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Did you guys hear the one about the mathematician who was afraid of negative numbers? He would stop at nothing to avoid them!

Really, really enjoying the first episodes of the new The Dark Crystal series on Netflix. Best "classic" fantasy show in ages.

Only if they promise plenty of lootboxes! No lootbox, no play!

Substantively, most of my picks have been covered already in this thread, but the coolest ability icon is easily The Long Pain. (The upgraded versions don't look as nice, IMO.) Some of the movement abilities are just satisfying to watch, too. Leap and Launching Kick, in particular. (The Knock-up on the latter is indeed annoying to manage, but an AoE interrupt is worth a little disruption in my view.) Conceptually, all the Chanter abilities are just cool in my book. All it took was the inclusion of a lot of world-building epic poetry to achieve the otherwise-impossible: a Bard analogue that wasn't lame.

Just launched yesterday: Toby's Island- the second Kickstarter for the "Creature Collecting, Farming Sim, Town Restoration RPG". I backed the original KS. Game has been delayed but the developer has made much progress and is planning on putting it in Steam Early Access next month. Might be of interest to Stardew Valley fans who wish it had turn-based combat. Solasta: Crown of the Magister. A CRPG using (D&D) 5e ruleset (OGL) and turn-based tactical combat. They have a playable demo you can DL off their steam page.

It's really good. Considering giving it a rewatch and that doesn't often happen with stand-up comedy.

I think Dave Chappelle may be the greatest living comic. I saw only the Jussie clip off the new special but if that is anything to go by it seems he'll be keeping that title with me.

It's good to see society is starting to appreciate the positive aspects of video gaming: 15 surprising benefits of playing video games Older people are embracing video games When a passion for video games helps land that job

I guess that's because it's a copy of the orignal Rogue ability. All those "foreign" abilites (Sunbeam on a Priest of Eothas, Arcane Veil on a Preist of Wael etc.) are just hard copies of the original ability. In this case it might be that Skean's Shadowing Beyond never got updated like the Rogue's version was. Lots of players were complaining that Rogue's DoTs were breaking Shadowing Beyond so I guess Obsidians tried to fix that ability for the Rogue - but forgot to transfer that to the Skaen version. Basically like in PoE were they forgot to change Knockdown from primary to full attack on the Girdle of the Driving Wave while it was done for the original Knockdown of the fighter.

And Mari Crudia. I forgot about Eder, maybe because he can't be assassin (and has average Int) therefore a bit less optimal for Vanishing Strike. Ooblit + Eder is perfect for Unbending by thé way.

And Ooblit if Main Character

https://twitter.com/CDPROJEKTRED/status/1169158024482762761?s=19 Hopefully it gets a battle royale mode!

I was only joking.

Im pretty sure that Im a better thespian than that lady in the spirit realm.

Zeke deal is done. Biggest RB contract ever (of course). Which means the Cowboys are back in the hunt and are my top pick for the division.

I once had Living Illusions who carried Spirit Lances summon some Essential Phantoms who also carried Spirit Lances...

Most of my IRL friends from adolescence are RPG virgins so I've been slowly introducing them to my favorites - we're getting too old to play twitchy clown fiesta games so they've finally developed an interest. Lately I've been streaming VTM: Bloodlines on Twitch to show them a worms and all experience: that a game can still be meaningful and fun while overtly threadbare. I'm running a stealth and melee Malkavian and am nearing the game's final chapter... fearing the Griffith Park encounter. It's been a fun ride showcasing a game I've played through an embarrassing amount of times, and I've often gone into detail on some of its more esoteric lore hooks, along with its production history and cult status.

