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Messages - kurashu

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1
Off Topic Fun / Re: ScarJo to star in GITS live action movie.
« on: January 07, 2015, 12:28:03 AM »
Maybe if we have some live action to scale Tachkoma's.......everything will be okay? :D

How about just a two hour movie of Tachikomatic Days.

2
Off Topic Fun / ScarJo to star in GITS live action movie.
« on: January 05, 2015, 09:58:25 PM »
[So this is a thing that's happening.](http://variety.com/2015/film/news/scarlett-johansson-signs-on-to-star-in-dreamworks-ghost-in-the-shell-exclusive-1201320788/)

I've not kept up with her career outside of seeing her in Marvel movies. I've heard mixed things about her performance in Lucy, but I'm not even sure what that movie is about -- Satan maybe, but that could just be because of Lucy, Daughter of the Devil.

Anyways, I'm not gonna hold my breath. I got a real bad feeling this will be more Matrix Revolutions than Neuromancer.

3
Min/Max 3.x / Re: I present to you the LaTeX 3.5e template!
« on: January 05, 2015, 05:02:32 PM »
Why is this template called LaTeX?

It's a document markup language. It's used quite a bit in academics, to my understanding. Very useful for writing documents that have mathematical equations.

You can use it to create beautiful documents, but it's a little obtuse (for me at least, sadly).

4
Off Topic Fun / Re: The Small Rants Thread VI: Festering Anger
« on: October 27, 2013, 03:43:24 PM »
Rant , my car died.

I've been looking for a deal on a car I'd like/enjoy.
The market has changed drastically.
I wanted to get as low priced +low ownership costs
+ low maintenance + high gas mileage, as possible.

People don't answer their phones for a $1000 call.
Why?  That's real money, that's really worth your time.
I can't quite figure out how to get by without a car.
I'm gonna take a shot in the dark on a GrandMom mobile.
Medium low price + lowest ownership cost possible
+ random maintenance at the get go probably expensive
+ bad to iffy gas mileage.  It's the best deal I can do.
It's a bad deal, compared to every other car I've ever bought !!
Every.
So I'm nervous.

Try to find a used Honda some has up for sale. They're good cars and the engines last forever if they're kept up minimally (regular oil changes, trans service every 30k, timing belt at 105k/7 years unless it has a chain). The only thing about them is the water pump: it's run off the timing mechanism, so fixing one is a little cost prohibitive. But they're real easy to work on and an engine -- if it needs replacing -- isn't terribly expensive, as long as you aren't dead set on a new/low mileage one. But seriously, a 100k miles isn't anything to a Honda engine as long as the last owner wasn't abusive towards it.

I might be bias though, I work on them for my job. Civics and Accords are nice cars (Accords are little worse on gas and tend to be full size sedans though). I own a 2001 CR-V and the gas mileage isn't fantastic, but it's pretty good.

Interesting fact, Chromium thinks isn't and wasn't aren't actually words (apparently aren't as well, probably all contractions).

5
Legends of the Heroes / Rebuilding the Night Below.
« on: October 27, 2013, 12:32:47 PM »
I tried to post this the other night, but a series of laptop mishaps got in the way (not the least of which was forgetting I didn't have my battery in and getting up to go smoke).

Anyways, the Night Below is an iconic adventure. I played through the first and some of the second parts when I was younger. I ran a group a while ago through the first part of it (well, most of it, they were getting ready to pounce on the orcs when the game fell apart). However, there are some criticisms of it:

  • The first book is awesome. I have no complaints, but my large group was split on role playing and wanted something a little more hack and slash. Plus they felt like they were more on a wild goose chase and "having one guy send them somewhere just to be sent to another place." That's on me.
  • The second book, from limited experience and from reading forum posts, is a drag. The players find out about their end goal and are essentially told to power level to reach it.
  • The third book I haven't heard much about other than it's a great tactical scenario.

Given my experience, this'll be limited to the first book for now.

The biggest complaint I have with Book I: The Evils of Haranshire is two fold, and both involve the map: It's barren and cramped. Seems contradictory, right? First, look at the map for Haranshire. There's nothing. Forests that take up huge tracks of land with little added in, Howler's Moor is just empty. There's two villages and the Parlfray Keep in terms of population. Some Hobgobs in the canyon, and you could added a small Elf or Dwarf settlement in for variety if you wanted.

But it's also very cramped. Look at the scale of the map. It's tiny. Adding in some extra adventures would mean the players are just stumbling across shit every five or ten miles. That's not bad if you like Skyrim/Oblivion style adventures but I like mine to be a little more balanced.

