#fhjy discussion

[ttrpgnoob]

If you are mad that Kipperlilly isn't getting a redemption (at least it isn't as set up as the other rat grinders) that's a little silly. Freshman year Penelope and Dayne were not given that chance, despite giving the same "just a teen who had some evil intentions brought out & honed in by a teacher" because it was obvious they had manipulated Ragh.

Kipperlilly murdered Buddy in front of Kristen, is now heavily implicated in orchestrating the murder/possesion of her entire party. I'm so sorry folks, she is just a tragic story of villainy.

[canyouseeher]

This most recent FHJY episode has, I think, finally radicalized me against D&D. There are just so many story beats that I feel like got lost because the system, in many ways, requires a fight to the death.

[luvedaisy]

i think if i did not engage with any online discussion for fhjy i would have enjoyed it a lot more. like the attachment i got to trg was not supposed to happen and i think if i had consumed it without that interference i would be a lot happier. this was an amazing season, technologically, visually, i loved how it sounded and looked. i was laughing so hard my side hurt for EVERY EPISODE. from an enjoyment perspective i cannot say that it was bad. it made me think a lot more about the show, and made me think more critically about every season. I also am grateful that I don't have the instinct to defend and scratch and bite every time I see any kind of discussion of something I like. This is a show. We can feel stuff and we can talk and I think that this season started a lot of people on creative paths, and even if we like different parts of the story, it's still the same story

[hidingfromsav]

sat like this for a solid 10 minutes after the episode ended because what!!!!! WHAT DO YOU MEAN we have to wait a whole week...

[im-da-bronx]

Something I can’t stop thinking about is the comment Lou made when Brennan revealed what the Rage Tokens were for. The only reason Fabian didn’t have a rage token was because of one of Adaine’s portent rolls. That works so wonderfully narrative-wise. Adaine has a vision, she doesn’t understand what it means, she just knows that she has to help Fabian out so the stress doesn’t get to him. And later it comes to pass, and Adaine realizes that by helping her friend and being there for him, she prevented the big bad from gaining a foothold in Fabian’s heart.

[rainbowtransform]

I want to make something super clear: all of Brennan Lee Mulligan’s battles are to the death. It is kill, or be killed and that extends to the Rat Grinders.

I like them just as much as the next person but I knew they’d die. They’re amazing antagonists and it’s great that we like them but this is their fate. They were doomed the minute they chose Porter, and yes they chose him and to come back.

Lucy didn’t. It was painful but she didn’t.

The others did. They were doomed by the narrative the moment they got the mark on themselves.

[dramaqueer-commie]

we need to give more credit to Steve Yasui, the sound mixer for the fhjy finale

the lowest moment for Brennan in d20, and by what i can only assume to be actual, real life magic, either the same dice magic Ally has that let K2 roll a nat 20 there, or by the curse that haunts Brennan in that dome, he *spills coffee on his shirt* in the exact spot and shape that Gilear has in all of the art of him.

And Steve Yasui, this absolute hero, plays the Gilear-curse effect.

here is my theory:

Brennan gave K2 true life, and she brought the Curse to our world. here, all magic has a price, and Brennan paid for bringing her here. the bad luck that haunts every DM from time to time, becoming the only actual curse in out plane of existence.

[itsjustevil]

Ok so we know K2's DM is Zac, but who else is being DM'd by him? And what about the other Intrepid Heroes? Who the Hell is DMing Sprak LeFevre?

[islandoforder]

on a train to the seaside, crocheting a sundress, and listening to the complicated women podcast which is real and on spotify

[remidyal]

What is Fig Doing? - Mechanical Discussion edition

So! I know a lot of people who watch D20 are relatively new to DnD, or may not have much experience with the game itself at all, and as a lover of exploring weird and mechanically ineffective multiclasses I thought I might dive in in advance of whatever the hell Emily's about to do to Fig's character sheet following episode 7. Spoiler alert: Weird it may end up being, but this is absolutely NOT going to be anything like an ineffective multiclass.

First, here's Fig's character splash screen as of episode 7:

In addition to the information shown here, we know that she's currently subclassed into a Hexblade patron and into being a Lore bard. The Lore bard part is less important, but Hexblade is an incredibly common subclass for multiclassers into warlocks and might actually be the most common multiclass subclass in the entire game for reasons we'll get into.

There is a very small elephant in the room: Multiclassing into or out of Barbarian would, by the rules as written, require 13 strength; multiclassing into or out of Paladin requires 13 strength and 13 charisma. The charisma Fig has in spades, but she's short on strength, and in fact I would actually argue that Fig's overall stats are the worst of the entire party - she has a whole lot of 0s or +1s, where most everyone else either has multiple +3s or higher or has almost all +2s past their primary. However, the multiclass requirements have been consistently ignored in Dimension 20 as a whole and have been ignored in Fantasy High in particular in the case of Gorgug going into Artificer back when he was at 8 int; I think it's safe to say that if Fig/Emily wants to add Paladin and/or Barbarian that either they'll move around stats to allow for it or just ignore the requirement, because that strength stat is, in fact, completely irrelevent to this build.

