This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
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Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
@JM
Not human
@Ing
I honestly couldn’t tell you. Tall white dude. The only thing that stands out about him is how long it’s taking him to climax.
You’d think editing would have fixed that.
Ah well. Time to see what the Marvel heroes are doing.
@Julian
WTF are you watching?
Tall White dude I think rules out Guy Gardner and John Stewart at least.
Does he have a white hair streak?
John Morales #500 reminds me of the pink panther theme song,
pedant, pedant, pedant pedant pedant :-)
Oh goodie:
1. Unwillingness to capitalize.
2. Unwillingness to switch out of Twitter mode long enough to type “You are,” instead of “u r.”
3. Copy-pastaing.
Dude, fuck you.
Porn. Thought that was kinda obvious.
No. The actor’s got all black.
broboxley, makes a difference: two females can surely fuck, but they can’t engage in coitus.
</pedant>
Kyle Ryner. If anyone cares enough to make it accurate. Ryner is the one who’s GF coined the “Woman in Refrigerator” trope, so I can only assume this is an assassination attempt
strange gods befor me, second study, small sample size, from mainly college students. only objections hard to really say with a high degree of accuracy that this applies to all people. i’m not saying that priming does not work.
not saying that people aren’t suspicious of people not like themselves, only saying LARGER, MORE RANDOM SAMPLE SIZE GIVES BETTER RESULTS, sorry, that just sliped out.
“But it’s absurdly presumptuous to suggest that you know what other people should be arguing about, and such talk is usually indicative of an unfounded sense of superiority.”
Let me rephrase that in a way that i can understand a little better…
ahhemm….you stupid hamster snorkiling, prictoid, assclown. Who in the hell are you to be so arrogant and presumptuos to come in here and think that your imbecilic, purile, pre-pubesent, anencephalitic, panderings to obviously simplistic reasonings, make even the slighest difference to the least of us. you sound like a raving loonitic with delusions of grandure.
Go stick your head up your ass and see if you can find any enlightenment there.
by the way here are some links that you may want to read, come back in a couple of months when you have finished reading the titles, and we’ll talk about it some more.
(Lifted from a Linux Help Thread)
and no, strange god, i can’t guess where you are going… (momma always said forrest was the smart one).
oh great one of the changing nym: Pedantics are fun, it seperates those who can stand long periods of bordem from the rest of the heard….thereby making it much easier to feed upon them.
broboxley OT: no extra credit for this one. I like the idea though, but only if they were fully functional. as a guess i would say Sagan or Dawkins, both could be delightfully snarky at times.
Godbot: If PZ isn’t God, then who is…..thats right, prove to me PZ isn’t god…..LA LA LA LA LA LA LA ALLA LA ALLLLALLLALALALALALalalalala la……
Finally, to all the people here at Pharyngula, please excuse my rude and boorish behaviour. I have lurked here for about 2 yrs and have seen many wonderful debates, trollings, thashings and trouncings. The flames have been almost as amusing as some of my other favorite places to hang. I always enjoy learning, listening and inciting. I have a thick skin and a thick skull, please bear with me.
Respectfully,
Howard M. Gray
keresthanatos:
No worries; chew-toys are always welcome.
(You’re a prime specimen — perhaps you may be worth a few yuks)
—
Re:
Clearly, you either mean to refer to pedantry or to pedants, but your ignorance precludes such precision.
John Morales: sigh……sorry meant to say: “Pedantics iz funzs”, please excuse my lack of precession.
keresthanatos, you are forgiven.
(It takes a certain nous to be able to ostensibly simulate dumbness rather than exemplify it)
JM whos stimulatin ??????
Josh you wouldn’t like it, I’d just lay there and sweat.
John Morales, #7 strapons don’t count? ejaculation isn’t a requirement for coitus
keresthanatos #7 try lenny bruce.
if you want to discuss the wonderfullfuckupedisness of christian theology that a jew who represents a realestate deal between his father and other jews have anything to say about gentiles who insist that having penis to anal passage is an automatic death sentence this is the wrong forum. just sayin….
broboxley, yeah, it does.
(There’s always ‘sexual congress’)
—
keresthanatos, I know you’re trying, but alas, you’re not trying.
(Homophonia < polysemia)
PS Perhaps if you tried harder, you might become trying.
(I don’t mistake unlikelihoods for impossibilities)
Not even worth being a chew toy.
JM Damnit…. busted.
I do have a real problem with spelling. Low level dyslexia, shows up as mostly as orthographic coding problems. I also have problems parsing sentences to arrive at the implied meaning. On the flip side, I am able to solve a fair number of math problems by inspection. Not rapidly and not uniformly, but enough to really have pissed off a fair number my calc, statistics, and physics proffessors.
Heavy sigh, ya play the hand your delt(a)….sorry couldn’t resist(or)(oh god make it stop)../…!!!!!!
keresthanatos, relax.
I don’t judge your intelligence either by your orthographic capability nor by your grammatical competence, rather by your contentions and your intent as inferred from your thematic topicality.
(How’s your foray here working out for ya? ;) )
little below what i was hoping for, but i see potential in most of the people here. still noting lots of logical fallicies, but much higher levels of thought, and much more introspective than the general population.
Josh, try BEAR baiting, nothing like pokin them big ole hairy men w/ sticks and gettin them to chase ya….YEEEEE HAAAAAW, now get on all four and bleat like a sheep !!!
keresthanatos:
No, you’re claiming that you’re noting such, but you have yet to actually note such.
(Care to adduce a single example?)
any how, enough fun with the atheist, gotta go rile up them christians.
peace all, stay safe.
H.M.Gray, troll ordinare.
absence of evidence is not equlivant to evidence of absence.
to state that something does not exist cannot be proven, at least not in the most rigours of form.
Brave, brave H.M.Gray
keresthanatos:
Yeah, it is; you confuse evidence with proof.
When the statement is equivalent to claiming the impossible is not impossible, then yes, it can because it’s tantamount to claiming that contradictions aren’t or that the incoherent is coherent.
(And in neither case is that a fallacy, since both are but claims and not arguments)
thank you, that was most enjoyable, I haven’t seen MPHG in years, knee, nnooooo, ecki, ecki, eck tum zoom boing…. damn i forgot, knee…..
Oh ffs too stupid to allow contamination Comment by keresthanatos blocked. [unkill][show comment]
keresthanatos, no worries, after all, it takes two: one to provide amusent by doing unto, and one to do so by being done unto.
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AbsenceOfEvidenceIsNotEvidenceOfAbsence…. yes another cut and past.
P \to Q, P \vdash Q
Modus ponens
What is this idiot babbling about?