I feel like The Night Below is more of a framework, somewhere between an adventure and a campaign setting. Just enough meat that you could have a meal, but to feel satisfied, you'll need a side or two. However, ever the tinkerer I am, I see a framework and I see an example implementation (like when I started picking up Flask, you build a basic blog with it, nothing fancy but just to see how it works). I see the plot as something that should take place in somewhere a little less backwater but not necessarily in the most populated area. I needed a new map. One with plains, mountains, forests and most importantly, to me, a defining river. Lucky for me, I hoard maps. You'll never know when they'll come in handy. My old harddrive was a graveyard for maps and I'm sure I still have most of them on one of my externals lying around the house (no, seriously, I have three from 750GB to 3TB and they can be found anywhere in the house sometimes). There's one map I know fairly well, not by heart but the general layout, that fits this criteria perfectly it just needs a bit of coercion to fall in line with my idea. So I did a thing.:


Click for full resolution.



The forests aren't too pretty, but for a first time Photoshop (GIMP, actually) I'm not too upset about that. Many of you will recognize that as The Valley of Obelisks from The Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde. I ran a solo campaign for my ex here and I've spent a lot of time looking at this map over the years.

I stripped out all the place names despite the fact that I'm not changing many of them (or any, really), but I feel like a good map should have consistent fonts. Also, I removed Shul Vaarth and Shul Shennek from the map. One of these is permanently gone, I'm not sure which. Maybe one'll be just very secret. I'm not sure yet.

This is an on-going process that I'm just beginning and I wanted a place to collect my ideas and get feedback on them. I'll be going into more details later, but here's the base of it all:

The Night Below plot is a regional adventure. Potentially, I want to make Book I an entire campaign arc that leads to about level 12ish. Books II and III might be explored later on. I'm attempting to limit my stuff to just the SRD/Core (not including psionics, since if I ever ran this with my current group there's no interest in that). I'm also going to add in short, area specific adventures to each village (for example: Hemyulak gets The Sunless Citadel). I enjoy more a Skyrim/Oblivion style setting but not one where the players are going to get sidetracked because they're coming across a mine or fort or cave every time they move across the map. I'm also going to be shamelessly lifting quests from Skyrim, Oblivion, Dragon Age and other games as well.

6
Homebrew and House Rules (D&D) / Re: Incarnum Dwarf
« on: October 27, 2013, 11:55:55 AM »
Perhaps the bonus to saves could be +1 base and allow investment of essentia for another +1 per point.

That's not a bad idea.  Alternatively, it could be something like "Whenever you have a soulmeld shaped (bound?) to the Feet chakra, you get +6 to resist Trips and Bull Rushes.  This replaces the standard dwarf's Stability."

Why not +1 per essentia invested?

7
Min/Max 3.x / Re: Melee Ironsoul Forgemaster build, help needed.
« on: October 27, 2013, 11:54:24 AM »
The most powerful meld an Incarnate gets, in terms of melee, is Incarnate Weapon. A NG Incarnate will create a warhammer, which is very iconic to Dwarves. However, weapon bond kinda imitates this -- but you won't gain that until 14, but doesn't affect attack rolls. Hm...

That one level of fighter adds just a little: 2 more HP on average (4 if you do max HP at first level) -- but with Vitality Belt and Armor Bond you wouldn't even notice an extra 10 HP in the long run -- grants all armor, shield and martial profs, and an extra feat. You'll come out 2 Meldshaper levels behind  (which is better than most incarnum PrCs). Typically the rule of thumb for this sort of thing is: does it benefit you more than that level of spellcasting/incarnum? For your build, since you're going for a tank setup, the answer is yes.

You're BAB will be 12 (12/7/2) but with Incarnate Weapon, plus anything else you'll manage to stack on top of that, it shouldn't be too much of a problem, but I wouldn't rely on full attacks too often unless you can really jack up your attack -- full attacks at 20 are 20/15/10/5 and even then it seems most people find a way at getting extra attacks on their Full BAB than go for straight full attack.

Weapon Bond doesn't explicitly rule out using it on an Incarnum Weapon -- which I think is a more accurate translation of Incarnate Weapon, except it has a hard limit on how much incarnum can be added and is harder to expand. Creating one wouldn't be hard with the Secrets of the Forge and a scroll.

Frankly, I'd stick with incarnum weapon as my primary damage source. Yes it isn't two handed, but maybe you can talk to your DM about that (blow a feat on creating a two handed version of whatever weapon is created -- Goliath Greathammer (exotic 1d12/x3) is in Races of Stone, fyi).

8
Off Topic Fun / Re: Dual Monitor advice
« on: October 23, 2013, 06:48:58 PM »
When's the last time you updated your drivers?

Is there any particular reason you're still running XP other than fuck Vista, 7 and 8?

9
Gaming Advice / Re: Handling Adding Material Outside Of Core
« on: September 07, 2013, 09:14:23 PM »
[...snip...]

This is actually what I'm asking. I suppose "How to encourage players to try new things." would have been a better way to phrase my question.

10
Off Topic Fun / Re: The Small Rants Thread VI: Festering Anger
« on: September 07, 2013, 09:12:37 PM »
So last night, my ex posted an ad on Craigslist for our area for men seeking men for hookups. With my picture. And my name. And my phone number.

