Min/Max Boards

Technically... You don't even hold or wield that weapon. They are armor spikes, and you wear them.

But the answer has been given to you. You could treat them as either depending of what you do. If you only use your spikes to do your AoO then it is just the same than if you attacked solely with them in the preceding turn.

Also note that the fact that you used whatever weapon in your turn have absolutely no impact on your AoO unless specifically mentioned in the weapon description. The attack you performed during your turn and your AoO are not linked together, unless again specifically mentioned by something else.

Emphasis added.  First of all, "noisy signal" is a term of art.  It means something that may convey some information, but there is also some "noise" in it that makes you not trust it.  Also, you misread my comments:  game SALES (and reviews, etc.) are noisy signals.  They may mean that the game is really really good (and hence sold a lot), but they may not. 

Well then we finally agree on something I guess. However, I was under the impression that you opposed my argument on this subject because you thought otherwise. You keep asking for proof that games are better or worse than the past, however which kind of base ground would you want to use then? The gaming industry itself completely consider games which sell low as extremely bad games and games which sell very high as the best games around, completely irreverently of if they are good or bad to begin with. This is why it was brought up because even though we might both (or all users in this thread) know that it is false, it is so widely used right now that it is considered as an universal truth.

What I can do, though, is try to explain to you what I think make a game good. Maybe by establishing some base comparison pattern we will be able to move on in this discussion. So, what I consider and always considered the most important point in a game is simply the gameplay and, to a lesser degree, originality. A game without gameplay or with bad gameplay is not going to cut it for me. You could have the best graphics in the world, you could have the biggest evolving world ever created... But without gameplay it's quite meaningless.

I could cite you a lot of examples of recent games which do that but in my mind I think Spore is probably the best example to use here. Great potential, the game was sold as the ultimate game you'd ever want to play. Evolve your specie from cell to space age? What's not to like? In theory anyways. In truth, in the game all you do is rush each single stage as fast as possible without much regard for the real evolution of your pet because a) it's forced to you and you can't change the stages and b) it doesn't impact the end result at all. Then you get to the end stage, the space age, only to find out that you are simply a carrier of some sort and the few missions available always repeat themselves endlessly. Thing is, since you are the only craft in your fleet even though your empire can span thousand of planets (!?!) you always end up either destroying everybody else to be quiet around you or endlessly running from planet A to planet B to solve mindless problems the inhabitants should be able to solve by themselves. Thus completely wasting your time both in game and out of game.

Now, Spore is the real first game of it's kind. So the originality factor really kick in and add to the game. This fortunately drag a quite poor game back up to a low good game because you have the feeling you are playing something you have never seen or played with before. But that's about it, really.

So, what kind of game would I consider great or a gem? Humm... There is actually a lot. But let's try to stay somewhat recent... I'll pick Minecraft. What's great in minecraft? Well, about everything. But to expend on the notion, the gameplay is great because whatever you want to do in this game you can do it. I personally could not stand the game if there was only the creative mode (I'd rather play with Legos, mind you ) but there is also the adventure mode which hooked me into the game. Run around alone in an endless world, learn how to craft everything you need (the first time I played that game I never looked at the Wiki. It was a great learning experience) then dwelve deeper and deeper underground to fight monsters and find rare gems or metals to further help you develop your trade... I believe that's brilliant gameplay. Originality is really there too because even though the game has been inspired by a bunch of other games it is still truly unique. But then, what's bad about the game? Well, the only really bad point about Minecraft is that the graphics are not up to par with "modern" graphics. It's a builder game, everything in the game is designed on squares that you can stack on each other (again, like Legos) so it has its inherent limits. Plus, it's such a big game that adding too much graphically would mean that the game would crawl to an halt (especially since it was built on Java..!). But again, I don't care at all about graphics as long as the gameplay is there and they are practical enough for the game to be played correctly. And they are. So there, one of the best games I ever played.

Read the bolded part of your comments.  Now, assume your gentle reader is a person who is reasonably pleased with the way the video game industry has matured.  The conclusion is that he (in this case, me) only believes so b/c he is a brainwashed robot.

Now, walk up to someone and accuse them of being a Stepford [insert appropriate noun here] and see how they respond. 

I would not have put it this way but I guess it might be true in a way. But I would not say that I consider people who love the current modern evolution of gaming as brainwashed robots... Rather that the vast, vast, vast majority of those gamers (which are like this because they are only occasional gamers who don't know much about what they are talking about) always look for incredibly crisp graphics in a game before anything else. There is so many great games out there which are completely ignored simply because the end user look at the graphics and, because they are only slightly substandard or are not 3D or are not top of the line or whatever, completely dismiss the entire product. Usually with the line of thinking that "the graphics suck, the game also suck". Graphics can be a great selling point, but really... Is that all which matter in a game? I don't think so. But the average player do. What to do about this? Nothing much I guess.

