014 I wouldn’t pat myself too hard on the back if I were you guys, you still have to deal with Gov. Walker’s legacy on transportation funding.

Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: LASD to bar deputy distracted driving before they kill again; successful South LA CicLAvia

A little infrastructure news from the Emerald Isle. ‘All motorists see is a bike… not the person riding it’

Some really cool bikes, and some not so cool. Wheels of change

And those were all the links I could find today.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the unkillable badass Poet