When the statement is equivalent to claiming the impossible is not impossible, then yes, it can because it’s tantamount to claiming that contradictions aren’t or that the incoherent is coherent.
old and throughly refuted in the real world both mathatically and observationally by quantum mechanics. i.e. superposition, and bose einstien condensate.
to all the physicist and mathmaticians out there, yes it is sloppy, and yes it is streching the metophor and no it is not at all rigrious, but boy is it fun.
Wowbagger, I think keresthanatos imagines looking up a reference proves it has some grasp of logic.
It fails to note that the only time that contention applies is when there is also the premise that evidence cannot be had, in which case the proposition is otiose.
As is often the case with those who cite without comprehension, the linked page actually disputes its claim (I quote from its own link):
And those forms would be the useless and irrelevant forms.
Like gun kata.
Also, why keresthanatos apparently imagines QM is either incoherent or contradictory is open to speculation, but that it does imagine such is rather silly.
like dividing by zero, a common curse in many instances.
hmmmmm….. let me put it simply for you, have you exercised all possible modes of investigation, known, unknown and unknowable., to determine that the possibility of the premise is false, or are you just assuming a lot.
sounds a lot like the old “I don’t see it, no one I know has seen it, therefore it does not exist”.
Wasn’t it leaving to bother Christians? Why is it here? Is it quantum entangled?
I suspect the pretentiously ‘nymmed one
keresthanatos:
To such as you, perhaps. To the rest of us, no.
Such stupidity!
One cannot (definitionally) exercise unknown or unknowable modes of investigation; you are playing with words and not with concepts.
(Very poorly, at that)
Like I wrote, that’s otiose.
If something is defined in contradictory terms, then it’s analytically true that it doesn’t exist except as a proposition; otherwise, if there is no evidence for that something, then it’s irrelevant whether it exists or not and to believe it does is futile.
(A stupid person will here exclaim “but it could still affect something, somehow”, the which I expect from you)
Oh, xe’s pushing god of the gaps.
[giggles]
well this is fun, but sleepy time is calling, will see if I can drag out physics books to find that damned photonics experiment that drives the philosphers wild. also tends to unsettle the whole Copenhagen crowd, can’t be solved, many world however is a snap. been told it has been resolved in on of the brane theroies, but the math is hard to follow, don’t hold your breath…. or do if you wish.
TTFN
Simple troll
I’ve got your casket all ready for you. Fluffed up comfy pillows, just how you like it.
Here’s hoping it won’t pull a PatrickG on us.
Oh lord. If that had been a sex game it would have been the longest marathon of edging in Internet history.
Simpleton troll.
(FTFY)
—
PS
((P→Q)∧(¬P→¬Q))→(¬Q→¬P)
@
1/x as x—>0: Linky
All very well understood. I am impressed by your ignorance.
Oh … you want to trollstand it? Sorry, cannot help you there. That is quite different to maths.
O hai!
Have you had enough creationists lately? If not, come here and watch an epic takedown from comment 15 onwards.
kthxbai
Just to add fuel to the gaming fire, 4e D&D is a complete abomination. GURPS 4e, OTOH, is a consistent improvement to an already good system, and I wish I could afford more of the damn books. For those who are looking for more descriptive combat options, imagine a system where you can actually decide whether you parry with your sword, block with your shield, or try to jink out of the way, and it matters which one you choose. The default magic system does run into the same ‘swiss army caster’ issue that others have mentioned, but the balance knobs are easier to tweak, and there are several well-supported alternate systems that make casters less almighty without crippling them. I still like my old blend of 1/2e d&d for old-school high fantasy dungeon crawls, but for virtually any other game type, GURPS is a far better system than any of the d20 variants. It handles the high fantasy dungeon crawl perfectly well too, I just have a lot of nostalgia for Gygaxian D&D.
@Dalilama
My group is so naughty, we stopped rolling dice and now the game works on the rules of Drama. Yeah there are character sheets on what people can theoretically do, but I don’t think we’ve ever really rolled that many dice in many many games. My group is big on story not crawling.
Wasn’t ‘H.M. Gray’ one of Pilty’s many nyms? Or was that Jonathan Gray?
Ing:
That’s also perfectly valid; I’m in a PbP game of long standing that didn’t even start with a system. I do generally like a certain element of randomness now and then, though. Keeps things surprising. Honestly, I’ve not really had much chance to play GURPS recently. I haven’t got a meatspace group, and most of the online groups I’m with are playing In Nomine right now. Also a fun system/setting, based on christian mythology in the modern era.
I don’t remember very many of Piltfuck’s nyms, but I don’t think that’s him. He hasn’t done false-flag trolling, as far as I remember. At most he sometimes pretends to be slightly less racist, misogynistic and homophobic than he really is, and the fullness of his bigotry can be easily coaxed out of him.
Trust me, that’s not Piltdown. I know Piltdown. “Howard M. Gray” is no Piltdown.
SG:
Yeah, it didn’t read like Pilty to me, I think it was just a case of nym confusion on my part (He’s used so damn many here, I can’t keep track.) The last time I saw Pilty, he was pestering Jadehawk on her blog.
You kinda need experienced gamers with a love of story telling for this to work. I’ve tried it with survival horror games and they’ve just fallen apart. (To be honest, probably no more often than my normal D20 games.)
@ Ms Daisy Cutter
What, that status isn’t tattooed on my forehead? Disappointed.
@ rorshach
Ouch. I resemble that remark. :)
But no, I’ve learned my lesson. My newfound Kentucky heritage (read: bourbon) doesn’t mix with Pharyngula.
After the first chewing out, I made myself a cheatsheet to navigate FTB standards blog-to-blog. Very simple, but I find it useful. At the bottom it now says in giant letters “Are you drunk at Pharyngula?”
I do hope my comportment in other areas earns me Chew Toy status, at least. Perhaps I can work my way up to Nibblelicious.
I’ll nibble your licious!
Hearn, would you please go die already?
But they’re only used by other people. I notice that you present an opinion as a fact – “little below what I was hoping for” – [citation and survey data needed]{lol}, and I wish to point out that might want to look into a spell checker. Half of my words(FOS – figure of speech) are underlined with red. For instance, I spelled it ‘speach’ at first.
Welcome, good sir or ma’am.
Oh yeah, is this TZT descendant?
Yep. Hi mike!
Well the campaign is a sequel to the setting I built that we’ve been using for like 4 years. The story became the core point
I love this!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_hatch
We should have them in the USA.