So let's get to the meat of this: There is almost no combination of bard, paladin, and warlock that Fig could end up with that is not going to be an incredibly effective build, as long as she has pact of the Hexblade and is at at least two levels of Paladin for access to Smite (the first level of paladin gets her almost nothing). There are some that are going to be better than others, but mostly it's going to reflect different strengths and focuses, and the reason for this is this little section of the Hexblade level 1 abilities:

The influence of your patron also allows you to mystically channel your will through a particular weapon. Whenever you finish a long rest, you can touch one weapon that you are proficient with and that lacks the two-handed property. When you attack with that weapon, you can use your Charisma modifier, instead of Strength or Dexterity, for the attack and damage rolls. This benefit lasts until you finish a long rest. If you later gain the Pact of the Blade feature, this benefit extends to every pact weapon you conjure with that feature, no matter the weapon’s type.

Fig is a one-trick pony, statwise. Being a hexblade allows everything she would want to do in combat across all of these classes to use that trick. She'll have dials she can tweak across the three classes, and they're going to impact just what she can do, but if she's really decided to leave being a Bard behind it wouldn't surprise me to see her ditch Bard levels for Paladin and Warlock ones over the course of the season.

For those dials, one key thing to consider is the spell slots she'll have, which are WEIRD to calculate for any warlock multiclass with another caster. For every other caster class in the game, there is a pool of spell slots that go up as you level any of them that refresh on long rests. Warlocks, however, have a seperate pool from any of those, so her warlock spell slots are seperate and refresh on short rests. If she stays at level 2 in warlock, this pool will be two slots of first level. If she levels in warlock, the level of these spell slots go up but the number of them doesn't (unless she somehow were to end up at level 11, when warlocks finally get a third slot.)

The paladin and bard combo is a little simpler to look at - she's going to have spell slots from the table that a primary caster would have at the level equal to her bard level plus half her paladin level. Just as an example, let's say she by the next combat were to drop two bard levels for two paladin ones and she were to end up 7 bard/2 paladin/2 warlock. She would end up with the two warlock first level spell slots that refresh on short rests, and 7 + .5*2 = level 8 from the primary caster spell slot table. (4 1sts, 3 2nds and 3rds, 2 4ths). A very deep pool for using Divine Smites - a full paladin wouldn't be able to match this until level 16, and that's not even counting the warlock first level spells!

Key level breakpoints that might be worth looking at: At level 5 of Paladin, she would have multiple attacks; at level 6 Paladin gets one of the best abilities in the entire game, an aura where she and allies within 10 feet get her charisma mod as a bonus to ALL saving throws. In Fig's case this is an absolutely incredible +5 - at their level, this is a bigger boost than being proficient is! If she really wants to guard her president, this would allow even Kristen to have a +2 on dex saves! I'm not certain I could overstate how good this ability is in general; with a +5 it's completely insane.

She can also get multiple attacks through either Bard or Warlock, but neither is automatic. For Warlock, she would have to choose to take Pact of the Blade at level 3 (warlocks have, somewhat confusingly, two more-or-less subclasses, and Hexblade and Pact of the Blade are in fact different things) and Brennan has been HEAVILY hinting at wanting her to take Pact of the Chain so that Baby can be a class feature instead. She'd then have to get to level 5 in warlock and take the Thirsting Blade eldritch invocation, which are sort of little bonus powers warlocks get. I think this is the least likely path to multiple attacks but it is there. (Mechanically, while it's all still fine, I also think leveling warlock would be the worst of the three in a three-class build.)

Bard CAN get multiple attacks at level 6 but Fig would need to change subclasses to either Swords (which is what Fabian is) or Valor (which is, frankly, a worse version of what Fabian is, though it's still fine.)

Getting multiple attacks is a really big deal - Paladins can smite multiple times per round, and given being able to lay on mid to low level spell slots for ages Fig would likely want to.

I have no idea what Oath Fig would pick for a paladin if she gets to level 3, but honestly the level 3 subclass features for Paladin are mostly not that big a deal; she'd need to get to level 7 for the subclass aura for it to really matter all that much.

You'll notice I haven't been talking much about Barbarian above. If Fig dips into Barbarian mechanically at all, it's almost certainly just for one level given how spread thin she might be. This is a level she won't get any spell slots for, but she will get two rages per day, which will add 2 to damage rolls if Brennan allows it (technically it wouldn't apply normally because it does specify only to rolls made for attacks using strength) but much more importantly will halve quite a lot of incoming damage - bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing damage, more or less all of the physical attacks in the game.

