#shit pinkertons

[joyouss-whimsy]

I did it boys… I finished red dead redemption two.

[badolmen]

They don’t even attempt to assassinate US politicians anymore. You notice that? Not since the anthrax scare back for… who was it, Barack? And even that… pathetic. This new generation has no respect for an honest hitman. I’m not sure this new generation has any honest hitman - you see that shit with Boeing? Sloppy, fucking disgraceful - you kill the whistleblowers before they get halfway to a lawsuit. What kind of fucking amateur is doing faked suicides the night before testimony? Goddamn greenhorns. Back in my day someone tried to shoot Ronald Reagan in broad daylight. There used to be bomb threats to Congress. I took out a few union leaders in the utilities sector myself. Today’s generation? Won’t even threaten to throw a punch - not even over on that - what’s it now, ‘X’? They got no guts. None! And they don’t even have poor impulse control to boot! Too much of that - that panopticon anxiety bullshit. “Oh what if I get a called out post???” People used to send the president letters full of bioweapons. In the mail! Today’s generation? Not a chance. All because of woke.

[julpernulper]

are weezer fans on tumblr? anyway here’s pinkerton

[t4bb1th4]

What the fuck is this disaster of a film

[charredhare]

"Agent Milton was just doing his job" STOP SUCKING HIS DICK OH MY LORD. I DON'T CARE IF HE WAS HONEST OR FAIR HE STILL DID THAT BULLSHIT IN LAKAY IN CHAPTER 5 WHEN HE KNEW ABOUT JACK'S PRESENCE, ACTIVELY PUTTING A CHILD IN DANGER FOR SOME RICH GUY MONEY.

HE STILL.. IS A PINKERTON. I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU BUT IF THERE'S SOMETHING THAT'S NOTORIOUS FOR BEING CRUEL, I WON'T REALLY RESPECT OR TRUST ANYBODY WHO'S IN SAID SOMETHING.

DOING HIS JOB OR NOT, HE DOESN'T HAVE A RESPECTABLE JOB.

[pinks-bricks]

Happy Birthday, Pink (and his Wall of course)

[lightlessentwine]

If you're wondering why r/196 is "awake" but not actually re-opened, it's because reddit will be forcing closed subs back open by replacing the mod staff and taking over the subs.

it is likely that atleast8courics is aware of this, and is doing anything possible to keep this from happening.

[prettyboykatsuki-moved]

RAHHGHGHGH . so glad i can finally be fucking insane in the membrane abt dutch without spoilering . i know hes not ur guy from this one but hes such a fucking beast to me i need to put him in the salad spinner and watch him go .

his like subtle manipulation of everyone , particularly arthur, john and molly. oh my god i could talk for england abt molly oshea. dutch's romantic relationships are like a microcosm of how his manipulation and favour with arthur / john plays out over the course of the game . he was originally with susan grimshaw ( rip to the goat ) , then it's heavily implied he did her extremely dirty and ditched her for molly, a aristrocratic but crucially younger and less experienced woman who better embodied his big , grand ideas ( oh motif of dutch surrounding himself by rich lovely things. like his clothes . ostensibly pretty extravagant for an outlaw but when you get closer you see how ripped and frayed they are , representing him clinging onto a lost way of life ). THEN at several points in the game if you explore camp , you can see dutch flirting with karen multiple times !!! karen who is like NINETEEN i think ??

hes such a fucking scumbag . he does not get attached to people in the normal way . he views them as extensions of his pretentious beliefs . he preys on young, vulnerable people with nothing to lose, offering them a home , a family , only to use it against them when they start waking up to the reality. and it hurts so much watching arthur come to this realisation because he loves dutch so goddamn much , he sticks around for wayyyy longer than he should've because he's loyal down to his fucking core .

sidenote sorry for being insane . dutch has my fav speech in the whole game which is his one to milton ... 'ain't no such thing as civilised. it's man so in love with greed, he has forgotten himself and found only appetites ' ohhh dutch ur so silly dont u want to introspect a little . arent u tired of projecting . dont u just wnana go apeshit.