I also love the instructions on the Czech one:
“The green indicator light signalizes the baby-box is in operation. The red indicator light signalizes the baby-box does not function. Push the red button and open the baby-box. After you put a child in, close the baby-box.
SG, there are baby drop-offs like that in many states in U.S., where supposedly, a woman can drop off a baby anonymously, legally and safely. This was started to prevent women from dropping babies in dumpsters and the like, ending up with many dead babies. The problem is that in the U.S., these aren’t nearly as anonymous or legal as they purport themselves to be. Women who use them can still be tracked down and can still be prosecuted, so they aren’t used much and we still end up with dead babies.
Yep. That’s why I like the “baby hatch” better, ’cause it’s anonymous.
Apparently it’s been recognized for 800 years that these are a good idea, but here in the USA we still can’t have nice things. Even though these things are older than liberalism!
Germany has baby hatches too.
The problem with safe haven laws or baby hatches is that it leaves the kids in legal limbo. The first problem with anonymous abandonment of kids is that you don’t know who abandoned them. Could be the non-custodial parent, seeking revenge on the custodial parent. Could be the grandparent, embarassed about their teenager having a kid. Could be the babysitter. Second and related, there’s no way to know if everyone who has potential parental rights has signed off on the drop off. Perhaps the father doesn’t know about it and would take it if he had a chance. (Unlike the first case, this doesn’t imply deceit or malice: the mother might just never have thought of asking the father if he wanted to take the baby.)
I wish there were some way to have no-shame drop offs of kids so that the kids’ history could be traced and the legal problems solved without shaming the parents who weren’t able to be parents so badly that they’d rather leave the kid in the trash than face the shame. But I guess that’s not possible in current society.
dianne, if it’s the sitter or another third party doing the deed, surely it’s likely that the parent(s) would report the missing baby?
(Obviously, I opine from ignorance)
@John Morales: It seems like that would be the likely outcome, but I’ve been told that the children dropped off at safe havens can be virtually unadoptable because you can’t prove that no one with a legitimate case for custody is looking for them. Hard to prove a negative, I suppose.
Actual conversation overheard at the bar last night:
P: ew, this beer tastes funny.
Q: Here, let me see…mm, tastes good to me!
P: huh. Maybe it’s my gum.
Chas I’ve been debating putting together a book of stupid shit hear at the bar.
It would be a huge project.
That’s not a problem, since the alternative is more dead kids.
Dianne:
Y’know, it’s just amazing how other countries manage to keep these babies alive, get them into good situations and don’t fuck up the mother’s life while doing it.
I think this “legal limbo” is pure, grade U.S. bullshit. There are babies who are abandoned and found and successfully adopted out. That alone shows it’s perfectly possible to do. If a baby up and disappears and it is wanted by someone, said someone will report the baby missing, full stop.
As for a father ‘not knowing’ – look, if a man isn’t interested enough in the mother of his child or his child to notice that the mother doesn’t exactly want the kid around, maybe he’s not great parent material.
Most women who abandon babies are young and have intolerant parents (or fear their parents reaction) and don’t have the committed interest of whoever provided the semen in the first place.
Baby hatches have been used for hundreds of years, almost always successfully. FFS, in various countries, monks used to have a baby hatch, it was standard in a lot of monasteries.
The U.S. has long been a pit of pure shit when it comes to rescuing children, let alone seeing them into safe situations and it’s become just about fucking impossible for people to adopt, thanks to stupid standards and insane legalities. Why do you think so many people go to other countries to adopt?
Oh great. Another mass shooting. This time at Texas A&M.
Reports of man shooting from house with…
Automatic weapons.
Not semi-auto
Auto.
Let’s see how this shakes out once the “fog of war” lifts.
Rev. BDC:
Aw shit. Off to check the news.
@ Rev. BigDumbChimp:
How dare you even bring the subject up. TOO SOON!
That said, fuck. I saw a lot of commentary wondering if the Aurora mass murder would have a copycat/domino effect. Is that what this is? I dunno. Just fuck.
No one is reported dead, thankfully. So far, two injuries are being reported.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57492214/shooting-near-texas-a-m-kills-officer-civilian-gunman-fatally-shot/
3 dead, actually. That includes the shooter.
rumor is that the shooting may have been an eviction gone wrong
I see Perry is being his usual helpful self. :eyeroll:
Got my yellow fever booster today, and it’s knocking me out. I am suddenly just exhausted.
http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/
SC #82 /me loves lavender soap. On me. Dunno about others
Them who enjoy watching abb3w may enjoy this.
My favorite part is when a Catholic says to abb3w, “If I thought you were genuine you would get a genuine response. I see no reason to think that from your postings.”
That’s really funny, considering — but then I suppose a lot of blog communities that’ve been trolled probably feel beseiged by now.
sgbm @84,
There is much stupid on that blog.
@78: It’s a good thing armed cops were around, isn’t it? Oh, wait, actually at least some of the dead and injured were probably killed by the cops’ crossfire, not the original shooter. Too bad the cops weren’t unarmed. There might have been a lower body count.
@84 (and 85): I don’t understand the attitude. Aren’t Catholics, especially priests, supposed to be interested in converting the heathen? Perhaps they feel less secure when they don’t have a sword or gun to back them up.
strange gods:
Thanks. I did do the google search you recommended and it lead me to this post of yours where you said the following…
[emphasis mine]
I actually thought that it was quite honest of you to say that the general repulsion to the idea of killing infants (at least in the West) is a “societal preference” that has the possibility to change, over time. So we don’t know if Singer’s philosophy (and Giubilini/Minerva’s) on the justification of infanticide could one day be acceptable in the future, no matter how appalling we would consider the notion today. I mean, just consider how abortion was viewed in Western society only a hundred years ago.
You also said this…
I agree that the reaction to that ethics paper was strange.
You speak as though they’ve defended killing infants just because they’re unwanted. This is not the case. You should educate yourself.
We?
Consider two hundred years ago; abortion was more acceptable than it is today.
Circumcision: It was good enough for Jesus
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/12/opinion/la-oe-allen-anti-circumcision-activists-20120812
intactivists? first time I have heard that phrase
where you going?
91 ChasCPeterson, that map should be updated from the yucatan south http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aedes_aegypti little bastards are all over the place
If AE is getting vaccinated, it’s almost certain to be because of CDC guidelines. And they pretty much know what they’re doing over there.
94 yeah, thats why I caught it and almost died visiting belize in 1982 and they have posters all over that country with pictures of the little bastards and warnings. great way to lose weight, went from 230 to 175 in a matter of 2 weeks.
The word is hilarious. Their modus operandi, not so much.