Barbarian is a massively bad combination with caster classes in general because you can't concentrate on spells or cast them while raging; there's been a lot of in-character noise made about Gorgug's multiclass being unique and a bad fit together for exactly this reason. The exception to this, as Porter demonstrated to Fig in their last scene together, is that Smiting things is burning through spell slots but is NOT casting and you CAN do it while raging.

So, if by the end of the season, we see some wild 6 Paladin/5 Bard/2 Warlock/1 Barbarian build, know that it's going to be an absolute menace. And if Fig and Gorgug keep trending the directions they are, where she's adding heavy hitter abilities and he's shedding Barbarian levels for Artificer ones, don't be surprised if on the last boss she's the one up on their face and he's casting spells next to Adaine or casting the key Revivify.

[postluminescence]

thinking so hard about kipperlilly copperkettle on this fine day…idk i just think a tragic figure whose fatal flaw is envy, not of success but of *mattering* at all?? even if it means you suffer?? is so interesting!! and rage as a solution to that, as a way of taking control of the pain she wishes she felt by inflicting it!! like. maybe if i am surrounded by pain it’ll all come together, finally! maybe all of this rage will find a place to live, if i welcome it.

[a-jar-of-beetles]

kipperlipper this and cornkettle that, have you considered that id rather be discussing the political landscape of rat city?

[ornitharts]

I was so looking forward to a discussion about juice this adventuring party and I feel like I just got punched in the face instead

[whoblewboobear]

It is so so silly to me when people say that Bill abandoned Fabian. That man is dead and in hell. The bad kids can reach him but idk if it works the other way around. He didn’t abandon Fabian he’s just dead 🤷🏾 now Hallariel is a different story (love her so much) bc she effectively /did/ abandon Fabian. Granted she is an elf and time for her feels different so half a year is like nothing to her but it’s something for Fabian who doesn’t have as much time.

[kipperlillyforpresident]

ratgrumblr ask meme

To celebrate the Rat Grinder fandom's unofficially being named, I put together this ask meme!

Some of the questions are open-ended, so that you can answer them more then once if you'd like. Or don't! I'm not the boss of you. You know the drill: reblog the post, get sent asks with the questions, answer, and profit.

Kipperlilly Copperkettle - What are you obsessed with?

Food Trucks - What do you normally have for lunch?

Ruben Hopclap - If you were a celebrity, how much would you interact with your fandom?

Puka Necklace - What were you like when you were younger? How different are you today?

Oisin Hakinvar - Do you fall in love easily?

Dragon's Hoard - Do you have any interesting family heirlooms/inheritances?

Mary Ann Skuttle - Do you enjoy any sports? If so - which ones?

Mango Soda - If you were a fandom character, what food or drink would people latch onto as your Favorite and make it a personality trait?

Ivy Embra - What's your ideal fashion sense? How close is it to how you actually dress?

Party Girl - What's your idea of a perfect Saturday night?

Buddy Dawn - Do you take pride in your hometown?

Light Domain - Do you believe in fate? Free will? Some combination of the two?

Lucy Frostblade - Are you the type of person to 'stick to your guns' on your opinions?

In Memoriam - How do you think others perceive you? How accurate is this perception?

Porter Cliffbreaker - Who was the worst teacher you ever had?

Jace Stardiamond - Which would you prefer: a fulfilling career that is difficult, or a boring career that is easy?

Henry Hopclap - If you could study anything in college, with no financial burden, what would you pick?

Shatterstar - What's something silly that makes you unreasonably mad?

Devil's Honey - Confess a lie you recently told. Optionally, share the reason you told that lie.

Bakarath - Share an inside joke - with or without context.

Quokki Pets - If you could adopt any fictional animal/creature as a pet, what would you pick?

My Clerical Gnomance - Share a favorite piece of fanart/fanfic/fanwork that somebody else made.

The Last Stand - Have you ever cheated on a test/academic assignment?

High Five Heroes - Share something that makes you happy.

[the-knight-of-destiny]

On Fantasy High, Redemption, and Agency (General Spoilers for Junior Year, sort of?) Also this post about FHJY is long as fuck, as all of mine are getting. In short it's my understanding of how Brennan Lee Mulligan sets up the teenage villains of Fantasy High.

Fair warning, this is LOOOONG below the cut.

Y'know when I said I wasn't going to talk about Ratgrinder discourse? I lied.

So Brennan as a DM has a very specific narrative language for how a villain is 'redeemable' and it primarily has to do with the level of agency a villain has in their actions. This isn't particularly hard to notice when you look at our very own (and fan favorite) reformed villain squad.

Starting with Ragh, while he was in his right mind for most of his villainy in Freshman Year, he really didn't do too much other than beat people up and be a bully? While he worked with Daybreak on some level, he wasn't anything more than muscle and not very in on most of the plans. There was also some implication of grooming and manipulation from Daybreak to Ragh.