There are several nice combos with Ciphers, Priests and Chanters. But I will concentrate on Wizard and Druid mostly: Goldpact Knight + Bear Form = superhigh AR and thus very sturdy while stacking lashes with FoD + Wildstrike. Use Ring of Focused Flame and Scion of Flame. Kind Wayfarer + Wizard + Sun and Moon + Magran's Favor + Fire PL pet (like Otto Starcat) + FoD. +5 PL for all your fire abilities including FoD. I suspect the White Flames healing scales with the increased PL as well...? Also works with Priest (of Magran) and Druid (if you stick to fire spells mostly). Rogue/Druid + Firebrand + Ring of Focused Flame + Scion of Flame does great melee dmg due to +10 ACC and +1 PEN while the many additive dmg bonuses multiply with the lash of Firebrand. Devoted with the same setup has +3 PEN with Firebrand and +10 ACC as well of course. Bleak Walker + Fury + Scion of Flame + Spirit of Decay + Heart of the Storm + Ring of Focused Flame = +3 PEN and +10 ACC with natural weapons. Eternal Devotion applies to spells as well. Paladin/Wizard + Blightheart + Eternal Flame = +10% corrosive lash and 10% burning lash for all your spells. Not really melee but worth noting since it's a big dmg increase for a spellcaster. If you use The Beacon for +40% dmg and then do something like Torrent of Flame or Death Ring you can see impressive dmg numbers. Tactician/Wizard + Dazzling Lights + Pull of Eora + Chillfog = Brilliant. Tactician/Cipher + Phantom Foes = Brilliant Clear Out with Spirit Lance alone is great. Same with Spirit Lance + Rogue's strikes. Steel Garrote/Blood Mage with Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff drains health like a champ. Whispers of the Endless Paths + Taste of the Hunt applies its DoT over the whole cone Area. It's strong. You need lots of INT though. With a Rogue you can stack several DoTs in an AoE then: Toxic Strike + Taste of the Hunt + Deep Wounds makes shirt work of most mobs. The low base dmg of the cone doesn't even matter. My favorite is: Stalker/Wizard + Willbreaker + Wolf + Takedown Combo + Concelhaut's Draining Touch + Essential Phantom. The setup-casting is a bit lengthy (I tend to start combat with a tank and keep the rest of the party in stealth mode to buff up secretly) but then you suddenly have a high AR melee Geomancer with two buddies who lowers fortitude by 25 with Body Blows and Will (with enchantment) so that his Wolf can apply Takedown Combo easily and then the Phantom does its *booom* with its non-dissipating Draining Touch which targets Will and weakens (lowers Fortitude even more) - and does +100% damage. Note that Draining Touch has the highest base dmg of all weapons so the hit from the Phantom can reach high dmg numbers. All the while the Geomancer casts some other single target spell (Necrotic Lance or Killing Bolt for example) that targets fortitude (by now fortitude is down by 35 points) and times it with Takedown Combo for the sweet +100% dmg. Or he casts Combusting Wounds. This combo is sturdy (high AR and three bodies), does tremendous single target damage and has a lot of options. You can also fall back a bit and use Blightheart for the +10% lash on spells (great with Takedown Combo since lashes are multiplicative). It's micro-intense but very strong. I guess it would be even better in Turn Based (since then the micro part and timing isn't so messy). I would use Bloodmage but I find I don't need that many spells with a party - and I like Empowered spells + Takedown Combo too much... I can solo the Beast of Winter and Dracolich with this - with zero consumables, food or resting bonuses - although it's not meant to be a solo build. I mean that's my favorite besides all kinds of Warlocks, Sages, Tempests and Ascetics which are the most fun due to the most useful synergies. Too bad you don't like Barbs and Monks. I never tried an Evoker/Priest who focuses on fire spells with Sun & Moon + Marux Amanth. It would be all about the somewhat stacked spell repeating effects and not about melee combat obviously, but still a melee weapon setup. I wonder if this would be fun or not... Honorable mention: Vatnir as Rogue/Priest with his summoned Battle Axes, stacking DoTs like crazy with his strikes. I found him to be a very good melee damage dealer (while still keeping all the advantages of being a priest). There's so much more but that's what just came to my mind while typing

You forgot deep wounds and assassinate bonuses. The only drawback is it doesn't work vs single targets. But there's an even more powerful combo than that and works also vs single targets - priest/assassin. With Salvation of Time and Brilliant you get infinite unbreakable invisibility. Then proceed spamming Gambit...