Their number one tactic is to try to make circumcised men feel bad about themselves. They assert that men who were circumcised in infancy must experience less sexual sensation than uncircumcised men. There is good evidence that this is not true. (Men who were circumcised in adolescence, or especially in adulthood, are more likely to experience less sexual sensation.)
Tactic number two is to deny all the evidence that circumcision has any health benefits for any population anywhere. This is grossly irresponsible.
About places like the United States, UNAIDS says: “In settings with lower HIV prevalence in the general population, including where HIV infection is concentrated in specific populations at higher risk of HIV exposure, such as sex workers, injecting drug users or men who have sex with men, limited public health benefit would result from promoting male circumcision in the general population. However, there may be individual benefit for men at higher risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection such as men in sero-discordant partnerships and clients presenting at clinics for the management of sexually transmitted infections.”
As for sub-Saharan Africa, millions of lives are at stake. I think it is sensible for non-experts to try to not hold strong opinions about issues of public health which are still being reasonably debated by public health experts.
Don’t know what to tell you, Boxley. Take it up with the CDC. And the WHO. You know, right, that the mosquito is not the disease and that yellow ≠ dengue?
Speaking of intactivists: one just showed up on an old thread.
I’ve seen a few interactions with people who’re interpreted to be Thunderfoot supporters but who aren’t obviously such. The issue (which I think to be a misunderstanding in a couple of cases) arises when someone says “Thundefoot hacked into the mailing list” and the other person says “no, he didn’t; that’s not hacking.” This is interpreted to be a defense of Thunderfoot. I think in some cases it is instead a defense of hacking.
Hacking involves creativity.
Being a script kiddie involves using automated tools that a hacker created.
Thunderfoot does not even rise to the level of script kiddie. He just clicked on a hyperlink that he’d received in his email.
A cat on an iPad — an actual cat; this is not hyperbole — could do what Thunderfoot did. Calling it hacking thus offends some sensibilities.
+++++
PatrickG:
Everyone is “allowed to” mock people for having dyslexia. There’s no law against it.
Whether it’s socially destructive to do so is another matter, and probably does not depend much on whether the mocker has dyslexia.
So anyway, is that why you mocked Ing’s dyslexia?
It doesn’t appear that Ing was bothered by that instance, but if you’re using flawed reasoning akin to “it’s okay for gay people to mock other gay people”, such flawed and socially destructive reasoning does bother me generally.
Huh. I just linked to that thread, so I imagine he might have followed my link.
Note tactic #1 in action:
Generally not.
Chas #96 the mosquito is the vector for both diseases.
Interestingly, Aedes aegyptii can transmit both.
xposted from the sign-thread, because bored, and y’all aren’t talking enough about me:
As a means of procrastinating the design work I’m supposed to be doing, I made this. In hindsight, it should have been green or red, not blue, but I accidentally deleted the vector-file and I can’t be bothered to recreate it.
Jadehawk,
your clear design beats all the rubbish from AA easily. But I don’t like the message tbh, atheists aren’t intrinsically reasonable as we all know, and while atheism is a reasonable position, if I was a believer I’d consider that message arrogant.
If Silverman pinches this, make sure they pay you royalties…:-)
Jadehawk, it’s too clean for AA.
Needs more visual busy-ness. Like so:
http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/46932
atheists aren’t, but atheism is, so I’m ok with that bit of it.
OTOH, it might well serve to attract more of those folks who identify urgently with the “reasonable” label, to the point of refusing to see their biases… so who knows, it might attract the wrong kind of atheist :-p
SGBM, don’t give them ideas…
yeesh.
Yes, I know about the common mosquito vector.
Neither virus is found everywhere the mosquito is found. OK?
The question was the distribution of yellow fever, not A. aegypti.
yeesh.
I’ve been working on this one for a long time, but I was thinking you could use this as a background, then somewhere on the sides it could say this:
𝔸𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕚𝕤𝕞: ℂ𝕝𝕦𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕗𝕦𝕔𝕜 𝕠𝕗 𝔾𝕒𝕣𝕓𝕝𝕖𝕕 ℕ𝕠𝕟𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕤𝕖
𝔹𝕦𝕥 𝕚𝕥 𝔻𝕠𝕖𝕤𝕟’𝕥 𝕙𝕒𝕧𝕖 𝕒 𝔾𝕠𝕕
Yeah, sorry, I’m just bored. In SE Asia, which is close to my part of the woods, you get both.
my billboard concept
ATHEISM: the world is fucking awesome! [picture of flying squirrel]
Chas #107 I contracted yellow fever in belize. They have a problem with that particular mosquito. Is there another logical vector for me contracting yellow fever in belize? Not sure what point you are trying to make
Dont know if you are aware of it but dengue has shown up in florida.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/05/20/127016467/dengue-fever-outbreak-in-florida-portends-a-growing-problem perhaps the cdc needs to update their maps?
ell oh ell
I first noticed this phenomenon of plagiarism years ago, when he copied generously from Bob Black’s The Libertarian as Conservative while we were explaining to a young libertarian how employers (and starvation and homelessness) are more coercive than the state.
It was the
bits that popped out at me. I’d read a bit of Bob Black when I was deconverting from right-wing libertarianism.* I knew I’d seen that phrase somewhere before. Tonight I thought I’d look it up again. Alas, wherever this was on Sb Pharyngula, it’s not showing up in Google yet. No matter.
Here’s pretty much the same bit at Dispatches, and at Zingularity. The very best line is at Dispatches:
*Bob Black writes some antifeminist crap, but I either didn’t read those essays at the time, or they didn’t register with me; I only became cognizant of this recently.
you’re welcome ;-)
@ Ing: strange gods makes one good point. If I offended you there, I will simply plead intoxication and a tendency to be overly sensitive to spelling and grammar mistakes, due to my own minor dyslexia. I wasn’t aware that you have (may have, unsure) spoken to issues before, but regardless, since I suffer from a similar issue, I should (and will) be very careful about the things I say in this area.
@ strange gods before me:
SHORT VERSION: Fuck you.
Just fuck you.
How dare you compare being gay to having a disability? How. Fucking. Dare. You.
LONG VERSION:
First, a disclaimer that I’m sober. I’ve PUI’ed here before, and I am not doing that again.
I screwed up addressing Ing, again pleading intoxication not as an excuse, but context. (Given that people were previously asking people not to “pull a PatrickG”, I’m going to venture that alcohol + blog commenting is not my strong suit.) However, intoxication is no excuse. I apologize wholeheartedly and sincerely for my inexcusable behavior, particularly since my background should have made me sensitive to what I was writing. Sorry. :(
However, I must comment on this from strange gods:
If you’ll note, I had made an error in a thread which someone else had called out. It hurts me more than you might suspect when that happens. Because, you know, I’m disabled, and I screw up now and again. It embarrasses me. It’s tied to my self esteem. It makes me reluctant to speak.
