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i love how Gandalf invested in Hobbits in year one and has been pushing them ever since. Thorin, i hear you need help with a breaking and entering. Can I recommend one of these little cunts? Silent as fuck, trust me. Elrond my dude i know you're skeptical but these four chucklefucks just transported a weapon of mass destruction all the way here. Theoden, you've gotta get yourself a hobbit man, I've got a spare one here. Denathor you big prick, take a hobbit - literally this is the bottom of the range but listen to him sing. Beautiful little bastard.

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so many creatures putting SO much effort into putting ‘special’ fluids that TOTALLY aren’t water through every organ possible to clean them so they can use them again 2 seconds later. like why not simply sit on a damp substrate and pull water through your body by evaporating the extra out pores in your leaves lmaoooo

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WIBTA for taking advantage of my boss’ possible manic episode?

I know this already sounds bad but hear me out.

So I (30M) am the sole employee of this guy (62M) who’s honestly just a miserable boss and an even more miserable person. It sucks so bad working for him—the pay is horrendous, he’s verbally abusive, and the working conditions are awful (in the winter I literally have to stay bundled up the whole work day because he refuses to put the heat on in the office). He wouldn’t even give me holidays off if it wasn’t for the fact that there’s basically nothing to do those days because everywhere else is closed. I’m almost positive he unironically thinks poor people should die if they can’t work. His nephew (aka his only living relative and just the nicest guy) came by yesterday to invite him to Christmas dinner and he told him he’d see him in hell.

I cannot stress this enough—it’s BAD. I’d quit, but it’s been hard finding a better job and I’ve got four kids at home, including one with special needs.

Anyway, so here’s where I’m wondering if I’d be the asshole. Today was Christmas Day and he showed up at my house out of nowhere (huge red flag, I know). At first I thought he’d forgotten I had the day off and he was here to chew me out, which was worrying enough, but then his whole demeanor changed and he was super happy and excited and talking about how he was going to raise my salary. He even mentioned possibly making me a partner in the firm.

Now if that was it, I’d feel a little weird about the suddenness of it but it’d be fine. I’m not going to complain about having more money to feed my family. But then he started talking about how he wanted to pay our mortgage off. He talked about wanting to pay for our son to get the very expensive medical care that’s probably going to save his life. He mentioned at one point that he was going to be donating a huge amount of money to charity too—I knew he was rich but it staggered me. All this from a guy who doesn’t (didn’t?) even want to turn on the heat or the lights because it costs too much money.

It was such a sudden and drastic change that happened very literally overnight and now I’m kind of concerned he’s having a manic episode or something. I really, really want to accept his sudden generosity (I probably will; my wife is all for it and thinks he owes it to us), and I would love to believe that he’s truly had a sudden change of heart (an actual Christmas miracle lol) but I’m just worried about the possible consequences of accepting huge financial gifts like this from someone who I believe might be experiencing some kind of break from reality. Even if there’s nothing legally wrong with it, I’m worried about the ethics of it.

TLDR, my asshole boss might be in the middle of a mental breakdown. WIBTA if I accepted his offer to pay off my mortgage and my son’s medical expenses?

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a quick step by step guide on what to do if you come back to your apartment and find yourself locked out because your front door is frozen shut

kick the bottom of the door for 10 minutes

text your landlord

remember your landlord is on vacation and also in her mid 50′s so it takes about 36 hours to receive a response

briefly wonder why the fuck you moved the canada

remember that college tuition is significantly cheaper here than in the united states 

look up and notice your cat is at the window, staring at you. he paws at the window lightly and meows. it’s devastating. his eyes are so big and imploring. decide that you have to get inside your apartment at all costs. not even god himself can stop you from feeding your cat his chicken wet food dinner. frida kahlo herself could descend from the heavens and ask “hey you wanna bang?” and you’d say “hell yeah but first let me open this door so i can feed my cat his dinner”

remember there is a starbucks 3 blocks down the street from you

enter. the barista gives you a weird look for entering a starbucks at 7pm on a tuesday

order a venti cup of hot water. you order in french because the barista just said “bonjour” instead of “bonjour, hi.” you have a strong american accent. you hit the r in merci a little too hard to compensate. you embarrass yourself.

exit the starbucks clutching the massive cup of hot water in your hands. it’s burning your fingers.

return. methodically pour the starbucks cup of water all over the the door frame. it begins moving a little but still wont open

back up

ensure your doc martens are properly gripping the sheet of ice covering the ground. many people have told you to stop wearing doc martens in the winter, despite your protests that theyre actually the ideal winter boot. also, you’re a lesbian and punk’s not dead

release a pterodactyl screech and sprint towards the door, slamming the full force of your pathetically tiny 5′2″ 110lb body into it

you dont know any of your neighbors so you dont care about maintaining your pride anyways

the door swings open

run up the stairs

open the actual door to your apartment and yell MOMMY’S HOME MY LITTLE BITCHASS BABY BOY DONT WORRY at your cat

cat flings his body to the ground and starts purring like he does every time you come home

write tumblr post

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I want good vegetable soup and hot buttered bread. I want my cats warm and happy Far away from any dreams of stray life. I want a favourite blanket, a favourite tea, a favourite candle.

