#i got the role btw

[ihavenohotcocoa]

fun fact: i performed the 118 monologue for my audition to play the villain in an after-school theater program

anyways when i said “how old were you when your father left” the director nearly did a spittake it was great

[quippso]

[milquetoad]

can someone check on taliesin jaffe please. this is two campaigns now that he’s built a pc specifically designed to seduce liam o’brien and both times he’s gotten cucked by a cool-toned trust fund baby that wasn’t even in the main party

[imorphemi]

So I ended up animating this haha I just. I love these two sm they are just so incredibly

[dragonageruinedmylife]

With the conversation with the Arch Heart and some of the things brought up, I keep coming back to the idea of: You live in a world where Gods are fully confirmed existing beings. You are a cleric of Bahamut. You are a Paladin of the Everlight. You are a believer that makes small prayers to the Wild Mother for safe travels on the sea. You find comfort and solace in your faith and in serving the Gods.

Then one day, the gods are suddenly gone. The powers they blessed you with are gone. Perhaps on a random Tuesday for you. Perhaps in the middle of a battle when you needed to save your friend's life. You can no longer hear them. You're panicked, you're scared. You finally learned what happened and it is people saying "the gods left! we're not beholden to them anymore! We can live our own lives!" And your entire world has been ripped apart without anyone asking if this is what you wanted.

[nightmare-foundation]

Nightwing is not the favorite child, he's the favorite soldier. Dick Grayson is the golden child turned scapegoat. Everyone needs Nightwing but no one needs Dick. In this essay I will-

[witchlingcirce]

Okay but Cailee Spaney’s Ellie with Nikolaj Coster Waldu as her Joel WALKKKK with me here people!!

Like idkkkk I have a vision of these two together

[gonkaccino]

Season 4 hope/prediction: Deb's show is solid, zero issues, runs flawlessly with great ratings, but her personal life is completely eroding. We start with her discovering Marcus is leaving, and it culminates in DJ going into labor right before a taping. Deb chooses the show. When it's over, and she finally flies to Vegas, it's too late -- Aiden's not letting her in because he loves his wife too much to let DJ get into a shouting match with her mom right after giving birth, and instead takes the brunt of Deb's wrath, with her making excuses and talking about how they used her money for IVF, and anyway, DJ's fine, so who cares if she wasn't there? Kathy's in the room with DJ and the baby (DJ's the closest she has to a daughter, after all) and Deb leaves too furious to think about how badly she's hurt her family.

She heads back to her Vegas mansion -- empty, obviously, Josefina and the dogs would be in LA -- and pops open a bottle of wine. Alone. Completely alone. Can't call Marty, she has no friends, the closest she's got would be Kiki and wouldn't that be embarrassing, calling your poker dealer to talk about your feelings --

and then Ava's there. She got the news about DJ's labor, she got the story from Aiden (who was distraught, by the way, man's too much of a sweetheart for Vance drama), a spare key from Damian (happy to pawn that off on her, though if it isn't returned promptly he's taking legal action) and has arrived just in time to see the Deborah Vance having a breakdown the likes of which no one thought physically possible. Crying gives you wrinkles, you know. But Ava has to be here. She's the physical embodiment of a lesson Deb never truly learned: you don't have to like someone to love them.

In my imaginary fantasy land that I am concocting this would then subsequently lead into them fucking nasty but I understand that this may be a step too far for the surprisingly large number of very normal people who watch this show and would forgive JPL for not taking it that far. However I do believe they should fuck about it and let Ava take the reigns in their relationship while they see how many of Deb's bridges they can un-burn.

[hychlorions]

intervallo called "the greatest musical this town has ever seen"

[stormbros]

Robbie was just on fire in this episode. I mean, everyone was ABSOLUTELY, but Dorian's immediate deflection under direct scrutiny, followed by his beautiful RP of his mother's song and the story from his childhood (dragon horse!!). And the way he collapsed and finally FINALLY got to cry and mourn in someone's arms, if only for a little bit. I'm just so happy he let himself break down. He deserves it.

[aroaceleovaldez]

actually in hindsight why did Rick repeatedly have Piper solve all the ghost problems on the Argo II when. Hazel was right there. A daughter of Pluto. who by all logic should be able to control ghosts even a little bit. like, we know she has at least some of those types of powers. she just never gets to actually practically use them. ever. and then when there are zombies Hazel once again. does not get to use her powers about it. what.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

watched Grease the other night with my buddy and. well. obviously i Had To

[sky-scribbles]

What is Essek's Wisdom score?

(aka, a totally unnecessary ramble about one drow and his dnd mechanics by me, a tumblr user who should be asleep)

Last episode, we got a rare hint about Essek’s Wisdom score, in the form of Fearne’s attempt to sneak a look at his feet while he slept. Whatever Essek’s passive perception is, it was ‘just enough’ to catch Fearne, with her Sleight of Hand check of 9. I made a joke about this giving Essek a pretty low Wisdom score, and several people pointed out that because Matt halves his characters’ passive perceptions when they’re sleeping, Essek’s Wisdom would actually be around the 18-20 mark. But this… might not necessarily be the case.

Now, I did honestly mean that post as a joke and not any actual theorising on Essek’s mechanics, but since people got me thinking, let’s crunch some numbers! (Huge thanks to the folks over on the Essek discord for helping me with the maths here! Also, disclaimer that all of this could be disproven next episode, and I am fine with that. I enjoy doing dnd maths anyway, because I am a nerd.)

