By the rules of the game you can’t surprise someone who is aware of your presence, so you’re correct.
That also means you don’t automatically get to interrupt a monologue by blasting the bbeg in the face mid-sentence. You need to roll initiative to see if you are able to act before they can respond.
Alright, my bad, though you still haven’t provided a link to any of these.
Also, from what I can see that 8645HS iGPU does not match a PS5 in performance and has exactly the same iGPU as the 8700G. It’s not even close to a PS5’s performance.
…none of the processors you list seem to exist? The only “7800” ryzen is the 7800X3D which retails for more than that by itself, let alone in a complete system, and I highly doubt you mean the A10 7800 which is over a decade old. No AMD CPU or APU that I can find has ever been branded as 8800 or 8900.
The closest and highest end match to any of those numbers, the 8700G, falls well short of a PS5. There’s no way it counts as close unless you’re talking astronomical scales and “within an order of magnitude” is considered “close”. The iGPU on the 8700G being a newer architecture than the RDNA2 in the PS5 doesn’t make up for the fact that the PS5 has three times as many compute units.
I’ll happily eat crow if you can link to one of these alleged $300-$400 PCs.
I think you misunderstand. It was painful for Valve to cut the margin so thin, assuming they kept one at all.
According to Valve’s messaging at least the Deck launched at the lowest price they possibly could manage.
I’d like to see a link to a parts list that provides PS5 level performance for $300 in any form factor.
To your last point, back when the Steam Deck launched they described its price point at the time as “painful” but felt it was necessary. Turns out they made the right call and it was wildly successful, so hopefully they stay the course on “painful” pricing.
Hey. There could also be some Record<string, any>.
Everyone is clowning on the order, but clock faces also traditionally use IIII instead of IV.
I never understood the hate for Aloy. She was at worst bland with a pretty heavy helping of “I’m better at everything because I’m the main character”, but she’s hardly alone in that, and it doesn’t usually attract that much ire.
I really didn’t understand the complaints that she was unattractive or even outright ugly.
// these are unicode characters in four hex…
If your dev team needs a comment explaining this I have some serious concerns about their qualifications.
This is already pretty close to how many EVs are designed.
Now, this I like.
Average annual family income in the US is around $80k/a. Are you seriously suggesting that families should be looking for homes in the $20k to $30k range? What kind of home, exactly, do you think you get for that?
I have also never played Rimworld but curiosity got the better of me and against my better judgment I checked to see if you were correct.
You were.
Since you asked:
The damage against the floor is a minor thing, and smashing up the place as a consequence of fighting there is a reasonable bit of extra flavour. I’m not against it.
A free action that grants a skill check to get +2 to hit on your next attack as a reward for missing is wildly disproportionate. There are feats worse than that. If this is a thing people can do why would literally everyone playing not be constantly chewing up the floor in every encounter?
Broadly speaking objects that are worn or held are exempted from automatic manipulation by spells and effects, though this is usually called out in the description of the effect. Telekinesis, which is much stronger than Mage Hand, is one such spell which grants the wearer a save. Then you have things like Catapult, Daylight, or Fireball’s ignition effect, from which held or carried items are flatly immune. Personally I’d consider that grounds to extend that same restriction to Mage Hand.
I’d go so far as to say it’s not just the DM’s prerogative to set DCs for actions the players want to take but literally part of their job as specifically outlined in the core rules on ability checks.
The fact that the DM presumably set a DC for the intimidate check is also not the part here that’s in question.
Yes, completely agreed.
There are also systems much better at this than D&D, which makes calling it out as being the “great” thing here even more out of place.
If you want crunchier rules that have these kind of flavourful interactions you could play PF2e, which literally lets you roll intimidate to debuff your opponent and you have to actions available to do so after swinging your weapon. If you want something looser and more freeform that encourages improvisation maybe take a look at Legend in the Mist or something.
No. These people are welcome to play however they want. They’re having a good time and that’s great for them.
Pitching this as “d&d is great” when the entire story hinges on multiple table specific rulings makes this both less relatable for players of d&d used to a different tone of play and can set unrealistic expectations for new players who might join a game that plays very differently.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t play like this, or that this isn’t d&d. It’s just a very specific scenario that is quite likely to be non-representative of many games.
I’m glad these people are having fun, but I always feel a bit put off when some random group’s homebrew and table rulings are pitched as being typical d&d.
Yeah, absolutely. There are plenty of RAW ways to allow a bbeg to monologue, at least to some degree.
Of course it’s also entirely within the GM’s power to just tell the players to let it happen, but it definitely feels better when there’s some kind of in game reason why.