Specifically, I made a ridiculous inversion of ‘m’ and ‘n’ in a word that doesn’t exist, in an offhand remark about Stephen Donaldson. Someone called it out in a comment. I don’t give a fuck about the existence of the word, but the swapping of ‘m’ and ‘n’ hit me hard. I fucking hate it when I screw that kind of thing up.
To use your analogy, it hit me as hard as *i think* homophobic slurs hit members of the LGBT community. But then, I don’t know. I’m straight/cis. So I don’t presume to be competent to judge.
But then, here was my comment:
So, you know what? I’m aware of my condition. I use humor and point out my own situation in responding to it. It’s the way I shield myself from shame and ridicule, which I’ve experienced far too much of. I’ve had years of dealing with people who assumed I was unintelligent because I misspoke or misspelled things. I even had to deal with this bias while in the 3rd year of a fucking doctoral program in engineering.
Could I have phrased it better? Perhaps. Could I have made it clearer that I was referring to my *own* disability? Perhaps. Could I have avoided using language that did splash damage? Definitely. Valid points, all.
But I still have to say you’re a fucking jackass. You know why?
Gay != disabled. Worst. Analogy. Ever.
You know, you can make any arguments you want about stigma in society, and how people are treated with regards to disability vs. sexual orientation. Doesn’t change this basic fact:
Being gay means a lot of people treat you badly, and that’s fucked up. Really fucked up. Being disabled means you can’t do things like “normal” people can AND people treat you badly.
So, I’m sure you’re a wonderful person and all that, and I’m just going off the walls in addressing you this way. But on behalf of this disabled person, FUCK YOU.
FWIW, it took me a full hour to write this post. I had to go over every fucking single word four times over to make sure I didn’t misspell anything. And I still probably missed something. Even with spellcheck!
It’s the Thunderdome, so it is what it is. I’m sure you didn’t mean to be as thoughtlessly and ridiculously idiotic as you sounded to me. Probably a lot of people will think I’m overreacting. But well, fuck them too.
Jadehawk! I love it! Thank you.
+++++
PatrickG,
It’s this form of argument — “I experience X, therefore I am justified in mocking others for X” — which I suspected and addressed.
That is fallacious reasoning for any X, and my pointing this out does not constitute a claim that any X₁ is harder, equivalently hard, or easier to live with than any other X₂.
Since it appears (from your response to Ing) that you recognize that form of argument is fallacious, then I misunderstood you — you evidently weren’t using it as justification to attack another — and I apologize for my error.
If, after we understand each other, you’re still bothered about me substituting one X for another to talk about the general form of argument, that would be unfortunate.
So noted. I sympathize.
@strange gods before me:
Thanks. I appreciate it. Apologies for lashing out, it’s something that causes me a lot of distress. I’m sensitive about some things.
I do appreciate your suspecting my argument as being “justified in mocking”, and in retrospect I wish I’d been more clear about mocking only myself. I’ll try to be better about that.
I also very much appreciate you looking past the various FUCK YOUs and going to my concerns. You win my personal internets tonight. :)
You don’t need to apologize, but it’s generous of you to do so. I may be primed to see the “justified in mocking others” trope where it ain’t present — I was recently targeted with the very same reasoning and I’m still irritated about it. But that’s not your fault.
Thanks for the internets; I will use them for phishing.
North West North North East
N W N N E
4e is the best DnD. It’s the only one that admits honestly both what it is, and what it is trying to be, and has design parameters that mostly achieve that goal. Every other DnD has lied horrendously on either or both of those, and as a result is a tangled mess that half-tries to be “all fantasy ever” and half tries to make a specific setting; where it is used for a specific setting, it is all too often kludged, and rarely the best system for that setting (Not the highest honor, but something I can at least hand to Exalted and, on the matter, Forgotten Realms when minimal additional books are added).
I also do not play much DnD 4e, because it is DnD. Just because it’s honest about what it is doesn’t mean I’m interested in that kind of thing for role playing. That kind of game is better suited for single player stuff, in my book. But honesty about goals, and design principles backing those goals up, matters a lot in my book. XD
</way late>
Oh hey there was more on the first page. Let’s see…
I’ve played far more RPGs to MMOs, although a considerable number of the latter. I stick to my statement.
As a general rule about this argument, DnD did not work fundamentally dissimilarly to MMOs in theory. Disavowing MMO conceits in RPG design, without disavowing DnD is… perhaps ironic at best.
So that I would have the vague sense of feeling I’d conquered quadratic wizards without actually doing anything about it? So that anything that isn’t a caster or spamming consumables still lacks for real options?
Adding a few weak and mostly irrelevant options to hitty types, removing a (rare few) of the most grossly overpowered spells and feats. CoDZilla is still in full force, as is wizard win. Shapechange is kind of a loss, but not the loss the designers think it was… and it defaults to non-core stuff being included. That’s a bigger gain for non-casters in relative terms, but in absolute ones, it helps casters more.
You never had to roleplay in previous systems of DnD either, don’t worry. I’ve seen too many RPGA events and regular old dungeon crawls to give any lip service to this.
Which is hilariously funny when you look at playtestinig and balancing of 3.0 at hte outset :D
Blatant lies. The core rulebooks were more broken than any other book in 3.0/.5/.P’s existence. Chargers doing literally thousands of damage in a single round, compiled over 5 or more books, are *still* weak compared to a core rulebook wizard, Druid, or Cleric. FFS, Druids get Fighters as class features =.=;
Greyhawk is fucking bland dude. Also Pretending it’s a real setting as presented in the core books takes… something. It ain’t. It’s this weird fusion of presenting your game as not having a default setting while actually having a default setting.
That’s literally identical to how they handled skills in 3.0/.5/P in practice, for most groups. You have a few skill points for flavor and the rest maintaining HD + 3 ranks. At higher skill levels (Player, not character, wise), this isn’t quite so true
…You think monks are brokenly strong, don’t you? TWF was fucking *WEAK* in 3.0/.5/P in practice. Conversely, the first “Solo the strongest monster in teh MM” build for 4.0 was a TWF Ranger. TWF wasn’t great, but if you weren’t going sword and board, investing the feats was a step up, at least.
Yes. Because in 3.0/.5/.P, Feats were conceived as one of the primary ways to give gameplay customization. In 4.0, Feats were designed as minor number tweaks and character customization, and powers were the major customizers. This complaint is actually true on its face, but fails to understand *why* it is true.