i know a lot about dutchs story through osmosis from beloved lamb and you are SO right that his relationships with women (particular his trading in of women for younger models whenever he so feels like it) is a microcosm of how he manipulates people in the game !!! it always baffles me when i remember that dutch was with grimshaw once upon a time and it feels . so apt to think that it would later be grimshaw to kill her, especially in the midst of the crisis of the gang falling apart.

i LOVEEE the motif of dutchs obsession with luxury - unaffordable luxury. its such a great way to subtly represent his greed that will eventually kill him. not only is it present in his appearance, but its really the most impactful when held up with how hosea dresses himself. hosea is such an important anchor to the gang, and an important part of leveling dutch overall. i really like that element and that hosea dresses primarily in blue while dutch does in red... i love the way the honor system uses color because once you see it you cannot Unsee it and it makes me insane

and i think that obsession with the finer things and also his consistent preying on the young and vulnerable and how he groomed arthur and john into violece is once again.... sooo representative of the fact that dutchs main sin is a deep pride and a sense of arrogance. he DOES believe that all people in the gang are some extension of his bullshit philosphy and he views his love (which i do believe he views as genuine love) as holy and righteous...dutch believes himself to know best. better than anyone, for everything. whether that be in clothes or how to live and act. his prestige is so ... fake... he is SO fake. he has constructed an entire life upon a falsity and false understanding and he's sold it time and time again to recruit members. and he does it so well that it drives the gang to obsess over loyalty and dutchs word as law.

the only thing that was tempering that for so long was hosea. hosea was the voice of reason. hosea was the counter. and when hosea inevitably dies - dutch completely slips and sinks further and further into his unethical tirade. but dutch still has some humanity in him, and everything snaps back to reality when arthur dies in front of him and it is all dutch's fault in some capacity. its the one time in the game where dutch is forced to reflect inward, because he did love arthur. he did. i know he did. and that is precisely why he leaves arthur there alone - because he is then forced to face every single reality all at once when arthur dies like that. and it is so .so .

[bearenjoyers]

i’m sorry i’m always saying this but i feel like people truly believe dutch has some sort of superhuman foresight where he knows everything that’s gonna happen and lets it happen anyway in some move to manipulate and hurt his entire family instead of him just i don’t know. being a human who doesn’t know everything and is going to make mistakes

[a-roguish-gambit]

So the FBI isn't really a thing quite yet or is barely a thing and is all together not very functioning, when mutants get outed and stuff I think one of the major groups that'll get contracted to mess with them is the pinkertons.

And the dumbest shit is that there's probably a handful of mutants among pinkertons cuz that's kind of how they function they just hired whoever was willing to stab their own kind of the back, cause those people made for the best spies.

[akira97]

[maleficore]

You're telling me that the Pinkertons are a real life thing that still exists?? What the fuck.

[antiquatedsimmer]

Eddy and the woman settled at a table next to the window, the rhythmic pattern of raindrops against the glass creating a soothing ambiance. The woman leaned in, her voice carrying over the sound of the downpour.

" Mr?…." the woman paused giving Eddy a moment to introduce himself. " Edward. " Eddy spoke stiffly.

"Mr. Edward," the woman began, her voice laced with a hint of uncertainty. Edward leaned in attentively, eager to hear her thoughts. "As an outsider in this quaint town, I find myself struggling to fit in, especially as a working woman in a teaching profession," she confessed, her gaze searching for understanding in Edward's eyes.

Edward nodded empathetically, acknowledging the challenges she faced in a community rooted in traditional values. The rain continued to beat against the window, creating a backdrop of melancholic ambiance to their conversation.

With a touch of trepidation, she continued, "If I choose to assist you in finding Helena will you help me in return? will you make sure not to jeopardize my position and standing in this town? Will you not tarnish my reputation as a school teacher?"

Eddy leaned closer, his voice a hushed whisper, as if sharing a carefully guarded secret. " I assure you, my intentions are not to expose or harm Helena in any way. Tell me what you need. "

The woman leaned closer, her voice barely above a whisper, her words almost drowned out by the other patrons speaking in the bar.