So yeah, if you simply state that you like the current way gaming has evolved and don't bother expanding your explanation to what really make a game great other than its graphics it is very easy to be categorized as such I guess... But then, I have a saying roughly along those lines: if the hat fit you then wear it. If it doesn't... Then don't.

The reason that point was dismissed was b/c I pointed out a set of "mainstream" games that I said were quite good.  And, you responded by saying that I only thought so, not b/c I had actually played them, but b/c I was some sort of marionette.  To some extent, I'm skeptical that you would be able to convince me otherwise.  You'd have to make some general argument that quality of games now was worse than it was 10 years ago.  Given that my contention was that there are some great games out now, which I used to indicate that mainstreaming hadn't hurt at least one traditionally geek industries quality, you'd have to convince me that the games I thought were quite excellent over the past few years weren't.  That seems ... unlikely, and odds are laborious.  There might be some possible general argument to make, but I can't even imagine what shape it would take. 

I don't quite remember exactly this happening. You pointed me out a few games you thought were good, I dismissed them as otherwise from personal experience. And I don't remember you going out of your way (or much trying at all) to prove that those games were good too. I remember, for example, that you cited Civilization V as a great game which I shot down because the only real evolution of that game was its graphics and that I could not even navigate in it because I don't like the interface. It's not going to convince me the other way either, y'know.

But as far as mainstream is concerned, I am puzzled why I would need to even try to prove how harmful it can be for about anything. Just take a look around you. Electronics? Desks? Chairs? Cars? Phones? Appliances? Everything which went mainstream at one point or another simply dropped their quality almost exponentially and lost their main defining points to "blend in" or morph into something which can be sold to a greater audience or market. Like chairs... It seems nowaday that there is only a single template ever for computer chairs, and that template is a chair on wheels with an S in the back... But that damn S in the back hurt my back when I sit for too long in it... I've been trying to find a nice chair since ages now but I'm stuck with the same old chair because I simply can't... Appliances... Try to find an appliances which will last more than 10 years at best right now. Almost impossible, to tell the truth. Etc. I could go on and on but frankly I'm not really interested in turning this post into a market bash thread. Too tiring and depressing...

Ok, thank you.

It is officially the Idiot card.

Quick search give me

Ability Drained

The character has permanently lost 1 or more ability score points. The character can regain drained points only through magical means. A character with Strength 0 falls to the ground and is helpless. A character with Dexterity 0 is paralyzed. A character with Constitution 0 is dead. A character with Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma 0 is unconscious.

so I guess I have to assume that it wasn't as permanent as the description led me to believe.

Ok. I'm not 100% sure... If I'm not right I'm sure others will jump in heartily to point me wrong... But:

1) Two weapon fighting modifiers always apply as soon as you have two weapons, one in each hands, and are using them both in battle at the same time. To save on the negative modifier then you would need to drop your second weapon somehow so you can hit with unmodified first hand weapon. (I would allow one of my PC to drop his second weapon as a free action even if it wasn't their turn if it was required somehow but I don't think a specific critical AoO would ever happen in my games to warrant a player from losing the advantage of their second weapon... However, that would probably be a critical climax moment of "if I don't hit we are in deep ****" or something similar so why not allow it?)

2) I don't see why you could not only because you used a reach weapon in that round. As long as the weapon is a valid, ready weapon you can use at that time then you have the choice to do use whichever ready weapon you want.

If I were the DM the might be consequences for basically trying to football bash someone with spikes while using a reach weapon... But that's completely beside your question and more on a RP matter.

@Unbeleiver: As far as I am concerned, I addressed you and your points (just as many others on this thread too). If you're not happy about it or how I did it then please tell me how I'm supposed to do it or what you actually think I didn't address. Otherwise you're only trolling me right now. I'm not impressed.

@Amechra: Thanks for the link. I'll check it out later when I have time.

And, what the hell is a "real gamer" anyway?  That sentiment may be the entire rub of this thread. 

I usually use the term "hardcore gamer" but that term is not liked by many people. What I meant by a "real gamer" is exactly that: I'm a real gamer by it's true term and not by the retarded term the industry or the media tried or are trying to picture a gamer to be. Which mean someone who play practically exclusively FPS games. Yeah, that's a retarded way of categorizing people who play games... But you would be surprised by how deep this term is anchored deep inside people mind, even today.

Saying in a RL conversation that you are a gamer is usually a social faux-pas. Half the time people will look at you strangely, wondering if you're not the next psychopath who will go shoot people in a school... The other half will start babbling stuff about FPS until I tell them that I'm actually not into that genre at all and then they too give me a weird look.

A real gamer is someone who has games, in general, as an hobby. This usually describe people who are extremely competitive in everything they do. I play about any game genre which exist and I also include sports I like in that definition too.

Some people paint as an hobby. Some people collect coins or stamps... I game. I almost exclusively only do that with all my free time. That's what I like to do. Best example I can give you: me and my D&D group are gathering the 23rd, right before Christmas and while everybody probably should have better to do, to play the board game Axis and Allies. I'm really looking forward to that.