I could be content with nothing. I could deprive and abstain. But no,

I want heavy books. Heavy mugs. Heavy hearts made light with laughter. I want soft sheets and you inside them.

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Sweets and treats are all the nutrients a princess needs

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@elodieunderglass horrible things with legs

(source)

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The legends were true

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a magical sword can only be pulled from its anvil by a maiden of purest heart. a young knight visits the anvil daily to make the attempt, crushed each time he cannot do the deed, yearning for a sign from the universe that he *is* in truth what he yearns to be. for the world to plop the gift of identity into outstretched arms. but of course, it never does. until one day, he has a chance encounter with a nymph of the lake who was once an ordinary squire, and he learns from her that maidenhood will not be given to him, that he must be brave and choose it for himself. and so the knight changes her name and reintroduces herself to the world and employs the greatest miracles of modern science to become the maiden she had always dreamed of being, and this time, when she revists the sword, she only can't pull it because she's kind of an asshole.

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Some of us want a massive amount of strawberry compote

When threatened, I discharge a massive amount of strawberry compote to distract predators.

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But this is D&D working as intended. It's long term campaign structure is the hero's journey from a fragile weakling not too dissimilar in power to the average player to a world shattering entity. The rules are very opinionated about this being the level 1-20 experience and part of that is the fragility of level 1 characters and the over competence power fantasy of high level characters.

And that can be great if that's what you want. If it isn't then either start at level 3 or above or play a different game but don't fudge the dice. The eventual lucky/skilled few will feel so much more special for every loss along the way

Plumbing the Depths: Is low-level D&D meant to be this brutal?

The short answer to reddit user DisgruntledVulpes688's title question is "no", because as they reveal in the replies, there are some exceptional circumstances that are far from the D&D standard. But that's really just context for the part I want to discuss, which is this reply from Mac4491:

Even when I want to challenge veteran players I pull my punches at low level when required. The Goblin rolled a nat 20 and did 12 damage to the Wizard with 6hp? No...he didn't.

Mac4491 didn't ask for advice, but their reply exposes the nature of the underlying issue: low-level D&D really is brutal, in a way that disagrees with the creative goals of many people who play it. If you've ever fudged a roll to save a level one character before, then this post is for you.

In any game of skill (including games like D&D and similar RPGs that are often a mixture of skill and chance), the more that someone plays the game, the more they tend to develop their skill at that game. As a player's mastery grows, challenges that were "Just Barely Manageable" at first will gradually become trivial and even tedious for them.

To compensate for this, designing a game normally involves creating what's called a "difficulty curve", a process of increasing the difficulty to match the player's mastery so that they continue to experience an engaging challenge. The problem is that D&D, et al., have an inverted difficulty curve, which does the exact opposite.

At first level, 5E D&D characters are extremely fragile. Survival depends on both a healthy amount of luck and on your own wits and strategies – skills that, if you are trying the game for the first time, you don't yet possess. The preferred environment for learning is one in which you are able to experiment and make mistakes without suffering serious consequences. That environment does exist in D&D... but only at the higher levels.

If you manage to survive (using the skills you never had the chance to learn), then you eventually acquire a disproportionately large hit point pool relative to enemy damage, plus various other protective abilities. If you've developed some real-life mastery of the game system at the same time, then this allows you to trivialize much of the ostensibly "level-appropriate" opposition – the game has gone straight from "oppressive" to "tedious".

My impression is that the overwhelming majority of people who play D&D would prefer a game with a more traditional difficulty curve: one that is easy at first, and then becomes more challenging after they've learned the ropes, but the rules don't support that.

Mac4491's fix is to replace D&D with Captain May I?, which I generally think is a bad plan.

My fix would be to replace D&D with an RPG that doesn't have the inverse difficulty curve – perhaps Apocalypse World.

But if you're married to D&D, maybe try this house rule out: every character starts with 10 Hit Dice (and the corresponding total HP), but they never gain any more than that. Tons of health at first – but the margin for error shrinks as they level up and face deadlier monsters.

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I know it's been said a million times but I'm so so pissed about the fixation on forcing nonbinary people to put ourselves into neat little categories?? Especially the kind that demands us to broadcast what genitals we have??? Literal steps away from "Are you penis nonbinary or vagina nonbinary?". I'm "fuck off" nonbinary. I'm "whichever satisfies your mom and dad" nonbinary.

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Me stumbling across a wild trans girl: "Oh, hey there."

Her: Hisses

Me: Calmly holds out my bio so she can smell the pronouns. "I write monster TF fiction."

Her: immediately starts meowing loudly for food.