"I need support, I'll tell you where Helena is IF you help me put in the effort to promote education for young boys AND girls here in Henford." she said, her tone laced with a tinge of anxiety.

Eddy nodded, his eyes fixed on her, Catching up with Helena turned out to be more dramatic than expected, and Eddy can't deny he was a traditional man himself, women wanting to work just seemed silly to him... but a little education for children can't be a bad thing.

The rain continued to drum against the window, serving as a constant reminder of the clandestine nature of their conversation.

"I... alright I can do that" Eddy replied

Rosella's smile wavered, replaced by a tinge of sadness. "My name is Rosella," she introduced herself, her voice carrying a hint of melancholy. "I am Finchwicks' only school teacher. "

Eddy's gaze softened, recognizing the weight of her words. He could sense the underlying struggle, the hardship that had befallen their small community.

"Times have been tough for all of us," Rosella continued, her voice tinged with disappointment. "And sometimes, survival demands unconventional measures."

Understanding dawned on Edward as Rosella's words hung in the air. She carried a burden of shame, a secret life intertwined with the necessity to make ends meet.

Rosella's voice trembled with a mixture of vulnerability and regret. "I have resorted to taking occasional customers, seeking financial means to support my teaching and maintain a modest living. There exists a seedy Room & Board business, hidden amidst the houses of Finwick, just south of here. Each time I ventured there, Helena was there too."

Edward's eyes widened, his mind racing with the implications of Rosella's revelation. The puzzle pieces began to fall into place, revealing a clandestine world lurking beneath the surface of their seemingly idyllic town.

Rosella's gaze held a hint of firmness, a resolute determination. "In a town where nothing happens, gossip becomes the lifeblood of entertainment. Women are expected to remain confined within the walls of their homes," she expressed, her voice carrying a tinge of defiance. "All I ask is that you keep my secret and the truth hidden within it. My sole objective is to preserve the existence of my school, to ensure the future of education in this place."

Eddy's nod conveyed his understanding and unwavering commitment. "You have my word, Rosella," he assured her earnestly. " I reside in Bramblewood, and you are welcome to visit anytime. Your secret is safe with me."

With a tip of his hat, Eddy turned and made his way in the direction of the business called The " Zum Whol. "

[robotmieser]

forgot to mention there's also this, for player side stuff if you just want races, classes, feats, items and some UA classes and such.

Here is a free pdf of the players handbook

Here is a free pdf of xanathars guide to everything

Here is a free pdf to monsters manual

Here is a free pdf to tashas cauldron of everything

Here is a free pdf to dungeon master’s guide

Here is a free pdf to volo’s guide to monsters

Here is a free pdf of mordenkainen’s tomb of foes

For all your dnd purposes

[blackberryjamboree]

When a fucking Weezer song is your anthem for your pain and agony and regret

[that-house]

The Tarrasque Can Blow Me or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Make 5e Bosses That Don't Suck

HI, I'm Catherine that-house, and I play Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition almost as much as I hate it. I do this because I am a sicko pervert who likes to tinker with abysmal dogshit, not because it's a good game. This screed is dedicated to everyone trapped in the same mine as me.

D&D 5e combat sucks! Here's the flow chart for your melee champion fighter's turn:

IF BAD GUY: smack bad guy

IF BAD GUY WITHIN 30 FT: move to bad guy, smack bad guy

IF LOW ON HP: second wind

IF NO BAD GUY WITHIN 30 FT: dash towards nearest bad guy

action surge, take it from the top

IF YOU'RE FEELING DARING TODAY: maybe a grapple or an item interaction

And pretty much any non-caster monster has a pretty similar flowchart: there's no real back and forth, just the same set of actions over and over and the only time you have to pay attention on someone else's turn is for an attack of opportunity maybe. Finally one side reduces the other side's number to 0, and you can get back to roleplaying in your roleplaying game.

In general, I strive to make my boss fights hard and interesting, with interesting being the more important of the two. For some reason the wicked clowns working at WOTC got it into their heads that the only ways to make a fight hard are Bigger Number and Less Counterplay. I don't have any data on how they sought to make fights interesting because as far as I can tell they were too busy siccing the Pinkertons on people like it's the fucking 1800s.

