Ahdok @ ahdok @ttrpg.network

I make comics sometimes: https://linktr.ee/ahdok

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in 5e, Geas is a level 5 spell that compels someone to either do something, or refrain from doing something - the compulsion is in the form of the threat of massive damage for disobedience.

Side Note: If you read any of the 5e official books, they say the temple of Tymora is in the Castle Ward, not the Sea Ward... Despite the temples of Gond and Sune (which the Temple of Tymora sits between) being in the Sea Ward.

Here's a map.

The gambling angle is pretty much a Tower of Luck (the temple of Tymora in Waterdeep) orthodoxy. While gambling is somewhat in Tymora's purview, it's not a common focus of her followers, which tends to be more "fortune/fate/karma/adventure" focused. Most Tymora worship is done at small traveller's shrines, hoping for fortune or safety on a journey.

The tower of Luck in Waterdeep is unusual for Tymoran worship, it's the largest temple to Tymora in Faerun (and the only one that's remotely close is in Suzail) - part of the money for such a large institution comes from placing it in the noble quarter of town (the Sea Ward) and... not dissuading nobles that donate huge sums of money in the hope of it "buying" them fortune and luck in the future.

The other part comes from the temple sponsoring and supervising gambling houses in the city - most official gambling establishments have a resident Tymoran priest who blesses the proceedings, and is there to assure punters that the house is running a fair game, and not stacking the deck. There are non-sanctioned gambling houses in the city, and they often offer better returns on bets, but... they don't come with these assurances... so really if you go there you're making a different kind of gamble.

This relationship between the church and "sanctioned gambling establishments" might explain why, our of the extensive list of guilds in the city, there isn't a guild of gamblers or gambling houses.

As for Konsi herself, while she recognizes that gambling represents a form of worship to Tymora, she much more subscribes to the "good karma" theory of fortune and fate. Those who do good deeds will be smiled upon by Lady Luck, and their good deeds will be repaid in kind. She doesn't tend to go in for gambling games too much, because they tend to require a bit more calculation and mathematics than she's comfortable with, and thus her knowledge of these games is a little sub-par for the wishes of the church.

It's a fun religion, they even have a casino floor in the church itself where you can just hang out and play some chill cards.

She likes to pull her hair back out of her face, and wrap it around a bone to hold it firm - but some of the front tufts always escape.

Well, you could just buy one.

It's a classic. I wish the movement didn't require your full action though - the spell is level 5.

I'm pretty sure that the rules as intended for this one are that it just affects attacks, I'm afraid. Sage Advice repeatedly argues that the intention of wordings like this is that they don't extend to other effects.

Of course, it's perfectly fine to run your table different to sage advice. There's a lot of stuff in there that I think is rather silly, or bad design.

Were you able to see the whole space, you should be able to see the illusory duplicates fine (they're not "vampires" mechanically), but not the real vampire, so I'm in full agreement there.

It's a common trope in media and fantasy lore, Quite a few tropes of vampires are listed in the flavour text, rather than the statblock, and this is one of them.

...All of this is pretty sketchy though, it's definitely pushing the limits of what these spells or abilities are intended for, and "having your image move around inside you perfectly so nobody notices" would require an extreme level of control that I imagine most, if not all casters wouldn't have.

If we're trying to design an NPC vampire to foil the mirror check, it's probably better to have them use a custom spell or magic item that's explicitly for this purpose than to try and repurpose an existing spell to do it. "This amulet creates an illusory duplicate of you that fills the same space as your body. When you turn invisible, the illusion remains visible and moves in a random direction away from you" for example.

This approach has a lot of advantages I think.

1. If you let NPCs do it, then PCs can do it.
2. It doesn't feel like you're creatively abusing the rules to give NPCs an advantage
3. When the PCs beat the vampire and get the treasure they get a lightbulb moment when they realize what happened
4. The players get an interesting niche treasure out of it they can come up with clever uses for later.

I don't I can make a good case for "looking in a mirror" to use the "attack" rules. If it's an attack you'd have to make an attack roll (if you're not making an attack roll, it's not an attack.)

Likely, if there was a d20 roll involved, it'd be a perception check.