Zayn as an example also helps build this thesis, while he also hasn't done a TON evil he's generally a bit more discerning than Ragh. However he builds the understanding of how Fantasy High looks at it's redeemed teenage villains, when Zayn is found as a ghost he explicitly calls out Daybreak as being the only reason he's still housed, were he not to go along with the Freshman Year scheme he'd have been sent back to his abusive parents, the foster system, or homeless as like, a fifteen year old boy.

But the actual silver bullet to understanding this is Aelwyn, to preface. Aelwyn fucking sucks in freshman year, way worse than Ragh or Zayn. She's also responsible for way worse than any other teenage villain in the series. She's arguably committed worse than Dayne Blayde or Penelope Everpetal, but there's an important component to her redemption in Sophmore Year, something Brennan has her stay conscious despite making death saves to explain.

In tears Aelwyn notes that Kalina was actively threatening to kill her had she not complied with the Kalvaxus plan.

So there's a running theme here, Ragh didn't seem to have much of an idea of what the wider plan even was and was just muscle, Zayn was under significant threat to his personal safety (and unbeknownst to him, also under threat of death, a threat that actually gets carried out), and Aelwyn was literally convinced she'd be murdered for not complying.

This tracks with the teen villains who DON'T get redeemed by the way, Dayne had no qualms about casually murdering his classmates with a great sword, Penelope didn't seem to mind the idea of throwing her best friend Kalvaxus for a power play. They both get killed because they don't seem to really care what happened, were fully complicit, and had no form of remorse at all.

This leaves us with our code to cracking if Brennan sees the Ratgrinders as possibly worthy of redemption (IMO, signs point to yes, but it's complicated.) We know the Ratgrinders are being manipulated heavily by Porter (I have so many more thoughts about Jace's place in this but that's for a whole other post,) however they don't have Ragh's excuse of being mostly in the dark.

Kipperlilly and Oisin for sure know exactly what's going on, and the rest (sans Buddy) probably do too. The actual question is how much does Ankarna rage affect one's reasoning, and the thing that's interesting about how the Ratgrinders have been set up is that question is sincerely ambiguous.

Signs point to the corruption needing some sort of genuine anger or frustration to latch onto, but this is my first hot take here. This isn't really that damning? Pre-Rage Kipperlilly said some concerning things, in private confidential counseling. She (at the time) understood her fixation on Riz was a problem and perhaps not fair. Oisin probably was mildly frustrated or saddened a girl he had a crush on didn't notice him, but to cast Pre-Rage Oisin as a full on Biz Glitterdew incel is, in my opinion, unlikely. Ruben was already seeking attention but wasn't anything worse than a mildly annoying teenage boy, etc.

These aren't exactly 'good' feelings but they are pretty normal for 14-15 year olds. Pre-Rage Ratgrinders really aren't that much worse than Pre-Character Development Bad Kids, let's not forget that they too definitely act out in really mean, unfair ways at around the same time as Pre-Rage Ratgrinders (Fig and Fabian, most notably.)

As for agency though, they clearly have a bit more of it than previous teenage villains, and are a bit more aware of their actions. They're not under direct threat of violence like Aelwyn or Zayn (though the way Porter and Jace act around them may make that threat implicit.) and they don't have Ragh's excuse of being seemingly largely in the dark.

The Ratgrinders I feel are an intentional test for the Bad Kids (and the Intrepid Heroes as players) because they're significantly more antagonistic than previous teenage villains. Heck, even ones that turned out totally evil. Dayne's kinda chill to the Bad Kids initially, Penelope is a bit backhanded but she isn't outright mean. If you count him, even Johnny Spells humors Riz and is relatively lax to him. Ragh's honestly way more harsh for most of the first half of Freshman Year, Zayn's initially more rude and confrontational to them too.

That said they're both being influenced by a much worse adult (Like everyone in the Reformed Villain Squad) and have a rage god clouding their judgement to an unknown degree. If we follow previously established patterns, they're salvageable by the story's own logic.

The test is for the party, it's easy to forgive Zayn when he openly cries and apologizes immediately when finally confronted about his place in the villain plot, it's easier to forgive Aelwyn when she openly puts herself in harm's way and almost dies to save Adaine.

It's going to be harder, emotionally, for both the player characters and the players themselves to forgive the Ratgrinders and recognize they're also victims in some sense when the Ratgrinders have been actively fucking with the Bad Kids for the whole season, and taking an obvious amount of satisfaction in it.

The challenge Brennan has set up for the party, I feel, is a test of their character. Fighting a possibly ascended god Porter is gonna be a lot easier without a whole other party of enemies in the fight (and even much easier if you can convince some to fight alongside you as a part of heroes.)