Probably not all 5e combat is like this. But, like, look at the statblock for the Tarrasque, the CR 30 "strongest monster in the game" and try to tell me that that thing looks INTERESTING to fight. Difficult? Maybe, if your stats are bad. But INTERESTING? It walks at someone and murders the shit out of them, then rinses and repeats. The fetid dog turd that is the Tarraque is the perfect example of the Bigger Number, and even its meme status as the DM's "fuck you" monster is eclipsed by later additions to the game.

The other end of the "strongest 5e statblock" spectrum is shit like Sul Khatesh from Eberron, who earns the title of "most bullshit" by being immune to nonmagic attacks and creating antimagic fields. This is progress, because you might force someone to grapple it out of the field or something so everyone can deal damage! But this is still ultimately a pretty linear fight, not unlike fighting any other caster in the game, but with Less Counterplay.

My DMing style is pretty character goal-oriented, with the occasional bullshit superboss. We sit around for a few sessions while people pursue side projects and gather information, and then I subject them to the Horrors of a 5e fight that requires things like "positioning" and "planning" from turn to turn.

When playing a high level D&D campaign with insanely bullshit homebrew magic items and character-specific custom mechanics, it becomes necessary to pull out the big guns. The biggest guns. I'm talking a gun like my boy Hierarch Ozyas, undead demigod, father of monsters and heart of a living city, who had a meaty 2000 hit points and took somewhere in the vicinity of thirteen rounds of combat to bring down. Building bosses is an arms race and it's my job to lose in style. Here's Ozyas' statblock:

The bitch himself

Anyways I've been talking for a bit without actually saying anything of substance besides making fun of the Tarrasque. Which I will do one more time:

...deep breath...

D&D 5e is a pretty widely-disdained game by pretty much anyone who's ever played more than one RPG system. I myself only play it because I enjoy game design, and the thoroughly-beaten dead horse that WOTC calls a game serves as a decent foundation to do a lot of heavy tinkering. The Tarrasque is perfectly emblematic of all of the trash I have to wade through in order to get to the stuff worth keeping: it is an uninspired, anticlimactic relic of the past that didn't even manage to cling to a shred of its old glory and is instead content to wallow in the filth of what it once was, never once providing a challenge to any character with a flying speed. I would probably attempt to beat it to death with my hands (and fail, because it checks your character's stats rather than challenging you as a player in any way), but Jim the 1st level aaracokra with a save-forcing damage cantrip already solo'd it for me, so I'll settle for chewing through the throat of whichever game designer forgot they were making a "game" and submitted a three step flowchart for D&D's ultimate boss monster.

But anyways, I promised you a guide to how I design boss fights these days, so let's get to that.

Actually, first here's a quick aside about action economy that I didn't bother finding a place to fit in elsewhere: legendary actions are basically a necessity for any boss past level five or so. One big action is going to be a lot more polarizing than several small ones (i.e. one big crit on a large attack could completely flip the course of the fight, whereas multiple smaller attacks offer the same amount of damage output in a more consistent fashion). If you don't want to give your boss a bunch of HP to make it live long enough to take a few turns, you could consider giving it two turns in the initiative order (reducing the damage per turn to keep the damage per round constant). Low health minions are also a good way to pad out action economy, and even if they're easy to kill they tend to buy the boss another turn or two just from the actions it costs to take them down.

ANYWAYS, here's the core ideas I like to focus on in my boss design:

Keep them moving

Keep them working

Keep things changing

Reward good play

Punish mistakes

Make it a game

Along the way I'll be using snippets of the boss I mentioned above to illustrate examples of these principles and how they affected play. Let's begin.

KEEP THEM MOVING Positioning doesn't really matter in 5e. AoEs and movement values are both so large that you can easily get away with not having a battle map and sorta just tracking "in melee" or "not in melee." I run most fights without a battle map and just kinda track that, but for a good boss you need a map.

But how do we keep the game from just falling back into "move into range and hurt people," you ask? Simple: the Zone of Nasty. The Zone of Nasty is something on the map that is going to hurt the PCs if they're in it, and the Zone of Nasty moves. Depending on the boss, it could grow, shrink, follow a player, follow the boss, alternate between areas of the map, whatever. Some bosses might have multiple different Zones of Nasty that move in different ways and do different things.