I think the illusory duplicates made by the magic are designed to "move around in your space" to make it hard to tell which one is actually you - the purpose of the spell is to make you harder to hit, so it's behaviour probably works to let that happen. It'd also be very difficult to get away with it in a social setting because you have to cast the spell first, it makes four duplicates, and they don't last that long...

Now on the other hand... Trickery Cleric "invoke duplicity" allows you to control the movements of the duplicate (which is incorporeal), so it might be possible to hide it inside you if you were really practiced. Konsi sometimes summons it in her exact position while standing still, then uses her second channel divinity slot to turn invisible and run away.

It'll only give you cover for a moment, but if they're doing some sort of "check every visitor for vampirism" check on the door, it might get you past.

I'll make a nice transparancied version and post it :)

Yeah, she has a few goblinoid features, larger ears, lack of pronounced tusky teeth. She's taller and prettier than most goblins (4ft) because she's free of Maglubiyet's hold, which twists and corrupts his servants.

I think the idea of the initial post is that, when presenting someone with a "guide" for running a game, you kind of expect someone to have read the whole thing at least once, and then use it for reference.

With the case of the 5e DMG, it actually has quite a lot of good advice in it, but most people running games haven't read it fully... You constantly see complaints about 5e saying "there's no advice for (x)" where the advice is just in the DMG

When I first picked up the Nobilis RPG, I read it cover-to-cover, the margins were always crammed full of stories and examples that really helped develop the setting and ideas and contextualize everything. I think the majority of RPGs that I've picked up have been read back to front... because what else are you going to do on your first pass?

I'll definitely agree that it's good to have books that work as decent reference manuals, especially for rules heavy games... but... have you tried to use the indexes in the 5e books - the PHB index is an experience and a half.

It's true. The fastball special is all about positioning, and closing the gap.

This is why you polymorph the fastball into something small and fuzzy first.

The main thrust of my argument is simply, and throughout, has been this:

In the last 50 years, "worker productivity" has increased dramatically. compensation has not. The increased wealth that we are all generating is not making our lives better - it's going into the pockets of billionaires.

As you put it "the real median wage has not changed since 1980". As you showed with the graph you posted, the increased wealth that is being generated is increasingly going to the wealthiest people. This is all the data we need to support my argument, and they're both claims you have made.

The "improved living conditions" from better technology and industrial processes do not REQUIRE us to be giving all the extra wealth we're generating to the wealthiest people. These would still exist if we were taxing billionaires and large companies more, enforcing better wages for regular people, and investing that wealth into social programs.

It shows extreme confidence to draw that many horses... One of the three impossible artist feats.

While it's true that new inventions do make people's lives materially better, the point that's being missed is... this is an inevitable consequence of the development of society, we'd have these new inventions regardless of our economic systems or choices of where to tax people, or economic policy. Those benefits aren't caused by the widening wealth gap, and the wealth of billionaires isn't required for new inventions to be made.

What we're talking about here, specifically, is that people are producing more wealth, but not getting wealthier. The wealth of people has "effectively stayed constant since the 1980s" but the total wealth we're creating has gone up significantly. It's certainly nice that we have more things we can spend that wealth on, but that's a distraction from the issue of where the rest of the wealth is going.

If you actually look at people's lives, "materially" and look past the inevitable march of technology, what else is happening? 70% of people are "living paycheck to paycheck"; poverty, and child poverty are massively increasing; many schools can't afford to give children textbooks; and teachers have to buy school supplies out of their own meager paychecks; the cost of healthcare is increasing, leaving many unable to afford it (or in non-USA countries, where everyone can afford healthcare, waiting lists are increasing due to poor funding); Towns are bankrupt and can't afford to repair infrastructure; the quality of most goods (clothes, houseware, and furniture especially) are decreasing to the point where they fall apart in a few years; and most public services are on the verge of collapse.

The cost of housing is so high that younger generations don't even aspire to own a home any more, the cost of higher education is so high that people expect their student debts to never be paid.

So yes, it's nice that we have Facetime and Playstations, Those things do make our lives better... but you have to consider, if the "increased productivity" of workers was going towards society and making our lives better instead of enriching billionaires, could we address some of this?