So: if Matt remembered the house rule about halving the passive perception while a character sleeps (and he doesn’t always), this would give Essek a passive of 18-20. But does this mean his Wisdom is 18-20? Actually, no! For a start, if he had no other bonuses to perception (and I’ll get to that in a second), this would give Essek a bonus of +4 or +5, which would make his awake passive just 14-15, and his sleeping passive 7. Not enough to catch Fearne. But: it might well be the case that Essek simply has Perception proficiency, in which case, he wouldn’t need a Wisdom of 18+.

While Essek, being an NPC, obviously doesn’t conform to PC rules, it’s worth bearing in mind that all elf PCs get perception proficiency for free from their Keen Senses trait. Perception would therefore be a pretty reasonable proficiency for Essek to have, even if it didn’t make sense from a character perspective – which it does. He is, after all, constantly having to look over his shoulder for assassins (and even before he was, having a keen eye out for trouble would be a useful asset in his former courtly intrigues.)

So what does this mean for his passive perception? Well, he appears to be the equivalent of a level 17-20 wizard, if his use of a ninth-level spell slot is anything to go by. With the caveat that he doesn’t have to use player rules (just attach that caveat to, uh… everything I say in this post) that would give him a + 6 proficiency bonus. If this is true, then all Essek needs for a waking passive perception of 18 is actually a Wisdom modifier of just +2, i.e. a Wisdom score of 14 or 15. (A baseline of 10, plus 2 from his Wisdom, plus 6 from proficiency). This would allow his halved passive to be at least 9, and let him catch Fearne in her sneaky feat of feet-peeking. If we make his Wisdom any higher than this, I don’t think we can qualify Matt’s ‘just enough’ statement.

But wait! There are more options! Unlikely ones, but options worth bearing in mind, nonetheless. We know Matt is on board with giving his allied NPCs feats; indeed, Essek himself has the War Caster feat. So it’s entirely possible that he might also have the observant feat. This would be a very logical choice from a roleplaying perspective considering Essek’s current status as a fugitive.

Having this feat would add +5 to his passive perception. Let’s say Essek has no Wisdom bonus at all, but has this feat and is proficient in perception. In this case, his passive while awake is 21 (a baseline of 10, plus 5 from Observant, plus 6 from profiency). That's a sleeping passive of 10: just enough to catch Fearne in the act. We could actually dump his Wisdom into the negative and he'd still be able to just barely notice her.

If you shook me and asked me to tell you what I actually think Essek’s Wisdom is, I’d guess at his Wis being at that ~14 mark I pitched earlier. I think this would make sense from what we’ve seen of him – yes, he has done some completely dumbass things, but he’s shown a level of self-reflection and self-awareness, especially after his redemption arc kicked off, that I think a Wisdom of about this number is justified. I wouldn't be surprised to find it was lower or higher, though; Wisdom is a wibbly stat to define at the best of times and you can make a case for Essek being just about anywhere on the number scale.

A stat of ~14 also works for me from a character construction perspective: we already know he has an Intelligence of around 22, and a decent Charisma; back in campaign 2, the Nein regularly had to roll Insight checks of 20+ to see through him, indicating a high Deception. So I’m hesitant to pitch his Wisdom too high; this might just be my own personal preference as a DM, but I’d be unlikely to roll up an NPC ally with high numbers in all three mental stats. Give ‘em some lower scores to keep things spicy, y’know?

(As a side note, Essek’s Dexterity is a very serviceable 16, and I suspect that his Charisma is at least equal to that. Having scores of 16+ in four stats would be a bit much, imo, even if his Strength and Constitution are probably much, much lower.)

A final point: one thing we can rule out is Matt allowing Essek to use his regular, un-halved Passive while trancing, since he didn’t remember that Essek could trance until Laura reminded him (bless them both), and I’m pretty sure the Fearne incident happened before she did. Though I should say again, considering that Matt can and does forget rules from time to time… it is also true that Matt might’ve just forgotten about halving the passive score. If he did just forgor, this entire ramble is meaningless but oh well.

Tl;dr: we don’t know, but a reasonable guess would be to say that his Wisdom is about 14. I guess I’ll just sit here and hope that Matt may eventually release his statblock (and an explanation of how he made his dad so mad he died. Hi, Matt Mercer, not to beg but please –)

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

if 9&10 were "dont wander off", and 11&12 were "the doctor lies", 13s rule #1 is "dont question me"

"have we not had a good time together" shes pointing yaz to the rule that yaz very well knows is there: we can travel if you dont ask me any difficult questions. yaz knows this is the rule - "because you ask too many questions", "this team structure isnt flat" - but she also was the one to invite the doctor into her home so im pretty sure she also knows shes not gonna kicked out that easily. she has some leeway. which she has been using between revolution and flux, which is why the doctor reminds her of the rules

i dont think she'd kick her out though. she wouldnt. i think it's just that the more you break the rule, the more unpleasant she becomes to be around, and eventually youre gonna walk out on your own. she doesnt want you to, she'd rather you stay and dont ask questions. but if youre gonna try to ask questions anyway, i think thats whats gonna happen

and yaz must think so too. because she does back off. because she doesnt want that to happen either. and it does anyway

[revvethasmythh]

you ever think about Ocean (ft. Khalid) on the first Fjord playlist and how it's dedicated to the Mighty Nein? you ever think about "you could put an ocean between our love, it won't keep up apart"? you ever think about "you could build a wall, I would burn it up, just to get to your heart"? you ever think about how much Fjord loves the Mighty Nein?

[daily-linkclick]

daily link click: 9/10/23

relief