There are other ways to force movement besides a moving AoE, such as punishing players for being too close or too far from each other or the boss.

The general principle here is that a boss should at times force suboptimal play: optimal play involves simply standing around, spending all your actions on damaging the boss, and it's incredibly boring from a strategic standpoint. There should be turns in which your players have to spend their action economy on protecting themselves or helping their allies. If they find themselves in a Zone of Nasty, it should force a decision between suffering the consequences to continue optimal play, or spending resources to get out of it.

Our boy Ozyas had a Cancer Field that he could move slowly around the arena that damaged and debuffed PCs inside it, and Pretender-God-Piercing Strike, a telegraphed line attack that oneshot anything that stayed in its area too long (more on this one later).

KEEP THEM WORKING Everyone needs a job to do! This job is probably just going to be based on what their class and abilities encourage them to do, but it sucks for someone to not be able to meaningfully participate in a boss fight.

Let the DPS players kick the boss's teeth in, obviously, but make sure the person who focused on AoE effects has some extra enemies that they can deal with. Bonus points if the extra enemies have something that forces them to be dealt with instead of just rushing the boss' HP bar.

Worst case scenario, throw in a secondary objective like completing a ritual, controlling a point on the map, or fighting the boss' soul on a higher plane to give someone who isn't immediately needed for DPS to still have something to do.

Ozyas spawned a bunch of extra monsters from these gross Birthing Pillars around the map, and killing the monsters and destroying the pillars provided a nice secondary course of action for people either not equipped to slug it out with the boss or not currently positioned right to fight him.

KEEP THINGS CHANGING The tarrasque sucks because it does one thing over and over until it works or it dies. The Theros splatbook improved on this marginally: Mythic Traits are fucking baller! Combats should change over the course of the fight, or this could have been a fucking autobattler. But we can go further.

In addition to occasionally shaking things up based on health thresholds, here's a few ways I like to do it:

Rotating list of effects that change every round

Huge list of options the boss can choose from for one of their effects with no repeats

Some sort of meter that increases and decreases based on what's happening in the fight and modifies the boss' abilities

Ozyas summoned new monsters every round and could customize the statblocks with a bunch of quick templates I whipped together, and in his second phase he started alternating between scaling the to hit/damage of his tentacle attack, the reach of his spear attack, and applying extra buffs to his summons.

REWARD GOOD PLAY These next two kind of tie together but the core idea here is that it's okay if a boss is a bit easy, as long as it makes your players work for it.

This can include things like ways to trivialize certain parts of the encounter as long as the players utilize them, typically at the cost of advancing other parts of the fight.

I knew that Ozyas was going to be a long fight, so I gave my players the ability to heal to full health, as an action, whenever they wanted. They were fighting inside Ozyas' body, and he was a generous host. However, any time they healed, he would be healed for the same amount. They got around this restriction by hitting him with Chill Touch to disable his own healing whenever people needed to heal, but that obviously had the cost of losing two actions' worth of damage output.

Towards the end of the fight, everyone was still standing thanks to that healing, but as he began to infinitely scale his stats once he reached his second phase and started taking them seriously, they couldn't afford to waste turns healing anymore and the safety net they built up by healing earlier in the fight kept anyone in the party from dying.

PUNISH MISTAKES The range on D&D characters' HP pools and general survivability can be pretty broad. I like to give my bosses a reasonably-heavy hitting melee and some sort of light ranged attack to remind the backliners that they too can die. But there's a third kind of attack.

The great equalizer.

The One Hit Knock Out move.

These need to be telegraphed. There needs to be copious time to get out of the area, or to stop the boss from using it, or whatever the case may be. But any superboss should have a way to threaten any player on equal standing: a move that will always hit if its conditions are met, and puts them clean to 0.

Ozyas' OHKO was Pretender-God-Piercing Strike, where at the end of each turn he would wind up a spear thrust with enough range to hit across the entire map, targeting a 15-foot line through the nearest player. Neither he nor the line could move after that, and if you were still in that line at the start of his next turn, you were done.