At least I'm laughing about it now.

11
Gaming Advice / Handling Adding Material Outside Of Core
« on: September 04, 2013, 07:57:00 PM »
Just a quick question: How do you adding handle material outside of the core rule books (DMG, MM1 and PHB)? Specifically, I'm asking about 3.5 but any advice is nice.

I find that adding too many things overwhelms my group and people treat them as curiosities rather than sources for rules and I end up with a mostly core party with a few PHBII or ToB classes that "outshine" the core classes. By "outshine" I mean, "Well, I wish I'd known about that because I'm unhappy that he's a fighter-mage out of the box and I'm a stupid druid." Despite the fact that I'm more than willing to allow players to adjust their characters (within reason) or retire/kill off old characters and replace them with new ones (again, within reason).

I've tried asking what each player wants to do at Session 0 and suggest classes that'll facilitate that, but sometimes it's shot down without even thinking about it. "I want a monk." "Well, the core monk isn't terribly fantastic, how about a swordsage." "That looks too complicated. No." Now, I have had several players try a warblade, crusader and swordsage and they always have a blast when they do but then the party's fighter is all ":( I just get stupid extra feats instead of the power to shrug off gravity."

I know limiting it to just core isn't fantastic -- then you have half a party who's calling lightning from the sky, invoking divine wrath and summoning monsters several times better than the party fighter -- but so is banning core altogether and forcing them to play with "unusual" classes.

I may try composing a book of extra classes -- like the good bits from the Complete Warrior/Divine/Arcane, maybe PHBII (not looking at you, knight) -- and seeing how that goes. Just have the PHB and a binder. What do you think?

12
Gaming Advice / Re: Elan + Totemist. Why is this good?
« on: August 31, 2013, 11:19:25 PM »
If I remember correctly, it has to do with (ab)using Azure Talent and the Elan's ability to negate damage with power points.

13
Off Topic Fun / Re: I has arts! And I bet you do too!
« on: August 31, 2013, 11:13:12 PM »
Does this count? It generates images...

14
Homebrew and House Rules (D&D) / Re: Warblade ACF ideas
« on: August 29, 2013, 10:45:53 PM »
I lied. Well, I deleted it apparently. From what I remember I had:

Weapon Aptitude changed to Iron Heart Aptitude. Apply any feat that applies to an Iron Heart weapon applies to ALL Iron Heart weapons.

I don't remember for sure what the others were. Whoops. >_> I think one of the bonus feats were traded for a Favored Enemy. Or added the longbow to the weapons.

15
Homebrew and House Rules (D&D) / Re: Warblade ACF ideas
« on: August 29, 2013, 01:55:16 PM »
I had some hobgoblin racial sub levels drafted up a while ago. I'll see if I can find them and post them later.

16
[rant]I'm getting sick and tired of having all this mental creative and critical ability and yet having no way to break into the market. I can take a list of things a client wants and give them a finished card/board game in under a week. I made a goddamn edutainment board game about HAMLET for fuck's sake, and they enjoyed the hell out of it![/rant]

D: Do you have a web site? If not, I'd suggest figuring that out. Even just starting with a Wordpress site and moving on from there.

17
Off Topic Fun / Re: Hacker convicted , NPR left me wondering ...
« on: March 21, 2013, 08:08:33 PM »
Even if he did it for white hat reasons, he breached security of an organization without their consent. It'd be one thing if AT&T asked him to, but they didn't. And he got caught. I feel bad for the guy but not overly.

18
Off Topic Fun / Re: Drunk Whoo!
« on: December 11, 2012, 11:57:59 PM »
Alright. So you know that feeling when you realize you did something really dumb? *snip*

How'd this work out for you? Congrats by the way, there's few enough of the awesome ones going around.

Well, when I mentioned that I'd try to avoid drunk texting her while she's gone again -- for a whole month this time, what am I to do with the little free time I'll have? :( -- she kind of smiled all coy and told me as long as it was lewd or crude, she wanted me to do it again. So, it went fantastic other than the crushing anxiety I had immediately following it.

19
Off Topic Fun / Re: Happy Thanksgiving!
« on: November 24, 2012, 12:40:48 AM »
I'm probably going to watch Thankskilling later.
:twitch  :banghead
Get that out of my head.
 :banghead :banghead :banghead

GOBBLE GOBBLE MOTHERFUCKER!

20
Off Topic Fun / Re: Happy Thanksgiving!
« on: November 22, 2012, 06:19:18 PM »
Don't tell me how to spend my thanksgiving. :p

I made chili and eggnog muffins and spent the rest of the day doing next to nothing -- did some laundry and cleaned my car out, but that's it. No annoying relatives, no awkward conversations (yet at least, I have to call my parents and grandparents later, but that's usually pleasant). I'm probably going to watch Thankskilling later.

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