The LFG thing is mostly a sidestory for me because the opportunity for it to be relevant was closed by the time it was introduced. By the time WoTLK rolled around, I had long retired from the PUG scene and essentially did dungeons with guildies exclusively - the LFG tool therefore served the one (admittedly convenient) purpose of removing travel time. Yeah, yeah, I know the "it makes the world feel small" argument, but eh, manually flying there also does that. Actually though, I can see the difference it made to the social aspect of the game in my brief experiment at levelling an opposite-faction character, which I did back in Cataclysm. I made it all the way from 1-85 not just without getting to know a single other person, but by literally not ever talking with another person. Granted I'm a very withdrawn person naturally, and will almost never initiate a conversation. All my friendships in the game were initiated by the friend. I started classic blind, like many people. I never expected to do any particular type of content, or to even make a single friend. But I did make a few friends, and managed to build a decent rep (essential as a rogue) on the dungeon PUG scene through networking and (I hope) competent play. Taking this "natural" approach I went maybe 5 months before I felt I had run out of stuff to do, and I think I would have quit soon thereafter if I didn't make the conscious choice to join an established raiding guild.

not offended; appreciate perspective from the few remaining well-read mentioned Ms. Marvel ... who is distinct from uberfrau Captain Marvel, in the form of a flawed, ignorant, and in need of help, teenaged kid from Jersey City ... Kamala will get her own live-action on the Disney streaming service, which should be ostensibly incapable of continuing the noted instagood trend some potential to avoid that terrible sameness: high-schooler with immediate family from Pakistan, gifted unwittingly, bit of a dork, no idea that, with great power must also come -- only bring it up because this character leapt off the page in a way Diana or Jen, Carol or Rey didn't quite ... as human, as flawed, sometimes weak, self-unassured, yet indomitable in spirit

I'd hazard a guess, and say at least a few are, and some of them are even more old school than WoWClassic Vanilla day 1, ie, Everquest and NWN MMO RPGers. I can easily see myself doing the same thing.

I asked Josh on Twitter while commenting on @Decadency's "Thank you" tweet. Decadency then told me that he spoke to @Tenray : his run was finally validated.

luke was annoying for the first couple movies. he were whiny, flawed and refused to take advice o' those with more experience, to his detriment. yeah, luke has moments o' competence in the first two movies, but those exist as a way to setup and magnify his failures. rey, in spite o' being a junk scavenger on a remote world who ekes out a subsistence existence, is instantly competent/superior at everything. ignore advice o' merlin figure not matter 'cause whereas luke loses a hand and has world shattered, rey frees her boyfriend from snoke, the seeming biggest bad in the galaxy at the time. the comical wide-eyed stares and f'ing threatening luke with a f'ing lightsabre 'cause he won't answer her questions? is a horrible character on many levels, but y'know, 'cause she is cute, she gets a different standard. and is apparent both rey and luke sold their soul to the robot devil blame on the direction, but there is nothing subtle 'bout the luke or rey performances. there were a time when growth were kinda the key to heroic character development, so is not shocking luke takes a long and difficult journey to become more than the whiny youth from episode iv. the problem for rey as a character is she started competent and were intuitive smarter than everybody else around her. in the third movie rey ain't gonna overcome fears or prejudices or failures o' the past, 'cause she don't have any such flaws. kylo has obvious room for growth, but rey? no doubt she will come to terms with her past in the upcoming flick, but becoming even more supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is kinda lame. is the new norm o' lame. ... am gonna offend a few folks with the following observation, but am thinking one unfortunate aspect o' our current culture which has artists and entertainers conscious o' the need to make female characters in all kinds o' mass media more capable, is that too many female characters is being cheated o' a chance for growth. is ok to start weak. is ok to begin a story with a female character who is flawed and ignorant and in need o' help. so cautious o' avoiding damsel-in-distress and double-standard that we end up with rey and wonder woman and ms. marvel being the expected and defensible norm. lame. is ok to have a few super women characters in pop culture and entertainment as we have had many supermen over the years. unfortunate, is a terrible sameness to the predictable competence o' female protagonists nowadays. seeing as Gromnir has complained 'bout the male characters who is instagood at everything and have no real growth, would be unfair o' us to hold back on criticizing the new trend o' 2-d and soulless uberfrau. HA! Good Fun!