It wasn't hard to avoid: just walk like 10 feet and don't get pushed back in by another enemy. They even lined it up to target some of his own allies sometimes. But it forced them to think about positioning and stay moving, and there were a few times where it aaaaalmost caught someone in the line. The prospect of Instant Death really does wonders to ratchet up the tension.

And now, finally, we come to the most important part:

MAKE IT A GAME D&D 5e likes to jerk off while fantasizing about being real. "Catherine what the fuck are you talking about?" What I mean to say is that D&D makes a fumbling attempt towards a more simulationist style of game, trying to distance itself from the fact that it is, in fact, a game. It tries to comport itself like reality, such that every part of its combat makes sense in-universe, and then immediately falls short because it can't be assed to indulge in actual simulationism.

It is my belief that if you're going to spend 4 hours fighting a boss, and one of the boss mechanics doesn't really make much sense as an in-universe concept but does make the boss more interesting and fun to fight, then that's a perfectly fine mechanic. Obviously finding some way to justify it is preferable, but my bosses prioritize good gameplay over verisimilitude.

The upcoming boss in my campaign has a feature which puts the fight on a ten-round time limit before he begins kicking substantially more ass than he was before (and the prior ass-kickery was indeed already substantial). If this is a desperate fight with his life and his dreams on the line, why doesn't he open with that? If this were a WOTC statblock, barring a mythic trait, that's exactly how it would work. But fuck that, because it would make the fight way less interesting! Now there's time pressure! And sure, the post-round-ten version of the boss is meant to be fled from, not fought, but if he's at a low enough HP it could instead make for an insane climactic finish!

I let my players see the whole statblock before the fight. We talk through all of its abilities, and I'll even point out some of the potential points of complexity and the big risks to watch out for. There's no in-universe justification for why the characters would know this (beyond, perhaps "you're exceptional adventurers and are good at evaluating your foes"): in fact, one of the quintessential examples of classical 5e metagaming is the Guy Who's Read the Monster Manual. I think that's fucking stupid, though. With open statblocks:

Features can be game-warpingly deadly without instantly incurring a TPK born of ignorance. OHKO moves don't feel fair unless the counterplay is known

The players can strategize around the ways in which the boss is going to change throughout the fight

It's fundamentally fair. Some GMs just wait X turns and then let the boss go down when it takes a big, impressive hit (and I fully respect people who do that! That's still more compelling boss design than 5e's normal schlock), but I personally like when numbers have meanings.

You can still hide some information (I like to black out the boss' Mythic Trait, and then only use it if the players stomp the fight too easily), and you can still tweak it to adjust the difficulty, with the difference being that your players know it's being adjusted and how so (which again comes back to my feelings of fairness).

A few other fun mechanics to toss in include stacking debuffs that trigger something horrible at some certain threshold, additional win conditions or lose conditions, and silly little minigames. One trick I particularly enjoy is having my players secretly vote between two or more bad outcomes, and punishing them even more if the vote is tied.

CONCLUSION Your mileage may vary, but I'm hoping at least some of the insights here were useful to you! I have a particular strain of undiagnosed mental illnesses that make me especially predisposed towards piloting huge convoluted intricate bosses with 1k+ word statblocks, and I'm lucky enough to have players who know their shit well enough to play around this bullshit. Find something that works for you and your players.

If you hate 5e combat and think this sounds like way too much work to be worth doing, go play something else, like Pathfinder or Lancer or (heaven forbid) a game that actually struggles to trace its lineage of inspiration back to D&D. Go to itch.io and find some game no one's ever played before, and toss the creator a bit of money. The only way we're making it out of these goddamn Mines of Phandelver is if people try something new from time to time.

On the subject of cool games with cool combat, bear with me as I shill for a friend real quick. If you want a game that cares less about combat as an abstract dick measuring contest and more about combat as a facet of violence and all that that entails, check out [BXLLET> by @rathayibacter.

And, finally, from the bottom of my heart, fuck WOTC. Your books aren't even worth pirating, and the Tarrasque can blow me.