If the flavor of the game was to have a caster with almost no meaningful constraints and who could do literally everything, then sure. If you want magic that is closer to what fiction usually has, 4e is sadly closer (but still not very close).
But that’s not usually how DnD fiction presented casters. That’s not how a lot of players perceived casters. The system failed the flavor long before the alleged alteration of that flavor.
Whoops, the directions are because I have a hilariously short memory and needed them playing NEStalgia.
Minor addition to my last paragraph:
It is also only insanely rarely how casters are presented in non DnD-fiction. I’ve seen a few europe-y fantasy books wherein Mages are presented as nascent demigods. They’re not common. If Gandalf operated under similar constraints to DnD wizards, he would have solved the Lord of the Rings very, very quickly, to say the least. E6 and a few other variants try to address this, but in practice only address it for weaklings.
I know I rarely comment, and then only on heavy stuff. Oh well.
ruteekatreya:
D&D is heavy stuff?
Also, by “MMO Conceits”, I mean the holy trinity, and reasonably set roles per player/class. DnD playtesting in 3rd and 2nd ed was based on the exact same shit. EQ and UO didn’t come up with this stuff on its own. That was how people were playing DnD in large part. They went from being subtle to overt, and in the process of this change, managed to actually succeed at making those roles relevant.
That was poorly phrased; that is, “Yeah there looks to be conversations to be had on important shit but for once I’m going to just talk about nerd shit to the complete exclusion of the serious stuff.”
No worries, Rutee.
(I was once a fairly hard-core D&Der — but I stopped around 1992 FWTW)
@SGBM and Patrik
Leave me out of this
Again glad I had people who wanted to focus on story first as we didn’t have a problem with our wizard. The flavor for the setting and him is that spells are prepared via potions/rituals/talismans that are consumed (thus explaining the spell slot thing) or through magical devices. He also thankfully picked a few favorite spells to be his default abilities and didn’t really abuse it otherwise. Really the laziness of the players became a benefit as they just picked spells from the books to be the favorite abilities and basically just requested upgrades of that if they grew stronger. Fun game but most people would say it’s horrible D&D
But for reference I’m also the jackass DM who nerfed Sense Evil/Good/Motive spells and abilities for dramatic reasons. Our paladin couldn’t sense good/evil, that power was replaced with Psychometry. She got visions of the worst thing anyone had done when she touched them. Considered it an improvement as the visions were removed from context so you couldn’t jump to snap decisions and even good aligned characters could potentially have deeply troubled pasts (or someone untrustworthy may just not have had to opportunity to do anything really bad yet). Seemed to work well for deterring the Lawful Stupid paladin. Instead of a Crusader knight she had to be a detective, piecing together visions and clues and story threads to figure out what was going on.
The stage is set: the notorious Thunderdome, site of countless bloody internet battles. The crowd is restless with anticipation. The battled scarred glatiators enter, face each other and…start having a chat about D&D.
I’ll see if I can make this into a quarrel nonetheless.
I’ve never played D&D. Too mainstream.
dianne:
It may be so now, but it was once at the nerdish cutting-edge.
It may be so now, but it was once at the nerdish cutting-edge.
The sad life cycle of a nerd game. One day it’s the most obscure source of nerdish amusement, known only to a select few and played nowhere but sunless basements away from the eyes of the general public. The next jocks are playing it at half time.
I played D&D only one time, maybe 1978. You had to roll various dice to get your character’s attributes or whatever, and I rolled up max bravery or courage, good strength and/or weaponry, and no intelligence or magic. (Or whatever I don;t really remember.) So, a stone fighter, Sgt. Rock, who I figured just had to go full-on at any adversary without care or thought. Role-playing, no? He didn’t last long, and I went back to reading, which was fine.
boxley:
no shit. Hint: it’s your reading comprehension.
First, I have good reason to doubt your claim. But so what, I’ll stipulate it for the sake of argument.
You seem–I could be wrong, but all I can do is try to interpret the shit you choose to post–to be confused about some stuff.
Yes I know the mosquito vector for YF. Yes I know the mosquito is in Belize etc. I also know that the mosquito is not the disease; it’s a vector. The disease is caused by a particular virus that is spread among humans (etc.) by that particular mosquito.
But, see, not every individual of that species of mosquito carries the YF virus. There are even large geographic regions where none of the local mosquitoes carry the virus. For example, none of the mosquitoes in Belize are known to carry the virus, not for a long time.
Dengue fever is of course a different disease caused by a different virus but transmitted by the same mosquito. Again, not every individual mosquito carries that virus, and again there are whole populations of the mosquito without the virus.
I don’t know if the CDC needs to update their dengue fever maps because I never linked to a CDC map for dengue fever (which, you’ll recall from the previous paragraph, is a different disease from YF). I spose you could g**gle it up yourself if you cared.
But I’m pretty sure the CDC knows aaaall about it. Do you read the shit you link? [my emphasis]
Chas, #130 “For example, none of the mosquitoes in Belize are known to carry the virus, not for a long time.” Stanleyville is where we stayed. I dont want to go into tmi, just erased a longish post. That was the diagnosis, but the diagnosis was actually made in Vera Cruz Mexicoabout 15 days after spending a month in stanleyville.
Yes I understand that the mosquito can be disease free over large areas. I also note that medical reporting in the 3rd world isnt as rigorous as in the English speaking world for many reasons not all of them ignorance
Man, all this weird D&D stuff. There were revisions? And editions? I just played the original D&D, the 3 volume, crappily illustrated, ugly beige books, where the rules all sucked. Which was OK, we just made it up as we went along.
@PatrickG:
Aiee! That was me, and and that was not my intent. :-/
I’m sorry.
If it’s any consolation, it’s a very common mistake, since both renumerate and remunerate are real words.
What’s interesting is their different origins: both are from Latin, but the former is from numerus (number) while the latter is from munus/munia (service performed for the community, duty, work) which is also the origin of “municipal” and (my favourite) “munificence”.
/etymologygeek
To me.
(Pre-empting, this is.)
;-)
(I don’t think John is awake yet.)
[ominously]
“yet”
/spartan
No!
Wait, “laconic”!
/laconic
Here I sit crosslegged with a puppy on my lap — it’s the only way he’s anything other than a ball of energy.
Rescue pup, 9-10 week-old American Staffy x Staffy; a brindle barrel on legs with sharp, sharp teeth.
(The kitty is far from impressed)
@ cm’s changeable moniker:
No worries, but thanks for the kind thoughts and etymology (interesting!).