China's Lunar Rover Finds a 'Gel-Like' Substance on The Far Side of The Moon I say nuke it from orbit; it's the only way to be sure.

I simply spawn some different enemies somewhere on the map and try stuff out. You can spawn anything with the console using SpawnPrefabAtMouse <prefab name> Prefab names can be found with FindPrefab Characters <search string> . Search string can be "Xaurip" or Skeletal" or whatever the name of the enemy type you wish may contain. You can also spwan NPCs and bosses etc. In case of "Xaurip" you might find "CRE_Xaurip_Champion" and can then spawn it with "spawnPrefabAtMouse CRE_Xaurip_Champion". My first testing is always done with CRE_Dummy. It's a Rhotgast with low defenses but very high health that doesn't move and only does tiny damage. SO you can test stuff out without any worries. See how the mechanics work and so on. You can give yourself any item with giveItem <item name> . Item names can be found with "FindGameData <search string>". Usually the pattern is like this "pistol_U_scordeos_trophy" where the U stands for unique. You can enchant stuff for free if you use FreeRecipesToggle . To open the console look up which key is assigned to the console (don't know which one it is on US keyboards). In order to spawn stuff and all that you'll need to type in iroll20s first to unlock cheats. This will mark your current run as cheated (no achievements, blessings and so on). But no worries: You can simply save your game before doing cheating/testing, go wild and then simply reload the game afterwards: your playthrough will not be marked as cheated then. You can also switch classes and add abilites with setClassLevel and addAbility . Skills: skill , Attributes: attributeScore . You can always use <tab> to let the console guess/complete your command. It's very helpful. You don't need to know the exact names of commands/items/abilites/chars/etc. then, just how they start. I know no better way to quickly yet thoroughly test stuff out.

I watched the show and I thought it was pretty funny, and a healthy antidote to the twitter mob who get to decide what the right opinion on anything is. Dave Chappelle can do whatever he wants. Permanent immunity, they can't touch him. It would take something out of the ordinary. I so hope he's not a secret pervert. I don't want to lose another Louis CK caliber comic.

Hey Ophiuchus, thanks for this. Seems a bit more measured of a change.

For the 40k lovers out there, prepare to have your pants blown off.

Let's see, men of low character, millions of dollars, minimal oversight, nothing out of the ordinary.

The man always deliver

If Morrison is becoming the definitive Dragon Age experience, they are probably letting you romance the boss fights.

IWD2's writing didn't receive enough praise, especially for such a combat-driven game. Isair and Madae are my favorite villains of all RPG, just too bad they don't have enough "screen time", and even some of the secondary antagonists had great backstory (espically Sherincal and Saablic Tan) In addition, it has arguably the best soundtrack of any classical fantasy game ever, together with the original IWD, (Planescape not counting as classical fantasy IMHO).

i THINK its also in the attacks file, but they go by ID rather than just raw numbers try changing the "CastSpeedID" of a spell that has a long cast time to the ID used by a spell with short cast time, idk if this would work or not but worth a shot

https://techraptor.net/content/alpha-protocol-removed-from-digital-storefronts-as-segas-publishing-rights-expire

More gambling stories online, I’ve never seen Yong to be as furious as in this video

FAKE NEWS: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-06-19-alpha-protocol-pulled-from-steam-as-sega-publishing-rights-expire