In a high level campaign I ran, I took the design philosophy that the villains were supernatural (e.g, dragon or lich), the average npc was weak (level 3 or less), and the characters were once-in-a-1000-years heros (level 10-20).

Every now and then they would have an obstacle involving regular humanoids or the local government and they had the option of just steamrolling everything (even whole platoons). It provided a great contrast to the magic-boss death matches and let the characters really feel special.

It also drove home that they were the only ones who could save the day.

How interesting to be living in a time of transition. Watching people fight AI is like reading about teamsters diverting irrigation into roads so only horses and not cars could pass. Or like reading about pony express riders climbing telephone poles to sabotage them.

In the article, this one was just an accident even, or so it seems. Photoshop released a new, unspecified, AI-powered tool and the human artist used it. WotC at first defended the art as they believed it was human generated (and I believe they contracted a human) and retracted it.

It'll get to the point where almost anyone can use it and it indistinguishable or even better than most human art. Right now we're fighting, but eventually the public will either get tired or (like with cars) become the primary users of AI art and the fight will sputter out.

Thanks, you saved me the trouble of writing out a rant. I wonder if the other guy is actually a computer scientist or just a programmer who got a CS degree. Imagine attending a CV track at AAAI or the whole of CVPR and then saying CV isn't a sub field of AI.

Computer vision is AI. If they literally want a robot eye to scan their cluttered pantry and figure out what is there, that'll require some hefty neural net.

Gets back up, "also, his name is Jolam." Lies back down.

"I hurt my friend because I took a dumb idea too far" is a very probable story. The part I can't believe though is ending the game over a dire bite. We finally got the schedule together, we're going to use the time, darn it!

Pretty much, only detail missing is that it was the season for fruit. So, there is an added sense that by all natural laws the tree should have had fruit and it's lack was a particular aberration to a societythat used the fig so much.

Also, thematically, it rounds out God's domains. Up to this point, there had been miracles showing dominion over weather, matter, human life, animal life, spirits, disease and now there's plant life.

Okay, but real talk, this looks like the equivalent of having a cutsy cuddle session at the firing range.

Even if you like guns/spells, you don't want to be kicking back, listening to your man read poetry while Samantha in the background is repeatedly screaming "IGNIS!" *BOOM* "IGNIS!" *BOOM* in her coked up magic voice.

Another aspect of the puzzle is that not every evil deserves death. A bum who does minor theft almost as a habit, a hateful bitter man who antagonizes everyone but obeys the law, a teenager, a greedy business person who employs half the town but makes everyone's life a bit worse, and so on.

Good should have the self restraint to not go straight to murder.

Simply ignores it while regurgitating my personal opinion as if reiteration and intuition could trump the cold equations themselves 😎😎😎

20 years

20 years

20 years on the other side of the planet with the average citizen so uninterested that weeks would past without a news story on it. How is that not the definition of terrifying? Hell, it was terrifying to Americans who were paying attention.

Just flee to the Astral plane, bro. They don't extradite.

17 INT 6 WIS 😎. I'm not here for your society. I want to get rich and delve past the 4th circle of the mind brah. Not work for the man so he can forgive me for the debts he saddled me with in the first place. Or something... Look I didn't learn how to create energy ex nilho to have to consider my actions.

This jpg rationing makes me sad for what we used to have. When I was young, the internet was young, and jpg was overflowing. But as we burned through the last of the cheaply minable jpg we had to turn to increasingly cost ineffective means, like jpg rigs to extract deposits from the ocean floor, and accordingly images everywhere became clearer and clearer.

It would all be fine if we could just make a cost effective way of recycling jpg or green jpg technology would be adopted worldwide. But that's not something you or I can accomplish, we need whole governments embracing the switch to new jpg sources for it work.

The monk isn't homebrew, they just used the 1d20 in order method of stat generation. They got 18(+2)/20/20/14/20/10 and a CL feat. Honestly, MADness is only thing holding a STRonk back.

Yo dawg, you got that vaporwave wizard template without the text. It's real, yo.

*Currently seducing goblins

The rest are out chasing dragons, etc.

*pushes glasses even higher* That rule specifically only applies when you use a bonus action to cast a spell. (Rules link). Two leveled spells using your actions are fine. Here's the relevant sage advice to confirm.

While the sage advice doesn't address leveled spells in action/reaction (e.g., fireball and counterspell) in the same turn, we can assume it is possible as no bonus action is used.

My favorite DMing style is what I like to call "train line DMing." The train goes to all the stops but you can do whatever you want at them.

There is a plot, no crazier than any purchased campaign, but it's structure consists of a chain of open-ended* scenarios. Its a contract: the players are willing to follow the general and well telegraphed line of plot hooks and in return they do whatever they want in the scenarios and I do my best to incorporate their interests and backstories.

And like all contracts it starts with explaining that and seeing who is interested. Example: "I want to run a short campaign where you explore X looking for Y. Be whoever you want, except one key part of your character is they want to find Y." Then we do it if people want.

*Open-ended here means "no right/pre-planned answer" not "no ending to lead to the next part." For example, city A has a cult to deal with and the leader has a letter pointing to city B. Whether they kill the leader, join the cult, plan an economic take down to render the cultists penniless and impotent, or something weirder, they get the letter.