On the one hand it's fair to say there's not much in the way of strategy games, certainly not a ton of them.  Although there is Total War:  Shogun 2, Dawn of War 2, Civ 5 that recently got an expansion, and a few other smaller titles as others have alluded to.  And, I know of those and I'm not even all that into strategy.

Well, first you agree with me that there is not many strategy titles. With the heck ton of games we have right now it's already saying a lot... But, except for Civilization, I don't even know about those games. About Civ 5: Ever since Civ 4, the Civilization series took a heavy turn for the worse. Maybe someday the producers of strategy games will realize that better graphics for a strategy title is actually a bad thing. Sure, I can see the units move now. Everything is prettier. I can zoom on that dragoon and try to see if they do have boggers down their nose and stuff... But it doesn't help playing the game, it's even an hindrance! Stuff like having trouble picturing where a square start and stop? Constantly having to zoom in and out to get the real picture of the game? That's pretty much the basis of the game right there. Strategy games doesn't require fancy graphics, they require you to be able to easily assess the situation without distraction. Since graphics have been worked on primarily, improvement on real aspects of gameplay was pretty much thrown out of the window and extremely few actual improvements were done on that aspect, if at all. With all this, why would I want to move from Civ III if I consider Civ 4 or 5 actually inferior? Which is exactly how I see it.

For the other two titles... I did some research. Total War:  Shogun 2 is clearly not a strategy game but a wargame. Which is kind of a subgenre of strategy but it is clearly not the same thing. I happen to dislike this kind of game a lot because it require you to know more about every single units in the game and how to use them against what instead of requiring real strategy than anything else.

Dawn of War 2... About the same thing. It's an RTS. The first few RTS really had strategy going, but modern RTS could drop the S really... Not my cup of tea.

Anyways, instead of trying to turn the thread into my own argumentative playground, there is actually a point tightly related to this thread that I am trying to make here: I liked the way gaming was before, when it was an elistic group. Mainstream mean that you want to appeal to masses which know absolutely nothing about what you really want to do, and managing to do that mean that you really need to dumb down what you do and turn it into something which is several levels behind in term of quality and fun than what was produced before. It sure sell well, it might even be quite the nice thing for people who are not used to a genre and are looking for something simple to whet their appetite... But while I have no problem with that per se, I do have a heavy problem with the whole industry going that route because, supposedly, that's where the cash is...

The end result is that I get dumbed down games I don't like and which look, feel and play as very bad games when I compare them to what I used to look at, feel and play with in the 90's. And in my mind, things should evolve and get better with time, not the opposite like I've been experiencing since a little more than a decade now.

Eagle of Fire, you check out some of the indie titles? There have been several great indie adventure games/strategy games that have come out relatively recently.

Yes. Most of them are not even worth looking at. There is a few that I have great hopes for but recent experiences lead me to believe that you never actually know what you'll get until the game is actually finished. At the speed some indies are being completed then we might still have to wait a decade to see the end result...

Also, indies only mean that the game is being produced by a company which is not already mainstream (in the sense that it is not an already well established company). It doesn't mean much in itself to be frank. The big players are those you need to look at because great games will come out from those on a regular basis, not the indies.

I would not say so because one of the most basic rule in the D&D core DM book is that if you don't know what kind of penalty to give to a given action then go with the basic -2 or +2 bonus.

The variant rules stated here obviously follow this rule too.

The only important point to ask yourself is "Am I going to bother my players with this?" or "Is my DM going to bother me with this?" IMHO.

Many DMs simply don't care about weight of items and coins. It simplifies things for everybody... But it also leave out some possibilities.

The other day, my PCs of a new game found, without much of a fight, a coffer filled with about 47 thousand... Copper pieces. It was quite a small coffer too for the size of all that stuff together.

In the end they didn't bothered to bring the stuff along as it was weighing them down a whole 47 kilos. lol.

I wonder what face they'd do if they had realized that the coffer was way too small to contain all that stuff... And that it was in fact magical too.

I question the fact that you can even turn bones to stone with flesh to stone to begin with. The spell description specify that

Only creatures made of flesh are affected by this spell.

.

1) Bones are not considered entities or creatures
2) Bones are not made of flesh.

Does anybody know or have handy a list of all available metals in D&D?

In my last table my group, while in a recess, got into a very non incidental discussion about magical and non magical metals in D&D. The conversation started with a player mentioning adamantium, which I know doesn't exist in the D&D universe. That would be the metal used in the creation of Marvel's Wolverine body armor and claws. In D&D, the closest named metal would be adamantine instead.

Mythril (mythral?) and obdurium also were mentioned. As the DM, I was also interested to know if any of those metals can be mined outright as an ore or if some (or all) of them are in fact alliages of other metals. Which ones are magical in nature and which ones are not, too.