I feel like I’m saying this a lot, but I have a real short fuse while commenting online. I don’t know if it’s just the format, or the fact that I go back and forth from places like, say, this to comment threads on Kentucky creationists trying to (yet again) change school standards. Fucking AiG trolls.
Anyway, it’s something I’m sure will fade as I gain more comfort in a new forum. Particularly once I (a) master the skill of not just hitting “Submit Comment” and (b) develop less of a stream-of-consciousness style.
John, the kitty may not be impressed but I will guess the puppy will be impressed with the kitty sooner or later
You know, you could post links here.
We’re always (usually) up for a bit of creationist-bashing.
(This is Thunderdome. *grrrrr*)
Oh! That’s sister-in-law’s dog, after teenaged nephew got him as a hard-man status symbol. *sigh*
SIL’s Mr put him in his place, though. (The dog, not the nephew.)
He’s turned out to be an extraordinarily placid dog.
yeah, the dog is easier to train than a nephew. Other than a built in stubbornness a mile wide most of the bulldogs are pretty tame fellows when allowed to be.
cm, he’s gonna be a house-pet; first thing is to get him to stop mouthing to show affection and to house-train him, then we’ll take him to puppy-school to socialise him.
I know his breed tends to get along better with people than with other dogs, so this is very important. Last thing we want to do is encourage aggression.
(Our first dog was a staffy x labrador x ???, and he was the bestest dog; our second was a purebred (but ridgeless) Rhodesian and he was… um, beautifully-tempered but only obedient when he thought it appropriate. Fingers crossed on this one!)
Out of curiosity, how were Protection from spells handled? Or were they cut all together?
My references have sent me to Plutarch:
Word.
Probably to you all who knew it back when it was still 100% geek underground.
Me, I only started a few years ago and (having always been terrible a min/maxing gibberish) played roles with flavor and character first. Whatever my wizards may have been capable of (and with how high powered my dm’s caimpaigns usually are it was a lot) they spent more time at whatever library was available than at any kind of shop.
That’s one of the reasons I’m drawn to play by post. Being able to spend “my turn” on a post that consists of a wizard sitting at stool, going over the magical equations in their book, looking for a common theme between them that might hint at some greater universal pattern in magic is perfect for me. My material world group is big on moving the action along so monologues and the like need to be dramatic and announcing victor/defeat. A player going on trying to role play his wizard picking up Automatic Silent Spell really isn’t what they want.
Honestly, I kinda hate rules and want combat in the background. Maybe I shouldn’t toss so much scorn and hate at 4e.
Julian,
I kind of understand that, if you just want to beat things then pick up a videogame.
I’ll just chime in here to say that I’m veteran gamer (first game was Palladium’s TMNT, then I spent a lot of time playing 2nd ed revised AD&D, then transferred most of my gaming energy to a V:TM LARP) I *love* 4e. Yes, it’s intensely combat focused, but isn’t that the point? Roleplaying and narrative are wonderful but they can be handled with, y’know, roleplaying. Combat is where you need rules, and combat is where 4e shines.
Changed to Protection from (Element, school of magic, or creature type)
Protection from Profane and Protection from Holy for example replace protection from evil/good, protection from necromancy, protection from Fay, protection from animal etc
Paladin’s smite evil was also turned to just a holy based attack.
Also just renewing my open invitation to StevoR to suck a rail road spike, fucking naziass white shit stain.
Combat is what DnD focused on since its inception, along with dungeon crawling. It’s your free time to use on whatever, but it would appear better spent with other systems or no system, if given an opportunity. Granted, Roleplaying being a group exercise, that isn’t always an option.
I wasn’t in on DnD when it was geek underground; my first tabletop RPG was the West End Games Star Wars RPG, actually, and it came years before anything else for me. I did, however, enter DnD after playing EQ. It was very, very easy to see where EQ’s design concepts came from. It was equally easy to see how a class that was Enchanter, Magician, Necromancer, Wizard, and (most of) Shaman simultaneously was going to be leaps and bounds better than a Rogue or Warrior. I also read back into the history. People have been playing DnD in the roles that 4e codified for a very, very long time.
I actually have next to no problem with rules for other things besides combat. I may hate the specifics of execution, for instance, but take Exalted; it has a thing called Social Combat, which is used for when folks are trying to win hearts, change minds, debate effectively, etc. You could argue that should be done in roleplay, but why is sword clashing by necessity more important to settle by rules than talking, when character concepts aren’t actually focused on hitting people? It’s not for everyone, or even every game within the setting, but I’d argue that it’s not a bad idea to account for non-combat if it’s not supposed to come down to combat.
Continuing with the irrelevant DnD chatter:
Minions aren’t actually a bad move. On seeing systems besides DnD, that introduced similar concepts, I instantly grokked why their absence in DnD was a flaw, mechanically. Take, in Order of the Stick, the army scene where a general or paladin or w/e was trying to explain to the adventurer why she should be scared of level 1 goblins. “Every natural 20 is still a hit, and can you really kill 100 goblins before they get at least one swing of 1d8+2 each?” In setting, this is treated as profound, and a real threat by dint of numbers to a party of adventurers trying not to blow major resources.
Source: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0417.html
Except no, really, an archer may not be able to kill 100 goblins alone, but they can kill a pretty considerable number at just +6/+1 BAB or so before they actually get close, when you actually shoot out to max range (unarmored, Running 1/2 or 1/4th HD creatures are not known for their high AC; If they’re not running, they’re a little harder to hit, but you get at least twice as many shots on them), take all of your allotted attacks (or more than that, with multishot feats), etc. Further, even the wizard can winnow some out using nothing but a hand crossbow and base BAB, prior to using any AoE spells, and every character in the party has base BAB and access to crossbows, bows and the like. And if you need 20 of these mooks to swing their sword or axe or w/e each turn to have a chance of hitting, you get to the issue of only 8 being able to actually reach an adventurer each round, if they’re entirely surrounded and cut off (which PCs will almost never be)
…Where I’m going with this, is that minions, as introduced in 4e (and elsewhere), have the advantage of being more tweakable. If you want to introduce something as a credible threat, en masse, they can have decent defenses and respectable damage, without relying on natural 20s. You can present yesterday’s elite mook as today’s minion, and still represent how what used to be a dire threat is, while still difficult in numbers, easily dispatched singularly (without actually relying on something as obnoxious as, for instance, rolling a bucket of dice). Their 1 HP is only lost on a direct hit, so you can’t just expect every attack to dispatch one, but you can reasonably kill a fair number of them, while they still need a fair number to do more than harrass you. Just because it’s a minion-class mob doesn’t necessarily mean every minion is auto-killed instantly on being glared at, because their defenses are generally credible for their level (In the previous example, this may actually mean increasing that previous Elite’s AC/Defenses; it’s not that it’s harder to hit once, it’s that quickly killing it is not as easy as just hitting it used to be). It means a mass of wusses can mean something with a LOT less book keeping at the table.
That’s not how it works in every system, but it is how it works in DnD 4e, and it’s better than actually relying on 20 goblins to roll a nat 20 to hit, to do any damage whatsoever. Especially when those 20 goblins can be easily dispatched with a single first level spell (A trivial resource to a higher level group).
@Rutee
I seem to recall the 3.5 DM guide having something about most members of an army are conscripts and go down with one hit regardless of actual damage dealt. Just thought I’d share that.
Also have you developed any thoughts/ know anything about wushu?
Wasn’t it true that in one of the versions of the DnD ruleset that a level one unarmed human peasant will lose a deathmatch to a level one unarmed cat?
Sure, but that was based more on those conscripts being unwilling to fight, they’re just faking death even if they’re fine as soon as they have an excuse to do so. And they’re still just level 1-3 in crappy armor, so they’re still trivial to exterminate if you aren’t yourself 1-3 (And still trivial to kill if you are, you’re just likely to die yourself), and have the same “roll natural 20 to hit” issue as a goblin to an adventurer with even a modest level of 6 or 7.
Minions aren’t just there to represent level 1-3 in crappy armor. I mean, that’s probably close to what they are when you’re level 1-3, but a creature that is a Minion to a level 10 could just as easily be statted as a level 6 Elite or a level 4 Solo (Exact ratios wrong, it’s been a while). Mincing like 20 creatures isn’t that uncommon in fantasy, and this makes it a lot less bookwork. There’s seriously a reason a lot of games have this sort of feature (Exalted’s Extras, Mutants and Masterminds’ Minions, Legends of the Wulin’s Thugs…) Not using it in a given game can make sense (If you’re not having swarms of discrete units relying on natural 20s to begin with), but not having it in the rules is a serious flaw if you’re presenting a game as heroic fantasy.
No, nothing about Wushu offhand, unless I’m thinking of a different system.
In practice, every one since ADnD has this, because cats are represented as creatures with attacks and human peasants had 2 HP (ADnD and 3.0/.5/.P) or “Goes down in a single hit” (4.0). If Cats exist in the MM at all (which I can’t check on this computer and don’t remember off hand), they still do this. I’m also not saying it wasn’t true in DnD’s first edition, I’m just not that familiar with it. Make of it what you will. I can tell you how that would and would not be avoided in other systems, but that’s not as funny as “Peasants mauled to death in cat uprising; Local lord dispatches army to quell them”
Actually, I shouldn’t say “In practice, house cats best peasants in death matches”. In practice, it’s not an issue. But by the rules, Kitties are perfectly capable of killing several villagers who don’t properly team up, and is still quite capable of dropping one individually. In an engagement between an equal number of cats and peasants, as presented in the books, I’d bet on the cats.
But that’s not how it’d actually be handled in almost any game, so take that for what you will.
4e was hardly the first system to have 1HP mooks. I’m not sure where we first got the idea but they’ve been a fixture in my gaming circle for at least a decade. Whether your game is focused on tactics or narrative, minions can play a very useful role. Even though they’re easily dispatched they still threaten to do significant damage (as rutee pointed out) if not dealt with quickly, and the presence of a large number of minions not only provides an opportunity for heroic mass slaughter but can also seriously effect the tactics of an encounter.
@amphiox, It’s worse than that I’m afraid. In 2nd edition AD&D (and I assume earlier version as well) a domestic cat has a better than fifty percent chance to kill a first level wizard.
AWESOME
http://creationwiki.org/Apatosaurus
this is incontrovertible proof that I am the true Pope(s).
Squishy wizards indeed.
(Or is that the in-universe reason for spellcaster’s familiars – as a weapon against other spellcasters?)
dysomniak:
There’s a reason why DMs exist, and this exemplifies it.
Any DM who’d have a domestic cat be able to kill a wizard (never mind a peasant) is not worthy of the title.
(Bah)
It comes down to HP and spells/day. An “average” 1st level magic user (or wizard depending on the edition) can cast “Magic Missile” for 1d4 damage only once per day and if that fails to kill the cat (with 1/2 hit dice) they only have an average of 2 hit points. I don’t have my 2nd ed MM anymore but I believe a cat’s claws do 1d4, the exact same amount as a first level wizard’s hit dice.
The implication was that even though the rules permit it, it shouldn’t be a factor in how the game is ever actually played. Which it really shouldn’t be, unless house cats aren’t domesticated in your setting (and thus aren’t really house cats at all). If you insist on having a cat attacks omeone, it shouldn’t be capable of inflicting more than 1 HP of damage (in total) to a human, etc etc etc.
Which doesn’t make the rules less ridiculous, but does reduce the impact that the ridiculous rules have on a game; similarly, by the rules, you heal someone at negative HP if you begin to drown them (because the rules say the character’s HP becomes 0, rather than inflicting damage). No DM will ever actually honor that rule, but it’s there. It’s stupid, but it’s stupid in a way that isn’t really relevant.
In contrast, the rules, as presented, allow a cleric to easily out-fight the fighter class while also doing other things. A respectful player may not do this (and may, for reasons that aren’t related to direct jackassery), but the only simple and on-the-spot solution is arbitrary proclamations by the GM on the cleric’s effectiveness. The rules are stupid, but in a relevant way.
I once had a friend try to use Mage Hand to hurl 1,000 blowgun darts for 1 damage each. That shit didn’t fly.
Back in the day, when we played (2nd Ed), magic-users actually had to get (and carry! and use!) the material components — and also the travelling spell-books — and we applied encumbrance.
Apparently, most players never bothered with those, so people who played my games when I DMd at Adelaide Uni back in the early 80s were taken aback and stuffed.
Basically, when combat came around, the rest of the party’s job was to protect them.
(Not to mention weapon speed factors! Travelling spell-books!)
@ strange gods
Nobody doubts you are the One-True-Pope ™ !
I had a dead dinosaur recently. Chopped up with mayo and some cheese and herbs. Hard pressed in my snackwich maker.
PS: abb3w is trés drôle
Linky: Boltzmann Chickenosaurus
There’s a lot people do with spellcasters they really can’t. For example, full round actions vs round spells. People don’t distinguish between the two. A spell that isn’t supposed to take effect until your next turn is treated as immediately going off at the end of your turn.
NEW THREAD.